Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We've been admonished to really speak into the microphones. Yes. Good evening, everybody. I'll call this April 2nd, yeah, April 2nd, 2026 Sammamish Planning Commission meeting to order at 631. First roll call, Hisham Al-Khawad. Here. John Bachman. Here. Mazzy Punawalla. Yep. Ajay Chakrapani. Here. Syed Safavian. Here. I'm Mike Bresco. I'm here. And we're expecting Sudha, but she hasn't arrived yet, so. All right. So next after roll call is the approval of agenda. Is there anybody who is wishing to change the agenda? Any changes? Okay, seeing none, we'll consider the agenda approved by common consent. And next, the minutes from our March 19th meeting. Any adjustments to the minutes? Okay, seeing none, minutes from March 19th are approved. All right. So first, or next is public comment. I want to mention that this is going to be the only opportunity for public comment this evening. We did do a public hearing during our last meeting on the topic that we're going to be continuing as part of old business. So if you do have a public comment, you could comment on anything, obviously, including the impact fees. So, anybody for public comment? Oh, what the heck. Okay, Mr. Stickney, please.

Hello there, Paul Stickney, Sammamish. I've turned in some stuff. I'm not going to go over every single thing there because A, I wouldn't have time, and B, there's no need to repeat some of it. But a couple things I would like to read into the record. Where I'm coming from is what I wrote in my email to you guys, and it is genuine. I strongly assert that the way forward, oh, and, you know, by the way, let's start with a quote from Martin Luther King that I'm not going to get correct. But his quote is, there is never a, it's always a good time to do the right thing. And I assert that the right thing is adding market rate housing we need in the community, authentic, bottom up, to meet long-standing needs in market rate housing, mostly from 500 to a million five. And that would help create revenues in sustainable ways to address past infrastructure deficiency. Because if you look through what I sent in, the vast majority of our infrastructure problem has nothing to do with growth for the last 20 years in Sammamish. We've only done roughly 14% or 15% of the houses that were here. It has everything to do with what was inherited at 1999 when that plus King County pipeline homes were 85%. So we have prior deficiencies that new development can't pay for. So I'm looking to kill two birds with one stone, add genuine market rate housing we need that helps to create revenues to help meet some of the prior deficiencies of the past. A couple specifics. You know, I'm not going to say I wish I had more time because I would probably just go on and on. So I'll try to keep it short here. I have noticed some things that I can't reconcile entirely. in the fees. And I will also say, to start with, that I still am very troubled that a 3,000 square foot high-end condominium in Town Center pays the same thing as a 3,000 single-family home somewhere in the city. They do not create the same demands on the traffic transportation system. Why are they paying the same thing? Also, I couldn't figure this out, but it appears to me that the PM peak trip ends inflating the PM peak rates from the ITE manual and rates are going up a case in point in the 2006 or 14 rates a senior adult single-family home was roughly eleven hundred and sixty dollar impact fee if attached or twenty seven hundred if you know detached in this table in the packet those two same things are 55 71 or 46 42 but i'm lost it doesn't say what that size is it just it a lot of this doesn't add up and to me i don't think it is passable as it is today with the information you have but that's just my opinion

Okay, thank you, Paul. Anybody else? Evan, anyone online? All right. So time to move on to old business then. And so I want to do a couple of, I guess, preface statements as Evan's getting set up here. First off, this is continued deliberation of the proposed park and transportation impact fees and then also the municipal code basically rewrite or change. So that's our focus. We're continuing, you know, we've had Six meetings already on this, so this is number seven. It adds up. The agenda packet provided responses to questions that we posed last time. And so, you know, Evan, I don't know if you're going to touch on those briefly, but, you know, there were responses to the critical questions that we had. And I wanted to recognize that and thank FCS and the staff for getting those answers to us. The objective of this meeting is to take action and to make recommendations on these impact fees so that we can provide those recommendations to council. So we want to complete that tonight. Hopefully we can without moving to a number eight meeting. So the important part of this is the process that we're going to use. So brief presentation from Evan. Then we will make motions and deliberate on each of the policy needs. We'll start with the main motion and deliberate. Before voting on the main motion, we may add and deliberate and vote on amendments to the main motion. And then through the video recording and notes that we take, we'll be able to capture our rationale, put that together in the recommendations. Okay? So this is a motion and debating and making motions and passing motions meeting. And once we close the meeting, staff primarily, with some review from myself and Syed as the chair and vice chair, will prepare the recommendations. And we can include any dissenting opinions. So it's very clear for council what we've been thinking and the nature of the deliberations that we've had. So with that, Evan, you ready?

ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU, CHAIR. GOOD EVENING, COMMISSION. FOR THE RECORD, EVAN FISHER, SENIOR MANAGER ANALYST WITH COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT JOINED BY DAVID PILE. I THINK THAT WAS A GREAT INTRODUCTION AND I APPRECIATE IT. actually caused me to repeat just a little bit of that information. But it doesn't hurt to hit it a few times. So tonight's meeting objectives are to, again, address briefly the questions from last meeting, which we did put in the agenda bill, but to take action on these three items. The first key item is the impact fee report and the proposed scaling impact fees for parks and transportation. The second, then, we're going to ask this broader question of, and this is a topic we brought up before, Does the commission recommend that the city council assess 100% of the calculated values, or somewhere between 100 and 0, because they have that discretion? And then we'll be looking at the code topics. The code as a whole, we'll ask for your recommendation on, but specifically we're looking for direction on how we should write into that code any reductions or waivers for affordable housing at different income bands. what exemptions we should consider like for ADUs or additions or possibly other exemptions if you have them. And then we'll talk about the deferral limits for large developments and we'll get into that in a little bit more detail in a further slide. So just to spend a few minutes revisiting what we talked about last time, there were some questions that we walked away with, consulted with FCS, and hopefully were able to address in the agenda bill. But we want to spend just a minute talking about them. So the first is, again, can we summarize the historic investment methodology used for the parks impact fees? And this was a helpful revisiting with FCS, because admittedly, there has been some confusion. The idea of the historic investment methodology is to capture the total asset value of our park system as it is. And that sets a benchmark for the level of park service that we've provided to the city. We then use the current population to derive a park's value per person. And that gives us a realistic way to estimate how much we need to spend per person to maintain that level of service to support future growth. The second part is where there was a lot of confusion, and again, I apologize for this, and FCS wanted me to extend their apologies, because on the November 6th meeting, if you go back and watch that tape, Commissioner Alkawad brought up a good question of how are donations counted for in the valuation method. FCS at that meeting said that donations aren't counted in that valuation. If the land is gifted to the city, that would be a zero for land value, and we would just count for any improvements the city made. And the idea there was that the valuation would be strictly based on any investments the city made. They've clarified that they were incorrect on November 6, that any donations, what we're trying to capture is the total value of the asset. So that would be land value and improvement value, whether it came from a donation or a purchase. hopefully helps clarify where that, I think it's a $399 million total valuation of the park system came from. And it does include donated land. And if you think about it, it would also include when the city was incorporated, we inherited parks from King County, like Beaver Lake Park. So it includes the total value of that asset. There was a question of, is this methodology? I'll run through them and then circle back. There was a question of, is this methodology commonly used? And the answer was yes. This is kind of the predominant method for valuing park systems for the purposes of impact fee calculation. Kirkland uses it. They said they're doing Redmond right now, and Redmond's strongly considering this valuation method. So it is a common methodology for impact fee studies. Were other methodologies considered? Yes, FCS did look at other methodologies, and there ended up being some real limiting factors. And the key one would be is the historic investment methodology that they're recommending allows the city to spend impact fee dollars on any projects listed on that capital facilities list. Whereas a different methodology, more like the transportation methodology, if you think, would require the city to go project by project and assess how much of that project is strictly for expanding capacity. And then we'd only be able to spend the fees on the portion that is expanding. So it gives the city a lot more flexibility in how we support our capital facilities development with this historic investment methodology, which is why they recommended it. And then lastly there was a question in the confusion again I'm going to extend FCS's apology apologies and my apologies for this but Mr. Stickney and Chair Bresco pointed out that The updated version of the report upped the maximum square footage amount for the maximum fee from 2,600 square feet to 3,500 square feet. And there was a question at the last meeting, was this a typo or was this based on data? And they let us know, without letting us know, that during the course of the study between the versions of the reports, they got updated. updated data that confirmed that 3,500 feet would be the correct setting point for that maximum fee value. So I'll pause there because I saw at least one potential question. Oops. I'm all elbows tonight. So apologies. But I'll pause for any questions and clarification before we move on.

I have just one question, and I was reading and I had this question, which might seem a little bit of a tangent, but I'll just ask this. Let us say that I have a donation of a land which is valued at, let's say, $2 million, and then there is a consideration to build a let's call it a wedding hall, where there's going to be people who are coming, the city is going to make money out of rentals and other things that is there on that, or that it's going to be changed into an R4 and it's going to be made a dwelling, for lack of a better term. How is the donation accounted in those two times? Would that be just the land? or the land and the perceived value of that land, which changes in each of these two aspects. And I could not square that when I read through the documentation. I mean, when I read through and watched the meeting. And so that's why I had a question on that.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think it would depend on how... It's used. If it is donated and it becomes park land, set as park land, then the value of that park asset would be the land value, the assessed land value, so the $2 million or whatever you said. If once the city got the park land and then built a $5 million wedding venue hall and then charged fees to use it, it would be the park land and the improvement value. It wouldn't account for the revenues generated through the the weddings, if you were to go a different route and it would be rezoned and sold through development, then it wouldn't be part of the park system and it wouldn't be counted at all towards evaluation.

So that doesn't get counted in that option three that I talked about. If it is the first one, which is that it's just a park land, it'll be constricted for the land. And with the second option, which is that they'll be done and let's say a $5 million wedding hall is taken, then it'll be evaluated at $7 million, but not for any of the revenue that comes out of it while the property is being used. That's the best I understand.

Yep. Perfect. Thank you. Value of land and improvements. Yep. Okay, anything else or we'll move on?

Can I follow up AJ's question? You said the value of the land. Value of the land at the time of a purchase, even though that in his hypothetical situation, if the zoning was changed from basically open space or parks, to a retail, the value of land will be substantially different. So when you say value of land based on the time of a purchase of the property by the city, or the value of land would change automatically over time?

The first option. So the value of the land when it was donated or bought, and then if it were bought 10 years ago, it would be brought to present day dollar terms. There would be an escalator or whatever to make sure it was at a net present value. But the first way.

Thank you.

Yep. So there's also some conversation about the blended fee and the impacts of multifamily housing. And so we thought we'd just spend a minute on that because we did also talk to FCS about this. And it's important to remember that the transportation impact fees are based on the idea of offsetting the impacts of growth on our system as it is today and the characteristics of our system. So when you think of our system, currently it's comprised mostly of single family housing units. Right now, roughly 87%. So the blended fee is derived by basically a weighted average of the proportion of single family to multifamily units. And you could see the formula there to... run through and get you that blended fee amount. And ultimately, the thing to remember is that impact fees are not meant to incentivize a certain type of housing, like middle housing units or multifamily housing units. They're meant to help fund infrastructure to offset the impacts of growth. So I hear Mr. Stickney's point around trip generation rates and the impacts of multifamily housing. But again, our impact fees are based on an assessment of our system and its composition.

Actually, just maybe to reinforce that, I've thought a little bit about this because there's multiple methodologies. Every one of the methodologies is at best an estimate. It really is. And you could start to think about, well, you know, the single family, the impact is changing as the makeup of the city changes. How many families have youth, young kids, how many, you know, all that. You could go on and on and on and think of all of these what-ifs. So where I've gotten to, frankly, maybe this is jumping ahead a bit, but this is a methodology. FCS is used elsewhere. It's legally defensible. We could come up with other methodologies. You could also tear those apart too. So that's, in my mind, is this a consistent methodology throughout? and is legally defensible. Evan, you've brought that up, supported by what the consultant has seen and used elsewhere. And so from that standpoint, it doesn't make a lot of sense to relitigate the basic methodology.

And that triggered my brain on two things that FCS said that I think are important to touch on right now. And one is, David mentioned this earlier in our private conversation, is that when the time comes that our proportion shifts and changes and we have more multifamily or single family, we can update the blended fee and respond accordingly. Second point is that the reason FCS recommended a blended fee and use a blended fee is that their reading of the RCW and the statute is that we're creating a single methodology per square foot for a single fee for housing units, not housing types. So not middle housing, not multifamily, but for housing units and creating a scaling methodology for that based on bedrooms, trips, or square footage. So that's their reading of the RCW is that the blended fee approach creates a single fee for all housing units. So this is kind of reiterating what the chair was saying earlier, is a framework for us to get through the night, because we do have a lot of things to touch on and get feedback on. So first will be the question, again, on the impact fee report and the scaling impact fees. We'll pause there, we'll deliberate, we'll make a motion. Once we get through with that, then we'll go on to the question of how the commission recommends that the fees be assessed, deliberate, make a motion, vote. Then we'll go through each of the code issues. And then lastly, we'll look at the code as a whole with the modifications you all have deliberated and voted on independently and say, are we ready to move all those things forward as a group? And in the next The next slides go through each of those things individually. And the first one up, again, is does the commission recommend to the city council the scaling parks and transportation impact fees as outlined in the impact fee report? And by way, to help get started as a starting place. We've included a recommended motion of kind of staff's perspective of how we think it would go or recommend it would go. But again, that's your discretion. So we've created a starting place, but feel free to run with it however you feel appropriate.

Definitely appreciate that. And Evan, you mentioned about deliberate and in motion. Actually, I think for Robert's rules, you could certainly do that. Questions, make a motion, deliberate. It is, and I think since we've had a lot of conversations on this, unless you all disagree, what I would suggest is that we make a motion, assume it's seconded, then have deliberations. Based on the deliberations, decide and vote.

so otherwise we make questions we make a motion deliberate some more so so would anybody like to make a motion uh before we make a motion i have a small request a chair um and i'm so sorry to spring this like this but um i should have sent an email i have a million excuses to do it because i grew up in catholic school i'm going to give all the excuses later on but the point that i wanted to tell is that i have now applied for a permit to get an ADU added for my property. And it's now with any SSWD for water and sewer impact that's there. So for that part of the discussion alone, and I think that comes under section three of what you mentioned, I would like to recuse myself. And if there's some other place that you think that ADU impact is, I thought it was only in section three, but if it is in any other place, please let me know and I will recuse myself from that as well. I would like to move forward with a motion, but before I do that, I just want to emphasize that this broad motion does not set whether or not we're at 100% or 50%.

doesn't address any exemptions, and it also doesn't address whether we're going to do square foot or room count. So those are things that we can discuss and amend under this broader umbrella.

Is that room count, square foot?

That would be- That was a staff recommendation, if I remember right.

The staff recommendation is accepting the impact fee report as drafted, which uses the square footage methodology.

Strike the last one then. So I'll go forward. I move to recommend to the City Council the scaling parks and transportation impact fees as presented in the impact fee report and found as exhibit one in the agenda packet.

Okay, we have a motion. Anybody second? I second that.

I heard a stereo. No, no, you can second it.

It's okay. Wait a minute. I have another question. I think before getting to a discussion of scaling, I thought that we were supposed to take a motion and express our position as far as a consultant's report impact formula that they use.

That's exactly what this is.

That is a scaling that's different.

No, it is specifically about the report.

It says it's scaling.

Well, that's part of what is in the report.

I think that there are two different issues.

The discount, the second thing that we're going to talk about is... One is methodology.

The other one is scaling. Evan, if you go back to the...

The report outlines the scaling methodology. So the report walks through the methodology for calculating the parks and transportation impact fee, and then talks about how it takes those calculated fee amounts and applies a scaling method to get our blended and parks and transportation per square foot fee amounts. So it's all captured right there in the report.

If you go back, Evan, that's one or two slides. So the one with the arrows. So next will be the reduction in fees. So maybe that's just semantics or terminology, but the reduction in fees would be a way of scaling the recommended from the impact report or the report to 0% to 100%. So that'll be a second motion.

So maybe the wording under number one, wording and scaling impact fee should be a part of number two. That's what I'm saying. The first subject is the whole approach that a consultant has taken as far as calculating the impact fee, the methodology. And the scaling comes after that.

We see it as all in one. You don't get the scaling impact fees without the methodology. And it's all captured right there in the report. So we see it all as one item. And to reject the methodology would be to reject the scaling impact fees.

Well, and the key reference is what's in Exhibit 1. In Exhibit 1 is the report that doesn't have any kind of reduction in the impact fees included in it.

So if I remember right, the new state RCW allows for us to use the scaling, and maybe there's confusion over If we recommend 100% to council, council could scale that back, or we could, to 75% of that 100% scaled fee. It's kind of nuanced, but what we're talking about in terms of if we want to reduce the fee, we reduce the percentage, not the scaling methodology.

Yeah, I think you're right, and it is getting confusing in the scaling. What we're referring to in number one as scaling is ultimately the per square foot amount of a park's fee and the transportation fee. That's what we're talking about as a scaling impact fee. The base, yeah, exactly. scales depending on this the size of development so a smaller development pays less impact fee than a larger development so that's what we mean by scaling impact fees in number one what John is saying is correct then in step two it's like as David always says the dials and the levers right one of the local policy decisions we have is you can turn the dial up all the way to ten and charge all all of the fees or you can set it somewhere in between so maybe that's what you're what you're thinking of is as scaling is it turning the dial and reducing the fee amount I'm not sure if I'm helping address your concerns or not my concern is that let me tell you where I'm coming from I'm fully supportive of scaling but I'm the supporting of the methodology that a consultant has used

And I have my reasons and I have made a number of emails to the council as well as to the staff that the methodology has a lot of errors in my judgment as far as how they came to the conclusion that that is the way to calculate. But the scaling, I don't have any problem. I'm fully supportive.

Yeah, so we don't really have a choice about scaling. We are required under state law to scale our impact fees. And I'm not against it. Right. And I don't think it's, I think that's moot. I don't think it matters whether you're against it or not. We are required to do that by state law.

Right.

I think, so if you, in this case, he would vote no, because you do not support the formula that is the foundation of the scale fee that is generated. So that's simple.

He would just vote no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and so what we'll do, we'll have deliberations. And this is, the way I look at it, is the report that FCS submitted, and it's Exhibit 1, where the motion is really to say, we accept that. And that is the framework methodology that Sammamish will use to determine the base, maybe it's a good word, impact fee, scaling, amount right and then so now for deliberations if anybody has and said you obviously do some concerns about that methodology and those who have maybe feel good about it this is the time to just discuss those and have the deliberations and to determine whether we vote all in the affirmative or a mixed vote or reject the motion

I have just a clarification. You mentioned... Sorry, can you hear me? Okay. So I have just a clarification. You mentioned that this was done, obviously we are not the first city to do this kind of thing, where we are figuring out the scaling of the impact fees and then we are going to talk about the reduction of the impact fees and all those things. Now, while we are still doing that, Can you just, and I was thinking and thinking that I could not get to it, is that what was the cities that were used as an example when we built this model for Sammamish that we are considering right now? Were there any cities that were done? And the reason I'm asking that is because were they considerable bedroom communities like we have over here. And I'm not saying that it should not have a town center, it should not have something, it should not have a downtown or anything like that, but was there a significant residential population that we used as our metric when we built this impact-free structure that we put into place.

Excuse me, it's been a while since we've talked with FCS about other cities. I do know we're at the early end of cities adopting this because it was due six months after the adoption of our comp plan and we're the first group of cities going through comp plan updates. We're early, like Redmond is behind. We actually, in a meeting with Redmond, alerted them.

That's good for me because I was worried that I was completely missing that part of the syllabus where there was probably some other city that was there and I was not seeing that city or I was not seeing what they did with the impact fees and all those things. But your answer confirms that point to me is that we are on the front end of those cities. And I'm not saying they're not. I can't honestly remember at the moment the examples they used. That's got it. The question then that I have goes back to the model that we put. The model is perfectly fine for me. The example that you gave me is something I can understand. I can wrap my brain around it of $17,445 and $6,733. But what I'm trying to understand is that doesn't this have an unintended impact of it becoming a city that is more attractive for having this multi-mode family housing. And that will cause more impact on a lot of other factors that we are not considering right now, given that we are at the front end of it. And so if we come back, do we have that option? to say, okay, we thought it was $17,445 and $6,733. We have it a little bit off in this thing, and it should actually be $15,000 and $9,000 or something like that, and correct that. I thought we had that option. I just want to confirm that that option is still a valid lever that we can use sometime in the future if we find out that that is the case.

Well, if we were to find out that the total composition of housing in the city has changed, where we now have 20% multifamily and 80% residential, then yeah, we could adjust that and reflect it accordingly. I don't think that there's anything inherent about this methodology or the scaling impact fees that make it more or less attractive for particularly multi-family housing. I think it could create more incentive for smaller housing units, period. Because again, the whole idea the state had with this is to charge less impact fees for smaller proportionate impact fees. Smaller units would pay less and bigger units would pay more. That could result, you know, oftentimes multifamily units are smaller, so it could result in multifamily buildings. But again, the idea of an impact fee is that it would then collect revenues for the city to spend to help offset the impacts on its systems to support new growth. So if growth does occur, it's part of the tool used to help support growth. Got it.

So just like I said, I had some questions on the model. So we'll be discussing when we go to number two later on, or are we deliberating that right now? It just wasn't clear what was the conclusion on.

It would be now. Ideally, once we get past number one, we'll be done with the conversation about the models. And then we'll be on to the other issues. Yep.

To go ahead, if you're, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I can go ahead right now, but I thought he was ahead first. He had some questions on the model, so I don't know. I'll go after him.

No, I don't have a question. My position is that the model that consultant has used is basically capacity driven congestion peak hour calculation. And as a result, it favors the projects that will be funded from the impact fee. restricted to the intersection improvement, capacity improvement, no regard for the sidewalk, no regard for the non-motorized transportation, those are not recognized. And as a result, and that's exactly, unfortunately, what's happening. If you look at it right now, the impact fee and the CIP, you have a list of projects, multi-modal, that in my lifetime, probably the city is not going to be able to fund these projects and build it because they're so big. And the reason is that because the model based on large projects, corridor-wide intersection improvement, and capacity improvement during the peak hours. And this is in contrast with the city transportation master plan, transit plan, and all that. And everybody, including the council, the council was very adamant that our system is multimodal. But the formula that they use is not multimodal by any sense of imagination.

Can I make a clarifying point to that? Because I appreciate these comments, and we've had a lot of conversations about this at these meetings and also offline and other channels, right? And I appreciate your willingness to share this with us and to try to understand each other, right? But I want to highlight that I think what you're referring to is how the capital facilities plan, the CIP, capital improvements plan, whatever it might be called, the jargon, how that serves as an input into the model. So if I may, I think what you're saying is that it's not that you disagree with the model itself, it's that you disagree with the input going into the model because we haven't gone through the process of amending our transportation master plan, our CIP list, and the list of projects that go along with that, and that you would like to see that list of projects include multimodal projects, other projects that are of different scale and that might be able to be more attainable, and all of those things, that's not so much the model, that is the input. And what we have said in response to that is that we hear you, In some levels we don't disagree, but that would mean we'd have to first go through updating the TMP and updating the CIP as part of the budget process before we finish the rest of this work. So we would then pause this work, wait until the CIP list is updated, and then resume this work with that new range of inputs that are going into the model that are responding to what you're talking about.

Actually, while you're talking, I pulled a copy of the report, and I don't know what page is that. Transportation fee calculation methods. Eligible cost of capacity increased projects divided by growth in person, trip ends equal to our traffic impact is actually this fundamental of the methodology.

We did talk about this last time, and again, I'll try to reiterate that what we're talking about capacity is capacity of our systems not just so it's it's not just level or intersection capacity it is an assessment of are we adding so our current capacity is everything we have now all of our roads are our road capacity our sidewalks are our sidewalk capacity any eligible capacity adding projects are those that build bring new capacity onto those existing systems. So that includes road miles, but it also includes trails, bike facilities, sidewalks. That all adds capacity. That's that top line. And that's the assessment the consultant does. I'm just going to actually give me a second to share my screen. That goes back to those percentages that we talked about. Coming up. So again, those eligible capacity projects. This is the CIP list that was used as an input. The yellow highlighted ones have a multimodal component as part of that project. So these were ones. And I don't know if this is exhaustive. This is where my. Admittedly, I was doing this quickly. This is where I ran out of time. But these yellow ones were confirmed by our senior transportation planner that they have a multimodal component. That eligibility percentage here, right, in the center column here, these ones that represent, that percentage is saying how much of that project is increasing system capacity. So, I guess I'm just trying to clarify to be clear that there are multi-modal projects. The model does account for them. The eligibility percentage of capacity adding is how much of each of those projects adds capacity versus repairs existing capacity. Because remember, state law is clear. You can only use impact fees to fund capacity adding projects. You cannot use impact fees to do repairs in existing systems. So the model does account for multimodal. It is based on adding capacity to the system, because by definition, that's what impact fees are supposed to do. And the model uses person trips. as the denominator instead of vehicle trips, which in the past it was based on vehicle trips, which limited us to only doing road projects. Person trips allows us to look at multimodal projects. So I just, from staff's perspective, those things are accounted for. We might just disagree. And that's okay. I just want to be clear on that.

Simply changing from the vehicle trips to person trips doesn't address the concern of the multimodalism. I read that the senior transportation planner responds to my email, but I totally technically disagree with it.

I'm still trying to understand a little bit more your concern around multimodal because on page 22 of our agenda packet in the report from the consultants talks about trip ends. City's transportation master plan provided estimated PM peak hour vehicle trips for 2025 and 2024, FCS used national data to convert these PM peak hour to person trip ends, so the person trip versus vehicle. This better aligns multimodal transportation projects to the charge basis. So as I read this, and I'm having trouble understanding your concerns, is that if we're hoping and wanting to see multimodal supported by the impact fees, the approach that they took, using person, not vehicle, and the way they tied it into the national data. And they say clearly in the report to better align with multimodal transportation projects.

Well, if I may, I want to go back to the comment that both David and Evan brought up, and they say that you guys, you think that the reference to the capacity applies to all modes of transportation. That's what you're saying. When the formula says capacity, it doesn't mean vehicular capacity. It doesn't mean inter-station capacity.

Right? System capacity.

It would have solved the problem. It would basically address my concern if we had on those lists of the project that Evan highlighted Stand-alone projects that addresses those multi-modal systems. For instance, a good example is a sidewalk. Changing the vehicle trips to the person trip, how would address the capacity or lack of capacity of the sidewalk or crosswalk?

Well, I think that gets back to the project list and updates to the project list that are planned over the next year or two years, right? And also the other part in what you're saying is how does it address? That's the percentage that can be allocated to the need for the result of increasing capacity of the system.

Yep. I agree with that. And I'd also say that part of it is not FCS's issue. It's an internal issue of how we choose to prioritize our projects. That's understood. Yeah. So as Chair Bresco said, the CIP list is coming back. I believe the council will be starting to have a conversation with that in June. along with the budget so they'll be looking at those different projects and I don't know how transfer how the Public Works Department and transportation team chooses to break out projects I don't know if they're focusing on specifically individual sidewalk and multimodal projects versus just you know a more you know, a road with bike lanes with, you know, like a holistic, yeah, combined project approach. But none of anything listed, your issues with, I hear your issues and I think they're fair. It's really not an FCS problem. It's a city problem of how we choose to do our transportation planning.

No, I'm not accusing the consultant. I'm just saying that the way that I see it, I have a strong technical reservation about the accuracy of using that formula to calculate the impact fee.

So here's what I'd like to do now. So Saeed, we'll come back to you. So you've made at least initial concerns about the technical accuracy of the methodology.

Right. But again, I want to make sure that I'm making it clear. I'm fully supportive of scaling. I have a problem methodology. Right, right.

yeah that's clear at least to me it's clear so but we should hear from others so how about let's we go around this way saddle we'll come back to you if there's other things you'd like to mention so john would you what's your position on the motion since i made the motion i support it i think a lot of the concern there's timing issues with between we're already behind

deadlines on this part of the comp plan budgets coming up you know so this is going to be very iterative process over time I'm looking at Michael back there in the audience ultimately the budget stuff comes down to council decisions about what gets included in CIP and exactly what what those look like you know is it a new sidewalk because the development is close to a school you know that's going to decide how they can spend some of this impact fee money, assuming we recommend to the council that at least some percentage of impact fee is charged. I'd go 100%, but that's my personal. Yeah, that's the next one. Okay. Okay.

My issue is the same as last time, that the way we evaluate or value the parks. And again, I'll use the same example I used the last time, that if someone today donates 100 acres to the city, That will actually negatively impact how much impact fee we collect from our fellow neighbors who wants to build properties. Or from any developer who wants to build a property. Instead of helping, it's gonna make it worse. And that's where I have an issue with the methodology. I heard that Kirkland uses it. I heard that Redmond is about to use it. What other methodologies that other cities are using, Redmond and Kirkland are two out of many. Again, honestly, I don't want to repeat what we talked about last time because I don't think you changed anything. You just showed me that, yes, what I was saying from before was correct, that they are including the donated lands. It's inflating the value. They are inflating the value of the parks, which is not helping the impact fee to become lesser, which is making houses smaller. It's increasing the value of building houses.

I got the one that's missing the button. One thing that might be helpful to the council is understanding in the past you have said that you disagree with that. One thing that might be helpful is to understand what you would do differently. We understand that you don't agree with it, but one thing that would be helpful is if you could explain then how would you do it?

I asked in the past that if we look at different cities, the areas that are parks per area, for the people who live in the city. Do we have enough parks or do we need more parks? In my opinion, we have plenty of parks. Like I said, if we walk to any park in the city of Sammamish, it's empty. I do not believe we need more parks. And probably we do not need more parks for the next 10 years. We need to improve the quality of services we provide in the parks. We need that CIP list. We need more items in that CIP list. I would fully support that. We need to improve those parks significantly. But to use the value of the parks themselves as the way to come up with an impact fee, that's where my disagreement is.

So it sounds like your disagreement is with the level of service standard that is a park acreage per person.

My disagreement is with the way we come up with the impact fee. I don't want to say my disagreement is with the quality of service that we provide.

So the level of service is set by the city's parks and recreation open space plan and by the comprehensive plan. And within those plans, the level of service is anchored by the acreage per person. That is why the methodology that is being used for the purpose of impact fees is related back to the value of acreage per person, which then results in us having a corresponding measurable fee that could go along with new development in order to sustain that acreage per person that is identified by the Parks and Recreation Open Space Plan and the Comprehensive Plan. And I understand the desire to want to have a different level of service. However, to do that, we would first need to amend the Parks and Recreation Open Space Plan then we would need to amend the comprehensive plan in which we would amend the capital facilities plan to identify a different level of service, which is a different standard. Maybe it is a recreation facility by square foot of, you know, there's got to be a different way to measure that service for that quality of that facility. But currently that is not how it is set up in those documents. So again, much like the disagreement about the capital facilities plan for transportation, there is a process to do that. And given where we are, the reason why we ended up with that methodology is because of that level of service that was set years ago in the PROS plan, two years ago in the comp plan, and that we are now following up on this phase of implementing that through impact fees.

Thank you. I see similarities. What Jean is talking about is exactly the concern that I have on the transportation.

So a quick suggestion here in terms of not going through dramatic changes to all these plans, but coming at it from the other direction, and that is instead of suggesting 100% of the parks fee to council, you suggest some different percent to mitigate and offset the donated properties or however you want to do it, but make it a budget issue rather than trying to change the methodology.

It's a way to reduce it, but honestly, I wouldn't be able to justify it. If someone says to me, how did you pick the number? It's just going to be a wild guess.

So the answer for us as to how you pick the number is that, oh, the percentage. I mean, I guess you could understand what percentage of the properties listed on the list are donated, and you could simply adjust it based on that.

John, your background is Parks and Rec. educate us a little bit of what Sean is talking about as far as, and I totally agree with what he's saying, that instead of increasing the value of the land, therefore charging more to the developer for the parks, buying more parks, park space that we probably don't need it, but improve the quality and the features of the typical, can you elaborate on this based on your background?

Right, and keep this quick. In the consultant study, they want to do total valuation. The Parks Department wants to know that. The Parks Commission definitely wants to know that. And that's probably why they've included everything, including the kitchen sink. So from the Parks Department perspective... They want to make sure everything's in there. If there needs to be an adjustment to how much the impact fee is charged to new development, that becomes a budget issue, as David suggested, could be reduced by looking at

how much donated property there was or some other factor but reduce it on the budget side rather than in the methodology side no that's not i don't think that that's what isham is talking about what isham is talking about instead of focusing on purchasing the property for the future expansion of the park improve the facilities that you offer in each part heaven can speak to that

well yeah and that's what i was looking and trying to pull up here so listed in the report is the capital facilities project list in the park section which is on screen now and you can see there is a line item towards down at the bottom here of land acquisition and it's 4.3 million dollars but the majority of the the improvements are improving the existing park system. And remember, like we said earlier, the benefit of the historic investment methodology is that we can use the impact fee revenues on any of these projects here, anything listed here. the the big dollar ones like the big rock south the phase one improvements or uh you know the the synthetic turf overlays these are all eligible to be funded by impact fees based on this methodology and i think at a higher level really the question is is do you do you want It is a revenue source for the Parks Department to use on these system improvements. And by rejecting it, we are rejecting a revenue source.

Time out, time out, not necessarily every one of these. Because if some of these items has to do with the deficiency of existing system, you cannot charge a car parking back fee.

You can on parks, you cannot with transportation. And again, we've talked about this at a couple meetings about they are fundamentally modeled differently. And the historic investment approach, which we've used in the park system, allows for that spending.

If I could add one thing here, too. One thing to keep in mind is that the parks fee that we're talking about in the methodology, the capital facilities list, the pros plan, the level of service, that is all under the purview of the Parks and Recreation Commission. So the PROS plan was developed by the Parks and Recreation Open Space Commission. It was approved by the City Council. The method of measuring the level of service was something that was developed through the Parks Department with the PROS, with the Parks Commission. And there is, the Parks Commission, as I understand it, I can't speak for them, does have a strong interest in both improving our existing parks, but also land acquisition. So that nine person body would have a lot to say about this. And we are basing the way we are modeling these fees on the direction that they have given through the PROS plan, through the capital facilities element of the comprehensive plan. And we are simply here to implement it. So if we're here second guessing their whole approach to how they measure level of service and their whole approach to whether we should be acquiring land with a land acquisition strategy, That's a whole other conversation, and we probably should stop talking about this altogether, take it back to the Parks Commission, or maybe have a joint meeting with them so that they have a say in this as well, because it sounds like we're basically going a different direction than what they have done through the PROS plan, through the capital facilities planning effort, and through their level of service and how they've set it.

I have two things. One, Evan, slide that up. So it says total growth-related portion of the CIP is about 36 point. What does the rest of that paragraph say? As this value is greater than the value needed for growth, no adjustment is required to reduce the impact fee. So when I read this, and I may be missing something. I haven't read this prior to this particular meeting, but for the ones before. The way I read that is when the consultants, maybe in concert with the Parks Commission or department, looked at this whole list, which totaled 37 million, that they said that we don't need to make an adjustment, we're good, using the methodology of the value of the land. So it seemed internally consistent to me, frankly. So I know we've got, there's a lot of energy around these things. We want to hear from Mazzy too.

If I can just say one thing, quick. My issue is not with the way the Parks and Recreation Commission, they come up with their capital improvement list. My issue is the way the consultant calculates the per capita. That's where my issue is.

Yeah, and what I was going to say is we will get to a vote. We'll either pass or not. If we don't pass, then we're basically saying that we're rejecting the report from the consultant. And we'll have to talk a little bit about what implications that would have. What I think from a council standpoint might be better, and I'm not trying to sway the vote here, but if we do pass it, be very clear about the concerns that we have. The report that we send to council should be very clear. And in the sense, and I usually don't like to do this, but it would be upward managing the council to say, you've heard our concerns, and now you all have to decide whether to accept or reject the methodology based on the significant debate that we've had and the clarity around, Hisham, your concerns and Sedge, your concerns. And we'll just have to make those crystal clear in the report to Council. And I know that some of the Council members either attend or watch the videos, so they'll have a chance to, you know, hear firsthand, so to speak. So, Manasi, we should hear from you, too.

Thank you. Thank you for giving me time. So my concern or question is basically around the sensitivity of the assumptions. So many of the fee calculations depend on assumptions such as population growth, trip generation rates, and the share of transportation projects attributable to growth. Did FCS perform any sensitivity analysis to show how the impact fees would change if these assumptions vary? For example, if growth is slower or if trip pattern changes? So any idea we have on that?

They didn't do any sort of sensitivity analysis. It was outside of their scope. The assumptions we used are what we've been working with the last four or five years on the comp plan process, is that we as a city are planning for 20 years of growth. under the Comprehensive Plan, the Growth Management Act, which this is all a spinoff from. And we are assuming, we are planning for 2,100 units of new housing over a 20-year period. So that's what we asked them to plug into their formula because that's what we're planning for. We're trying to, again, it's the idea of internal consistency. That's what the county, the whole long process has said we can anticipate in growth. So that's what we've used.

Yeah, but given the conditions, I mean, you know, you've seen layoffs happening around this part of the world, you know, the way things are changing with AI and technology and, you know, less people actually needed to do those jobs. You know, what we assumed five years ago may be different 10 years from now. I mean, I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball to predict that, but at least do we have some, like, is this something which we can change in the future? We want to set it in stone, right?

This is what numbers are because those numbers could go down, right? Well, as David said, yeah, we do the comp plan process every 10 years. So in 10 years, we'll re-look at the growth target, the 20-year growth target. We'll set a new one. But on a sooner time frame, if as a city, we're noticing like, hey, we're not growing. It's flatlined or people are leaving. We can choose to recalculate our impact. impact fees because we could say, hey, one thing, we know this is set based on an assumption of growth that we're not meeting. So at which point we can use the same formula but use different inputs to recalculate our fees.

So do we do look at this at a year by year basis? Do we look at this or is it five year basis we look at it?

We're proposing that it would be done looked at with the budget process So every two years we do we adopt a new budget and we'd we do sort of a check, right? Like are we in line with the growth we've expected or are we way off if we're generally in line? I don't know. It makes sense that we go through this process every two years Yeah, plus or minus 5% is okay up and down.

I mean you could be true, but right but if it's bigger jump, right? I mean, I mean the new Washington state income tax that could pass right people it it could really change. Yeah, and which way I especially because it's a very millionaire kind of area, and they're saying that millionaire tax might affect and people might move out. I mean, I don't know what the growth may be. It might go down. I don't know.

Yep. At which point we can, if directed, we can update it.

That is my concern, sir. Thank you.

That's a good question. Thank you. Ajay? Yeah, Evan, can you go back to the slide, to the page where you had the highlights?

Yes.

With the highlights. I just want to cover one point of that. OK, here we go. So I looked at this thing for the inputs. And I was seeing these inputs. And I saw that we have here, we have accounted for some $32.2 million in here. They're looking at $37 million as the total impact fee. We have some other calculations that will come in. And that's why comes your paragraph at the end, at the bottom of the other slide, that other page that you were showing, which said, we are not going to change anything because it is accounted for. Am I right in lining up these two things, first of all?

but this is the transportation impact fee input, and we were talking about the parks impact fee. And the parks impact fee. And again, they're fundamentally calculated differently.

They're fundamentally calculated differently. Okay, that's good. Now over here, right, and we've talked about the transportation fee, impact fee, addition, and all of those things. So I've looked at this thing and I used to think that, okay, we look at the Issaquah Pine Lake Road and the 230th Lane, and signal improvements. That has barely any eligibility percentage that's coming up into this thing. So that does this one. Then I looked at, I used to look, I mean, when I used to look at this number, I used to see, before your highlights were there, the Southeast Connector Road and new signal on Southeast 8th Street, and that is a transportation impact rate. And that has a really good impact out of it. That's 100%. So it does all of these things. And I was rationalizing all of it together, and I was thinking, okay, this is good. But when Commissioner Elkowat said, you know, we have parks, and we have these things, and we are not using it, and we're not making... we're not making enough out of it, I don't know why we're having an expense that is adding on to these things. And I know that these two are unrelated, or these two are not the same thing, but eventually all of it adds up into one specific pressure point. And that specific pressure point becomes the cost of living in Sammamish, which keeps on increasing with all these fees, all these projects, and everything that goes on. But this whole thing. And going back to what Commissioner Mazer said, which is that with the way the economy is changing, with the population that's over here, AI needs us to have lesser jobs. It has an impact on everyone. It's going to change the way we are doing these things. I went back into thinking what Director David Pyle said, which is that these are the levers and these are the buttons that we can decide to press in the two-year review period and come back and say okay this was not what we thought it is there is not enough of the growth over here we have to reduce this down or we have to increase that we we don't think it's 7.67 like you have over here 7.6 like you have over here but it should be at 25 for this thing but it'll be something else or something else and then it'll add up on to doing that. Am I getting too far into the weed to decide this thing? Or is it the understanding that at the end of it, we've all, everybody has driven into this concept of let's look at it at $37 million. Let's look at this at the traffic impact fees of $32 million. Let's look at it. Let's compare. Let's get it to a point. And then after that, we will use the levers and the buttons, as Director David says all the time, to figure out where we land about this whole thing when we don't have it. If that's the approach, I understand that approach, I appreciate that approach, and I think that because we are at the front end of a lot of these things, we don't have a good template to run with, and we may become the template for it, and I understand that. But if that is the case, I would definitely encourage that we should acknowledge it in the document to say that we will we will review it at the two-year period with the comment that commissioner hisham had which is that we will see the usage and figure out whether this is all valid this is needed and and then change it based on that metric at this point we are not even acknowledging that point and if we don't acknowledge that point my worry is that we'll keep on building we'll keep on making it at 37, at whatever million dollars, or whatever the amount is, and then we're going to come back and we're going to give the city council an unenviable role. Sorry, I got so excited. We'll give the city council an unenviable role to say, okay, this is the cost that is there, this is the money that we thought is coming, it doesn't look like it's coming, so there's no other point but to now charge the people who are living in this city to pay for what we have already broken ground for and that will end up making it much harder for us to achieve any of the other goals that we have established for this thing. So can we make it into the into the two-year plan to say that we are going to go back and we're going to look at utilization of these resources that we're going to invest and at that point we will take a hard decision whether we want it or not. And if we don't do that, we run into the risk. But if we do that, at least we have a timeline and a metric that we can go for.

There was a lot there, so I hope I can address parts of it or all of it effectively. But one thing to note is that we've been collecting transportation impact fees for 20 odd years. This is not a new thing. The only thing that is new about it is that it now scales based on the size of development. And FCS is largely dusting off the old methodologies we've been using. this is not a new untested thing this is creating a way for the city to pay for infrastructure to support new growth and if we choose not to do it it it's like the idea um i think what you wanted to add to clarify something yes i i don't want to say that we are not going to do it what i am saying is that at the end of two years when we come up for the first review

I want to definitely look at to see how is the city utilizing or is trying to utilize some of these improvements that are there and to change the way we calculate it at that point in time, and then every two years after that, or whatever time that we decided to do that, to actually put that into the ground to do it. Because if we don't do that, we are doing this purely as a theoretical exercise. At this point, we are doing this as a theoretical exercise. And then the city council is going to come and is going to have to deal with an actual problem, and that is the shortfall. And when that shortfall happens, we're going to cut everything. And I'll make it very simple. We'll cut off fireworks to say, let's make it happen.

But there's no revenue projections here. This is not what... It's not a revenue projection.

What I'm saying is that the revenue projections will come up at a later point in time because we are looking at cost projections over here, investment projections over here, And that does not, nobody has a blank check right now to say, I'll give you $37 million, do whatever you want to do with it, right? We are definitely going to look at it and come back and see, has this been utilized? At that point, we don't have a way to say we earned this much money out of it. There is no way we can do that. None of these projects you building a sidewalk is not going to make bring revenue into the picture, right? But what I'm saying is that we have to then make a Sophie's Choice question of whether it is Whether it's living up to its worth or not and that goes back to Commissioner Hisham's question Oh, why are we building more parks when we have so many parts over here at that time? You may come back and say yeah, we plan for it. We plan for 14 parks It doesn't look like we're using even the seven parts that we have Why build the 14 parks? We will stop at 8 or 9 to figure that out. And without stating that we have a quantitative, given we are having a quantitative discussion, let's add a quantitative point to say, let's come back to a hard review two years from now to see how the utilization is. And if the utilization does not line up to where we think it would be in that 20-year cycle,

Let's change the buttons and the levers. So I was taking notes. So what I was hearing is that part of our transmittal letter will include a recommendation to take a hard look at two years. And you said utilization. So if I capture it right, utilization of the fees, the impact fees, or utilization of the what?

The utilization of the, how do I say this? I'm trying to find the right word. The utilization of the facilities, if you'll call it that. the parks or this... You may want to say assumptions. Sorry?

Assumptions.

Yeah, the, yeah, the exemptions. Yeah, okay.

That's a good one. Actually, that's a better way to say it. We'll listen and tie that together, along with the concerns about the way the calculation is for the park impact fees. Is there anything else, Ajay, that you want to add?

No, that was my biggest concern as we go through it right now. We're doing a very theoretical exercise, and it all lines up. It seems like it's all lining up here and there and everywhere. But we're doing it based on numbers, we're doing it on a quantitative scale, and we're not doing it on a qualitative scale. But I'm saying that let's measure the qualitative use in two years from now, and then come back to do it.

I mean, having numbers and doing theoretical is not wrong. I mean, that's good to do. But to do it at one time and just forget about it is not right. Every two years or whatever, repeatedly we go to, it should be live, it should not be fixed and say that's it. Yeah. every two years revisit and say, hey, whatever assumption we had, whatever numbers we projected, did we achieve this? Did we go above them? Did we go below them? If we go below them or above them, then adjust the model, adjust the plan, so on, whatever your levers are, and then say, now this is what it is. And every two years, they may go up, they may go down. We don't know. Exactly. Because I don't have a lot to predict.

Which is what I used in this thing. This is why I went back to your, this one, into coming back, and I know that this is not the one. Please, again, all the caveat that I want to add that this is not the one. But we will come back to saying that if you look at this, you said that the transportation impact out of Issaquah Pine Lake Road is at a 7.6%, right?

No. What it's saying is that 7.6% of that project adds capacity to the system. Therefore, 7.6% of that total project cost would be eligible to be funded by impact fees.

So 7.6% is what you're saying is the eligible. We can come back and we can look at it to say, actually, this is very close to couple of schools. This is very close to the Pine Lake Strip Mall. Everything is there. It seems like it's not 7.6%. It's 14.4%. Let's go ahead and look at that for that.

I think I'm following now. I think what, in theory though, what would have happened ideally is that that project would have been built. So it would just be out being used by people in the community. It would no longer be assessed by how much capacity it's adding because it's on the project list. And ideally, that project would have been funded in part by using impact fees and built out there servicing the community. So I think it's hard. I don't know. You couldn't revisit it then because it wouldn't be included on the project list because it's built. So in a future iteration, ideally, these projects will have been funded and built and will have added capacity to the system if they add capacity or repair the existing system. And they wouldn't be counted next time in the transportation model because, again, they're fundamentally very, very different about how they calculate it. So I think that's why I feel confused about this example is because, in theory, it will be built or it will The amount of its eligible capacity that it could add.

Yeah. Yeah. I understand where I got it wrong. I was not more this on that particular project that is there. I was just using it as an example. But my thought process was, when I saw the yellow, was just the non-yellow part of it, was to say, yeah, there we go for it. For the yellow parts of it, which says 100% and other things, we're going to come back and we're doing this thing. What I'm saying is that can we do the same thing in the other one, too? and use the levers. At this point, I don't see anywhere where we are even giving an idea of where those levers and buttons are. of what we can change, what we can do. And that makes this model extremely brutal, like Commissioner Mazahir said.

Yeah, and I think I'm following you a little bit more, like where can the adjustments be made? Where can the adjustments be done? Yeah, well, part of what makes these models... tricky and complicated they're trying to come up with a sound legally defensible methodology for estimating the value of the system or the impact the future impacts of the system and so it needs to be a very quantitative data-driven exercise i completely and so i think there's a little bit of attention of that's why it's hard for us to spend so much time talking about the methodology because it just needs to be what it needs to be to be defensible and robust and reasonable estimation of our impacts there if we when when we get Yeah in simple right because there is no perfect way to do a lot of this stuff we unfortunately the policy realm is a gray area and We look at long-term assumptions and what ifs and what what nots, but it's always good We're going to live in the gray a little bit. This is the best tool we have and currently, for estimating the value of our systems and how to then charge newcomers to the system so they pay their share to improve it as they use them. That's, again, the whole idea. I've lost my thread a little bit, I'm sorry. Yeah, I completely agree with you. Oh, the discretion is coming once we get past this methodology. Again, the staff's recommendation is the methodology is sound. It is what it is. You will then have discretion on how much of it do you charge. If your concern is that it's putting too much burden on newcomers to the community, which I think ultimately is Hisham's point, then a sound recommendation would be to choose to charge less or none of the parks fee, in Commissioner Alkowad's example.

So that goes back to the buttons and levers that you were talking about, which is that we will then do that. I completely agree with that. What I'm saying is that can we also add that into the language that we are going to recommend to say that we will definitely look at this in two years and start pushing the levers and levers.

We've got a note here, and Evan, I'm sure that, you know, you watch the videos, but it's also written into the code to do an assessment every two years or to use escalation based on...

I don't think that it makes reference to the two years as frequently, and that's the question that I have. It says frequently, it doesn't say two years.

Yeah, and part of that was to leave some discretion to the council... Yeah, it was originally that, but we did change it. In part because this is now a time-consuming effort that we've gone through, and to obligate ourselves to do this every two years might not make sense if our growth projections are reasonably within the 5-10%.

I'm not even wedded to the two-year model. If you say that it's the four-year, that's fine. What I'm saying is that let's put it in this one to give a date and a time, because this model is an evolving model, and without the date... We can never go back and review it and do this thing, and we will either build something that is not used, or we will not build for something that needs to be there.

One thing that I can say, predictably, that is true, that unless state law changes, we will be, and one of the biggest inputs, as I understand it, aside from the methodology about how we, you know, whether we're using acreage per person or, you know, N trips, people N trips, right? Those are parts of the puzzle. But the other biggest part of the puzzle that I think we've heard the most about in this whole process is the CIP lists. And one thing that I do know is that we do update the CIP list as part of the budget every two years. So as long as we're updating those lists, and as long as part of that process we are assessing how we are progressing with housing in the city and whether we're meeting our state and county obligation for housing and whether we're meeting our internal need for housing as we hear about we have the ability to push those buttons turn those dials to say that okay the the The CIP list and the methodology results in this base fee per square foot. And we can choose to say we don't want to collect any of it as a matter of a market catalyst. If we said, hey, we're not seeing any new housing being built in the city, and we wanted to add a market catalyst, the commission wanted to recommend it, the council wanted to do it, we could choose as a city as a policy choice, not to collect an impact fee. We could also run a limited time basis for a limited time basis and then we revisit it again in two years and keep revisiting it and maybe then the like the comment about you know, the economy and jobs and things like that, maybe that's changed and the Where we are now and historically have been is that we do this every ten years and it's not working So we are proposing to try to be more Responsive to do it every two years And if we don't do it in two years, well, then there's an automatic clause built into the code regarding a market factor, or excuse me, an inflation adjustment. There's a term that's better. I'm not doing a good job describing it. I apologize. But that would be included there. So I think what we are saying is that the... This is the formula that we have brought forward that is based on the one hand for transportation, the transportation master plan, the capital facilities element to the comp plan, and the capital facilities plan, or excuse me, capital investment plan list that we have. That's for transportation, and that's what that's based on. And we understand that there's disagreement about the projects that are on the list and there should be smaller projects that are more attainable because we actually want to build them, not just big projects that are pie in the sky that we'll never do. And we understand that that needs to be updated, and we need to do that. That's part of that other part that's bringing the new CIP list in in two years. Or I guess this year. We understand that on the other side, that there is... some disagreement about the fact that do we really need to buy more parks land? Why do we have a level of service that is pinned on an acreage per person? Are we just chasing acreage or are we chasing a quality of the experience for the user? And we might want to evaluate our CIP as it relates to that and the PROS plan. And maybe there needs to be a tweak made to the PROS plan to better reflect that. And that is direct feedback. We're going to be meeting more closely with Parks and Parks Commission. We'd like to have a joint meeting with you all in the near future. And I think that would be a good time to address that. But for now, our adopted and embedded in the comp plan and in the PROS plan is a level of service that is based on acreage per person. So that is how we came up with the formula. So in that case, it's those two factors. It's the level of service and the capital facilities plan that plays into that one. So given that and given the results that we have based on What we're given, the CIP, the TMP, the personnel trips, the PROS plan, the level of service, the acreage per person, the CIP that supports that, we end up with these two fees, these base fees on a per square foot level that can be scaled to small units at the lowest end, 3,500 foot units now at the high end, And the next, so if you understand that, we understand you might not agree with exactly how all that works, but there's a lot of pieces to move to change those things. We can work on that. But if you can move to the next step, the next, if you go back to the list of things. Let me finish one thing, I'm sorry. The next thing you're going to be talking about is whether or not you should charge the whole fee. and whether you think it's too high, whether you think because of these factors, maybe we should only charge 75% of it. And it's going to be hard to pick that number, to your credit, right? But that is part of the policy decision, is we think it's too high, we think it should be lower, we think that given that there's all this extra parkland, maybe we should bring it down 25%. Maybe we only charge 75% of it. That's that next step in this whole process. Thank you for bearing with me. I appreciate it.

I want to get back to AJ's comment, and then can you go back to that highlighted list, please?

Sorry.

No problem. I want to kind of make a point that everybody should know. That list of projects and impact fee? That's right.

No problem.

All right.

Here it goes.

Okay, so question on that list. Basically, it tells us three things. The project, project cost, and eligibility, right? Who created that? City staff or consultant?

It was created by city staff with the city's transportation consultant, DKS, with the city's impact fee consultant, FCS.

Right. There is nothing in the report that says what was the basis, what was the formula used to calculate eligibility.

Let me give you an example. That's good feedback. I think... The Hollyway.

The Hollyway project, that is number one. Everybody comes and talks about the deficiency. Eligibility, according to that list, is 6%. Would you believe that?

Well, I'd add Crusader Way, TR 125, is shown at 0%.

So that's my question. What was the formula that was used to calculate eligibility?

And that is something we can bring back to FCS that we could ask that they thread into, or excuse me. Well, it would be FCS because it'd be part of the report where it outlines that methodology.

Back to Mr. Mazira's comment about the trip generation or number of trips or future. Actually, I was seeing something on one of these AI sites that City of Sammamish is a leader in telecommuting in the whole Puget Sound region. That is not included. These numbers that you see is coming from the IT International. They're located in Washington, D.C., and this trip generation that they use to calculate that the consultant and city staff uses is average condition, not for the city of Sammamish that you have a high number of the people that they're using are the modes of transportation like...

No, but that is changing because now Microsoft is going to go back to work. So those numbers will change.

Exactly. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, all of this stuff. I started early on about any model is just that. It's our best illustration. And there's lots of different ways of doing that. And all of them are fraught with all sorts of issues. And so you take your best shot. So kind of where I'm at on this is after seven meetings, or six and a half meetings, seven and a half, whatever the number is, that the basic report has a methodology, the formulas, the formulas, not the list of transportation projects. and it provides a defensible way of determining the impact fees. And frankly, in prior meetings, I brought some similar things up, including Hisham about the parks, because I was having trouble getting my arms around using the value of the parks for parks projects. But all that's saying is that we've got so much square footage or acreage of parks, And we need to maintain it in some way, or improve it, I mean, not maintain, improve it. It doesn't imply buying new property. And in fact, the list of projects, only one of them has, if I remember right, or a small number have new property. So I think the question for us and for me is, is this methodology solid enough to go with, or would we say, go back to the drawing board and produce a whole different methodology? And I don't think that's worth our cost as a city to do that, frankly. There's a cost for continuing this thing, and I don't want to pay it. However, I think there's some really important points. And the report, because it's going to be sort of the reference document, right? And if things are unclear in that, so for example, great point, Syed, about how exactly is that transportation eligibility percentage determined? you know, is there any guidelines for that? Or is there a reference manual out in D.C. or someplace? That should be referenced. And I think we should make that in the notes, assuming that we pass this forward, that there are some necessary refinements to the report to enable it to be a good reference document. And that would be, that's at least one that I noted. And then there's a few things that, you know, we've got some concerns about. And we've had them for every single meeting. So we should capture those and make sure that the council members understand those. But are they enough to say, we should throw out the whole methodology, and at least for parks, and if not for both, start fresh? And frankly, I can't support doing that from a fiscal responsibility standpoint for the city.

One point that we haven't discussed, you and I, we discussed it with the staff, but for the rest of my fellow commissioners, there is a provision for the developers if they dispute the impact fee, there is a process.

Yeah, and that's part of the code.

I just want to kind of remind you, there is a process that they can hire a consultant and submit it to the city, forward it to the city's consultant, they review it, and then based on that,

Did I say something wrong? No, I have one thing to what you're saying. So one thing to also remember is we're looking at a lot of large dollar numbers with these CIP lists. Impact fees are collecting basically pennies on the dollar compared to what it costs for us to make infrastructure improvements in the city. My tongue-in-cheek way to say this is we could have spent already more in these seven meetings than what we actually would have collected in the first year. Just... saying. So it is a very small amount of money based on the rate that we grow. I mean, I'm looking at the Office of Financial Management population reports, and it shows that for 2025, our population was 68,480. For 2024, it was 68,410. So 70 people we grew in one year. And for 2023, it was 68 to 80. So we've grown 200 people from 2023. So these are reports that are showing that growth. Now, the growth was faster in the past. There's different periods, really. It depends on, as was stated, trends in employment and housing need and those types of things. So there are different rates of growth at different times, but the point being is that impact fees does not bring in a lot of revenue to the city for infrastructure. So just keep that in mind. In my mind, that's one of the things in the background is that we're not really making a lot of money here.

Well, and to add to that, because one of the, actually, the reason, the assignment we all got this was to get this so that impact fees reflect square footage in our case. Bigger units are going to pay more because they have more impact. And small units, actually, the amount of money is going to be relatively small. The bigger units, it gets to be a little bit more significant. But on the bigger units, it's going to be percentages, not 10 or 50. It's going to be 3% or 4% or 2% to the cost. Not that that's irrelevant, but it's relatively small. So anyways, we've been through. We've gone around. We have a motion and a second on the motion. And this is about accepting the report that's shown in exhibit one. I'm ready to ask for a vote. Does anybody else want to make one more additional comment? Trying to push us along a little bit. So I hope you can appreciate that. OK. So who is in favor of the motion to accept the report shown in Exhibit 1?

I am. I. I. I.

3, 4. OK. And opposed?

WE DO APPRECIATE THE CONVERSATION BECAUSE WE HAVE ALL THE INFORMATION AROUND THE OTHER PERSPECTIVES THAT WE CAN MAKE SURE TO CAPTURE IN THE

recommendation to the council and to sending opinions for sure that's what i meant by that yeah thank you thank you okay and i'm also thinking um normally uh i guess david between you and evan or evan you put together when we've done these in the past the the letter you draft that um when mark was chair mark and i would do a review usually it was great and we would sign um We'll do a little bit more thorough review, and maybe this time we might want for the dissenting opinions to make sure that you have a chance to, you know, make sure we've captured those well. Because we really do want the information of our debates to be very clear for Council. Sure.

Will we have a meeting with the council in the future sometime? Don't we have one every once a month? Could you bring this up at that time? It's a once a year thing typically. Oh, it's once a year, not once a month.

At the commission and council's discretion, they could choose to increase the frequency. But traditionally, it's been once a year in the fall, usually in October, September, October, I think. I do want to highlight that aren't we going to council this on the 21st?

Yes.

So there will be a fairly tight turnaround on that letter. So we're going to be working on it right away. And in order for us to get it in the packet for publication to the council, we would need to have it published on the 17th, Friday the 17th. So just want you to be aware for that this first part. I know we still have more to do here, but wanted you to be aware of that.

So a question. So David, when you send a report to the council and those that voted against, you're going to be basically showing what we say to our position. Are you going to be re-battling our position and making a statement to staff? Staff responses to those comments as well?

no we're not planning on that that's that's i hope that you don't yeah i think we're just we're just trying to represent as best as we understand um what those positions are and we might reach out to you for for some some who voted um to support to make sure we're getting it right we're not trying to put words in your mouth so um we want to be careful of that

actually if it's more expedient given the time frame evan if you want to reach out to sid and isham directly with the draft before going to us sure yeah that would probably be a little bit more efficient so either way but that's i think that might be better sounds good all right one down it's the one we've had the most conversations yeah yeah yeah because the next one and john is already on record about the scaling so um we see here that staff is recommending the 100 of the maximum calculated impact fee so basically follow the formulas that are in the report well

Yeah, for now. And we recommend this in large part because it's historically what we've done. And as David said, ultimately, the big picture, we're talking about a fairly small amount of money, but it is money we can use to support building our projects. And we have a projects building issue. We need more projects to support. So, which is... The revenue helps. It's not a huge thing, but it helps. Also, just as a point of context, on February 3rd, we asked this question to the council just kind of as a preliminary, what are you feeling? And I think to a person they said, collecting 100% makes sense to them, but they were eager for your input.

If I can just say something here, because I heard it multiple times, that the impact fee is not that much, and the revenue helps. Yes, additional revenue helps. But when you take this additional revenue from someone who wants to build a house, it hurts. And it will increase the cost of housing. We saw it a couple weeks ago on the couple that their house was destructed by the storm, and the revenue that we were trying to collect from them, and how it was hurting them. One is one too much. So I wouldn't say it's not that much. It's too much for someone who wants to build.

Yeah, well, there is... Maybe a slightly different way of thinking. This is not going to be a new thing. I mean, these impact fees have been assessed again for 20 plus years in the city, thereabouts. So it's not, again, but it is again the idea that when someone, these systems that we all use currently are being paid for by current residents' tax dollars and the impact fees whenever their housing unit was built. So this system has been built by the folks here. The idea is that the folks coming here who are going to use the systems and we need to build more systems to accommodate them coming here are kind of paying their fair share. The idea is development is paying some of the share of the impacts of development. So I think it's just an alternative way of thinking about it.

So in this case, where a house was there, impact fees were paid 10, 15, 20 years ago, whatever, and something happened, storm happened, whatever, and we're just rebuilding it, we are not adding any extra capacity, any extra trip, because the same four people who are living are just going to live in it, probably the same size of the house. So there should not be any new impact fees, correct? There's no new impact fee.

Hang on, hang on. So that's going to be one of the other portions. Yeah, the third bullet here is specifically around that is when it's okay to say no.

But there's something here that sometimes we say there's no fear, there's no impact fee on existing. It's only on new. We know that new sets the price of existing. When we increase the price of new, existing price, the market will go up and everything will continue going up. So it will have a negative impact on existing, even though it's not direct, but indirectly it will increase. Indirectly, property taxes will increase. Indirectly, monthly payments will increase indirectly. Retirees who are on limited income, they will face additional taxes, additional property taxes. So don't tell me it doesn't have an effect. It has a huge effect.

All I'm saying is that it's had the effect every time always a new house has been built. That's what I'm saying. I know, but it doesn't make it right.

But I also want to highlight one thing, and I'm not... I understand that side of it too, that the cost of producing the housing is increased. Absolutely. And if you're a person who is building a home that is going to then move into the home and own the home, sure, I agree with that. The part that I see over and over play out in the community is that, and it is a common thing, that a product, the value of a product is not what it costs to produce it, it is what someone will pay for it. So assessors and appraisers set values of homes for the purpose of sale. It is not dependent on what it costs to build it. It is what the market will bring to sell it. And we hear builders all the time say, if you add these fees on, you're going to make housing more expensive. And the reality there is it's sort of. I don't disagree that that's part of the equation. However, the value of something on the market is not what it costs to produce it. It is what someone will pay for it.

A couple of questions. Last time that we talked, David and Evans, I asked that if there are some numbers from the other jurisdictions as far as if they do show reduction impact and what has been the consequences on that as far as bringing more businesses to the city. Do you have any numbers? No?

I think it gets really tough to... It's tough to quantify that, I think, of being able to show a direct relationship between jurisdictions choosing to assess less impact fee and maybe more building. It could be a number of factors that is causing more building. It could be interest rates or people moving in for jobs. I mean, there's so many things, I think. Or bus line or, yeah, it gets fuzzy. Yeah.

And also, how about listing possible trade-offs? More or less what Hisham's talking about, that if you go with 100%, if you go with the... with the answer no to that question and then go with 100% what we will trade off. consequences as far as less number of developers coming and building. So it would be nice to have some trade-off items that, in the case that fees are reduced or not reduced, what would impact on the development?

That's great feedback, and we can definitely think about how to present that to the council when we bring it forward to them. And based on your feedback about where you think we should land, I will highlight that based on my experience working with a wide range of builders, whether it's an individual homeowner who's trying to build a home or whether it's a builder who's trying to build a 30-unit subdivision and any range in between there, that by and large, it's not the impact fees that are causing the costs and causing a builder to want to build a home in the city or causing an individual homeowner to try their success in building a home in the city. It is things like tree retention regulations, stormwater rules, setbacks, other envelope restrictions that go into that that make the land economics of the entire project much more expensive because of how efficiently that land is being used. And ultimately, at the end of the day, impact fees are a very small part of that equation compared to other large land use economic drivers like tree retention and stormwater that play into how a home is designed and fits on a site.

The other question, David, if you recall, I asked... Could I interrupt for a second?

Sure, sure. So that we can get to the real question here, which is the recommendation to Council. I think, so we can have a discussion about is it going to be 100% or something less? I think that's the question in front of us right now. And I think that's what we should be discussing. So to that end.

That's what we're discussing. Do you know?

We haven't made, let's make the motion. I'm going to make the motion. I move to recommend. One second. Just to the, this is just a word thing. but your question and answers are incongruous your question says does the commission recommend to the city to reduce the amount of impact fee on all units the answer to that is no and if so what should the reduction be and what justification should the commission provide the answer is zero percent for that and then state that i move the city council assess 100 because we're not answering the questions that you put up

so we'll make the motion and then i appreciate it the question it's a good catch you understand the intent though so okay so i moved to recommend to the that the city council assess 100 of the maximum scale calculated impact fees do we have a second

Okay. I'll go for it. I'll second it. All right. Thank you, Ajay. And so discussion could include an amendment to that motion if we'd like to have less than 100 percent. So that's how we'll work that. Got it. So we'll start around this way, go around and, you know, say if you support 100 percent or something else, if something else, you know, what would be at least a rough logic or rationale for that something else? And it could be as simple as, I just think the fees are too high. know but it would be nice to have some rationale for about 75 percent makes sense because maybe hard to do but anyways so john my only comment here is just to refine this you might think about oh okay i want 100 on transportation but only 80 on parks

So that's a potential way to refine this a bit. Otherwise, I support 100% all across the board.

Just one clarification. Are we discussing both of the parks and rec on one?

OK. Like I said earlier, it's very hard to come up with a percentage. So I would go with 50%. if I have to pick a number, but I cannot defend it. I cannot sit here and tell you how did I pick it, just because I like half of it. But that should not be the way we do this. I'm just being honest here.

Just for clarification, so that would, and I'm going to put words in your mouth, tell me if I'm misstating, but basically you're saying the impact fees, because of the calculation, are higher than they should be, we should reduce from 100%. And you're tossing out 50% as a starting point. Because I have to pick a number.

The way we should do it, we should go over the numbers, agree on the methodology and come up with the right impact fee instead of just sitting here and saying, I like 50%. So I like 50%.

One friendly proposal could be that you request that we assess the percentage of parks that are part of the total valuation of the cash valuation that have been donated. and that as a matter of percentage, we reduce the impact fee accordingly. At least that is related to a metric.

My question is, basically, are we discussing this part of the next one? Because I have some numbers I want to talk about regarding affordable housing. So should we discuss in this one or the next one? Because I don't want 100%, basically, affordable.

Yeah, well, this is kind of across the board, whether it's affordable housing or not. So if we, my understanding, at least the way I was thinking about this, is later on, when we get to, should there be some additional discount for lower AMI housing? Yes. Let's say we do with 50%. We'd do 50% and then a further reduction for the low affordable housing.

So for the non-affordable or for the what you call regular housing, I'm okay with the 100% or whatever number we have. But I have some other suggestions for the lower housing and ADUs and stuff, which is question three, right? So I'll report it. Thank you. Yeah, I'm good for this then. Thank you.

I don't have any data point to oppose the staff-recommended motion of 100%, so we'll go with the 100% at this moment. Sayed?

I would go with the 25% across the board but then once come to the housing I would like into taking into consideration of the point that Mr. Sidney brought up equity location maybe consideration for zone impact fee ratio for instance if the housing is built in its town center the rate should be the impact fee should be a little bit less than the other areas. I don't know how we're gonna be bringing that into some numbers, but 25% across the board, but further reduction for the affordable housing and some for the different zones.

Okay. Go ahead.

I think it would be helpful to make sure, I think in the letter, right, to Commissioner Alcowod's point, it is very arbitrary to say 50% and then stop. And we can throw a percentage at it and the council can consider it. But the why behind it, I think I would like maybe just a short reiteration of the why from both of you, because I think it's more impactful to say to the council. Commissioner Elkwad thought a reduction by 50% made sense because it lessened the impact on new development and aims to reduce the cost of housing or whatever you would say. So is that does that capture your sentiment? I would.

I mean, again, I cannot tell you how I came up with the number.

Well, that's fair. And so maybe don't give a number and just say you think they should be reduced for the reason of. And if there's a way we can help the council, if they agree with that sentiment and we can help them quantify what that could look like. It's much better to say it like that.

Sure. It should be reduced. I disagree with the methodology. I keep repeating it and I know that we are beyond that.

What methodology are you talking about?

The way we calculated the impact fee. Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right.

No, it would be helpful if the why.

Well, I think that you summarized it very well. My concern is that I look at a list of cities in here. Unfortunately, we are, after North Bend, I think is the most expensive, we are the second. And I strongly believe that, despite the fact that David seemed to not agree with me, that every dollar counts to the developer. If you reduce the impact fee, there is good potential that you're going to see more development. Now, David, I ask you this question before, please clarify that again. What is the reason that we're not looking into non-residential use and discuss that as far as potential impact reduction, even though that goes through a different process? Commercial use.

offices spaces and all that why we're not discussing it in here we focus on the residential again it's a choice to to assess impact fees period so it's a choice to assess them across the board on commercial uses or residential uses so if you choose to reduction for all unit types we we've sort of taken up units because we're mostly talking about housing units in Sammamish but it would apply the reduction would apply across the board

including residential, commercial, and so forth. So that would be, I didn't know that until you just mentioned it. I thought that we were only looking at residential. But the impact fee that you're talking about, no matter what the magic number is, that would apply to the commercial as well.

I mean, correct.

So if we say 50% reduction, that would apply to the way... Then the incentive to reduce it is going to be substantially more to bring more development, not only residential, but commercial, we desperately need it. And that's the reason that I wanted to go with a minimum of 25%. But the further reduction based on the zonal and equity issue. Town center versus other areas. So you would be recommending... Zone-based impact fees.

Okay.

That would be... The state law allows us to create, what are they called? Service areas. So you would recommend service areas... For further reduction beyond 25%. A specific town center-related service area... Do we have only one service area? The whole city is the service area.

So what that would mean, right, is defining multiple service areas and determining the impact for each of those. And the reason I brought this up was in one of the prior meetings, I thought at that point you would also need to go back to the basic formulas, not just the percent reduction. That's a question. Because there's different, the reason that came up before was that let's say an area of Sammamish is all built out. There's not going to be any transportation added to address increased capacity. And if that was a separate service area, there would be no need to have impact fees for transportation. That's how that conversation went several meetings ago.

What is the reason that we have only one service area? What is the definition of service area?

It could be, for example, in the transportation realm, being broken down into transportation assessment zones. You could break it down into neighborhoods. Some cities have certain areas where they're anticipating more growth and that their system is in those areas might need to be improved. And therefore, that might result in a higher impact fee because that system is not as built out. There's a wide range of reasons why you would choose different service areas. Sammamish is just not complicated enough to warrant having different service areas. We are, for all purposes, a very simple city. And if you wanted to add service areas, that then results in our having to operate a program then if we have to operate a program then we have to bring on staff to staff that program. The city's biggest ongoing expense is its staffing and one of the challenges with our fiscal sustainability is staffing. So we recommend that you keep it simple because we don't want to have to grow a program that would therefore manage different service areas and have to staff that program to support it.

Don't we have already established some areas?

We have one sub area in the city that is the town center.

But that's not the same as a service area, like from the standpoint.

That is different than a service area. And it's important to note that it would be hard to select the town center sub area as a service area and have a different transportation impact fee for that area because it is so intertwined with the broader system network.

I thought that the direction from the new council is that city staff should be focusing into new sub area or sub area other than town center.

We do not have those on the books. We have in the city's future land use map as part of the 2024 adopted comprehensive plan, the concept of future sub areas, including Pine Lake, Englewood, and Kalahani. In addition to that, there are, I think, five neighborhood centers that are conceptual neighborhood centers, all of which before they are put in place as an official sub area or neighborhood center would have to go through a formal sub area process, likely an EIS, and about a two to three year process to pull together a sub area for any one of those. Thank you.

Okay. I understand and appreciate the concerns about the impact fees and every little dollar adds up to the costs. And affordability is a huge issue. I try to look at this. The reason I will say for the 100% is that although that's one element, there's a lot of other elements that factor into development costs. David, you listed a bunch of them. Just the time to get permits adds cost. lot you know every month of delay adds cost and so in the grand scheme of things although I do get I totally appreciate every dollar matters we also need to be able to pay for infrastructure and And when I think about the concerns from the citizens that drove part of the election, it was about traffic and infrastructure, right? So necessary evil, impact fees help. So I would be in favor of that 100%. Before voting, Evan, you were taking some notes and you caught, yeah. Could you at least not... try to wordsmith them now, but at least capture the essence of what you put in so we can get a sense of what would be added to the letter. Do you want to do a motion to extend? Oh, look at that. Time flies. Let's finish the statement and then, yes.

Commissioner, both the commissioners seem to head nod at the notion that impact fees should be reduced ultimately to lower the cost of new housing.

We didn't

You're not putting the numbers of 25%?

I'll include 25%. I can include 50% if it matters. I mean, if you want. I think the sentiment is more interesting to the council probably than the number. But I will absolutely include 25% for both.

Mine was not only 25%, but the further reduction to 50% based on the zonal or equity issues. I don't know how you're going to define the equity issue.

Yeah.

We'll include it. Yeah. We'll be able to capture that in the video. Okay. So we'll take a vote on the motion first and then we'll make a motion to extend. All right. All in favor of the 100% motion as on the table say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed? Aye. Okay. 4-2. All right. And would somebody like to make a motion to extend the meeting? So moved. Till 9 o'clock.

Till 9 o'clock.

Yeah, let's go to 915. We're going to need more than that. All right. All in favor? Aye. Unanimous. Great. The first one tonight. All right. Let's go to the next one. Do we have an option? We can vote against it. Yeah, we can. All right. So this is the one, Mosley, that you're asking about, right? The affordable housing and further discounts for that. Evan, do you want to tee this up or should we just read that?

Well, I mean, I think what we tried to follow was a bit of a combination of what felt logical from what we've heard from the group and also... the idea that the deeply affordable housing is largely publicly subsidized anyway, and charging any sort of impact fee might not make a whole lot of sense. So we have proposed that for the deeply affordable range from 0% to 50% AMI, we'd waive impact fees. We would reduce impact fees for housing in the range of 50% up to 80% AMI, 51% to 80% by half. And then we would reduce 80% AMI to 100% AMI by 20%.

Before starting discussion, roughly, what would be a house value at the 100% AMI? I know we've seen that, but I...

I will take Paul's for it. David might be able to look in the comp plan because it's in there as well, but yeah.

Thank you, Paul. All right. So we continue going around like we've been? We've got a cadence going.

You want to make a motion before going around?

Well, John's been making the motions. OK, I'll throw a motion. He's in a row.

Thank you, . I move to recommend that the city council waive impact fees for affordable housing at 0% to 50% AMI, reduce impact fees by 50% for affordable housing, at 51 to 80 percent ami and reduce impact fees by 20 percent for affordable housing at 81 to 100 percent ami second second oh sorry got it all right cool

And as we start, I think one of the things that we should at least recognize is the targets that we have in the comprehensive plan around these affordable housing levels. So this could be complementary to that as opposed to, in some ways, inhibiting.

Right. I think part of the conversation David and I had is it's, you know, it's part of the incentive toolkit that we have to help address affordable housing. It's part of a broader suite of tools.

my first okay um just to refresh my memory and address i think mossy's question um adus will automatically be exempt because they're 1500 feet or less is that do i remember that right david you answered what was the

They are exempt from the inclusionary affordable housing requirement. ADUs would be regulated at 1,000 square feet or less, according to state law and our code. Cottages are 1,500 square feet, so they would be exempt from the inclusionary affordable housing requirement. Is that your discretion to choose to exempt? Well, ADUs would be... It depends on the size of the unit, right? The primary unit. The primary unit.

I think you can assess a maximum. On an ADU, you can assess a maximum of 50% of the impact fee of the primary unit. Right.

In our next section, we're going to have an opportunity to determine if we want to waive fees for ADUs. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you.

You can be no more than 50% of the total impact fee for the primary unit.

What are the other cities doing?

Again, I think we'd have to look at what exists now. So what is based on the static fee versus the scaling fee model? And I think... a lot of the cities we've looked at see similar reductions of 20% for 80% AMI, 50% for 50% AMI, and steeper for affordable. It seems pretty in line with what we've seen across the board and sort of some of the recommendations we've heard for March.

Okay, thank you.

So just before I start, I just want a clarification on the ADU. So Section 3B's ADU, we're going to talk about it later. Okay, so I'll just talk about affordable housing. Okay, so yeah, I mean, some suggestions I had, one of them was the tiered fee reductions for affordable housing. I have a little bit more conservative numbers here, but I'm okay to go with these. But there's other options we could have is, for example, a fee deferral program. So allow developers of affordable housing to defer payments of impact fees until after occupancy or sale. This reduces upfront financial barriers and improves cash flow for projects targeting lower-income households. That's one option. The other one is allow developers to earn credit towards fees that provide amenities that benefit the community, like public open spaces, green spaces, trails, transportation improvements, et cetera. So this can make affordable housing financially viable while still funding infrastructure. And yeah, those are the two I have. The other one is on EDUs I'll talk about later, but...

Both of those are actually allowed in code. Deferrals was something we'll talk about a little bit later, but any project can defer to the point of occupancy or sale. And if a development were to provide something that is identified on the project list, then they would be eligible to receive a credit.

OK, thank you. That's good feedback.

Of all the code modifications, 3A is my favorite. Good. Nice.

I guess ditto to me. I'm comfortable with these numbers. Call the vote quick.

Is this the same Planning Commission?

I think it's past 8.30. Let's go. Let's go. All right.

So let's take a vote on the motion.

All right. Level of sensitivity of the issues. That's what it is.

All in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay. Any opposed? All right.

Well, that was an extending, but that's, all right.

Yeah, and there's also the one about the deferral, right? That's the last one. Okay, yep, yep, yep, okay.

Yeah, so this one is something we've been flirting with and are excited to talk about. include in the code exemptions for additions, accessory dwelling units, and potentially other exemptions you may have. But I think these were the ones that made most sense to us, additions and accessory dwelling units. Understanding that rebuilds, if done within a certain time frame, are already exempt.

Okay. I move the motion. Anybody seconds?

Second.

Okay. We've got a motion and a second to exempt impact fees on additions and accessory dwelling units. So that's meaning none of these fees will apply to those. All right. Discussion?

I have a question. David and Mike, we talked about this. There's some reference made to some alterations. Remember, we talked about it at the meeting that we had that said that they're not included in exemptions. I thought that you're going to be changing this.

We didn't have time to change. I mean, it was two days ago.

Do you want to kind of elaborate on that?

If you could remind, it would be helpful as a reminder, or you could... There were some...

Exemptions, these are copies of the code right now. Exemptions included, but then this wordage is not there, so somebody makes an assumption that any alteration would be exempt.

The Vice Chair identified an opportunity to shuffle and clarify the relationship between two sections of code, one being EXEMPTIONS FOR PAYMENT OF FEES FOR CHANGES IN USE.

REFERENCE MADE TO ANY ALTERATION.

THAT CUT MY EYES. WE NEED TO CLARIFY WHAT THAT MEANS AND CLARIFY WHAT IT MEANS WITH REGARD TO EXEMPTIONS AND REDUCTIONS. whereas it currently states assessment of fees for redevelopment or changes in use for a change in use of an existing building or dwelling unit including any alteration expansion replacement or new accessory building the impact fee for the new use shall be reduced by an amount equal to the current impact fee rate for the prior use provided that the applicant has previously paid the required impact fee FOR THE ORIGINAL USE AND PROVIDED THAT THE PRIOR USE HAS NOT BEEN ABANDONED FOR MORE THAN 12 MONTHS. SO I THINK THE QUESTION WAS WHY IS THE TERM ALTERATION USED IN THERE AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT? IF YOU ARE CHANGING OUT OF SINK OR PUTTING A NEW COUNTER TOP IN.

Is it subject to an impact fee? I think largely this one, the intention of this, that line is really speaking more about commercial properties and tenant improvements because a tenant improvement, when they come in to submit a tenant improvement application, it's signaling a change of use and flagging for us that they might be bringing a lot more trips into the system, so we need to assess that balance of the impact fee.

But as you recall, my suggestion was to put an asterisk down the bottom that this statement applies to the commercial and other

Yes, that's just change that to tenant improvement. Yeah, yeah Instead of alteration exactly that'd be clearer wouldn't it?

Yeah, I appreciate the comment on that one Thank you It's another clarification and then we can continue debate. So This is not saying that if we're doing an addition that there's

there's it's saying there's no impact fee even if the addition is greater than the original so yeah the the so the way the code is currently set up is it exempts um could tear down rebuilds if it's the same size it exempts um tear down rebuilds as an act of nature if it's the same size But when you are doing a home addition, or if you're tearing down and rebuilding with a larger unit, it exempts up to the original size of the unit, but you would then pay on the square footage for the additional square footage that you're adding.

And the reason I ask that is the way this is stated is that you're not paying for that additional square footage.

So policy choice is if you all as a community want your fellow community members who are building or doing a home addition, or who might have like the the walker family have had their unfortunately had their home destroyed by um an act of nature and if you wanted to rebuild that very small modest home to a bigger home should you have to pay the um the impact fee now this would also play out in the form of development or redevelopment. If you had a one acre lot in the R4 and you had a single home there and it was very small and a developer bought it and they tore down the home and rebuilt out the lot with four units on that one acre and you would only be paying on on if this was the home was much bigger you'd only be paying on three units because the developer would be able to count that one as a rebuild of an existing unit that's currently how we do it where it's it's one you know it's the number it's one down one up you don't pay on it that's what i was just thinking about too that an example like that might happen and you need to be able to capture it

Further discussion, now that we've got some clarifications. Further discussion. Anybody have anything they want to add?

Are we going in order?

I give up my time.

Thank you. You yield the time. Thank you. So my question is, I'm trying to understand the definition of ADU because we have only exemptions on ADU so I mean you just added a little bit more information just want to make sure I'm clear. So if I have an existing house and if I add another unit in the same lot so if it was whatever like the mother-in-law apartment or whatever I create on top of the next garage whatever that counts as an ADU correct?

Right, so there are two forms of ADUs. There's what are called DADUs, detached accessory dwelling units, and then there are ADUs, attached accessory dwelling units. Okay. Right, so you could, in theory, this is where this gets really complicated, and I'm sorry, first of all. That's okay. But what happens is if you had a home and you wanted to do an addition on it, the way the code is currently set up is you would be paying an impact fee on the square footage for the addition beyond what is currently there today. Now, however, if you were to choose to exempt accessory dwelling units and that addition that you were doing was in the form of an ADU, you would not have to pay it because that accessory dwelling unit is exempt, right? So what that does is it creates... sort of this fairness question about should you be allowed to add on to your home to do additional living space just to add on to your home? Say you have additional kids or something. We see that all the time. Or And where you'd have to pay it. But should you be allowed to build an accessory dwelling unit and not have to pay it? Right. So I would say that the good news there is that one of the things that we have heard over and over again in this community is that our housing stock is too low. single-minded it only have allows for large single-family homes that that provide for somebody for a certain portion of their lifecycle need and That then they have to downsize and move out and and maybe move out of the city because there are not options So what one of the benefits of keeping that structure? I'm just trying to think of the different pros and cons is that you would be promoting people towards building pushing people towards building adus instead of just additions. And that that might then allow for the housing stock to be diversified down the line, whereby they could then rent that unit at a later date. They could choose to move into it and rent the primary unit. And that it could be adaptable to be used as part of the primary unit or apart from the primary unit. And it starts to produce more diverse housing stock for the city going forward, which is one of the objectives that we understand. Now, there's a whole lot of things to consider here, so we're here to answer questions. I'll stop talking, but there's a lot of pros and cons to think about.

Right. So, again, my suggestion and my opinion here is that if we have an existing unit and then you're making a detached unit to help city get more affordable housing or anything, then I'm for that exception for that pay. Now, if there's only a unit that is there, say it's a 3,000 square foot home and I'm upgrading it to 5,000 or whatever, I'm adding more square footage, again, there are two parts to it. If the number of people is not changing, then you're not actually adding more impact. It's the same number of cars, the same number of trips or whatever, same number of park visits. But if there's an addition to the family, you're getting three more kids, then there's three more potential car trips or whatever, then in that, so again, there's three parts to look at it, right? So I'm for the exemption for two out of those three, which is one, the ADU, which is being added as a detach, or which is being added as an attach, but there's no increase in number of people. And I don't know how you come up with a calculation, I don't know how you calculate that, but so I guess, yeah, that's what it, but if it is going to have an impact, then I think that should be an impact fee, because that's what it is, an impact fee.

Why should we look at two different kind of set of guidelines if it is attached or detached?

What's the difference?

From an occupancy point of view, it wouldn't make any difference.

From a detached, yes, the occupancy is going to increase. But because we want to encourage middle and low income housing, that ADU is one way to get it without having to break down our you know other green areas and all that stuff because i have an r4 area and only have one house there i could add two other small units and do that without impacting other areas right so that's the way i look at it so that's an exemption exemption i'm ready to give because it helps us solve our affordable housing problem david on a typical year how many requests do you have how many applications for the id use in the city

With the new rules that's going up, I think this year... What was it last year? 10 so far this year about ADUs that we've seen. We see probably three to four inquiries for project guidance about ADUs a month. Not a lot, but that's still more than zero.

Insignificant, but are they mostly detached?

Mostly detached. We have had some interest in people rebuilding their homes and renovating their homes to incorporate ADUs for extended family, where they might have mother-in-law moving in or an unemployed brother moving in or something like that. We have seen that interest go up as well. Keep in mind that you cannot build an ADU in any of the subdivisions that have HOAs in the city that have restrictions on the types of dwelling units, which is about 80% of the city. So ADUs are not really widely allowed in the city. They're only allowed in the older developments and in the unplatted areas. So yeah.

So, I mean, listening to all these things, I mean, looking at the pros and cons, overall, I think the exemption is good to have, I think. That's what I feel. I mean, it's not, it's too difficult to divide it away. I was looking at it, it's too complicated. So, let's just, yeah.

Thank you. You wanted to recuse, right? What he said. No, I would respectfully recuse myself from this discussion.

he's about to recuse you anyway so i don't know if that's a verb if i think about them probably half of them it's for people that they just need an extra space a kid who is now older that needs a separate space or like you said the mother-in-law who lives with you that she needs her own space and maybe the other half it's additional income. They want to build an additional unit so they can rent it. Or like you said, they move into it and they're in the house. There's no way to quantify them. So that's why I would just go with exempting them and

I also would go for exemption, but I have a question. Should we be concerned about the size of the ADUs? Because the staff recommendation doesn't say. Would that apply to any size?

It's defined as up to 1,000 square feet.

So a square, I see.

Yeah. And typically, we see ADUs occupied by one or two people. We have a few staff who live in the city in ADUs. They're rental. They rent from... property owners here in the city, and they live in ADUs, and I don't really know that an ADU can carry much more than two people, maybe two people and a kid, that kind of thing.

All right, my turn. Yeah, I like this, and I thought a little bit about, you know, just there is some additional impact, but I think, like, my neighborhood, we wouldn't be able to put this in, we have an HOA, but, you know, just in general, you've got people Aging out moving. You've got kids moving away Mother-in-law's moving in there's this dynamic that's going on and net net who knows what the impact is going to be right on the transportation in that local area and we want to encourage these kind of things and then also on the additions this goes back to when we had the the discussion last time about the fees, you know, and it's the same thing this property rights versus the community needs so yeah so that's where i'm at on this so

I have one follow-up question because I heard a couple different things here and I want to make sure we got this right. So my concern lies in that I think there's interest in exempting impact fees for additions for existing homes that are maybe being torn down and rebuilt on an existing lot or for homes that are destroyed by active nature and being rebuilt and maybe enlarged because they were too small before. But that we might not want to exempt homes that are being torn down by way of development where lots are being divided, redivided and restated and new homes are being built. So what that would mean is that we would grant the exception for when there is not a multiplication of lots occurring. would not grant it in that case, but we would grant it in all cases when it is the existing lot that is being retained and there is simply a home being added on to or torn down, rebuilt or destroyed by act of nature and rebuilt and enlarged.

Go ahead. Middle housing.

How are we treating those? Well, middle housing in that case would be well, that's a really fascinating one. It'd be scaled impact fee, except that if you were to tear down a house and come back with two units, I suppose that'd be multiplication. So then then you'd be paying it at the scale fee rate. Right. So that would be caught. That would be captured.

However, it's stated that the description you gave, and actually both of them, including the middle housing, feels like that's development. And where I come down on this is, like, when we're developing subdivision or, you know, impact fees, if I'm doing something to my home, not, you know, that kind of thing, and that what you described really felt like now we're doing some development. We're taking this unit, we're clearing out some other area, and up pops multiple units, you know, so. And so if that could be clear, if it needs to be clarified, we should do that. If it's clear enough in this, then fine, but, yeah, so.

appreciate that and that may have also helped us I think you just hit on something that light bulb went off in my head about the inclusionary affordable housing requirements and the exemptions related to development or not development and maybe we could recycle this for some other purposes at a future conversation down the road so I just want to add just because you brought up a good point I just thought of something sorry

It is a new house being, I mean, do we want to encourage this to build as is that you build a single family home, but you still have two units in it. I mean, this is very popular if you go up in Vancouver where they have basement homes. So the tenant lives on the top, the owner, but then they rent out the one lower unit, which is the basement. They have their own separate entrance. It is still one unit. It is not two separate attached units. It's not a multifamily or a townhome because it's still one home. But there are two people living in it. There are two different electric meters, light, whatever, you know. So do we want, as a city, to encourage it? Because that's the way Vancouver is solving the housing crisis. Because now they're getting two instead of one. And it's not impacting the environment as such because you're not cutting more trees or anything because the footprint is the same.

Right. So absolutely. So that would fall in the ADU, the attached accessory dwelling unit.

But as you said, it's a development. But you could build it. You could build a whole subdivision. You could build 20 homes, which are 40 homes actually, because each of them is two homes.

Right. So in that case, you would be paying the fee on the primary unit, but not the accessory dwelling unit. Right.

So then that would encourage builders to build two homes and you would get potentially double their capacity.

With only one impact fee.

With only one impact fee, that's what I'm saying, exactly.

Because one of the units is primary, one is accessory. What's interesting also is under the ADU laws now that are in place, and we haven't started to see this really, but it's coming our way, is you could actually build an accessory dwelling unit on your side or backyard if you didn't live in a HOA neighborhood, and you could condominiumize it and sell it. Right. So new laws.

Yeah, but this I'm talking about is an HOA. Like it's a proper 20 home or 40 home community. You actually double the capacity by allowing them to build basement homes.

Absolutely. And we are starting to see builders see that and want to do that. And we feel that that is a product that this community would be really interested in.

I mean, when cool is doing it all. I mean, you go to when cool, you see what those homes are. They all can you imagine if Highcroft had been built that way?

It almost looks like it's built. It should have been built that way.

It has three levels in it.

David, is there any language that we can add to the code to actually encourage what Mazur is talking about?

Yeah, that'd be a separate work plan item we could talk about, but I, you know, we do already encourage it by way of middle housing allowances. So we do allow for those units and that multiplication of density in that way. I think it's just a matter of builders catching on to it and being able to make it pencil by square footage.

All right, are we ready for vote? Yes. All right, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, unanimous for those allowed to vote. Well, he's abstaining. Yeah, abstain, yeah, yeah. All right. His vote doesn't count. Of course it counts. All right, so now...

BEFORE WE GO ON FURTHER, SHOULD WE EXTEND? WE WENT TO 915.

OH, 915. SORRY. 14 MINUTES.

SO THIS ITEM 3C IS ABOUT DEFERRALS AND CURRENTLY THE CODE STATES AND THE RCW ALLOWS THAT THE CITY CAN GIVE DEFERRALS FOR UP TO 20 UNITS FOR A SINGLE PROJECT PROPONENT. And then after that point, you don't have to give deferrals anymore. And you could charge the impact fees at time of permit issuance rather than at the point of sale or occupancy. The question then for the commission is, should this limit be higher or removed? Staff are recommending that we just remove the limit and allow a project to defer to the point of sale or occupancy.

I mean, I just want to say, based on what he said earlier about coming up with a number out of your hat, how did the number 20 come?

I mean, what is the purpose? It's in the RCW, so I don't know. I would have to ask the legislature at some point in history.

Oh, it's Washington State? Yeah.

Oh, not Sammamish City Court. Oh, right. Yeah.

I was going to say, why are we even deferring any? but you're gonna say it's in the rcw they chose 20. and yeah i mean they will create a real impact if i'm a developer and i'm adding 20 houses um i'm i'm adding a real impact why am i not paying that fee right away to allow the city to start planning for whatever changes the city needs to do

Because the RCW says so. It's kind of the unfortunate answer, but it is deferrals.

We have to allow for deferrals. So deferrals are, so I hear what you're saying, absolutely. And the way the city currently plans for that is that we account for that money as if it's been receipted, as if it's revenue. There is a certain window of time when that product will be brought to market and it will go through escrow and that fee will be paid to us, right? There is, it will happen. There is a risk that a project, will, after building permits have been issued, because otherwise it's not paid till building permits are issued anyway, but there is a potential that a project could go bankrupt. In my time here, I've seen two projects, both one four, one five lot, small projects, minimal impact in that way. But in that case, the people aren't moving in. So the people aren't arriving, so the impact isn't really there yet. So on the flip side to it, one of the biggest tools we hear about from or the biggest issues with development these days is that there are not many cash builders anymore. Most builders are building on credit and that when you are extending a credit line or consuming your credit line for the purpose of paying fees that won't get you to actually building a product that you can then sell, that it depletes your ability to build that product. So what that does is it changes the dynamic and we end up with with a fewer fewer options for builders we end up with cash builders which is a good thing in a lot of ways but it but it narrows down the the range of builders that might come to the community because they can't get that that waiver on that or that i wouldn't call it a waiver it's the excuse me the deferral of the fee until escrow of when the home is sold

So I just had a follow-up question on that because I remember with past discussions we had that the impact fee that is paid by whatever the construction or what happens has to be used in a certain amount of time. So my question then going back to deferral is where does that clock start? Does that clock start on the time they start building or does it start when they defer and they pay the money? Because if it does the latter, I'm okay with it. But if it's not, you're eating up the time. It could take two or three years to build a project.

and you just lost that time. Right, so the clock starts when we collect the fee. So the fee is assessed when the permit's issued, right? So the fee is calculated then, but they could choose to pay it then. A cash builder would pay it, or a credit builder would defer it, And it would be, we at that point would have that account in our system. We would see that money as being available. And we would start planning that contribution towards the project. And if you defer it, then that money would enter the system and that's when the time would start that is the clock, that is the limit on the amount. deferral time is on sale right it's not after sale right it's not like a future two years after sale or something right it's it's on sale it's okay so then deferral is either um is either occupancy or first sale whichever comes first so and that's when impact comes in because now people are moving in so till then there's right or when occupancy occurs is when people could quickly move in yeah we we see a lot of homes sold pre-sold pre-sales that's how most of the the subdivisions here are sold as pre-sales um there was one other thing i wanted to to raise oh it it is a reality that we as a city have had a hard time spending our impact fee dollars specifically in in transportation or traffic fees um in part because of what um the vice chair has raised is that the list of projects are fairly large and we cannot choose smaller projects because we we don't have those available to spend impact fee dollars on so it doesn't really affect deferral too much but just to be aware is that we have we have bumped into time frames where we're getting close to having to give the money back It is a reality. So really wanting to refine that CIP list going forward So that we have projects on the shelf that are ready to build that are meaningful to the community would be really great Thank you Another quick question or maybe it's a comment and then we could do we haven't actually made the motion yet.

I don't think Not sure we have to play the tapes back. But hey, so We're thinking a little bit about the cost of housing. And if we don't allow deferrals, there's a cost to that to the builders, right? It will show up because they have to come up with the money up earlier. Right and because it's coming up earlier. There's some cost to them to be providing that money rather than later It's a net present value thing right opportunity cost right opportunity cost. Actually, that's a better phrase. Yeah, so So that would be an argument for allowing the deferrals All right, then it disappointed clarification.

We have to allow deferrals up until 20 units for a single proponent.

Yep So we should get a motion.

Yeah

I MOVE TO RECOMMEND THAT THE CITY COUNCIL DO NOT CAP THE NUMBER OF OFFERED TO A SINGLE PROJECT. I SECOND.

WE'VE GOT A MOTION WITH A SECOND. ANY FURTHER DISCUSSION?

I just had one point to make in that, and again, this is getting to mathematics here. So yes, there's a deferral, right? So it could be two months, it could be 10 months, or whatever it is. There's some amount of interest involved in that, right? Because if it collected on day one versus day 100 or whatever, That money could have one interest, right? So when we defer could we add that interest on to it? So instead of collecting $100 now, we're collecting $105 or whatever the 5% interest or whatever. Assuming whatever the interest rates are at that time.

I think it would be a good question for legal. I don't know that the statute specifically allows us to do that. Um, but I, I see what you're saying is, you know, is, is you get assessed. Another way to do it would be is that if you defer that you are assessed the fee in place at the time of payment. Oh, some fee. Exactly. Because, because what, what might happen is somebody might get a, pick up a building permit the day before a new fee goes into effect and they might do that deliberately and then defer it and then they could, um, basically move that payment point down the line a year and a half and they've avoided that new fee that would have been in place when, you know, if they'd had to pay the fee in place at the time of payment.

Because I'm going to come back to what Mike said about the opportunity cost, right? That's what it is. So if you defer later, I mean, if we collected the money, the city would put it in a bank account and we would earn interest on it. So we're losing that amount and I don't know.

think it's a great question for legal there's definitely a downside and something to be aware of yes maybe city council can research that one or legal or well legal legal we'll have that together by whatever it's the 21st maybe that's why they picked that 20 instead of leaving it open so that it's a happy medium for everyone most of the developments let's say they are 40 and 20 is we split the difference.

We very rarely see projects bigger than 20 units in the city. If they are, it's only by a few.

Not counting Highcroft. Call to vote.

Okay, further conversation. Any other deliberation? Are we ready to vote? All right. We have the motion. All in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

right motion carries and then we still need to the overall draft of the code the code package itself with these amendments attached exactly yep and so that's what this motion here is trying to trying to capture is you recommend the the code set as amended by what we've talked about tonight so we would work to what we heard tonight incorporate it in the updated draft and then include those updates to the city council when they see it on april 21st along with the uh the um edit that you identified yeah exactly yeah yeah how about those no votes how it is going to be reflected in this Well, it's separate. The no votes will be captured, as we've discussed, in the recommendation letter. They'll absolutely be captured.

So if I say yes, it still means no to my no?

I was thinking about the same thing.

If it is included, then I should say, Hisham and I should say no to this.

Actually, no.

Can I just move the motion first? Mike, before we have a discussion, can I just move the motion? Move the no to the no.

was going to move the motion before we start a discussion on oh that's actually well let's make two motions first to extend for like 10 minutes or something like that i second okay and like all in favor of extending all right now yeah can i make a motion to can i move a motion to um move to recommend smc 210605 impact fees to the city council is presented in exhibit two And a second. I second. All right. We've got a motion and a second. And actually, to clarify why I said no, if my notes are right and my brain is right, might not be. It's been a long, long day. But the concerns were about the report.

Specifically about the methodology that they use to calculate the parks and the transportation. Exactly.

What we're talking about now is the code. Those are two separate things.

As long as they're two separate things, but I thought that you said that that basically includes everything.

I meant everything code related. Okay. Yeah. And we've made these motions, you know, that will factor into the code. So about the exemptions and so forth, the AMI pieces and the edits. So that's the part that will be modifying the code. Right. And so everything else that's in the code will say, yep, looks good. given these amendments and edits right so okay so any further discussion about the content of the code silence that's a good thing i think at this time are we ready to vote all right maybe we didn't have to extend the meeting okay all in favor say hi any opposed all right motion carries we got a lot done tonight yay check it out congratulations we did it oh good work you were so confident i knew we were going to get there you promised actually actually would have been a meme with a guy hey there's still there's there's still one or two sorry there's still one or two other things so um we've got the agenda uh or the upcoming agenda so the things that are coming up in the next meetings so we should mention that briefly yeah the next next meeting

Oh yeah, right. We're going to revisit Title 24A. Miriam, I think, Jackie and I gave a presentation a few weeks ago about Title 24A, so they're going to come back with some discussion questions, and then we're going to revisit the bylaws to talk about how we incorporate the second public comment, if we want to do that at the end of the meeting, and then any other sort of broader discussions we want to have about the process in moving through work items as a commission.

Are we going to have a public hearing on 24A?

Eventually. I think that's scheduled.

That is not going to be the next meeting. Not the next meeting.

Oh, good.

Thank you.

That's it.

We'll see each other in two weeks. Just a few short weeks. Yep. Yeah. So hope everybody has a good holiday weekend, whether you're celebrating Passover or Easter. And any objections to adjourn? I hear no objections. So by common consent, we're out of here. Yeah. All right.