Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Okay, 6.30. Time to call this meeting to order. The April 16th Sammamish Planning Commission meeting. First we'll call roll. Ajay Chakrapani. Here. Sudha Sankara. Here. Syed Safavian. Here. Mike Brusco. I am here. John Bachman. Here. Let's see. Hisham Akhavan? Here. And Mazi Poonawalla? Present. All right. And first we'll consider whether we should make any changes to the agenda. Anybody want to modify the agenda? Okay. Seeing none, we'll consider the agenda approved by common consent. And any changes to our last meeting's minutes?

Any changes?

Seeing none, we'll consider the minutes approved by common consent. So now time for public comment. Three minutes on any topic. We have a few people here in the room. It saves a lot of time to not go back and forth. Rock, paper, scissors, something like that.

Okay, the mic is on. Hello, Planning Commissioners, Paul Stickney, Sammamish. Last Tuesday, I sent what you have before you to the City Council and then emailed you a copy of it today with a link to a couple of the public comments I made on Tuesday. and in short i asked the council to postpone some decision making on the budget on fiscal sustainability and code just as i had a couple weeks ago made a a plea here to say hey we should do our impact fees based on adding internal housing to the comp plan Well, the thing I turned in is a conversation about the number one crux in Sammamish, which is to consider the consequences of adding internal housing needs or not, and what happens if we do or don't, and get past that hurdle that has never been dealt with in 25 years. made statements here that I'm just going to summarize, is I think the number one crux is not having set internal market rate A, B, and C housing need shortage target numbers in the comp plan. And as a reminder, A housing, I call affordable, which is 175 to 500. B is market rate, different and diverse from 500 to 1.5. And C is some condos and townhomes over 1.5, which we don't have any of. There's no doubt that the city has notable internal deficiencies of A, B and C housing supplies based on economic, demographic and workforce housing needs for those living and working within our community over stages of life and for generational legacy of the future. It's high time to do these four things. We need to identify A, B, and C imbalance housing need factors. We need to contrast consequences of meeting various levels of those shortage needs. Then we need to obtain public input based on need factors and consequences so the public knows the whole story. Then there's a choice, either 4A or 4B. 4B, based on knowing the consequences, knowing the needs, getting public input, we have to decide whether we begin to meet some of those needs or not, because there's two radically different paths of outcomes. radically different. And so we have never done this. So I'm asking for support to do this because this isn't a election issue. This is a direction issue. And these two different directions have massively different outcomes. No time. We shouldn't run from this. It's 25 years overdue. Let's figure out which way the community wants to go based on complete information and accurate consequences. I appreciate the chance to speak. Thank you.

Thank you, Paul. Looks like Mary's coming up.

Good evening, Planning Commission. Mary Wichter, Sammamish for 25 years. So I didn't send in stuff on the Title 24 yet, because I'm not sure what's going to get presented. If we don't get to speak at the end, I won't be able to get to say anything. But I will say that when Title 24, before it became 24A, was first updated, Miriam Leitner had been the one in charge, and she was able to fix a few things that really didn't make sense. There was a city getting in trouble for not allowing people to request a text amendment. That's like a change in code, either a word, a sentence, or a whole thing. And so that was clarified and added. And that allowed a docket process to be. For a while, Miriam said I was the frequent flyer for dockets. 2019, I think I submitted some joint dockets with Mary Johnson. And some of hers are supposed to get into that urban forestry management plan. Whenever that occurs, not as a docket, but just incorporate it. I had asked for in-city transfer of development rights because it's very annoying where staff will say, those lots are undevelopable. But since they exist in historic plat, people do try to build on them. It often fails, does not succeed for 10 years or more or 20 years, and really takes down a lot of trees. And we need a place for those to go. So I'm hoping that that will somehow get added sooner than later because we really do need to have that. I haven't talked with anybody that says we can't. It just has to do with density. You shouldn't be developing places you shouldn't, and you should be developing places where there is room and you can add density and incent affordable housing and that sort of thing. The second thing I wanted to talk about is public comment. I originally didn't come to Planning Commissions when I started in 2015 speaking, which was over 16 years ago, because I just figured the City Commission, they make all the decisions there. They don't listen to the Planning Commission. And then after a while, Lyman Howard was actually the second city manager there after Ben. And he called me in his office for 10 minutes, and we spoke on steep slopes and critical areas. And he goes, can you please go to the Planning Commissions? Because I really want you to give input there. It would help. and the city and staff and everything. So I started going and then I learned that study sessions are tied to, for this council, are tied to a single topic or topics to study so you're not really supposed to talk off there. So I got all that right and study sessions don't have an attorney at them so they can't make decisions. Otherwise people can attend. So what I would suggest is when people come they don't know what to do, they haven't been here before, they sit down, they're worried, you want to give those people the chance to talk. So like if there's a public hearing and they're coming for that, they might be here, want to state their case and leave because they have four or five or six kids or three things to do or they work shifts or something. So I think anytime anybody comes and they should be allowed to speak, whether it's agenda, non-agenda, or public hearing. And if you have to fix it, I don't know if you could say for public hearings, we're opening it now. Please speak later. You know, we'd like to have your input then. But they've done that at City Council before, and I'd like to see it here. Also, there used to be a seven-minute. I'm suggesting a three to five-minute as an agenda topic, either at some point or at the end of the meeting, probably at some point in between is better, because it really, really works, and I think it's valuable. Thank you.

Thank you, Mary.

Evan, anybody else online?

OK. So end of the comment period. So we'll move to old business, old business Title 24A. uh jackie you're coming in clear now you're real fuzzy for a second uh good to see you i think you're going to be uh you know starting our presentation and just a reminder for the commission so we'll have a short presentation and then there are three questions that were posed in the agenda bill that we're going to be discussing debating and providing directional input to jackie and to miriam okay jackie that sounds good can you everyone see my screen okay So we can. Okay, perfect.

All right. So, as you said, tonight, we'll be meeting on title 24, a updates for those who don't know. I'm Jackie. I'm a management analyst with community development and Miriam and I will be sharing the update for tonight. She's joining you in person. First, we'll have a reminder of the background of 24 and then we'll move to some of the items that we are asking the commission for direction on as well as a follow up item from our meeting in February. And then we'll go over what the next steps look like. We wanted to give a reminder of the background of 24A and also explain a little bit more about how it relates to Title 21, which is the city's development regulations. So Title 21 directs development in the city. This includes land use, zoning, critical areas, and much, much more. All development in the city is subject to the requirements of Title 21. If you want to make changes to Title 21, you must follow the process in Title 24A. So as state law requires, any changes to the development regulations must be docketed. So prior to 2019, this chapter was called Title 24. And then during the update in 2019, major changes were made. That included removing duplicative language, adding specific requirements for the two types of amendments, which we'll talk about more later, refining the decision criteria, and adding a section on noticing and public participation. So since the changes were so significant, we were advised to completely repeal Title 24 and replace it with the updated code, calling it Title 24A. So that is where the A comes from. Then I also just wanted to go over the amendment process as a whole so you can see where the annual docket fits in. Sammamish plans under the Growth Management Act, which requires that we adopt a comprehensive plan with required elements. We are required to complete an update every 10 years and the last update was adopted in 2024. The periodic update is when we review substantive changes um to policy language and any changes to the urban growth area this gma allows cities to consider amendments to the comp plan no more than once a year with a few minor exceptions and give cities and counties the ability to define their own annual amendment process so in sammamish this is title 24a The annual amendment process is often referred to as the annual docket or annual review, which is the process that we take to you all and to the city council every fall. So as I said, there are two types of amendments. The first one is text amendments. These are proposals to change the text of the comprehensive plan or the city's development regulations, which is Title 21. This can range from a very minor like just word change or updating information or making other small changes, or it can be a little bit more substantial. So the example that we have here is from a docket request from 2020 for a text amendment to the development regulations. In this example, there were more critical priorities on the work plan, so the docketed item was integrated into the critical areas update, which we completed also in 2024. We do require a notice on title for single family residents to be recorded when there are stream swellings and buffers, which also adds to the split rail fencing. The other type of amendment is the site-specific land use map amendment, which changes the designation on the future land use map and the comprehensive plan for an individual property or a small group of properties. If approved, the applicants then need to submit a zone reclassification application to change the designation on the current zoning map so that both are in alignment. I just want to also note that any future development on the parcel is also subject to the requirements of Title 21, as we talked about before. An example of a site-specific land use map amendment would be changing the designation of building 120 from neighborhood residential to mixed use center, which was on the docket from last year. I will go ahead and hand it over to Miriam to talk about the items for tonight.

Great. Can everyone hear me okay? So as we introduced the first feedback item, we thought it would be helpful, Jackie, if you can, yep, perfect, to review the amendment process. Docket requests can be submitted at any point throughout the year. However, 5 p.m. on the first Monday of August is our annual cutoff deadline. The docket request form is short and simple. It's really aimed at identifying the issue that the proposal is aiming to address and and what their proposed solution is, because we don't want people to invest a lot of time and effort if the request doesn't get docketed. The first phase of the process is the docket request process, which includes two public hearings, one with the Planning Commission and another with the City Council. The City Council ultimately decides which requests warrant a more detailed review by placing them on the docket. If a request is placed on the docket, then an amendment application must be submitted within 30 days. This application form collects a lot more detailed information, including a non-project SEPA checklist, to help inform staff's analysis of the proposed amendment, which is the second phase of the process. So this second phase mirrors the first phase with two public hearings, one with the Planning Commission, another with City Council. And the Development Regulation Amendments are approved in a separate ordinance from Comprehensive Plan Amendments to ensure that the City is meeting the Growth Management Act's requirement that cumulative impacts of all changes to the Comprehensive Plan are considered together. So as we went over on the previous slide, there are two phases of the review process. The first before something gets docketed and the other after. But the way that the code is currently written makes this a little hard to understand. And even staff sometimes get confused between a docket request and amendment applications. As we were looking at codes from other cities, we found that several other cities use preliminary or threshold review for that first phase and final review for the second phase. And we really felt that this was a much clearer and easier way to understand these two phases. So we're requesting your feedback tonight on changing docket request process to preliminary review and changing amendment process to final review. We're also seeking your input on changing site-specific land use map amendments to future land use map amendment, aside from having a very hard time saying site-specific land use map amendment repeatedly when presenting. We noticed this change also when reviewing other cities' codes and felt it mirrored the language better and the title of the map in the comprehensive plan, so we think it's probably easier for the public to understand as well. So I just wanted to close this one slide by highlighting these are only terminology changes and rewordings. They're not affecting any process change. So I'm going to pause here for questions and for your feedback on this item.

Any questions? Yes. Can I start? You look so much like you had a question.

I have a question. First of all, I have a question on slide number eight, which is site-specific land use amendments. And I know we're changing the name for that. So in this site-specific one, the next slide, slide 8, oh, I don't know why I had written it as slide 8. Maybe it was slide 7. Anyway, so in this one, if I'm changing the use of it, and we took an easy example out, which was use of building 120, right, to mixed use. But What if it was something more nuanced, like I want to change an R1 to an R4 or an R16? Does that become site-specific land use amendment?

so if you're changing within so if you look on the map which is really hard to read i need an eye exam i think but this this case we're looking at changing like neighborhood residential which is that light yellow color to a different designation perhaps urban residential which is the equivalent of like our OR R18 OR NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTIAL TO NEIGHBORHOOD CENTER. IF YOU'RE CHANGING WITHIN THE ZONE, SO IF YOU'RE IN NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTIAL, WHICH WOULD BE R1 THROUGH R8, YOU CAN DO A QUASI JUDICIAL REZONE, WHICH WAS A PROCESS WE ADDED DURING THE COMP PLAN. SO YOU GET TO SKIP THIS PART OF THE PROCESS AND GO RIGHT TO THE REZONE PART OF THE PROCESS. Because you're still in your designation from this map.

Got it. Got it. That's where my second question was. And whenever Mr. Eastman used to come, he used to talk about the neighborhood center near the lake. So if I were to change that neighborhood center, not saying I, but then generally if somebody was to change that neighborhood center onto a different kind of this one, like an R4 or something like that, that will come to this classification. Yeah. Whereas the other one, like you said, would go to a quasi-traditional one. Great. Now to slide 10. This time I have the number right.

One more.

Yeah. There we go. Yes, I'm old school. So I really liked the docket request and amendment process because I related them as I want to give this to the docket and I want to make an amendment for this one. When we say preliminary review versus final review, aren't we blurring that line up a little bit? I can still think that, hey, I have to just make it before final. I was a good college student, not a great college student. So I never valued preliminary word as much as I valued final. Isn't that a problem? So that's number one. Number two is that site-specific land use amendment specifically talks about site-specific one, which can like the question that I asked you right now. Future land use is far more generic when it comes to future land use. Anything can become future land use amendment. So isn't that also confusing in that? Those are my two questions.

I think the site-specific land use map amendment became outdated when we adopted the updated comprehensive plan. In the previous comprehensive plan, our future land use map mirrored the zoning map. They were one and the same. So if you wanted to change a land use designation, it was for a site. Now we have, again, those broad land use categories that cover greater swaths of the city. So it is a much more appropriate term to be looking at the broader buckets on the future land use map than a site-specific change, which we used to have to do in the past because, again, the future land use map was the zoning map.

And there is no way that specific land would be generalized to a, no, don't worry. I answered my own question there.

Well, and I think you had mentioned, when you went back to the illustration of Sammamish, the slide with the future land, that's the title on that particular illustration. So this makes what's going to be in, presumably in 24A, consistent with what's in the comprehensive plan for that illustration of Sammamish and the land use. Yeah, got it. Thanks, Jeff. Other questions?

I can go.

Okay, please go.

I don't mind the changes, but hearing what AJ just said, is there a way that you can combine words from the old and the new, like preliminary review for docket request or final review for amendment process, something that combines both of them. But if I were to choose one or the other, I would go with preliminary and final. But I hear what he said, and it makes sense what he said. The site specific, I thought I understood what you meant by that, but when he started talking about it, I again. Future land use map amendment. Is this a proposed future land use or is this a future land use? Because my understanding when you called it site specific, it's about a specific site, let's say building 120. We are just talking about that it's a site specific for this site. When we call it future, again, what he said made me think twice that is it too broad?

I think that's a good question. And when you drill down on it, I see how it can get confusing. Jackie, can you back up to the future land use map on seven? So as far as terms, this map is called the future land use map, and it is in the comprehensive plan and helps spell out our vision of the future growth. You're correct that if for building the example of building 120, you would be looking at the parcel that that building sits on a specific site and but you're changing its future land use designation. So currently it's in the bucket of it's allowed low density residential, and you'd be putting it into a new land use bucket, a new future land use bucket as described by the map. So I get how it gets confusing that way. I'm not sure if I helped.

I would also add that recently, well, more recently, It's been just one parcel and one project, but there's the ability for multiple owners or multiple parcels to come in under one proposal. So it's not always one site specific. The other thing I would say is, in this case, these are two-step processes. So what comes to the Planning Commission is to change the designation on the future land use map. Once that were to get approved by city council, it then goes to the hearing examiner. The applicant has to apply for a zone reclassification to change the current zoning map. So in my opinion, it's okay to call it a future land use map amendment because that's really what we're talking about changing here.

It's just what went through my mind is if we add the word proposed future, it will make it clear that this is not the future map yet.

It's in the proposed. I agree. Ajay and Hisham both made me think now, and I'm good with preliminary and final, but I do like the proposed, yeah. Because it's not approved yet. It's not, yeah. Okay.

So building on this conversation a little bit, to make it clearer, just as you just said, Miriam, maybe add in your slide that last step of moving to the final land use designation so that it's clear that you're moving first to the future and then to the final.

Well, to me, when we're talking about site-specific, you're talking about a specific geographic area. But when you go and change it to future land use, the geographic area becomes basically city-wide. So that should be taken into consideration because when you call it future land use, immediately, in my mind, We're talking about looking at the entire city, which is not the intention. The intention is site-specific. So I tend to agree with Ajay as far as using the site-specific. Somehow, maybe we can come up with an amendment to combine the two into one thing that would satisfy...

Our job here is to create a tongue twister. Well, so correct me if I'm wrong on this, but it would be the land use map that has changed. And there may be one little tiny part of that land use map that changes.

But land use changes are one specific area, not the whole entire city.

with i don't think that's personally i don't think it implies the whole city it implies a change to that map so if we go jackie if you could go back to the her map again so we've got the whatever that pinkish kind of color is in the middle you know it would be potentially changing that to yellow or whatever another appropriate color would be so it changes the look of that that map And it may be one small parcel or in the Eastman case, it could be a chunk of the northwest quadrant that changes color to a neighborhood center. So I'm personally fine with the use of the land use and not including the site specific.

Would it make sense to add area into that instead of, say, future?

Maybe, but I think that where I get a little bit confused with the proposed terminology, if we go, Jackie, to the flow chart, So the way I understood, being an old hand at this, kind of understood the docket request is here's a proposed project, I'll call it, right? When it gets past city council, it really becomes a project, if you will. And then some detailed work, including the applicant providing a lot more information. Where I get confused is when that goes in terms of the potential new language, to start to say that that's final, because final implies that the applicants put in all of this information that's needed. There's been, you know, site review, whatever all that work, a ton of work, right? Then goes to reviews and all this before it is final, like way down to where it says ordinances. So if the proposal says docket request process up at the top is going to change to preliminary and then where amendment analysis process going to become final, that feels confusing to me because there's a whole process that's related to finalizing, if that makes sense.

Approval.

There's an approval process basically, right? Yeah. So if, now, Jackie, if you could go back to the proposed language. So was the intent to, in that bottom part of the flow chart, change the sort of heading of that bottom to final review? Yeah, so that's where it feels potentially confusing because it's not final until, like maybe the final review is when council's finally gotten it. So there really is that amendment process that's going on, I think, so. I don't know if that clarified. I'm not trying to say here's where I would, it was just to bring it up for the rest of the commissioners.

All feedback is good feedback.

Would it be appropriate instead of saying final review, draft final review?

Or amendment process. It really feels, if it were me, I would, I think preliminary review makes sense. Amendment process probably makes sense if we're referring to the flowcharts, right, that were on the, and I think that the future land use map amendment you know, makes sense to me, but for what it's worth. You're getting direction from others, you know, maybe you'll, you know, start to wordsmith and be able to move forward.

We'll integrate these into the redline version, and if you all don't like what we came up with, we're happy to play with it some more.

Actually, we do have a couple more reviews of this, so we'll have a chance to fine-tune as we go along.

Jackie, can you go back to that flowchart, please? So can you talk a little bit about the timing of this? Because my understanding is that it's once a year. Can you give us a calendar?

Sure.

Because we're talking about 10 different stages.

Yes.

Different processes.

You'll see them a little bit more when we get to item two as well. But again, the DACA requests submitted can happen at any point throughout the year, but we pull all of them in August, beginning of August. The staff review and recommendation usually takes about a month and a half to two months because it involves us posting summaries online and opening those up to comment to the public, which is required by code. We want to have the comments in so we can provide them to you all when we come, which is usually in October for planning commission. Depending on what is submitted during the docket request, how complicated it is, the number there are, we'll either have a separate workshop from the public hearing or we'll combine it like we did last year just because there was one item and it was fairly straightforward. Then it goes to the city council for review and public hearing as well. That usually happens end of November, early December. It depends what else is on council calendar. And then the resolution setting the docket happens that night. So same timing, end of November, early December. The amendment proposal then is 30 days of whenever it's stocketed. So you're looking around Thanksgiving or end of December. The staff review and recommendation usually happens in phases. So once we get the application, we review it. We make sure all of the information that's required has been submitted. We read through everything, make sure All of the narratives, everything makes sense. There's nothing missing. We also start thinking about, especially for site-specific, like, okay, what are the needs of the site that we need to study? Are there critical areas? What else do we need to be pulling in experts to look at as part of our evaluation? So that can take a while. We also have other work plan items as well. So it's balancing the priorities and seeing where it fits in. So I would say typically that can take anywhere depending on the request from two months to six months depending And then it goes to Planning Commission Which can usually take about two to three months just depending on the intensity of review that's required and the same thing with City Council So, yeah, I just it really once it gets to that second phase of the process it really depends on what kind of AMENDMENT IS BEING PROPOSED. IF IT'S A MINOR TEXT AMENDMENT, THAT'S VERY EASY. WE CAN COMPLETE IT WITHIN PROBABLY FOUR MONTHS, EVEN FASTER MAYBE. BUT IF IT'S SOMETHING MORE COMPLICATED LIKE A SITE-SPECIFIC LAND USE MAP FOR BUILDING 120, WE MIGHT NEED MORE TIME TO REALLY DO MORE ANALYSIS.

DO YOU HAVE AN EXAMPLE OF A SIMILAR DOCKET PROCESS THAT WAS Submitted to the city. How long did it took? What was that about?

Yeah. Sure. I will give two very different examples. So the first one actually was from Mary Wichter, and it was an edit to our old comprehensive plan that had a reference to I think it was like a. TRAIL AND PEDESTRIAN PLAN THAT WAS NEVER ADOPTED. SO MARY WAS REQUESTING THAT WE UPDATE THE LANGUAGE SO THAT IT CONNECTS TO THE RIGHT DOCUMENT. SO THAT WAS ONE WHERE WE WERE ABLE TO MAKE THE EDITS MUCH MORE EASILY. WE WORKED WITH THE PARKS DEPARTMENT TO FIND OUT WHAT THE PROPER REFERENCE WAS. WE WERE ABLE TO THEN GO INTO THE DOCUMENT, RED LINE THE CHANGES AND TAKE IT THROUGH FOR REVIEW. I THINK THAT PROBABLY TOOK THREE TO FOUR MONTHS, I'D SAY. The challenge here is that when you get to the very end where it says ordinances, if you're making a change to the comp plan, no matter when you take it through, everything has to be considered at the same time before it can be adopted. So it doesn't matter if it takes three months. If there's another one that's being considered and it takes nine months, you have to wait. So my other example is the one site-specific land use map amendment. that I worked on that made it all the way through past the docketing process and that was a rezone over in town center. And that one took quite a while. I would say from start to finish it was about two years. We did have unfortunately for the applicant our code change of title 24A halfway through so the process changed. And there were some other challenges as well. But it can be a lengthy process. But we also work really hard to inform applicants ahead of time what to expect so they know how much it's going to cost, how much time it could potentially take, what the steps are in the process so they know what they're getting into.

I did also want to mention some feedback we heard from you all in February was that it would be helpful to have kind of updates on past annual dockets or docket items that have been submitted. So we did add a page to the website that's just a table that's tracking kind of the status of current dockets. There wasn't a ton of space to give too much detail, but it should give kind of minor updates on those.

So I don't know what I ate for lunch, but I have a lot of hypotheticals in my head right now. So the question that I have, let us say that we start with something. I started with a project, and that project went through this entire docket request process. And then came down and there was amendment analysis and all those things were written. Somewhere in the second part of the thing, as it went through it, we find out that what I was suggesting, what I was proposing to do in the land was going to affect the water flow for, let's say, the kokanee salmon or something like that. That could not have been found out previously. And which may end up going all the way down to an ordinance that will be needed to do this, to get this in place if you have to do that. How does that fit into this thing? Let's say we've done that. The date for it making it into the docket has passed. It made it before that and all of those things. And now suddenly we find out things are kind of have to go back to not square one, but close to square one.

In this hypothetical scenario, are we before the ordinance? Like where on the flow chart are we?

In my head, I was thinking just before the ordinance.

Okay. So I think probably we would go to city council and say, hey, city council, we just found out these things that we weren't aware of before. We need some time. We're going to remove it off of the ordinance. We're going to continue to study it into the next year.

So you'll pull it back. We would pull it back. And then I'll be told that yours is pulled back because we have to do some extra work.

Yes.

And then we will come back to it.

Yes.

And if it was if it was after the ordinance, it's obviously going to be a much bigger thing. Even then, I'll be told that, hey, there is something else that has to happen for this thing. There is no emergency process that kicks in for this thing.

There are emergency exceptions. that you can skip this process. They're part of the state law, and there's a link to it in our code that links to the RCW, so you can see those exceptions, but they're very limited what's allowed.

Okay, got it.

What would be the typical examples of the emergency?

If you give me a minute, I can pull up the code and tell you. Evan will pull up the code.

I can tell you one right offhand. This happens very, very rarely, but you get a parcel that's got split by two different zoning codes, and nobody discovers it until you get into development, and then the council could step in and do an emergency ordinance.

OK. Sorry.

Do you want to move to the second question?

I would love to move to the second question. OK. Jackie? Yeah. OK. So the second item we touched on in the introductory presentation from the prior month, and we just talked about it a little bit now around timing and submittal deadlines. Like I mentioned, Most typically, the application, because of the 30-day submittal deadline, is due right around Thanksgiving and the winter holiday season. A lot of our applicants are out of town or doing things with family, and this is a really challenging turnaround for them. So next slide, Jackie. Thank you. So with that in mind, we started to look at different timelines that aligned with work plan development, which typically starts around November, early December. We also looked at alignment with the budget, which is now starting around March or April. And as we looked at these different scheduling scenarios, we also considered extending the 30-day submittal requirement to 60 days or 90 days, because like we mentioned before, This amendment application is a lot more intensive and has a lot more required documents than the initial docket request. So it needs some time to pull together. So after looking at all of these, our recommendation is actually to keep the current schedule but extend the application deadline to 60 days. This gives the applicant most of January to complete the application. And we'll still have the public hearing right around end of November, early December, which allows us to integrate the docket items into our work plan. The timing also allows us some time to get a budget estimate from a consultant if that's needed. And we can integrate that into the department's budget request in April. So that's our recommendation. However, as you can see, there's lots of different ways to look at this and think about this. So we wanted to get your input.

I have a question on that 30-day submittal. Can they always request for an extension?

The code does not allow them right now to request for an extension. Thank you.

The process, is it something that a normal person can do on their own, or do they need to hire someone to do it for them?

So I would say the text amendment application with the exception of the SEPA checklist, they could do by themselves. The SEPA checklist is quite complicated. One of the things that we were talking about was putting a sample. This is a non-project SEPA. So we could put a sample online that people could refer to and see how the city has answered and kind of adjust their responses for that. The site-specific land use map amendment is more complicated, especially if they have critical areas on their property. They'll need to get some reports to turn in from someone else.

I guess the short answer would be depends on the complexity of the project.

Yeah, I was gonna say the average type because like the one Mary did, probably Mary did it herself. Yeah. But Mary is more than that. Yes. I mean, for that reason, I think it makes sense to extend it to 60 or maybe even to the 90, even though I hate to prolong the process. But to expect a consultant to do work over the holidays, I don't think it's realistic.

Yeah.

I just had a quick question on these three rows that you have. Are these, I don't understand the chronological order of this. So I'm starting in, so if I'm year one or year X, August, right? And then year X plus one is where January kicks in to March. And then the second line, April, is that the year X plus one or is it still year X? I'm trying to understand how these

I would say they are each separate. They don't relate to one another.

So these are all three parallel things?

Yes.

So these are all in the same year for the same?

Three options. So the first one is our current schedule that we've gone over. The second one would be if we wanted to tweak the timeline.

Oh, okay, move it ahead.

Yeah, to align basically directly with the work plan schedule. Or the last one is for the budget. So finishing everything in April to align with the budget.

Okay, so you're saying to align the current schedule with the work plan schedule or the budget schedule. That's what you're proposing.

Yeah, so those were the three things we looked at. What staff is recommending is we keep the current schedule, but we adjust the submittal requirement.

And what is this work plan, budget schedule? Sorry, these are something different things you do?

Yeah, so our work plan is where staff say, okay, based on either outstanding items that we weren't able to finish last year or priorities that we know are important to the community or laws that are coming down from the state that we have to integrate. These are the things we think we're going to be doing for the next year. And then it goes to city council and city council kind of refines and prioritizes things for us. The budget, we put together a budget for our department, which then goes through our finance department and our city manager's office and ultimately to city council to decide what they want to fund.

So if I look at the three schedules, and to come back to your original concern that you had around the holidays and all that, budget schedule is kind of just a month off from current schedule. So we still don't avoid that problem. We are still in that November, December in planning review. Some of us may be out at that time, whatever. So that might get moved out. The work plan schedule looks much better because it is April to November. And by November, you're done with everything when people start going on holidays. So that kind of solves the problem that you're trying to solve, which is the holiday season is not affected, right? What is the downside of that? I mean, what is the con of moving it out four months or five months early?

Yeah. I mean, I think the challenge from the work plan schedule line is that you're having the public hearings for both the Planning Commission and City Council in the summertime when a lot of people are out on vacation. So that's one thing to consider.

Okay.

I'd also say with so many families in Sammamish, having an application due in September or October is probably not the greatest idea, but I think it's doable. Okay. Thank you.

And what was the reason that staff recommendation is 60 days rather than 90 days?

I think 90 days is also doable. The reason we went with 60 days, I was thinking about the budget process being due in April and wanting to have time. Sometimes it takes us several weeks to work with a consultant and kind of have them understand the scope of what we're looking for in order to get a budget estimate to put into the budget. And then we have to write about it as well. But I think either are good.

Also, a question. Typically, when you have a project that goes through the docket process, is that something handled by staff or you hire consultants to work with you?

So we typically do that ourselves. It does depend on the scope of the docket request. If we're looking at site-specific, sometimes we will hire consultants to look at very specific things.

Again, it depends on the complexity of the project.

Correct.

It could be months or years.

I have a question. So the work plan schedule, and this is more generic than, you know, the way that's written, it implies that the work plan for, say, this year actually really gets kick-started in April, if I read that, as opposed to at the beginning of the year because all of this other stuff is going on. Is that a correct interpretation?

I would say when you're looking at each of these, I would focus more on the 90 submittal dates. So our thought process was like, okay, we know the work plan has to be done by November. We know these are the various steps we have to take to complete the docketing process. So working backwards, knowing that November is our end goal, here's where it puts us at, which is April.

Okay, so let me, yeah, I think you answered what my question was about for the department's work plan. So it is pretty much pulled together in the November timeframe for the upcoming year. That's so I was a little confused when I said and I know that April was implying that the docket request would come in April but because that said work plan schedule so the reason I was asking is it makes sense to me that in some way this would also support the normal work plan flow and when things get rolling and knowing what's coming up on the work plan and if the 60 days does that a little bit better than the 90 days then you know, we should go with 60 days that I'm trying to understand the overall flow of how work flows into the department.

I just had one other question. So the online comments is about one month, right? And then the council review is also about one, one and a half month because it's in the holiday season. Is that time frame enough? What is the feedback we've got from from public comment as well as from council saying, hey, are these like, should we extend those by Instead of totally making 45 days or something like that, is there some feedback on that?

We have not received any feedback on the length of anything. I think usually when we go to the planning commission, to the city council, we'll kind of, we have a schedule, but we also have room in the schedule to adjust. So if a topic is taking longer than we thought it would, we add a meeting and then we just PUSH THINGS OUT A LITTLE BIT. THE ONLINE COMMENT PERIOD IS TWO WEEKS, WHICH IS PRETTY STANDARD FOR OUR NOTICING. SO IT'S THE SAME THING WITH PUBLIC HEARING NOTICING. IT'S TWO WEEKS.

SO IT'S THAT EQUIPMENT. YEAH.

SO MY ONLY COMMENT IS MORE The paradox, moving it to summer, obviously not a great idea. Keeping it pretty much as is with the 60-day, not much impact to our workload. But for council, if there's a lot of docket colliding with the biennial budget update, It's a workload issue. I'm just saying that.

There's no perfect world, I think.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Is that enough to let you do a red line?

Yeah, I think we're good. Awesome.

Thank you. Okay, let's move on. Okay.

Okay, so our final item we wanted to discuss is whether we should build on the existing decision criteria by adding specific criteria for the site-specific land use map amendments. Right now we have three existing decision criteria which are shown on screen. The first one relates to alignment with state, regional, and local laws, policies, and planning priorities. The second reflects why the proposal is needed, what has changed since the last periodic update that warrants the request. And the final one is about the potential impact of the proposed amendment and what it may have. So how it serves the community and the potential fiscal impacts. So we noticed after looking at several other cities as we were reviewing codes that several cities do have specific criteria for site-specific land use map amendments. And we wanted to bring that forward to see if that's something that the commission would be interested in as well. We do, as part of our review for any site-specific land use map amendment, we already evaluate conformance with surrounding areas and suitability for development. but we think it might be a good idea to codify this to create consistency, especially during staff transitions. So we've drafted two suggestions here for your consideration and feedback. The first relating to conformance with surrounding areas and the second around suitability for development. So I will open it up for discussion.

The first question is that what is the definition of the suitability?

It's a good question. I think, you know, one of the challenges with this.

Can we qualify? Can we sit?

We can give it a go. Yeah. We can try to be more specific in the red line version that we bring to you. I think, you know, typically we're looking at are they fully encumbered with critical areas? Are there any other limitations that we should be considering under the development regulations? without knowing the proposed use necessarily.

Can we itemize it and maybe asterisk it down the bottom as suitability includes but not limited to the following?

Sure. Yes, we could do that.

I was questioning myself before asking this question, but I'll ask this anyway. In the conforms with surrounding areas, we say existing uses. This is existing uses as we know it right now, right? Does it give us any leeway into say that this is the planned usage and so we will do that? Or... Does the existing usage include the planned or would that become a completely different animal when it comes up to it as well? Because if somebody wants to do it and we say there is a planned use that is planned for it, they're going to come back to this to say there is nothing existing right now. So why are we even going into planned use?

So I think what we're saying existing uses here, we're talking about what's built around the parcel that we're looking at. So, for example, we're looking like, okay, the surrounding neighborhood is residential or there's a mix, right? On one side, it's residential, but on the other side, it's mixed use or it's commercial. So is what they're proposing to change it to, does it fit within the mix of what's there or is it going to stand out like a sore thumb or cause issues?

Well, To that, I could also say that we had a plan for 120 and that changed, right? And if, I mean, 120 is a little different because it's very close to East Lake High School. There's not much that we can anyway do with this thing. But if it seemed that it was all residential around it and there was 120 and we had to change this thing, wouldn't that have become... again, an animal of its own, if we had decided to change that. That's why I'm asking, is existing uses existing uses make sense in the most normal cases, but in any outlier cases, wouldn't we want to give us some give ourselves some leeway to say existing use and planned use?

We can take a look at that a little more.

So the suggestion here might be to change existing to allowed uses to conform to code.

I want to go one step further. I think that we should say existing and future because you are not only looking at the situation right now as far as existing, if there is any changes in the plan, future land use plan that changes the land use or zoning of the area, the proposed land use designation should conform with not only the existing but future.

but then how do you define future you can tell me future i can say future is 50 years and she can say the future is the next six months how do you define so i i like his idea it gives them it doesn't lock them to existing it allows them to review it based on what they know that the public doesn't know

Let's go to the comp plan. The comp plan looks at the existing land use as well as what is going to happen 10 years or what is the comp plan is 20 years? 20 years in the future, the land use is going to change. So you have the future land use. So instead of saying existing only, I think that we add existing and or future.

I have a question that might clarify a little bit. So as I brought up the building 120, if we think about the Eastman property and whether that would check this box or not. you know, it's surrounded by steep slopes in residential areas and he's thinking of at least in one of the things that he talked about was something that was was more than that and it would end up being a sub area, right? As I read this, I'm not sure that that would be the same as or past consistent and compatible with the area of residential homes around Timberline and

Yeah, I think for me the difference is the Eastman project would be the development of a sub area This is only for a site specific land use map amendment So it's a different body of work when we do a sub area There's a lot more outreach and engagement and looking at kind of the potential of the area studying that area Thinking about what uses should be allowed for that area.

That's helpful, but both would be docketed. I

Yes, I believe so. I'd have to come back to you on the sub area.

Okay. And the other thing I was wondering about and thinking about is that because it is like what is consistent compatible, this feels like, and maybe the fact that it's site specific is the answer to this, but it feels pretty restrictive. And because there's public comment, if there were concerns like the wedding cake issues around development around town center, we heard like, oh, there's we're going to be in the shadow of a big tall building. And so that it feels like that gets taken care of in public comment. And to put that as part of the checklist would be overly restrictive. can think about that i'm not i'd have to think about it a lot more to know if i would really want it in or not but it feels like it would be overly restrictive so and maybe the city wants that but i don't think we have a strong position one way or another it's just something we noticed a lot of other cities had and we thought potentially it could be something to explore

All right, so we're going to go ahead and move on to our follow-up item. And our follow-up item was the question around doing expedited review for the docket. We met and we talked a lot about this issue. We decided it would be very challenging to allow expedited review, and I will tell you what our reasons are for that. The first is that topic that I mentioned earlier, where there's the GMA requirement that everything be considered together at the end. And it can't happen more than once a year. So even if you were to do expedited, you'd still have to wait until everything else was done for that period. The other thing is that according to our conversation with legal, the Growth Management Act really prioritizes early and often engagement. And so one of the reasons that the process is so lengthy is that there's multiple opportunities throughout there, multiple public hearings, multiple opportunities for comment for the public to engage, to learn about it, to provide their continued feedback on it. THE OTHER THING TO THINK ABOUT IS THAT THE ANNUAL DOCKET REQUEST AND THE RELATED AMENDMENT RELIES ON CITY COUNCIL APPROVAL. SO WHEN SOMEONE PAYS FOR EXPEDITED REVIEW, WHICH TYPICALLY AT LEAST FOR ME I'M FAMILIAR WITH IN THE PERMANENT CONTEXT. you receive a service and you usually get the desired result, like getting a permit. In this case, that's not necessarily true, right? Even if your application is strong, if it doesn't resonate with the city council, you could be paying for expedited review and then have nothing to show for it at the end. The other thing to think about, too, is oftentimes we'll have a docket request for a topic that is also another topic on our work plan, or it relates to a topic that's already on our work plan. And so by having the review happen internally, we have more opportunities to collaborate with one another. We're more aware of what's going on even outside of our department with other departments. we would hate for something to get missed, right, to take something through in the docket and then find out at the end, oh, wait, Parks is also working on that, and they're going a completely different direction. So for those reasons, we don't think that it's necessarily appropriate here. But if we're short-staffed, we do have some options available to kind of help bring things along with our work plan. So we just wanted to follow up on that.

So these are the challenges that you have to deal with.

Yeah, I would say these are the reasons why we don't think expedited review is the right fit for the docket process.

I appreciate seeing this because I know I like to see things that we can move along faster and not be so bureaucratic and so time consuming and so costly for both staff and applicants. And what this really says to me is that if we were wanting to change that, we would go to Olympia and, you know, make a policy change at that level because it is really governed by the GMA.

Okay, should we go ahead and talk about next steps? All right, so right now our draft code is being reviewed internally and by legal and we have set a goal of getting everybody's edits back by Monday. Hopefully that happens. Once we integrate those changes and we integrate your feedback that we got here tonight, we will send out the updated red line version to you all. We're hoping to send that out a little earlier than the normal packet so you have more time to review it ahead of the meeting. We're also going to be sending out a review matrix so you can see kind of our thought process behind why the changes were made in each case. At the May 7th meeting, we'll highlight the major changes, we'll answer questions, provide any clarifications that would be helpful. And then after that, depending how the meeting goes and how you all are feeling, we will have the public hearing or another work session, depending where we go. Any questions?

Mary, would it be, it would really be helpful if you send us the red line so we can see the changes that you have made.

Yeah, as soon as we have them ready, we'll send them out.

Thank you.

Did you get what you want from us?

Yeah, this was great. All right. Thank you.

Glad to hear that.

I'm going to head out then.

Okay. Thank you, Miriam. Thank you, Jackie. On to new business.

Actually, maybe it's new old business. I don't know. New old business. Let me go promote myself at that computer so I can share this computer screen.

Okay. Promotion should be that easy. So while Evan's doing that, the next topic is about changes to our bylaws and specifically about public comment time. So we're going to be pretty focused on that. So and this is related to feedback that we've received. And I think that, you know, we've discussed a little bit and how we felt in terms of just having that three minutes per person comment at the beginning of the meetings, and whether that's sufficient or not. So

Yeah, that's a great lead in. I don't really have much more to add. I did prepare some draft redline edits just to help get the conversation started of how we could possibly amend the bylaws. I'll just go ahead and share those and really then we'll open it up to you all for a discussion of how long the comment period should be if we do choose to add it, when in the meeting we do it, and if there are any other rules that would apply to it. So let me share. Alrighty, here we are. I'm just going to give us some context of where we are in the bylaws under public involvement. We scroll down and currently the language says that we follow the, um, the the processes and procedures established by and used established by the city clerk and used by the city council and then i've added new language here that says at the chair's discretion a three-minute agenda item or items public comment period may be added to the end of the meeting testimony must be related to agenda items and shall be non-repetitious

This public comment is only for this meeting, not for the council meeting, correct? Correct. Thank you.

just so everybody for for the newer folks we used to do an end of the meeting agenda item public comment and it was seven minutes and what happened at the end of the meeting last year at some point or two years ago we were asked to bring everything into kind of alignment with each other we reduced it to just the single at the start of the meeting public comment and it does seem now that the city council at their study sessions on tuesday are doing a an uh Open public comment at the beginning and then seemingly an agenda related comment at the end of the meeting So it would be kind of following that format If I jump in I'm in favor of bringing it back I

and giving them more time than three minutes. If we go to five minutes, because it used to be seven, and I felt that going to zero was not fair, because they want to comment on what we were just talking about. And three might also not be enough, just looking at how much time we talk about it. So five, it might be just a happy medium between the two of them.

The other thing that goes through my mind is it at the very end or is it sometime in the middle that I don't know It's a great great discussion point I think so from what I understand if we keep the status quo right now what happens is We have public comment at the beginning People come give a comment right then we go ahead and do our agenda and people listen to a meeting and there may be some questions coming up for them as part of whatever we discuss and they want to bring them up right away and Right now, the option is they've got to wait two weeks when we have our next meeting, and they give their comment then. And it kind of becomes stale news because two weeks has passed away. So I think the purpose of this is that, hey, we give them time. Whatever we discuss, like, for example, with the Title 24 discussion, whatever, right now, Mary or Paul have some comments. They made some notes. They want to come and keep it fresh to us right now, then wait for two weeks. Is that kind of the purpose we're trying to understand here? Is that what it is? That's exactly it. So can we be more specific saying, hey, the second public comment that we have in the second half of the meeting, whatever, is only related to the agenda items and not the general stuff. The general stuff should be discussed earlier, the three minutes or whatever you have. And then this is only related to agenda. Because otherwise, you're going to kind of hijack all of it, right? You understand what I'm saying, right? It's only specific to that. If nobody has any comment, then we go earlier. Otherwise, we sit until 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock, whatever it is.

Thanks. Yeah. No, I think I agree with everything you said. Yep.

Yeah, I like that, Motsi. Normally we open the public hearing and close it. Are we going to consider opening, you know, we have something that people have a lot of interest in, opening the public hearing again after they've seen our comments, or that's only in the past?

In the past, if I recall, the public comment, the public hearing, the comment period for a public hearing was it. That was your one crack, one bite at that apple. But if the meeting had a public hearing and then another agenda item, you could comment on that second agenda item at the last agenda related public comment. So some meetings ended up having three comment periods.

Yeah. I like Masi's idea of the public comment at the end only being agenda items because we tend to get two different kinds of public comments. One, our general policy comments. Mary and Paul do that all the time. And then sometimes we get very specific. My house blew down in the storm and now the cop plan screwed everything up. You know, it's a very specific item. So having that they can still speak to those individual instances at the beginning and then we have room for policy stuff again at the end.

That's not what I'm hearing. Let's go over again. Right now, public has, as far as the Planning Commission, has one chance to make comment no matter what the subject is in the beginning of discussion. That's what we have right now. What has been proposed is in addition to that, integrate or include or add another public comment after the presentation by staff or the consultant before we discuss it among ourselves.

At the end of the...

Not at the end.

Currently, we're discussing at the end of the meeting. We could discuss moving it to a different point at the meeting, but we've been discussing it.

So when you say at the end of the meeting, let's say pick up a project that there's a staff presentation that should open it up for discussions. Then at the end of that discussion, before we go home, we're going to hear public comment?

Correct, yep. Only regarding what was discussed, not general stuff anymore.

OK. This is the second. Now, what John is bringing up, which is a good comment, and that is how do you relate this to the need for the public comment as part of the public hearing of the project?

that a third one i think i can here's how i'm thinking about that to answer because i was i was struggling with this a little bit because my initial was i'd like to hear before we begin to have dialogue so let's play this out miriam and jackie presented title 24a revisions And the way we've done it today, you know, we've had conversation, discussion. We're not finished because there's going to be a public hearing. And at the public hearing, we'll get comments before we vote, right? Just like we did on the, after much discussion around the impact fees. In this particular case with Title 24A, if we were to add a comment period at the end, whoever's commenting will have had a chance to hear the things that we've discussed, seen the presentation, the things that we've discussed and said, I hear what you're saying in the direction you're going. Here's a different way to think about it. and then whatever two weeks or four weeks later after we get the red line public hearing we could factor in or staff could factor in those comments and so they do their worthwhile input to our overall decision process and like frankly I was a little concerned if you put it at the end then what what are we going to do with it but if you think about the process of anything where we're going to have a vote and make recommendations to council there will be at least one more opportunity for us to have thought through what has been commented and to factor that into our recommendations but that applies that comment applies

to the discussion that we're going to have that requires public hearing. But there are a number of times, quite often, there are other subjects we don't have to go through that process.

Well, and most of those are directional. And so just like, well, and staff would have an opportunity also to hear from public, right? So if we're not voting, it's, we do have that opportunity. Well, I I'll stay with what I was saying. If it's a major decision where we're voting, we're making recommendations to counsel. hearing at the end of the meeting gives the public an opportunity to factor in what our discussion was and say, hey, I disagree with what you all are heading towards, right? Versus if it was right after the presentation, it helps us hear what they're thinking, right? There's pros and cons.

That's exactly what I was trying to kind of think, that it may be better to have that public comment period after the staff presentation because the people like public that they wanted to make the comment, we hear those comments and we discuss it among ourselves because we heard not only the staff presentation but also the comment from the public and use that as far as the discussion that we're going to have. If you do it at the end, that is not going to work.

Except when the end isn't the end. When the topic continues into another meeting where we'll have then the public hearing.

Not all the projects will end up going to this.

Absolutely. So it's a matter of which ones make the most sense. It is clean at the end, frankly. But heard you heard me when i said i started off thinking it would be best right after the presentation for exactly the reason that you're saying and then i thought oh but really when we have major decisions and we're going to make a motion vote we have the public hearing and at that time we do hear from the public and i want to kind of remind ourselves that one of the comments that we get from the public

uh that is that people they come and make presentations but they don't feel that their comments has been considered looked into it or discussed it but if we do it after the staff presentation we hear the comments from the public and we we make the comment and then discussion discuss it ourselves not only what does this have said but also what the public said absolutely it makes total sense however

Well, no, the other part of that is the agenda bill is clear about the things that are going to be discussed, won't necessarily have the benefit of the whole presentation. But for example, again, with Title 24, the three questions that we really discussed were in the agenda bill. And so anybody from the public could look at that and at the beginning of the meeting say, I know you're going to be talking about this. I want to give you my two cents. or three or four, three minutes. And so it's not like they have no knowledge about what we'll be discussing and cannot make any comment until after the presentation. They actually can make comment ahead of the presentation. So there's multiple ways. They're probably all equally good and equally have some issue and drawback. So.

So quick note, Evan, you might want to make it clear in the red lines that if there is a public hearing and we've opened and then closed it, that if there's public comment at the end, they cannot comment on the public hearing.

So I want to go back. Finish one more.

Go ahead. My concern with putting the comment immediately after the agenda item, because we're in pretty informal situations, setting that we end up getting into a discussion with whoever's making the comment. I think it's a little cleaner, which is something we really should avoid. I think it's a little cleaner if we put that comment period right at the end to make it clear that we're just receiving your comments.

How about before the vote?

Well, vote takes several meetings. So as Mike outlined, there'll be multiple opportunities over multiple meetings before and after. But once we get to the public hearing and the vote, that's it.

Many times we will be going through the conversation or the discussion with the consultant as they are presenting. So I don't think there's a clean cut that says after the presentation is done, that's when the public can comment.

It also gives the public an opportunity to hear what we're thinking and say, you're spot on. What really were you thinking here? As opposed to trying to fly just based on the presentation. And actually, it's a very good point about the questions that we ask of the presenter or the consultants. Like, where do you really enable that public comment? So actually, my mind has shifted from where I was at. I was exactly thinking the same. and frankly no matter what we are practicing an important principle which is to listen to the public and you know so that's something that is really important and providing that second opportunity for public comment is consistent and an important thing to do and you know I want to hear from the rest of you so we should because we in this case we're going to modify the Bylaws well, we need to come back with another meeting and is that this is something that's controlled internally.

And so yeah, yeah, you'll you'll tell me what you want I'll make the changes. I'll publish them. They'll be active.

We don't need to bring them back and okay approval So do we know what other cities are doing that? Do we have any data like that? Like what is equal Redmond?

Oh, I don't know offhand I could look I could look at I'd have to bring that back to you but offhand I don't know

okay oh and and another follow-up to that is have we got public comment from the public saying hey this is a good idea to have is that basically yeah we definitely got it yeah yeah i mean right so again coming back to your point uh mike that hey we should listen to the public then i think they're asking for it right so

Well, we always listen to Republicans. Yeah, way too much. We're supposed to. We're mandated to listen, but there is a question not only listen, but also somehow we wanted to make sure that we incorporate their comments into our discussions, either agree or disagree or modify it. I want to go back to John's initial comment or the question, and still I'm confused. Let's look at the hypothetical situation. that we have an agenda, we have two items on our agenda. One requires public hearing and one is a project. So in that example, are we allowing the public three times to make comments? Is that what I'm hearing?

Yeah, correct. Over the course of the night, they would have the one at the start of the meeting, then there would be the public hearing comment period, and then the last one at the end of the meeting, which would be limited to comments only on that last second topic.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I want to go back to Shyam's and get the feeling from the rest of us. Shyam strongly feels that three minutes is not enough. I guess that we all have to talk and come to an agreement with it and come up with a vote on it or what. So what is the overall... Can I say something?

Thank you.

Three minutes versus five minutes.

No, what's City Council doing? Are they doing it after the meetings?

It seems like...

It's in between or...?

Well, I think for regular meetings they do the non-agenda open public comment period at the beginning for three minutes and then that's it. It seems like study sessions like they did on Tuesday, they did one at the beginning and then one at the end. Okay.

And both of them three minutes or...?

Correct.

I believe they're both three minutes.

I would recommend three minutes.

So how about the idea of going from three to five? Do you want Mike, Mr. Chair, you want to kind of call the vote on this and see if there is any consensus as far as increasing the time from three to five?

Since you ask. I think that is, you know, not that we really formally follow Robert's rules, but I would like, why don't we go around really quickly, beginning or end, three minutes or five minutes. John, what do you think? Middle or end.

Sorry. I'm torn, but I think I would stick with the three minutes. I know that some jurisdictions allow five or seven minutes for a group, that someone's representing a group, but that doesn't happen here very often. So I'm fine with three.

Hisham? I started with the five, so I'm going to go with five and at the end.

I think I'm okay with three because we have two options, one at the beginning and one at the later part. And I would rather go with the one in the middle than at the end, so then at least we can hear what they're thinking, so then we can include it in the discussion. So I like the idea of the middle versus the end. But three minutes should be enough, I think.

We don't have a lot of people coming up with comments. We've not had that busy meeting set here, so I would like to go with five in the middle, just because I can shamelessly take some of the ideas that I hear from them.

But what's the middle? What's the middle? The middle is after the agenda point. After the staff presentation or the consultant presentation? Yeah, after the staff. That's the end.

Well, I think we'd have to get a little more structured to your point. We'd have to kind of clearly, like tonight, Miriam gave the presentation and we stopped and talked along the way. I think we'd have to get a little bit more structured of we're doing the presentation, we're holding questions to the end, we stop the presentation, do public comment, then we start questions and discussions.

Let's take that example. If it was, we interrupted during Miriam's presentation at slide 10 and then slide 18 and all for all of those things. We'd rather hold all our questions at the end and let the public talk in between.

I think the way we do it is the practical way, that as she is presenting, she will take a pause and we will talk. I mean, I prefer that the public, they provide it sometime in the middle, but I can see that there's more benefit for us to have the conversation as the staff or the consultant as they are presenting.

Well, it depends on the subject. Some subject requires that we would be interrupting them because we have a question before going further. That's most of them.

That's most of them. I don't remember a time that we waited for them to finish and then we started asking them. Yeah, yeah.

So there are times I just press the button and and hope that everybody sees it. And people see that, right? I mean, you see the button, you're like, okay, you have a question or something like that. So I don't think we are constricted in any way about the comment. I'd rather have the public step in and talk about it. Because if the public does not step in and talk about it, over a period of time, we may end up making it a, the risk that we run into is that we may end up making it a theoretical discussion. more than it is a practical discussion. The public has a lot of value in making it very practical, grounding it into real issues that will help us answer or ask questions or prepare something. So I'd really like to hear that in between rather than

But you are only allowing them five minutes. You are not allowing them... I'll go back to Miriam's presentation. Remember how many times she stopped and we were talking and we were asking, are you going to allow the public to do the same thing? As she pauses, they ask. No. We actually can't. At the end of the presentation.

Yeah. Well, continue. And then we'll go. Should we? Did you finish?

Yeah, no, I got it. Were you middle? You prefer middle and then three or five? For me, it's the middle and five. Okay.

Or would you rather have middle and the end?

No. Please no. Not the end. Not the end. Yeah. Sorry.

Should we have some timing for the commissioner's questions? Maybe just have a limit of five minutes? Just joking.

It's unanimous for staff.

I'm fully recused from that question.

Well, I would suggest go at the end so they can hear everything, hear our discussions too and go with the, you know, question.

How about three and five? Which one? Three. Three and both. Three in the beginning and then at the end is three also?

Three, three.

I would go with the three in the beginning because that's basically, that's the time that the people come and make general comments. But the second one should be five minutes because sometimes there's some issues that requires them to have a little bit more time.

think what i'd like is you've you're going to redraft this um if you could figure out how like today to your comments about like we've we had a dialogue with miriam and jackie right um what that would do if we have it in the middle would be we're making a presentation um maybe allow questions for like i'm really confused you said you you said a word i have no clue what that is so just Brief questions for clarification, not for elaboration, discussion, that kind of thing. And then public comment following that presentation. That works when we've got one topic. if you could think about what happens if there were actually two topics like even tonight i know miriam mary had experience with title 24a and she cares a lot about public comments When would we expect Mary to make comments because it would be very hard I think unworkable to have a presentation about title 24 a a presentation about staff recommendation for bylaws changes then a public comment of five minutes and then we go back and discuss title 24 a right so it just If you could figure out a way that that would work out, and it might when we've got one like key, when we're doing, I hate to say it again, impact fees. You know, there was a presentation, and then, you know, that's kind of clean for public comment or, you know, after that. But otherwise, on an evening like this, it seems harder to work. I don't know if it's unworkable, but harder to work out. So if you could think through a way, if we could provide guidance to Evan where it would work, we're... We've all felt like when we've heard comments, it's like, oh, actually, I've done the same thing. It's like, I like what was said. I'm going to repeat that because it's my idea. So it is very helpful, but it's challenging to do it in the middle, I think. in terms of just the overall meeting flow. So if I had to choose right now, I would go with the end. I would allow five, but we would really be very clear about these need to be about agenda topics, not general things that I'm thinking about, like we need traffic light here or there, whatever, you know. And and you know the chair whoever be the chair in the future and myself would have to be very clear about You know not extending beyond the five minutes. It gets to be longer most important comments have been fitting in within the three But to say hey, you know public can have some really important comments and we don't want to come too short so for what that's worth, so what I was hearing was more about like we'd like it in the middle and If it could be worked out, I think there's some practical issues to working it out in the middle. That's why thinking ahead, I would probably go with at the end, and like I said, five minutes. But if you could figure out a magical way to...

It seems hard to implement, especially on two-topic nights. I don't think you could do both presentations, then pause. I think it would get tough for commissioners to remember questions, and we'd probably have to go back through a lot of presentations by the time we got back to them. So I tend to agree that it gets logistically challenging in the middle on the longer nights. Putting my city clerk hat on a little bit, I was kind of tallying. I think... And we could vote if we want, but I think I heard a majority for five minutes and at the end. Just look around for general head nods.

We can call the vote. Or the other way to do that, would anybody not agree with that?

At the end in five minutes. There are two issues. One is 3-3 or 3-5. That's one issue. I think that's one.

The three at the beginning is solid.

Yeah, we're set with the beginning. That's one. And the second is that where that five minute or three minute, the second one, where would that be? At the end or in the middle? Two different issues.

Correct. And what I was just summarizing is that I heard the group, the majority of the group say five minutes feels appropriate and it would come at the end of the meeting.

And what I said was, would anybody object to that? It's kind of a quick vote. If you have a real problem with it, you know, let's continue our conversation.

I'm okay with the five minutes. I changed the vote to five. I know I voted three earlier, but I'm okay with five with the majority. I think it makes more sense, yeah.

I think we can always amend it. If we try this out for two months and we think it's not working or not getting what we want, we can come back and revisit it. The one other thing I would say, just going off my language, I have at the chair's discretion, do we want it? like that or do we want it set that it just happens at every meeting and the reason I put that there is some meetings we do you know the meeting is about the bylaws or we have community norms and maybe it doesn't feel like you need to open up another comment period so it could be at the chair's discretion or I think it's easier to say or another way to say that is at the chair's discretion

that agenda item could be canceled or we can do that when we're planning the, you know, when we're sending out, yeah. This particular meeting will not have an end of meeting public comment and that could be posted. But the default should be having it because we do want to hear from public. So I can't think of too many comments or times when we wouldn't. And for the meetings that go really long, I think that would help to self-limit some of the length of some of the public comments.

Fair enough. That sounds good. I think I understand what I've heard. I'll draft it. And then at the next meeting, we can start the new process.

I just have one small question. You said non-repetitious. What is non-repetitious? Here's the thing. I'll give you the reasoning for that. If Commissioner John was to say something, unless I repeat it verbatim... Even if I'm almost in his neighborhood of telling the same thing, I will stand on my point that mine is not repetitious. So it's very difficult to enforce that rule. So I don't know what the non-repetitious stands for.

I get what you're saying. I think it would be kind of at the chair's governance to decide if, like, if tonight Mr. Eastman showed up and gave a comment about what he wants to do with his property at the beginning of the meeting. And then he got up at the second thing and said, was explaining again what he wants to do with his property that would be repetitive to what he already commented before and the chair would then have the the standing to say thank you mr eason we've heard this tonight we're going to move on um you don't have to he doesn't have to you know, re-quote himself and say it verbatim to qualify. It's kind of, if it is within the same themes and we've heard it once before tonight, generally, then it could be cut off. And it's a language, the non-repetitious is something that we pulled from the hearings examiner rules and the comment periods that are allowed with the hearings before the examiner. Got it.

Got it. Okay.

That's it. Sounds like you have what you need. I have what I need. Cool. Good to hear. Yeah. So the only other thing is our upcoming agenda or meeting.

Yep. Miriam previewed that. The next meeting is May the 7th, Title 24A workshop. She'll provide red lines. And then we also hope to provide you just a brief update, an overview of what the legislature did this last cycle and some of the things that we might see as work plan items. from that, from the work they've done. And then that's it.

Yeah, and one thing that, so we have a pre-meeting meeting. I think you all know that. And Director Pyle mentioned that with hiring people, there may be a period of time coming up, perhaps June, July, where we may not have meetings because of onboarding new staff. If it's possible, if you know what that's going to be and can just free up that time so that we could maybe go off on a vacation or something instead of, you know, reserve our Thursday night for this. So it would be nice, obviously not a requirement. Sure, that makes sense.

We'll do our best, yeah. Okay.

All right. Hardly a drop. We've got a motion and a second. Almost a second. And a second? Second. All right. All in favor of adjourning? Aye. All right. Good job, everyone. 8.07.