Planning and Community Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Snohomish County Council Planning and Community Development Committee. It's Tuesday, June 16th, and we're going to call the meeting to order. Taking public comment, beginning with in-person and then remotely. On Zoom, you can click the hand icon to raise your hand. Calling by phone, you can press star 9 to raise your hand and then press star 6 to unmute. Each speaker will have three minutes to speak, and please start your comment with your name and city of residence. Next is roll call.

Committee Chair Nehring?

Here.

Vice Chair Peterson?

Here.

Committee Member Lowe?

Present.

Committee Member Dunn? Here. Committee Member Mead?

Here.

Chair, we have five members present.

Great. Thank you. Next, we have public comment. Is there anybody in person who'd like to give public comment?

Any hands on line? No hands raised.

Okay. Let's move right into our action items then. First, we have Ordinance 26-020.

Good morning, Committee Chair Nehring and Council Members. For the record, Depp Bell Council staff. My staff report, I'd like to correct. It has an error on it. This is actually ECAF 2026-1. The proposed ordinance 26-020 would amend and update the setback tables for the road network elements and covered parking structures with the goal of simplifying regulations. It defines public roads and private roads, updates the setback tables, and adjusts the minimum front line setbacks for garages and carports from 18 to 19 feet in compliance with the new parking staff requirements as cows excuse me, as cars often park in the setback space in front of the garage. This proposal is a Type 3 legislation action under our Snohomish County Code 30.73.010, and it has gone through the notice and intent of the Department of Commerce, SEPA, and the Planning Commission. The proposed code amendments and update complies with the GMA and is consistent with the MPPs and CPPs, including the GMACP. The public Participation process used in the adoption of this ordinance complies with all applicable requirements of the GMA and Title 30 of Snohomish County Code. The requested action today is to move the motion of GLS on June 24th to set time and date for public hearing with a proposed public hearing date of July 22nd at the hour of 1030 a.m. Council has received public comments and those comments have been added to the record. This concludes my staff report and I'm available for any questions. And today we also have planning and development staff here, Michael Cepenaro with PDS, to give you a more in-depth briefing if you wish.

Great. Thank you, Deb. Appreciate it. Any questions for Deb? All right. Well, thank you for joining us, Michael. I'll turn it over to you. Thanks.

Great. Thank you. I have a very brief PowerPoint, too, that I can go over. It's really just meant to be sort of a table redesign. And just for the context of why we're doing it, if you look at other kind of peer government's we have maybe 20 to 25 pages in the code of just droning on and on with setback tables of what the setback requirements are. And so if there's a way to simplify it, just to make a simple two or three pages worth of setback tables, make it easier on the deck permit review. And also for developers to understand that it'd be easier. And also just kind of ties into this change that they're making to the size of, of parking stalls to 19 feet. So now some of the, setback is going from 18 to 19 if it's the case of like a driveway in front of a garage, then it kind of is used as a parking stall. So it's just kind of good synergy to redesign the setback tables, make them easier to read, and also just tie in that change from 18 to 19 feet on parking stall sizes. So that's kind of the context, but I'll go through just for probably just five or six minutes, maybe even less on just sort of overview on this PowerPoint here. Proposed code amendments relating to setbacks. For the presentation, I'm just going to explain some current issues with the need to clarify setback tables, the need to streamline the parking stall dimensions with setbacks for covered parking structures and instances where cars park on a driveway in front of a garage, explain how the issues could be addressed, list the proposed amendments, and just see if there's any questions. For the first issue, the setback distance are for covered parking structures and the covered parking structure setbacks has increased to 19 feet, was 18 feet, and that's just to anticipate changes to the parking stall size in SEC 302665. Also, sometimes there's large cars that extend beyond the driveway to the sidewalk. But it's mostly just because if you look at 302665, 65, the stall size has changed. And so if you use the driveway as essentially a setback for the covered parking structure or garage, that's kind of why we're tying it in that way. The other issue is just the setback table design is very long and cumbersome. We want to simplify the setback tables by combining columns, cutting redundancies. There's a new table that was added to 30, 23, 48, a new section. that added that sort of summarizes all the covered parking structures. You can kind of see in the ordinance, but it was basically a repetition of each column. Each row would keep repeating the same numbers over and over again. And we just found ways to sort of combine and condense the setback tables into just kind of quick punchy two or three pages for the whole setbacks, make it easier on everybody without changing the context of the actual setback tables. Oh, and there's also an added table reference note, and that just sort of clarified the public road language to also include roads not maintained by the county. Public road includes public rights away, both open and unopened, and clarified private road language after shortening the column title, which was now shortened to all other private road network elements that shall include drive aisles, shared courts, and shared driveways. And if you're wondering, what the context for that is. It used to be kind of a weird loophole where we used to call public roads as roads maintained by the county, which kind of makes sense. But if you're talking about setbacks and suddenly you have a public road that's like a state highway, technically it's a public road not maintained by the county, even though it is a public road. And so some people were trying to find a loophole and say, well, we don't need a setback because it's not technically a public road as defined as maintained by the county because it's a state highway maintained by the state. So we're like, you know, let's just clarify some of the definitions and the public road definition to make it more clear and close that loophole. Uh, there, I think there was a change in 3042B145. Yeah. And that's just because there's a bunch of cross references. We would just want to make clear through all the cross references that the setbacks go from 18 feet to 19 feet. Um, where possible. And if you just want to get a quick glimpse of where the cuttings are, it's just used to be kind of this kind of hard to read table that had on one side, minimum setbacks for structures and the other minimum setbacks to the entrance of a car covered parking structure, which, you know, it doesn't need to be that convoluted. Just have one set of tables that here's the setbacks for the structures, simplify the tables. And then here's just a final conclusionary setback table. That's, Here's the setbacks to the entrance of a covered parking structure. It's 2348, I believe. And that's just kind of a little snapshot of what it would look like kind of smaller for the new section. And I think there's a few other reference notes. Like I said, the definition now says public road includes public rights-of-way both open and unopened. All other private road network elements shall include drive-bys, shared courts, shared driveways. And then just a quick, there's a weird cross-reference I just want to include that said in 3042B-145, minimum setback for automobile entry of garages or carports in the front lot line shall be now 19 feet. Synergized with the new parking stall size of 19 feet. Did I reach the end over there? Okay, I think I reached the end, but that is the long and short of it. And then if there's any questions, please go ahead.

Great. Thank you, Michael. Appreciate that. Thanks for walking us through it. Any questions from council members? Okay. Then let's go ahead and move ordinance 26-020 to GLS on the 24th to set time and date for public hearing. Thanks again for joining us. Next up, we have emergency ordinance 26-026. Do you want to do the next two together?

I can if you wish. for the record deb bell council staff ordinance 26-026 has been proposed by council number nearing as well as um proposed motion 26-238 which is a referring motion to the county the planning commission excuse me sorry lost train of thought there um sorry yes yes sorry No, 238.

On the written agenda, it says 236, but online it looks like 238.

Yep. No worries. So ordinance, this ordinance in motion have been proposed by Council Member Neering and is for an emergency ordinance declaring an emergency and adopting a moratorium on data centers. Snohomish County Code does not currently contain comprehensive regulations specifically addressing the sitting development or operation of data centers to adequately ensure the protection of Snohomish County, its lands, waters, natural resources, natural environment, and human community from the potential impacts from data centers. Snohomish County intends to develop permanent regulations to address these deficiencies. According to industry standards, there are three types of data centers. There's an enterprise data center, which a company has exclusive use of the digital services, including cloud storage. These sometimes include large tech companies. also distribution centers and warehousing centers the second type is a co-location data center which is often used by smaller companies which lease space in their data center for their own purposes and then there's also the hyperscale data centers which are very large often several warehouses and are driven by ai and crypto mining the motion is as i said is a referring motion to refer this item to the planning commission for feedback and a recommendation back to council this has been proposed again by councilmember Neering Snohomish County code does not contain code specific to these data centers including a definition and so the motion is intended to solicit feedback from the Planning Commission in an advisory capacity so that regulations and development standards applicable to data centers within Snohomish County may be developed the requested action is to move this motion and ordinance to June 24th 2026 for consideration this concludes my staff report I'm available for any questions

you to appreciate it and maybe i'll just speak real briefly to these starting with the the latter one um so the idea here i've received a lot of outreach and maybe other council members have as well about data centers and concerns uh regarding the siting of data centers in sonoma county and so the idea is to refer the issue to planning or the subject i should say to planning commission for them to review provide recommendations back to the county council that we could then use in developing a potential land use ordinance regulating these in some fashion But in the meantime, number two would enact an emergency ordinance, which essentially would press pause so that we can't have these centers cited within the months or potentially a year plus it takes to develop a policy on it. So just kind of having a temporary stopgap in place while we, as a council, in conjunction with the Planning Commission, put together some sort of a policy. So that's the idea behind it. Questions for Deb? Yeah, question.

I guess my concern is only on timing. So if we don't have a draft that we're sending to the Planning Commission, their agenda is pretty full or their year is. So we're asking for their input. It would come back to Council, and then Council would then have a draft and then have to refer it back to Planning Commission to come back to Council. To me, that takes more than six months because the emergency moratorium would only be six months.

You are correct.

so is there a way to have a draft before sending it to the Planning Commission so my understanding is the emergency moratorium is six months with the option to extend for a further six months is that that is correct as well yeah so so one option would be to enact an emergency moratorium and then as a council put together some sort of a draft and send that to Planning Commission um I was thinking of starting with Planning Commission just because I've been hearing a lot of feedback or input, I should say, on it. And yeah, I don't know what the right place to start would be. I was hoping for Planning Commission and maybe staff analysis of what some different ideas would be. And when it comes to council, our planning situation is challenging with the workload that we have too. But anyway, that is an option for sure.

your thoughts are um to have a definition around data centers and that would be then incorporated into land use changes for where they would be authorized to be yeah where they can be cited correct the thoughts comes from me

So I don't know if the council members have gotten a chance to look at the Citizens Assembly report out that we received. It must have been yesterday. I got a chance to visit with the Citizens Assembly group and watch them conduct kind of the end piece of their process. And their topic was all about AI implementation. And they had a bunch of stuff written in there about data centers and concerns and the needs desire for guardrails and for more understanding before we allow for sites. I'm definitely in favor of moving forward with whatever vehicle we're going to use as far as building these guardrails. And my hope is that as a council, we have some conversations more broadly about AI generally based on some of the Civic Assembly report. which also includes the conversations around data centers. So the emergency ordinance, I'm comfortable with pressing pause and saying, hey, let's not do this yet. Let's get some guardrails. As far as delaying for the six months and all that, I do think we should talk about a much quicker timeline. I think we're working with, I think our chair is working with our chief of staff on putting together a briefing or a roundtable discussion on the Citizens Assembly report out. I think this should be tied as closely to that as possible, given the topics and the synergy there. But I'm supportive of both the ideas behind what we're doing. It's just I don't want to unintentionally de-sync these by sending it to planning commission and saying, hey, we've got to wait for planning commission for a handful of months. But on the front end, next month or hopefully sooner than that, we're going to be talking with the civic assembly group about this topic. Do we unintentionally tie our hands would be my concern with timeline.

Yeah, I think those are good points. So I think maybe the time-sensitive one is the moratorium, just so that we have something in place that, again, hits pause while we're working on this. I'm open to ideas on whether it's referring the issue to Planning Commission, or we could look at other options, too. So I'm curious what other council members think.

Why don't we pass the... I mean, this is just my idea, but why don't we pass the emergency ordinance, put the moratorium down, and then what's the purpose of... the next motion if as a as a group we're going to be talking about all this anyways and producing a at least my intention is certainly to produce policy based on trying to implement the civic assembly stuff which is related to data centers but ai generally so what is this what is the second motion well i think the intent was because it was prior to us receiving those recommendations which i agree i've read through and i think are are pertinent um

so the idea was okay there's a lot of constituent concern around data centers um i certainly don't have a ton of expertise in this area so um you know i wasn't my plan was not to go and propose something but rather to try to get some analysis and so i thought the planning commission made sense to get that analysis from typically we use the planning commission for feedback on you know items that already have either from council or pds um support or opposition and so this would be an opportunity to really get Good feedback that, you know, is objective or neutral in some sense that we can then use in developing a policy. But as an alternative, we could bring loop in the citizen assembly. We could I mean, there's lots of different ways that we could get that feedback and craft a policy.

So related to timing, the Citizens Assembly has been invited to join us in July, like mid-July meeting. We did receive a draft of their recommendations I think Plan A would be having a draft for the Planning Commission to consider. I would think we could have that by end of July or before recess. And then Plan B would maybe to refer it as a discussion item.

my worry was about timing but if we have a year instead of six months then there's time to go back and forth but it seems like it's limited in scope enough that having a draft would be better for the Planning Commission to consider sure so maybe what we can do is move the moratorium forward we could keep the motion referring to the Planning Commission and committee that way if we decide we want to do that we can I think their agendas are full for the next couple months so it doesn't make much difference if we do that now or later. And then as a council, we can work on what it might look like to put together a draft policy, if that makes sense. Is that good with everybody? Thoughts?

That sounds really good, but Mike, do you want to add anything to that at all?

Repeat the question?

So the idea is, you know, should council put together essentially a draft policy around data centers and then refer that policy to the planning commission? So is there thoughts from the exec's office or PDS on that idea?

Well, yeah, I think that the more information you can give, if you're going to refer it to the planning commission, the more information they have, the better. This is, you know, us referring stuff to them to look at something that we haven't done a lot in the past before so you know the first few times if you already have an idea of where a direction you want to go I think that would be a great way to guide them a little bit I'm giving some context to it so the more information that you can give them the better okay so do we want to look at maybe in the next planning committee we can have a conversation about this and then who

who do we want to get feedback from? So the citizen assembly has sent us some stuff and we can, you know, we're going to be engaging with them. It'd be great to get maybe PDS's perspective at some point, but are there others? No legal women voters has reached out to me. So it'd be great to include them.

I'd say our IT department, I'm worried about impacts to municipal broadband and making sure that doesn't impact some of our work around that with the definition of a data center.

And I just want to clarify, this is for unincorporated county. Cities can still do this.

Yeah, and that's a good clarification because I know a lot of the consternation has been around areas and cities. And so I think being clear that we're only able to regulate unincorporated areas as we go through this process is important, including the moratorium would only be for unincorporated.

And if I can piggyback on that, you know, up in Skagit County, you know, there's been a lot of concern about it being in farmlands and next to streams. And that's really important to me that we do not have any of the same problems they've had up there, down here for sure. Okay.

So is everybody comfortable if we move forward with sending the moratorium to GLS and then holding the referral motion in committee and we can revisit this at a future planning committee meeting to figure out next steps? Okay. All right. Then let's go ahead and move emergency ordinance 26-026 to GLS on the 24th for consideration. Let's put that as an action item since it's an emergency ordinance. We'll keep motion 26-236 in committee, and we'll move on to motion 26-219.

For the record, Cynthia Foley, council staff, the county, as part of a culvert replacement project, will be relocating the Tulalip Tribe's utilities water line that is in the county right-of-way. The project requires a single-lane bypass road and the relocation of the Tulalip Tribe's water line. An ILA is needed with the tribe for the line relocation. The tribe will be invoiced for costs in the scope of work. Motion 26-219 authorizes the executive to sign the ILA and any documents related to the agreement. The request is to move motion 26-219 to the GLS agenda for council consideration.

Thank you, Cynthia. Any questions or comments from council members? If not, then we'll move this motion to GLS on the 24th for consideration under the consent agenda if there's no objection.

move on to motion 26-222 for the record cynthia foley council staff department of conservation natural resources is seeking to contract with agri party and events for booth rental and support services for the evergreen state fair the contract includes canopies draperies booths and flags on-call service will be provided during the fair as needed for any repairs the not to exceed amount for this contract is forty thousand dollars documents in the ecaf state incorrectly that this contract allows for $40,000 in expenditure per year. However, the total not to exceed amount for the contract is $40,000. DCNR will develop a new contract prior to the fair next year. There is a proposed substitute motion stating that the total amount of funding in the contract is $40,000 and amendments of more than 20% will come to council. Council may choose to move the proposed substitute motion 26-222 to GLS or the motion as written.

Okay, thank you, but the recommendation is a substitute.

Yeah, DCNR was fine with redeveloping the contract. There was some inconsistent language in it, so a new contract would be recommended for next year.

Okay, and then just to check with Debbie, are we moving both to GLS or just this?

Either one.

Okay, great. Any questions from council members? If there's no objection, we'll move proposed substitute motion 26-222 to GLS on the 24th for consideration on the consent agenda. If there's no issue with that, we'll move on to motion 26-223.

Motion 26-223 authorizes the executive to sign nine lease agreements with Pacific Mobile Structures for office and dressing room trailers for the Evergreen State Fair. The total cost for these agreements is $54,439.77. The request is to move motion 26-222

to the GLS agenda for council consideration all right thank you questions or comments on this motion if not we'll move this to GLS on the 24th for consideration on the consent agenda if there's no objection and we'll move on to our last action item which is motion 26-229 Snows County is seeking to partner with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources for the

collection of LIDAR data for mapping urban tree canopy. Mapping in unincorporated Snohomish County will be paid for with a salmon recovery through local planning grant. Several cities would like to access this service and will pay for LIDAR sensing in their jurisdictions. Motion 26-229 authorizes the executive to sign a cost-sharing agreement with Washington DNR for LIDAR data collection and authorizes the executive to execute agreements with cities for this service.

request is to move motion 26-229 to the gls agenda for council consideration all right thank you cynthia questions or comments on this motion okay then let's move it to gls on the 24th for consideration on the consent agenda if there's no objection and that brings us to the conclusion of our meeting we'll be adjourned for the day thank you