Legislative Meeting - Regular Meeting

When did they announce this? I don't know.

Let me move that over there. Sorry about that. There you go.

OK. Is this one of ours?

No. OK.

Well, that's a good idea.

Yeah, that's right here.

Oh, sure. Is that about this? So that we didn't get it. Yes, sir. We did.

Yeah.

We do that for tomorrow's meeting also downstairs.

Well, good evening, everybody. We're going to get started. Always appreciate when people show up on time and we want to respect your time.

If we get some stragglers, we'll do the best we can with them. I think I've seen and met most of you, but if not, I'm Scott Chesney. I'm with Spokane County Planning. We've got Michael and Joshua in the back, our two planners that are also working on this entire project. And they'll be available as well afterwards if you have questions. We're going to go through two specific things tonight. One is an overview of the environmental impact statement, and it's out in draft form now. It was released on Friday. The notification slides on here will have to be changed a little bit. Comments are due no later than noon on July 11th. So you've got plenty of time to do that. We'll show you how to make those comments as well. And then secondly, we're going to talk about the potential residential zoning that might go forward in the 26 plan that will change the way we zone from what's now the limited or low density, medium density, high density residential into more of a mixed use category. And that allows for a lot of flexibility on making market decisions meet what people want to buy and where they want to live. So let me back up. In the environmental impact statement or analysis, there are three alternatives. And we do that because As you might imagine, Spokane County is geographically very large. If we tried to study every possible development option, it would take years. And so we narrow it down to three. One is if we do nothing to change the county's zoning subdivision areas and make no changes to the urban growth boundary, how does that affect 104,000 new people coming into the county? And as you might imagine, it doesn't work very well. Alternative one is the sort of following the mandates of the Growth Management Act to their logical conclusion, which is to say, tighten the density requirements everywhere in your zoning code and then do not make any expansions to the UGA. Put all 100,000 in the existing cities and county UGAs. The third version or alternative to is reflecting our historic development patterns, which are about over at least the last 10 years, average about four and a half units an acre, single family detached housing. And how does that then inform us as to any additional land we might need to accommodate that growth over the 20 year period, including using the land that's already vacant within the current UGA. So those are kind of the three what we call bookends to the environmental study. This is the calendar. The comments I'll be doing 30 days, and now that's going to be July 11th. We discussed this with our board a week or so ago, and this is the fourth of four open houses that we're doing in the communities. We're also holding a discussion tomorrow night Uh, in the commissioner's hearing room, uh, downtown at the county campus, uh, at, uh, 4 30, uh, for those that are either centrally located or, or can't make one of the four outside ones, we will be discussing these recommendations or these findings. Including comments we received from you and others, uh, with the planning commission on, uh, June 25th and then with the board on July 6th. So it's, if, if there are comments, it's important. We hear from you as soon as possible. This is the metro core of the urban growth area study areas map. Generally speaking, the lilac shades are urban growth areas that exist now, and those would be looking at mostly an alternative one for density increases, including those hatched areas, specifically in the West Plains. And then we'll talk about alternative two in a minute. Now, when we're done, when I'm done up here blabbing at you, This map is along the wall in the back, and you can see all of those areas that are in the study areas themselves. In the EIS, we identify urban growth areas by name, and they've already gone through what we would call the highest filter of low probabilities or low interest and up to high interest. These are just a few kind of a Summary of them, Airway Heights is growing, and we want to help them continue to grow so they have a high development priority. The Alcott UGA, which is on the east side of the city of Spokane, sort of between Regal and Glen Rose Avenues, outside of the city, of course, a little bit more north, almost between 29th and 37th, relatively small, but it's got some interesting growth potential. Deer Park is listed as low only because of numbers. They are growing. They're changing how they want to position their urban growth area in the future from two parts. One is they've got urban growth area west of the highway and they realize that trying to serve that, and that means essentially pushing pipes and stuff under a highway, is going to be very, very expensive. And so they want to shift that more to the east and more contiguous with their existing city. We're supporting that. The other reason we've got it here is, you know, those of you that have been here for almost forever probably recognize that the North Spokane corridor has been on the books for 50 years. If it stays on track, it'll be connected to I-90 in the next five years. When that happens, the east side, north metro, Deer Park, they're going to have all sorts of development pressure that'll come off that highway. So Deer Park is kind of looking at 26, but also looking at 2031. Then a few other areas, Five Mile Prairie, kind of the north central, northwest side city of Spokane. Historically, you know, the prairie was a kind of a natural artifact, but over the last 20, 30 years, it has kind of slowly started building in with subdivisions here and there, some attached to the city, some not. It's also, because of that, it has a lot of infrastructure in place that makes it a good candidate for more development. One of the key aspects of where new development goes if it's not in an existing UGA is, of course, how well is it connected or can it be connected to urban services, meaning how does it work on transportation, how does it work for sewer water, and those kinds of services. So Five Mile Prairie is a good candidate. Excuse me, Medical Lake, back here in the neighborhood out here. Mayor Cooper has been ambitious in trying to reestablish Medical Lake as a small resort community, as a place to go. We want to help them do that, shifting their urban growth area mostly from their north side, which is between their existing city and Fairchild Air Force Base runway, not a particularly desirable place to build a house, more to their east side so they can grow out toward the lake along the highway with, again, the possibility of being able to bring urban services into that urban growth area that might be able to give them environmental protections over septic systems that are around the lake and provide a better transportation system that was unfortunately so obvious in the fires of 2023 when there's like one way in, one way out around that lake, and there was no other system to do that. So they've got issues beyond this. The Moran Prairie, Glen Rose area, again, south side, southeast corner of the city of Spokane. Medium area, there's a lot of infill development that could be done right on the edge of Palouse Highway and 57th, but wrapping around in the north between this and that Alcott UGA, there's quite a little bit of land between the city of Spokane, a different hill's natural area, but a lot of it is very complicated. There's a lot of topography, so it's a challenge to grow. And then the last two, neither one will surprise you, I don't think. The North Metro, the area from Whitworth University across to where the old Kaiser plant used to be, now the Costco on Newport Highway, That has been changing in the last five years significantly. Lots of parcels are going from lower density residential to higher density residential. Mead Works project is moving along on the old costs on the Kaiser site. Next to Costco will be a major medical center in the future. MultiCare bought 40 acres a year ago, sold 10 acres to Shriners Hospital, serves me two medical facilities on Newport Highway. And well, multi-care is going to build slow. 30 acres is a lot more than you need for an urgent care center. So that's going to be a full-blown hospital medical center somewhere in the future, which makes it an employment center, and it has growth. And then the West Plains. It's been growing haphazardly, at least in the last 10 years, from its 2001 plan that had mostly light industrial in the UGA along both sides by 90, Quite a number of parcels south of I-90 have converted into residential of one form or another. So what we want to do now is try to reflect a whole bunch of things going on here. And as Julian knows, and some of you from everything else that we've learned from you, the critical areas part of this is now a factor in how that development can take place and where it will take place. So it's still going to be a fast growing area. There's going to be jobs out here where we want to have housing next to jobs. We just want to do a better job of it than we did over the last 10 years. So alternative one, again, kind of to summarize, it's an infill idea. It's adding densities. It's kind of averaging this 13 dwelling units an acre. And so you can kind of see how all that goes. And we'll show you a couple of maps here. This reflects how in alternative one, you may simply change the existing zoning to do things. And there are some subtle differences. And this is the West Plains. For example, out here, Aspen Park and some of these subdivisions were done in that 2005 to 2007 window when the county code allowed single family residential platting in light industrial areas. that when it was there and it was gone in 2007, yet these things got started. And so part of what we're doing, in a very simple sense, is right-sizing the zoning map so that it reflects more of that neighborhood development, but also reflects that if you're building a home, or if you have a home, in these areas as they're growing, and something happens, you're going to a bank for getting new financing or something like that, and your title shows that you're an industrial area. So you gotta fight with your title company, you gotta fight with the bank, you might have to fight with the insurance companies. This will make that much more safe for those homeowners to be able to care for their property. So the study zones, and we're using this as an example, this is the North Metro, again, Whitworth University here, Division Street 395 going at the old 395, Newport Highway going up this way. This is south of where Costco is, the Y is right there. You can see multi-colors of different zoning on this map. There's lots of haphazard things that happened there over the years. The new neighborhood zone would allow that to happen in one zone, and what it does is it coordinates it so that you've got access you've got paths between things you've got buildings that don't overwhelm each other because they're all designed to fit into a context but it allows for more residential to go in here's a version of the west plains up closer to garden springs geiger interchange there was a proposal in 2022 for a comp plan amendment for 110 acres roughly in that Sorry. And it was a light industrial area. And it was withdrawn due to some DOT concerns and other things that were going on. This is a chance to bring that back in a way that could develop a mix of businesses and multifamily residential in that area, planned for good sewer and water. And then lastly, moving down a little further down these hodgepodge areas of that light industrial zoning surrounded little pockets of residential, trying to make that more of a residential neighborhood. And so the zoning that we're talking about that we'll get into detail here in a minute is called neighborhood residential. And it allows for and encourages both small businesses, shops, services to go in and planned in the residential neighborhoods so you have things you can get to walking on a bike, very short trips in a car, golf cart, for example, that right now are simply not permitted in residential zones.

Scott, could you go back to the pre, just prior to this?

That one?

Yeah, you talked about the West Plains Thorpe and as though it's, and this is in the county, correct?

Correct. This is the current UGA.

So you talked about it being served by good sewer and water? This is, yes. That's what I heard. All right. So the county's not in the water service business or to do some sewer, as I understand it.

Not here.

This is sitting in Spokane.

Sewer and water.

So you would be connecting county property to city of Spokane sewer and water. Is that what this is meant to say?

Correct. That's the case now. The city of Spokane's retail water service district goes out south of Airway Heights, but goes essentially to Craig Road and all the way to the Four Lakes interchange and then back. Anything in that area, the city of Spokane as a utility provider has the first right to serve. They claim that territory.

Thank you.

So as we move into, especially the West Plains in the EIS, we've included and we've gotten our team to dig into this. This is Chad Pritchard's work. Some of you have seen it many times and some of you helped us understand this. This is the kind of mapping and data that will be in our best available signs, our critical areas ordinance, and in our maps for planning for growth. So as potential landowners look for places to go, they'll be able to see this. As planners, our successors look at these maps, they'll be able to see what's going on and help decide, should we be growing here? Should we not be growing here? If we're gonna grow here, what are the constraints? What do we have to do? This is a map that exists in the engineer's world that we're pulling back into the planning world. The kind of sort of cream-colored or coral-colored cover is the high risk of stormwater flooding area. Many of you know this backwards and forwards. If Terry Corn were here, you know, this is, you know, these are the areas that have been inundated, you know, especially here in the West Terraces area. the golf course and whatnot. Having... What does that floodplain cover? This map shows areas of high flooding susceptibility from stormwater. From what? Stormwater. Flooding. From rain.

I don't know. I've lived there for 40 years and I've never seen flooding on the West Plains.

In this area where a lot of the land has been taken up by homes and streets... what used to be able to soak in or percolate now has to flow somewhere. And there's not much drainage out here because the basalt of the aquifer is so high that it doesn't drain very well. And so it goes up in the surface and it flows.

But in the Medic Lake area, in the last 40 years, I have seen where all those apartments are built underwater. Okay. And somebody gave them a permit to build there. So that's BS. Yes.

But that's flooding on the West Plains that you just said you never saw.

It wasn't flooding. There was just a pond there. No flooding.

Well, that's stormwater.

That is precisely what we're trying to identify going forward to say so we prevent something like that from happening in the future. Is knowing where these areas are and pointing that out and planning for it. If something is going to go here, It can't be what we call impervious surface where the water can't move. Or if somebody goes in, it needs an engineering or engineered stormwater solution, which is expensive. And so will a developer go to that expense to put a project in?

And what's your difference in what do we call wetlands? Yeah. Compared to what you just said there, it was all designated wetland, but they still built on it anyway.

There are a lot of things that have happened in the past that we're trying to prevent happening in the future. We don't have the way back machine to go back in time and fix them. True. But yeah, and wetlands out here are important. Again, the water doesn't percolate very well, but what does, the wetlands are important to add wealth To add to the shallow, the Grand Ronde, shallow aquifers in some way, but also with the PFAS, at least that can also help continue to flush that out in some ways through the paleo channels when things are there. And wetlands are easily identified out here. Protecting them is something that we're going to try to bring a stronger arm to. We know that there's development, again, south of I-90 particularly, or actually north of I-90 between there and the airport, that has... proposed filling in some wetlands along there by using a wetlands mitigation bank near Cheney. That fits the law and it fits Ecology's position, but it doesn't really help the water quality here. So we're trying to balance that and make that a little less obvious. First there and then you.

I don't know if it's even accessible, but that would be historical. archives from 100 years ago because there's areas that were known as springs like between 902 and Fairchild out there in the bunkers. That was springs. That's why the old trails worked around that way instead of other ways. And so I just wondered if that is a source for kind of some areas that But it was before mapping and easy access to information.

I hadn't heard of that fight that directly. What we will also do is when we follow up is we've been working with Dr. Pritchard at Eastern since we've known him and he's been working on these studies for the West Plains. We're doing everything we can to incorporate his research on on how we got here, how that all happened. So if he's got something on kind of the history of water surfacing itself out there, we'll find it. Then we'll put it in our background. This one.

What is a wetland mitigation thing?

It is a tool that was created some years ago to say if there's a wetland, let's say it's at the end of a runway. Airports don't like birds. So they want to pave that over or fill it up. In Washington, with the Environmental Act, where they actually get the EPA, you are allowed to replace that wetland somewhere else that is generally in the area. And then you can pave this by, if it's a 10 acre wetland, you build a 40 acre wetland over here to replace that water source and make the ecological function. And then you can fill this one. and make some use of it. So it's a way of literally taking one out of existence, but adding wetland in a new area.

How do you add wetland?

Well, actually, you can. If the water goes to the low spots, it'd be there already if it was wetland. You can. There are ways. Sometimes it's expensive. There are ways that involve actual blasting of soil and doing things to create a place where water can still spill back in. The geology of that is out of my skill set, but it's been done for 40 years or more in different places. The challenge is one of how much do you protect and why do you protect it? Is it helping to refill or soak into an aquifer? Is it in a flyway like the Turnbull Refuge is outside of Cheney? or is at the end of the runway where it needs to be somewhere else because you don't want birds and planes colliding. The pressure of development has always been, let's just fill them and move them somewhere else. Before there was mitigation, most places would just fill them and ignore them. Now at least you've got to try to fill that activity somewhere else reasonably close by. It's not a perfect thing, but it's better than it has been.

Is that happening? Is that happening for the

Yes, there is a proposed wetland bank being created in which someone that wanted to fill a wetland in here would have to, it's generally called like buy credits. What they would have to do is they would have to pay for the establishment of that new wetland. And there's sometimes five acres to one acre. You can't just replace a five-acre well into a five-acre well. If you can do this, you have to make it 25 acres or something. They have to pay to do that. And then once that's established, you can sort of like decertify the existing well.

And is that a permitting process through the county? Is that like public documents that are available?

The permitting process is really through the Department of Ecology, not the county.

So how much are you at, I've heard that in another meeting where there's the tightrope of, if you make it too strict on the county side, then they just say, forget you guys, we'll go to the state, bypass you. So is that a real issue for you?

No, that doesn't affect wetlands. The ecology has always had control over wetlands. In our case, once it's in the critical areas ordinance and identified on a map, We control the development that can happen around it and any mitigation there. But if it's going to be filled and moved, that gets bumped up to the state. What you're talking about is called the Energy Facility Siting Council, or FSEC. That's created at the state mostly for wind energy and solar energy, big turbines that you see in Whitman County and Benton County. If a local county doesn't have an ordinance to guide wind turbines, or if it has an ordinance that says we just don't like them, that applicant can go directly to the state, and the state has the ability to override the local codes and site an energy facility. So, specifically for energy facilities, but that does exist. Spokane County is working to create an energy ordinance right now so that we've got something in place to help guide them. It is a Right now, what we've done, and our team has done a lot of this work, is making it very, very difficult. Because what we've heard from farmers and others is we don't want these in our backyard. And so we're really narrowing it down pretty tightly. And that will come before our commissioners later this year. If we make it too tight, we'll get ignored. So we have to have a balance. And then off topic, to be sure, what we've done is create what we call a constraint map. which shows all the places you can't build this. Within 15 miles of Fairchild, for example, 800 foot turbines and airplanes with fuel, again, not a good mix. You can't build it near Turnbull. You don't want turbines and birds. So it came down to six sections of land in the Southeast corner of the state that are suitable for wind turbines under the basic criteria. The sort of hidden restriction though is, That's all ag. That's the flutes. That's all wheat fields. In the zoning code, that's large-track agriculture. The GMA specifically protects it from being decertified for non-ag uses. The energy companies say, well, it's just, you know, it's an acre or less per turbine. Well, yeah, but you want to build 200 turbines. And you're going to have these farm roads, you know, these roads to connect them. And so the idea is, okay, this is permitted, but Now you've got to run up against the GMA. So we've written this pretty tightly so far. But it is definitely different than what we've got here. Anything else before we jump on? This is important. We'll take as much time as you want.

Go ahead. Everybody's talking right now about these data centers. Yeah. And the word on the street in Spokane County is they've okayed one. No. We have not. That's good. Because it's something that will ruin our county, period.

I'm not a fan of them. We have had companies come into our office to ask about them. And we're adjusting our county code because it's way out of date. We will be putting things in about data centers. We've had inquiries. Today's paper, Avista's got a deal with somebody to say, if they come here, Avista's ready to provide them power. So we know it's on the doorstep. And we're trying to get in front of that to say, if it's going to go somewhere, where are we going to put it where it causes the least damage?

Well, this is a three mile noise barrier around them. And they use five million gallons of water a day for cooling that is not reusable. There's got to be some place to go with all that water that's being wasted.

And it's contaminated.

There are some that use a reclaimed water system. And believe me, I'm not here to defend them. But even the data center folks are realizing they've got no good argument to sell to a county if they're going to say, we're going to need 5 million gallons a day of your water. That's just not going to fly. But if they say, we need five million gallons of your water, but we can use it without another drop for the next five years. Okay, well then put that off the table for the moment. That's all recycled and reclaimed in there. But again, we've got no specific proposals and we've got nothing coming in except inquiries on sniffing around. Thank you. Alternative two, this is where we look at are historic patterns that have developed over time, which is what all of you have seen. As I said before, it averages about four and a half units an acre. And what does that do for requiring more land than we currently have available in our urban growth area? And so this is the first cut, first evaluation of that map that you saw. And I think we've got that back in the corner. It's impossible to read. It's even hard to read there. We'll put together a more visually useful map here in a few days. But it's on our website if you want to download it and look at it when you can zoom in a little bit. But this is the first glance at all of those target areas. And in this case, it's how are they affected by transportation and sewer. Now, those are two things that control, mostly controlled by the county. Our transportation planners work with DOT and with the SRTC, the regional group, And for most of the East Valley and the North Valley, the county provides sewer treatment at their facilities. And then we also have, we, the county has capacity in the city's facility. Some of that flows through city pipes to get there, but it's county capacity. So we've done a first look at the challenges of transportation and sewer transportation. is always a first cut because if you take a piece of land that is currently vacant or has some ag use on it and all of a sudden replace that 40 acres with 200 homes, same road is not going to work very well. You're either going to need expanded roads or some other intersections. There's going to be ripple effects at signals down the system. So this is that first cut at understanding how that filter affects where you should and shouldn't expand into the county. So then a couple of places, suggestions. Again, the North Metro. This is that hatched area we showed you before about the infill ideas. This is the Costco project area right here. The multi-care is going to go there. Up into the Northmead area, some Target parcels here, some Target parcels here. And that suggests some potential infill around them if they seem to be good by transportation standards. Five Mile Prairie is over here. This is up against the city of Spokane, so it looks like it's kind of out there by itself. But those are already essentially touching the existing urban growth area. So they've got water and sewer available by themselves. These don't have much of a transportation network. If you've been up here, you know that for a long time, until recently. But it was very hard to go west off the brewery because there was nothing that went down the slope. And so if these were to happen, it would be with an improved transportation system, which, again, is expensive. West Plains, not so much being planned or at least thought of for expanding the urban growth area here because there is a lot of available vacant land, but there's a couple areas. And it sort of makes sense if you think about it. The UGA is up here. It's pretty tight. It might make some sense to use the existing infrastructure A little better and try to make some improvements me Thorpe road goes through, so that is a study area, this is the infill and stormwater management area there's an area about 180 acres. west of the Pillar Rock project, which was another one that I learned the history of recently and how that got developed. And so the project next to it also has constraints from the Luke Air Force Base contours that are there to protect the base from encroachment. And then finally on this map, Airway Heights has a request to move some of their urban growth area from their north side over to their west side.

Yeah, I happen to know that parcel, the Pillar Rock, the parcel west of Pillar Rock, extremely substandard roads, no transit, no sewer, no water. It's outside the urban growth boundary. So why would you make an exception for something that's situated over a very contaminated aquifer that many private well people depend on?

It may not ultimately withstand the analysis, but it made the 1st cut because it was between the city of and the city of airway heights and filling in the infill pattern. Most simply. It does provide. From Airway Heights perspective, I think it's 12th Avenue. It provides a chance to extend and connect the east-west transportation system in the area. So it has a couple of tiny benefits, but you're right. It's got a lot of constraints. Looking at the city of Spokane here, the Moran, Glen Rose, 57th runs right through the middle. Palouse Highway comes down here. This is that Alcott area. So there's some small areas out here, quite a lot of potential land. Like I think a lot of you in the West Plains, the development sentiment in this area is this or this. There's not much in the middle. The folks that are owning these properties are interested in bringing them in for development, and we see them as target areas. But there's a lot of opposition to more urban development in the area because of people that are like their large lot, low density living. And so all that has to be factored in. At some point, what we will be giving our planning commission and ultimately the board will be a set of options that are based on data. The arm twisting, please pick me, that's in their hands and we can't control that. Some infill here and then one project south of, this is Hatch Road coming down the hill, 195. east or west side of 195. This is a project that DOT is very nervous about because of the congestion of the ramp at I-90. But it offers a possibility of starting a road that can connect at Hatch and go straight across the West Plains all on edges of parcels. So there's not a huge real estate issue for that. But it can come over and connect to Arrow Road and it could connect to I-90. which would provide another one of the few east-west connections through that whole triangle. And so it's in the mix because it has kind of a secondary potential benefit. But it's also a challenging area. The topography here is really difficult.

What about the road they're proposing to get to the backside of Fairchild, south of Erwin Heights? Craig Road? Well, they're talking about a road from the freeway to Airway Heights.

Yeah, that's Craig Road. No, Craig Road goes north and south. It's said to be Thorpe. Oh, well, okay. The things I'm aware of as far as Fairchild, Craig is being improved here to be a big-time commercial road. This is being redesigned right now to accommodate that. McFarland was... going to be the South Gate opening into Fairchild, and that's on the books, but we're waiting for state funding to move it along. I didn't hear of anything else moving north from Medical Lake.

Well, there would be. Right now you're driving Spoo Highway 2, and there are plans to wreck that for traffic. They said they're going to build a road around the backside of it. We'll check on that. I'm not aware of that. I'll look into that, Doug. The whole design of Highway 2 through Airway Heights is going to have 11 to 13 roundabouts. And that's going to be a real pain.

And they are working on two alternatives. One is the 12th Avenue north of that, and the other is 20th, maybe, along the south to provide some local bypass for that. But the Craig Road part of it is really designed to be a a commercial reliever so that trucks moving either way can get out of, not have to go through Airway Heights. They've still got the main gate at Fairchild. But if they're eastbound, they can come down and catch this and go. And if they're westbound, they come down and they bypass that. So among other things, that's designed to take as much of the heavy traffic out of Airway Heights as possible. Yeah, it's a challenge to go through there. We talked about the. We talked about the areas for. All 2, uh, if. I'll stop for a 2nd, if you've got more questions about that. Let's take some time. Otherwise the next part of this is about the potential new zoning that we would be using inside and potentially outside of the. Any other quick thoughts?

So how much weight do you actually carry when it comes to a U.S. highway, like two? I carry more weight than I like right now.

A lot of us like that. Influence with DOT, in some ways, very little. DOT likes to be the big gorilla. Anything that touches one of their facilities, they don't want us messing around with it. However, they do sit at the table when we're doing the planning. We talk to them. We do studies. And when you're talking about that Craig Road improvement, it provides relief to Highway 2. So that's good for DOT. And Craig Road down to I-90 puts more traffic at I-90, which they don't like. They also recognize, though, and I'm not sure if this really answers your question, with expanding job growth in the West Plains, there has been enormous residential development in Post Falls. And a lot of that comes all the way through the metro every day. And I'm sure you see it. Five o'clock eastbound traffic coming from I-90 down through the city, backed up all the way up the hill almost every day. DOT understands that if we can build more housing on the West Plains, location to be determined, That'll take some of that traffic off of I-90, which makes them happy because you don't need two more lanes from here to Coral Lane. And so there's balances to be done in every case. All that said, we have no real weight to tell DOT what to do. We can tell them what we want to do, and we can tell them why, and then we have to try to persuade them.

Yeah. Two things. One is... water rights. And how do you, my understanding is that it's first in time, first in use. How do you protect when there's not so much urban stuff, but just kind of as a general rule, the spillover that, well, we don't, we can, as long as I got 10 acres, I can just Well, wherever and the poor guy that's next door that had his well for 100 years.

Well, you can't do that. But water rights are, they're gaining a lot of importance. Water rights have been granted in Washington for a very long time. But they haven't been adjudicated, which means there's never been a full legal evaluation of your water right and the ability to use them. That's not going to affect big users like the city who has water rights for a million people. They've only got a quarter then. But the smaller users, the smaller water purveyors also, you said it before, it's first in time, first in rights. So senior water rights are protected over junior water rights. Smaller providers that are not municipal also have a use it or lose it provision. If you've got a water right for 20,000 gallons a day, but over the last period of time, you've only used 5,000 gallons a day. When that adjudication process comes through, you will probably lose the right to that extra 15,000 gallons. It'll go somewhere else. Spokane County is on a list for adjudication by Ecology. They won't tell us when, but what they say is like the next 10 years. That's going to be a very, very messy process when it happens.

My other question is, it just came to me, is You realize all this work is sabotaged by the state legislature. People are going to move to Idaho. They're not going to stay here. And so are we going to gain 100,000? Are we going to stay even? Because people go, we don't. Now it's changed. Here's the last year, and we don't want to live here anymore.

That is kind of a bottom line question or issue that we deal with every day. The legislature over the last three to four years has, and I've said this in public testimony at the legislature, they're thinking of themselves as a state planning commission. They're so far down in the weeds of planning, planning law that are supposed to be done at the most local level possible. Meaning people like me representing people like you saying, how are we going to live for the next 20 years? And let's put that in a rule book and then we'll live with it. The state does stick their fingers into that. They've mandated these increases in density in urban areas. They've mandated the difficulty of expanding the urban growth area. We're trying to work within that law, but say the market conditions in Spokane County mean we need to do this thing or we will lose to Kootenai County. So far, that argument has not been very persuasive, but we're also using other county planning directors to start working with the legislature on bigger issues. We've got a group of 24 county planning directors that meets twice a year. That didn't happen three years ago. It was Spokane County going to do this and Clark County going to do that. Now we're starting to band together because if you band that together, all of a sudden there's a lot more votes in the legislature for those counties than there was when it's just you. So we're getting our voice heard. This makes things different.

I was just thinking more in terms of economic income tax and also vehicle regulations and the kind of stuff that there's an ebb and flow there that's pretty hard to tell what 20 years in the past.

I have the luxury of saying the finance discussions are outside of my purview. Not my fault. Well, enough. But that, yeah, that makes it very, very difficult. Not to get too far into details, but these urban growth areas that we have now, they've developed over the last 20 years. They are still in county control. Those were always designed under the Growth Management Act to be planned by the county, and then as they built, to be annexed into the city they were attached to, because cities are better equipped to deliver those services over time than counties are. Our budgets, county budgets are not built to maintain city roads with, you know, pans and curbs and gutters and sidewalks and street trees and lights and all of that. Our county roads have swales and ditches, you know, and that's the road fund budget that we have. We can't maintain those over time. But in Washington, the cities don't annex them. So they've been out there forever. And that's part of what the county planning directors are working on is a strategy to get those annexed into cities so that the county budget can be better protected for what we can do better. So, yeah, the legislature makes things really challenging for us. I'll leave it at that. I did want to get back to your water question. There are two things about ecology. One, ecology has declared the Spokane Valley Rastrum Prairie Aquifer closed, meaning they will not issue a new water right or any water out of the aquifer. The second is sort of contradictory. You can still get a permit-exempt well from Ecology and draw 5,000 gallons a day out of that for a particular parcel. No more than 5,000 gallons. You can only irrigate a half acre total of land no matter how many homes or things you have in there. But within almost very little limit, those permit-exempt wells are still being allowed. So yeah, it's a strange system. And it's the same state agency that does it. Zoning. Very quick history left. Zoning started, depending on your perspective, maybe in LA, but mostly in New York in 1916 for two reasons. One was as the buildings were growing high, The first zoning code forced the setbacks that you see in every picture of Manhattan, where they go up and they go out. So it let light and air down to the street level instead of just 40 stories going straight up. It was also designed to separate the meatpacking district from the theater district and from Park Avenue. So it introduced that separation of uses. 10 years later in suburban Cleveland, a village of Euclid, which is a residential bedroom community, The realty company was trying to sell land to bring industry out of Cleveland into this small town. And they used what are called the police powers of the state to say they prohibited that. They say, no, we're creating a zone that this is residential and you can't approach into it. It was appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court and the Supreme Court found it valid. That is the basis for zoning in the country today. Spokane County zoning. is the same form as that of 1926. So literally 100 years ago, the zoning that was formed is the same kind of zoning we have now. And it's all about separations, separating industrial from commercial, industrial from residential, even separating densities of residential over time. That was a product, for the most part, of the, you know, what was called the automobile era after World War II when cars became popular, land, the highways were there, and it was easy to go out and buy a piece of land and build something on it. But that, as those lands were purchased, it was like, I want to draw, I only want low density in here. I don't want something else happening in these areas. In the last 20, 30 years, more places, cities, and again, these county UGAs, which are little mini villages or neighborhoods, are starting to go back into mixes of uses where, you know, in the 1800s, before a lot of the cars, cities had factories, you know, and the workers' homes were all around the factory. So you had literally smokestack industry next door. Some of it was a little less, you know, obstructive, but you did have those mix of uses. So we're trying to now move into a place where We're creating a zone that does two things. It allows for a mixed use and encourages it in some cases, but also allows housing builders to gauge where the market is and build something that, in fact, people want to buy or rent. And what this shows, this is an illustration over an existing neighborhood, but it shows how that might work because you've got single-family detached housing. You've got townhome. You've got an alley served version on this side. You've got some limited multifamily. You've got some bigger multifamily. That could be a small grocery store. These could be live-work units where the ground floor has a storefront and there's an accountant that works there or a hairdresser, barber, architect, lawyer, somebody that doesn't have a lot of foot traffic but can work in their building and live above it. So it's a system that lets those things happen. And what we're recommending is this neighborhood zoning will replace that separated zoning that we currently have using the LDR, MDR, and HDR. So there's three versions of this, three flavors. Neighborhood Residential 1 is essentially duplicating what we call the LDR, low density residential, and MDR, medium density residential classifications. This is most of what's in the existing urban growth areas. It's most of what's developed over the last 20 years. So, excuse me, when we get to NR2, we'll talk about some of the bigger apartments that have gone in, you know, in these odd sort of areas. But it's designed to do two things. It's designed to fill in the remaining lots that are in the UGA that have already mostly developed. There may be a subdivision of 100 lots and 90 of them have developed. Well, this will allow the remaining 10 to be built in the same pattern as what's there. So it protects the property rights of everybody around it. Doesn't introduce a lot of change. If somebody wanted to put one of those live work units in it, that would be allowed. But you couldn't just say, oh, There's a one acre parcel here. I'm going to put 40 units of apartment on it. That would not work in the NR1. It's more of a low density. NR2 allows for the illustration you saw three slides earlier, or two slides anyway, and that is kind of what we call the master planned approach where you plan the land use from the beginning to have that range of uses from single family detached to some limited multifamily to shops, businesses, stores, transportation grid, again, connecting things so you don't have one way in, one way out issues with neighborhoods, and the idea of having a chance to live and work in small areas. One of the other advantages to this, and this one is used, is envisioned mostly if we are able to expand urban growth area parcels where you've got 20 or 40 acres to deal with from the start. If you've only got fragmented parcels, that's where this one comes in. But it gives us a chance to create an area where people don't have to get in their car and drive three miles to a yokes or toilet paper. Maybe it's a C-star with or without pumps. It doesn't have to be a blight. but something that is more convenient in their neighborhood. It could just be a gathering spot with a coffee shop that people want to walk to in the middle of the day. But it's planned from the beginning. So builders can form partnerships to make this happen if they can't do it all at once. And then neighborhood business is sort of a, not really a reverse of that, but neighborhood residential is housing first with businesses interspersed within it. And the businesses all have to be scaled and fit in there. business, the neighborhood businesses, places where you already have big business and institutions and you want to put in multifamily residential, single family really isn't going to work in this area. It's how you fill in areas that are wasting land. And this also allows something that we've been talking about, but not as much the idea of adaptive reuse of some of those commercial structures as residential projects, then surrounding them with more residential. And so it's a chance of doing some things that don't happen right now. So let me show you kind of how these work. The NR1, and this is a sketch of, this is the city of Spokane Valley, the Southeast UGA, and some of these smaller infill parcels. This NR1 probably fits really well out here because they're small. There's not a lot of extra land to say, I've got 25 acres. I can put in three shops in a small row. That may not happen here. So again, it's there to reinforce and protect the existing homeowners who are already in that area. NR2, that master plan approach, two areas. And again, that's where this hatch is to say, How can we tie these together in a way that makes sense so you don't have to drive to airway heights for groceries or all the way down to Rose hours if you wanna do that. And again, when you've got the master plan approach, critical areas are involved in that now. It's not just how many units can you jam into it. Oh, and by the way, don't watch this too fast because you'll get seasick. Let me go back to this. you know, this central green right here, it looks like it was just land cast aside. That could be part of a critical areas ordinance. That could be a wetland. That could be something that's close to the aquifer being close to the surface and protected. So the idea is you integrate that critical knowledge into these projects at that master planning stage. And then neighborhood business, again, when we're talking about that, Wentworth University, Rockwood Retirement is in here. So you've got two big institutions. You've got Costco in here. You've got 40 acres across from that that is potentially mixed-use major medical center. And you can see these medium and high-density parcels that have gone into the older neighborhoods along Hastings and Farwell on that corridor. This would allow... The neighborhood business to go in this area where you've got room in between the businesses to maybe put in some residential and here along 395 where the shops are. And then neighborhood residential to in here to do smaller shops like here dot has a right away parcel up here and then let that develop in a way that's more compatible than it does when it's just a one off apartment going into a neighborhood. So I'll show you one example of something. And this is the same place side by side about 10 years apart. The photos show it 20, but the left one is the year 2000. There's a major east-west arterial across the top, north-south here in the same street here. You can see the residential neighborhood is right on that side. And 1960s shopping center, department store, grocery store, all sorts of stuff in here. The usual giant parking field around it. You know, the old adage from retailers when they really controlled things was they wanted to build a parking lot for the Saturday after Thanksgiving. So you see that parking lot, it's barely, I don't know what, 20% used and all that land is just sitting there. So the photo next to it, Ariel later, took this entire parking field, put in a set of townhomes along the street, so you've got a residential street on both sides, tucked this parking in the structured parking. It's expensive, but it's only two levels, so it wasn't outrageous, and then put another set of liner buildings, retail shops, against the parking garage and formed a little promenade between them and the existing mall. So they created it. housing. They created housing that you can walk to work. If there was a dentist in here, you've got that to happen. Importantly, they saved that mall. Malls are dying all over the country. By creating this new massive additional retail in here, they made that a viable retail destination for everybody. One way to see that in addition to what happened here for infill, this very low density project, which was a a housing project, ultimately replaced by a big box. That's a Target store, 135,000 square foot Target store. But if you look at that, there's no additional parking for that. Like the Target on Newport Highway, there's no parking. It's all shared with what's already in existence. So it recaptured that land in a way that you didn't need to build new infrastructure. You didn't need to go out on the fringe And you were able to really use that land in a more efficient way. So it can be done. This is Madison, Wisconsin. And while there are certainly differences, there are a lot of similarities. Madison and Spokane are about the same size. Dane County is about the same size as population as Spokane County. They're both a little bit isolated from bigger cities. Madison, of course, being kind of surrounded by no Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and Chicago, and we're 300 miles from Seattle. They have different economics, but they have similarities. So that's why we show that this is like, it can work. And then just kind of details, and I'll go over this really quickly. What we're doing to make it reasonably easy to understand the new zoning categories is we're using our existing zoning tables and language to incorporate them. So you see the categories across the top, the things down here, building coverage, lot sizes, all those. So it's easy to figure out the rules. And then what we're doing differently, though, is we're adding guidelines right there. So you can see, well, I can do this on a 3,000 square foot lot, but what other options do I have? We think this is going to make, you know, anytime you can make your rules clear and easy to read. Somebody that's investing or building sees this and they say, okay, I can do this. I can design something and have it here quickly or go somewhere. It's like, wait a minute, I got to sift through 40 pages of rules to figure out if I can build a porch on a house. Making it simple means we can bring investment into the county. And again, two projects, both in Washington, a little higher density here. This is downtown Spokane, Kendall Yards, but that's sitting on that, The mix of uses, the grocery stores off on this side, multifamily residential in the middle, shops over here, single family down on the side. And so these are the things that we're looking for. Yes. Go back to the last slide.

Yeah. And then your additional provisions, how are they developed? Who decides it's 1,300 square feet or 20,000 square feet?

No, really good question. Some of that comes from our experience in other areas of saying what works in areas and what doesn't work in areas and what do you need a minimum amount of land to do certain things. Others, frankly, back to your comment, come from new mandates from the state. How many units do you have to have on a lot? Can you have minimum lot sizes or not? So it's a combination of things that we must do and things that we've seen work in other areas. So it's mandated by the state and their experience. And then that's why we're also having these conversations. We're talking with community groups. We're also talking with builders. We're talking with businessmen. It's like, does this make sense to you? Like I said, we've used these, we've seen these standards used in other areas. We know they're not outrageous. We're not trying to be out on the fringe. We're not trying to build Manhattan. But if if the local market says, no, you know, this right now that's a 6,000 billion, if this was LDR, it's a 6,000 square foot minimum lot size. That's a pretty expensive piece of land now that it wasn't before in, you know, even 2020, that lot might've cost $50,000 for dirt, you know, with the street and everything improvement. Now it might be $200,000. The land values have gone. It's just been astronomical. So if we're going to allow any kind of mid-range, middle housing, these lot sizes need to shrink. And so that would be a way of doing that. So can you still have a 1,500-square-foot house on a 3,000-square-foot lot, have some quality of life, an extra yard for kids to play in across the city from a park, rather than A big expensive piece of land that we can't build a small house, because you can't sell it for 200 yet you've got to recover your land costs, all of a sudden this $800,000 house to set up a $300,000 house so they're coming from trying to balance all of those things into a set of recipes for how you bake the cake. I was just.

kind of your comment about. of the really good life from business. I tried to wade through all the draft documents, but I found the comment section very interesting with some really well-thought-out organizations that have given input to some of that, and I go, they're really good at that. communicate their ideas well. And I think that I see that it's a wealth of input to these kinds of things.

Thank you. We've tried to reach a broad audience. Developers and builders are not necessarily evil. They are building, they're investing, they're investing in the community. And so we want to make them see something that gives them a chance to make a profit, but build a product that people want to buy or rent or live in. And that's kind of the goal is how do you provide for growth of a community and not give away the profits, so to speak. So anyway, we're just about done. When you look at all of these things, in addition to setbacks, plot sizes. All of these attributes have to factor into the recipe, if you will, for building those environments. And with that, I'm done. So we can take any questions. If you'd like to look at the maps in more detail, you can do that.

I have another comment. As a farmer, I know that Once there's pavement, it will never go back. And that tilled ground looks pretty attractive, but farmland preservation is an important thing to me. And so I think zoning should... I know it's always a fine line between respecting property rights and then... It is. The bigger issues.

Farmland preservation is at the top of our priority list. It is the first thing we look at in the plan. How do we have regulations that protect our agricultural areas, farming and ranching? None of this happens before we've gone through an understanding of the ag economy in Spokane County. We've met with Farm Bureau. We've met with Cattlemen's Association. We've had several meetings out in the Palouse area.

I got to differ with you. Yeah. I've been president of Spokane County Cattlemen for 23 years. Yeah. You've never talked to me.

No, no, no. I recognize you. You were in our studio. You came to an event when we talked about farmland preservation. That's where I recognized you.

Yeah. I've been in Valley Ford and several others.

Yeah. I knew I recognized you. Couldn't place why. But that was the point is, yeah, we want to talk about from you, what do you need? that we can make sure is in the code and in the plan that protects what you're doing. And I hope we made that message clear then.

Well, this group right here is all involved in this, but you stated too, we object to the wind towers and to the solar panels. We don't want any of that. We don't want these data centers that they're talking about. And And you said you're trying to write some rules and laws to follow. And boy, that stuff's got to, you can't be waiting to get it wrote. I mean, it's got to be done and it's got to be, but you still got the state that's going to say, well, no, you can build your wind tower right there. I'm saying you can't.

The one big advantage we have as a county is if we're able to put forward coding that regulates wind and solar. Get it on the books, get the board to adopt it. Then if a wind company wants to go to the state and ignore the county code, we still get a seat at that FSEC table. We get to be at the meeting and say, this is the county code, this is the public policy, this is what people in Spokane County want. It makes it harder to just ignore it completely. It's not perfect, but it gives us a chance to be there.

It's like you said a while ago, you and I are both carrying a lot of weight. We are. It's got to be a group effort, and it's got to be something that is agreed to by the entire group before we let somebody walk over us. Our grazing land is getting less and less every day, and the farm owners are sucking it up and Of course, you know, a lot of these people, they've been farming for 40 years, haven't made a dime. Guy says, well, I'll put a wind tower up on your place and I'll give you better goals, you know. There's got to be some stipulations.

Yeah, I know. It's a tough balance at times. But, you know, since you were there, I hope you realize that when we, and the way we've even organized the plan and the priorities, it starts out with ag and ag preservation and then it gets into urban development. We want to make this plan abundantly clear that the rural ag sector of the county is the heart of the county. Yeah, we need manufacturing. We need other jobs. We need to support the Air Force Base. But once the ag land is gone, it's gone. It never comes back. So to the degree we can protect that, that's what we're seeking. That's why we wanted to talk to you and the Farm Bureau. I think we've got a meeting coming up to kind of go over some of that. But we'll be sending out those drafts again of the chapters to say, did we hear you? Do you see something in here that reflects what you want?

I got notification in this meeting tonight at 1240 this afternoon.

Notification of? Of this meeting. Oh, okay.

Four hours ago.

We have a dozen. First off, I'm sorry you had late notice. We have tried every possible way to get the word out on meetings, including email blasts. We send things out at least a week ahead of time. We put them in the paper a week ahead of time. And yet some people get missed. I'm glad somebody called you or somebody sent something to you.

We have struggled with that.

Right. So, yes, ma'am. I was wondering a little bit about transportation planning, because it seems like someplace like your White Heights, there's no, you know, putting something in place where it's mixed use and people are expected to be out of their cars. There's like no place to walk. It's, you know, the roads are dangerous. I mean, I'm thankful they fixed Frank Road, because that was a horrible,

This kind of land use planning goes hand in hand with transportation planning. You can't have that walkable center if you don't have some protection for pedestrians or bikes. And those can't be high volume streets. You have to have that balance in place. We have transportation planners on our staff. So we've got the advantage of being able to talk about this right inside of our office. We also work with DOT on bigger projects. So we're very aware of that. And that's where If you have a chance to look at that map, second from the right back there, that has some early transportation comments on it for all of those areas. So that's like the first filter we use is what's the road system going to do if this happens? So they're very well connected. Other thoughts? And if you have other comments, you know Ronan now. You can send her an email. You can send me an email. You can go here and there's a place to send more comments. We have another one of these tomorrow night downtown. It's going to be the same thing, so it's not any different to you. And then we'll be, like I said, before our planning commission later this month. And as the plan comes together, the entire plan will start to roll out in July for review from the public and everybody else that wants to take a whack at it. So...

Yes. Just one more question. Of these three alternatives, is accounting leaning toward one or another more heavily at this point in time?

Leaning? No. What the alternatives are designed to do, the best way to describe it is to create a set of bookends. Either bookend is really not going to be acceptable for either market reasons or Growth Management Act reasons. So what the the county board will do, hopefully as this evolves in the first week or so of July, is we will help them narrow down what they like and don't like about those alternatives to create a preferred alternative. One pattern that will then put back through this whole study thing a second time for more detailed transportation, sewer, water impacts. But it'll come from somewhere within that set of bookends that we talked about today. Something in between. is ultimately what the county board will give back to us and say, go study this thing. I think it will be some combination of infill development because that is, in many ways, that's what's being forced on us by the state is to increase our densities. But to be able to demonstrate that the Spokane County market requires us to have single-family detached housing development, and so we need some additional land in some of these key areas. I suspect that Somewhere in that balance is what we're going to try to achieve.

And then when you talk about the developments, you're talking about fire and emergency, all that kind of stuff that's got to filter in.

Fire districts, water districts, school districts, we talk to all of them. I meet twice a year with the entire group of superintendents. I've met with the fire chiefs. It's like an awful lot of shiny stars in the room, but I've met with all of them. Tony's never done that before we've never talked to the districts and doing planning they're they're grateful that we're there and they're being very helpful for the. You know all these areas are in different fire and water districts, for the most part, so being able to talk to them, can you serve this, what are the problems and that's going to factor into which of these work. And the school districts, especially we know she just kicked off a new school, you know here we're close to your narrow nice. We've been talking with them for a couple of years because they and Meade are the most impacted by these growth areas. And, you know, the other area, I guess Julia might have left. But this project north of the airport by Airway Heights next to Pillar Rock, outside of the Air Force Contours has enough land to be another school site. And so, you know, Cheney was interested in talking about that. So that can factor into, you know, if you're gonna go to school, why not build a neighborhood around it so that everybody has to drive their kids to school? So yeah, we're trying to talk to everybody in those special districts that we've never talked to before. Well, thank you. Sorry, I didn't recognize Both of you before. Oh, yes, sir.

Were you going to bring up anything about AI? I was not. Can I? Sure. Okay. There's a lot of controversy about it. Those AI centers are going to come. Oh, data centers. Yeah. We did talk about that a little bit. Okay. But what I'm wondering, they say that they need something like, what is it? Five million gallons or a lot of water every day, but they say they can't put it back where they got it from. Why is that? Is it contaminated or is it hot temperature-wise or what is the reason?

I don't know precisely. I think in the early years of the data centers, I don't want to get sued for saying something. I think it was just lazy. It's like, well, the water's there. We'll just use it and flush it back into the stream. We have heard of some that use a closed system now where they bring in a lot of water, but they use it over and over and over again. So some of these are listening to the public and saying, we can't let you use our resources in this way. And I'll tell you what we told everybody else. A VISTA had a story in today's paper about making a deal for a high volume user, they call it. We have no applications for data centers anywhere in our permitting shop in Spokane County. We have talked to people that are sniffing around about data centers, but there's nothing that has come in and said, we want, can we put one on that land? So there's nothing active in the county.

See, I'm in favor of them because they're going to come one way or another. And I think for the state of the world, we need this kind of stuff.

Well, whether you like him or not, Elon Musk wants to put data centers in orbit, which I think would be a great idea. It'd be raining all the time.

It'd be hot rain all the time.

But he was on the West Plains Starlink is like one of the most reliable internet providers. Okay, that's good. Elon Musk.

Yeah. Yeah, he's got his fingers in a lot of things. But yeah, we are aware of them. Our county code right now is so far, I'll just say out of date, it doesn't discuss how to plan for them, how to manage them, how to regulate them. We're starting to write that code now in anticipation of more interest coming in here.

I personally believe they are a necessary... I could say evil, but I don't want to say that. But because you look at right now, we've got cameras stuck everywhere. And I understand it for the criminal element that's in the United States now. And I think that's going to be showing its ugly head over the next probably 20, 30 years or more. And We have to be able to gather data from around the world to confront the evildoers. Let me put it that way. And I don't like the cameras, but I think they're a necessary evil. You know, we got Spice in the Sky. They helped catch criminals. The cameras along the highways. Most people never see them, but I tend to look for them. Sure. And you can see them.

Be careful driving if he's on the road.

Just drive defensively, Mike. That'll get it.

I appreciate your comments. Like I said, we're We're aware that it's on the doorstep and we're trying to better understand it so that we can find the advantages or disadvantages of them and then make that recommendation for building. But nothing is imminent right now. But thanks. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate that and have a good night.

Yeah.