Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We're recording. We're recording.

Welcome to the Wednesday, February 18th, 2026 Thirsten County Planning Commission meeting. it. Uh the thirst county planning commission is a advisory committee to the board of county commissioners on land use planning matters such as the comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance amendments. Planning commission actions are in the form of recommendations to the county commissioners who are the final decision makers. All planning commission meetings are open to the public. Community members are welcome to observe all planning commission briefings and work sessions. Public comment is allowed on those topics for which a public hearing has not been held. My name is Eric Casino. I'll be the acting chair for tonight's meeting and we will uh continue with introductions first here in the boardroom and then online.

Scott Nelson, District 4. Barry Halverson, Yel Washington, District 2. Commissioner Kaiser, can you hear us? Yes, I can. I'm Sandy Kaiser. I live in and serve District 3. Commissioner Flores. Yes. Hi, everyone. I'm Lola Flores and it's district three for me. Commissioner Miller. Um, I am Ivon Miller and I serve for district one. And Commissioner Fishburn. This is Bill Fishburn. I live in and serve district 4.

All right. Thank you very much. I don't think we have any other commissioners online. With that, has everybody had a opportunity to look at the agenda? And if so, I'd uh entertain a motion. uh move to approve the agenda for February 18th, 2026 with one amendment. State your amendment. That amendment would be for 4.5 for election of chair and vice chair for the commission. Second. It's been moved and seconded to uh approve the amended agenda to include election of officers. All those in favor say I. I. I.

The motion carries. Thank you very much. Has everybody had an opportunity to look over the meeting minutes from February 4th, 2026? And if so, is there any discussion on those or changes that need to be made? I move to approve the meeting minutes and accept the audio as the official meeting record for February 4th, 2026. Second. It's been moved and seconded to approve the meeting minutes for the February 4th, 2026 meeting. All those in favor say I. I. I.

I. minutes are accepted. With that, we're going to move on to the public communication portion of our meeting. Uh you'll have three minutes. If you please identify yourself in the area of the county you live in, we'd be happy to hear from you. Um Loretta, would you like to Oh, I'm sorry, Beth. I was reading the screen and looking at the same Nort.

That's great. Um thank you. I didn't really have time to prepare very formal comments, but I would just like to um make a brief um just call your attention to when you're talking about joint plans and when you're talking about planning, I would just like to ask you to think very clearly about making sure that there's space for green space, resident space, parks, and uh make sure that there are big enough buffers between residential and industrial commercial areas that uh you know you're not going to be uh basically pressing some communities by putting them smack next to you know high polluting or um very noisy industrial areas uh when you have multif family housing but I'm thinking of water for that and so um it it just seems to me like some I know that there are people who would say in the UG built out wall to- wall, you know, continuous development. And I think you need to remember that as a city grows, it's the people are going to start residing in there and working in there. And you really don't want cement. Um it's not good for climate change. It's not good for people. So, um when you're thinking about adopting these rules, if you see that sort of pattern, I would just ask you to step in and rethink it.

Thank you. With nobody else in the boardroom, are there any? Yes, we'll call on Howard Glass Stutter first. You're up, Howard. Howard, we can't hear anything from you. We're gonna we're going to circle back to you in a bit, Howard, if we can. Is there anybody else online that would like to address the planning commission?

We never got Howard back, did we? He's right there. Did you know? Pastor Don muted. I don't think he he's not muted. Oh, he is muted on our end. Can we unmute Howard? Am I on now? Yes, Howard, we can hear you.

Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to say um I really appreciated the n the last meeting. I I listened to to the um YouTube version of it and I um uh I I thought the comments about the Nquali Delta were excellent. I've sent in a couple of comments um to the the planning commission. I don't expect it to be covered, but I just wanted to give my thanks and say I added a little bit more that might uh help things be better understood uh about uh my feelings about the Delta where I've lived for over 55 years. So anyway, that's my thought. I know I know the subject is not going to be the Delta, but I think there's more information that you might appreciate. So, thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else online that would like to address the planning commission?

All right, I guess that will conclude it. We're going to move on to uh item number four, new business work session number one, joint codes and plan introductions. Thank you.

We were expecting Maya to be able to deliver this presentation tonight and unfortunately her son, it sounds like he chipped a bone in his thumb. So Anna and I are going to do our best to to cover the topic. Um we didn't necessarily want to delay it. Um so tonight is an overview of joint planning. Um especially for our newer commissioners. Um this is going to be kind of a 101 on how we plan in coordination with uh with the cities here in Thirstston County in particular with our north county cities. Um so moving next slide. So just an an overview of what this project which actually represents a few docket items includes is an update to the urban growth area zoning codes and joint plans for Olympia, Lacy and Tamil water. Um the intention is to align uh the development standards that we have in the UG's um with the development standards they have within the cities. Um for any of these um joint code updates, the county always retains the rollover process. So, we are the permitting authority. So, if someone needs a permit, they're going to come to the county even if the standards we're applying are essentially city standards. There are two docket items that relate to this um that the planning commission reviewed in January. The first of the first is the thirst in 2045 joint plan update. This is a comprehensive plan docket item and then of course there are the UG codes um the joint the joint codes and those are development code docket items. Um this is a mandatory update. This falls under the umbrella of periodic review. Um of course it would have been ideal for us to bring all these updates alongside our rural comprehensive plan, but the cities weren't done with their own comp plan. So it is delayed um to be able to incorporate all the housing and zoning

updates that the cities made to comply with the new state housing laws. Um but we are going to try to get it done in 2026. We're really proud of the fact that we got the comp plan adopted on time and we really don't want this to to drag on too far beyond that. So what is what constitutes the UG? So here's just a map of the whole county. The lightest shade there are your cities. The mid sort of green shade there um are the UG, so the urban growth areas. And of course the the darker parts are the rest of rural county. So for these joint plan updates and joint code updates in 2026 we'll be focusing on just those areas in Tumbwater, Olympia, Lacy. And I think you can kind of see the biggest UG is obviously in Lacy especially there in southeast Lacy. Um and they have kicked off an annexation study for that area. The next sort of larger chunk over that's actually Olympia, Southeast Olympia. that's their last remaining um significantly sized area in the UG. And then west of that you've got Tom Waters. So Tom Waters UG is is pretty small. It it's more staggered sort of around the edges of the city. So why is this needed? This is where I wish I could have a current planner come and sit at the table. There's of course that the overarching goals to support um all the recently adopted comp plan policies, especially the ones around 5% real growth targets. Um but the the big one for us just programmatically is the codes themselves that we administer in the UG haven't really been updated since 1996. they have lagged so far behind where the cities have gone in terms of

implementing their own housing initiatives. Um, and sustainable thirst probably being the biggest one that's happened in the last decade. Our codes don't reflect the changes that the cities have put in place to allow for more intense development in our urbanizing areas. So, our codes are inconsistent with the updated joint plans. And I should say the joint plans for I'm looking at the folks in the room and you all were here for the last joint plan updates. It wasn't that long ago was 2021 and 2021, 2022, 2023. We held off on updating the codes because we were like, well, they're going to update again after the comp plan update. So even the joint plans we have on the books are not reflected in the codes that we implement dayto-day. Um the codes are very inconsistent with city development regulations. And so even when our planners are having difficulty like interpreting a particular code when they call the city, the city's like, I have no idea. We haven't had that on the books for 20 years in terms of trying to figure out how we should apply. Sign codes especially are pretty difficult. Um and then of course we have new state laws every year coming out um for housing and subdivisions. A lot of those only impact the cities and the UAs. They don't necessarily impact rural county because we don't have sewer and water available. So all the middle housing stuff that's really targeted to cities and UGs and it's not reflected in the our joint codes.

Commissioner Miller, did you have something? I did not. No. Okay. Sorry.

Yeah. So, a primer on UGS, urban growth areas. Um, they are intended to accommodate the 20-year projected urban growth. The sizing of the UGS is um tied to our buildable lands report that is done periodically. Um, within the UG, we actively work with the cities to plan for urban services and of course the cities um then provide those urban services, mostly sewer and water. Um the joint plans themselves are basically like mini comp plans for these for these respective areas and they govern the land use policy. Um and that's where you'll find sort of the the land use um land use designations for these areas as well as the zoning. Um the codes themselves are the development standards. So when someone comes in to divide their land, when they come in to build build anything on their land, they're going to come to the county and the development standards that we have on the books are what we what we will have to implement. Um and then of course the county is the permitting authority until annexation. So we process all those permits in coordination with the cities. Um so as it pertains to any kind of land division, the cities are reviewing all of the um public works plans related to any kind of public facilities, roads, sewer, water. So we get all that information from the city and then we implement it through our our subdivision process. So little history lesson. Um and then Commissioner Nelson can chime in because I think he knows more about some of this stuff than than we do. Um, so the county was actually in the like on the leading edge of how to manage our urban growth areas and we had our our first urban growth area management agreements as early as 1983 and 1988.

In 1995 um there were threeus signed um with the individual cities. So the county signed these agreements with the cities and what they essentially commit to is applying city zoning standards in the urban growth areas and they were intended to reduce friction at the time of annexation. So you know you basically have consistent consistent um uh provisions and a consistent land use pattern at the time that these lands are brought into the city. The joint plans themselves are adopted by both the county and the cities. Um, and I know at least some of the the planning commissioners have gone through that process. Um, but we have separate county code titles implementing those city standards. So each city or each UG gets their own title within our zoning code. So our planners here at the county have to know four different zoning codes when they when they are working on their various projects

if the property is within the UG. Yeah. Well, our our planners get a mix of projects and so at any given point in time, they'll have a project that's in Telmar UG and has a certain zoning standards and they'll have a Lacy UG project. Um, and that's where we like to call on our city partners and be like, "Hey, we're not experts. Can you help?" And they're like, "No, sorry. We don't we don't have anything like that on our books." What happens if if a city doesn't adopt a UG joint plan that we've made? They don't like what we've done. Uh, well, that hasn't happened, but I don't know.

They Well, they don't. They can. The county adopts it. Well, she just said that adopted. There's a I think this is um the intention here is that they're they're coordinated officially in the countywide planning policies. there's a recommendation made by the cities to the county and then the countywide planning policies themselves basically say that the the county should accept the recommendation so that the cities don't actually adopt our joint plans.

They the adoption comes through the adoption of their own comprehensive plan gets it's a little confusing. So they adopt their comp plan that lays out all the land use designations and those essentially just get reflected in the joint plan. So with the exception of I think the city of Lacy, the joy plans really are just mirrors of the city's respective comprehensive plans and something I learned from the Twater one was this. Even though we had a public hearing with the third with the Twater City Planning Commission, the Twater City Council does not have a public hearing. They just make a motion to forward it to the county commissioners and then the county commissioners have a public hearing.

Oh

yeah. And I think in their mind they have they had their hearings when they had their own comprehensive plan update and so they're not really looking to change their land use designations or change the zoning per se. So, it's we have a very unique joint planning framework um here in Thirstston County and there's a lot of positives. I think it's created a really collaborative environment if you look to the north to put regional council like we don't go through the processes that they go through to try to coordinate. So, I think there have been there have been good things that have come out of a history of joint planning and then of course there are challenges like anything else. So next slide. So how it's done today, speaking of challenges and benefits. Um so the advantages um of having joint planning um is that we do have UG specific zoning tailored to each city. Like we like I said we've got three separate titles, zoning titles um within within the thirst county code. It does help reduce friction um and does create more consistent land use patterns at the time of annexation if your codes aren't 30 years behind the the city codes. Um it it definitely can create predictability for applicants and residents too in terms of like what what things are going to look like um between being in the UG versus being in the city. So some of the disadvantages from an administrative standpoint, you know, we've got three separate code titles to maintain and ensure you know updates happen in a timely fashion. There is a big administrative burden with that as you've seen because it is a big burden and it's not always prioritized. We have a lot of lag in misalignment as the city codes change or as the state laws change.

And as I've mentioned, we still have a lot of 1996 regs on the books. So here's here's our box that we are in as staff. Um theus require county consistency with city's zoning. There's limited flexibility to diverge from the city standards. We do retain more flexibility when it comes to variance authority and non-conforming use approvals. And we also have countywide with planning policies that reinforce joint planning and the coordination requirements. So that's that's our box.

Who who made that box? Lots of past board decisions. Okay. So those are those are county policies through countywide planning countywide planning policies um agreements that are still on the book and are active.

Yes. So that's that's CPAD's box. So we operating within that box have been looking at different options for how can we still you know reflect all of those prior agreements that have been made um while addressing some of the administrative challenges that we face as a department. So within that box, this is what we've come up with and we're open to discussion. Um but we would like to explore adopting the UG zoning codes by reference. Um we can have exceptions to that like uh a good one that Commissioner Nelson has brought up there are existing a uses. there are more limitations within the urban zoning codes for existing A. We could hold on to our provisions for existing A and only at the time of development would city provisions apply. So that's a good example of like you can adopt by reference but not adopt everything by reference if there are things that we want to hold on to. Um especially uses that are more rural.

Would that include forest egg?

It could. We were looking uh I was looking specifically at the Tumb Water UG area. Um there aren't that many farms left. Um for better or worse, um we don't have that many left in the UG. Um but we could look to see if there are, you know, forested forested areas as well. Want to make sure we don't create a a lot of extra policies and standards for a problem that doesn't exist. So this would be kind of a spatial analysis to figure out if there are things that the planning commission wants us to look into. we could look into it, identify what those are, and then get creative with how we might address it through the code. Um, if we go the route of adopting it by reference, it does eliminate duplicate uh duplicative city zoning standards. So, it's not like we have one set and the city has another set. Um essentially when they update their codes it would get automatically updated um in ours the city code amendments would automatically apply then in the UGS it would maintain consistency which is required by theUS u the memor memorandums of understanding the countywide planning policies in essence it's a procedural change rather than a policy shift because we're already supposed to have codes on the books that reflect with the city have. We just can't keep up. We don't have the staff to keep up with the changes that they make. And lately, most of those changes have been because of new state laws, new state housing laws.

Is have those mainly been in areas like residential building and development? Okay. And subdivision and sub Well, it's kind of related to that.

Yeah. So just you know of course these are benefits from our perspective um and then considerations for for you all and of course there could add another column on you know concerns that that are brought up. Um we do see a benefit of a reduced administrative burden. You all know what it's like every time we bring the smallest code update through. It's a lot of process whether I mean process required under the growth management act. Um, and it's really in our minds it's just checking a box like yes, we have to update our code because the city updated their code because state law changed, but we've got now duplicative processes um in place to reflect those changes. Um, so it would mean faster compliance with the new state housing and subdivision laws. We're about two to three years um behind where the state state housing laws are for UGS. um better alignment for annexation. County would retain all control over review processes and project decisionmaking. Um I'll also put out there that one of the benefits is we haven't really been able to ask our city partners to fulfill all the provisions of theou. Theus actually allow for the city to help us with project review if we're short staffed or we need their expertise in UGAS. We can't really do that when our codes are 30 years behind theirs. But if they are this very similar, then we'd be able to actually get some support technical support.

They had done that for us. Like when we were down there on the corner of Rich Road and Yelm Highway when they wanted to get rid of the provision of the supermarket, he went to the city. Tom Shrader went to the city first before coming to the county. in terms of the the development review. Yeah, they have I mean it's not that they're not willing to help us. This would allow us to actually have agreements in place. Okay. Where we could get technical technical planning review to support our staff so they don't have to know four different codes.

But the idea would still be that no matter what the applicant in the UG would always come to the county first and then you would make the decision whether or not to loop the city in. Yes. Yeah. So far there's no question about permitting authority and full disclosure there have been public discussions that the city of Lacazy has broached about shifting permitting authority. Um I think it was on Martin way in lie of that I think they just want to annex. That was kind of our answer at the time like well if you want permitting authority annex. So they are looking at annexing. Um but just so you're aware like th those conversations come up there but they have not come to CPED yet. Um and that would be our our decision. Um considerations um it does reduce our ability to tailor those standards. we would have to build in some kind of review um like more periodic review um and clear timing to update the joint plans um and we would have an increased reliance on city legislative timelines and I'm not sure if I'm not sure exactly what that bullet refers to from from my

I think she's trying to get at like the city as they're updating their their legislative like as they have documented projects that require code updates I think it's just we will rely on them to complete them and until they're completed, we wouldn't adhere to that. That's how I inter if they're like if they're not on top of it and making the changes that the state's requiring, then we're sort of subject to their timing. Yeah. Right now, we're not doing it on our own though either, so I'm not sure if it's much Well, I mean, we got our comp plan done in time. We've seen that like specifically the city of Lacy has been behind on quite a few of their projects before.

They got their comp plan update um up

up to speed now, but I mean I would hate for the county to get in trouble because we told the city to do something and then it never got done. I think in those cases, I don't I don't see any reason why we couldn't have a provision that says that we can go ahead and adopt it, especially if it's a new state housing law or it's in response to some kind of case law. Like, we can definitely navigate those. And so, yeah, really just in terms of schedule and next steps because this is a a priority from a timing perspective under the periodic review umbrella. um coming back in March with scope and more of a deep dive with Maya's brain on implications. Um she's been working through just what this would look like from administrative procedures perspective. So meeting with our our legal council, meeting with the cities, their legal councils just to make sure if we go down this path that we have all of our eyes dot and our tees crossed. Um in this this summer we would plan to have the draft code and the joint plan updates um and a public hearing on that and to the extent that we can maybe just on all three. I think the planning commission said it was okay and we have the agreement from the cities that they could have their own planning commission meetings rather than scheduling all of these special meetings, joint meetings. So they could go ahead and have theirs, make recommendations, and then we could go ahead and have a a public hearing on all the joint plan updates and code updates at one time. Um, and then the board is hoping to review the comp plan packages in the fall and early winter so that it doesn't fall on top of the budget, which is what happened last year. Um, so the goal would be to try to get it to the board by September so that they could make their decision in the October, November time frame.

Okay. So just so that I'm clear, project schedule and next steps are to have the three joint plans from the three cities wrapped into this for a public hearing around September time frame. A summer for you. Summer for you. Correct. Okay. Public hearing for are the cities going to have their They're done. So the joint plans it will be minimal changes and it'll be related to housing. So a good example is like there's some middle housing updates. I know Lacy and Tumbwater consolidated did some consolidation or further consolidation of the residential zones. So it's really just like naming conventions.

Okay. So the big big thing for residential then is the county only accepting a 5% growth and the rest of it being in the city. So where are they at with that? They don't have to do so. So all of the analysis that we've done um that TRPC did as part of the the land capacity analysis for housing really demonstrated that the cities did the work that they needed to do coming out of sustainable thirsten to take on the additional to take on additional okay we are the ones who needed to do the work to have the UGS be available for development and

to make sure that that's where our development lands and like I UGS are not easy to develop in. So now when we just did this 5% development for our comp plan 6 months ago and we wanted that 5% projection, was that 5% projection using a density that was on the books at the time or using the city's densities that we hope to be adopting with these new joint plans? the the 5% was the was the was the goal from sustainable thirsten for rural growth.

There is there's enough capacity at the city level so that we could hit that target. We also have extra space in the county. So we need to make sure that we are basically incentivizing and moving that. No, I I Yeah, the the land capacity analysis used the zoning that was there at the time rather than the updated zones because we they didn't figure out what the updates this could actually take more pressure off rural county. It could bring more density to the UG.

Yeah. And the I think the basically what the the board discussion around the 5% real growth goal I think it was Commissioner Mener who was like if it's not going to happen in the county then like we need to we need to make it easier to happen in the UG. like these are the areas where you have water and sewer. This is where you can accommodate um higher density housing, middle housing. Um and I can tell you right now it is it's tough to meet minimum density um in a lot of our UG low density residential zoning districts because of the provisions we have on the books. Is it the uh acreage requirements?

Oh, there's all kinds of things. There's um incompatible use buffers, not the kind that um Betsy was talking about. Um but incabatal use buffers even between residential like two residential parcels um and they're 30 feet wide. If you think about a 30 foot wide swath the length of some of these parcels you're taking thousands of square feet out of your density calculation and you can't make it up. The critical areas ordinance our critical areas ordinance is really intended more for rural environments. urban critical areas ordinances, they're structured very differently and they work a lot better with urban level development. We apply our rural one and you can't get a reasonable use exception for any any kind of flexibility. The only thing you can offer flexibility on is density. So we can essentially eliminate any minimum density to comply with our critical areas ordinance, but we can't really shift any of the provisions in it. So, we have I I know two projects just in the last four months that weren't going to hit minimum low density residential density requirements because of our critical areas ordinance.

Will we will this update incorporate anything with use to or just building or zoning and use? Zoning. Yeah, they're the zoning codes. I I don't know. Well, I know for sure on one item on on use there is a big difference uh between cities and county on marijuana and there might be differences in use on LRA. How are we going to account for those? My intention was to retain the county LRA as one of those exceptions. Okay. because the cities don't have L

and I know that marijuana is a ultimately going to be a big board decision at some point or another. But in the mean in the interimm if we adopt this joint plan, is it going to go then will UGS be under city marijuana use codes or will they be under county marijuana use codes? We'd have to do research to figure out what how much of a gap there is between our provision provision. Well, I on marijuana I know there's a huge gap because we don't allow it and the cities do. So there's no We allow it. What's that? We allow it. We don't have it for retail.

Retail for cultivation maybe, but not for for retail. And so, um, and I know the the BOCC has had a big change since they made the policy of no retail marijuana in county controlled areas, but I don't know if we can we can take a look. There isn't a lot of commercial remaining with the exception of Martin Way and there's a few small commercial areas in Lacy, Southeast Olympia. We Yeah, we'll have to look to see like down by the Yum Highway Walmart or something like that. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Also, just the availability of commercial licenses. It's pretty low. Yeah. I don't know.

But but no, I mean, I appreciate you flagging. We can take a look at that. Um, another one that we has come up is um our wireless our wireless codes and whether those are something we want to hold on to. So, there are already things that we have flagged. Another good example is if we end up adopting any kind of battery energy storage system um provisions, Lacy's not looking at touching those until 2027. We'd want to hold on to ours um if we're the only ones with provisions. Um so yeah, we are expecting to have exceptions where we have gone faster than the cities. we're mostly behind when it comes to housing

because I I do see the value of adopting by reference even if it doesn't make me feel all that great emotionally. But I understand where where there could be a lot of value to it. But I do think there are some core things that we need to hold on to. So I'm hoping to get convinced to adopt by reference if we can hold on to some of these core issues. Yeah. Does anyone have any other issues that we can look beside that? For sure. Anybody online has a comment?

I guess we we'll go back to this where we started with the tumb water thing. Um my biggest concern is disenfranchising people because if we do this by just adopt by record then if say I lived in a UG what power do I have then because I mean I can go to the city council and talk to them. I have gone to several of them and you know I mean not that it's any different coming to the thirst county commissioners you know it's not that I but the difference is is if I don't like what their answer is to me I can vote them out I mean I could I could even run against them but I can't do that in the city and so if so what you're saying right now what I what I hear is if you live in the UG, your vote doesn't matter because we we've turned all of your land use over to the cities and that's my biggest sticking point. And also I think I mean I've thought about this a few times recently because we've always heard about these MOAUS but I've never seen any of them. Oh, we're happy to provide them

when we get those. I don't know how different they are for this. They were attached to the memo for today's work session. Okay. Yeah, they're they're like scanned paper things, so you can't search them or anything, but see the perforations on the but we do want to be transparent about the box that that we find ourselves in. So, they're not online anywhere? No, but we they are through legis search but not like on our on our website. So there's some tricks now. Do they need to be updated orus?

We could we could take a look that that's a question for the board. Yeah, because I well and I think that's

and it would be good though planning policies. You know, part of where I'm coming from is, and I say you guys as staff now are accepting this responsibility that we're so far behind, but you know what the fact is? When we did these before, we the planning commission wanted to make changes because we saw what the city's zoning code and stuff was like and we were told, "Oh, you can't do that because we've got theseUS." So, I mean, it feels like we're running in a circle now

and we're saying, "Oh, well, we we have these things and it's because of us." But it's not. It's because of theus and previous previous versions of our staff that were, you know, I don't know what they were saying. I don't remember exactly what they're saying or what their issue was, but basically when we were saying, you know, a long time ago, well, if we don't have, and this was one of the things we said, the cities aren't doing their share for ex taking on the added population, the growth. So, let's, you know, one of the things we said as a planning commission, okay, let's put it in the UG. let's let's grow our UGS and then you know of course then they're gonna have the tax base there and the sea are come take it which is probably why people didn't want to do it but I mean so but yeah basically the adopting everything just as the city does it does not sit well with me

well I think the state heard you and they're just requiring ing all those housing changes now. Well, and that that's I guess that would go back to my other point. It's not like the cities have done these wonderful things because or have decided to take on all this growth because they wanted to. It's because the state changed laws and told them they had to. I'll give them a little bit of credit. Olympia went above and beyond where they had to be with all of their mental housing stuff. And this time

it wasn't that. And I'll go I guess the other thing I have a concern about is transfer of development rights because that was set up and I don't know if that's in theUS or not but that was set up in 1995 also and the cities have not upheld their part of that bargain and be in the in a previous time that was the problem was people building in the cities were having the same problem that people building in the UG are now having. Why would I want to spend money on a transfer of development, right? I can't even build my minimum standard anyways. You know, if I'm zone four to six, I'm lucky to get two or three houses on that lot. And so I think that's when we're looking at this, I think another reason I think we could and should veer away from the cities is if they aren't willing to do it to work on getting more development in the UG, maybe we should look at using TDRs to up development.

We we definitely want to think creatively about PDRs. I will say there there was a creative idea baked into even the last round of code updates for TDR and we got our first inquiry for a TDR in years, first real inquiry using using the new the new market essentially we're trying to create. So I'm not sure if it's going to happen within cities. I think actually we've got more pressure in rural areas than we have cities now for for growth. Um, but we've got TDR and PDR on the docket as well as a proposal and I think we could we could fold that in.

Uh, what is the period that we try to update these joint plans? They're kind of periodic updates, but is it just every time we do a new comp plan or Yes. The reason the last few were so far behind is because our comp plan was so late. What what would be the pain in updating theou the year prior to updating joint plans? I don't know. That's a question for for the board. I mean, it's just three it's three separate

and we have a docka conversation coming up. Joint plans and joint codes are on it. If the planning commission would like us, we've already sent all the materials on to the board, but if you'd like like as a planning commission for staff to share any any additional feedback about the joint plan docket item or joint code docket item, we could do that. Well, I I think that considering reviewing theus beforehand is probably more beneficial than doing it while we're doing a joint plan. But nonetheless, anytime we can review thoseus, I think would be good. And I think we should probably have it scheduled as part of that whole cycle. Um I'm not sure if we should forward that recommendation when we should forward that recommendation recommendation and what packet that should go to the board with. But

yeah, I think for for now even just a a motion from the planning commission to add that in as a consideration for the current docket since both of these things are on the docket. I I'd move for that. I'll second it. All in favor say I. I. I. Yeah. Could you forward that for us, please? Yeah, if if it's okay, it'll be incorporated into our comments. Um, and we'll we'll make sure that's part of the presentation notes. We won't we won't be able to touch the slides, but that's fine. We can have it be part of the notes because we have on each slide

a planning commission recommendation or basically your feedback on the docket item. And so we'll make sure to cover that when we get to the joint plan and join code. So I I heard threeus that would be Lacy, Olympia, and Tumbwater. We don't have one with Yelm, Rainineer, or Tonino. Not that I know of because we don't have joint codes with them. Okay. They basically they have a rural zone um and they retain that rural zone until the time they annex. So their rural zone is the UG for their area. Okay. And it matches what we have in the rural area. Mhm. Okay. It's actually one of the reasons that y wanted to annex,

which is a lot of agricultural land by the way. That was a huge annexation. Huge 1200 acres. Yeah. Mostly agricultural. Yeah. I had a lot of people around my neighborhood. I lived there in that area. Yeah. I'm couple of them raised their voices about it. And we don't just to be clear, we don't initiate annexations. If we could find a way to encourage annexations from the cities though, that would not hurt my feelings. I'm not sure how we encourage that. Well, I think Lacy's looking at it. Well, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We've been encouraging it for a long time. Yeah. And and I I know from at least looking at their annexation scenarios that, you know, Tingle Wild, Thompson Place are in all of them. Good. That was one of the big things two years ago with their joint plans.

Yep. I remember that coming up quite a bit. Um so I I don't know what their ultimate scenario will look like, but that is the only area that was in every single scenario. I know that when the city was when Lacy was in here before, they told us that they kind of had an annexation schedule and they used the term annexation schedule and at that point we I asked if they could share it and it was never shared. Uh is there any way that we could get these cities to share uh annexation schedules that were plans earlier than later? Because it does change what we do. so we could send out the annexation study that Lacy completed. It wasn't a schedule. It was essentially an analysis of was it 15 areas, Anna?

Yes. 15 sub areas. So, similar to what YM did with their annexation plan, they annexed a most of the area that they have. Yeah. No. So, like Lacy's looking at 15 sub areas. They did a high level financial analysis, population analysis. Yeah. Um, and they didn't have like a takeown schedule, but it was like a lot of plans that was a little more than aspirational.

Yeah, I haven't seen anything that that I think could be relied on for county planning efforts, but we are happy to share, you know, what they shared with their council last year. It's I don't know if you really like planning, geeking out on an annexation study is right up there. It's more riveting than a lot of other studies. Commissioner Miller, did you have anything on this topic? Uh, no. Does anybody else online have questions for staff on this? Are sorry, are you done with this presentation?

Yes, we I closed it out because there's enough people online. I figured them seeing us bigger would be But yes, I actually went through the whole package of slides. Commissioner Flores, you look like you have a question. You know, I actually do. Thank you. Thank you for noticing. Um, so I just I was just wondering about the administrative burden. If you can talk a little bit more about that, like what does that look like? I think you mentioned it both as a disadvantage and then an advantage. So, are we referring to both the administrative ver uh like burden for both the county and cities or can you just talk a bit more about that?

Yeah. Yeah. No, I I appreciate that and I'm sorry if I if I was confusing. So, within our department, we have both long range planning and current planning. So, long range planners, the ones that you see here come to the planning commission. They're responsible for making sure our plans are updated and our codes are updated. And that is a very lengthy process that's laid out in state law, multiple public hearings. Um, and usually, well, for a joint plan, you can only do it once a year. Um, and for the development code, it takes, I mean, six months at a minimum to get through the process. So, when you're talking about making updates to um updates to codes or updates to plans where really all you're doing is just matching somebody else's, it is a lot of administrative work um to essentially just say, "Okay, we're now current with what the city has." Um, so that that's part of that administrative burden. And then on the current planning side, I'd say a lot of the burden just comes from having to know all of these different codes. And because they don't match what the cities have, they don't have um they don't have the ability to tap into city current planners for technical support. So, a lot of time is spent just trying to interpret very old city provisions and you know how to administer them.

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And it seems like you're you're also trying to align codes with different city codes, right? Like you don't just have one, but several. Yeah, we've got three. So, we've got titles 21, 22, 23, and they're essentially like the city zoning codes dropped into Thirsten County code. Yeah. Okay. All right. And then when you when it says procedural change, not a policy shift, um like would the policy come later, would that be something that would happen with annexation or you know kind of how does that work?

Yeah. So, at a high level, what that means is that the policies that are currently on the books um require us to match the city's zoning zoning provisions, development standards. Um we're just way behind. So, that policy isn't changing or that requirement under the current agreements and the countywide planning policies is staying the same. We're just about 30 years overdue in most cases on our zoning codes for these Okay, I got it. Thank you. Good questions.

Commissioner Fishburn, Commissioner Kaiser, do you have any questions for staff? No, I don't. Thanks for the presentation. Right here. Thank you. I do have one other one that I just thought of. I think we may have covered this earlier, but the other thing when it goes comes to disenfranchisement is if I live in the UG and the city's considering a change, I'm not going to get a notice. So, I won't even know to go to the city and ask them to do something or not to do something. So,

so notice that's a good point. We actually I chatted with the planning directors um for I was able to touch base with Tom Water and Lacy to get better understanding of how they just did their outreach for their comprehensive plan update with all the housing changes. Um they said they did attempt to do outreach to UG's. It's hard because we're not doing mailed notices. I mean that would cost tens of thousands of dollars. So they're doing web outreach, social media outreach, things like that. um they made it really clear that what they were proposing though would apply to both the city and the UGS. I think moving forward we could do an even better job of coordinating if they are proposing any change that we know is going to impact our our residents in the UG that we also include outreach via our communications channels. Um, but as you know from even sitting here at the planning commission, like we target our outreach to rural areas, but we mostly have people from the cities that show up and I'm not sure who's showing up at their meetings, but it is really difficult to do targeted targeted outreach. So, we're all doing the best we can. Um, but we could do better um moving forward to coordinate and at least use the power of both of our communications channels.

I have a question. Um, do you know um if affordable housing is going to be a part of the housing um part of the housing? Yep. So, the all the cities were required to update their their codes and policies to basically comply with all the new state requirements for affordable housing and middle housing. So although we didn't touch on it a lot outside of Grand Mound, that's been the bulk of their updates and their focus for their own comprehensive plan updates. Perfect.

All right, I guess that takes care of it. Thank you very much for that update and overview.

So Mile will be back in March. will relay the questions that you've had so she can provide more information related to those particular uses. And if anything else comes up, just feel free to send it our way. And also have fun. You could look through the city's codes and then our codes and maybe play a game on like do they match, do they not match. Well, I hope that um uh when you do bring this back before us, the kind of things that you are thinking that we like L and marijuana and agricult stuff, you can kind of give us a list of all of those and show us what the changes are. I mean, I could see a big spreadsheet all of a sudden or on our laps from you, but hopefully we can kind of eyeball all that stuff.

Did you say L? L. I thought you did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think if we I think if we gave up control of L in any portion of the county, it would cause quite an uproar.

Okay. Well, we're going to move on to our next item, which is the amended item number 4.5, which is officer elections. uh sir elections have been postponed because we are not um a 10 member board yet but we are a nine member unit so we're going to um move forward with elections with that I'll call uh first round of nominations for chair if anybody wants to be the chair accepting nominations I'll nominate Eric Casino You know, I second that.

I'll make a second call for nominations. I have to make three calls for nominations. So, I'll make a second call for nominations if there are any. Third call for third call for nominations. All right. Well, I'll make the first call for uh vice chair. Do we have any nominations for vice chair? I nominate Sandy Kaiser. Oh, I like that nomination. Does that require a second? I'll second it.

I'll make a second call for vice chair and a third call for vice chair. We have a a slate of Commissioner Kaiser as vice chair, Commissioner Casino as chair. Um, I don't think I actually have to call for the call for the vote or I got to do a voice vote, don't we? Hey, you get to run the voice vote then, don't you? Or somebody staff has to run a voice vote. Call the roll. Roll call or voice vote. Voice vote. Roll call. I think we can just say I mean I don't think there's going to be any objections

objections. So all in favor say I. I. I. All right. Okay. We have our officers for the 2026 season. All right. We'll move on to the next item of business which is staff updates with manager day.

So um we do have one update on our side of the the CPAD house if you will. Um we have been in the interview process for um Mr. Larry Shaft position. So we had started that recruitment um beginning of December. Um but we paused it for a moment and uh we should have a decision here pretty shortly. You have you've already narrowed it down. We had a we had a really great crop of candidates. Good. Good. I'm glad to hear that. Any internal

um there were there were not any internal applicants.

Um and we have the most amazing administrative services manager. Please please send her your any any gratitude notes of gratitude you can. She she was able to run five like recruitment processes all at once. And so we're going to have five new people joining the team here. in the next few weeks. So, we had Tim Roupert retire. I know some of you knew him, our building services supervisor. He was with us for more than 35 years. Um, he retired, but we have extended an offer to to somebody. Um, and they should be starting the meeting next week. I think I can actually announce that one. He is an internal candidate from public works who used to be in CPED. Oh.

So, we're So, he knows a lot of the folks. Yeah. Um, and he's excited to move back, move back to CPED. And we have a new associate planner starting. So, Natalie, who left us and broke our hearts and went to Mary'sville, um, we'll have someone starting in her position. Um, and so we'll be sure to to bring them to the planning commission and make introductions. Um, and then we have a new planning tech and new permit tech starting here soon, too. So you guys, you got one on your side, a new one, a planning tech, or is a planning tech still BDC?

It's BDC. Yep. So those are all on the other other side of the house. Do you have any holes on your team? No, we have one one open associate planner position. Um, and we've just been waiting to hear more about the state of the budget because it's a general funded solely general funded position and I just want to make sure anyone we bring on our team will be able to keep on our team. So, probably hold out just a little bit longer and see about some grants coming in before we recruit for that one.

Yeah. One other staff update. We did have the board approve us to go out for bid for our integrated water project. So that will be going out um along with another uh grant that we brought in um for uh part of the critical areas update. So those two non staff relate state or federal grants. Those are um those are technically those come through the department state department of commerce but they are uh they're clean water act 320 funds coming through the EPA. Okay or act yeah they're pug zone geographic funds.

All right I have one more update. Um the clerk of the board was out sick, so there was a slight delay, but we are scheduled for March 4th for an introductory docket briefing with the board. Time has yet to be determined, but they hold their work sessions in the morning between 9:00 and noon. So it'll fall sometime in their scheduled work session, but March 4th, uh for all the folks listening live or to the recording, we'll be sending out more correspondents with details. I'll be updating the website and we'll be sending a web mailer and all of that so that folks know that that's on the horizon. Yeah. and we've been collecting comments this whole time and so people can continue to submit comments and we'll be sharing those those with the board.

Okay. Well, uh next on our agenda is a calendar um which I'm assuming would be our next meeting would be March 4th. Is there anybody that is not expecting to be here? I should say that. Oh, no. I'll be here. Everybody's expecting to be here on March 4th. And then on I would assume March 18th would be our next meeting. Um, is there anybody that expects they would not be able to make our March 18th meeting? Sounds like we should have everybody for that. Does anybody have anything for the good of the order? I passed out some show and tell um from our ENO folks. Um but definitely check out the website because they're producing more handouts and more materials every time there's a work session held with the planning commission.

Those look good. Anybody else have anything for good of the order? All right. Having no further business, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. unit.