Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the April 15, 2026 Thirsten County Planning Commission. The Thirsten County Planning Commission is a resident advisory committee to the board of county commissioners on land use planning matters such as comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance amendments. Planning Commission actions are in the form of recommendations to the county commissioners, 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. Uh my name is Eric Casino. I reside in district two and we're going to do some introductions first in the sorry first in the boardroom then we'll move online.

You don't want to mute your computer not your your mic. Start down here with Commissioner Bombgarter. Commissioner Bombarger newly reappointed for district 1. Barry Halverson, Yel Washington, District 2. Scott Nelson, District 4. Commissioner Pinger, are you online? Yes. Kevin Pinger, District 5. Commissioner Flores. Hi, Commissioner Flores, District Three. And Commissioner Fishburn. Hi, Bill Fishburn. I live and serve in district 4. Commissioner Kaiser.

Sandy Kaiser. I live and serve in district three. And Commissioner Miller. Good evening. Um I'm Yvan Miller. I serve in District One. And we do have Commissioner joining us here shortly, so we'll include him at this time. Uh, with that, I hope that's uh, everybody's had a chance to look at the agenda and um, if so, I'd entertain a motion. I would move to amend the agenda by 15 minutes for a time increment throughout the agenda. Okay. Because we started late. I would also like to add a second public comment period towards the end for folks who may have tried to get in earlier and couldn't.

All right. So, the um it's been moved to add a second public comment period to 8.5 and to add 15 minutes to each each uh item to make up for our late start. Uh is there a second? I second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor say I. I. I. I. Our agenda has been approved. All right. With that, has everybody had an opportunity to look at the uh February 18th meeting minutes? Uh I would move to approve the February 18th, 2026 meeting minutes uh and accept the audio as the official meeting record. Second.

It's been moved and seconded to accept the meeting minutes from February 18th and accept the audio as the official meeting record. All in favor say I. I. I. I.

I'm abstaining since I wasn't here. site should be seven with one abstension. All right, with that we're going to move on to the public communic the first public communications portion of our meeting and we do have some guidelines for our public communications portion. The first is to please introduce yourself including the address you reside in the county. Please address the planning commission and not the audience or staff. The planning commission may not respond to public comments. Speakers are limited to a total of three minutes. The timer will show one of one of the video screens to help keep track of time. Meeting attendees cannot donate their speaking time to another person. No comments that are lwd and offensive, inflammatory, hateful, defamatory, or discriminary. Discriminatory in nature. No comments that are of commercial in nature. All materials provided to the county may be subject to release pursuant to the public records act. Remarks on projects that have already had a planning commission public hearing will be forwarded to the board of county commissioners for their consideration. So, we'll start here in the boardroom if anybody would like to address the planning commission. Miss Blessing.

Um, sorry, I lost this in the in the shuffle here. Uh, would it be okay if we move Marissa up on the agenda? Absolutely. We're going to switch five and six. Please, please go ahead.

Hello, my name's Bonnie Blessing. I live in the headarters of 83. Um um I just want to share some observations from other counties as to like in some other counties the CMZ wasn't protected the channel migration zone. And because of that, I'm helping out two people that live in a CMZ, a channel migration zone in King County. and one of them has eroding banks and one of them has um other flooding issues. And I believe that protecting a CMZ protects the people that would live there. And I think thirst county has opportunities to protect channel migration zones. Um and then secondly, I've also seen where where a big gravel pit was put in a channel migration zone up the snowcoming pass and the stream upstream of it totally dries out and strands bull trout. And it may have been that they shouldn't have put a gravel pit in a channel migration zone of Gold Creek at Stocoming Pass. You know, it's just an example of something they did years ago that caused the stream to dry out and it's really really hard to fix. Um and then uh thirdly, I've seen a lot of elk use um a channel migration zone of the Dutes kind of near um Lake Florence. It's really cool. they they they use it and it'll meet long-term habitat for elk in those areas. So, I just hope since a lot of parts of our county are still kind of intact that appropriate land uses can go in places called channel migration zones. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else uh in the boardroom like to address the planning commission? All right. Do we have any hands up for online? Sephanin.

Hello. Um, Loretta Sephanin and I, um, want to I I did send in, uh, written comments for you. Uh, I was trying to answer three of the questions that uh, Clara has put in her memo. And so I'm hoping that you will at some point uh, reference those comments as you try to answer those four of the three of the four questions she asked about. But the other matter that's on my mind is I've been looking through my old notes and you started this whole process. Those of you who are on the board back in October and I was looking at the slides and four of them have to do with uh engagement. So community engagement concept and one of the key ones uh little bullet points was seek input from a broad range of individuals and community groups early and throughout the process. And I want to ask you to to do at this kind of halfway point a little double check. How are we doing on that? Seems to me that you're hearing from just a very small group of people amongst your yourselves and u and a small other group of people. And I'm I'm concerned that that this is so complex, this is so difficult that it's not engaging people. and and I'm suggesting that maybe some steps that have not been considered yet need to be considered. Um I and several others who are in the room right now with you are members of the local good governments uh coalition that includes uh people who are advocates for good government uh locally and also people in environmental groups and we talk about every single month when we meet we talk about what's going on here. And but at

our last meeting, people commented on two things that suggest to me that we're not doing a good job of communicating with people. One is people said they wanted to see a flowchart of what's required in a um critical area ordinance. Well, there already is a flowchart. It's called the uh plan your project um page on the website and it looks relatively decent and not all that comprehensive but but it's good but people aren't seeing it. So I think they're really meaning something else when they say we'd like to see a flowchart. And the second one is they'd like to see um what kind of stuff is in the water quality report. So, it's assumption that there is a water quality report in the critical area um package that you have to submit. Well, there isn't. It's water quality is is handled in every single thing we're looking at in here, but in a different way. And so I think to me those are two community inputs that are not currently on the table and and I wanted them them to to put them on your table so you can think about what are people really saying when they want a flowchart. Are they saying that they're just seeing developers getting a pass and nothing's really being checked? Are they worried about that? And what are they meaning when they ask for a water quality report when that's not exactly how critical area ordinances operate? Thank you.

Thank you. Chrissy White, you're up next. Hello. Can you hear me? All right. Can Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Christy White and I live in the Deli Valley. I'm commenting tonight on the applications for open space and the habitat confer conservation areas chapter. It is really encouraging to see the number and size of parcels being preserved as open space. At the same time, it is disheartening that some of these designations appear to result from a loss of agricultural land being productive anymore. But I'm really glad to see these open space applications. Um, as for the chapter on critical areas, uh, regarding fish and wildlife habitat conservation, um, I have a few comments, uh, regarding to the the points of discussion that that Clare has in the memo. And the first one is that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife recommendations appear at first to be really supportive of protecting critical areas. So my ask is that we adopt the maximum feasible protections within the CAO. Regarding streams, whether they're fishbearing or non-fish bearing, both types of streams clearly provide an ecological value and benefit. So I recommend that both types be included in the critical areas ordinance evaluation with some reasonal guidelines around seasonal creeks. Um so I ask that both both types be included in terms of implementation of resources. You know that that at the counter example that you all did before I thought was so valuable. It would be nice to see how some of these regulations would be in a scenario, an at-the-counter scenario. So my ask is that perhaps uh staff could come up with

a couple of scenarios uh regarding the fish and wildlife chapter. And then the last point was um about additional species being included. And I don't there could be a lot more species that are critical in Thirstston County that we don't know about. And so my ask is you know reach out to Evergreen State College. Maybe there's some other organizations that can help us identify some of those additional species that should be uh added locally. Um I may have more as we go through the chapter, but that's what I have for this evening. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Is there anybody else online that would like to address back to the boardroom here from Miss Norton? There's nobody else online. No, nobody else has their hands up.

Okay. Um my name's Betsy Norton and I just wanted to share with you just a couple of observations. One is that um when I've been following some of the Ottabbon science people, one of the things they're talking about now is that um because of climate change, populations of just regular birds and regular uh species are declining. And so it's important, you know, we have the HCP and some of these other things and the fish versus non-fish and salmon streams and all that kind of stuff, but the species that are not considered endangered are threatened today, tomorrow. And so, um, I would just ask you to think about changing over time, changing their ranges, changing their needs. And so the habitat, if we can try and preserve as much habitat as possible just in general, that would be really helpful for them. Um, that's all.

Thank you very much. All right, unless we have anybody else that would like to address planning commission. Right, we're going to move on in our agenda to the public communication debrief portion of this where staff might have some quick answers. Um quick answers I'm not so sure. Um are there any So uh we heard about uh channel migration zones. Um I think that's something we will be wanting to consider. That's a kind of a decision point. How do we want to treat those? Um I'm not I wasn't quite clear if a flowchart was a process update flowchart or a what happens at the counter flowchart. um both that and um I think some of the ideas about the other reports those would be further further down in the in the process. So, I'm not sure that I have I think the the long answer is I'm not sure that I have quick or easy answers to any of these, but if you have questions,

I have a response. um Loretta's comment about community engagement and stuff like that after our presentation uh this afternoon between 5:30 and 6:15 which we've had three of these now at the previous three uh planning commission meetings which were very good very low turnout uh from the community which surprises me even online. Um, but I talked to Miriam after the presentation and asked her what the upcoming events were. They've got one in Tanino and uh they're scheduling the others. Uh, but they're having some questions about how they communicate the CAO to the public because it's so vast. Um, so it may be something that the staff might want to look at, help Miriam look at that communication effort, you know, because there's so many different pieces to it. How do you communicate that to the public? That's my input. Thanks. But that one exercise that we did do where we had a couple people come in and picked a piece of property and walked through kind of the permitting section.

Is there something that we could do along those lines that would touch both of what Loretta and Christy were both mentioning? We talk about how somebody would go through getting a CAO compliance for their project. Maybe I think we could uh we could do something like that. It'd be hard. I think we got a question about doing it with specific components. Um and I think one of the one of the things you want to see how all of the pieces fit together. Like we maybe could make some assumptions that there's only a certain critical area, but then you also have the piece that we haven't gotten all the way through the all the administrative procedures yet. So there's a interplay between those two that you kind of have to have some answers.

So we could think on this a little bit and circle back to it. We could probably do something like that later. Okay. And I think we'd probably talked about and envision something like that early on. Like wouldn't it be interesting to see what it was like before and after? Just questioning is that a go for staff? Because if it is, we should probably note it like a task for them to consider how we would do that. Is it outside of what you already feel is on your would it be helpful? I would basically if this was request from staff I don't think it would probably change. It's something I think we could Okay. Just how do we how do we feel? How do we feel? I think it' be nice to have if it's if it's something specific that we'd like.

You want to make a motion? Maybe you would not a motion. Just a request. Okay. make a request on the agenda and they they follow up until it clears. We've done that a couple times with things. Um yeah, we got um we just conferred briefly and I will say uh it could be useful in case it does schedule pushes that might give us a little bit of help with is anyone here uh opposed to the planning commission requesting that sort of mock walk through because otherwise I think it'd be useful if they gave that as direction from the planning commission so that it can be budgeted for time with staff. I think that's valuable. I think the public will understand it.

How do you want that articulated? Um, with a show of thumbs would be fine. You have any online thumbs? We got enough in room thumbs that Bill and Stan are both up. So, okay. No, no, just figured if it was helpful, we might as well make it actual direction.

We can understand thumbs that way. And then the last one there would have been Miss Norton's concerns about regular birds on the decline as well. Yeah. And I think the the suggestion there is really to think about um less about the specific like critical area or the specific species need and more about how we're protecting the ecosystem at large. And that is a that's a that's a good practice and I think we would want to strive to do that as much as we can. Um that'd be a responsible way to think about and develop a CO. So I think we'd be thinking about it that way too.

Like it does regulate specific things, but there are ways that you could think about it as a as an ecosystem protection ordinance. I would add uh What would that what would that process look like then if we're talking about like there are species that are declining that haven't been declining marketkedly that haven't been noted as threatened or what have you

and I think that's exactly the dilemma and that's where taking a taking a like a habitat or ecosystem like lends to it versus a like we're protecting wetland we're protecting this habitat for this specific species like if you're trying to protect the ecosystem generally and uh through the lens of critical areas.

Okay. So like I guess what does that look like in this context like if if someone has a a chunk of assorted habitat that that their property? I think it' probably mostly come through um how you're managing loss of functions and values and how you're either like it probably be mostly once you start getting the mitigation side of it to make sure that you're the overall function is maintained of the ecosystem which is the no net loss standard. Yeah. So it kind of is intended to get there um through some pretty specific lanes that you can maybe learn. Commissioner Pinger.

Yeah, thank you, Chair. Um, this conversation, I don't know, it's solidified some thinking in my mind that I'm concerned about, but at the same time, happy with what we're doing, but also still wondering, can we do more? Because this topic of like, okay, let's not focus on a singular species that's not yet endangered. um let's focus on the entire ecosystem and the habitat and everything. It makes a lot of sense except for we've had a lot of issues that have we've become more aware of recently around decline of species rather suddenly and rather shockingly. And I'm g I'm I'm running the gamut in my mind of everything from bees that pollinate everything we have uh and a sharp sharp decline in bee colonies. I'm thinking of birds and I'm not a burer myself, but I know many people who are burers use a website for for notating what they've spotted. And almost every city in America has seen sharp declines in some specific types of birds. Um they none of them are at the point of reaching endangered on a either national level or anything that we would be aware of. But they become endangered in certain areas. And I I really wonder with things like bees and birds and I mean another example is insects. I mean, I grew up in Washington when I was when we drove in the family car in the 1970s. You couldn't go 5 miles in the summertime without your grill being filled with mosquitoes and bugs and everything. Take you half an hour to clean them off. Now, I could drive a 100,000 miles and have barely three bugs

on my grill. So, we've had a decline in insects. We've had a decline in bee populations, etc. And I do think we there might be some things we can do that are not entirely habitat-wise, but like be colony specific, for example, even though they're not yet endangered. Um, so are there any opportunities we have to consider those types of things? Thank you for that commentary, which leads back, could we add um apiaries to mitigation as a mitigation?

Yeah. Well, it if it's native bees, then apiaries don't get you up very far. Yes, we're importing a lot of non-native bees for pollination. Yeah. So, it would depend, I would imagine, on what what function we're talking about here. Um, yeah, and I'd start to defer to biologists at that point and also be very careful about putting them on the spot. Might not be prepared to answer questions like that. Question. Is there is there a staff biologist that we could talk to about that meeting? U maybe at a future meeting, but like I said, I don't want to put anyone on the spot. That's why I asked at a future meeting. It's something worth putting in the back of our heads to think about, isn't it?

Possibly. But one thing I do I do want to mention is the that kind of habitat and ecosystem focus to like species recovery and species protection is that's the that's the best practice in the in the ecological uh protection world. Um there's a long history of single species like protection or habitat and that kind of came out of the early endangered species act uh work and restoration and there's been a there's been a a big push towards moving away from looking at species specific uh recovery and looking towards habitatbased recovery. So uh that is a that's a that is the best practice I will say and it's really really hard if we want to try and anticipate and it I'm hard probably impossible is probably more accurate but I don't want to be that um you know that that hard on that question but um somewhere between hard and impossible to anticipate where you're going to get a crash like that and the best thing that you can do is protect habitat because that's a thing that we're really talking about here. And when we talk about bees, um, you know, what's really impacting it? Is it uh, you know, is it global? Is it local? Is it something that we even control through land use? So, there are all of those questions that are really hard. And the best practice is try and maintain intact habitats and restore them where you can. I think I mean I think saying something is declining probably puts us on a pretty slippery slope because you know like with this species that I'm most familiar with

is uh dusky geese. So there's fish and wildlife has a plan and they know this is how many we think I mean obviously you can't count them exactly but they have estimates this is how many we have this is what we need for our to maintain our population at this point which is for them it's enough that we can hunt right so if we just start saying oh well we think this bird or this mammal is declining without having numbers. How do we justify that best available science?

I'm going to go back to Commissioner Pinger again. Thank you. Um that website, does anybody know the website that's where birders track uh their bird bodies? Eird or I naturalist? Both. I use bird a but eird

one of those two you just mentioned eird I'm pretty sure is it um that has a huge volume of data in it and a lot of science papers are using data from that website right now um they have counts they have numbers they can tell you specifically what the number of populations are at least as far as what has been spotted so if we want data I think it's Commissioner Miller.

Um, actually, Commissioner Pessinger uh answered my question. Well, my comment. Um I was going to say that uh it is like scientifically proven um that especially the bees are um being um the population is uh decreasing and I am wondering if it has anything to do with like pesticide exposure. You know more people that are planting are using lots of different pesticides. um climate change. Uh there's many different uh reasons why bees and birds are um declining. That's my

Thank you. All right. Does anybody Oh, I'm sorry.

Oh, no worries. Um, I guess two things I was one one was just uh I do think there's a meaningful difference when we're talking about declining is that we're not talking about like a year-to-year or like a balancing out. We're talking about a longer term trend. Um, and I do think there I know there's language around species of interest and I know that we're talking about we want to have ecosystem services that are functional and that these things sort of fall out of that, but I know that a lot of species that may not be mentioned as a particularly threatened species may be a really good indicator of those. And I'm wondering if any of that's just caught within our general species of interest um protections that we have because I know that's a little bit more open of a term that doesn't just have to be something that is listed. Just a thought that I had about that. Um yeah, and I think everything else will be way too in the weeds. I have a lot of opinions on neocottenoids, but

All right. Well, I think that would probably one last comment. Go ahead. Any immortal words of the musician sting and the police uh the canary and the coal mine. Those might be good species to consider for

all right with that will conclude the public communication debrief portion of our schedule and we are our agenda. We are going to uh jumble this a little bit and we're going to jump right to item number six which is work session one. the Baldwin Gardener Revocable Living Trust and the Mau Open Space Application. Thank you, Marissa. Sorry, this isn't sharing as I'm trying to do. She's giving me only the options of sharing with one drive. One drive personal.

You might need to be made a co-host.

It's one of those evenings. I also had had my volume turned off earlier and then forgot that unplugging it. The share options. It's um share options there, but but when I go to share it, it just says to upload it with one drive or one drive personal have the um so go to soon. So go ahead and hit the X on that little share window. Thought I hit zoom and then we're going to hit share here. All right. Sorry. And then you're going to share your screen and you'll be good.

This one of those days. I'm telling you, I'm on the payroll.

State pays off. share screen. There we go. Okay, that out of the way. Everybody able to see? Good evening, commissioners. I'm Marissa Wisman here with Thirsten County Community Planning. Um, originally I was here this evening to um ask you to review um three open space tax program applications and if all went well to set a public hearing for May 20th. Um, today I just learned that the properties for one of those applications is pending sale. So we've we've had to pull that. It was for the Baldwin application. um without any you know written verification that a new land owner would use the same land use practices or signature we can't move forward with it. So you can go ahead and disregard the rodeo horses on the upper right of the slide and it'll be a shorter um presentation. So as usual I'll begin with a brief overview of the program for listeners who may not be familiar and follow that with a description of the applications under review. To begin, the Open Space Tax Program is guided by the Open Space Taxation Act um enacted by the Washington State Legislature in 1971 under RCW8434. This act requires county governments to conserve open space lands and under this program, property tax reductions are granted if qualifying properties are maintained in a rural undeveloped state. In accordance with state law, all property shall be valued at 100% of its true and fair value unless exempted by law. And the open space tax program authorizes this exemption. And now my slides are not advancing for some reason.

What? My apologies. I'm usually much smoother than this. There we are. Click on the slide. Eric, he's seem to be failing you, but clicking on I see. There we go.

So, under enrollment in open space, um a reduction in property taxes is based on a change from highest and best use to current use and also based on the public benefit rating system score, which would determine um the percent reduction. Tax tax reductions generally occur after the second year following an application submittal and properties must be eligible for at least one priority resource and at least three points under the public benefit rating system um to be enrolled in the program. Uh we do additionally require supporting documents such as land conservation plans um to be submitted with the application package just as evidence that the resource applied for exists on site. As you may recall, the Thirstston County Assessor's Office manages the farm and agriculture and designated forest land classifications, and it's also the assessor's office which makes the tax determination decision for every application submitted, including for the board's program. Meanwhile, the board manages the open space farm and agricultural conservation land um process for parcels no longer meeting the assessor's requirements and also for those applying for other resource categories including fish and wildlife habitat, private recreation areas and urban growth area open space. Home sites and other non-resource areas are generally ineligible for classification and the amount of area which must be excluded for a resident uh must be at least 1 acre. Applicants must meet the criteria in RCW8434 and in the thirsten county open space tax program guidelines to qualify. Um now a hot topic of discussion um lately and it comes up periodically is that when a when an applicant is successfully enrolled in open space this

does result in a slight tax shift um to other land owners. So this um illustration and example has been graciously provided by Jeremiah Olsen from the thirst county assessor's office um just to show how minimal the tax shift is. He did do a similar um presentation with the board for the the Gorgus application recently um just to kind of explain how the tax shift works. Um bear with me. This is not my area of expertise. Um but the figure on the left shows how three different taxing districts in this case a a city, a school district, and a fire district can overlap to create seven different tax code areas or TCAs. TCAs are unique geographic areas where all properties pay taxes to the same combination of taxing districts within its boundaries and they are pretty complicated to determine and that's why he wanted to provide this sort of highlevel illustration. Um, a tax shift happens because the total property value in a TCA decreases by the value of the exempted property u which causes the property tax rate to increase when taxes are spread across the taxable properties in a district. So while the exempt taxpayer pays lower property taxes, the taxes then shift um to others due to the increase in rate. Um one thing to bear in mind is there is a maximum tax rate for a given district. So there is a limit you know to how much um taxes could increase increase as a result. Um so when a parcel becomes exempt the assessed value is removed from the total taxable value used to calculate levy rates. And this basic rate formula on the upper right of the slide um was meant to illustrate this. um this formula produces a tax rate per $1,000

of assessed value. So when the denominator or the taxing district assessed value of this equation um shrinks, it results in um the rate increasing. So you end up with a levy rate per $1,000 of assessed value. This principle then applies to every taxing district within the TCA where the exempt parcel is located. And so there's an example below in which a taxing district assessed value was um $2 billion and um following a property tax exemption it drops to 1 bill700 million. So you see the levy rate per $1,000 of assessed value changes from like 5 cents to just under six. And um Jeremiah just wanted to point out that it took an example in which you had a $2 billion um taxing district assessed value and in order to show a notable example because it literally is pennies on the dollar. And he stated that if you had any further um questions or detailed questions to reach out to him because he would do a much better job explaining it. But he is available to address any questions. Um so moving on to the 2026 process. Um, unfortunately since I just found out today about that one application needing to be dropped, I'll have to just kind of move through their slides. Um, but we did originally have three. Now we have two. The gardener revocable living trust and the Macau applications. Um, both are applying for the farm and agricultural conservation lands classification um with no public access. Um both um land owners were formerly enrolled in the assessor's farm and agriculture program but having received a notice of a removal because they no longer meet the requirements um they are applying for the board's program. Um, as you may recall, former enrollment in the

assessor's farm and agriculture program um, generally qualifies a property for the board's farm and agricultural conservation land classification so long as the land has not been, you know, irrevocably modified. So, it couldn't be used for future commercial egg use and so long as a land conservation plan is submitted with the application and basically describing measures they'll do to maintain the property for future farming. So, in this case, all of the applicants um check those boxes for eligibility. and we'll go through these as they're no longer um under consideration, but Gardener Revocable Living Trust, Mike and Sherry Gardner wish to enroll at 33.37 of their 38.47 acres in open space. There are no residential structures to subtract. Um they are subtracting a 5.1 acre forested area. Um you could see it on the the southern boundary of the largest of the three parcels. um this historically had not been used for um livestock grazing and has a stream, so they're just simply not including it. These properties have been farmed for at least the past 48 years with uses including raising livestock, honey production, as well as growing fruit. And the properties are located just outside of Yelm um at the central portion of Pacner Road southeast east of Baldill Road. Um the properties are also situated in the Nquali water resource inventory area or RIA 11 and the Nquali river basin. Um as you can see in these photos uh these properties are still open and suitable for pasture other than that excluded forested area. The land owners have been meticulously handpulling scotch broom and other weeds to keep them open. Um during the site visit they told me that a variety of

wildlife also used the property including a large herd of herd of elk and deer and a number of birds. So to um conserve their property for future egg use um they'll continue to you know keep the pastures cleared um remove brush as needed and weeds. They would like to eventually hay the properties just to provide feed for local farmers. um they'll manage invasive weeds um just by mechanical means and they would also like to plant um trees along the fence line to provide shade for wildlife and livestock. Um next we have the Macau proposal. Um Brendan Macau wishes to enroll 155 of his 159.2 acres in open space. Um they've excluded four acres for existing residences that are mainly clustered on the southern portion of the large property. Um two of these properties are also enrolled in a grassland reserve program conservation easements. Um so that does make them eligible for a greater reduction under the public benefit rating system. And this is a um GRP easement managed by natural resource conservation service. And these properties are also located just outside of Yelm um near the eastern end of 128th Avenue Southeast of Bald Hill Road Southeast. Um they're also located within Rya 11, the Nquali water resource inventory area. And they contain open pasture um some fairly open understory forest which has historically been included um for grazing and livestock sheltering. So, they've included those in the application. As you can see in the upper right photo, they do have several mature Oregon white oak on the property. And I believe that same herd of elk might visit them as well um from what I was

told during a site visit. So, to preserve these properties for um future um commercial egg use um they will continue to graze their own livestock as well as others who lease grazing. They um currently have some alpacas and sheep and goats um as well as allowing others to graze cattle. Um they'll hay where appropriate to provide hay for their personal livestock um and just you know do things to maintain existing fencing and rotational grazing as needed to prevent soil erosion. So in review of these applications and the subject properties meet the criteria for enrollment under the farm and agricultural conservation land category for the points and reductions applied for based on the following factors. The lands were previously qualified as far farm and aggra or classified I'm sorry as far and agricultural conservation land under the assessor's program but no longer meet the criteria for continued classification and they've applied for reclassification under the board's program. The landscapes of the properties remain suitable for continued farming and um applicants included a land conservation plan with their application materials. um enrollment to the subject properties and open space um creates the opportunity to preserve farmland for future egg use in Thirstston County. And after review of the application materials, the gardener application meets the criteria for the classification of 33 um 37 acres qualifying at a 50% reduction as open land for current use assessment. and the Macau properties meet the criteria for the classification of 155 acres qualifying at 50% reduction for the two properties that are not enrolled in the

conservation easement and 90% reduction for the two properties um enrolled in the conservation easement. Commissioners, I thank you for your time and consideration of these applications and in the decision to set a public hearing for May 20th, 2026. Happy to answer any questions. Start here in the morning. Does any have any any questions on this? Do we have any idea why these don't qualify for?

Um it's mainly just income. Yeah. Like you have to be just doing enough active like commercial farming to um to meet the assessor's requirements. And so for the board program, if they just are at least keeping it so it can be um used for commercial egg in the future, does the assessor have a different requirement than the state um than the than the county? So I'm I'm just getting to a specific question. I don't understand how somebody with income on 155 acres does not qualify for that program. Um I believe just because they're not um just doing enough like I guess sales

at 155 acres. It doesn't I mean I'm just I'm so you know this has come up before and this is my soap box at 155 acres state law says you have to generate income there is no limit under 20 acres there is a set you have to generate a certain amount of income per acre and this has happened and that part of this is this has happened before this I believe this is the assessor taking land that qualifies for their program out. And I know that's beyond our control, but I would just like you to relay that message to these applicants.

Okay.

That especially the one it sounds like maybe there's not commercial agriculture going on, so that would not qualify. But once they get everything up and going, I would suggest that they reapply. The other one, if they're if they're renting pasture out for other people, then to me that probably qualifies as income. And I would also like this message pass to the county commissioners because when it comes because we had a it hasn't happened a lot recently, but we had a time back when back when the law changed that the assessor threw a whole lot of pro of places out. And I believe it's not the assessor doing their job, it's the assessor looking and taking advantage of people that don't really know the rules. Because again, as I my biggest concern is for over 20 acres, there is no limit for how much you have to make. And I know one one of them that came specifically that came through was their application said it was a hobby farm

which really helped and I I agree that if you're just but if you're doing that and they should know because maybe they don't know and maybe they can change their program to get back into that program. I will note that I know in some cases too you'll have the farmers have like health condition or physical condition that occurs and they're less able physically to be out managing their farm and I've seen cases like that too where they choose to just join the board's program because they can't really put the effort out to generate enough income but definitely noting what you've said. So, what happens if they sell their property and the new owner comes in and uh they've got it in this program?

Uh, well, the new owner, in order for um back taxes not to be owed, the new owner um if they wanted to remain in the program would need to complete a notice of continuence. That would be stating that they're staying in open space and would have to meet some of the same land management agreements. And yeah, you just basically you would have to make sure that the property still qualified based on what the new owners were going to do and that they completed the notice of continuence and completed all the just the paperwork to prove they were going to stay in and be in compliance with the program.

Whereas under Commissioner Nelson's uh item, they wouldn't have to because it would be designated as agricultural land and would continue as agriculture. They would still have to say we're going to continue with the county assessor. Yes. You have to be in the program. you if you bought

technically unless and I think this is if if I bought 40 acres from you I would I would still have to be in that program andor we would have to have some because the other thing that gets people is if we don't put something in the sale agreement I the seller can be liable for the back taxes because you're liable for for whenever that property comes out. So if you if I buy it from you and 10 years down the road I take it out, no problem. If I buy it from you and I start subdividing, problem.

Uh where are these properties? Trying to find them. Um they are just outside of Yelm um in the Baldill Road vicinity. Um, so if you find road and one's on 158venue, it's kind of in that vicinity here. You already have it up.

I know that this came up during public hearings when we were doing gorgus and it had some um concerns for me and I'm glad that Mr. Olsen was able to assuage some of those by showing us exactly how nominal the impact will be on the neighbors. But I still think that that information should be more readily available and telling people it's going to have a nominal impact and showing them it's going to be nominal are two different things. So I would think that we would want to have the information on and I know that you can't predict the future because we don't know what the 2026 tax rates are going to be. But if we just pretended that we knew what the 2025s were, which we do, we say this is what we paid in 2025. this is what the value of the TCA in 2025 is and so this is the impact on per dollar and I think that information would be very good to bring to public hearing so people can see that their neighbor going into this this uh program is going to have a very nominal effect on them. So uh if we could bring 2025 numbers along with this I think that would be very helpful.

Absolutely. Yeah, I could reach out to JJ and um see if he could produce that information. He's been or Jeremiah, he goes by JJ. Yeah, he'd be has been very helpful in providing that sort of information.

Great. Does anybody else have anything for Marissa or can you bring up your proposed language again or would anybody uh care to make a motion? I can do it. Uh, I'd like to move to set a public hearing for May 20th, 2026 at 7 p.m. or as soon thereafter, the matter may be heard to accept public comments for the Baldwin Gardener Revocical Living Trust and Maccgawan open, sorry, McCone Macau open space applications. We're we're pulling Baldwin out though, right? We are.

Sorry, just for the Gardener Revoc Living Trust and Macau open space application. My apologies. There was no time. Second. It's been moved and seconded to set a public hearing for May 20th, 2026 at 7 p.m. or as soon as thereafter as the matter may be heard to accept public comment for the Gardener Revocable Living Trust and Macau open space applications. All in favor say I. I. I.

We have any nazs? That motion passes and we have set a public hearing. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, we're going to move back to works uh item number five, work session 13, wetlands and hydraological fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas discussions and best available science with Larry. Missman, thank you for your presentation. Thank you for coming in. Very, very helpful. I appreciate it.

And thank you for your patience. It's been quite a journey. No worries. But you did great situation. Yeah, they're right next to each other. It's the same the same milk squad. Both seems to have benefits to me. I want to hear from the neighbors. Maybe they're not being honest. Maybe it'll be really destructive to them. I don't know. Yeah, just a flat reef acre. I do think having the 2025

in progress I get to do is a 50% or I guess we never It just told me that joined. I think I think it says that out loud to anyone who joins so they know like two party after. Yes. Oh no, everyone's n as far as I'm aware. Yeah, I don't know if that's now and muted.

Yes. So, um, while I'm opening the presentation and before we get into the fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas, Sorry. Okay. Um, there were a couple questions at the end of last time's conversation. We were talking about wetlands. Um, I think the biggest one that I'm still looking for a little bit more like either continued discussion or more concrete guidance on before a code starts getting drafted uh would be which of those three options we discussed that are the buffer calculation options from ecology um we are interested in. So I think I want to open with that conversation before we get into the presentation on the new material.

Let's start down here. So I have thoughts on this because I didn't get to participate in the conversation when it happened. Um, I wonder I hope you all you all stick with me on this. Like I don't see a lot of merit in option two, but option three is simple but strict. And I think there are folks who could benefit from a simple process where they just take a huge buffer and build their thing without having to go through a bunch of steps and a bunch of flexibility. But I feel like most builders would probably want to default to option one, which gives them the most flexibility with buffers. you can do averaging and all this stuff. So, I don't know if it's possible, but I feel like we should default to one, but if people want to simplify staff time and their time and just give themselves a giant buffer and call it a day with the simple option three, they should be allowed to do that.

The building development center is 100% cost recovery, though, so all the staff time is going to be paid for by the developer no matter what, or at least it should be. I I still feel like from from the developer standpoint like

getting off the off the ground and getting moving right option one is more work for them if they know that look if it's a massive plot they're building yes there is some some critical areas on the plot but they're not building anywhere near them like why do we make them go through all the stuff in one when they could just take the extreme option take a really healthy buffer and save everyone time regardless of whether it's compensated time. I'm just saying like having it as a like if you want to go ahead like that that would that's my ideal solution in my mind. I think the flexibility in one is important but I don't feel like it everyone needs it. Yeah. But

oh no I think I think Daniel put it really put it really really well. I just don't see them as as necessarily exclusive. I really like having that flexibility to to to move between the two. I think that kind of gets at exactly the questions we were asking last time.

Yeah. So, as just to clarify like my understanding, I think this is really doable. Um, again, the buffers are a framework that ecology has like put out there for folks to use. There's nothing in place that we like have to use them exactly as they're proposed. Deviating from that type of guidance generally requires a little bit of justification. Um but I think that just sort of creating kind of a hybrid system between multiple options so that we can increase that flexibility um is something that we can do in code. Yeah.

I don't want to slow down development if it's really not risky. You know, if they're taking their due diligence and they're okay with the more extreme, less flexible three option, then why wouldn't we? I mean, it meaningfully rewards people then for wanting to be a little bit more uh self-restrictive. You know, it saves them time then, even if it isn't really a huge money saver. But yeah, and I I kind of had the same thought like I was thinking along the lines of if I've got five acres and I want to build a house on it and I've got a spot where I can build, I don't want to spend all this money on studies.

Yeah, exactly. I don't want to have to hire a wetland biologist, a fish and wildlife biologist, a habitat, a prairie habitat person. If I've got a spot I can build, then I just want to do it. So I had I had the same thought was if we could do a mix, you know, kind of come out here and say, "Okay, this is what we think this buffer should be,

but if you can get if you want to hire a biologist or whatever professional, we'll allow you to do." And I think maybe some things like I mean and maybe there's some middle ground where we can just say like you know oh I've got this property and I want to build it here but there's this wetland buffer so maybe I can just draw this circle and average my buffer out if there's so you're a proponent of option two the mixed option. No I'm a proponent of mixing option one and three. Okay we call it option four not to confuse it. Option four, option two be a mix of one and three. Option two is its own thing. Yeah.

Option two is the way I remember it. Option two is maybe having a little bit smaller buffer than option three, but not having the flexibility of option one. Yeah. Three is the biggest buffer, right? And it just makes sense to me that like if you're willing to accept the biggest buffer for a simplified permitting process, then okay. Yeah. Yeah. I I I tend to I just watched the video so I didn't participate in the conversation but I I was in the audience but um my concerns were if you don't have option one we have seen times where somebody has bought a home and then they've pulled a permit for something and during inspection came through and said, "Oh, your addition was built in a buffer."

Yeah. And now you're going to have to tear it down. Well, with option one, there might be some way that they can average those back out and figure out a way that they don't have to tear down their addition. And I think without that option one, there'd be some problems. So, if we if what you're saying is we should do a combo of one and three, I would be fully on board with that. Yeah, I I think Commissioner Bartlett, Commissioner Nelson, and I agree on the one three combo or option four. Yes,

option four. Is there anybody on any commissioners online that would have heartache over option uh combination of option one and three and and then I guess I should also ask if that's something staff can actually do put together. Okay. No heartburn for me. None for me either none here casino. Would you be willing to call it more carrot? Well, yes I would. It it would be I liked seeing more carrot less stick. Exactly.

I think the outcome would look really similar to the code that we have talked about for geologically hazardous areas which is kind of the same where it's like if you just accept this standard buffer you might be able to you have less reporting done have to pay less for the the time to get a report done. Like option three doesn't require the use of habitat scores, which is a really big bulk of those like long long long binder sized wetland reports you see sometimes. So if somebody isn't wanting to do that, but their house is far away enough um they they can pursue that. It would look pretty similar I think to that like report level outline that we did for uh geologically hazardous area as well as well. So yeah, I think that's doable.

I think you have your direction then. Thank you. Wonderful. Well, that was easy. All right. So now we can talk about streams and riparian areas.

One more note on the wetlands too. I know last time we talked a lot just in general about that reporting burden. Um, and we've been looking a lot and NIM here has been super helpful in looking at um, how other jurisdictions handle things like um, expedited reviews or single family home specific permitting processes. So, we'll be I'll be looking into that a little more as um, we actually start writing the code. But there could be some opportunities to without sacrificing protection continue to open up those simpler pathways for some of our common projects, especially folks who are just trying to like work on their own private personal home, you know. Um it's something that other jurisdictions have some pretty strong examples of as well that we're looking to. All right. Today we're going to be talking mostly about riparian areas. Um, riparian areas. Uh, well, here's the outline. We'll talk about what they are. Uh, we'll define the critical areas we're talking about today, look at functions and values, talk a little about climate change, look at our protection strategies, and have room for discussion. is pretty familiar outline at this point. Um, so what we're broadly talking about today as a critical area designation or fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas. It has a nice long acronym for a nice long phrase uh and a nice long definition. Um, so this is the WAC language on the screen now. Um but they are essentially areas that serve a critical function in sustaining habitats uh and species that are sort of part of the survival and health of the broader ecosystem. Um the focus in fish wildlife habitat conservation areas is state listed um threatened endangered species and otherwise species of local importance. Um that's that um second kind of paragraph on this screen. Um and

this is something that um we have time for discussion for later. So there's the state list of habitats and species that are designated to be protected. And then local jurisdictions, cities and counties can also nominate species of local importance. So if there's something that the state hasn't listed, and we we were having this conversation a little bit earlier in the public comment debrief. Um if there were a species of concern that we wanted to address in the code, we would nominate it as a species of local importance. Um, so it wouldn't necessarily have to become from the state list, which is called the priority habitats and species list. So today in this presentation, we're mostly going to be talking about riparian areas, which make up a lot of the areas that are designated as fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas, but not all of them. Um, because of its kind of broad definition, there's a lot of landscape features that fall under this type of critical area. Um in Thirstston County in particular, we have a lot that are more um related to our prairies. Uh so we're not talking about those today. We will talk about those in a future meeting. Um today we are talking mostly uh about areas that relate to aquatic habitat. Um, so these are rivers, lakes, streams, ponds, um, and even the Puget Sound and the areas of land around them that sort of have an ecological interface with those bodies of water and the aquatic habitat in them. Um, an important thing to note here is that some of those areas, a lot of them actually, fall under shoreline jurisdiction and are therefore managed by the shoreline master program. We'll also be talking a little about the differences between the SMP and the CAO at a later meeting. Um, so these are more more commonly in the CAO we're looking at smaller streams and lakes, things that are are kind of below the threshold for being designated as shoreline. Um, and sometimes those things intersect with shoreline areas and then we get the CAO being implemented in the SMP and it's really

fun. Um, yeah, so riparian areas in particular are the areas of interface between that water body and the dry land. Um they are important both for some of the terrestrial functions. So like the creatures and habitats on the dry land and the animals and habitats in the water. Um and they help us with our water quality, quantity and temperature and things like that as well. This is just a little diagram to understand that. So on in here in the middle you have the active channel which is the actual stream or water body as you would think about it. And then the area related to it nearby is the riparian ecosystem. So there's the immediate riparian zone and then what's called the zone of influence. Those come together to kind of form the riparian ecosystem. And this is the critical area that we're looking at designating and protecting. So um the functions and values for riparian areas um vegetated buffers or riparian areas um filter pollutants out of run runoff and storm water. Um the vegetation composation composition in those areas is really important. So having things like native vegetation having them um densely or at least appropriately densely vegetated is important. uh width is the most um important factor for pollutant pollution filtering specifically. Um buffers also perform the role of just keeping dangerous or polluting activities away from the body of water itself, physically separating them. Um native plants and trees also provide nutrients into streams. So, when we're talking about nutrients here, we're talking about organic matter, things like leaf litter or dead bugs or even dead animals um that sort of feed an ecosystem. Um and in a natural process, those nutrients are necessary. They're kind of

part of the whole food chain, food web cycle. Um, sometimes nutrients can sort of overburden a water body and cause things like algae blooms where you see a lot of um, algae problems on some private lakes because there's a lot of septic systems and septic systems are full of nutrients, but they're not necessarily the nutrients that that ecosystem is adapted to take on. Uh, plant roots and tree roots also uh, stabilize banks and prevent erosion. Um the habitat functions um one of the most important um aquatic habitat functions for riparian areas is that trees will fall or drop their branches into streams. This creates fish habitat. It changes the stream morphology and makes it more complex which allows the stream to support more species. Um and also it creates deeper pools which lower stream temperatures. Trees and plants also provide shade which lowers stream temperatures. Um, and streams are great for um both aquatic and terrestrial habitat connectivity. Um, I think we had some folks talking earlier about uh elk using the areas along streams to get from place to place. Um and then obviously we have um a lot of fish particularly salmon uh other s salmonids as well um which are called anadimous fish which go to and from uh freshwater and saltwater streams and the connectivity of streams is really important for those species of fish as well and then in turn some of our uh Puget Sound species like the orca whales. So climate change, this is another um sort of similar to when we talked about wetlands. This is an area, a critical area that is both pretty susceptible to the effects of climate change and is also important for offsetting the effects of climate change. Um so riparian areas um help us protect against things like pollution. Um and

when pollute either point source or non-point source pollution occurs near riparian areas and vegetation is removed and there's more um impervious surfaces causing runoff in riparian areas. All of that comes together to worsen water quality. Uh the loss of vegetation either from development or just environmental change in general uh can raise stream temperatures along with just the warmer across the board temperatures that we see in general. Cool water is particularly important for salmon survival. A lot of these critical areas protections focus on trying to maintain water that is both clean and cool because that's what we need to keep our salmon alive. Um development and riparian areas can disrupt the habitat functions both in the water for fish and for other more terrestrial species nearby. Um and more intense rain and flood events that are a result of climate change can cause more erosion uh in and around streams. Sort of like the nutrients, some erosion is part of a natural process and is healthy for the stream. Salmon, for example, need gravel to enter the stream so they have places to lay their eggs. But really intense erosion events that those um streams and animals aren't adapted for can be harmful. So, generally protection strategies focus on avoiding and minimizing impacts in those riparian areas or like stream buffers or something like that, the area near and around the stream. Um, and the strategies are to allow those riparian areas to keep contributing those functions. So, to keep water clean, to keep water cool by being non not disrupted by development essentially. Um there's new pretty comprehensive um guidance from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife um that talks about how to delineate sight specific riparian management zones which are sort of a

more holistic and ecologically focused uh framework for understanding riparian areas. Um the the standard is more like a prescriptive stream buffer which is a more familiar language probably. So, riparian management zones are delineated using the channel migration zone if it exists for that water body and something called site potential tree height. Um, site potential tree height is the average height that the dominant tree species on that specific site could reach after 200 years. um and it's pretty specific, but what they find is that for most of the the four key functions um of riparian areas happen within that range. Um because so many of them are related to the plant and tree species nearby the stream. Um so the recommended um buffers for that RF that WDFW has proposed is that it's the channel migration zone plus site potential tree height and uh with a minimum overall regardless of 100 ft for all streams. They also talk in the recommendations about applying the same protections to both fish bearing and non-fish bearing streams. Um and that is related to the sort of water quality and quantity functions that streams have even if they're not fishbearing.

Yeah. Uh what the site potential tree height and the way that that impacts that is that direct like what is the I guess what's the formula that's being used for that?

Yeah. So um it is it is direct. Um so the I see if I can list the functions off the top of my head. So there is woody debris contribution, shade, root stability and and pollution removal are the four kind of key functions of the riparian areas. Um so shade, woody debris contribution and to an extent root stability are all functions of the essentially size and species of tree in an area. Um and then that vegetation that pollution removal also just happens to tend to map on to that pretty well. Um so it is related directly to the specifics of essentially how that stream and the species that use it have formed in relation to the vegetation around the stream. Um and the the framework obviously based on the name works best for streams and forested areas. There are other ways to determine an RMZ um that they have recommendations primarily for eastern Washington, but that also might be useful for us and some of our prairie habitats. Although we do have organ white oaks we can look to for tree height. Um so yeah, does that answer

and it's based on the soil classification and the type of tree that you'd expect to grow there and then how tall that tree would be at year 200. So, for the most part in Thirstston County when you map it, it's Doug fur is the the species that they assume would be on the site and that usually comes out to right around 242 or 241 ft um is the site potential tree height on most most of our areas in Person County. So, the the buffer specifically the riparian management zone.

Okay. But that's going to be no development is the idea. There's going to be no development within these buffers. Not necessarily. There's a diff there's a reason that they're calling it a riparian management zone and not a buffer. Um well, if it says WDFW recommends a minimum buffer or RMZ of 100 ft for all streams, we're not going to call them buffers. We're just going to call them RMZs. the so and also remember that our goal with the critical areas ordinance is to protect those functions. Yeah.

So those key functions um like out at full sight potential tree height. One of the primary functions you're trying to protect is pollution removal. There are other BMPPS and ways to get pollution removal if you don't have an option but to be closer than 240 ft okay to a stream. So, and maybe I don't understand it, but it feels like the effect of this is basically is where S&P doesn't control because there's not enough water, we're going to use CAO and RMZs to apply buffers that will limit or curtail development. And these RMZs are going to be there's only going to be one of them. It's not like we're going to have a bunch of different SEDs like we did with the shoreline master program, but this is basically to have setbacks off of all the rest of the water in the county that is not covered by the SMP. I I think setbacks is a

Yeah, I think I that might not be the right way to but protections off of all the other water that's not protected by the S&P. The Yep. It is designed to extend protections

and those protections are going to be in the form of RMZs that are effectively buffers that could be encroached depending on a couple of other factors. But they're the main purpose of them is to be protective, you know, linear feet away from the water. And I think the way that I would I would say I I like to think about it is it it isn't necessarily a buffer, but it would would basically set a series of standards you'd probably need to meet

to be working within that zone. Yeah, we're going to talk about it on the next couple of slides a little bit, but there are different ways that the other jurisdictions have looked at this and that we could approach this and there is room for discussion on kind of like where the difference between an RMZ and a buffer is and there's a potential that we could implement both buffers and RMZ's. Um, and so like the language on this slide here is kind of regardless of whether you are using their RMZ framework or a different buffer, WDFW would like to see 100 ft. That's their recommendation in general. Um, and then we'll we can talk a little more about specifically what it looks like to have uses in a buffer as we currently use them and conceptualize of them now, which is pretty much a setback or a restricted area where you can't develop and a management zone where you might be able to build and have activity, but it meets certain uh BMPs like if we're trying to manage the function of pollution removal, you have some storm water BMTs that you're you're utilizing there. That's that's actually pretty close to what I wanted to ask about, which is I know that we are we've been talking a little bit about like, you know, birds and bees and stuff and and other uh other uh species that we want to protect. Um, and I know a lot of that right now is coming from uh runoff pollution from agriculture or more more often uh just from like agriculture has its trade-offs, but also from like just uh uh garden management or lawn management. Um, and so that's something where it wouldn't be a development issue, but it would be a it would be relevant to what you were doing with the land uh outside of that.

Yeah. So, it sounds like we're getting to that. Yay. Okay. Good. Then these are not going to overlay over SMP areas, though. I'm I know you said we're going to get to the interaction between those two later, but they don't necessarily overlay.

It can happen. uh we sat down and did a whiteboard exercise about this because we're also working on the S&P with ecology right now and it is kind of complicated but sometimes essentially the simplest explanation is sometimes um streams that are not SMP like managed water bodies because they flow into rivers or there's interaction just hydraologically they cross into and other critical areas do as well cross into the area managed by the S&P and in that case you're kind of applying both in kind of a overlay. Um

because if if we adopt either either one of these standards, the uh site tree height potential or even the 100 foot, but then it's going on an overlay where the SED says that our setback or our buffer is only 50 or 85 or 75 ft and then that gets pushed out to 100 ft or 241 or 242 feet. that kind of negates all the work that we well not all the work but a lot of the work that we did with SMP. I think it depends on what we mean by mitigation though like those are different modes of development and they're Andy maybe jump in if I'm incorrect but it it's not so like say we're talking about the Nquali River

uh the Nquali River is not the water body that's getting these buffers placed onto it but maybe a tributary stream to it is falling under this uh if it so it's it's not um that corner where it comes in though is probably got a S&P sed. Yeah. So you would have to be set back from the Nsquali River as far as the buffer shoreline buffer says. But if there's a stream flowing into that river, what the riparian stuff that we're talking about here would be how far away you are from that. So you're only getting as close as you can to Nquali, but then it's like which side of the property would you then be on? And since that would be an especially sensitive area where those two meet, it does make sense to have a little bit higher of a buffer

maybe. I don't Is it more important to big water bodies or more important to protect small water bodies? Yeah, when we get into it, we can bring a whiteboard in.

Yeah. So, yeah, to give a little context to kind of what we currently have, the the buffers which are are pretty just flat restrictive uh in the current code in our current code range from 200 from 100 to 250 ft and that depends on the stream type and the characteristics. Um this is current common practice. Different jurisdictions use different buffers. Um, but generally the the current common practice is delineate where the stream is, stay a certain number of feet away from it, that's your like based on the stream type and some other characteristics, you can just you just do that. Um, so that's what I'm referring to here as a prescriptive buffer. It's just kind of a flat

distance. Um, and you could use that kind of framework alongside the RMZ framework. And this is kind of what we've been touching on a little already. Um, but you could say, well, we're going to observe that minimum 100 or maybe even for some stream higher prescriptive buffer development is staying totally or almost totally because there's there's some uses that are compatible, but um out of that and then for the extra 150 ft beyond that, you're also doing something like following certain best management practices or avoiding um so some of that might be like restorative agriculture. um storm water BMPs, things like that. Um septic systems are are a big concern as well. Um so we can we we can sort of in the way that we've just discussed kind of managing the ecology recommendations to get to a h happy place there. We could do something like that with this guidance as well. Um and then if we do deviate from this, it would be really good idea to make sure that we have um a solid reasoning for doing so. We'll talk a little bit about this at the end of the presentation, but we are going to be looking into doing more of a gap analysis and reasoning and justification type document. I think we had some public comments that brought up um an appeal um happening in another county that was really informative for how we should be approaching some of these things.

The hearings board case that Loretta turned us on to was is informing our work.

Yeah. So, just to to kind of continue elaborating, um the RMZs could be more used to help delineate areas where low impact development, regenerative agriculture, similar management practices could be implemented. They're also really, really good for identifying areas where restoration work is particularly desirable. Um, we can do things like encourage restoration activities like invasive vegetation removal. Um and we can kind of use RMZs to identify um in general where retrofits might be needed or need to be encouraged. And we can also consider in the code how to encourage or at least not burden or discourage people who are making improvements to older development that might be harming um riparian areas. Septic tanks is a big one comes to mind for me. We would prefer people have functional septic tanks. Um but other types of retrofits, storm water and similar um we could encourage in these areas as well. So these are my discussion questions. We've already talked a little bit about the first one um is what our approach generally what type of approach we'd like to take to the WDFW recommendations. Um I think another big one is the consideration of different stream types. Um, again, the WDFW recommendation is that we treat fish bearing and non-fish bearing streams the same. Um, I know not every other jurisdictions that I have looked at that has responded to this guidance has done that, but they have provided justification for not doing so. Um, so we can talk about how we would like to approach that. Um, in the the third question here is kind of broad. Um, it's just something I was thinking about in response to some of our public comments. And then the last one being, um, are do do we want to designate any additional species of local importance? And that like the

wetlands, we may not get a final answer in any of these now, but we'll be coming back again to talk more about habitat conservation areas next time. If we could we could get a a future meeting with the biologist to talk about pollinators and things like that that are local, I think that would be useful, but I don't have enough knowledge to just list some species.

And I did I didn't get a chance to jump in and mention it, but uh WDFW does also have riparian pollinator guidance. So, it's riparian specific guidance for how to it's it's mostly restoration focused, so it is a little less regulatory. Um, but it's something we could consider. Um, or like certain activities that would count as like mitigation. Um, so they do have guidance on riparian pollinators which I thought was interesting. More about that fish. Claire, I think you said something about DFW had recommended not differentiating between fish bearing and non-fish bearing streams. Yes.

Could you say more about that? What is the rationale for not differentiating between those two types of streams? Yeah. Um it relates um I know I copied their bullet points in the memo which I don't have in front of me but um it relates to um the kind of hydraologic connectivity between streams and the water quality and quantity functions that those non-fish bearing streams um provide to fish habitat. Um so I have the memo up here if you want me to read it. Oh, sure. Thank you.

Um, WDFW recommends that the same protection frameworks apply to all streams regardless of whether they are fish bearing. According to WDFW, non-fish bearing streams support a unique community of aquatic and repairarian obligate wildlife, provide corridors for wildlife, particularly in the face of clim uh changing climate conditions, provision fish bearing streams with matter and energy, and cool water to downstream reaches. Washington state has already experienced increased stream temperatures due to climate change and expect further resources which have direct implications for the persistence of fish. So TLDDR is they put water, food and uh organic matter into fish bearing streams and so we should treat them the same because that water will end up in them.

They also intermittently are fishbearing streams especially during flood events. They're important dispers and there are some that are uh erroneously classified. Um but there some for for a long time uh there was this idea that you really just need to like the fish bearing streams are the most important. You want to protect those. Um when you actually zoom out and you think about what a fish bearing stream needs, it needs functional hydrarology in the whole wershed and that is a function of the fishbearing and non-fish bearing system. It's a system.

It's a system. Some of the most important places are those non-fish bearing areas because they're way up in the watershed. They provide a lot of energy if they don't have uh strong buffers. And if you look back at like the way they've done um they just recently changed this with forest practices, but going way back, they had high protections for fish bearing streams, lower lower system riparian areas, and you could go ahead and pretty much cut the entire upper basin. And uh we found that that was devastating and the rules have recently changed.

Um and to that end and I'm wondering if this is the r this is part of the rationale for the other issue that we were discussing which is the difference in buffer size. Um but if you're talking about these streams and and these other water bodies that feed into these these larger systems. Um, I mean that is literally they're feeding those that's what gives them that like they're they're the the smaller bodies are both a little bit less resilient to development if I'm understanding this correctly and then would also be uh the circulatory system that allows those larger water bodies to exist. So they're a little bit they would need that extra buffer if I'm if I'm hearing that right. They I would say I wouldn't necessarily call it extra buffer, but they they do need consideration and protection um for the functions that they provide.

Yeah, I forgot buffer is a very specific word here. Management. Yes. Well, and it's not necessarily extra. It's just appropriate for right sizing. Yes. Adequate.

I guess one of the concerns I have is is how can I frame this well? I I don't have a lot of concerns about how new development's going to be treated. They can if it's going to be new development, they can do their development under new standards with higher protections. I am concerned about areas that are already developed and if things need to happen, we've had a lot of those discussions when we did SMP. I don't want if somebody's trying to make a minor improvement, but because this buffer expanded around them, they can't make a minor improvement. So, if they want to do an upgrade to their septic system, but now they're in an RMZ that says they can't do certain things, I think that defeats the per and these are conversations we've had a million times. And I'm not I'm not sure how to go about that. And I know that in S&P we always made distinctions about how far from ordinary high water. And I know we're not really doing that in in these riparian areas. We're saying all the riparian area is important, but I believe that I feel that if there's a home that's in an RMZ and they need to make an addition that's farther away from the body of water, but they're still in the RMZ, that should be an allowable thing for them to do. I don't want to burden people that have already done some development. Certainly when it comes to things like septic systems and reasonable additions, you know, I don't want them all of a sudden putting in 5,000 square feet more of house, but if grandma needs a place to stay and they need to put a ADU in behind the house farther away from the water, I want to make sure that they can still do that. Another and just quickly to those are the kinds of situations some of those redevelopment situations where you have older development that was way different than what would be allowable today built on standards that were way different

standards of than we have today. Um those are when they come in for some sort of redevelopment that is a really big opportunity to get ecological lift. Yeah, it's actually one of the only real, if you think about like this big idea of like if we wanted to have net ecological gain and not just no net loss from our programs, that's the place where it's easy easiest to get it. Yeah. Um, if you try and just go back and, you know, tried to write a check to restore everything and get the hydraology fixed, like you can go ahead and ask for the moon and the stars, quite literally, it'd be expensive, more expensive than the Apollo program was.

Yeah. In today's dollars, you had some Oh, Commissioner Herson,

I mean, the discussion we had literally for several weeks was conforming versus non-conforming. when we talked about the S&P and we finally came up with some language that everybody sat on and I think I'd like to see that language come back uh out of the SMP. So when we're talking about the S&P and the CAO, you could bring that up. Yeah, there's a different there was a specific carveout in the state laws that govern shorelines that allow residential structures that don't conform to other standards to be considered conforming for that specific purpose. I don't know whether we can use that terminology because it's a different set of rules that govern CAO, but I think the sentiment we can certainly work with and I know that there were some changes made to the CAO a couple years ago that tried to enhance some of those administrative decisions around that stuff like looking at building an addition onto an existing home on the back side of it away from the water in an area that clearly has already been impacted and and that sort of common sense thing if if it's not functionally connected to what you're trying to protect and we can make that all then maybe the standards don't need to be as stringent and I think that's the kind of conversations that C we could have with CEO as well.

Yeah. Uh I think there's also there's there's development restrictions which are the things that we're talking about here but there's also other types of use restrictions that do seem pretty relevant that even if we are talking about uh making some exceptions for older residences or older thing older uh structures we would still want to be able to implement some of those like you know you can't just dump you know uh Miracle Grow directly into the stream next to you um things like that um we would want to have use restrictions even if we're not having building restrictions and those I would still want to apply to these older older

places. We don't we don't actually untie use from development though, do we? For it to be a use, it has to be in a developed area. I guess well I'm looking at some of these uh I think this is the maybe development standards versus performance standards is what we're talking about here. Um, so like the way that land is managed after a use is established is more about like performance standards and then how that use gets constructed on the land or added to or changed is development standards. Um, and so both could apply here. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm looking at the management zone checklist, which is what I'm I'm pulling some of that from, and I'm looking at the way that they're talking about how you deal with invasive species and not wanting to use particular pesticides in certain contexts. using expanded

really generalized example here like hypothetical like let's imagine that we've now drawn this riparian management zone and your house and your yard is now inside that riparian management zone and you do want to build that ADU we I mean there's a world in which you know you've got lawn down to the creek um in your house and part of building that ADU to offset the impact of that ADU might be replanting some of the like that very close riparian zone and that's going to be like that would be relatively easy for a land owner and a net lift for the environment. So there are these there are ways that we could end up with like through the policies that we build like a healthier better functioning ecosystem not just one that we protect from new development which is really cool. So, are we already building in a mitigation sequencing matrix for these or is that just something that we're going to copy over from S SNP or

I'm not sure. Well, we'll use the standard of mitigation sequencing for all critical areas. Yeah, I was just noting that as

so something I want to note with this and also for my my previous suggestion of our our option four um we've been talking basically entirely about residential uses and while I understand that commercial and industrial uses are limited in an unincorporated county um my personal sentiment is grandfathering exemptions mitigation like no if if it's a commercial use, if it's an industrial use, if you're going to be putting a huge impermeable surface up, things like that, the exceptions aren't designed for you. We're talking about people trying to access housing, not you know, like we're trying to expand our factory and we want option three so we can go right up to the edge of the buffer. Like that's not that's not what I'm not I don't think that's what any of us were talking about when we were talking about that. So like in these discussions, exemptions, grandfathering, things like that, I would exclude RARRI, RCC, AC, HC, those your commercial designations, just no.

Yeah, I I think we're kind of on the same page on that. We just didn't say it explicitly. And I would rather call that out because I if for the older circumstance, if if it's a if it's an industrial use, I don't care if they're willing to take the big buffer. Option one will give them forces them to study adjacent property uses, get that wildlife score. Like that's good. We want them to do that and they clearly have the resources to do it. Um, same sort of goes for this grandfathering. Like I Yeah, they can buy new land. They're a commercial enterprise. You know, that's that's just my thought process on that. I just wanted to get that out there and express that.

Yeah. And this is something where we could construct the use table in a way that reflects the level of potential impact. Obviously, a single family home and an industrial operation have super different impacts.

Um, so the RMZ might apply a little differently to some of those more intense, especially chemically intensive like we kind of see currently in CARAS. You know, you can't do all these things in car 3 that require the use of really heavy chemicals. Um so we can consider kind of like yeah no none of the because of the use tables that we use in the code. Nothing applies exactly the same to every use. And like if you think about the one say for floods where there's all these different flood designations the flood plane the flood way high groundwater hazard and different uses interact with those designations differently. We could do something similar here where maybe there is a smaller prescriptive buffer and a larger SM RMZ. And this is just one example framework. It's not what we have to do. Um this is how I've been thinking about it. Um where there those are columns on the use table and the a single family home and an industrial operation interact with those differently in a way that reflects their potential to damage the environment.

I like that. I'm I'm probably wrong on this, but my gut feeling is that most riparian zones are probably CARA 2s or CARA 3es. Probably not a whole lot that are not a car at all. Or if they are I mean, we were just talking about true of most of the county also creek for example, and it's got a ton of bedrock and a lot of really tight uh till. Oh. So, um not necessarily then, huh? Sometimes the ability of water to pull and collect on the land means that it's not really infiltrating there. So it might it kind of be the inverse where just lose it and that's probably and it's gone. That's why we do seepage runs.

Does anybody do you have uh more Claire?

Uh I was just going to talk about the schedule because we have some updates to this. Um, so just based on the kind of level that we're getting into, based on some of the public comments that we have heard and based on the growth management hearings board decision um that was provided to us in public comment, uh we want to take a little bit of time to um add some additional meetings to the process here before a decision is made and particularly to um go back around and do a bit of a gap analysis. Um, so what a gap analysis does is all of these memos that you've been receiving that explain what the science says about the critical areas uh and even resources like um checklists from state agencies we can use to go through the code as it currently exists. Um identify where um it doesn't meet um what is in the science or what our policy goals are. Um talk about what needs to change where and why because of that. Um and then also discuss um kind of reflect the discussions we've been having here and talk about and justify any reasoning that we have for the choices that we do end up making. Um and that was a big problem in that growth management hearings board case that kind of sparked this change. Uh is we want to make sure that uh there is really clear and robust documentation for the reasoning behind all the decisions that we make as we consider all the different guidance and science and try and filter it into policy. That's a really nuanced process. taking time to do a gap analysis will allow us to interact with that process more fully. Uh it'll also give us more time um to respond to the feedback that we've gotten not only in these conversations but also from public comment um and and just take the time to dive a little deeper into um the changes that need to be made. So this is the new schedule. Um we're up at the top here in April still. Um and you can see it's been pushed back to about October. So

five meetings have been added here. Um and they all focus on uh that gap analysis and feedback incorporation. So some of these will also function so for some chapters this will function as kind of a second touch point. We'll go back and look at um the feedback that we have received um already and then for some of them um the the first look might come a little later. Um, but we can also use the feedback that we've gotten from public comment already and in these discussions and that comes over the course of doing these. So, all right. Yeah.

Does anybody else have any questions for staff on this? I guess I am just interested in making sure that we we do touch on um on chemical use restrictions when we when we talk about this um specifically around pollinators. And again, I think one of the one of the ways to do that is to think about what types of things we allow in these zones. Yes. So the kinds of things that are associated with those chemicals might be limited or restricted.

Yeah. And I think that's more what I'm thinking. I'd have to go back and look, but um I think that the most at least the most harmful chemicals to pollinators is neonicotides

and those are pretty much been banned most of those have been banned in Washington state. So it won't do us much good to try to tell people they can't use them. You know, I also wanted, you know, something was said about, you know, if you're commercial or industrial, you can just go get go somewhere else. Not in Thirstston County, cuz there's not land zoned that way for you.

And I mean, I don't I mean, I don't even know who owns industrial land, but I know several people that own commercial ground. And you know all the little stores you see around town, that's what those that's what a lot of those are. They're all zoned a lot of them are zoned commercial. And if they need to do something to tell them that well because this person has a house you they can they're grandfathered in but we're not going to grandfather you because you're a commercial use I think is not a good idea. Those are very different uses though for what we're talking about when we're talking about use about uh approaching these these uh restrictions based on what kinds of use you're doing with them. I mean your your restrictions are going to be a lot you're there's a lot le higher risk of what you're going to be doing with the property if it's commercial. I think

sometimes it I think there's a I can tell you from just from driving around I can tell you that uh people that have small plots of land with lots of animals is probably very underrated in their uh damage to the environment.

I think you're probably right on that. Um I think if you're you know if you've got a little grocery store or something then and you want to do something if you've already impacted that buffer unless what you want to do is going to create more impact then you know you're not make I mean our goal is no net loss. So I mean that's something to keep in consideration. Plus, there's besides protecting the environment, there's 14 other growth management goals. Um, I I looked it up. It's neonoids. Um,

uh, fifthronil, which is highly toxic to bees, pyrothoids, um, such as delta, lambda, cyanine, and cyclutherine, and organo phosphates. So, four main categories that are bad for bees.

Yeah. And I think to to speak a little bit to how the regulations can be structured to kind of hear both of these concerns is that um I think we when we when we do these use tables, we're not looking necessarily as broadly as like all commercial uses this applies. We'd be looking more specifically at the really direct impacts. And that relates to our requirement that the regulations we impose are have a nexus and are proportional. So we need to the nexus is the connection. And so that would be like focusing on uses with certain commercial uses or chemical uses that we know to be harmful or other types of land disturbing uses that we know to be harmful so that there is a connection to the impact. So like you're saying like a small grocery store or corner store is going to be really different than a chemically intense industrial operation and those need different those have different nexus in proportionality to regulation basically. I'm just concerned though like someone who has like like a small warehouse or something decides they want to introduce a ton of impermeable service surface and they're go oh well you know I'm just going to use option three because I can just like that's way down there like that's going to have impacts not just to them but to their the surrounding properties and stuff and the option one does study that doesn't say no it says you have to do more work than take the easy option um and same for like maybe not blanket bands for specific uh um specific zoning. But yeah, if it's a highly intensive use like we should apply the higher standard to you. It's not when we talked about giving alternative options or about grandfathering or exemptions or mitigation. We're talking about low intensity things that are generally good for our other goals like increasing housing access or mitigating water issues with septic or whatever.

That's all I'm trying to say. You don't want to add a bumper chromine chop, whatever. You would you would not believe the number of super fun sites that are tied to dry cleaning in this county. It's ridiculous. Everywhere. Serious business. Yeah, chemicals are rough. Yeah, the state owns a number of those, too, because DOT was just like, I'm going to dump it there. Okay, well, it's true.

Anybody else have anything for uh staff on this particular issue? Okay, we're going to we're going to Thank you very much. We're going to move along to staff updates now. Um I don't have any big updates at this point. Uh I think no. Anything else for the good of the staff? All right. All right. Then we're going to move on to calendar. Uh does anybody believe that they will not be able to make our May 6th meeting? I will not.

Commissioner Kaiser will be gone. Okay. How about for um how about for May 20th? Is anybody expecting to miss May 20th? Should be good. All right, looks like we should have everybody. We're going to open up a second public comment section now for people that weren't able to um uh participate in the first one because of our technical difficulties that's that staff uh was able to fix but took us an extra 15 minutes. So, is there anybody online that wanted to provide public comment but didn't have the opportunity to do so?

There's nobody online that didn't provide public comment. It's just worth including just want to make sure everybody gets heard that wants to be heard. All right. Well, with that, we're going to move on to the good of the order. Does anybody have anything for the good of the order? Welcome back. Yeah. Hopefully, I'm I'm already proving myself helpful to

Maybe you should resubmit your application now. I actually have a a couple things for the good of the other. First is I wanted to thank Commissioner Kaiser for doing a great job of running the meeting last time. She runs a very good meeting and I hope that next year she would at least consider accepting a nomination for being the next chair. And uh my other item for the good of the order is I'm hoping that um Commissioner Nelson's concerns about the open space programs and the auditor's involvement in it. I don't know how best to direct staff to communicate those to um the board if that's going to be in a staff report or through the work sessions or something. But if there's something that we need to do to articulate that in a way that you can do that, I' I'd like to know what that is because I want to make sure that gets done.

Usually we should be able to bring like highlight uh some public comment that we've heard. We could do the same with the planning commission what we heard at the planning commission. Show of thumbs would make a direction from us so you're not going rogue. We're warm on that issue. I guess my point on that chair would be this would be something that would need to be addressed before the public hearing on these two properties to let these folks know that it's more economically beneficial for them to put a cow on their property and uh than it is to go into the commissioner's program and be under the uh

fuel tracker might have more limitations. That's kind of why I suggested to Marissa that she tell because I think they're already in the process. They're probably going to have to go back through it either way. I think it's a that I definitely perked up when you mentioned that because it's something we should we should be thinking about how to help people get into one program or whatever. Yeah. All right. Uh does anybody else have anything for the good of the order? Well, with no further business, this meeting is adjourned.