Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Everybody's mouths moving, but I couldn't hear anything.

All right. Welcome to... May 20, Thurston County Planning Commission. The Planning Commission is a resident advisory committee to the Board of County Commissioners on land use planning matters, such as the Comprehensive Plan and Zoning Ordinance Amendments. Planning Commission actions are in the form of recommendations to the County Commissioners, the final decision makers. All Planning Commission meetings are open to the public. Community members are welcome to observe the Planning Commission briefings and work sessions. My name is Eric Casano, and I am the I live in District 2. We'll start with our other introductions down here. I live and serve in District 1.

Scott Lewis in District 4.

Sandy Kaiser, I live in and serve in District 3. I live in and serve in District 2.

Commissioner Fishburne, yeah, Bill Fishburne, I live in and serve District 4.

Any other commissioners on the list? i've always had trouble joining apparently the link in the agenda doesn't work so commissioner miller will be joining us as soon as well i'll do my best okay but without having with our agenda if everybody has an opportunity to look at the agenda and if so entertain a motion move to approve the agenda for wednesday may 20 2026. second moved and seconded in favor of accepting this agenda say aye aye we should note that Thank you. The agenda has been accepted. Commissioner Bartlett is also here with us tonight. Next up, has everybody had the opportunity to look over the meeting minutes for, what are we doing, February 18th? No, it's the May 6th meeting minutes. Has everybody had an opportunity to look at the May 6th meeting minutes? Last meeting, we had to correct the date on it too. Yeah. I think I should start with the February ones. Well, if so, can you entertain a motion on the May 6th meeting minutes?

Move to approve the meeting minutes from May 6th and accept the audio as the official record.

Second. Second.

Moved and seconded to accept the May 6th meeting minutes and accept the audio as the official meeting record. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

This number 2448, might that be Commissioner Miller? 2448, it's Commissioner Miller?

I don't know.

Commissioner Miller?

I don't think Commissioner Miller has joined yet. She was having some problems with the phone number.

Okay. Well, I don't think we actually have enough to approve these meeting minutes since we had a couple of abstentions. Yeah, so we'll move the vote to the end and hopefully we'll have enough people. No, because we've already voted on it once, so we'll just adopt it as a meeting. All right. Well, we'll move on to the public communication portions of our meeting. We do have some outlines for public communications. While we welcome comments from the public at our meetings, please introduce yourself, including an address you reside in the county. Please address the Planning Commission, not the audience or staff. Planning Commission may respond to public comments. Speakers are limited to a total of three minutes, the time of the show, one of the video screens to help keep track of time. Meeting attendees cannot donate their speaking time to another speaker. No comments that are lewd and offensive, inflammatory, hateful, inflammatory, or discriminatory in nature. No comments that are commercial on 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 community commission public hearing will be forwarded to the Board of County Commissioners. We're going to start here in the boardroom with a panel of comments. We'll start with Ron Smith.

My name is Ron Smith. I'm a resident of the county. And it's my understanding that you're going to be talking about the SMP some tonight. Am I correct?

I think we are. Okay.

Well, I had a question and a comment. I'm in possession in front of me of the minority report from this group about the draft SMP that was submitted to the board of county commissioners. And my question is, how many planning commissioners are the same as was on this letter in 2023? Are any of the members the same? And how many planning commissioners are there now? There were nine back then. So my comment is that, is there going to be any other opportunity for incorporation of some of these worthwhile comments before this is considered by the Board of County Commissioners?

This Board is not revisiting the issue. No, we don't have the opportunity to do that. I'm sorry, I didn't understand.

If the commissioners were to request it, would they have the authority to do that?

No, that's sort of our docket items now. Our work is defined by the docket, and S&P is no longer on our docket. Thank you. All right, you just have one more. public comment, we have one for two.

Lynn Fitzhugh, Executive Director of Restoring Earth Connection, resident of the county. I'm here to comment on the proposal for North City's UGA joint codes, which CPED staff brought before you last week. I was very surprised to see tree codes as listed as something that would be changed to align with the individual cities. surprised because at the April 22nd Board of Commissioners meeting, the commissioners expressed the very opposite, that they wanted to retain the tree codes as something that the county would work on in the near future, not at some distant point as part of climate updates. I'm asking you also to retain the tree ordinances as county work. In 2023, I worked closely with the commissioners to pass what was touted to be the best county tree code in the state. However, just as some of you were in dismay to see the Olympian reporting on 1244 trees that will be cut down on a 22-acre parcel in the Tumwater UGA, which includes a 300-year-old tree and 15 200-year-old trees, I also was in dismay. I was dismayed to learn for the first time that one sentence had been popped into our great tree ordinance, making an exception for subdivisions. That one sentence went right by me when reading the ordinance before it passed, and I have checked with the commissioners and it went by them as well. Staff knew, but the commissioners did not know what was passing was incomplete. If the exception was not in there, then all 16 of those trees would be saved. Yes, a different tree ordinance has to be written when subdivisions occur because you have smaller lots. Over and over again, we are told the lie by developers that to have housing in density, we have to cut down trees. That is not true. By keeping setbacks large enough for the existing trees, you both have trees in life-affirming housing, but you also have affordable housing instead of big houses which are built out to the margins." None of our cities currently protect big trees. Science has only understood in the last 15 years that the biggest 1% to 2% of trees do 50% of the sequestering and storing of carbon. Creating tree designations, as the county's new code did, can incentivize the protection of the county's heritage trees, those over 40 inches DBH. The commissioners are interested in bringing some of those concepts that will protect our biggest trees into the UGA codes just as other cities statewide have done. All of the cities currently have different tree ordinances. For eight years I have been asking them to update them and I could tell you a long list of exceptions explanations as to why this has not been done. all have what I call a floor method, i.e. you can cut down to a minimum number per lot and actually you can just cut all of them and then plant back to the minimum number. This does not protect big trees and in climate change increasingly saplings are not going to make it through the summer heat. We need mature trees as protection against increasing climate heat. I ask you to retain this as county work and not give it over to the cities as a blank check. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Christy White? Commissioner Miller is not with us. Commissioner Miller is not with us.

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Christy White, and I live in the Delphi Valley of Thurston County, officially District 4. My comments are regarding the Item 5, the UGA code, this evening. I was so excited to see the memo written and compliments to the staff for lining out a current process the biggest difference and the approach that is so helpful um to be able to see what what is and where we're going to so thank you for that um one of the things that uh to echo uh lynn here about you know forestry codes in terms of how trees are handled individually in cities is there going to be a possibility of conflict then with the county-wide and how we manage and coordinate that. So concern, so my ask is that you look at, how can you not have conflict, particularly when you have areas that border each other? Um, the other concern I had is this concept. I was educated what by reference means, uh, by one of the commissioners. Um, I'm not sure public really understands what that means. So my ask would be to be very clear what by reference, by reference to whom, to what, so that folks can understand, um, that some of the areas I also have concern about is, um, the wireless code, adopting city standards. Again, having worked on that conflict between wireless that's handled in a city versus wireless that's handled as a county code, because we worked very, very hard to have a county code for wireless. So I have some concerns there. Other than that, I just think, again, looking at How we generate everything that it coordinates with each other. Concern about that. And then lastly, on a personal note, I wanted to extend my appreciation and thoughts about my people leaving us. She did an extraordinary job just on this today. And she'll be greatly missed. She was always kind to us and citizens asking about everything and guiding us in a very neutral, professional way, but helped us navigate so much as we have tried to continue to keep Thurston County the little shire that we are trying to. So, Maya, if you're listening, if you're on, thank you very, very much. Most appreciated. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Christy.

Run to Larson Kramer.

Hi, nice to see you again. My name is Rhonda Larson-Kramer and I live at 1814 East Side Street, Southeast in Olympia. And I just wanted to update you on something that's going to be coming down the pike. You may recall voting 10 to 0 to recommend against changing the way that land use appeals are handled in the county. The proposal had been to remove the Board of County Commissioners from the appeal process. Yesterday, the board was set to vote on that proposal and decided that you should have another look at it. The main proponent of the proposal is seeking a vote by you that either supports the proposal or is at least less unanimously opposed to it. You will likely hear that the reason a change is needed is because land use appeals involve code at the hearing examiner level, politics at the board level, and code at the court level. You will hear that the proposal is intended to remove politics from the process. The proposal is being portrayed as more fair than the current process. But the claim that staff, hearing examiners, and judges neutrally apply the code while the board injects politics into the process is simply not accurate. I'm asking you to stick with your prior instincts when you voted against the proposal the first time. Human judgment and bias and agendas exist at every level of land use decision making, no more in the board than at any other level. And I'm not necessarily talking about staff in this room, but I have seen so many times when staff have pushed agenda items and not followed the code. I have seen so many times when judges don't follow the law because they know and like a particular attorney and believe anything he says. The common denominator is that everyone at all levels is human. And humans, by nature, have bias. Unlike judges, hearing examiners, and staff, however, the board is the only body that is accountable to the public in a meaningful way. And I would agree that judges are elected as well, but few people follow judicial races. That's just the way it is. If you vote to remove the board from appeals, you would be voting to remove the only place where someone with accountability is weighing in. You would be voting against transparency, fairness, and accountability. So please vote again to preserve the current process. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Is there anybody else in the board that would like to address the planning commission? All right, we're going to move on. We're going to start with Bonnie. Bonnie, bless you.

Hello. Happy, I think this is National Bee Day. So enjoy bees. I learned that they can fly like a half mile, which is so amazing. And I don't really understand this interjurisdictional like joint plan thing, but I just want to bring up a couple of constraints. Oh, let's see. Happy B-Day. And then I want to bring up a couple of constraints to like what I think might should be considered in joint plans is that. Specifically like in Tumwater, I believe they need to make more parks in their Southwest area and to meet like some sort of standard. And people in Thurston County also need access to parks. It looks like we have a lot of green stuff out there, but it's really not accessible. I bike through these towns, there's no real parks for miles and miles and miles. So like in the plan, it says they need more parks. In the Salmon Creek Basin, it's like the old plan from years and years ago said that Tumwater might not be able to really realize the zoning that it would like to do because of all the constraints in the Salmon Creek Basin. And a whole bunch of listed species occur in Tumwater. I found some of them there and I'd like to see them recover. So those critters need open space and they need appropriate stormwater management. and appropriate management of wells. Um, and the water management is so important, like inter-jurisdictionally, you know, cause we share watersheds with so many cities and, you know, I'm seeing spotted frogs going dry in a lot of places. It's just going to be a real tough to recover, but I just want you to remember that there's constraints in, in some of the UGA's with a lot of things and, um, I just want you to remember that. And I really did like that Thurston County likes to do or prefers to do infiltration and dispersion as a stormwater management approach. Thank you. Bye.

Hi. My name is Betsy Norton and I live at 1405 Evergreen Park Drive Southwest in Olympia. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I only had a short time to take a look at your agenda and your presentations, but I have some questions. I was wondering why the HCP and the SMP would be integrated. And I'm just concerned that I don't want, you know, if that happens, I don't want the strength of the HCP to be diminished. So I just ask you to take a look at that. Secondly, are you considering manmade structures in your shoreline and critical areas? Things like stormwater ponds, ditches, mining lakes and ponds. I think that particularly with climate change and our struggle to maintain fresh water supplies, we're going to need to think about things like that. Reuse as reservoirs. Third, are you considering aquatic connectivity when you are assessing the impacts and setting boundaries and limits on water bodies? Streams and rivers scope should include downstream influences. Connected wetlands impacts should include the network they're connected to. And most water bodies are connected to some sort of groundwater source. So retaining water quality and quantity in the larger sense is important and should be a goal of whichever code you guys end up with. I was wondering if you guys can create a no net loss calculator that the public can use to verify that your permitting desk is actually calculating that reasonably. And when you say that permitting and administration is handled solely by SMP, do you mean that SMP basically the rules and processes take priority? Or did you mean that there was an actual staff group dedicated to SMP. That wasn't clear to me from the presentation. And then finally, would adopting city codes for UGAs apply to all cities or only the big three? And if possible, is it possible to just do a reference thing, but also set up county codes so that you take whatever is the most protective of any of the rules? That's what I would prefer. Thank you. Bye.

Thank you very much. Is there anybody else that would like to address the Planning Commission? I'll come back to the order if anybody here missed that would like to. All right. Well, that will conclude our public communication portion of our agenda. We're going to move on to the next part, which would be the communication debrief with staff. And I would also like to note that Commissioner Miller has made it online. I've seen Commissioner Fishburne's hand approved.

Yeah, thanks. We're having a hard time, or I'm having a hard time at least, hearing folks that are around the table. So the board and staff at the table. The microphone seems to be fine. Like the public speakers are coming through just fine. People also on the internet are coming through just fine. But you all in the room, it sounds like there's something going on with room audio. So it's very garbled. That's, yeah, it's terrible. And I know, Commissioner, Commissioner pestinger was saying something similar.

So yeah, I'm experiencing the same thing.

Okay. Sounds like it might be one of the mics connection.

They have a different setup in this room than they usually do. Yeah. So maybe that's some of the audio controls were changed in some way. Do we know how to change them back?

We had this issue, we had a stuff or it might actually be your question. the Zoom and the folks who were able to hear from the laptop if we spoke loudly enough.

We're just going to hand this over to Commissioner Bonbarber to do all of that thing.

Hello.

Check.

That sounds really good.

Yeah, so this is what's currently the primary audio microphone. I wonder what happens if I turn it off.

The room seems like it's getting worse, but that microphone is good.

Well, it's on right now, so I think it's overriding the room.

Is it just...

It's the table room.

I'll just walk away until it loses its connection.

You could lay it on the table, Daniel.

Now it's flashing a funny color. Hello?

Keep talking because that seems like it made it a little bit better.

Is the room picking up now because I disconnected?

Yeah, you're picking up good. Can a few other commissioners talk because it really depended on who was speaking.

For our

I'm joking. All right. Well, I hope you guys can hear better now.

Yeah, that's way better. Thank you.

Well, we need to.

Well. So we heard a lot today. I'm not sure that there's much that makes a ton of sense to address before we have the presentations from staff. Will the presentation answer a lot of this? I think they'll cover a lot of it. And some of the discussion that might break out amongst you all might be better suited for that.

There was one question I think it might make sense to answer before. And that was, would it apply to just the big three or all the UGAs? Because I don't think that was addressed in the presentation.

only have separate joint codes for Tumwater Olympia and Lacey so the southern cities would stick to count there yes okay that's the answer cities themselves have their own codes but and they also have smaller UTAs especially with the recent Yelm annexation unrelated just a I'm going to be heading back to the shelter at eight so that'll be my time out of here thanks for letting us know

Is there anything anybody had a question about? I think Mr. Passenger.

Well, maybe we could circle back to this agenda item if we need to after the presentation and finish up any of those questions that might be lingering from public comment. But if we move on with the presentation now and that solves most of these or answers most of these, I think that'd be great.

Yeah. And we will have folks who might be best suited to answer them who are working directly on them. Great. With questions.

We're going to move on to item number five, which is work session number two, UGA code updates, the major changes crosswalk. And I'm going to be doing this one.

Okay. Good evening, planning commissioners. Maya Teeple, senior planner with Thurston County Community Planning. I'm here with you at some of my last planning commission meetings with the county. I do want to say, Cassina, when you were speaking, it was a little in and out. So if you could just try and speak up. I don't know why the audio is having issues with you, but it's your voice specifically. So I can hear you and I can make out your questions, but if I have to ask you your to repeat it um that's why okay okay so trying to find my share button and share my screen here we go so tonight the presentation that I'm bringing to you all is to talk about our urban growth area codes and how the county is moving towards adopting them by reference um so Christy, great question. Adoption by reference. What does that mean? It basically means that we're going to be adopting the city's codes in most cases by simply having a reference to sections within their codes. It could be titles. In some cases, it's specific chapters. And then the public and our planners at Thurston County who do the permitting will use basically the city code. So that means that when the city implements changes, whatever is in place in their code will take effect at the county level as well in most situations for our open growth areas. And as mentioned, this is focused on Lacey, Tumwater and Olympia. We only have separate zoning codes for those three cities right now. The other South County cities are all subject to Title 20 rural zoning. So our last work session, it's been quite some time, but in February, we provided an overview to the Planning Commission. And at that meeting, it was mostly general information, just a high level update on this project and what it means, the historic approach for how the county and the cities have done permitting in those areas and also how the county has updated codes in those areas. And then we provided general information on the timeline for this project. So today I will give a little bit more detail. The crosswalk is still fairly high level. It's really hard to synthesize this amount of information down into something that can just be easily taken in. So still pretty general tonight, but I'll provide an overview of what the biggest changes are going to be and what that means for the county. So you'll see I'll work through each section of code and I'll just go over what we're doing now. what the differences are between the county and the city codes that are in place, and then what the approach is planned for this project. And then I'll also provide a high level update on changes to joint plans. So this is not the UGA code by reference is not the project where we're doing a whole update to our joint plan across the board. It's meant to be a targeted update to those plans just to facilitate this code by reference adoption. so um project overview right now tonight we'll be talking about lacey and tumwater that's titles 21 and 22 and both of those will again adopting by reference basically means we'll be pointing to the city codes that we would be applying in those urban growth areas And in cases where we retain county codes, we'll be pointing to county codes. That will mean that right now our titles 21 through 23 have all the zoning districts. They have all of the standards copied over from city codes and updated. They'll mostly become administrative. So maybe eight to 10 pages of pretty much pointing folks where they need to go in order to get the information they need for permitting. And what this does is it will help the county quickly comply with the recent changes in state law. The biggest one is housing. There have been a lot of changes around housing, what types of housing needs to be allowed, emergency housing, transitional housing, housing types. All of that right now in our county UGA codes is out of date and moving towards an adoption by reference facilitates bringing us quickly up to speed and in compliance with the recent changes in state law. And then it also keeps us more aligned with future changes in state law. So our last updates to our joint codes, I mean, we've done some updates over the years. The biggest ones that I've known of in my time at the county have been low impact development, LID, and that was in 2016. And then sometime around then, we also did urban agriculture code updates. But other than that, most of these codes have not really been substantially touched since the 90s. They're 30 years old. So doing an adoption by reference really keeps us aligned with the changes the cities are making in their city codes so that our UGA is alike those areas. And again, as far as the joint plans go, it's a very light targeted update of what needs to be done in order to facilitate an adoption by reference. So going through it, please stop me if you have questions and feel free to just interject and speak over me because I can't always see everybody's hands on the Zoom meeting. But for zoning, currently the county copies over all of the zoning chapters and we adopt them into titles 21, 22, and 23. That's Lacey, Tumwater, and Olympia. Some of those zoning codes are adapted to county needs. The most recent examples, as I mentioned, are LID and urban agriculture. But in the city ordinances and the city zoning districts, they have been updated much more recently than our county copies of them. 30 years old is quite old for zoning regulations. I would say when I was doing a cross comparison between zoning of what the county has on the books versus the zoning that the city has on the books, the biggest changes that I could consistently identify across all of those at a general level is The types of uses are more updated. The environmental performance standards and the design standards are more updated in the city codes. And generally things like setbacks, lot widths, Those types of things, building heights, those were all the same, right? Those haven't been changed so much since the early 90s, but the types of uses and the performance standards that go along with those are all updated in city zoning district codes. So our approach for this with this project is to adopt by reference the city zoning codes. So that will mean that the types of uses that they allow in there, the design standards, the performance standards, setbacks, lot widths, all of those things will be applied in the UGA as well. The exception to this and this falls under zoning is the county has provisions for less restrictive alternative housing. I know some of the planning commissioners on this group may recall that. We also have something called an emergency housing ordinance waiver, which both of those things we will retain and we will hold on to those so that we can apply those within our urban growth areas. So we'll just point to Title 20 in those two situations. But otherwise, we'll be using the city codes for zoning district standards. Subdivision standards. So this is one of the bigger changes that we're running into with this proposal. Right now, we currently use the county subdivision code for our urban growth areas, and that's Title 18 and Thurston County code. Moving forward, the plan is to adopt city subdivision codes, so an adoption by reference in this situation. I will say the biggest difference when looking across these two titles, they're very different, but mostly procedural and types of permits are the same across cities and counties. But the biggest difference is the county code ties our subdivision more into critical areas. So critical areas will impact the design of a subdivision. And city codes emphasize things like density, design, infrastructure, incorporating the critical area into the design of the subdivision. So in order to meet our densities in the urban growth area, it's really important to apply the city subdivision code and move towards that. I wouldn't say that it lessens the protection for critical areas, but it does allow developers more flexibility. And I'll talk about that in the next couple of slides when I get to the critical area slide. critical areas, speaking of. So again, this is one of the areas that is going to be a major change for Thurston County. Right now and under our MOUs, our very dated MOUs with the cities, we apply the county critical areas ordinance for the urban growth areas. So all of the provisions in Title 24 apply in Lacey, Tumwater, Olympia, countywide, basically outside of the cities. And so county critical areas, the big thing is they limit flexibility for developer. In most situations, if you want to impact the buffer over a certain percentage, you have to do a mitigation plan or reasonable use exception. There can be that can require hearing examiner if it hits a certain level. And there's just a lot of additional process associated with that and less flexibility for the developer. Going forward, the approach would be to use the city critical areas, except for the shoreline area, which I'll get into a little bit more detail on the next slide. But the cities build critical area impacts into their site plan review, and so they are generally a little bit more flexible than the county is on things like buffer averaging, buffer reduction, buffer mitigation. And additionally, when looking, when cross comparing like our county code to the city codes, their buffers are a little bit smaller than Thurston County. So I think the example I wrote down is like a category one wetland in Thurston County can range from 150 to 300 feet, depending on the class of it. And then in Lacey, that's 100 to 225 feet. So it's not You know, it's a good amount of distance when you have a setback on a property that's 10 or 15 feet in the urban area. But those are the types of things that will, again, allow us to reach certain densities in our urban growth area. So shoreline master program on the last slide I mentioned that will retain our critical areas ordinance for the county in shoreline areas. So initially when we had started working on this project, we had the thought to use city shoreline master programs and We were going to go with that approach. But after further conversations with Ecology, they indicated that we should not do an adoption by reference. And that in fact, that option will be going away in the future. There are going to be legislature changes so that the county really needs to retain their own SMP for UGA areas. Also, not all the cities I have found out since designate all the shoreline areas in their urban growth area. So it would have been pretty inconsistent to try and adopt city SMPs by reference. So knowing that, we will be retaining the county shoreline master program for our urban growth areas. It's not a ton of area. There are a few lakefront areas. Lacey really has the bulk of the lakefront with Pattison, Long Lake, Woodland Creek, and a small section of marine shoreline in the Nisqually Reach, which may ultimately go away after annexation. but, um, uh, we'll be retaining the County SMP and the County CAO only for shoreline jurisdiction. So what that means is if you're a shoreline property owner, your zoning district standards would be whatever the city code has in place, but your SMP and your critical areas will be what the County has on the books, which is, um, Pretty similar to how those properties are being treated now outside of the zoning piece. Flood standards. I called this one out specifically just because flood is a big one and it's not just in your critical areas ordinance. It's across a couple different sections of code. So we really wanted to investigate this just to see how it would influence impact things like flood insurance rating and all of that. But currently, the county uses the county CAO for the urban growth area. So by default, our flood standards. And since going forward, we will be using a city critical areas ordinance. There are a couple differences. Cities use things like seasonal high groundwater instead of just a high groundwater buffer like the county does in that critical areas ordinance. But primarily the building code regulations for Thurston County will still apply. So any sort of flood review will still have to comply with Thurston County building code. and that is where we get the bulk of our flood rating from. Again, same with shoreline, not expected to impact a significant area. I actually worked with our CRS coordinator to evaluate that, and it really only comes down to across all three North County UJs, roughly 11% of flood insurance policies are in that area. So We don't expect that this will be a huge impact, but we'll be using city CAO and flood under their CAO, but still counting building standards. And I'll pause for Commissioner Pestinger on the phone.

Thank you. So one of the members of the public, I think Mr. Smith had asked about shoreline master plan stuff and I'm not sure whether he was asking about stuff related to the CAO. I kind of doubted it. It sounded like he was talking about the total shoreline master plan and the status with the county commissioners and all that. Is this the portion of the agenda that his question might be addressed or is there a different portion of the agenda that would be covered under?

Yeah, Andy, feel free to jump in here. I think we also have SMP and HCP integration for the CAO as the next work session. And I think he was more referring to if the planning commission would revisit shoreline overall, not necessarily as it relates to the urban growth area codes. Okay, thank you.

So I can do that now or I can wait? Let's hold it for your presentation.

Yes, that is true. Thank you.

Okay. And now the volume is really low in the room.

So I'm just going to say, I think we lost audio again. We can like hardly hear you at all.

So I'm going to keep going, but if there are a lot of questions, I'm either going to rely on Anna or Ashley to help, or we might do, I don't know what we, I can't remember what we did last year with calling in from the zoom, but yeah,

Better now? Can someone over there speak? Can you hear her now?

Yes, a little bit better.

Okay. Seems like that microphone. It's an evil microphone.

Never a boring night. Okay, so stormwater and drainage. Currently, we use county provisions for urban growth areas, and that means the county drainage and erosion control manual and the county stormwater standards. the approach going forward is that we will retain county standards. So we are not planning on moving towards an adoption by reference for these specific codes. However, what I will say is that Some city zoning and subdivision standards may still incorporate things like LID concepts, open space. So we will really get the benefit of both. And I think it was Betsy Norton who said, maybe it was Bonnie. I can't remember if it was Bonnie or Betsy who said they like the dispersion and infiltration. So that is more representative of how the county applies the DDECM. Cities generally focus on LID and BMPs. So we will retain county provisions here for our urban growth areas. And like I said, we'll get a lot of what the cities would apply for LID within their zoning district and their subdivision provisions. And not adopting this by reference is mainly this is like a public works item. So this would be a heavier lift if we were to pursue something like that with lots of other threads through our drainage manual. So Habitat Conservation Plan, Thurston County does have an HCP program and implementation provisions. Right now, the county HCP applies within the urban growth areas and we will be retaining county standards. So all of that will be carried over as is. The city standards and zoning and everything else that we're adopting by reference will not replace or replace override or anything to our county HCP. So this will continue as it is occurring now. Yes, Commissioner Pestinger.

Thank you. I'm looking at our notes from our last session and I'm seeing the fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas and you're talking about habitat conservation plans. Are those intertwined and is that part of the CAO, the Fish and Wildlife Habitat Conservation Areas, or is that different from the HCP?

Yes and no. So Fish and Wildlife Habitat Conservation Areas are within the critical areas ordinance. And so Thurston County and the cities each do have provisions for those. However, the county also has a separate HCP ordinance, which is in Title 17, and that is what will be carried over and retained, as well as the separate HCP plan.

Thank you.

Agricultural Critical Areas. So right now we have County Agricultural Critical Areas Ordinance, which is Chapter 1715. And we colloquially refer to this as the AgCAO. This is basically the code that operates under the Voluntary Stewardship Program. So for agricultural activities, that are existing and ongoing. That means things that were in place on or before July 24th, 2012, as is specified in code. Those are subject to different CAO provisions, which is a separate chapter. Cities don't have their own separate provisions for agricultural areas so we will continue to rely on county provisions and that just just continues to allow for our VSP program to operate in those areas as well. One thing I will note is that most of the cities specifically Lacey has phased out and are phasing out their agricultural zones so So ag is still permitted as a use in certain areas, but the zones designated for agriculture have gone away, at least in the city. And then as part of this update that is proposed. And I'll talk a little bit more about that at the end, what that is changing to. Questions on this? So forest lands conversion, this slide and the next slide are on trees, and I know this was a point of conversation in one of the comments we received. So starting with forest lands conversion, this is really like you're clear cutting a property and you want to convert it to a use other than forestry, any sort of non forestry use. So currently, Under our dated MOUs, we apply county standards and we apply them uniformly for all UGAs. So all of the UGAs across the county receive Thurston County FLC standards for slant conversion. The county does have a carve-out for Class IV forest practices and other forest practices for a single-family residence, but other development types are limited after certain forest practices permits. The approach moving forward is to adopt city forest lands conversion standards. Those primarily confirm conform with state law. So I would say most of the provisions under class one through four forest practices are under state law. But this is really tied to the next slide because the city intertwines their forest lands conversion with their tree protections. So I'll talk about tree protections and then if the Planning Commission has questions, we can discuss a little bit further. But tree protections, right now, again, we apply county provisions uniformly to the whole county, including our urban growth areas. Our current tree protection standards that were adopted a few years ago are mostly intended to address single-family residential development. They don't really address other types of development that we would see in the UGAs, things like multifamily, commercial, industrial. Those types of uses are not addressed by our tree protection standards. Our approach going forward would be to adopt city tree protection standards. Again, the forest lands conversion is intertwined with that, which is why we would do both. But the biggest difference is that the cities have a little bit different tree protection standards like Ms. Lynn said they do, I think she referred to it as a floor method where you can clear and then replant. And I would say my reading of the codes is that's accurate. Lacey does prioritize the type of tree. So they don't necessarily specify on size, but they indirectly get it that through like the tree being near a critical area or in a buffer or something like that. And they prioritize based on that. And all of the city provisions, Lacey and Tom order, I should say, I haven't evaluated Olympia yet. They all have provisions for tree protection in subdivisions, industrial, commercial, and single family. So they cover the gamut of the types of development you get in. They, they all have certain tree protection requirements. Generally speaking, cities require, I would say, more trees than the county tree protection standards, like in terms of replanting. But yes, Lynn is right. They don't necessarily require that old or large trees be retained. The main thing is the city provisions, while they do require tree planting, they allow greater flexibility to the developer. Some of the cities like Tumwater, they have like a tree bank and there's a penalty for cutting certain trees or you have to replant more or pay more if you clear cut or something like that. So the biggest thing is that they allow the developer a little bit more flexibility to accommodate their design and to reach urban levels of density. So I will stop there and see if there are questions. And I'll also check in with Ashley if she had anything that she wanted to add on trees.

I think the only thing I would point out, because it was also brought up, the board did identify urban tree protections as a priority for our joint planning areas, our North County UGAs. What we're leaning into when we did a scan of the codes is really a timing issue for We would like to get the joint codes updated because of all of the housing provisions. And it is going to take more time. I think, you know, Ms. Fitz, you said that the, in some cases, the cities have been working on this for years. Tumwater has had two different consultants, you know, they have money for that. We don't. So it's going to take longer for us to be able to research this in a comprehensive way and do it in the same way that we did the forest lands conversion update. And just from a staff perspective, we're worried that that time then just hinders our ability to adopt all the new housing provisions for the UGA and work toward the county's 5% real growth target.

Commissioner Pessinger has a question first, but then I do. Commissioner Pessinger?

Thank you, so I share, I hear and I share concerns that we heard from the public today and previously about lack of tree protections. I don't think ours are good enough in the county and I think they're really not great in the city and I hear You know, I hear this talk about, oh, they have some good things. They have some protective measures. They do types of trees and things like that. But I live in Lacey and I've experienced Lacey for decades and it's not good. And if you just look right now today at what's been developed recently, I mean, the new Lacey police station, massive clear cut with a few trees on the fringes left basically to hide the fact that they clear cut everything from the road. Um, a giant apartment development over on carpenter road, uh, massive clear cuts, very few trees anywhere, just on the fringes. And, uh, there's a massive development between Martin road and the I five freeway. That's in Lacey. That's in the UGA at the least that is a massive, massive clear cut. Um, there's many more of these. This is just simple current examples we drive past every day. And I just, I don't understand how we're not being more aggressive in tree protections. I feel like we really need to do more. The county, even if it's not matching up with what the cities want right now, I would rather have us take the stance that in the UGA's, Um, we're at least going to ask for a higher standard if it gets overruled or something by the city. So be it, but at least we should be pushing and pressuring the cities to be more protective. I'm looking at our notes from our last meeting on page two, uh, starting on line five is where I asked about the removal of heritage trees on the Tumwater thing. And. literally on that same page, too, if you go down to the section on the fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas, if you go to line 37, Ms. Swearegen then reviewed the protected species where protected species rely on prairies or mature forests. Mature forests were cutting down and mature trees were cutting down. And then we've got these policies that say, oh, replanting a few saplings is going to make up for that. It's insane. It's going to take hundreds of years for a few saplings to turn into mature trees and forests. Why are we cutting down hundreds of years old trees and then saying we can replace them with a few saplings? And then on top of all of that, we do that at a UGA because we say we need housing, but then we're just a mile down the road and we're in the county. And we're saying, let's do stuff to restore our forest canopy cover. And we're making a bunch of efforts there. So we're going to spend money and energy trying to plant trees and grow trees and rebuild forests a mile away while we're just actively cutting stuff down that didn't have to be cut down. I mean, I get that it's more profitable to cut them down, but I don't think they had to be cut down. There are ways around this. We've got to find ways. and be more protective of our trees. And the public is asking this of us. And we, as planning commissioners, at least some of us, and I think maybe most of us, are asking for this.

Commissioner Bartlett, did you have something? Just to add on, Commissioner Pessinger covered a number of my concerns. But I know that the UGAs are largely in mind when we were talking about a lot of our concerns our comprehensive plan goals. We were talking about the goals around climate mitigation, around a lot of the development issues. We were constantly referencing back to what is this going to do in the UGAs? What is the effect there? Because the UGAs really are that we're locking in a lot of development potential there. We're locking in a lot of the mitigation potential for a lot of the development we're going to see if we can have decent tree protection. I'm worried about what the timeframe was, which is actually going to be my question about this. I understand that we are looking to address this in future climate updates, but I'm concerned that that pushes that to an ambiguous future that may not address it in time for a lot of this major development that's going to be happening in the meanwhile. I'm wondering what an interim measure would look like if we don't have the capacity to go for something that is an in-depth policy. We do want to move forward, but we don't want a full deregulatory approach, which I don't think any of us do. What would something like that look like?

It's really resource intensive and we don't have the resources to commit to developing a new urban tree ordinance, which is what this would be. You're taking three very distinct zoning codes across three different cities and they're woven in. They're like, it's a, you know, very detailed fabric with all these pieces woven together. It's not that it can't be done, but you have to make sure you're not like ripping this thing apart. So I think the options at this point are it's ours or it's the city's. And we're trying to brainstorm ways that like, could we, one of the ideas we've had is both Lacey and Tumwater. They have a tool in their toolbox. We don't have, they have these tree banks and, Right now, their tree banks are really set to you pay based on the value of the tree that you would plant. And we were wondering if maybe we could take that same tool, that same idea, but maybe tie the value to the trees. Figure out some kind of value piece for trees being removed. Because then that would tie back to the tree conservation chapter that the county adopted. Then you could start incentivizing retaining the larger trees because you'd have to pay more into the tree bank to remove that. And that's something that like, Oh, could be applied across the UTAs without breaking their codes apart and trying to piece them back together in a way that would apply across, across all of them.

That's exactly the sort of thing I'm thinking about. It's like, what are these, what are these additional tools? If we can't, if this is going to take too much time. Okay. Things like that sound great to me.

One of the other reasons that we were hoping to adopt the city codes by reference is that they are working on updates. So Tumwater just launched the second phase of their update to their own tree standards. If we go this route of being able to recognize the updates that the cities are making more in real time rather than with a 30-year lag, then we will also leave room for Tumwater to adopt those new standards without us then trying to follow up within a reasonable timeframe to get those integrated or having to redo a bunch of work to recognize that. Lacey, I know has talked about it. I don't think it's on their work plan for this docket cycle, but that is one of the benefits that you don't get this like 30 year gap and what they have versus what we have. Lacey's tree protection standards aren't even woven into our joint codes because they exist outside of their zoning chapters. They live in their building and construction chapters, which we never integrated in. It's just a really good example of their code has moved so far beyond ours in 30 years that the tree protection standards they have are not even reflected in the zoning standards that we have on the books. So just some thoughts. but we don't have the budget or the resources to do a full stop right now.

This feels different than a lot of the other presentations we get where a lot of times it's asking us and this one feels very much like it's telling us what CFED is going to do, which feels different because it makes me feel personally like my opinion isn't really being taken into consideration. I know one of the things that was stated by Maya was that it's not less protective, but as an example, the CAO in Lacey allows wetlands to count as up to 50% of your open space requirements. The county doesn't do that. So that actually incentivizes building on areas with wetlands with less buffer. because that area can count as open space for your development. We also did a lot of work on trying to prevent things like data centers and warehouses in the county that we all agree are net negatives. And if we adopt this by reference, we're abdicating any power to control that in the UDAs. We're saying, Great. Hey, maybe Lacey bans it right now, but if Lacey decides to change their mind, we're not involved in that. Lacey can do what it wants because we adopted it by references. When it changes, that's what it is. I'm actually less concerned about the tree protection standards. I've looked into it. Tumwater actually has better tree canopy rules than us. Lacey has better tree removal standards than us, but they have a lots of like, but you can get these fun little exceptions through administration or the city arborist that we don't have. So that's where it's a little iffy, but My particular concerns are CAO because I respectfully disagree. The city UGA, the city codes are far more permissive from an environmental protection standard in their development.

I just want to the not asking for feedback, that really isn't the staff's intent. We also are operating under the direction of old MOUs that basically create a joint planning framework that says that we should be adopting and implementing the city's zoning standards. Those are documents that can be updated. And I know we've had conversations with at least a few of you that your recommendation onto the board could be Here's how we feel about this joint code proposal in joint plan update. And also, please consider updating the MOUs. But as they stand right now and within the countywide planning policies, joint planning looks like us administering the city's codes. And at least in the conversations I was part of for the comprehensive plan update, when the UJs were discussed, they were discussed as the place where housing was going to occur in order to get to a 5% rural growth target. As it relates to the critical areas ordinance, it is very limiting in the UGAs. The only thing within RCO currently that we can modify, that I can modify, is density. So I can waive density, but I can't waive anything else. So we are having developments happen in UGAs that don't even meet minimum density. So we're not seeing the housing potential

Just to emphasize, adopting this doesn't just adopt it for housing. It adopts it for other zonings like commercial and industrial. And that's where a lot of my concerns come in.

Yeah, everything but the carve-outs.

Yeah, but the carve-outs. And that's my concern. If we were saying we would like to adopt city CAOs for residential development, I would be more comfortable than we're just going to adopt them wholesale.

Do you want it?

Oh yeah. I'm sitting here waiting. So I'm going to first, I'm going to apologize to staff because I know this is going to sound like it's coming at you, but it's coming up the County. Okay. Number one, I don't think it's fair to say that it's been 20, 30 years since we've updated these things, because as some of you will remember, I believe right before and during COVID we didn't tell them water. Since COVID, we've done Olympia and Lacey. And we were specifically told at those times when we were trying to make changes that we couldn't because of the MOU. And I think the only reason the cities are ahead of us is because state law changed and they had to change. We tried years ago to put development into the UGAs. And we were shut down by staff and technically the county commissioners. The other thing, there was some discussion about ag, there was ag standards and ag code. And those of us that were here for Tumwater remember, there was a recommendation to adopt by reference Tumwaters AG code or whatever they call it. And this planning commission voted entirely nine to zero at the time, or I think it was eight to zero. I think somebody was not there to pull all those recommendations out. And two of our current county commissioners said no. And I went to the public hearing. This is why I know it was during COVID because I testified on Zoom. So I, as a planning commissioner, went to that public hearing on Zoom, said, this is what this says. Tumwater City staff said, no, that's not what it says. And the county commissioners didn't even have enough respect for me to ask me why I thought that. They just went on. They voted to put this in. I would also ask, why are we sticking to a memorandum of understanding that I believe the cities are not upholding their end of the deal? So I think that's a question that staff, the planning commission and the public need to be asking the county commissioners. Because I said this before, basically, let's say, let's just say This is the city and that's the UGA over there. Basically, when we say we're going to adopt these by reference, you're telling those people out there that their opinion doesn't matter because they live in the county and can't vote for city representation, but the city now gets to do whatever they want with that person's land, right? there is a problem there. And we hear a lot about democracy and a lot about representation. I think if the County commissioners move forward with this, it's exactly what they're doing. They're taking, tearing away representation from these people. And I say that as somebody who lives in the County, doesn't live in the UGA, I do own land in the city, but that's different. Um, And then to commissioner bone gardeners point, it really feels like, and I'm sure this is coming from, not from staff, but from the County commissioners, it feels like we're being told this is what we're going to do. Get on board because I mean, every one of these was, this is what it is currently. This is the city's approach. this is what we're going to do. We're either going to maintain our own stuff or we're going to adopt the cities. And I would ask the county commissioners if that's their approach, then why are they going to bother with us? Which I know because they have to. That's been their position on a lot of things. And also there was a comment about We were talking about doing this, but ecology said the law is going to change. And this is an ecology problem. But how does ecology know the law is going to change? I think for the law to change, it has to go through the legislature. I guess as it's holding.

So. And I do just want to clarify, we haven't reviewed this with if there are changes that the planning commission wants to make. This is the proposal based on review of the codes and how we think we can do this with a minimal amount of breaking of the codes. But this is for you all to review and say, No, here's another way. But what we're really trying to get at is we're operating under preemption clauses right now in the urban growth area. And because there are a number of state housing provisions that were not that are reflected in the codes.

Commissioner Miller? Commissioner Miller, did you have something?

I'm going to come back to Commissioner Bumgarner then. I was just going to reiterate my previous point. I understand that the housing needs in particular, but adopting their full codes doesn't just address housing Again, my personal ask, and I can't speak for the board, is I don't think we should be adopting, like we're carving out shoreline for the county. I feel like industrial and commercial we should keep to the county standards because there's too much potential for abuse in the UGA's IMO based on how some of the city CAOs are written, particularly around sensitive wetlands. That's my main concern.

I have a couple of concerns, and I'll come back through the room again. My biggest concern is always adoption by reference and it not having a timeline on it. I think if we are going to adopt by reference, we have to adopt by reference as of date. and that anytime we, so that way people know what's going on and that way it's not the cities that are dictating to us how we're going to do things. We know what's happening and we're not blindsided by it. There could be times like if the city's tree removal, Lacey's tree removal codes are more protective than ours, we might like that. But if all of a sudden they reverse on that and we have to do that, we might not like that. Or if all of a sudden, if the city of Tumwater decided that they're gonna say, battery energy storage systems can be located in residential areas. I don't think that's going to happen, but if they did that, we would automatically have to accept that. So I think that if we're going to do any kind of adopt by reference, it has to be as of date. And then if we want to, if the city changes something, they can come into a periodic review, maybe during our minor corrections docket item that happens once a year or something like that. Say, these are the new changes that the city has done. that we're gonna incorporate as long, at least so there's some public process to it. I think not having a county resident public process on adopting a city code that's going to apply to them is asking for a lot of trouble. And maybe we call that an alignment or maybe we call that a consent thing. I don't know if that matters.

We can't leave joint codes on the docket all the time.

I'm not even sure how the... That part doesn't matter to me. I just don't want... cities dictating to us what our code is going to be without us at least having a public process that goes along with each and every one of those. So not that the other concerns that the planning commission has aren't just as valid. I think that this would be a real sticker for me to have an automatic adoption by reference without any input from us.

Commissioner Miller did confirm that she is trying to speak but is having trouble unmuting.

Oh,

Can we request her unmute? She's in on her mobile.

She is an attendee and needs to be promoted to a panelist.

Commissioner Halverson? Yeah, I've been just sitting here listening to all this and I know Mr. Ryan knows my opinion on joint plans. Having been through all three of the joint planning sessions, with the cities and being very vocal about what the cities were doing and weren't doing. I fully understand the problem with, you know, the Growth Management Act and all that goes into that, trying to get more people into smaller places and the county's thing about pushing all 5% into the UGAs. So I understand the problem, but I still, like Commissioner Nelson, Commissioner Cassino, they were both there when we went through this with the three cities. We didn't like a lot of what the cities were planning to do and adopting everything by reference to me is kind of like saying, well, we're not going to be useful. We're just going to set aside and let the cities do what they want. I know... I don't know, but I know that most of the Board of County Commissioners agree with the joint plans that the cities have and the MOU and all that. What really gets in my crawl is I was at the meeting Tuesday when the commissioners pushed off the decision on the land use appeals process because two of our five commissioners said they were gonna vote against it and they wanted to at least have four vote for it. When this body, the current body of 10 planning commissioners voted 10 to zero to keep the process where the county commissioner, the appeal went to the county commissioners and not to the court system I just felt like, and I talked to one of the commissioners afterwards, I just felt like, okay, well, again, this is just another example of why is your planning commissioner here making recommendation that's 10 to zero and you're not listening to us? And I felt the same way with the joint plans with the cities and talking to them about it. So I have some real concerns that have already been expressed about adopting by reference. I'll just end it there. Commissioner Miller?

Hello, can you guys hear me? Yay, okay. I just wanted to touch in on what Commissioner Pessinger said. I completely agree with him. There is, and everything everybody else is saying, that there is things that we can do, I think. We, commissioner, passenger service, mentioned how we can if we have to go up against somebody I feel like at least we can try even if it doesn't pass even if our voices don't get heard at least we did try because we are here so that we are here to for the environment and cutting down trees is hurting the environment it hurt it's hurting the wildlife and therefore like Commissioner Bumbarker said, if it's with housing, then that's one thing. But commercial, like Commissioner Pessinger said, the police station, that was a useless way to cut down tons and tons of trees. And So I do feel like that there is something that we can at least try, but throwing up the hands and saying that there is nothing, we don't want to go against the code, I think that is unfair to the public and also to our environment. Thank you.

which is pretty clear at this point. I just wanted to clarify that I agree with Director Arai about the importance of the urban growth areas for specifically where we're going to meet our residential goals. And I dispute the idea that we have to choose between tree retention and density. And in fact, I think that if we're talking about building larger housing and not tracked housing, that's exactly the way to retain tree density and meet our housing goals. But more to the point, I think what I'm hearing here is that we would prefer We are, if we're adopting by reference, we're adopting specific reference. We are choosing consciously where the references are that we are adopting. And we are being conscientious about that process and responsive to the strong feelings of the public on this. And I know that we have a standard that we are set by. I know that we that we're kind of running up against, but I think at minimum we can point where it is most useful rather than just adopting wholesale.

Commissioner Pessinger.

Thank you, Chair. As a follow-on point about the tree cutting, I'm sad to report that I, in the last few months, had to spend a little bit of time at our local Providence St. Peter's Hospital And while I was there, if anyone knows that location, that campus that the hospital and medical facilities are on, you'll know that it's a very large building, lots of other buildings nearby, and yet it also manages in all of that property to have a huge amount of standing trees. And while I was there, I had several doctors explain to me that there's a large number of studies that show that literally patients in a hospital looking out a window and seeing trees heal way faster than patients looking out a window and not seeing any nature at all. And if we can build a giant hospital facility and campus with a bunch of medical buildings everywhere and still retain a huge amount of forest and trees right there next to the buildings. It's why it boggles my mind to see like a police station and a giant apartment complex that literally could have done the exact same thing and don't do any of that. They just clear cut across the entire space and then save a little trees just barely on the edges. um it is literally better for health and those people living in those apartments deserve to also have a little nature and didn't need it to all be cut down just for efficiency's sake all right so yeah it would be great to have some direction can i try to reflect back some oh i'm i'm sorry um just something that came to me while we're

going through this, the open space tracked comment. You require it in the UGA, but cities don't. But when that was set up, that was for a reason. So you would have space on a property once that became part of the city for development. So you would have instead of having A few houses spread over a large parcel. You would have less houses on a smaller section of it. And you would have this space on the side that when the cities decided it was time to annex that area, there would be a place. Because if you have a house built on every acre, it doesn't make a lot of sense to annex it and bring it to urban development standards because that's going to cost a lot of money. Talk about planned infill.

It's shadow planning and siting of houses. So that does exist. I feel like there's a few choices right now. I mean, I just have to be really honest about our resources. So we don't have the resources to hire consultants and to help us draft a brand new urban tree code. We can explore, we do have resources. We could explore what it would look like to just do a residential update at this time to meet sort of the minimum standards. We can also, we can do that. We can look at like, we're going through a CAO update now. Do we want our CAO to apply with that help address? Because we do have resources established for that. to get the CAO through so we could apply it in the UGAs. I would ask that we consider at least a few more allowments for flexibility so that I can change lot sizes rather than just get rid of minimum density. But we could have them track together and have our CAO apply, or we could table and just operate under preemption, which basically means that the state laws, the state laws are what we implement. It's harder for our staff and the public because when you go to our code, you're not seeing the updates there. But we have an area of our website where we can just highlight the things that apply for the new housing rules. And there's some subdivision stuff too. So any specific feedback on that? I want to be able in Maya's last few weeks to... We're going to start with Commissioner Bartlett because he has to go soon.

Oh, actually, I don't have to go. I pushed my time back so I can stay. It was important. Yeah, I specifically, the flexibility you mentioned, I think is important around lot sizes and being able to move those. I would support that.

But applying RCAO rather than continuing down a pathway of, which for our planners, if you've if the Planning Commission could keep in mind, and maybe we add a work session to talk about as the CAO gets developed, what it means for an urban environment, because there are some additional considerations you'll want to have in there, but I don't know how the rest of the Planning Commission feels, but we could start going down that path of, yes, we apply our CAO.

If I could make a suggestion, The last time we were in a situation like this, and we already had a nice little crosswalk. We just went issue by issue and sort of gave where we're feeling on it. We already have this memo that has a nice like this issue and what we're suggesting. Maybe we just sort of see where we're at on it.

I don't know. So would that give us like a, we essentially like benchmark off the city codes and see where there was.

Whether we agree with the recommendation on trees, whether we agree on the recommendation on CAO, like talking about pulling out our carve out.

It's a little harder with, I don't want to misrepresent what we would put in that crosswalk because a lot of them are, yes, it's possible. But it's a difficult code lift, just the integration of the puzzle pieces. So we could do that. I just don't want you to be surprised. It's not us trying to be obstinate, but I will have our team be honest about, like, is this something that we can really tackle?

I think what I'm hearing Commissioner Bumberger say is actually just the slides that we were just looking at, going back through those and being like, this is an area of concern. This is an area where we want to.

If you want guidance, and instead of us sort of broadly talking about everything we've been presented, let's just go not long speeches. Like my concern is 10 words for each one so that you have a couple like sticking points for us.

And then the everything else we would leave up to adoption by reference.

I mean, some of them we're probably going to agree with because they're not adopting anything by reference.

It would be nice to, and even if the guidance is table it and go with preemption, like that's guidance, but I just don't want to have Maya, Anna, Nim on our team spinning their wheels. Yeah. Do we have like the five to 10 minutes to go through the topics really quick? We'll try to be, or that will try to be quick.

So the, I think the first one was zoning. The key differences were that the city code allowed for more housing types to increase densities and updated uses and standards. And the approach suggested was adopting city zoning standards and retaining the limited county provisions around the less restrictive alternative housing for sex offenders and the emergency housing ordinance waivers. I know. Oh, sweet. It's up. I just wasn't sure.

Yeah.

Sorry, I was trying to figure out if you were going from the memo or the PowerPoint. And yes, I'll put the PowerPoint up. So zoning. Let's hear the thoughts on zoning.

I'm fine with these. My concern is this is fine for residential. I don't want it to apply to industrial and commercial use. I agree with that.

I agree with that.

I understand that the UGA is a red density needs to happen and I don't want to stand in the way of that. So you think that UGA density should be solely for housing and not for- We should adopt city code by reference for their residential zoning types.

What about in areas where you have commercial, like mixed use? Would you want us to restrict that out or would you want?

You're not likely to get a warehouse or a data center in a mixed use zone, right?

Well, no, but if mixed use has commercial and residential permitted uses, the blanket statement of like, we're good with residential, but not commercial.

I want to clarify. Maybe not permissive, but restrictive, not for industrial and commercial zones.

We could, we could take the guidance that you want to make sure it is some of the highest densities that the cities have are in their mixed use zones, like on Martin way, which I know you've all seen. So we can take a look at the residential allowments and explore whether whether that's possible. Go ahead, Commissioner Miller.

Sorry, I do want to point out with commercial, there are also the ideas of empty buildings being used for commercialized. That could also take an effect. Instead of cutting down trees, that is not any use for.

certain commercial uses intertwined with them. But just looking at our urban growth area, the bulk of the commercial is neighborhood commercial. And then there are just a few very small areas of light industrial. I think we can evaluate that. What that would mean is basically the residential districts get adopted by reference, but the county would pull over chapters and review them specifically for commercial and industrial. Or we could have some sort of review clause provision if, I don't know, we can investigate that. So noted residential, yes. Industrial, commercial, no.

Thank you.

Just to clarify and to reemphasize Commissioner Cassino's point, if we're talking about adopting by reference, can we be specific about adopting by reference? code.

We can do that.

Is anyone opposed to that? Are we all on board with adopting by date if we're doing that?

Anywhere that we do adopt, we adopt by as on unanimous.

We've been talking to now that we have a normal docket and that works.

It sounds like we're in agreement on that. We would just like to add agriculture to that because I'm sure it's small. And I don't really know what Olympian license thing is, but I do know that Tumwater does not allow commercial agriculture. So if we were to not carve out agriculture, then we would be saying, if you are ag and you're in that area, then Tumwater has the right to shut you down. Okay.

would agree with that and that gets to our i agree conversations about wanting to have like more food security and protect that anywhere there's other priorities as well there's also some really cool housing developments i've seen in areas where they keep some functional farm but they still build housing and i think that's there's a lot of that in illinois we want to look at uh next one after zoning yep

Next one, Maya. Next is subdivision standards. So right now we use county subdivision code. And the proposal would be to move towards city subdivision codes.

And you were noting Maya that that you saw that city code as providing the same level of protection of critical areas, but more flexibility for the developer to meet those goals of protection.

I would say there's more flexibility on design for a city subdivision code. Critical areas, the planning commission can go one way or the other depending on their preference. If we adopt county critical areas with a city subdivision code, that could be difficult. That's not something we've evaluated yet. If that's direction from the planning commission, we need to look into that a little bit further.

But if we did that, we would lose tons and tons of development potential in the UGA, which would go directly against the idea of increasing housing.

Yeah, it could potentially complicate things.

As it is right now, that's what we're seeing. It's more stark, though, in the UGA, because, you know, you might have a new development surrounded by one acre or two acre parcel. So it seems dense. But when you actually look at the numbers, dwelling is per acre, we're not capturing the densities that are planned or intended.

Yeah, I think that just for keeping the pressure off of the rural areas, we do need to do everything we can. Well, not everything, but a lot of what we can do to increase the densities of UGAs. And I think having city standards on something that's going to be annexed by the city soon anyways, or hopefully soon, I imagine if they put in new neighborhoods, it'll be sooner than later. I think that's a good idea.

I agree.

I still have concerns particularly about the some of the open space rules and with wetlands and that a CEO rules and it doesn't make a distinction between a commercial development and a subdivision. That's what concerns me. We also did ask about this and this I believe was where Maya said that they could clear cut trees and plant saplings and that counted.

That's the tree protections ordinance. That's a separate item.

That's come into play with the subdivision standards?

No, that's ruled by a separate section of code.

Yeah, these are really like the legal provisions for dividing land. Oh. Your boundary line adjustments, your plats, your platting rules. Ours are really out of date in the county. They also date to the 90s.

I think a lot of us saw subdivision and thought subdivisions.

It's all interplayed. Especially when there's a picture. I know. If we showed what a plat looked like, it's just not totally as engaging. But you get a flat piece of paper when lots being created. So it's a fairly technical section of code. The things that are more interesting are what goes on those lots.

Yeah, I'm, I'm okay with doing those by adoption.

But we can keep in mind the questions and look into it. Next one, I think is hilarious.

This was my biggest area of concern, particularly what how they do how some of the cities interpret open space and allow wetlands to count that I'd also point out like lacy was was told back in like 2006 by trpc that their riparian um riparian buffers were not according to best available science and have not changed since then so they're still operating on almost 30 year old stuff there as well um stuff like that concerns me

This is definitely, I think, the one of a stickler about a patchwork approach.

And I get that that's one of the more difficult things, but we're already agreeing that a patchwork has to exist because we're saying outside of shoreline areas.

All I would ask is if you want to apply the critical areas to reserve time to talk about just some provisions to allow flexibility because they don't exist now and it is really hard.

Is there any way we could maybe use basins as a way of delineating where our CAO would apply?

I think for the ease of our planning staff. I'm just trying to think of ways. No, I appreciate that.

You can imagine all sorts of things. The other thing I think we should be really careful with the critical areas is the county critical areas are really designed for rural spaces. And what we're going to be working on will be very, very closely tailored for rural spaces and probably not be as good of a fit for some of these intended for urban models of development spaces. And if we try and do one that does both well, it will probably end up doing neither well, just from a how it fits to work standpoint compromises. So I think that's the one thing I would like us to be cognizant and careful of this moving forward.

The concern I would like to note is open space interpretation on wetlands. I don't like it. And I don't think we should be adopting that by reference. Lacey City Codes let them remove wetlands as long as they make new wetlands, which ends up in these little swampy ditches they dug. We wouldn't fly in the county. I don't understand why we'd let it fly in a UGA.

I agree with Commissioner Bumbart.

I don't have strong opinions on it, but I do think that we need to get these UGA densities up. And, um, if we're still, uh, looking at using rural designed wetland criteria, um, the director talking about having flexibility to make different mitigation or other opportunities to get the densities up. I'm not sure how that would work, but that's something that we should probably consider.

There are examples. It's more relaxation of other standards. Like I went through five different versions of a concept for a subdivision with a property owner trying to save oak trees. And I couldn't change anything but density. And if I could have shifted lot width, if I could have shifted lots or I, the county could have shifted these other things. You could have saved the trees. Like our codes are working against us. And so it's that kind of thing. It's like, even when you have the best of intentions, you can't accomplish the thing. You can't meet the minimum density and save the trees because you don't allow any flexibility to any of the other standards. So. It's that. It's really trying to find that balance of environmental protection and the intended densities that the Planning Commission and the boards that they want to see in the UGAs.

Commissioner Bartlett? I'm thinking about for this is specifically our comprehensive plans ideas of what we want to be doing for climate protection, what we want to be doing for tree protection, what we want to be doing for connectivity. And these UGAs are a transition zone that matters a lot for that in terms of the way that we build into those spaces, the way that we allow building to happen in there is going to going to have an effect going forward that is kind of hard to reverse. I guess what I'm saying is I like the idea of having a lot more flexibility, and I want to give those tools, but I want those tools to be constrained by what our larger goals are within these protection regimes we've been talking about. And it sounds like we're largely on the same page about what our concerns are, and those concerns are fairly specific. Um, around like wanting to make sure that we're being more protective of habitat, which is an intent rather than we're concerned about this specific tool being taken off of your, out of your toolkit, which it doesn't sound like we're interested in. And I don't know, like, that just seems like a difference in guidance of like, we want you to, to be looking at this thing rather than we want you to not be able to do this thing.

How do you incentivize tree retention? Yeah.

brainstorming it's hard it's not quick answer would be density but the problem is we can't get there with the rules we have yeah yeah it's it's a tough one been the issue for a long time we we've brainstormed we've brainstormed some stuff um but it's not i would say it's not the planning usually that is driving that I think most planners are also wanting to save trees and try to find that balance you know public work standards come into play not just ours you know like utility providers it's just a lot of layering of stuff and once you start layering it all like in that example of five different versions I was like well what are we starting over here it's like no no we can't because of an awful point here so it's complicated I mean I think flexibility is is the key like how if you do we have actually good developers here that especially the local ones that want to work toward an outcome where they are trying to do both um so just having having that built commissioner miller

Yeah, I just want to say that it's not only just saving the trees, it's also saving our environment. It's saving the wildlife. It's saving people, like Commissioner Pessinger said, it's saving people's lives as well, because trees are important for breathing. And so just saying that it's just trees is a little offensive to me because it's not just trees. There's more to that. And I get what you're saying, and I get that it is probably challenging. However, I do think that there's also things that can be done, and it might be a little work. And whatever I have to do to help you figure it out, I will. And I'm sure that other commissioners feel the same way. But to just say that it is just trees, it's more than that. Thank you.

I can't tell if that's Commissioner Pestinger or Commissioner Fishburne that has their hand up. It should be clear once in a while. I do. Okay, Commissioner Pestinger.

Thank you. I'm a little confused when we're talking about working so hard for density in the UGA. And I know we want some density, but the UGA are on the periphery of these cities and these cities have cores and these cities have nodes and they have transportation corridors already preplanned. They've got bus routes, they've got other things, bicycle paths, et cetera. And We can't get density along those core paths and corridors and nodes and in the city center enough. If we can't get them there, we can't get dense apartment buildings to get built right on Martin Way. It's like the best place possible. I don't think we need to encourage giant apartment complexes out on the periphery when they're away from services, away from most of the stores, away from most of the transportation routes and corridors. It just seems like we're getting a little out of whack with saying we want so much density in the UGA. We do not. We want density in the urban cores and corridors.

So CAO, it sounds like look at an option that would apply the new one that we are developing with some additional tools for

It's housing lot sizes and buffers are on the line with the city is for we're not as happy about our considerations about open space. And some of the some of the allowed mitigation that they're the city's allow that we don't. That's my guess. Sorry, I'm trying to condense multiple viewpoints.

Do you have enough to go forward with? We'll do our best. We'll flip the S&P a little bit then.

And this one is kind of an ecology, this is what you have to do.

I absolutely agree with ecology. I want the county standards applying to UGAs. I agree.

Anyone disagree on that one? Doesn't sound like it.

I agree.

I think this is already addressed if we retain county CAO specific provisions. So this basically defers to county provisions. Any other thoughts? No. This is not a change from what we're currently doing. Any thoughts here?

agree with sticking with county standards.

HCP will continue using county standards. Any questions or thoughts on this one?

How much HCP lands do we have in the UGA's? Let me rephrase that. How many HCP mitigation sites have we purchased in the UGA's? good question is brian in the room no it's not it's not the purchasing it's the mitigation yeah but i'm just worried like if the city comes like if we if we use the hcp and we buy some habitat and then the city comes and annexes it does that throw off our takings permit any no it's ours in perpetuity you can add brian all those questions a little bit i don't want to buy the city anything they could buy their own

No, we have not purchased any HCP land in UGA.

But we've had plenty of subdivisions. We've had plenty of take in UGA. Plenty of takings in UGA. Okay. I don't think we need to change any of that. It's fine. This one, we're going to stick with ours. Scott, we're all looking at you. Scott, streamline permitting for conservation projects for farmers. We can stay with ours, but then we are going to stick with our limited tree protections too, that at least are on the books for now.

So question, do all of the cities have dedicated forest land conversion plans? So I was trying to look for them and I think some of the cities may have just incorporated bits of it into other parts of their code.

Yeah, they're all within their tree protection standards, which live in their building codes. So it's not like Thurston County does it. But Lacey's is a little bit more detailed, but Tumwater's is very brief. They're forest lands conversion. These basically just defer to the state. class 1, 2, 3, 4 forest practice permit provisions in most cases in the cities. The counties are a little bit more robust, but like Ashley said, this slide forest lands conversion and the next slide tree protection go together. So if we're going to stick with the county approach, We probably want to stick with the county approach for both. If we stick with the city approach, we want to use the city approach for both. And we did we did look into like if we could do a carve out. But at this time, it would be pretty complicated and time consuming to do that. So it's really lean one way or the other here.

I guess my question for asking that is, how are we adopting it by reference if it's all mixed into their building codes, right? Like adopting something by reference, we should have a clean, like we're referencing this little chunk?

No, it's just the title that it's listed. So like we have title 21, 22, 23.

They don't have a dedicated title for this. This would be like a section. It's just a single subsection under building.

It's a chapter. And so we would reference the specific chapter and it would point exactly to the tree protection and forest land conversion chapter in Lacey or Tumwater or however.

Which is how ours is too. Title 17 is a whole mix of different things. So these are just chapters of that title.

I mean, I was more concerned about the CEO stuff than I was about the tree stuff.

Does anybody have strong thoughts on these tree protection codes?

I'm unhappy with the city's, with any one of the city's tree protection codes. And I understand that we can't at this point interested in what we can do with the CAO in that regard. I am not impressed with the counties. I'm not impressed by the concerns in this context of the counties, like one single family home restriction, like that's not useful.

Yeah, it was intended for a rural context. And so it's replanting requirements when you're doing a single family home on five acres or whatnot. And so it didn't integrate into subdivision multifamily commercial areas.

Yeah, and I think that we need to have strong tree protections for the larger structures I would like to be seeing going in instead of single family homes. I just don't think that we have that tool at the county at this point. So that would be something that would have to be a CAO if we wanted to pursue it.

I mean, we have landscaping standards. It's not that nothing exists. There are landscaping standards and there are considerations built into the The codes, but I would say that cities are stronger. They just are across across the board. I think tree protection standards have gotten stronger in 30 years. And we've got the 1996 version. And I'm not saying that that's perfect. Like there's room for improvement for sure. But if you just look at them side by side, the cities have more tools in their toolkit than the county does.

I guess just my last question on this is if we did do something like adopting the city's standards on that, does that take off the table and take further protections or further considerations in using the CRS and cut off the table for us in the future?

No, I mean, the reason that we tied the tree protection to climate is because we're seeking climate grant funding. We can look for funding for updating, you know, tree provisions. But that was the one we had already identified that like, oh, here's a bucket we might be able to go after. Because yeah, we just don't have resources for consultants like the city of Tumwater does.

Are you okay with that program, Mr. Burleigh?

Yeah, I mean, I would like to see something about older trees, but I think that's going to be something specific that we can tack on after the fact. Not after the fact. Not after the fact. Well, that's something specific I'd be interested in tacking on.

And we can keep exploring.

You mentioned the incentives in, like, I think it was Tumwater's tree banking system. They don't have incentives built in, but if we... Well, there are incentives built into that, no way they've set it up.

With their inherent incentives? We could build one with inherent incentives.

With that caveat, I'd be okay with it. We had something like that. That would be something programmatic and wouldn't come through the code.

It's a very small provision. It's a small section of the code that could live within ours applied to all the UGAs, essentially, which would also have the benefit of You know, in cases where developers are paying into the bank, then you do have a dedicated source of funding for forest land protection and management in rural areas, which is something we don't have right now. So it would both incentivize what we hope the retention of larger trees on site. as well as start building a dedicated resource for forest land protection and management. So that's one of the ideas we came up with. And I'm so grateful that I have a team that is full of great ideas and a planning commission that's full of great ideas. So I'm sure as we're working through this, a few more will come up.

I think commissioner passenger might have a comment.

I do. I would agree with that. I think that's a good idea to do the caveat to adopt but at some caveat.

So we can do program at will look for look for programmatic go with city stuff right now because it's more protective.

I didn't present on this, so I'll give a quick overview, is wireless. Right now for the UGAs, we use the county wireless code, which was updated a couple years ago. And our thoughts here were to use city codes. I would say they're all very different, every single city in the county. But the cities generally focus on small cell wireless facilities. They Look at things like street design, allowing for those small cells in right-of-ways, streetscapes, sides of buildings, just a more urban environment. There's also more urban design controls in those codes. I did notice that Lacey does have an RF testing provision like the county does. But again, all three of these are... quite different. So either way here, initially when we worked on wireless code in Title 20, we had always thought we were going to update the UGAs eventually, like they would each get their own wireless code. It was never intended to apply to the UGAs in perpetuity. But open to your conversation on this.

Well, I know that wireless was a very contentious topic for us. And I, I'm hesitant to abandon our control over wireless because of how much work we put into it. But I can't honestly say that I know what's the right direction to go on this. So

I think on this one, if it would be helpful, we've had a number of wireless facilities that have kind of pent up demand once we had the new code implemented. If you wanted to wait, we could get you permit data on like the kinds of proposals we're seeing within the UGA. So you just have some context. So we could bring that to a future meeting or whatnot.

If we have any public comment on this, I would love to hear it too. have another round of public comment on them.

Yeah. Public comment, public hearing.

I mean, yeah. Well, I'm sure the public will come in and tell us their thoughts on this, and I'm looking forward to hearing it.

Thank you for taking a little bit more time. This is helpful. We'll do a little bit more digging. We'll also do sort of a resource check and go from there.

Thank you. This went really long. I apologize for that, but hopefully... some good direction we're going to move on then to our next work session then uh edward yeah i guess we are done maya so we are going to move on work session 15 a presentation on smp and hcp integration i think that's with claire here yeah you have time for this presentation we're an hour over

I know staff is here, but I'm just, how long is this presentation going to take?

It's two presentations.

Do you have time commitments or? No, I don't. Yeah. I'm just thinking about. Are there time commitments? Anybody else on the planning commission needs to consider whether or not we should work through this?

I'm down to work through it.

It depends on how long it's going to take. Well, let's do the first presentation then and see how this goes.

Special guest privilege. Start with who might not be able to come to the next meeting.

I should warn you, I just watched a special on how to win paper scissors at least 70% of the time.

Now you have to tell us.

This goes through rock, paper, scissors. So I'll just start with rock, then just paper, scissors. Maybe it's the second one. Never mind. They're going to do rock. You do paper. And I'll go to paper.

I believe that you know this. I don't believe that you're going to tell us the answers that will allow us to do this.

It's sort of like where the fishing hole is, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So it's always a chance that one of us will stand down. Okay, well, pulling up the presentations.

I just want to give a little clarity on the kind of intent of

this work session item. So this is part of the CAO project in general. This is CAO work session. What we wanted to be able to do was come in and provide just basically background and information on the way that CAO SMP and HCP all kind of do the things that they do. And then this is sort of just a good guiding starting point for thinking about any ways the CAO could be made to mesh with the SMP and the HCP better. So what we're not necessarily doing or looking for today are changes or updates to either the SMP or the HCP. Those are their own projects and so what we're really trying to think about is we have each of these like either programmatic or regulatory tools that we use to protect the environment. How do they intersect? Where do they intersect? How do they function differently? Some of them cover certain areas, some of them cover other areas. How does that play out on the landscape? So this is mostly informational and just providing background to consider as we continue through the CAO update process.

We cannot update the SMP and the HCP. So you're just giving us information as to how to integrate possibly with the CAO.

Yes.

Okay. I just want to make that clear. We're sharing. He needs to understand that the Planning Commission does not have the ability to update the SMP. We've already proved it. It's gone to the County Commissioners. It's gone to Ecology for approval. That process is on its way back. The county commissioners, it's in their court now.

In a very limited way. Very limited. Exactly.

Yeah, hi everybody. I'm the Natural Resources Program Manager with Thurston County CPED. I wear many hats, streamflow restoration and HCP and a bunch of other policy initiatives that we have going on in the department. So it's my pleasure to be here with you tonight. And I think what I was asked to do and present on HCP is really to have a dialogue with you about the dynamics of the HCP. So we just had a very, mechanical conversation about different components of joint codes and joint plans. And this is about the kind of big picture context and operation of the HCP with a little bit of discussion about how it's implemented mechanically in the department. So I'm going to start without further ado. Our schedule for tonight, we'll talk about what the Habitat Conservation Plan is, Talk a little bit about the difference between regulatory protections and mitigation programs. Dive into the mechanics of how the HCP is implemented. And then talk more about this integration potential about how prairie protection can be met through both CAO initiatives and the HCP's larger programmatic role across the county landscape. I want to start with some really important context on what the HCP is doing and how it's responding to current and historic conditions for prairie systems, prairie ecosystems, including oak savanna and oak woodlands, and why this initiative was started. Across Thurston County, we have less than 3% of historic prairie range left. and that our remnant populations are largely confined to protected and managed reserves. So this map is illustrating, outlined. We have the Thurston County boundary, and then we have an array of different prairie ecosystem types and oak savanna and woodland types mapped out. Our beiges and yellows are prairie. And our greens are oak savanna, which have prairie systems, and our dark greens are oak woodlands. So the intent of this is not to dissect what's where, but just to show that there's very little remnant population left, and much of it is already protected through land ownership or other mechanisms from conservation agencies across the county and the state. Our historic prairie extent is a much different picture. I have a map that I'm gonna show you that shows likely distribution and extent of prairie ecosystems. Likely just means that we don't know exactly what was happening there, but that the soil, The soil structure and soil chemistry indicates a very strong likelihood that the map I'm about to show represents where prairies existed across Thurston County prior to colonization and the loss of indigenous land management that allows prairie ecosystems to occur. Prairies are human ecological systems, so they have always required human interventions in order to be successful, healthy habitats and indigenous populations managed for prairie for tens of thousands of years here in the South Sound region. And the map illustrates the parts of Thurston County that could be restored to Prairie again through landscape scale management approaches, whether that's like the HCP where we're purchasing and managing land across thousands of acres, or whether that's through site-specific regulatory standards and flexible standards through our critical areas ordinance. So this may be a little bit hard to see. I wasn't able to change the symbology, but all of the yellow extent across this map is where historic prairies used to be in the county. See that most of Thurston County was characterized by prairie ecosystems. Take some time to digest this extent. Again, 3% of historic remnant prairies exist. This is the 93%, and I see the 97% of prairies that used to exist across our landscape. All right, I'm gonna move on. So now talking about what the Habitat Conservation Plan is. So our habitat conservation plan provides coverage for incidental take of four covered species. We have five subspecies of the Mazama pocket gopher, Taylor checkerspot butterfly, Oregon vesper sparrow, and Oregon spotted frog. This concept of incidental take is largely in reference to development activities, although it extends to things like my cat gets gophers out in the yard. That is also incidental take. So it's not just development activities, but the human habitation and the impacts of humans living on a landscape that we're providing coverage to. A little bit more on the definition, kind of gives permission for, oh, I also want to take a little bit of time. I have featured some key prairie flowers throughout this presentation. This is balsam. This is pearly everlasting.

Are these from our name?

Yeah. These are South Sound prairie pictures. So these are plants that exist on our landscape. These are not from our reserves.

Is that a white canis on the front?

It was a white camas. That was our picture. That's one of our preserves. It's the Kersey property, which will be probably renamed to white camas reserve. But I'll flip back just to highlight it. I forgot. White camas is a genetic, is a recessive trait, but it's very exciting to see. And the white camas reserve with Kersey property, as it's named right now, has a lot of it, kind of surprising amount density of white canvas across the reserve. That's our property, but we don't know the HCP program. So sorry for the flipping between screens here. So there's our balsam root. There's our pearly everlasting. Take means harm, harassment, or the creation of habitat lost on prairie habitat supporting covered species. Again, that's our pocket gopher, butterfly, vesper sparrow, and spotted frog. under an obligation to mitigate those impacts offsite. So the county offers coverage to individuals or corporations or state agencies or our public works department that needs to maintain essential public infrastructure, roads, bridges, culverts, and we offer permission for them to create take to these species with an obligation that our department will go mitigate that property impact offsite. Again, the HCP is a mitigation program that offers expedience and regulatory surety to development, allowing impacts to occur with an obligation to restore offsite and at a landscape scale. Under current forecasting and development extent and pace, we are looking to acquire about 3,500 acres over the life of the 30-year program. So 3,500 acres to be enrolled and restored. And that number might change as we adaptively manage the program and as we watch the speed of development. So if it increases, that acreage extent might increase or it might lessen if we see less development, which is unlikely for Thurston County.

How much have we here? We have 300 acres enrolled today.

So 10%. Three years in, 10% of time, 300 acres, about 10%. of the acreage requirement. So we're neck and neck with where we think we should be and what our forecasting anticipates us to be acquiring. Again, mitigation happens at county owned and managed properties. Project applicants pay a mitigation fee that helps finance our department in the restoration and stewardship of property and management of HCP properties is an in perpetuity obligation. So we charge a fee one time for take and then we have to maintain the habitat value that we create forever. Okay, now getting into this difference between regulatory protections offered by programs like critical areas ordinances and mitigation programs. So regulatory protection programs like the CAO require development proposals to avoid, minimize and mitigate impacts as a condition of permit approval. Typically, mitigation must occur on-site through replanting and maintenance of specific ecological functions, although you can offer off-site mitigation through private banking or through public banks, but the county does not have such mitigation banks to offer right now. So ostensibly, most or all mitigation that's happening in response to our regulatory program is on-site. The process for determining what needs to be mitigated onsite is following sort of this generalized screening verification and prescription. So staff use GIS tools and property history documentation, as well as nearby property history and other documents on record to screen for critical areas. There's a verification of the habitat values that are applied onsite. and then a prescription at the time of permitting in the form of conditions that apply to permit and mitigation practices that are required to build. Our mitigation programs function a little differently where they allow a project proponent to pay for offsite restoration and stewardship of the ecological systems that they impact. That restoration is proportional to the impacts of all projects covered under the program, meaning that the habitat values are maintained forever. So there's an assessment of proportionality, whether you have to do more mitigation or meet a one to one threshold is what we're deciding in the steps for mitigation program. So we're screening like we do at the permit counter for our critical areas ordinance. but instead of shifting into a verification, we immediately start to calculate the impact based on best available information. So we look at the habitat value that we have on record or land cover, And we're saying under our HCP and other mitigation programs that you owe us this much money for this number of credits that are made available to you. And then we go, instead of the property owner, we mitigate offsite. So the property owner's obligation is ending here in this middle stage where their project is being evaluated. The habitat value and functions are being determined. They pay a fee and their obligation is over and is transferred to the county. Now pause there for any questions on this sort of big picture. How is the CAO different from HCP and more generally mitigation programs?

This has been very easy to follow.

I would say keep going. Good. All right. Now getting into the mechanics of the HCP, what is staff actually doing? So there's first the issue of extending coverage. Someone comes to our permit counter and they want to pay for mitigation to have their take covered under our plan. So they come in, they submit their permit. Our staff is reviewing that permit to ensure that they are meeting the avoidance and minimization standards, that if there's an option to cite a development off of gopher soils, as you kind of may understand, and I should have a map showing that properties aren't just uniform in soil composition, some portions of property are are covered in gopher soils some are not and so we would have a requirement if you have portions of your property that aren't on endangered species act habitat that you avoid first and then you can pay for mitigation and minimization is sort of looking for excess so If you decide that your gravel driveway needs to be winding and half a mile long unnecessarily, we might come back and say, hey, this is too much impact. When you can minimize, you have the option. So once they demonstrate avoidance and minimization, we calculate the total number of credits that a project will be purchasing from our bank. And then a little explanation here. Credits are a multivariate calculation of both the size and the habitat value. So it's not just a square footage impact. It's a habitat value. We assume a habitat value in our banking system. So that habitat value for all prairie impacts is at 0.6 or 0.7. That number doesn't mean anything to anyone in particular. It's just an intermediate determination and driver of how much they're paying. And then once they pay, we offer incidental take coverage so that they get a certificate of inclusion that says we've evaluated the project. They've met minimization and avoidance criteria. and they have paid their fee, and their development is included in our program, and they're covered, and they've met Endangered Species Act compliance.

Your last tick there has a kind of hanging sentence. This demonstrates the project's ESA compliance. Oh, thank you. And I'm thinking you're saying fees paid. Yes.

My mistake. And then there's the back end work that our department is doing. So we offer this coverage to permit applicants, and then we have to go do rather a lot of stuff.

With a very small team, I might add.

And this is primarily where I'm operating. So our permit reviewer, our counter staff, and our current planners are implementing this extension of coverage. And then My team, myself, Marissa Wissman, Phil Adams, Kevin Jensen are all laboring with the support of Ashley and Eric.

Oh, no, I was going to say our conservation partners.

Yeah, and our conservation partners. Shout out to Eco Studies Institute and Gary Slater and Sarah Alka, who actually do the... do the work. I'm not out there with shovels taking up scotch broom.

Oh, and one more plug for Public Works. Yes. Sorry.

And our Public Works team who has recently joined our team in the sense that they're using HCP mitigation funding to support retention of staff and we get to call them up to go mow properties and do scotch broom control in exchange. So that's been very exciting and recent development I can't begin to articulate how hard and expensive it is to deploy private entities to go MOA of site. It is astronomically expensive and to have public works involved has been a real asset for us. And of course, we'd like to keep our team whole. Back to the mechanics, what we're doing, we're acquiring and enrolling property So the county is obligated to acquire property with covered species habitat and put those properties into the HCP lands conservation program. These lands provide the credits that we're selling and distributing to private dollars and to our public works team and other kinds of development activities. Then we go out on site. This is Marissa and our Eco Studies Institute partners. County staff conduct baseline monitoring to document the condition of properties that we acquire. So we have transects. It's grids the size of meters by meters where we're documenting all prairie plant species and indication of occupancy. So gopher mounds, we're creating extensive data sets of point data showing the distribution of species and habitat when we acquire the property. And we use that to then jump into our restoration and stewardship planning where we need to create ecological lift. So we've documented everything at baseline when we acquired the property, and then we have to make more habitat happen there in order to release further credits from the sites. And that's very reductive. And the timeline for restoration and stewardship can range anywhere from five years on a fast timeline and properties with lots of scotch broom on them can extend into the 15 to 20 year timeline to get that under control. So this is an extensive body of work for restoration and stewardship. Releasing credits from properties that we acquire is not easy. It takes a lot of time and effort and money. So the HCP creates an obligation for the county to mitigate development impacts over the 30 year period by purchasing, restoring and stewarding approximately 3,500 acres by the end of the planning period. Again, that number can change and depending on how we implement can grow or shrink. I think I expect it to grow a little based on the expense of creating credits. So we may end up acquiring more than this number, but that's an adaptive management problem that we work with our HCP implementation team to resolve. That's representatives from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, from our restoration partners, DFW, and anyone else we choose to invite periodically to come tell us how we should be adaptively managing our program and to manage our credit portfolio to extend coverage to permit applicants. This is Harsh Paintbrush. You see our Harsh Paintbrush friend and Golden Paintbrush here on this side. And then really starting to you know, introduce a concept, and I would be happy to come back for a workshop with the Planning Commission to talk about more of these concepts. but that as we imagine it, the CAO and HCP are meant to work together. They're not exclusive of one another and that all of these protection mechanisms, whether it's through mitigation and landscape scale restoration and management or through site-specific protection initiatives are meant to restore our systems. So the CAO protects prairie habitats and species not covered by the HCP. So we have our four covered species and associated habitats, but there are an extensive number of native prairie species that we will not restore to. The CAO is meant to cover those. The CAO defines how and where restoration activities can occur. And this has actually been a challenge and feedback that we've had from our agency partners that restoring in Thurston County is really hard. Cutting trees down that have colonized historic prairie to restore the historic prairie is deeply encumbered by regulations. And so there's been a call across our land trust, WDFW, JBLM to start relaxing are critical areas ordinance in situations where qualified restoration projects can remove species that have colonized since the loss of indigenous management across the landscape. And then lastly, the CAO addresses indirect impacts from development that the HCP is not intended to regulate, right? So this is kind of an obscure concept, but essentially saying that human habitation and occupancy of a site comes with inherent risk, inherent vice. People do stuff on property, and that's good, and we want them to do stuff. And sometimes those protections come from the CAO and don't have anything to do with the take that we offered initially when the development project was approved under our HCP. Some potential opportunities for further integration. The CAO can encourage regulation towards prairie. So again, creating flexibility for restoration partners to be able to take trees down and in certain areas, whether that's stands of Doug fir that have colonized historic prairie habitat. or whether that's riparian areas that have lost their oak wet prairie riparian characteristics to alder stands and doug fir and other kinds of trees that there's desire to be able to remove and replace with something that is more historically appropriate and precedented across our landscape on reserves that are owned by state agencies and by state or other restoration partners. we could establish companion programs to the HCP that increase the habitat types that we restore. So right now, The HCP is our only mitigation banking system. You can have mitigation banking for wetlands, you can have mitigation banking for trees, and you can divide it by species. And that there's this opportunity to create more synergy with this landscape scale restoration effort across thousands of acres that the county will own and development impacts that we'll see into the future. And then lastly, this one's a little more obscure, but Seed bank retention and lawn standards are also opportunities to have more site-specific control. For prairie systems, the reason why we have remnant prairies at all is because their seeds are trapped in the soil and disturbances of different kinds, whether it's fire or someone putting a shovel in the dirt and releasing... these seeds, the seed bank is there. And we would like to consider how seed bank retention, so essentially not exporting your soil offsite. If you need to dig up and disturb soil, scatter it across the property and don't chip it offsite. And then lawn standards. Lawn is an enemy of native prairie.

Kentucky bluegrass in particular.

Some old grass in the country and it's useless, which is a little ironic because our prairies are grassland systems. So lawn grasses are troubling. So lawn standards, whether that's the type of grass that you plant or incentive programs to give people's roamers fescue, which actually makes a very nice lawn. So if we could have that kind of incentive program, it would be nice. And I think I'll end it with the ATP provides long-term management of ecological resources and the CAO protects resources where they are in place in time. That both of these goals are essential to recovery and health of ecological systems, maybe in particularly prairies that have always had a strong human management component. So, Both of these things need to do their jobs, and we would suggest that mitigation programs broadly paired with CAO protections and having our CAO allow for the creation of new mitigation programs could be a direction that is explored further to kind of create this synergistic reality between the need to manage the health of ecosystems and protect them where they are.

This is precisely the sort of, like, target that I was thinking about when we were talking about, like, creative, like, using the CEO to have creative alternatives when we're talking about dense housing, is if we, like, furry is a lot more our style of prairie rather, not the tall grass prairies where I grew up, but our style of prairie is accessible in putting into developments and doing prairie restoration within the context of an apartment building or in the context of a housing development. isn't if you're dealing with a tall grass prairie or a forest. So if we're talking about wanting to have some flexibility with tree protection, with habitat protection, it seems to me that this is exactly the kind of area we could be looking at. Like if you had a subdivision, and if you had one of these, these are subdivisions, but the lawn space that they had all had to be prairie.

Just to be clear, tree protection and prairie, it's a different kind of tree we're looking at. It's oak woodlands rather than... which is the predominant, I think, tree type in a lot of our youth.

Yeah, Doug firs have always existed on prairies, but they colonize prairies in the absence of human management and oaks do not. Oaks fit in with, or I should say they're much slower at it because they're a much slower growing species. So we do not observe colonization in our lifetime or in generations time. That's thousands of years. of work that the oaks have to do to do what the firs will do in a couple of generations. And my last slide here is just the nine properties that we've acquired to date. We've got a frog property and then the rest is Mazama pocket gopher across the subspecies for a total of about 301.5 acres.

With quite a few additional ones, at least in feasibility.

And feasibility that could more than double this portfolio in the next 18 months, maybe. So more on the way.

Can you give us a thumbnail maybe of how much of the takings have been for like single family home development versus institutional or government or public works for that matter? Or I imagine there might be some commercial or residential or commercial or industrial somewhere. I don't know, maybe.

When you say single family, do you mean subdivision or like one house on five acres?

Maybe one house on five acres, whatever the taking is for human habitation.

So I think at this point, the largest driver of take as a whole is residential development. There's a little bit of discrepancy or complexity in understanding the number of projects versus the square footage of projects. So we see lots of single family residential projects that are covered under our program. They don't amount to all that much acreage. What we're really seeing driving take is intensive development, whether that's subdivisions and UGAs or other types of development with large footprints. And that would include commercial and industrial. So the number of projects is heavily skewed towards single family residential. Each one of those projects tends to have a small impact in terms of habitat value and square footage of the development happening. And then our bigger picture driver of the program has been UGA subdivisions and a couple of commercial projects. I want to highlight that the intention of the HCP though is to be permissive of those and that those projects are the primary revenue source. That's the largest mitigation fee that we get. And we're essentially have baked into the habitat conservation plan an ethic of saying that these landscape scale needs are driven and financed through development in our UGAs. That 20 acres of prairie impact in an urban growth area is going to result in the acquisition of tens or hundreds of acres in rural county where these prairie ecosystems have a better opportunity to be managed by the county and its restoration partners. And I think that that's true of other ecosystem types as well, including trees. The existence of a stand of trees does not mean that it's a healthy stand of trees or that you can't do things to thin or replicate the habitat value elsewhere. And we, again, advocate for both on-site protection as well as mitigation opportunities to restore at a landscape scale and ensure the health of the systems that we rely on and that our animal friends and families rely on too.

just to make sure that I'm understanding this correctly. You know, we saw that map about prairies and like the total, the total, So your goal with this is to increase the like real world net amount of prairie through these mitigations as opposed to just like what is technically considered under like protection or not.

We will be adding 3,500 acres or thereabouts of newly managed reserves. Newly established and managed. They may have prairie species on them when we buy them, but they are either in a shrub-dominated or degraded grassland state, and we'll be taking them from that state into better approximation of what historic prairies would have looked like. Of course, the size of the property you acquire dictates what kind of management you can apply across it. Varying results are expected, but it'll be new. in that game.

Anybody else have any questions for Brian? We got room for SMP? So it's 10 slides. Two of them is a title and the questions.

So we can probably get through eight slides.

All right, let's do it. Thank you, Brian. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me.

SMP is super easy. It goes really fast.

I strung them, Brian. I talk faster.

We've been doing this for seven years.

Don't remind him we don't want him to leave. Every slide.

So it's ironic that albatross is a marine going species. So it's all good. Okay. Okay. So Andy Defoe, senior planner with community planning. I'm here to talk about critical areas and the shoreline master program. So here's what I plan to cover tonight. A little bit of history on the Shoreline Master Program and its current status, the legal framework for planning in both shorelines and critical areas, an overview of shoreline jurisdiction, and then specifically how critical areas are addressed in the SMP update. Some folks on Planning Commission are familiar with this story. Some of you are not. The Planning Commission reviewed the SMP between the time span of 2017 and 2022, which included 81 work sessions and a public hearing. The recommendation to the Board was provided in August 2022, which did also include a minority report from this body. The Board of County Commissioners reviewed all the information, held their own public hearing, and then locally adopted the SMP in December of 2023. That was adoption number one. There will be one more. The SMP was then sent to Ecology, who had its own open public comment period and a public hearing in September of 2024. And then after reviewing all of that feedback received, they requested a county response to the public feedback, which was provided to Ecology in February 2025. So we got our initial feedback from ecology staff on the whole package, the county's submittal and all the public responses and our response to those responses back in December of last year. And since that time, we've been digesting their feedback and taking meetings with their staff and trying to assist ecology in its formulation of its final or formal response on the county's SMP. And have they given anything? Oh yeah. So we've gotten, yeah. So I've been in regular communication with Tess Brandon at Ecology. And so we've got her initial feedback, staff level feedback, which we've responded to and had some meetings on. And they're essentially trying to determine what are going to be required changes, what are going to be recommended changes. And some of those things we really don't have a lot of room to negotiate on. Some things we do where we can point out, here's where we've addressed your concern. or here's maybe a different way of addressing your concern to get at that and make it move from required to recommended or just kind of drop off. So yeah, there has been coordination going on. We do expect them to have a formal response back to us later this year. I was told like by summer, but I know that a lot of their staff have been working on rulemaking, additional rule changes that are happening with Shoreline. So we'll see, but later this year, and then just briefly the way that rest of that process will play out, Ecology's formal response will be a matrix of required and recommended changes based on state law. That information will go back to the board to address those changes, But really the scope of anything the board is going to consider from here on out is limited to things that ecology is requiring or recommended, which were derived from the public feedback they received and what our board telegraphed to them. So that included consideration at the time of the minority report. Anything that the board of county commissioners wish to have addressed within that report has been addressed in what was transmitted to ecology. And I would temper expectation about changes outside of the lanes ecology has set up from this point forward. In the meantime, the 2012 Critical Areas Ordinance by and large regulates critical areas within shoreline jurisdiction. And as clarified in a 2010 state law update, that's actually the same law that let jurisdictions say you can look at existing development in shorelines and consider it conforming for the purposes of regulating redevelopment and modification. So the legal framework, There are two big pieces of legislation that guide a lot of the work that we do in CPAD. Those are the Growth Management Act and the Shoreline Management Act. So the Growth Management Act requires jurisdictions to identify and protect critical areas, and an update of those protections is what this body is currently considering. The Shoreline Management Act specifically regulates shorelines of the state and also critical areas that exist within shoreline jurisdictions. So in 1995, the state legislature acted to integrate SMPs with the Growth Management Act, essentially ruling that goals and policies in the Shoreline Master Program are an element of a local comprehensive plan. And in 2003, the legislature amended the GMA goals to include shoreline specifically. So shoreline protection became one of the 14 non-prioritized goals of the Growth Management Act. Meanwhile, the... The SMA controls the protection of critical areas within shoreline jurisdiction. We do have options when we look at this, including exactly how those critical areas rules are brought in and where and when shoreline jurisdiction applies to those. The SMP adopts that 2012 CAO by reference. So we took a snapshot and CAO as amended in subsequent ordinances is now what is in the SMP update going forward. And we have a courtesy appendix on that so you don't have to You can actually go and look and see which rules apply. And critical areas have been a part of the process for a long time. They were in the foundational work that the county did when we looked at the characterization and inventory of the shorelines, looking at where the critical areas exist and how should that shape what environment designations are given to shorelines and what protections should be put in place. So let's talk a little bit about where the SMP applies and what exactly is shoreline jurisdiction. Shoreline jurisdiction first includes shorelines. So those are considered marine waters, Puget Sound in our case, lakes that are 20 acres or larger in size and streams with a flow of greater than 20 cubic feet per second. Shoreline jurisdiction also includes what are called shorelands. These are lands extending landward for 200 feet in all directions from ordinary high water mark of a shoreline water body It includes floodways and the contiguous floodplain area, 200 feet landward of the floodway. and all wetlands and river deltas that are associated with those shoreline water bodies. So there's a graphic there that I pulled that kind of shows you how wetlands are considered as part of this base shoreline jurisdiction. Basically, if you have a wetland that's wholly or partially within that 200 foot shorelines, it comes in. If it's within the floodplain of a shoreline water body, it's part of the SMP. And also if it has a hydrologic connection. So if it's outside of that area, but they're connected, it comes into the SMP. And jurisdictions can also expand their shoreline jurisdiction to include additional critical areas if they so choose, and the land necessary to protect critical area markers, which we did. So how does the SMP apply to critical areas? At a minimum, any critical area that's located inside that base shoreline jurisdiction is regulated by the SMP. Thurston County's SMP update expands that base jurisdiction to include marine bluffs, landslide, and erosion hazard areas and their buffers that are partially within shoreline jurisdiction. And then we did the same for the high groundwater flood hazard areas and important aquatic species in their habitats and also wetlands, as I mentioned. So the critical area regulations that are in the SMP are held to that same no net loss standard as anything that we're promoting in the SMP. So the goal here is in including these additional critical areas in the SMP is that we hope for seamless permitting for those sites that end up with both. You have critical areas, you have shorelines, essentially one framework and one set of rules that would apply and avoiding the need for duplicative permits. As it stands now, if you have both critical areas and shorelines on your property, you are subject to the entirety of both the CAO SMP. So that's two sets of permits, two sets of rules, two sets of administration and all of those fun things. And sometimes those development standards conflict and it's very confusing. So moving forward, the SMP is going to make clear that generally speaking, most restrictive provisions are going to apply to those properties that contain both shorelines and critical areas. And for non-conforming uses and structures specifically, the SMP body is going to apply. So both the SMP and the critical area standards have non-conforming provisions, but essentially saying you're going to have to use your SMP in all cases within shoreline jurisdictions. So some changes that are coming with the SMP update, the relevant critical area provisions from the 2012 CAO are included in the SMP update with reference to that adopted ordinance specifically. And there is a courtesy appendix in appendix E, as I mentioned, and the body of the SMP also lays out this whole relationship and how these things work. So we're trying to commemorate that in the document so that it's very clear in the future how these things are handled, what was considered, what is excluded, included, all of that. And I'm sure it still won't all be perfect, but that's the approach we're trying to take there. So if you're in SMP jurisdiction and you have critical areas and shorelines, the SMP is going to control your permitting and your administration. So even if it's a critical area, there is no longer going to be a critical area permit. There will be no more reasonable use exceptions. All permits are handled through that SMP framework. So shoreline substantial development permit or an exemption, a conditional use permit or a variance. That's the only permits we'll have within those areas. And also all the appeals of permit decisions and enforcement will be handled through the SMP. There are also likely to be some modifications required to our critical area wetland provisions. Ecology has kind of telegraphed that so far. So ecology doesn't really, they don't get to control what's in our CAO. They don't have jurisdiction there. That's commerce. But when you're putting critical area rules within your shorelines, that's where they get to make sure that it aligns with the SMA. And they've already told us there's going to be some tweaks to what's in the CAO to make sure that that's the case. You may be asking, what about the new critical areas ordinance? Well, right now, the SMP currently has the 2012 ordinance in it. And as time has gone on and the CAO project has caught up to the SMP, we've started looking at, well, wouldn't it be great to look at all the new things we're doing with the CAO and get them incorporated in the SMP? So we are in conversations with ecology on that front and trying to make common sense case for like, we've got to better Better thing coming that's going to solve existing problems that we're aware of. And wouldn't it be great to have this across the whole landscape and not end up with one SMP, but with an old CAO kind of attached to it? So the bottom line there is that we want to ensure the critical area protections that are included in the SMP are easy to understand and implement. And we believe the new CAO is going to do a better job. that's what we're working on. There appears to be some precedent for amending critical area regulations in that fashion. So that's what we're hoping we can see through this process. So we'll see how it plays out. And the backstop there or the silver lining, I suppose, is that even if we end up needing to keep the 2012 CAO, one goal of the department is to not have it be 10, 15, and 36 years until we develop new regulations. So sooner rather than later, we will be able to line these things up. So we're just hoping that will be sooner. And the last thing I wanted to leave you with was kind of just some examples of how this might play out or where we might see critical areas within shorelines and at a very high level, how the new SMP would handle that. So one example would be if you had a property on the Nisqually River that is bisected by a smaller stream that is not of itself a shoreline stream, it's not 20 cubic feet per second flow, but it crosses over into shoreline jurisdiction and then empties out into the Nisqually River. So the SMP would set the buffer from the Nisqually River and also tell you what types of uses could occur within that shoreline jurisdiction and the development standards that would apply. But the critical area regulations would say, here's your buffer from that smaller stream. So those regulations are folded in and would still control protection of that smaller stream. And then the entire project would get one permit. And it would be whatever that underlying shoreline permit is, a substantial development permit or an exemption or a conditional use permit. Another possible scenario would be if you had a parcel with a wetland on the edge of Pattison Lake. So that would, you know, Pattison Lake as a shoreline water body would have a shoreline environment designation associated with it, which would control what that shoreline buffer is. But because there's a wetland there, the critical area wetland buffers would still apply. In many cases, those can be larger than the shoreline buffer. You could have a 50 foot shoreline buffer, but a 180 foot wetland, just depending on how that is typed out through the critical area buffer. I don't want to say ordinance because the ordinance is going away with the critical area regulations. And those wetland development standards would apply to that buffer. And then lastly, thinking about a constrained lot on the marine bluff where maybe putting the marine bluff buffer on it takes you all the way back to the property line and no one would really have the ability to develop without some sort of exemption. That shoreline buffer is still going to apply. And the SMP might say, you don't need a variance for a new structure there because those structures are allowed in shoreline jurisdiction. But because you have that bluff, you may need a variance from the bluff standards in order to cite something on the property. Formally would have been a reasonable use exception. So you would have needed your shoreline approval and critical areas RUE. It's all just going to be one permit under the SMP and probably a variance in that case. Okay. That's all I have. Are there any questions? No.

I'm going to have to wait for the follow-up.

I'm going to have to start filling.

Awake enough for too many questions.

Anybody have anything for Andrew?

That was great, Andrew.

Thank you.

Good summary. You up the number to 82 just for fun. Oh, I guess I could. 82 work sessions. Sure.

Encore. Did you have anything for us?

No, I was mostly here to answer any CAO-related questions as they came up, but yeah. That's everything.

Okay, well, then we're gonna move on with the last part of our agenda, staff updates.

I don't have any big staff updates.

We're still a couple.

Sure. Pesting her.

Yeah, Maya. Yes. I will say given our limited resources, not yet, but I'll make sure you get in.

Okay.

We have some open positions, or as positions open up within CPED, we may not be able to fill all of them, just given the budget constraints.

Really?

We are filling Maya's position. I want to be clear about that. But you'd really need three people to fill that.

So, unfilled?

Oh, we have one unfilled associate planner position, and just as any other openings are you know, come out. I just, I can't stress enough that, like, we really do have constrained resources, and we're going to do the best we can with the staffing that we have, and I'm just super grateful that we have rock star staff.

All right. Well, then let's look at our calendars. Is there anybody that's not expecting to be here June 3rd? Or is there anybody that's not expecting to be here June 17th? I might not be able to be there June 17th.

I might be on the train.

We're going to start good of the order with Commissioner Pestinger.

Thank you, Chair. So several meetings ago, we did this thing in the meeting where I think the staff shared with us some updates on some stuff that had been happening with the county commissioners, recent decisions or Um, things that have got sent back, uh, that were related to the planning commission. And I thought that was really valuable. And then today we didn't have that, but, uh, you know, I know that not all of us have the time and ability to attend all the commissioner's meetings, but I know chair casino and commissioner Halverson often, uh, see some of those and they shared today with us some of the stuff that was relevant to the planning commission. Um, but you're not always able to do that. I'm just wondering if we maybe restructure our agenda slightly so that we start each of our planning commission meetings with staff, giving us just, you know, a few sentences of updates of anything that's gone on with the board. That's relevant to the planning commission.

He's not in the next meeting.

I didn't fully hear that. It sounded like you said you'd try.

I think we could do, I would probably just, I would change staff updates to like staff program and something, maybe something else update, like general. Give us some sort of report.

Is there any way we can have that part at the beginning of the meeting so we know that as we're having the discussions? Because there's no way all 10 of us can stay up to speed on all the stuff that commissioners are doing.

it gets to the commissioners, it's no longer germane to the planning commission's work sessions.

That's great. If that's the case, then just tell us that. But if there is things like there was today, then let us know what there is.

Is it to provide context for public comment?

No, it's to provide context for the stuff we are meeting about.

And then aside from docket, they wouldn't be germane because they would have left the planning commission and gone up to the commissioners.

I think what he's talking about.

That's so weird why it came up today then. That's what was so weird. It came up like two months ago.

I'm just going to say, I think what he's talking about is the land use appeals process that the commissioners deferred to another meeting center more information on it and they made the suggestion that it go back to the planning commission for another review and vote on that particular issue i don't know that they are going to send it back to us i didn't hear that as like a board direction it was part of their conversation it was and you can go and watch it um yeah it was part of the conversation it wasn't a direction

We have not been directed as staff yet to bring it.

It was Commissioner Mincer that made the comment that if he or some other member of the Board of County Commissioners had been at the Planning Commission meeting, they could have made the case for the appeals process to not include the county commissioners. Don't know that that's true.

Did the board recently provide any feedback about the strengthening of tree protections and use of county tree protections on the UGA?

It was part of the docket conversation. And it is like the docket sheet got updated to reflect that. And we said that we would bring it to the planning commission as part of the joint code updates.

That's what I thought.

There are a couple of different things happening here. And structurally, if something did come from the board, it would come through the docket. I could be officially assigned or granted back to the planning commission. We talk about that general discussion at the board that is related to things that we're doing. I wouldn't feel super comfortable trying to distill general discussion by the board as a staff person.

Yeah, to be honest, we're not even tracking all of a conversation. I mean, the appeal one came up an agenda setting that we didn't go to.

So does anybody else have anything for the good of the order? All right, having no further business, this meeting is adjourned.

Is it just because I came?

I feel bad.

Why?

It went so late. This is more how late it was when we were doing Call Plan.