Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

2026 meeting of the city of Vancouver Planning Commission will now come to order. Please call the RO. Chair Adagwami present. Vice Chair Pile present. Um, sorry. Commissioner Beck, present. Commissioner Wheeler here. Commissioner Jay here. Commissioner Castensson, present. Commissioner Cavell,

thank you. Correct me if I'm wrong. We have a forum, but did we receive notice? Oh, we did. We did. Yes. Perfect. Given that like make a motion to excuse Commissioner G from tonight's meeting. Okay. Motion has been offered. Is there a second? Second. Motion has been offered and second. All those in favor? I I.

Those opposed? Any abstensions? The motion passes. The absence is considered excused. And that takes us into the next item of business, which is the adoption of minutes from the February 10th, 2026 meeting. The chair will entertain a motion regarding those minutes.

I said I have a quick comment on them. If I recall reading, I was trying to open them up beforehand, but that the date on the end of them was in January as opposed to February. Just want to call that out. I also noticed that Commissioner Wheeler's statement was also missing as well. So those two amendments are what statement? Just her comments. board. I And I noticed it because I made a statement in reference to her statement. The bike parking one.

The bike parking one. Yeah. Now I've got it open. Okay. Well, amending the date just below adjournment to read February 10th and amending the section regarding the discussion on bike parking to include the comments or rather the commissioner discussion staff response step should include some of the comments that are missing there. Okay. The chair will entertain a motion regarding the minutes.

I move to uh adopt the minutes as amended. Motion has been offered. Is there a second? Second. Motion has been offered and seconded. All those in favor? I.

Those opposed? Abstensions? The motion carries. Thank you. Motion carries and the minutes are adopted as amended. Please note that commission effectively say and that takes us into the first sorry the third item of business on the agenda the workshop on the comprehensive plan update code details part three. any introductory remarks on this workshop item?

Uh yes, thank you chair. Um so Rebecca Kennedy, deputy director, um part of the comprehensive plan update team joined by Mark Pson um senior planner who's been leading the code update task project. Um just wanted to provide a few introductory um sort of comments framing. Um, so, um, this is the last time you'll see both the plan and the code, um, before we go into editing mode. Um, and what that means is we're going to take, um, edits that we've received from from you all, from the community, from other boards and commissions, and from the council, and, you know, go through them and figure out what aligns with the count council's policy direction and make a set of edits. Um and then so when we come back to you in April, we'll have two meetings in April. The first will be a workshop on the the draft final plan. So the the refined plan based on those comments. Um and then um the second one on February or sorry um April 28th will be a public hearing to vote on the plan map code supported by a final environmental impact statement. Um, so really just want to emphasize that June 1st sort of seems weirdly a long way away, but it's not because of the lead time for the process. Um, and that, you know, basically we've we've got some updates for you on the code here. Um, and sort of to tell you a little more about what we're hearing from other groups of people. Um, but it's a short presentation. It's intended to provide space for you all to provide any comments you have. If you've already said it to us, I mean, you're welcome to reiterate it. Um but we we have logged those. Um but anything that you want to get into um this is sort of that that final chance prior to the um April workshops or the April workshop and then the April adoption hearing. Um so with

that, can we pull up the presentation? Thank you. Um so with that just we'll do the recap which is just now a thing we do for the community because you all have seen it. Um but the sort of framing very quickly. Um we'll talk about the some of the code details the feedback we've received what we're doing about it. if we know um and then what's next. So um as you know this is a 20-year plan. It goes through the year 2045. It accounts for projected population growth and the housing jobs that that requires. Um it uh can can we

sorry there's a small popup over there? Yeah. Can we close that popup? Perfect. Thank you so much.

Yeah. Um and we are really at the tail end of the process um at the point where we're we're refining um to develop final drafts and then taking them through the um environmental review and the adoption process. So we are required to meet a number of new state laws. I won't belabor this because you've seen it so many times but four to six units per lot every residential lot effectively getting rid of exclusion exclusive single family zoning. We have to make room for a bunch of new housing units. Um, we have to allow for 280 use per residential lot. Um, we can't have parking minimums for many uses, though we're proposing them for almost none. Um, we actually just, um, as of March 1, the single stairwell well alternate in our building code went live up to six stories. So, that is done. Uh, very big deal for us. Um, we have to have proportional impact fees so that they align with the size of housing. So relatively smaller housing is relatively lower impact fees and we have to allow for permanently supportive housing everywhere. And with that I'll turn it over to Mark quick.

Uh thanks Rebecca. This is uh Mark Pson, senior planner in our development review division. Uh again this is uh information that you've seen before. Again we're moving to uh more oh thank you a more uh form based code. Most of our design, excuse me, development standards will live in building types and not in base districts. Um, we'll continue to have some overlays. Some will go away and we'll add some new ones. We've discussed that previously. Um, and since we've last met, we've uh published the complete draft code and comp plan. So, we're excited about that. That is out there for everyone to hopefully have a review of. Uh again, our new plan comp plan designations across the top there, residential neighborhoods, urban, mixed use, employment uh and and industry and our two green space uh parks and natural areas. Uh and then our um new excuse me, new zoning districts there uh in in the different colors below. This is the preferred alternative that council adopted on December 15th. uh essentially placing uh new base SLzoning districts on every parcel in the city. Uh this will go into effect with adoption, but right now this is the preferred alternative that was adopted. Here are the draft densities and heights associated with those base districts. Uh minimum residential density there and then maximum height on the right. We do uh like to remind folks that we are going to regulate by uh feet just like we do now. All except the low-scale neighborhood where we will limit folks to three floors above grade. Uh buffers between districts. We did go

over this last time, but since that time we uh we did add in a buffer between the mediumscale neighborhood and the lowscale neighborhood. Previously we were just showing general landscaping there. Um there is quite a jump between the low scale and medium scale neighborhood going from 45 ft to 75 ft. Uh and there are quite a few places on the map where you will see that lighter low scale neighborhood abuing that mediumcale neighborhood. Uh so we wanted to add that to uh kind of account for those jumps uh in zoning designations where they align with property lines. Here is our continuing to refine uh buffer between districts graphic. Uh and we are working with our uh image folks to to widen out that uh the graphic there on the left. it it's got uh staff and uh it was brought to staff's attention by some council members that it it looks pretty uh narrow in there that the buffer distance appears to be and while it's not the scale we understand that uh it appears to be a shorter distance than that step back and in most cases that step back is in fact 5T and the bumper distance is is 10 to 15. So just to kind of graphically uh show what we have in our in our table.

Is that back to you, Rebecca? It is. Okay.

Thank you. Um so we've gotten a lot of feedback that we're working on. So one is about the manufactured home park district. We've spent a lot of time talking about this. Um it only applies to 16 parcels in the city currently. Um but obviously this is a important housing type that we need to get right. So um one of the I think um challenging things and we're going to work to clarify this in the um sort of intent and purpose section of the the zoning the base zone is is about the intent of it. Because when you look at the building type table, you see that no building types are allowed. And that's on purpose because it's not allowed to be redeveloped unless you can show us that it's not possible to continue operating it and then we will work with you to reszone it. Um so that's by design. Um, I think what we've heard is that's a little just generally confusing and so having some sort of reference there that just directs people to the use table where it talks about um what is is allowed um in those areas which is the way we see it is the park is the use right the manufactured home park development itself is the use not the building type. Um and the the other kind of thing that I think is confusing is that again gets back to this earlier point about the park is the use. We don't we are not in the code. We are agnostic about construction type. We don't care where it was built like if you panelize you know you built panels in a warehouse or you built the whole thing in a warehouse um or you stick built it on site you know we don't we don't we're agnostic about that. So um again the the use is just uh it's the de the development itself that is the use. Um and so I think we just need to reference that and make it clearer. Um uh

the um I think the other thing that our council has asked us to make clearer is just that you can put a modular or manufactured or fabricated or whatever you want to call it anywhere. It's like we we're agnostic, right? So if you want to add a unit to your property, it can be modular. We don't we don't care. just it'll be a flex plex or something else based on its orientation to the street and the number of units you have um and how they're configured on the site. Um, and then lastly, um, staff saw the article. Um, and I don't know if some of you saw it, but there was an article in the Colombian a few weeks ago about Habitat for Humanity buying an existing mobile home park in Clark County, not in the city, but um, you know, putting ensuring permanent affordability, helping replace or you know um, upgrade existing units, but also sort of filling in with new because manufactured home parks are can be kind of spread out with new units and in fact new units might be more affordable if they weren't um manufactured necessarily or they were done differently. They're not. So, um, we are looking at sort of a carveout for permanent affordability that would allow someone like Habitat who's essentially maintaining the purpose of the manufactured home park, which is maintaining that housing, but may want to add additional rent restricted affordable housing in there. Um, because I think that's that's something that, you know, that's that the permanent affordability is really like the ultimate outcome, right? We can't do that with land use, but we can support that if if nonprofits and and um folks who who do, you know,

fund rent restricted housing want to do it. So, um that's sort of that we spent a lot of time on that. Um council also asked us to clarify that um bike parking can also be like small mobility parking. So, like you know, you can put you know, just to kind of be consistent with the way we talk about bike and small mobility lanes, right? like that it's not just for bikes, it's for people who it's for non-vehicles that are small and fitness space. Um Mark mentioned it, but the buffers like need to be um we're trying to make the buffer definitions clear. We're going to update that graphic so that it more clearly represents for the community. Like we all know that a step back won't just be five or step down won't just be five feet because you'll have to step down some portion of your building and it won't be just five feet of it. Um but for for purposes of illustrating for the community what will happen right we need to have a you know that that show a buffer that is relatively smaller than the setback because that's the the regulation we're trying to illustrate. Um and then lastly on child care um so um in 2025 um the um legislature passed SB5509 which was about the sighting of childcare facilities and SB5184 which was about the parking requirements for childc care facilities and so um we are planning to implement these we're not required to for another like year but implement these with this plan child care. There's several policies around it. It's an economic development issue and it's an equity issue. Um so anyway, the direction from the council is to um allow child care in all zoning districts except heavy industrial both inh home. We differentiate between homebased and like childcare facilities. Um what and those have numeric limits at the state level. Um and then we defer to

Washington state children, youth and families on capacity limits and other regulations because they um permit these. So essentially the direction is that we should not be more restrictive to the than the state. We should just defer to the state um and allow them um wherever. This is slightly more permissive than what the state is requiring us to do. They say we could exclude child care facilities from all industrial zones, but we don't know why we would exclude childcare facilities from light industrial zones presuming that people work in light industrial areas also in childare. um and that the externalities are pretty minimal. So um so that was the council feedback. Um there was also a whole conversation around detention centers, federal detention centers. You may have seen in the news that is not a local land use issue that we can take on um because of federal preeemption. So we're uh determined not to go down that path with you here because it's an entirely different discussion separate from the zoning code at this point. Um so we have two different working groups that are um represent the development community. So one is um it's co-convened with the building industry associations. It's typically the smaller builders um single family to town home middle housing type builders um and then um modular some like Wolf Industries as part of that. Um and then um we have another one that is made up of um multifamily developers that are typically doing much larger projects, mixed use projects. Um you would the names would you know ring a bell um but it's it's folks who are doing big projects around the community and and people we've worked with over the years um and who we feel like um I mean every anyone was invited but these are folks that we've worked with a lot and so they've been a really good sounding board as well. Um so we've met with both

of those groups um since the last time we talked to you. So we want to share a little bit about what we are doing, what we heard and what we're doing. Um so um we on the um so transparency requirements generally so windows basically openings um uh we we there was a comment that we we should make sure whatever we're requiring works with the energy code because Washington state does have a very very aggressive energy code. Um and so we've been looking at that. um it's particularly in the ground floor ready where we have a um I think it's 70% currently listed transparency um and sort of looking at whether that's like doable with energy residential energy code um and desirable and so we're we're taking kind of a fresh look at that. We're also looking at the floor to or clarifying the floor to ceiling height requirement in the active ground floor ready and required. Um, essentially someone asked that we clarify whether it was um, you know, the the minimum was floor to ceiling or structural basically floor to floor like so you could have a drop ceiling basically. Um, and so it is um it's it's structural ceiling, not that floor to finish ceiling basically. Um, because that the incentive is to provide more space for commercial uses in the future. it doesn't mean you have to utilize all that. Now, um so we are clarifying that in the code. Um we have gotten feedback from the some of the smaller builders that you can't achieve um the minimum density for um in the 32 units and then in the regional activity center 624 units an acre with a town home product. And um

uh I think we've heard different things from different people. Some people say yes, you can achieve that in the mixed use area because of the way we calculate density, which is the higher density count if you have more bedrooms, which I think we've shown to you all. Um and I think that some of it is about what folks want to build um and what they're used to building. And so our our kind of our position as of right now and what we'll be talking to council about next time we talk to them is is is essentially to hold the line like where we have those mixed use area. I mean, regional activity center is not intended for that, right? It's a it's a higher intensity zone, but where we have mixed use zoning is on our transit corridors. Um, it's on our major corridors. Like, these are the places where we actually do want to push the market to build a a denser product um because of the public investment that has gone gone into those areas. So, we're still talking about it, but I'm just want to be upfront about kind of where we're going um as a staff and and thinking about it through the lens of our housing action plan and other policy guidance. Um we heard here, sorry for leaving it out of the box. Um and from the development community that um the bike parking standards may be overly prescriptive and that in-unit requirements are not always what people like and want. Um and so we're going to take another look at those and um we certainly are going to keep requirements of some sort because we need to move in that direction but providing more flexibility and perhaps a lower um per unit requirement. So we're looking at that. Um heard that tree preservation requirements could be challenging. Um if you listen to the state of the city last night, you know that climate is a very big um deal for our council and for the community. And so I think where we're going is is we want people to try really

hard to preserve those um mature trees. And if you can't, we're looking at a system where you can pay into our tree fund, but it's going to be high. We're going to push people to we'll give you an out, but it's going to cost um because we really do want to push people to to figure out creative ways to retain richer trees. Uh so we're talking with our urban forestry folks about that. We obviously have to make sure there's, you know, there's we have to find, you know, the um identify and sort of explain the nexus for that requirement and figure out how if that works for a tree fund. But currently, we have a process where if you can't get the you can't the landscaping standards for new trees, you can pay in to a fund. So, we think this may be a way to um provide some flexibility but push towards the outcome. Um three standards we are working on. We're finding that some of our street standards as well as our fire st our fire access standards um and are are creating sort of challenges for um middle housing. Um the good news is we have what we call in our infill code right now which provides some modifications to those. And so I think what we're looking at is some changes that will um you know basically take less space on a site for public or private roads and fire turnaround and that kind of stuff. Um, and then we've heard also that the some of the utility requirements particularly around like setback requirements from foundations on small sites could be really hard like storm water has to be X your your dry well or whatever has to be X feet from your foundation which is hard to fit on small sites. And so um we're talking to our stormwater folks about those. Um, and then also we're looking at the sort of competing uses of street frontage from pet access to utilities to solid waste, you know, recycling to emergency

access to transportation and driveways and on street parking and other stuff. So, we're trying to work through those things as well. So, this is this is this last two items, street standards and some of the utility requirements have been on our radar for a while and we've been working through these. We our our approach right now is to get as much done as part of this code update as we can and with the understanding that it won't be perfect and we're going to have to keep modifying either other chapters of the VMC or potentially even further title 20 refinements. Um I should say this a lot more to you all, but we will not get it right. Um we will miss things and we will be back. and your 2026, you know, you're you're going to get a break, I'm pretty sure, in in May and June, but your 2026 after that may be just a lot of of code tweaks, right, to make it work because we're hearing from folks like, "Oh, you did not think of this thing." Because we will not think of everything. And then lastly, it's a lot we've gotten a lot of feedback from the community over the last couple weeks. We did four community presentations on the planning, the draft planning code. um to um virtual to in person. Um

I'm really worried about

oh um we um you know I think there's folks who um as you know this happens but haven't been aware of the process or paid attention to the process um until sort of pretty far into it. Um we've heard a lot about um questions about how the new base districts were applied um across the city and we've been pretty um trying to be really clear with folks that council had a framework and we've tried to apply it honestly and consistently at their direction around the city. Um and that doesn't mean that base zoning is the only thing that encumbers what can happen on a piece of land. In fact, there are many things that encumber it beyond zoning um including you know things like um you know critical areas, steep slopes, wetlands um easements, utility easements, infrastructure easements, private contracts, um CCN, right? So this we we are we have applied the base zone in a consistent and honest way around the city and um that that is not the only thing that will regulate what can happen on a piece of property. Um, I think a lot of people just want single family neighborhoods to stay single family. This is largely who we've heard from is folks who have lived in their neighborhoods for a very long time and don't want them to change and like what they have. Um, which, you know, it's fair. It's it's it's hard. Um uh we've had some questions about non-conforming development and I think people generally understand our explanation which is that we're sort of the non-conforming code will you know in terms of use will be a bit liberalized. You can expand uses that are non-conforming and from the building type standpoint if you have a non-conforming building it's it really only the new code applies when you redevelop. You're not um we're not going to ask you to pick up your building and

move it closer to the street. understand that would not be reasonable. Um, uh, we've heard just some like other things around just like things that are going on in communities that aren't necessarily things we can fix through the comp plan, but like about long-term parking issues and lack of enforcement. Um, we heard um some confusion about building types versus allowed uses, which I'm kind of think, you know, there's some of it where it's like the it's the code, right? It's the the average people who don't use the code all the time won't necessarily get the code. Um, you know, we want it to be as clear as it can be, but also there's people who implement it, people who use it, and if they can understand, it works for them. That's that's kind of the base thing we need to hit. Um, we had a question. We, you know, we talk about best practices. Um, again, I think people are like, well, where do those come from? What does it mean? And we tried to explain that there are organizations across the state and the country that are studying what it means to make it easier to build build housing particularly in in the United States because we have this this housing crisis and um have had really uh it's come out of very consistent development patterns around the country and so um we provided people with information on that and then um I think there are questions about like how were you how did you apply different state regulations um and and what regulations are meeting what requirements. So for instance, we had someone saying, well, you're really taking 11, you know, HP1 1110 way farther than you need to um because you've got beyond this lowcale neighborhood that allows that, you've got these other zones that allow tons and tons of development. And it's like trying to explain that like you know the low-scale neighborhood is implementing HB1110 but like we it's not like we

could revert existing multifamily or you know not have new multifamily that allows even you know more than that middle housing type and meet the requirements of say HB1220 which is our um our total unit target income band. Um, so that's a I don't think I did a very good job, but I talked to the person after it and tried to explain it. Um, and then there's been lots of questions about fire life safety in single stair buildings, and we've really tried to explain that, you know, um, fire suppression is very effective. Um, sprinklers and fire rated corridors will get people out of buildings and and and the impact of, you know, requiring double loading. So, these are actually just here if you want to talk about them more, but again, we're going to reduce the bike parking. We're looking at it. We're going to think about how we can h provide an out for the tree preservation requirement. Um, we are going to continue to send neighborhood associations notice um uh of developments in their neighborhood. Um, but we're going to work on a system to make it access more accessible to everyone in the community. Um, whether or not you're a leader in neighbor, you know, official neighborhood association. Um, and then just coming up, um, we are coming back to you on the 14th, the workshop plan and code. So, I'll probably break it into two as we have been. Um, and we'll we'll tell you what we changed and we'll we're gonna try to provide you with um change logs so you can see exactly like what was changed from the first draft that was published to this this draft final version. Um, and then on April 28th um you all will have a public hearing on it. We'll publish the draft environmental impact statement um at least 10 days in advance along with the other materials. Um, but

then that that FBI will be out there from for essentially, you know, all of May for the community to look at till it gets to the council action, which is really the final action. Um, yeah. So, we're getting there. We're getting kind of down to um list, single lists of things, right? Like consolidated lists of things that need to be addressed or changed. Um, we're going through the state checklists again. the commerce provided checklist to make sure that we're like complying with every single state law. Um and um finishing some core components that um will need to be in the final plan that weren't in the draft like our um kind of technical documents but like our ADA transition plan, our six um our one to six year and seven to 20 year capital facilities list. So listing every project um is a requirement. Um there's a few other sort of things we're tying up. Um but we're getting close. So that's kind of where we are. We will continue to do engagement. We're going to a neighborhood association next week. Um and uh um continuing to do meet with our working groups. We met with the climate working group as well and more of the plan chapter, working with some of the community based organizations that we've met with over the process to talk more about policies because that's their interest point. Um um and and yeah, we'll we'll keep going where people invite us. Um I've been doing some neighborhood walks with people um to talk through specific neighborhood conditions. So um but yeah, we're moving towards the end um and we're all really looking forward to that. So I'll stop there um and open it up. Thank you.

Thank you. I don't think it's an perhaps it's an understatement to say a monumental gigantic uh huge herculean effort and we appreciate it. Commissioner Beck, comments, questions?

I mean, your team is like you've just gone out of your way to inform us and involve us in the community and city council with this process and um I've just been very impressed and very appreciative of it. I do have a few comments. um wanted to uh offer support for holding that line around the minimum density requirements in the mixeduse um not the regional activity centers but in the mixeduse um areas uh for town homes. Uh noting that this absol absolutely I think align and supports the comp plan and um the state regulations for building housing and as well as the transportation plan. and we really don't want to give on things like that. Um secondly, I uh as we when we met, I mentioned to you and I want to go on record here that I am strongly in favor of um uh incorporating bicycle parking in any new or full redevelopment. Um, I believe that our comp plan and our city uh has a reputation for and I think goes out of our way to be forward thinking and our um transportation plan and policy has um has plans for bike lanes and uh for furthering bike routes in the city and throughout the area and then our bicycle parking should support that. It's not a chicken and egg thing. You don't do one and then wait and build the parking later. it absolutely has to come together. So, a lot of support for that as well. Um, those are my comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Wheeler.

Um, first of all, just thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the thoughtfulness. Um, I really appreciate all the work that's gone into this, all the outreach that's been done. Um, just a couple comments. The first one about the buffers, which I know is a losing battle. I'm not going to say don't do them. I know they're going to happen. Um, but I know we we said today that one of the reasons we added the buffer with between low and medium scale is because there are a lot of places where those intersect, but what that sounds to me is there's a lot of places where we are restricting housing because people don't want to look at tall buildings and that frustrates me. Um, so just putting that on record. I uh I know where we're at with that, but I just wanted to say it since I am grateful to have the opportunity to. Um then the other piece that I'll say um is when it comes to the development community obviously I'm not really a part of that but um I just kind of want to defer to them for what they say will be challenging. Um I understand that pretty much every decision like this you're it's competing priorities. You know there's so many good things we want to accomplish. We want mature trees and tree cover. We want bicycle parking. Like there's so many good things we're trying to do with this. Um, and so deciding where to uh where to add regulations and where not to, that's a hard decision and you know, reasonable people can absolutely disagree. Um, so I think when it comes to things like the the tree preservation and the bike parking, because I know we're thinking about those, my opinion on that is if it's a problem that you can address later, um, maybe not in a way that exactly, you know, brings those mature trees back or um, exactly adds the bike parking in later like retrofit into the building. if you can find ways to add more trees or add more bike parking later, but help solve the housing crisis now, I think maybe that's more important. Um, so that's just something that I would consider when we're deciding what we want to regulate and what we don't. Um, but I think that's all I had. Thank you very much. Yeah, just ju and just want to clarify um really appreciate that comment and

because we're trying to balance it too and so what we're we're trying to do is okay we hear you that um you know people are you know bike rooms people follow other people into bike rooms. Bike rooms are notorious for theft. Um yes we need them. Some people will use them. Some people especially if you ride like you know a $10,000 ebike will not. You will put it in your unit. Um, but you may not want the hook there, you know. Um, talk to folks who are like, "Yeah, we don't put them in. We just add hooks when people want them, where they want them, right? We just stick it in the wall literally where they want them as part of property management." Um, so I think like we're just trying to So again, that's where we're revisiting the requirement, trying to look at like can we reduce the overall requirement? Can we just be more flexible? Um, you know, one thing that's challenging for us always is with these discussions is we can't really um we could try but we can't enforce performance mandates. You know, we get one crack at this. We approve the land use application. We don't go in to see if the hook is there later. And so trying to kind of balance that. And same with the trees, like saying, "Yeah, we if if we want to have an out, but we want it that out to be something you really need to use." Um, and therefore make it, you know, something you you really have to give on. Um, so, um, yeah, I just want to say like that is where staff is at. We're really we've worked so closely with the development community through this process and like we've we've made a lot of changes based on their input and um so we're just always trying to kind of balance that. Um yeah

yeah that absolutely makes sense and I appreciate it. Thank you Commissioner J.

Thank you very much. really appreciate the presentation today and as always I'll continue to voice my skepticism on bike parking as well as potentially the use of land or treat preservation to prevent development but I think my opinions on those are relatively clear. So I'll jump in and say that I'm very excited about the single stair buildings. I think when I joined this commission, I believe that only Seattle and Vancouver or British Columbia had a single stair building requirement. So, this is extremely exciting to see that we're able to build more density on smaller lots and be more creative with our building constructions. So, I'd be happy to hear if you have any more how any comments on how working through the process, if you get any other challenges aside from just, you know, navigating the fire code and all of that or um just like share more about the win.

Yeah, I mean it's it's a big deal. I think um it's a really So, we have a housing action plan, right? And this is like a a sort of this is where having these overall over sort of writing policy directives allows us to move pretty efficiently because we all know what we're trying to achieve. And so um yeah, I I mean Seattle has had this for since the 70s. We have looked at their fire incident data. We have looked at what their sort of fire response capabilities are relative to ours um and is you know in relative to size as well, right? Um and our building official and our fire marshall work together um to essentially put an alternate in the alternates in the building code allow you to kind of do a different thing because it gets at the same intent in place in advance of the state building code council. So um that was a great process. We are also looking at allowing um sixstory woodframe buildings right now and again looking at Seattle and Tacoma. Um and how we could maybe put an alternate in place for those as well. Um and it might be two. It might be like you know you go with the pressurization route or you go with the um separation route basically. So um yeah so we're working on that. So I really a testament to our ability and fisher and fire marshall um who are bought into and understand that we need to prioritize housing.

Yeah. Thank you. Very excited. Thank you. Thank you Commissioner Cington.

Thanks so much for the presentation. Um I have two comments. One is on the it's more of a design comment on the table and the associated graphic for the buffer. So on slides 10 and 11. And I do really appreciate the additional detail on um slide 10 and then also the addition of having that buffer with the medium scale to low scale. I think that's, you know, from what I've heard, you've received in terms of community feedback and um I know you updated the commission about when there were those changes and zoning and um so I think it it strikes a nice balance with being responsive to that feedback while at the same time not really you you aren't having a buffer that's so big that you're losing out on a lot of housing as a result. So, um the design comma is just um maybe adding a key to this to show what the the different colors how the different colors of the numbers like how that's reflected in the subsequent graphic. I know I was trying to do a little bit of a comparison and it was a little unclear what that how that max height so what's in pink in the the table above. So, the slide 10 sorry. So that um like how that relates to

um the height, the step back height and then the maximum height in the next graphic. So I think just digging into that a little bit for folks that um aren't developers and are looking at this as community members and just trying to understand um the connection between these two. So perhaps a key might help. Um, and then I I recognize you already explained a couple of great ideas about modifications, which makes sense to me. And maybe a comment, just a reflection I was having about the the tree preservation standards, and perhaps this is a matter of differentiating between what's going to be in code and what's in policy, but I do think exploring a bit um just in terms of of feasibility. So, when you were mentioning the the fund that developers could pay into, well, I think that's a really interesting idea and perhaps there's there's times when that would be appropriate. Um, just making sure that we're considering um looking at at times when it's still feasible to preserve those trees as opposed to just developer wants to build more homes, which is of course a priority and one that we have to balance um with the tree preservation and climate impact. um requirements. But I think, you know, we all we all seen new neighborhoods where the trees that are planted to replace the ones that are taken down are, you know, it takes decades obviously and and that's something we all know um to to get back to what was there prior. So I think just um an encouragement for exploration of you know how much is going into policy versus code and you know pushing pushing developers to consider that feasibility and um you know not not just like having this as an off-ramp I guess um if uh the the desired goal is simply just more

more density on that parcel that has more mature trees. So, just wanted to offer that perspective. But overall, I I really um I know I'm I'm new to the commission, but just have been very impressed by um the level of of detail and outreach and especially with the community. I think it's um really admirable and just want to commend everyone that's worked on this. Thank you.

Thanks, Shar. Thanks, Jeff. Awesome work as per usual. just thought I would chime in on a couple of uh these topics that were discussed today. Um first of all, in the overlay districts, I'll just um kind of repeat my um my distaste for the ground floor commercial ready um overlay just in general. I think it's um it's three reasons. One, um it's speculative by nature and um and it will just it will increase cost. The question is how much it will it increase the cost by. Um I haven't seen evidence of conversions from residential to commercial. Uh and three it creates a compromise that isn't ideal for either commercial conversions or the residents that would live in there at day one. Um and so I I don't necessarily have a good solution because I recognize that um the whole idea of commercial ready was to um create kind of a bridge between where ground floor commercial would be required and uh which is a very limited portion of the city um and some of those other areas that could really use some neighborhood serving commercial. Um but uh the challenge I found as I thought more about this is those areas that are have this overlay are probably some of the more desirable areas to redevelop in the short term and therefore we're kind of increasing costs towards the things that are most likely to redevelop the soonest into more density. Um so that's my kind of statement on on ground floor commercial ready. Um just wanted to reiterate that a little more clearly than I thought I had in the past. Um, an alternative could be to look at some of those neighborhoods again where neighborhood commercial would be appropriate and desirable and just pick some corners and say, "Hey, these are the corners where ground floor will be commercial will be required." Um, that's a little bit of

picking and choosing on on parcels and some property owners may not see the value in that. Um, but it's something I think we should grapple with. Okay. Um, number two, um, was going back to the the medium scale neighborhood. Again, I've I've said this in the past, um, but I wanted to articulate a little more clearly that I think the reason we have, uh, zoning districts is to provide a foundation for neighborhood compatibility. Like we don't want um, neighborhoods to be incompatible or feel checkerboarded or feel unplanned. Um that said, the medium scale neighborhood is made to have a highly flexible um building typologies. Everything from single family residential to uh the multif family building which has a build two line 5 ft back from the property line uh and can go up to um you know we may see sixtory woodframed buildings. I think that by leaving the 75 ft mark uh as a maximum building height in the medium scale neighborhood does not help facilitate that compatibility. Um lowering it I think would give reassurances to the community that we are keeping compatibility in mind while still providing a very robust level of flexibility for things that are one likely to get built and two um would be u would be um compatible with with existing neighborhoods as they burden and the reason I think multi um medium scale neighborhood is particularly important to pay attention attention to is because it is a large portion of the city's uh reszoning efforts and upzoning efforts. So I think it requires special attention. Um and that's where I'll leave at that. I think the max building height should be lowered.

That's it. Thank you. Just a couple of comments from my side. Again, want to commend the effort to not only seek out so broadly feedback from community and stakeholders, but also to incorporate it. I think we've seen along the way and along this path how our feedback has been taken and and accounted for. So I really appreciate that. I wanted to touch on the tree fund and you know I don't know what the right number is. I'm sure there's lots of I don't know either

that go in there, but I just want to make sure that it's not just the cost of doing business and the cost of tearing down trees is this and it's something that people are gladly uh willing to pay to develop. I think it should be something that's adequately um important and proportional to the the trees that are being removed. Obviously, if it's a tree that someone planted last year, that's quite different, I think, from what we're talking about. But there's a thing that happens where if the fee is too low, it's not really an incentive to try. It just becomes, well, pay the fee and that's the cost of doing business. So, really just want to underscore that point which I think Commissioner Castensson raised earlier. And then I would just love to see when they come back in April. There's some more community feedback here that's listed, some questions that they had. I would love to see how we um address those if at all possible. Some of them are more just qu like questions will be like we've taken a lot of the questions that we're getting and added them to the FAQ's and some of it is just like trying to it's we're not going to address it like it's not appropriate to put it like something like that in the plan or the code but we're trying to

put it out there so we can bring that back. Yeah. Even just a slide like this that has a couple more bullet points and say this is addressed in this FAQ or we took this and did X Y and Z with it. It doesn't need to be uh exhaustive or looped into the plan at this stage or anything like that. Just want to see what happened, what was the outcome of that community feedback um once we were able to answer the questions or understand their concerns. Okay. Any gobacks from my fellow commissioners? All right. Well, thank you so much. I believe that takes us into the break.

Okay. Great. We'll be back at 6:30 for the second workshop. Perfect. Thank you. Yep. Yep.

You got to go first. Did you enjoy that rain or Sunday? Sorry, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So didn't

last one too. Test. One, two, three. Hello. Hello.

The March 10th, 2026 meeting of the City of Vancouver Planning Commission is resuming after the 6 p.m. break. Earlier, we had a workshop on the comprehensive plan update going over the code details, part three. But as we reconvene here, that takes us into the community forum. It sounds like we have someone signed up to speak for community forum today. Yes.

Okay. So, a community forum is held at each meeting of the planning commission. During the community forum, the public is invited to provide input on matters related to the planning commission's authority and responsibility for land use and development matters. Each speaker will be given three minutes to address the commission. The chair will help to keep track of time. Remarks should be directed to the planning commission as a body, not to individual members or staff, and focus on subjects within the commission's advisory perview. Community members who wish to submit lengthy or detailed testimony are encouraged to email their comments to planning commission at city of Vancouver. us. Please note that the community form is different from testimony provided as part of a public hearing. In the case of public hearings, individuals indicating they wish to testify on the public hearing item will be called upon during that portion of the agenda. We appreciate, welcome, and consider community input regarding land use policy. Please call the first person. Mary Keltz. Good evening. I'm here again to comment on the comprehensive plan update. And I went to the trouble of writing something out to try to be concise. So I will read that to you. There's a huge elephant sitting on top of the proposed comprehensive plan update. That is the Vancouver urban growth area. It's mentioned in the annexation chapter, but not enough for many citizens to understand and accept proposed changes to the city. There is a lot of land suitable for development to increase the supply of housing in the UG. How is the city working with Clark County toward an equitable and consistent transition from historically suburban to increasingly urban? This

question should be answered before the plan is formally adopted. The entire UG is projected for annexation within the next 20 years. The draft plan says annexation should proceed only when they do not result in a reduction of service for existing city residents. Meanwhile, the draft plan would effectively bring more buildable land into the city by allowing building in many new places and into the sky. Thus, city residents are already facing a reduction in service in terms of quality of life and potential crowding from a de facto annexation. Which brings me back to a key question. How are both jurisdictions, city and county, planning together for more housing in the UG and not just within current city neighborhoods? Thank you for listening. Thank you. Do we have anyone else signed up to speak for community forum this evening?

No, no one else.

Okay. Given that there is no one else signed up, the community forum is now closed. We will move into the next item on the agenda which is the workshop on the comprehensive plan update, the draft community experience, equity, inclusion, and annexation chapters. Any introductory remarks on this item? Just the same reminder that this is the time for comments um on these chapters or if there are other ones that you didn't get out in the previous meeting um workshops on the the plan to please let us know now or or follow up in writing. But um we're we're really you know taking comments now and want your feedback so that we can review and incorporate as we refine and get to a more final draft. Um and then I think I'm kicking this off if I may chair. So, Rebecca Kennedy again, I'm the deputy director of community development department for the city and part of the comprehensive plan update team joined by my colleague Dominique Martinelli um senior planner who is also part of the comprehensive plan team. We've been in it together since the beginning. Um next slide please. So, we're going to um do the again the highlevel introduction that we always do um sort of around um the plan chapters, how they're organized, what the state requirements are. Um uh talk about sort of why the chapters are organized the way they are, what are the legal requirements, the policy direction that are sort of informing that. And then um wanting to get your overall um input, feedback, is it clear? Are the chapters legible? the policy intent legible um and then there will be plenty of time for review and discussions um and next steps. So um I'll turn it over to Dominique.

Hello everyone. Um I'm going to do kind of a quick introduction and then talk about the first chapter community experience. Um we've talked about this the last couple presentations, but again um the comprehensive plan is a requirement under the growth management act. Um and that's a statewide um legislation that requires you know growth planning and all of that. Um it talks about how those elements must relate to one another. So it's implemented through um the statutory requirements. Um there's detailed guidance and commerce checklist that specifies like what needs to be in each chapter of the comprehensive plan. Um key things to look for in all these chapters as you're reviewing them is they have to be internally consistent. There can't be like clear um conflicts or issues between the chapters. um the data needs to be supported through assumptions. Um and or the there need to be like um there significant data to support the claims that are being made in the plan. Um there's somewhere around 16 to 17 exhibits that we're including as part of the comprehensive plan that has significant amount of data associated with that. Um and then demonstrate capacity to accommodate growth. Um so and we're going to talk specifically about the legal requirements for each chapter. So, as we've gone through, we've talked about um you know, the legal requirements outlined in the RCWS as it applies to each chapter. Um community experience is not a mandatory element. Um but it does function as a planwide lens to support internal consistency and it it helps think through a lot of the key issues that we're talking through. Um and reinforces a number of goals related to quality of life, um quality public facilities, health equity, and environmental protection. Um and it must remain coordinated with all the other chapters that are in the plan. Um annexation is also not mandatory, but there are um governed annexation statutes that exist outside of the Growth Management Act. They're contained in chapter 35A of the Revised Code of Washington um which specifies the circumstances under which you can annex property and and the ways that cities

and counties, you know, relate to each other in terms of annexation. Um it's limited to territory within an adopted urban growth area. um it must remain contiguous in an order early manner consistent with the um GMA and there's also countywide planning policies um that guide annexation as well. Um so each of the chapters we really think through the context the strategy and the implementation. Um so we kind of started a high level talking about framing up the issue. Um you know what are the what are the current conditions facing you know the elements in each chapter? What's the key vision statement? um which was developed through community input for each of the chapters. And then we kind of get into the the key challenges and trends that the policy strategy is responding to. Um there's an equity lens that that sort of looks at relevant supporting data and factf finding. Um how are equity pride community communities impacted and how do we address that from a policy standpoint? Um and just sort of frames up um the the whole argument and then we get into the specific policies that relate to each of the goals that are outlined in the chapter. So, I'm going to talk a little bit I'm going to get more into depth on the community experience piece. Um, many of you might be wondering what that word means, community experience. Um, it kind of sounds like it can be a little bit more vague of a term, but it's something that was really driven through our process and through engagement with our community partners early on. And sort of what this chapter is about is it's one of the two plan lenses. So, we have community experience um and equity inclusion. And so one way to think about this chapter is for anybody that's ever has worked in tech about thinking about like user experience or user design. We wanted to have right at the beginning of the plan sort of a chapter that thinks intentionally about like end user experience. If you're a community member, what's your experience like in the community? What's it like when you walk outside your front door? Um and rooting us in a set of policies that

really help us think about all community members first and how they experience the community. So putting that into to practice um this actually has um second to the housing chapter the most number of goals associated with it. Um but the first piece is social infrastructure and this is essentially a goal that thinks through how community members live in active and engaged neighborhoods with supportive social ties and and really thinking about treating the community spaces and the places where people gather. um similar to like how we might invest in infrastructure and things like that. So it puts an intentional lens um and there's a number of of policies that relate to that like centering impacted voices in the development of community spaces um community engagement event programming um and trying to really build up there's a lot of work that happens through um different departments in the city like our our community neighborhood grant program and and ways that the city is funding like actual community events. Um and then we have policies around increasing access to community spaces. So it's thinking about like investment in social spaces um as something that has stated public benefits on the quality of human life. Um inclusive and affirming environments is the second one. So this thinks through public spaces and facilities um that are affirming across identity factors like age, race, class, age, sex, gender identity, ability, national origin, that kind of thing. Um so making sure that we have specific policies that apply to the work we're doing you know generally as a city about creating an inclusive environment for all. Um the third one is about safety. Um I would say if you read through our community engagement um reports that we've developed throughout the planning effort. One of the biggest people issues that people brought up in addition to housing was safety. People think a lot about safety and feeling safe in their communities. So there's obvious connections to transportation safety and

vision zero and stuff that we talk about. It's also um if anybody has has you know dug into like planning literature thinking about like Jane Jacobs and eyes on the street um and how effective land use planning can lead itself to positive safety outcomes. Um it does not deal with um you know police or anything like that nature since this is a land use plan. um but it does guide a number of things and it also has a strong overlap um with the climate chapter and thinking about resiliency. So there's a policy in this chapter that relates to like disaster recovery and emergency response and um thinking about that type of stuff of how we respond in the face of n natural disap disasters and and threats and all that. Fourth one is innovation. So this is thinking there's a connection between um economic opportunity here and and thinking about how we innovate as a community, but also just the city taking on an innovative mindset and approach as we tackle problems and solutions. Innovation and addressing the housing crisis, innovation in implementing pilot projects, for example, is is a policy that's listed in there. Um so that that's really something that we're kind of encouraging um you know throughout that. So it's thinking about also there's policies around like inclusive technologies and and things of that nature. And then the fifth one and you know getting back into that root of like what does it mean to to live in this community and to be in this community? What's your experience is asking the sort of fundamental question of what does it mean to be a Vancouver right? Um so um you know depending on on who you talk to um your idea of what Vancouver is varies quite differently. Um, but thinking about some of the great cities in in our country, um, all have some sort of shared pride and identity, like when you say, "I'm a New Yorker or I'm from Philly," like people have an idea of what that is. Um, so trying to kind of think about that in the context of policym and um, you know, who gets to tell the stories about what this place

is and and just thinking about all the different identities that live here. Um, so we have a number of policies that that align with that and when and we think about place too. There's some connections to policies that have to do with um, you know, neighborhood centers and and developing public spaces and things like that. And then it also thinks about like public art and historically and culturally significant resources. What makes a place what it is? So um this is the topic for uh annexation. Um we have it in our current plan um because and and we will have it we have a chapter in our new plan. Again it's not mandatory. Dominique accurately points out there are many RCWs governing governing annexation the you know methods processes etc. Um, and I think, you know, one of the reasons that we consistently include these in our planning documents is because we have the largest unincorporated urban growth area in the state. Um, it's nearly the same size of the city geographically and there's 170,000 residents. So, it's an extremely large urban urban and very urbanized urban growth area. Um, so we get lots of questions about annexation and I think unfortunately we don't have satisfying answers because we're just not far enough along the path um of of talking to the county and coordinating and um you know building agreements about how we might work together to get um get to a place where there there are parts of the urban you know the UG that are very urbanized that are you know coming in to the city and receiving saving urban services. I think it's a long conversation. So, um really the annexation chapter is just a set of um

policies that sort of put out the city's position on um uh when and how we would pursue annexations. Um and you know, we we recognizing that the Growth Management Act has not a regulation but an expectation that cities are bringing in urban areas. Um but also recognizing that you know in many parts of the state the those were done you know after right after the GMA before the urb the UGAs were developed um so cities could still count on the revenue that come out of development to provide the services and unfortunately that is not the situation we're in. So um uh essentially the policies talk about um you know fiscal sustainability. We don't want to annex anything that we can't serve and we don't want to decrease the level of service for our existing residents. Um it requires us to really understand what we're getting. Um so and and I've gone through some decent size a decent sized annexation in the past um but nowhere near the size of your growth area. But the you have to inventory all the infrastructure you're getting. You have to know what you're getting. Um and um sometimes that's you know great stuff like you're getting parks and parks are great parkland's great but sometimes you're getting you know stuff that was built a long time ago and needs work um or isn't necessarily built to the standards that you would you would have on your infrastructure. So, um, there's this we we have to understand what we're getting and what are the long-term maintenance and capital obligations that come with those and how do those impact level of service for our current residents but also new residents if they're coming in from the UG. Um, and uh, it doesn't and then again it sort of just provides this guidance for how to go about um, and what are the sort of conditions under which the city will consider um,

annexation. um but it doesn't have a schedule and I think it's important to note and it's in the narrative of the chapter that we adopted a annexation blueprint plan in um 2008 and it was like very detailed about what would come in in 5 years, what would come in in 10 years, what would come in in 15 and 20. Um, and then I think you all know what happened in 2008, but the city laid off almost half its staff and the whole, you know, we we'd stopped that entirely given the recession um and the kind of I don't want to say reemergence, but the um uh the um I think renewed impact and spotlight on the structural revenue issues in Washington state. Um, so anyway, that that local governments have to provide services. So that's that's really what this is. It's intended to set the stage for us to continue to engage with very clear policy direction about how and when under what conditions the city might presume these um pursue annexations. um and to provide I think a path or that that for us to start you know more robust conversations with the county. So yeah I I've pro I've talked to lots of people about this. Um I they never find this answer satisfying. I doubt you do either. Um but this is what we we have for now. And and I will say, you know, you I think you all are aware, but the city manager and I presented what was like all like last June, but to the county council on annexation and sort of the the challenges we saw and the needs that we saw and I think that was very wellreceived and my understanding is that leadership um continues to have discussions about how we might work together. So, this is really just kind of I think building on that work and and hopefully moving us forward um with the understanding that

it's hard for counties to provide urban services. Um so, um that's a challenge that we know our partners in at Clark County are facing. So, I'll pause there. Um oh, I guess we can just keep going. Yes. Thank you. Great. Next steps. Um so, uh we're going to initiate the adoption process with you. will be back here for a workshop on April 14th, a public hearing on the 28th. And we'll be starting the process with council. We go to them next week. Um and then twice in April. Um once in May and once on June 1st for a um public hearing and adoption unless you know that that that's a target unless it gets moved. It's all we got on these chapters.

Thank you, Vice Chair Pal. Thank you both for the presenting that. I a very short anecdote is um I'm was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas and I moved away um you know 20 years ago and came out to Vancouver and one of the ways that I stay in touch with my hometown is through the San Antonio Spurs. I'm a big Spurs fan. Um, and I'm not saying that Vancouver should be pursuing a professional sports team, but I do I do I did want to ask like, you know, I think that having something the Vancouver blank as a way to like stay connected to home as a as a representation whether it's sports, orchestra, dance companies, you know, musicians of all types, whatever, artists, whatever it is. I I wanted to ask like in the community experience because that seems like a community experience type of thing. Have we made space in in our goals or plans or policies for helping facilitate that that type of um that type of branding really that's what I think it is.

I would say in the community experience chapter that that is contemplated. Um, I know for those that tuned into the state of the city last night, the mayor talked a lot about this issue actually like they held us at the the Vancouver Arts Hub and um, you know, mentioned like you the performing arts center and stuff like that and um, you know, particularly within that social infrastructure piece, I would say there are policies that relate to that directly. like we don't call out a specific plan for you know how we're addressing that through like a set of actions but it does the the framework does encourage that type of of that's great

labeling especially the community it's it was that it's that policy it's C1 and then C5 is it it hits to that last point as well

wonderful yeah again not saying you know we need a um to I I I guess Um, it is also an economic development consideration. Um, and maybe there's a tie in there that, um, I just wasn't seeing called out specifically. Okay, next question was, um, I appreciate the annexation goal around fiscal sustainability. I just wanted to circle back to a question that I had had a a meeting ago around that kind of fiscal policy around the public facilities just because I don't you said bring it up if it was still lingering. Um

yeah. Y is has there been any progress on on that front in terms of like the revenue generation question that I was asking about?

Yeah. I mean maybe let me say what I think you said at the last meeting which is which is that um I think what you said was that how how you budget is a policy choice as well how you prioritize you know not just and so what's going to guide that like where's the policy that says we will do X when we make budget decisions or it's kind of an oversimplification um and um I I so so yes we're having conversations that's in that's in our log of things. It's it's been logged um and we're having conversations about it. I think the

that's not an US call, right? That's that's more like a um leadership budget office strategic plan type call is like what is the framework they're using for prioritizing things in the budget and should we memorialize that in the comprehensive plan or should we memorialize something more less less sort of specific from a values perspective but more about transparency community based budgeting whatever it is like we you know so we're having that conversation Um on the annexation front um we um that those conversations are really discipline by discipline, right? Like there are some things you could take on that you have systems to do that and so it probably wouldn't be that hard and yeah, you might need to add some staff but you know that kind of thing. And then there are other things that are like um there's no sustainable source of funding and we would have to identify that right like so that it's sort of that I I don't think we can apply a policy to the fiscal sustainability more specifically in the annexation section. Um I think and and nor do I think our leadership would be willing to do that right now. I think it's just generally this that it needs to be fiscally sustainable and um it it can't decrease level of service for our current residents. So I I'm not sure we'll get there specific to annexation, but we will get there more as like a budgeting thing and good governance transparency stuff is in the community experience chapter. So I'd anticipate seeing something added there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Beck. Just full disclosure, I live in the urban growth area and um you know some of the information and and thank you for the presentation and all the information. First, I just want to say I understand that these two um chapters are more goal oriented and perhaps aspirational than with tangible uh steps and appreciate that they are nonetheless included in the compliment. So, thank you for making that effort. Um, and you're right, I don't get all my answers or all of my questions answered right away. U, but that is pretty typical in life. I think that um when I looked at the different um chapters for community development or community experience as well as annexation, I start looking at numbers and I think there were numbers provided in the annexation um PDF. I don't know about numbers provided in the community experience PDF. Um representation is one of the um biggest topics for me as an urban growth area resident and as a lesbian. Um, I want to know that I have uh hold that space is held for me and that I am part of this community in all parts of Vancouver. And um and same with for my loved ones and friends and everyone else. And um

and I think around community experience um I appreciate the aspirational goals. I um of course want to get down to, trust me, the nitty-gritty of how many gay artists have really been um hired and represented and show gay public art in um Vancouver. And I haven't looked into that yet, but I probably will. Um under annexation um the numbers seeing that the population in the urban growth area is very similar or close to the population within the city limits of Vancouver. um really I think stressed the I guess separation that I feel or the lack of representation that I feel from um being in the urban growth area and not within the city limits. And you know I've talked to some of my neighbors about this. It's very interesting. Everyone has different opinions. Um the majority of the people I speak with about the topic are um are concerned that the services that the county provides uh will will not be as or are not as good in terms of emergency response or something like that as what the city may provide. And since we live in a 55 and older area um that is even of more concern to us. Um, but I think just representation overall. I mean, recently I heard there was a uh two positions open on um the Fort Vancouver Library Board and um I know some people who were interested in them. I myself was interested in it uh particularly after the recent controversies and looked at those and you have to be a city resident to apply for those positions. So, urban growth

area people, I mean, I hold the urban growth area seat on the planning commission, but um not all commissions necessarily or boards hold seats uh for urban growth area residents. And yet, our population in the urban growth area is almost as large as our population within the city limits. So, I trust me, I do understand the intricacies and balance of um working with the county um and of um financing infrastructure and being able to put together a plan, let alone cataloging everything that's there. That's a huge huge task. And at the same time, uh the disparity is noticeable. and I just wanted to speak um personally from that as a resident of the urban growth area. Um thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Wheeler.

Um first I just wanted to say that I thought these chapters were really well done. Um I thought they were readable. I really appreciate, you know, especially in the community experience, the like holistic approach to what it means to live in a city and and what matters to city residents. Um I have one small comment on the community safety goal. Um, it does touch on safe street designs and transportation, but I think for most people, the biggest risk to their safety dayto-day is cars. Whether they're in one, whether they're a pedestrian, whether they're a cyclist, whatever they're doing, um, having a safe transportation network is probably the biggest thing that determines whether or not they're going to be safe that day. Um, so I think that the danger of cars could maybe be a little bit more emphasized in that chapter because it probably is the biggest risk to most people. Um, and then aside from that, I just wanted to emphasize, um, a quote from the community experience chapter that says, um, pride emerges not only from physical surroundings, but from the relationships and collective experiences that give neighborhoods their character. I love that. Kind of want to tattoo it on my forehead. Um, it's just great. So, I just wanted to call that out. I really, really love that. Um, thank you so much.

Thank you, Commissioner J. Thank you, Dominique. Thank you, Rebecca. Really appreciate you walking through these chapters. I enjoyed reading both of them and just wanted to call out that Rebecca definitely preempted all of my comments on the annexation including that county governments are not designed as municipal governments as well as even the 2008 document which I have read and noticed that it was a plan and sadly realized that we were well behind all those dates in terms of annexation. Um

we did too. So appreciate all those call outs. Less appreciation for stealing my questions, but no, I'm just kidding. Um, but yes, I I I would love to see more of a more framework moving forward. I mean, whenever that happens with the county of of seeing the actual timelines of the plans, I'd be even open to these areas even forming their own Hazel city rather than as it is just because it is a strain on our county's resources. it does require a duplication of offerings that aren't always a perfect use of our public dollars. So, and it is just kind of a culture shock to come here and see such a large or uh un uh such a large uh area uninccorporated. It's just kind of unique to our area, then it is a problem that I would like to see us solve and and not put on the back burner as we did in 2008, although unfortunately we couldn't predict a financial crisis. Um but so I kind of read this chapter almost as like uh things that could get in the way of it. Um challenges that are be to be had. But I did have one just question because we do in a lot of our documents we do reference like Vancouver is changing the demographics are changing and I assume that means like the natural growth of the city boundaries as it is though and and I do follow up with the question my brain that I'm afraid to ask which is like what if we incorporated the this area? How would that impact the trajectory of the city? because if the city that area is less less diverse than the city itself, a little wealthier um from all the numbers that I have seen illustrated on this, I'm sure that'll have its own different impact if we were to absorb plus the natural growth of the city in both areas. But I'd imagine that's a big question to tackle, but I just want to

point out that I was thinking about it at least. But thank you both. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Commissioner Castensson.

Thanks so much. Um, I also found these chapters really readable and especially the community experience one um quite inspiring. For the annexation chapter, um, just a little design suggestion including a map might be helpful unless there was a a compelling reason not to. I think it could be interesting for people to to see that in one place and like add a level of detail where they could kind of understand um, precisely where those urban growth areas are. And then um a question which perhaps won't be addressed in this chapter but just something that I was wondering about and and I think actually perhaps could address some questions that folks who live in the ring growth area might be thinking about and that is presuming that those areas do come or at least there's the possibility those areas might come into Vancouver in in the next um few decades. how might this plan be applied to them just from a practical standpoint and thinking like at a pretty large level with respect to to zoning districts and you know how how might those decisions be made and I remember when we were or a few chapters back and thinking about the historic development of the city and um specifically in the eastern part of the city in a lot of lowscale neighborhoods single family homes and thinking well what if we could have gone back in time and and applied some of the principles that are in the current comprehensive plan to these areas as they were developing. And so recognizing that a lot of the unincorporated areas are already quite urban, but perhaps some of those areas, there is that opportunity to apply some of these principles of um you know, good good urban planning and and neighborhood design, having those neighborhood centers. I know that was a a question that came up with city council about, well, where are those neighborhood centers in the east side? And there's not, you know, there there are I live on the east side, like there are some places where, you know, maybe I can see that happening, but maybe

there's even more opportunity in the urban growth area. So, I guess just perhaps helping people who live there as well as current residents of Vancouver kind of see what might that vision look like um with applying some of the principles of the plan to these new areas. Thank you. Thank you. Just a couple from me. Um, we'll start with the community safety chapter. Uh, I hear a lot of talk about public safety in general. So, I loved the rebrand to community safety. Um, here I also really enjoyed the fact that it goes beyond just, you know, the simple equation of like more police equals more safety. I think looking at good lighting and the different safer patterns for mobility um that was all really great stuff that I love to see in that chapter um and in that particular goal. So that was awesome. And I think he made a comment about how um it's land use policy um and so obviously that isn't nothing pertaining to you know um police funding would even be in there in the first place. So, I thought that was uh great to remember and maybe something that can ride with with that section um if it were to be in conversation with community in the future. Um, and then looking at the annexation chapter and we don't have to rehash the presentation that you went through in June, but I do just want to understand is this one of those things where, you know, obviously things aren't built to the same code standard and there's some areas where like the city is the utility provider even though they're

unincorporated, but Just on a in a very general way, does feasibility get better? Does it get worse the longer annexation doesn't happen? Yeah. I mean, I'm I don't want to speak in specifics, so I'll just speak in trends. Mhm. Um

the county standards now are much closer from from an infrastructure standpoint to the cities. Um um but some of the the land use patterns that you see in their the alternatives that they're you know their land use alternatives that they're evaluating. Um, for instance, don't don't emphasize things like commercial services near where people live. Um and so if you think about buildings and development typically lasting for 50 years um and we think that you know achieving X policy goal um requires us to have more mixing say right so people can you know whether it's equity and access or you know mode shift and climate change or whatever it is um yeah it could get worse yeah you know Um I think it's sort of relative and hard to quantify but if you keep I if we think that different development patterns are good right or needed and then then sustaining old development patterns maybe you know in that sense it could get worse.

Okay. So generally as long as the visions are different for these two areas they may not begin to get closer together. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say the unfunded liability grows with time.

Okay, thank you. That was kind of the last comment that I had on that. Just looking to my fellow commissioners for any blowbacks on this presentation. Okay, thank you so much. Truly, I think that takes us to staff and commissioner communications. Any communications from staff? just really want to reiterate, we're going to meet twice in April. Um, so the 14th and the 28th. Um, I anticipate at least the 28th would pro will probably be a pretty long meeting. Um, and so we'll we'll get information out to you as soon as we can. Thanks, Dominique. Um, uh, on sort of timing and schedule. Um, and then uh and then I you probably noticed that we didn't send out um like we typically in the like email that says the materials are posted there's like and here's the schedule for the next quarter and you probably noticed that wasn't included and that's because we don't know. Um so I think just generally I mean we have some ideas right but I think generally the planning commission can expect a little bit of a break. Um and then we're going to start to see as we implement right challenges and I think get busy again in the fall. So just I guess all to say it's just a really irregular cadence than what is typical for the commission in sort of your average year where we're not doing this and so ask for your patience and um you know do the best you can.

That's all I got chair. Thank you. Thank you commissioner. Oh, wait. I do have one more one more thing. One one more thing. Okay. Um I also wanted to let you all know I'm super thrilled. Um but we have hired a new long-range planning manager

who's going to be starting um on April 1st. Um you all may know her. Um her name is Lorie Severino. She works for the city. I actually hired her a couple years ago um to work on the interstate bridge replacement program. um but she has a background in um station area planning, community engagement, current planning, transportation. So um we're super excited that she's going to step into this role and um it's going to be a slow um transition because she's doing the good work on the interstate bridge replacement program and we won't we cannot take her from that fully. So, it'll be sort of a slow transition, but she's going to be um so you'll start seeing her at meetings more as an observer um so she can get a feel for it. You know, she'll be kind of wrapped into comp plan stuff just to absorb as much as she can at the end of the process. And then importantly, it's going to be extracting information from Brian Sonrass's brain at a accelerated rate. So, um, as we do come back to you with, um, with zone and potentially comprehensive plan changes for the first time in my entire time at the city and most of our entire times at the city, those will be brought to you not by Brian um, which will just be completely weird for all of us. um but or or jointly with Brian and Lori and then you know so anyway um so yeah it's going to it's going to be a period of transition kind of all around or of flux maybe is the right word um and then 2027 we should get back more into a kind of typical cadence that's all thank you

thank you that is exciting news it is exciting news we're all very excited

commissioner any communications commissioner Okay. Commissioner Wheeler, Commissioner Beck, Vice Chair Pile. Okay. I had one thing. Um, I had a conversation with a community member the other day who posed a question to me about a scenario and I wanted to just bring it to this forum and see uh what your thoughts might be. Uh, they happen to live in the waterfront area. um they have um kids who come and visit them and they just haven't really uh figured out how what the best way to get I guess their parking situation figured out is. I know that's not generally uh a thing that we dive into too much, but um just wanted to get your thoughts on how that could operate, what the mobility options are for them. Maybe I just need to bring that to the Transportation and Mobility Commission to ask over there. just wanted to float that idea.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, of course. Um, you know, obviously, you know, it's not the city's responsibility to provide off- streetet parking for private individuals. That's really the responsibility of the developer and their choice as when um when they pursue um different um you know, housing arrangements. Also, we know that um not everybody has a choice. So the waterfront is certainly a location of choice just given the the cost. So um but I I would say that you know downtown is the best where well served area or the best served by transit in the city. Um it has the most connected sort of grid mobility system um because of when it was built as a street car s you know neighborhoods there are sidewalks in most of it and so there are good mobility options. Um, I know that the private off street parking that's not, you know, separate from a specific, you know, apartment building or something is quite expensive. We'd say the city lot, um, the 415 lot right across city hall is it's $9 for 24 hours. So, you can you can spend the night, you can be there all day. Maybe it's a little bit of a walk. Um, but it is more affordable than um some of the other options. So, would put that out there. um not sure what this person's situation is. Um if they do have like a mobil if it's like an ADA issue, they should get in touch with our parking folks. We will stripe um on street ADA spaces for people who request them if they have a placard and you know, not I can't request one. Um but if you so so happy to work with them on things like that. Um but I would say that um quite quite a bit of parking has been built at the waterfront. Um, and I think some of it will start to shake free. Um, part particularly with recent office development that's not being fully utilized. And so that may become options. But probably now if you if

you're not going to bus, bike, walk, roll, um, you and you're going to drive that the city lot is, you know, three blocks away and is pretty affordable um, even for overnight visits, weekend visits. Um, so hopefully that might provide an option. Thank you. That was much more thorough than I thought we were going to get into. I'm surprised at the wealth of parking knowledge in your heads. Spent a lot of time parking. He's talking about parking. Vice P. Speaking of transit options to the waterfront, I think I saw that the new purple vine that's under construction will actually serve the waterfront, which about darn time that we have a vine serve the waterfront. So, that's great.

Yeah, it is great. It's going to come down um uh Washington and then go cut over and serve the waterfront. And then there'll be a loop um around Grant Street and then back up 8. So there'll be a there's going to be a new station in front of City Hall um which is great. So given that a lot of services are provided here, there'll be better transit access. Great news all around. Further communications? Okay, there being none, the March 10th, 2026 meeting of the City of Vancouver Planning Commission is hereby adjourned.

Thank you everyone. and we'll see you on the 14th. I stole this charger was sitting here. This is the one I used. Thank you.