Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. We're ready.

Okay. Good evening good evening, everyone. I call this meeting of the Westland Planning Commission to order. Today is Wednesday, May 6, and it is 06:05PM. Lynn, would you mind calling the roll, please? Of course. Thanks.

Commissioner Dietz? Here. Commissioner Kaczorowski? Here. Commissioner Walvotny?

Here.

Commissioner Jones?

Yes.

Chair Schulte Hillen? Here. We have five members in attendance.

Great. Thank you. Okay. So the second item on the agenda is public comment related to land use items not on the agenda. Do we have any?

We do not have any testimony tonight. No comment.

Okay. The next item is approval of a number of meeting notes. So for the January 21, the February 4, the February 18, March 4, March 18, and the April 15, all 2026. Does anybody have any comment or corrections for any of the minutes. Commissioner Wolvotny.

Thank you, chair. So, I'm gonna refer to the draft meeting notes for 02/18/2026. And so on page two the fifth full paragraph down it starts out concerns about a historic land side from I two zero five construction were addressed by noting that the reference date maps are informational. I I and I noted during zero that hearing and it should be in the the video audio that those map state maps are not just informational. They're part of our code.

So that those are directly referenced and I read off that that section of the community development code. So I want that referenced in in these notes. I will not accept them for it to say that they're informational because that implies that they do not apply. It doesn't imply it just purely states. So that reference is in is in that video.

And that was February 4?

'18.

'18. '18. And I guess my point, I'm not trying to be annoying about this, but my point is that is part of our code. That is part of the approval criteria and and should have been included as part of the requirements that the applicant was that needed to to meet. And that included hazardous slope type maps from Dogami Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. So those apply directly to what we we do here.

Let me pull that one from approval and then we can take a look at correcting that and bring it back.

I believe alright. Yes.

Commissioner Jones did you have further okay. Thank you.

First off, thank you for taking these notes and the work of trying to balance everybody's thoughts and opinions and trying to do it accurately is not an easy job. And thank you. It's appreciated. One very small thing I noticed in at least one or two at least of the meeting notes, the link that went to the meeting video appears to go to or the the Webex link for logging into the initial meeting as opposed to an archived copy of the video. Just letting you know.

So, for example, on the March 18 video, it says the meeting video is available here. When you click on the link, it appears to go to the Webex login for the video for the meeting when it was taking place as opposed to being able to access and see the video.

Is that March 18 specifically or all of them? Because I'm able to oh.

I can or I can double, triple check. But on one or more of them, was able to when I clicked it, it went to a Webex login, not a like I said, it wasn't I wasn't one to spend too much time on it, but it just seems something that would be important.

Okay. So if we could have the links for the videos checked.

03/04/2026.

That's something we can update Lynn?

Yes. That's that's easily updated. That's not really a substantial part of the minutes, so you can still approve them. And I do wanna remind you that you any action you take on the meeting minutes including tabling them needs to be a decision of the the council. I'm sorry, the commission as a whole.

Okay. Does anyone have any further comments? So it sounds like those links will be fixed and then the comment from Commissioner Wolvotny will be stricken and then revised and addressed separately.

Yeah. Think just so that we can make sure to get it right if it pleases the Commission, we'd like to just withdraw them from consideration and then bring it back.

Okay. And do we need to kind of give consensus on that or is it?

Any proposed changes need to be a consensus of the commission but we can make some adjustment and bring them back and then you can decide at that point.

Okay.

I propose that the comments that commissioner Watney Watney proposed be accepted to move forward so we can accept the meeting notes and that the links that are in the meeting notes go towards the archive so that the public can see the meetings the the meetings as they are referred to. Tada.

Sure. I second that.

Can we get a vote on that?

Commissioner Deeds? Yes. Commissioner Kaczorowski? Yes. Commissioner Wolvotny? Yes. Commissioner Jones?

Yes. Yep.

Alright. Thank you. Okay. The fourth item on the agenda is the introduction of senior planner, Erica Smith.

Evening Planning Commission, Steve Cooper, community development director. I am pleased to introduce our new senior planner, Erica Smith. She just wanted to come to introduce herself to the commission, and I'll turn it over to her to give a little bit of background about her.

Hi. It's really nice to be here and nice to meet everyone. Like Steve said, I'm Erica Smith, and I think I'm in my third month here now. So still kind of getting up to speed on everything, but everyone has been super welcoming and nice, and I'm very excited to be here in West Linn. I grew up in Southwest Portland and then went to undergrad at PSU, and then went back to PSU and got my master's in urban planning, and then worked for a private consulting firm in Portland doing long range planning, updating comprehensive plans around the Pacific Northwest, but also across the country.

And then I pivoted and decided to start my own landscape design business. So I did that for the next five years and then missed planning and wanted to kind of work with other people again at a larger scale. So I went back to work as a planner for a civil engineering firm in St. Helens and then worked out in Columbia County for a couple of years working in communities like Skapoos and St. Helens and Klatzkenai.

And ended up actually working as the contract city planner for the city of Veronia while I was there, which is a tiny little town out on the way to the coast. But that was an amazing experience, and that kind of made me realize that I really wanted to work full time in the public sector, advocating for the public interest. So I was really excited about this opportunity in West Linn to be a little bit closer to home. Me and my family all still live in Southwest Portland, and I was excited to come back to the metro area and work at in a little bit bigger of a city. I know people here don't necessarily feel like it's a big city, but compared to Vrinnonia, which has a population of less than 2,500, it's, you know, scaling up by a scale of 10.

So yeah. So I'm excited to be here, and I'm also excited to be in a planning department where it's small enough that I get to kind of touch every aspect of things and wear a lot of different hats. I get to I love interacting with people at the counter and taking phone calls. I've been reviewing land use applications, and then I'm also working on some of the long range projects like Vision 43 and the housing production strategy implementation. So, yeah, I'm just excited to be here.

It's been a really great experience so far, and I just wanna encourage you to feel free to reach out to me with any questions or just to say hi and chat. Yeah. So that's about me, but I'm I'm open to any further questions. Yeah. Great to meet you all.

Wonderful. Welcome Erica, nice to meet you. Does anyone have any questions for our new senior planner? Commissioner Wolvotny.

I just want to welcome you because the planning department has been understaffed for a while. So I know that there's there's been a huge demand on everyone's time. Having another person come in even if it's a replacement that it helps a lot. So thank you.

Commissioner Jones.

Also welcome and is there a question you wished we would ask you?

Well, I really like talking about plants and dogs, and I'm also kind of obsessed with ceramics right now. So any of those categories, I will happily talk to you about ad nauseam.

What was the last

item? Ceramics. Yeah. So those are fun things I like to talk about, but I also have been nerding out on housing legislation and trying to keep up with all of the changes at the state level and make sure that I understand what the implications are for West Linn and how we can stay in compliance, but also, you know, maintain the level of local control that that the community deserves. So I'm happy to chat about housing legislation anytime. I'm always happy to talk about landscaping and street trees.

Alright. Follow-up. What kind of local or what local plant have you kinda geeked out on and any type of ceramic style that you kind of like indulging in?

Oh, I like those questions a lot. Plants well, I have been taking lunchtime trips over to the Camassia Nature Preserve, which I love, and I take a lot of wildflower pictures over there. I love the trout lilies. They're kind of hidden sometimes, so you have to kind of seek them out, but they're just really delicate and beautiful. And I love their mottled leaf patterns.

And ceramic styles, I mostly build by hand. I don't don't really do wheel throwing, so I big build big coil pots. And I'm really interested in different textures. So mixing like smooth and rough textures and then I do a lot of kind of botanical illustrations on them. So that's my ceramics pitch.

I could talk to you about dogs for a long time but I can do that off on this meeting I guess. Oh great, me too. Well thank you so much Erica, welcome again. Yeah. I guess next I guess next on the agenda is the presentation of Oregon League of Cities Good Governance Award. That's exciting.

Thank you. I definitely wanted to be sure to bring this award to share to the Planning Commission because the Planning Commission, you know, played no small part in moving this project forward to adoption and a big part of the Good Governance Award which was awarded for the breadth of public outreach that the project achieved. I'm gonna read just a quick little blurb from the press release because it includes a quote from Darren who accepted the award on behalf of the city. The city of Westland is proud to announce it's been honored with the League of Cities LOC 2026 Good Governance Award in recognition of its Waterfront Community Vision Plan. The order is presented during the League of Cities Local Government Spring Conference in Pendleton, Oregon.

The Good Governance Award highlights progressive and innovative city operations and services across Oregon. Westland was selected for its comprehensive and community driven approach to long term planning along the Willamette River. We're very honored to accept this award on behalf of the city of Westland, said principal planner Darren Weiss. A special thanks goes out to Westland Community, our partners and stakeholders. Their involvement is what made this plan possible.

Weiss noted the breadth of engagement that shaped the plan, but we held seven in person engagement events with roughly 700 participants, convened 18 meetings with property owners, stakeholders and tribal representatives, attended 40 civic group meetings, saw more than 3,200 visits to the project website when the draft plan was released. Two online surveys also received more than 800 responses. I don't know how many Planning Commission meetings there were but I'm imagining that it was a lot as well. The time tested active meeting people where they are really worked for us. So again, thank you to the Planning Commission and the other folks that helped make this project possible.

Wonderful. That's really cool. Okay. Next on the agenda is the planning docket discussion.

And I have materials in the packet for that, and then we'll have a short presentation to walk through as well. Alright so before I get into the nuts and bolts of the docket I did want to talk a little bit about the team and I do want to acknowledge and appreciate commissioner Wolvotny for recognizing that our team has been short staffed in the past and even at full staff is small but mighty. So we've got me, community development director, as mentioned Darren, our principal planner, our new senior planner Erica Smith, Lynn, our management analyst who wears many hats, Erin Goodell, our associate planner, and then Taryn Finley, who's part of our team but as I'll illustrate on the next slide, is actually a relatively small part of our team. Are we we not able to see it on

A couple of us are not able to.

No. I'm sorry.

That's okay.

Sorry folks.

So I'm sorry that the dais is old and I'm not sure why it's not showing up on two of yours, but maybe you could look at if you can look on the other side. I apologize that it's not showing up on

There's also two over here that appear to be working, if you really wanna come over here and look at here as opposed to breaking your neck, which is always an option and a choice.

I'm going to just sit closer to you.

And I will eventually get to the part that's in that's actually in the packet as well so that I mean some of this is just a little bit of illustrative background to frame the conversation around the docket. So hopefully it should be fairly straightforward and not too much that you need to follow along and I can share copies of the PowerPoint after this meeting if you all want to catch up. So you know, the people that make up the department, five point one five, so Terren is actually our admin assistant that is shared among departments, so she's actually three twentieth allocated or point one five to community developmentplanning, and then she is also allocated largely across the building department and then also partially across the public works department. So again, small but mighty staff, but we do a lot with with what we've got. I wanted to talk a little bit also about the budget that we have because this ties into the work plan and the work that we do.

So overall on the left hand side of this slide, I just wanted to illustrate that our annual planning budget, so the city budgets on a biennium basis, but each year our budget is about one and a third, it's ranged somewhere one and a half percent of the overall city budget, so really small. And then of that really small share of the pie, for us personnel, our people make up about 80% of our individual operating budget, And then naturally materials and services make up approximately 20%, essentially the remainder of our budget. And then of that materials and services, which is a little bit of a technical category, about 90%, 91% is allocated to professional and technical services, is a fancy finance person way of saying that that is money that we have available to pay for consultants and other technical services that are used to supplement our relatively small staff and largely support previously approved long range planning projects. And so even though I'm showing, you know, we talked about the overall budget on one year, so over the biennium it's $240,000 in one year and then $190,000 in the next year. We have approximately $430,000 over the twenty twenty five-twenty twenty seven biennium allocated towards that professional and technical services.

Most of that has been spent for the adoption of the Waterfront plan and then other parts of it are going to the Vision 43 project as well.

And I'll talk a little

bit more about those in a moment. So with that budget, mean with that small but mighty staff, we do a lot of stuff. I've divided into roughly four categories. There's lots of different ways to describe what we do, but I think this at least illustrates some of the different ways in which our staff is pulled on a day to day and overall basis. So really development review kind of is in the upper left quadrant.

It's legally mandated, we have to have a planning department that is able to respond to current, we need use applications proposed by applicants, we have legal timelines in which we need to respond to them, so on and so forth. You all are intimately familiar with that process, so we won't belabor it. Down below on the lower left, long range planning, so again kind of on the planning side, our goal here is to help support creating a vibrant community and so that entails promoting planning initiatives that are in response to counseling community priorities as well as changes in legal landscape. Erica mentioned housing legislation is one great example of that and then best practices overall. And then so those are kind of the hard things that we do that are really related.

And then on the other side is a little bit of the softer squishier things that we do public service, so we get lots of different types of inquiries, we get phone and email inquiries, we get people who come in person to the development counter, we have lots of pre application or pre pre application I'll call it, inquiries from developers and other applicants who interested in figuring out whether or not they can actually meet the criteria and submit for a project. That also includes supporting the planning commission, you all, as well as the historic review board and the economic development commission. And then lastly, of a little bit of unseen work that we do. I call it reporting and miscellaneous, but record management is a big part of what we do. I don't know if you all know this, but planning records are generally an unlimited retention under the administrative rules and so we have to take great care to make sure that we're being good stewards of those records.

Fortunately, we've recently been able to go electronic which has certainly helped a ton, but that is still no small task. And then we also do a fair amount of data reporting to the state of Oregon and Metro, lately even more related to the housing production stuff, but we've always done reporting helps with, for example, not mentioned here, but like census data and then also metro population forecasting, so the things like that. And then we also have what's called the CLG, Lynn, help me out here. What does CLG stand for? I just forget the c.

Certified local Certified

local And so that means that we work with the state historic preservation office, SHPO, to manage Westlands Historic Preservation Program. So lots of things that we do. Here are some statistics to put some hard numbers to those perhaps squishy or amorphous tasks or responsibilities that we have that I described on the previous slide. So in 2025, just because we have a whole actual calendar year to be able to tell this story, we received a total of 40 development applications. So that's almost one every week that we're here working.

As you know sometimes even simple applications are complicated and obviously complex applications can take a really long time both at the Planning Commission level and even for applications that don't rise to that level. In addition to those 40 development applications we also did 26 pre application conferences, so almost one every other week in the year, seven final plot approvals, 13 sign approvals, and three zoning verifications. And then which was a particularly busy 2025 and I think the stars aligned to have a whole bunch of things overlapping at once. The waterfront vision plan was adopted, the CFAC, those little changes were adopted, the town centre pieces. The housing production strategy was also adopted right before I came here to the city last summer, and then Vision 43 was worked on but significantly in process in 2025.

I did also want to interject a quick note about framing our future for those of you that may be aware of this, apologies if I'm being repetitive, but framing our future is a conversation that has been started by the city council and the staff to try to The best elevator pitch for this is that it's perhaps a little bit of an overdue opportunity to have a conversation with the Westland community to better understand what projects, programs and services are of the greatest priority to the community in light of the fact that as you can see from the slide, WestLinn gets a relatively small sliver of every tax dollar that property tax owners pay. And so there's a web link here to framing our future on the your Westland site. If you haven't checked it out, I'd encourage you to do so. We'd love to hear feedback from you. Obviously, as a group that is very engaged in providing significant volunteer support for the community.

I think that you have a great perspective and a great lens to lend to this conversation. And so if you have any questions about that, I'm happy to answer them. The reason why I mentioned it as part of this conversation is that, you know, the backdrop for this is the particularly coming out of COVID seeing, you know, significant rises in costs that the city doesn't have control over things like healthcare for employees. And so even if we're having our budget staying flat costs, materials and services, the cost of consultants are going up. And so what we can do with the same amount of dollars or, you know, 3% incremental increase in dollars that we get every year, you know, less and less going forward.

And so we wanna make sure that we are, you know, as much as we can aligning the work that we do with the priorities of the community, which again going back to the docket is why the docket comes through the Planning Commission for review and recommendation of City Council. We're almost Can

you jump in? Oh, real quick. I am sure I heard wrong. Did you say that the city employees don't receive health benefits?

No, the costs are increasing for health care. Okay. It's one of the many costs that are outside of our control.

Okay. That still sucks. But

It does. Yeah. Okay. I mean, everyone's feeling it, not just city employees. Yeah, thank you for that question.

So before I jump into the docket I just want to talk a little bit about council priorities because they do heavily influence the work that we do. So it's essentially effectively parallel to or it can be I'll say it exists in parallel to the docket currently. I think we're gonna talk in the discussion prompts at the end of the conversation about whether or not there's an opportunity here to better align the docket process with the process by which council sets its priorities for its annual retreat. But I'm jumping ahead. So the top council priorities and these council priorities are included as part of the packet materials that are of import to the Planning Commission and to the Planning Work Plan are Waterfront Vision implementation, which we're already working on in the sense that we are putting together behind the scenes grant application to Metro for getting a grant to have a consultant help us continue the work that was set forth in the Waterfront Vision Plan.

And so ultimately once we have hopefully successfully gotten a grant award and been able to hire a consultant then the Planning Commission's role will be broadened significantly at that point. And then vision 43 which you already know, so the planning commission coming up later this, I guess later this summer at this point, will start to review the code and other pieces of the vision plan with an eye towards teeing up a recommendation to City Council hopefully by the end of summer. So on to the docket. And I I think you all well, some of some some of the commission is newer but still may be familiar with the docket, so I don't wanna I wanted to try to give a high enough level overview that we can have the conversation but not, you know, get too repetitive here. So the docket is provided for in the community development code, which is a little bit unique, but I think that it makes sense.

So the docket relates to comp plan amendments, community development code amendments, zoning map amendments, which are intended to be worked on effectively prepared and processed is the technical word, but I would say worked on in each year following adoption or approval by the docket, excuse me, of the docket by council. So a couple notes on the docket. Anyone can request additions to or changes to the docket, I suppose. Planning commission is charged with proposing changes and recommending prioritization, and then the council has the opportunity to set the docket, and then there's also a codified note that council can change their, excuse me, can change or requests projects at any time. So the 2025 docket was also attached along with the materials.

For 2026, 2027, I've kept the skeleton of the docket in the sense that I've kept all the projects that were part of the docket or part of the work that we're doing, but I've restructured a little bit to I hope and open to feedback on this, make it more clear what's actually being done in year one or or in this in this single year following the docket, and also provide a little bit of a look forward so that people can see what what the future holds and especially because we already know in many cases what we're already gonna be working on in the future based on the projects they're already working on. And so the intent here is just to basically make it hopefully more transparent to the public and other decision makers. And then in the spirit of not at this point changing the docket itself, we have an appendix of unprioritized projects listed with a brief summary of each project and then an action or actions needed in order for that project to be moved onto the prioritized list. That would have just assumed that funding could be identified or appropriated, so I didn't list that for each of them, but that's the underlying context.

And then a note on that appendix reiterates the council's exception path for, quote unquote, urgent items. And so with the existing structure, I guess, visually changed a little bit, I've also included for your consideration and transparency as well, a prioritization rubric. So at the top of that hierarchy or at least high on the hierarchy, these aren't necessarily in strictly numerical order from highest to lowest, but kind of roughly. Mandated or compliance related projects, so projects that have a deadline like we have to adopt for example the town center designation we had to adopt by a certain date, so that gets a really high priority as a result. Or if there's some sort of pending legal risk of non compliance, so let's say that we have something in state law that we really need to add to our code because our code is not just silent on it but it's actually in conflict with it.

So that would rise pretty high. And then we have funding readiness. Obviously, if we don't have staff or funding available, then it is harder to move a project forward. Tying in with that capacity, the two are essentially interrelated but a little bit separate. And then of course, council direction is certainly important.

Again, not ranked in necessarily order, direction could potentially override these as well. And then lastly, a little bit kind of maybe unspoken, but I did wanna daylight this one, dependencies or sequencing. So projects that depend on work from another project. So, you know, for example, if we needed to have those CFAC Town Center designations adopted before we move forward with some other project, then certainly we would want to phase or sequence the projects in a logical order on that basis. That's the idea there.

So with those multiple lenses from council priority to structure to a rubric, the results of the prioritization are essentially tiers or bands. And so the first tier is legally required, which I'll explain a little bit in greater detail when we look at the docket itself. Tier two are ongoing or resource, so those are projects that we're already working on, have resources, or are coming up in the near term future and have resources. And then tier three are things that have been sort of formally or informally prioritised but have not been yet started and or have not yet had an identified resource source. And then as I mentioned, Appendix A is unprioritised projects, which could be potential future year projects depending on the Planning Commission recommendation and then council prioritization.

And as I mentioned, and we'll go through these again at the very end of my presentation, future considerations. So I'm just gonna plant this seed here to realign the docket presentations schedule to the latter part of the calendar year to match the budget cycle, and that would allow the community and planning commission feedback to better inform the council prioritization which can then inform the budget process. And so I'll get into that a little more at the end and explain what I mean by that, but we'll just leave that there for the moment. And then other future consideration is review of older unprioritized projects. So within that appendix and within the which are pulled from the 2025 docket, last year's docket, Some of those projects are over a decade old.

Is there interest or appetite in visiting whether or not those should be moved in priority order, moved up, eliminated altogether? Just a thought there. So with that, I'm gonna show an overview of the docket itself and then just because it can be a little bit hard to read at this scale, I'm gonna bump to the next slide which actually focuses on the projects themselves, but I just wanna orient you all to the visual layout here. So again, with the intent that, you know, we budget and we spend on projects based on a fiscal year, this is laid out as a fiscal year visual. And so the little red dot which you may or may not be able to read says you are here, so we're in quarter three right now for those of you that are not familiar with the city's financial year, I

had to look it up too.

So you know, right now we're working on, as Erica mentioned, some of the zoning and code changes. We're starting out working on the financial tools for housing, and then we will shortly jump into, although we're kind of starting early work on it already, the state legislation compliance. And so the little plus next to that indicates that that is a housing production strategy implementation action, in other words it is legally required, and then the asterisk next to that indicates that it's grant funded. So just visually showing that we need to do it and that's how it is being funded. I've also put on here is legally required but TBD, the FEMA model code, so you all may remember that FEMA had a biological opinion issue that went all the way up to federal courts and I think Ninth Circuit maybe said that cities would ultimately have to do something.

Feds came up with a model code, DLCD I think is working on their own model code. Do you know Erica? They were talking about at some point as you all may also imagine with the change in federal administration, the role of FEMA has been slightly deprioritized for the moment, and so we're in a little bit of a holding pattern on this project. But I think that at some point, it's probably likely to come roaring its head back, and we will have to deal with it because it'll be legally required and it'll fall into that bucket of if we don't deal with it, could be out of compliance and risking legal risk to the city. So that's that first band, legally required.

The second band or tier is the scheduled resource. So Vision forty three, we're working on that currently. Oh, and I guess I'm sorry to just reorient ourselves as we go through. Green suggests kind of a light or maybe moderate level of staff effort or involvement. In the case in many of the cases, we're either not doing a lot or if we have a consultant working with us on this project, the consultant is doing more of the heavy lifting at that stage than we are.

The yellow is like a little bit more where perhaps we and the consultant are doing a little bit more frequent meeting schedule or we're having to provide more work for them. Like for example, in the scope of work, the city might have the deliverable as opposed to the consultant. And then the red indicates that it's a level of high effort. So we're doing a lot of work, whether that be code writing or whether that be meeting with the community or other types of things. And then the LA indicates that it's a legal deadline and so in this case with the projects that are required as the housing production strategy implementation, we have to spend the money and have them adopted by the end of the state's fiscal year, which is the same as ours, is that basically by 06/30/2027.

And then where there's not a legal deadline, the A indicates the planned or proposed or desired adoption date. So taking going back to the middle band, the scheduled resource, we have vision 43, which we're working on now, pretty doing quite a lot of work on that project right now and then anticipating going into a fairly intense period of public meetings with the Planning Commission Council and so forth, and then hoping for adoption in Q1, which is basically would be sort of like late summer, early fall of this year, of 2026. The housing production strategy implementation I just put on there just as a general thing because there ultimately will be other actions that will be needed to be accomplished as part of that, not just the ones that are under the legally required bucket currently. And so that's what that little red arrow indicates at the end of it, is that the housing production strategy implementation as an overarching project will continue on even once those three projects listed at the top of the docket are finished. And then waterfront projects.

So we're hoping to or as I mentioned, we're doing a little bit of background work right now, and we're hoping to have a grant in Q1 and then continue working on that through the end of fiscal twenty twenty seven TBD there, but we're doing our best to keep that moving. And then a couple of just to mention unscheduled, unresourced. So annual code cleanup, there's certainly a number of different code provisions that we've identified, some of which are kind of legislation oriented, some of them are housing legislation oriented, so we may be able to fold those into the project that we have going on that is grant funded but some of those may not be. And so we might take those forward with adoption concurrent with Division 43 since we would already be doing a comp plan zoning amendment at that point, but possibly not. And then the public use zone creation and code changes, this was something that I've actually worked with councilor Braaikan, and we'll be bringing forward a work session to discuss the topic for City Council in the next couple of months.

And so just putting on there just a note in the interest of transparency, relatively little effort right now but that could obviously change going forward. And then the last one on here is the transportation system plan update indicating that it's likely to be needed and because of the large amount of resources and particularly funding that a transportation system plan update would entail, we would likely be looking at applying for the Oregon Department of Transportation, TGM Transportation Grant Management grant excuse me, Transportation growth management grant program. Not on my acronym game tonight, sorry. And basically because of the cycles of that project and then kind of looking forward even further, The city at this point is now several metropolitan regional transportation plan compliance cycles out of date by now. The last TSP update was in 2016 and so we've already had 2018 and 2024 RTP, and then we'll have another RTP, regional transportation plan update by Metro in 2028.

And so at that point we're falling very far out of compliance. And really I think the main thrust because there's not a lot of necessarily new additions to Westlands transportation network that are at play. So in some ways our transportation system plan is probably, you know, adequate currently. There are certain areas where particularly when you think about the multimodal realm, when you think about some of the inadequacies of TriMet currently, when we think about opportunities for, you know, pedestrian projects that could be grant funded but are not identified in our current TSP and so forth. At some point, it does make sense in my mind, I think, to modernize those and that would entail a TSP update.

So that one is is on there, I guess, as a placeholder, but that's why it's there. So a little bit larger for you to see. I'm sorry if I was too small on the last slide, but it just gives you a better sense of what I was talking about. I have a little bit more to talk about, but I'm also almost at the end of the presentation. Anyone have any questions at this point? Or do you want me just to go through the next couple slides and we can always come back?

You just keep going through the

rest

of Thanks. The slides,

Great, thank you. So here I just mentioned, just throwing up on the screen the note under the appendix A which is the unprioritized projects. I didn't list these in the PowerPoint presentation. As I mentioned, there's a summary of each project, just a brief one or two sentence summary of what the significance of the project is, and then essentially conditions precedent, what would what would have to change or happen for the project to be pulled off of the unprioritized appendix list and then become prioritized in addition to the understanding that of course it would need to have a funding source, which is implicit. But written there as a disclaimer just in case the implicit part is not picked up.

So with that, I've got a couple of discussion prompts. Obviously just the overarching thoughts about the whole thing, I'm happy to get feedback there. But the discussion prompts are whether or not there's any recommended additions to or subtractions from the unprioritized list. We do have in the packet a specific just kind of stars aligned and the person timed it right as we were having this discussion, but someone submitted a code amendment request concerning property on Rosemount Road on the very edge of the city to the west. So what do you think about that?

Are there other recommended changes? And then bringing back the future considerations that I mentioned on the previous slide. And so what I mean by this realigning the docket presentation schedule is my suggestion here would be to consider having the docket presented more so say like in fall, just given the budgeting cycle by the time in, you know, odd years when the city budgets, by the time the Planning Commission is getting a docket in April or May, the budget's really pretty much already the dice cast there. And so any recommended changes especially knowing that the docket has to go to council for, you know, acquiescence approval adoption that it's not we won't be able to change the budget it's pretty locked in. And so my thought would be to make this a process that could actually inform the budgeting process essentially.

And then again, like just an overall global question, is there an interest in having a deeper dive into reviewing or updating or changing that unprioritized list of the appendix given that some of those projects are a decade old? Is there value in keeping them on for posterity or are some of them at a point where a previous commission added them and this planning commission doesn't think that they merit inclusion on that list. So those are my discussion prompts. Happy to answer other questions, happy to have other conversation or receive any other feedback. Let me know if you want me to move up and down through the slide deck. And thank you for having this conversation with me.

Thank you very much. Does anyone have a preference of how we kind of go through this? Do you again as Steve said if you want him to go to a specific slide we need to ask him to do so. I think if anyone just has anything top of mind that they want to bring up we can start with that and then kind of make our way through the prompts. I open the floor, yes.

Are we specifically talking about the presentation or the document memo as well?

I think I think both right? I think all of the material that we've read in preparation as well as the presentation.

Thank you. Okay.

Yeah absolutely.

Are we going in order of the list?

I think we can but if there's anything you would like to say before we do that that's also fine.

I just did them in the order that I thought of them so happy to entertain them out of order.

Sounds good. Sorry I can't see because of your because of Chris's water bottle. I'm sorry. Thank you. It's okay. And I also can't see Chris's because of your papers. So thank you very much everyone. Okay.

I just wanted to I don't know if it's too early to start on the Rosemont Road code amendment request, if anyone wants to engage with that. But I was just curious about it. I was reading it and I wasn't sure if the AKS was asking for it to be permitted outright or if it was what they're wanting a conditional use for it.

I mean, think that probably my guess would be their preference would be permitted outright, but conditional use is certainly an option too. Yeah.

Okay. So that being said, I was just thinking about it, and I think if they want to this is just my personal opinion, but if they want to develop that area and start with this precedent, I think it would be best to set it as a conditional use and follow the examples of Oregon City and Milwaukee just because some neighborhoods may not be appropriate for assisted living facility or memory care and some neighborhoods would be, so just throwing that out there.

So there is a property and I'm blanking. It on Rosemont up? I believe there is a property that is being used in that exact manner, right? I'm not sure if it's memory care but it is like an older

Yeah, I think and I think the intent here is this is distinct from like the the congregate living. This would actually be like a true I don't know if there is one or not.

Do you know? So

on Rosemont there's by Rosemont and Summit.

Yes.

Just just as you turn on to Rosemont from Summit. I go by it all the time. There's a my mother-in-law was was in this kind of housing. There can be five residents. The people who had that particular house then they also built an additional house next door to it. So I think my understanding is they can have five and five. So 10 total.

Yeah. Those are the comp those are like the it's congregate care basically. And so those are allowed for in state law and cities are required to allow those.

Okay.

This is like memory care is more so memory care is more so like like like individual like like beds basically, less so people living in like the congregate care of the concept is that people are living kind of as one household unit. Yeah. And so, is like more what, like I guess, might have called the traditional, like a nursing home.

So is there a proposed location for that?

Well, they I mean, this particular property in in mind is 1045 Rosemont Road, which is the pumpkin patch property on Rosemont. It's like the It's very it's like the last property on the way out of West Westland that's in the city.

I think it's by the school.

It's next to Trillium.

Right.

Yeah. My my initial reaction what you've just said, I'm still mulling over in terms of the distinction of what's allowed outright and what differentiates this between what we were looking at on the other side of Rosemont. My initial reaction before I completely wrap my head around that differentiation is that I also think that a conditional use permit makes sense. But I'm I'm open to other opinions on that. I just think giving it a blanket r 10 kind of permission might it might not be appropriate everywhere within Westland. But I don't know.

Yes. Yes, and.

Yeah, I was just the first thought that came to my mind was essentially in like health care services, you will need good access for emergency personnel if people are having falls or strokes or cardiac arrests. And so I think some neighborhoods would be, you know, have good easy access for that and may be appropriate and some may not. And that's just my first thought about that.

I don't think any of us are doing anything but violently agreeing.

I'd I'd be curious, but I'm happy to do this on my own time. Just I I appreciate the sampling of Oregon City, Milwaukee, and Sherwood. I'm curious how many jurisdictions in this area permitted outright. I mean, we're looking at two of the three offered as being conditional use situation so I guess that kind of slightly tips my the scale for for me but yeah. Chris, what do you think?

Gary?

Well, that that particular location, mean, I can see pluses and minuses. So I think it could be great if kids are exposed to that. I mean, it's right next to Trillium School. So maybe there could be some, you know, things, activities, the the residents could come and watch school activities, the whatever is appropriate. But on the other hand, access to the school is critical.

And so if things get tied up, if there's I mean, when you drive down there during early morning, there are parents dropping off kids for school. There are school buses. And if there's if there's a need for emergency services, I mean, maybe they, you know, everyone pulls over as well as they can, but I'm just access is gonna be challenging at certain times of the day. It's it seems, but so I see pluses and minuses to it, at least initially.

What you're saying about synergistic cooperations between programs between schools and the elderly, the fact that elder care is a massively increasing business and will continue according to projections keep putting it going forward. And it is something that we are seeing neighborhoods like in Lake Oswego, etcetera, that they are capitalizing on very heavily. It is a high growth industry in this country right now, especially in suburbs. The issues you're bringing up, yes, they absolutely would have to be mitigated. It's also kind of nice that already the cars have to slow down to go past there.

That's a nice thing. So it, you know, but I think conditionally as opposed to blanket, you know, to look at it as case by case might is worthy of looking at.

Yeah, mean just thinking about it, 60 bed 60 bed facility seems rather large unless it's at least two stories. So on that that lot, I mean I I see it regularly so I it seems like a lot of people.

Yeah. And I think I think maybe just for the purposes of discussion and bring it forward, I would maybe ask that we separate like whether or not this lot could be approved for it through particularly if we're going toward a conditional use versus whether or not there's appetite to recommend adding the use as a conditional use to the R10 zone.

Where is maybe I missed it, but so it's not a conditional use at this point?

Correct.

One additional thought is it might be worth looking at what state regulations are in place for licensing for that type of facility because there may be requirements related to emergency vehicle access that would need to be met regardless. And so maybe that would have some additional criteria that may make it more acceptable to be a outright permitted use.

Yeah. Think that'd be very valuable to take a look at before we kind of make a decision about adding that as a conditional use. But yeah, that's my opinion. Thank you. Shall we move on down the discussion prompt? If we could get

I'm just gonna just summarize that we didn't have necessarily a consensus but had thoughts about a couple different things on that topic?

Yes. And would like some more information about kind of the state. I'm sorry, Erica. I'm gonna butcher your words. Wait, you were the kind of dictate yep. Licensing requirements. Yep. From the state.

Great. And we'll share that with the council when we bring this greater discussion forward.

Great. Thank you. Does anyone have any other recommended additions or subtractions from the unprioritized list as stated in the in the document or any other recommended changes that they'd like to bring up. Commissioner Wolotine.

So at the bottom of page 27, there's a category for CDC chapters twenty eight and thirty two and chapter 32 has been regularly brought up by the community for consideration, review, and update and that that chapter addresses our our drainages and the requirements that we have around those for housing and permitting and and it has been troublesome. It needs to be revised. So I would suggest that needs to go under the prioritized list.

I think just to be clear, we're not we're just talking about whether or not there's changes to the unprioritized list. The prioritized list is we're we're fully we're fully unless you're gonna propose taking a project off of the list.

Oh, well, don't want channel I don't want chapter 32 coming off that list.

Okay. So we'll leave that one on then. Yeah.

Commissioner Jones.

I had a question about and whoever is appropriate to speak to this on page 16 on the Westland waterfront vision on the council roll. I'll wait for people to get to that. Item three refers to research potential return of the Willamette meteorite. And could anyone just speak to that kind of in a larger context? I appreciate the eyebrows.

We we do have we you're you're in luck. We have counselor break in the house with us. I I think may be able to speak to

Which is why I said to whoever could speak to this.

Good evening. Is this is this word working? I can't okay. That is on the list. The meteorite is currently in the Natural History Museum in New York City.

We do have a smaller replica on Willamette Falls Drive. There's also a much better representation of it in Willamette Park. I know that there are some people that have a great deal of interest in it. However, at one meeting that I was at with people from the Grand Ronde, they don't necessarily think it needs to come back here. So that is something that council talked about.

I believe that, the council president was interested in it and had people asking her about bringing the actual meteorite back from New York and having it on display somewhere in the city.

Thank you. It's something I've unfortunately been involved in multiple conversations about. And just if I can throw in this, it would be wonderful if it returned, but not to us. It is a sacred artifact. It is the source of religious faith.

It is something that is important to a culture that isn't us, and we shouldn't really be playing with it. I understand that there are many people here in West Linn who have an emotional attachment to it. But I feel that it seems to be unnecessarily placed in the calling dibs on something that don't belong to you. And we may be not a pool to be dipping into, considering also the demographics and ages of the people who are expressing and putting the most interest in acquiring this are not the next generation that will be living here necessarily. And yes, it 100% should be returned.

The conditions under which it was acquired and that it ended up in New York are abhorrent, but we shouldn't be putting it up like a trophy. I think that should be not on our table. I've committed enough sins in my life. I don't really want this on my plate going forward.

So so If I can say it

subtly, like, really quiet under my end, like, just yeah. Just underplay it, really.

Just to throw a geologist's perspective on this, The the meteorite didn't actually come to earth here. If it had, it would be underground because it would have it was such impact it would be buried. And it came down during the last ice age. It was part of the the ice age floods, on a rafted down here from Washington, Canada, Idaho, that general area, and floated up against the hillside and the ice melted leaving the rock right there or the meteorite. So

That's your interpretation, white man. No.

Sorry. But So I I it would seem that if there were gonna be claims on it, it wouldn't just be us. It would there could be multiple other and that's my point is there could be multiple other cultures, groups trying to lay claim to it. So, anyway, I I'm a little annoyed that it's in New York City that I can't see it. But I walked by the replica last night and that was okay. So okay.

Okay. Thank you, counselor Breich.

Yeah. Thank you so much for allowing us to be heard.

Okay. So if there's anything else we want to add about the unprioritized list in terms of additions to or subtractions from, is it okay if we jump to the bottom and discuss the deeper dive into the I mean I think Gary's point about the drainage kind of speaks to possibly wanting a review of the unprioritized list. Is that is it okay if we jump to that?

Yeah, happy to. I just didn't wanna it's a long list so I just didn't want to put it in the PowerPoint but yeah, I've got it here pulled up so happy to chat about any of those items.

Sure. So and I don't I don't want to skip ahead if people have any additions or subtractions they want to bring up but Commissioner Wavotny I'm assuming based on what you said that you think that a review of the older unprioritized list would be a valuable exercise and pretty important. So how may I ask how would that happen? Would that be right now looking through the list or I mean

Tell me more when you say review of the list, what you're thinking.

Oh well, I mean just the example he gave speaks to, I don't know kind of an opinion that there are some items on the unprioritized list that I think he sees merit in kind of revisiting and right and kind of figuring out what to do with them if they why they're I don't know I feel like I'm speaking for you Commissioner Wolbotti if you want to jump in.

Yeah. So there are these these come up every so often. But maybe just a step back a few several years ago when the state legislated requirements for housing came up and we ended up going through so many legislative work sessions and hearings and it really got in the way of our doing. These these kind of updates to our own code that were not related to housing. And the two that come to mind are chapter 32 and then also the tree code.

Now the tree code, by and large, everyone has has viewed the way it is written as as an error. And so even the developers have not have not tried to avoid what seems to be the intent of it. But when you read it, it's like a one eighty. It's it's the complete opposite of what the community probably intended. But to go through and have a review of that tree code at this point, it looks like it's pretty straightforward and you could do it relatively easily, but planning manager Weiss has indicated that we'd have to go through basically a review consistent with the comprehensive plan and and I wanna say code five, but it's not.

Use those big words. Use those big words.

It could be goal five.

Goal five. Goal five.

Yeah.

I said code. Yeah. Okay. Goal five. Yeah. And so that seems to be why it's been put off because of the amount of work that would have to go into that. So anyway, it's worth considering because just to clarify that because we're supposed to be a tree city. I mean, we've had that that that honor, I guess, of bestowed upon us and yet our tree code is messed up. By So one or two words.

Yeah. And I appreciate the conversation. I think maybe the thing that I didn't perhaps make explicit enough is that one of the fundamental contradictions given all of the lead into the docket is that we don't really have a lot of maneuvering room to add projects that aren't already resourced and allocated. So, that's there's two parts to your conversation, which I appreciate both. One is like, where on the unprioritized list, like, would there be value in prioritizing the unprioritized list?

And then the second question is, what would it take to move things off of the unprioritized list? And they are slightly two different conversations, both of which are our policy conversations. And I am not gonna claim to know the scope of what it would take and I nor did I look very deeply at what it would actually look like to do any of these projects. Rather, I tried to more so simplify what was kind of longer verbiage previously. And so, we would need to do that, but obviously just even the exercise of coming back to review takes resources and staff, and so that's like another thing where there's like to what to what end, I think.

And then the question of like with the tree code being separate for the CDC versus the muni code and most tree removal in the city happening under the provisions of the muni code rather than the CDC, you know, which which is which is a better bang for your buck update, which is again also a policy question, And I think is a policy question with many of the CDC updates is that considering the amount of buildable land the city has, is there And then some of the other sort of bigger fish to fry, if you will, how much value is there with constrained resources? And I can't answer that question. It's a policy question. So, mean, that's the function of this discussion is to have your recommendations and then share those with counsel and then have them make the hard decisions. Right?

Sounds good.

Oh, I'm sorry. Commissioner Jones, please.

Just another yes and to what was just said. I think in the last two years, we've run into several things where we were making rulings where the current tree code was insufficient, inaccurate, or we were using materials that were non applicable. I very much hear what you're saying. So even if not this year, a vote or request that it be considered as, you know, within next year to be bumped up. We have been using, like I said, inaccurate terms, etcetera.

It it does need addressment. It is to the betterment for us all and understand why it may not be able to be a priority this year but it's something that I think would be beneficial to everybody going forward.

Thank you.

And my understanding is that the basis for the the CDC came from another community. We didn't have a code or we didn't have an adequate code and so we borrowed and then edited and and that happened, I don't know, thirty five, forty years ago as I understand it. And so that that has led to situations where the code is not necessarily I I think a lot of that has been fixed, but there were a lot of sections of code where it was not really applicable to this community or wasn't designed to be, but somewhere else. So.

I just have a question of clarification, page 15 on the docket concerning the fund drinking water system capital needs. And just as I'm reading it, ensure continued maintenance and operations of the system's drinking water, research investigation into local water rate caps, South Fork water boards, and there as I'm reading through them, what's it it's implying something, but I'm not reading what it's implying that it's addressing or what it's referring to. It's it's alluding to an issue. What's the issue it's alluding to?

The overall I'm sorry. I'm not quite sure I understood

your question.

So on page 15, the fund drinking water capital needs, and there's other things where it's it's talking about that, you know, that there's needs to be strategies working on dealing with capital water, why it's important. But I'm not quite sure I'm understanding why this is important. You know, like, I'm I'm it. Like, clean water is good. It's important. We But should

always back

just kinda like, okay. So what's the undercurrent of what maybe we're not seeing?

So so these are all council priorities, which are not necessarily applicable to planning commission. But So

Oh, I'm just asking because this is the only chance we'll be able to ask and we have a representative here.

Yeah. Councilor Bryke, can we call on you again? I'd give it a try but I feel like you'll do a better job than I.

This is not meant as a It's like, oh I just want to understand it. I'm reading it but I'm like I want to understand the big picture.

Well and this is something that I actually know a little bit about. Part of the challenge that we have is that our city charter has a 5% limit on utility increases, and if we want increases any greater than that, we need to go to the voters. And in my opinion, 5% is kind of arbitrary. What is that based on? And where we run into a problem because the city budgets and tries to maintain the water system to the best of their ability and stay within that 5% limited revenue increase.

But we are owners of South Fork Water Board and South Fork Water Board also has capital needs that they need to address to make sure that they can send good clean water to us and as they manage their capital plan, they might increase the cost to the owners, Oregon City and the city of West Linn, by more than 5%. The way our charter is written, we would have to absorb that. And this is something that the council is talking about and we've had legal looking at it as well. In Oregon City, they also have a cap in their city charter, but they exclude the actual cost of the water treatment from that cap. So if the South Fork doubled their rates which that's not what we're talking about but they could do that and still stay within their cap for the distribution system of of their water.

Whereas we have it all in one bucket. So if South Fork raises it too much, then we might not have sufficient resources to maintain all the water lines. So that's kind of where that concern is because they don't really align. And and a second part of that is the water line that's going under the 205 Bridge. And so the, you know, the city has been able to get funding federal we've been promised federal funding.

We haven't gotten it yet. We are very very close to getting the state funding that is helping to pay for that, but we still have to deal with when ODOT actually installs that line. So we we added that goal mostly when we were concerned about the replacing that waterline. And so through that goal, we have gotten funding from federal and state sources, but now we still have to be concerned about the needs of maintaining the water plant where all of our water comes from.

So and I the reason it came up was was it a year ago or a year and a half ago that we actually had to vote and went through a huge amount of documentation to approve the budget for the water. Didn't wasn't am I recalling this wrong? I remember going through a lot of documents about the Westland water supply. Lynn, do you recall? Well, it was in the tens of millions of dollars, so it was a small item.

And I was just kinda curious, like, so if we had just approved that, like, a year, year and a half ago, and that there's all of a sudden these large incomes, which you're being thrown at of, okay, now fix it, why what happened in the last year where these changes happened where they couldn't have presented that in the budget that we were given a year ago? And and and say and the answer can totally be I don't know and that is valid.

I don't recall the planning commission approving a budget. So the, you know, the budget committee did have to look at that a year ago and we included money in that budget to to pay for that waterline. And as I said, we went to federal and state resources and we were given we were approved funding from both sources to reduce the cost. There was a two or three years ago there was a ballot measure that failed that was going to pay for that waterline.

Thank you so very kindly.

Absolutely.

Okay. Do we want to return to the prompts? Does anyone have any recommended changes to the docket as it as it stands? Steve, have a question for you. The annual code cleanup seems like based on the docket and kind of the great demand and need for adoption in q one twenty twenty six.

When will when when can we expect that to kind of enter our schedule or to what extent will we be involved and when?

I think that's where we're still we're still trying to figure out. So that that's why it's an we've put it as a potential placeholder, but it's still unscheduled, unresourced because one opportunity would be to again, like, because we're we have a code amendment or we're we'll be doing a code amendment and noticing a code amendment for vision 43. So there's potentially opportunity to do it there. The other next logical opportunity would be to do it, you know, basically next summer twenty twenty seven concurrent with other, like, housing and legislative updates. And so, those are kind of the two opportunities where the greatest efficiency standpoint.

Right.

And so, of it I think we need to parse it a little bit because some of the good pieces are like housing or state law related. Like, for example, unbeknownst to us, the state changed the middle housing ORS, which ORS it was located in. In our code, we just literally changed it to reference the now incorrect ORS. And so, and the ORS is the actual content of the ORS has also changed enough that that is like potentially a problem. But it's not specifically like housing legislation because just like it's just a change.

And so that's something that we might put in it. And then there's some things that are kind of like borderline scrivener's errors where there's like flip flopped setback standard in historic in one of the historic districts. For example, where the side yard is bigger than the rear yard or something like that. That could make sense along with it, but then there are some other ones that might be large enough that we might need to strip them out. And so, that's kind of what we would need to scope internally. As you can see, we have a lot of other stuff going on. So, if you're sensing reluctance to commit that's

No, no, that's that makes sense. And you

You're picking up. You're reading

No, it's fine. You alluded to kind of how it could be part of the housing legislation consultant work and that makes sense. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure I got it.

I'll say and I know both Erica, I, and Darren, and others on the team are aligned where we're constantly looking for opportunities and efficiencies where we can like, so for example, we have some, you know, budget to take care of housing legislation as part of the grant, but we're also trying to see if there's other like sort of ancillary legislative fixes that we can also throw into it and try to balance the equation. So, for example, the scope of work in the code calls for the consultant to adopt it, but we might ask them to reorganize the tasks and then take on internally adoption, which would then save scope to do other parts of the projects and get help adding some of the pieces that were not originally scoped. DLCD is the holder of the contract, so there's some negotiation and some limits on our ability to do that. Whereas if we had just a contract we were paying for, it'd be a little bit easier. And so those are some of the kind of behind the curtain things that we have to deal with when bringing these forward.

Okay. Great. I appreciate that. Thank you. Commissioner Wolvotny.

So I think I confused myself here between the docket and then going back to appendix d and seeing unprioritized projects. And because the docket does indicate that they're not those projects are not yet prioritized. And it does include, you know, everything is back in appendix d. And I I think most I can't see any that should be removed or I I think there are some things moving up to prioritize projects. If I can go there.

Sorry to interrupt you. Would you mind referencing the page you're on just Yeah. For anyone who's trying to follow

So pages, what is this page? Page 10 has projects identified by council, planning commission, public, and staff that aren't that are not yet prioritized by council. So there's small, medium, and large projects. And so I mentioned the tree code and it falls under a large project just because of the goal five process. I think that maybe some consideration by a land use attorney might be worthwhile just to see if it really is a large project and maybe we can move that one up as a smaller project for prior, maybe not even prioritizing it yet, but but maybe to review those to see how much time is actually required.

Assess those again.

I think maybe just to inter if I can interject just to clarify. So that's from last year's docket. Yeah. And so I removed the size on them because of the fact that I think that I wanted to be a little bit more I wanted to make sure that the docket The docket, going back to the code, is what we accomplish in a year. Everything else that's on there is not the docket. Right? Right. Just so that we're all on the same page there.

They're just on list.

I think there's value in keeping projects that we would want to move on to the docket, like a so called parking lot. And so, I just wanted to make sure that there weren't any that we remove and so appreciate that there's not. I didn't think the answer is yes, but some of them are quite old and this is a different commission than previous. So, I just wanted to have that conversation. And so, again, to be clear, this year and even next year, like, based on the projects they're already working on, we're resourced for prioritized projects.

No unless your recommendation to the council is to stop working on a project that we're currently working on, like not do the waterfront, we simply don't have the staff. And that's why I'm providing you the context of the framing our future and giving you a little bit of peek behind the budget. Simply put, we can keep it in the appendix, but it isn't able to move unless we just simply deprioritize a different project.

Right.

So, if that's a recommendation, we can certainly take that forward. But, I just wanna make sure that we're all

kind

of speaking in the same vernacular when we say, like, we want something to be prioritized.

Yeah. I mean, I guess if I were gonna prioritize something, it would be chapter 32 from the unprioritized list. There are some old things on here and and and again it's because the state has required that we be diverted to middle housing issues for several years. And that's ongoing now with housing production issues. So failing to recognize at least in this community, we're almost built out.

So it's gonna be hard to meet whatever numbers are required. So that all said, on the prioritized projects at the bottom of page five, we have the committee for, well, and now it's committee for community involvement, I think. Rather than citizen involvement, we changed that, the use of the word citizen. But anyway, report was was prepared by the CCI at the time when it was when CCI was reinstated again in early twenty seventeen. And during the course of about a year and a half, we had I think around, I wanna say 60 meetings.

We had a lot of meetings. And we developed that report. I was the representative from planning commission because I was chair. So and during the course of that year and a half, we had four at that time, membership allowed for members of city council to be on the CCI. And so there were four different city councilors who rotated through on the development of that report.

We finished it. I signed it in July 2018 and it has been sitting right here ever since. So my concern is that with the changes that we have made in in the code and changes that have been made at a state level, that report is probably gonna have to be reviewed again whether it goes back to CCI or it becomes a function of the planning commission to review and consider. But it was all about increasing community engagement in the land use planning process. And so there were gonna be some substantial changes proposed.

And those are just stagnated. So that that's my concern with the docket. And I think back at that time we had, so we have what three three planners now? So I think at that time we had five. So the staffing has really been reduced significantly. So I I feel your pain. I I would love to see two to four at least more people working in your department.

Yeah. I appreciate that. The one thing I did wanna because I I definitely want to amplify the changes to community engagement. So, in the updated appendix a which includes that project still, I just want to call your attention to the recently passed HB 2,950 which directs the LCDC, the Land Conservation Development Commission, which would presumably then direct the Department of Land Conservation and Development, their staff to update goal one which relates to public involvement by 2029. And so that one is going to come back to us in some way shape or form.

I'm all but sure regardless of whether or not we reprioritize it because it'll become a state law. Okay. And so that's the one bit of good news there is that in the long run that should ultimately fall under that legally required bucket.

Okay. That that sounds great. I just thought of one other thing that's of concern related to community engagement as well and that is the status of some of our neighborhood associations. And think there are a couple that are that aren't even active at this point and that's unfortunate. And and but it's also a function of people's lives because it's all volunteer. So anyway.

Thank you for that comment. I agree.

Just because I don't like or screwing up my I don't like screwing up my sources. It was actually two years ago. It was 05/15/2024, and it was our recommendations to city council on the 2024 West Linn water system master plan update. And it's because we were dealing with just so much money just it weighed very heavily of wanting to go through it and get it right.

Thank you.

Steve, would you mind returning to the prompts list? I'm I'm happy for anyone to interrupt if they want to bring up any recommended changes or go to any of the other previous points, but I thought maybe we could discuss realigning the docket presentation schedule. Does anyone have any opinions about that? I found Steve's points pretty compelling that made sense to me to change it to the latter part of the calendar year to match the cycle of the budget. But I think we should all kind of state our opinion on the the matter.

Chris? I agree with that too. Commissioner Wobotny? I

agree completely. I've had the same thought in past years.

Great. Commissioner Dietz? Yeah. I agree. It makes sense.

Commissioner Jones.

It's rational. It makes sense. Thank you for bringing it to attention.

Yeah.

Great. Thank you for the feedback.

Great. So I'm the final point just to go back to it with a bit more clarity. I think given everything that Steve has kind of elucidated in terms of the docket, the constraints, know, the fact that we can't really add much more. We are still left with the list of unprioritized projects. Is there interest, I guess at a future date in kind of going line by line and just decide or not deciding but giving some feedback into possible action for what we how we kind of handle the unprioritized list as it remains an unprioritized list.

Is that correct?

Certainly optional. It's not I wasn't necessarily looking for that, but I'm happy to entertain it. I mean, I think probably at this point our goal is just to bring forward the docket to council in June. I mean, I think that that is maybe we could if we're going to, you know, which will be sooner rather than later, bring this back in fall basically to restart the timing of it, we could bring that broader conversation as part of that. Just given a lot of the other stuff we have coming up on the agenda. If that's okay.

That makes sense. It seem where it fits. I mean, I don't think we all know what the summer docket has for us. So I guess just yeah. Maybe seeing this again in the fall.

Does anyone have any other contributions about the docket as it is presented to us today? Yes, Just Mr.

Listening under the large project, the side code update, we've been talking about it for quite a long time in multiple different pockets. Just looking forward to when and if we get to dive into that.

I'm sorry, I don't recall. Is that one on there or that's a suggested addition?

No, no, no. I'm not making stuff up. Page 11, large projects, sign code, planned unit development, tree code. The sign code, it's just like it keeps popping up in conversations. I'm glad that eventually we're going to be having those conversations on behalf of other people.

Okay. Gotcha. Thank you.

I'm sorry, I appear to have brought up the wrong agenda so let me move back to thank you very much. Okay. So I believe that commences our planning docket conversation. Is there any further action or just a recommendation that this be presented to counsel as?

Yeah. I mean, the way the code's set up, it doesn't require a formal recommendation. And so, mean, I've been taking pretty copious notes and planning to share the feedback with the council. I mean, the council doesn't have to adopt it. It's a little bit it's in the code, but the mechanisms are rather informal actually,

despite

it being formalized. So, that's the plan I think was that we're going to tentatively bring it to council on June 6.

Okay. Great. Thank you very much. And thanks for the presentation.

Thank you

all for

engaging in the discussion.

Thank you. Okay. Next on the agenda is Planning Commission announcements. Does anyone have any announcements? I actually wanted to bring up something.

I hope this is an appropriate time to do so. And I would love your feedback about kind of how we move forward with this. But it was it came to my attention, I'm sure it came to all of your attention over the last two meetings that there seems to be a question of the codification of the neighborhood association plans and the extent to which we are involved in this is a little unclear to me, but I think that we should seek to have some clarity about which associations have plans, which have been adopted, and which ones have been codified because it is difficult in a situation like we had a few weeks ago to know the ins and outs or ask that of people in the room, but it was important to the discussion and it could be important to further discussions. And I just wanted to bring that up. I am also not the most senior person in terms of my my time on the commission.

So if commissioner if any of you have more information on that, but if commissioner Wolvotny or commissioner Jones or if Steve would like to weigh in, I would really appreciate it because it wasn't necessarily probative to our discussion, but I thought that it was extremely extremely relevant and it's very important to the people in West Linn and to the members of the individual communities. So I think it'd be it'd behoove us to have more clarity on that subject moving forward at least. So I guess that's all to say. If nobody up here has a lot of information on that, I would really appreciate if maybe we could get some kind of a memo explicating where we stand with those plans, the codification process, whatever is realistic. If anyone has opinions about that I would love to hear them.

Great. Is that possible?

Yeah, I think it makes sense. Yeah. Mean just to make sure that we're seeing the same thing. Like I'm envisioning a memo based on what you described like which neighborhoods have a neighborhood plan, what the status of them is, kind of what is a neighborhood plan, what does it do, what would it take to kind of in nuts and bolts to move it forward to codify it, and just, like, brief issue identification summary. And then if the planning commission had more interest in

the topic, then we could figure out what the next steps would look like after that.

Exactly what I was envisioning. So I would appreciate that if you guys have any anything else to add. But that sounds wonderful. Thank you.

Absolutely.

So I think part of the confusion in the community and sometimes even with the commission is that is that we have the comprehensive plan and it lays out our policy relative to each goal, each state land use goal. And that the comprehensive plan also prioritizes neighborhood association plans, but then leaves them hanging out there. So, you know it's kind of like the when we have an application that comes in and the CDC is the provides the applicable requirements even though it's backed up by the comp plan and in some fashion by the neighborhood association plans, unless it comes those those neighborhood association plans and the comp plan, unless that actually comes forward as as real code, it means nothing. And so that's I think what's frustrating to the community is that they've gone through the trouble of developing these localized plans for their neighborhoods and and yet nothing happens. And this comes back to, you know, not having enough staffing, not having enough funding.

It's it's and it and it's not it's not planning's fault. I mean, it's just it is just the way it is. So yeah. So I I if there's a way to move us, maybe what you bring forward regarding the chair's request, if there's a way to address that and provide some guidance to the community so they can feel better about having the neighborhood association plan come into play. I mean, now it seems that, I mean, the best way that something is happening is that the Robinwood Plan is influencing the Highway 43 Plan.

But it's not at this point doing anything with the CDC, if that makes sense.

It does and I mean I I can't speak to why that was done in that fashion. It's a little bit puzzling.

Does anyone else on the commission have any announcements? Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Commissioner Dietz.

It's more of an item related not related to the agendaannouncement, but I was wondering if it would be possible for the planning commissioners to get, like, a printed out physical copy of the CDC just so that we can flip through it when we're reviewing projects and things like that. I know it's a little expensive and time consuming, but I also think it's difficult for myself to read like look on a computer and try to look back on an application and it just would be easier if I could like tab something, if that makes sense.

Unfortunately, I don't think we have budget for it in our department. That's that's the constraint that we have. I don't know when when was the last time we printed a time ago?

We moved to a paperless a paperless approach to our planning materials that we provide. So that's not something that we have printed out since I've been here. So for seven years. So

I used to print out my own copies. So I'd go to the website and I would print out all of the the chapters. And or I'd I'd download the PDFs and then they reside on in my folder. And then I would every couple years or when a project came up, I would go back and then just see if that code had been updated. I have piles of paper in my office. My wife would love me to get rid of. I think that's happening shortly. So so anyway, even even historically, the CDC hasn't been printed out unless you do it yourself. So

I was just thinking in terms of this is a volunteer position and then I would have to spend my own Yeah. You know, money on it. I I just figured I'd ask.

Okay. Commissioner Wolbottany. Yes.

So I have I have two things. So just to go back to my when we started here earlier tonight, I'll just give you a quick reference to the code that I made during that hearing regarding maps and their applicability. So under CDC fifty five one ten b no. Let's see. Yeah.

B six. There are references to the city's natural hazard mitigation plan, map 16, and the landslide vulnerable analysis areas designated by the natural hazard mitigation plan on map 17. So, and those definitely are required by the code. I'm looking for others, but anyway.

So I

guess just to clarify though and we can work on this offline. Those are not Dogami maps. So do you

I'm looking for that. But I remember seeing a reference to Dogami. So, okay.

We can work on it offline and make sure we have it

right. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, and then can we have a discussion? Obviously not tonight, but a discussion about the Lot seven memo. I have questions. So and that's at this point probably not the time for that to happen. So

Yes. Up to up to the commission. They wanna entertain a chunk of a future meeting to talk about that.

Because it was a seven o vote to have to get information and we haven't had a discussion about it. We have a memo, but I'm the only one who knows the history of it. Sure. Because everyone else is new. I can have a discussion offline, but that doesn't make it a public record discussion.

Yeah, happy to entertain that. So I mean I think it would just be a motion and consensus from the commission to put it on as a work session item for a future meeting.

Okay. And I don't know that it'll take long. It's just could be fifteen minutes. So I guess

Yes. Commissioner Deeds.

Are we motioning?

Yes. I second that motion. Oh, I think somebody needs to make a motion to add that to

I'll the make a motion to add a discussion hopefully at the next meeting to discuss the lot seven memo.

I second that motion. Great.

Second.

Shall I take the role?

Sure. Okay.

Commissioner Jones?

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Commissioner Kaczorowski? Yes. Commissioner Wolvotnik? Yes. Commissioner Deets? Yes. Chair Schulte Hillen?

Yes.

The motion passes five to zero.

Great. Okay. If that is all of the Planning Commission announcements, we will move on to staff announcements.

The only thing I have is just to note that we are still working on scheduling a hearing time for the Tanner Blankenship development. So it will not be the next meeting. We're not sure exactly when it'll be. So we'll try to let you all know as soon as we do know for sure when that meeting will be, but some point this summer.

Okay. I'm going to adjourn this meeting. It is 08:00. Thank you.