I'm Chair Adams.

Now is the time and place for a meeting of the Beaverton Planning Commission.

And we'll get the mic set up in just a second.

For the record, I will do a roll call to verify which commission members are participating this evening.

Commissioner McAvoy.

Here.

Commissioner McCann.

Here.

Commissioner Mettler.

Here.

Commissioner Winter.

And let the record show that Commissioners Holmes and Spec are excused and absent from the meeting tonight.

We are now at Commission Communications.

Commission, any communications.

Looks like no communications.

We are now at staff communications.

Staff, any communications.

Good evening, Chair.

My name is Anna Slatinski.

I'm the planning division manager here in Beaverton.

I just have a few comments.

One of them is to just mark that this is the first in-person planning commission meeting since 2020.

It is still a hybrid meeting, so we have a few commissioners joining us virtually and a staff member who's presenting virtually, but it still feels like a really important milestone to get back to holding these meetings here in Council Chambers down at Beaverton City Hall.

I also want to announce that the annual one book one Beaverton book has been announced for the coming year.

It is Dr.

Jim O'Connell's urgent mission to bring healing to homeless people.

And it is, excuse me, I missed part of the title.

Rough sleepers, Dr.

Jim O'Connell's urgent mission to bring healing to homeless people.

And there will be a variety of events scheduled to facilitate community conversations around this book.

It's a kind of really really fun activity that the library has hosted for many years now.

Represent one of a number of volunteer boards and commissions here at the City of Beaverton, but for anyone watching who may be interested in becoming a volunteer, uh check out the boards and commissions section of the Beaverton City website to see what opportunities are available.

And that is all of my comments for this evening.

Excellent.

Thank you, Ana.

New business.

Case file number TA 42024-00709.

Before we move on to the ab to the substance of the hearing, I will ask the city attorney to cover a pre-hearing matter.

Thank you, Chair, and good evening, Commissioners.

I'm Robin McIntyre, Assistant City Attorney.

Testimony arguments and evidence must be presented, must be directed toward these approval criteria or other criteria in the comprehensive plan or development code that the speaker believes apply to the application.

Failure to raise an issue accompanied by statements or evidence sufficient to allow the planning commission and other interested parties an opportunity to respond may preclude an appeal to the land use board of appeals based on that issue.

Anyone who submits written comments or gives oral testimony has standing to appeal this decision.

Failure of the applicant to raise constitutional or other issues related to proposed conditions of approval with sufficient specificity to allow the city to respond may preclude an action for damages in circuit court.

State and local law require commissioners to make certain disclosures to these ends.

The following question will be asked.

Does any commissioner have a potential or actual conflict of interest?

Chair Adams.

No conflict of interest on either account.

Thank you.

Commissioner McAvoy.

No conflict of interest.

Commissioner McCann.

No conflict of interest.

Commissioner Mettler.

No conflict of interest.

And Commissioner Winter.

No.

Does any member of the audience wish to challenge the right of any commissioner to participate in this hearing?

Let the record show no response.

The order of the public hearing tonight will be as follows.

City staff will give a presentation, followed by commissioners' questions of staff.

Members of the public in support of the application may speak for up to five minutes.

Members of the public oppose the application may speak for up to five minutes each.

And then members of the public who are neither in support nor opposed will then have five minutes to speak.

The planning commission will then hear any final comments from staff.

Chair, that concludes the pre-hearing statement.

You may proceed with the hearing.

Thank you.

Are there any questions of staff with regard to the proposed?

Oh, we'll now begin the staff.

Are there any questions of staff with regard to the proposed application?

Chair, I think this is the time that we would move into the staff presentation.

Perfect.

So we will now move into the staff presentation.

Good evening.

Before I get started, I believe Miss Latinsky wanted to have a couple of opening words.

So I'll turn it over to her first, please.

Thank you, Steve.

This is again Honest Latinsky Planning Division Manager.

I just wanted to note before we start the presentation that this is the first opportunity that a number of the commissioners have had to review a text amendment proposal for the development code.

So I know we talked about it in advance to kind of prepare for this.

I hope that the materials that were provided were effective in allowing you to understand the proposal.

Overall, the proposal did end up being less lengthy and sprawling than we thought might be the case.

So it may be possible to cover all of the all of the questions you may have during the hearing tonight.

If that's the case, you can go ahead and decide to make a recommendation to the city council tonight.

If you you need more time, uh then you can choose to continue the hearing to a future date, and we can discuss what date would make sense when we get to that part of the evening.

And that's all my comments.

Um and I would just hand it back to you, Steve, to go over the substance of the presentation.

Thank you very much, Alan.

Again, my name is Steve Regner.

I'm a senior planner with the City of Beverton.

I want to apologize that I cannot be there with you all tonight.

We had an unforeseen event that keeps me at home.

Um, but weirdly, I do wish I was there at Council Chambers tonight for this first hearing.

Uh, nevertheless, we will uh carry forward the application before you tonight is LU4 2024 00710.

Code maintenance project text amendment.

And the application before you in general is a text amendment whose main purpose is to keep the development code in good working order.

Uh we know it is not a perfect document, and we know that times change.

Um so it's good as a regular practice to make sure that we keep the development code up to date.

Um we intend to do these annually.

Uh we did one last year around this time.

And when I'm done with this project, we'll be handing the baton off to the next planner.

But the goal really is to do projects like these on an annual basis to keep the code operating smoothly.

Uh, one main goal through this project is it's intended to be policy neutral.

We are not attempting to establish any new policies, but more of these language updates are really intended to uh better implement goals and policies already established by commission and city council.

The proposal intends to amend uh most of the chapters of the development code, specifically 20, 40, 50, 60, 70, and 90 of the development code.

And uh the updates are there for a variety of reasons.

Um, some of them are in there to implement new laws passed by the state of Oregon.

Some of the rules are there to help fix existing code sections that for whatever reason just don't quite work.

Maybe there's a clarity issue, maybe there's a conflict issue.

Really, it's more of a tune-up to make sure that things are operating properly.

And sometimes we just have minor miscellaneous changes for clarity, updated code citations or whatever reason.

These little tweaks need to be made along the way for clarity.

And finally, for this year, we selected a topic of focus.

We might not do this every year, but this year we decided to focus on transportation related issues as a main effort here, including shifting some regulations from the development code to the engineering design manual, which is essentially public works' version of the development code.

It's the regulations and standards for the construction and maintenance of public infrastructure like storms and sewers and roadways.

And really, when we're talking about that tonight, it's gonna be more about sidewalk design specifically.

We'll get to that later.

Tonight's meeting, uh, we're really going to be providing a high-level overview of the proposed changes in this text amendment based mostly on the materials provided to planning commission in the staff report dated September 17th.

In that staff report, you'll find all the legal findings and justification that staff is basing our recommendation upon.

In addition, there is a grouping of uh indexes, essentially summarizing chapter by chapter what the proposed amendments are, their code citation, a make quick summary of what it is, and comments from staff providing context or rationale for the change.

Additionally, there's a set of red lines with strike through and underline detailing the specifics of the language of the proposed amendments.

And finally, there are versions uh clean copies of the code with the proposed amendments incorporated, because sometimes the strike through underline gets difficult to read, so the clean copies are there to get a better read on that.

Finally, I'd like to draw commission's attention to the supplemental memo circulated yesterday, September 30th, uh, when staff was preparing their presentation.

Uh, they realized that there was one of the uh chapter summary indexes that was missing a couple of entries.

Uh the red lines, the actual proposed changes were in the document provided September 17th, but a couple of the entries were omitted by Air Index.

So the new chapter 60 index now has all of the entries, and the two new entries were highlighted for ease of reference for commission and any members of the public following along.

With that said, let's jump right into it.

We'll go chapter by chapter with a couple of big highlights for each of each of the chapters, leaving plenty of time uh for questions and discussion from the commission at the end of the presentation.

So, first off, we'll start off with chapter 20, which is the land use chapter, all of the zoning regulations, site development rules, land use rules.

Um one big one here actually is responding to a change in state law, specifically House Bill 3560, which was in rule earlier this year.

And this bill relates to the ability or lack thereof for a municipality to regulate the siting of a child care facility, essentially where in what zones a child care facility could be established.

And generally speaking, the House Bill, which uh will go into effect in 2026 requires that most zones require the child care facilities to be permitted outright without any other conditions or limitations.

So any zones that are primarily industrial in nature or commercial in nature, and that includes all of our multiple use zones.

Um the bill requires that cities and counties require those to be permitted outright.

So there are a couple of changes we're making in the code.

The uh neighborhood service zone, for example, um, the child care facility right now is a conditional use that will switch to an outright permitted use.

Um, another example is in the OINC zone, it's permitted, but there's a footnote that says it can only be established for essentially employees, children to go to that child care facility.

The House bill says you can't do that anymore.

So uh limitations through footnotes like that have also been struck.

Um the big difference is when you have lower density residential zones, in Beaverdon's case is the RMB and RMC zones, B as in Boise's and CAT.

Um, right now, the child care facilities are conditionally permitted.

And when they are a standalone use, they will remain conditionally permitted.

The twist here is that if they are co-located with a legally established institutional use, uh, they must be outright permitted with no additional conditions or limitations.

An institutional use being a church or school or a library city facility like that.

So that change has also been made in chapter 20 to reflect HB 3560.

Second big change we made in chapter 20 was to clarify an existing practice.

Essentially, we have rules in our commercial zone that state that outdoor commercial operations can really be limited to a very small amount relative to the size of the indoor operation.

And the real purpose of that was to limit the amount of outdoor sales or storage of goods that could be done by a business.

But it was never really intended to apply to outdoor eating and drinking at a bar or a restaurant.

But the question has come up enough in the applicability.

We thought it was important to clarify and essentially codify our existing practice that that limitation did not apply to outdoor seating for eating and drinking establishments.

That limitation will not apply for cafes and outdoor seating and things like that.

Finally, we provided clarifications for rules for housing type integration and land divisions for Cooper Mountain for commissioners that are relatively new to the commission in 2024.

The city brought forth a red rather large development code update, a new batch of rules for how Cooper Mountain would be developed.

And honestly, whenever you bring in a really large code package, you know there's always going to be some updates that you'll need to make in the years ahead.

Either the code gets implemented and you realize things didn't quite work right, or in this case, Cooper Mountain is still several years from being annexed and developed, but we know that there's some updates and clarifications that need to be made.

This is one of those examples.

It's really just setting the stage to make sure that the development code is ready for prime time when properties in Cooper Mountain actually annex.

Moving on to chapter 40, which is our land use application section.

We are updating rules to some applications, adding new applications, and in one case proposing to eliminate a land use application.

But we will start with bicycle parking.

Right now, if an applicant wishes to deviate from the required bicycle parking required in the code, they have to go through an application called a minor or major adjustment.

Minor if the small deviation, major if it's a larger deviation.

The adjustment application is pretty broad in nature because it's intended to cover a lot of different types of deviations from the development code.

It could be height, setbacks, FAR, density, a whole lot of different types of things.

So the approval criteria are pretty broad in nature, and they don't really speak to the specific needs of bike parking analysis.

In addition, the major adjustment or the minor and the major adjustment applications also speak to special or unique conditions on site or hardship conditions, which really aren't a great fit for someone saying, hey, your bike parking ratio really doesn't match the needs of my proposal.

So it's always been a bit of a tension based on the fit there.

The good news is we have an existing park or existing application that does have that consideration about what a use really needs as far as parking, and that's our parking determination.

We have approval criteria already in that land use application that require an applicant to demonstrate that if they want to provide bicycle parking less than the requirement, then they need to demonstrate how it will still work.

So we already have that language in place.

So all we're doing is shifting essentially the mechanism of how someone gets to ask for a deviation from the adjustment to the bicycle parking determination application.

We're also proposing to add two new land use applications to our suite of land division applications.

I think we're at 13 now.

The large lot land division and public facilities preliminary land division.

And both of these applications really are intended to help facilitate large green field or large lot redevelopment in Cooper Mountain.

When we in the past decade, as we processed applications and facilitated development of Cooper Mountain, we learned that our existing land division applications, most notably our subdivision and partition applications, don't really consider large lot redevelopment or what it takes to go from a 500-acre site down to 50 or 100 acre sites to be sold off to developers, develop major streets, develop infrastructure, our existing processes and approval criteria kind of got in the way a little bit.

So taking the lessons learned from South Cooper Mountain, we are adding two new land use applications to facilitate a smoother process for the development of Cooper Mountain when it does come into the city for redevelopment.

We're also updating language to our final land division application.

Final land division is the application that is used for the review of a plat before it gets recorded at the county.

So if you've already gotten preliminary approval for your 10 lot subdivision, you then come in with your plat, which is essentially the legal document to create new legal lots of record that gets recorded at the county.

It gets reviewed by city staff and it'll go to the county.

But we really need to change some language to more properly and correctly identify applicability when you need one when you don't, and the type of application it really is.

So some clarifying language in that, but the process generally is going to remain the same.

Finally, we are proposing to eliminate a land use application, which is a sidewalk design modification application.

A little bit of background on how our sidewalk design actually works at this city.

Sidewalk design, and when I say that, I mean the horizontal width of the sidewalk and the horizontal width of the planter strip.

That is actually regulated in the engineering design manual, which remember is kind of the development code for public works.

Depending on the functional classification of any street, so arterial, collector, local street, there are different regulations on the width of the planter strip and the sidewalk based on that functional classification.

And it is expected that any new development that builds a street is going to build to those standards.

However, if an applicant wants to deviate from those horizontal widths of the sidewalk or the planter strip, they don't do that deviation request right now through the engineering design manual where the rules are.

It comes through planning through a land use application.

That understandably creates a little bit of tension of kind of having two different sets of regulations to work through.

And we, in the effort to essentially acknowledge that things in the public right of way should be regulated by the engineering design manual, which falls under the authority of the city engineer.

If there is a request to deviate from something in the right of way, it really should be going through the engineering design manual and their existing essentially modification process called a design exception.

That is an existing process where if an applicant wants to deviate from anything in the EDM, whether it's storm, sewer, or street related, they have an existing process.

So we are not abandoning the concept of being able to deviate from the sidewalk design modification.

We are simply proposing to transfer the authority to the city engineer and the engineer design manual because it's in the right of way.

Moving on to chapter 50, which is our procedures chapter.

So this is a very process-heavy slide here.

There's a major theme going through the entirety of the chapter where we're proposing to remove a lot of internal policies and best practices from the development code, mainly because the development code is a regulatory document.

And having internal policies and best practices isn't always the best idea.

One of the major uh drawbacks is that we are obliged to follow what is in the development code, even if it is just an internal policy, not regulated by the state or any other other requirement.

So when we find that there's a better way to do something internally, we have to go through and change the development code, which is not exactly a nimble process.

We have public noticing, we meet more efficient counsel, we have to tell the state we're doing it.

By taking out these internal policies and best practices from the code and just keeping them internally, that allows us to be a lot more nimble when we want to start doing things differently and more efficiently.

We don't have to wait four or five months to move the ship slowly.

We can just actually start changing it and doing our best practice.

To be clear, we're not proposing to change any of our internal policies or best practices right now.

Really, we just want to give ourselves the opportunity to be a little bit more responsible when we identify that there's a there's a better way to do things.

Second on this list, we are specifying that when an application is deemed received by the city, a little bit of context here.

There is in state law certain timelines and milestones a city must meet, and a lot of them are based on when an application is received by the city.

Right now, in the current code, we consider when you give me an application, I consider you received.

What has happened though sometimes is because the city is required to respond in a timely manner to an application.

City staff jumps right on it, routes it for review, other divisions look at it, and sometimes not a lot, but sometimes an application gets withdrawn without ever having been paid for.

So we find ourselves doing weeks of work and not just planners, but other division reviewers doing quite a bit of work only for the project to be withdrawn without any fees paid.

So the proposal here is to say we will not consider an application deemed received until those fees are paid.

And on that day, that is when our clock starts, and that's when we jump in, start routing, reviewing, sharing with our neighbors, and getting on with business.

And that just makes sure that the city is not doing unnecessary work for a project that's going to get withdrawn and fees won't get paid.

Third item on the list here, we are just updating some language and policies based on new technology, not even the real term technology.

That's been around for a decade in some cases, but we're playing a little bit of catch up here.

Things like digital submittals, our development code does not consider those to be a thing.

We don't acknowledge digital submittals as a sufficient way or satisfactory way to provide a signed application.

We've been accepting them since COVID, if not earlier, but our code just has never caught up with that fact.

Speaking of COVID, virtual neighborhood meetings became the norm in early days of COVID for obvious reasons.

And because they have proved to be so convenient, we have allowed them through practice to continue to happen.

But our development code does not specifically allow those to happen.

So what we're doing is saying virtual neighborhood meetings aren't appropriate way to meet this requirement, but also there's some rules in place about needing needing to provide proper accommodation for those who need assistance with the virtual meeting.

Fourth on the list, we are adding language for a what's called a limited land use decision, which is a land use process prescribed in state code.

It takes a very specific type of land use application to qualify for limited land use decision.

And generally what it means is that it gets less noticing and gets processed a little bit faster.

But instead of prescribing everything out for them to land use decision, like we do for type one, two, three, and four applications, we simply refer the applicant and staff and anyone else to go look at ORS language as how to properly follow that.

And finally on this slide, we are updating to provide more clear language on essentially who gets what kind of notice when a decision has been made either at the staff level or at planning commission level.

When a decision is made, the city produces something called a notice of decision.

That's essentially like a two-page cover letter that says this application has a decision has been made on it.

It was made on this date.

The appeal period lasts through this date.

Here's how you can appeal.

Here's staff contact information, here's where you can go on the website to learn more.

Um, a lot of state mandated notice information.

Additionally, a notice of decision can also include the full staff report with all the legal findings justifying the decision that was made.

And I'm sure most of you commissioners have gotten at least one or two pretty lengthy staff reports.

Um you can think if we get um 10 public comments, we're sending out a hundred-page staff report to 10 people who just said yay or nay.

So what we are proposing to do is to say if you are a party to the application, so you're a property owner, you're a consultant, you're the applicant, business owner, and there's been a decision made, you will get that notice, that cover letter with all the information about appeals and dates and everything.

You will also get the full staff report, all the legal findings.

If you are uh a member of the public that has provided public comment, you will simply get that two-page cover letter again, because all the information about what the decision was, here's how you can appeal, here's how you can find the staff report online, and here's who you can call with more information.

All of those people will only get the two-page letter that will really cut back on the amount of paperwork, paper being used, postage being sent, um, and still providing any members of the public that testified an opportunity to understand more, contact staff and know how to appeal if they would like to do so.

All right, moving on to chapter 60.

This is our special regulations chapter.

It really is a catch-all.

There's a whole bunch of stuff in here.

So I have more than one slide on this on this chapter.

Um, but we will start with um language updates.

Um code right now sometimes uses the term walkway and sidewalk interchangeably, when really they're two different things.

Sidewalk is something that's in the right-of-way next to vehicle traveling.

It's part of the street, part of the right of way.

Whereas a walkway is actually where pedestrians, people walk on a property on site.

So the goal was to go through all of chapter 60, mostly our design review rules to make it more clear that when we're talking about these rules, we're talking about on-site pedestrian walkways, not sidewalks in the right-of-way.

Really consistency and clarity there.

We're also making more rule changes for bicycle parking.

Um, we are clarifying that bicycle parking is required for all proposed development.

Right now, our code leaves off some development types, and there's some weird blind spots.

Um, so we were updating language simply to say that if you come in for a land use application, we you are expected to demonstrate that you are meeting the bicycle parking requirements in the code.

Our bike parking ratio table is a table in chapter 60 that says if you are building retail, you must provide bicycle parking at this ratio, you know, X number of spaces per thousand square feet.

Same thing, you know.

If you're building an office, it's a different ratio.

School, it's a different ratio based on staffing amounts, or if it's a high school number of kids.

So it is really the guide to say you're building this type of use, you have to build this amount of bicycle parking.

Except if you look at our bicycle parking table, it's pretty compressed.

It's and has a lot of omissions, especially when you compare it to our motor vehicle parking table or our land uses in chapter 20.

Um, there's a lot of land uses not listed in the bicycle parking ratio table.

And the consequence of that is if you come in with a use that's not listed in that table, you automatically have to do a parking determination to then get a designated bike parking ratio.

So we end up having quite a few parking determinations for bicycle parking simply because we don't list it in our parking tables.

So we have proposed to add another essentially says if you don't fit in one of these boxes, go to the bottom of the table, you are now in other, and you must provide bike parking at this prescribed ratio.

Uh it's somewhere between, I forget the exact number, but somewhere between what we require for retail and what we require for restaurant.

So it's high, but not worst case scenario high.

Um, and so what that does is it gives an applicant an opportunity just to provide the other amount instead of automatically falling into this extra land use application.

If an applicant does not want to provide the ratio required in that other category, they still can apply for the parking term and application and demonstrate why their proposed bike parking amounts better fit the use that they are proposing.

Uh moving on, um, again, talking about sidewalk design, we have in our design review section requirements for wider sidewalks where it's expected for more pedestrians to be.

So think downtown, multiple use zones, town centers, station centers, um, commercial areas.

We have regulations or development code that say instead of doing what's required in the design manual, which is your planter strip and your sidewalk, simply do a 10-foot wide sidewalk instead.

Um this gets back to the idea of we think it's more appropriate for the engineering design manual to be regulating things in the right-of-way and leave the development code to focus on things on real property.

So the proposal is to strike that language from the development code, but transfer that idea into the engineering design manual.

So language in the engineering design manual will still say in downtown multiple use zones and commercial zones, you shall have wider sidewalks in order to accommodate higher pedestrian volumes.

Um simply it will just live in the EDM instead of the development code.

But the policy of those wider sidewalks will remain.

Next on this list, um, we took a look at how um decks and patios are currently allowed to encroach in rear setbacks and whether or not we wanted to provide weather protection or allow for weather protection for those decks and patios.

Um right now, our development code allows decks and patios up to 10 feet in height, measured for the railing, to encroach into a rear setback up to five feet from that rear property line, reference the regular setback in those zones, either 10 or 15 feet.

So it allows some encroachment into the rear zone.

Um but you know, I I know I walked my dog in the rain today, and I'm sure other folks are in the rain today.

I am reminded now very quickly about why weather protection here in Beaverton is pretty darn important.

So we were taking a look at what would be a sensible way to allow weather protection for these decks and patios in rear setbacks without causing too much uh impact.

And so we looked at building code, we looked at other provisions in the development code, and realized the answer lied in how we handle our accessory dwelling units right now.

Our accessory dwelling units, uh, when you have a single-story detached ADU, think you're like quintessential mother-in-law unit in the backyard.

Those are allowed to be five feet from the property line and 15 feet height.

So we have decided to transfer those, that idea to these covered decks in these rear setbacks as well.

So not only can the deck or patio be five feet from the property line, there can also be a cover for weather protection, five feet from the property line, as long as the highest point on that weather protection or cover is no more than 15 feet tall.

So we'd be treating these covered decks and patios the same as we treat accessory dwelling units today.

Last point on the slide is clarifying how an applicant can actually qualify for a tree plan type three.

A little bit of background, the tree plan three came into being about 20 years ago.

And the difference between a tree plan two and a tree plan three, at least as far as portion of it goes, it's when you want to remove trees from a significant grove, which is a is a mapped inventory growth of trees in our comprehensive plan in the city.

If you want to remove up to 75% of trees in a significant grove, um you would qualify for a tree plan too.

If you want to remove more than 75% of a grove, you'd be required to go through a tree plan three.

Which presents a bit of a problem because you can't remove more than 75% of the growth, which is the threshold for a tree plan three, unless you preserve less than 25%.

So there's always been this paradox of how was this supposed to work.

So staff went and did research into the uh legislative record for the tree plan three, looking for a kind of legislative intent and found very clearly that the intent of this was to actually, yes, allow for more than 75% to be removed, meaning less than 25% preserved, but it had to go through a discretionary process through a public hearing.

So really we're adding, I think just a sentence in here saying if you are not preserving more less, if you're preserving less than 25%, you have to go to planning commission to do so.

Really, that's all that's happening here.

But that's clarifying uh something that honestly has confused me for the 12 years I've been here, so I'm really happy to clean that up.

All right, uh next slide on chapter 60.

This gets some of our transportation rules specifically about middle housing.

Middle housing, um, you think your your duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, townhomes, we'll also throw single family into the mix here, although technically they're not middle housing.

Really, this is looking at how we can clarify our transportation rules to better facilitate infill development, which is where we get a lot of our middle housing proposals, and um to kind of streamline the process.

So we're proposing two things here that I wanted to highlight.

First is um change language to allow for shared driveways to occur across property lines.

Something like we see here.

Clearly, we've got two homes.

You can imagine the property line goes right down the middle, but we've got this shared driveway.

And this can be a benefit for many reasons.

Whenever we can consolidate driveways, we always try and do so.

Um there are certain benefits, especially in residential neighborhoods and even commercial neighborhoods, you've got room for more on-street parking because you've got fewer curb cuts, you've got more room for street trees and the soil volume for those street trees because you've got fewer curb cuts, and we're presenting fewer conflict points between pedestrians and vehicles because you've got less points where both of those users will occupy the same part of the sidewalk.

So anytime we can allow for uh driveway consolidation, we'd love to see it.

So this rule chain is really just getting out of the way and allowing for uh shared driveways to happen across property lines.

Uh the second rule change, which was uh a bit certainly a bigger one, is changing our rules to how on-site driveway designs are regulated.

Right now, our development code doesn't do a very good job of saying what a driveway should look like, how big it should be, what pedestrian facilities should be there.

The only thing we really do is we say, well, if it's long enough, if it's 150 feet or longer, it needs to be built like a private street.

But our code doesn't define what a private street is, and then we have to go to the EDM for the definition of private street, then what we end up doing is saying, oh, it has to look like a local street, which is sidewalks and planter strips and massively overbuilt facilities when you're maybe only serving a couple of units.

And that risk really proved a frustration for step.

So we sat down with our transportation planners and our um city um transportation engineers to talk about how we can replace that and do a better job of having driveways on site be right sized for the number of units that it will be serving.

So we developed three different essentially types of driveway designs based on the number of units it could be serving that scale up with the intensity of the development.

I've got a couple of pictures here to kind of share the idea.

Don't read too much into any of these pictures.

Really, we're just trying to give you a side uh an idea of the scale of it, but there's a lot of information, the photos that I that would probably disleading.

So I'll just kind of talk about the most important parts.

If we've got a development that's going to be serving one or two lots, that's going to have really low volumes of both pedestrians and vehicles.

So it's okay for those driveways to be narrower.

So we're proposing if you're only serving up to two lots, think of like a flag lot maybe.

Um the driveway can be pretty narrow.

And it's not critical that we have a designated pedestrian facility.

The volumes of vehicles and pedestrians are going to be low, and the travel speeds also are probably going to be pretty darn low.

So the need to actually have a designated pedestrian spot, not really that important.

And so when we scale up to more units, that it becomes more important to have wider vehicle lanes, or at least vehicle lane, and a designated pedestrian facility.

This idea here, we can see the driveway has gotten a little bit wider.

It's not the width of a full street, but you can maybe, if you've got a car coming each direction, you can kind of slow down and kind of go around each other.

And also importantly, there is on one side of the street a pedestrian facility.

Won't call it a sidewalk because it's not in the right of way, because I've said about enough about that tonight, but it is a designated differentiated material grade separated pedestrian facility so that pedestrians have a place to be expected to walk, and pedestrian and drivers know where pedestrians are expected to be found.

Scaling up to the oops, scaling up to the largest size of on-site vehicle circulation would be something looking closer to this.

This is for six lots or more.

This could be several quadplexes, this could be several townhomes.

Um we are here looking at the widest type of street, um, 20 feet.

So really you can have vehicles passing pretty comfortably without having to slow down, and sidewalks on both sides of the street if you've got um units on both sides of the street.

We don't require planter strips, so you can go with the street trees, but I had trouble finding a better picture.

But the idea is really as a development scales up with a number of units it could potentially serve, the width of the vehicle travel area needs to be wider, and the need for designated pedestrian facilities becomes greater.

And that's really what we're doing here is to make sure that we are not requiring overbuilt on-site transportation facilities or middle housing so we can get that infill development that everyone is really in favor of.

Moving on to chapter 70.

This is our downtown uh chapter.

First three items on here are topics I've already talked about, so I'll go through them pretty quickly.

First off, updating rules for child care facilities consistent with HV 3560.

Child care facilities now in all downtown zones are outright permitted because they are commercial zones in nature.

Um we are updating language, differentiating between pedestrian walkways and sidewalks for that consistency to make it clear that walkways are on private property and sidewalks are in the right-of-way, and that these rules for design review really only apply to on-site pedestrian walkways.

Um again, uh sidewalks in the right-of-way right now in the downtown zone are regulated in the downtown code saying you must have a 10-foot-wide sidewalk because we want that higher pedestrian volumes to be accommodated.

Uh, we are proposing to strike that language and transfer it to the engineering design manual.

Policy doesn't change, outcomes will be very, very similar.

Really, it's just where the room is.

Um last item on here is a new item, so I'll take a little bit of time talking about it.

Um, but this really talks about um making sure the development code and the engineering design manual are playing nicely and how to deal with it when there's a conflict in a very specific situation.

When we were working on developing the downtown code, we found it important to have areas of emphasis and energy and utilizing um the urban built environment to help with that.

Um instead of saying that every street in an old town was important, we decided to identify certain streets that needed to have the energy focus there.

So think Hall and Watson, think First Street, think Broadway.

These are the areas where we want this energy to happen.

And if you have a property with multiple frontages, so think a corner lot or maybe a full block development in old town, we wanted to have some guidance in place to tell properties where to put the fun stuff, outdoor seating, weather protection, big storefront windows, primary entrances, where all the fun stuff happens, and where to put all the essential business things like trash storage, loading, any driveway curb cuts.

Those things would kind of go in the back or on a side street.

And so we utilized we developed kind of a new hierarchy system that's different from functional classifications, which is your arterials collectors, things that deal with vehicle throughput.

We created a different hierarchy saying this is where the energy needs to happen, and this is how the built environment of private property can respond and help with that.

And we look through and we kind of compared our two maps and tried to identify areas where there might be conflicts.

We caught a couple, identify them, called them out and said, hey, right here, these rules don't apply.

Maybe the West Rail makes it a little weird, can't work, what have you.

We thought we'd caught all of them.

Turns out early this year we found one that we missed.

And we kind of had to do some creative workarounds to make sure that we could satisfy everyone.

So with that lesson learned, instead of going back through and looking with a fine-toothed comb at every possible potential permutation where it might have overlooked something the first time, we instead have put in language to say if we find a conflict between where the development code is saying put your driveway versus where the EDM says put your driveway, we will defer to the EDM.

There could be several reasons why the EDM would say put your driveway one place or the other.

Maybe it's because it's on the lower classification of street.

Maybe there are proximity issues to the intersection and you have a narrow lot on one side.

There could be a lot of different reasons why.

But mainly we want to say we recognize there could be conflicts we haven't identified.

And so when there is one that arises, defer to the EDM, and more importantly, applicant, we're not going to punish you for not meeting this development code standard.

Meeting the engineering design manual counts the same as meeting the development code or the design review standard for that.

Moving on to our last chapter, which is our definitions chapter.

Um, we added and modified a few different definitions.

First of all, we added the definition of a bus bay, specifically to clarify bicycle parking rules and transit centers.

It's the only time we use the term, but we want to make sure to clarify what counts as a bus bay and what doesn't for bike parking rules.

Uh we are updating our definition of care facilities.

Care facilities are something described in in ORS state law as a area where care is provided for five or fewer non-related persons.

That could be child care, that could be senior care, that could be any type of adult dependent living care.

But our development code says it's only limited to children and seniors, which leaves a pretty big age gap where sometimes care, live and care is needed.

So we are proposing simply to eliminate the children and seniors section of that definition and have it be applied for all ages and all reasons of why care might need to be provided for five or fewer persons consistent with ORS.

Third definition, uh, we're adding the term child care center in response to House Bill 3560.

Um this is a definition being added by this bill into ORS.

And really the way we're going to use it as an umbrella term uh for a couple of different child care facilities.

One child care facility itself, um preschool co-ops, and a third, I can't remember.

Um, but it generally child care center is the umbrella term to be used for all three of these different uses.

So it's essentially a way for our development code and our existing definitions to play nicely with the rules in House Bill 3560.

We have added the definition of what fence height means and how to actually measure fence height.

Um every couple years it turns it comes up that we've got a fence either on a really steep slope or wants to be put on the top of a retaining wall.

Um, and we go back and say, how do we measure this?

Which side do we measure from?

And we always return to the same answer after some back and forth.

It's the high side.

Um imagine you've got a five-foot retaining wall and you can have seven-foot fence.

If you measure from the low side, that's a two-foot fence that doesn't do anybody any good.

But the fact that we have to have this conversation every couple years, I think is a good indicator that we should actually just codify the memorialize our measuring methodology for when we run into these issues.

So we don't have to have this conversation anymore.

And finally, we are modifying the definition of initial development to exempt the two new land division applications I've discussed already.

Um, the main reason is is that we have specific expectations for when uh when a property is divided.

And when we think about divided, we're thinking about divided for individual homes to be built on, for example.

Um, and so when we talk about initial development, we say, hey, at initial development, you're gonna build your sewers and your streets and everything else.

Um, but if you're doing a large lot subdivision, you know, taking a 500-acre site and you're making it 100-acre chunks to then sell off to different developers, or maybe to get an arterial through.

Um, it doesn't make sense to build all the sewer and storm because there's nothing there yet.

It hasn't been designed yet.

Again, a lesson we learned through South Cooper Mountain that we are moving forward with to essentially streamline facilitation of large lot green field redevelopment in Cooper Mountain.

So hopefully we get out of our own way on that one.

That concludes our summary of everything in the development code.

We'll now open it up for questions and any conversation.

Of course, I am here remotely to answer any questions, but we have several staff members from the team sitting at the staff table who've contributed quite a bit to this effort.

So I might turn to them virtually turn to them for comments as well.

But as Ms.

Latinsky mentioned at the top of the meeting, if commission feels comfortable having reviewed all this information tonight, we would recommend that you uh recommend to city council approval of this code maintenance project.

And if planning commission feels like they need more time, we can talk about that at the end of the conversation as well.

Um but with that, I will um I will end my presentation and I'll stop sharing for now, but I can share it again if need be.

And I am happy to answer any questions uh any members of the commission may have.

Thank you.

Are there any questions of staff with regard to the proposed application?

We're now moving to the applicant presentation.

Excuse me, I now see the questions.

Uh I don't know who is first, but I'm gonna go with Commissioner McCann.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, I just had a couple of questions that maybe will be easy to answer.

Um the first thing that came to mind um in your as I was listening to your presentation with regard to moving the sidewalk regulation and approval into engineering um is what is the process if the city is choosing to make modifications?

Because a wider sidewalk is not entirely just about where there's more people, it can be about creating quality design space, a look, a feel to certain parts of town, you know, why you might want a wider sidewalk or different regulations.

So out of curiosity, who is ultimately determining if there are changes to those design standards, is that still remaining within the planning department, or is engineering now going to be deciding quality.

Is it yeah?

So is the question really about when it's appropriate to exceed the minimum width, or when there's a request for the same thing.

When there might be a when there might be a district or an area that you want to modify the look of, like um there are certainly streetscape modification programs that happen that sort of redetermine parts of the city and how they're going to look and what you're gonna be developing.

I know you're doing some of that.

Um, you know, so it's really who is deciding that is that still remaining within the planning department and you know, kind of or who's engineering, Steve, I'll just do that.

Yeah, that's a great question.

And uh and I I got a note in the chat that that uh Anna might have a few things to say.

So I will let her respond to that first.

Thank you.

Uh Anna Slatinski Plain Division Manager.

Um, I just wanted to actually kind of zoom the conversation back a little bit because I think this is actually um a relevant question, uh, Commissioner McCann, I appreciate it.

So the decision maker for amendments to the engineering design manual is the city council.

So um actually a companion to these development code text amendments is amendments to the engineering design manual.

Um those are actually expected to be at council in December, which actually coincides with the time frame for council considering the amendments to the development code that planning commission is reviewing this evening.

Um so ultimately, how wide sidewalks should be those different components of that right-of-way is a policy decision.

Um it's a decision that's made by council.

But I also want to note that the transportation system plan update project, which is currently underway.

Um there's been um one presentation, I believe, um, to planning commission so far, um, and that project will come back to planning commission um more as the project progresses.

One of the things that that transportation system plan update will be doing is considering the cross sections for streets, including sidewalks, planter strips, bike lanes, et cetera, uh, for the entire city.

And so those considerations that Commissioner McCann is mentioning, um, what is it that uh those regulations are intended to accomplish?

Um, again, those are policy decisions.

Um, they are made um uh with the recommendation often of planning commission and ultimately the decision maker is city council.

But just to kind of highlight some of those processes, um, they uh the kind of the it's impossible to escape transportation metaphors, unfortunately, but the vehicle for those policy decisions um that's really top of mind right now would be that transportation system plan update.

This amendment to the development code is intended to be policy neutral, and so those um those widths are being essentially transferred to the entry design manual from the development code.

Okay.

So I think what I'm hearing is that if there were a decision to define a district within the city, and you might want to reconsider how those streetscapes look, that would still be that would not be within engineering necessarily, although certainly they would be part of making decisions, but there would be a separate design process for that and just determination.

So the the transportation system plan update itself is a comprehensive plan amendment.

Um, and so that will uh formally speaking, go to planning commission for hearing and a recommendation to council and then further to council for a decision.

That is a change to the comprehensive plan.

Changes to the engineering design manual would not necessarily come to planning commission.

They could potentially go straight to council.

However, for changes that would be addressing as you describe the look and feel and functioning of a neighborhood, those would typically be things that would um in which planning commission would be playing a role, even if the ultimate regulation were not in document where planning commission are one of the explicit decision makers.

Got it.

Okay, thank you.

I did have one other question that is not related to that.

Um, that was uh when you spoke about driveways um and some of the narrower driveways, the 12 foot serving a number of units.

Um question was if that was all if fire access or anything was taken into consideration on that just to make sure that that there weren't any there wasn't a conflict with um fire access requirements to get to units that might, you know, if you have a lot of units that are back within that area, you know.

I realize once you cross a threshold, you're going up to 20, which is what the fire access route is uh rate of fire, but just making sure that that was considered.

Yeah, so um that that was something that we did take into consideration, and there there are a couple different ways to provide fire access.

One is to actually drive the apparatus onto the property.

Um, another outcome is that um the units are required to have sprinklers as as uh as an alternative.

Um so really when an applicate applicant comes in and wants to um develop property, um, they are gonna need to make sure they satisfy our design rules, but they also need to get sign off from TDFNR.

Any new development that comes in needs to get a service provider permit from TV F and R to say that uh one way or another, they were going to be satisfying TV F and R's needs to provide uh buyer services.

So there are certain situations where they might be able to build a narrower sidewalk by our rules, um, but they'll still need to make TVF NR happy through one way or another.

Okay, thank you.

Commissioner McEvoy, you have a question.

Yeah, thanks.

Um and thanks, Mr.

Regner.

There's a great, very thorough presentation.

So I appreciate that.

Um I guess I had two questions.

The first has to do with the large lot uh division, that new application process.

Um and specifically, you know, in your examples, you sort of describe that as um, you know, you talked in terms of hundreds of acres or 500 acres, which kind of all makes sense at the scale of Cooper Mountain.

But I noticed in the the language that actually that lot could be as small as five acres.

And so I was wondering if you could describe sort of how how staff arrived at that five-acre threshold as the right place to sort of start with that application.

I'm gonna take the opportunity to turn it over to current planning manager Jana Fox to say a little bit more on that.

Good evening, Commissioners.

I'm Jana Fox, current planning manager with the city of Beaverton.

All right, I will take that one.

Um, so Steve gave in his presentation a kind of high-level overview using very round large numbers, um, which were very applicable to things like South Cooper Mountain, where we had we do have some very large parcels in Cooper Mountain, but we also have a lot of smaller parcels, and some of those parcels have um one overlays that could be parks requirements or um other utility requirements, and they also have some of them have multiple zoning districts.

And what we've learned from South Cooper Mountain and development in general is that it can be very difficult to get those parcels developed because developers who do commercial don't generally want to do housing, and developers who do housing don't generally want to do commercial, and you cannot sell off a portion of your lot without having divided it first.

And so the large lot is really intended to be able to allow developers or property owners, really not developers, but um to break off sections of their lots that make sense so that they can actually get them developed.

And so in looking at the sizes of the lots, the sizes of commercial pieces for those lots that contained multiple zoning districts, five acres seemed like the reasonable amount.

Five acres is still allows a very comprehensive development with a street network.

When you get down to less than an acre, it gets a lot harder.

It's much more of an infill type situation.

And so the five acres still allows for kind of coherent, thoughtful development to occur on a single parcel.

Um it you get much smaller, and that gets harder unless you're looking at kind of a commercial situation or um something different.

So that's that's why we came up with the five acres.

It seemed to fit with the development context in Cooper Mountain while still allowing further division and not losing access to resources and resource protection as well.

Gotcha.

Okay, that makes sense.

Thanks.

Um the other one question again, unrelated has to do with the um citing of child care facilities to meet that legislative need there.

Um can you explain to me why the decision to leave them as as uh I don't know how to say this conditionally permitted in the RMB and RMC, unless it's attached to an institutional, you know, recognized institutional use.

You know, why not why not permit them outright in those two lower density zoning types?

Yeah, that that's a great question.

And um really I think the short answer is that the kind of the framework and structure of this text amendment um it is really intended to be policy neutral um wherever possible.

Um and so to shift anything from conditionally permitted to remitted, it is a policy change.

But the changes that we've made the proposal are required by state law.

Um so while there is a policy change there, it's essentially not in our hands.

We don't we don't have a choice in that matter.

Um, but state law does not require us to have the um the use, the child care facilities in those lower density zones as a standalone use to become permitted outright.

Um so um to keep it as policy neutral as possible.

Um that existing conditional use as a standalone is gonna remain uh a conditional use.

If we wanted to change it to make it um to make it approved outright, we'd probably want to handle that through a separate text amendment that had more engagement um than something like code maintenance does.

Gotcha.

That makes sense.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Fantastic.

Commissioners, any other questions.

All right, looks like no questions.

We'll move to the applicant presentation.

The applicant is the city.

So we will move on.

We are now at the public testimony portion of this agenda item.

We will call for testimony in groups, starting with those in favor of the application, then those in opposition to the application, then those neither in favor nor in opposition.

We will take testimony from those attending in person first, followed by those attending via Zoom webinar.

As a reminder, testimony is limited to the criteria that apply to the application.

Now is the time for testimony in favor of the application.

No yellow cards.

All right.

So now is a time for testimony in opposition to the application.

Any cards?

No yellow cards.

So now is the time for testimony, neither in favor nor in opposition to the application.

No yellow cards there either.

All right.

Does staff have any final comments?

Uh we have no additional comments at this time.

Thank you.

Great.

We will move then to close the public hearing.

With the final comments completed, I will close the public hearing.

Now is the time for deliberation.

Do any commissioners have further discussion on the proposal?

Looks like there is no further discussion.

Is there a motion?

Chair Adams, I move that we recommend passage to we recommend to City Council passage of the code maintenance project.

LU 42024-00710, the 2025 Code Maintenance Project Text Amendment.

Based on the facts and findings of the staff report dated September 17th, 2025, and with the additional supplemental memos.

Great.

Is there a second?

I will second.

Chair McCann seconds.

A vote will be taken by roll call.

When your name is called, please say yay or nay.

Commissioner McAvoy.

Chair, I would suggest that you ask for any discussion.

Um if any commissioners wish to discuss the motion before a vote is taken.

Okay.

I thought we had done that with deliberation.

You'll want to have a discussion after the motion as well.

There's a deliberation and then also an opportunity to discuss the motion.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ana, and thank you, Robin.

Commissioners, we're opening it up for discussion.

Any discussion?

Looks like we are good.

So now a vote will be taken by roll call.

When your name is called, please say yay or nay.

Commissioner McAvoy.

Yay.

Commissioner McCann?

Yes.

Commissioner Mettler.

Yay.

Commissioner Winter.

Aye.

And Chair Adams is a yay as well.

The motion passes.

The planning commission's decision will be memorialized and land use orders provided to all parties who testified.

The planning commission's recommendation will be forwarded to City Council.

Council will hold a hearing and make the final decision on this application.

We are now adjourned at 7:36.

Thank you.

Thank you all very much.

Have a nice evening.

Good night.

Thank you, everyone.

Recording stopped.