Good evening and welcome to the September 24th City of Bellview Planning Commission meeting.

This evening meeting is held via hybrid format with both in-person and virtual options via Zoom.

Tonight's meeting will provide an opportunity for public comment during the oral communication portion of agenda.

All written commun comments that have been submitted prior to 11 a.m.

today, Wednesday, September 24th, will be summarized into the record.

We have two studies session items tonight.

The first study session item is one.

We post one from our last meeting.

It's planning commission roles and responsibility training.

The second study session item is on critical area ordinance.

Staff will ask us to set a public hearing for the land use code updates.

And now let's move on with the roll call.

Vice Chair Liu.

Okay, let's pause for a second.

We have some audio issues.

Okay.

Commissioner Ferris.

I am here.

Commissioner Gopel.

Here.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Here.

Commissioner?

Here.

Commissioner Velavesas?

Here.

And Councilor Lezion of Deputy Mayor Momala Cotean.

And I'm Chair Hanlu.

Can I have a motion to approve tonight's agenda?

Chair?

Second.

Any discussion?

All in favor?

Deputy Mayor Momana Cotian.

Any reports from you?

Yes, absolutely.

All of my life, seven years for this moment.

Great.

It's on public records.

I just wanted to first share an amazing news.

One of our own commissioner.

Commissioner Neilshawn has the bar exam.

Can we clap for that?

Yeah.

Also now have a new job.

So we are really happy for you.

And the issue a lot.

And thank you for all of the time that you put in this commissioner while you were passing the bar exam.

And now you have a brand new job.

So we really appreciate you, man.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

Then of course, business.

Uh you guys did an amazing job of lost staff on three ordinance.

The crossroad, Newport, and downtown neighborhood plan.

And that came to council two weeks ago.

And unanimously passed.

I think it's going to come for adoption over 41st idea.

It's a great job.

Should we continue?

I think it was deputy mayor's mic now working well.

Just gone.

So a question from Deputy Mayor.

Okay, nothing.

Liaison, Kate, um Ness, will you provide us some updates and meeting schedule?

Sure.

You will notice that after the discussion about HOMA at last at your last meeting, I've tentatively put the public hearing on your calendar for the December meeting.

If you um if you choose to set a public hearing, that would be a good date to do it.

Um I also wanted to mention that I will be sending a survey um in advance of the retreat in November, similar to the survey that you guys had last year.

Um it'll be like five or six questions about how things are going and what we can improve in the next year.

Thanks.

Any questions?

Thank you.

Um, time for oral and written communication.

Um, the total time for oral communication is 30 minutes.

Um, speakers would be allowed up to three minutes to speak.

Staff liaison Caithness will call in speakers in order in which they have register either in person or online.

If anyone from the public has missed 530 registration deadline, you may well provide public comment if there's remaining time.

Please use a raise hand function in the Zoom.

Or if you are attending uh in person, please um shake or wave to our staff.

The rules adopted by city council limiting the topics um about which the public may speak during our meetings under ordinance um 6752.

The public may only speak during public comments about subject matters that are related of City of Bellevue government and are winning the power and the duties of planning commission.

Additional information can be found in the governing conduct of the public um and the ordinance six, seven, five two.

Sorry, I lost my sentence.

Kate, would you like to uh provide some summary of the written communication that we received?

Sure.

Uh there have been eight written communications that have come in since you received your packet.

I've forwarded those to you on Monday and then again today.

Um they're all regarding the proposed land use code amendment to address critical areas.

And as you have no doubt learned in your review of the public comments, there are a wide variety of opinions on the proposed changes.

Um I'm not going to try and list them all.

Uh no uh additional written comments have come in since I sent that last packet earlier today.

Thank you.

Can you start with uh oral communication for 30 minutes?

Sure.

Um, so we have seven speakers um signed up.

The first speaker is in person, uh Jessica Clausen.

Uh and that is followed by Katie Kendall, who is online.

And if you just just one moment while I pull up the slideshow.

Go ahead.

Hi, commissioners, chair, deputy mayor.

I'm Jesse Classen.

Nice to see you all.

Um, I'm here to talk about the critical areas ordinance and the requirements of the Growth Management Act as it relates to the critical areas ordinance.

Um, there are two very basic requirements when you update a critical areas ordinance, and this is very simple.

Uh, your city attorney is sitting in the back there.

He knows this is a simplified version of this.

Um, but the first is that the regulations don't result in any net loss of environmental function and value.

Um, and that to me tells me it means that you can't make a critical area worse than it is today.

And the second is that the real regulation consider the best available science in the context of how it applies to the city.

So, you know, there's a lot of science out there.

You gotta apply it to Bellevue and the context in Bellevue in order for it to, you know, inform your critical areas ordinance.

Um, I'm here tonight because many of the regulations are expanding buffers and making the critical areas ordinance more stringent.

That's not necessarily what the law requires you to do.

The law requires that the city ensure no net loss of critical area function and consider the best available science as applied to Bellevue.

As many of you have seen, we have sites that have parking lots that are paved all the way up to the edge of a creek or a wetland.

And I would say that the best available science as applied to those sites would probably say that redevelopment of those sites is going to be better and with modest and reduced buffers than what the critical areas ordinance would propose today.

Um and I think you've heard our concerns before.

We're really concerned that the ordinance is going to result in these non-conforming situations not being able to actually develop and then these degraded situations with tire dust pouring into wetlands and streams is going to continue.

So we would like you to please um ask your consultants and staff about the no net loss requirement and make sure that that is top of mind when you're um reviewing these ordinances today.

We'd like to ensure that existing nonconforming sites are allowed to develop in a way that doesn't just lock them in place forever.

And we would also, there's there are piped creeks out there.

We want to make sure that it is a proper incentive for those to get out of the creek.

Best available science says that's an amazing thing for the habitat.

But if you are increasing buffer and not giving enough incentive to do that, it's never gonna happen.

That's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Thanks.

All right, Katie Kendall is online.

I will allow you to unmute just a moment.

And um the next after Katie Kendall is Rebecca Bloom.

Uh, can you hear me, Katie?

Yes, I can.

Can you hear me?

Yep.

Go ahead.

Great.

Uh good evening, commissioners.

My name is Katie Kindle, and I'm here to speak on behalf of Gaw Capital Partners, the new owners of Bellfield Office Park.

We submitted a comment letter yesterday, which you have now received, but I wanted to highlight a couple of the points from our written comments.

Uh, before I get started, I do want to say I agree with uh the statements that Jesse Coston made, and ours are in line, but on a on a smaller scale due to the fact that Bellfield is uh already pretty fully developed here.

Um, overall, what we're looking for is a common sense approach to managing previously disturbed and non-conforming spaces within the critical area buffers.

With that in mind, uh, we've raised some concerns on how the revised regulations actually work in practice.

And that's what we're talking about.

Like when we actually come in to improve something and probably improve it on an ecological basis as well.

Are we going to be able to do that under these regulations?

Um, the details of our concerns along with the proposed uh uh revised language for 2025 H065 are in our written comments, and we've actually proposed some language there.

Specifically, we asked that the proposed regulations be clarified to ensure that repair, maintenance, and modification of any non-conforming structure is still allowed.

Uh, we also ask that the planning commission add in some flexibility and clarity for repair and improvements to develop portions of the site outside of the non-conforming structures.

So anything that is already developed, like a parking lot or something, allow a little bit more flexibility there to uh make improvements.

Tenants want to have flexibility to improve the already improved spaces, which I'm sure is a city goal as well.

Uh, this will not only keep Bellfield successful, but allows for more ecologically friendly improvement to occur.

Uh, our goal here is to make improving and managing a site such as Bellfield more predictable and less burdensome uh with these proposed changes.

We ask that you consider these modest changes, and I thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Our next speaker is Rebecca Bloom, who is in person.

And that will be followed by Mark Hoyt, who is also in person.

Go ahead.

Good evening, planning commissioners.

My name is Rebecca Bloom.

I am chief investment officer for real estate equity at Columbia Pacific Advisors, and personally have a long history of entitling and developing residential and commercial office throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

I have a site plan here that I think I'd like to share as I read my comments here.

So we're working on a large, almost full block site, bounded by 132nd Spring Boulevard and Bell Road Road, Kitty Corner from the Light Rail Station.

This should be ground zero for TOD development.

This site also includes Gough Creek in a pipe below grade, and it runs the entirety of the site from north to south.

Today, if we were to redevelop the site, leaving the creek in a pipe, we would be required to provide a simple 10-foot setback on either side.

Doing so would allow for the site to be developed to the density it should be developed to.

On the site plan, you'll see our site showing the impacts if we were to daylight the creek under the current critical areas ordinance today, between a 50-foot critical area buffer and a 50-foot structure setback, 100 feet in total.

You can see that daylighting the creek renders a very large portion of the site undevelopable.

The proposed code that you are talking about tonight enlarges buffers to 100 feet.

It is not an improvement over the current code.

And in fact, is a disincentive to creek daylighting.

Under the new draft ordinance, there is only an allowance for a 15% reduction to incentivize daylighting.

This is not enough.

Simply put, this code is a disincentive to the behaviors you which you would like to see, which includes daylighting creeks and streams, creating environmental benefit and supporting TOD and the areas it is specifically targeted for.

I asked the planning commission to direct staff and your consultants to provide more visual case studies such as this to illustrate how this code truly impacts the sites you are working so hard to develop.

Otherwise, I fear these sites will remain undeveloped for the foreseeable future.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Mark Hoyt, followed by Kramer Canna.

Good afternoon.

My name is Mark Hoyt.

I'm with Tremel Crow Residential.

So we are a housing developer.

So all we do all day long is figure out how to navigate the complications to build housing, generally built rebuild mid-rise housing and generally middle income housing as well.

We had the great opportunity to recently close a new construction project in Eastgate, the first market rate housing development in Eastgate.

We're putting 388 units just north of the Eastgate Park and Ride.

So we closed that a few weeks ago and just starting construction.

So it'll be done in another two and a half years.

So we did do the MFTE on that project, and we likely will do the MFTE on the project we're going to present tonight.

So we have teamed up with an office building owner at the corner of 112th and Southeast 8th.

It's a 1985 vintage office property with a large surface parking lot.

We've taken an innovative approach to truly execute on an office to residential opportunity.

We're not converting the actual building, but we're repurposing the parking lot to create a brand new 300 plus unit housing community on the on the site of an existing service parking lot.

Our plan is to build a mid-rise property, not a hot downtown high-rise.

And we believe this is exactly in line that captures the vision of the zoning the city and this commission adopted in 2021 for the east east main TOD low density.

However, during our pre-application process, the city's with the city staff, we learned that the current critical area ordinance does not allow our project to proceed.

There's three small areas.

Untreated water flows from the parking lot into the ditches.

And they're heavily degraded and have been disconnected for over 40 years from the larger wetland complex.

The Department of Ecology and multiple other east side jurisdictions allow for these scenarios to be to be mitigated.

And we're we're hoping that the City of Bellevue will align with the city with the Department of Ecology guidance, as well as the precedent set in multiple other jurisdictions around the region.

So in summary, we can create a win-win-win scenario here where we can repurpose an underutilized property.

We can add housing density into the east main TOD zone as adopted by the city in this commission and mitigate heavily degraded low-quality wetlands and enhance high-value wetlands by removing invasive species and planting native vegetation in the surdivent creek area.

Our request is that the commission direct staff and to bring to include our proposed minor amendments in the next draft critical area update to align with the Department of Ecology guidance.

Thank you.

Your time is over.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Kramer Canop.

And that is followed by Charlie Bauman.

Good evening, everyone.

My name is Kramer Knupp, and I'm a senior environmental scientist and project manager with Soundview Consultants.

And I've been supporting Tramil Crow Residential and Mark Hoyt with the project that he was just discussing in the East Main TOD zone.

As Mark alluded to, we believe that we have a win-win opportunity for the city that would provide 321 new housing units within a very short walking distance to the new East Main Light Rail Station, while also providing extensive client-funded on-site ecological restoration of the large category two wetland and sturt event creek that are currently located on the eastern portion of the property.

Currently, the large category two wetland and Certain Creek are dominated by non-native invasive reconary grass, which is choking out the stream channel, increasing sediment collection in the stream, preventing native trees from establishing and resulting in increased water temperatures and poor water quality within Sturdivant Creek, which is resulting in serious negative impacts on resident salmon and also other fish species and other animals within this wetland and stream complex.

321 residential project proposed by Trammel Crow is currently not feasible due to the city's current critical areas ordinance and the language currently included in the draft critical areas ordinance.

As both the current critical areas ordinance and the draft ordinance do not provide allowances for wetland buffer interruptions or for wetland impacts to category three and four wetlands, unless under very specific criteria.

As such, this property would remain in its current degraded underutilized condition until the City of Bellevue updates their critical areas code or allows for wetland buffer interruptions for paved commercial parking lots and also for impacts to category three and four wetlands.

The proposed code updates are both supported in Department of Ecology guidance and are currently implemented in cities and counties throughout Puget Sound region, including the cities of Kirkland, Redmond, and also King County.

Additionally, the City of Bellevue CAO already allows for wetland impacts, but only in very specific situations, primarily related to public infrastructure development.

And the City of Bellevue already allows for wetland buffer interruptions to pave roadways and railroads and similar infrastructure, but does not outright include paved commercial parking lots.

The benefit to the city of Bellevue through including these two code and recommendations within the city's updated critical areas ordinance are one.

321 new housing units will be established.

Well, a good thing your food is ready right now, it's just scooping it up.

Oh wow.

That's cloud.

I'm sorry.

All right, cool.

Um the first benefit to the city here would be that 321 new housing units would be established within the East Main TOD zone within one 1800 feet of the new light rail station.

And second, extensive on-site developer habitat restoration would occur within the category two wetland and along Sturdivant Creek, which are currently severely degraded.

Specifically, restoration within the category two wetland and Certivent Creek on sitewood would involve installing thousands of new trees and shrubs and also removing non-native invasive Reconary Grass, which is currently choking out and severely degrading the habitat for SAM within the stream and the wetland complex.

So ultimately, we recommend and encourage the city commissioners to further study our recommendations to include wetland buffer interruptions for paved commercial parking lots and also an allowance for direct impacts to category three and four wetlands, specifically within the EMTOD zone, and to work with planning staff to bring these concepts forward in the next draft critical areas ordinance.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Charlie Bauman, followed by Alex Zimmerman.

Good evening, Commissioners, Deputy Mayor.

My name is Charlie Bauman, uh Bellevue resident and an aspiring developer of six acres in Bell Red next to Light Rail.

I'm here to comment on the critical areas ordinance draft specifically in regards to Bell Red.

Bell Red is a true blank slate, hundreds of acres of asphalt, four light rail station stations and the state's top district poised for housing growth.

But it also has a network of streams that are fully degraded in pipes and narrow channels.

There is no functioning habitat there today.

But the goal is to bring it back.

I've previously advocated for a performance-based code, tying measurable ecological improvements to redevelopment.

That remains the right approach, but I've regrettably learned it may be too ambitious for this update.

For now, we can work within staff's proposed framework, which contains some promising concepts but needs further clarity and collaboration to be successful.

Three areas especially need attention.

First, stream incentives must be broadened.

Staff has added a stream daylighting incentive.

This is good in concept, but it must also apply to channelized streams and the buffer reduction incentive must be increased.

Restoration of the whole stream system is equally important, but will only happen if private development can justify the cost and loss of land.

Being required to turn a pipe or a 10-foot ditch into a 100-foot channel is not an incentive.

A 25 or 50 foot channel is an obvious net gain of function over a pipe or a ditch, but is often not supported, leaving these streams in a degraded condition for decades.

Second, current flexibility tools remain unclear.

New concepts like compensatory mitigation and incentives for re-meandering streams are promising.

But if when and how these will actually apply remains unclear, I'd request that this commission task staff to further define these concepts and test them with real projects to ensure they will work.

Third, review of the critical area ordinance must happen in tandem with the Bell Red Luca.

The uh critical areas ordinance cannot be reviewed in a vacuum.

It must be paired with the Bell Red Luca since zoning setbacks and street requirements could further impact housing feasibility.

If both wide 50 plus foot buffers and new 61-foot-wide streets are imposed, then much of Bell Red becomes unbuildable.

These potential code impacts must be reviewed together.

Making flexibility tools clear, broadly applied, and calibrated to be real incentives is essential.

Absent that, this draft code simply makes buffers bigger, often by 50 feet or more.

Very few of us are following this issue closely, but please be aware that these buffer increases will blindside many homeowners across the city.

In closing, I request that this commission direct staff to make these flexibility tools explicit, continue working with active projects, and ensure the Bell Red Luca is reviewed before the critical area ordinance is adopted.

This will allow Bellevue to deliver a code that unlocks both housing and restoration.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Our next speaker is Alex Zimmerman.

Thank you, very last uh speaker that's signed in.

I'm forgiving me, I'm disabled man.

Um Kate, do you have someone's raised hand online as that person wanted to talk?

Thank you.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Hi.

Uh my name Alec Timmerman.

Yeah.

I want to speak about something that is, I think very unique, very good.

You elect uh chair her name, Kanlu.

She's a brilliant.

She has too many shiny cora.

Yeah.

Shiny corner.

Yep.

Many.

Muslim terrorists, not anti semite, and totally crazy family dog.

But with a very important is absolutely copia from primitive aggressive, stupid Mare Robinson.

So make me very happy, you know what it meant, because it's exactly what is a talking for 35 years.

You know what this means?

Because we have here in this city, people who belong to government is absolutely Nazi Gestapo.

But he's not alone.

We have a more Muhammad Iranian Muslim terrorist.

You know what this means.

This makes Pakach very unique.

Your committee is so unique, guys.

I'll be honestly, because I spoke in 100 committees, not only in Bellevue.

You so unique, you know what this means.

You make me very happy because each time, what is I come to you and talking to you, I feel good.

Yeah, we need a stop and then Nazi gets to pig, what is we have in Bellevue right now.

Is this exactly what has happened?

So how we can do in this.

I know only one way, what is we can stop on this Nazi gestapa pig.

You know what this means.

Let us make Bellevue a plantation.

Use 120,000 jungle slave for make a money.

You know what this means?

Corporation.

Housing, wow, wow, whoo, how many money you can make from this jungle slev, huh?

I can told you a billion and billion dollars is its only beginning for the last six years under Mayor Robinson.

You know what this means.

So right now, my opinion, very strange and very simple.

Viva Trump, viva new American revolution, stand up, Slev and happy cow.

You know what is mean for change this, because when Vina change this, Bellevue, after another few years, will bring another 30,000 jungle slave from Amazon.

You know what this means.

We'll totally write people out.

It's only 30,000 white people, but this is too much.

So this council is this Nazi picker, you know what this means.

We can be elected and staying forever because it's 120,000 jungle slaves, don't have voice.

They scared because they born like a slave and will die like a slave.

So again, viva Trump, viva new American revolution, stand up.

Stand up.

Your time is over.

Thank you.

We have um two hands raised online, and we have about nine minutes left.

Two.

Yeah, thank you.

Uh Gabriela, I see your hand raised, and Nicole Myers, I see yours.

Um, Gabriella, I'm going to allow you to talk.

Can you hear me?

Gabriella, are you able to hear me?

All right.

I'm going to um I'm gonna come back to you.

I'll go to Nicole Myers.

Nicole, can you hear me?

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Great time begins.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak tonight.

I really appreciated reading in the written communications, the communication from the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

And I just wanted to highlight some of the things that they mentioned that seem important for Bellevue.

First of all, um they recognized that the um density uh section that was deleted is a useful section to include things like this are very common to have in um uh the critical areas in other um cities um rules.

And I think you know, Bellevue so far has had this.

So um unless we have a strong reason to delete it, I think it's useful to retain the development intensity section entirely.

Um I think you know, now that we have uh allowed so many more housing units per lot as a result of the middle housing ordinance, um, six middle housing plus two ADUs on every lot that um you know doesn't have the critical areas um in place.

If we if it's possible to see how that goes before we remove the development intensity section, um it might be worthwhile to um make sure that we have a chance to see um the effects of that first.

Um I also wanted to highlight the fact that um they mentioned allowing uh more room uh for underground streams um to allow maintenance and so forth.

Um they mentioned having a larger setback to accommodate uh potential wildland or wildland urban interface fire risk reductions to allow defensible space that doesn't require cutting into the critical areas.

And um I think you know there's a lot of um suggestions in here that are very thoughtful and meaningful, and um I hope you'll consider um making sure that we um do everything we can to protect the trees around the streams uh and uh meet our obligations to protect salmon in um conjunction with the other local governments that we've made agreements with.

I also hope that you'll uh consider how we can maintain um uh better protections when rules overlap.

And I think the suggestions within uh Department of Fish and Wildlife's letter were also very useful there.

Thank you very much.

Thanks.

Can you hear me?

Yes, I can hear you.

Go ahead.

I I figured out why my microphone was broken.

All right, so um my name is uh Gabriela, and I'm not a contractor or an environmental expert.

I'm just I'm 17 and I'm just speaking uh in favor of transit-oriented development.

Um as um there's I'm uh when I grow up, I'm gonna be worried about like housing and how much it's going to cost.

And so building like more housing units is going to just make things just a little bit more affordable for when I do have to eventually be able to afford my own house or any kind of place.

In addition, um I'm also worried about the environmental impacts of not like building enough housing nearby transit because um when uh more um sorry building by transit encourages more people to commute via like public transportation instead of cars, and I uh don't really have great experiences with cars because two of my friends were hit by one, and then I was like right hooked.

And so there's also there's numerous reasons to avoid traveling by car, but in general, building more transit-oriented developments can help kind of encourage people to like explore other options of getting around besides just driving.

And there's also the fact that um uh it encourages like economic growth because um car infrastructure as opposed to like transit infrastructure is very costly and doesn't really contribute much to the economy and like it doesn't encourage any kind of economical growth.

This was a little spontaneous, so pardon my site kind of disorganized um thinking, but that's mostly what I have what I have to say.

Thank you.

Uh Chair, there's about uh three minutes left if there's anybody else online or in person that wants to speak.

We can just have the staffs here.

That's the end.

Would you like to talk?

Are you good?

Okay.

Okay.

We are ready for the study session.

Um the study session item regarding the planning commission roles and responsibility will provide a refresher course on the planning commission's roles and responsibility under Washington state of law and local city of uh Bellevue and ordinance.

The city alternate office will present uh background information, legal authority, uh guidance, and recommend that best practices.

We have Matt uh McFord.

I never pronounced your last name.

Um assistant um city attorney and Heather Jones.

Welcome to the teams.

Um assistant city attorney in the City of Bellevue office, and they will provide us the training.

Thank you, Matt.

Thank you, Heather.

Thank you, Chair Klanlo and uh Vice Chair Lou, Planning Commissioners.

We um community development and development services requested that we revamp and present this training, which we do about every other year.

We usually try to time it with a comp plan amendment and a land use code amendment that the planning commission is processing.

In the past, we've done it with um the Eastgate Comp Plan and also the Wilburton Comp Plan and Luca Most recently.

This is a truncated version that focuses more on the planning commission's roles and responsibilities, and also with the two new commissioners, Commissioner Milton, congratulations for joining the bar.

I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere about so many lawyers in the room, and also Commissioner Kennedy, who is contributed to that joke as an attorney as well.

Um and I have one of our new assistant attorneys, Heather Jones here with me.

So um Heather will provide an introduction since I don't think any of you have met her before.

Hello, everyone.

I'm happy to be here.

Um as Matt said, I'm Heather Jones.

I'm a new assistant attorney um here in Bellevue.

I'll be advising the community development, parts of community development as well as transportation.

Um I before my computer's still starting up, it's kind of stressing me out.

Before um becoming an attorney, I have background in planning and transportation, so I'm thrilled to be here.

And um as I said, when we've done this training in the past, we we styled it as a cooking class, kind of cooking the cop plan, and we broke it up into two different planning commission meetings, one that focused on comp plan amendments and one that focused on land use code amendments.

But um in deference to the deputy mayor who's seen the training probably more than any former planning commissioner and council member, maybe Barksdale, but but other than uh for former council member Barksdale, we've mixed it up and we have quiz questions this time, which is um it'll determine whether you get to stay on the planning commission or not.

I guess just joking.

Okay.

So here's our um I'll let Kate work her magic.

There's our brief overview.

We're going to kind of go through uh a high-level overview, what we call the history lesson, um, the roles and responsibilities and uh try to ground the planning commission and and what the function of the planning commission is and what are the guardrails within that function.

We're also gonna have a second part where we go through the major kind of statutory and process authority that influences both the planning commission process and also the um the larger planning and and development regulation adoption, both flowing from the state to the county to the local level where we are in Bellevue.

And then um then we're gonna talk about our meetings and and kind of what we we do on Wednesdays and uh as I think everyone knows, even the new commissioners, it's what you do is you make the future here with your comp plan and policy recommendations and also with your land use code amendments.

Oh um quiz question number one, and if you know the answer, just shout it out.

Um what year the people?

Okay, great.

Was the city of Bellevue incorporated?

1952.

There we go.

Points microphone, second I'm picking.

Let go, please.

Um 1953 is correct.

Um and what was the first legislative action taken by the Bellevue City Council?

Please, Commissioner Ferris.

The planning commission.

That's correct.

Yeah, Matt, I don't know if you have.

And and I I brought papers, I bought props.

Ordinance number one, the very first ordinance ever adopted in the city of Bellevue from April 9th, 1953, the formation of the planning commission.

So right now.

And I'm gonna mark down Commissioner Ferris with one point.

Oh, she got two.

The second one doesn't count because I think that Emil said that at the retreat one time.

She remembered that.

I think she's two.

Yeah.

Okay, so so starting with what what we think of as as the the body of the planning commission, the city boards and commissions, but particularly the planning commission.

So what are you in 2025?

Um you have in front of you which what the planning commission was back in 1953.

I just blanked on the date, but um fundamentally you're you act as a fact-finding and citizen advisors to the city council.

Uh Bellevue's an optional municipal code city governed by a a state statute that's uh 35 ARCW.

And a city council like Belleviews could choose a number of different options to form or to formulate its planning and satisfy a statutory planning functions.

It could designate a single planning director.

It could, for example, have a planning department very similar to community development, appoint a planning commission or a committee alone, or a combination of these bodies.

And that's what Bellevue does is it has a combination of bodies.

And the planning commission's primary role is to provide planning and legislative land use recommendations to the city council.

And those are almost always going to be comp plan amendment recommendations, and then changes to the city's development regulations, those are the land use code amendments or what we call LUCAS.

That's always the if if you practice in land use, it's the world of acronyms.

So Luca is land use code amendment.

Now, very importantly, the planning commission is not a substitute for the city council.

The planning commission is an administrative body in the city council is a legislative body.

Those are two distinct functions within the city of Bellevue.

And the final word on what regulations or ordinances are adopted and what govern land use is a determination by the legislative body, the city council.

And that's a responsibility that can't be delegated to city staff, can't be delegated to the planning commission.

That's the uh the function of the legislative body.

And um because the planning commission is created and also functions through a statutory process and a statutory framework created by state law and also from city code, where the city code specifies the process to be followed or the criteria to be followed applied, the code provisions must be followed.

The the an example came up at the last week's meeting.

This is a good this is a good timing for this, when um the process for legislative process has a public hearing that it designates with respect to a LUCA, and the planning commission was considering deviating from that process, maybe having two public hearings or breaking it up, and the planning commission has to strictly follow the process adopted by the code, even if maybe there's there's a consensus that there's a better process that could be followed, or maybe that the process is outdated.

It's the legislative process dictated in the code that the planning commission must follow.

And as I think all of you know, the planning commission serves at the pleasure of the city council.

Um the city council, which is an elected legislative body in large part, obviously serves at the pleasure of the electorate, because the election determines who's on the city council and who's not.

So the fundamental thing to remember is the planning commission is serving as a very, very important administrative function in the city's planning and land use decisions.

The city council satisfies that legislation legislative function.

Okay.

So to reiterate um something that Matt said, um, as Matt mentioned, the commission's essential mandate is to provide city council with input on planning and land use decisions, and specifically those are comp plan amendments and land use code amendments.

So here's the reinforcement of the same point.

Here's here's our creature of statute right here.

Um it's a little bit early for a Halloween, but hopefully that this drives the point home.

Um that only when the meetings go past 1030 at night, right?

Let's say that that's a picture of a planning commissioner post 1030.

Um the the uh the other points I covered with the earlier slide.

Um, but the the final point, which is always kind of the the least popular um point uh in this training, is that the planning commission does not represent the public, only elected officials represent the public.

And that once again is tied in to the difference between an administrative function that the planning commission fills and the legislative function that the council fills.

Now, I do want to point out though that the planning commission is meant to be representative of the public.

Each person on the planning commission is a resident of Bellevue, has their own individual subject matter expertise, hopefully has some desire to participate in the planning process, and that's how you ended up joining the planning commission.

So the planning commission is representative of the public.

The planning commission also has an incredibly important fact-finding role in getting public input, and because the planning commission is typically not always, but typically the body that holds the public hearing, takes the public comments and processes those public comments along with city staff.

But the planning commission does not represent the public, that's the council.

Um, this is my favorite creature of statute, the the shark topus.

Um drilling down on what the planning commission actually does within this statutory framework, lead role in the annual comprehensive plan amendments.

That's that's the main part of the planning commission's work program.

And then also, as I said earlier, recommendations on both the comp plan amendments in our acronym world CPAs and the land use code amendments, LUCAS.

Uh, one thing that some of the commissioners and and the deputy mayor have heard me say before also.

It's important to remember that directors for community development and development services, and in Heather and my case, our city attorney, they supervise staff and direct administrative operations.

The planning commission has no authority, which all of the planning commission's authority is granted by statute, and the planning commission has no authority to direct or supervise administrative operations or supervise city staff.

And then this last point, which I know uh Commissioner Geppel has asked this question before in the past, the planning commission has no role in project level or quasi-judicial land use decisions under city code.

That the easy way to think about that is those are permits when a developer or a property owner submits to the city a permit application.

That permit application is processed usually by um city staff and development services, but the planning commission does not have a role in those project level quasi-judicial land use decisions.

That um typically goes through the process, certain permits like a conditional use permit, go to the hearing examiner, and we use the hearing examiner system in in um the city of Bellevue, but that's not something that the planning commission has been delegated with that authority through their statutory authority.

It it's it's possible that other jurisdictions may delegate that authority to their planning commission, but the city of Bellevue does not do that.

So the um specific limitations to the planning commission's work live in Bellevue Code Title III, Chapter 64, Section 090.

First, the commission has no powers or duties to advocate on behalf of the city without express permission from council.

So for example, you would want to steer clear of uh presenting yourself as a Bellevue Planning Commissioner when you're expressing your opinion on an online forum at your work or um in some other some other venue, um, because that could give the appearance of advocacy on behalf of the city.

Second, the planning commission, as Matt mentioned, does not supervise staff, administrative operations or maintenance.

That being said, community development and the um city attorney's office to provide support to the planning commission in the form of planning, land use, administrative, and legal expertise.

And finally, um again, remember that council sets the scope of the planning commission's work, and you don't have a specific role in considering regional issues that are not specifically assigned.

And that last point's a good point.

In addition to the statutory framework, kind of the the shark topus, the creature of statute, the zombie, there's also a smaller box, which is the direction that the city council has given to the planning commission on any specific item, right?

Right.

So council typically sets the framework and also the scope of the work that's coming to the planning commission as well, for the most part.

So that's something that I know uh commissioners that have been on the planning commission for a while have heard city staff say that before.

You know, that's a good point, but that's actually outside the scope of what we're at we're looking at for this particular land use code amendment, or outside the scope for this specific, for example, neighborhood comp plan amendment.

So doesn't mean that it's not a valid point.

It just means that it's not within the box though that we're the planning commission is operating now.

Okay.

Quiz question number two history lesson.

What is the oldest building in Bellevue?

Ooh.

I kind of know it, but I don't want to.

Is it what's the name of the building on the east side of the Hyatt?

I forgot they have a PAC, HEPAC, what is it?

I was gonna ask if it's the Wilburton House, the one that's in Wilburton.

Oh, would I mean a building building?

The winter's house is what you're thinking of.

Which they had to move when and and uh when they were putting in the link.

You're thinking of the PACAR building.

Yes.

And and that is the oldest, taller building in downtown Bellevue.

And the planning.

But that's not, but it's not the right answer.

It's the borough's cabin.

It was built by Civil War veteran Albert Burroughs in 1883.

It's been relocated a couple of times, but it's uh currently resides in Chisholm Beach Park.

And there's a blurb on the website if you're interested in learning more.

Oh, wow.

But those were but those are two that I thought it was the winter's house when when creating the quiz, and was surprised that it was the borough's cabin.

I can think of another house in Wilberton.

It's this gray house that's that's their the winter's house is the stucco house, right?

So um this is one of our cliches that that we always um introduce in in this, and this is well-known cliche and kind of planning and land use nerd communities.

We're gonna move now to kind of the framework of the the Washington State Growth Management Act, which requires local governments to develop and adopt long-range comprehensive plans and a variety of other items as well.

So it's useful to think of this framework as a kind of decision-making regime that's like a waterfall of substantive and also directive policy that flows first from the guidance in the GMA, and more frequently mandates in the GMA, which which are becoming more frequently as as the years go by, um, rather than just general guidance.

Um it used to be said that there was no state land use plan in the state of Washington, but now there are quite a few mandates that come from the GMA.

And then it flows down to the planning goals and policy documents in counties and cities.

So that's that's our our waterfall metaphor.

And then from the counties and the county planning plan, I'm sorry, the county planning policies down to the comprehensive plans and the development regulations in the cities and municipalities.

And then that trickles down into the functional plans for transportation planning, capital budget decisions, and then also other activities that are um implementing those policies that the planning commission processes and um in influencing those local decisions as well.

So the GMA requires local land use regulations, which are referred to as development regulations.

You'll frequently hear development regulations kind of kind of as the term of art that is passed around at planning commission meetings.

And it requires that those development regulations, i.e.

our land use code amendments be consistent with the comprehensive plan.

And the comprehensive plan is kind of the found is the foundational planning document in the city, and then the land use code regulates projects through zoning and land use controls.

So that's that's the kind of the end of the waterfall of the planning commission's work from the state growth management act down to the county and the county comprehensive plans and the county planning policies, and then to the comp plan, the local comp plan in the city of Bellevue, and then from the comp plan to the land use code.

And the the point of that waterfall in that framework is to ensure consistency between the regional comp plans and policies and the local comp plans and policies, and also to ensure the internal consistency within the local comp plans and policies and regulations as well.

So this is another example.

And I tried, I know the Commissioner Ferris, I know this is one of my wordiest slides, but but I did think it would be useful on the right hand side to kind of give real examples of what these different kind of um breaks in the waterfall are addressing.

So you have the Growth Management Act, which is talking at a high level or is supposed to be talking at a high level about growth, transportation, housing, economic development, the critical areas update ordinance that you're considering with your second study session item, public facilities, and then the growth management hearings board is the adjudicative body that if if a comp plan policy or a land use code, uh comp plan amendment or a land use code amendment is appealed, it goes in front of that board to uh to adjudicate the appeal to to generally speaking look for consistency with the Growth Management Act.

And then that flows all of that policy direction through in the Growth Management Act flows down to regional planning in King County.

You have the King County planning policies, you have the housing and job targets that are allocated to the different municipalities within King County.

You have the Puget Sound Regional Council, which is in our acronym world PSRC.

You have the Growth Management Planning Council, which is GMPC.

We have a council members that are representatives on both of those.

I believe Deputy Mayor can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Council Member Newenhouse is our representative on the Growth Management Planning Council, and maybe Mayor Robinson on the Puget Sound Regional Council.

Okay.

And then we have the urban growth capacity report or what's called the buildable lands report.

And I am not going to put Kate on the spot, but community development can explain that far better than I can, so I won't try to explain it.

And then we and then we flow down to our local planning, the comprehensive plan to make sure that it complies with the GMA, complies with the county planning planning policies, and then is internally consistent with itself, right?

You don't want to have uh different elements of the comp plan that contradict each other within one municipality.

And then you have your land use code amendments, your development regulations, which are required to comply with the Growth Management Act and also be consistent with the comp plan.

So even though this slide was wordy, I thought examples were the best way to kind of explain it as well.

Okay, this is an overview slide.

Um, subsequent slides will go into more detail.

But um, broadly speaking, these are where your procedural substantive and um ethical guardrails are enshrined or codified.

So process four um provides the procedural framework for legislative land use decisions, the CPAs and the LUCAs that we've talked about.

Parts um, sorry, Title 20 and parts 30i and J lay out the procedures and substantive review for CPAs and LUGAs, respectively.

Um, Matt will later discuss bylaws and some ethical rules, and of course, we talked already about the establishment of the PC Plan Commission.

Um, so let's talk about process four.

Okay, process four outlines the city's legislative land use process for all comp plan amendments and land use code amendments.

It begins with um city council initiation of the amendment, unless it's a publicly initiated amendment.

Um the planning commission would hold study sessions as needed, um, and city staff would provide a staff report and their recommendation.

At some point, the city's environmental coordinator would review the amendment as a non-project action under CEPA, that's the State Environmental Policy Act.

Um, generally, the city provides the CEPA determination prior to the planning commission's recommendation so that the um determination can inform your decision or sorry, your recommendation.

However, it's noteworthy that the strict legal requirement is that the SIBA determination be completed before the city council's final action.

Um prior to the planning commission making a recommendation, you must hold um by law.

Um, the planning commission must hold a public hearing or public hearings.

And then, of course, lastly, you have city council would take its final action following your recommendation, not following it after the recommendation.

I'll pass it to Matt for more about process four and planning commission recognition.

Yeah, and and the the kind of the easy way to think about this is any comp plan amendment or any land use code amendment that the planning commission processes is always going to be a process for process.

That that's the way that our code sets it up.

Um to kind of provide a higher level context.

Our code has five different processes, land use processes in it.

Process one, process two, process three, process four, and process five.

The planning commission doesn't have to worry about the other four.

The planning commission never makes a process one, two, three, or five decision.

Planning commission only makes a process four decision.

And then if you go back to the previous slide, if you look at first, if you look at those code sections that we put up there, that's where the process four process is delineated.

And then when you go back to this slide, Heather's overview slide, the part 2030i part of the land use code drills down specifically on the comp plan amendments.

So within that larger process four framework, that is the specific comp plan amendment process for the planning commission, including the decision criteria that you always see.

And then part 2030 J is a separate code section that covers land use code amendments.

So when you're talking about process, when you're talking about the procedures, when you're talking about the decision criteria, those are the big code sections in the land use code that kind of direct the planning commission process too.

And the the uh 2035 chapter has all of the land use code processes, but the planning commission only deals with process four, not the other one, two, three, or five.

And then um what what what what's what does the plan at a high level?

What does the planning commission look at when they are in fact conducting the um process for recommendation planning commission recommendation process?

Obviously, you look at the proposed comp plan amendment or land use code amendments, right?

That's the the most important thing, right?

And then also the council direction for the CPA or Lucas Scope, as we talked about earlier, policy considerations, legal requirements, staff expertise from community development or development services, environmental review under CEPA, and then that very, very important fact finding role processing and and uh holding a public hearing so that you can get public comment and stakeholder input on the comp plan amendment or the LUCA prior to making the recommendation, but then once again, the the decision criteria that the planning commission applies when making the recommendation is set in code, planning commission being a creature of statute has to follow that decision criteria.

Okay.

So we've talked about how reviewing and making recommendations on comp plan amendments is a fundamental piece of your work um program.

But what are we talking about?

What's the comp plan?

Um, what's it supposed to do?

This is another text everyone, so bear with me.

The comp plan articulates the goals, objectives, and policies that uh guide growth and development in the city over a 20 year horizon.

While the document looks at a 20 year period, it's um updated every 10 years, and there's a one-time annual consideration of amendments, do it one time annually so the amendments can be considered cumulatively.

Um and notably there are funding consequences if the regional planning body, the PSRC does not certify the comp plan.

The policies laid out in the comp plan direct city actions and decisions and give guide infrastructure investments so the city can accommodate that planned or anticipated growth.

And importantly, the plan guides the nature and intensity of development and creates a framework to address that for development regulations, land use designations, and zoning.

In general, comp plan amendments and changes to the comp plan future land use map are preconditions to city zoning decisions and land use districts.

And I'll pass it to Matt.

Okay.

So this is a planning commission specific quiz question.

Hopefully, all the planning commissioners know the answer to this.

So, how many jobs is Bellevue required to plan for and accommodate between 2019 and 2024, which is our planning horizon?

Who knows?

No, I'm I'm picking the person who knows that.

November.

I know the answer, I think, but who wants okay?

Please.

Okay.

Um 75,000 jobs, 35,000 housing units, and that's in the comp plan.

Referee, is that close enough?

Did you say 70,000 jobs?

75.

Oh, so 70, 70.

He said 3500.

35.

Yeah, sorry.

My bad.

It's it's it's just nerves.

Two.

Okay.

Very good.

75 is you're probably confusing the amount of um jobs that we looked at in the environmental impact statement with the actual targets.

Okay, so um, what planning documents identify these housing and job targets for bonus points.

The arge respondents said.

Oh, you say that.

Okay, I'm sorry.

He said comp plan.

Okay.

I have um examples of our waterfall here.

So what I brought is this is this is a copy of the 2021 Keene County planning policies.

And when you pull out Yeah, yep.

I think I have an extra one that I can pull.

And you can see with here's the Keene County jurisdictions, municipalities.

And I highlighted Bellevue along with Seattle, the two metropolitan cities, where the King County planning policies have designated the housing and job target for the city of Bellevue.

So that's that's the not the top of the waterfall, but but kind of in close to the top of the waterfall, right?

So then what happens as by way of example is the city council adopts a resolution ratifying those King County planning policies, ratifying the not only the planning policies but the jobs and the um housing targets that are included in there.

So I brought I brought a copy of the resolution too.

And then to to the the answer that Commissioner Geppel got that I didn't recognize.

Here's here's a copy of our comp plan, and this is the land use element of our comp plan, and you can see where those very same targets pop up in the land use element of the comp plans.

And then that is the planning target that then so many other elements in the comp plan flow from that framework.

So uh, you know, transportation is is one of the most obvious, but um it it informs from the county planning policies to the council decision to adopt the resolution adopting the planning policies and trickles down to the comp plan.

Correct.

So I'm gonna talk about the um comp plan amendment process.

That's the um 20.30i process, and then Matt will get into the specifics of the Luca process, the 20.30J.

So after a comp plan amendment is initiated, it's reviewed under a two-step process.

You have the threshold review and then the final review.

During that threshold review, the question that the planning commission is weighing is whether the CPA proposal is appropriate and timely um to include in the annual work program.

As I mentioned earlier, the amendments are considered cumulatively once a year, so that's your annual work program.

Um so the P the Planning Commission holds study sessions as needed and a public hearing or public hearings as need not as needed, required to evaluate whether the amendment satisfies the criteria in uh 20 part 20, title 20, part 30i, section 140, um, and then makes a recommendation to council.

Council would then take final action deciding whether the proposed amendment should be added to the annual comp plan amendment work program.

If the comp plan amendment, excuse me, if the comp plan amendment um passes threshold review, then you would get to final review.

Again, the planning commission holds study sessions and a public hearing, but this time it is to determine whether the comp plan amendment satisfies the decision criteria in the land use code at Title 20, Chapter 30i, Section 150.

Following that, the um following the planning commission, the planning commission recommendation, the council would adopt or deny the amendment.

And I think Matt wanted to add a little bit of color here.

Yeah, this is this is another slide that we um have one of our built-in cliches.

This is this is where we remind the planning commission that you want to when you're processing a comp plan amendment, you want to think outside the box, but color within the lines, right?

And and that that's kind of the same thing we've been talking about.

You've got a scope directed by council, you've got certain um staff recommendations or are um staff framing a lot of the issues, the policy issues that you should be considering.

And then you have what we've been talking about from a legal perspective, you have the guardrails that as a creature of statute that the code puts around you and and puts around the process.

So always remember that the comp plan creates a framework for a lot of city decisions.

You know, it's it's a lot of times it's it's easy to just kind of get lost in the weeds with the comp plan policies and get focused on something very specific, but always keep in mind that the comp plan is going to be that foundational planning document for so many city decision actions and and and so many um later council actions that flow from that comp plan.

And this can be really challenging for the planning commission as well.

You know, the comp plan doesn't, and and it shouldn't regulate development projects.

It shouldn't regulate private property.

So a lot of times you'll hear from stakeholders and you'll you'll um you'll there'll be a fixation on a specific piece of property or how a policy decision can affect one one piece of property, and you'll frequently hear staff also massage language to try to make it more of a policy-based language, guidance or direction, rather than it being acting like a development regulation or a land use code provision.

So that's um kind of a high-level guidance and best practices is to is to just always keep that in mind that it's perfectly fine to think outside the box, that you still want to color within the lines, and then also keep in mind kind of the the effect of that comp plan and the policy direction that it provides, because so many different later city actions do flow from what council ultimately adopts in that comp plan as well.

Okay, here's a tough one.

What 2006 literary novel and national book award finalists is partially set in Bellevue, Washington.

Sorry, Matt.

Audience Charlie.

The vampire one, yeah.

Eat the document is the name of the book by uh author named Dana Spiota.

And and the segue is because we're now going to our food part or our cooking class part.

It doesn't, it doesn't.

It's just a quick question.

It's a bell, it's Bellevue.

Bellevue pops off in the National Book Award finalists.

So I thought someone might know it.

Um, but anyway, if you try to eat our land use, I don't know if anyone's ever seen a paper copy of our land use code, but that would be quite a few full meals if you tried to eat that document.

But um, the other metaphor for our land use code is the gumbo metaphor, because our land use code really is truly like a like a gumbo.

And um, what's in our land use code?

What what what what is the ingredients that make up the land use code?

Sometimes it's easier to take a step back from all of the development regulations and all the specific requests that the planning commission gets when a land use code amendment is in front of them and just think generally about what's in there.

So you have land use districts, Bellevue calls zoning districts, land use districts.

So when you hear um development services staff or the city attorney's office talk about land use districts, it's talking about the zoning, right?

And and the zoning, going back to the to the comp plan consistency, the land use districts, the zoning has to be consistent with that future land use map that's in the comp plan, right?

So you so your future land use map is is unlocking the door for the zoning designations that can occur within land use districts or even for specific properties, right?

So that's that's kind of the big picture land use districts and zoning.

Then you have the specific development regulations, which it's easy to remember that what those do is they regulate development, right?

You apply those and they they kind of let um applicants know what they can or cannot do based on the adoption and then the administration of those development regulations.

And then the land use code is full of permit information processes, appeal information, administration.

A lot of that doesn't really come before the planning commission.

Um, typically, if the city is going to break apart one of its land use processes and um completely change it, that's something that that the city council will typically um maintain um control of and even hold the public hearing in the process for framework.

Um the planning commission is is tasked more with the the land use code amendments that are flowing from the comp plan that goes to those first two bullets, the zoning and then the development regulations that are going to regulate development, but also be consistent with the comp plan as well.

So where's our recipe for making the Luca Gumbo?

That that's in 2030 J 135, and that's the decision criteria.

And um the deputy mayor, Commissioner Ferris, probably Commissioner Geppel as well.

One thing that we always try to point out is the planning commission's area of expertise, and also the most important decision criteria for the planning commission is A, consistency with the comp plan.

Because of the work program that the planning commission has, the planning commission is the city advisory body that actually has expertise with the comp plan because you have in all likelihood just finished processing that comp plan amendment that now is leading to the changes in the land use code.

So I don't in any way, shape or form, want to undermine or act like uh criteria B or C are not equally as important, but those really fall more within the purview of the city council and the city council's area of expertise compared to the consistent with the comp plan criteria.

So by all means, you consider all three and you look at all three, and you're required to look at all three, but your area of expertise is 20 um 30J, 135A in that consistency with the comp plan.

Okay, so the I left this in this uh on purpose.

This is this is a leftover from one of our earlier slides.

So what is consistent with the comp plan?

And what we had in our earlier slide was coexist in a stable fashion without unduly negatively impacting the plan.

That is a wonderful example of a of a planner speaking legalese abomination, right there.

You know, you know, if if you if you take our our our planner speak and our legal um editing, that's that's what you end up with is is that kind of impenetrable coexist in a stable fashion without unduly negatively impacting the plan.

So here's a wordy slide, but hopefully more kind of plain language.

Consistency with the comp plan is compatible with the comp plan, much like the chicken and waffles over there on the side, is land use or development regulations that must generally conform to the comp plan, right?

It's it's whatever that previous slide said, that's really what it means is you need to generally conform to the comp plan.

Uses permitted by the zoning must not be in conflict with the in conflict with the planning policies described in the plan.

And also most importantly, the zoning can't in any way, shape, or form be in conflict with the future land use map in the comp plan as well.

And does the land use code amendment is it compatible with and does it further the city's visions, goals, objectives, policies, growth planning, and future land use densities.

You know, really what that is is does it conform with the comp plan?

Does it consider the land use densities and intensities and other development that's envisioned in the comp plan?

Is this mine?

Oh, sorry.

Okay.

So what's the tallest building in Bellevue?

I don't know the name, but I know where it is located.

Pointing will get you.

Um, 108 and the transit center, the west side of the transit center, one of the building that Amazon just at least I'd forgotten the name.

Is it Everst?

No, it's something else.

I forgot.

Do you know, Deputy Mayor?

Oh, thank you.

Yes.

Yeah.

But formerly the 555 tower.

Yes.

And how tall is the tallest building in Belgium?

60.

I forgot.

60 floor.

I just know an app one, but I might be wrong.

Don't quote me.

Is it 450 feet?

No.

It's a good guess.

600 feet.

The 60 is a 600, dang it.

And why is it 600 feet instead of 450 feet?

The cake one?

Because of the cake.

Yes.

Because the new land use code that was adopted in 2017, the downtown land use code raised the maximum height from 450 to 600 feet.

So the point of the Luca in action quiz question is that that's the real world manifestation of the changes that a land use code amendment affects, right?

Prior to the 2017 adoption of the new downtown code, the the tallest building in Bellevue was 450 feet.

Yep.

And then after the adoption of the land use code, and now we're seeing the buildings be built to 600 feet.

And that's that's the results of planning commission recommendations and then council adoption.

Okay, so we've mentioned uh SEPA up a couple of times, and that um amendments would have to be considered under CEPA.

Um, but what is CEPA and why is it important?

SEPA applies to all state and local agencies, and CEPA is designed to inform decision making and disclose impacts, unlike some environmental laws, it does not mandate a substantive outcome.

It's about um disclosure of impacts and informing decision making.

So to do that, to inform decision making and to not foreclose alternatives, the city should consider an action's potential environmental impacts early in the decision making process.

And as mentioned earlier, uh CEPA review must be completed before uh council takes action.

Why is CEPA important?

SIPA is important.

Oops.

CEPA is important because, in addition to disclosing impacts to agencies and the public, um, CEPA review can potentially identify alternatives that either avoid impacts or have fewer impacts, or it could identify mitigation measures that um lessen impacts.

And also importantly, failure to comply with CEPA could result in the city's action being uh being found to be illegal, a finding that the city's action was illegal.

Um, as the slide says, this does not mean that the action could not take place.

It just means that the city would have to go back to the drawing board, perform SEPA, and then um could potentially take the action at some later date.

All right.

Quiz question number six.

What federal environmental law like SEPA at the state level requires federal agencies to identify potential environmental impacts that may result from governmental decisions and action?

Always conclude two people.

I don't know.

Might be a tiebreaker here.

One is two.

That's correct.

The National Environmental Policy Act, it was signed into law in 1970 by Richard M.

Nixon in response to several high profile environmental catastrophes.

Um, NEPA in the context of uh in the city context is triggered when a project uses federal funds or intends to.

Um, following the enactment of NEPA, lots of states enacted uh baby NEPAs like CEPA, which pull in a broader range of state and local actions in addition to just federal actions.

Uh one important distinction between NEPA and CEPA is that um if NEPA is not completed early enough, uh, that could jeopardize the project's eligibility for federal funds.

All right, this is also me, I believe.

Yes.

Um, so switching gears a little bit.

We've talked about study sessions or public meetings and also public hearings.

Um it's important to note that both are subject to the open public meetings act, uh, which ensures transparency in decision making affecting city business and governance.

But while both are governed by the OPMA, um, different rules underpin um the provision of public comment.

So the planning commission bylaws allow the public to participate in public meetings uh during oral communications, but in contrast, public hearings are required by law prior to CPA or LUCA amendments, uh recommendations, excuse me.

And unlike oral communications during a public meeting or study session, all members of the public must be allowed to speak during a public hearing.

Um public hearings provide a forum to obtain public testimony or comment on a comp plan amendment or a land use code amendment, and the planning commission considers that public testimony as part of its fact-finding role to effectively advise city council.

So all of the planning commission meetings are subject to the OPMA, the Open Public Meetings Act and the requirements of the OPMA, but also all of the Planning Commission's uh writings and records are subject to the public records act as well.

And that means that you have a legal obligation as a planning commissioner, as a uh a Bellevue resident who's been um selected and appointed to the planning commission to preserve your public records and to also respond to any public record requests that we get.

And one thing that that's important to remember is that a record is essentially any recording or any writing photo, text, form of communication or documentation that contains information related to your work on the planning commission.

So that doesn't matter if you're doing if you're sending it from a city-issued computer or uh city issued email, or if you're doing it from your personal device, it's still a public record.

So you have a very strong obligation in order to comply with the public records act to both preserve that record and produce it if the public records act request comes in.

So here's some public records act best practices when conducting planning commission business.

All communications you send or receive in connection with your planning commission work are public records.

You know, think about where you generate and store public records.

Remember that the work product that you send and the work product that you also receive in connection with your planning commission work is going to be a public record regardless of what device it's on.

And then try to do your best to keep them organized and secure and to have a accessible and organized and easily producible retention system so that it can be produced in response to a public records act request, too.

So moving on to the planning commission bylaws.

I know and Commissioner Gapel have been through a couple of bylaws amendments already during their time on the planning commission.

And these are largely uniform bylaws that flow from the council rules of procedure down to the boards and commissions.

So it's almost like our own little waterfall where the city council adopts their rules of procedures, and then either the planning commission code and or that which is 364 in the city code, and the bylaws end up being amended to conform to the council rules of procedure.

And that's not specific to the planning commission.

That that is all city boards and commissions have pretty close to uniform set of bylaws.

And the reason is to ensure compliance with the OPMA, first and foremost.

Second is to make sure that we are conforming with the local codes, the local personnel codes that apply to each board and commission.

And then to also include elements of the council's rule of procedures and also Robert's rules of order with the with the correct and well-settled way to run a meeting, like a planning commission meeting too.

Also, the planning commission is subject to the code of ethics for all city boards and commissions.

And the purpose of that ethics code is not that dissimilar, at least in in the first instance from the purpose of the Open Public Meetings Act, which is to promote confidence in the integrity of local government and its fair and transparent operation as well.

It's designed to ensure legal compliance with the legal requirements that the planning commission is subject to fairness.

Make sure that planning commissioners are fulfilling their role for the public good and not for personal gain.

And then also foster that open, transparent government that we all aspire to so that everyone can participate in the comp plan amendment and also the land use code amendment process.

And then 392030 has the prohibited conduct.

I'm not, I don't have a list of it.

I called out one because it's it's close to our city attorney's office heart, which is prohibiting the disclosure of confidential information.

Usually the only confidential information the planning commission will get is from our office.

It doesn't happen that often.

But I just want to remind you that not only is that problematic with respect to a risk basis of putting the city at risk, but it's also an ethical violation too.

So we have a planning commission manual that I believe, Kate, is it still available on the website?

I think it's available on the planning commission's website.

I think so.

And it's big, it's not as big as the land use code, but it's another document you probably wouldn't want to eat.

And um it here's here's kind of some highlights.

It goes into a lot more detail than this training does.

But um, if if if you have any trouble finding it, you can certainly let Kate or or let me know, and we can show you where it is.

And and this slide, um, which you all have a copy of this PowerPoint, this slide was was meant to kind of touch on the topics that we covered here today.

So there's more than just this in the in the planning commission manual, a lot more information, but but these are really the the topics that we're talking about today.

Oh, and I I had one more point that I skipped over with my notes.

With respect to the OPMA and the Public Records Act, um I mentioned about maybe two or three months ago that um in May of 2020, the May 6th, 2025 council meeting, um, our outside council Pacifica law group, they provided the op the OPMA and Public Records Act training to the city council.

And and what what Heather and I are giving today is a incredibly poor substitute to the training that Pacifica provides.

And that's available on the city council's website.

If you go watch the video and click on that agenda item, that's available on the May 6, 2025 council meeting.

But also, I do believe the clerk's office is planning on uh making that training available to the boards and commission members in October, I think.

And if you haven't received any information about that, I think the clerk's office will be pumping that out.

And it's uh from Pacifica Law Group, they're the they're the experts, and they the city hires Pacifica to do the OPMA and public records act training that's required by law for board and commission and and council members too.

So it's already available, but there'll also be an opportunity to do it in person too.

Matt, can I just do a little commercial on I thought that was an excellent training, having watched it, and also for the training manual, I used AI to turn it into a podcast.

Oh, yes, yes.

And it was great.

So anyone high recommend.

Yeah, and that may be a use a more user-friendly version right there.

Um, so here's our last pop quiz.

Um, and and I think some of the some commissioners may remember this, but who is the planning commission's unofficial mascot and where does it live?

Is it the zombie?

It's the baker because the planning commission bakes up the comp plan amendments and the land use code amendments, and and the baker lives in the Portland Art Museum.

If you're ever down there, I highly recommend going and visiting uh not an official city of Bellevue Bascot, but uh a city attorney's office training recurring slide.

That's actually a picture of the baker from my kitchen because I have yeah, I have a carnet.

Yeah.

I'm so teen, uh wonderful painter.

But um that that was from our old cooking class training.

So I know I know that uh the commission has a in-depth study session on the critical areas ordinance.

We're more than happy to answer questions, but we're also available if individual commissioners have have questions to to ask us in person or or outside of the meeting too.

Thanks, Matt.

Thanks, Heather.

Any questions?

Anyone there, sure.

Um I was gonna ask about the microphone somehow.

I was gonna ask about the um the roles of um the commission versus the council.

Um, because one thing you um indicated earlier is that the the role of the commissions really is um fact finder.

And I'm wondering that transition going from the commission and our recommendation up to the council.

What's the sort of standard of review for purposes of the council reviewing a recommendation from the commission?

Is it a de novo standard where they are reviewing things, you know, just um from the start, or is there an idea that there should be some deference to whatever the um the commission came up with after going through the fact-finding process?

Well, I that's a good question.

And and I think the best way to think about it is there is no like legal standard.

So council can essentially do whatever council wants to do before when they make their final legislative decision.

That being said, uh one thing that the city of Bellevue does really, really well, and one reason why for comp plan amendments and land use code amendments, the planning commission tends to conduct so many study sessions and also sometimes process them for so long, is there is a strong motivation citywide um for the staff recommendation, the planning commission recommendation, the stakeholder input, the public input to all be synthesized by the time the planning commission gets to the recommendation stage in a way so that it is very palatable to the city council.

So I don't want to say that it it never happens.

Um it does happen sometimes where you have a different staff recommendation, a different planning commission recommendation, and maybe even a different council decision as well.

But there is a goal and and a very, very strong motivation to try to get the recommending bodies, the staff recommendation and the planning commission recommendation aligned at this stage.

And then I do think um, you know, I can't speak for the elected officials, but I but I do know that there's a motivation in Bellevue to certainly honor both the staff recommendation and the planning commission recommendation because of how much time, effort, work, public input process has gone into those.

And a lot of that is because the process is so long at the planning commission, and that's what the process is meant to do.

You know, the the code adopted process is meant for the planning commission to do a lot of that work and to get a lot of that input.

So you so if the process is working correctly, by the time it comes to council, even though there's no legal standard for deference or in it, and it would be de novo from a legal perspective.

But I do think that in general, council as a body tends to give respect to the planning commission recommendation and also the staff recommendation as well, because of the amount of work that went into it.

But they're not required to, the council is not required to by any stretch of the imagination.

And if you look in our code as well, if council were to go in a direction that and modify the comp plan amendment or the land use code amendment that's in front of council for final adoption in such a way and that it wasn't reasonably foreseeable from the notice and the public hearing that the planning commission held, then the code, the process the code would say to follow is that council essentially remands it back to the planning commission to hold another public hearing on that modified comp plan amendment or land use code amendment.

And the reason for that is also twofold.

A, you want to give the public the opportunity to participate with that modified version of the public hearing stage.

And also because council would like for the planning commission to process that um, you know, uh pretty different version that they're considering adopting at that point too.

So thanks, Matt.

I I won we continue this conversation, but we are literally at 206.

And if you want to be here until 11, I'm totally aligned with that.

But I think Matt, I want to say on behalf of you, you can send him an email and ask all your hard questions.

But if you want to ask, I'm totally open.

But we can take like 10 minutes break and come back at 8.15 or 8.16 for the study and be here until 10, 1015.

Sorry to not let the question continue.

No, the the critical areas um conversation is something that you want to hear.

Absolutely.

But literally.

Thank you both so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Can we come back by 8 16 or 15?

I think 15 will be good in eight minutes.

Thank you.

Fantastic Joel.

And two more minutes.

We still have one.

Are we ready?

Okay.

Our next study is critical area or ordinance land use code amendment.

The goal of this study session is to review the revised draft LUCA.

Staff is looking for feedback on the draft code and direction to schedule a public hearing on the proposed LUCA at future meeting.

Scheduling this hearing is necessary to ensure compliance with the state's December 31st, 2025 deadline.

We have Kirsten Mant, Senior Planner, and Christina Gallett.

I don't know if I pronounce anyone's name correctly, code and policy planning manager in development services department, um, who we'll presenting for us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Chair Conlu, Vice Chair Liu, Deputy Mayor Malikutian, and commissioners.

Uh, this evening, we are happy to share the full draft of our critical areas ordinance.

Uh, this draft, in our opinion, strikes a careful balance to both strengthen project protections where they are necessary to preserve intact natural resources and to provide flexibility for development, particularly in areas with degraded conditions.

Uh, ultimately, while it's important to establish a baseline, baseline provisions in the code that are somewhat static at first glance, um, what's needed to ensure no net loss is highly dependent on site-specific circumstances.

Uh, fortunately, both today and under the proposed update, the mitigation sequencing process available through the critical areas report process facilitates this analysis.

Uh, in addition, uh, with this update, we have introduced additional options to incorporate um further site-specific conditions uh within that review.

Um, so as noted, we do have to have a baseline as a starting point.

Um, when it comes to streams, those are established through standard stream buffers.

Um, and one we will note is that yes, those standard buffers are recommended to expand under the draft.

Um, but these do apply to intact streams.

Uh, the best available science has told us that this expansion is necessary to preserve function in such circumstances, again, specifically with intact streams.

Um, this also represents a compromise instead of going to the wider uh site uh uh site potential tree height buffers uh that was based on an analysis of diminishing returns to stream function.

We have received comments that for those standard buffers that the BAS could support less restriction in a number of topic areas.

We've repeatedly shared an openness to review alternative sources that remains.

But to date, we have not been provided specific references to support those claims around alternative best available science.

Again, we are happy to review with our consultant if we have alternative references.

But these buffers, these updates are consistent with what we see in other jurisdictions, even more modest compared to some.

So claims that our proposal goes far beyond state law or is unusually restrictive are false.

But that's just the standard buffers.

Again, we do have provisions to bring those down and alternate provisions.

The proposal includes smaller buffers for daylight streams, for armored and straightened streams.

And even if none of those options work well for a project, we do we do have an expanded innovative mitigation option, which we'll be able to talk about tonight.

So ultimately, staff do believe we've proposed a code that is removing barriers for development that do not further the no-net loss of function goal and provide further flexibility for development while providing that protection.

We'll also reinforce that this is not the only opportunity to support housing development and continue to encourage you as we move forward, thinking about all of our land use code amendments again, coming up with HOMA, with Bell Red, with everything else.

You know, the critical areas is one side, but what we make possible in the portion of the site that's not encumbered by critical areas, thinking about all those provisions we're looking at for maximizing that building envelope in other areas that aren't addressed in the critical areas.

That's the other side of the equation.

So we remain committed to helping to even that out there.

So with that, I will start to wrap things up.

I will note as we're going ahead that Riley Pittman with the city managing our critical areas team is in attendance.

He'll be joining us for the question period, as well as Dan Nickel from Facet to help speak to the consultant recommendations.

So we'll be bringing them up towards the end.

So this evening, the direction that we're seeking is to provide input and direct staff to prepare the proposed Luca for public hearing at a future meeting.

And I'll pass to Kirsten.

Great, thanks.

So just a brief overview of the agenda tonight.

I just want to give a quick recap on the July study session since two months is fair amount of time and we had summer.

Go over the engagement summary from this summer.

We did a number of engagement with the public internal engagement as well as with other stakeholders and agencies.

Go over there are updated stream recommendations that are in the code and then the innovative mitigation strategies portion of the code that Christina mentioned, and then a little bit about next steps and schedule.

So as a brief reminder of some of the discussion points we had back in July, there was a lot of support around providing as much flexibility as is feasible or possible, particularly around expanding some of the types of degraded streams that could qualify for more flexible buffer approach.

Also supportive of staff's approach to the reasonable use exception section.

So expanding that allowance given the change in regulations with HB110 and 1337, as well as some concerns sort of on both sides of the discussion around both the potential cumulative impacts of development as well as concerns around potential development impacts to Bell Red and similar other areas.

Some other concerns around engagement work and timing of engagement, which is always a bit of a struggle trying to find a good time to make those engagement sessions work within the schedules of everyone and everything that's going on.

I think that's all I had up there actually.

Yeah.

And then in terms of engagement, these are sort of the four big buckets of engagement that have been all kind of synthesized and gone into what we have in our draft right now.

So we spent a lot of time speaking with development stakeholders and reading comments from them, uh, working with the general public through some of our workshops over the summer, as well as a virtual workshop in August on the draft.

We've been engaging with agencies.

We have met with DFW, which is the Department of Fish and Wildlife for the state, as well as receiving some comments from other agencies like the Department of Natural Resources, as well as some comments from the Snoquami tribe.

And then as well, it was important for staff to understand some of the other city work that our other departments do that is heavily influenced by some of the things we also do in the land use code.

So I'll be getting into a little bit of some of those discussions we had with specifically some of our utility staff, the work on what's called the stream team.

We also have a beaver team, which I will get into a little bit later, and some of their ongoing long uh long-term planning work.

So spring and summer engagement, starting off with an EarthFest booth that we sat at, we were not a very popular booth, but we were there to talk to anyone who would want to talk to us just to get the gets the word out there about the project in the first place.

Like I mentioned, we had two public workshops in June and July.

One was in person, one was virtual, very well attended.

And then in August, we had a session on the initial draft, a little bit less well attended, but it was a bit more of a wonky session since it was more specifically on the code, but still had some really good conversations there.

We also had a joint meeting at the Belleview Development Committee.

I believe that's the correct acronym breakdown.

Yeah, with the Critical Areas Ordinance as well as Bell Red.

So we've been working, I've been working really close with senior planner Josh Steiner, who's leading the Bell Red sub-area work since there is a lot of synthesis between our two projects.

So this the goal of that session was to kind of bring those two topics together, have some good conversations with the development committee.

We've also had our meeting with DFW, as I mentioned.

We had a really robust discussion about their comments and our code and kind of working through some of those discussion points.

And then we're just ongoing receiving comments and reviewing those.

We're hoping to have the full public comment matrix for you guys for the public hearing.

So you have kind of the full list of comments, the sections referenced and responses to those.

So in terms of other city projects, I had spent a lot of time speaking with some folks from both our watershed group and Stormman's surface water group and wastewater group.

There's a number of folks on those different teams that make up these sort of subteams, so the stream team and the beaver team that are really focused on both stream habitat as well as stream health.

And those are kind of the two really important components when we're talking about these riparian management zones.

I learned this summer that beavers are a keystone species, just like salmon.

So they provide a similar input to the environment that is greater than their relative presence.

We also recently readopted our interlocal agreement with the RIA 8 group in May.

This is a organization that's both jurisdictions, private groups that are all about Chinook habitat recovery.

So it was important to understand this, I think to understand the where the nexus is between the private regulations as well as ongoing city efforts.

Our watershed team does do really robust evaluations of our watersheds and those streams to understand what's the health of those streams, what are some of our priorities for improving those, are there opportunities for capital projects?

So we really felt it was important to understand those efforts to make sure we're not kind of undercutting them.

And further, they've been doing plenty of community engagement themselves as they developed this watershed management plan.

Unfortunately, the timing's not great since we have to get this done this year, and they're probably not going to have a draft of their plan until the spring.

But it was helpful to read through some of those documents to get a sense for, you know, we have what we're hearing from the community about this.

What are you guys hearing from the community about this?

And unsurprisingly, it's pretty pretty similar in terms of the prioritization of our environment from the public residents.

A brief reminder on best available science, since that has been a topic of discussion.

Um the code or the state law requires that we have best available science.

It also requires that we update it when before we go to do our update to the code.

Unsurprisingly, science changes over time.

And with this update, the big one is the DFW recommendations for streams.

So that has been a big point of evaluation for us and analysis.

State law also requires that we give special consideration of what are called anadromous fisheries.

And those are basically just fish that go out to the ocean and come back.

And then it also must be peer-reviewed.

Any type of science that goes into the best available science has to meet a certain standard by state law in order to be incorporated.

That's also one of the reasons that recommendations from agencies are pretty highly regarded in that in that way.

So it is important that we at least have to evaluate all of that.

One of the first things we wanted to look at as part of this draft is where we can provide flexibility and development.

So the initial draft was talking about removing the density intensity calculation that is now been worked into the citywide component of the draft.

We kind of split it out in this study session, so it's kind of easy to understand.

This is just the overlay component.

These are the citywide changes we're recommending, and then the separate regulations for critical area, critical aquifer recharge areas.

So this was removed in a bunch of sections in the code that reference this, including in the subdivision code.

It also removes the density intensity restrictions on FAR.

There's also currently lot coverage restrictions that limit how you calculate lock coverage if a parcel is in the critical areas ordinance.

So we're proposing to remove those as well to again provide some more flexibility for development.

We also had originally included a restriction on middle housing not applying in parcels subject to the critical areas ordinance, which was because of the density intensity calculation.

So we always kind of anticipated coming back and removing that once we were able to get rid of that as a complicating factor.

So that will also open up parcels in the critical areas ordinance to be able to develop middle housing.

And as mentioned earlier, we are proposing some uh changes to the reasonable use exception requirements.

Uh right now we're allowing up to two dwelling units as an RUE, and then some limited commercial and office uses as well.

As a reminder, we're streamlining a lot of the maximum limits of disturbance in the current code.

It's pretty complicated and based on different zones and sizes of parcels and which is kind of unusual for reasonable use exception code.

So we're really trying to streamline that down a bit and make it really more site-specific, which is what it's really intended for.

Now getting into streams.

So I want to again kind of reinforce the fact that the standard buffers are really intended to be applied to streams that are not in a degraded condition.

These are for streams that are in a natural stream bed that are in good condition, uh, where it is warranted to implement a more standardized buffer.

Um, as Christina noted, the way that we got to the recommendation here was an analysis of the site potential tree height uh methodology from WDFW, and then measuring that on what's called a FEMAT curve, which basically measures what is the relative return on investment of a larger buffer and at what point does that start to kind of even out and not really provide a greater benefit.

We kind of found that the sweet spot for type F streams was about 150 feet, which is up 50 feet from the current standard buffer, but not all the way up to the 190 to 200 foot recommendation that would have come out of the site potential tree height.

So we felt that this was kind of a good sweet spot.

It represents a good recommendation for those streams that again are not degraded.

So we're thinking, you know, places down in Mercer Slough area or some of those other more natural parts of the city where it would be appropriate to apply some of these larger buffers.

Another change here is the current uh code doesn't differentiate between the two types of type N streams.

There are perennial streams and seasonal streams.

So we thought it would be again to provide some nuance and a bit more flexibility to separate those out.

Also very common for a lot of jurisdictions to do this to apply a greater standard to those perennial streams rather than the seasonal streams.

And then lastly on this one, um, well, not totally lastly, but lastly on the types.

We are a bit odd in that we have a type O stream, uh, which is very unusual from what I've been able to determine from looking at a bunch of codes.

It's pretty much like a ditch that doesn't have water in it all the time and it's not attached to anything hydrologically.

So again, we felt this was a kind of an easy win to just remove that as a typology that's regulated.

And then finally, a pretty big change is where we're measuring these buffers from.

The current code measures from top of bank, which generally tends to result in a larger riparian management area than measuring from the ordinary high watermark, although it is also an unusual way of measuring stream buffers, and it's not really a standard that most agencies or other consultant firms use.

So, but mostly for clarity and a bit of more consistency, we figured that was a better route to go, but then also to take into account the situations where it may be warranted to measure from a slightly higher position, whether that be because the river is in a floodplain or on a slope, we have some provisions for expanding where that measurement comes from.

But for most streams, it would be measured from the ordinary high water mark.

And then getting into some of those degraded conditions.

So we do have provisions for daylighting in the latest draft.

It allows a buffer reduction down to 50 feet.

It also allows for averaging on top of that.

So that averaging can go down to 75% of 50 feet in any one place, so long as the total area of the buffer remains the same.

So basically you can bump it down in some places, bump it out in others, as it might help with some of the geometry on the site.

It is subject to improvements to functionality and also uh exploring streamlining of review for larger daylighting projects as well.

And then this didn't make it into the code.

This was a bit of an oversight.

It was in the stream memo and it was intended to be in the code, which was similar reductions to other types of degraded streams that have been kind of channelized or armored to be able to also take advantage of some of those reductions.

So that will be included in the public hearing draft.

And I know this is a lot of text, but just wanted to make sure that it was out there that this is the recommendation from the stream memo that we're planning on putting into the draft.

So again, it's those sort of armored or straightened channels that have clearly been manipulated that it can be reconfigured into a more natural condition.

You can reduce those buffers down, subject to some performance criteria.

Not sure if you want to read through that.

I can give you a minute or we can move on.

Yeah, and it'll be in the public draft.

And it is in, I believe it's feather attachment, D or E.

I don't remember exactly which one.

And then for wetland buffers, uh there weren't a ton of changes in this code.

We did have to update the habitat scores, and that's just some uh department of ecology requirements.

We added some vegetated buffer standards for what we want to see for those quality buffers.

There's some habitat corridor requirements for just higher habitat scoring wetlands that were another department of ecology requirement, and then just some beefed up language around mitigation timing and ratios.

And then we also added some additional flexibility for those lower quality wetlands, a easier pathway for filling of a category four wetland, which is the lowest type under a certain size, which is a 4,000 square foot threshold, and then an outright buffer exemption for category four wetlands that are less than a thousand square feet.

And these are pretty straightforward exemptions that come from the Department of Ecology.

And then getting into the innovative mitigation section, we actually already have an innovative mitigation section, but it's rather small and doesn't really say a whole lot.

So we really wanted to expand upon this idea given some of the challenges that we know we have within the city, particularly in areas that unfortunately someone decided was really great to turn into an industrial park back in the day, even though it's full of fish-bearing streams.

Um, so and some of this language was shown to us by Department of Fish and Wildlife.

So we felt like that was kind of a good recommendation to come from them.

Uh essentially, what this does is if you have existing improvements, either structures or existing impervious surface areas, you may be able to take advantage of utilizing the edge of those improvements, uh, subject to basically showing the evidence of why you should be able to take that approach.

So you have to document your mitigation sequencing and why this alternative approach is warranted and could be a benefit.

Uh, you do also have to show compensatory mitigation that shows uh equal functionality and values as if the standard buffers were in place.

So you can take advantage of a lot of flexibility, but you have to mitigate it in some capacity, whether that be on-site, whether you want to say, hey, maybe I'll just beef out this whole corner of my site, or you want to do some off-site mitigation or take advantage of some mitigation banking.

Another component of this we felt reflected some of I guess the ask you would say from the community is around the opportunity to have coordinated projects.

So multiple applicants could come in and do a larger scale project or work with a local organization on doing some kind of improvement project in some kind of a creative way.

So we felt like this language was kind of one of the layers of options that's available depending on the site-specific conditions of a particular site that wants to come in and propose a project that might do something a little bit different than just kind of the standard requirements, but could offer a really great path for that.

I wanted to provide some mapping to kind of show some conditions and the different options.

I wish the buffers are a little more visible on here.

But what I have here is the West Tributary through Bell Red with the existing impervious surface and structures.

You'll see the existing buffers are in kind of a shaded blue color.

Uh, the 150 buffer bump out is in pink, and then the red areas are where there are pipe streams with a 50-foot buffer, and then the hatched areas are open segments that we pretty much know are probably degraded because it's in bell red that could also take advantage of a 50-foot reduction.

Uh, I thought the map on the right was kind of interesting to kind of show the impervious surface both below and above those buffers to really get at this is really how close those impervious surfaces are to those stream channels as being some of the sites that could potentially be appropriate for an innovative mitigation project.

But again, they can show the evidentiary support of that.

But again, just kind of depicting all those different layers of potential regulation and in an area where we have a lot of impervious surface in the existing conditions.

So just kind of thought it was interesting to see those in both of those ways.

And then also showing that as well in the Gough Creek example.

You can see the pipe stream, of course, once the impervious surface is overlain over the top, just kind of goes away.

But again, it gives you a sense for we have a lot of pipe streams, and then it's very reasonable to assume the conditions of the streams that are open in between those pipes, probably not so great.

So a lot of opportunities for some creative thinking through some of these pathways we have.

And then just a few other quick components.

We did need to add in some critical aquifer recharge area code.

We don't have any what are called sole source aquifers in the city.

We just have these wellhead protection areas.

The majority of this code, it's pretty light.

It's mostly just about making sure that we're not allowing things like gas stations in some of these watershed areas and that you have to follow LID and stormwater requirements.

So pretty straightforward on these.

And it has been reviewed where our consultants are working with the Department of Health to make sure that these are consistent with what they would hope to see for these.

And this is mostly just getting at protecting potable water.

And then for buffer setbacks, uh, we wanted to streamline this down.

The current code has a variety of different types of buffer setbacks depending on a number of different things.

Uh, we've chosen to simplify this down to one standard 20 foot setback, and then we also permit a number of different structural intrusions into that setback area that vary depending on what it is, um, how high it is.

So generally it's going to be things like you could have a deck into the setback area, some of those minor structural elements.

Uh, we do have some options for here for you to think through.

We chose the 20-foot setback as a potential standard, but jurisdictions also commonly use either 10 or 15.

So that's something that we could discuss as uh a revision.

And then we currently have those intrusions going up to five feet from the edge of the buffer.

That could also go all the way up to the buffer edge as well.

So, again, another kind of option for flexibility.

Then for steep slopes, a lot of this is the same as we talked about before.

Uh, some small revisions since we last discussed this were uh because it's a bit confusing to talk about a buffer and a setback when it comes to a steep slope area.

We decided to just have one buffer recommendation for health and safety purposes uh from which you can start building.

We also added a minor work exemption pathway for just minor activities that wouldn't cause an issue again, subject to that documentation that is not hazardous.

And then also a pathway for reducing buffers as well.

So just getting into next steps again.

This is a slide you probably see with the orange in the middle for the last time, although I guess October is when we're asking to go to a public hearing.

But yeah, really getting deep into the drafting phase, hoping to go to a hearing so we can move on to uh council and adoption by the end of the uh the year, which is our deadline for compliance on this.

And that is all I have.

Again, we're asking for input and direction to prepare the Luca for a public hearing at a future meeting.

So happy to take questions and comments.

And we'll have uh Riley, probably Riley and Dan come up and sit with us so we can ask them to help out with some questions.

Thank you.

Is it fair we go by around and ask only two questions in each round?

And then if we want to make a decision to ask a staff to change something, let's vote on it.

Let's bring it up, vote unofficial vote if it's necessary.

Like if I feel it should be uh no one feet uh set back, let's ask the commission opinion about that before asking staff to do that to just be more clear for the record.

Um, okay.

Commissioner Ferris.

I'm your name first here.

They give me the names.

I'm that much just kidding.

Uh, two questions then.

Um so I think on slide 15, you were talking about the innovation mitigation ish.

And uh think of if I understood the question or the statement right, you're allowing them to do approach things innovatively as long as that they the end result that the functions and values meet the standard buffer.

What if a site can't get there?

I mean, well, I mean the reason I'm asking the question that I am concerned that a degraded uh stream is gonna end up staying in that degraded state because there's no redevelopment that can occur.

Yeah, so the code doesn't require that the mitigation be on site.

So that's kind of the important component.

It can be on-site or off-site, or it could be through mitigation banking or some combination thereof.

So it really depends on the site conditions and what the how they choose to move forward if they want to take that path.

So if you know they have very, very small buffers, and so they would have to do a lot of off-site mitigation and they're not really sure how to accomplish that.

They could do some on-site, some off-site, and you know, some mixture of those types.

So it doesn't all have to be on-site mitigation.

So the idea is they would go to somebody else's parcel and help them improve the site.

Is that what you're imagining there when you said it's not on site?

And maybe you want to speak a little bit about Stan, how that kind of works typically.

Sure.

There are there's mitigation banks that are available.

Um that some are compensatory where you can pay.

Um, you know, there's built-in other options for off-site mitigation if there is a another location that there is an acceptable landowner type of thing that, or maybe it's another site that the property owner also owns.

That's possibility.

So it's more often just paying a fund.

Yeah, that's a common, that's actually pretty common.

Those are established mitigation banks, which have been proven to be successful.

Great.

Helpful.

Um second question.

Um is the 50-foot reduction enough to allow for redevelopment?

And I'm thinking it's slide 17, I think.

Uh, yeah, may reduce the buffer to 50 feet.

And again, I'm kind of going back to is this going to be enough to allow redevelopment to occur.

I would say probably the counter to that is in discussions with our stormwater team is they have concerns that if we went too far down, they would rather we not even daylight streams.

Because the reality is you can only protect those streams to a certain point, depending on how wide the buffer is.

You can show a net, it's really easy to show a net gain when you're daylighting a stream, right?

Because when it's closed, it doesn't really have any function or value.

Uh, but that doesn't necessarily mean having the tiniest buffer possible is the best path forward.

And also keeping in mind, you know, LID and stormwater is only one component of stream health, um, and the value of those zones.

Um it may not be enough for, I mean, this is the the difficult topic of this is not everything's gonna work perfectly for every site.

And so that's why we're trying to build in the flexibility for different options.

So there may be a site we're reducing down to 50 feet, may not work now, but maybe they could utilize any innovative mitigation techniques, or maybe that site may just not work right now.

Um, so that's the balance we're trying to find is what is how much how far we can go down that feels like we're still allowing those areas to be protected, and we have concerns that going any further may make it that we wouldn't want to encourage daylighting.

I think would be probably part of the challenge.

Okay, that's helpful.

Thank you.

Um Commissioner Kennedy.

Great, thank you.

Um so two questions.

Um I had three, so I'm I'm just okay, okay.

Next round, next round.

Um, I guess I might follow Commissioner uh Paris's recent questions and just kind of following the logic of um how just trying to think through you've done so much work here in trying to balance kind of two competing interests to protect the environment and enable growth.

And sometimes those are easy to put together, and sometimes they're more competing.

And so just thinking through all of the exceptions, as you were saying, we're kind of setting something that has now been in place for two decades.

This could be in place for two decades more.

This is applying across the city, but like you said, there's a lot of different projects that may have specific considerations that we need to think about.

Um, and huge divergence in this beautiful diverse city that we're in.

We have coal mines under the ground.

We we we now know that the oldest building is from 1858.

We have lakes, we have um wildlife zones that that flow through thousands of acres of wild life quarter, major transport regions, huge um uh downtown regions where we're trying to incentivize development and you're trying to have something that applies everywhere.

But what I've seen is, and you kind of walk through five, maybe more different ways in which a given project developer can consider exceptions.

So you've got daylighting, armored uh buffered or meandering streams, reasonable use, innovative mitigation, averaging of those buffers.

So if I'm a developer and I want to come in and have an I don't fit well within the standard buffers, can you just explain kind of how the the code as revised enables someone who may not see an opportunity to develop to use these different exceptions to develop?

How how have you addressed that?

Just I know you just walked us through, but if you could kind of just clarify if we're seeing that 50 feet doesn't work, what what would I do to try to see if it could work?

I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna say, hey, I already have an existing building.

It's sh it or paved property that goes right up to a stream.

It has more less than a 50-foot buffer.

Would I could I go into the innovative mitigation racks?

I guess it's a difficult question to answer because typically what happens is someone will go do an evaluation of their site and see what are the existing conditions, what are the avenues available to me, and then propose something and then the city kind of react to that and give them feedback.

Um Riley can probably speak better to how that process works now.

But there's an option.

What you're saying is there's yeah, there's an option, and it's sort of an iterative process where someone will come in with sort of what they have together now and usually come in for a pre-op meeting or something similar, and it's sort of a discussion around what do we have now, what's in the code, maybe what are what are some pathways.

So I might let Riley speak to the process a little bit.

Hi, good evening.

Um I think I think there was a slide up there that maybe it was the innovative mitigation section that talked about existing development.

And right now, like if you have a site, you're building footprint.

You're you're you can tear that building down and rebuild in it in most situations where like someone's completely scraping a site and starting over again.

I think the thought is in the new code that you know, they should be meeting the code.

So we have a non-conforming section that we're putting in there as well, which we don't have at all really.

Currently.

Currently, um so like you know, most of the things that we see that you know, the bulk of what like people on my team and my staff do is um additions, minor projects, things that bump into and move up to a buffer, like things you can't uh they're not proposing to tear something down, they want to keep it and they just want to do something like a deck or a patio.

So you have that, you know, kind of bulk of what we do, and you have sites like major project sites that they want to tear down the you know, strip mall that used to be there, and it's a hundred percent impervious, and it's got a pipe stream, and what do we do?

And so that's you know, we've had some code that says we should daylight these, but we don't really have much specific like how do we do that?

Is it possible?

That's kind of what this code is, I think getting to is how you know it's it's trying to give parameters on something we haven't done, uh, but make it be flexible enough to achieve something.

Um so, yes, is a pipe stream opened up better than in the ground.

Oh, yeah, 100%.

You know, does it mean that it should have no buffer?

And I think there's what Kirsten was saying is that there's there are functional reasons why you would have a buffer.

Um, you know, stormwater control, safety, floodplain, habitat.

Um, you know, it doesn't mean that you have to have the 50 feet.

I think and I think that innovative section that we talked about averaging or something that lets you go down in portions lets you meander that.

And I think that's the idea is that generally there's a buffer, but on a huge site or a big project, you know, does that buffer is it 50 feet and every every inch of that buffer?

Probably not.

And that's something right now, you know, we we deal with that.

Um, the the it's usually the the goal is still to make it better than it was.

Um, you know, the ultimate route that someone has is they could apply for variance.

They could say, I want to vary this, and that's that's something that's in our code right now.

We don't that's a harder, much harder path to go.

Um, because you know, usually on a variance, you have to show that you're not causing the problem, or it's not something you know, there's a special reason why you need it or um, but it it is there.

But it's an additional exception in addition to what we've already put into the case.

Yeah, it's like saying ordinance.

We don't we can't comply with your standards, and sometimes that you know that is the case, and we do variances with critical area permits, but usually that's like reasonable use situations where they have like zero development potential and it doesn't meet like any of our codes, and yeah.

This was a long question.

I'll I'll I'll give my time back and come around next round.

So thank you.

I appreciate that.

It's a whole that I think so.

I think what you're saying is you can vary this down below the 50 feet.

We have multiple ways in which you can do that through averaging through site-specific variants through reasonable use, but it there's a burden of proof associated with it, and the goal is to ensure that it's left in the position or better than where it was from an environmental standpoint.

Is that a reasonable summary?

I can speak to the old code, the new one is shifting.

I appreciate it.

Um, commissioner um Geppo.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you for a good presentation.

I have two questions.

One is about um streams that are not degraded and the new um and the new setbacks that are being proposed because they're substantially bigger than the existing ones.

And I'm wondering um about the impacts of that in terms of you know, the geographic impacts across the city and how much area that's taking out, you know, from possibly being developed.

I mean, one thing that you know resonates with me.

Um, you know, the last speaker tonight, um, Gabriella was just talking about um, you know, housing in the city of Bellevue, and we have more obligations, you know, as a planning commission to think of in addition to you know, critical areas and streams that we need to balance.

And I I want to make sure that you know, as we're looking at larger potential um, you know, buffers that are being proposed.

What what is the impact of that in terms of um the development potential?

And again, I'm just focused first on the ones that are um that are not degraded, and then we'll talk about the degraded piece um as part of the second question.

I don't have a specific number in terms of the potential impact, but I will say that that is something that we always consider as part of all of our projects and the full kind of holistic scope, as Christina mentioned.

I think it's one of the reasons that this team continues to try to give you really robust, ambitious ordinances with both middle housing, HOMA, um, what's happening with Bell Red, because we see there are certain guardrails in place when it comes to critical areas.

We just have to respect.

And for me, that's what's or for us, that's what's really important with reflecting what's in the best available science.

And the balance is we have certain restrictions we have to put in place when it comes to critical areas.

And for fortunately or unfortunately, that's just kind of the case.

Um, so a few extra, you know, 25 feet on a site means well, what what's what's left over and what can we do there?

And that's one of the reasons we're trying to remove some of these uh inflexible components like the density intensity calculation, the lot coverage restriction, opening those sites up now to middle housing.

So that's some of the balance we have in there.

Um, in terms of a specific number impact, I I don't have that number, but that's mostly because this is really getting at kind of what we feel we have to do to meet that best available standard requirement.

And that's why we're looking at all right, what is the most flexible we can get with critical areas?

And then beyond that, with a site that this area that's left over, what additional flexibilities can I provide through the citywide code for critical areas and then through our other projects as well.

Where can we look for opportunities to provide more density in the leftover spaces?

So that's kind of how we've been thinking through this project.

Yeah, thank you.

That's helpful.

I I think in particular on the end streams, I mean, that feels to me like a big increase in terms of in terms of buffer.

So I I won't go into that further because I want to ask the second question, but that's that's just um that's one reflection.

Um the other piece I wanted to ask about is degraded um streams.

And I think you had a slide up here previously that talked about the performance criteria that have to be met.

I don't know if we can go to that slide.

Don't know if I have it on this presentation.

Oh, okay, gotcha.

Okay.

So this, yeah, this is specific to uh degraded streams that are armored or straightened.

It's a little bit different from the daylighting section, uh, but since it didn't make it into the code itself, I just wanted to have this available.

Yeah.

And so just so I understand, I mean, is the is the idea that um is the idea that you have to have that minimum 50 foot buffer, you know, on both sides, plus um, you know, you also have to meet all of these performance criteria in order to get the benefit of that 50 foot um that 50 foot smaller buffer.

Is that it's and it's not 50 foot smaller, you can go down to 50 feet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that that is the intention is that you need to meet the performance criteria as well as the applicability criteria to get to that 50 feet.

So I have to satisfy all of Romanette one through four in order to even get to 50 feet.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, but this does also allow you, I believe we have in, I'm not sure if we put this as well into this section, but in this daylighting code, you can also take advantage of averaging, which allows you to reduce that 50 foot down further to uh 75%, which I think is like 38.7.

Okay.

I mean, I just I mean, I think for degraded streams and for redevelopment, it it feels to me like a pretty heavy standard, even to get to the 50 feet.

I mean, that's that's my perspective.

But um I will send I could also defer to Dan on this a bit.

A lot of these performance criteria are pretty standard.

Um, they're not particularly atypical for a lot of these items.

Um I don't know if you want to speak on that a little bit more.

But I think that from the science uh standpoint related to the pipe streams or the the you know straightened streams.

I mean, it kind of goes back to it, but rally is it and and uh anything less than it's a certain dimension, it it becomes the the the quality of the buffer is already diminished even further.

And so having I mean essentially you need you need at least some dimension to be able to perform functions and values of the you know for the stream itself and protect it in that buffer setting.

Anything less than that is you may as well just keep it in a pipe to protect the stream.

Otherwise you may be impacting it.

So, you know, those those are the kind of the rationale for having some level of buffer maintain there.

Um and the performance criteria that go into this are I wouldn't say are terribly difficult to meet.

Um and they are fairly common in terms of looking at um, you know, even though even though the results in a net ecological gain, you're gonna get gain by doing those things.

It's a it's a fairly um easy bar to hit.

Um so these are not intended to be um terribly difficult.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks.

Um Commissioner Chan.

Thank you.

Um, and thank you for the presentation and uh for being here to answer our questions.

Um I'm gonna start off by uh expressing my support for uh the comments made by Commissioner Geppel.

Um and uh, you know, he mentioned the final uh person that gave public testimony here today, and I uh I empathize a lot with that person's testament.

Um, you know, growing up in Bellevue, one of my biggest concerns and one of the biggest concerns of a lot of people that I knew was whether or not we'd be able to afford to continue to live in the city.

So housing is is very much something that I'm uh looking to as a priority.

Um so I I just have a couple of questions to understand how to kind of square that with um the critical areas presentation here today.

And the first one I have is kind of in response to to the last question here.

I understand the rationale for having some level of uh buffer.

Um but is it if we want to be in accordance with the best available science, is it your understanding?

So we should need to I do apologize.

Can somebody take a motion to extend our meeting for one hour?

I do apologize.

I'd like to make the motion that we extend our meeting until 10:30 in these seconds, second.

Any discussion?

All in favor?

I do apologize.

We have like two minutes to go.

Sorry, thanks.

Um is your understanding that in to be in accordance with the best available science that there must be at least some 50 50 foot buffer with those slight variances to get it on to, I think it was like 38 uh potentially.

Um, or is any lower than that just straight up not in accordance with what we legally have to be doing.

I think to answer that, there's there's to my knowledge, there's not like a scientific decision that's been made.

It says anything less than 50 feet, and you know, you may as well not have a buffer, right?

And just keep it in a pipe.

I don't to my knowledge, I don't think that's been done.

Um however, the scientific information that goes into like looking at uh buffer quality and what the if effectiveness of buffers um, you know, is really anything less than 100 feet, and you really start to have diminishing returns on water quality.

Um, I think there's mention of this fee mat curve, and I'm not sure if you've seen that where you show there's an exponential increase in in buffer functions as you increase size of buffer.

And at some point it starts to you know plateau.

Um if you go in the reverse, the same thing happens, right?

You're your diminishing returns are exponentially going down.

Um, so at some point you need to draw the line.

Um, and so that that line is not clear to me in the sand, but you know, there has to be somewhere.

So um I've seen I've seen buffers at 25 feet, and I've I've looked at them, and you look at the vegetation that's trying to grow there, you look at the you know, the habitat qualities that are in there and the and the filtration that's happening, it's not very effective.

I mean, it's just my honest opinion on that.

Um, so the larger you can get, the better it's gonna be.

Understanding there's gonna be a balance with the housing issues that are going on.

That's totally sensible.

So thank you.

Uh, and then my second question is I believe it was on slide 17.

Um, with the buffer setbacks.

Uh you gave us another slide 17.

The 17 was a map.

Oh.

So it must have been yeah, this one.

Uh, you give us a different option there.

Can you just tell us a little bit about why the proposal is the 20-foot setback, but uh and you didn't choose to go with the 10, 15, 20.

Just give me a little bit of a.

Honestly, it's just somewhere to start.

Okay.

Um, it's it's somewhat arbitrary.

Um, there is a lot of jurisdictional differences here.

So we just started somewhere and gave you the option if you want to go down further.

That's something we can adjust.

And same thing with the going either up to five feet from the edge of buffer for those intrusions or going all the way to the buffer edge.

Again, that's just an option.

So some of these, it's not everything in code is perfectly scientific and analytical.

Some of it is just local choice on what you want to do with your flexibilities.

Great.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And we might we might add, I think I mentioned.

Oh, geez.

So in thinking about what makes sense, like the intent of this structure setback in the buffer is to kind of help account for some of the typical activity that happens around the building to try to keep out of the critical areas.

I don't know what else to how else to frame that to think about like, oh, what makes sense?

I think it's kind of the same as generally why setbacks were invented in the first place, which is basically just light and eran space.

So most jurisdictions will adopt a setback from the buffers so that someone, especially for residential, if you're building a house right up on the edge of a buffer, that's not such a great outcome for the person that's gonna live there.

So it's nice to provide a little bit of what ultimately accounts for yard space.

Thank you.

Commissioner Velavesis.

Thank you.

Thanks for the presentation.

I have some questions.

Two.

Um I have one question, I have one question.

So first I want to just make sure that everybody here understands that buffers, we keep talking about buffers and buffers are not the end.

That's not the goal.

The goal is no net loss of ecological function.

Buffers is a means to that end, and they work very well.

Sorry, they work very well in some instances.

If you've been walking to Red Town Trail or Cole Creek, it's beautiful, pristine streams.

Those deserve those buffers.

When we talk about Bell Red, and we talk about net laws, there's no net loss that could occur there.

Uh, we need to provide a path to development in Bell Red.

And having these type of buffers is not a reasonable path.

Uh I love the question that Commissioner uh Kennedy asked because there was no clear answer.

How do we go around this?

There's no clear answer.

And and I think the answer to this is I mean, 50 feet buffer is an arbitrary number.

It's 15.24 meters.

So it's not there's nothing sacred about 50 meters.

What we're trying to do is get some buffer to protect the stream.

But if we focus on the goal, which is the required goal is no let law, no net loss of ecological function, but the desired goal is maybe net gain and economic development and a vibrant city that is developed around these streams, which we discussed in the comprehensive plan.

This was this is a policy in the comprehensive plan.

We need to have compatibility, as we just heard during our training session.

Uh, if we focus on the goal, then what happens if we let the developer and their environmental team to come to us with solutions and say, I'm gonna propose this, and I'm demonstrating here that we have net gain, which is not difficult to achieve in Bell Red because is they're degraded and buried underground and terminately.

So I don't see why are we focused on these buffers when we can provide a path.

We can we can we can live this so there's a prescriptive prescriptive option.

So you can look at the code, and if you can figure out a development with this buffers and with this conditions based on your site geometry and location, well, that's great because that makes it easy for you.

You have a clear set of rules to go by, but then if you have something like this, it's like you're missing 50% of your site, then you have another option.

It's like, okay, let's let's figure something out.

Let's retain a consultant that knows what they're doing, and let's design something that does not result in net loss that results in net gain in different aspects, not only the ecological aspect, but also the the cultural and the public space aspect of of the of the site.

And that is, I mean, we said somebody here said we haven't done it before.

We haven't done it before here, but that doesn't mean that it's not done before.

I mean, we've talked about case studies.

I know some of the letters are requesting case studies.

Um Rebecca Bloom today requested case studies.

Uh I know I passed some case studies, so there's there's a lot of things that have been done.

So let's instead of putting this straitjacket, let's just get inspired and try to do something that is really meaningful for the city in here and not get focused on the buffers, but focus on the goal.

How can we achieve the goal and give developers and owners a path to achieve that goal and by different means that they can apply and and create a great city?

I think that's my main concern.

I think Bell Red is a special situation, and I don't think it necessarily fits within this square box that we're trying to put here for everything.

So we need to open up that flexibility path so that we can uh achieve what we want to achieve, which is develop Bell Red and create housing and create a great great public space.

And I remember this policy.

Dictate the direction of development in Bell Red.

Uh let the streams layout and the streams presence in Bellrid to dictate the development and the urban layout of the of the neighborhood.

So that's that's it for now.

Thank you.

I do want to mention though that that is exactly the reason we included the innovative mitigation project pathway in the code is for precisely those types of situations.

It doesn't have a prescribed buffer in that code.

It allows you to use the edge of existing improvements as your buffer, uh, but you do have to show that compensatory mitigation again in some capacity.

It doesn't have to be on site.

Um, so that is exactly the type of pathway that that code is intended to provide.

Okay.

So when when we spoke on on Friday and we saw that, I thought that was a great step in the right direction.

When I got around to read the draft of the code, I don't see these very clearly, and maybe we're just not there yet.

When we were looking at the code, it's like I don't know how I can really apply that page of language to a property.

So maybe it's a matter of refining this and providing some clarity on on the on what is allowed, what is allowed through the compensatory mitigation.

But ultimately developers should be allowed to demonstrate no net loss.

And maybe not everywhere in Bell Red or in places where the streams are degraded.

I I don't, I don't know what you would not do with this.

I I think I'd like to back out of it just because you know we are on a real time crunch with this one.

It's not to rush it through without thought, but we do want to get as much specific as we can.

You know, our perspective on the innovative mitigation section is it's ex in our in our view, it's what you're looking for.

Because you you noted too, you know, I'm a planner who doesn't have an environmental background, you're an architect.

In this in this scenario, the developer would hire a consultant who can help provide the analysis to develop um the the concept that meets these environmental standards.

So I guess from our perspective as drafted, we feel that we're getting there.

And so when you're saying you want to see more, like what kind of specifics are you looking for in the code?

Um, I think where I I could see us just getting stuck.

I'll give you a very good example, actually.

Your uh steep slope code section.

Uh let me see my notes here.

How do it page 77?

Um it says 50 feet versus 25 in most jurisdictions.

Uh buffer modification for slopes.

I'm sorry, page 78.

Provide it provides a compliance path if a geologist is geologist or geotechnical engineering assessment determines that the slope will not pose a risk to development, to neighbors, and to the environment.

So, and this happens, this is very typical, right?

If you're building near a slope, uh the city might request a geotechnical report, and then you can say I want to build within 25 feet.

Here's the report from the geotechnical engineer, here's the uh resonance studies or whatever that shows that the store the slope is uh uh stable, there's no landslide hazards.

So the city then makes a determination, okay.

So you're not compliant with the slope, but you're demonstrating that the goal is met.

So that's exactly the same thing.

It's very clear in the in the in the steep slope section.

It's not very clear on the stream section.

Uh and yeah.

Judging from the letters that we received, I think that's a consensus.

Is perhaps it's maybe I'm not reading it correctly, but maybe the message is not getting a way the code is wrapped.

Well, and I'll highlight too the the steep slope section, you know, that is a specific analysis, you know, very specific to steep slopes where we can identify that clear path.

Um, the innovative mitigation section, which is its own separate section, which kind of is encompassed as an option for all types of critical areas, is responding to this kind of if all else fails, can we come up with something completely new for our site?

And so inherently, it's really difficult to say exactly what that would look like because it is intended as a fully custom option.

So yeah, and I want to bring us back to these images to really illustrate the goal of that innovative mitigation technique section.

So it really speaks to you on your site.

What are the edges of existing improvement currently, whether that be a structure or impervious surface?

That innovative mitigation technique section allows you to utilize the edge of those improvements as your on-site edge of buffer, so long as you're compensating for what would have been there if you had the standard buffer.

And again, that doesn't have to be fully on site.

So you could choose to do some on site mitigation and build out some buffer and then say, hey, the rest of it we want to put into some mitigation banking as an example.

That that sounds great.

That is as that's how the code is intended.

I'd like to know if everybody understood this thing, and maybe I'm not uh understanding.

Well, I will say some of the letters received look like they might have been looking at the first iteration of the code.

I saw something about a 15% reduction, I believe it was actually 25% reduction in the first iteration of the code rather than 15.

So I don't know if it was a matter of maybe looking at some older versions or um maybe not having read this section of this code.

But this that is the intent of this section is to provide that ultimate flexibility for sites that have such a challenge right now and allowing a path forward through that.

Okay.

Well, that's reassuring.

Thank you.

So I'll let you know.

Thank you.

Um thank you.

And thank you both for all the hard work.

I know it's been a long back and forth process.

So appreciate you taking all our comments and all of our suggestions.

Um, I was gonna dive into some more specifics and uh um actually something that came up during the public comment.

Um, I saw you guys built in the uh the ability to fill in the was it the class four wetlands.

Um, you know, I'm not an expert here, you guys are.

Uh, what's the difference between I guess like why just class four?

What about class three?

What's the distinction of uh what's allowed for um kind of mitigation of those wetlands?

I could answer this question, but I have an expert here that knows even more about wetlands than I could ever deign to.

So I might let Dana take that one.

I think a lot of it has to do with the value or the quality of the wetlands itself.

I mean, class category four wetland is going to be the lowest quality of a wetland.

And typically they're fairly degraded systems.

These are small isolated wetlands that you know really aren't connected to other larger systems.

So um, above that you're telling me the distinct between like the class three and class four and like what that even visually might look like.

Uh ditch.

Oh, okay.

We had a good four.

Okay, okay.

A batch of read canary grass.

The yellow really tall grass.

Gotcha, which is like someone's backyard.

Yeah.

That could be like neighborhood that we encounter.

Just like very small.

Okay.

Would probably be a little more plant variety, more than read canary grass, but probably still read canary grass and like some other stuff.

But you know, you're starting to see some other things going on in there.

Is that just does that distinct between kind of like man-made ones and natural ones?

Uh, I guess if like a sitting body of water, that's not thoroughly.

I mean, that most of those are going to be uh, you know, more naturally based.

They they could be there from man-made in, you know, results of of man's actions, but you know, otherwise are fairly natural settings.

They just have been degraded because of other impacts.

Yeah.

Oftentimes we conveniently located storm drainage uh infrastructure where there already was a wetland or a stream.

So they we use the the features that nature gave us.

So got it.

Um, so I I guess I'll just respond to maybe some of the the comments of it.

Sounds like there is some uh want for having class three or some type of mitigation path for class three as well.

I'll I'll kind of leave it to your discretion uh in the code itself to see if that's something that we can bring in to allow for a mitigation path for uh a class three.

The the second thing I wanted to uh kind of tack on here um uh is on the reasonable use exception.

Uh so first I appreciate that you guys took out the red-lined out the uh the part that uh kind of designated only for single family homes.

Like that I think it's great to open it up like that.

Um I was kind of curious on um what your thoughts on this of I think right now it only uh applies when it denies all economically viable uses of that property.

Like that's a very, very like uh that sounds like a strict line, but it's actually a very gray area of like what that actually constitutes.

So uh is there any chance that that could be used as a mitigation pathway also for people to say, you know, this is really significantly degraded my economic opportunity here.

Um, and then that allows for a reasonable use exception.

But I want to hear your thoughts on that.

That might be one we have to review with our legal staff, just because we can reasonable use exception law was basically developed in order to avoid takings, which is why it typically has to meet a pretty high standard in order to permit development in a site.

It's really intended for a site that's almost almost if not entirely encumbered.

Um, we did get a comment from the Department of Fish and Wildlife that made sense that if you had, you know, a minimum developable area, um, you wouldn't necessarily qualify for reasonable use.

Um, but again, that's us trying to get at that flexibility of like even if you have an entirely encumbered site, you have a certain level of disturbance and you can maybe do up to two units.

There has been some discussion of should we bump it up to a minimum of four since that's the citywide minimum um allowed through middle housing.

That's something we've talked about.

That could be another potential option we look at.

I don't know how feasible it might be to build those four units within a same restricted area.

Um, but it's pretty standard in terms of the language all cities use, just because that kind of comes straight from the law, um, that it is the minimum required in order to provide an economic benefit.

Could we bring maybe an aspect of that into the innovation or the innovative uh pathway that you described?

Because you know, maybe that's a way that we can yeah, yeah.

So that would be my suggestion is to maybe add that pathway into the innovative one.

That's it.

Thank you.

Yeah, yes.

I just wanted to bring it back to commission and everybody vote for it.

Um, I think I have one question to a question.

Slide 19.

Uh, Kristen, if you can bring it up.

Um, you mentioned in um other cities jurisdiction, they use 15, 20, 10 um setbacks.

And you mentioned you have been in 25 setbacks and uh habitat is messy.

The like it's it doesn't look good there.

Like I'm hearing there's case study cases studies that has been felt or has been successful.

Is there any chance we can have those cases study visual for us?

And if there's any um common area between those um lands in Bothell or other places compared to the Bell Red Road, do we have any of those available?

Because what I'm hearing from all of us, or what I'm sensing is we all want to get the cases study or some best practices to get the sense.

Because again, what I was hearing from you guys is saying, oh, we saw it from 10 because other cities started from 10, or we can go 15 because there are other people places go 15, but the hundred could be the best, but the 50 can be messy.

Like I don't see any logic.

I'm not saying it's bad, but I'm saying there's no um solid land that we can be there.

Then how can we can have some best practices?

Is there any best practices or worst practices?

Do you want to clarify that there's you have your buffers and then you have your setbacks off the buffer?

So the buffer is what we're talking about when he's talking about a degraded condition of the vegetation, and those are what's been best based on the best available science and that's no net loss requirement.

Um, the setback from the buffer is what's sort of less regulated.

This is really just getting at once you protect the buffer, let's say you have a split rail fence and a sign, this is a wetland, you can't go in here.

How much extra space do you want to provide beyond that?

Um, and my prior jurisdiction in Both, I think ours was 15 was a standard, and that worked out pretty well.

Um, in terms of the functionality of smaller stream buffers, I might need to defer to Dan if he's seen something or has a case study background.

That really gets again back at the best available science is providing that guidance to jurisdictions.

And I will say, as Christina noted at the beginning, uh the standard buffers we're proposing aren't very different from what a lot of jurisdictions do.

And kind of contrary to a lot of maybe other code projects, that might be a good thing because we are all connected to all the other jurisdictions' waterways.

So having some consistency in those standard regulations is not necessarily a bad thing.

Um, I'm not sure about specific case studies, but I will say again, that that best available science is really what's backing up the buffers themselves.

But then the setbacks are where it's just sort of like what do you want to provide beyond the buffer edge?

Is there any possibility that we have the example of those?

Like, for example, can we have because I'm I'm trying to see how we can get to the common ground.

Is there anything that we say, like, hey, this is like the similar um wetland that we have in Bothell, which I'm assuming maybe you were talking about the one alongside of the Mary Moore trail or anything.

Like I have seen doses of wetland those and and the buffers and everything.

And I'm like, can we have those cases studies or those are as an example that these are like only 15 um feet far um uh setback and these are successful and after five years is still um everything is looking good over there.

I just want I I feel I personally got my PhD in sustainable development, and I'm struggling to have an impact on the water quality of the people by being impacted by developer voices or my eagle.

Then I just don't want in 15 years from now, I'm I'm the person who voted about our recommendation to the council that the water quality of the Bell Red Road would be impacted, to be clear.

This is what I'm personally really um struggling.

Um, I don't have any solid ground to make a decision based on that.

I do understand a comprehensive plan is about have a housing.

I understand about that one, but what is the price?

It's gonna go be a water quality off the Bell Red Road and all the downstream from that.

I don't want to make that decision.

That's my personal struggle here about I don't want to fight against best science and the scientists who who are expert, but on the other hand, I'm hearing there's so many concerns about the developers and housing and all of those.

Yeah, and I mean, if you want, we can bring back no more wide breadth of related comprehensive plan policies if that makes commission feel more comfortable because there's both.

I mean, there's also a lot of policies around climate change.

No, I don't want a policy.

I want you guys uh and we can vote as a commission about it.

I personally want to see this is a case of studying the both.

This is a wetland, and that's a buffer, and that's a setback at five years now, it's good or it's horrible.

I just want to see that best or worth.

But this is my personal opinion.

We can go and vote about it.

But I I feel I feel comfortable if I have some four cases that I can think about it and vote it.

I can go for the second round.

Um but we can we can ask about it.

Should we go subject by subject, or do we have more questions that we go another round?

Another question or subject subject, or do you have anything that you want to bring up?

Can I talk to your setbacks briefly?

Clarify now that it's hot.

Sure.

So we can go backwards.

The setbacks, just briefly, the setbacks, the purpose of setbacks is to provide light and air around the building.

Uh the purpose of the buffer is if this is your stream or your wetland, but this is your buffer is to protect the buffer.

So having an increased setback here, it depends on the type of city where you are.

But if you're in an urban area, having a small setback like five or ten feet makes sense because you're already provide uh providing uh space for for the buffer.

You're you're already protecting the stream or wetland with the buffer, and then you're providing some space around the building to walk around.

And it also gives you some space for excavation because excavation takes more space, so you don't get into the buffer, but you don't really need more light and air.

So in that sense, I would suggest going to the smaller setback, but that's that's just my opinion.

Yeah, that maybe makes sense in Mercer Island, like Mercer Loop or something like that, but not Bell Red.

I don't know.

Um, but any anything else?

Um okay, and I'll start from Kosha Ferris.

I don't have anything else to add.

Would it be helpful if I made a motion about these buffer setbacks just to have something?

I think if if you want to if you want to bring it up first and we talk and then take a motion, because I don't want we do 100 amendments on your motion.

Although you're feeling super comfortable, yes.

Actually, need a uh um a motion, but you could take a head nod.

Okay, let's do the head nod.

That's the perfect one.

Let's do that one then.

We don't do a method.

Thank you.

Please go ahead.

Well, I'd like to suggest I I feel comfortable with 15-foot setbacks from the buffer, personally.

Is there any discussion or suggestion or are we good with 15?

Okay, I got two, three.

Okay, I got three.

You are okay.

I I looks uh you don't want to be responsible of the water quality.

Okay, good.

Where you are, so there's maybe the underlying zone setbacks makes more sense if you're in a zone that has 10 foot setbacks or your zone that has 30 foot setbacks, then maybe that makes more sense.

But let's speak to that before I nod or shake.

Can I ask a clarifying question for Sam?

Uh you mentioned that jurisdictions kind of vary on 10, 15, 20.

Is there a like a predominant foot buffer there?

Or is it just kind of just all over the place?

Not that I'm aware of.

I mean, I think to Commissioner Via Vazes' point, we could look at maybe a smaller buffer depending on or smaller setback regard depending on the proposed use.

So it does make sense for more of a commercial project to potentially have a smaller setback if you're not really necessarily gonna be utilizing that space for anything, but maybe for a residential project where you want to make sure people have yard area, having a larger setback makes some sense.

So I can speak a little bit to the setback.

Like often we find where people it becomes like a line of that line keeps on getting pushed.

Like, you know, you reduce it once for a deck, and they want to make that deck into a house, and then they want to put another deck on the edge of the house.

So it's like it's a constant creeping line.

And so when you know, oftentimes when we do reduce setbacks, um we will often put like, you know, this is now a native growth protection area.

You cannot go any further.

We're putting a fence and a sign up.

Um we did change here is that the setback right now is regulated, like it's a critical area.

You get a permit to go in.

That has been removed.

So it's it's strictly a setback.

Like if you can go into it, there's more allowances.

It also aligns like with the Shoreline code and other codes that do allow those non-structural intrusions in there without reducing the setback beyond the it's not considered a reduction anymore.

In the other discussion.

And Commissioner Bellow says Commissioner Kennedy, no comment or I had a couple of questions if we were doing it.

Please go ahead.

No, we are just talking subject by subject.

Yes.

Oh, we're right now.

We are just talking about the 15-foot recommendation.

Um yeah, two responses.

I thought that both the dependent on uses and I thought at Commissioner Villa Basis, you were kind of alluding to dependent on um neighborhood or Luca.

Uh so we would be looking at like a bell red land use code associated setback and a Cougar Mountain associated setback or a uh Newport or associated setback.

And I think both of those are reasonable recommendations and I would defer to staff on on that.

I am comfortable with a 15-foot in the appropriate places as well.

And I have a question too.

Can we go with DevRange regarding that you mentioned people start pushing it?

Can we start with like, hey, starting from 25 to 15 at the end, everybody goes to 15?

Is that the correct understanding?

Um we should have like a solid number, or we can have a range based on the type of the um neighborhoods and lots and so many other things.

I would say just from personal experience for the most part, most folks are gonna go for the smallest setback.

So we might as well just pick the one that we want.

And are we all comfortable with 50?

Okay.

I think we are comfortable with 15 if we can have that one in the future public hearing.

Um, any other subject that anyone wants to bring up?

I know um West Chair and do you were mentioning about two items that I said, let's bring it up.

Would you like to elaborate about those and bring those up and see how the commission think about them?

Well, I think the first one that I had is not as much of a let's vote on it.

It's a more, I think, you know, you guys will have a proposed amendment and maybe just allowing for that.

But the second one, um, sure, that one of bringing in a I guess the actual suggestion is bringing in economic viability into the innovative um uh I don't know the full what's the terminology?

The mitigation innovative mitigation.

Yeah, yeah.

Um technically that's the part that I would like to bring in is uh uh uh applicability um uh I guess requirement uh of economic liability.

And are we all comfortable nodding system for bringing that up?

I don't I don't know.

I I understand what the that is.

Can you just explain a bit more?

So I'm I'm driving this a little bit from the uh the Luca that has reasonable use exception where right now reasonable use exception allows for basically an exit plan if it has basically zero economic viability.

Um and so my original intention was to kind of toggle that down a little bit to be if there's extreme, you know, uh what's it called, uh substantially, you know, uh uh degradation of economic viability or substantially um impacted economic viability to make it a little bit easier to use that reasonable use exception.

They're saying it's really probably not a good idea to put it in that part of it, so shifting it into the innovative mitigation to say if there is significantly degraded economic viability, then they can use that pathway.

Can I ask a question?

Oh, yeah, this is a discussion.

Go ahead.

Okay.

So um sorry to try to just want to make sure I fully understand the proposal would be to add a like a a threshold or a trigger that you that you must hit before you could use the innovative mitigation mechanism.

Uh it's more that it's a threshold you could hit to uh reach that innovation mitigation.

Because right now I think it's a little unclear on applicability, but the innovation one.

So this is trying to define applicability a little bit better.

Are you are you want to add anything here?

I think that's something we'll just have to talk through and see what that would look like.

I guess I go ahead.

I I think I think I have a I um I just have a little bit of a concern on how that would actually play out in in potentially I'd I'd like to better before we voted on that.

I would like to better understand the applicability and the limitations it would put on the utilization of this section.

And I think the other thing that Commissioner Vileva says you were bringing up, you were mentioning about the innovation mitigation.

It's not as clear as you're expecting.

And then can we elaborate about that part, see if how we can ask if it's possible even to make that more understandable for us?

Yeah, oh, obviously.

Thank you.

So a couple of things.

So the I think that I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly, but the purpose of the reasonable exception, as far as I understand it, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong.

If you have a property and you have a stream here and you want to build a house, if this is for a single family home, and the buffer stream takes over your entire property, then you're saying I need to be able to build a reasonable using my property, right?

Right.

So I I understand what you're saying.

I think I don't know if it should they should meet.

It looks like it's a reasonable use exception for larger commercial projects, the compensatory mitigation.

I agree with Sherbol ASIS.

I think they're different.

I I would agree with um Commissioner Villa Basis.

I think they're different types of situations because I think that that reasonable use exception is really focused on that situation where you have actual hardship and preclusion of development entirely.

And the the innovative mitigation approach is instead uh an approach to deal with you know buffers, I think in um probably larger, larger developments where you're where you want to allow for some flexibility.

I think those are different things.

That that's my impression.

I understand clearly that we should keep them separated.

That's do we all agree?

I'm not trying to merge them.

Okay.

Okay, that's what I understand.

Okay.

I'm trying to add uh like another way to qualify for for the uh the innovative mitigation is to you know, I'm using as an example of taking some language from that.

Thank you.

But I'm keeping them separate and just saying here's a pathway to access the innovative innovation mitigation.

But I'm open to suggestions.

This is a I wanted I want to make, I want to kind of actually build on your point of like let's make it clearer or qualifies for that pathway.

Yeah, I got a question.

Do you qualify for the mitigation, innovative mitigation, or can you just do it if you want to?

Do you so the way that I mean code application just works generally is you have to provide the sort of evidentiary support that you do qualify for something.

And that's true kind of across the board for permit projects.

So in the critical areas code, this usually looks like mitigation sequencing.

So you'll hire a consultant, uh, usually some kind of a biologist if you have streams and wetlands, they'll do an evaluation of what's on site, and then they'll look through the code and look for those opportunities of all right, this is what we have.

What are some pathways available to us based on what's existing on the site?

And then you have to go through that mitigation sequencing starting with avoidance of all impacts, and then that gets you to a point of um, okay, this is what we're proposing now.

So it's a little bit difficult to speak about in black and white because it is so site-specific and really dependent on what you have and what the options are available to you.

Um so that's kind of the goal of having both the more kind of prescriptive pathway and this more flexible pathway is you know, you can choose to go to the more prescriptive pathway and that's me really clear what you have to do, or you can spend a little time doing some of this evaluatory work and analysis and bringing a proposal to the city to look at.

Um that's why it is a little bit kind of fuzzy whether or not you qualify, because it's sort of like it really just depends on what you have on the site and what you can kind of show through what you have on the site, both in terms of the critical areas and the improvements.

And kind of what I'm trying to add is that you can use an economic assessment to qualify.

That makes perfect sense okay.

Yeah, thank you.

Are we all nodding about that?

Okay.

Yeah.

It's 9 30.

Yeah, I'd like to think the actual words of that.

So Kristen, are we good about that one?

Yeah, so we'll we'll spend some time thinking through what that might look like.

Um and just kind of talk to maybe some of the what that might look like in terms of what they might have to show.

Oh, you go ahead.

Thank you.

So to answer your question about what type of clarity I would like to see in there.

So first, I don't know if you need compensatory mitigation to be able to demonstrate performance.

I don't think they're necessarily uh related.

You could develop a project and develop it in such a way that you recover the stream and it's performing and it's a net gain and you're doing a great project, and maybe you don't need to apply to this compensatory mitigation.

You're just restoring.

So I think we talked about so we have uh uh mitigation, restoration, repair, and enhancement, right?

So you can apply those in different ways to uh developing a project.

And say if you are looking at uh this stream, you could do a performance-based design that meets this criteria, and you have to do the studies and the critical area reports and all this stuff.

But if you meet this criteria, you can develop.

And your criteria might say that 10-foot setback on buffer on one side and 25 buffer on the other side is still results in net gain.

So why would we not do that?

Can I ask Dan to speak a little bit about what compensatory mitigation means?

Because a lot of the things that you're speaking about kind of all kind of encompass compensatory mitigation.

So I don't know if you want to speak a little bit about all of the different things that might qualify as compensatory mitigation and how that kind of fits into maybe what he's speaking about a bit.

Yeah, I think before I dive into that, I think to your point, a lot of these situations were in in Bell Red, when you're opening up streams and and improving functions, you're going to inherently get a net gain out of some of those actions.

And the scale of that is gonna is gonna vary widely depending upon the site characteristics and where your development is, where your existing development was and where your footprints are.

So, you know, there's most likely going to be some improvements that are going to be had by that.

Um what's wrong with that?

Sorry.

No, I mean that's good, but I mean it goes back to like what what are the what are the remaining functions and what's going to be taking place in those buffer areas?

So I mean you want you want to have a long-term success of these things to happen.

Having functional buffers are very important in terms of the downstream overall functions of the of the water that's flowing down there.

So um when it comes to the compensatory options, um, or different types of compensatory mitigate mitigation, um, a lot of times that might be coming in form of uh you know enhanced vegetation, different types of you know, structure, uh trees, shrubs, you know, very submerging vegetation, um, different types of habitat qualities that are in your critical area.

And if you have you know woody debris and vegetation, you know, and and the habitat structure that that comes with that, um, these are all forms of different types of compensatory mitigation um that can be brought in.

So you mentioned long-term success.

So why don't we how do we measure this?

And why don't we say if you comply with this criteria that is gonna uh increase the likelihood of long-term success success, then this is uh this is doable.

This is you can do this project.

That's that's my question.

And perhaps that's the intent of this innovative mitigation.

I'm just not very clear about it yet.

But I was just gonna ask a clarifying question on compensatory mitigation too.

Is compensatory mitigation you've referenced a number of different sort of um things like that that could improve the uh um you know, improve the conditions for the stream.

Um are those considered um compensatory mitigation, or is a straight um square foot to square foot, you know, um expectation in terms of what mitigation that you'd need to provide.

So, in other words, if if you ended up having a 30-foot buffer or a 25-foot buffer on either side instead of a 50-foot buffer, would you have to is the compensatory mitigation that you have to make up that area?

Um, or is it or can it be satisfied through other types of compensatory mitigation?

Yeah, it can get it can get sort of gray, but like oftentimes a lot of the compensatory mitigation is easy to understand when you're talking about vegetation because you can have square footage for square footage of potential impacts and mitigation.

So vegetation is an easy way to kind of think about what is my impact area and how am I going to mitigate?

And yeah, I'm gonna provide this much additional square footage.

And sometimes it's one to one, sometimes it's greater than that.

Um, you know, if I have if I have you know a bigger impact here because it's located in a certain area, your compensatory mitigation might need to be larger.

That's why we have you know mitigation ratios when it comes to actual wetland impacts.

We have scales upon which we look at what that impact is, and we might need to provide a larger area based on what the impact was.

So it it does vary and it depends upon what that situation is going to be.

And also if you're doing banking too.

And if and and certainly if banking isn't a whole other um situation when it comes to compensate for mitigation.

Is there anything uh do we I want to go back to the innovation mitigation?

Do we need clarification in that one?

And Kristen and Christina, do you think it's something that you guys can do it or do you think it should be fossil fuzzy because it is kind of gray area?

Um well, I'll just add one note that I was thinking of um in Commissioner B.

There's while there's it's it's great to be able to identify specific criteria in the code for projects to meet.

There's also a flip side to that, that if we limit ourselves to certain criteria, that also closes the door to projects that might say, hey, we're not hitting these criteria, but there's these other criteria that you know we anticipate the city really cares about that our project is really excelling in that maybe we didn't think about that we're advancing.

So that's that's kind of again the benefit to yeah, we can't be super clear on yes, this would definitely be approved, but the benefit there is that it really is maximum customization.

So yeah.

We have around 15 minutes left.

Should we take a motion and then continue the conversation or is it any I'd like to make a suggestion and then I'm I would like to make a motion that we move forward to the uh or recommend that they go to the public hearing, but we just say recommendation for the next go around the next time you present.

To me, it would be helpful if you're specific about this is in Bell Red.

We know that we have really degraded conditions, so let's just talk about Bell Red and what a developer could do to be able to develop their property, as opposed to starting up high, and then anyway.

To me, I think that would be really helpful because I think all of us recognize that's something that we'd like to be able to get developed.

We also want to save our streams.

You know, whether it's Cougar Mountain, it's that's a whole different situation.

So anyway, I'd suggest focusing on that.

Can we wait for that motion?

There's a still question going on.

Sorry.

Yeah, go ahead.

Would that be kind of what you're looking for with a case study, Commissioner Conlo?

Just um for me, the cases study, I was I was looking forward for best practices and worst practices, honestly.

Like I want to see when you are telling me that's I don't know, 10 feet case got failed.

I just want to see that.

Like I literally want to see a picture of it as like, oh yeah, that's bad.

Um, because it's helpful decision making.

Um and the best practices, like for example, in Bossel, Commissioner Kennedy was like raising her hand before you.

But okay, Commissioner Kennedy, please.

Thank you so much.

And and I may just um plus one on the case studies.

One one thought I had too is the critical areas ordinance doesn't we've spent a lot of time talking about stream buffers for for uh various reasons.

It also is covering steep slopes, flood zones, things that are meant to protect public safety and health.

And so in the case studies, it would be helpful to better understand how the code provisions that are being proposed uh are protecting and continuing to protect the citizens of Bellevue as we move forward.

It's very important, particularly as we see increasing flood events.

I actually found myself going and looking on the NOAA website to see how many flood events we've had in Bellevue that resulted in property damage or um injury.

Um and I think it's important for us to to see and understand why we continue to have the critical areas or ninth.

So just a plus one to Chair Conloo's recommendation there.

Um following on Commissioner Ferris's comment that it would be helpful to see those in our in our in our public hearing and and be able to help everyone um better understand uh on Commissioner Ferris's comment, I think I very much agree as well that it would be very helpful to um I found your maps to be incredibly useful.

Visuals uh do a very good job of explanation and so to the extent we can see those projects in a linear fashion to understand if I'm a developer, maybe in in just the year two um mapped zones.

If I would if I would like to do a development and I have pavement leading up to a critical area, how would I walk through this new code to to be able to get to the point of development?

And in doing that, I think it's particularly important that we have a representation of the neighborhood Lucas as an overlay.

I think we're still considering Bell Red's Luca coming up, and my mind consistently went to how will this critical areas ordinance overlay with that bell red?

And I know a lot of thought is going into ensuring that we are thinking about neighborhood plans in a way that's consistent with those neighborhoods.

Bell red is a neighborhood where we want and are aiming for a lot of of development downtown is a place where we're looking for infill.

If there's a stream in downtown and there's a stream next to a 4,000-acre wildland, like our beautiful Cole Creek is, I'm going to think about those representative with the neighborhood plans and all the feedback that has gone into that.

And so just helping to see that overlay would be beneficial.

Thank you for the time.

Yeah, just um two things.

One is um one relates to the um the setbacks based upon the types of streams.

And um, you know, go I don't know if you can put that up on the screen.

The buffers.

Yeah, the buffers.

Um yeah, I guess, you know, when it comes to the um the type F streams, um, which are fish bearing streams.

I mean, I I think you did a good job at trying to balance, you know, the um, you know, the existing standards versus the ones that um the um state fish and wildlife uh proposed and and using that um using that curve in order to set that amount.

I'm less convinced on the end streams.

Um, and I guess I'd like to get a little bit more input as to why it makes sense to increase those and what the impact is on the areas that could be potentially developed within the city of Bellevue.

Um just because um they're not they're not fish bearing.

Um, you know, some of them are perennial, seasonal, they're not even running all all year round.

So I I'd really like to get a better understanding of the the um both the benefits and the impacts of us looking at a bigger buffer here.

Yeah, I do want to just note um just just so that information is out there, the best available signs from DFW applies site potential tree height regardless of the type of the stream.

So that is part of the evaluation component is that they don't differentiate in their methodology.

Uh so that is why that was wrapped into a component of this recommendation.

So just wanted to mention that.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that.

I don't think the state standard is frankly realistic for a city.

Um, you know, it we have competing objectives as a city that we need to we need to honor.

Um so that's one um that's one piece.

I think the second thing is I'm I'm also for degraded streams.

I mean, particularly this probably dovetails with some of the discussions about Bell Red.

I'm not necessarily convinced that 50 feet is something that should be, you know, um, should be applied in all circumstances.

I mean, either I I feel like we either need to figure out how to open up and strengthen the um the innovation um alternative, the innovative alternative, or we need to look at whether there's more flexibility on that, one of the two of them.

Because I I think otherwise I I really fear that in places like Bell Red.

I mean, we saw the map, you know, on Gulf Creek and the like.

I don't I don't think we're gonna see much development in that space um without some more flexibility.

I mean, I will say the intention of that map was to show those limit the limits of those impervious surfaces that could be utilized as buffers with compensatory mitigation, not necessarily to show like how scary it might be to really redevelop there, but to emphasize that pathway could be really utilized well in a lot of those sites.

That was really the intent of of that map, I will say.

Okay, thank you.

Um, is there anything else?

Sorry, I know you have a motion on the table.

So anything else that we want to bring, or are we ready to give a second too?

Commissioner Farris motion for the public hearing.

Like to talk about other wetlands for the tribal crow property.

It's a similar situation.

Uh I'm familiar with the with the side because that's where my accountant has his office.

And there's like in the parking lot, there's like the media is for the parking lot.

There's like this table.

Those are the wetlands.

And those are preventing that project to go through.

Now what I heard tonight is those wetlands are no longer connected to the main wetland.

And the argument they're making is let us restore the big, there's a huge wetland behind it, and there's uh, I think there's a stream as well.

So they're proposing to improve function on the big wetland, develop housing near transit, but these small pieces of legacy wetlands are not allowing this project to go through.

So I think this is a good example of how we can prevent development from happening with something that we could avoid.

So I think I mean this is I'm not saying you should let the project go through.

What I'm saying is this is a good example of a performance-based design approach where you could hire a consultant and say this is this is gonna result in net gain.

Let me go through with this project.

This is what we're proposing to do, and this is what we're committing to to maintain this in the future.

So I'd like to hear.

Right.

And the project would also involve the wetlands in the back.

That's kind of the part.

I think this is a good example of how we can open up an alternative path of compliance.

Any other discussion that has been remained?

Anyone wants to have a second?

No pressure.

We can just let it be there.

Or do you feel comfortable for the have a um?

I haven't actually made the motion yet.

Oh, I saw you did it.

Okay, sorry.

Okay, go ahead.

I would like to make the motion that we um direct staff to uh have the public hearing.

Second.

Any discussion?

Yes, do we have the opportunity to uh discuss this again after the public hearing?

Yeah, always, and we can have even another study if we want it.

Yeah.

Okay.

So we don't have any obligation.

Um is it on a calendar December 6th?

Then uh this one is tentatively set for October 22nd.

Okay, good.

It means if we want to have another session, we still can meet the deadline of the end of December for the counts.

Okay.

Uh we to meet the deadline at the end of the year, it would likely require adding a planning commission meeting in November if we go past October.

Um actually I'd have to look back at our council schedule.

Schedule to go to council on November 12th.

Yeah.

Then we have a reach and then for action or right.

Yeah.

So we're we're really coming up there.

Then can we have if we need a study session, can we have on the same day of the public hearing?

And then we will have a say session following the public hearing.

Okay.

And and planning commission can also direct changes to the draft at the public hearing with your recommendation too.

So yeah, we love doing that.

Um, a discussion.

All in favor, aye.

Aye.

I would also like to move that we adjourn our meeting.

Any discussion?

All in favor.

Aye.

Thanks all.

Thank you.