Thank you so much.

Good evening, everybody.

Welcome to the Parks and Built Environment Council Committee meeting today is August 12th, 2026.

It is 5 p.m.

We are here in the Everett City Council Chambers.

Joining me on the dias, Councilmember Barbano and joining us online is a committee member and council member Ben Zarlingo.

So on top of our agenda today, very first slot is our lot splitting ordinance update from staff.

So I'll turn it over to York if you could please introduce yourself and uh share the good news about the lot spitting ordinance coming our way.

Thank you, Committee Chair Ryan.

I'm your Stevenswatched planning director for the city, and we are in the uh final stages of developing and uh poised to forward to you a ordinance addressing land divisions and uh overhauling our uh regulations on them.

Uh land divisions is the process by which you take a piece of property and divide it into two or more pieces of property that you can then sell to separate parties.

From 1956 to 1992, uh, we limited development to one residential development to one dwelling unit per one lot, and a land division was the only way to get additional housing or density in a in an area.

And so there were a lot of um uh standards and processes associated with it because it was the primary method for uh adding population density and need for services and everything.

Uh, since 1992, where we started to allow accessory dwelling units and then steadily increased the number of uh individual dwellings that could be allowed on one lot.

Uh I would say the importance of land division is a controlling uh measure on the development of land has waned.

And especially after the periodic update and uh I think about around 10 years ago, we adopted unit lot land divisions.

The two of those really um, I think dropped the importance of land divisions as controlling development and made it a little bit more of a real estate transaction.

So we've been thinking about this uh during the periodic update, and there were a couple of policies that we are uh seeking to implement with this piece of legislation here.

Uh, four of them in the housing element deal with advancing home ownership and simplifying the process to develop uh simplifying the process to create uh fee simple lots, which are uh kind of your standard uh ground to the sky property ownership.

Uh other forms of property ownership include condominiums and uh and uh and then rentals is a different way to have multiple uh households and dwelling units on a lot.

So we have a couple of policies that uh call for the city to boost homeownership opportunities through administrative, regulatory, and financial benefits, provide for land division into small fee simple lots, allow lot splits to encourage homeownership by simplifying regulations and streamlining the approval process, and supporting shared equity models such as community land trusts.

So those are the main policies that we're seeking to implement with this.

There is also a uh bill that was passed by the state legislature that required cities to adopt procedures and standards for an administrative lot split in which one piece of property could be split into two.

Administrative process means it would not come to a hearing examiner or uh the city council, like is done in some cities.

And uh there was some protection for appeals uh for these uh lot splits.

So we're also implementing that bill with this uh ordinance, although we have found that uh I think for the most part we are already compliant with it through some of the prior uh reforms that we have done to land division, uh most specifically unit lot land divisions, and that we are already pretty far to the administrative side and uh streamlined side for land divisions.

Um I think we can call this mostly a uh city initiated uh ordinance to uh streamline simplify and support both homeownership and middle housing uh through small lot land division.

There were uh three main um thrusts that we had with this.

Uh, we were looking to get to parity in standards, so the same development standards, whether you were using land division or not.

Currently, there's a handful of standards that come into play if you're doing land division and do not if you're doing the same development uh under a condominium or a different form of uh ownership.

And uh so what we're trying to do is make it uh uh not because of development standards that a developer or property owner chooses to do a land division or not.

Uh right now we have some standards that have caused uh even fairly large developments to develop as condominiums to avoid standards that applied to land divisions.

And so trying to seek same standards regardless of that type.

Deferred improvements is the other one.

Currently, to final a land division, you need to have installed physically the utility infrastructure, the landscaping and the access, like driveways and such private uh roads.

This can be some friction to perhaps a homeowner who would like to sell their backyard.

A developer is interested in acquiring it and doing a development.

Maybe the owner of the main property doesn't want to participate in all that or wait for all of that.

So this would give a method by which we could approve this land division.

The backyard could be sold, and there would be conditions on that land division that required those improvements to be installed before any building permit could be issued.

So you would still get all of the improvements before any occupancy, but you would not have this two-step process where you have to build it out and be completely ready for just a house or some other residential development to be installed on it.

Uh, and you can defer those.

We'll maintain the ability to condition and protect the cities and the public's interest with these land divisions.

Um, it'll just shift uh some of that uh at the option of the applicant to later in the process.

And then streamlining and simplifying, we have four separate chapters and then uh little connections throughout uh titles 19 and 13 uh for land divisions, and we proposing to we rewrote the the whole thing into one chapter with four articles, uh a little bit more user-friendly and throughout, uh it was just an overhaul in a way that I don't think we've done in decades.

So it should be more usable for applicants, uh, more uh streamlined for reviewers and overall make land division uh a more readily available tool for residential development to support that homeownership pathway within especially middle housing.

Um, some of the standards that we are adjusting with the land divisions, uh right of way dedication language and block length language, moving that out of the land divisions chapter and into chapter 1368, which deals with streets and sidewalks.

It's the public works chapter for uh access improvements, and that will make that apply equally whether there's a land division or not, when it's warranted to require right of way dedication for public roads or for pedestrian and shared use pathways.

Um removing a requirement with land divisions to clear gaps in encroachments, especially in older parts of the city.

You have property lines that aren't exactly on the fence line, or sometimes so an encroachment would be when part of your property extends over your property line onto your neighbor.

We have lots of blocks like that where the whole row of houses is offset by a couple of feet because of surveying errors in the 1920s or something like that.

That has been an irritant for folks uh to be held up in a land division until those are cleared.

Um, I think we're relatively unique in having that requirement.

So we're proposing to drop it, and that would revert to being a civil matter between the two property owners.

Uh alley access after land divisions.

We require that if you have an alley lot that you take any vehicular access from that alley and not do a new curb cut across the sidewalk.

Um if uh there was a scenario through this simplifying of land divisions where you could sell your your alley side, and then because you are no longer an alley lot, then you would have the ability to uh justify a curb cut and a new driveway on the public street.

Uh, we now say that after the effective date of this ordinance or propose that after the effective date of this ordinance, if you had an alley lot and you separated it from the alley by land division that you know you have given up your right to access uh via vehicle access from the public street.

Uh, you can solve that, cure that by maintaining an easement back to the alley when you do a land division that separates you from the alley.

And that would be written on the face of the plat and clearly communicated to applicants that by doing so, they're giving up their right to a new curb cut, which is I think important to a lot of folks in North Everett.