This meeting of the Kirkland Planning Commission is called to order.

Let's start with a roll call.

Aaron Jacobson.

Here.

Gina Medea.

Here.

Scott Racer.

Here.

Justin Robbins.

Here.

Angela Rosman.

Here.

Rodney Rutherford.

Here.

With that, we have a with the majority of the commissioners present.

We have a quorum.

And now comments to the audience if there's anyone who would like to speak.

Seeing none, we will move on to I see there's no special presentations on the agenda, but we do have our study session on the Washington State Housing Codes compliance, our first briefing.

Staff, would you like to get that started?

We moved on too quickly.

No, we'll cue it up here.

Great.

Well, we've been talking about housing for quite a while.

And now we're gonna get our hands a little bit dirty here when we uh got a lot of work to do over the next six months or so, seven months, I guess, seven and a half months at this point.

Um, where we're gonna be talking about about five house bills that passed uh the state um legislature that um the city is required to uh amend our state code to comply with um so there we go.

So I'm gonna have a presentation that's gonna just go over those state requirements, um, uh present uh the staff's recommended uh approach to the amendments and um our approach to public engagement, uh provide a little bit of next steps preview, uh, and then allow for question and feedback from the planning commission.

So just a little point and time check here.

I know that we have talked a little bit in uh the comprehensive plan related to um implementation and a lot of discussion around code optimization due to the time constraints here and uh what we really want to achieve with code optimization.

Um that is probably gonna be largely left to uh future code amendments.

Not to say that optimization won't naturally occur with these code amendments, but majority of the types of code uh code optimization that has been discussed in your uh pack attachment two, I believe in your packet um that was presented uh to planning commission, I believe, in August of last of this year.

Um will be large left to a future phase.

So we're really talking about state compliance over the next um um seven seven and a half months or so.

So getting into it into it right here.

We this is the first uh bill that um that we're gonna need to address.

Um this is um of course the middle housing bill, uh HB 1110, um, and it's um engross uh engrossed substitute housing bill that made some minor adjustments to it uh 2321.

Um it's what it's really trying to accomplish here is to um require cities to add middle housing types, at least six of the nine that you're seeing here on on this slide, um, at the prescribed minimum densities.

Those densities are either between four to six unit dwelling units per lot.

Um, and that uh the numbers depend on its proximity to uh transit um service uh uh or the ability for that project to add um affordable housing with that.

Um the updates here uh that staff has identified in attachment one of your of your um of your packet, which it goes through a kind of a gap analysis.

Um we've identified a few areas where uh development standards will need to be adjusted.

Um we'll need to uh including parking requirements and uh make some adjustments across our um our residential zones when it comes to uh minimum lot sizes.

Uh moving on to the next one.

Um this is uh House Bill 1337, which uh discusses um accessory dwelling units or allowing um uh more accessory dwelling units in our cities.

Uh we largely comply with this, just to let you know.

Uh there are adjustments to uh how we regulate accessory dwelling unit size.

We have an accessory structure um limits that may uh not meet these uh state mandate um and we have additional development standards related to height, um, uh dimensional uh require uh some um placement requirements on the lot uh orientation um and street and uh parking standards that we'll probably will need to adjust here.

Um largely there's an there's a bill uh uh 60 uh 15 that um addresses parking more generally in residential areas.

Um this includes uh requiring uh tandem parking um allows for some limited amount of gravel surface parking, um lowers the uh dimensional parking standards that we currently have, um, and um other kinds of uh oh yeah, and grass grip grass block paver parking, which um we do we do not allow and non uh we'll need to make some adjustments to our non-conformance code related to existing parking, allowing for continued um non-conforming parking standards.

Um next bill.

This is the design review bill.

Um part of this is this is um uh 1293, and it relates to uh some of our massing regulations, our design regulate relations that we adopted in our last update of our um of our metal housing code amendments that uh are not really clear or objective.

Um we'll need to make some make some adjustments there.

Um this is not to be confused with uh another task that we have on the books right now, which is being um mainly uh spearheaded by our design review staff related to the design review process, um, design review board meetings, um, and uh those will be coming to planning commission uh I believe sometime in Janu uh late January or early February.

Um and lastly, there is the co-living bill uh bill.

We what we would call our residential suites here.

Um cities now are required to um allow for this type of use on lots six uh that allow for six units or greater um that these must be you know must be allowed as standalone uses.

Uh it sets lower parking standard, the state sets lower parking standards than uh what we have.

Um they also have development standards that don't deviate from uh other multifamily, uh unlike our uh our current uh code does and sets unit densities.

We have some unit density minimum unit density requirements that um don't meet the state requirements.

Uh there's a sewer connection fee um uh limit that we don't we'll need to adjust, and um there's a state now a new state definition for code living that we'll need to adopt.