The Kirkland Planning Commission met on September 25, 2025, from 6:00 PM to 7:19 PM in the Council Chamber. The primary agenda item was a study session (Briefing #3) on the Critical Areas Ordinance Update (CAM25-00248), covering proposed amendments to Chapters 85 (Geologically Hazardous Areas) and 90 (Critical Areas). The Commission also approved minutes from four prior meetings and received an update on upcoming meeting schedules.
This meeting of the Kirkland Planning Commission is called to order. Let's start with a roll call. Margaret Bunyall. Aaron Jacobson. Here. Gina Medea. Yeah. Julia Nolan. Here. Scott Ricer. Yeah. Angela Rossman. Here. Ronnie Rutherford. Here. And with a majority of commissioners present, we have a quorum and may conduct business. The next item on the agenda is comments from the audience. Are there any members of the audience either in the room or online who would like to speak to the commission? If you're online, you can press the raise hand button. Yeah, we have one here. Yeah, you can go ahead and come straight on up if you'd like to speak. This is our first time coming to something like this. So it was more of me just asking, like if at any point in time, if we have a question. So not necessarily that I have a question just yet. Okay. We have there is time at the beginning of the meeting and time at the end of the meeting for public comment. So we only have one major item on the agenda, so you can see. I would say the question questions would be to staff. Yeah. If you have questions. I'd say, yeah. Okay. Sounds good. All right. Then seeing that there's no one else who wishes to speak to the commission at this time. We will proceed on to the next item on the agenda, which is special special presentations. We have none today. The next item is our study session on the critical areas ordinance update. Steph, would you like to get us started on that? Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Before we jump into critical area ordinance, wanted to welcome our newest planning commissioner to the dais, Commissioner Bunyall. So very excited to have you all back to seven commissioners and excited to have uh Commissioner Bunyall on board before we hit the public hearing for the critical areas ordinance update. Uh we have briefed you on this one before. Um, this is really intended to be a good deep dive into the critical area ordinance update for you tonight. It's the only item on your agenda, so we gave ample time to answer any questions you might have. Um we did include full drafts of all the code amendments in your packet for tonight to give both you and any members of the public good opportunity to look into those draft code amendments prior to the public hearing. Staff's gonna walk you through really the significant changes in the code that we expect to result in some change on the ground, and they'll do a lighter touch on some of the amendments that are more along the lines of clarity edits and things like that. For each of those items that might result in change, they're really we're really asking you the same few questions for each of them, and staff's gonna do a lot of call and response with y'all tonight. So for each of those items, we're gonna be wanting to understand from you if you have any questions about the proposed amendment, if you'd want to potentially see any changes to that amendment prior to the public hearing, or if you need any additional information or background information about that amendment before the public hearing, so that we make sure that you're well prepared for that.