The Kirkland Planning Commission met on March 12, 2026, at 6:00 PM in the Council Chamber. The meeting included a public hearing on state-mandated parking code amendments (Senate Bill 5184), a study session on the 2026-2028 Planning Work Program (PWP), approval of minutes, and public comments. The Commission voted unanimously to recommend a specific parking option and to remove a section on affordable housing parking regulations, and deferred final action on the PWP to the March 26 meeting.
Call roll, please. Margaret Bunya is here. Aaron Jacobson. Here. Gina Medea. Here. Julia Nolan. Here. But Roiser. Here. Angela Rosman. Here, Ronnie Rutherford. Here. So for starters, we have public comment, but this is if you are here not to speak on the public hearing. If you are here to speak on the public hearing, that will be in just a minute. Public hearing? Public comment. Then feel free to come up. Okay, then yes, feel free to come on up. It's on. Okay. Just state your name. Yes, my name is Troy Schmeel. I'm the owner of Sapphire Homes, a local building company. I'm here to talk to you about the City of Kirkland planning work plan priorities and middle housing optimization. We, meaning all the builders, were shown the middle housing code for implementation, implementing HB 1110 January 8th, 2025 at the Master Builder City of Kirkland quarterly meeting. Myself and many other builders were concerned about how you were doing what we felt was the minimum to meet state law, but not doing anything additional regarding setbacks, floor area ratios, and lot coverages that we feel allows it to be done well. At the January 8th, 2025 meeting, and since we were told by staff that phase two of middle housing would be completed in 2026, and these items would be addressed at that time. Those of us that were there that were doing middle housing or want to do middle housing, we're not happy but went along with it because we thought it was gonna be fixed this year. Uh we made it clear that at time we'd um they would continue to lose land to large one-for-one builders. I have nothing against that, but they do not add the housing stock, they do not solve our housing problem. Um I personally won't do that. Um that we wouldn't be able to optimize the land that we are building on now. So uh now I'm hearing that the city may backtrack on that commitment and it would move to possibly 2028, which means it would really be 2029 before we could start using it. That is an over three-year delay that the city of Kirkland is meeting the law, but not really in my opinion, meeting the intent of the law, what 1110 was meant for. Um the current code was set up to control size and scale of single family houses, which I totally understand. You guys wanted to make them so they weren't so huge. Um, those same standards do not work very well when it comes to middle housing, as we need additional floor area ratio lot coverage, and if we can better setbacks. Um all the jurisdictions around you, including Bellevue and Redmond, put into place reduced setbacks and increased limits on far lot coverage and other things that allow middle housing to be effective and competitive as part of their initial implementation. You guys were great. I love the fact you guys did it ahead of everybody else, but then when it came to actually doing this, everybody else realized that the FARS and the lot coverages for single family don't work for middle housing. Um a lot of them are just going back and doing some cleanup. Please do as promised and update at least the critical items in your code to allow middle housing to be implemented as intended and more housing to be built. Thank you. Thank you. And if you could also email us those like general comments, and if you have any more specifics on what you think would be helpful. To your just your guys' general email. Yeah, that would be wonderful. Thank you. Um and then if anyone online would like to speak, this is again not to the public com public hearing.