Okay.

I'd like to call to order the planning commission meeting of August 11th, 2025.

Christina, will you please call roll?

Vice Chair Nashuk.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Bruce?

Here.

And Commissioner Twing and Chair Mitchell are absent today.

Great.

Agenda item number three, City Council update.

Do we have an update from our city councilor?

Not today.

Okay.

Moving on to item number four, approval of meeting minutes.

Our last meeting minutes were from July 28, 2025.

Does anyone have any comments or revisions to the meeting minutes?

No.

Okay.

Do we have a motion to approve the minutes as written from July 28th, 2025?

Move to approve as written.

Do we have a second?

Second.

All right.

Well, uh, do we vote now, Christina?

All those in favor.

Ah, all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Great.

Motion passes unanimous unanimously to approve the meeting minutes from July 28, 2025 as written.

Moving on to item number five, public comment.

Christina, do we have anyone signed up or anyone waiting online to provide public comment tonight?

None today.

Thank you.

Item number six, Commission for Citizen Involvement, General Updates.

I believe we have no items from the Commission for Citizen Involvement.

Leads us right into item number seven, our work session for the code audit and amendments for housing and business work session number two.

That's PP 25 slash 0002.

Commission will be providing an update regarding the recent Metro 2040 planning and development grant application to support the code audit and amendments for housing and business project.

And Evan Franstead, senior planner, will be presenting.

Thank you.

Good evening, Commissioners.

Yeah.

My name is Evan Franste, Senior Planner.

Tonight I'll be providing an update on the city's recently initiated code audit project.

So my presentation will cover project background and purpose.

And any discussions we have.

So as background, the need for more in-depth comprehensive analysis of the CDC was identified in the economic development strategy and resource plan in 2022.

And the housing production strategy in 2024.

And it's supported by the 2025 City Council initiative to begin a comprehensive review of the development code.

So the overall project purpose and objectives.

And improve accessibility and ease of use of the CDC to support an efficient development process for applicants.

And here's our project team.

There's the staff.

That's myself, project manager, community development director, Jessica Nonlu, and long-range planning manager, Eric Olson, with his great photo that I asked him about in advance, but figure we'd need some photos up there to make it more presentable.

I tried to tell you, right?

So yeah, I'm generally okay with that, and then I see it, I'm like, oh wait, maybe it has been updated technically.

So anyway.

I just didn't have that one.

But um anyway, the uh future consultant will be hired for the project.

Um, as the staff memo for the this work session details, the planning department applied for a Metro 2040 grant to hire the consultant.

The Metro Council will decide on the grant application in a public meeting in late September.

If successful, the request for proposals will be released in October, and the consultant will be selected in December.

All right, so for the process overview, there's basically five key parts to this.

The project itself is will be conducted in two phases with five key milestones.

The details are fairly high level at this time while we wait to hear from them if we receive the Metro grant, but give you a basic overview here.

Um the project kickoff is the first step.

Um that's will start once we hire the consultant.

In this phase, the consultant will become familiar with the CDC, other relevant planning documents, and to refine the project objectives and schedule.

The consultant will meet with staff to establish project expectations and familiar familiarize themselves with city specific concerns.

Staff will provide the consultant with a background report with a list of identified as potential barriers to housing and business and business development in order to help the consultant to get a better understanding of the type of issues the staff are experiencing and their overall complexity of the CDC.

The consultant will review the CDC to identify specific code sections identified during the background report and provide an initial CDC review memo.

During this phase, a technical advisory committee or TAC with key city staff and representatives from the development community will be formed to help direct the technical work with the project.

The consultant with staff report with staff support will draft a public involvement strategy that will help define help guide the project.

The community engagement process will likely include open houses, um, stakeholder interviews, community surveys, and online communication.

The initial CDC review memo along with the background report will be presented to the commission, the TAC, and elsewhere as determining the public involvement strategy.

Next will be the will perform the audit.

Um building on the information provided in the project kickoff, the consultant will prepare the initial draft code audit report and present this to staff for review and comments.

After those comments are considered and taken in, a second draft report will be presented to the council, the commission, um, TAC, and general public.

The draft report will include a list of specific places in the CDC that will require updates in order to be compliant with existing state land use laws, as well as those passed during the 2025 legislative session.

An outline of the CDC standards or procedures will have the effect of discouraging housing through unreasonable delay of costs, and identification of specific areas in the CDC that will be streamlined, clarified, or amended for greater effectiveness, including potential zoning districts and overlay consolidation.

Excuse me.

The final audit report is the next step, and this will include revisions to reflect input learned from the staff from staff, the TAC, and public outreach as part of the draft code audit phase.

The final audit report will include recommendations on the type of changes to implement the solutions identified.

The report will be presented city council, commission, TAC, open houses for and maybe focus groups as determined the public involvement strategy.

And the next phase, the second phase is to draft the code amendments.

This will be done primarily by staff with the consultants as help during presentations and guidance.

The amendments will be presented to city council to TEC and the Planning Commission, and for public review and comment as determined by the public involvement strategy.

I keep saying that, but until we have the strategy, we you know this is all draft and theoretical at this point.

But the last phase is to adopt the code amendments.

Um staff will prepare the final draft code amendments with coordination with the consultants.

And hopefully final adoption as part of that.

So that's a basic overview of the project.

And schedule, we have so this schedule begins.

Hopefully you can read it.

It begins in October when the request for proposals go out.

It's 23 months right now.

So we go October to December for the request for proposals, and we'll hire the consultant hopefully in December.

Then the project will officially begin in January.

And so the project kickoff or initiation is three months.

So that goes from January to March of 2026.

And then you perform the audit, and that's from April to July.

And then the draft audit report and recommendations will be from August to November.

So that pretty much still take up all of next year.

And hopefully we'll start the draft code amendment process in December of 2026, and that will go in till March of 2027.

And the code adopted code amendments will be about five months.

That's from April to August.

So hopefully this will be all wrapped up, August of 2027.

That's my brief overview of the of the project.

I mean, there's a lot to be determined yet, as I said, would we get the grant and we hire the consultants?

This is just our basic framework as of now.

But happy to answer any questions at time or any discussion you you want to have.

Thank you.

I have a question.

Yes.

So I wish you the best of luck on this grant.

Thank you.

But if you were if we're not going to receive it, is there a plan B for paying for this service?

Not or how we do not right now.

There's not.

No.

We are hoping that we we get the full amount or close to what we'll have a better idea at the end of August if it's going to be recommended to the council.

Yeah, I was just gonna say the uh metro planning and development um grant that we are going out for for this project actually just as of 2025 transitioned to a quarterly cycle as opposed to an annual cycle.

So if there were some issues with the project or there were some concerns, we might be able to address them in a subsequent application.

Um but we've received some good feedback so far from Metro staff that we've talked to about this so far.

Um, and it's very much in line with the types of projects they um you know have been funding previously, and there's a couple good sort of examples from um some other jurisdictions that we've been using as uh sort of a template or at least kind of a reference um when we're putting this together.

Um so we have seen similar projects funded.

I think generally speaking, um, there are a lot of grant uh opportunities out there right now.

The DLC grants are on like a two-year cycle, so that would be a little bit more difficult.

But um, yeah, there's Metro grant funding, there's other sources as well.

Um, yeah, so I guess we'll cross that bridge if we need to uh when we get there.

Um, but you know, there's a lot of different options that we could be exploring here.

So yeah.

Thank you.

Any other questions, comments?

Sort of right in line with that.

Are there other communities in the metro area that are undergoing this process at the same time?

Or have started or even recently completed and can point to as a result of this project who were the impacts on business expansion, retention housing.

Yeah, I looked at um one of the examples I was looking at was Clackmas County.

They're in the process of doing it right now.

I know Monomah County is also working on it.

Um that might be it for the metro area that I'm aware of.

I think correct me if I'm mistaken.

I think Gresham might have done something similar, but they called it something like a diagnostic report or something like that.

A little different zoning code, so maybe a little bit different scope.

Um actually received an email today um from somebody at Hillsborough talking about them sort of doing a code audit concurrent with the adoption of their HPS, so they're kind of undergoing this process right now.

Um so anyway, that's news to Evan because I just barely saw that I've been very busy today.

But um, probably more that are happening than every day.

It seems like a common thing throughout the state.

I know HUD River just finished their process.

So it's it is it's a common project going on.

Yeah, I think the more of these housing production strategies we see being completed throughout the state, the more sort of similar types of projects we'll see emerge.

And you know, a lot of the smaller jurisdictions haven't been required to complete their housing production strategy yet, um, based on the schedule that the state outlined.

So we are one of the earlier jurisdictions when it comes to at least the HPS piece of this.

So to the extent that it's being driven by that, you know, we we are in the first batch somewhat.

So thank you.

Uh any further comments or questions.

All right, seeing none, uh moving on to item number eight, other business.

Does anyone have other business to bring up?

Just wanted to um give a gentle reminder to uh just make sure that we all have our microphones on when we're speaking.

We did receive some um comments uh from a recent meeting where certain commissioners weren't um able to be heard over the um you know the the stream and um on our sort of digital feed.

So just a heads up um to to make sure we're doing that.

Um I think we're trying to be as consistent as possible there.

But um yeah, to the extent that um you need that reminder, just wanted to put that out there.

Thank you.

Uh any other new business.

All right.

Uh with that, moving to number nine schedule review.

All right, it's a quick one today.

Um, our next meeting is on the 25th.

We'll be talking about the draft public involvement strategy for the Foothills um framework plan update.

So um really diving into what we're proposing to do for engagement purposes moving forward, um, trying to get some feedback from the commission on that.

This will be basically the first um publicly released draft of that draft public involvement strategy.

So you'll get kind of the first crack at this.

Um we are um, as you may or may not recall, still kind of in the process of forming our CAC, the community advisory committee.

Um Vice Chair Najs uh graciously offered to be um the representative from the planning commission on that committee.

Um we're also compiling uh technical advisory committee as well.

So kind of um we'll we'll talk a little bit more about the progress that we've made with those different um pieces and some of the ideas that we have for engagement moving forward and just kind of what to expect.

Um, you know, I think we are trying to keep things a bit flexible with that.

So, you know, we're gonna have kind of a set of tools and um some of the early phases plotted out.

Um, but of course, you know, I think one of the bigger strengths uh for the consultant that we brought on board is that they you know want to remain a little a little bit nimble and kind of see what works, see what um people are responding to, see what sort of the direction of the project is to a degree before we dial down all the later phases and all this everything we're gonna do for adoption.

So it'll be an evolving document, but we still want to sort of get it out there early and get some input.

Uh so anyway, that will be on August 25th.

That's our next meeting.

Um after that, uh, we'll have a hearing on the fair housing policy and education comprehensive plan amendments.

Um I'm grateful for your feedback at the last work session that we held on this.

Um, and we were able to get that notice sent out on time.

So we are um going to be able to conduct that hearing on the 8th.

So you'll be seeing more about that um in the near future.

Uh and the meeting after that on September 22nd, we will be holding another work session on one of our HPS related projects that's kind of in this early grant application phase for um that's related to more of a citywide look at potential uh non-residential or uh mixed use areas that could be rezoned to better accommodate multifamily use.

So really kind of a citywide look, but mostly at these kind of non quote unquote residential or our you know districts.

Um so that will be uh uh initial work session on that.

I've talked a little bit about that in the context of the HPS, but that will be the first kind of deep dive.

And we would also ideally, if all things go well, adopt findings for the fair housing policy comprehensive plan amendment at that meeting, too.

So that should bring us through September at least.

Great, thank you very much.

Uh with that, I believe we are adjourned.

Thank you.

I guess that's the first time.

I moved out.

Rachel runs all the