As soon as they hit the webinar in process, we go ahead.

Recording in progress.

Good evening.

I'd like to call to order the shoreline planning commission public hearing for Thursday, July 21st, 2022.

First item on the agenda is roll call.

Thank you.

Commissioner Callahan.

Here.

Commissioner Galusca.

Present.

Commissioner Lin.

Here.

Commissioner Mauzier.

Here.

Vice Chair Wamishon Jay.

I'm present.

And Chair Sager.

Here.

Thank you.

And Commissioner Brynn is absent with notice.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, Brinson.

Thank you.

Next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda.

Does anybody wish to make any changes?

Okay, I'm seeing none.

Next item is general public comment.

Do we have anybody signed up for general public comment today?

We do not.

Great.

Thank you.

That brings us to our public hearing portion.

Tonight's public hearing is regarding outdoor seating development code amendments.

Purpose for the hearing is to obtain public testimony and for the commission to develop a recommendation to forward to the city council on this topic.

The process for the public hearing is as follows.

The city will present its staff report.

The commission will be given an opportunity to ask clarifying questions.

Individuals will be given an opportunity to testify.

After all testimony has been received, the commission will begin deliberation and may ask the questions of the staff or individuals who testified.

The commission will vote and then close the public hearing.

I now wish to open the public hearing.

Good evening.

I'm Kate Lee, a planner in the planning community development department here to present on this item tonight of outdoor seating.

So this is the agenda for the presentation.

I'll briefly go over the background, the public outreach on this proposed development code amendment, go over the proposed code and outline next steps in the process.

So ordinance number 985 was effective on July 27th, 2020, and these regulations have been extended four times.

The purpose was to allow increased flexibility with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

And five businesses have filed outdoor seating registrations on private property, none within the right-of-way, and two of those on private property continue to be in use.

So there was an online survey held from March to April of this year.

And that was emailed to emailed and mailed to business operators within the city.

There were 25 responses to that.

And then in April, city staff met with a small focus group consisting of three local business owners of restaurants, bars, and breweries.

The results of both the survey and the small focus group helped to inform the proposed development code amendments.

In response to that determination on June 21st, the city received a comment from Seattle King County Public Health, and they had a suggested addition to the proposed development code amendments relating to ventilation of the spaces.

Regulations.

We hope that those in the business community will take advantage of this new flexibility in our code.

It's only allowed in association with an eating or drinking use.

It does allow conversion of off-street, some off-street parking into this uh use of outdoor seating, and there are design standards for the furniture elements included in the space.

Probably the largest policy component of the draft amendments relate to off-street parking, so no additional off-street parking is required for creation of these spaces, and it actually would allow conversion of off-street parking to a seating area for single tenant sites.