Recording in progress.

All right.

It's called to order the Thursday, June 6th, 2024, Planning Commission meeting.

First on it is roll call.

Thank you, Vice Chair Brinson.

Here.

Commissioner Cabe.

Here.

Commissioner Fry.

Here.

Commissioner Hadley.

Here.

Commissioner Lynn.

Here.

Chair Mosier?

Here.

And Commissioner Pove.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Next is approval of the agenda.

Any changes?

Nope.

Super.

Approval of our minutes from May 16th.

Any comments, feelings?

Nope.

Super.

That brings us to public comment.

Do we have anybody signed up tonight, Carla?

We have no one this evening.

Thank you.

Excellent.

That brings us to our study item, the comprehensive plan update.

Elements, which is the land use housing, and economic development.

All right, thank you.

Yeah, I think I'm gonna kick it off, kick it off from over here tonight.

Um, and then Elise, I think is going to be driving the slides.

So all right.

So, yeah, we're here tonight to uh discuss the planning commission's comments on the uh land use, housing, and economic development elements of the comp and um all of so we've consolidated all of the commission's comments on the draft goals and policies and your attachments tonight, and so we'll be providing kind of a general overview on some of the new concepts and topics uh raised through uh the commission's review and then provide an opportunity for the commission to ask questions and then also discuss amongst yourselves and not just on the topics we sort of highlight tonight but on anything related to uh any of these three elements.

And so as we uh were reviewing and consolidating the comments, there's some common themes that emerged throughout, so um related to uh focusing future growth to uh the high capacity transit areas.

Um there was some common themes around cafes and other neighborhood commercial uses uh themes around connectivity and parking requirements, and then also around existing neighborhood compatibility and kind of understanding what that means as it relates to encouraging new uses and new uh growth and um what does compatibility mean with regards to existing uses and neighborhoods.

I'm going to speak just briefly on um one of the common ideas here that was raised up around the future growth near transit and um really this uh the idea here is kind of a uh continuation or supporting existing regional policies as it relates to the Puget Sound Regional Council's Vision 2050 as well as the countywide planning policies that uh speak strongly to focusing growth to these areas that are served by high capacity transit.

Um there's several reasons and several things that support uh that uh the growth plan around that and so really it's about uh maximizing the region's investments around transit, especially as we talk about white rail and the massive investment that we have a region have made into building out that light rail system and uh many of the growth strategies, not just in shoreline, but across the region focus a lot on putting as many people and jobs in close proximity to those transit areas as a way to minimize reliance on vehicle personal vehicle use and uh vehicle miles traveled.

Um, in Shoreline and kind of across the Puget Sound, we'll see kind of as new opportunities emerge for uh new neighborhood commercial areas or new neighborhood centers, especially as we talk about middle housing and uh you know opportunity for some of our existing neighborhoods to encourage more growth and more density perhaps with uh with the ability to support some other uses and potentially kind of more organically grow in some more opportunities for uh new centers that maybe or will be emerging in the coming years and decades.

Um and so with that, I'll turn it over to Elise to talk about housing.

Terrific, thanks, Andrew.

So just wanted to start off with some context.

Uh, with the passage of House Bill 1220, the scope of housing elements in Washington State comprehensive plans has expanded dramatically.

So uh no longer is the housing element just about the total number of units and making sure that you've got the sufficient land capacity to fit them all in.

It's now about uh doing some deeper analysis and taking a look at um uh having housing available for people of all needs and income.

So looking at moderate, low, uh very low and extremely low income households and what are their housing needs, and does Shoreline have capacity for that.

Uh furthermore, uh House Bill 1220 expanded the uh housing elements scope to take uh to charge cities with looking at local policies and regulations that have resulted in racially disparate impacts, displacement, and exclusion in housing, and then work to implement policies to undo these harms.

Uh and so just putting that in context of uh what's going on with our housing elements and some of the areas of focus.

So a lot of the comments that we received from commission were generally supportive of the goals and policies.

That's kind of the feel that we got, and we definitely heard there was a lot of very strong support for additional affordable housing and what we as a city can do to make that happen.

So I'm just gonna uh discuss briefly some of the new concepts that were that were brought up first on the topic of affordability, whether the city could step in to either fund or build affordable housing options when the housing market just isn't supplying uh the needs of the community, and spoke about this with uh some of our colleagues in human services to see what like what could this possibly look like, and they let us know that with the adoption of the recent uh human services strategic plan, uh we're going to be looking for an affordable housing plan specifically, and so what that's going to look like in terms of programs and funding and budgets, uh, that's probably going to come once that plan is more fully developed.

But we do have a number of uh uh goals and policies that speak to the city's support of affordable housing developments.

Uh, another uh comment came up a couple of times about is vacant and underutilized land is housing always the right use there?

And the answer is no, right?

It could be uh far away from any services or it could be uh encumbered by critical areas.