Thank you.

It's been a minute.

I would like to call to order the Planning Commission regular meeting of Thursday, July 3rd, 2025.

Carla, will you call roll, please?

Chair Brinson.

Here.

Commissioner Cabe.

Here.

Commissioner Hadley.

Present.

Commissioner Lynn.

Here.

Vice Chair Mosier.

Commissioner Poveck?

Here.

Thank you.

Commissioner Fry is absent with notice.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Approval of the agenda.

All right, we're good to go.

Approval of the last meetings minutes.

Any comments?

Nope.

We're good there too.

Carla, do we have anybody signed up for public comments?

We have no one signed up tonight.

Thank you.

All right.

Turning it over to you for our environmentally critical areas code update discussion.

Good evening, Commissioners.

Thank you for being here on the eve of a holiday.

Really appreciate it.

Here to discuss our critical areas code updates.

Shoreline is in the process of updating its critical areas code by the end of 2025 to be consistent with the Growth Management Act.

When we did an evaluation of the existing code, we found that the area that was in need of revisions was related to streams, and so that's what we are focusing the majority of the update effort on.

So to that end, this evening we'll be spending time learning about the Department of Fish and Wildlife's science synthesis and management recommendations for riparian ecosystems.

And I'll get into what all of that means.

And then going to tee up a discussion because there are some items that staff would really appreciate some direction from Planning Commission on, so we know where to put our efforts, and then a brief preview of next steps.

So first, let's talk about streams and how they are currently regulated.

Streams are regulated based on the type of stream that we're talking about.

Typically, that's whether or not it involves fish, or if it is a stream year-round, or maybe it dries up during the dry season.

These streams themselves are considered critical areas, and the lands around them are buffers, and those buffers vary in width, largely based on the presence or absence of fish.

So that's currently what's happening in shoreline.

What that looks like is this map here.

So what we have is it's a little hard to see when we're zoomed out to see the whole city, but these are buffers of various widths based on the different types of streams that occur in the city.

And uh what we are now uh looking at are the publications from the Department of Fish and Wildlife related to riparian ecosystems.

These are the lands around the streams.

WDFW has two volumes that they have published.

One, the science synthesis, and the second is the management recommendations.

Most of our time this evening is going to be spent on the science.

We'll just touch briefly on the management.

We'll come back at later meetings to talk about that in more depth.

So what is a riparian ecosystem?

This is the transitional area between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

It's those upland areas uh near a stream that influence a stream's health.

And per WDFW's guidance, these riparian ecosystems should be treated as critical areas themselves, not as buffers.

So previously that land next to the stream that was a buffer.

WDFW's guidance is to treat that as a critical area called a riparian ecosystem.

And these riparian ecosystems perform five key ecosystem functions.