It's a call to order the city council study session of March 31st, 2026.

Clerk, please call the roll.

Deputy Mayor Bushnell.

President.

Councilmember Diaz.

Councilmember Hines.

Councilmember Palmer.

Councilmember Rumba.

Here.

Councilmember Sidalga.

Here.

Councilmember Scott?

Here.

Councilmember Walker.

Here.

Mayor Ibsen.

Here.

Our first agenda item is state legislative planning and permitting mandates.

I'd like to call on planning and development services assistant director Brian Boudet to begin the presentation.

And Steve Eckerson.

Welcome, folks.

Thank you very much, Mayor.

Deputy Mayor and Council members.

Pleasure to be here this afternoon.

And as you said, talk a little bit about state mandates, and this is with a particular focus on planning and permitting mandates over the last couple of sessions.

So I'm I'm Brian Boudet, the assistant director in planning and development services, and happy to be here with Steve Atkinson, the manager of our long-range planning group.

So this is at some level follow-up to conversation that started back in January when Planning and Development Services was providing its uh overview of our department.

One of the things that we talked about was the reality of a lot more state uh bills being passed that were affecting in general the planning and development services department's work program and particularly planning commission's work program as well.

So I know one of the questions that came up as part of that conversation was council's interest in getting a better understanding of what some of those mandates are and how that plays out both in the work program and upcoming policy decisions that council will ultimately ultimately be making.

So we're gonna talk a little bit about um last year's session, 2025, some of the primary land use bills that came out of that, as well as a little bit about this year's legislative session, which as you know just finished up, and um there's a lot of bills that um got adopted this year and are still kind of in the uh waiting for governor's signature phase.

So we'll talk about those, but obviously some of them are still in waiting to see exactly whether they get finalized, and if so, what exactly that final form is.

Um, and then we'll talk a little bit about how that relates to the existing and future planning work program.

So I'm not gonna go through everything on these lists.

Um you have them.

We're gonna highlight a few bills after I sort of give the overview.

Um I'll be honest with you, part of the message here, uh whether intentional or not intentional, is that there is a lot.

Um, and again, these are just the bills that specifically are relating to planning and development issues.

So you'll see a number of things on there.

The other the other big item, and I think no surprise to the council, as Tacoma is struggling with it, but Tacoma is not unique in struggling with housing production, housing affordability, is that that certainly is much of the state's focus over the last couple of years.

Um, going back even further than that, obviously, with uh the middle housing bill that drove part of our home and Tacoma conversation, but the state is continuing to try to find ways to unlock additional housing production.

So there's a there's a bunch of bills on there, like I say, um these are you know a modifying processes associated with residential development, trying to streamline those, um, addressing regulatory barriers that have been identified by the state, by the development community, and others, um, and um just generally trying to increase both production and um tax support for new housing development.

Um a couple that I'll just highlight on here.

Um, in part, well, one of them I'll highlight is the HB House Bill 1576, uh, which is about historic designations.

This is one that was adopted, and in fact, actually, the council has already taken action on this one.

You may recall back in October of this last year, uh, the council updated some of the historic district regulations, and that addressed the requirements of that bill.

Um, in addition, there's um stuff on here about housing elements, uh, minimum parking requirements.

We'll talk about in a little bit.

Um, and uh there's also um idea uh components on here about transit-oriented housing development, which is also a really significant bill that the state adopted um recently.

Um other one on here, I think is uh let's see.

Oh, it's uh it's on a future slide, so I'll talk about it as I get to it.

So one of the big ones on there as is parking requirements.

This is another place where the state has taken a lot of action over the last few years to try to reduce the level of parking requirements, um, as council is well aware.

Parking takes up a lot of space, parking costs a significant amount of money, and this is a place where the state has really taken liberties to utilize parking as sort of an incentive and a carrot as ways to try to encourage housing development of different types of different kinds.

Um, so sort of in the same way that the state often uses tax policy to try to encourage some things and discourage others.

Parking seems to be another place where the state has done a lot of similar work.

So I think as the council is well aware, we have a project that's already kicked off through the planning commission and through the infrastructure planning and sustainability committee to look at parking requirements.

Uh, and so there is a pretty significant reduction that's being considered, as well as the potential for just generally removing parking requirements.

You will see on here where you start adding up all of the different exemptions, um, small units, 1200 square feet and under, small commercial spaces, affordable housing, child care, other things like that.

You start getting to a place where between what the city has done in the past in reducing and exempting parking requirements, and what the state is mandating that the city do to further reduce and exempt parking requirements, you start getting to a place where there's almost more places where there's no parking requirements than places where there would be parking requirements.

So, um, like I say, that that project already uh in the works but is responding to this and other state bills.