The Yakima City Council held a regular meeting on February 18, 2025, at 5:30 PM in City Hall Council Chambers. The meeting included a presentation from the Downtown Yakima Business Improvement District (DYBID) board, the Yakima Valley Tourism 2024 annual report, a public hearing on the Six-Year Transportation Improvement Program, and department items covering traffic calming policy, capital project updates, homelessness solutions, and budget outreach. Two ordinances were passed, and the council directed staff on three future actions including a vote of no confidence in the Yakima County Homeless Coalition.
Fire sheep is there in the morning. Good evening, welcome. I will call to order the Acima City Council of Business Meeting for February the eighteenth, twenty twenty-five. We'll start with roll call, please. Berg. Brown. Here. Present. DCO. Here. Glenn. Here. Her era. Here. Roy. Here. Thank you. Please rise and join me for the palatial legions. Thank you. Um, I'm going to ask Maruffy Vasquez to come forward, please, for interpreter services. All right. Next on the agenda is public comment. There will be 35 minutes allowed for public comment this evening with each person receiving two and a half minutes. When you come to the if you want to make public comment, you haven't done this yet. You need to pick up form in the lobby and turn it into our city clerk. When you come to the podium, please give us your name and the city in which you live. Okay. The first person I have for this evening is Shelly White. Good evening. I'm Shelley White, a lifelong Yakima resident, a mostly retired realtor, and um uh before John, a former director of sales for the convention bureau under Kathy Coffee. And although I am a member of the planning commission, I am appearing tonight as a private citizen. Last week, Trevor Martin, senior planner, came to do a study session with you concerning land use and zoning, and he briefly touched on the new middle housing laws. I'm here to begin to give you more information on those laws, and in the future, I will return to share a series of educated opinions based on deeper research dives that I've done into those new laws and what I have come to believe are the real reasons behind them. So tonight let me start by saying that the state has declared an official housing crisis and has set a goal of building one million homes by 2044. The state cites affordable and fair housing as primary motivations for these new laws. Which, and who can argue with that? Um, but they are the most sweeping land use and zoning reform laws in Washington state history. But I believe that another agenda entirely is at work here, and I feel it is imperative to wake us up. These new laws remove much local control over zoning and land use from cities and counties and seriously diminish and disregard the rights of existing landowners. Although these laws cannot be altered by this council, it is my opinion that you need to be thoroughly aware of them and their implications. The Yakima City Council previously voted to allow, and so did the state, up to two ADUs to be built on any city lot that could accommodate them, considering normal building codes. However, House Bills 1110 and 1337 blow past your earlier decision and now a low f allow four housing units per city lot in cities of Yacima's size and only partially apply current building codes and permit oversight. This means that instead of an average of five homes per acre, you now have 20 homes per acre. In fact, the new housing bills completely eliminate most single family zoning in the majority of Washington cities and urban growth boundaries. So tonight, if you'd like one, I'm gonna hand out packets for each of you containing the MRSC easy to read versions of 1110 and 1337, and I sincerely ask you to please take the time to familiarize yourself with them before I come back next week. So, Miss White, your time is up, but we will gladly receive the packets. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you.