all right good evening i'd like to call
to the meeting to order at 6 33
welcome due to the virtual format of
today's meeting i'd like to start by
providing some guidelines
we have participants attending by
computer and others who may be attending
by phone we're all meeting attendees
please speak clearly and pause
frequently
state your name each time before
speaking mute your microphone when not
speaking
if having technical issues try joining
the meeting using different device such
as your smartphone or tablet or use the
call-in information in the meeting
invite to call into the meeting
for the overview tonight is a joint
meeting with the policy and planning
commission and the environmental board
and we'll be discussing title 18 updates
attendance kristen will you please go
ahead and start with attendance of
policy and planning commission
yes commissioner milligan
here
mr bader
i see you
um
you are you're muted
mr bader yeah hold on
you know we heard you thank you
hey um commissioner voice
here
commissioner zaragoza
dear
chairfall here
uh commissioners lewis and monahan have
excused absences commissioner zaragoza
will serve as a regular member
environmental board if i don't get all
of your names right i apologize
uh mr
davidson here
mr finch
here
fisher
yeah
commissioner hints
he had a last-minute uh
health issue get stung by a bunch of
wasps
al
thank you i'm sorry for him
he should be an excused absence he did
let us know before the meeting okay uh
commissioner
okay uh commissioner madden
mr mcwilliams
here
mr newcomb
commissioner anderson
uh commissioner
bola pragata
thank you mr wall
mr wall
i'm not a commissioner
you're not an environmental i'm sorry
well
are you a board member
yes
okay so i apologize if you all are
called board members and i was doing
commissioner i'm sorry um
and then
board member harza has an excused
absence so board member wall will serve
as a regular member tonight
okay thank you kristen
uh tonight and we're going to cover
three different public
uh three different opportunities for the
public comment
uh we're going to start with public
comment now
and we will have public comment for the
individual topics we will be discussing
and then when we conclude i can't speak
right
when we conclude our meeting tonight
we'll have a last opportunity for public
comment so if you have public comment
that you wanted to talk specifically
about a topic that we're going to be
addressing tonight please reserve that
time
um
and speak then
so kristin let's go ahead and open up
for our public comment tonight
do we have anybody from the general
public would like to speak
yeah if there's anyone who would like to
speak now please raise your virtual hand
and if you are
having trouble finding that and it's
difficult to find sometimes please just
type it in the chat and i will see it
no there is no one no one who wants to
speak right now
okay thank you very much uh kristen
so for regular business environmental
policies is part of the title 18 and
land use updates tonight mini dollywood
will
our community planning and development
director
and katie coat of bhc consultants will
lead our discussion about four specific
areas
aquatic critical areas geohazard
critical areas outdoor lighting and
climate change and sustainability
climate change and sustainability are is
one topic
so i'm going to go ahead and
hand it over to
mini for the rest of the presentation
thank you chair fall good evening
everyone and members of the community
so tonight our purpose of the meeting is
to continue the conversation that we
started on july 22nd
so we introduced where the gaps are and
what our proposed approaches we asked
you some specific questions to
give us some policy guidance
while they were very specific on certain
topics and then we followed up with a
survey uh so thank you all for taking
the time uh to
you know um take give us your feedback
on that and we've assimilated all of
that and it's included in your packet um
so tonight i think um kristen do you
want to share yeah
the powerpoint i think we just want to
uh listen tonight uh i would think we
ran out of time for discussion at the
last meeting so really the purpose of
this meeting is to
be able to um to get you know get
through uh the items that we didn't get
through last time
and in order to
facilitate and to
manage our time um what we're going to
propose is um like uh chair fault said
there are four topics so the first one
with the aquatic critical areas uh we
want to
you know budget at least 30 to 40
minutes and see if we can get a good
conversation started on that topic for
all of you
next slide
so the the main thing i think we've got
good feedback from you i think in
general everyone's supportive of using
the department of ecology's guidance you
want us to fix the stream definition
increase the buffers for streams uh
figure out a solution for ditch versus
stream debates
and also look at how do we treat
non-conforming situations um so we've
given you some additional information in
in your packets tonight in terms of
buffer
averaging or reduction so if you want to
have some discussion about that topic we
gave you some examples of some of the
other cities that you wanted to know uh
how they regulate them um i think for
most part the information is accurate
that we know of
i do believe that city of sammamish may
allow some buffer reduction for smaller
wetlands but for larger ones it does not
so
we also have some maps
in
uh your packet i'd be happy to take a
couple minutes to kind of explain those
um
next slide
so this one is an example of the site i
think the planning and policy commission
we took you on a tour and apologize
environmental board uh you may be
familiar with it this site though it's
on newport
uh called riva town homes uh it has a
larger wetland in the back and i think
some of the commissioners stood on the
outdoor space and we looked at some of
the uh dead um snags that were left
deliberately within the wetlands so you
can kind of conceptualize and visualize
what this area looks like
so under our existing code the the
dashed line is where the existing
wetland buffer is of 75 feet for the
category 2 wetland here
and it was reduced by 25 percent of so
that's where you see the the green
shaded area so that was the wetland that
was approved for this property which our
code allowed a 25 reduction i know
there's some debate about uh how the 25
feet is applied but it was applied for
the entire length of this which is
um
some comments you may have received from
a community member on that topic
but what we really want to focus our
discussion today is whether we should we
should look at buffer reductions or
completely uh look at the buffer
averaging aspect
so under the new department of ecology's
guidance you see the first shaded brown
uh portion if we went with just
establishing uh the standard new ecology
guidance that would be a hundred foot
buffer here
the option two and three
would would make it uh to 75 feet but
you would have to do certain impact
minimization measures you would also
have to
replant the buffer in order to get under
option three in order to get that to
that 75 feet it's still more than what
our current buffers are where the 75
feet could be reduced down to 56 feet
so that's sort of a visual i think some
of you wanted to see what does this
actually mean so we wanted to make sure
graphically we were able to explain this
next slide
uh
so
so overarching um question that we
really are looking for is
you know we've shared a lot of detailed
information for you we've got some
really good feedback from you and from
the community members through the
surveys through the testimony through
written comments that we've received so
we believe we have good guidance uh to
start creating the first draft
but if uh you all can think about if the
proposed approach that we've shared with
you does it meet the goals and outcomes
chart that the council had established
for this title 18 update so that's sort
of uh the bigger question that we're
really looking for you to
to give us uh some direction on
and next slide
so i think we'll pause here you can stop
presenting uh the slide um kristen so
that's uh the critical areas which
included the wetlands the streams
the the aquifer recharge
and the fish and wildlife habitat
areas
so with that i think uh we have some
questions um
that uh we want you to focus on in if as
you discuss this but we're open to
taking any feedback that you may have
that we
haven't uh synthesized
at this time so buffer averaging versus
buffer reduction one or the other or
both
um and uh do you have a preference for
the approach one two or three under um
under the guide guidance from ecology so
just establish the hundred foot buffer
in that example that we showed you or
allow that to go to 75 feet with some
minimization measures which means no
toxic flow into there and you know
there's a whole table from ecology that
we've shared with you in the past
or uh allow 75 feet but also require
replanting with it so those are two main
things in terms of policy discussion
uh but then the the the bigger
overarching question is do we are we on
the right track to meeting the golden
outcomes
so with that i'll turn it over to chair
fall excellent and many can you please
define uh buffer reduction in buffer
minimization
or buffer aubergine so for our
commissioners tonight sure so buffer
reduction is
if you have a hundred foot setback you
can reduce it to 75 feet so a 25
reduction is allowed it can there you
know um i think the community uh comment
that you received talked about a linear
length you can we can go down the
nuances of how we want to structure the
buffer reduction but at this stage we're
just looking for whether even we want to
pursue the buffer reduction and then
buffer averaging on the other hand
really means if you reduce 25 feet here
you have to increase 25 feet in the
other area so the overall area remains
the same but it allows some flexibility
uh if you want to improve in certain
reduce the
reduction you know your in one area but
you have to increase it in the other
area on your property
excellent thank you minnie all right so
let's go ahead and open up for questions
from the commissioners and i've got a
question first from nancy davidson
yes thank you very much this is nancy
davidson chair of the environmental
board minnie just a quick question
is there an option that we don't do
either is
that we don't give an option for buffer
reduction or an option for buffer
averaging so basically what the wetlands
are today are what the wetlands will be
in the future
uh sure there's that's the option i
think we would have to go and say why is
so different that we want to deviate
from uh ecology's guidance
so we would have to prepare a supporting
document uh to that effect and uh we do
have our technical experts herrera greta
presley from herrera is here
um so she can also wait you know do you
want to weigh in on that greta
sure can you hear me
yes
um
i i don't think it's any deviation from
ecology's
guidance
one of the first alternatives that they
offer is
just a straight up
uh
100 foot buffer for category three
uh
150 foot buffer category 3 wetlands or
200 for category 2 wetlands
but then they allow for
some leniency so that you can
negotiate with projects builders that
sort of thing um through the buffer
averaging or the other scenarios
and let me just follow that up with
another question along the way so
let's say
i'm just throwing this out for ideas i
mean this is not a position i'm taking
if you said you weren't doing either but
you really needed to improve the
wetlands such as get rid of all the
blackberries in it or something like
that
um is there a way if you say you're not
allowing those two options that you
could put into the code if they improve
the wetland there is some leniency in
that just
trying to think through some options
here
uh
question to your question are you saying
in the wetland itself or the wetland
buffer
the wetland buffer or the wetland itself
some of them are overgrown as well i
mean it's an option just trying to think
outside the box
yeah there's um there's ways you could
could work that
thank you
all right and thank you uh davidson uh
commissioner
finch
got the floor
thanks jeff all right
uh vice chair speaking um
i had a question many would it be
possible to present i know in past
uh slide decks we had like the options
laid out it's just easier for me to look
to make sure that we're all speaking the
same language do we have a slide that we
could pull up during the discussion or
that would just make it easier for me to
make sure that i'm not
calling option one option two etc um
and then the the other question i had
was i know there was some other feedback
in the packet down near the bottom on
some of these topics
would it be possible
i'm just not totally clear on
the people that were making those
comments so is there is could someone
provide
a summary of what if there was any
comments on this topic within those
others that in some context on who was
making that comment
i just wasn't clear on that
uh are you discussing the survey
responses
not the survey responses that we as the
environmental board did but the ones
that were closer to the bottom that i it
was wet dot someone like jen at wet.land
and
someone else
and i don't know
who those people were
um
at the bottom of our packet we had some
commentary on oh yes uh so those
comments were received uh from uh
members of the public
um
not from the board members is that
so we've attached those did you want to
uh discuss those
okay no i just didn't know if those were
things that the city had like requested
a response from an expert or something
to provide comments so those were just
comments from those were comments from
the public correct
okay thank you
i was going to jump in here really
quickly i can't get my video to work but
um
yeah the
cleaning policy commission we we
continue to get title 18 comments from
the public sometimes they go to planning
policy commissions sometimes they don't
so the planning policy commission has
asked us to include new comments in the
packet each time each time we meet so
that they can get them all in one place
and that's what that is
thanks just want to make sure that
wasn't something different thank you
all right and thank you very much uh
vice chairfidge
so i also have a question here uh this
question goes to i believe katie
you said that king county has
a buffer reduction zone of 200 feet
or 150 feet
can you please go back over uh what
those buffer reduction zones are and how
those zones might be different than ours
if ours starts at 100 it sounds like we
are already at the county's minimum
that's probably a better question for
minnie or greta since that those memos
were their
work product um
i don't recall the king county guidance
speak to that
yeah um greta do you want to um i i
don't recall king county's uh discussion
i think what we were talking about was
department of ecology's recommended
guidance
for the buffers and they range
um so it it they range from you know x
to y depending on the habitat score
um so if it is treed or not trees and
things like that so there's a great
granular way of of categorizing them
um i think that was uh
which methodology we want to use for
that
uh but perhaps if you repeat your
question maybe greta can uh better
answer it sure uh so granted
based on
the department of ecology you're right i
misspoke i said king county
based on the
criteria set forth by the department of
ecology
on buffer
buffer zones
why is there such a difference between
what the city of issaquah has starting
at a minimum of 100 feet
versus what the department of ecology is
recommending
if those are
higher than 100 feet
um
i think
the discrepancy is from
i don't think issaquah is meeting the
minimum
buffer width
in their code right
now um
so you'd first have to
meet your the ecology's minimum buffer
width
and then
wanted to do reducing go go from there
so is this a new gap that we just
identified
i guess that's a question to many
yeah it's it's identified as a gap so in
your in the code update memo we did
identify that our
buffer wits are not meeting the
recommended guidance from ecology
okay
so in our
verbiage
um
in fact in one of our questions tonight
aquatic areas which option is preferred
option 100 foot buffer option 275 with
doe performance standards or option 3
75 buffer with doe performance standards
and buffer enhancements
all three of those options are already
in deficit of
the department of ecology so why are we
only looking at going to 100 feet why
not
adopting the department of ecology's
buffer
standards
yeah let me let me kind of uh take a
step back and explain so
these options are for one example for a
category two wetland i think is the one
we showed you
so under a current code the the adopted
buffer width for this type of a wetland
is 75 feet
so
under the new ecology guidance if you
just want to adopt the buffer width it
would be 100 feet
so it would increase from 75 to 100 feet
but under a current code we also allow a
buffer reduction to go from 75 to 56.
um so these three options are under the
new ecology guidance
so they're just particular type of a
wetland yeah for one particular type of
a wetland okay and we have multiple diff
multiple types of wetlands so
the buffer reduction that you're posing
here option one option two option three
is an example of
what we would do if we had a
uh a criteria that was
a hundred foot buffer
but we have buffers that are 150 feet
and 200 feet that exist in the city of
isequa
yes potentially yes there could be for
the higher quality wetlands yes those
those buffalos would apply
uh
but keep in mind that a lot of our
buffer you know uh wetlands are are
impacted already because of development
around it so it depends on what we
what the existing
condition of that wetland is what its
habitat score is that's going to
determine what the buffers would be
under ecology and it could vary
depending on the type of a wetland
okay
all right and uh looks like we have uh
three more questions here i'm going to
go ahead and switch over to
jared davidson
hi this is nancy davidson again um
i guess my question for you mini is can
we combine these options let's let me
just throw out an idea which is if we
say the minimum standard is a hundred
foot buffer with performance standards
but if you want buffer averaging the
minimum you have to have is 75 feet or
do you see what i'm saying so that
basically we have a threshold that says
this is what we're doing with
performance standards but they have to
do more if they get any buffer averaging
or if they get
anything else so that there's a higher
threshold or more they're doing to
enhance the wetland or off-site
mitigation
to basically achieve
um in that extra 25 feet that they're
not taking they were obtaining the same
quality or the same end results out of
that 25 feet am i making any sense no
absolutely i think that that's ab
absolutely right
the criteria for buffer averaging
can include a required enhancement i
mean that is typical for any kind of
buffer reduction or buffer averaging you
would
you know you can tie the that you
qualify for buffer averaging only if you
enhance the what the buffer
um greta could speak to if we go for and
reach out further based on your previous
question which is enhance the actual
wetland uh then that can trigger
more permit requirements for applicants
you know to get more federal and state
possibly uh greta can speak to that but
that may be a hindrance for someone to
actually require it so as a policy maker
you just have to keep in mind that while
it may be uh
a good um you know
idea but will will it have unintended
consequence that nobody would request it
because it becomes too onerous at that
point and then they'll just leave the
the buffer width alone and not do any
enhancement or ask for buffer averaging
so you just have to weigh those
into your policy
i think a simple
the three options that ecology um gives
you for
buffer width i think using
the simplest one which is option one
which is the most
restrictive so the
has the most the widest buffers
um
and then allowing buffer averaging
on top of that
is the safest bet
for
simplicity um
because once you get into the third
option which allows for more flexibility
for development
um then you you sort of window away your
buffers
and then if you allow averaging on top
of that
then it sort of
reduces it even more
thank you
all right and thank you commissioner
davidson so we're gonna go ahead and go
to commissioner bader
yeah hi this is sarah vader i think my
question might have been answered um
just then but i was curious if
um
i liked the idea that was presented but
i think board member davidson before
about like the 100 foot but if you know
giving some leading scenes if they're
able to enhance um the buffer and i was
curious if
with a 75 foot buffer and
complying with the standards and buffer
enhancements if there's actually an
opportunity if it's better off for the
wetland um if the original like hundred
foot buffer wasn't
that great quality in the first place
all right right yeah that that's the
theory behind um
averaging enhancement um because you
could have a hundred foot of lawn
surrounding a wetland
and
it
has some
uh buffering qualities but not as much
as like a if you were to put it to
forest
but there's also the
temporal
loss or temporal issues associated with
trying to grow a forest around a wetland
but yeah essentially
thanks
all right thank you commissioner boehner
and board member finch you know you got
the port
thank you chair fall jamie finch
speaking um
can you remind me of exactly what the
doe performance standards what that term
means
uh performance standards for what
i don't know it's on this slide i'm
that's what i'm trying to figure out
what is that what that term like the 75
for example the 75 foot buffer with doe
performance standards
i think it's the impact minimization
standards credit that
is in the guidance i think
that if you
uh
you know
have stuff that's not as um
we can try and find the exact table but
there's a whole table uh which ecology
has put together in terms of what those
um impact minimization standards are
so for instance you're not
having toxic flow run into the wetland
you're putting less noise
um
creating uh uses next to the wetland um
and and other things like that so you're
you're minim by by you're putting what
kind of uses you're putting and by what
kind of uh stormwater
features and other things you're doing
that you're taking some about going
above and beyond a little bit then what
would otherwise be allowed on your
problem
okay thank you that's helpful um one
other question so
and
credit and mini you both kind of hit on
the fact that there's this big matrix of
like habitat scores different types of
wetlands
what i'm curious about is it seems like
we're answering for one very specific
type here
is this logic going to be applied across
that whole matrix or how does this the
answering this question apply across the
rest of that matrix
it would this was just meant as an
example to help uh simplify and give an
example where you can
you know
compare 100 to 75 to 75 but yes that
logic the option one two three logic
would apply to any type of a wetland the
widths would change
depending on the quality and the
category of the wetland
and do we have like
like what a proposal for what what each
one of these options would look like for
that whole matrix or is it just like we
need to answer with just this
i think if we're just looking for
guidance if if
you
we would create that when we create the
the code um based on which option you
prefer so the table itself and the code
will be for different types of uh and
categories of the wetlands and we would
establish the buffer widths based on the
category so yes the code itself will
look uh more nuanced it's more of at a
policy level
which one which way should we
be looking at it is what we're seeking
tonight
and if anyone
that matrix is on i think page 19 of our
packet from the end of july meeting if
anyone wants to look at that just for
context
all right perfect uh
and you're good uh board finch
excellent yes thank you
uh
i've got a question for many uh i'm
confused because we were just talking
about option two option three and option
two i heard someone mentioned that
there would be
buffer enhancements
and then buffer option three is
buffer doa or doe
with buffer enhancement so
are we talking about
option two has
performance standards or option two has
buffer enhancements only only above
performance standards which is your you
impact minimizations you know you're
you're minimizing your impact but you're
not really enhancing and planting the
the buffer option three is where you're
minimizing the impact based on what
you're doing the rest of the site and
you're also uh enhancing the buffer
so i'm going back to something that
commissioner bader
had um
asked
and if i'm not mistaking um commissioner
bader and correct me if i'm wrong
when you opposed the question you were
saying great you know let's go ahead and
put in buffer enhancements because we
the buffer may not be that great of
quality
referring to option two
but option two doesn't have a buffer
enhancement so we're
maybe you were thinking
option four would be
75-foot buffer with buffer enhancements
not looking at performance standards
no i was thinking of the option three um
so to me option two is kind of a
non-factor i'm not sure why we wouldn't
want to require enhancements um so it
was either you know if not a hundred
foot are we better off with the 75 foot
buffer or could we be better off with
the 75 foot fair with the performance
standards and buffer enhancements if i
left a term out there it was just um
my mistake but i was referring to the
option three
no no no that's good you just made
option two sound better than option
three
yeah it sounds like um if i may say
maybe option two you know if everyone is
in consensus that we can take the option
to out off the table we just wanted to
kind of give you more options but if
that's something you're not interested
in then it's just comparing one and two
and what i heard commissioner davidson
say is could we even require
buffer enhancements with uh option one
so she created another option to just
say
the the standard if i understood you
correctly commissioner davidson that
that you would just require a buffer
enhancement
with without that that was my comment
yes
okay
okay excellent so we'll uh we'll come
back to this i guess after we do public
comment on this topic uh but we've got a
couple more questions
ron i'm going to interrupt you for a
minute um next actually commissioner
milligan had a question she just sent it
to host privately accidentally
okay we've actually got a couple here um
we've got a question from
um
our
board member wall
uh board member wall gear on you
down at wall
yes
go ahead you have the floor
yes and um
my
i didn't have a question i had a comment
that uh in the past
uh i have
always opposed the uh
getting a buffer reduction for
enhancement
because buffer reduction is permanent
and uh
unless you have continuing
mine uh monitoring
the um
enhanced
enhancement could uh could be just
temporary
and the wetland could
uh return to uh
uh being infested with invasive species
so i guess i would recommend
either if you can do it
a
100
100 foot buffer
and require
enhancement
uh and
at the very
most i would
prefer
buffer averaging
rather than a
overall
reduction of the buffer
okay uh excellent uh
are you looking for feedback from anyone
on that comment
uh
not necessarily
okay
uh we have another question here from uh
board member finch
i think uh board member mick williams
had a question before me
uh you are correct yes go ahead uh nick
williams
um i think this question is for greta
um so
a few minutes ago you mentioned that
with option one the 100 foot buffer that
could be long is that correct
um the existing condition could be
one um it just depends on where you're
at
so if you went with option three a 75
foot buffer with performance standards
and enhancements would that be long or
would that be required to be native
species
uh
you would you would apply
performance standards to that
requirement
which would probably be
uh native species native trees and
shrubs
thank you
actually that was a very good comment or
a question thank you very much uh
mcwilliam
and so uh board member finch you have
the floor
thank you chairfall jamie finch speaking
um
i know that two of the things that we
were asked to consider were around
buffer averaging and buffer reductions
but i don't see a clear call out in any
of these options whether they include
those or do not include those
is that intentional or do some of these
options have
either of those provisions or ideas
incorporated
so if i may answer that they're two
separate questions so this one was
really asking you what buffer woods to
establish
the second question would be
do you want to allow buffer uh reduction
um or just go with buffer averaging so
in for instance in this example if you
cho all chose
by consensus option three to say
uh for a category two wetland you want a
75 foot buffer but you also want the
buffer enhanced for that 75 feet
then buffer averaging would then allow
you to reduce the buffer in one area to
go down to 56 feet but in the other area
you would have to increase it to 100
feet so overall your average
works out to be the same area
so
uh buffer averaging would be on top you
know would be a separate um criteria to
consider so first you have to establish
what buffer widths you want to establish
in the code and then you have to decide
whether you want to allow buffer
reduction
or buffer
averaging so now as we're discussing uh
buffer widths we are proposing
um
what buffer widths to establish
and i can see how it
you know the buffer enhancement is
already required
under option three
but if you
if you chose that then we would go and
consider what additional enhancements
would be needed or can be done what
would justify the buffer averaging
another question there's another
question that will be asked or asked and
discussing relative to averaging and
reductions is that correct correct yeah
okay um
i do think there's a little bit of a
chicken in the egg situation here
because i think those the two things go
hand in hand um but you're nodding and
smiling so i think
but yeah
that's that's what i'm struggling with
because it's all of our discussions are
like circling back to trying to figure
out how to incorporate all of those
things together so i do think it's a
little bit challenging to try to
do this in a two-part question but i
understand that it's
a little hard to
know but uh
it is tough having those separations you
could fold it into this one question i
think some people yeah so if you want to
just discuss both of those topics
and say yes you want option three with
buffer averaging on top of it or no
you know or that's it no but
so so yeah i think
it can there can be multiple options
created out of this framework but this
is the guidance the three options from
ecology and that's what we've laid out
in front of you okay
does the city have a position or a
preferred option on this
this question
you know um in i'll leave that up to the
technical expert greta to say but i
think at this point we're really looking
for
giving you the information so
you can make an informed decision or or
a choice that that will inform what
where we want to go with this um
obviously there are pros and cons like
uh all of you have come to that
conclusion that option two really is is
should be off the table because there's
really no benefit to giving them 75 feet
for a small impact minimization
the the pros for 100 feet are it's easy
for people they don't have to you know
um
do
enhancements or mitigation they they
stay away 100 feet and they don't have
to do the monitoring like
a board member wall was talking about
that with monitoring comes some
accountability and responsibility the
code will then require at least five
year monitoring every year you need to
give us a monitoring report there are
some criteria established for what's
successful what's not successful so
there's more
uh long-term commitment needed
so option one you don't have to do that
you just establish a buffer and it's
easier to implement an administer um but
the con is if it's all grass like um
uh commissioner
mcwilliams was saying then you're left
with no in you know no really net gain
for the environment
so
while there may be some gain and for
easy of implementation but it's really
not a good
option for uh improving the habitat if
it is degraded already um
so but with option
three
you
get the enhancements uh you still get
larger buffers than what you have today
so
you know
so those are pros and cons for option
one and three
thanks mate greta do you have anything
to add to that
um
yeah i don't i don't want to taint your
opinions with my
ecologist bent
uh because of course i'm going to say
make the
buffers as wide as possible and don't
allow reductions or averaging
but i think
generally what i see communities doing
is moving away from buffer reductions
and allowing for some averaging
great thanks both of you
sure fall i think you might be on mute
yes thank you
thank you board member finch and
commissioner milligan you have the floor
thank you
commissioner milligan here
uh now my head is really spinning but
thank you board member finch for uh
bringing that up because uh the fact of
the other topic question two is very
difficult
to not talk about when we're talking
about question one they do go hand in
hand so right now it's questions and
then we're going to have time for
comments later combining these two i
hope so that we can put those two things
together
and
i was just um spending a bit of time
with the
um
goals and objectives for the title 18 um
project and
i i am seeing in that to allow
flexibility
only if it will demonstrably improve
or equal
superior protection in the areas and so
my question is that we've got these two
things split we've got that flexibility
you could
you know perhaps have
buffer
averaging
but the
but it's not an incentive
we've already we would have already set
the standard
with question one
that there is no
incentive
for having a larger buffer or not buffer
averaging
could you say that
how do you combine these two so that
we get the
um the greatest buffer but if we did
have flexibility that we get something
in return it just seems it seems this is
what was so difficult to me to even do
the survey and i didn't do it because
these things are all split up into
sections that they
interact too much with each other yes
that's my it's a comment and a question
how do we
let's get these two together let's move
on
if i may answer your question um
commissioner milligan i think what i
hear you say is go with the
the largest protection but then allow
for flexibility so that would be that
option one of 100 feet but then you
would allow some kind of a
reduction
if you did
some enhancements but you could tie it
to just saying averaging 100 feet but
you allow averaging so under your
scenario where you were leaning if here
if i understood you correctly the
biggest protection but with some
flexibility so that's one option you you
could go and establish 100 foot buffer
but you allow buffer averaging with
enhancements
yeah yeah thank you minnie um i think
you're you're stating a possibility but
not necessarily my preference so i
appreciate that
i was just looking at how difficult it
is to split these two questions
and i'd like to bring them together
later when we um
voice our opinions
so i'm just gonna save it
so commissioner fall if there are more
questions you know we can ask greta but
otherwise you may probably um
want to
uh take public comments and then
deliberation on this topic
yeah we're we're starting to
be kind of in a time crunch here i've
got uh
comments from
uh commissioner davidson
and
commissioner fisher
commissioner jason
voice and commissioner zaragoza so let's
go ahead and just leave it to those four
and uh we'll cover those quickly
um let's go ahead and go to uh
commissioner davidson
mine's more appropriate for the
deliberation so i'll hold off thank you
excellent thank you uh commissioner
fischer
yeah likewise uh i think many also
answered my question earlier
regarding monitoring standards so oh
pass thank you
perfect and uh
commissioner voice
thank you chairfell so i def i don't
have a question i want to say thank you
to everyone who previously did because
uh it's enlightening
um i do think there's a couple things
that we also need to keep in mind
so i'm leaning towards option three i
think option one a longer buffer
with averaging and possible reductions
would be okay
or option three with averaging and again
i think what we need to keep in mind is
option three not only enhances the area
but it also allows the flexibility that
developers need
to make projects feasible
as well as with our dwindling land
supply we're having we're not going to
have these large land agreements um
such as talus and such as is aqua
highlands so when we redevelop certain
areas
you know they need to be able to situate
the lot in a way that makes sense
otherwise one they won't be built or two
they won't be sold
and the more stipulations and
regulations and things that we continue
to put
that price will be transferred to the
homeowner and as most people know um
this clause middle class is almost gone
and it's shrinking even quicker and so
when people talk about justice and all
of these things um this city you cannot
buy a house for four hundred thousand
dollars it's impossible a family who
makes
130 000 cannot afford to live here
so
we also need to be cognizant of the fact
that
when we're building and we're
redeveloping land here um we need to do
it in a way that's feasible for
everybody who's a partner in this and
that also includes the developers and it
also includes keeping our pristine
environment which is why
isaqua is such a draw for so many people
so i think like i said looking at those
two options
option one you can increase the buffer
you can allow for reductions
possibly or but definitely averaging
or number three which i think is better
because you actually enhance the
environment
but again with averaging so they can
situate every lot is unique every
wetland is unique and you can move it
around in a way that makes most sense
nobody's going to buy something that
is
not aesthetically pleasing or doesn't
make any sense if you try to put
a three-story house you know those split
level houses popular in the 70s it's not
going to sell
so just again thinking there's a lot of
different components here want to make
sure that we have the room to move
especially as we move forward in the
next 20 years when we're going to be
seeing parts of old town and different
areas basically be brought down single
houses one at a time as like i said as
we're losing some of our land supply and
we continue to stick with trying to
force some of the building into the
central area
so again we need to allow flexibility
for people to continue to make it
feasible to want to build here
and live here
excellent thank you very much
commissioner voice
and commissioner zargoza said that his
answer was question or his question was
answered so thank you
all right so we're going to go ahead and
open up to public comment
yes
uh no one has their hands right if
anyone would like to speak please raise
your hand
and if you are having trouble finding it
please tell me in the chat we do have
one who would like to speak
i will move you over i believe
she can confirm in a minute so that this
is connie marsh
hey connie you are unmuted
okay yeah for some reason my hand
wouldn't go up
um
my name's connie marsh
and
there's a back story on this that
that that you aren't getting
and that is people let their land
be
[Music]
uh degraded in order to have the lowest
possible buffer
so for example if you have a beautiful
buffer then
in our current code you are not allowed
to reduce it
and
also
you
have the widest buffer if you have a
lousy buffer then your habitat scores
are low
and then you get to develop more
so we have this situation where we have
an incentive for people not to care take
their buffers
because they get development
area if they let their land go to pot so
to speak
not that pot is a bad thing
um
so
so you all
weren't given this backstory it is like
people don't plot about what to do their
la with their land before they put in an
application
so some of these things
that that
you are given
are
um
continuing that incentive to treat your
land badly
if you have a hundred foot buffer
and it doesn't matter you know
because they've treated it like crap now
they get a reduced buffer because
it's a lower habitat score for example
but if you say okay well lower habitat
score you still have 100 buffer you have
to enhance that buffer
so that's going to cost you money you
don't get to reduce that buffer
so they have less of incentive to let
their buffer just go to crap for the
rest of time
and i i watch it over and over and over
so this is not a thing that does not
happen
so i am more
um
uh
interested in how do we get our buffers
enhanced
and kept beautifully and even if people
are are going to redevelop they know
that their buffer
needs to stay great all the time and
even now they should be making a great
buffer because that is actually how we
get things
better and better and better and none of
that is really included in this
presentation which is a little
disappointing um the
emphasis that we can go down 25
of the entire buffer
is gives you an illusion that that is
true right now our code says you
basically get to reduce a corner of that
buffer you get to buffer average only a
corner of that buffer
not the whole line of the buffer so
when they're giving you these options
and comparing them to our prior buffer
it's it's it's not true
so
i guess i would say
um
flexibility in development at this point
in time has allowed people to cremate
their buffers and reduce the habitat and
reduce the value of our streams in
wetlands and i think that the idea is
we need to have an amazing town with
amazing buffers and amazing habitat and
that will
make people want to build here and they
will want to build here our
way
now the affordability issue it's like
okay
you want to live in santa barbara or you
want to live in watts
um i don't know that that is
that's possible to change here but for
me and and our values in the city of
issaquah i
think that
what our goal really is
is to imagine all of our critical areas
with healthy
functioning
buffers wide enough for both wildlife
habitat
and wildlife corridors
in perpetuity
and that is actually our end goal our
end goal is not how do we figure out how
to get development in there our end goal
is to how do we get those buffers
and allow for development
and
so i think this this conversation has
been pitched
for development as compared to being
pitched for both simultaneously
and that's the conversation that i would
like
to to see happen now nancy was the
closest to to that
minnie
was not close at all and so i fear that
staff and administration's point of view
is going to have a hard time combining
with um sort of the community value set
of of environment and and so this
conversation is sort of scaring me
and uh hopefully
hopefully i've given you a different
vision so that
that we can have both simultaneously
thank you
i'm not seeing anyone else that wants to
speak um but i'll give it just a minute
if anyone wants to raise their hand
and connie if you could put your hand on
that would be great
all right i'm not seeing anyone else who
wants to speak
okay excellent uh let's go ahead and
circle back to comments and discussion
so now we're going to go ahead and
discuss this topic
and we have a
comment from
commissioner davidson or chair davidson
all right
hi this is nancy davidson and i'm giving
comments on behalf of two people uh the
first one is one that came from one of
the board members dan heights who could
not be here tonight he sent his comments
to megan jamie and myself and i'm going
to just read those so that we all have
them um i just feel it's fair that he he
sent these at 6 00 p.m so he couldn't be
here tonight so i'm reading what he had
said i'm not sure you'll see this oh
sorry about that that's part of it but
the main point i want to make tonight is
on buffer averaging and reductions i do
not support either of these approaches
and would encourage more clear and
concise guidance on wetland buffers i
feel averaging and reductions work
against the goal of establishing
contiguous habitat and averaging creates
uneven buffers with more
quote edge end quote and less
core end quote habitat which is not the
direction you want that ratio to go when
prioritizing habitat for wildlife and
limiting the impacts of invasive weeds
i do personally support the inlue or
even wetland banking approach being
incorporated into the land use code from
my experience on site mitigation is
often an attempt to fit a square peg in
a round hole i feel that it is often not
successful and you can create healthier
contiguous habitat within lieu or
wetland banking programs that focus on
larger tracts of land
i do encourage the city to think about
how these options can be kept as local
as possible for example at lake samantha
state park and those are dan's comments
to
um to be presented into this um meeting
tonight
there you go that's one
in terms of nancy davidson's personal
comments um i am in favor of
sticking with the biggest
buffer possible and that would be the
100 foot at a minimum with performance
standards i think we have done a lot
to impact the environment and our
streams and our habitat
i too do not support significant
reductions unless there's something
really big that you can do such as as
dan suggested
some kind of mitigation bank out there
that we could actually get something
bigger and better
i think the city has taken some very
significant hits
and the environment and our ecosystem is
showing that
and i
think that we should be thinking long
and hard about how to improve things and
not just focusing on how to support
development that's my perspective thank
you
and thank you very much chad davidson uh
we're gonna move on to
let's see where is my place
it looks like
board member
fisher
board member fisher has a floor
no comment from me
excellent
and board member finch
the other floor
thank you chairfall jamie finch speaking
um
my perspective is uh
similar to nancy's in that i think we
need to be prioritizing maximizing the
buffers and moving to that in the
example that we've been given the 100
foot along with performance
standards
i think any decision to
make any reductions or averaging
need to be
met with something and i understand the
the
administrative complexity of this but if
we're going to have something that
permanently to
commissioner walls uh common early that
permanently impacts this wetland
the mitigation needs to be somehow
permanent as well and and five years in
my opinion is not enough
um i understand that it's difficult to
monitor there's there's all kinds of
complexity but i think if we are looking
at ways to
ensure that
our developers and and ultimately the
landowners that end up that end up being
on these properties um
become stewards of the property if they
are close to a buffer and they've done
anything to uh to decrease the buffers
around that wetland so
i don't know what that that option looks
like but i think that's
if there's nothing that can
guarantee that we're going to have
permanent performance of with native
plants and and
an effective buffer
um it feels like we're not really
accomplishing much
thank you
thank you board member finch and
commissioner milligan you have the floor
thank you chairfall commissioner
milligan here again i'm gonna save you a
lot of time because i'm going to talk
about question number two even though
we're not on it
because i don't think i could separate
these things as we just discussed in our
question period
the
buffer averaging or buffer reduction
when i look at the goals and objectives
from the um in the tabular form the the
directions that we've been given
there's a desire to have an increase in
protections and not allow a decrease in
protection so i hear from this and from
the survey and from
the fellow members of these boards and
commissions that buffer reduction is of
no interest to anybody
so we can move that off the table
simplify where we're going and say okay
are we allowing buffer averaging
setting that aside for just a moment
going back to questions one two three i
really appreciate the bold comments by
the chair and co-chair of the
environmental board with the foot buffer
and
performance standards but i think that
also from the guidance that we have from
the goals and objectives that were we're
supposed to look at the opportunity to
provide some flexibility and respect for
property owners
and one way i think we can do that is by
incentivizing further
improvement to our wetlands
as the public comment was speaking about
degraded wetlands what are we going to
do if we just leave them that way if we
just say 100 foot buffer
done leave it simple that's not adequate
if we had a combination of 100 foot
buffer
with performance standards
but if you wanted a 75 foot buffer you
have to do not only performance
standards but the second one which i
can't remember the wording that had
ongoing
five-year
review and reporting so that the health
of that
buffer
uh is for the future and not just a
band-aid at the time i think that kind
of incentive
would help us get better wetlands
rather than
just wetland buffers
so i'm looking for an incentive
opportunity here in combining these
things but for averaging i don't know
why would we bother if we want to allow
buffer averaging then let's tie it to
another incentive
let's take it up another a notch if you
want a buffer average then you have to
do something even more
i think those are the kinds of steps
that we could outline for people and
also i have one question that um could
be answered do we have a wetland
inventory of
where our wetlands are and how big they
are and
you know regardless of degradation
that's it thanks
and thank you commissioner milligan and
so i have a question comment here uh to
um
i like what uh
chair davidson had mentioned about um
keeping it to 100 foot and um vice chair
finch i think we need to we put enough
stress on our wetlands already we
definitely need to
i think
buckle down and protect what we already
have because the amount of stress that
we're placing on
our wetlands and the buffers
um but i also like what commissioner
milligan had just said so
why do we have to be at a 25 i mean 25
percent why
why 75 feet why can't we be maybe at
take it down to 10 10
or 15
and still get an enhancement and that
way we have a little bit of flexibility
to be able to
um to jason's point
offer that to developers so that they
can put a square house on a
on a round lot
and it will it'll work so um and we get
something in return
but we don't have to go all the way down
to 25. i think that's too much we've
already given up too much so let's not
give away everything yet that's
maybe half it um
to say
some smaller number than 25.
uh okay and that's my comment um i'm
going to go ahead and move on to
board member mcwilliams
thank you
williams here so i agree with all of you
i think the 100 foot buffer is
appropriate but i would like to see 100
foot buffer with enhancements and a
monitoring period on it and jamie this
might help you a little bit the
monitoring periods from my experience
are three five ten year and those are
establishment periods the idea behind it
that the vegetation is at full maturity
by that point doesn't need any
monitoring anymore
um i do think that we could provide
incentives to developers for
some form of buffer averaging
um
but i think that should be left up to
the land use professional that's
reviewing this because they're probably
closest to the situation and know more
about it than anybody
so i'm going to look to the expertise of
the staff on that
excellent thank you and
i don't see any more questions or
comments
we are getting we are over so we do need
to move forward uh
is it okay for me to conclude just give
me a nod
yeah okay all right so we're gonna go
ahead and conclude this topic and we're
gonna move on to the next topic uh mini
you have the floor
yeah uh thank you commissioners great um
suggestions and thoughts so i think
we folded the averaging conversation
into it so i'm not sure if you want to
have that again
i think i heard it loud and clear
that there isn't much support for uh
buffer reduction but we can take a a
call on that and and you know if you
want to ask anyone who hasn't spoken who
is in favor of buffer reduction
uh then we can have a discussion about
buffer reduction versus averaging
otherwise i think we've heard uh
averaging is as a possibility that we
should explore not everyone feels uh
averaging is uh needed um so i think at
this point where
it may be better to not just get back
into a conversation about averaging or
reduction but just to kind of look up
for consensus on both of those topics
together you know i heard
um
some
comments uh about 100 feet with
enhancement
so we can take take a call for how many
are in support of 100 feet with
enhancement and and if they
you know start with that and then um
i heard averaging you know if if someone
says no averaging at all then i think we
can ask that as a second question
um just just to kind of get get a
consensus vote on where where everyone
is that those are my suggestions but
feel free to see how
what makes sense to the rest of the
conversation here
so minnie are you suggesting that we
skipped the presentation that you were
going to give on question two
there is no presentation on that it was
just a question um asking so there is no
additional information
that we are ready to present at this
point it's just
looking for guidance yeah
so guidance uh well we've heard
i think we have two extremes here we've
heard 100 we've heard 75.
so
what about a consensus among all of us
say
uh
10 or 15 percent
we wanted to ask the city for guidance
on that
for averaging or for reduction
well either or
so what's the ques i mean what do people
think of the averaging versus the
reduction
because that's what you're asking us
right is correct which one are we going
to pick so let's go ahead and decide
which one we're going to pick and then
of that do we want to stick with the 70
the
100 or 75 or do we want to do something
in between
and that would be the compromise
bringing everybody together in a
consensus let's go ahead and uh
commissioner milligan
thank you chairfall nina milligan here
thank you minnie for summarizing i heard
you say
that
that you heard us say
then there isn't any support for buffer
reduction
and that there is
some support for buffer averaging
especially if it might be hooked to some
incentives or some other benefit
now i think she put that on the table
and said
is there anybody who disagrees with that
because i think that and she can nod or
shake her head to say this is what she
thought her take home was if you
disagree with that speak up now
that's what that's what i heard i don't
disagree with that by the way
excellent okay thank you commissioner
milligan uh
board member fisher
yeah cameron fisher here um just
listening to money there i i would
encourage uh if there is going to be
some kind of uh reduction or uh in a
buffer that we do it up via buffer
averaging versus reduction uh with
enhancements uh i think the
they'll uh improve the net gain of the
the wetland that you're ultimately
trying to protect
while still allowing development within
the the area
still creating a uh a wildlife corridor
and and the enhancements with uh with
with that uh buffer averaging uh so but
i would uh steer away from the buffer
reduction thank you
excellent thank you board member fischer
uh
commissioner zaragoza
thank you chair mr richard serkos i just
wanted to kind of make my
uh
my my state and things are clear i'm
definitely for
uh increasing to 100 feet
and no reductions at all but the
possibility of averaging and averaging
with enhancements would would be great
so
that's all
excellent thank you uh commissioner
zargoza and commissioner voice you have
the floor
thank you sure foul and
so i am for
buffer
averaging and reductions only in certain
certain circumstances i do think you
could tie it to the performance
standards and also
upgraded improvements but i do think
it's necessary i mean planning is the
most important thing a city can do
and we're thinking of as a quad a day as
it stands and we need to be thinking
about issaquah in 20 to 30 years and if
we're not allowing the opportunity for
redevelopment
because we're making things so
restrictive
um this city is going to find a way like
any pipe under pressure and then we're
going to be left with a lot of bad
decisions and bad up bad choices to make
in 20 to 30 years because we've
restricted ourselves so much
for today
when the city is going to look a lot
different in 30 years so i think like i
said giving us some flexibility
asking for
again some of those enhancements we
could even increase the buffer zone
but again we need to allow for
flexibility for future growth and also
for future redevelopment
again the city is not going to look like
how it does today in 30 years
thank you commissioner voice
okay question for many are you confused
yet
no i i think it the more
it's great to see some of the ideas per
from this discussion right everyone has
a good great viewpoint and it's and our
job is here really to make you
understand the pros and cons of each
policy choice that um that that's out
there so
uh
i think uh greta may have some
input as well
um
she just emailed me i want to make sure
your
uh
point can be made here greta do you want
to
make your point
sure um
i just wanted to make sure
there's
there's more options than just for
the buffer reduction and the buffer
averaging you can still have
buffer mitigation on
as an option or
it's always out there right so
uh if if a development wants to
impact
a buffer they have to provide an equal
or more
uh amount of a buffer somewhere else in
that same
you can apply either that same wetland
or that same uh watershed
anyway
um but i just wanted to make sure that
that
you know that
reduction and averaging are the only
options for getting a better white lip
buffer
so in that example that you just
explained greta for if i may break it
down so if you have a hundred foot
buffer
you require enhancements uh that's one
of the the topics that i think that was
discussed
but if you were impacting that 100-foot
buffer
um
and it's not a reduction but you you're
allowed to encroach into the buffer up
to a certain point of course
but that can then be
um
either averaged out on your property
through buffer averaging or you could
have some other opportunity to enhance
it somewhere else is that
did we understand your option correctly
right well buffer averaging is just a
mathematical um
operation whereas mitigation you have
you're you're bound by all the
performance standards um such as
planting standards monitoring standards
and reporting standards
so there's a little bit more
restrictions on top of
offer mitigation
as opposed to averaging
yeah
so what i'm saying
what i'm saying is
you can do away with reduction in
averaging and i don't think anyone's
gonna complain maybe the developers
might complain but you will still have
the buffer mitigation
component of your code
so it sounds like a can of worms at this
point because we have
if we
we allow mitigation
then
if someone wants to cut into the buffer
and they don't want to do
uh buffer averaging
and they don't want to
basically they're doing buffer reduction
but they're going to
pay that forward in some other area of
the
in issaquah
i can understand that might be
okay in some
buffer zones but other buffer zones
might be too critical or too important
to do that with so now
we're there's a whole new matrix or
criteria that says
well you could do it in this type of
buffer zone but you may not want to do
it in this type of buffer zone like is
aqua creek we don't want to
reduce the buffers anymore on naziqua
creek because there's already houses
built on the creek
so if a developer was to come in and
they wanted to do buffer averaging or
buffer reduction
and they want to expand onto
you know somewhere else down there in
lake samantha then that's kind of
defeating the purpose
but if they had a non-fish bearing
wetland
they could cut into that buffer and
maybe add it to
a part of the state park or add it or
not to the state park but add it to the
lake some amish area or to the iseq
creek area but how would they do that
they'd be buying into a trusts or a lan
development
right yeah there are mechanisms for
doing that um
but you could you could set your
parameters however you want you could
you could say
we only want mitigation on-site
or you could say
within the same watershed or you can say
within the same wetland complex but
maybe off-site
um so you can set it how whatever makes
sense
for your situation
i can see that being a case-by-case
basis because it depends on the wetland
quality of atlanta and the importance of
the wetland
true but you could you could say
um
for a category for wetland you can do
mitigation off-site er in lieu uh at a
mitigation bank but for any category one
or two wetlands you can't do that
okay that sounds better
because that's
that's a giving that's to jason's point
it's giving developers options and
flexibility
where it's not so critical
and to
uh commissioner fish
finches and um
davidson's point
of being more restrictive and in
protecting the environment to
board member walls point so
i
i think that's a golden opportunity but
how as a commission are we going to
decide that tonight
yeah i think tonight we're just looking
for um guidance so i think what we can
do tonight uh accomplish tonight is
eliminate the options that we don't need
to spend time recreating i think the
buffer reductions there was less support
for but there may be one or two folks
that may
want to keep that on the table um
the uh the other thing i think is out of
option one and
uh three there's more it sounds like
there's more support for option one if
we can just kind of take a tally and how
many people are in support of one or
three that we laid out to you
and then uh the exploration of doing
mitigation i think we can we've got
enough in order to give you more
detailed language for the code that can
give you more examples when we bring in
our first draft so we don't have to nail
it down tonight but we're seeking for
larger
guidance so that we don't spend time
crafting code language for something
that you there's completely no interest
or guidance on um
so that i think if you can accomplish
that
you take a vote on
are there people still interested in
buffer reduction
or just some more flexibility whether
it's buffer averaging this mitigation
proposal that greta had
we can we can get more
crafty with details and proposals for
you uh when we come back to
with some code language how would you
like us to uh
vote or send you our
show of hands maybe anyone for buffer
reduction
can i just make a comment yeah
are you able to see that in the chat
sometimes it doesn't show up
um so i just want to say that um i
support everybody with a hundred percent
um
buffer 100 100 footage buffer
with the buffer enhancements
and um
and then i also
uh see what jason is saying about the
equity and um
so i'm what i'm hoping is that
this will encourage when there's less
space and it's already happening in
issaquah i'll encourage people to build
upwards
um with both housing and parking
rather than outwards so when i first
moved here in 1984
um we weren't allowed to even have a
two-story building as i recall so it
everything's sprawled out
and there's a lot more room
to go up which i think is going to help
with equity
so i liked your um idea minnie
that we
we add one one more thing which is
keep it 100 foot and then add the
enhancements to protect the aquatic life
the buffer enhancements
thank you
okay so
you want to show a hands mini so we can
wrap this one up
sure so i think we um we did the um the
reduction so some flexibility with
buffer averaging whether it's through
averaging or the proposal that greta
explained we can you know look at that
so i think should we explore more
flexibility as long as there's a net
gain for the environment and flexibility
for the development
show of hands on that
so it seems like we have a pretty good
consensus on that so what was the
question
the question was if
um
we want to have allow
some flexibility whether it's through
buffer averaging or the proposal that
greta explained about mitigation in it
and it could vary we can get nuanced
with what that flexibility looks like
but having some flexibility which is not
buffer reduction
as a straight go that'll lead to a net
gain for enhancement
uh and provide flexibility for
development
depending upon the
buffer area
correct we'll get to the nuances through
our code language yeah we don't need to
get into
uh sorting out all the nuances but but i
think at a general policy level do you
want us to come back with some good
uh options
that gives more flexibility through
buffer averaging or the proposal that
greta just explained
significant number of hands on that last
one yeah
so and then the last thing i think is
the 100 foot with enhancement option
that you all discussed and came up with
which is different than the third three
options we had laid out which was the
100 foot without the enhancement
but it seemed like you all
had a good discussion and
wanted 100 feet with enhancement if we
can get a show of hands for that
proposal
so like on my screen i see one two three
four five six seven eight
and folks that don't have their camera
on
can't tell but
um
someone just showed up
okay
so majority of you uh for that option
okay
so i think
at this stage of our code uh preparation
i think we've got guidance on the
aquatic critical areas uh obviously this
is not a done deal if you have other
questions or thoughts we have support
you know already have any detailed
questions you're confused about
something please reach out to me we want
to make sure we we give you all the
information that you need to make an
informed decision on this
excellent thank you minnie let's go
ahead and move on to geohazard and
critical areas
yes um
so kristen do you have the slide
up
i think we got very clear guidance from
you on
um on your written responses i think
that was really encouraging to read some
of uh the creative thinking of um
you know what i read in there was um
you know some examples of when you
thought larger buffers should apply so
those were really good you gave us some
guidance on when to incentivize over um
lower impact hillside development uh we
heard clear loud and clear
no tall retaining walls um
we did and you know you do understand
that some of these geotechnical things
have to be case by case so there was
validation of that will need to be done
through geotechnical analysis of each
development proposal
we heard some concerns about mapping
inventory primarily for cost concerns so
i think that those were our key
takeaways from your survey results
and we shared our proposed update
approach with you previously
we do have our technical expert jim
johnson you had some great questions for
him last time so he's here if you have
any further questions to answer those
um but but really what we're looking for
is
um
you know are we on track of meeting the
golden outcomes chart
uh with the proposed approach that we've
shared with you
so you can take off the screen for this
one
kristen thank you
okay and so minnie do you want me to
yeah i think one approach would be to uh
if anyone has any questions they can ask
that um and jim johnson's here you can
then take public comments on it and then
you can just do a deliberation of if you
uh think of any ideas that we've missed
let us know
okay that was really short presentation
i was expecting more
yeah i think we've done a lot of
presentations the purpose of this
meeting is really to listen to you all
um so
i understood okay so let's go ahead and
open up to uh commissioner questions
i'll give it a couple a minute here
and commissioner our board member
davidson
down the floor
i just have a quick question i know that
in our last conversation about this um
there was a conversation about a
landslide that happened in dallas and
has there ever been a code that has
required a developer that's working in a
hazard area such as a geologic hazard
area to require that they have insurance
or some kind of bond uh substantial out
there so that you know to basically hold
the city and keep it for a period of
time so the city's not
um left-hand
um handling this in case there is a
failure of some sort
yeah we've noted that comment so we'll
be working with our city attorney to
come up with some mechanism uh in the
code that requires that
all right and thank you very much board
member davidson looks like she's the
only
comment at the moment so let's go ahead
and open up to public comment
kristen do we have any members from the
public
like to speak tonight
yes
uh connie marsh would like to speak and
if anyone else would like to speak
please raise your hand but in the
meantime connie i will move you over
bonnie you are a panelist and you can
you've already done it
so that was interesting because you
you were asking us to agree to a
proposal but you didn't i wasn't clear
on what your proposal was
so out here in the world i have no idea
what you're talking about but i can tell
you the things that make me crazy about
our geotech
we allow uh we have a 50-foot buffer
standard for steep slopes and we allow a
reduction to a
foot steep slope buffer with a critical
area study and so
um
we're pretty easy about our reduction to
a 10 foot
buffer instead of a 50 foot buffer
and uh
the answer to that needs to be just no
way
there is no way that a 10-foot buffer is
appropriate on the
remaining land that people are trying to
develop especially if it's greenfield
development and it only causes problems
so
if your proposal is that you are going
to say
50 foot steep slope buffer
with some much
larger
flexibility like down to
30 foot buffer with a 50 foot setback i
might not dislike that so much if you
are also adding information on things
that are not steep slopes but things
that are erosion hazard and landslide
hazard areas that do not meet the steep
slope buffer criteria
then i would be interested in seeing how
we are protecting those and also
protecting the trees and the vegetation
that keep those slopes in place
along with the water that combines with
these steep slopes in order to make our
landslide hazards and so
because maybe i should have read it but
i didn't i don't know what you're
proposing
those are the things that need to be
in there we can no longer
grade and create retaining walls that
homeowners associations and the
community is responsible for maintaining
to the millions of dollars
over time we have to learn how to build
with the land and um and
drain with the land and keep our slopes
with the land and that will help
alleviate all of our steep slope hazards
many of our geotech
issues so again this is probably more
overarching and holistic than you had
discussed but it is the way i look at
our city
thank you
no one else has signed up or has asked
to speak
okay thank you
kristen and so let's go ahead and open
up to commissioner um
comments and debate
and so let's go ahead and
yeah comments or questions
pop them in there and commissioner
milligan you have the floor
make a chair fall don't mind being first
this time
anybody who knows me this is one of my
favorite topics
i found this
there's another reason why i didn't do
the survey is that i found that the
options made available to us did not
seem like appropriate alternatives or
didn't seem like uh you know solutionary
do you want to do this or that well this
isn't an or that and then there's so
many others i'll just point out a couple
of things i just think this needs a
little bit more work um one question
number 14 in the survey should other
environmentally aesthetic alternatives
to child vertical retaining walls
be incorporated into the land use code
okay well i'm glad that um it seems to
be interpreted that people don't want
tall retaining walls yeah we don't want
tall retaining walls
i for one like the speaker and the from
the public would rather have us build
with the land i don't want another
environmentally aesthetic alternative
i would rather have people build with
the land if there's a hill build with
the hill if there's a steep slope stay
away from it anyway i didn't think that
the options were
were useful to me here's another one um
when engineered slopes or walls are
created to meet the steep slope definite
mission should they be required how
critical why are we allowing engineered
slopes or walls to be created i mean the
whole premise was something that i
wasn't for so how can i answer that
question
i you know you guys
people who know me you just opened up a
pandora's box i'm just gonna go with it
number 17
should development applications be
allowed to regrade existing steep slopes
to a more a stable configuration no i
think we're trying to say we don't want
to change the topography and we worked
on this several years ago we changed the
language and i hope it doesn't revert
we
we
improved it a little bit we do not want
substantial changes to our topography
period
and if if we're going to be making some
changes now i'm just putting lay it down
please help me
find a way to not go backwards but to go
forwards on that initiative and to be
less manipulative of our environment and
to be more uh integrated with it in our
building
that's it it's so scary going first you
know you guys could all disagree with me
but uh that's me that's who i am bye
thank you commissioner milligan uh so i
have a comment uh that's kind of in line
with uh commissioner milligan i agree
with her on all these fronts
when looking at issaquah
looking at squawk mountain specifically
squawk mountain all the properties in
squawk mountain are built
the only way to build anything new is
either one to tear something down or to
buy a lot that is vacant
the lots that are vacant are vacant for
a reason no one's been able to build
anything on it because there's on steep
slopes
if we
ease
the requirements for steep slopes and
allow people to build on some of these
properties and i'm i look at these
properties i you can walk right past
them
there are landslides waiting to happen
i mean they've got water oozing out the
sides there's really lush ferns ferns
are growing on the side of the slope for
a reason
it's because they get a lot of water so
i i think at this point
there really isn't any property left on
squawk mountain that fits the definition
of it's buildable if it isn't already
built it's not really buildable so we
shouldn't be having a conversation about
having
um reducing steep slopes the the
mitigation around steep slopes i think
we should leave it
as it is and leave the 50-foot buffer
in place we shouldn't be allowing people
to
go from 50 feet to 10 feet because we're
going to build a retaining wall
retaining walls are man-made they fail
and they're expensive to maintain and
we're going to find that out the hard
way when king the king county wood wall
is going to fall down and we're going to
have to pay for it
but
uh
right off of newport is a developed
proposed development across from the
school
where they want to cut into the hillside
so where's the
buffer in that there is no buffer
they're actually cutting into the
hillside 20 feet and going up 50 feet
which means there's actually 50 feet of
mountain is going to be cut out so that
they could put in a development
i i think we need to have this
conversation i am absolutely not for
uh reducing the buffer
and uh i
looks like we have a
question or comment from um
board member finch
thank you cheerful jamie finch speaking
um i'm not go going to go into the
specifics of of the questions here i
just i think
taking a step back
and this echoes some of the other
comments that have been made
as i look to the future of squad what i
hope for where our development is focus
is the places that are already developed
will continue to get more dense and that
we find the majority of
future
whether it's low income regular income
alt whatever housing that we find is
primarily sourced from the existing
developed land and so i think
a lot of what it's not just this section
but
this section stands out
because it kind of goes in conflict with
our desire to keep
development to the forest or to the
valley floor and keep it off of
the steep slopes around the valley
so i do think that
as we think about
our direction on this
um i would
propose anything that we're doing that
focuses development in areas that are
already disturbed and obviously there's
there's a there's exceptions to that but
um
that focus development on areas that are
already disturbed in the places that we
have stated as a city that we want to
have development which is on the valley
floor so
obviously there's there's other hazards
other critical areas on the valley floor
so that's easier said than done
but but that would be my take as a
kind of a higher level on this question
thank
you excellent thank you board member
finch and board member uh mcwilliams
thank you chair um echoing on your
comment chair fall um
i i agree with you that we should have
setbacks on steep slopes and not reduce
them but you mentioned something that
kind of alerted me of cutting into
slopes to build roadways and whatnot to
get
ingress egress up there so how does that
play into this because i don't see that
anywhere in the code that defines that
mini is is there something in the code
that talks about cutting into hillsides
um you know i
jim do you want to take that one
all right just unmuted
um
so the code does not really
differentiate
specifically about cuts
what it does talk about is what you can
do
within the critical areas either making
a cut in a steep slope
or a cut in a landslide area
and how it addresses that is it talks
about whether the cut can be stable or
not
so it doesn't really say you can't make
cuts it just means it just
the code addresses the stability of
those cuts
thank you
yeah the other thing i would add to it
is i think the questions that we had
posed was which you all had really good
feedback on was when in what
circumstances should the buffers be
increased i think a discussion today is
you don't want to decrease them i think
that may be
[Music]
a little bit of takeaway but i think
what i read
in your responses for
examples of times when the buffer should
be larger than 50 feet so let me read a
couple of uh answers here you said if
the if it's at the top of a steep slope
uh the other one i think you said if
they're um you know we're going to get a
lot of rainstorms and um with the
climate change so therefore keep that in
mind as you consider increasing the the
the setbacks
um the other one i think was uh where
there's more fire uh hazards um and such
things of that nature or where there's a
landslide potential so i think that
that gives us a little bit of guidance
on on at times when more than 50 feet
maybe perhaps makes more sense um
um so i think we we did get some
guidance from you all in terms of some
examples um to give us some food for
thought when
we want to put some language in the code
for larger buffers
so i just wanted to point that out
because i think the discussion was
focusing on reducing the buffers but the
question really posed was when do you
think the buffer should be larger than
50 feet
okay i don't see any more comments or
questions
so with that let's go ahead and
uh commissioner milligan has
she's waving her hand so she has a
question or comment
i'm just waiting for round two
thank you uh it's so good to hear from
the fellow commissioners milligan here
um uh chairfall i did want to uh just
touch again on your comments about
squawk mountain and squat mountain can
in many ways be one of those examples of
development that happened in the early
times where people who lived on a house
on a hill lived on it still lived on a
hill
after they built their house
and i want to point out that
redevelopment will be a challenge going
forward especially with communities like
squawk mountain and i
had some personal experience on mercer
island
and they were rewriting their
residential code because of
redevelopment so i think that we can't
ignore what will happen on squawk
mountain just because it's already built
on
it will be rebuilt on
so i don't want to neglect it and then
to something that many just said at our
previous meeting we talked about whether
we were recognizing
slopes because they are steep or because
they are steep and maybe
other slopes aren't as steep but they're
still unstable
and i think mr johnson said something
about that last time and i don't
remember the criteria about how he would
it would determine it but that would
broaden the
areas that would be protected
and
i think generally speaking when you look
for consensus if the consensus is to
increase our protections
uh in this and be more vigilant
yes let's do
it thank you
excellent thank you commissioner
milligan and kudos i
i second her
uh that's it for comments on this topic
here so uh
any the ball's back in your court great
uh thank you i think we've covered the
aquatic critical areas we've covered the
geological hazardous area so we can
excuse uh
jim johnson from this meeting he's
welcome to stay but
i want to give him an opportunity i
think we'll move on to
discussing
uh climate change and outdoor with that
i'm going to turn it over to katie she
will facilitate that
those topics
um kristin i think we'll take the
sustainability topic first and then do
outdoor lighting last
it's well thank you
um so
um
we wanted to give an opportunity to have
a longer conversation about the climate
change and sustainability topic it was
cut a bit short at the july 22nd meeting
and um i also wanted to acknowledge that
since july 22nd uh you all have heard
draft policies from the climate action
plan but
that the environmental board has been
working a lot with that group and that
also the ppc recently met on those new
policies so
um you're aware of a little bit more of
the direction the climate action plan is
going and then the title 18 group has
also been talking with the um cascadia
consulting
group that's doing the climate action
plan so our intention is as as the
policies become actions and strategies
that those actions and strategies
that are focused on title 18 or code
items
get pulled into our title 18 update work
directly and that we're in close
conversation with that with with um
the climate action plan folks so that
their trajectory is that the plan would
be adopted by the end of the year
and so it's our hope that we would be
able to start drafting um
preparing draft language
that addressed sustainability throughout
the code uh earlier in 2022
but for the purpose of tonight
um
we wanted to
present again some of the areas where
sustainability and climate
related
code set code can appear
um i have a list here of seven places
you'll notice that
two of the number six and seven are
actually
green building requirements and storm
water requirements that are outside of
title 18
but from the the survey responses we
heard that
um
the preference was not to have a
standalone point based system but rather
to
incorporate some point-based system but
also to elevate
the entire code or or
to elevate many sections of the code
to hopefully achieve better
sustainability results
so some of the places where that can
happen um one would be with land use
codes so this this has to do with
which uses are allowed in different
zones where mixed-use development maybe
is more appropriate um
mixed-use development helps to
reduce vehicle trips and
places housing near services and jobs
housing density near those services and
jobs also has climate
benefits and then
also looking at areas that may become
more vulnerable to
climate impacts as the years
go go by
particularly
thinking about
wildfire and flood hazards and so
looking
at the city of issaquah and trying to
find those places that could be
most vulnerable and
looking to limit the development
intensity there
we've talked a lot about critical areas
protections today but both critical
areas and tree retention and landscaping
codes
help to protect the existing environment
and to enhance the environment
and
also maintain and enhance our tree cover
and landscaping in general which has
climate
carbon sequestration benefits and also
other benefits to the environment
numbers four and five have to do with
electric vehicle charging and then
multimodal facilities such as bike
facilities or scooters or other things
that
may be
part of
requirements for new developments to
help to
encourage
travel that's not
fossil fuel based
and then these last two requirements
green building and green storm water our
requirements are are both ways to
to
reduce energy use and resource use and
also
provide better stormwater infiltration
and blood prevention and water
cleaning benefits so
the last two would not obviously be in
title 18 but um
part of what we will be doing as the
climate action plan uh
comes to a close is working on
thinking through which of these
um
could be required in some sort of
point-based system
and
which would be required for every
development which possibly
be
required an elevated level for
certain
incentives or point-based um
frameworks
so
we wanted to
take questions or comments in general on
the sustainability and climate change as
it relates to title 18 but also
see whether there's anything missing
from this list or
if there are items on this list that are
perhaps of a higher priority than apps
okay we'll go ahead and open it up to
commissioner questions
and our first question is from
board member don mcquilliams
hi katie um question for you and you may
not know the answer to this on number
seven your green storm water
infrastructure
so under the
current npds your storm water discharge
permit you're already required to use
green storm water as your preferred and
common mechanism when developing so are
you indicating that you want to go above
and beyond
the ecology requirements for this
you're correct that i'm not a stormwater
expert but i i know that there are
different levels of enhancement that can
go above and beyond the npds guidance
so we would be looking at you know they
would need to meet that minimum
obviously but um
if there were
you know there's different um created
artificially created wetlands that that
have different benefits than
stormwater systems that are underground
for example and some of those
are not required by code but um
are options for certain sites that are
trying to achieve higher levels of
filtration for water quality reasons
i'll be interested to see a little more
on what this point based system would
look like so maybe chat with your
stormwater folks and circle back with us
yeah definitely we'll well we're still
developing i don't think that the um
that the specifics of the storm water
code have been are are under
consideration right now but i do know
that the stormwater code
is going to be updated in in the near
future
so that might be coming later
all right thank you
and we have a question from board member
annie newcombe
thank you this is anne newcomb
um
so good job putting this list
together um
i've got a question so um i've noticed
that the hoas have a lot of rules that
are going to
make it difficult
um for us to meet our climate change
um or
our climate goals our climate action
plan goals
for instance
you know no um
inability to
hang laundry
and um
and then also i noticed uh
there's no irrigation so i'm i'm
thinking that um
having
gray water uh you know go out to water
people's yards would be helpful
and um if if the hoas are saying that
it's not possible then i'm wondering if
um
if this gets changed in um title 18
will the hoas have to comply
um so the hoa agreements are outside of
title 18 and the city
doesn't really have um
much control over those
okay but i think that there could
definitely be
outreach from the city as as a city
initiative to try and work with
different communities to incorporate
more climate-friendly practices into
their
ccnrs
[Music]
but i think that at this point the the
code wouldn't have the ability to go in
and change hoa rules
thank you for that
and then as far as the tree retention
and landscaping
requirements
um i know
i'm guessing
that the city of issaquah even though we
have a 51
tree canopy which is higher than most
other
cities
i'm guessing that residents are going to
want to keep that
um
so
i would like to propose that somehow
there's verbage that says um if you're
if you're developing you're
you're needing to cut some trees down
to
create something then you need to go
plant trees someplace else
in town if that's possible
yeah thank you for that comment i think
that's uh definitely
something that is uh already there's
already tree replacement um provisions
in the code but we're looking at
strengthening those and making sure that
they work and achieve
the desired tree academy coverage so
that's actually the topic of the next
ppc meeting oh good because i thought i
read something and i heard somebody say
with the title 18 that
we might be losing half of our tree
canopy or maybe i read it wrong um
so it's good to hear that if somebody
develops
they have to
replant the trees
thank you
all right and thank you very much board
member newcomb um
so i have a question regarding
topic number
[Music]
five multimodal facilities commute with
trip reduction and parking what do we
have i mean where are we
what are we looking to
right now because we have set policies
that are being developed
has that been ironed out or is that
being worked on by the transportation
board
so existing in code there are
requirements for bike parking and
certain large developments have to have
commute trip reduction
programs in place um and also obviously
there are parking requirements
what we would be doing um
after the climate action plan is done is
looking at these
regulations and seeing if there are
places where we can adjust them to
to be
um
to be i guess farther reaching for
sustainability goals one example
with parking
there's a recommendation that
one way to get more accessory dwelling
units would be
to not require
the adu to have its own parking place
because that is often a barrier
if you have to fit another parking place
on the site so one option would be if
you wanted to have more adus and that
that is a barrier to to take away that
requirement i'm not saying that we're
proposing that but that's just an
example of one revision that could have
to do with parking um
commute trip reduction goals could be
could be expanded to not just apply to
larger projects but
to apply more broadly in the community
and some of that may be
more of a programmatic level that the
city works on and some of it may be
connected with um mutual developments
but i think we haven't worked through
that yet
and maybe that would be an opportunity
to work the transportation board to talk
through some of those options okay
my thought was on the commute trip
reduction is working with partner
major employers
employers that hire that hire a
significant number of employees or
residents within issaquah like let's say
microsoft have a partner program with
them where
people could work from home or do
something else or a shuttle
that would take them to redmond instead
of having to put all these cars on the
road
um
and then the other part was uh bike
parking and so on so
i'm glad to hear that transportation
board and i think i heard you right is
going to be working on this and then
that means policy and planning
commission we're going to also hear
about this before it gets moved forward
without the idea
well any any changes to the code are
definitely coming to the planning and
policy commission
um
and
the example that you mentioned with the
with the microsoft shuttle that would
not be part of the title 18 update
because that
that code requirement if we're talking
about microsoft located in
redmond we wouldn't be able to require
that of microsoft but if there's a major
company coming
issaquah
for example
the new costco um
the new costco corporate building uh you
know if they were to a certain size they
would be required it's actually a state
program that large um
destinations are required to have
commute trip reduction measures in place
so
i'm not saying
for the commute part with an employer
like microsoft completely out of our
jurisdiction i totally understand that
but have some sort of program
where
the city could reach out to
the boeings the microsoft's
the amazons and work out some sort of
partner program maybe a sister city kind
of program where
we work with other city agencies to help
trip reduction
by
motivating
these organizations
by through
um working with us coming up with
solutions that would help reduce trips
i think it's a great idea
not sure who the right person
i'm not sure that it's part of the title
18 update
um
but it you know it could be part of the
climate action plan because that the
climate action plan touches all levels
of the city so that could definitely be
everybody wants to work from home
that's been a huge benefit and a lot of
employers are realizing that works so
um kristin you had a
well i do i mean for years the city's
had a program in place where we work
with employers who have only changed it
it was to over 75 employees and we go in
and talk to the employers and work out
programs with them costco is matter of
fact the highest
uh
vancha program in the entire state
so we do have it we unfortunately are
lacking a program manager for that right
now um but i you know i it's still in
place i don't know what the monitoring
is like but but there's something out
there
i see
excellent all right that was my question
uh looks like we have a
question from commissioner uh or board
member davidson
thank you this is nancy davidson
and this is just kind of a general
question how does um artificial turf fit
into all of this and the reason i'm
asking that is
it reduces water consumption
i know some homeowners associations
don't allow it
but it seems like it could touch a lot
of points
but i'm not sure how effective it is it
um recharging aquifers and things like
that i'm not as familiar with it as i
probably should be is that an option we
could be looking at in our landscape
requirements basically to reduce the
amount of water that's going on the
ground or does that in
exchange reduce the amount of water
that's getting into the aquifer and thus
into the wetlands and other places so
just i just a little curious about that
you know i don't have a lot of
experience with artificial turf but i do
know with the
new
sports fields um
for example the new middle school that
that had a huge art had a foot you know
artificial football field and um it has
significant drainage requirements
because the the turf doesn't
soak in the water the same way that
lawn would so
it preserves water because you don't
have to water it but then it also
doesn't have the same water purification
and retention um that that a natural
material would have so i think there's
definitely pros and cons
um we haven't considered it but we can
add that to the list of some something
it seems to me like that would be an
interesting thing to at least have in
your
pocket for landscape requirements um you
know
trying to look at reduce the amount of
water that's going on turf i know a lot
of people don't water their lawns but
it's an option that's sitting out there
um
that still provides that kind of
greenness in a different sort of way
i've seen it go down very effectively
but a lot of places don't allow it i'm
not sure what the city is but i think
it's something
i don't know the pros and cons of it but
it's something to consider there you go
yeah
thank you board member davidson and
board member uh newcomb you have the
floor
um
i would just say that um we would want
to know what the ingredients are of the
artificial turf because if they're
plastic
that would be
bad for
the aquatic life and
as it goes downstream or even right
there
and then also
it would kill off all the microbes
underneath the um
underneath
and
um even grass
all plants sequester carbon
so um while we might be saving some
water
and we would be
giving up
some carbon sequestration and
potentially
poisoning aquatics with
plastic
so that would be my comment on that
and thank you board member newcomb i you
took the same question right out of my
mind or out of my mouth so i was gonna
ask the same thing
uh okay so i don't see any more
questions
let's go ahead and open up to public
comment and then we'll come back to uh
discussion
i believe we have one person who would
like to comment one moment please
honey i think you wanted to speak so i
made you a panelist yep here i am
all right so you know i was just
reading through the agenda and i'm
confused because
most of this is not really where i could
have ever seen to anticipate what i was
supposed to say
so
um here we go
uh at six and seven on this page talk
about point baits
uh based systems
but
so i'm gonna say that's like leads to me
but i don't know what green storm water
infrastructure is so
i can't
comment on that if there is green
stormwater infrastructure that would
help our stormwater going into lakes and
amish and help our
our streams and fish
i think it should just be required
instead of being part of a point based
system where they could choose to do or
not
do that
and
green building requirements
are similar if we want it just ask for
it
and then people will know what they have
to do and they can do a pro forma and
they can say yeah we can do it or no
it's too expensive and most developers
you know what
they want to build a new sequoia and
they'll just say okay we know we have to
do it and so we'll
we'll just do it
um the
tree retention and landscape
requirements
um
again
i i don't know what those mean so if you
are saying that we are aiming for
um
pre-retention
that will
keep
significant trees and trees that add
habitat
uh
and we will make it so that those need
to be retained in order to develop
i agree with that the ability to cut
down 80 foot dug first
and plant
two inch tall dug first at the top of
lake tradition
does not play with me
um it does not serve the same function
an 80-foot dog fur is a huge thing it's
a big carbon
sink it sucks up and treats storm water
and provides shade so tree retention
needs to be based upon the function of
those trees and what they do
not just a holistic ability to be able
to remove trees because they are
inconvenient and plant them elsewhere
and hope they survive because right now
we can plant trees elsewhere however
they we don't know if they get planted
and we don't know if they live landscape
requirements are similar
um in theory they're supposed to be
uh required in perpetuity
but
no one checks to see
if if landscape requirements are done in
perpetuity so the the list
to me
is is sort of interesting commute trip
reduction one of the big things is uh
school trips because we all groan when
school goes back in session and every
parent starts driving their kids to
school
and that is one of the single largest
impacts to the street system that we
have yet that does not fall under
commute trip reduction because it's too
it's diffuse right
and so that's seemingly
uh
not addressed in this so rather than
commute trip reduction for only those
larger businesses it needs to be some
sort of goal or program that as a
community we want to achieve in order to
make it so that our roads are drivable
for local people
and
um better for the environment and none
of the language here
sort of covers the concept of reducing
congestion
and making our lives better on a daily
basis while we lessen our impacts to the
planet
so there is a lack of personal
accountability
in our climate change and sustainability
here that
that um i think is going to be necessary
if we're going to wait if we're going to
make any progress toward our goals
on this it can't be just about
uh
them
it needs to be about all of us
uh thank you
okay kristen uh do we have any
additional
members of the public
no one else has raised their hand to
speak i'll give it a minute though if
you'd like to speak please raise your
hand
no no one else would like to speak at
this time
okay excellent uh we're going to open up
to
commissioner comments and i saw
it looks like a commit or a board member
newcomb uh but i wasn't sure if she had
a comment or question because it came in
just as we were transitioning over to
public comment
uh support member newcomer you have the
floor
awesome thank you this is anne newcomb
um i would like to suggest that um for
the green building requirements that
we ask for five star enviro house
code minimum
it's a more holistic approach
and um and then also
i got to thinking about the um
the
landscaping requirements and it would be
really nice if we could require that
people
use like organic gardening practices and
don't use
toxic chemicals on their yards
and the organic gardening practices will
sequester more carbon
as well
so
that's it for now
thanks
excellent thank you
board member finch
have a floor
thanks cheerful uh this is jamie finch
um
i don't see any major gaps in this list
i do think in terms of
areas that i would focus in on the most
uh i mean i think
land use and the way we develop and
continue to grow responsibly is probably
the most important because everything
that we try to do to reduce the impact
of climate change and be a sustainable
community will be centered i think
around that um so i think that in my
mind it's number one on this list i
think it's also number one in terms of
priority
uh and then
the other ones that i would look at as
other critical areas to focus on
probably wrong terms given that's one of
the options uh
number five number six
um
and number two and three obviously kind
of go hand in hand so i think those are
those would be kind of in my second tier
of uh areas that that help assuming that
we're developing
responsibly help to ensure that we have
a vibrant ecosystem as well as
uh
the population or the citizens of
issaquah continue to be able to uh move
about the city efficiently so as well as
in homes and buildings that are built
efficiently so those would be how i
would prioritize
from that list thank you
excellent
excellent thank you very much board
member finch
uh
commissioner milligan you have the floor
hi thank you commissioner milligan here
thank you chair fall
and thank you for the
comments to leverage
just to quickly
weigh in
uh number one land use as i said when we
met before
the mixed use development and housing
density is already planned in issaquah
for the central issaquah plan
and
the objective of adding housing density
to other residential areas the objective
stated was to reduce vehicle miles
traveled and it doesn't do it if all
you've got is houses there
all right so i reiterate looking at our
commercial deserts where we have housing
developments and with um
plenty of density plenty of people
living there who can't get anywhere
either because transportation options
are limited or they're just simply car
dependent
uh and
to go off of the vehicle miles traveled
we're talking about the commute trip
reduction act in this slide and and it
did seem a little bit
misplaced to talk about that here
because it is a state program that's
already in place what we wanted to do
was reduce vehicle miles traveled and
the mobility master plan addresses that
well and a lot of work went into that i
think that that
could provide the direction that we need
to interpret in our land use code
a couple of things that come to mind
there besides
areas housing areas where there aren't
any
services any daily needs services is
also the placement of our schools
especially elementary schools
they can be more dispersed and that can
reduce vehicle mouse traveled since
everybody seems to want to drive their
kids to school
uh and then i wanted to touch on trees
and and reiterate and i'm glad to hear
support here about increasing our tree
canopy especially in our built
environment certainly we have a higher
number and we should have a higher
number but how do we
how do we protect and increase our tree
canopy and our built environment part of
that goes to
what our audience member brought up
is about enforcement how can we
encourage the city to invest in
enforcing the standards that we create
here
in tree retention
and even in board member newcomb's
comment about
organic requirement of using organic
materials in our landscaping or even
native species now this is all doable
issaquah highlands has these standards
and they enforce them
and uh that's a third of issaquah so
it's it's not infeasible it doesn't stop
development you know these are things
that are compatible with development
yeah over four thousand homes up here
and very high standards same thing goes
for
green building requirements
increasing our rebuilding requirements
is not going to stop
building because
look because the quahogs look at dallas
they didn't have a problem with that and
then i want to
ask for clarification
about code and hoa rules if we increase
the strictness of our code
do
hoas need to follow and i saw i don't
know my screen this way now but i saw
lucy solomon in the room earlier she
really knows the answer to this question
but i understood that hoas could have
stricter rules
that hoas could not have
less strict rules than the city so i
just wanted to bring that back up
for um re
re-answering
that's it thank you very much
i don't know if i should reply to
nina right now but my uh
uh
um
my understanding is the same as yours
um
i guess the question
would be to take the example that um one
of the other commissioners or board
members gave was
clotheslines that's a really classic one
that many hoas do not allow them
i think the question is
the city is the city going to require
clotheslines
so you know it's a question of whether
um
there is a restriction that could be put
in place
but the city would choose to put a
restriction in place
that would lead to to the city being
more strict and then the hoa having to
address
okay uh
[Music]
we're moving on to
four peopleians
yeah hi don mcwilliams and i think this
question is for you katie um does this
program the climate change
sustainability or some other similar
program in the city have an education
and outreach component to it i.e a staff
member devoted to that
reason i ask because i'm hearing a lot
of questions here that can't really be
solved through
regulating people but through a
aggressive education and outreach
program you could certainly make some
headway
yeah so the the city has an office of
sustainability and um
right now megan curtis murphy is is the
head of that or she is the she's the one
that's heading up the climate action
plan um she's actually only with the
city for another month or so and then
they're hiring a new person but it would
be that person
that would um
be the best suited to organize public
outreach and i know that there there
will be some public outreach
as part of the climate action planning
process
and maybe going maybe the climate action
plan is also asking for additional
community education outreach
okay so maybe more to come on now
all right thank you
all right and thank you very much uh for
memory of williams
uh i've got a
comment here
question comment um it's a multi-part
here so the first part of this question
is having to do with our tree retention
uh looking at
um
our agenda page 26
26 page 28 um item number seven
um
it says insurers retain ensures the city
retains 50 tree canopy i know we've
talked about 50 tree canopy and so on
what is the definition of tree canopy is
it
we got we're going to retain 50 of the
trees within the city of issaquah
because to connie's points we have some
trees that are four inches tall and we
have some trees that are 300 feet tall
i've got
three trees in my backyard that are
about 300 feet tall if i was to cut
those down
how many small four inch trees would i
have to plant to get the same carbon
sink out of those
so are we calculating 50 tree copy
boy that's a good question um i
i
will look and hopefully get a a nod of
approval from the other folks from the
city staff but my my hunch is that that
number came from
um
an
aerial image taking the drip lines of
the trees or the the
circumference of the tree canopies
and
taking that as a
fraction of the overall
land area of the city to to come up with
how much is covered with trees and
there's
aerial image you know aerial photography
tools that can be used to
to tell what is what's vegetation what's
building
um that's my hunch but i honestly am not
sure exactly how that 51 number came
came to be
i'm going to this is kristin leeson and
i'm going to concur with katie i recall
our gis
i'm going to call them guy this
department but one person in particular
who
calculated our free canopy for us
and that was what he did
okay so we can definitively say
the tree canopy is based on the width of
the images in gis
it would be the the amount of land area
covered by the
the trees branches
so
you know a small four small trees
versus one large tree may have very
different tree canopies to your point
okay
so
and the one thing i would add um
commissioner fall or just for
clarification is there's actually
companies that do this that specialize
in at the parks department contracts
with them
um it's not based on our gis because
rgis isn't updated every year
but they
do fly and do the calculation as
described
okay
so
we can definitively
our 51 tree canopy has been definitively
or mathematically calculated and is
reasonably accurate
when we go or when a developer wants to
go in and clear out a lot
maybe one of the things that's missing
is
not so much capturing the 50 tree canopy
but the quality of those trees or
the effect of
the environmental effectiveness
of the tree canopy that is being
proposed to be removed needs to be
replaced which means if they want to
remove
50 trees that are 300 feet tall
it's going to require them to have to
replant
a lot more
four-inch trees and
you know
one-to-one ratio
um
so i think there's you know we're
talking about gap analysis or
identifying some gaps i think there's a
gap here
in the quality of trees that are being
removed
and
how are they going to be replaced and do
those trees really need to be removed
is maybe something that the city should
be looking at and thinking
we wanted a
very rigid tree
policy moving forward because we have
grown so much
that we really don't
we can't afford to lose any more trees
than we already have
because our population is expected to
grow the state wants us to almost nearly
double our population within the next 30
years
so we're going to put an enormous burden
on the existing tree canopy we have we
don't want a bunch of small trees to
replace the big trees that are already
here so maybe we need to put some more
verbiage around
this tree policy and how we calculate it
and the policies around removal of trees
and
the quality of those trees
yeah if i can just quickly respond
commissioner fell this is um a really
important topic to this code update and
one that you'll be getting lots of
detail on for the september 9th meeting
when we'll be addressing the tree
retention code
so um
that we're definitely considering the
quality of tree the health of tree the
size of the tree and what are
appropriate replacements
and considering
uh significant trees and landmark trees
so
definitely be talking about that
but for this for this exercise we're
just trying to make sure that the list
of topics is correct
um knowing that each of these seven
topics needs a lot more detailed
fleshing out um
and attention on their own
excellent okay thank you very much for
your feedback there uh
kitty uh
moving on to
the next comment here is from
commissioner voice
thank you chairfell you have all these
wonderful
questions and responses mine's gonna
seem pretty simple so
first i'd just like to uh
also concur with board member finch i
think it's a pretty well laid out list
um
i think like i said as far as somebody
asked the question you know how would
you prioritize it i think one three five
are all probably right up there i think
three and five simply because you can
get a lot of community buy-in
um and then one obviously is going to
have a huge impact not so sure about
number six although i know it's very
popular
but number seven it seems to make a lot
of sense so just as far as you guys
getting feedback it seems like a pretty
pretty good starting point to continue
to move as you guys continue to narrow
the focus and flush these things out
again i think somebody made the point
about parking and i think a lot can be
done with parking so
um it's a win-win for everybody right
developers don't want more parking it's
expensive we don't want more parking uh
impervious surface runoff
that's where we want to put most of our
density right so right now in the
centralizable area we've got 70 percent
is impervious surface so i think right
there is a win-win for everybody
involved so
i guess maybe a little bit of focus on
the parking aspect but uh that's how i'd
kind of rate them
but i think the list seems pretty pretty
good pretty good to be able for you guys
to be able to continue to narrow it down
i don't know if that was the original
question but i hope it was because
everybody else was so thoughtful so
thank you
[Music]
thank you very much commissioner voice
uh and board member annie newcomb
of the floor
so um
would it be appropriate to put
a code restricting
gas
pipes to be hooked up to new
construction
so that would be um
similar to the city of seattle that new
new construction can't be using natural
gas heating and
cooking is that
what you're suggesting yeah
that's definitely an option that
cities can consider
it would be part of the building code
rather than
the title 18 because title 18 doesn't
touch
most things that are inside the building
but that's definitely
something that
could be proposed
oh and i know we're not getting into the
nitty-gritty but maybe i could just say
one thing about the trees um
are you looking at climate resilient um
trees and fire resilient trees
as well when you're thinking about what
to replant
as
things get warmer
um so the the
list of approved trees the city has a
list of approved trees right now that
will be updated as part of the tree
retention work
um i don't know if a climate resilient
and fire resistant filter has been put
on that list but that's a really great
comment that i think we could pass along
to the um
to the consultant that's working on the
trees
awesome thank you
all right and thank you very much uh
commissioner newcomb i'm not seeing any
additional comments or questions so
let's go ahead and wrap up
and then
throw this back to uh mini
to continue on with the next topic
mr phillips yeah i think he's gonna wrap
it up
one more so um
if kristen you can just skip back one
slide
um the last topic we oh two slides i
guess
it's to the outdoor lighting there you
go
um so for outdoor lighting we um
presented a couple questions in the
survey that we felt we like we got good
feedback on um there were some comments
about so we asked about
um
doc lighting and how to acquire that
whether it should be to new development
or all new and existing
and then also asked about
using how to use lighting as a way to
achieve different urban design goals
and there seem to be some good consensus
that outdoor lighting
for docks new dock lighting it makes
sense obviously to require
some restrictions on on new development
but also
um perhaps later when docs are being
uh
being repaired or replaced or some some
level of change that at that point they
would be required to come into
complaints but with whatever new
lighting
standards we might have for docs
and then also that there was some
support for for using lighting for these
urban design
as well so staff feels like we have
pretty good direction um
to put forth or to put together some
draft lighting code so we're open for
additional questions and comment at this
time but we didn't have any specific
questions regarding lighting
all right thank you very much katie i'm
going to go ahead and open it up to
commissioner questions
and commissioner milligan do you have a
question
no one's going to go first
okay i am not seeing any questions on
this topic
board member andy newcomb has a question
will there be an led
requirement
for reduced electricity use
so
we part of the update um
to new industry standards will be
changing um nearly everything to leds
thank you
okay that is the only question we've had
so we're gonna go ahead and open up to
public comment
right now no one has their hand raised
for public comment but i'll give it just
a minute if someone would like to speak
no one would like to speak at this time
okay and so i'm going to go ahead and
come back to
commissioner
comments or discussions
not seen any
okay last chance
paul can i just ask one maybe at one
consensus question um
based on the
update approach that we've proposed we
get
since nobody has any comments i just
want to make sure can we get a thumbs up
consensus that the approach that we've
laid out for out for updating the
outdoor lighting standards
is consistent with the goals and
outcomes chart
okay and uh katie you got your answer
i
i did get an answer but now i see that
uh commissioner voice has a comment so
well
oh okay
we'll just have to make him wait because
he's too late i just can't go ahead
commissioner voice go ahead
thank you chair foul so the only thing
as far as
being
tied into our
our goals and policy goals um one thing
i noticed reading it is so is that also
every
retrofit everything is considered that
it needs to be upgraded lighting
um so if somebody
um
i don't know puts a small addition on
their dock would that also include um
updating all of this or are we talking
about like a 50
um i think i forget what standard it is
but there's something in old town that's
somewhat similar like once you reach a
percentage
then
the new code or the the requirements
come into play is that similar for this
or is this kind of different
i guess that's a question
i think it the details haven't been
drafted yet but i think it would it
could be a similar um
there's some standards that once you
if you have to replace um
or enlarge something to a certain number
and often it's 50
of the value or the size that then you
have to come into compliance with
all of the codes generally it acts as if
sure and i i guess i'd be generally in
favor for that that was the only part
that was kind of tripping me up was
you know are we talking about every time
someone um
for whatever reason
has to upgrade or we talk about
percentage so if that's the case i think
it's a win again we help out
our friends below the surface
and also i think aesthetically it's
important we want our city to be
beautiful so i see a lot of good in this
one
all right thank you commissioner voice
that is all the questions and so we're
gonna go ahead and close out and move
over to reports
kristin would you like to go ahead and
discuss any reports um i i can do that
i'm happy to but i also think that the
environmental board you've done a
fabulous job tonight and you can
probably go now
you don't need to stick around unless
you want to thank you thank you
everybody
nice having you on great discussion
tonight
so the only council report that i have
kitty if well you i don't i'll leave it
up to you um the only council report
that i have is that the sign code is
going for public hearing on september
7th
in case you all want to tune in and
listen to that then you can provide your
own comment as residents not as
commissioned members if you'd like to do
that as well
um many do you have anything else to
share
no nothing else to add
okay
and
so other business and announcements
uh we just have the title 18 public
comments that were submitted since the
last time that we met and if you guys
have any questions on those we can
address that if you'd like to
okay
and
schedule
schedule
um schedule
is really long and you'll notice that we
sort of learned our lesson after the
first environmental discussion that
maybe we need to break things up into
two meetings each time
so we went from about 18 meetings to
about 36 meetings and carries us out to
the end of 2022
so and in some cases we have three
meetings and i realized today that i
left one out so we're going to add
another one but
um
yeah just take a look and let me know
ahead of time if you're not going to be
able to make any of those
and just you know eat healthy so you're
you're ready to go
yeah
that's how
excellent
i like being needed
we all like being needed
okay so with that let's go ahead and
conclude and uh i'm going to adjourn the
meeting at 9 15.
[Music]
you