It's too hot here. Too hot here. Good evening everyone. And welcome to the August
25th meeting in the Planning Policy Commission. The first thing on our agenda this evening
is the approval of the minutes from August 11th. Do I have a motion to
approve the minutes? I have a motion to approve the minutes. Do I have a
second? Second. Any further discussion or changes? All those in favor say aye.
Aye. Tonight we're gonna talk about sustainability
and the city of Issaquah. Where we are, how we're doing, and how you
categorize how we're doing. So, Megan,
are you going to give us a presentation and update on what's going on? And
while you're getting up there, I'm gonna just do a quick intro. Ron wrote in
and had a very right on comment on, were there any decisions to be made
tonight or is this just a preview of all the things, one of all the
things that you're gonna see on October 13th for the public hearing? And the answer
is yes, it's one of those previews so that you don't feel overwhelmed. You may
still be overwhelmed in October, but we're trying to give you pieces of it as
we were finished or almost finished so that the public hearing on the comp plan,
all the amendments, I think there's seven or eight There are many of them that
we weren't able to finish this year just because things happened and we weren't able
to finish. It's listed in your packet all the ones that we weren't able to
complete this year. But the purpose of these previews were just to get you a
little up to speed on some of them. And to let the listening public know
what's going on. Yes, because we don't want them to be overwhelmed. But look at
these people, they're not overwhelmed. We picked the greatest people this time. We had awesome.
PICS THIS TIME. YES. TO GO WITH OUR VETERANS. YOU KNOW, IT'S HARD WORK BUT
A LOT OF THINKING BUT IT'S A LOT OF FUN DOING IT. SO MEGAN, YOU'RE
ON. GREAT. SO I'M MEGAN CURTIS MURPHY WITH THE OFFICE OF SUSTAINABILITY. SO THANKS FOR
HAVING US HERE. OVER TO THE MIC A LITTLE BIT. YES. So as Trish
mentioned, we're still in the process of updating the indicators for this year, but wanted
to provide a preview for you all to look at. And the report will be
coming out later this year. And so this is an update to the sustainability indicators
that we do every other year. So the last one was in 2014, and that
was, and that is now an appendix in the comprehensive, the 2014
comprehensive plan. So this will be an update for that. 25? So I want to
talk a little bit about what the indicators are and where they came from first.
So in 2008, Mayor Eva Freisinger assembled the Sustainability Sounding
Board, and that had a board of 16 community leaders who met for about nine
months to a year to talk about sustainability in Issaquah. And they developed a long-term
vision of sustainability and recommended some indicators to track long-term progress
towards community goals and targets, and also so we can see trends over time
about how data is changing. So the board identified eight core
sustainability themes and 26 indicators.
And so this is the framework that they used. So they developed a vision and
guiding principles. Then the themes came out from there and then there was
discussion about which of the indicators to include and we'll go through those. So
just so we're all on the same page here. So the vision and principles, I'll
go ahead and read the vision. In Issaquah, we are striving to achieve the highest
possible quality of life for today's citizens and for future generations. Quality of life means
livability, a livable community enjoyed by all, where natural resources and the environment are
protected, the economy is healthy and vibrant, and citizens are supported, active, and
contributing. We recognize that Issaquah is not an island. In order to grow and live
sustainably, we must connect to and cooperate with our neighbors. The way we live our
lives is a cornerstone of a sustainable Issaquah. And so here's some of the guiding
principles there. So these are the eight
themes. So I'll go through each of these today. Each of the themes also have
a vision statement with them. And then also I'll go through a couple of the
indicators, not all of them, but a couple from each of the categories as well.
So the first is basic needs. And the vision here is that Issaquah residents will
feel safe and have access to food, shelter, and healthcare. AND THERE'S FOUR INDICATORS UNDER
THIS CATEGORY. THE FIRST WE'LL GO THROUGH IS COMMUNITY SAFETY. SO THIS IS MEASURED AS
THE TOTAL NUMBER OF CRIMES PER 1,000 PEOPLE. AND IN 2015, THE CRIME RATE WAS
55.9 CRIMES PER 1,000 PERSONS. AND SO THIS IS SLIGHTLY LESS THAN 2014,
BUT A LITTLE HIGHER THAN 2011 THROUGH 13. AND THE DATA FOR THIS We have
data from previous years as well, but the way that the data was reported
changed. It used to be under nonviolent and violent crimes, but now it kind of
just shows everything together. So this could be incidents from just graffiti in a
park to more serious crimes. I did have a question on that. How does that
compare to similar sized cities and other jurisdictions? So we started getting into that a
little bit. I was talking with one of the officers and they're going to look
at that a little bit more in the future. It's comparable, but it definitely depends
and there's a lot of factors going into it. They're saying that sometimes they have
different ways of reporting. So sometimes an incident may be reported in one city, but
a similar one not in another city. So hopefully in future years as we kind
of go through the indicators, we might be able to get a little bit more
comparison between cities, but I don't have that today. Aside from
crime rates, has there been any looking either in the initial group that came up
with these indicators or years since as to other targets or indicators that we could
use, such as utilizing Issaquah Municipal Court's recidivism data or
court processing data to kind of give us more than just a crimes number. Right.
So, yeah, this was developed from the sounding board in 2009. We are thinking of
maybe doing some sort of overall update, like maybe a 10-year update to start to
look at is this what we still want to be tracking and measuring. So that
we would definitely want input from the community to hear more about that. We do
have some kind of more anecdotal data from the National Citizen Survey. So that went
out this or in 2014, and to a sampling of residents and had
questions about All sorts of things. So one of them was on community safety. And
for that, according to the survey, 91% of residents felt Issaquah was a safe place
to live. And that was 38% gave it an overall rating of
safety as excellent and 53% as good. So that's kind of more of an
anecdotal piece that we have.
The next one is food bank use. So this is measured as the total number
of individuals and families served. And so we work with a lot of across departments
to get the data from the city and then also with a lot of our
community partners. So this data comes from the Issaquah Food and Clothing Bank.
So here you can see that the total number of services went down in 2014
and 15 and in talking with them in 2014 they implemented policies
to ensure clients live in the in the service area which is the Issaquah School
District. So with that new policy update they think that they lost probably about 15
to 20 families and the families come continuously so that kind of makes up for
the services and they were and when they do that they also direct them to
other resources. So that kind of explains a decrease in that number. Additional question there.
You just stated that they use the school district as the data point. And given
that several school district members are outside city limits, I mean, is there another
indicator that can be used? Or I mean, how does the food bank collect that
data? I'm not sure exactly. I would have to double check with
them. I'm not sure do it each time someone's coming in for service or just
kind of a yearly check. But yeah, I know they do track
that data though. Okay, the other question I had on that was
has the sustainability group looked at updating this indicator? It seems like there
would be data available from the state as far as other assistance
resource usage that may provide indications such as amount of people or dollars spent on
welfare or unemployment that may provide some more solid numbers as opposed to just food
bank use in terms of where families are struggling. Yeah, I think that's a great
point. I think that there, again, when the sounding board came up with them, I
think that there's a lot of discussion about all the different types of data sources
that could be used. And they started and they kind of had to PICK ONE
OR TWO FOR EACH OF THE INDICATORS. BUT AGAIN, I THINK THAT'S SOMETHING WE CAN
LOOK INTO MORE IN THE FUTURE. AND THAT'S KIND OF AN OVERARCHING QUESTION THAT MAY
SHORTCUT A LOT OF MY FUTURE QUESTIONS. HAVE ANY OF THE INDICATORS BEEN LOOKED AT
OR UPDATED OR EXPANDED OR CONTRACTED BASED ON THE FROM THE INITIAL SOUNDING BOARD DISCUSSION
IN O-H OR HAS IT KIND OF SAT THERE stagnant waiting for, I mean, because
citizen development is one thing, but best practices and data is another. And so, I
mean, we could take those overarching ideas and expand on them, or if they just
sat there. Yeah, so some of the targets have been updated, but the actual
measurements for each of the indicators have not been since the sounding board.
Oh, that's true. Yep, quality of life is one that we'll go through and that's
one that we weren't able to report on before. Maybe I'll think of that as
I go through and if there's other ones I'll let you know or you can
as well. Quick question for you. If we want to dive down into some of
this data, is it available for us to be able to evaluate or is
this information? Swing your mic in. Sorry about that. I'll
repeat the question. Is this information available for us to be able to do a
deep dive on? I would think so.
Yeah, if there was specific data that you wanted, we could definitely get kind of
like the background data for where it's coming from. Yeah, I'd like to be able
to look at that information. Rather than ask you a bazillion questions, I'd just rather
just go through and read it. I think it'd be easier for both of us.
No problem. I am happy to answer questions as we go as well. If I
don't have the answers, we can definitely follow up too. Thank you.
Also, we showed the breakdown of the food bank clients.
Over time, this has remained relatively steady with about 60% of services going to children
and seniors. The next
theme is business climate. So the vision here is that the local economy will be
healthy and diverse. Sorry, going back, did we touch on
community health and housing affordability? So for this preview, I was just doing about two
indicators from each of the categories. So we're still in the process of finishing the
updates for some. Some we're still waiting for data on, and then other ones. We
haven't quite finalized it, you know. So I do have some input on some of
the things I noticed in terms of community health. We had stated a target as
far as 100% of adults with insurance. And
I think it's just a general policy that policy should be just 100% of residents
with health insurance, right? Because there are some gaps in terms of children as well.
And we wanna make sure that those are addressed. Just generally in terms of the
housing affordability gap in terms of comments, one of the things that I would like
to see brought forth as indicators, and this is kind of going to be a
theme throughout for me, tracking of homelessness as an indicator of affordable housing.
percent of residents using Section 8 vouchers would be another one that would be indicative
of affordable housing within the city.
This year and into next year is the housing strategy and we'll be looking at
the homeless and the Section 8 vouchers and those kinds of things in more depth
through the housing strategy. I'm not sure that's part of what your indicators are, but
again, as Megan said, if we update it in 10 years, maybe the that
goals and the targets and all those things might change and evolve. Whereas with the
housing strategy, I know we're going to be looking at those two things. Yeah, yeah.
And I'm just looking at this in terms of sustainability and what data we're collecting
if we're going to be measuring sustainability. And some of these look like they're trying
to measure, but it almost seems either square peg and round hole or too small
a peg where it's just dropping into the hole and you're not capturing what would
be your best indicator of some of these issues. I was just going to add,
I'm David Fujimoto with the Sustainability Office as well. I think that's absolutely correct. So
the indicators are intended to measure long-term progress, but they are something that should be
a work in progress too. So if we identify indicators that better measure what it
is that we're trying to achieve in terms of basic needs or housing affordability, I
think those are open and we welcome that feedback because they should be reflective. I
also wanted to comment on the question about homelessness and how that's being counted. So
for the first time, Issaquah earlier this year participated in the point in time count,
the one night count of homeless individuals. And so that took some work to actually
expand that Issaquah and to be included in that area. But we do have now
another source of collecting data. So the trick with it, however, is that the way
that that data is collected is they only report it on a regional basis. There
are some exceptions to that based on history, but they don't like to report that
on individual SO GOOD NEWS IS WE ARE PART OF THAT COUNT. BAD NEWS IS
WE ARE NOT ABLE TO EXTRACT THAT SEPARATELY. THAT IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF HOW DO
WE GET RELIABLE CONSISTENT DATA BUT HAVING TO FIT INTO A REGIONAL SYSTEM
TOO. THANK YOU. WE
ARE
GOING TO LOOK AT A COUPLE INDICATORS UNDER BUSINESS CLIMATE, BUSINESS DIVERSITY AND JOB HOUSING
BALANCE. So for business diversity, this is measured as a number of businesses in
Issaquah by size, employment and type. So in.
So the charts here show that the number of total businesses has doubled over the
last 10 years. So from about 940 in 2005 to just over 1800
in 2015. However, the breakdown of sizes has remained relatively
steady over that time. So about 90% of businesses in Issaquah are small businesses.
However, in the last five years, this number has increased by about 73%. The number
of large businesses in the city has increased by about 36% over the same period.
Has there been any analysis in terms of whether we want to include
comparison statistics either with other similar situated cities or
even in terms of women minority owned businesses versus state numbers that might provide a
better indicator as to overall diversity as opposed to just diversity of business type? Yeah,
I think that that's a good point, again, for kind of future updates. There has
been, it's kind of, I guess this one has been mostly the same over
time and hasn't been updated in that way, but I think that would be good
for future updates. Is there any analysis of, in terms of the service sector jobs,
I notice we include them, a lot of those, just given the nature of the
city, are obviously governmental jobs within the school district. Is there any split out of
governmental versus non-governmental that could be included? So we
use a certain classification that the state uses to separate it out. And there
are, I think it does separate government, so I guess the rest would would mostly
be non-government. So you mentioned the, so our
biggest sector is the service sector, which includes several different categories. So it's not
just like traditional services, but more like professional services, business services. That includes
education as well. Not government, though. So
do you know what relationship, what the,
Most of them are small businesses, but how many of them are home businesses, one-person
business? I don't have that data. So
we received this data from the state. We do also have some business license data.
I know that the addresses that they have on there isn't always, it may be
the owner, so it may be inside the city, it may be outside the city.
So I don't know if there's a way to tell if it's specifically home businesses
or not. But I think the small businesses would include like a smaller consulting firm
that would be out of home, but I don't have the breakdown of what percent
that would be. So something that in talking with the Economic
Development Department about this, something that they mentioned is during the
economic crisis when there's, you know, some layoffs in some sectors, some people may
have gone and started their own smaller consulting firms. So that could be one reason
why some of the numbers have gone up over that time. Ms. I think you
look at this as even those small businesses, you're looking at people hiring other people
create other jobs. I mean, I have a business, I have a business license in
Issaquah, but I don't have any, I don't hire anybody. So it would be nice
to know what kind of relationship that has and are we bringing in
people who work out of their home or are we bringing in actual businesses to
hire people? So John, to clarify, kind of a business license versus number of
employees ratio that we could use? Yes. Okay. I mean, it's really great to
have 18,000 businesses, but if there are only, you
know, 18,000 people working, that's not what we want. We want to have,
provide jobs for the community. Right. Yeah, I think the next one that we'll look
at is job housing balance that kind of talks a little bit about that as
well. Quick question. Sorry, I have a quick question for you. I'm looking here at
employment sectors as the second largest sector is retail, which is currently 14% of employment
in the city or 3089. The retail sector has
decreased since it peaked in 2008 with 18% employees in Issaquah. Can you explain what
that what I'm reading there? So I think again with the the
economic downturn. So I think there was more businesses, more retail businesses open
during that time. And then it shifted some as maybe some businesses went out of
business or closed. That number, that percentage started to go down.
Okay. And what does it mean when it says 18% of employees in Issaquah? So
with each of the sectors, so it breaks it out by the sector. So like
the service sector is 65% of employees, and then the retail was 18%
but is now closer to 14%. So total employees in the city, they're each broken
out into, I forget the name of the sectors,
I forget the name, but it's broken out kind of by codes. So each of
the businesses classify the employees in that way, or each of the businesses are classified
in that way. And then we get the data from for the employees. Okay, thank
you. So this is the
job housing balance. So this is the ratio of total jobs to total housing units
in Issaquah. And having a balance between jobs and housing means that Issaquah is more
evenly matched and more likely able to provide adequate housing to those working in the
city and adequate jobs to those living here. So in 2014, the job housing balance
was 1.59. And something knows that although this is important to track, it doesn't really
discuss the affordability of the houses or the wages of the employees.
And now in looking at that, I couldn't help but notice in the job housing
balance, we're talking about the ratio nearing zero and it looks like
from 09 through 14 we've been climbing away from zero as opposed to
going closer or climbing away from one as opposed to coming closer to one.
What is kind of the ideal ratio in terms of the municipality in terms of
job housing balance? Is there any kind of magic number? So we don't have an
established target for that. So I wouldn't be able to say that there is a
magic number. So I think it's important to kind of track the trend over time
to try to make sure it's somewhat evenly matched, but there isn't a specific target
for that. And that's something that's been discussed in King County some, and there may
be a target coming down the line, but we don't have one for now. But
overall, the goal is to have it matched roughly, is that what I'm hearing? Yes,
around there, yeah. So going to that in terms of the green compact misuse development,
I realize this is jumping ahead. We state our housing target is
to add about 5,750 additional homes, but our job
target is to add 20,000 additional jobs, which would skew us
even further and further away from that. evenly matched.
How do we have these two goals within the same plan? That seems counterintuitive to
me. I'm not sure the answer to that one. We do work across
the city with the different departments to try to get all the data. I would
say I know a little bit more about some of them and a little bit
less about other ones. I don't know if Trish has any comments on that. The
last set of targets that you mentioned, the 20,000 jobs and 5,750?
It's 5,000-something. That's a state mandate for
Issaquah for between 2006 and 2031. Those are the job and
housing targets we're supposed to take. As far as the jobs housing balance, we try
to get to one. but because we're on I-90, we have a lot more jobs
and retail and services because we're on I-90 and we're sort of that magnet to
everybody around us. And we're starting to get that way with housing, but not as
much as we are with service provision. And so we're trying to get a little
bit more that way with the central plan. And even when we adopted the central
plan, we knew we weren't bringing them completely in line because it's hard once you're
that far apart to bring them together and we can't control the market. The market's
what's building the houses and putting in the offices and commercial. So we can try
to squish it and skew it with incentives and zoning and all those kinds of
things, but we can't say stop building housing, we're done, we want jobs now. No,
and that's my question. I mean, if our target is 5750 for housing. Is that
the minimum target set by the state or is that the actual target? It's a
target set by the state. Okay. And all the cities in the state that
are in growth management have growth targets set by the state through their counties.
And that's my question is can we seek to exceed those housing targets if we
see ourselves skewing away on the drop housing balance? Our capacity, we certainly have the
capacity to go beyond. I think we've always been careful to do what we do
and not go over, knowing that there's gonna be another round of targets in a
few years, and so we don't wanna be the one that's growing out of our
seams. But we've always done really well with our targets because we're on I-90 and
we're just a really great market with our school system and our location. So I
would say no. I don't think politically we would want to ask for over
our targets. I think certainly our zoning allows us to go over our targets just
because our capacity is higher. Yeah, and that's, so I mean if we're looking at
developing a job housing balance ratio, I think we need to be realistic if we've
got housing and job targets that are going to put us closer to two in
terms of job housing balance to not set one where our goal is one and
we set those two goals in conflict. That's my worry on that. Right, and I
think that's why we're doing studies like we are this year on mixed use. why
are we getting all the housing in central Issaquah instead of the mix of uses
that we were hoping to get? Why isn't the market there for that? And so
we're doing a study now to show are there things that we can do from
a regulatory standpoint to help applicants come in and do mixed use versus just housing
and just commercial. So we're trying to figure out what's not working exactly so that
those numbers can be more in line than they are now. One other thing
on the job housing balance indicators, one good one that popped into mind, we mentioned
it specifically in the why is job housing balance important, but just a measure of
average commute times. And that can be tracked even through census data or if we're
on off census data years if we do any sort of quality of life surveys.
But census data is certainly the easiest. Right.
All right, community awareness and stewardship. Can I go back
and ask one question? Maybe Trish, you know the answer to this. The 5750,
which is the target, how does that correspond to the target that was basically set
in the Central Area Plan? That's a great question. The next
picture makes people crazy. When we applied to be a regional growth center,
okay there's the state over here the state requires job and housing
targets and those are from 2006 to 2031 PSRC
which is the regional our regional boss they set targets if we're
going to be a regional growth center and so what we had to do is
we had to show them what part of our state required targets we were going
to try to funnel into the central plan through the zoning and that we allocated
there. So they're both mandated,
but they're apples and oranges, because one is mandated by the state, the other is
mandated if we want to be a regional center, and we did and we're approved
as such. So they're similar. We didn't ask for more to be a regional center,
but what we did do is we dug into the capacity that we have for
the zoning, to get to that number that PSRC wanted us to have. And the
good news, at least for me as a planner, the good news is there's not
a time limit that we have to meet those numbers in the Regional Growth Center
where there are from the state targets. So that's why we were able to dive
into our capacity that we have to meet the Regional Center requirements. Didn't we approve
the Centauri Plan before we went into the LID? Yes.
We had to come back, that's why we did that second amendment. So in the
original central area plan, what was the target? I'd have to look back at it,
but I think we called it goals in the central. And that was from the
EIS. The environmental impact statement told us how much we could, what the
capacity could assume there. And we didn't go to the top because we know that
even if your zoning is X, nobody can ever build to that perfect number.
But we did have the EIS numbers in the original plan, which we're putting it
back in through this next set of amendments because everybody always asks us about those
original numbers. So we're putting them back in this year as sort of that baseline
but it's like we were just looking at that today but now it's in the
front of the central plan what those numbers are i can send those out okay
well i just uh 5750 i thought uh it was like 7500 in the original
it was higher the one of the another little detail is when we first applied
PSRC came back and said we couldn't use our capacity as the same as our
target. So when we had to amend it, we had to... take our number down,
our target down, so that we still had capacity left. They're such number wonks, it's
hard sometimes to. It's not easy, is it? Yeah, because then you have 17 sets
of numbers and everybody is like, well what about this number? I remember this number.
It's like, we don't use that number anymore because PSRC said. I know, I was
just kind of comparing where we're going and we've had housing
has been developed and built since that time. Yes. And the other thing that we're
working on that I know you guys will be excited about is we're trying to
document from the 2006 when the timer started for this set of targets,
required targets from the state, we're trying to show how many housing units have been
developed because people are like, well, how are we doing with the state targets? And
we've known different times through the different things that PSRC make us do.
but we need to update that so we're right up to 2015. This is how
many housing units we've got on deck since. And the housing includes apartments, right? Correct,
anything that's a housing unit. So there's been at least, what, 2,000 apartments that have
been built in the last couple years? I couldn't say for sure. I know there's
900 in the pipeline for Central Issaquah. Housing units not just that's still in the
pipeline, but the ones that have been built right and I Kristen would know that
number But I wouldn't know that number but and the jobs are harder to figure
out Well how we're doing on the target because that's you know you take the
square footage of commercial and you divide it by the number of square feet per
employee So that's one of those now. No way that you're gonna we can't but
housing units we can nail but jobs We can't really nail that to be the
exact number of jobs. We've gotten But that's coming soon that data When we look
at that data, is it possible that we can actually project it out to 2016
because we've got a lot of growth that's happening within this year? Oh, yeah. That
would really change numbers from 2015 to 2016. Yeah, we can project out, like in
the monitoring report that you all got in, when did we send that out? June
or July? I think we presented it to Council in July. we show the 900
units in the pipeline that we're figuring are gonna go online, they're gonna get their
finals within this year, next year, or depending on the applicant, the next year. So
we know at least how many are coming, if not the ones that haven't applied
yet. But there is a set group in the pipeline. Okay, yeah, because looking at
if it's already been... plans have been submitted, it's sort of in the pipe, it's
likely to be a done deal, so... Absolutely. Including that information would be really awesome.
in our . Well, we have that in the monitoring report. Oh, okay. I remember.
And we quantify it as saying, it's not official, but it's coming, we think, and
it's pretty much almost guaranteed, if you can say almost guaranteed, but so that people
can say, oh, you know, it is starting to take shape. Yeah, I remember. I'll
have to go back and take a look at that. Yeah, and that's online too,
that's on the website under documents.
Development, and then Central Issaquah, and then you click down and it's under Monitoring Report.
And it's the first three years of Monitoring Reports, and then this year's Dashboard, which
is the really exciting one to look at, because it's got all the pictures. It's
my favorite. It's not just numbers, it's pictures. That helps me understand the numbers. You
must enjoy your job. I do. I don't know why, after all these years, but
I still do. I guess that's a good thing. So back to Megan up there.
Well, this conversation is exciting and it shows sustainability definitely does cover a lot of
areas and there's a lot of data behind it. So the indicators are kind of
just that snapshot. So I appreciate the questions about it as well.
So community awareness and stewardship. So the vision here is that people will be actively
engaged in their community. The indicators are quality of life, volunteerism, and voter turnout.
So quality of life, so this is the first year that we're reporting on this
indicator, so it was identified by the sounding board, but we didn't have kind of
a data source to be able to report on it for. So this year we've
updated that with using the National Citizen Survey that I was referring to that was
sent out in 2014. And so that is showing, according to that survey, about 91%
of residents rate Issaquah as an excellent or good place to live. There's also several
other questions in there related to quality of life about Issaquah as a place to
raise children, work, visit, and retire. And the National Citizen Survey is
implemented in several different cities across the country, so they're able to establish some national
benchmarks to compare different cities to. And Issaquah was, Rated
either higher or similar in most of those quality of life categories.
Voter turnout. So this is measured as a percentage of registered voters who vote in
general and local elections and the percentage of eligible voters that are registered. So
as you can see here, it's very cyclical in nature. In 2015, we did have
a lower percentage of voters with 33%. So that's lower than previous years.
We're expecting that to go up in 2016 with it being a presidential year. And
although the percent of eligible voters who are registered has remained steady around 78%
though. The percentage remains the same, but the volume goes up?
It goes up and down. So yes, the percent of eligible voters who are
registered has remained about the same. And then people are either voting or not voting
in each of the years. Next is
education and so the vision here is that in Issaquah our schools be world class
and we'll have excellent ongoing education for adults. So this is an indicator that we
work closely with the Issaquah school district on and so they have been tracking their
extended graduation rate over many years and Issaquah in the 2014-2015
school cycle school year was at 94.3% and Washington State at about 80% so we've
been The district's been a little bit consistently higher than Washington
State for the last few years. The district also participates in the state's biannual healthy
youth survey, and this is a survey that the state administers every other year, and
we've worked with the district to to see some of the indicators in there. And
one of the ones that we've been tracking is the percent of students who report
that they feel safe at school. Because if the students are feeling safe, then they're
more likely to be able to learn. So in 2014, 92% of sixth
graders and 90% of 10th graders report that they felt safe at school.
And the Office of Sustainability also works closely with the district. on some environmental
programs. So in 2015, we worked with the district and issued a Waste-Free
Wednesday Challenge where we worked with 19 of the schools
on trying to reduce the amount of waste that they have in their cafeteria. And
they kind of measure it against each other. And we found that they're able to
really reduce their waste when we're working with their green teams and working with the
schools. I'VE GOT A QUESTION FOR YOU ON THE
SAFETY ISSUE. DO WE KNOW WHY ONLY 10%
OR WHY 10% DO NOT FEEL SAFE? THERE ARE SEVERAL OTHER QUESTIONS
IN THAT SURVEY THAT I THINK COULD GET AT THAT SOME. IT KIND OF TALKS
ABOUT KIND OF bullying and drug use and things going on at
home. So there is kind of a more full picture in that survey, which is
posted online, but I wouldn't be able to say for sure. Okay. Yeah, the devils
are in the details and I think that information would be very important for future
decisions for us to be able to evaluate.
Looking again at the education portion, on the substance abuse rates, Do we
have a comparison as to how that compares to Washington and or other similarly situated
cities? So the whole survey does go through the different school districts
and does compare them with Washington. I don't have those numbers right off the top
of my head. So the Healthy Youth Survey is online and
administered by the state and has all of that data.
Next is green compact and mixed use development. So the vision here is that we'll
manage our growth so we can live, work, and play closer to home. And the
indicators are current and plan density, green buildings, and population density.
So green buildings, so this is measured as the number of LEED and built green
certified buildings as a percentage of Issaquah's overall housing stock. So in 2015
we were at about 19% of the total housing stock certified built green, which is
higher than many of the surrounding communities. It's also up from 2013 when it was
about 16%. We also have 12 LEED certified projects in the city.
And we have also worked on several kind of demonstration projects. One is Z-Home, which
is pictured here. and that was the nation's first net zero energy townhome, meaning
it produces as much energy as it uses. And in 2015, we did a post-occupancy
study of that and found that it produces, in fact, 3.5% more energy than it
uses. So that was fun to figure out that the kind of planning that went
into that was able to result in that. We're also working on a sustainable
building action strategy for the city that will take a look at sustainable building down
the line as well. Next is population
density. So this is the average number of residents per acre in each sub area
in Issaquah. And from 2013 to 2019, the density increased in each of
the sub areas. Right here, you're seeing the 2014 and 2015 data because
in 2015, the city amended the planning sub areas. So we're not able to do
apples to apples comparison with those. But here it shows that each of the sub
areas have either increased in density remained about the same. And I have a, this
is the new sub area map. So Newport is the densest sub area and has
a large concentration of multifamily properties. The Highland is the second most dense, followed by
Greenwood Point and Old Town. And with the Central Issaquah Plan, we're channeling
the majority of growth into that area. So we would expect that that sub area
would be rising in future years.
Natural areas and open space. So the vision here is to protect our open space
for community enhancement and have a regional food supply that keeps us healthy.
The first indicator is preserve natural open space. So the The
percentage of open spaces increased steadily in the city. In 2015, there was about 200
acres of maintained parks and about 1400 of open space. So that is about 21%
of the city's total acreage is in the preserved natural areas. And that's up from
about 15% 10 years ago. We
have a projection. We have a projection of what that looks like out to 2030.
I'm not sure. I know that the Parks Department is kind of undergoing a planning
effort right now, so they'll be kind of looking at the longer-term plan, so that
might be something that they're looking at as well. Do you know, Megan, if we
get credit in that for annexing the state park and the
Talus open space, are those in the... Yes, that's included.
So it's parks and open space, so it kind of groups it together, whether it's
like an active park with a playground or if it's more just the open space.
Okay, because we annexed the state park in 2015, so maybe that's what the
bit of a little bump is. I think it might be, but I'd have to
double check on that.
the next is food grown locally so this is measured by farmers market sales and
product type So overall the sales depend each year on several
factors. It could be weather or also the parking garage has been undergoing some
construction, so there's less parking options. But over the past few years, the food sales
have shifted with an overall increase in the processed food sales. So this includes
bakery goods or popsicles or pickles, things that are kind of processed beforehand. And then
the overall produce and meat and egg sales have been a smaller percentage of
that. I did have a question on that. Has there been any reaching out to
some of our local retailers that actually do also track local food production, such as
PCC, I believe QFC and Fred Meyer both have a sourced locally
category, so they probably track those as well, which might give us some greater idea
of retail sales outside of just those people that go to the farmers market in
terms of local sustainability? Yeah, we haven't gotten that data specifically
from them, but I think that that could be an interesting way to kind of
get a fuller picture there. How far away do the farmers come?
The inhabitants of the market, we're talking about
food grown locally, but do they come from a fairly large distance
away that might screw up the
data? Yeah, we don't have a specific mileage with this.
The farmer's market might track that, but that's not information I have, but that would
be interesting to look at as well. It would be a good project for a
high school class.
Next is transportation mobility. So here the vision is that we'll lead the region in
transportation and reduce emissions. So we don't yet have the data
from the most recent cycle. We got our data using the Commute Trip Reduction Program,
which collects data from the city's So with over 100
employees. So in 2014 we had 72% of employees driving alone to work.
So we weren't meeting our single occupancy vehicle travel rates of 10% or to reduce
by 10%. So we're expecting to get that data in soon and
we'll have that in the full report. The Office of Sustainability launched our Salmon Friendly
Trips program this year, which is kind of an incentive-based program to help get people
out of their cars and that's grant-funded to work on that. So providing kind of
alternative mode ideas and tools for walking, biking, taking transportation.
We're also working with the Issaquah School District to launch School Pool, which does a
similar program to work with parents and to try to get people to be
carpooling to school or get walking buddies for students as well to reduce the number
of drive alone trips. So a carbon
footprint is the measure of greenhouse gas pollution associated with our activities and carbon
emissions are linked to climate change, which is associated with adverse impacts in Washington state,
including decreased snowpack and increased precipitation and flooding. And so this is an
indicator that is updated once every five years. So we'll be updating again soon. But
with the city has goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2020 50% by
2030 and 80% by 2050. So here we see the data from 2007
to 2012 and we had approximately a 1.9% decrease in emissions.
So this was at the same time that we had an increase in population with
about 25 people in 2007 and 31,000 in 2012.
What's the asterisk on the 2012 transportation number?
That's an
excellent
question. I forget what that is. Do you know by any chance? I believe it
might have been the transportation data was one year old. Well, I've got a question
here. Ecology is not one of my strong suits, but is Izequiel looking at other
possibilities of reducing carbon footprint by adding vegetation, more trees?
As we develop and we start removing more and more trees and replace it with
asphalt, we're actually increasing the impact from carbon, right? So
what are we doing to help mitigate some of that? So we do have a
tree canopy goal to have 50% coverage and that's something I
think we're around We were around 47%, but there was recent, earlier this year,
there was an aerial study done to update that, but we don't have the data
from that yet. That should be coming later this year. But development services does also
have a strict tree ordinance as well. And then the Parks Department also tracks
that and plants trees as well. When a developer comes through and clear cuts out
a couple thousand trees, how do we balance that? I mean, we don't have that
much open space to go plant more trees and a lot of the open space
we do have already has trees. So, wondering what we're doing from a sustainability standpoint
to replenish a natural inventory. I think that
the planners and development services would have a little bit more information. I know that
we do have a tree ordinance, so it is something that is considered in the
site development phase and talked about there, but I am not sure specifically what the
details are. Okay. Sure.
Also from carbon sequestration, we have looked at total carbon sequestration value for the open
space. I don't have that number just at the tip of my tongue. When the
tree ordinances and clearing occurs, those don't currently take into consideration carbon sequestration
as part of mitigation measures. But Megan mentioned before, one of the things the city
is looking at is a sustainable building strategy. There could be a number of measures
looking at things like how are carbon impacts assessed in development projects
and what kinds of measures might be associated with them. There's nothing specific on that
from a carbon standpoint currently. Okay, isn't it
important? Because when you go from an area that has a lot of trees to
an area that doesn't have a lot of trees, you can notice the difference just
in the air that you breathe. And I realize some of that might be moisture
and the temperature itself, but it seems like if we want to be sustainable
as a city, that would be a really important, the other aspect is using natural
resources to help mitigate pollution. It's part of the equation. The other part
too is when you look at carbon seek restoration value for the natural habitat and
the trees but then there's also the ongoing operations of
building, if it's replaced by a house or building of whatever type. And that ongoing
operational element is usually the biggest piece. And then there's also the kind of during
construction of the actual building, everything that kind of goes into that from an embodied
emission standpoint. So yes, the transformation of kind of virgin green space
land into development does have a kind of net carbon impact. And so the question
is, if those are allowed uses and there are some those
projects develop, are there measures that they can do to help reduce that over time
so they're more efficient or there's some offsetting measures that can help with that? So
I think the short answer is yes, there's an impact and the question is kind
of what do you do about it? Thank you.
So the last theme is waste resource use. And so the vision here is that
in Issaquah, wasting resources will become unthinkable.
For energy use, so we measure this as a total energy use per capita and
by sector. And overall, we would hope to see a decrease in energy use over
time. As you can see, the residential energy use per capita has declined
significantly since 2000, which is thought to reflect some of the new built green housing
stock that we were talking about and also more stringent energy codes and
efficiency in appliances as well.
Not an idea. Sorry. This might be something I should take offline, but being that
we are removing so many trees, HAVING AN IMPACT FROM A POLLUTION
STANDPOINT. LOOKING AT ENERGY, IT'S GREAT THAT WE'RE MOVING OUR ENERGY
DOWNWARD. WOULD IT BE SOMETHING THAT WE COULD CONSIDER
MAYBE MOVING ALL CITY RESIDENTS OVER TO WIND ENERGY? RIGHT NOW,
PSE SELLS WIND ENERGY. IT'S AT A PREMIUM OVER YOUR REGULAR UTILITY BILL.
BUT IF WE MOVED as a city over to that type of program,
that would help mitigate some of the other pollution, although we wouldn't impact, we wouldn't
notice that here in our valley, but we would be able to return favor, so
to speak, back to ecology and good sustainability practices. We're trading one
form with another. Is that something that we could consider? I mean, or is that
just totally impractical? I would say in the action strategy we'll be
assessing several different options. I think there has been some
studies on wind in the area, but I think that it could be
behavior change to get people to use less energy. Solar could be another option,
but I'm not sure about wind specifically. So just to add to that, I think,
so there could be a variety of measures that could be taken. And you're right,
PSE does have renewables in their fuel mix. They also have a significant chunk which
comes from coal-fired plants. So there's some work right now on the part of the
cities and counties actually to work with PSE to transition away from the higher
carbon-intense fuel sources for the electricity. And so that's part of it. The other part
is if the replacement could come from renewable sources. The question is
kind of the cost of doing that and the transition time because if we were
to switch over and say everybody in the city now First of all, I don't
know that we have the authority to do that, but even if everybody were to
switch over to renewables, there would be a cost associated with that. So, you know,
trying to mitigate that cost over a longer term so that the transition can be
made. So that's one of the things that PSE was seeking some authority from the
state in the last year. They received that, so now they're actually coming up with
a plan to transition away from at least some of their coal-fired plants. But as
Megan said, there are a number of different ways of reducing the overall carbon and
impact and that could be renewables, it could be usually we like to promote efficiency
first and then using the more expensive renewable for the last portion and so there
could be a whole host of things. So is it practical for us to
look at this as a giant community and say, you know what, we're gonna make
a decision, maybe the vote might have to go to vote but others, the community
but If we collectively did it together, then
there'd be more economies of scale, because it'd be that higher cost would be spread
across more people, and therefore we'd still be able to have a
better environmental impact, right? So we'd be able to mitigate some of the pollution that
we're creating in the valley by bringing this everything back. So I mean, is that
something that we can discuss as a city the population or is that just
something that we can't do because for whatever reason? Certainly whether
we'd be able to make that wholesale change might be difficult but you know certainly
increasing the options or the availability or maybe the collective buying power for something like
that is something that could be looked at in the building strategy. There are some
campaigns. There's a Solarize campaign that's operated in several communities, for example, where essentially
households join together to kind of purchase solar panels, and that brings the cost down.
There's also some other examples of doing similar kinds of things. So there are programs
that can help to get closer on things like that. Okay. I'll take this offline
with you, but I think it's a good idea. Maybe we should start looking at
it. I don't think we're at a point where we have
enough ability to provide that kind of
energy. I think everything that they've talked about is in the works and
there's a little bit here, a little bit there, but it's gonna take something major
in order to be able to provide that much, at least what I think. Enough
energy and enough A purpose for the city to say, OK, let's go do this
and and let's change. We're not there yet. I think we all think and hope
that that's where we're going to be at some point in time, but I don't
think we're there now.
All right, the last indicator is waste generation. This is a total waste generated amount
landfill and amount diverted. So between 20, 20.
2006 and 2013 our total waste generation has been going down. From 2013
to 2015 it started to rise a little bit, which is thought to be with
the economy recovering as well. Our diversion rate in the
city is currently at 43%. So we do have a King County and citywide goal
to be at 55% by 2015. So we're not meeting that goal at this time.
So other cities in the region right now are also not meeting that goal. So
we do have, we are doing better in the single family area, but we have
some work to do in multifamily and commercial as well. I do have two questions
in regards to that. How is the diversion? rate been tracking? Like where were we
one year ago, two years ago? Last year I think we
were at 44%. And then I'm not sure.
It's been around, I think it's been between 40 and 44 for the past several
years. And then the The multifamily one specifically this year went
up a few percentage points. I think that was closer to 24% last year. That's
an area that we have been doing some work, but it's also a smaller percentage
of the overall waste. I think I mentioned this about a year ago in context
to some other aspect of the plan, but I moved out from the city of
Seattle where there were actually multifamily disincentives to
lack of diversion of waste, meaning that if you found recyclables within your
trash, the complex itself would be fine and they would have an incentive to track
down which resident was responsible for not diverting their waste. Has
there been any thought or discussion on implementing that kind of disincentivization
program in the multifamily context and then Has there
been any looking at mandatory composting as a way to increase the diversion rate?
So right now we've been mostly just implementing programs. So specifically with
multifamilies this year, we've been going around to a few of the properties going door
to door to talk about reducing food waste and how to properly compost. So we
haven't gotten into the specific ordinances that would require them to do so.
We have had some waste ordinances in the past with the plastic bag ban and
some others. So it's always something It could be there, but right now we're looking
more at doing the outreach and education. Have we talked with, well, are there any
other cities within King County that are meeting this 55% goal already?
Seattle is meeting it right now, I believe. I'm not sure about any of the
other kind of smaller cities. From my understanding, most of the smaller cities are not
at this time. And I think that we're doing fairly well in comparison with them.
But we do have a ways to go. As far as we know, it's a
behavioral, individual behavioral thing, not that they aren't just, it's not available. Is that basically
what you think? For the most part, so composting is free
in the city. The rates are embedded, so everyone has the option to do it.
With multifamily, it's up to the complex owner themselves. So I think about half
of our multifamily buildings have compost service and the others don't. So we have been
working as the Office of Sustainability and also with our Hall of Ecology to
reach out to all the properties that don't and try to get them on board.
Also, trouble troubleshooting if they had service and stop having it
for any reason. So rather than just trying to cancel their service, we'll try to
troubleshoot with them as well. And which multifamily complexes currently aren't utilizing
this to your knowledge? I do not have that list off the top of my
head. I think it is around half, but half have the service and half don't.
I know you're going out to the multifamily complexes and talking to them individually.
But have you ever thought about giving them incentives, making it fun in
the city, getting more people involved and more
signs, more activities that would show people how to do this? I think a lot
of it is just people just don't take the time to learn or they're just,
it's not that they don't wanna do it. have to have a reason to do
it. So have you ever thought about giving them some kind of incentive to-
Yes. So we have had a few programs in the past. One, we've done outreach
at a lot of farmers markets before to try to talk to people there. We've
had some film series talking about waste reduction, so trying to reach
out to the community in that way. Right now we are running a program called
Food Too Good to Waste, where we're trying to help people reduce the amount of
food that goes to waste. And with that, we received money from Department of to
provide incentives for people that participate in that program. We also, with Rural
Ecology, our waste hauler, they provide us with a lot of
outreach opportunities as well and also some finance for kind of overall
incentives for the community. Has there been any reaching out to those
multi-family complexes that don't offer composting services and either creating incentivization for them
or having heavy-handed discussions with them about the importance of this issue.
So they, I believe we're reaching out to them just about every year. So, you
know, some will start composting and others will drop off. So it's kind of a
yearly cycle to be reaching out to try to get more on board. There has
been some programs where they'll be offered a discount on their overall bill if they
participate in certain programs. You might have already mentioned this, but
why wouldn't a multifamily dwelling or apartment complex not
participate in composting? So some of them have had problems
either with kind of just finding the placement for it, either
outside of their buildings or just finding that's not being used very much. So that
would get at some of the more outreach and education that needs to be done.
Others, there some complaints about smell, but we can also, the hauler can
also pick up at certain times, so that, again, can be something that we try
to kind of troubleshoot before it becomes a problem.
I think that's all for that one. I just wanted to share kind of an
infographic that we put together last year with some of the environmental indicators that we
had included in the report. So this is from the 2014 report and then we'd
be hoping to do another one this year around some of the other themes.
If you have any questions about any of the other indicators, I'd be happy to
answer those as well. With Trish and David. I have a general question that I
think links several together. Thinking back to the graph you had that showed the percentage
of homes that are green, whatever green certified, whatever it was, and that it was
higher than other cities in King County as a percentage. And
then some of the other indicators we were looking at are talking about, is there
or are there Some of that is probably because there is a lot of new
building and materials are better and incentives to build things in a more
sustainable way. Are there things in the city code and the building code that require
new developments to meet some certain standards regarding energy efficiency or
water use or things like that? Yeah, so in the past, so with
the Highlands, there was a development agreement there that required all new developments
there to be built green certified. So that's one of the big reasons why we
have so many of that housing stock is certified. And then we have, we do
have several green building incentives right now. And then with the action strategy, we'll kind
of be looking at some more options, either policies or more incentives and different strategies
to try to increase that. Anything else?
Thank you so much. Thank you guys. I really appreciate the questions. There is a
lot behind the data. Being able to dive into it is always fun as well.
There is a lot of data that you have to accumulate and it takes a
lot of time. It's understandable that some of this stuff is being pushed off to
2017 to actually get some good numbers. So you guys have a
lot of work to do. I guess I actually had one final kind of process
question. You mentioned that there may be like a 10 year update, so there'd be
2019. and you maybe haven't even thought about this yet, so it's fine if you
haven't, but I mean, would there be another kind of group that gets together to
sort through what the updates would be, or would that come in front of groups
like this, or do you know at this point? Yeah, we haven't detailed out the
process, but I think we would definitely want to have a good amount of community
engagement, like we did the first time around. So hearing from the commissions, residents,
trying to engage as many people. And one of the things, I mean, just you
could kind of gather from my questions here, it seems like a lot of the
indicators were developed by the community at large, where I'm sure they have great
ideas as to what things they want to measure, but relying on the community to
come up with the actual measurements that would best track those things may be a
little bit of overreliance on the community who may not have access or the knowledge
of the best data. And that's where I think those things could best be flushed
out by your department or by circulating it through these commissions who have some
ideas by looking at other aspects of the plan, what data might be available and
how best to track some of that data. Yeah, I think for each of the
indicators, there would be a lot of different of information that you'd want to know,
but we don't have data sources on. So I think that was kind of part
of the process of staff being involved in 2009 that, you know, it would be
great to have this information, but we have data on this right now. So that
might be one reason to do that, but maybe looking for other data sources as
well. I remember in the beginning we wanted to be sure that the data source
would be there over the years, because if you would have it only for two
years and then you would have that data, then you're going apples to oranges to
.
would be a local piece of data that it might not be the best, it
might not be. But it was something we knew would be constant through the years,
the first 10 years, so that's why as a group we picked that that would
be a good telltale for us. But it was a fabulous process. And one thing
that we felt strongly about as planners is we wanted to get the indicators in
the comp plan so that you all would get to talk about it every year
when we update it and to kind of give it a higher profile so that
the team would get to come and answer questions and make people think about it
again. So that's why we were so I'm so happy that last year we were
able to get it into the appendix of the comp plan. So well done, you.
Well done. I've got one closing question here, sorry. If I wanted
to look at the data behind some of these topics, where could I go to
actually see that? Is that available publicly online or is that stuffed away on someone
on a server somewhere and needs to be brought up to the public? It is
mostly on the servers right now and coming from different departments, different
partners, and kind of being aggregated in that way. But yeah, if you want to
work through Trish, I'd be happy to provide some of that. And the original from
2009 and then, are those still on the website? You know, the original document?
that first called them all out and identified them and then the annual or yeah,
so there's a you do it. Yeah, there's a report measuring what matters that kind
of went into detail about each of the indicators and so that's on our website
on the Office of Sustainability. We have a section so that has the most recent
report and then also that the report that kind of established it and got into
the details about the indicators. Because that had a lot of really good background, I
thought, in it, of how you guys started it and what the process was and
how hard it was to narrow it down to, what, 23 and 8? I mean,
those were some wild meetings trying to narrow it down to what we really wanted
to measure. Right. Because we want all the information. Yes, we do. It's like, you
guys, how about this one? How about this one? That's how those meetings went. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. So thank you. Good job. So you're already on
this one for October 13th? You feel like you've gone through it? Can't wait.
Yay, me too. So our next meeting is? Is September, which is hard to
believe. What happened to the summer? I think it's the, is it the 13th? I
don't know if I'm looking at me. I think maybe on this, the 13th of
October. No. October 13th is
a hearing. The 22nd. Is a public hearing on? September the 22nd is the next
meeting? Yes, because we had to, my memory is we had to cancel the
8th because the Council Land and Shore Committee is meeting then and they're meeting in
here and the people that would be there would also be the ones that would
be here and we haven't figured out how to clone ourselves yet. So, so Council.
we're having the land and shore meeting. So you get a little bit of time
and then we're having a public hearing on the 22nd and that's on the next,
yet the next round of the central standards. And there's only three, at least at
this point, there's only three amendments. One of them is boulevards and parkways,
clarifying the difference between those two. I just did the public hearing
notice for this. What are the other two? Structured parking and how they fit into
the bonus density program and lighting more lighting standards for central
Issaquah we've got some lighting standards in chapter 17 but we found as we're doing
site plans that there's not enough direction for for applicants on what kind of lighting
is appropriate and where it should be and how it should be done and so
that's the third one so there is a shorter it's a smaller group of amendments
this time for you. Anything else?
Excellent. You guys have been great. Thanks for showing up when you don't have to
vote. That's great. We're dedicated. You are. It's wonderful. I'm
going to close the meeting at 8.47. 7.47. I was going to say,
it's what time? 7.47. Excellent. Thank you all. See you next time.