Good evening and welcome to the October 13th meeting of the Planning
Policy Commission. It's nice to have so many commissioners here, braving the
weather out there. First on our agenda is approval of the minutes,
and I have a motion to approve the minutes of the November
-- September 22nd meeting. I move to approve the minutes. And a
second. I second that. Is there any discussion? Hearing no discussion,
all those in favor of approving the minutes say aye. Aye.
Opposed? Standing? Tonight we are continuing working on the comp plan
and we are going to have a public hearing. But first
of all, we are going to have a presentation from Trish
on What is proposed, what we've already talked about, and what the
future of Issaquah is going to be. Can you do all that? All of those
things, yes. And if anyone wants to testify, the sign-up sheet is there. Feel free
to sign up at your leisure because we'll be taking comments shortly.
Tonight, as Joan said, we're going to be talking about all of the account plan
amendments this time. You've been seeing them all sort of trickling in throughout the year,
and tonight they're all grouped together. I'll briefly, with Kristen's help, I'll briefly share them
with you again. Take any Q&A that maybe you didn't quite get from before or
that there's still questions that you might have. Then we would open it up to
public comment and then you're able to discuss what you've heard from the public and
talk amongst yourselves, ideas that you have, thoughts that you have. And then if you're
comfortable at the end of the meeting, it would be great to have a recommendation
from you all to the city council. If you're not feeling comfortable, we can talk
about the next steps on that. If that's where we end up tonight. Are there
any questions of what we hope to do tonight? before i launch in the first
thing i always like to show is to remind you all of what the docket
was way back in march when council adopted the docket that you helped put together
and there are many that stayed on the docket that we were able to do
this year but as you know many of them we were not able to finish
this year for reasons. The first six we have done and they're in
your packet and we'll go through them slower after I just show you the
docket. All of these are continued or postponed on the second page and all
of the third page except for 19, I'm sorry 18, are continued or postponed
as well. The first amendment we're going to start with tonight is the capital facilities
element, which we spent a lot of time on in September on the 22nd. And
the purpose of the capital facilities element, it has a few purposes, but
the main amendments that we do every year is we take the newest
budget, the newest capital facilities plan, which sadly hasn't been updated in the
last year or so. And we merge those together to see what the
new level of service for the fire, police, general government, and there's one
more that I'm missing, parks. And to update those with the new
population and budget and capital facility plan numbers. So that's the purpose of
we do this every year. And I've shown you in this slide the data that
we use this time and again. Sadly, there is not a new capital facilities plan.
It's still the old 2014 to 2019 one. We've heard that they hope to update
that next year, but nothing right now for us to use. For
fire, the level of service is based on population and it was done in a
rate study. The last time we updated the rate study was 2006. It shows that
we have it. Oh, the fun thing about fire is the first time we ever
did a rate study for fire, we were just starting to go in with Eastside
Fire and Rescue with the bigger group, but we still had this that if we
ever had to go back to our very own fire station, we wanted to be
sure that we would be able to make the switch to go solo again. So
we've always done our rate study with the thought that if we had to go
solo, we would have enough facilities and enough equipment that we would be able to
do that. So we need to keep that in mind that fire is the only
one that's done that way. We're acting with a group in real life, but we
do the rate study as if we're alone. It's a little odd, but it's just
because of our conservative nature, we don't ever want to be without a really good
fire department to use. So that's why we did it that way. So the apparatus
is based on population and there's a deficit and again it's a deficit if we
were solo today. It's not a deficit of Eastside Fire. It's a deficit if we
were solo and we're down you know many trucks and also we'd be down even
more trucks by 2020 if we kept going like this if we were solo. And
for stations, we're surplus of stations because that's based on land area. And unless we
annex any land soon, and there's not that much land that we could annex soon,
the surplus will remain. Are there any questions on fire? I have a
question about the projected deficit, potential deficit in the apparatus and understanding
that that is if, you know, if we were to go away
from the group and be on our own again, is there, what
is that risk and what can be done now to plan for
that deficit? Good question. Um, I would imagine the way that we got into Eastside
Fire and Rescue is the city leaders, um, talked a lot about the pros and
cons on why you would do that. And I think if they started doing that
to be out of Eastside Fire, I would think it would have to happen in
the same way that they would have to plan for how to be out. So
they would start putting in the budget. Fire apparatus would be one thing that they'd
have to start deciding that they were going to start buying them in order that
at a date certain we would be okay to go solo. So that would have
to start happening before they could probably make the separation. Otherwise, they'd have to have
some kind of interlocal agreement or some kind of agreement something so that the folks
here wouldn't be at risk with no fire service. They'd still have to figure out
how to get through that part where they didn't have enough fire apparatus. And my
understanding, and this is based off the discussion we had about this when it came
up last go-round, is that that deficit doesn't actually amount to any negative effect in
level of service because of that agreement. Is that correct? Right. And my understanding as
well is that there's no-- potential cessation of the agreement with Eastside Fire and Rescue.
That's going strong, especially after the, I think the last hurdle was that hump with
Sammamish recently. Right. And Klahani going to Sammamish. And as far as I know, and
I'm certainly not in city leadership, but I've never heard rumblings that there's any issues
with Eastside Fire and Rescue. Trish, where would, there's a little bit of disconnect for
me anyway, is that we have a deficit maybe in 2020, of, in essence,
10 fire trucks. We have a surplus of half a building. Where do the
10 fire trucks go if we buy them? We'd have to figure that out
if we decided to go solo again. We potentially would have to get--
another fire station or more. - Right, or do a temporary like we did for
a while over by Burger King. We had a temporary until we built the new
one by the transit center. - Okay. - And so that would all be part
of the, if we were leaving, there would be all those kinds of things we'd
have to figure out before we separated. - Yeah, and in my personal observations, there
are, I think generally about one empty bay per station within the city. I
mean, whether that would affect the level of service is a different question. Yeah,
I know they come from all over. When there's a call, they come from
everywhere. Any other questions on fire? Police is another good one. This was late.
The last time we updated this was 2008. The vehicles are based on calls
for service. And I'm waiting for the question, where are the officers? Well, we're
not allowed to have-- people in our capital facilities because they're people and they're not
capital. Even though they're wonderful, they're not considered capital. So we have to back into
getting people through the vehicles. And so, for example, a patrol vehicle would have two
officers. So if we're down vehicles, That also tells the council that we're down officers.
Same with motorcycle. If you're down a motorcycle, then you're down an officer. So that's
how we back into our personnel projections for police and fire. The good news with
patrol vehicles, we're surplus for both of those now and in the future, and also
investigation vehicles now and in the future. Space, we're getting really close to being at
a deficit. They're already talking about moving folks from upstairs so that police can have
the whole building across the street. So that's already in the works because we've been
seeing this number get higher and higher every year when we do this. And so
it's been on their radar that we need to find some more office space for
police. Any questions on? Trish, I know that there are bottom line things that
you have to meet, requirements that you've come up with. Have the police had
input on the value that they see a more need than maybe what is
in this plan? Right. They help us with the rate studies when we do
them, and they also ground truth. what we've budgeted for, what the council's budgeted for
to see if there's enough in the budget to cover what this shows. And for
example, when we updated the study in 2008, they asked that the calls for service
go up because they were able to do a lot more in their cars with
the computers. They didn't always have to come back to the station to do the
paperwork. which allowed them to do a lot more calls per service per officer than
they were in the past. So they give us a lot of really good information
that we would normally not have, not being an officer, you know, doing paperwork or
doing whatever they do. So they're very much helpful when we do this kind of
analysis. So they weren't given the option of we'd like to maintain the level that
we have or decrease the number, find a way to do it? Oh, they were,
and they asked us to raise the number. They also asked in the newest one
if we could use investigation vehicles, separate those out from patrol vehicles so that detectives
would also have a level of service for their vehicles as well as patrol officers.
And also motorcycles are in there as well. I think they're counted, whereas they weren't
counted in the first rate study as a level of service, you know, as counting
as a vehicle. So they help a lot. So they actually meet the requirements
and they can answer the problems that are determined by the calls in from the
populace that there are problems. They can meet all of those within a certain amount
of time. Right. It is time, though, we think, to do an updated rate study
because the last one was 2008. So we try to get that in the budget
every year, and we haven't been successful yet. Okay, because I see the
city growing exponentially and I would think that there would be more need
to, for more services. Right. For our and police. Right, right, I would
agree. What is the? desired frequency of doing that rate study is like is three
years realistic right it's supposed to be three years because by three years that six-year
capital facility plan you should have already bought whatever's in the first three years and
so then it's time to make sure you've got enough facilities that you're gonna buy
in six years to offset the deficits that might be coming with growth But since
this is 2008, we've already gone through whatever the six years would have been. And
so that's why we ask them, how many vehicles are you saying we should get?
Because that's how we would roll in. That's within the budget how we would roll
in if we're going to be in a deficit or surplus. just from asking them
what are you asking for because that'll help us know if we've got a deficit
coming or not. So over the last five years what's prohibited them from doing an
updated or? Money in the budget. There's too many things that are vying for budget
money. But there's a possibility that by doing that rate study it would free up
more budget? Right, or we could get a higher fee perhaps because the costs have
gone up for service so that then you can charge more in your mitigation fees
for developers. There's some incentive to do that. Yeah, I always say it's an investment.
If you update your fees, it's an investment in that you're going to get more
mitigation back from the applicants, from the developers, if you can do that updated study.
But sometimes the money's still not there. Where does that money come from? To do
this study, it would just be from the general fund. Trish, I'm curious. You mentioned
the building across the street. If police took over the entire building, roughly what kind
of square footage does that give them as far as the projection? I don't know
off the top of my head. I just know that we've talked about it, and
it would solve the problem. It would. For several years, yeah. For at least several
years, yeah. Thank you. Parks and
open space was just updated in 2014 along with concurrency and
the non-motorized and we're still in a deficit of over a
million and we'd be over 50 million deficit if projected out
to 2020 and this is because oh I still didn't fix
that from last time because the the updated population is the same,
has been updated, but the capital facility list has not been updated because it's the
2014 to 2019 one. So that's one of the reasons that the deficit went way
up is we didn't add any new parks to help us with capacity. And so
there's nothing to cancel out the deficit. So this one really could use the new
capital facilities plan that we're hoping is in the works. - I have
a question. - Yes. - So in this thing that you
put together, this table, CF5 Park Level of Service Standards, you
have a cost to build or create the parks, but you're
basing your need on the total value. And I see a
disconnect with that. - And which page are you on? -
Page 20. - 20 of 84?
This is the inventory that we start with that we have to base. The way
the impact fees for parks are done is we have to take an inventory of
what we have now. Well, it would have been in 2014. The inventory of parks
that we had at that moment and the amount of people we had at that
moment, and that's the cost per person that we spent on parks. and then going
forward, and it was $3,831.28. That's the amount of money based on the inventory
and the population that we spent on every person. So the new people coming
in, our commitment through level of services will spend that much money on every
new person that comes in every year. And that's how we figure out how
much we need to invest in more capacity for parks. And so that's...
what the number is. And so we have to agree with what the value,
what the inventory value is, and that's often difficult because some parcels came to
us for free, some were deeded to us, and so because we don't want
to use zero for those, we have to figure out the value. But that's
how the impact fees were calculated. I just think it's difficult to use those
figures when um people want to know how much it's going to cost to
build a certain park when you talk about adding it to mitigation fees what you're
doing is taking housing where you want to have affordable housing and you're making developers
and builders raise their prices to meet all of the fees that go go with
it so you might get parks but you're not getting the affordable housing
that you want. So you have to look at that a little closely. So
I look at this and it's, you know, if it costs a million dollars,
but you're looking at the value of two million, it is a value. I
mean, you base your tax rate on the value, not what it costs to
build. So I have a little hiccup with that because now you're looking
at for each person it's $3,800 and some dollars when actually to build it, it
was only $1,200. Right. So I see a little misconception in there. Right. And you're
right. Some of the parcels that we've had to buy are in the millions because
that's how expensive land can be now. And so it is, it is a tough,
because a pool is different than an acre of land is different than a swing
set. And so we had to figure out how to make them all sort of
have the same denominator. And that's where we went with, tried to figure out the
value and then divide it by the population. So it was a per capita number.
But you're right, it's not perfect. It's not a perfect science to figure out. Unfortunately,
you have to have some basis. You have to pick some number. Right. in estimations
for the future, you're not quite sure where they're going to be, but at least
you have some goal. Right. And I think we're maybe the second highest impact fees
in the state for parks, and it hasn't stopped anybody because they all want to
be here. They all want to build here. And so we found in the studies
that we've done that the amount of your impact fees isn't a deterrent to applicants.
No, it's not a deterrent to applicants, but what are they building? Right. When the
least expensive thing they're building is $500,000, you eliminate that affordable housing. Now, affordable housing
is great, but when you have one affordable unit in a complex, that's not really
not enough right to to add to our community right and the good news is
if they're building affordable housing we don't charge them impact fees we waive impact fees
for affordable housing which is trying to make up for that and we know that
they're doing a good thing so we're trying to help them by helping them with
the impacts but yeah it's a you raise a good point it's a it's not
a perfect science are there other questions about parks just as a footnote the reason
we started doing it this way is there were council members we used to have
sort of the level of service you need for tennis courts for every 500 people
and you need three tot lots for every and they didn't want it they the
one council member says I don't want to buy another tennis court I want to
buy land land land land because it's so expensive and so we figured out well
if you just have to spend the money on anything on this inventory then they
can buy land for for seven years and still meet the LOS. And then when
the price, when they've got all the land, then they can start putting the facilities
on it, you know, the play fields and whatever. So that was one of the
purposes of just allowing them to invest per capita and not have to buy two
tennis courts, a pool and a basketball. You know, they got to pick what it
was at that moment that they thought they should get. Any other questions on parks?
The other one, municipal facilities are the buildings, the city buildings that we have. and
that's based on new residential units. And right now we're under
by 24,000 square feet. And we, in the future though, we
should be over because there's projects in the capital facilities plan.
Land use, Kristen's up. - It is fascinating. So I'm gonna
talk about the land use element. We talked about this most,
about half of this, I would say on September 22nd.
and talking about numbers being population growth targets assumptions regional growth
center policies to reflect that we are now a regional growth
center and zoning and land use changes so we talked about
the population chart population chart starts with a number that we
receive from the state um telling us based on what we've submitted
to them what our population is for the year from that point on we are
required to do estimates as to what we think we will grow these estimates are
based on what the state is using for household population it's typically about 2.3 persons
per household so we just average out for the next over the next 20 year
for the 20-year planning period and we also estimate housing units as well any questions
on this one i'm kind of curious uh this may sound like
a silly question but once we um once we've exceeded our future target so let's
say in theory that we see that we're not going to have any more need
does the city plan on actually trying to limit the growth it's my understanding that
we have wanted that we're projecting out farther than what is needed for the regional
growth center and i'm curious why we're doing that and if there's a plan to
to to slow up or continue So the city could always, if it wanted to,
can't just stop growth. It can't put a moratorium on growth. But if the city
chose to, they could down zone. The target though is not a goal to reach.
The target is something that the state gives to us and wants to make sure
that we are building towards that, but they don't monitor us annually and say you
still have 200 units before you get there. You know, you should have gotten 300
more units this year. So it's just something, it's a guideline for us to get
to. It's not a stopping point. So based on some of the numbers I was
reading, it looks like we're far past that, that we'll easily make those numbers as
a regional growth center. So Issaquah has more aggressive targets. Well, the growth targets are
actually citywide, and it's not just based on a regional growth center. So our assumptions
for the regional growth center, let me. So our assumptions for the
Regional Growth Center is that, that's what this kind of reflects here, it'll help
out. We are assuming the draft environmental impact statement, the DEIS, assumed that we
would have approximately 7,750 new units in central Issaquah. Our targets for the entire
city were 5,750. So our assumption is that we were going to make about
2,000 more units over our adopted state target. So yes, we
will reach, we have about 2,300 to go before we hit our target, but we
are a regional growth center, so we need to just keep continuing to grow so
that we can get more grants to help us build infrastructure. for the city to
accommodate the growth. Right and the other piece that I love to add is the
7,750, there's no date associated with that. That's forever. We have forever for that. That's
our assumption. That is what we are assuming that we can accommodate in central Issaquah
and like Trish said, there's no sunset. That's just if this thing ever builds out
to what we think you know could potentially build out to, we could have 7,750
units. the zoning would allow that. And I think that's where people get mixed up
is they're saying, you're hoping for 2,000 more than the target. And it's like, well,
the capacity could take 2,000 more. The zoning could accommodate 2,000 more, but that's like
forever. I mean, that's the forever capacity. It's not to 2035 or 2031. It's not,
it doesn't have a date. It doesn't have a date. I guess where my question
comes is that when we have this additional percentage percentage of units that then needs
all these other things, whether it be the park services we provide, whether it be
the jobs that we're providing in our community. So when we're projecting out that we're
going to have more than what is necessarily needed by the state, I'm curious how
we then compensate for the fact that we've we now have a kind of a
surplus of growth that needs to then be accommodated through these other areas. So you're
going back to essentially like talking about the capital facilities that Trish just talked about
because whatever our population is, you can probably do this better, but whatever our population
is at the time is what we base our numbers on. So we say, wow,
you know, we have this many more people than we thought we would have. We
need to plan for more services. Right. We don't just stop planning either. And that's
why we do it every year. Right. So, for example, the deficit of the police
facilities, we've been seeing that creep up on us for like the last four years.
And it was sort of that flag that says, oh, check out this number. It's
changing faster than we thought. And that's what would happen if all of a sudden
we were getting a lot more people every year than we did. That would be
the flag that either we need to update our rate studies for impact fees, we
need to change the zoning. That's part of the reason we amend the comp plan
every year so we can see the new numbers and see what that helps us
understand or that we don't like about what's going on that year. And that's when
you crank it back or you make some other changes. It should help make a
lot of decisions that way. So it seems to me that that citywide
number is just basically almost confusing this issue with our projected targets
because we're not talking about-- the 5750 is citywide growth through 2031.
That 7750 is really just-- we're talking about central Issaquah capacity. has there
been any breakdown of that 2031 target as it relates to central isaac yes we
were we were required to do that as part of our regional growth center application
and getting the certification that's one of the things that we had to go back
and fix because we were confused we had goals and we had we were confused
so they said you just need to go back and fix this part and this
is you actually have to set targets for central isaac but what they said we
had to do is pull from our 5750 So you can't go over 5750. And
then we subtracted out kind of what had been built to date. And we said,
okay, the remainder, we want most of that, not all of that, because some of
it needs to go in the city, but we want most of that to go
in central Issaquah, in our regional growth center. So there is a regional growth center
target, but it's part of the 5750. It's not on top of it. Okay. So
is that that 1435 number then is that the projected growth that's coming out
of that 5750 for Central Issaquah? Yes. I'm seeing in the yellow
central urban core assumed build out. And that's part of the 77-- it would be,
yes. It's part of the-- it's kind of confusing. Part of both. It's part of
both, exactly. It's part of the 7750. It's part of the 5750. Yeah, it goes
towards our 5750 goals, and it also reduces our total capacity for build out. Correct.
Correct. So you have a target, and it's a long period of time.
Do you stop when you find out that you don't have enough transportation, you don't
have enough stuff? Do you continue on and hope that somehow you'll raise money to
and find land to build these facilities? Or do you actually stop and say, let's
see if we can't fix the roads or do something or whatever to meet the
needs of those extra Well, we kind of did that before. Trish was here when
it happened, so again, she can explain it better, but it was with concurrency. And
go ahead. With transportation concurrency, when we did that back in the 90s, and TALIS
East Village came in, and they took their proposal, took all the capacity in the
city model. And so we had like four or five years where there weren't any
smaller projects could come in because we needed to fix some big projects. because the
concurrency had failed, which is exactly what concurrency is supposed to do. It's supposed to
fail when you've hit that limit, when you've sucked all the trips out. And so
we needed to fix SR 900. We needed to fix the interchange. We needed to
do a lot of things before all of a sudden the capacity went back in
the traffic model and projects could start again. And we didn't call -- it wasn't
a moratorium. It was just concurrency failed. And according to GMA, if your concurrency has
failed, everything stops. until you can you figure out a way to fix it and
we could have lowered the level of service and said we're okay with gridlock let's
move forward but council didn't want to do that they didn't want to change the
zoning they wanted to do the improvements so we waited until we could do the
improvements before the before it went up again and we were able to allow for
permitting And the state does require, and it's in the transportation element, it's one of
the GMA requirements, is that you have to meet your level of service for your
population. So if you don't meet it, they give you four different options on what
you can do to try and fix the situation before allowing a whole lot of
development to happen. So the rate things are going now, do you feel comfortable that
you have enough support that the traffic is, I know that at some of these
intersections it is failing, Do you feel comfortable with adding more
units without planning more roads or access to roads? We are planning more roads through
Central Issaquah. And we raised the impact fees to help to pay for those. Right.
And the TIP has more projects. And if the bond goes forward-- if the bond
doesn't go forward, then we're going to have to talk about some other options because
that's part of the funding mechanism for the projects, for some of the projects.
So this is a really good slide to be on. Fabulous slide. It is.
So my first statement is that we changed goals to assumptions. So the word
goal was a carryover from our urban center application. Book and mirrors.
- It got people confused when you talked about goals. - It did. It just
totally threw people off and goals and targets got confused and capacity was, what's capacity?
So we said, let's go straight back to the EIS, which was the source of
all these numbers in the first place and just use the word assumptions. So anywhere
that we have found the word goal, we are just replacing it with its original
word assumptions. I think we've missed one or two and we'll go back and we'll
fix that. But that just, I didn't put all of them in here, but heads
up that that's what we've done. As we mentioned earlier, assumptions do not have a
sunset or a build out date. They are just what we think it, you know,
when this thing is built out as far as we think it can go, that's
what we think we'll have. The next table is actually a replacement for one that
was in there before. People see things in different ways. So we, you know, last
year put in tables with numbers and we were told, I don't understand it that
way, I need to see it this way. And then I don't understand it that
way, I need to see it this way too. So I think we have about
three different versions of these. This is one that we are changing. The numbers are
the same. We're just trying to change how you see it so it's maybe a
little more understandable. So what we're saying is that Central Issaquah, as we just talked
about, the assumed units or the assumption, 7,750 units. You break that down, you have
a target, a state adopted target of 5,750 units. We're assuming that 1,435 will go
in the urban core, which means that we are thereby assuming that 565 units will
go within Central Issaquah but outside the urban core. We're hoping that this is
a little clearer than it was last year, the way that we had it in
here. Can you repeat that one more time? Sure. Starting from the beginning? Okay. So
in the draft EIS, we assumed that we would have, which is on the left-hand
side, 7,750 units whenever this whole thing gets built out. but if you break that
down which is what a lot of people want to see you have your growth
targets which is in green which are the state adopted targets of 5 750 housing
units of those in the eis we assumed that one if you break it down
to get to the 7 750 1435 of those will go inside the urban core
or the regional growth center and then which is in central issaquah and then another
565 would go within central Issaquah but outside the urban
core. The 1435 is excess, is what you're saying? Pardon
me? The 1435, what component is that from? That from
the draft EIS, draft environmental impact statement that assumed that
an additional 1,435 units would go into the urban core.
It's projected above the state target of 5750? Yes. Who
projected that? Our company, I think, who did the EIS, I'm not
sure. Was it Burke? Right. Our environmental analysis that we did for Central Issaquah. Is
that what zoning can handle or is that what environmentally we can handle? No, that's
what zoning can handle. But they take environmental considerations. Those are a factor. Okay. So
in theory, if every landowner built out their property to the maximum capacity, we would
be looking at $1435,000 as the excess. They didn't. Yeah, they didn't assume that every
landowner is going to build out to capacity. They were more realistic than that. They
said that financially that just can't happen. So this is why they did it, not
us. I don't understand all the market stuff that goes into it as well, but
they didn't assume that everybody's going to build 10 stories with zero lot lines on
either side. That's not what they assumed. But they did assume that in about seven
years, people would start taking advantage of bonus density and building higher than they are
allowed to go than the base. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Are we good? Can I
move on? Okay. This is the same thing with jobs. Jobs are harder for
us to predict though. When we predict jobs, actually we don't really predict jobs.
We are given a growth target. Our growth target in this case, what we
are assuming in central Issaquah is less than our state adopted target. Our state
adopted target is 20,000 new jobs between 2006 and 2031. The
Central Issaquah, the draft EIS again, assumed 14,555 new units in
the urban core, which would leave us with about 19,425, 522
or something like that in Central Issaquah together. So 14,55 in
the core, 4,670 in Central Issaquah outside the core, leaving us
with about 775 new jobs outside, just in the rest of
the city. What is this Issaquah doing to entice
new businesses to come into the core? Well, we now have an economic development department,
which is new since this all came about. They're going out, they're doing flyers, they're
promoting, they're working with chamber, they're going to regional meetings and working with different groups
there. I don't know exactly what the economic development department is doing, but We
have one and they're working on it. That sounds cool. That's what I wanted you
to say. But sometimes I ask these questions and it's, it'll be determined for whatever
the developers want to put in there. And I want to make sure that the
city is proactively trying to find 14,000 jobs to go into the. They are proactively
trying, yes. Right. And we have, we've got the, what is the thing called? The
the incubator that Jen just got. - Oh, that Jen's doing? -
I can't think, but it's with regional recreation and sports medicine, and
we did a-- - Oh, that. It's a state thing where you get money for
focusing on a kind of business. Where we got certified that we have all the
pieces. We have the hospital. We have REI. So they're trying to get a regional
sports medicine and recreation kind of a tag so that we'll be more of a
focus and a magnet for those kinds of businesses and doctors and patients and all
that kind of stuff. Years ago when we had the Lego things, everybody in my
group said this is, you know, We need to promote Issaquah as recreation, as this
is what sets us apart. So I'm glad it's finally coming out. Right, and that's
on the website under economic development, what it's really called, because I know I'm messing
up the name of it. But it's a very cool thing that we just got
approved for. So hopefully there's some entrepreneur out there that's going to focus on providing
a a restaurant, a business or whatever that works towards bikers. Fingers crossed.
Innovation partnership zone. That's it. Yes, thank you. Thank you. That's exactly what
it is. I would never have come up with that in a million
years. Thank you. I thought I had a C in it. Okay, moving
on. Sorry, one more question. If we can go back one more slide,
please. So looking at these goals, In 2020, we would be 1,750 above
the state target. CHRISTIE WOOD: OK. That's not including the additional 1,435 units that
could be built out at any point. CHRISTIE WOOD: Correct. I want to find
out. Thanks. CHRISTIE WOOD: OK. Kristen, just to be clear, the 5,750 includes stuff
that we've already built. CHRISTIE WOOD: It does. So that's a table that's coming
up in just a minute. But it does.
Which one's this? Okay. So this is a table that they asked, the city council
asked us to put in last year. It kind of compares how we've done citywide
with all of central Issaquah with just the regional growth center. So it shows where
the target started in 2006 and what we had with housing and jobs back then,
how much we have increased since then, and how much we have remaining to target.
So our numbers, we've changed them a little bit. We are now, I mentioned this
last time, using strictly the state numbers because they are adopted. So for housing units,
it is the Office of Financial Management. And for employment, it is the Employment Security
Department through the state. So the numbers, so the existing change just a little bit.
Some things have changed, but we're trying to remain consistent all the way through the
plan to avoid any more confusion. Okay.
This chart, I noticed today, so there are two charts that again
show assumptions of 85, golly, here we go, assumptions of 8,500 units,
and that's total, that's not new. That's total units in Central Issaquah.
with our target of 5750 and kind of how we're going. I noticed today that
what I put in your packet was actually still the 2013, so I've adjusted that,
but due to user unfamiliarity with Excel, I haven't figured out how to get 2014,
2015, and 2016 at the bottom, so that will be fixed. But the other table
still does reflect 2016. So this just shows kind of the same things that we've
been talking about all the way through, how we're growing. And this is just in
central Issaquah. These are central Issaquah. Oh, no, wait. Sorry, these are citywide, citywide numbers.
And this is the same thing. It just goes all the way out to 2031
and kind of our trend and how we're doing towards reaching that 2031 target.
This table we talked about last week, this is another one that council asked
us to include. They wanted to see year by year how many units we
had constructed since 2006, again towards hitting our 2031 targets. Again, we are using
the OFM numbers, the Office of Financial Management. These do not include properties that
have been annexed into the city. Those don't count, they're only new units. And
so since 2006, we've constructed 3,442 units and needed to meet target, we
have 2,308. We also talked about this last week. This is a proposed change. When
we adopted our comprehensive plan last year, we had applied for regional growth center status.
We had not been certified. That happened after the adoption. So this change is being
made to reflect that we are now a regional growth center. And the primary policy,
a lot of just the discussion talking about how it's located in central Issaquah and
kind of what the purpose of regional growth centers are to take in
growth to, you know, densify the infrastructure. We also did, the
policy that we included in here is to prioritize funding for
the urban core for infrastructure projects, including transportation, public spaces, parks,
and anything else to meet the needs of the population. And
I've got a, sorry, I have a question about the other
slide there under LU policy K2. Yes.
What is the criteria? Have we decided what a criteria would be used to prioritize
the funding? Other than it's, well, so when we did our impact fee study or
when we did the most recent impact fee study and we looked at, we created
a mitigation fee for non-motorized routes and we increased the fees for new roads. But
when we looked at that and we said it needs to be kind of a
shorter list, which is in the comprehensive plan, it needs to be a shorter list.
There were priorities and I am more familiar with the non-motorized than I am with
the motorized, but I can at least speak to those right now. They probably fit.
Some of the priorities for putting those non-motorized routes on the mitigation list to get
money were, is it where density is going to go? Does it increase capacity? Does
it connect centers? Does it connect destination points? Those were at least four of them.
I think there were seven in all, but it kind of focused on is it
going where growth is and does it actually increase the amount of space where people
can move? And I, so like I said, I would imagine that some of that
was the same for the motorized facilities for the roads. - So is there a
control that when I read that I have to, I think worst case scenario when
I'm reading this and I'm thinking, okay, so we have concentration of it's gonna get
the prioritize funding, but what about the other parts of the city that also need
the funding funding wouldn't go to them, funding would go
to the urban core because that is priority. You hear what I'm saying, right? I
do. Right. And there's other priorities in the transportation improvement program. And one of those
is safety. And so if like a corridor has got accidents or has warrants for
a light, that's one of the priorities. So let's say it wasn't in the core,
but it was somewhere where there were accidents. then that would have a different sort
of priority to get the funding for that transportation improvement. What about level of service?
What I'm afraid is going to happen is we're going to prioritize all the funding
towards urban core and we're going to allow the level of service in the areas
that also need those funds not get it because we're pushing it towards. Keep in
mind though, prioritize does not mean only put your money here. It means look at
those things first. Look at those areas first because when a development comes in, too,
that development is required to do any frontage improvements, safety improvements that meet the needs
of that development. So over here on 7th and Gilman, they're getting ready to put
in a light over there for safety reasons and for traffic reasons. Granted, yes, it's
in central Issaquah, but they're required to meet the needs of that improvement as well.
Impact fees, yes, can be used around the city, but like I said, though, it
doesn't mean only here. It just means look at central Issaquah first. And in terms
of that, the ultimate prioritization, especially when it comes down to competing priorities, that comes
down to a decision of council. Is that right? Yes. Yes.
With input from the community. Pardon me? Right. With input from the
community. Yes, with input from the community and the Planning Policy Commission.
All right. This one also was shown last week. Or no, it
wasn't. I don't know. This is a map that's always been in
there. We just, there's a table, this table on the right hand side, which is
very unlegible here, was on a previous map and for some reason was taken off.
We just wanted to put it back on and we included a little bit more
information. So it includes things like the ordinance, when it was annexed, how much acreage
was included, how many housing units were included, what the population was, and I think
that's it. So we just wanted that back on there just as a point of
reference for people. Rezones, we talked about these last
week, rezones and redesignations. So as I mentioned last week, every year, usually every year,
the city acquires property either through dedication or purchase. One of the priorities of the
city and particularly the Parks Department is to purchase land along creeks to prevent development
there and thereby helping the flooding issues and so forth. Some are dedicated. In this
case, this is the property, this is 7th and Locust and Gilman, 7th and Gilman,
and this is the parkland that was dedicated as part of the Atlas Agreement to
the City. This is just being dedicated so it is being proposed, it's currently mixed
use and it's being proposed to be rezoned as community facilities recreation and the land
use would be community facilities. Any questions? You said that's next to the Atlas property?
It is. It's part of Atlas. Yeah, the buildings, the atlas theater. Those two
are the, that's where the buildings are located. And that parcel would be public?
Yep. Yes. Public park. And does the public have, what kind of access would
the public have to that versus Atlas? Because it's basically right on Gilman. It's
in Atlas. Right, but there's access to it from Gilman and from Atlas as
well. And from Locust. So it's totally public. Yeah. And actually that long tail
is a trail. is a shared use trail that goes from 7th through to the
park. I realize this is probably a parks decision, but how welcoming would that be
from Gilman? In other words, is it going to be welcoming to the public where
the public will look at it and go, oh wow, that's a great nice park.
Or is that going to be kind of pigeoned off to the side where It's
really going to be enjoyed by Atlas and not so much by the community. I'm
not familiar with the design. Are you? Right. I know that there's an entrance on
it on Gilman and it's going to have a, you know, entrance here and it'll
be on our maps as a public park. I think it's going to get a
lot of use. People driving by, it's right there on the creek.
So these next four properties are some of the ones that I talked about that
are purchased because they're Creekside properties and you prevent flooding from, you know, you prevent
development happening there and prevent flooding. These are both proposed to be zoned community facilities
open space. All of them will be, the city-owned properties will be designated community facilities
just to show that they are for public purpose. They'll be zoned community facilities open
space. Same with the next two here on Clark and Front. One of these, number
four, so it's the top property, is proposed to be zoned Community Facilities Recreation, but
the other one is Community Facilities Open Space. This last property
is a privately owned property. The owner recently had a deed of conservation easement placed
on it. It was approved by the state. This means that this property will remain
open space in perpetuity. And so the property thereby is, you know, the property owner
has asked that the property be rezoned to conservancy recreation, which just means it won't
be touched. It will remain as open space. Questions? Just
to let you all know, we sent letters to property owners within 300 feet of
all the parcels that are having a rezone, just so they're aware of what's happening
to land near their home. And so that might be why there's folks here. But
we want to be real open, you know, to folks to know that something's changing
in their neighborhood. So that's, we've sent out, what, 300 letters? Almost, it was about
200 letters. We only received one phone call, actually, which is unusual. We only received
one phone call and it was on this property. That property though isn't
going to change. It's going to stay exactly
the way it is. Right. Yeah. In fact,
the deed, you know, even if we didn't
zone it, the deed keeps anything from happening
on it. Trish. This one you saw in
September. Actually, no, you saw this one in August when Megan and David came and
showed you the sustainability indicators. It's all new because they had to rewrite so much
of it since they hadn't updated it in a while. And it includes the eight
primary sustainability themes that are based on the sustainability report card that they do. Were
there any questions about this since you just so recently saw it? No questions. I
just wanted to kind of re-voice my concern over those sustainability report card indicators. I
know that they were initially done by the Sustainability Sounding Board, but I still have
those fairly major concerns that we're not using kind of best methodology and best evidence
to gauge those areas that were identified by the Sustainability Board. Right. And I think
their answer was that they're hoping to redo them. at some time which would revamp
whatever it is they're using in that methodology and all. But yeah, point well taken.
I think that's one of the questions that we got in the email from Mary
Lynch. And I sent that to David Fujimoto, that's the director of the Office of
Sustainability, and he wrote her back on some of her questions and concerns of methodology
and what was being counted in the indicators. So she did get an answer to
that part of her set of questions. um oh
yes just uh just i just noticed that on page
61 of 84 it talks about green buildings yes the
first question says what are breen buildings oh we got
a nice typo there okay i don't know what green
buildings are i thought that might be a compilation of
built green so it's green That would be good. That would save us
a lot of room in the plan if we merged them together. Good eye. OK.
Well, I didn't realize I'd be down for such a short time. All right. Transportation
element. I don't think you all have seen any of these. Most of the changes
that are here are required by the Puget Sound Regional Council. These were given to
us after our periodic update was done in 2015. And then also included is the
annual Transportation Improvement Program update, which you all saw back in April and Council has
since approved it. It just is required to be in our comprehensive plan. So
the first one is clarification. This is a PSRC requirement. It's a clarification of state-owned
facilities, their locations and levels of service. And our two state-owned facilities are SR 900
and I-90. And the level of service for SR 900 is a level of service
D. And for new, I-90 is a level of service D. SR 900 is level
of service E mitigated, which means that if congestion gets really bad, then it
needs to be mitigated with something like transit or bike lanes or more sidewalks, that
kind of thing. And that is a, we don't give it those levels of service,
the state does. We don't have any controls over what it is and isn't. They
also asked us to show it on a map. We originally showed I-90 as a
highway but didn't really spell it out. So this map just shows that SR 900
is a designated highway of regional significance and I-90 is a designated highway of
state significance. This is the TIP that was approved by city council earlier this
year and you all had a chance to review. This is the table that
goes with it. It's listed on all the projects and estimated costs and when
they'll happen and all that good stuff. The last one is part of the
transportation element. The state requires that we show truck routes. So this truck routes map
reflects the most recent decision made by city council, which essentially eliminates all truck routes
south of I-90 with the exception of SR 900, which again, we are not allowed
to touch. So that's what this reflects. The dotted line up there, there is a
piece up at the north on Southeast 43rd Way, there is a dotted line that
shows that that road actually is in Sammamish right now, but it still continues as
a truck route. So just letting people know it doesn't stop. Moving
on to the central list. So central Issaquah plan is a sub area plan of
the comprehensive plan. And so when we amend our comprehensive plan, we lay, if we
need to make changes to the other ones, the sub area plans, we like to
do that at the same time. So next year you get to see Old Town.
I think. Hopefully. Hopefully. So again, this is something that was central to the
Soho plan and like so many of the numbers, it confused people so we
took it out but then people kept saying where are those numbers? So we're
putting it back in. These all again came from the draft environmental impact statement.
It just reflects It is for all of Central Issaquah. It breaks it down,
and there are footnotes here too that I didn't include here, but there are footnotes,
but it breaks it down by urban core, outside the urban core, Rally Development Agreement,
what we have existing as of 2012, not 2006, what we had existing, what we
assume that we are going to get, and therefore our assumed total, which would include
the new plus the existing. Okay, we good? The next table, more numbers. Love numbers.
This comes from the Central Issaquah Monitoring Report, which is done every year. And council
asked us to include this in the Central Issaquah Plan just to help people track
it. And that's all we did. We just updated the numbers with what has been
constructed, parks that have been acquired, jobs, commercial square feet, which then turns into jobs
and residential units as well. So this just updates what we've had. This was our
third year, so it shows what we've accumulated over the three years in Central Issaquah.
Any questions? We talked about this one, Trish if I mess it up let
me know. We talked about this one at our last meeting and King County,
well the King County will be taking, so we have right now we have
East Cougar Mountain which is larger than it reflects here. It goes further east
and touches our boundaries on the east. King County will be
taking back part of our potential annexation area. The part that we are keeping is
the part that is developed right now. It has houses in there. King County will
be taking the open space piece that is going to remain open space. It can't
be developed. It's already designated as, most of it's designated as part of a park.
And that's, so this map is shown to reflect that. It also changes there. We
also reflect changing the urban growth boundary as a part of this. The county is
doing that. And this is part of the county's update of their comprehensive
plan. We requested this PAA to be removed, so they're removing not quite half of
it for us. There we go. Next steps. You all will talk about it, have
public comment, talk about it some more, maybe take action tonight, and then it goes
to council on November 7th with the potential of being adopted in December. All right.
Do you have any questions for us before we open it up to the public
comments or any other questions? thoughts before um since the public comment always when
you open up to public comments there's always things that come up that maybe we
haven't thought about and and maybe we'd like to continue discussion so i'd kind of
like to wait until after the public hearing and then then if there are any
questions we'll go for that sure is there anybody signed up Do
any of you want to come talk even though you're not signed up? There's
still time. Okay. Okay. So with that, I'm going to open the public hearing
at 735. We're on. No, you can just speak slowly so Susan can get
your name in. Hi, my name is Steve Pereira. I live at 170 Northeast
Dogwood Street for about nine years now. So I did have a couple thoughts.
I wish I was more organized, but here we go. - No, it's just me.
- Part of it is my own problems reading my own writing, so please bear
with me. Thanks. So the central Issaquah plan, I guess I had assumed, and it
seems to be incorrectly, that was just, and I don't have a sense of direction
either, east of I-90 only, it wasn't the rest of Issaquah. I'd like to see
that reflected to just that east of, I guess I want
to say the Costco side of Izaquah wasn't the valley floor
itself. Right, no, it's north and south of I-90. I think
that should be restricted by zoning. But anyway, that's just my
input I'm providing. Okay. So I'm on page 6 of 84
now, just for those who might want to follow along.
So it has to do with number four, the police vehicle usage. So two
things occur to me that we're looking at is we've recently changed the truck
traffic routes and while it's hoped that there's a voluntary following of that,
That's one example. Another example is when we looked at the redevelopment of Sunset, one
of the things that the residents who live there stated is that traffic often bypasses
their streets or bypasses Sunset and drives to residential zones. So I'd like to see
more, both of these things are an area where there needs to be more police
enforcement activity. And so the patrol vehicle usage doesn't seem to be adequately staffed to
provide that coverage. So I think that should need some more reflection and
inclusion in the budget for that to happen. If that also involves officers,
I understand that's a separate budget issue, but that should be part of
the discussion as well. Have you ever brought that up to the police
department that there are problems associated in that area? Can you repeat the
question please? Have you ever spoken to the police department specifically about the
problems that are encountered in that area? No. I just know I've
got past those reader boards that say your speed is currently this
and it's often above the posted speed zone so it just seems
like if you're considering that as part of the discussion with police
then that's part of the conversation from a policy perspective as well.
From page 9 of 84, again the police And this is a
level of service measurement. Number of speeding tickets that are issued seems like that should
be part of the discussion. What's the percentage rate? What's the number of tickets as
far as the level of service of things that we're expecting police to provide? I
don't expect public information on who got tickets, that type of thing, but general information
seems a relevant topic or target.
Page 31 of 84, CF Policy C1 and CF Policy C2 allow development
only when and where all public facilities and essential public services are adequate
and such development can adequately be served without reducing levels of service elsewhere.
It seems like with the level of growth we're not meeting or able
to provide that. And C2, I feel like I'm insulting you when I
read out what's already in writing, so I don't want to do that per se.
We're growing faster than we're able to provide the roads, the police service, the fire.
And again, maybe larger scope, I think that's part of a zoning issue where if
we want to target growth to go in certain areas, we need to down zone
other areas to accommodate or direct growth into a certain area.
Page 37 of 84. This is on the target of assumptions versus goals. And it
seems like what we're really talking here are really goals, not assumptions. It seems like
they should better be defined as goals, both because if we want to target growth
and development in a certain area, we need to not targeted into certain areas and
that's a goal, a public choice, a policy to put things in a certain place
and not allow them in other places. Otherwise, if we did simply have zoning that
said you can have max use in this area, then you're gonna get that because
you have to allow for the best use of the policy. So I think we
should call them goals and we should publicly and through policy encourage or make that
happen.
This is a combination of things. We need, and this was something that was said,
we need growth to get grants to pay for growth. And we seem to be
putting that backwards. If growth isn't paying for itself, then we need to limit what
the growth is either through the through the development staff to make that happen and
for the traffic mitigation fees. One of the things I've heard people, or I've heard
is that you have 10 years between the time you apply and get assessed impact
fees and the time that those impact fees have to be used to mitigate the
impact of the traffic. And it also seems it's not a direct correlation between this
project is gonna cause traffic problems here, but you can use those fees wherever best
deemed by the city. So that seems counterproductive for
a growth policy to not mitigate its impacts that
are caused by a particular project. I'm sorry, page
53 of 84, why is housing affordability important? When
there's a residential building applied that's gonna have affordable
housing as part of its target, I would like
it to be required that they say these are
the number of units that are gonna be
and at what level of affordability that they're going to be targeted. I understand
there's different levels of what affordable growth is considered a range, and that should
be part of the public process of saying this is the number of units
and what those rates are going to be. Next page, 54, and this has
to do with what I think the level of service, the things we measure,
how we know how well we're doing. The first one that's presented here is business
climate. It just seems we have the business climate here as maybe kind of the
one largest thing that we're measuring as far as a weighted impact. And we seem
to, I think we're better measuring this than we're measuring all the other ones. So
we get what you measure. This is back to the goal of targets and goals.
So I'd like to see a bit more emphasis on some other categories besides business
climate being the central thing that we seem to be measuring. It's important, I just
don't know that it's the central thing. Page 57 of 84, community awareness and
stewardship. So I'd like to see some, Citi does some good things, public programs
like Concerts in the Park, a number of public boards and commissions, get back
to how we measure them and what the engagement and what the process is
and whether people like those. I'd like to see things like how often people
write to the city staff or to the city leadership team, we want
to see these things and how quickly they get a response back. I
know they do email blasts, could more email blasts of things like growth
and development and changes overall within the city of, let's say, agendas and
meeting minutes from groups like public policy and development commission and library board
and other things, more engagement with the public, not less.
Next page, 58, voter turnout. I agree voter turnout is critical. I wish more people
would vote when you only have half of those who are registered, people who are
eligible to vote are registered and only half of those that are registered actually vote.
I'm just not sure how reasonable of a goal it is that it's a major
theme of what the public policy is. It's a little, I'm not sure how the
city engages or engages that happens, so I'm not sure why it's listed as one
of our goals. as the city. Page 64 of 84. There's more pages.
I only got through 84 pages printed off, so you won't have to
bear with me that much longer. Tree canopy. So we talked about tree
canopy, but there seems to be a differentiation that can be made, not
just tree canopy, but how much is a wildlife zone, how much worse
squirrels and birds and forest critters will play versus just having a number
of trees. And sometimes it seems like there's a difference in
public policy here and when we cut down trees along Front Street, we're
losing something and by saying we want growth but tree canopy or tree
protection isn't as important to us. There also seems to be a disconnect
when a high density building is allowed to be put in and city
code allows for to waive the building requirements for the number of trees
and also the types of trees to be less than what
I don't think we should have a zoning that allows that
to happen. And I also think there's a difference in the
number of trees that get zoned, get replaced and the type
of tree as far as the carbon footprint of the tree
needs to be included and considered as part of the policy.
And that does kind of carry over to page 65 of
84 where it talks about the carbon footprint. So I report
that completes my comments. Thank you. - Thank you. - Thank
you for, thought process that you went through to
actually go through every part of the proposed comp plan and
come up with some good ideas. I think that the city
should take several of those ideas at least into consideration. Maybe
not changing actually the comp plan but providing input to
the departments to look at those specific things. And the one
value of having the PPC meeting in front of the camera
is that people like you can get some input of what
we're, or the city is doing. And so I really appreciate
that. Some of those things we've already discussed when we were
going through the all the discussions on the central area
plan. We had, and I know Carl was part of it, we had always
been presented that there were ten sections and all those ten sections were going
to be developed differently. And when the environmental study went through, they kind of
lumped them all together. And it came to a point where you have F
transportation in some areas but maybe c or d over here so when you combine
the two it makes it a level d and that's not really what the city
wants or was planning and certainly what we weren't talking about when we were going
through the process of of how the city was going to develop in the central
area plan but all the other things you said were were right on and i
think that it should be um shown that people who come to this
meeting are actually listened to and something is done based on their input, at
least an answer of why it's not being done or how we can do
it to some extent. So I hope that gets forwarded on. Hopefully that will
be of value to you and the rest of the city. Does anybody else have
anything to say for public comment? Janet, do you have anything that you would like
to say in the way of the comp plan? Are we accomplishing what you think
we should be? Okay. Okay. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to do
that. So if there is nobody else that I would like to make
any comments on the comp plan. I will close the public meeting at 7:50
and then open it up for you to add any more input on what
was said or what other questions you have for this. - I just would
like to add two things and they're not really in reference to findings that
we'd make but I just wanted to point out the dismal state
of the affordable housing gap and would hope council
and the planners really look hard at what incentives
we're offering to strengthen and reduce that gap. This
is especially important in light of the growth at
Amazon that just keeps pushing things east. And I
think I hate to be the guy that always brings up Seattle, but the
grand bargain that was made in terms of bringing the developers, nonprofits, and the city
all to the same table to create a real substantive plan. I think something similar
could be done here in terms of working directly with the developers to come up
with a meaningful increase to those affordable housing units. that
was one you said you had two oh thank you uh the brain is the
brain is tired uh the second one is um again not related to the metrics
itself uh but just something that that rings true to me again i i in
terms of waste generation i just don't see why there's not at least if not
mandatory composting mandatory availability of composting especially when we look in in terms of and
other large complexes where we could really be making a meaningful
reduction in waste. Again, that doesn't fall into the metrics of
it, but it's something that I would love to see as
we move forward. - Anyone else? - Can we vote? Can
I put in a note to city council? Like an exception?
- Sure. - Okay. - Would you like to state the
exception now so we know what? - Yeah, so, Paige.
so my proposal to the city council would be
to propose changes to the comp plan page 55
and 96 shows an upside between units built of
15 186 to 19244 by 2020 that's a 1750
unit increase above the mandate not including the 1435
which is the the excess build out i'm trying
to read my own writing here It was on page
48 of 96, which if both numbers hit 3,185 units, plus the
565 units that are outside the urban core, that's going to give
us a total of 3,750 units above the state target on the
valley floor. We need more analysis to ensure that our LOS can
handle the capacity. Do we really want an additional 3,750 units above
the urban core targets? I
recommend holding off on any decision until after the
election to ensure ST3 passes. My concern is that
we are moving too fast. Is he in the
pop chart in the forecast? Is that where he
is? faster than our level of service can handle. And so basically when
we have growth, the state's idea is to, if we go this direction, we can
have our infrastructure develop along with us. But if all of a sudden we start
growing too fast and our infrastructure has to catch up, then that's going to create
a negative impact to LOS across the entire valley floor. We really want that.
Is the table you're referring to the population
and housing chart? Yes. Where are the numbers?
So, okay. I'm referring to the table L6
in the population household projections on page 55
of 96. Want me to go back through
the math with you? So, there's a quota
total under units. We have 15,186. That's for
April 1st, 2016. Estimated April 1st, 2020
goes to 19,244 units. That's 1,750 units
above the state target. Then we have,
going back to page 48 of 96,
then we have to add in the
additional 1,435 units, which would be build
out, and the 565, which would be
outside the urban core. together. Why do
you have to add them to that number? Because the pop chart is
everything. Right, so the $7,750 is everything, but the $5,750 is what is
being asked of us, right? So if we go back to, unless maybe
I got my math wrong or I'm looking at this incorrectly. Well,
I think part of the confusion may be that the table and household projection are
integrated into that pie chart that you're looking at. Yes. Yeah. They're not separate numbers
or additions. They're part and parcel for the same. They're just in a different format.
And I should also note that, you know, the EIS that was done that made
the assumptions and what could be built took into account environmental constraints and what could
really be developed. you know, redevelopable lands, that kind of thing. The pop chart doesn't.
The pop chart is a simple 2.3, 2.3 people per household, you know, this many,
you know, you're growing at a 0.3% of, you know, year over year over year.
So it doesn't take any of those other factors, market factors, environmental factors, anything else
into consideration when this is being done. It would be a year-long process just to
do that every single year. So the difference between 15186 and 19244 is
showing by 2020 that we are going to be 1,750 units above target.
Is that right? That would be if we grew the same as we
have grown in the past, using all the footnotes that are up there,
the extended growth target based on an estimated 0.3% annual growth. I mean,
there's... We do this because the state asks us to forecast out using past data.
And so this is using different data than our EIS used for Central. Right. As
Kristen described that that actually was environmentally based on wetlands, streams, buffers, and what you
could build. Whereas this is just a straight calculation based on percentages in the past.
And again, we update everything every year. So if all of a sudden one year
we got 7,000 housing units or even 700 would be a huge year that would
send the flags off, not only for the budget, but impact fees, level of service.
And so that's why we do this every year is so nothing surprises us as
a city, as the, as the council. So the fifth, the 19 to 44 is
1700 units above target. Correct. But remember the
target started in 2006 and we only have 2000 left
to go to hit the 2031. So that's like an
apples and oranges piece as well. I think Justin described
it very well. So if we use that philosophy, units
towards the 2031, so I'm looking at 53 of 96.
We have 5,750 housing units targeted. So that's the
same as the green area in the pie chart
on page 48 of 96. So 5,750 that matches.
That's just the urban core. And if we hit
based on this table 19,244, that's putting us 1,750
units above what is required. That's excess. But that
doesn't include the orange portion of the pie
chart, which is 1435, or the red portion- It includes everything.
The pop chart includes everything. It's not a subset of anything.
The only thing it doesn't include is it doesn't consider environmental
constraints that would provide less ability to provide housing units. So
this chart, L6, population household projections, includes that
entire pie chart. Yes. Correct. Which is on page 48 and 96 for those who
are going to read this. Correct. Yes. Okay. All right. So then I am incorrect
in my assumption. You're looking at it in a different lens. Yes. I could say
it that way. I wouldn't say you're incorrect. I'd say you're looking at it with
a different lens. So you're trying to separate things out and things are separated out
above that before you get to the total so you can see all the different
things that change. in those four years that might change? Right. because we didn't
want to just do one lump sum. This is the housing units times this. We
tried to at least break it down by area, by Talus, Lakeside, because some of
the places already have growth targets built in that they can't have any more units
in a certain number. So those are some numbers that don't get multiplied by anything
because they can't grow any farther because they have a cap on them from the
development agreement. So that's why the units coming down this way are broken out into
the different numbers so it's not just one big number is multiplied by right right
but still it's not totally accurate as any forecaster will tell you it's always going
to be wrong because we don't have a really good crystal ball yet i i
agree with that go ahead you talked about this being a tool to bring up
red flags exactly what are what are the red flags from this last year what
i mean what did we learn from from this? Is this, is the takeaway
from this that we have been going too fast? Is that kind of what we're
reading into this? Are there, is that what, - Drove the moratorium or disconnected?
- I think from what the council said, the growth that they're getting isn't the
growth that they thought they would get. And I'm paraphrasing what the agenda bill says.
And they listed, I think six pieces of it that they're unhappy with. One was
the architectural fit of the new projects. One was the urban design aspects of them.
One was that we haven't gotten any affordable housing yet. One was that the district
visions didn't seem as clear in the projects as they had hoped they would be.
Parking. We hadn't gotten any real structured parking. And I always forget one. What am
I forgetting? Mixed use. Thank you. Oh, that was easy. I just forgot it, though.
And they weren't getting mixed use like they thought they would get. So it didn't
have so much to do with density as I understand it. It was more with
how it's coming and what it is, but not how much that I could tell
from what I read. Right. And that came about from the three-year, most of it
came about from the three-year monitoring report. We do one every year, but then we
do sort of a bigger one for three years, and it was the first one
we'd done for Central that was the three-year, and that showed them some, you know,
that we hadn't gotten any affordable housing, we hadn't gotten any mixed use. So it
got them thinking that, well, maybe we should pause and see if there's a different
way or different things we can do to get those kinds of things. In other
words, there was a stop and they're looking at all of the pieces and when
it gets to a point where it's stuck and they're going to go back and
reboot and see how to do it. So even though it says 1700 new units
or 1200 or whatever it is, it's just a projection and by monitoring it every
year, they're going to see if that's possible and they'll stop if it isn't.
but if we as they say right and the other piece though john what what
flags have come up is that at least this part in the budget proposal that's
coming out we would be updating our transportation concurrency next year to update not only
the transportation improvements that we would want done, but if the impact fees go up
at all or if the percentages of developer to city. So that's been a flag
that it's time to update those. They were updated. We adopted the new ones in
beginning of 2015. And so they want to look at that again to help us
provide better and better transportation improvements. So, yeah, there's been some good flags came up.
In response to these extended targets past what we, what the state would like to
see, I feel like while looking at the comp plan, I understand the logic you
guys are using, but it feels like a knee-jerk reaction. Telling me that there's a
problem when it already exists feels like something we can head off before when we
start saying, hey, the state needs us to absorb some growth. We're accommodating this, and
yet we're projecting numbers that are far larger. It feels like we're going to be
getting into a situation where year after year we keep getting red flags. why don't
we head this off before? It feels very like a knee-jerk reaction to me in
reading this report, especially when we talked about in August these metrics of how are
we doing as a community kind of being unrelated and you know, for instance, whether
it was our local produce. Going to the farmers market, you can see that a
lot of the produce there is actually not grown in our region and is brought
over. So the fact that a lot of these things that we use to say,
how are we doing as a community are off, then we use these things to
say, hey, every year we're looking at them, but yet we're, they don't mash up
to me. So to the, regarding the 2035 targets, that was kind of required by
the Puget Sound Regional Council because it's supposed to be a 20-year plan. And they
said, well, you need to show us, you know, projection or what you think your
targets might be. So every city, they gave us a formula and we all calculated
based on the same thing. But they're not recognized by the state. And in 2021,
we're going to go through the process of adopting targets again. So while that goes
all the way out to 2035, it's kind of just... there to show 20 years.
No city that I know right now is planning on that. They're not looking at
that 2035 number and saying that's it because we know that it's going to be
addressed again in six years. So that might help address some of your concern about
what we think we're planning for. We're not going out that far. My fear is
that we are using, we're creating a number, we're putting a number down on a
piece of paper that might be an unlikely number, but the fact that we're putting
it down on paper starts allowing people to kind of normalize that and we really
want to put down numbers that exceed our target i mean i understand that we
can grow and that's okay if we have the capacity to grow that's fine but
do we really want to start putting these numbers down on paper and using them
if we put it on paper people are going to start thinking of it as
a target or that's an acceptable growth for us to be able to handle we
really want to put that on and send it up to the City Council and
say, hey, you know what, we proved that you can handle this extra capacity. We're
okay with it. I realize it's a recommendation. We don't actually make a decision, but
I think City Council should look at it carefully. Well, the 2035 number's actually already
been adopted. If you're talking about the growth target that's in there, the 2035 number's
already been adopted by the City Council in the periodic update that we did. And
we did note in there several times that that is not recognized by the state.
It's only to represent a 20-year planning period. So, we did note that. Right. So
are you thinking, just if I can translate what you said, is that this chart
would have for when the target year is, which would be 2031, let me make
sure I got my numbers right, that the 2031 number, and I might be totally
wrong of what you're saying, that the 2031 number would have the 2,000 more housing
units that we have left in our target it would have that ending
number in it. Is that what you're saying? No. Okay. Because that
would mean that our target for 2031 was exactly what, how many
units the state is asking us to take. Okay. Right, but I'm
trying to understand what he's saying and I guess I don't understand.
Well, I want to be sure that I understand this too and
maybe I don't and that's part of the confusion here. So
when I look at, because this isn't, I'm getting confused
at this then. When I look at page 53 of
96, it says 2031 housing targets 5750. And I'm not
looking at new units 3442, units needed to target is
2308, but let's go back to the 5750. That's the
housing target for 2031. Then we go back to the
pie chart, And within the green area, I see
the 5750. Then I see the additional red and the
orange. And you're seeing those numbers all together. An entire
pie chart is being represented in this table. - L6.
- Oh, I think I can clarify. - Right, yes. - 19. - That
table is a very simple projection that was done based on past growth. The
pie chart is the EIS report, right? The pie chart was an actual estimate
of actual growth, including showing the target and then showing what the potential looks
like at 2031 with more realistic factors. And another way to say
it is the two colors that are not green in the pie chart, those are
forever. Those don't have a timeline on them. So we would have no idea where
to put those in the pop chart. That is only based on what zoning can
-- the capacity of what zoning can handle today. Right. And that's just in central
from the EIS that we did. So that's why there's kind of apples and oranges
that we're using a lot of different tools to try to make good decisions. Okay.
Does everybody else have an easier time to understand this than I?
I GUESS I JUST THINK OF THEM AS A TOOL. I DON'T THINK OF THEM
AS THE NUMBER AND THE ONLY NUMBER, BECAUSE THERE'S SO MANY NUMBERS, AND THEY ALL
MEAN SOMETHING DIFFERENT TO WHOEVER'S ASKING FOR THE NUMBER. YOU KNOW, LIKE IT MEANS SOMETHING
DIFFERENT TO THE STATE THAN IT DOES TO THE REGIONAL PSRC, THAN IT DOES TO
THE HOUSING PROVIDERS. SO WE TRY TO FOOTNOTE EVERYTHING THAT WE GIVE YOU AND SHARE
SO THAT PEOPLE CAN UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT OF WHATEVER NUMBER WE'RE TALKING ABOUT. but they're
used as a tool for us to make good decisions and to understand what we're
dealing with as a community. But it is hard sometimes because there's way too many
numbers. Yeah. I think. I guess with another way to phrase that, pie chart
be that if every bit of our target for the city as a whole went
into central Issaquah, we still have some excess capacity. Is that a good way of
phrasing it? Yes. And not just in central. We have capacity in Old Town. We
have, you know, it's not just central. Even if we have capacity, do we want
to hit that full capacity? I mean, do we want to become a downtown Bellevue?
- I don't think anything in the report shows that we're trying to target
our capacity. It's just showing what our capacity is. And just here's the number
that we have available in Central Issaquah. And that allows, I think, the residents
to see, well, are we growing too fast towards that capacity? It gives them kind
of a benchmark to see what units are going into central Issaquah versus what capacity
we have in that area. So that pie chart that's showing if every unit for
the citywide goal, for whatever reason, went into central Issaquah, we still have some capacity
left. And I think that's what that chart is saying. And I think that may
be where some of the confusion arises. that helps me actually
i mean that 5750 doesn't necessarily every unit in our city-wide goal won't go into
central isaac necessarily and that may be part of the problem is that we're not
seeing the excess capacity for other areas or what percentage of that 5750 is projected
to go into central isaac and i think that may be a more helpful chart
i think that right except we don't know you'll come to all future meetings and
help explain that please no All right, well that was my concern, so. Okay. Are
you satisfied though? You have the, are you comfortable with that? I am. It'll go
to City Council and they'll have to figure it out. Right, I'm sure that there's
going to be similar questions. It's hard to compete with people who have worked with
it every day in and out and they understand the process and sometimes it takes
us a lot longer to. Yes. I'm glad you had the opportunity to ask
your question. Learning by the fire hose. Right. It always takes me several times
to figure out the numbers. Well, you got to understand though, you're basically new
to the planning policy. I mean, the two of us have been on it
forever and have a little bit more history than you do. So asking those
questions bring up things that we just assume. And it shouldn't. I mean,
they're valid questions. I'm glad you brought them up. And the gentleman in the audience,
the peanut gallery. Is there anybody else that has any questions at all about moving
this forward? Are all the questions answered? Do you feel comfortable with this? I have
a question that doesn't relate to our recommendation for tonight, but really just, Trish, you
mentioned the budget being thought about right now. Currently is there in
the budget that's being tossed around a new rate study for police? Not that I've
heard, no. Okay. I guess my thought on that and again this isn't, that's out
of our hands because there's no budget and it wasn't done, but it seems to
me a city growing this fast, you know, using numbers from or a rate study
from 2008-2009 is pretty risky. That's all I have to say. - No, I think
that's a good recommendation. I think that goes with Joy and Justin saying we need
an update on this community sustainability indicators too. I think those are really good. I
think that's what council wants from you all are those kinds of recommendations that maybe
they're so busy looking at big picture in the budget that they don't realize that
those things are getting old and it's not good for that to get old. -
And it seems like level of service is fine with police based on the projections,
just seems like old numbers that's all. Right. And changing in technology too. I mean
you mentioned Trish that when they redid it in 2008 that's when they split out
the different kinds of units and now they have police and they realize they don't
actually have to because of automation they don't have to go back to the station
as often and I know someone in the public at one of the previous meetings
mentioned servicing the traffic cameras and reviewing all the photos. So things are going to
get more automated. A lot has changed since 2008 in the policing world. So I
think bringing that to council's attention would be useful. I think that's a great recommendation
to come from you all. I think in general, I mean, anything that is, any
criteria that's based on information that's more than three years old should be
looked at closely and considered is that valid assumptions and, you know, what
can we do to update that? And I think you brought up last time, too,
that the need for a new capital facilities, you know, the whole six-year plan that's,
we're using the 2014 one, and that's another one that all the information, all the
capital projects, you know, are several years old already, and so it's, you know, it's
hard to It's hard to really think clearly when the data's old.
Right. I think anything that's based on 2006, 2008 is basically irrelevant and
it's to secure the future of our community we need some definite up
to date statistics. And I know that we had discussed that there's no
money to do some of the necessary studies, but I think it's
this discussion to understand that we do need that and it's important.
With a comp plan for anything in the city, we have to
know what's going on. So I would hope that the council looks
seriously at finding some funds to update all of these. Mm-hm. Anything
whatsoever that's based on 2006, 2008. Mm-hm. It's, it's. - Too far
back to do that. - I think those are great recommendations. - We make a
recommendation or a motion. - We have to, yeah, you can make a motion. You
wanna make a motion? - Yeah, so we'll make a motion for the city council
to reevaluate the police rate study. - Well, it could be any study, not just,
are you gonna limit it just to police or? - Or generally anything that's outdated
more than two years. - I don't know what that number is, but.
three years, five years, I don't know, probably different from item to
item, but how far back that's actually valid and how fast that
particular criteria needs to change to stay up to date. So we're
making smart evaluations. So do you, if we take your motion, do
you want to add more than just the fire and police? You
want to look at all? What else do we, what else should we have? -
The sustainability indicators? Joy and Justin mentioned that those were old. - And including, I
think that would encapsulate kind of an ongoing effort in terms of things like fire,
LOS and rates as well. So any indicate, I would phrase the motion maybe reevaluation
of indicators at a period of three years to ensure that we're establishing
proper rates and utilizing best indicators where required. - I'd like to make
a motion for what he said. - I thought you'd say that. -
He said it really nice and eloquently. - And so that's like police,
fire, and parks is new. - Yeah, and any indicators at three year
intervals. as well as rates at three-year intervals. Okay.
Where appropriate. And the capital facility plan. Basically, every item on here
that is old, I don't think you have to call us specifically
police or fire, it's going to encompass all of it, anything that's
more than... I'm relying on a lot of you for the expertise
and know what they call. So between all of those two,
Do you understand the motion? All those in favor of the motion say aye.
Aye. Opposed? Abstention? Sounds like a good motion to me. Does that go with
everything else going forward with the caveat? We'll get that. Okay. I wasn't sure
if I missed that part. That's absolutely separate. Tonight we have to decide if
we're going to move the comp plan as it's written forward for the council
to take a look at. You know, they might find some, after listening to
everything you've said tonight, maybe they, in their knowledge and their concern, might make some
changes and add some things. But we're asked to forward this exactly the way it
is. I think all the, as far as I was concerned, I think most of
the questions that I had were answered, maybe not to my liking, but there were
basis for what they based their decisions on. - And I would be
comfortable at this point making a motion to adopt the findings of fact
and conclusions of law and the proposed amendments with the provisio of the
update to table L3, which had the incorrect version, as well as the
alteration of green to green. - Yes, that's a game changer. And when
this goes forward, how does our whole discussion tonight get encapsulated? Do we have to
make a motion for each thing that was discussed, like everything that Steve brought up?
you know, each of those items that we talked about at certain points, does that
get like bullet pointed when it goes to council or? - Well, the findings go
that we put the draft findings to try to get the big pieces of it.
They'll have access to the minutes. They'll certainly see this, the latest recommendation that you
said, 'cause I'm gonna put that right in the summary statement that they get in
their agenda bill packet to show that it's different than, it's more than just the
findings of fact. and if there's anything else and any of you are welcome to
come to the meeting that land when land and shore talks about the account plan
amendments if there's something that you specifically would like to share with them or you
or we can just express it for you or have them and it's fun to
some of the land insurer members actually watch the tapes of your meetings so that's
pretty cool too so remember you're on candid camera So are you ready to vote
on moving this forward with the caveats that Trish just said? Yeah, but I'm going
to pull it out. All those in favor of recommendations? I'm going to add to
that. I'm going to say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye.
aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye.
aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye.
aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye. aye put things into the proper perspective so thank
you yeah well done and next week you have another really exciting meeting on
housing it's all housing all the time next week and it starts at six
so it's earlier than we usually meet And we just sent the agenda out today
with all sorts of links on different bits of information that you can study up
on. Plus there's two homework questions that there's not a right answer to either of
them, but just to kind of get you thinking about things as you're reading through
the material. And as far as we know, we started getting RSVPs from folks, and
I'm not sure who all has responded yet, but... but I'm just assuming you're all
going to respond by whenever. But that's an exciting one. That's one of the pieces
that council was asking about was the housing strategy to be done as soon as
we can get it done, which is going to take us a little while, but
you guys are part of the needs assessment, you and the Human Services Commission and
the Economic Vitality Commission, because you all sort of have a piece of the housing
public So we're going to get you all in the room and sharing ideas and
figuring out what you think we have and what do we need and what does
it look like, what should it look like, what populations aren't we serving. It's going
to be really exciting. And it'll just be the beginning because then we're going to
touch base with you again when we do more outreach as well. But we just
sort of want to get you immersed early on to get you thinking about it.
So this is an exciting one. Thank you all. Thank you all for your hard
work. This was a good one. This was a tough one. thank you any comments
so i will close the meeting at 8 25. we still have power
yeah good and thank you all for being here that it's always nice
to have folks