Council / Members (14)
Minnie Dhaliwal
Director
CP&D Tisha Geiser
City Clerk Christen Leeson
Senior Planner
CP&D Valerie Porter
Associate Planner 2. Public Comments (General) (00:02) ➢ Hossein Khorram
Milano Apartments
Townhomes, stated that Washington State has been in a state of COVID-19 emergency for three years
Land Use processes have slowed significantly. There are new economic challenges, inflation has become a hardship. New Land Use code should be delayed for six months for existing projects in development. The permit for Milano Issaquah was applied for two years ago, the pending Land Use change was only discovered a Page 15 of 85 APPROVAL OF MINUTES b) 07-20-22 Special Joint Meeting Planning Policy Commission & Development Commission Minutes few months ago. There are many questions, the state of emergency that COVID-19 has caused has prohibited meeting efficiently for answers. The city of Seattle delayed the adoption of the International Building code by six months, a significant code that governs all construction, development. Different municipalities such as Shoreline are considering permit extensions. RCW 36.78.020 states that permit applications should be processed in a timely, fair manner to ensure predictability, changing the rules with short notice for a project that has been in development for three years is not fair, does not ensure predictability. Staff is very busy, most communication is virtual with days of processing time. Khorram asked how the public is being served, ➢ Ben Hobbs stated that excessive regulation is not conducive to progress. Certain code compliance rules can tie the hands of developers
Hobbs asked if companies would want to deal with Issaquah in good faith when excessive regulation is added. ➢ Bob Haglund
Granite Falls
WA, stated that the role of public service is to balance the needs of everyone, the public, the environment, but encouraged more of a focus on the public going forward in consideration of the housing crisis. Children will not be able to afford to live in the communities they have grown up in, breaking the community up. There is only a certain amount of money available in most families, choices must be made regarding what can be spent for housing, energy, food, healthcare. Only the cost of housing can be in someway moved toward affordability by Issaquah. ➢ Lindsey Walsh
Issaquah Council President, stated being present to welcome the Commissioners back to in-person, hybrid meetings, thanked everyone for serving in an unusual time of virtual meetings. The Council wants to express how important the work of the Commissions on Title 18 is. ➢ Paul Hess stated appreciating that the Commissioners take the work seriously with many interests to balance. Large projects take time, when rules are changed during development, the project unfairly becomes very expensive for the developer. Deadlines have been extended in other communities. A six-month extension for all projects already in development should be more than reasonable. Processes to get projects done have slowed, in example, submitting questions via email, receiving replies over days versus an in-person meeting where all issues are resolved quickly. ➢ Dale Funk stated that transitions to virtual meetings during the COVID-19 state of emergency took time to become efficient, now the transition from virtual to hybrid meetings will be similar. Delays in resolutions to questions have put every project back in progress. Discretionary authority to pad time for delays in current projects would be reasonable at this time. Delays have not been caused by any stakeholders
Staff (1)
Minnie Dhaliwal, Director, CP&D Tisha Geiser, City Clerk Christen Leeson, Senior Planner, CP&D Valerie Porter, Associate Planner 2