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[00:04:57]
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Spokane City Council study session. Today we'll be having an update on build Spokane, and I think that's Mr. Thompson who will be presenting today. Welcome. All right. Good morning, Council. Thank you for the opportunity to spend a little bit of time with you here today and provide you with an update again of the build Spokane project. I'm joined today by our consultant team from Clarion associates and kimley-horn. From Clarion we have jenny baker and Elizabeth Garvin, who are going to give you an overview of where we are in the project, talk about the timeline, and kind of talk a little bit about the first module, which is the administration and procedure section, and some of the desired outcomes associated with that. And then we have six or so questions or items that we want to share with you, and hope we can have some dialogue and maybe get a little insight to where Council might be thinking on some of these items. So those items are our community meetings, in particular: when are they important, when are they valuable, when are they not? We want to talk maybe about puds, if anyone has any comments about that.
[00:06:22]
Staff discretion, administrative variances. You know, how do we feel about implementing some of those things within the code? Nonconformities is one of those big significant challenges in the City, and so I think with that one we want to talk about, is the desire truly to get rid of the nonconforming situation, or is it better to provide some opportunity to use underutilized properties, vacant storefronts, properties that may not meet current code requirements, without requiring them to be brought up to the current standard? As part of the code assessment, the consultant team is suggesting that we implement a new land use application called the site development permit, site plan review, something along those lines, which is an administrative review permit. So it would be similar to a conditional use permit, but would just be an administrative approval, not uncommon. And then we want to talk hopefully about the actual design review process. So we've in the past had a design review board. We've kind of pared that back. We have an interim ordinance right now where a subcommittee of the Plan Commission is going to function as a design review board. But so where do we go with that process? Do we continue on with that? Do we integrate it into one of these other processes? Do we do that review during a land application process? And so we really want to get some feedback from Council on that particular item.
[00:08:01]
So with that, I'll turn it over to elizabeth, and she'll introduce herself. And I'm gonna mess up. Good morning, good afternoon, okay, I'm gonna guess, because this is my first time here, madam Mayor and Council members. Yeah, okay. I'm Elizabeth Garvin. I am a director with Clarion associates, the denver office. I'm an attorney and a planner, and somehow my life took a left turn and I've been writing zoning codes for 30 years now. That's what I do. Excited to be here with you in your beautiful City today. Sorry that we're taking a beautiful afternoon to talk about zoning, but it is a big part of what cities do, so let's dive in. This is a touch point to let you know what we're hearing or what we're talking about, and also to get you up to date on what's going on next. So we're gonna talk about the timeline and the project objectives, just to remind everybody, ground us in the project, and our goals for the administration procedures drafting. We have been drafting. We have a working version of the draft, and we've bumped into places where we needed input and feedback from stakeholders and from our steering committee, from you, and from planning commission. So that's why we are here today. We'll give you a short overview of the draft so far, and then we'll get to the questions that tim was talking about.
[00:09:26]
So our timeline is pretty condensed. We finished the project kickoff at the end of last year, at the beginning of this year, and produced the code assessment, which was a public document that we gave you guys a briefing about. It's not really an actionable document in that it's a roadmap, and so we're using it as our starting place to get into the drafting. Right now, we're in phase three. We're drafting code chapters. We will be doing this fairly quickly over the course of whatever, a week and a half left in the spring, and then the summer, to get ourselves to code adoption at the end of the year to meet statutory requirements. So the project has six major objectives, and these are linking the code to the plan update and then to the City's policies. So the first big objective is to modernize the City's development regulations. Like lots of laws, we change over time and development regulations change over time, and so we can freshen them up, we can modernize them, and we can put new regulations in there that speak to what we think development will look like over the next 20 or 30 years. Second major goal is to remove barriers to development. This is a conversation that we're having right now as part of the procedures. There are actual barriers to development, like the plan says do this and there's absolutely no way the code will let you do it, and then there are kind of softer barriers to development. How do we move projects through the City process?
[00:11:02]
How do we make sure that we're working with the development community, and then also in the best interest of the City overall? So we try to find both the substantive barriers and the procedural barriers and make updates to the regulations to move that out of the way. What we want to do is make it pretty easy for someone to get to the development the City wants to see. That's reflected in the comp plan. And we might leave some barriers in for development that's just not going to move the City forward in terms of vision, goals, or policies. We want to improve the clarity and usability. I don't know if any of you've read it lately. Some of you probably do, just for fun, but there is some serious legal writing in there, and it is how we used to draft codes. It's how lawyers love to write. And it's a document that's used by the general public, and what we really want to get to is a place where a lot of people can understand what's going on there and be able to at least have an idea of what's expected of them. Backing up to barriers, and really where we've been focused the last few days: streamline permitting and service delivery. So this is a combination of what your professional planning staff does and what the code says needs to happen, and it's how do we work across planning rules and the development services group. How are we making sure that complete and cohesive reviews are taking place, and yet we're being consistent with our applicants? That is what we'll focus on with our questions today. We want to make sure that we engage the stakeholders and the public.
[00:12:39]
So when we update regulations, we're really implementing a plan. Plans have big, wide engagement. It talks to lots of people. They want everybody's input. By the time we get to updating the code, you'll have set the policy. It's in place in the plan. We're tag teaming the plan right now, it's going through kind of at the same time the code is, but we engage stakeholders at kind of a different level when we do the code. We have more specific questions, and we ask open-ended questions to the public, because a lot of people don't bring in, you know, short plats for review. That's a small group, and we talk to them as our stakeholders. And then finally, as the code moves into implementation, we want to support that and leave the code in a place where you can make meaningful change to it over time, and it doesn't kind of become a victim of its own frozen-in-placeness, which happens with a lot of codes. Okay, so we had some specific goals for this procedures draft. So first up, improve user friendliness. That goes back to how can we make it so lots of different people in different places can use this code and understand it. And we do simple things, like summarizing information in a table, and the table also has links in it. We try to treat the code less as an encyclopedia and more as an electronic document these days.
[00:14:04]
So you should be able to jump around and find the information you're looking for. I think, and I may be walking off in two different places today, but the City was, last I checked, in a codification process. I should probably check with tim before I say this. Hopefully the next version of the code will be a little easier to click through and find stuff. I always feel like we're wrestling with the code. We want to impose rational organization. We just want to put like with like, and we want to put good headings in, and we want people to be able to make their way through this set of regulations and find what they're doing. We're focusing the improvements to the process on predictability, speed and efficiency, transparency and clarity. The thing about updating procedures is that we don't necessarily make stuff easier just by updating procedures. We have to update the content of the regulations. So we have to have the sign code in the right place, or the lighting standards in the right place, to do some of the things that we have on this list. We're starting here, though, to make sure that everyone has a good understanding of the processes. Then, as we go in and write the standards, we'll be able to have people see from beginning to end: how do I take this application through the process, with this information? And then finally, back to removing barriers. This is a process of reminding ourselves and everyone that we're working with. Barriers aren't always easy to see. Sometimes that's exactly our blind spot.
[00:15:41]
So we do play a zoning version of 20 questions with everybody, just to see what it is that's going on that we're missing. So one of the things that we're doing in this reorganization is pulling together all of the common steps. So if I'm rezoning, or if I'm submitting a plat of some sort, there are still some basic things I do at the beginning of each of those processes, and there are some basic things your staff does at the beginning of each of those processes. What is in the code now are different versions of this, with different procedures. And every time we repeat language in a code, we create an opportunity down the road to amend it and create just one slightly different layer, and one slightly different layer. And when you're processing an application, particularly when you're working under Washington statutes, which has specific requirements for how this works, you don't want one-off processes. So we've consolidated everything into eight steps. Not every step applies to every application, and so when we go in and we do the specific application types, we say you're going to do, you know, steps one, two, three and four, and then you're skipping five through eight. We make that clear for applicants so they can set expectations, and staff, should they ever need to recheck it, they've got that there. So our eight are: the pre-app meeting.
[00:17:07]
Then, two, you're submitting your application and the staff is looking at it for their preliminary intake review. I think that's counter review. Three, staff is really looking at the application. Are we going to be able to send this through to decision-making? Do we have enough information? Was the applicant on point? Do we meet the regulations? Periodically we'll loop around between three and four, because that application doesn't meet standards, so it needs to be revised to be complete. Then we provide the public notice, we schedule up the hearing if that's what's taking place on the application. We roll into the public comment and the SEPA process for applications that need to do that. It comes to you, or the hearing examiner, or the director for decision-making, depending on the application type. And then sometimes, probably many times, when someone has a completed application that you have decided on, they may need to make a change to it, it may lapse. We put all that together in the post-decision actions and limitations.
[00:18:09]
So this is really the procedural reference section for the code. Come on. Renamed from tiers to grouped processes. This doesn't necessarily change how the processes take place, but this is kind of an accessibility thought. If I don't deal with the zoning code, the development code, very often, and I don't know what a tier two review is, it might not mean anything to me. And that's my first place where I can't get into the code. So to make the code a little more understandable to lay people, we're regrouping into administrative review. So these are things that go to the director, or just a staff review and approval. Then we have hearing examiner review and hearing. So with the title, we're letting folks know when they apply for a conditional use permit or a site-specific rezoning, they're not only going to the hearing examiner, but they are going to need to have a public hearing with that. And then, finally, we have City Council review and public hearing, and that's if I want to do a plan amendment or an area-wide rezone, that's how that's gonna take place. So it is different wording, and it's wording for understanding, but it's not necessarily changing how the process works. It's just thinking about how does someone who's unfamiliar with the regulations find the information that they're looking for.
[00:19:39]
So before we get to the questions, and tim touched on this, for the last couple days we have met with the planning staff and development services staff. We've met with our stakeholders on the project, who we did our initial outreach with. We have met with the project steering committee, and we've met with a larger group of what I always think of as partner departments. So other departments outside of planning who use the regulations with some frequency, or whose actions impact how development goes through the regulations. So we have asked them some version of these same questions to see where everybody's weighing in, and then we're taking that back to staff and bouncing it off of them and saying, well, if we make this change, what has to change internally? And when we make procedural changes in particular, we have to be cognizant of not overloading staff, not putting too much expense on what the applicants need, but also balancing that against the information that the City needs to make the right decisions, and then the time frame.
[00:21:00]
So as we've gone through each of these and talked about what does it mean in terms of the process, we've circled back and said, okay, what does it also mean in terms of processing? And how might this have impacts on other things the City is doing that we need to understand as we go forward? So our discussion topics, and tim touched on these: we're looking for a way to establish an alternative to community meetings. I'm going to go through these in a little detail, and then we'll come back. Why would we do this? Everybody wants to be able to talk about projects, and the thing is, the way the community meetings are currently set up is it's a mismatch of expectations. An applicant presents a proposed development, and maybe a neighborhood or whoever's interested shows up, and they talk about it. But there's no obligation for the applicant to make change, which is okay. We don't necessarily want to say you have to make change based on this one meeting. And there's also not a clear understanding that for some applications, the neighbors, or whoever's commenting on it, their comments aren't as meaningful as they would otherwise be, because this applicant only has to comply with the code. So what we want to do is think about how do we make that community input meaningful, and where in the project is the right place for that? In the current code there are other ways and other places where the community gets to weigh in on projects. Certainly those projects that get public notice and have a comment period, there's a way to weigh in on those. What we're trying to figure out is: do we look at community meetings and say this needs to change at the front end to make it work, or do we say we want this project to cook just a little bit before it gets to the community, and then to have the comment there? And then let everybody know that for things that get public hearing, there's still that backstop.
[00:23:07]
So you can still have your say. There's kind of some tension in this. Early in the project, neighbors might be commenting on something that doesn't get built at all. It might change completely before it gets built. Late in the project, it's expensive for the applicant to go back and make changes. And so we're trying to find that place where community voices can be heard on projects that can be impacted, and then that impact on the topics that maybe are helpful to that project. Because we all know that change can be hard, and there are going to be some people who are just super uncomfortable with that and will want to say no to every project. But how can we find that kind of magic mix of: this project should be commented on, these comments are meaningful, and action should be taken, and then we can go through decision-making? So, and this, we're starting out with a super simple one. We'll solve this one. I'm joking. This is a hard one. It runs, for a lot of communities, has different implications in terms of who's commenting, when, and how we're taking those comments into consideration. So that's what we're wrestling with on alternative to community meetings. Second, we want to take puds and put them in a corner and rewrite the code. So there are lots of more straightforward ways to get to development that don't lock in the property or the developer on the site for the next 25 or 30 years, and create headaches for those of us sitting here in 25 or 30 years trying to figure out why in 2026 did you agree to this thing that isn't what we do in development anymore. We see a clear and a lot of use of puds, planned unit developments. It's a band-aid. There's a problem in the code, and this is a good thing to reach for because it gives you some flexibility.
[00:25:09]
What we want to do is get the City standards and expectations in the regulations, so it's more clear to the applicants, it's more clear to you when you're trying to make decisions. And we want to move away from negotiated development into development that's a little more predictable. That actually speeds up the process most of the time. A fully negotiated approval tends to take longer than something that just came through a base zoning district and met standards. Third, we want to consider the ability to make more staff-level decisions. And so this really means: where have we set things up in the code to go to the hearing examiner, to go to City Council, where we can alternatively put some standards in the regulations and say, okay, if you're putting in doggy daycare and you can meet these five criteria, which are the conditions we put on every single approval we give anyhow, we can say the director can make that yes, instead of it being reviewed by Council. And you guys probably don't review doggy daycare, but it's my favorite project these days. I'm going to have to move on to data centers, but I'm sure that's going to wind people up. So. Exactly. So, doggy daycare, safe and happy.
[00:26:26]
So, some of the things in the code that come to you or go to the hearing examiner, because at some point in time we decided as a community, well, we need to see that, everybody needs to see that. And now, you know, 10, 20 years later, we don't need to see it anymore. There's a point in time when we all wanted to see every single walmart that went in everywhere, and we've kind of moved on from that. So we go through the code and we comb it and we make recommendations about, hey, this could go to staff if we put these bumpers on it. Would that be okay? So that's part of what we're doing now, is looking at, if we're having staff review stuff, do we have all of the right review criteria in place? Do we have the availability for staff to get questions answered? Is this the right way that we want to do this? So we're kind of backing into this one a little bit. We'll talk about it more down the road, but this is something that we want to consider. Other three questions. So we have this nonconformities issue, which is interesting. So in Spokane, nonconformities, nonconforming uses in particular. So, change to a nonconforming use, and if you haven't been brushing up on nonconforming lately, all we're saying is: you complied with a prior code, you do not comply with the code we have in place. So this is even before we draft everything. So somebody got something approved 30 years ago, you rewrote the regulations, either the whole code or pieces of it, and all of a sudden now my doggie daycare is not allowed in my building in this district. But I'm still there. I'm a valid use. I'm just called nonconforming. And so in Spokane, that's cool, I can keep going. But if I want to change the use or make some bigger changes to my use, I'm going to have to bring my building or my site into compliance with other parts of the regulations. And it is a way that many communities have used to get infrastructure brought up to date, or to get buildings brought up to date. The thing is that it can have a negative side effect of stifling redevelopment. It is not always as proportionate as we want to be with changes like this. And so when we come to nonconformities, we've got two things we can look at. A nonconformity is a legal out that zoning lawyers made up many years ago. It's a great idea.
[00:29:13]
We thought, I don't like the doggie daycare and I want it to go away, because I really want to put a new, you know, workout center where the doggie daycare is. I'm going to say it's nonconforming. Eventually it will close, it will go out of business, that's fine, that nonconformity will go away. We learned over time, though, that very few nonconformities go away. So we make buildings nonconforming, but the buildings don't go anywhere. All we've done is made it harder for someone to use the building or to redevelop on the site. So what we want to do is get into the nonconforming regulations and get clear about who can expand, how they can expand, how change can be made. This is a low-hanging fruit in the whole scheme of updating regulations. And to give you just a really small example of how this can, you know, make change: jenny and I just finished a code for bismarck, north dakota, which is exactly not like Spokane, but they had a lot of nonconformities through code changes. We managed to get rid of about 85 percent of the nonconformities just by changing the regulations, to make things conform, to make them something you can do under the code. So now, whoever those property owners were, they don't have that extra layer of, you know, hoop to jump through. They just go through the regulations. So, we understand, and I'm making this not into a question but a lecture, so thank you very much for being patient with me. We understand that this is serving a purpose, and there are other ways to serve this purpose, and we get it. Redevelopment is hard. It's harder than new development. We want to think about infrastructure changes over time.
[00:30:54]
We want to make sure that investment is being made in the City. This may be a place where we want to decouple it and move it on to other things that are taking place, so businesses can come and go and those uses can change. The question in there, though, is: what do you think about that? So we'll come back to it. And five. Five is a very juicy topic. We've got people all over the place about this. You probably did not know site plans were a juicy topic. Now you do. And so a site plan, it's literally that. It's like the design of my site. What am I going to do? Where's the building going to go? Where's the infrastructure going to go? Where are the streets and the sidewalks going to go? It's that set of plans that you think of when you think of planning. What's going on now in Spokane, which is common, is a lot of projects can come in and they can go and apply for a building permit, and as part of the building permit review, they get a zoning review. So that is: did the thing that you submitted for a building permit also comply with the zoning regulations? That works. Why are we saying do a site plan? The thing is, a site plan, if we go back to this guy, where are, yeah. A site plan is one of those things that can get stuck in the three-and-four washing machine. It can get, you know, two or three rounds of review from public works.
[00:32:24]
It can get a couple rounds of review from utilities. It can get two or three rounds of planning review. And so the applicant's expectation is, hey, I've gone in for a building permit, there's a pretty short turnaround, I should be able to pull the trigger and get going. The applicant's reality is: sure, we could approve that building permit, but we're going to be here for the next few months working at your site issues. Not all applications, not everybody. Some come straight through, some don't. So when we hear, which we heard early in the process, that developers or applicants are saying it takes so long to get something approved in Spokane, we want to start exploring where our people's expectations are set. If I were applying for a building permit almost anywhere, I would say, yeah, two weeks, depending on how their staffing was looking and how fast they turned building permits. If I'm in there for three or four months, I am going to paint the whole City as taking too long to do this. And so it is a mismatch of expectations. Our question that we've really been talking about, and we've had some great conversations, is: it is that, but are we benefiting the applicant by adding a process? What's the upside? And so we've heard things in some of our conversations about: could be an upside, because they could maybe get some site work going first, so they could be, you know, moving or building foundations or something like that. Could be an upside if it's optional.
[00:33:57]
So those applicants who might understand that taking advantage of that process is beneficial to them, because they work out some big issues early on, might take advantage of it. So it's not a mandatory add. Could be beneficial just in terms of everyone that has to do review on a site plan. It's not just planning. There's infrastructure, so there's engineering and public works and our utilities, and sometimes those can be as challenging to get through review as any, you know, development code issue would be. So it's, how are we teaching ourselves to play nicely together? Which, I'm not saying anybody doesn't, but this is one of those processes where it works best when everybody's in it, having that conversation, and that might be of benefit to the applicant. Downsides to it: time, money, and, you know, change. Change of process. So we would be teaching staff a whole new way to do this, which isn't something that's simple to do when you're already doing a whole lot. So that's been the thing that we come back to, and I'm sure that you'll hear some of this if anyone wants to chat with you about what's going on in this.
[00:35:13]
So the question that we're really leaning into is: do we just want to take the next step and draft it into the regulations? And so we can kind of tailor it to Spokane, everyone can see what it would look like, and then we can get that level of review. So we're not making a forever decision. We are making an "is this okay to move one more step" decision on that. And then finally, we are looking at a new approach to design review. So, design review of projects, to make sure that they're going to work within the community. It's pretty important for a City, and pretty important for a City that has historic areas and a historic core and is seeing new development. Design review as a process definitely has pros and cons to it, and when you're in the process of doing a code update, that's an opportunity to take your basic expectations and codify them, and create a set of more objective standards. And one of the definite drawbacks of a design review process is that design can be subjective. I'm probably not the first person to say that. I think I'm feeling pretty safe about that. I think there's a big Washington case that said that. That's hard on applicants, it's hard on the City, and we don't have that clarity. And so I might think that the yellow in the flowers up there is exactly the yellow you were thinking of, and you might think it was definitely something more like the orange-yellow of commissioner Zappone's water bottle there. So what we want to do is get as much as we can into the base standards, and have those in sort of a more non-arguable position. We're not going to tell everybody how to design their projects. We do a menu approach.
[00:37:14]
So we say you can do this, this, or this. Or we put a list out and say pick two, so people and applicants have choices. But we really want to explore, as we go through this process, what can we get into the regulations, and then where, geographically, is it important to keep that design review? So is that maybe downtown, and for public projects that have some success with design review? Or is that less than that, or more than that? So we're open as to where this goes, but it's one of the things we kind of want to poke and see what improvements could be made to it. So that's it. I will stop with your uninspired lecture on zoning and see kind of what's on your list, or top of your head, that you want to ask, if we're thinking about it or where we're going with it. This is, I say, it was great. Love this. This is the driest part of the drafting we do, the procedures. Everything else has fun, shiny aspects to it. But this is, it's process. But process is the heart and core of how we take things through the City, get them approved, and get things built. So it's kind of important. I'm gonna have you go back to your first discussion topic, number one, the engagement question. We get faced with that a lot about development in neighborhoods. So have you seen the best practice? I certainly understand the complications, but neighbors, my analogy is like: don't bake the bread till it's done. When I want raisins in it, then it's too late to put raisins in the bread. Yeah, and then they get mad when I want you to go back and bake it again.
[00:38:58]
So in this analysis, have you, are you giving us a recommendation of where? Because the engagement piece is really critical to this comp plan. Yeah, so, yes. To answer the question directly, we're going to give you a recommendation. We're all just going to take a look at what your peer cities are up to. This is a place that's kind of forefront of zoning right now. You know, historically we've done a poor job of keeping people involved. Not Spokane, people who write zoning. And so we're looking at it, kind of giving it a fresh look, saying, how do we do this? How do we do it well? And so what we will do, now that we've got a grip on how it's working, and when it is working and not working, we're going to take a look at all of your peer cities to see what they're doing, to see if anybody has come up with kind of the miracle answer to this. But then what we might come back with is a more nuanced approach. It's one size fits all right now, more or less, and so we may work within, like, our three tiers and say, okay, you know, if you're doing this tier, you're going out for a public meeting early, because it can impact project design. We will bring this back to you with a more detailed explanation of why we're recommending what we're recommending, and then we step back. Because also, you have to figure out what is going to work best within Spokane.
[00:40:29]
So we'll bring you the information and a recommendation, and then we'll let the conversation take place. The great thing about doing that is, you know, when the code is updated, when you're done, we recommend that you sit with it for six months to a year. If this doesn't work, you still have a shelf with some other choices on it, and so you can modify as you go forward. This is one that sometimes takes a little tweaking. So we'll bring you our best, and then we'll take your guidance on that. Council member Dillon, then Council member Telis. Yeah, thank you for this. I guess a couple things. One challenge that we're always presented is that we have two choices, and that happens in government so often, where, you know, it's either the economy versus the environment, or housing versus the environment. And yeah, data centers, economy versus environment. But another, I guess, when you go back to nonconforming use, and maybe not a dog daycare, but drive-thrus. And that's been a big issue of contention, where, you know, we've passed measures that are trying to create a very pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented environment in the City, and, you know, I fully support those measures. I think the part of the challenge, though, is, you know, "this is anti-business," and that fervor and that narrative went hardly.
[00:41:58]
Now, that's not the case. And so we do have, unfortunately, a lot of people that are sitting on land. You know, there has to be a way, I think, to thread some of that needle and bring more stakeholders in together, and how we try and maximize a lot of that land capacity for mixed use, for how we have a vision of trying to grow and meet folks there, and thread that needle. So it's not just this binary of false choices where things are stagnant. And then also, beyond just this comprehensive plan and these recommendations, I think also looking at future adjustments that are more kind of one-off, annually, like when we do our City comp plan docket. So when we look at maybe a particular parcel for changing the height restrictions, and how to, again, maximize some of that use. That goes beyond just our, you know, decades, 20-year review. Yeah, I have some drive-thru scars. I can show them to you later. I appreciate the question, because that yes-no dichotomy exists in a variety of things that we deal with in the code, and then it attracts supporters. So we end up with an argument instead of a conversation. I can't magically make the argument go away, but what we can help do is bring some design alternatives into that conversation.
[00:43:32]
Sometimes looking at how it has been managed in other communities. With, you know, we did, you know, this with drive-thrus, or we just said no here, and people got the hang of it eventually. It, you're kind of encapsulating the pain of change right there. And also, sort of, what can be really challenging about retail: retail can tell us one thing is really important, and the community can be like, it's not so important to us. And so trying to kind of balance that out also. So we'll look to staff to tell us where things are really heated up. We heard the drive-thru conversation yesterday. But we'd also, you know, be very open to hearing from you what conversations are coming your way, and then, kind of, as you know, notification to us to be prepared to have multiple different conversations about it. One of the things we hope to do through the rest of the process is a little education. That, you know, people tend to pay attention to this when we're doing it, and then they can turn it off and go back to world cup or whatever else they got going on. So if there's a subject that we need to expand a little more broadly, we can do that with you. Thank you. Council member Telis. Yes, I was just curious, first of all, who are these peer cities that you're evaluating against, and what is the criteria for determining that? You know, so we started putting together a list yesterday. So what we're looking for in a peer City is usually roughly the same population size. Also, we look for similar institutional inhabitants. So, like, you know, if we have a couple large colleges, a small college, and we have maybe a military installation, or whatever's going on at that. We want something like that, because that impacts how the population functions. For Spokane, we'll lean a little more heavily into Washington communities, just because of the encompassing nature of your statutory authority. But we'll also look outside the box. So, our firm updated boise's code a few years ago, so we might say, hey, boise thought this might work.
[00:45:48]
Is that something you guys want to talk about? We don't want to go super far away from where you are in terms of population and location. We're not going to bring you examples from virginia, unless somebody did something just stellar there and we know we can rewrite it to work here. I didn't answer your question. I told you how we're still working the list, and if anyone wants to suggest communities that we look at, we take a longer list, and then we go look at their stuff. If their code is old and out of date, we'll say so. Sorry, they're beautiful, and we have no clue how they're doing it, because their code is 50 years out. So that's kind of where it is. I don't know, tim, do you want people to make suggestions to you, or to? I don't know your process, so what's the preferred way to do this? I, okay, I can, oops. I don't have the preliminary list, but it was, no, I'm gonna mess it up. So we'll share. I'd just be curious. Yeah. Yeah, parameters of that. Yeah. Another thing that I wanted to discuss, and I don't have answers for this, but I'm positing it to you all. It seems like in Spokane, in my district alone, but I know this occurs in other districts as well, we have vastly different set-up infrastructure for the amount of development we have there. I think in places in district two, there are places that are in the wildland urban interface, and yet they only have one exit out in cases of fire. And that's something that I hear a lot about from constituents in those areas. Curious how code can be applied, or what you've seen, how code revisions could be applied to address sort of the disparity and the differences, and maybe try to make up for that in some ways. So, one of the things that we were talking about, I'm sorry, I'm like playing the piano today, I don't know where this is coming from. I put my hands down. One of the things we were talking about yesterday is that kind of range of differences, and
[00:48:06]
What does it mean to be able to address everything within the code structure? So what we try to do is remember that Spokane is what we call a redevelopment or infill City. You're getting new development out on the edges, but you're also getting redevelopment, which means the code needs more nuance to it. It needs standards for the new development, it needs standards for infill development, and it needs standards for redevelopment, and they're not always the same. So what we would want to do in that case is, let's do wildfire as our topic. So we know that it can have significantly more impacts in the interface area. So as we're putting access standards in place, and we'd be having conversations with staff, and we can reach out to anybody who wants to be in on that, and say: fire code, separately from zoning code, but fire code says at 30 units you have to have that second access. That might not work in more rural areas, so we can set a lower standard for that second access, so we don't end up with some of the situations that we know have happened with the one-in, one-out in a wildfire setting. That wouldn't apply downtown, and that's fine. We can put that in the code to address how development might happen as it either increases or stays exactly the way it is in some of those areas. So what we find in drafting the code is those issues tend to bubble up, because we'll put language in place, and, I'm sure jenny shared this with you guys, we share the full draft and we put it on the website, and everyone can comment on it. And all of a sudden we'll see 16 wildfire comments. So we do kind of an iterative approach, and then we can tell from that where people are really concerned, and we dive a little deeper into that.
[00:50:06]
We also let you guys know, through our summaries, where we've been focused, and if you see that we've missed something, you can shove us back and say, go do this one again. From my perspective, one of the things that I've seen most is, I would appreciate much more nuance in the code. I represent, just alone in my district, vastly different communities with different needs, and so I would like to see that addressed. It's something I've heard from constituents quite a bit. Thank you. Yeah, and I thank you, Council member Telis, for all that feedback. I think some of the struggles we have is that there had been negotiated developments prior to many of us up here on this dais that set precedents and expectations that are now changing, and we are getting the backlash from a lot of that. But we do have very diverse neighborhoods with very different infrastructures. You know, one of our models is: you shouldn't have to move to live in a great neighborhood. But with development, too many communities, it feels like they're being pushed out of their neighborhood, based on our new development codes and what's being allowed to come in. So that is the challenge that we hear from our seats going forward. So it is very nuanced. So I look forward to your comparison cities, as one. And then, as you said, Spokane is more focused on some new development, but a lot on infill. And from the smaller development, developers, the infill barriers are huge, that make it just not financially pencil out.
[00:51:53]
So therefore we're not seeing that so often, and we look at Spokane as this donut hole, where, like, everything's happening right across the City limits and not within the City, based on a lot of our regulations. So, and speed being one, it's like, why are we so slow? I don't know what that answer is, but I look forward to the report to tell me why we're not as fast as other cities. Are people being pushed out of their neighborhoods because home prices are going up? Is that a piece of it? Or what are you hearing about why people need to move to be in a great neighborhood? Not being pushed out because home prices, they're not able to afford. So the homes are being purchased, torn down, and then redeveloped, and that does not, in many cases, fit the character of the neighborhood, and certainly not the price point of the people who were living there prior to that. So a piece of this conversation is, maybe, I don't know, protecting is the right word, but figuring out how to solve for that: people staying in their neighborhood and still allowing redevelopment that works. Absolutely. And really, the neighbors are talking about our low-income neighborhoods, and so then, I think from my observation, we're really struggling with a displacement issue. Yeah.
[00:53:19]
Currently, in our low-income neighborhoods. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Klitzke. Thanks. Back to the timeline issue of the permitting process, and when is the best time to have community engagement, or the meeting that we typically require. Yeah, I think it's well taken that having the meeting too early, and having expectations that the community can come in and yes-or-no the project, is a valid concern. But I think there's a difference between engaging the community and notifying the community. I think that notification still needs to happen very early. Yeah. Especially with our neighborhoods and community groups. They need time to become aware of the situation and formulate and discuss any of their concerns amongst each other. So I would really hope that we would keep notification very early, and then work to find the most effective point that, should we continue to do meetings or provide some other kind of alternative, we find that most effective point. I feel like if we eliminate any communication between the project proponent and the community in the process, we are taking away an opportunity for the project proponent to understand the community's concerns.
[00:54:49]
So yes, I get this false sense of control that we might be giving the community. But we all are taking away, if there was a developer that had no idea that the community had this concern, and they cut down this tree or whatever the issue was, we're missing an opportunity there to have a good faith between the developer and the community. So I would encourage you to consider that. I know the timing thing, we're kind of balancing between what's effective and what's expensive. Yeah. But at the end of the day, if we miss those opportunities, we're not doing ourselves, the developers, or the communities any favor. And I think the question between yes-no and nuance, I don't know that it necessarily needs to be in code. I think maybe if we're clear with the community that this feedback and these discussions are about nuance. If it's a yes-no issue, it needs to be addressed in the code. So getting that public participation and community input in the code is the most important and effective time to get the input, not at a project-specific level. And the more that we can be clear about that, and the more that we can work hard to get feedback when the feedback is going to make the most difference, I think is an important distinction as well. That's one of my favorite points to make to people. We spent a lot of time thinking about it to put it in the code. I think that your points are all well taken on our end, and that's just a piece of kind of what we'll be wrestling down with you over the next few months. And we will remind everybody: this is their opportunity to get it in the code, or out, depending on what they're in the mood for.
[00:56:41]
So thank you. Any other questions? Council member Telis. Just, when you say anyone, are you asking public, or is there a place for, I just want to be clear if there's a place for that sort of commentary. Yeah, there will be, as soon as we start getting drafts posted and start doing community outreach. And we're working with our partners at kimley-horn, hi, who are here in the community. There will be events going on, and places for people to comment, and the actual draft for people to comment on also. So everyone will be able to have their say, should they want to. But it hasn't, we don't have something open and available right now. No, nothing open and available right now, but we will make sure, and I'm sure tim's doing it already, keeping everyone in the loop with our calendar, so people know when they can expect it and when those windows are open, to dive in and say something. Thank you. Thank you, Council member Zappone. Yeah, thanks for all this. I would just echo what was already talked about earlier, but just saying that it's valuable. The process itself is maybe not sexy or fun, but that is one thing that we do hear a lot of, is about the process as a pinch point, and that it adds those extra costs. And so just working towards making that easier, with the hopes of decreasing those costs overall, I think will be beneficial. So thanks. Yeah, I think, and I think one of the things that, if we're looking at the whole thing, something else we may want to look at in the process is: how have we educated applicants to come to the City? And often we find, at Clarion, when we're working with communities, that the applicant who will say "this took too long" also didn't have the information ready at the right time, or, you know, because they were super busy, or their engineer didn't, whatever. And so we want to make sure that we have some open and honest conversations about, you know, this is what the City can do, but there are two parties to this conversation. And so, you know, we want to make sure the development community is heard and their issues are addressed, but we also aren't going to come back to you and say, oh, your staff, it's terrible.
[00:58:58]
They're doing their best too. So we're going to try to figure out where that meter is, and, you know, figure out how can we help those applications come forward the best way possible. Any other questions? Well, first of all, thank you. The comp plan is new to, I think it's 20 years, however many years it has been since we last updated our comp plan. So many of us were not even engaged in government. I was probably still in elementary school. Just kidding. I gotta laugh at it anyway. So this is new to us as a Council, and new to the community, and how complicated. So I really want to thank tim and the team, and you as well, for really engaging us now, early on, and to help us understand, so we can help disseminate to the community the understanding of the process that's being put in place. So, any other questions before us? Well, thank you so much. Tim, do you have something else you want to share with us? Oh, there's one more slide. Oh, I, oh, go back to four, five and six. No. Did I miss one? Oh, this one. Okay, so, could I ask, I've been hearing a lot about site plan review and pre-site plans and all that. So do we have the ability in the City, for some developers, to have some pre-site plans already identified, tim, going forward?
[01:00:37]
So somebody comes in, it's like, this site has utilities, water, whatever some of the requirements may be, along with a site plan review procedure. So, I think we talked a little bit about cost, right? And so time is money. There's a cost there. Delay is money, cost. So I think the whole purpose behind the recommendation behind the site plan review process, which would be, as I mentioned earlier, you know, we have conditional use permits that are quasi-judicial, go to the hearing examiner, public hearing process. This would be similar to that, but it's only administrative, and we can establish what the applicability is. So we can determine which projects would apply, or would be required to go through that process. And I certainly don't think that every project, building permit, that comes in should have to go through that process first. I think we want to focus our efforts on projects that are new construction, additions, you know, maybe residential projects beyond six units. And really what it is, is an opportunity to identify issues and challenges earlier in the process. So one thing that we've heard from developers is, they get to the building permit stage and they're ready to go. You know, they've got their lending lined up. At that point, they're at substantial risk. They want their permit and they want to get in the ground.
[01:02:00]
Well, now there's multiple reviews, issues are being identified at that stage, that requires the applicant to go back and spend additional money to review and or revise plans, and then get them resubmitted, and then have to go through the process again. And so there's a little bit of a trade-off here, of really trying to identify those bigger issues ahead of time. We do this already. We do this, you know, primarily through our pre-development process. The pre-development process is optional. It's non-binding. You know, somebody gets eight pages of notes. They're not binding. They really don't mean much. They're really informational. This process would be a formal land application process. It would provide a binding approval for an applicant, which should give them some certainty going forward. So now they have that level of certainty. They can go to their bank and say, I'm entitled to do this project. I have a year, or two years, to do that project before it expires. Now they should be able to move forward with reasonable certainty that if they design their project to the standard, and address the conditions of approval associated with that, that they'll be able to submit their building permit and essentially sail through the process much quicker, without a lot of back and forth, because we've identified the big items, the big issues, ahead of time. And so that's, I think, really what the purpose of that particular process is. It's not intended to add another layer or make people spend more money. It's really to figure out how we can get this project through the process as quickly and as efficiently as possible. There's a lot of coordination involved there as well.
[01:03:51]
You know, when we're looking at these projects, it's not just the dsc. We send those applications out to the utilities, to fire, to outside agencies, our transportation partners. And it's an opportunity for them to review the project and comment back on things that we may not be aware of, so that we can, again, you know, draft appropriate conditions that provide the applicant some certainty. So that is, I think, really the intent of that. You know, I go back to kind of the three primary themes that we heard: applicants want certainty, they want consistency, they want predictability. They also want flexibility, which is a little bit of a pendulum when we talk about predictability. And so how can we provide that flexibility? So those are just some of the themes that we're kind of grappling with, and how do we achieve that, and use the process to do it. I think this all makes sense, the direction you're going. Sounds good. But I think what people are asking about is: can there possibly be, like, pre-approved site plans, where people don't have to jump through all of these hoops? And I'm wondering if the tension there is between us not knowing what's in the ground until people start working on the project. And so is that what's happening, is the variables of the site? Or are we going to come up with a menu of these kind of things that are just, go ahead and build it?
[01:05:23]
Well, I'll just quickly speak on the question of pre-approved plans. We prefer the term permit-ready plans, because they're not really approved until they're approved. The site layout is actually the one thing that, in the programs I'm aware of in other cities, is not the pre-approved part of that, because every site is unique. And so, the permit-ready plans, we have had discussions about trying to set up a program here. I think there's a lot of interest, and I hope that once we're through with this comp plan work and the code update, we can develop some plans that would make use of the new regulations. It can be effective in reducing some barriers in terms of timeline. I think the value is more in the increased certainty in the process, because you have an approved set that has already been reviewed, and you're comfortable that it's going to move forward without significant changes. But there's really no way to get around the site issues. And I think you mentioned, like, the utilities underground. There isn't really a standard format across the City, of the water line always comes in right here, or the sewer line always goes out right here. And so there's not really a way to front-load that. I think the value of the site review procedure that we were talking about is that it dispenses with some of those questions about where the utilities are and how they need to be connected, before you've spent significant money as a developer preparing those plan sets and doing a lot of the work that follows on from that. Our current process generally requires you to have full construction documents before you go in for a formal review. You can sometimes, or often, come in and ask questions and try to get an idea of how you need to anticipate something, but there isn't really a formal approval that gives you the certainty to go ahead with your project.
[01:07:27]
Under our current process, you basically have to have your full construction docs done in order to get to that step. So what we're trying to do is create an intermediate step. That is sort of like an extra rung on the ladder, for you to take smaller steps first, before you've sunk a lot of resources into a project. Get some certainty, and then take the next step. Does that answer the question? Yeah. And tim, I just have to bring this out, and it's just probably what I heard. You were speaking to the larger developers and the supports. I'm not hearing a lot of conversation around our small developers who are doing the infill work. Will that same level of support that you're speaking to, about six units or larger developers, be in place? Because my limited observation is, those small developers are the ones that are going to do a lot of the infill, because it will pencil out for them. Larger developers, I don't know what that looks like within our City, based on our land capacity. But I do have concerns that small developers get the same supports in their processes as the larger developers do as well. Yeah, I think what we're looking at, or we're trying to base the process on, are impacts, you know, the typical development type requirements, and not whether somebody is a big developer or a small developer. I mean, we want to look at the project, and what the impacts of that project are, to help us dictate. So if we use an example of an industrial site that doesn't trigger a conditional use permit. It's a new build. They go through this process.
[01:09:21]
We get an application. It's an opportunity for staff to send that out to the fire department, to wastewater, to water. And then we get feedback. So, you know, maybe we need to be concerned about pretreatment. Maybe, you know, we have stormwater challenges, and so, you know, we have our engineering team that can comment on that. And so as we go through that process, we start identifying the issues related to development, and then we can essentially issue an approval letter, subject to conditions of approval, that would provide that level of certainty. So that's what that is intended to be. When we talk about some of these smaller residential projects, I don't know, at least in my mind, that doesn't necessarily rise to this level where, you know, we need to have more significant coordination. But that doesn't mean that there isn't coordination happening behind the scenes. It's just a process. So somebody comes in and wants to build a fourplex, you know, they get a building permit. There's still coordination going on behind the scenes. We're still talking about where are the utility connections, and what are other potential challenges, stormwater. We're still addressing that. You know, the key in the process is really communication, and how we communicate with folks. You know, I think we're at this place where we use technology, or, you know, we issue comment letters, and, you know, frankly, sometimes things get lost in translation. And so sometimes, you know, being able to pick up the phone and call someone, usually you can work it out in about five minutes, because, you know, the person on the other end says, oh, I know what you mean now. And then it's resolved, and it helps to eliminate that back-and-forth, three, four, you know, comment letter reviews. But yes, I think our intent is, you know, we want to have a good solid code that any developer can navigate, and that the process that someone has to go through is proportionate to the impact of the project, and the level of coordination necessary to achieve the outcome.
[01:11:34]
I think that's key here, too, is: we focus a lot on process, we focus a lot on tasks, and we don't necessarily focus on the outcome. What is the outcome that we're looking to achieve? Are we achieving that outcome today? And if we're not, maybe we need to consider doing things a little bit differently. Thank you. Any other questions? Council member Telis. I was just curious, do you have specific, and I'm not very familiar with the development world, but do you have specific stakeholders that would be considered smaller developers and larger developers at the table? Just to understand that they might have different perspectives that they could bring. You know, it's a really good question. I'd have to look at the list. Offhand, I don't know that, I don't know that maybe we've done a great job of that. I think we've tried to identify folks that are common users, and the folks that we hear most frequently of. You know, who's a small developer or not? I mean, I would have to really talk to our dsc staff to maybe identify some folks and see if they're on the list or not. Happy to do that. Happy to reach out and engage those folks. You know, certainly we can do that. Thank you. Thank you. To us up here, every project is impactful. Just so you know. I don't care if it's one house, or some big manufacturing, or 500 units. To us, it's impactful. So it's just as critical that they receive the same amount of service and support, no matter where they fall on the spectrum of size. Any other questions? Again, thank you all. Thank you for showing up, to all the others out there that are in attendance, thank you as well.
[01:13:16]
If there's nothing else before us, I think we are adjourned. Have a great afternoon. Enjoy the sunshine.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRlvFRCCz1s
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[00:04:57]
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Spokane City Council study session. Today we'll be having an update on build Spokane, and I think that's Mr. Thompson who will be presenting today. Welcome. All right. Good morning, Council. Thank you for the opportunity to spend a little bit of time with you here today and provide you with an update again of the build Spokane project. I'm joined today by our consultant team from Clarion associates and kimley-horn. From Clarion we have jenny baker and Elizabeth Garvin, who are going to give you an overview of where we are in the project, talk about the timeline, and kind of talk a little bit about the first module, which is the administration and procedure section, and some of the desired outcomes associated with that. And then we have six or so questions or items that we want to share with you, and hope we can have some dialogue and maybe get a little insight to where Council might be thinking on some of these items. So those items are our community meetings, in particular: when are they important, when are they valuable, when are they not? We want to talk maybe about puds, if anyone has any comments about that.
[00:06:22]
Staff discretion, administrative variances. You know, how do we feel about implementing some of those things within the code? Nonconformities is one of those big significant challenges in the City, and so I think with that one we want to talk about, is the desire truly to get rid of the nonconforming situation, or is it better to provide some opportunity to use underutilized properties, vacant storefronts, properties that may not meet current code requirements, without requiring them to be brought up to the current standard? As part of the code assessment, the consultant team is suggesting that we implement a new land use application called the site development permit, site plan review, something along those lines, which is an administrative review permit. So it would be similar to a conditional use permit, but would just be an administrative approval, not uncommon. And then we want to talk hopefully about the actual design review process. So we've in the past had a design review board. We've kind of pared that back. We have an interim ordinance right now where a subcommittee of the Plan Commission is going to function as a design review board. But so where do we go with that process? Do we continue on with that? Do we integrate it into one of these other processes? Do we do that review during a land application process? And so we really want to get some feedback from Council on that particular item.
[00:08:01]
So with that, I'll turn it over to elizabeth, and she'll introduce herself. And I'm gonna mess up. Good morning, good afternoon, okay, I'm gonna guess, because this is my first time here, madam Mayor and Council members. Yeah, okay. I'm Elizabeth Garvin. I am a director with Clarion associates, the denver office. I'm an attorney and a planner, and somehow my life took a left turn and I've been writing zoning codes for 30 years now. That's what I do. Excited to be here with you in your beautiful City today. Sorry that we're taking a beautiful afternoon to talk about zoning, but it is a big part of what cities do, so let's dive in. This is a touch point to let you know what we're hearing or what we're talking about, and also to get you up to date on what's going on next. So we're gonna talk about the timeline and the project objectives, just to remind everybody, ground us in the project, and our goals for the administration procedures drafting. We have been drafting. We have a working version of the draft, and we've bumped into places where we needed input and feedback from stakeholders and from our steering committee, from you, and from planning commission. So that's why we are here today. We'll give you a short overview of the draft so far, and then we'll get to the questions that tim was talking about.
[00:09:26]
So our timeline is pretty condensed. We finished the project kickoff at the end of last year, at the beginning of this year, and produced the code assessment, which was a public document that we gave you guys a briefing about. It's not really an actionable document in that it's a roadmap, and so we're using it as our starting place to get into the drafting. Right now, we're in phase three. We're drafting code chapters. We will be doing this fairly quickly over the course of whatever, a week and a half left in the spring, and then the summer, to get ourselves to code adoption at the end of the year to meet statutory requirements. So the project has six major objectives, and these are linking the code to the plan update and then to the City's policies. So the first big objective is to modernize the City's development regulations. Like lots of laws, we change over time and development regulations change over time, and so we can freshen them up, we can modernize them, and we can put new regulations in there that speak to what we think development will look like over the next 20 or 30 years. Second major goal is to remove barriers to development. This is a conversation that we're having right now as part of the procedures. There are actual barriers to development, like the plan says do this and there's absolutely no way the code will let you do it, and then there are kind of softer barriers to development. How do we move projects through the City process?
[00:11:02]
How do we make sure that we're working with the development community, and then also in the best interest of the City overall? So we try to find both the substantive barriers and the procedural barriers and make updates to the regulations to move that out of the way. What we want to do is make it pretty easy for someone to get to the development the City wants to see. That's reflected in the comp plan. And we might leave some barriers in for development that's just not going to move the City forward in terms of vision, goals, or policies. We want to improve the clarity and usability. I don't know if any of you've read it lately. Some of you probably do, just for fun, but there is some serious legal writing in there, and it is how we used to draft codes. It's how lawyers love to write. And it's a document that's used by the general public, and what we really want to get to is a place where a lot of people can understand what's going on there and be able to at least have an idea of what's expected of them. Backing up to barriers, and really where we've been focused the last few days: streamline permitting and service delivery. So this is a combination of what your professional planning staff does and what the code says needs to happen, and it's how do we work across planning rules and the development services group. How are we making sure that complete and cohesive reviews are taking place, and yet we're being consistent with our applicants? That is what we'll focus on with our questions today. We want to make sure that we engage the stakeholders and the public.
[00:12:39]
So when we update regulations, we're really implementing a plan. Plans have big, wide engagement. It talks to lots of people. They want everybody's input. By the time we get to updating the code, you'll have set the policy. It's in place in the plan. We're tag teaming the plan right now, it's going through kind of at the same time the code is, but we engage stakeholders at kind of a different level when we do the code. We have more specific questions, and we ask open-ended questions to the public, because a lot of people don't bring in, you know, short plats for review. That's a small group, and we talk to them as our stakeholders. And then finally, as the code moves into implementation, we want to support that and leave the code in a place where you can make meaningful change to it over time, and it doesn't kind of become a victim of its own frozen-in-placeness, which happens with a lot of codes. Okay, so we had some specific goals for this procedures draft. So first up, improve user friendliness. That goes back to how can we make it so lots of different people in different places can use this code and understand it. And we do simple things, like summarizing information in a table, and the table also has links in it. We try to treat the code less as an encyclopedia and more as an electronic document these days.
[00:14:04]
So you should be able to jump around and find the information you're looking for. I think, and I may be walking off in two different places today, but the City was, last I checked, in a codification process. I should probably check with tim before I say this. Hopefully the next version of the code will be a little easier to click through and find stuff. I always feel like we're wrestling with the code. We want to impose rational organization. We just want to put like with like, and we want to put good headings in, and we want people to be able to make their way through this set of regulations and find what they're doing. We're focusing the improvements to the process on predictability, speed and efficiency, transparency and clarity. The thing about updating procedures is that we don't necessarily make stuff easier just by updating procedures. We have to update the content of the regulations. So we have to have the sign code in the right place, or the lighting standards in the right place, to do some of the things that we have on this list. We're starting here, though, to make sure that everyone has a good understanding of the processes. Then, as we go in and write the standards, we'll be able to have people see from beginning to end: how do I take this application through the process, with this information? And then finally, back to removing barriers. This is a process of reminding ourselves and everyone that we're working with. Barriers aren't always easy to see. Sometimes that's exactly our blind spot.
[00:15:41]
So we do play a zoning version of 20 questions with everybody, just to see what it is that's going on that we're missing. So one of the things that we're doing in this reorganization is pulling together all of the common steps. So if I'm rezoning, or if I'm submitting a plat of some sort, there are still some basic things I do at the beginning of each of those processes, and there are some basic things your staff does at the beginning of each of those processes. What is in the code now are different versions of this, with different procedures. And every time we repeat language in a code, we create an opportunity down the road to amend it and create just one slightly different layer, and one slightly different layer. And when you're processing an application, particularly when you're working under Washington statutes, which has specific requirements for how this works, you don't want one-off processes. So we've consolidated everything into eight steps. Not every step applies to every application, and so when we go in and we do the specific application types, we say you're going to do, you know, steps one, two, three and four, and then you're skipping five through eight. We make that clear for applicants so they can set expectations, and staff, should they ever need to recheck it, they've got that there. So our eight are: the pre-app meeting.
[00:17:07]
Then, two, you're submitting your application and the staff is looking at it for their preliminary intake review. I think that's counter review. Three, staff is really looking at the application. Are we going to be able to send this through to decision-making? Do we have enough information? Was the applicant on point? Do we meet the regulations? Periodically we'll loop around between three and four, because that application doesn't meet standards, so it needs to be revised to be complete. Then we provide the public notice, we schedule up the hearing if that's what's taking place on the application. We roll into the public comment and the SEPA process for applications that need to do that. It comes to you, or the hearing examiner, or the director for decision-making, depending on the application type. And then sometimes, probably many times, when someone has a completed application that you have decided on, they may need to make a change to it, it may lapse. We put all that together in the post-decision actions and limitations.
[00:18:09]
So this is really the procedural reference section for the code. Come on. Renamed from tiers to grouped processes. This doesn't necessarily change how the processes take place, but this is kind of an accessibility thought. If I don't deal with the zoning code, the development code, very often, and I don't know what a tier two review is, it might not mean anything to me. And that's my first place where I can't get into the code. So to make the code a little more understandable to lay people, we're regrouping into administrative review. So these are things that go to the director, or just a staff review and approval. Then we have hearing examiner review and hearing. So with the title, we're letting folks know when they apply for a conditional use permit or a site-specific rezoning, they're not only going to the hearing examiner, but they are going to need to have a public hearing with that. And then, finally, we have City Council review and public hearing, and that's if I want to do a plan amendment or an area-wide rezone, that's how that's gonna take place. So it is different wording, and it's wording for understanding, but it's not necessarily changing how the process works. It's just thinking about how does someone who's unfamiliar with the regulations find the information that they're looking for.
[00:19:39]
So before we get to the questions, and tim touched on this, for the last couple days we have met with the planning staff and development services staff. We've met with our stakeholders on the project, who we did our initial outreach with. We have met with the project steering committee, and we've met with a larger group of what I always think of as partner departments. So other departments outside of planning who use the regulations with some frequency, or whose actions impact how development goes through the regulations. So we have asked them some version of these same questions to see where everybody's weighing in, and then we're taking that back to staff and bouncing it off of them and saying, well, if we make this change, what has to change internally? And when we make procedural changes in particular, we have to be cognizant of not overloading staff, not putting too much expense on what the applicants need, but also balancing that against the information that the City needs to make the right decisions, and then the time frame.
[00:21:00]
So as we've gone through each of these and talked about what does it mean in terms of the process, we've circled back and said, okay, what does it also mean in terms of processing? And how might this have impacts on other things the City is doing that we need to understand as we go forward? So our discussion topics, and tim touched on these: we're looking for a way to establish an alternative to community meetings. I'm going to go through these in a little detail, and then we'll come back. Why would we do this? Everybody wants to be able to talk about projects, and the thing is, the way the community meetings are currently set up is it's a mismatch of expectations. An applicant presents a proposed development, and maybe a neighborhood or whoever's interested shows up, and they talk about it. But there's no obligation for the applicant to make change, which is okay. We don't necessarily want to say you have to make change based on this one meeting. And there's also not a clear understanding that for some applications, the neighbors, or whoever's commenting on it, their comments aren't as meaningful as they would otherwise be, because this applicant only has to comply with the code. So what we want to do is think about how do we make that community input meaningful, and where in the project is the right place for that? In the current code there are other ways and other places where the community gets to weigh in on projects. Certainly those projects that get public notice and have a comment period, there's a way to weigh in on those. What we're trying to figure out is: do we look at community meetings and say this needs to change at the front end to make it work, or do we say we want this project to cook just a little bit before it gets to the community, and then to have the comment there? And then let everybody know that for things that get public hearing, there's still that backstop.
[00:23:07]
So you can still have your say. There's kind of some tension in this. Early in the project, neighbors might be commenting on something that doesn't get built at all. It might change completely before it gets built. Late in the project, it's expensive for the applicant to go back and make changes. And so we're trying to find that place where community voices can be heard on projects that can be impacted, and then that impact on the topics that maybe are helpful to that project. Because we all know that change can be hard, and there are going to be some people who are just super uncomfortable with that and will want to say no to every project. But how can we find that kind of magic mix of: this project should be commented on, these comments are meaningful, and action should be taken, and then we can go through decision-making? So, and this, we're starting out with a super simple one. We'll solve this one. I'm joking. This is a hard one. It runs, for a lot of communities, has different implications in terms of who's commenting, when, and how we're taking those comments into consideration. So that's what we're wrestling with on alternative to community meetings. Second, we want to take puds and put them in a corner and rewrite the code. So there are lots of more straightforward ways to get to development that don't lock in the property or the developer on the site for the next 25 or 30 years, and create headaches for those of us sitting here in 25 or 30 years trying to figure out why in 2026 did you agree to this thing that isn't what we do in development anymore. We see a clear and a lot of use of puds, planned unit developments. It's a band-aid. There's a problem in the code, and this is a good thing to reach for because it gives you some flexibility.
[00:25:09]
What we want to do is get the City standards and expectations in the regulations, so it's more clear to the applicants, it's more clear to you when you're trying to make decisions. And we want to move away from negotiated development into development that's a little more predictable. That actually speeds up the process most of the time. A fully negotiated approval tends to take longer than something that just came through a base zoning district and met standards. Third, we want to consider the ability to make more staff-level decisions. And so this really means: where have we set things up in the code to go to the hearing examiner, to go to City Council, where we can alternatively put some standards in the regulations and say, okay, if you're putting in doggy daycare and you can meet these five criteria, which are the conditions we put on every single approval we give anyhow, we can say the director can make that yes, instead of it being reviewed by Council. And you guys probably don't review doggy daycare, but it's my favorite project these days. I'm going to have to move on to data centers, but I'm sure that's going to wind people up. So. Exactly. So, doggy daycare, safe and happy.
[00:26:26]
So, some of the things in the code that come to you or go to the hearing examiner, because at some point in time we decided as a community, well, we need to see that, everybody needs to see that. And now, you know, 10, 20 years later, we don't need to see it anymore. There's a point in time when we all wanted to see every single walmart that went in everywhere, and we've kind of moved on from that. So we go through the code and we comb it and we make recommendations about, hey, this could go to staff if we put these bumpers on it. Would that be okay? So that's part of what we're doing now, is looking at, if we're having staff review stuff, do we have all of the right review criteria in place? Do we have the availability for staff to get questions answered? Is this the right way that we want to do this? So we're kind of backing into this one a little bit. We'll talk about it more down the road, but this is something that we want to consider. Other three questions. So we have this nonconformities issue, which is interesting. So in Spokane, nonconformities, nonconforming uses in particular. So, change to a nonconforming use, and if you haven't been brushing up on nonconforming lately, all we're saying is: you complied with a prior code, you do not comply with the code we have in place. So this is even before we draft everything. So somebody got something approved 30 years ago, you rewrote the regulations, either the whole code or pieces of it, and all of a sudden now my doggie daycare is not allowed in my building in this district. But I'm still there. I'm a valid use. I'm just called nonconforming. And so in Spokane, that's cool, I can keep going. But if I want to change the use or make some bigger changes to my use, I'm going to have to bring my building or my site into compliance with other parts of the regulations. And it is a way that many communities have used to get infrastructure brought up to date, or to get buildings brought up to date. The thing is that it can have a negative side effect of stifling redevelopment. It is not always as proportionate as we want to be with changes like this. And so when we come to nonconformities, we've got two things we can look at. A nonconformity is a legal out that zoning lawyers made up many years ago. It's a great idea.
[00:29:13]
We thought, I don't like the doggie daycare and I want it to go away, because I really want to put a new, you know, workout center where the doggie daycare is. I'm going to say it's nonconforming. Eventually it will close, it will go out of business, that's fine, that nonconformity will go away. We learned over time, though, that very few nonconformities go away. So we make buildings nonconforming, but the buildings don't go anywhere. All we've done is made it harder for someone to use the building or to redevelop on the site. So what we want to do is get into the nonconforming regulations and get clear about who can expand, how they can expand, how change can be made. This is a low-hanging fruit in the whole scheme of updating regulations. And to give you just a really small example of how this can, you know, make change: jenny and I just finished a code for bismarck, north dakota, which is exactly not like Spokane, but they had a lot of nonconformities through code changes. We managed to get rid of about 85 percent of the nonconformities just by changing the regulations, to make things conform, to make them something you can do under the code. So now, whoever those property owners were, they don't have that extra layer of, you know, hoop to jump through. They just go through the regulations. So, we understand, and I'm making this not into a question but a lecture, so thank you very much for being patient with me. We understand that this is serving a purpose, and there are other ways to serve this purpose, and we get it. Redevelopment is hard. It's harder than new development. We want to think about infrastructure changes over time.
[00:30:54]
We want to make sure that investment is being made in the City. This may be a place where we want to decouple it and move it on to other things that are taking place, so businesses can come and go and those uses can change. The question in there, though, is: what do you think about that? So we'll come back to it. And five. Five is a very juicy topic. We've got people all over the place about this. You probably did not know site plans were a juicy topic. Now you do. And so a site plan, it's literally that. It's like the design of my site. What am I going to do? Where's the building going to go? Where's the infrastructure going to go? Where are the streets and the sidewalks going to go? It's that set of plans that you think of when you think of planning. What's going on now in Spokane, which is common, is a lot of projects can come in and they can go and apply for a building permit, and as part of the building permit review, they get a zoning review. So that is: did the thing that you submitted for a building permit also comply with the zoning regulations? That works. Why are we saying do a site plan? The thing is, a site plan, if we go back to this guy, where are, yeah. A site plan is one of those things that can get stuck in the three-and-four washing machine. It can get, you know, two or three rounds of review from public works.
[00:32:24]
It can get a couple rounds of review from utilities. It can get two or three rounds of planning review. And so the applicant's expectation is, hey, I've gone in for a building permit, there's a pretty short turnaround, I should be able to pull the trigger and get going. The applicant's reality is: sure, we could approve that building permit, but we're going to be here for the next few months working at your site issues. Not all applications, not everybody. Some come straight through, some don't. So when we hear, which we heard early in the process, that developers or applicants are saying it takes so long to get something approved in Spokane, we want to start exploring where our people's expectations are set. If I were applying for a building permit almost anywhere, I would say, yeah, two weeks, depending on how their staffing was looking and how fast they turned building permits. If I'm in there for three or four months, I am going to paint the whole City as taking too long to do this. And so it is a mismatch of expectations. Our question that we've really been talking about, and we've had some great conversations, is: it is that, but are we benefiting the applicant by adding a process? What's the upside? And so we've heard things in some of our conversations about: could be an upside, because they could maybe get some site work going first, so they could be, you know, moving or building foundations or something like that. Could be an upside if it's optional.
[00:33:57]
So those applicants who might understand that taking advantage of that process is beneficial to them, because they work out some big issues early on, might take advantage of it. So it's not a mandatory add. Could be beneficial just in terms of everyone that has to do review on a site plan. It's not just planning. There's infrastructure, so there's engineering and public works and our utilities, and sometimes those can be as challenging to get through review as any, you know, development code issue would be. So it's, how are we teaching ourselves to play nicely together? Which, I'm not saying anybody doesn't, but this is one of those processes where it works best when everybody's in it, having that conversation, and that might be of benefit to the applicant. Downsides to it: time, money, and, you know, change. Change of process. So we would be teaching staff a whole new way to do this, which isn't something that's simple to do when you're already doing a whole lot. So that's been the thing that we come back to, and I'm sure that you'll hear some of this if anyone wants to chat with you about what's going on in this.
[00:35:13]
So the question that we're really leaning into is: do we just want to take the next step and draft it into the regulations? And so we can kind of tailor it to Spokane, everyone can see what it would look like, and then we can get that level of review. So we're not making a forever decision. We are making an "is this okay to move one more step" decision on that. And then finally, we are looking at a new approach to design review. So, design review of projects, to make sure that they're going to work within the community. It's pretty important for a City, and pretty important for a City that has historic areas and a historic core and is seeing new development. Design review as a process definitely has pros and cons to it, and when you're in the process of doing a code update, that's an opportunity to take your basic expectations and codify them, and create a set of more objective standards. And one of the definite drawbacks of a design review process is that design can be subjective. I'm probably not the first person to say that. I think I'm feeling pretty safe about that. I think there's a big Washington case that said that. That's hard on applicants, it's hard on the City, and we don't have that clarity. And so I might think that the yellow in the flowers up there is exactly the yellow you were thinking of, and you might think it was definitely something more like the orange-yellow of commissioner Zappone's water bottle there. So what we want to do is get as much as we can into the base standards, and have those in sort of a more non-arguable position. We're not going to tell everybody how to design their projects. We do a menu approach.
[00:37:14]
So we say you can do this, this, or this. Or we put a list out and say pick two, so people and applicants have choices. But we really want to explore, as we go through this process, what can we get into the regulations, and then where, geographically, is it important to keep that design review? So is that maybe downtown, and for public projects that have some success with design review? Or is that less than that, or more than that? So we're open as to where this goes, but it's one of the things we kind of want to poke and see what improvements could be made to it. So that's it. I will stop with your uninspired lecture on zoning and see kind of what's on your list, or top of your head, that you want to ask, if we're thinking about it or where we're going with it. This is, I say, it was great. Love this. This is the driest part of the drafting we do, the procedures. Everything else has fun, shiny aspects to it. But this is, it's process. But process is the heart and core of how we take things through the City, get them approved, and get things built. So it's kind of important. I'm gonna have you go back to your first discussion topic, number one, the engagement question. We get faced with that a lot about development in neighborhoods. So have you seen the best practice? I certainly understand the complications, but neighbors, my analogy is like: don't bake the bread till it's done. When I want raisins in it, then it's too late to put raisins in the bread. Yeah, and then they get mad when I want you to go back and bake it again.
[00:38:58]
So in this analysis, have you, are you giving us a recommendation of where? Because the engagement piece is really critical to this comp plan. Yeah, so, yes. To answer the question directly, we're going to give you a recommendation. We're all just going to take a look at what your peer cities are up to. This is a place that's kind of forefront of zoning right now. You know, historically we've done a poor job of keeping people involved. Not Spokane, people who write zoning. And so we're looking at it, kind of giving it a fresh look, saying, how do we do this? How do we do it well? And so what we will do, now that we've got a grip on how it's working, and when it is working and not working, we're going to take a look at all of your peer cities to see what they're doing, to see if anybody has come up with kind of the miracle answer to this. But then what we might come back with is a more nuanced approach. It's one size fits all right now, more or less, and so we may work within, like, our three tiers and say, okay, you know, if you're doing this tier, you're going out for a public meeting early, because it can impact project design. We will bring this back to you with a more detailed explanation of why we're recommending what we're recommending, and then we step back. Because also, you have to figure out what is going to work best within Spokane.
[00:40:29]
So we'll bring you the information and a recommendation, and then we'll let the conversation take place. The great thing about doing that is, you know, when the code is updated, when you're done, we recommend that you sit with it for six months to a year. If this doesn't work, you still have a shelf with some other choices on it, and so you can modify as you go forward. This is one that sometimes takes a little tweaking. So we'll bring you our best, and then we'll take your guidance on that. Council member Dillon, then Council member Telis. Yeah, thank you for this. I guess a couple things. One challenge that we're always presented is that we have two choices, and that happens in government so often, where, you know, it's either the economy versus the environment, or housing versus the environment. And yeah, data centers, economy versus environment. But another, I guess, when you go back to nonconforming use, and maybe not a dog daycare, but drive-thrus. And that's been a big issue of contention, where, you know, we've passed measures that are trying to create a very pedestrian-friendly, transit-oriented environment in the City, and, you know, I fully support those measures. I think the part of the challenge, though, is, you know, "this is anti-business," and that fervor and that narrative went hardly.
[00:41:58]
Now, that's not the case. And so we do have, unfortunately, a lot of people that are sitting on land. You know, there has to be a way, I think, to thread some of that needle and bring more stakeholders in together, and how we try and maximize a lot of that land capacity for mixed use, for how we have a vision of trying to grow and meet folks there, and thread that needle. So it's not just this binary of false choices where things are stagnant. And then also, beyond just this comprehensive plan and these recommendations, I think also looking at future adjustments that are more kind of one-off, annually, like when we do our City comp plan docket. So when we look at maybe a particular parcel for changing the height restrictions, and how to, again, maximize some of that use. That goes beyond just our, you know, decades, 20-year review. Yeah, I have some drive-thru scars. I can show them to you later. I appreciate the question, because that yes-no dichotomy exists in a variety of things that we deal with in the code, and then it attracts supporters. So we end up with an argument instead of a conversation. I can't magically make the argument go away, but what we can help do is bring some design alternatives into that conversation.
[00:43:32]
Sometimes looking at how it has been managed in other communities. With, you know, we did, you know, this with drive-thrus, or we just said no here, and people got the hang of it eventually. It, you're kind of encapsulating the pain of change right there. And also, sort of, what can be really challenging about retail: retail can tell us one thing is really important, and the community can be like, it's not so important to us. And so trying to kind of balance that out also. So we'll look to staff to tell us where things are really heated up. We heard the drive-thru conversation yesterday. But we'd also, you know, be very open to hearing from you what conversations are coming your way, and then, kind of, as you know, notification to us to be prepared to have multiple different conversations about it. One of the things we hope to do through the rest of the process is a little education. That, you know, people tend to pay attention to this when we're doing it, and then they can turn it off and go back to world cup or whatever else they got going on. So if there's a subject that we need to expand a little more broadly, we can do that with you. Thank you. Council member Telis. Yes, I was just curious, first of all, who are these peer cities that you're evaluating against, and what is the criteria for determining that? You know, so we started putting together a list yesterday. So what we're looking for in a peer City is usually roughly the same population size. Also, we look for similar institutional inhabitants. So, like, you know, if we have a couple large colleges, a small college, and we have maybe a military installation, or whatever's going on at that. We want something like that, because that impacts how the population functions. For Spokane, we'll lean a little more heavily into Washington communities, just because of the encompassing nature of your statutory authority. But we'll also look outside the box. So, our firm updated boise's code a few years ago, so we might say, hey, boise thought this might work.
[00:45:48]
Is that something you guys want to talk about? We don't want to go super far away from where you are in terms of population and location. We're not going to bring you examples from virginia, unless somebody did something just stellar there and we know we can rewrite it to work here. I didn't answer your question. I told you how we're still working the list, and if anyone wants to suggest communities that we look at, we take a longer list, and then we go look at their stuff. If their code is old and out of date, we'll say so. Sorry, they're beautiful, and we have no clue how they're doing it, because their code is 50 years out. So that's kind of where it is. I don't know, tim, do you want people to make suggestions to you, or to? I don't know your process, so what's the preferred way to do this? I, okay, I can, oops. I don't have the preliminary list, but it was, no, I'm gonna mess it up. So we'll share. I'd just be curious. Yeah. Yeah, parameters of that. Yeah. Another thing that I wanted to discuss, and I don't have answers for this, but I'm positing it to you all. It seems like in Spokane, in my district alone, but I know this occurs in other districts as well, we have vastly different set-up infrastructure for the amount of development we have there. I think in places in district two, there are places that are in the wildland urban interface, and yet they only have one exit out in cases of fire. And that's something that I hear a lot about from constituents in those areas. Curious how code can be applied, or what you've seen, how code revisions could be applied to address sort of the disparity and the differences, and maybe try to make up for that in some ways. So, one of the things that we were talking about, I'm sorry, I'm like playing the piano today, I don't know where this is coming from. I put my hands down. One of the things we were talking about yesterday is that kind of range of differences, and
[00:48:06]
What does it mean to be able to address everything within the code structure? So what we try to do is remember that Spokane is what we call a redevelopment or infill City. You're getting new development out on the edges, but you're also getting redevelopment, which means the code needs more nuance to it. It needs standards for the new development, it needs standards for infill development, and it needs standards for redevelopment, and they're not always the same. So what we would want to do in that case is, let's do wildfire as our topic. So we know that it can have significantly more impacts in the interface area. So as we're putting access standards in place, and we'd be having conversations with staff, and we can reach out to anybody who wants to be in on that, and say: fire code, separately from zoning code, but fire code says at 30 units you have to have that second access. That might not work in more rural areas, so we can set a lower standard for that second access, so we don't end up with some of the situations that we know have happened with the one-in, one-out in a wildfire setting. That wouldn't apply downtown, and that's fine. We can put that in the code to address how development might happen as it either increases or stays exactly the way it is in some of those areas. So what we find in drafting the code is those issues tend to bubble up, because we'll put language in place, and, I'm sure jenny shared this with you guys, we share the full draft and we put it on the website, and everyone can comment on it. And all of a sudden we'll see 16 wildfire comments. So we do kind of an iterative approach, and then we can tell from that where people are really concerned, and we dive a little deeper into that.
[00:50:06]
We also let you guys know, through our summaries, where we've been focused, and if you see that we've missed something, you can shove us back and say, go do this one again. From my perspective, one of the things that I've seen most is, I would appreciate much more nuance in the code. I represent, just alone in my district, vastly different communities with different needs, and so I would like to see that addressed. It's something I've heard from constituents quite a bit. Thank you. Yeah, and I thank you, Council member Telis, for all that feedback. I think some of the struggles we have is that there had been negotiated developments prior to many of us up here on this dais that set precedents and expectations that are now changing, and we are getting the backlash from a lot of that. But we do have very diverse neighborhoods with very different infrastructures. You know, one of our models is: you shouldn't have to move to live in a great neighborhood. But with development, too many communities, it feels like they're being pushed out of their neighborhood, based on our new development codes and what's being allowed to come in. So that is the challenge that we hear from our seats going forward. So it is very nuanced. So I look forward to your comparison cities, as one. And then, as you said, Spokane is more focused on some new development, but a lot on infill. And from the smaller development, developers, the infill barriers are huge, that make it just not financially pencil out.
[00:51:53]
So therefore we're not seeing that so often, and we look at Spokane as this donut hole, where, like, everything's happening right across the City limits and not within the City, based on a lot of our regulations. So, and speed being one, it's like, why are we so slow? I don't know what that answer is, but I look forward to the report to tell me why we're not as fast as other cities. Are people being pushed out of their neighborhoods because home prices are going up? Is that a piece of it? Or what are you hearing about why people need to move to be in a great neighborhood? Not being pushed out because home prices, they're not able to afford. So the homes are being purchased, torn down, and then redeveloped, and that does not, in many cases, fit the character of the neighborhood, and certainly not the price point of the people who were living there prior to that. So a piece of this conversation is, maybe, I don't know, protecting is the right word, but figuring out how to solve for that: people staying in their neighborhood and still allowing redevelopment that works. Absolutely. And really, the neighbors are talking about our low-income neighborhoods, and so then, I think from my observation, we're really struggling with a displacement issue. Yeah.
[00:53:19]
Currently, in our low-income neighborhoods. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Klitzke. Thanks. Back to the timeline issue of the permitting process, and when is the best time to have community engagement, or the meeting that we typically require. Yeah, I think it's well taken that having the meeting too early, and having expectations that the community can come in and yes-or-no the project, is a valid concern. But I think there's a difference between engaging the community and notifying the community. I think that notification still needs to happen very early. Yeah. Especially with our neighborhoods and community groups. They need time to become aware of the situation and formulate and discuss any of their concerns amongst each other. So I would really hope that we would keep notification very early, and then work to find the most effective point that, should we continue to do meetings or provide some other kind of alternative, we find that most effective point. I feel like if we eliminate any communication between the project proponent and the community in the process, we are taking away an opportunity for the project proponent to understand the community's concerns.
[00:54:49]
So yes, I get this false sense of control that we might be giving the community. But we all are taking away, if there was a developer that had no idea that the community had this concern, and they cut down this tree or whatever the issue was, we're missing an opportunity there to have a good faith between the developer and the community. So I would encourage you to consider that. I know the timing thing, we're kind of balancing between what's effective and what's expensive. Yeah. But at the end of the day, if we miss those opportunities, we're not doing ourselves, the developers, or the communities any favor. And I think the question between yes-no and nuance, I don't know that it necessarily needs to be in code. I think maybe if we're clear with the community that this feedback and these discussions are about nuance. If it's a yes-no issue, it needs to be addressed in the code. So getting that public participation and community input in the code is the most important and effective time to get the input, not at a project-specific level. And the more that we can be clear about that, and the more that we can work hard to get feedback when the feedback is going to make the most difference, I think is an important distinction as well. That's one of my favorite points to make to people. We spent a lot of time thinking about it to put it in the code. I think that your points are all well taken on our end, and that's just a piece of kind of what we'll be wrestling down with you over the next few months. And we will remind everybody: this is their opportunity to get it in the code, or out, depending on what they're in the mood for.
[00:56:41]
So thank you. Any other questions? Council member Telis. Just, when you say anyone, are you asking public, or is there a place for, I just want to be clear if there's a place for that sort of commentary. Yeah, there will be, as soon as we start getting drafts posted and start doing community outreach. And we're working with our partners at kimley-horn, hi, who are here in the community. There will be events going on, and places for people to comment, and the actual draft for people to comment on also. So everyone will be able to have their say, should they want to. But it hasn't, we don't have something open and available right now. No, nothing open and available right now, but we will make sure, and I'm sure tim's doing it already, keeping everyone in the loop with our calendar, so people know when they can expect it and when those windows are open, to dive in and say something. Thank you. Thank you, Council member Zappone. Yeah, thanks for all this. I would just echo what was already talked about earlier, but just saying that it's valuable. The process itself is maybe not sexy or fun, but that is one thing that we do hear a lot of, is about the process as a pinch point, and that it adds those extra costs. And so just working towards making that easier, with the hopes of decreasing those costs overall, I think will be beneficial. So thanks. Yeah, I think, and I think one of the things that, if we're looking at the whole thing, something else we may want to look at in the process is: how have we educated applicants to come to the City? And often we find, at Clarion, when we're working with communities, that the applicant who will say "this took too long" also didn't have the information ready at the right time, or, you know, because they were super busy, or their engineer didn't, whatever. And so we want to make sure that we have some open and honest conversations about, you know, this is what the City can do, but there are two parties to this conversation. And so, you know, we want to make sure the development community is heard and their issues are addressed, but we also aren't going to come back to you and say, oh, your staff, it's terrible.
[00:58:58]
They're doing their best too. So we're going to try to figure out where that meter is, and, you know, figure out how can we help those applications come forward the best way possible. Any other questions? Well, first of all, thank you. The comp plan is new to, I think it's 20 years, however many years it has been since we last updated our comp plan. So many of us were not even engaged in government. I was probably still in elementary school. Just kidding. I gotta laugh at it anyway. So this is new to us as a Council, and new to the community, and how complicated. So I really want to thank tim and the team, and you as well, for really engaging us now, early on, and to help us understand, so we can help disseminate to the community the understanding of the process that's being put in place. So, any other questions before us? Well, thank you so much. Tim, do you have something else you want to share with us? Oh, there's one more slide. Oh, I, oh, go back to four, five and six. No. Did I miss one? Oh, this one. Okay, so, could I ask, I've been hearing a lot about site plan review and pre-site plans and all that. So do we have the ability in the City, for some developers, to have some pre-site plans already identified, tim, going forward?
[01:00:37]
So somebody comes in, it's like, this site has utilities, water, whatever some of the requirements may be, along with a site plan review procedure. So, I think we talked a little bit about cost, right? And so time is money. There's a cost there. Delay is money, cost. So I think the whole purpose behind the recommendation behind the site plan review process, which would be, as I mentioned earlier, you know, we have conditional use permits that are quasi-judicial, go to the hearing examiner, public hearing process. This would be similar to that, but it's only administrative, and we can establish what the applicability is. So we can determine which projects would apply, or would be required to go through that process. And I certainly don't think that every project, building permit, that comes in should have to go through that process first. I think we want to focus our efforts on projects that are new construction, additions, you know, maybe residential projects beyond six units. And really what it is, is an opportunity to identify issues and challenges earlier in the process. So one thing that we've heard from developers is, they get to the building permit stage and they're ready to go. You know, they've got their lending lined up. At that point, they're at substantial risk. They want their permit and they want to get in the ground.
[01:02:00]
Well, now there's multiple reviews, issues are being identified at that stage, that requires the applicant to go back and spend additional money to review and or revise plans, and then get them resubmitted, and then have to go through the process again. And so there's a little bit of a trade-off here, of really trying to identify those bigger issues ahead of time. We do this already. We do this, you know, primarily through our pre-development process. The pre-development process is optional. It's non-binding. You know, somebody gets eight pages of notes. They're not binding. They really don't mean much. They're really informational. This process would be a formal land application process. It would provide a binding approval for an applicant, which should give them some certainty going forward. So now they have that level of certainty. They can go to their bank and say, I'm entitled to do this project. I have a year, or two years, to do that project before it expires. Now they should be able to move forward with reasonable certainty that if they design their project to the standard, and address the conditions of approval associated with that, that they'll be able to submit their building permit and essentially sail through the process much quicker, without a lot of back and forth, because we've identified the big items, the big issues, ahead of time. And so that's, I think, really what the purpose of that particular process is. It's not intended to add another layer or make people spend more money. It's really to figure out how we can get this project through the process as quickly and as efficiently as possible. There's a lot of coordination involved there as well.
[01:03:51]
You know, when we're looking at these projects, it's not just the dsc. We send those applications out to the utilities, to fire, to outside agencies, our transportation partners. And it's an opportunity for them to review the project and comment back on things that we may not be aware of, so that we can, again, you know, draft appropriate conditions that provide the applicant some certainty. So that is, I think, really the intent of that. You know, I go back to kind of the three primary themes that we heard: applicants want certainty, they want consistency, they want predictability. They also want flexibility, which is a little bit of a pendulum when we talk about predictability. And so how can we provide that flexibility? So those are just some of the themes that we're kind of grappling with, and how do we achieve that, and use the process to do it. I think this all makes sense, the direction you're going. Sounds good. But I think what people are asking about is: can there possibly be, like, pre-approved site plans, where people don't have to jump through all of these hoops? And I'm wondering if the tension there is between us not knowing what's in the ground until people start working on the project. And so is that what's happening, is the variables of the site? Or are we going to come up with a menu of these kind of things that are just, go ahead and build it?
[01:05:23]
Well, I'll just quickly speak on the question of pre-approved plans. We prefer the term permit-ready plans, because they're not really approved until they're approved. The site layout is actually the one thing that, in the programs I'm aware of in other cities, is not the pre-approved part of that, because every site is unique. And so, the permit-ready plans, we have had discussions about trying to set up a program here. I think there's a lot of interest, and I hope that once we're through with this comp plan work and the code update, we can develop some plans that would make use of the new regulations. It can be effective in reducing some barriers in terms of timeline. I think the value is more in the increased certainty in the process, because you have an approved set that has already been reviewed, and you're comfortable that it's going to move forward without significant changes. But there's really no way to get around the site issues. And I think you mentioned, like, the utilities underground. There isn't really a standard format across the City, of the water line always comes in right here, or the sewer line always goes out right here. And so there's not really a way to front-load that. I think the value of the site review procedure that we were talking about is that it dispenses with some of those questions about where the utilities are and how they need to be connected, before you've spent significant money as a developer preparing those plan sets and doing a lot of the work that follows on from that. Our current process generally requires you to have full construction documents before you go in for a formal review. You can sometimes, or often, come in and ask questions and try to get an idea of how you need to anticipate something, but there isn't really a formal approval that gives you the certainty to go ahead with your project.
[01:07:27]
Under our current process, you basically have to have your full construction docs done in order to get to that step. So what we're trying to do is create an intermediate step. That is sort of like an extra rung on the ladder, for you to take smaller steps first, before you've sunk a lot of resources into a project. Get some certainty, and then take the next step. Does that answer the question? Yeah. And tim, I just have to bring this out, and it's just probably what I heard. You were speaking to the larger developers and the supports. I'm not hearing a lot of conversation around our small developers who are doing the infill work. Will that same level of support that you're speaking to, about six units or larger developers, be in place? Because my limited observation is, those small developers are the ones that are going to do a lot of the infill, because it will pencil out for them. Larger developers, I don't know what that looks like within our City, based on our land capacity. But I do have concerns that small developers get the same supports in their processes as the larger developers do as well. Yeah, I think what we're looking at, or we're trying to base the process on, are impacts, you know, the typical development type requirements, and not whether somebody is a big developer or a small developer. I mean, we want to look at the project, and what the impacts of that project are, to help us dictate. So if we use an example of an industrial site that doesn't trigger a conditional use permit. It's a new build. They go through this process.
[01:09:21]
We get an application. It's an opportunity for staff to send that out to the fire department, to wastewater, to water. And then we get feedback. So, you know, maybe we need to be concerned about pretreatment. Maybe, you know, we have stormwater challenges, and so, you know, we have our engineering team that can comment on that. And so as we go through that process, we start identifying the issues related to development, and then we can essentially issue an approval letter, subject to conditions of approval, that would provide that level of certainty. So that's what that is intended to be. When we talk about some of these smaller residential projects, I don't know, at least in my mind, that doesn't necessarily rise to this level where, you know, we need to have more significant coordination. But that doesn't mean that there isn't coordination happening behind the scenes. It's just a process. So somebody comes in and wants to build a fourplex, you know, they get a building permit. There's still coordination going on behind the scenes. We're still talking about where are the utility connections, and what are other potential challenges, stormwater. We're still addressing that. You know, the key in the process is really communication, and how we communicate with folks. You know, I think we're at this place where we use technology, or, you know, we issue comment letters, and, you know, frankly, sometimes things get lost in translation. And so sometimes, you know, being able to pick up the phone and call someone, usually you can work it out in about five minutes, because, you know, the person on the other end says, oh, I know what you mean now. And then it's resolved, and it helps to eliminate that back-and-forth, three, four, you know, comment letter reviews. But yes, I think our intent is, you know, we want to have a good solid code that any developer can navigate, and that the process that someone has to go through is proportionate to the impact of the project, and the level of coordination necessary to achieve the outcome.
[01:11:34]
I think that's key here, too, is: we focus a lot on process, we focus a lot on tasks, and we don't necessarily focus on the outcome. What is the outcome that we're looking to achieve? Are we achieving that outcome today? And if we're not, maybe we need to consider doing things a little bit differently. Thank you. Any other questions? Council member Telis. I was just curious, do you have specific, and I'm not very familiar with the development world, but do you have specific stakeholders that would be considered smaller developers and larger developers at the table? Just to understand that they might have different perspectives that they could bring. You know, it's a really good question. I'd have to look at the list. Offhand, I don't know that, I don't know that maybe we've done a great job of that. I think we've tried to identify folks that are common users, and the folks that we hear most frequently of. You know, who's a small developer or not? I mean, I would have to really talk to our dsc staff to maybe identify some folks and see if they're on the list or not. Happy to do that. Happy to reach out and engage those folks. You know, certainly we can do that. Thank you. Thank you. To us up here, every project is impactful. Just so you know. I don't care if it's one house, or some big manufacturing, or 500 units. To us, it's impactful. So it's just as critical that they receive the same amount of service and support, no matter where they fall on the spectrum of size. Any other questions? Again, thank you all. Thank you for showing up, to all the others out there that are in attendance, thank you as well.
[01:13:16]
If there's nothing else before us, I think we are adjourned. Have a great afternoon. Enjoy the sunshine.