City Council Workshops

0:00 Councillors, I'd like to remind you we're going to be practicing our accessibility standards this evening. Let me go ahead and lead off. I'm Anne McEnerny-Ogle, Mayor for the City of Vancouver. And Councillors, if you would be so kind as to turn on your microphones, we're going to try this now so that if you have any questions, everyone will be able to hear you. If we have a problem with the microphones, then we'll have some turned off.

0:51 But please make sure when you talk, identify yourself and we'll move forward with those new standards. I'm sure you're aware of all of those, Aaron and Brian. So it's 4 p.m. and we'll start the workshops on the state legislative end of the session update. So Aaron, go ahead and kick this off, please. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, Aaron Landy, Assistant City Manager. I'm joined here with Brian Enslow, the city's state contract lobbyist and we're going to be providing a recap of the 2026 Washington State Legislative session without stealing too much of Brian's thunder. Not the greatest session for the City of Vancouver and frankly cities in general, but we'll get into some of those details as we work our way through the slides and our intent is to get through the slides fairly quickly so that we can have some time at the end for dialogue and especially some looking

1:50 forward, how we're going to try to change things up for the next session in '27. So I'll turn it over to Brian now. Thank you very much, Mr. Landy. I am Brian Enslow. I am the principal of Arbutus Consulting and as you mentioned, I am your state government consultant. Thank you for allowing me some time today. All right. Good. Great. Everything's working here on my end. As part of today's agenda, we are going to provide a little bit of an overview of just the final budget and the impacts to either Vancouver directly or cities broadly, discuss some kind of statewide policy issues, highlight some key measures that impact the city or city operations and then as Mr. Landy alluded to, maybe just do a little kind of discussion about some observation kind of after action review items that we've

2:45 had a chance to discuss but maybe kind of share some thoughts with you all as well. So with that, I'm going to jump right in. So the overall state budget is, in my opinion, a little bit fragile moving forward. It's based on significant revenue from the assumption of primarily one new revenue source, which is the millionaire's tax, Senate Bill 6346, which I believe probably most of you have kind of heard about or read about but just for level setting, the state did pass an income tax on income above $1 million at a 9.9 percent rate increase for individuals and businesses. And then there's a little bit of additional

3:45 revenue in the short term on repeal of a data center tax provision, kind of opposite direction organs going on, increasing their incentives for data centers, Washington kind of pulled back. It also has a substantial transfer from the capital budget. So the operating budget for two years for the state is around $80 billion. They borrow a billion dollars from the capital budget or use it one time. They also use roughly a billion out of their budget stabilization account, which they then backfill from kind of some resources they grabbed from collapsing some pensions accounts. So there was a lot of creativity, good staff work on

4:42 behalf of the long-term nonpartisan staff in the budget office to find ways in which to continue to maintain some of the services being provided by state in lieu of some of the cost increase. So short-term solvency, as I mentioned, was kind of dependent on those one-time transfers, out of the capital budget, out of the budget stabilization account, things like that. And then that long-term where the millionaire's tax kicks in is about year three and year four moving forward. And that's kind of where the long-term solvency is dependent on. So if that were to be found unconstitutional or if that was to be repealed by a ballot measure, we wouldn't have a real fiscal crisis in the current biennium in the short run,

5:32 you know, the next year to two years, 18 months, but outward then kind of the projections in which they would have a balanced budget in fiscal year 28, fiscal year 29, those would be seriously impacted. And then, and we'll talk more about this kind of on the last slide I think, but I think one of the things that we have been experiencing either as the city of Vancouver or cities broadly is state revenue and fiscal choices do impact kind of the tools that are available and just generally the atmosphere of the citizens and the voting public. So when we look at the fact that the state increased operating revenue last year of eight to nine billion to balance their budget last year and then now are looking

6:32 at another kind of two billion annually or in out years like three on the millionaire's tax that does, you know, kind of take some of the I guess space or room when we start looking at municipal parks or if we look at, you know, like levee lid lifts and things like that when there's all these other things happening at the state level. So that's kind of what I wanted to highlight there and what I think has been something that has been felt in many jurisdictions, particularly at the ballot the last couple years. Excuse me, I'm just going to take a little sip of water. Tree pollen was particularly

7:26 bad at my house this morning. So one of the perhaps not anticipated features of the millionaire's tax is it has a substantial reduction in the city sales tax base and not just our city but cities broadly. And so that tax as it was constructed has, as I mentioned, the aforementioned piece where there's the tax on income but then there's also some what I would call kind of give backs or ways that were intended to kind of like balance our tax code and make it a little bit more progressive. So it has repeals of sales tax on certain personal care items like deodorant, shampoo, and things like that that are experienced by everyone. So there is kind of a sales tax relief for every individual. But it does impact the local

8:26 sales tax as well. So I'm not making any policy argument one way or another on kind of that proposal. I'm just saying that there is no share of the new revenue specifically with local government. But there is a repeal of sales tax on certain consumable items. So state still gets all the new revenue. We don't. And it wasn't necessarily an unintended consequence but it was a consequence of that. There is some language in the bill that says there will be a mitigation fund. That fund is possibly sufficient. We won't really know until 2029. It's not actually appropriated because you only appropriate for two years. You can't appropriate four years out. And then the one thing I find slightly concerning and again

9:24 we've talked about this. You pay me to be nervous. It's 200 million to cover the cost of the 2029 impact. But moving forward the impact is closer to 400 million or estimated to be 400 million. So some concern there about how we'll approach that and how cities are made whole. And philosophically kind of the other concern is if your intent was to maybe make the state's overall revenue more like proportional to how much you make by creating a hole in local government that can only be filled by sales tax. You kind of just undo the policy you were trying to do. And I don't know if I did a very good job of explaining that. But if you're trying to move away from a regressive sales tax system but if

10:24 ultimately you create a hole at the local level where our only tools then are local sales tax options you haven't really accomplished that or you maybe haven't accomplished as much as you would have liked I think is what I'm trying to say. Okay. That was a lot. I apologize. Thanks for sticking with me. Otherwise no major changes to state shared revenue. There is some increase in the housing trust fund that is important specifically to us. I know staff are listening. We have lots of great projects in the pipeline. We got one project funded this year. We got zero like a year ago. We're behind. And so the more money that's in the housing trust fund the more opportunity we get to move forward on those amazing projects that we've worked with our community partners that are really

11:14 just waiting on those tax credits quite frankly. So that's good. There was a somewhat significant increase in early childhood education assistance program. On a future slide we'll talk a little bit more about the working families connections child care which are working connections child care which was not so great I think from a policy perspective. And then unfortunately there was no additional funding for indigent defense either. I know there's been some real energy put in that and trying to get some additional state assistance especially based on the new misdemeanor caseload standards which are coming into play pretty soon now that we see as an unfunded mandate. There was a lot of conversation initially as part

12:10 of the millionaires tax bill that there would be local government resources dedicated for indigent defense. As that moved out of the Senate and into the house those provisions were stripped out and ultimately were not included in that bill. So there was I think Aaron alluded to there isn't going to be a whole lot of great news that I report today and that's that was some of the news that could have been positive but ultimately did not move forward. We did have some some really strong support from our local delegation and specifically represent Stonier. We were able to introduce House Bill 2583 which was Vancouver

13:05 requested legislation that would essentially align our lodging tax authority with that of Seattle. I think one of the primary pieces that we were hoping to look at was the performing arts center with some of those new resources. We had a good hearing and a good showing on that. We did not ultimately we weren't successful a lot of times with this it takes more than a year. We did have some very good conversations with the lodging industry broadly. I think what and there is a commitment to work with us this interim and kind of refining our proposal. I think there's some actually think there's some real opportunity especially given the

14:02 way this city currently uses their lodging tax resources how we would think about using these new resources moving forward. I think there's a lot of alignment because I think they see the value in what we're trying to do and actually seeing a direct nexus between what we're trying to do and the lodging industry. I think broadly there was some concern statewide about some other some other entities not using lodging tax resources without much nexus and that's something that kind of needs to be ferreted through before I think we can see something like our proposal ultimately making it to the governor's desk. >> Yes. Go ahead and identify yourself. >> This is councilmember Diana Perez. Brian, can you elaborate on the third bullet there of the crowding from other tax policies? Is

14:59 that local, state, all of the above or can you just elaborate on that comment there? >> Great question, Brian. Specifically I was alluding to there was a lot of work on the short term rental tax which ultimately didn't prevail either. I think there was a desire to get ahead of FIFA to get some additional lodging tax associated with short term rentals and that took up a lot of the oxygen but there were, as I mentioned, quite a few and we'll get to it later, quite a few other kind of taxing issues that were in some of those finance committees that took up kind of more of the oxygen in the room specifically in the lodging sphere the one on short term rentals. >> Okay. Thank you.

15:56 >> Thank you. >> As I alluded to in my previous slide, although there were some investments in the state supported ECAP program for kind of early education, the working connections childcare program itself had some legislation that was a little challenging and so House Bill 2689, I think the big thing that I wanted to highlight for you was there was some planned expansion of eligibility. Right now in order for a family to be eligible

16:46 you can be up to 60% and eligibility was planned to go up to 75 in 2029 and then 85% of median family income in 31. Those were suspended. There were some other changes around the margins around like when you allow billing, whether you can bill for like 11 days versus a full month, 15 days versus a full month or a full month, that was put in place but broadly I did want to share I think there was some disappointment about previous commitments and expansions that have now since been suspended. I think one thing that was considered a success is the governor and the governor's proposal had proposed capping the program. Ultimately the legislature did not go with that. So it's still available to all people that meet the

17:42 criteria as opposed to having a hard cap. There was a childcare standard board created by House Bill 1128 largely that's focused on workers, workforce issues, working conditions, things like that. The board composition then reflects that so it's like labor groups that represent childcare workers, childcare organizations, the appropriate state agencies, things like that. 2219 passed this year requires childcare providers to be free of high potency opioids, equipment and paraphernalia. I did want to highlight just Councilor Fox, I know we've talked about this a lot. So some of the things that I think we're looking for in that child endangerment statute that was House Bill 1087 was reflected in this. I think that bodes

18:38 well I know the sponsor of 1087 has stated that they will not be seeking re-election so I think that creates an opportunity for someone to pick up that issue and so that's something we can talk more about this interim about how we kind of move forward on that. And sorry I was having a little bit of a -- 1087 was the piece of legislation that we've spoken a couple of times but it's around adding fentanyl to the child endangerment statute. Okay, great. So right now currently it's potentially a crime of child endangerment if you have like methamphetamine and methamphetamine related products in your home. 1087 would have added

19:27 fentanyl and things of that nature. So one of the things we talked about was supporting concerning essentially banning law enforcement from using having their faces covered. That bill was passed into law. It was signed by the governor on the 19th of March and it was signed with an emergency clause so it was effective immediately. So as of now law enforcement officials are not allowed to use face coverings. There are some appropriate I would say exceptions to that whether it's in like a SWAT environment where you need some sort of protection based

20:24 on munitions or quite frankly if it's really, really cold and you're out doing some law enforcement and below certain temperatures. There are some exceptions around that. Also around like surgical masks or firefighting equipment but for -- it also puts in a civil action. So if you are an individual who is approached by a law enforcement officer who is not properly identified, I know the city actually because I follow you on social media did an excellent social media campaign on law enforcement identification. I can't remember like all seven signs. But I know that Vancouver police department have their hat and badge.

21:19 But if some other agency, not as responsible as Vancouver police were to have their face covered and approached an individual they have a course of action. 6002 was around license plate readers. And we at the staff level are still parsing out some of the implementation issues. I think broadly from a policy perspective the notion that the city of Vancouver wouldn't be like reading license plates and then selling that information to ICE or giving that information to ICE I think is something that we all understand and appreciate. But in terms of some of the

22:17 restrictions on like vicinity and proximity to like schools or healthcare centers or things like that is challenging to figure out how to actually operationalize. And so I know we're still sorting through that. I know there's been some conversations about parking and parking enforcement and using the bill explicitly states you can. But it also has been a lot of provisions that make it tricky around data retention and audit trails and things like that. So more to come on that. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some refinement on that bill next year just because of some of the unintended consequences. And so like

23:13 I said we're doing a lot of work at the staff level both at the department and kind of the legal side of that and so more to come. And then lastly you know we've done a lot of work on trying to create a regional consensus on moving forward with a physical campus for our regional training center. Seems like we have a little bit more work to do. And so unfortunately our capital request was not funded this year with moving forward on kind of planning and designing a long term community asset for regional training. >> As councilor go ahead. >> Can you elaborate on the not funded part

24:10 and a little more clarity on they just run out of time, was there missing information, was it just lower priority, just a little more context to why it wasn't funded? >> I have a hard time, it obviously wasn't a priority because ultimately it wasn't funded. I think there was some lack of clarity from the delegation perspective of whether it was a regional priority from all of the local government entities and things like that versus say just a Vancouver priority and I think there's probably more work to be done there and that was probably the biggest piece. >> And if I can add again Aaron Landy, council member just so you're aware our police department and police leadership is reaching out to the sheriff's office as well as other of our regional partners to make sure we're all on the same page and maybe revisit what page

25:09 we're on but trying to once again come back with one voice because as the message we heard was there was lack of clarity about what exactly Southwest Washington wanted and so that conversation is now going to continue to get back on the same page so we can make that regional ask next year. >> On the housing side, one of the pieces of legislation that we moved forward this year was the annexation conversation and what are the development standards in the city and then what are the development standards in the associated urban growth areas. We were you know essentially I wouldn't call our legislation heavy-handed but it was pretty direct in saying that the county will do what we do from a development standard in the UGA.

26:08 Not surprisingly from other counties statewide and the county association there's concerns over some fiscal impacts and desire to have date certain annexations which ultimately something I don't think we could support so it was a good conversation starter much like our lodging tax bill it was there's a lot more work to do and more work to do over in this interim. There were some other kind of significant housing policy items that were passed specifically House Bill 2266 which makes it very difficult to not allow shelters in your jurisdictions. I don't think there's any significant impacts to the way the city currently operates it wasn't targeted at us. There were some we do use operating agreements and there was some language around that that we kind of had to like work on and make sure we continue to kind of have the good neighbor agreements that actually help make these facilities move forward.

27:05 But beyond that I think that's something that makes sense from a regional perspective. And then we did a lot of work on 6026 and a lot of the work we did was just to make sure that the legislature didn't upset the awful cart of the tens of thousands of hours your staff had already done on our comp plan update. But Vancouver is already moving towards deregulation and already trying to allow kind of the market to decide whether it makes sense to have commercial or just housing. So a lot of alignment there as well. Although it took me a lot of work to get alignment. So anyhow, just wanted to highlight those. Yes, Councilor, identify yourself. Tye Stover, council member, Brian, back to 2266, so good neighbor agreements survived or we're working on the details there.

28:04 So existing provisions and contracts are validated and get to move forward. And then there's some language around kind of what can and cannot be in there moving forward. But I think for the most part it's not concerning or prohibitive to what Vancouver staff are asking from their partner Vancouver and Vancouver's partners are asking from providers. So you can still have operating agreements or good neighbor provisions, however you want to call that. There's just a little bit of side boards about it. Really what it's trying to make it is so some cities can't make it prohibitive, which is not what we're trying to do, obviously. Thank you. I think I'll just probably quickly go over this, but just moving forward we're wrestling

28:59 with what is a motorcycle versus what is an e-bike and I don't think it's a huge issue yet in Vancouver, but it's coming. So the big thing there is there's going to be a work group that's going to come back with more recommendations specifically on e-motos. The bike community was very adamant in helping define that e-motorcycles are not e-bikes and that language does that piece and it establishes the work group to start talking about how we do enforcement and how we approach this. On the side of good news is there was a fairly large piece of legislation that had some city flexibility and some other city resources.

29:55 House Bill 2442, a lot of things were crammed into it at the end, it had a good title. First and foremost it allows the city to establish a fire protection district within our boundaries. So there's regional fire authorities, city fire authority, this is kind of almost a middle ground where the city could create a fire authority but still have access to the same level of resources that regional fire authorities are so I know that at least some members of the staff have started looking at it including our city manager over here. So at least it's an interesting piece of flexibility. The other piece of, well the other new resource that's been added is councilmatic authority to an additional one tenth of one percent on sales tax specifically for children and

30:54 family services, childcare, things of that nature. It's only like two paragraphs so it's pretty broad and as always when you have legislative authority you can also put it out to a vote and then I guess lastly I wanted to highlight that you also now can extend levy lid lifts from six years to ten so not insignificant. Sarah I feel certain I've pressed it three times, would you if you could advance it? Thank you so much, she's the best. Some of the things I think like moving forward you know as Erin mentioned you know we had some go-go years with COVID and ARPA dollars and a lot of additional resources where we

31:52 were very successful in getting either direct appropriations or just you know there wasn't what I would call like a lot of tension between state government and local government in terms of resources since they're just fairly resource rich from you know 2021 until 24 or so. That's obviously changed the last couple years and just thinking more about where we fit in with respect to some of our traditional partners and I think maybe doing a better job of cultivating some new partners that we haven't traditionally thought of like with respect to public safety issues how do we get more engaged with like the victims community and things like that.

32:46 On the housing I think this city rightfully prides itself on all the incredible work you've done in the unhoused sphere and the housing sphere generally but we've been we broadly cities have been targeted have been kind of put in the position where both from the left and right we're kind of they're kind of pointing at us as being the problem and I think that's a narrative that has maybe been true in some jurisdictions but certainly not in the city of Vancouver and how do we kind of tackle that narrative head on and I think we've done some thinking at the staff level and we know that there's some conversations this interim

33:40 that we want to have with some key figures at the state level including the governor's office lieutenant governor's office about kind of our role and how we see that and how we see that moving forward with relationship to state policies. I think at times we're spread too thin and I think especially at the association level I think the engagement has negative impacts on our priorities at times and I think that we can probably think a little bit more strategic about that. We're going to continue to push on earlier agenda setting both at the association and here locally so we can get off the ground and running on issues sooner.

34:37 And then there is a lot of new members there's going to be a lot of new members in our delegation as well so better education better engagement of members specifically on city specific issues. You know ultimately I know this is reductive but I often say you know you have to fill a pothole and there's not a lot of politics around filling that pothole and sometimes that's just a challenge that we need to think about and how do we fit in that conversation in this legislature? Okay all right yes Mayor Pro Tem Fox go ahead. Hi Sarah Fox I wanted to focus a little bit on what you're saying about the narrative

35:32 on housing and also sharing that view that it seems that the state continues to look at you know cities as being the obstacles to why we don't have more housing it must be because we don't issue permits fast enough it's it must be because we have too many fees and impact fees associated with the housing and I find it really concerning especially two of the bills that passed that had to do with having preemption over whether or not we can collect property taxes on these new more dense housing types and so if you're not going to help us with you know changing our revenue structure around property taxes and now you're exempting you know whole cloth property types I'm just kind of wondering how the legislature expects us to fund our work so I'm really looking forward to making

36:29 sure we identify earlier when the legislature decides that they're going to tell us that we can't collect fees on new projects. Yeah thank you for those insights. Yes. Councillor Stover. Thank you mayor, council member Ty Stover. Brian it's always good to see you. You skipped over and admittedly Vancouver doesn't use this a lot but you skipped over one area where the legislature took a big swing at cities by sweeping the public works assistance account so it just it comes back to this you know last year they wouldn't 11th hour refused to move forward with partial common sense on property taxes this year they

37:26 continue to pull resources away one after the other and I'm feeling like we're starting to get into being a Dylan rule state which is where the legislature says everything that cities can and can't do and away from any semblance of a home rule state and it's getting concerning if I can ask some specifics so you had mentioned to the mayor pro tem 1087 having some things from twenty to nineteen or was the other way around and you brought up fentanyl but you I was not clear if one of the things that got pulled over was fentanyl or if fentanyl still stands out there as a hole in that legislation.

38:24 Great question I think what I was saying is there was a bill that passed twenty to nineteen specifically around child care providers that requires them to be free of high potency opioids and I was probably perhaps in artfully wanted to transition that to flag an issue that had been brought up a couple times on the child endangerment statute and what I intended to report was 1087 did not pass 1087 would have added fentanyl to the child endangerment statute. I would assume under 2219 and I don't have the actual legislation in front of me right now but fentanyl is a high potent opioid so I assume it makes that definition.

39:13 Yeah that's better clarity thank you and on 6026 so carte blanche I filled this early in the session and not late in the session so the concern was carte blanche ground floor retail goes away as a requirement is that what ended up happening? No our ability to require ground floor retail is limited there are a litany of provisions we have exceptions around our station areas we have like a 40 percent set aside things like that having very in-depth conversations with staff during the session I believe what

40:04 is being put forward in the comp plan update fits in within that level of limitations so I think we are okay there but it had started as essentially a blanket provision on us being able to require ground floor retail in some areas and why that's important right is walkability livability having neighborhoods that are grocery shoppable and things like that and 10 minute neighborhoods instead of 45 minute neighborhoods and that's really the goal we understand that that does potentially make it a little bit more expensive but again I think you know there's been tens of thousands easily of hours of staff work trying to figure this out at the local level versus having kind of a top down approach from the city levels or from

40:57 the state level has been part of the problem yeah so it's again being a movie is closer and closer to Dylan rule where the legislature dictates everything and and I'm all for common sense policies but it's it's just really getting hard to accept one year after another in this direction thanks Councillor Paulson any comments or questions Councillor Hanson go ahead thank you Mary in councilmember sober of the councilmember Bart Hansen councilmember sober I think that's a good point I think it'd be interesting to see if we could look over the past few years if we didn't have that requirement how many units are we actually talking about here is far as what would be able to go in if you didn't require commercial on ground floor

41:52 so I think a little bit of data on this to see what would it look like if we didn't have to do this over past projects because if we only have seven hundred and some units in the permitting section for last year what would that actually mean as far as how many more units would we get council president any additional comments Councillor Harless thank you so very much Brian it's good to see you again we'll stay in touch especially with the Southwest Washington Training Academy we have a couple different pieces that should be happening in the next month or so that's great thank you you bet thank you appreciate your time you bet all right let's go ahead and transition now to our comprehensive plan

42:38 and we'll have Rebecca Kennedy get everything lined up are we supposed to be done at five thirty is that what the agenda says okay time appropriately yes please okay evening mayor and council city manager thank you for having us back yet again on the comprehensive plan and development code update this is Rebecca sorry deputy director of community development mark person senior planner for community development go

43:31 ahead Rebecca thank you so we are here tonight to give you an update on the second draft of the comprehensive plan and code updated development code that has been published and basically to get any remaining comments that you have prior to us initiating the three touch adoption process on April 28th with a workshop followed by first reading consent on May 11th and public hearing and adoption on June 1 so we'll do a quick recap we spend most of the time here on the engagement feedback that we received and the changes that were made there is a detailed log of changes associated with both the plan and the code and where those sort of what those changes were in response to as part of your packet we'll kind of review it at a high level and then we'll just cover next steps so we do this at every workshop

44:29 just to set the stage if anyone is new to this but comprehensive plans guide the city's growth and development for the built and natural environment over 20 years we have targets for population jobs and housing that we are mandated to accommodate and demonstrate capacity for under the growth management act and the city council several a couple years ago adopted this vision on the right for the comprehensive plan update read that Vancouver is an equitable and prosperous community which ensures that all residents businesses and organizations benefit from the growth and advancement we make together Vancouver will be recognized for our quality of life as evidenced by affordable housing and vibrant safe and walkable neighborhoods access to jobs and economic opportunity for all and leading edge efforts to address climate change you also have a chart over on the left hand side that points out the population housing

45:22 units and jobs for 2024 are 2045 targets and the growth in between correct yes and the anticipated population growth is 81,000 people that translates into 38,000 housing units to address our existing deficit as well as future needs and 43,200 jobs to continue meeting the council's policy objective to have slightly more than one job for every working age person thank you and I'm still getting used to these new guidelines so thank you ma'am me too so we've talked many times about the changing conditions the conditions we're experiencing that are driving a lot of this update we've explained we've experienced shifts in economics and employment including you know work from home including sort of seeing that k-shaped economy that you read about in the news all the time where we increasingly have lots of

46:20 jobs on the low wage and lots of jobs in the high wage in but not those middle wage family wage jobs that typically don't require advanced education a lot of those are manufacturing and production so thinking about how to address that we've seen tremendous growth over the last several years clark county is the really the only county in in the fort trike or the fort county area that's been growing consistently with both population and jobs driving a need for more housing vancouver continues to grow and add about 5,000 people a year on average give or take we we know that we have disparities in access we know that your zip code in some part determines what you have access to in terms of transportation education parks and open space health care services and amenities and so we want to address that and that's been part of the council's sort of core policy objectives for this over the last several

47:16 years we've been working on the comp plan and then aggressive climate action very ambitious targets to be net neutral on our local ghg emissions by 2040 and this plan is really trying to pull the levers we have in a land use plan to help achieve that we also have a set of new state laws that we have to comply with at a minimum we need to allow four to six units per residential law in the city four as a base minimum two if two of those are affordable or if what's it's in proximity to transit we have to make room for 38,000 new housing units and we have targets within various income bands and that includes allowing permanently supportive housing everywhere we allow housing we have to account for racially disparate impacts and that is a lot of the analysis you've seen in terms of the opportunity

48:10 for all peace to we have to allow 280 use or accessory dwelling units per residential lot there are regulations restricting the amount of off-street parking that jurisdictions can require we've really moved away from parking minimums in the new code and so you don't see those but but the state has the legislature has acted on that we have to make impact fees proportional to the size of housing so a smaller unit would pay relatively less than a larger unit and then climate chapters or elements of the comprehensive plan and the associated greenhouse gas analysis those are new requirements for this periodic update cycle and we think it's important to kind of note as we kind of as we come towards the end of this process you know what what have we been doing and the answer is a lot of stuff a lot of detailed

49:05 analysis a lot of engagement but they all roll up into essentially five key tasks one is community partnership and engagement you were all aware that the public involvement plan and ongoing public engagement is a requirement under the growth management act when you do periodic update processes we've documented that in our our appendices but also online and it summarized that in the presentations and the memo from today we had to update our plan document itself and that were in that includes a lot of detailed analysis of existing conditions that go into that so you'll recall from earlier in the process our housing needs assessment our economic conditions and opportunity assessment our equity atlas a number of really detailed data and technical analysis we also have to have a preferred alternative that's

50:03 a land use map that applies zoning districts around the city we've got to update all the elements from our existing comp plans and we have to have a capital facilities element which is essentially two lists one for the one to six year period and another list for the seven to 20 year period covered by the comprehensive plan that lists out our capital facilities that we'll need to serve growth and in the one to six year list have what we call a financing plan but it's just really demonstrating sources of funding for those those improvements and those will not look unfamiliar to you because they are essentially our cap six year capital improvement program transportation improvement programs are that you're familiar with title 20 we have to update our land use code to implement our comprehensive plan that's been a key part of this and what we've done as part of this process represents a major overhaul of our code not just sort of a tweaking around the edges we have to

50:58 include some key priority implementation steps that show and provide information on how we will implement the plan we have those at the end of each chapter and then we have to we have to comply with the state environmental policy act which includes an environmental impact statement for a project of this size and scope and impact and we will release a final EIS Thursday with the final plan and or the close to final planning code that will be going to planning commission for their review and public hearing on April 28th and just to note it's important to note that all the comments we received 400 plus comments to the draft environmental impact statement process and that the final version of that will respond to all those comments so here's the process you know where we've been where we are we had you know a sort of introductory phase where we were educating people learning

51:53 from them doing a lot of visioning we moved on to analyzing data starting to kind of put the framework for the new code in place we did a lot of mapping activities and community engagement around what what should go where and what do you want to see where in the community we did an analysis as I mentioned to the draft environmental impact statement process we had a 60-day public comment period for that got 400 plus responses then we moved to refining the policies the map policies and code including councils endorsement of our preferred land use alternative via resolution at the end of last year we've been sharing out drafts of the planning code we published the first kind of full drafts of the plan and the code on April 19th or sorry on February 19th which is why you see on the following slides changes since February 19th because that was sort of the last time we did a full update or we've

52:49 published a full draft and now we are really moving towards the adoption phase again as I said this is the last workshop with council prior to starting the three touch adoption process we did a lot of engagement and outreach as part of this process partnered with many many different organizations across the community that focus on you know development business writing services transportation climate so a lot of org youth-based organizations overall we talked to 200 plus people directly at 200 meetings and events we had 200,000 sorry 2,000 people directly at 200 means an event 2,000 plus ideas and comments received through various phases of outreach and we utilized a lot of different methods of engagement and really

53:43 really met people kind of where they were so like we had a lot of youth specific events partnering directly with schools or youth serving organizations we released the first draft as I mentioned of the draft planning code in February we had a four we did four presentations with the community on the draft planning code answering questions to in person and to virtual we had about 120 people attend those across the four meetings a lot of feedback via email we had 1600 plus story map views and a lot of views of the interactive map as well and then throughout the process we distributed information on the process and how to get engaged via a lot of direct mail through the quarterly Vancouver hard copy

54:38 newsletter that goes out as well as many of our distribution lists e newsletters there was a lot of local news coverage etc oh and then we had a lot of fun social media content thanks to our comms people for their support okay jumping into the feedback so again this is a rolled up summary we have more details in the memo and the various documents including all the engagement summaries but high level we've heard quite a bit about the medium scale neighborhood and the building heights in the medium scale neighborhood 75 feet is what it is currently at I think people feel that that's we've got feedback that that just feels too too much especially in existing neighborhoods we've had some feedback that maybe it could

55:33 be a little lower I think staff feel like that provides the 75 feet provides the flexibility that builders need now given the energy code and all the other requirements to build livable units multifamily units in these areas we've got a lot of feedback on vehicle traffic and parking I think you know people rightly understand that more people means more trips means more demand on the transportation system and I think you know we've done a lot of work help just trying to talk to people about how we need to more efficiently use the infrastructure we have because the cost of upgrading infrastructure is often prohibited you know we have some large upgrade roadway process you know southeast first street 18th 192nd but those are the exception not the rule and that we would never have the revenues to expand nor the space

56:28 because we wouldn't have the right away to expand all our roads so the strategy really about moving people more efficiently providing more opportunity for shopping for for access to you know your doctor's office or a health care clinic near where you live to decrease the lengths of trips and allow for maybe different trip types as we invest in the multimodal system I think from greenspace parks and trees people love parks people love parks they want more parks but they also want to make sure that you know new development is helping to support new parks and isn't sort of overburdening existing parks and then we had a bunch of specific suggestions a lot of them coming out of our like our specific like topic specific working groups so we had some with for instance affordable housing developers market rate

57:24 developers around different different kind of standards or policies that we've sought to address and are logged a lot of the questions we get are not they're really about like the interaction of the plan with various external things so like application of state laws which we're showing how we do that in the plan but we're also just educating people about those state laws and what do they mean what's required lots of questions about the 2045 targets for population and housing and like for instance if we annex could we spread those numbers out across more land and you know the answer is no we just have higher numbers to accommodate if we annex more because the UGA has its own set the urban growth area has its own set of stuff of course conditions covenants and restrictions a lot of educating that those

58:19 are private contracts that the city does not enforce and so a lot of that's this kind of stuff is in our FAQs that are online so we've continually been adding to that as well we you know we send responses to people and answer them in real time but but some of it is just educating people that the overall system okay I'm gonna walk through this kind of quickly council feedback that we got over to our sorry three workshops and just to note that you know there was a lag between well there was a there was a time difference between our our receiving council feedback and our ability to incorporate that into a draft that got published so just want to note that your February and March workshops on the plan even though the February one took part took place before that we published the draft most of those

59:16 were not incorporated because we didn't have time so this is us responding to a lot of what we heard at your workshops in February and March so the idea that we need to needed to recognize the importance of the Columbia River and are the city's responsibility to preserve and enhance and protect that resource we've added in policy language around that in our policies but also in the introduction section there was some feedback about really elevating arts and culture and tying that more specifically both to the parks recreation and cultural services chapter but also to community experience and how arts and culture contributes to community experience recognizing the role that small businesses play in building an identity and supporting a culture of belonging and innovation so we added language there recognizing the role of sports and recreation in building community identity again we added

1:00:12 language there we did a lot to kind of clarify and cross reference connections between the community experience goals and parks goals I mean I think again people love love parks and so when they think about what's their experience right of their community parks and open space play in events play a huge role in that so we really tried to make that clear and and and create those connections across different plan chapters we added some language around encouraging or incentivizing or the city playing kind of an active role in solving some of the problems around access surface parking redevelopment because we know it's challenging there's often leases involved out of town landlords and so really trying to kind of find a way to support that process of conversion over time we got a better description

1:01:09 of the health impact assessment map we will we got we heard you that you wanted more specific geographic information about where future and library investments might be made but we were unable to get any additional information from the library so just we didn't make that change because we don't have any new information heard feedback that we need to celebrate when we when we finish public facilities and infrastructure projects and educate people and bring them out to show that so we added some policy and narrative language around that we updated our student enrollment table to add current enrollment numbers we did just kind of a full review for how our maps and figures to make sure that the way we describe them more clear and that they were consistently labeled and that the policies were structured kind of in a consistent way and then we also added policies on related to annexation and conversation

1:02:08 so related to the county adopting city development regulations and infrastructure standards and in advance of annexation and exploring regional service models etcetera okay we got a lot of feedback from the Planning Commission as well and we've integrated a lot of this we've got more information in the introduction section about the school for the deaf and the blind they pointed out correctly that how you make budget decisions like what informs those is in itself a policy decision and so we've made a policy around that that basically says they'll reflect our values and various inputs we added some information about the impact of just cars on personal safety we've got more data in the equity chapter on representation and the community experience chapter on representation that we pulled from the equity atlas we had it we just integrated it more into the narrative I talked about you know adding more about

1:03:04 what builds an identity we had a I think great comment from a planning commissioner just wanting us to call out that we often hear a lot about the evils of rental housing and how it will ruin neighborhoods and you know I think she really gracefully pointed out that renters are more than 50% of the city and there are neighbors and they contribute to the community and to our neighborhoods not just don't detract from it and so we added some language there we took a look at a lot of our tree canopy stuff to make sure we're emphasizing that sufficiently added just a I think a piece to a policy about looking at you know pedestrianization of streets and permanent or temporary street closures added a section in our transportation chapter we previously had a section on our ADA transition plan but we didn't we just said what we were required to do instead of prefacing it with

1:04:00 why that's important and why continuing to upgrade our infrastructure to make it all to make it accessible for more people is a value of the city so we added language there some more information on annexation some more information about kind of the differences between the city and the Vancouver urban growth area in terms of both service provision and demographic demographics we were asked to add targets for mode shift and we actually don't have those in the transportation system plan either and so I think that is something we're going to need to tackle after this because it's complicated thing to do and do it by transportation analysis zones which is kind of how we think about we measure the transportation system so that's really a future step we weren't able to do it as part of this we have heard from one planning commissioner in particular and I want to make sure to call this out that the ground floor active use ready overlay adds complexity and cost and we don't disagree

1:05:00 but we have removed the ground floor commercial or active use requirement from so much of the city as part of this is really picked the key places where we need it to advance connected and accessible neighborhoods and we think it is feasible that the ground floor active use ready is sort of the other piece of getting to those connected accessible neighborhoods because development lasts 50 years and so no you don't have to put an active commercial use there now but we want it to be ready to be converted in the future when the you know more resident rooftops are there and support that so we have left it in we believe it is a key piece of the combination of those two overlays and getting us to our connected and accessible neighborhood goals over time we also heard from the same planning commissioner that he thinks we should reduce the maximum height in the medium scale neighborhood to 65 feet and we've had the planning commission had a tremendous amount of debate between

1:06:00 about buffers between zoning districts some people thought they were good some people thought they should go away I think from we have buffers today and we think it's important to keep them to differentiate between the scale of different districts so that we've left that in okay I covered this so I won't go over it again but this is sort of how we bonded to those comments as in the various chapters and again this is listed in a table but I just covered this as I went through the comments so I won't be redundant similar here yeah we we tried to take in and integrate as many comments as we could from the various people that we were doing outreach and engagement with including yourselves in the planning commission but also the community broadly and a lot of different groups that we've been partnering with as part of this as long as they were kind of consistent with overall

1:06:57 council direction and policy mark's gonna take the code but I may have hopefully I didn't cover all of this thanks Rebecca mark person planner in our development review department I'll be covering the draft code changes since the publish of the draft code on February 19th we updated the code and as Rebecca mentioned there's a full list of code changes in your packet tonight as well but we made some refinements to the manufactured home district there were some questions from council on that on the previous workshops we clarified our definitions updated the purpose and character description we also allowed permanently affordable building types to be to open up those areas more for those permanently affordable uses and then

1:07:54 we clarified to allow community serving accessory uses in that district such as laundry recreation centers that sort of thing we clarified that modular and manufactured homes are allowed anywhere that housing is allowed in the updated draft so anywhere that household living is allowed right title 20 is not regulating how something is built it's simply regulating the height setbacks transparency those things we've made a reduction in our bicycling bicycle and small mobility parking minimums after feedback from planning commission and some of our community working groups we've had a reduction in ground floor transparency requirements and weather protection clarified the definition of ground to ceiling height and that's specifically

1:08:48 related to the active use and active use ready areas to let folks know what we're looking for exactly there on the ground floor and then we allowed for an increase in setback for industrial buildings in employment and industrial zones realizing that excuse me those areas aren't you know art in our dense more pedestrian oriented areas and the functions of those buildings and areas sometimes mandate that those are further from the public right of way moving on to some more code changes since february 19 we updated the buffer table and diagram for clarity and readability we've updated the child care to allow those uses everywhere except every industrial and we'll defer to the state for the regulations we

1:09:45 don't want to be any more restrictive than the state we've updated our annexation section to reflect the new base districts and update some outdated language we've made some refinements to show that neighborhood association officers will be automatically notified of pre-apps and the other folks can opt in we extended the timeline for replacement of single-family homes in the medium scale district to two years after hearing from some folks in the community and how long it can take to settle with an insurance claim or to go through the permitting process and really to show that that that timeline is to building permits submittal not issuance real quick let me jump in here you received comment on this today and we'll be responding to that comment but we we did address it well you know we so we

1:10:40 have responded to in the code i just have need to respond to it writing but essentially in the medium scale neighborhood you you tear down a single-family house for whatever reason you can rebuild a single-family house without meeting minimum density requirements for up to two years and you just got to start the permitting process within two years you don't have to finish it and essentially you know we've we've heard a lot i think people are some people think that we are like trying to intentionally move away from single-family homes like all together and that is not the case and we are allowing you know the code allows for people to replace existing single-family homes in the medium scale and low scale neighborhoods in the medium scale they've got two years in the low scale it's anytime any basically whenever so i just wanted to clarify that you know we we i have been slow in responding

1:11:37 to the person who's submitting this comment but we have integrated it and responded to it in the actual text of the cup thanks are you all done this is the last slide i think of the draft changes mayor do you want me to finish the questions let's finish updated the we updated the master mark person again development review updated the master plan section to clarify requirements for those larger sites we updated our development agreement um code to include the expectation of public benefit and to set expectation of term in there and then we updated our fee schedule and and maps to reflect our new design you have one more slide yep this is rebecca kennedy um community development department just going

1:12:33 over that you know we have our final workshop with planning commission tomorrow um then we will have a workshop with you on the 22nd effectively starting your three-touch process the following day the planning commission will have a public hearing and take a vote on the draft of the plan code supported by a final environmental impact statement and then we're slated to come back to you on may 11th for consent and june 1 for adoption and i just want to make this last bullet count here um we are not going to get every single thing right right this is we have done an overhaul full overhaul new structure paradigm for our development code and we have worked um with a lot of people to get it as right as we can and a lot of people have read through the code and provided us comments and really helped us get make it better um but there will be things that we didn't that we missed and we will need to not just implement um the plan and code post adoption and educate

1:13:29 people on the new code in the development community and how it works and facilitate them learning about it and getting through a smooth process we're also going to have to refine and fix and learn and adjust and adapt as we always have because we change our codes every year but i just don't want to set the expectation i want to be clear that there is no way we get it 100 right but we believe we have worked extraordinarily hard to get it close to right and to respond to as many comments and and really i've expressed deep gratitude to a lot of the folks who have taken time to go through it put new eyes on it from their lens and give us great feedback so that's it thank you thank you mayor and mackinac the ogle counselors we have a hard stop let's make sure our comments and questions are brief and focused let's go in reverse counselor harless do you have any counselor perez anything counselor hanson rebecca council member bart hanson rebecca i think you nailed

1:14:24 it when talking about the middle and what i think is going up broadway and going up uptown area and looking at some of those areas how many units are required for a half acre parcel and and if you can go single family for single family is that you have two years to do that from now or you have two years from when the unit is demolished or two years from when it's demolished okay and if you wanted to add density to that i i think one of the concerns is with the units that are required will it reach a point where the pro forma doesn't work and it won't get developed and then the single family home just sits there yeah i i think you know again we've tried to balance a lot of competing perspectives and um so broadway and specifically is a high capacity transit corridor and the framework

1:15:19 we use to develop the preferred alternative said our high capacity transit corridors largely should be mixed use or regional activity center and so those have higher minimum densities we believe based on our internal feasibility analysis that you can build something there that that meets the minimum density it may not be the product that someone specifically wants to build um but we believe we should hold the line on you know really leveraging those investments in high capacity transit for those higher intensity development types because we need to hit 38 000 units and we've got medium scale all over the city um so that's i mean i think and and we we refine our code and update our comprehensive plan every year and if we continue to see um that that remain that there you know are things that the minimum

1:16:14 densities are not feasible we can change them or we can change the zoning on sites to to reflect that so that's kind of where we landed on the broadway corridor councilor stopper councilor paulson councilor stover um hello ty stopper council member um rebecca this what i'm about to say is not a rebecca i want you to change something now at the last minute if you answered differently than what i'm thinking it would be in the bucket of that future so conversations have happened over the past for the over the time i've been on council conversations that were hypothetical at one point and then started to become reality uh and that is the situation where a small naturally occurring low-income

1:17:13 development gets torn down and is replaced by a much larger um single-family home uh therefore changing it from something that was once affordable to something that um is only affordable to a very limited number of people does the code address that at all um the code does not the new code currently does not address that and i will say we had quite a bit of discussion about this through the process and um in the spirit which is one thing that has guided this process throughout is simplification um not regulating to the lowest common denominator and trying to um say let's see what the market delivers before we kind of try to regulate those bad outcomes and so i think this the the the what we worked

1:18:13 through and and i think with the development community as well though is that um people are going to maximize units we're unlikely to see very many of those scenarios where you tear down you know either a smaller house and build a 4 000 square foot huge house or you tear down you know a duplex and do that um because the development economics are very tight now maximizing units is really what we think we're going to see happen and and this will be a fairly low risk if we start to see it we can change the code okay i i'm seeing something akin to that in my neighborhood um so i hope we do keep having this conversation going into the future thank you mayor pro tem fox sarah fox um i just want to say that i am just so pleased with all of the work that

1:19:05 staff has done on on this and i i am also um really appreciative of the staff report that included the change logs for those of you that maybe haven't dived in i mean the documents themselves are hundreds of pages and the code is you know hundreds of pages and so having that as a key to zoom in on the things that are different is really helpful and i appreciate that other than that i don't have any other well one other thing that was really pleasing to me really was staff working closely with me on on better refining the manufactured housing zoning and seeing that also reflected in in the updated version i was really pleased with that so thank you yes thank you and nagner nyogle ma'am mark how could you go back one slide slide 14 last bulleted item updated fee schedule um we have

1:20:04 earlier in the presentation state law that says align the impact fees to the size of housing so we have schools parks traffic all of those are now aligned no it's a great question mayor so that is the state law it is not required for us to do as part of our periodic review process though and while we have always been intending to do it the schools are taking longer they've hired their own consultant and i get it they need some time it's it's it's more complicated for schools because they're not just looking at you know like in it for traffic right all people generate impact on the traffic system but for schools only certain people generate impact so what we've basically agreed to is we're looking at our traffic impact fee program right now because of that was called out in the transportation

1:20:58 system plan to update that so we'll do transportation impact fee proportionality through that and then we'll come back with parks and schools when the schools are ready all right thank you so very much congratulations on your work here i talked all right thank you that concludes that particular work council we are now going to go into a closed session concerning collective bargaining rcw 42.30.144 from 5 30 to 6 then we'll go into executive session concerning pending or potential litigation according to rcw 42.30.110 i triple i from six to six thirty we'll be back here at 6 30 for a regular council meeting and that takes care of that thank you so very much

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