Name: Bellingham City Council - Committee Of The Whole meeting, Feb 23, 2026
Start: 2026-02-23
End: 2026-02-23
Location: City of Bellingham

City Council - Committee Of The Whole

Mon, February 23, 2026

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Meeting summaryAI-generated

City Council Committee of the Whole — February 23, 2026

This was a brief informational session with a single substantive agenda item: a staff demonstration of how to access the newly adopted Bellingham Comprehensive Plan (the "Bellingham Plan") online and in print. No binding votes were taken.

Presentation: How to Access the Bellingham Plan and Related Resources (Agenda Bill 24839)

Chris Behey, Long Range Planning Manager, walked council members and the public through the city's website resources for the Bellingham Plan, which was formally adopted in December 2025 following a two-plus-year comprehensive planning process.

Finding the plan online: Behey demonstrated that the plan can be found by searching "Bellingham Plan" or "comprehensive plan" on the city's homepage, or by navigating through Services → Community Planning. The plan is primarily designed as a digital document, though printed copies were distributed to council members. It is considered a living document and will be updated annually through the city's docket process.

Navigating the PDF: The plan's PDF version features a clickable table of contents, chapter-to-chapter navigation icons, and hyperlinked cross-references that connect related goals and policies across chapters. Underlined terms throughout the document link directly to a glossary. A "go back" button allows readers to return to their previous location after following a link. Behey noted the plan works best when downloaded rather than opened directly in a browser, as interactive features may behave inconsistently across browsers.

Interactive map: A thumbnail land use map within the plan links out to a full GIS web viewer where users can zoom in to individual properties, click to identify their land use designation, and view the specific policy that defines that zone.

Goal and Policy Search Tool: A searchable database embedded at the bottom of the resources page allows users to filter goals and policies by chapter, select multiple chapters, and search for specific keywords (e.g., "equity," "resilience," "trees"). Behey noted the tool is a basic text-search and flagged that exact phrasing matters — searching "tree" will also return results containing "streets."

Additional resources on the page: The resources page also includes an 8.5×11 print-formatted version for those who want to produce a bound copy at a print shop; a screen reader–accessible version containing all text but no images or graphics; a link to the adopting ordinance; the annual docket page; archived neighborhood plans (with a note explaining why neighborhood plans are no longer being updated under the new citywide approach); and chapter-by-chapter data links with current, dynamically updated statistics — replacing the static background data that quickly became outdated in the 2016 plan.

Housing and development rule updates page: Behey also highlighted a newer city webpage — found under Services → Community Planning → Development Code → "Housing and Development Rule Updates" — created in response to questions from the public following five separate ordinances passed in late 2025 alongside the Bellingham Plan. This page summarizes changes related to co-living, accessory dwelling units, parking (interim), middle housing (interim), and design review (interim), and is posted in the permit center for staff to reference with applicants.

Council discussion focused primarily on accessibility. Council member Huthman asked about the screen reader version's lack of page numbers, noting it could complicate cross-referencing with other versions of the plan. Behey acknowledged the issue and said he would check with staff on whether page numbers could be added, though he noted that incoming city-wide web accessibility technology may make a separately remediated PDF unnecessary. Council member Anderson raised the broader question of accessibility compliance — specifically, whether charts and graphics in the main PDF have alt-text descriptions for screen readers. Behey confirmed that a complete alt-text table for every image and graphic in the plan has already been prepared and is ready to be incorporated, but that the team is waiting to see whether new city-wide technology will handle accessibility automatically. Council President Stone noted that the communications and IT teams have been working on a comprehensive document accessibility effort across all city departments and that an update will be coming to the full council.

No action was taken. The presentation was informational only.

Old/New Business

No items were raised.

Executive Session

Council convened in closed session to discuss two potential property acquisitions: one with "Longman" (approximately 10 minutes) and one with "Rosenlat" (approximately 3 minutes). A report-out was scheduled for the regular evening meeting. *(Note: the names "Longman" and "Rosenlat" appear to be voice-to-text artifacts; actual party names are unclear from the transcript.)*

Key Takeaways

The Bellingham Plan is now publicly accessible on the city website with multiple formats: an interactive PDF, a print-ready version, a screen reader text version, an interactive land use map, and a goal-and-policy search tool.

Supporting data is now kept live and dynamic rather than embedded statically in the plan document, addressing a key weakness of the 2016 plan where background statistics quickly became outdated.

Archived neighborhood plans remain available online, but the city is no longer updating them under the new citywide planning framework.

Document accessibility remains a work in progress; alt-text for graphics is prepared but not yet incorporated, and the city is anticipating new technology that may automate accessibility compliance across all web documents.

A new "Housing and Development Rule Updates" page summarizes the flurry of late-2025 code changes for residents and permit applicants navigating what changed and when.

AI-generated summary from voice-to-text transcript. Not the official record. Verify important details with the source documents linked above.

What happened at this meeting

Old/New Business

The Committee of the Whole moved to Old and New Business, with the chair asking if any council members had items to raise. No items were presented at that time, though the chair noted there would be another opportunity for Old and New Business during the regular evening meeting.

Presentation on how to access the Bellingham Plan and related resources

# Summary: Presentation on Accessing the Bellingham Plan and Related Resources

Chris Behey, Long Range Planning Manager, led a comprehensive presentation on accessing the recently adopted Bellingham Plan through multiple methods, including the website search function and the Services > Community Planning menu, while recommending users download the PDF for optimal functionality across different web browsers. Behey and staff demonstrated the plan's digital features, including interactive chapter navigation via icons, linked policies that jump between related sections, hyperlinked definitions, and an interactive GIS map tool showing zoning classifications and lot lines throughout the city. The presentation highlighted the resources page, which provides organized access to the 2025 plan, supporting ordinances, engagement documentation, the archived 2016 plan, and live, updatable data including a green infrastructure map tied to GIS enterprise data updated weekly and monthly. Staff also showcased supplementary tools including a goal and policy search function that filters by chapter and searchable terms like "equitable" and "sustainability," neighborhood plan archives, and a new webpage listing housing and development rule updates from November and December ordinances. Council members raised concerns about accessibility features—specifically that the screen reader version lacks page numbers for referencing sections and that visual elements require proper alt text descriptions for compliance—which staff acknowledged as oversights and committed to addressing through potential solutions like generic page numbering or document mediation.

Agenda items (2)

Procedural (2)

2ProceduralOld/New Business

Council members and the public can raise any other topics or announcements that weren't covered earlier in the meeting.

What happened

24839ProceduralPresentation on how to access the Bellingham Plan and related resources

Staff will show residents and council members how to find and use the Bellingham Plan, which is the city's comprehensive guide for future development and land use.

What happened

Verbatim transcript available

130 transcript segments indexed

City of Bellingham Committee Of The Whole minutes February 23, 2026, 2:55 PM Chair: Hannah Stone Phone: 360-778-8200 Members: Hollie Huthman, Daniel Hammill, Email: ccmail@cob.org Edwin H. "Skip" Williams, Lisa Anderson, Web: cob.org/council Michael Lilliquist, Jace Cotton City Council committee meetings Standing committee members receive reports and information, ask questions, and vote on a recommended action for consideration by the full Council at the regular meeting.

Good afternoon and welcome back to the Bellingham City Council committee meetings. Um so we're going to move forward with committee of the whole. We have one item before us. This is agenda bill 24839.

There is no public comment period during committee sessions. Call to order and roll call Council President Stone called the meeting to order at 2:55 p.m. Present: Council President Hannah Stone, First Ward Council Member Hollie Huthman, Second Ward Council Member Daniel Hammill, Third Ward Council Member Edwin H.

This is a presentation on how to access the Bellingham plan and related resources. So, a presentation this afternoon will demonstrate um to city council and to the public how the recently adopted plan can be accessed on the city's website and how to find and use related resources and tools um within the plan um this time.

So, there was a staff memo included in the packet and I guess I'll go straight to Chris Behey. um long range planning manager for the city of Bellingham. >> Thank you. Good afternoon, council, mayor, members of the public.

"Skip" Williams, Fourth Ward Council Member Lisa Anderson, Fifth Ward Council Member Michael Lilliquist, Sixth Ward Council Member Jace Cotton, At-Large Committee Of The Whole 24839 1. Presentation on how to access the Bellingham Plan and related resources Summary: Chris Behee, Long Range Planning Manager, presented on how to access the Bellingham Plan and related resources on cob.org/comprehensive-plan.

Council Members discussed the plan and asked questions. 2. Old/New Business Summary: There were no discussion items for old/new business. Council moved into Executive Session at 3:45 p.m. to discuss two items until 3:50 p.m.

So, the goal for today, as stated in the memo, is really just to um all of the action was taken last December. Again, the culmination of a two plus year process. Um, we just want to take an opportunity to give you a tour and also the public and anyone that watches the recording and this meeting um to be uh able to find the plan easily on the website to walk through the variety of related resources um and just kind of point out what what the tips and trick tips and uh tricks are to access it most effectively.

um whether you're doing it online or or um interacting with a hard copy of the document which I've given you each your own paper copies. Um we at at the beginning of this process we didn't envision printing large numbers of uh copies in hard copy.

It's just one of those plans where it's it's most effectively used as a digital document and we do anticipate it's a living document. It'll get updated annually as we move forward. Um, but it is nice to have a hard copy, especially for you folks that were um such a key part of getting it passed and and all the pieces that went into it.

So, with that, um, I'm going to step through, um, some things on the website here to start the orientation and, um, I'll leave time at the end for questions and if there's something that's confusing, just raise your hands or interrupt me.

This is just basically again a guided tour. All right. So, when you're starting from our homepage, uh the first first thing that you uh would want to do just to look for the comp plan is just enter search terms.

And we do have the the different search terms to find it enabled. Um you can type Bellingham plan. It's not case sensitive, so it doesn't matter what combination of upper or lower case you use. And you'll see um it will populate as soon as it pers things.

There you go. There's a variety of things that show up that have Bellingham plan in it, but the Bellingham plan itself is the first item. You can also just do comprehensive plan. You'll also get a variety of things like our different utility comprehensive plans and other related documents, but the comprehensive plan itself, the Bellingham plan, will be the first item in that uh in that selection.

If you want to navigate there, um if you're more familiar with the website, you can go to the services uh grouping of things and then to community planning and then the comprehensive plan is the first item in the upper left on that page.

So there's a variety of different ways you can do that. This is the main page that I'll be referencing today. It includes the comprehensive plan main document as a PDF itself. Um, there's some other versions I'll touch on in a moment here, other tools, and then we'll take a few moments over the next 15 minutes here and scroll down and look at the other resources that are on this page.

They're all related to the Bellingham plan. As is indicated here in the guidance, um, there are a lot of interactive pieces to the plan and it behaves a little bit differently in different web browsers.

if you're using Chrome or Edge or if you're using uh Mozilla Firefox or a variety of other things on a Mac or on an Intel platform. Um so your experience may vary. I'm going to actually pretend that we have just downloaded this plan which is the advice that's given here if you want to have a kind of completely uh um predictable experience.

Um but again you can use it in in whatever browser uh you choose. So, I'm using a downloaded copy from that first uh first op first option there. And again, this looks exactly like what you've got in front of you or in hard copy with the exception that there's no no spiral binding in the middle.

It's the two-page spreads. Uh and so we've got our table of contents here. I'm just going to jump to the land use chapter. And again, these are all just hyperl so you can jump to whatever chapter you want.

Here's our opening page spread there. And um what I want to demonstrate here is just a couple of the the ways that the links work within this uh and this would be consistent across all of the chapters.

How the links and different structures work on a typical page in a typical chapter. Again, on the opening page here, um at the top we have a series of icons and there's one for each of the chapters here.

We're in the land use chapter. If you wanted to jump to the housing chapter, you can hit that. And then now you're in the housing chapter. Um, and then you could see the variety of policies related to that.

We can hit the land use icon again and we're back in the land use chapter. Again, the way this is laid out and this is all explained also in the how to use this document uh section in the introduction uh to the plan.

All of the policies are noted with the large green uh bold font and the as as kind of the main idea and then the full language of uh or rather the goals. In this case, the first one in the language chapter is clustering growth.

And then uh the goal itself, the full language is listed right under that main idea um bold heading. And then beneath each of those goals, when you see a goal like this on a page are all of the supporting policies that relate to that goal.

So clustering growth is the main idea and then policies LU1 through LU10 are all supporting policies for that goal. You also see again the uh the linked ideas or jump to related policies section. And we've we've shown this before, but I just wanted to demonstrate again.

um related to clustering growth. There are related policies that are in the community design chapter. So if I hit that link, we jump to the community design chapter and then you can see in there under site and building design, there will be policies related to clustering growth.

If we want to go back to where we were before, we hit the go back button down on the lower left and then we're back in that clustering growth grouping. We can look at the related housing policies and then this is under housing quantity.

There are related policies to clustering as well. So that's how those work and you'll see a uh some goals throughout the plan have a limited number of linked uh policies in other chapters and some have more.

So, it just depends on on how that relates to the ideas and other goals and uh in other chapters. On the right, you can see an example here of the resources and links blue bar. And this is usually on the first page after the big beautiful opening picture.

Um, and for each chapter, you'll see if there are documents that are adopted by reference, you'll see those listed. We're in the land use chapter, so there are a a wide variety of documents that are adopted by reference, including all of our urban village plans and our institutional master plans.

In some chapters like the environment chapter, you will also see some of the best available science documents linked there that are not necessarily plans that are adopted by reference, but they're very important documents to help us in our process of doing development review and informing us as we evaluate and uh uh implement city policies.

So that gives you just kind of a quick orientation there. Uh we also in various places throughout the document you'll see things that have this uh dashed underline under them. And those are usually terms um or ideas that are expressed in the language of the policies.

In this case, wildland urban interface. And when you see that underline, that means that if you want to find the definition of that idea, you can click on that word and it will take you to the glossery.

And here we are in the glossery, uh, the last page of it because we're in the W's, and you can see the definition of the wildland urban interface there. You can read that, figure out what it means, and then you can hit the go back button, and you're back on that page.

So, whenever you see those underlined terms, um, and again, it's it's a a wide variety of things that are in there that will link you to the glossery. Okay, I want to jump to the very end of the document and show you right before the glossery, we have a section that are all of the um it's about city documents and planning documents.

And so this introduces you to um the variety of infrastructure plans that are adopted by reference. And we'll touch on this again in the resources page. Talks about the 10-year periodic update process.

You can see there's a placeholder here for our annual docket updates. And so on the online copy of this um you'll see over the years as we go through our annual docket at the end of the year, there will be ordinance numbers listed here and then just a brief oneliner that says what did we adopt?

Oh, we adopted a new goal and a policy relating to something and that was a change in the plan. So that by the time we get to the next periodic update when we start talking about that in 20 what it's going to be 2033, we'll probably start talking about that.

Then you'll see a a list of of eight or so lines there with each of the things that we considered and added to the plan at the end of the year um based on the community's needs as we move forward. So, it's a way of kind of keeping track of things and we can see how the plan has evolved since it the last big periodic update.

And again, this is a um some material that we've uh used in our open houses and also uh in different meetings before you over the last couple years shows the relationships between uh the different processes that are used to update the adopted by reference plans and the Bellingham plan itself and how that relates.

And then again, the exhaustive list of all of those documents. These are also again on those resource bars on the right of each page, but this is just all of the resource or all of the adopted by reference documents in one place.

And these are all hyperl as well to the different PDFs on our website so you can find them that way. All right, I'm going to jump back to the live website and highlight a couple of things. One is if we open up the Bellingham plan and we go to the land use chapter and specifically uh a page that has the land use map and all of the policies relating to each of the general land use types on the map.

You can see a little note here that says click on the map to launch an interactive map viewer. This is a pretty general citywide thumbnail map. You get a sense of the larger scale lay. if you want to figure out if your property or with a a specific block or something is in a residential low or medium or some other zone, um it's difficult to make that determination on here.

So, if you click on the map, it will launch one of our GIS tools and then you're presented with something that looks a lot like if you were in City IQ or something like that. You can pan and zoom with your mouse.

When you zoom in far enough, you'll see the lot lines turn on. And if you click anywhere on the map, in this case, we're clicking on the the pale yellow color, you'll see that it pops up a little window that says this is the residential low zone.

It lists the specific policy that defines what that zone is. And um you also are able to see individual properties um on the map that way. And then again on the legend here are all the categories listed together.

So that's an again a tool for you to explore the map with. And for people that are wondering, am I in or out of a particular zone? This is a way to provide that level of detail. All right, I'm going to bounce back out to the main plan itself and then back to our resources page.

And so that's all everything I've shown you so far is in this main upper box here. And below that, we have a couple of different things. Um, we have the goal and policy search tool, which I'll show you in just a moment.

We also have a print view and this is if you wanted to go to one of the local print shops or if at home you had the resources to print yourself a color copy of the document. Um this is an 8 and 1 half x 11 formatted uh version of the plan.

Same exact information, all the same pages. Instead of two-page spreads, it's just an 8 and half x1 page spread. So if you wanted to get it bound like the copies you've got there, this would probably be the copy that you would direct a print shop to point to on the website.

So that's available there. There's also a screen reader accessible copy which again is all of the text from the Bellingham plan front to back um but none of the images or graphics or other uh visual elements.

It's just the text all the way through. And so this is something that would be most easily consumed by a screen reader um and be compatible with that. So that's also available on there. And again, it's just the same order of presentation all the way through.

Um but again, just the narrative and goal and policy text itself. And now I'm going to bounce to the goal and policy search tool. And with that, um, it actually lives at the very bottom of that page I was just on, but this just jumps you right down there.

So you're through the rest of the resources. This, this contains again, uh, it's driven in the kind of the back end by a table with all of the goals and policies in it. And it's got a bunch of search connectivity built into it.

So on the far left here, you can see a list of all the chapters. You can select individual chapters, you can select multiple ones, you can say select all, whatever is relevant to what you're looking for.

And then if you um click on the default view is you'll see goals related to whichever chapters you've selected. They're in order. So you'll if if you select land use, that's at the top and they're just in the same order you see on the left there.

Um and then these are all of the policies in the plan. So in this view, everything is selected. If you click on one of the specific goals, in this case LU8 on urban growth areas, then the policies that you see uh selected are only the supporting policies that would be on that page under LU8.

So it's just I just want to see just the ones related to that. And then you'll see over in the related goals and policies. These are the ones that equate to those blue bullets that you'd see on that page as well, the related goals and policies in other chapters.

Uh for that, you can also select multiples just by clicking on them. And you'll see this list here grows and includes all of those land use policies I've selected in these three different goals. And you could see that the number of related goals and policies grows as well.

And then you can just click them again to uncheck them. So that's how that works. Um, if you get in here and you've done a bunch of clicking and uh exploring and you want to reset it all, you can hit reset and that clears everything away again, you can hit select all and select all the different things.

So, that's a a way of navigating and searching for related ideas. If you're doing research uh or looking for a specific policy, you can't quite remember what it is. That's that's how you start doing that.

You can also search for terms. So once I've got these all selected here, you can search for uh specific words and it will highlight those. Um I've got to start with just typing the first part of equitable and you can see that highlight all of the goals that relate to um could be equitable or equity or any other combination of that word.

You can see that showing up there. Um, we could type uh around the idea of um of sustainability again, something like that. Um, or maybe resiliency. Can start to see here if I could spell better. There you go.

Resilience. You can see the all the res things. Um, going to the policies here. You can do the same thing. Um, and I'm going to show you something here as well. If you're looking for, say, policies that mention trees.

Um, and there's a little helpful hint up here as well. If you look in the the help for each of these, it gives you some hints. Um, if you just start typing tree, you're going to get things that say tree or trees, but you're also going to say see every time streets is mentioned.

Um, so what you should do is to put a space and then tree and then you're just going to get things that say tree or trees in there. So just be aware that it's um it's going to it just knows as much as you've typed.

So it's not that sophisticated. So it's really just a text search tool at this point. So good question. Thank you. So that's the goal and policy search tool. And again, I invite you to explore that. Um, and we welcome feedback and that's a great that's a great idea.

That's probably our version two 2.0 of the search tool if we can we can talk to our GIS staff and figure out if they can they can integrate that. All right, I'm going to go back to our main resources page for the comp plan.

So, we shown you the plan, the different views that are available, and there's that goal and policy search tool. Then, we've got some introductory language here. We have a link to the ordinance which you approved back in December.

So if you want to see the actual language of the ordinance with the different exhibits and attachments that's there. We've got a link to our annual docket page. We have a link to learning about the whole periodic update process that we just went through and that links to some pages that you can find that just talk about our general engagement plan, the different uh phases that we went through and phasing reports.

There's a link to our engage Bellingham uh page for the Bellingham plan which is still up. Um there's some conclusionary language now at the beginning of that that talks about the process has concluded but all of the meetings and materials are still there for people to explore and to look into to see what the process was.

We also have a link to the previous 2016 plan um because this is now the 2025 Bellingham plan but the previous document is still available as a PDF. This is how you can find that. Here again is an accordion with a repeat of all of those adopted by reference documents.

If you don't want to have to go into the plan to find it, you can also just expose it here. And then this is the data and resources that relate to each of the chapters. Um, and this is kind of the meat of what's on this page.

If you remember in the 2016 plan, as you went through each of the chapters, you had the narrative and the goals and policies were usually the first half or maybe third of the chapter and the latter half to twothirds of each chapter were a wide variety of things like census statistics, point in time statistics from our GIS information, other uh narrative from other supporting documents, but it was a whole selection of things that relate to the goals and policies and narrative in a particular like the land use chapter or community design or housing.

Um, and those things after the 20 2016 plan was adopted quickly became stale or out ofd. They weren't things that we updated on a regular basis. Uh, they also made the document quite a bit bigger. Um, this document is 150 or so pages.

The other one was more than twice that size. So, um, there was a lot of information in there to just navigate through and over each time you used it. Um, and it was not current. So this page is our attempt to say we have all that same information to support each of the chapters, but it's in a live format that we can update as needed.

It doesn't involve a comp plan amendment to update statistics and supporting information and it's something we can keep fresh and also organize in a really accessible way to say this all relates to the Bellingham plan.

So that's what all of these pieces are. I'm not going to go through all of them because there's just way too much to cover in here. But I encourage you to bounce through these and see the wide variety of things that relate to uh long range planning, to our community plan, um and all of the things we do around land use and housing and a wide variety of other topics.

I do want to highlight um a couple of things. Uh the first is in the facilities and services grouping. You'll see links to a lot of different uh pieces in here. Uh the green infrastructure map is something that was required by House Bill 1181.

It's a way of documenting um green infrastructure across Bellingham. This is something that's required in comprehensive plans for cities, for school districts. Um it's a a kind of a broadreaching idea that's now included in the RCWS.

And this is if you hit on that, it'll launch another web map. This is a compilation of Bellingham's green infrastructure. This is a perfect example of why we would put that in um on this resources page instead of adopting it in the plan itself because it's a really dynamic set of data that is updated all the time.

Um it includes all of our parks and greenways. It includes all of our above ground storm water components that have some vegetation associated with them. Uh it includes conservation easements, all of our city-owned properties for conservation or recreation.

If you zoom way in, you can see it's got all of the mapped street trees that we have so far in our inventory. Far from complete, but there's a wide variety of them in there. You can, if you want to really nerd out on it, you can click on individual trees and you'll see information about those specific trees.

Michael, I knew you'd be excited about that. So, that's that's our green infrastructure map and that's something again that will um it's tied to our actual GIS enterprise data that's updated weekly and monthly.

And so those things will evolve and grow over time. They relate directly to the Bellingham plan in that case to the facilities and services and also climate policies. Um but it will be dynamically up to date every time you open it.

So that's an again just kind of this whole page is envisioned as a variety of things that are in that vein that are updated quite often and always kept current. Let's see where I'm at here. um wanted to show you as you go to the very bottom of the page, here's that policy search tool.

Again, you can scroll down to it in addition to jumping from the very top of the page. This is our link to the archive neighborhood plans. So, looking for neighborhood plans, you can access them here.

Um, and again, you can access these through the city's normal um, services and neighborhoods page where we have the pretty pictures of each of the 25 neighborhoods, and there's a narrative. Um, and there are still resources on those pages that relate to current zoning, to uh, information about neighborhood associations, wide variety of things associated with neighborhoods.

Um, and there's also a link on there where it says the neighborhood plan, for instance, for Birchwood or for Al A al A al A al A al A al A al A al A al A al A al Aldderwood or or for Alabama Hill or any of the other neighborhoods.

Um, it will take you to this page as well. This is a um a narrative that is essentially the conversation that we've had with you last year about neighborhood plans and um that we're not adopting those under the Bellingham plan uh and the reasons uh supporting that decision.

And so you can see all of that information here. And then a little bit more detail if you explore these these different uh accordians. And then if you open up this link here, which is the plans themselves, what you'll see is uh a single PDF with all of the neighborhood plans.

Um there's a hover page here that explains again um what the status is of the neighborhood plans. There's if you hit this more information link, this is in case somebody downloads the PDF, it'll take you back to that page we were just on.

These uh contents are all hyperl so you don't have to scroll through the whole thing top to bottom, but you can jump to a specific neighborhood. And then you'll see the most current version of the neighborhood plan as of the end of the year.

Um it just has a watermark on it that says when it was archived and it's the again just the entire neighborhood plan. So, those are still accessible and usable on our website for anybody that's interested in them.

Um, again, as described on the main page before that, we're just not in a pattern of updating those anymore as we move forward with again that more equitable citywide land use planning that we've set up in the in the Bellingham plan.

So, that's for um again the the the ease of access and finding uh again having the explanatory information for people to understand what's going on there. And then the last thing I wanted to show you is related to implementation of the Bellingham plan.

It's not something that's in the plan itself. If we go back to the city's homepage, we again go to services and community planning and then go under our development code link. The very bottom of that is this new housing and development rule updates.

And this was something that we we found in January, right after the I think we had several things during the year last year, but specifically in November and December, there were five separate ordinances that you took action on.

Um and so it was along with the Bellingham plan, there was a lot compressed into a very short period of time. Um some of those things the community had a little bit more of a heads up and some of them less of a heads up.

And so there were a lot of questions at the permit center counter and calls coming in and people trying to figure out, I know a lot of things changed in the last month. Can you tell me what they are? And so this page was was developed with um help from our communications folks to just include most of the things.

It doesn't include all of them um but the most of the things that you took action on right at the end of the year. And so this is something that we have up in the permit center um on most of the screens there for planners to walk members of the public through as they come in and have questions about projects and how they might impact their um how they put things in for application or review.

Um, you can see for each of these there's just a a a little bit of information including a link to the adopted ordinance, a very brief explanation of kind of from a very high level what that action was uh did and then there's a learn more about these changes and those go to other pages on our website that have more exhaustive information about those specific topics.

So um each of these has um that kind of information in there if you go through them and some of them like co-l livingiving are permanent code changes accessory dwelling units were permanent again the parking is an interim measure that we're coming back to do more on later this year uh middle housing and design review are also interims but again it's just a a jumping off place for people to find a quick summary all in one place with that um that's what I had to present if there are any your questions.

Happy to happy to uh answer those. Um but really just again wanted to again thank you for your key role in this process. Wanted to give you your own copy you could get your hands on and um just again provide a quick tour of how to access all the different pieces.

So >> thank you very much for the presentation. Questions from council members. >> One question just regarding the screen reader version. Um, is that formatted the same way as far as I didn't see any page numbers on there?

>> The page numbers are a little different because it's so much more compact without all the graphics and imagery. Um, the order of presentation is exactly the same as in the plan. So, the page numbers will not sync up with pages in the Bellingham plan, but the the land chapters first, housing second, and so on all the way through.

>> Okay. The order itself. Um because I didn't see page numbers at all within the document, but I wasn't sure if I might have overlooked it, but I was just thinking if someone was using using that document to >> you you reference.

>> Let me open it up just to >> I just want to make sure I'm looking at >> that. Yeah, >> you are correct. There are no page numbers. That is something that we could we could potentially go in and add page numbers.

Um, >> and I realize if it's not syncing up with the other plan, if that complicates things, but I was just thinking if someone's wanting to reference I don't know, something in that. I imagine it's still voluminous.

Yeah. But that was the only thing that I spotted that >> I'll I'll bring that up with our team and see if there's a way of we can either add page numbers just generically to this document or potentially just segment the information to match up with the page numbers in the plan.

um >> it would be more work, but I'll see how I get an have them look at it and see if they can estimate if that's an easy thing or if it would be more timeconuming. >> I appreciate it. I was just thinking if someone was utilizing that resource but then communicating with someone who was using different resource to be able to reference certain sections.

I am definitely not the person to give the um correct update on this, but I am aware that there are some tools that might make this unnecessary that are in development related to different different options on our website for all documents.

So, um this may have a short lifespan. So, um but again, I'm not I don't have all the information on that. >> Council Anderson, >> um short lifespan. I know um the state has some uh laws and stuff for compliance, for accessibility.

Looking at the screen reader, I imagine if you've gotten rid of all the pictures, and part of that is because you have to have a description of every picture put in for a screen reader to be able to go through and not all screen readers are the same.

But I'm also wondering how are we dealing with any of the um the other graphics like charts and stuff because those often are images but you would have to have a a call out box that would have that description.

Is that something I'm assuming is not in there right now? If you don't have pictures, I imagine you don't have the charts and graphs, but will that be something that comes in later um once the technology is maybe more adopted at this, you know, across the board for the web?

>> That's a great point. It is something we've worked on. Um, if you're in the PDF for the main Bellingham plan, um, the one I opened up and navigated through before, we do have a, uh, worksheet ready to go that has what's called the alt text for every picture, every chart, table, pie chart, graphic, um, that has just a sentence or two that says you're looking at a chart of housing by income or whatever the specific topic is.

Um the idea had been to incorporate that in when we um I think the term is mediate the document. Um which we have not done yet. Um but that's something that's on our to-do list. Um but again the technology it's changing so quickly.

The technology that is now um and again I don't know what the implementation is but I know it's relatively soon. um for for the city's entire website um might make the process of of paying a firm to mitigate the PDF might make that unnecessary because it would be happening on the fly uh through the browser and there would be it'd be able to tell you what you're really looking at.

So, um thank you for that suggestion. Um, if that does not end up working, we do have those alt text things in a large table from front to back on the document ready to go if we do need to send them the plan out to get it mediated.

So, >> thank you. Yeah, >> I just want to acknowledge that council member Anderson's question connects to a massive body of work that the communications team IT department uh has been working on for document accessibility throughout all departments of the city, the website itself and the tools and the approach that we take and we'll be planning to come to council with an update on that body of work and where we're at on that.

But there's exciting progress. I'm familiar with my day job addressing that too at the college. >> Questions from >> we'll have to have a sign. It's like yearbooks with the planning team to come sign sign our you know plans so that we can >> I just wanted to reiterate I'm here showing you this but you all know there's a huge team that is responsible for all this work.

So my part in it was small but I just wanted to again give credit where it's due. There's almost every well I know for a fact every single department had people with their hands on this for several years.

So thank you. >> Great. Thank you very much for the presentation. Um so this is before us just for information and discussion only. So yep, no action taken. That action was taken at the end of last year but um exciting to have it so accessible to the to the public.

Um next we have old and new business. Any items for old and new? Okay, not there will be another opportunity this evening if you change your mind. Um, next we have an executive session. So again, this session is closed to the public, but there will be a report out this evening during the regular meeting.

There are two items currently scheduled in the executive session. So, one is a potential property acquisition um with Longman for approximately 10 minutes and the second is also a potential property acquisition um with Rosenlat for approximately 3 minutes.

Um so, we're looking at approximately 15. We will take a brief 5m minute break. So, we will convene in the mayor's boardroom at 3:35. Um and then I will be back at about 3:50 to adjurnn. Thank you very much.