City Council - Committee Of The Whole

okay I think we' got everyone back here um and just as a by way of a reminder council member Huffman is excused this afternoon and tonight our next item uh for Community the whole is an ordinance relating to multif family development in the Silver Beach neighborhood amending the Silver Beach neighborhood plan and the zoning table entitled 20 of the Bellingham municipal code to reduce the density of multif family areas 8 9 and 13 from high density to either medium or low density the uh I'll go ahead and just read the summary statement here following the public hearing on May 20th 20124 the proposed comprehensive neighborhood plan uh Amendment and reone city council passed a motion to refer this ordinance to a work session of the committee of the whole uh today additional information about this item may be found on the project web page located at uh cob.org uhpr SL Silver Beach uh neighborhood rezone you can just search uh on the on the website to to locate that um if if today we approve uh Council approves the ordinance establishing a density for multif family zones in the Silver Beach neighborhood um the public hearing this evening extending the moratorium on multif family development in the Silver Beach neighborhood will not be necessary and shall be removed from the regular council meeting agenda and here to take us through is uh Blake l director planning and Community Development thank you uh good afternoon um yes we're here to talk a little bit more specifically about the

zoning options that are in front of you in the packet for today you have both an ordinance for low density as well as medium density uh given the action that you all were able to take on May 20th uh we don't have the need to go into details on the storm water requirements but as was mentioned last time those tend to be intertwined a little bit and so we're happy to respond to any questions you might have in that regard as well uh but we we are interested in uh the staff's position is again recommendation for the medium density but we do have both options available uh to you all for this afternoon's discussion we're also happy to go through any of the details that you might want in regard to the public testimony that was received on the 20th um I will say that a number of the comments that were made were specific to uh project and Redevelopment scenarios so we don't intend to go through the details of anything in that respect because that is outside of the purview of the reone consideration but happy to entertain any discussion that you'd like to have with regard to this uh Motion in front of you and we'll stop there for now thank you director lion committee council member alquest move approval approval of the first ordinance uh specifying low density okay a motion made by council member Locos is there a second second a motion has been made by council member Lilo Quist and seconded by council member Hannah Stone council member Lis Anderson yeah I was just about to Second it so

that we could have further discussion okay further comment from committee C Marone um so I know during our last discussion I had just inquired about and I understand that sub Area 18 is already fully developed to right single a single family just for me piece of Mind of continuity and consistency and also to clearly direct sort of what the intention is for that area um I would move to include sub Area 18 which is currently at medium density to be included um in this ordinance second so we have a first and second on the amendment to include I'm sorry I was okay in theid of include sub Area 18 to include sub Area 18 okay that's an amendment yep it was made by myself seconded by council member list sub Area 18 correct so sub are 18 is currently at medium density and is not included in the draft ordinance that references low density and so I understand that it's already built out at this time but we never know what will happen in the future and so just to provide that direction Kar Anderson did you want to speak to the amendment yes I did I wanted to say that I did support the amendment I thought about it after our last meeting and um thinking about those wildfires that happened in California that just wiped out entire neighborhoods and communities and they're in the process of rebuilding um we don't want to be I mean we could hope and pray something like that never happens but with the climate situation we're having and drier Summers and closely built housing there 's always

that potential and we don't want to be reacting after the fact of looking at how do we want the zoning and since we're really looking at the waterers shed um appropriate zoning is appropriate so it's just it's a good uh Benchmark for the future as a cautionary um zoning to ensure that if anything tragic ever did happen reconstruction would be more at an appropriate level which is often the smaller housing okay further discussion to the amendment see none um just a go ahead counciling um Mr lion could you explain to me why Area 18 was left off of the list certainly um if you I'll direct your attention to uh page 194 in your packet uh which is the map of the zoning designations in the Silver Beach neighborhood and if you'll see um Area 18 which is listed on the right side of that page where it has the multi friendly residential at the medium density um the others that we're referencing of those were at a higher density designation and so as um council member Stone had indicated we didn't anticipate given the built out nature of it and that at medium that we did not uh foresee that to need if the interest isn't to go to low and you want to incorporate that in the motion for low then we can certainly we can certainly do that but that was why it was because the staff recommendation was for medium that's why we didn't pursue it okay further discussion to the amendment Miss scut can you read back the that Amendment please uh so it's moved to recommend an approval of the ordinance

relating to multif family development in the Silver Beach neighborhood amending the Silver Beach neighborhood plan and the zoning table in Title 20 of the Bellingham municipal code to reduce the density of multif family areas 8 9 13 and 18 from high density to uh low density that's satisfies the amendment okay any further discussion on the amendment or the I guess the the motion as as it's been amended any further discussion seeing none all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed extensions recusals motion carries 60 uh with one excused that's the motion to amend so now the original motion can you readback the original motion please so effectively it would just be what I read earlier so um mood recommend approval of the ordinance relating to multif family development in the Silver Beach neighborhood amending the Silver Beach neighborhood plan and Zoning table in Title 20 of the Bellingham municipal code to reduce the density of multi family areas 8 19 8 9 13 and 18 from high density to low density council is that as you was that the motion that you that you made Council Williams go ahead I'd like to move to uh to amend the motion okay to um and and that the motion read uh a motion to adopt the low density option with an opportunity to increase the total unit count up to the medium density maximum via consideration and Adoption of a development agreement is there a second to the amendment second motion's been made by council member Williams and second by council member

cotton Is there further discussion to the amendment seeing none we'll vote on the on the amendment and then we'll proceed to the original motion all those in favor signify by saying I I I opposed no no okay uh can we get a roll call please uh Hannah Stone hi Skip Williams hi Lisa Anderson no Michael lillquist no chase cotton hi Dan Hamill hi the motion carries 42 motion carries 4 two is that correct okay all right let's go to the original motion uh that's been read now TW or it's been motioned by council member Lilo Quist and read into the record by uh Deputy clerk uh gets any further discussion on that seeing none all all those in favor signify by saying I I I I opposed extensions recusals motion carries 60 so anything else pursuing to this matter okay all right Council ham yeah good I guess just briefly I mean just wanting to speak I understand that there's concern regarding the right potential development in the in the Watershed and I guess with respect to um the amendment proposed by council member Williams just wanting to highlight that a development agreement would provide the city with an opportunity for a negotiation um regarding what that you know increased density would look like not to the level of high density which it was previously but perhaps above low density um but being able to take into account significant public benefit um that's of interest to the city and the community especially within the Watershed but also with respect to um you know multiple targets

that we have regarding population climate change other other things so um obviously that piece would be be determined um but it allows an opportunity um that I think places the city in a good um seat for negotiation okay thanks Council Mone Council M Williams please um I totally agree with you council member Stone everything about things like this I see as opportunities to negotiate through and get to the right answer and um all of the issues that we've heard about or at least that I've heard about um are I when I boiled it down in my my head today we were voting on a density level period everything else is subject to the permitting process and the process that goes through between the city and the developer and I think with this amendment and and the way that this motion um has been carried forward that that process will come through with the right answer for that particular parcel at the lake so I just wanted to let the the public know that and uh and now the real work begins thank you counc Williams any further discussion pursuing to this matter okay seeing none we're going to move on to our next item this is uh agenda bill 24140 this is a resolution extending the exemption for the existing shelter at 152 2 and 1530 Cornwall Avenue from compliance with State Building Code requirements until November 17th 2024 uh go read the summary statement here Lighthouse Mission Ministries is a 501c3 uh tax exempt organization and they are requesting council's approval to exempt its

temporary shelter known as base camp located at 1522 and 1530 Cornwall Avenue from State Building Code requirements City extended the suas for the cornall property and the associated a temporary shelter permit for the facility through uh November uh 17th 2024 to support ongoing shelter operations until construction of the new Lighthouse Mission Ministries facility on Holly is complete resolution number 2020-2 which exempts base camp from building code requirements will expire on 614 24 staff has that all applicable criteria established in RCW 1927.jpg code which is set to expire really soon um so the goal is to approve a new resolution that would extend that exemption until November 17th to align with the suas agreement which city council has already approved um and the hope is that by then the new Mission would be fully constructed on Holly Street um and if there's any additional questions I'm happy to touch on anything committee questions I'll entertain a motion council member Anderson um move approval second motion's been made by council member Anderson and seconded by council member Williams any further discussion for this matter seeing none all is in favor signify by saying I I opposed extensions recusals motion carries 601 excused thank you appreciate that presentation thank you our next item is going to be presented by Council marble Williams this is a resolution declaring an opioid and Sy synthetic drug crisis in Bellingham and recognizing that addressing the crisis

is one of the highest priorities for the city of Bellingham the use of opioid opioids and synthetic drugs most notably fentanyl continues to spread throughout our community and we have experienced a significant increase in overdoses and overdose fatalities every year in wam County since 2018 the city of Bellingham believes wholeheartedly that the health and well-being of all community members matters that we must address this massive threat to our health safety and general Weare as a community this resolution declares that opiate opioid and synthetic drug use is a crisis the resolution further identifies that it is a high priority of the city to address this crisis by working with governmental and other Community Partners to address interdiction in the pre prevention intervention treatment and after care and Recovery needs of our community and here to take us through is council member skip Williams thank you president Hamill this I became aware of more aware of the details of this crisis through my work on the county multi- agency coordination coordination group uh commonly called the Mac Group uh this uh Group which I serve with the mayor on the public policy uh sub uh committee which uh coordinates the ongoing CommunityWide response and I mean the broader Community not just the city of Bellingham to the opioid crisis that we're facing and prioritizing short-term objectives and strategies needed to reduce the impacts of this crisis and reduce the opioid deaths that are

happening in our community every day through this work with our major governance Partners two of the uh biggest ones watom County and the lumy nation have both passed res uh resolutions state ating this crisis as a high priority of their respective jurisdictions and as a result of that effort the county executive is issued a rather substantial executive order addressing those efforts um under their jurisdiction as repr as a representative of our City's government uh uh governance um in this work and observing these developments I felt very strongly that the city of Bellingham needed to pass a similar resolution which will put us in concert with our major Partners in watom county in this crisis and establish a basic framework for taking a taking appropriate actions on our part to deal with this crisis simply put the resolution declares that opioid and synthetic drug use is a crisis in our city and further I and further identifies that is it it is of a high priority of the city of Bellingham to address this by working with all the other governmental agencies and Community Partners to address all of the issues interdiction prevention intervention treatment and after care recovery which are all of the needs of our community so so I felt in the aftermath of the mayor's executive order in February addressing the fentanyl crisis in downtown Bellingham uh that a resolution such as this was entirely appropriate declaring our highest level of commitment to dealing with this and with

that I I so move that we adopt this resolution second motion's been made by council member Williams and second by council member liquis member list um really appreciate um skip bringing this forward I think you're right uh it's our our turn to to join with other voices um and but I kind of have a question for the mayor because words are great but we're going to want to see this translated into action so I have some questions about that um so you know this calls for us to address interdiction as well as prevention intervention treatment after care recovery um can we have a work session on that can we have a work session to discuss how we might be allocating a programming the money that are coming to the city now through the uh public uh safet I think it's called the public safety tax monies which should be spent in alignment with the Justice project implementation plan how much does this work overlap with the jpip work already it seems to me there's probably a lot of overlap so I guess what I want to see is I want to see this turn into an outline of a work plan and then an outline that also includes deliverables and objectives maybe later on so I really like what skip has brought forward I'm kind of already looking forward to the payoff after we adopt this resolution so what can you tell me about Council involvement with con conceptualizing what we might be doing especially with regard to the jpip over the next budget year that's a great question and I think at the heart of

who will be leading that work in the city from the administration side is that strategic initiatives manager with that Health and Human Services Focus that you guys approved in um a budget amendment and that position as written is currently sitting with nhr they're going it's going through a class and comp process right now and we're looking forward to posting it shortly and I think at that time that particular individual at the end of a successful recruitment will be who will be driving that work forward um initially I think a lot of the money that will be coming in in the next 6 months in connection with the jail and um behavioral health tax will be supporting ongoing needs but there will be a point here shortly where we will have opportunities to consider what comes next and I would also say that we are still having conversations at both the state and federal level about seeking additional monies and flexible funding to meet this crisis so while Governor Insley is not yet declared an an emergency nor has the Biden Administration it's a body of work um we have County council members that will be going to national conferences this summer um members of lumy nation going um within Indian country and advocating for a crisis declaration that would increase funding available and so uh it is important that we have a work plan in place should we receive Monies to drive action forward PA um so with regard to the budgeting and allocation of the jpip money it's only June we haven't

seen your budget yet um will that money be basically fully allocated when we see your draft budget and I guess personally I'd like to see kind of like a little breakdown of where you're you're thinking you would slot that money in do so do you think you'll already have slots for all of that money by the time the budget's presented to us potentially I think we'll have a much better and complete answer to that question around September time frame C Williams um mayor lent the the intent of my work on this was to give you the framework to do just what you and C council member lillquist were uh talking about and one of the things that I've learned in the work that I've been doing is that every level of our governance and our governance Partners each one of us has a separate role to play based on the resources that we have and based on the the um based on the staff that we have and based on our role in NW work so my hope is that at some point we will get a more comprehensive presentation on the things that we as a city can do separately from well maybe not separately maybe some of it is but some of it may be in concert with and how we support the other agencies that are out there helping us get rid of this crisis so I'm looking forward to working with you and everyone else to get this down the road so thank you council member Williams and I want to express my gratitude to you for your time and thoughtful consideration to prepare this and I do see it as an amplification of other

work with other important Partners throughout the community um and it's very much in alignment with other actions that have been taken so far so thank you further discussion Council Maron yeah counc Williams um thank you for your work on the resolution and bringing it Forward I guess one of the questions I had was with with respect to the language and right declaring this a crisis um and what the next level is or whether there was any further discussion about right state of emergency and I know this comes up in City attorney and you know sort of the legal implications of that um always provide some maybe some hesitation but noting in the whereas Clauses that the luming Indian Business Council WR approved a resolution it says declaring a state of emergency and that the county Executives order was calling on the governor and president Biden to declare you know similarly states of emergency um and so thinking about right the impact on our community with respect to the fentol crisis in particular and also with other you know opioids and synthetic drugs that we're seeing coming into the into the community at what point that's triggered because I think about our law enforcement right and if there are areas of the city in my mind where our local law enforcement right doesn't feel comfortable or has concern um they're doing their job um and entering different areas of the city that's of right that's of concern to me when we're thinking about public health and safety and so wondering

where that right where that threshold is and if there was any other discussion um surrounding you know the terminology used I guess Williams go ahead um my goal in developing this like I said in in my earlier comments was to give the mayor a basic framework of that so the the uh things that you mentioned um I wanted to avoid being too prescriptive and allow the mayor to come up with the implementation plan do we send something to the president do we send something to the governor do we send I I saw those as all part of the implementation piece and uh in talking at least with our County side of things um that's how they saw it too that's why when they passed theirs all of the pieces in the executives well not all of them but a large number of them were originally in their resolution and they removed all those implementation pieces and turn that over to the executive side for implementation this is just setting the basic framework and it's up to the administration to figure out how we're going to administer this question you know for common use crisis and emergency are the same but they're really different in this case this really is a Crisis crisis is a word we can use it's it's honest um emergency especially in the city Charter has very specific meaning okay it it's it's a way of empowering the executive branch to take expedited action without Council approval in matters where time is of the essence and quick action is necessary that doesn't really apply in this case because

we're not asking the mayor to act precipitously matter of fact we just talked all about how we're doing this in a careful way each step building on the other hiring a a you know a manager looking at the funds allocating to ongoing resources developing coordinated action plan we're not talking about an emergency in that sense that's used in the charter so colloquially yeah we're having an emergency but in terms of specifics you know we don't have that kind of emergency but we do have a crisis this resolution says crisis this is exactly the right word and I think it ex exactly the right tone so I appreciate that choice skip City attorney Mariner yeah I I agree with council member lest this is there is a very big distinction between the use of crisis in its resolution and a proclamation of emergency by the mayor ex which allows her to exercise emergency powers under our Charter and and our BM and the Bellingham Municipal Code so there is a big distinction um and I agree with council member lilis council member Williams and yes I would say when when this first came up in the Mac Group this conceptually came up um use use of the word emergency versus crisis um the thinking in the group was the word emergency carries a set definition that triggers a process just like uh uh you said that goes up the ladder and then resources come in but it's a very um a very concrete application there's a flood you file the sense of emergency to the governor it goes to Washington DC and FEMA sends

out people to mitigate the problem this is a lot is more vague than that and so um that's why we did not put that word in there so marstone yeah just brief followup and I'm not in disagreement necessarily about the word that we've chosen for this particular resolution but just noting that right lumy in their resolution if it was declaring a state of emergency curious whether that right does that trigger support at other levels right state federal are there other resources then triggered by that um declaration and just I guess calling on local law enforcement and the administration right to continue monitoring this crisis because my concern is that there's always a tipping right a Tipping Point for things and so to be monitoring that that closely as we take um proactive steps but recognizing that um I feel like this particular crisis and we were talking about the influence of opioids and synthetic drugs in particular um that it's fairly right unpredictable um and also um just the multiple yeah factors that are at play I think it's a a tenuous situation to obviously monitor closely so thank you for the work that's being done further discussion mayor just wanted to share we have a draft um fenal action plan that's been shared with us from watom County and we'd be happy to coordinate while we're recruiting for their Health and Human Services focused um strategic manager um to have them come and do a presentation about that response plan I think that'd be a good intermediary step

thank you mayor forur the discussion seeing none I'm going to go ahead and take a moment here um this I first I want thank counc mber Williams for your leadership on on this and um this is uh important this is not um the beginning of the conversation this is we're kind of in the in the middle of this conversation um I'm not going to do a history lesson here but I just want to make sure that we're on the same page um we are not on Leaf drugs anymore so marijuana cocaine and heroin are all derived from uh things that had to grow out of the ground this is different this is a synthetic drug that's being manufactured um um from products that are bought in China and manufactured in Mexico and shipped up the I5 Corridor and we're at the end of the line here and we are our First Responders are responding to overdose death overdoses and overdose deaths in a in a way that we've never seen before in our community last year L Nation hosted uh an opio uh uh Summit and tribes from across Washington State came and every tribe that came had been impacted greatly in in many cases by this um epidemic uh and then shortly thereafter there was an all hands Summit AT Bellingham High School uh that was hosted by choconut Health foundation and some others and um um I talked with the with the parents of a um of a young man who died in one of our facilities at Arie Hannah uh died in the bathroom and um talked with the parents the parents had The Bravery to get up in front of a crowd of hundreds of

people and and talk about their their experience and losing their their son um this is sorry this is completely preventable um and we have to do that Upstream interdiction we have to do the prevention and the provision of of treatment and we will have news to announce um soon hopefully that there will be um the provision of um of treatment care um and and other modalities to help people in the midst of their of their addiction and we are partnering and have been for for a time now with wam County Health Department and other partners and so I think it's important for this statement to this is a statement of values that council member Williams has created um that that we are saying no more no more kids um we're not pulling any more people out of homeless camps um we are not going to be finding people in the restrooms of of our facilities or at the bathrooms of fast food restaurants anymore we need to make that the target zero Target is zero um and this this like I said it's not it's not the first step it's a step in many of many and um but we need to take it we need to I think that as a as a council body that we need need to make that statement that we value every human life here in our community we've said that in other ways and this says it again so further discussion seeing none motions made by council member Williams and second by council member Lilo Quist all those in favor signify by saying I I opposed abstentions recusals motion carries 61 one excuse thank you council

member Stone yeah council member H um just your note and it was also referenced in one of the whereas Clauses but the All Hands watom opioid Summit and just wanting to make note that there there's another Summit coming up this month um later this month on the 25th and 26th at Bellingham High School so okay that work will continue but just for the public to know all right thanks for noting that council member Stone okay any further discussion on this matter all right seeing none uh we have another item here this is a briefing on the Bellingham plan this is a 2025 periodic update of the to the comprehensive plan the next periodic update to the comprehensive plan is due to the state by December 31st 2025 this significant project known as the Bellingham plan launched in July 2023 and has included a broad range thank you uh Community engagement uh staff will present an update on the project scope and the schedule summary of input received to date the results of the 2023 Community Vision and housing preference surveys 2020 Pard me 2045 growth projections and preliminary allocations to Urban growth areas draft growth Alternatives and policy issues related to The Plan update here to take us through I've got Elizabeth Erikson a senior planner to to take us through but I also see Mr Bee as well so I'll just turn it over to you good afternoon Council uh I'll kick things off and then be handing off to Elizabeth in a little bit here so um we come back before you we launched last year in

July um so everyone remember and I just want to say uh that as the staff team that's leading the charge on this Elizabeth and I really appreciate seeing basically all of you at a wide variety of our public events over the past six months in particular the last uh since February we've been doing our bigger public session so that's been great to see the the involvement and support and that you're tracking the conversation uh what we bring back before you today is uh an agenda just uh you can see our agenda up there the update um on the project schedule we'll be talking a little bit about what we heard in phase one particularly with some of our broad community outreach we talking about some of the key anticipated updates and drivers and then finish off with the growth Alternatives which is kind of the the next phase of the conversation I will also say that there's a a a lot of slides we're going to go through pretty quickly here if you can just uh bear with us and then we want to leave a a generous amount of time at the end for questions so just please uh we're not going to spend a lot of time on these but we will be able to bounce back through them if you have questions specific to any one of the particular uh exhibits that you see the overall project schedule um again reflecting what we brought before you last July uh we are in uh the the middle of what we'd call phase two which is coming back with some more focused Community conversations and listing sessions and over the

next few months we'll be transitioning into uh the actual development of the policy component of the plan and then coming back uh over the the winter months with uh fall and winter to Planning Commission for review and recommendations and then eventually back to you for public hearings in the approval process in the the first half of next year you recall in the legislative short session the state legislature did give all of the 2025 planning jurisdictions additional six months which is the same amount of time they gave to the 2024 jurisdiction so instead of the end of June of 25 we have until December 31st of 2025 we don't intend to use all of that time we we want to leave a little bit of extra time for public process and extra work sessions in particular if you need more time to deliberate and discuss some of the key key policy initiatives but we do want to leave time at the end to hand off to Waton County and time for them to complete the countywide comprensive plan and evaluate Urban growth boundaries and those things in time to get it back to the state the growth projection process is part of what we'll be talking about today and that's basically boiling Down The Fairly broad State growth projections that they provide the county level um going through the local refinement process and adding in the employment allocation to that and then importantly the um planning for housing for all incomes which is a new thing for us this time around new for all the jurisdictions in the

state and then uh aiming towards what's been called in past iterations and will again this time a non-bonding multi-jurisdictional resolution that all of the countywide jurisdictions agree to and those are um relatively firm but still flexible numbers that we then March forward with and do the kind of critical policy and planning work around there is wiggle wiggle room to adjust those if needed but that's that's what we're aiming for is that uh interjurisdictional resolution and then finally incorporating that work into our individual comprehensive plans and going through the adoption process to orient everyone again this is the countywide map all of the highlighted yellow areas are the urban growth areas around the county each of the cities has them and then also Waton county has the Columbia Valley Birch Bay and Point Urban growth areas you can see the big red numbers there uh the the medium forecast from ofm which is what we typically track close to is for about 57,000 people countywide between uh now and 2045 and that translates to roughly 31,000 additional housing units so those are coming of big numbers that would be distributed across the county to each of the jurisdictions in your packet you have the copy of the technical report provided by the countywide consultant again as in the past couple of comprehensive plan updates we've been through across watom County in 2006 and 2016 we hire a consultant to take those population forecasts from the state and to kind of

narrow the upper and lower ranges down around that Medium projection and provide some guidance on employment forecasts as well and so that's what I'll be walking through just a few of the details on for you you see there the uh graph showing historic growth from 1990 uh we're we currently at the end of that black line right there that you can see uh right here in in the early in 2023 and then the gray line is that ofm Medium projection that they have for Waton County going out to just under 293,000 people countywide by 2045 and just as you can see we the the ofm medium projection is what we again historically have tracked very close to and when I say close I mean really within about one and a half% of that between uh you go back over the number of you know the past several decades um so that's a a forecast that we pay a lot of uh uh pay close attention to the um High number that ofm provides is this green upper line and then the low projection is the orange lower line and you can see that's a pretty incredible range from 337,000 down to uh just under 260,000 so that that's a number that's um very challenging to contemplate that range and so we pay the Consultants to narrow that down a bit again concentrating on the most likely forecast being the medium and then the other thing I would point out on this um you can see that we have left a little bit less room between the low and the medium and then the high and that's to make sure that we don't under plan for infrastructure if

we were to choose a lower number we kind of put a a lower um floor or have the the floor not be quite as low as as it might be in other forecasts and that's again just kind of being responsible and knowing that we if we under plan for infrastructure that could have some pretty uh serious consequences for us locally we also attach um employment projections and the state does not provide uh employment forecast for us but historically what we've done is we've looked at the percentage of our total population that is in the uh currently employed and that number uh both Statewide and uh in Waton county has been fairly consistent we tend to be somewhere around 46 or 47% and so that's the the number that we take as the the expect Ed number of people in the county that would be in the workforce there's a table in your an exhibit in your report there that talks about this and so if we take that basically just under 47% on the medium population growth projection that translates to about 24,000 new jobs over the next 20 years and then um historically bellingham's accommodated about 63% of countywide population or sorry 63% of countywide employment we have more people that that work work in Bellingham than the the fraction of population that we accommodate if we're to take that going forward that translates into about 15,000 jobs so 15,000 of those 24,000 new jobs would be in Bellingham and then the consultant has provided kind of a preliminary breakout uh based on the primary industrial

retail and commercial job sectors we do have a handful of kind of resource industry jobs in Bellingham as well but it's not a not a very large sector so that gives you just a very quick kind of overview of how we do that and what those numbers look like we're going to spend a little bit more time on the housing part because that's uh just it's a little bit more uh has greater consequences for our community and you can see that the 292,000 uh population total translates into about 286,000 people that would be in our household population group and you can see there's about 6,400 people that we would count being in group quarters that includes students on Western's campus living in dormitories people in Memory Care Facilities or other kinds of Specialized Care situations so we have 31,300 new housing units uh countywide and then we have a a series of kind of categories that those units are are allocated to about 9600 of those units are needed to eliminate the existing renter cost burden that we have countywide so those are all the people that are typically renting and they're renting above the the 30% of their income uh threshold so they're they're what we call cost burdened so we need about 9,600 units to open up the housing Supply in areas that those folks can afford rents in we have about 1,800 almost 1,00 housing units that we need to provide housing for people that currently don't have homes so that's our unhoused or homeless population we have just under uh 18,000 housing

units that would be needed to address additional household growth and a largest component of that would be new people moving into our community so our kind of net immigration component and then also we all know we've had a historically low vacancy rate for quite few years we've been around 2 or 3% we'd like to be closer to 5 or 6% and so that 1,00 or so housing units would be what would be needed to cushion these other numbers to get us up closer to that 6% countywide vacancy rate so that gives you an idea these are all very high level preliminary numbers but that kind of gives you some idea about how that Pi gets divided up and what those numbers will help us address this is what the um House Bill 1220 requiring us to plan for all income levels looks like um the dark blue bars are the current housing inventory countywide and you could see going along the bottom here different income ranges uh 0 to 30% broken into um permanent Supportive Housing and then non-permanent Supportive Housing an example of permanent Supportive Housing would be Francis place or over on Cornwell Avenue we have 42 units there that are um operated by Catholic Housing Services and have a full wraparound social services and case management that run with them so that's the an example the kind of units that those would be and then you can see up through 30 to 50 50 to 80 80 to 100% of the area median income and then the income categories above the median income so up to 120 and then all the categories

greater than that and then the far column um this small number here are the emergency housing needs those aren't actually units those are beds and so those would be our shelter beds that we have at base camp um that will be provided in the new Lighthouse Mission facility um the units or beds that we have in our tiny home Villages and other kinds of shelter situations and so the the dark blue is the existing inventory the light blue is taking that 31,000 units and spreading it across those income ranges and um saying where would the new units that we need to build land need to land to satisfy the income requirements in our community and really the big takeaway is that all these categories below um 80% of their immediate income are where you see most of those units landing and that's to really kind of rebalance the fact that we don't have many housing units in those lower categories we have a lot of households in those categories and they're renting in the middle of this graph which means they're renting above their means we'd like to provide options for those people to rent housing products that are more appropriate for their income so that they're not burdened that way so that's really kind of what those big numbers mean if we look at just bellingham's slice and this is again very preliminary numbers these are no doubt going to change but if we were to take 49% of this previous group and just say what's 49% of that look like 49% being the proportion of housing that Bellingham

has been able to build uh countywide in the last uh since the last comp plan update since 2016 and so to say we continue to build about that fraction of the countywide housing Supply this is what those numbers would look like and so again you can see the the same pattern just a little bit smaller graph but the same pattern and the real challenge here is that um again about 64% 64% of the units we would need to build would be in those 80% or below category um and so that's that's a real challenge that we have we we know we can't afford to subsidize that many units per year so we need to do what we can to make sure our regulations kind of get out of the way and allow as many varieties of housing um that could be affordable to of wide variety of incomes as possible so the growth projection process so the next steps are we're in the midst of updating Our Land Capacity Analysis looking at zoning vacant land infrastructure um and doing our our best estimate of how many units we could accommodate under today's uh land use regulations and then looking at growth Alternatives which we'll be talking about in a few minutes to figure out under different alternative scenarios uh that meet state regulations what how many units could we accommodate under different scenarios and then aligning that with the countywide multi-jurisdictional resolution and then doing the planning work to craft policies support what would be a preferred alternative that would come out of those uh Alternatives that

we'll be talking about in a few minutes with that I'll hand off to Elizabeth good afternoon apologies I'm getting over a little cold here um so I'm going to walk through thank you um so I'm going to walk through a little bit of um what we've heard so far far but just really high level so please feel free to ask questions after I go through that and then what that means for our anticipated updates to each chapter of the plan so you can see just a reminder of the schedule you've seen many times so far um that we're just about um halfway through the overall process but that means that we're significantly more than halfway through um phase two where we're really digging into some specific issues with the community so I'll walk into some of I'll walk through some of the things that we've heard in phases one and so far in phase two and what that means moving forward um so first phase one um this is just a highle slide showing a lot of the things that we did in 2023 and you can see um I'm not going to walk through all of these but we we heard from quite a few people and really what we wanted to do was understand high level what was important to the community and then also build our awareness and our list for folks that wanted to be part of this process so we were really successful at doing that and have had a lot of folks taking part in this phase is based on this early work that we did um but we did find that there were a few groups that we weren't reaching as well in phase one so

these are the groups that we're really focusing on reaching out even more to in phase two so making sure that that we're really reaching out to the Latina Or Hispanic communities as well as to kind of college or university age students um around 18 to 24 year olds and then making sure that we're really reaching renters and not only homeowners um this is an image we like to show based on a response to our vision survey that we had last year um that just shows the words that folks used to describe the Bellingham they wanted to see in 20 years so you can see some of the big words around safe or safety those types of words were were grouped together affordable diverse clean vibrant healthy sustainable Equitable lots of these these words kind of stick out to you so it's really interesting to to take a look at this um when you have a little bit more time and dig into even some of those smaller words as well um we also in that Vision survey um this was mailed to every household across the city um ask for demographic information because when you mail a survey out even when it's available through other means all of our tabling you don't necessarily get representative feedback so we wanted to understand um from those we weren't hearing from as much what they thought and so this is an example of um an image in our report from this survey which you can find online that goes into much more detail um but this is an example showing a breakdown by household income of what the top seven

things people thought were priorities for the city to work on in this update there was a list of about um 20 things that people could choose but across all income levels these were the top seven for all of them so there's definitely some agreement um no matter what what income um each household had but you can see that some things were more important and shifted with with these demographics so I encourage you to take a look at this report and really dig into some of these findings and um kind of learn a little bit more about what the community thinks is important we also did a statistically valid housing preference survey and this was a way where we were able to um using demographics and some different um ways of reaching unique communities get a much more representative sample and then also um our consultant was able to wait the survey responses to truly represent our community on a number of fronts and so with that we were able to ask about what type of housing folks were really looking for um if you know at first if they could have anything and then if they had to select only a few things what they would prioritize since generally you can't get everything all in one place and so this was an example of an answer here um where based on the actual unit itself what people prioritized across the board and one thing we found really interesting is even without having to narrow things down most um or the the most common answer to how many bedrooms folks were interested in was two

though a lot of people did also want to have an additional office space that was lowered down on this list um so that was interesting you see two bedrooms is kind of number four on this list and then quite a bit further down we've got three bedrooms is about a third of the population and one bedroom is about a quarter and then a lot lower down at 12% of the population wanted for more bedrooms or Studio unit at 11% so that was a really interesting way for us to understand um you know if you if you could um pay for for whatever unit you wanted that's helpful for us to know what we should really be targeting and what housing types were really encouraging um I'm not going to go through this entire slide but this uh survey really gave us a lot of interesting information so I'm going to highlight the two that I have in red here this was where we asked folks um between two scenarios which they might prefer um and they're they're sort of on a on a a lyer scale we we call it so they could say something all the way to one side or somewhere in the middle um and so the the the first one is really looking at um if they're if they're looking for a neighborhood um would you rather live in an area that has a lot of housing units nearby maybe a somewhat denser area but then you're able to really invest in public Transit bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure would you rather live in an area that maybe has limited or or or none of that infrastructure but you're able to have a little bit more

space and units or further apart you can see that a a vast majority of folks were really interested in that first scenario um in another question you can see near the bottom we were asking kind of related to the urban forestry discussions you all have been having um if if we wanted to to look the same number of housing units in an area we could either kind of um build it out in the way much of suburban America is built out and have them fairly well separated but a lot of the trees end up disappearing and being kind of built as as less mature landscaping or would people rather have kind of build up and save more of the the area for mature trees that that are preserved and more folks pervert that second category though to not quite the extent there's definitely disagreement on this one we also asked about neighborhood types and you can see here um in the very small text on the right a description of these types but the big pictures these three that we've we've highlighted as the types of neighborhoods that folks were interested in all have a bit of a a mixture of small scale housing types um and the two that were most popular have small scale commercial uses mixed in there as well um and and quite a few housing types and so you can tell that there's not agreement not everybody wants the same thing there's no you one right Sho size for for everybody but there is quite a bit of agreement that we we would like more of this kind of small scale um mixed housing type neighborhoods

with access to services and Commercial uses um this is really interesting um for really anyone across the city we asked about remote work because we were doing a statistically valid survey we figured let's get some data here the census only gives us so much data that's comp comparable from before covid to after um so we figured let's dig in deeper and get some more information and we found that over a third of employed Bellingham residents um work at least partially remotely and so 36% are working 1 to 4 days remotely and 22% are working at least 5 days a work five days a week remotely um and this is an a typical week so that's more than half of the population that is working some significant amount of the time remotely which is definitely a big jump from before Co though we didn't ask these exact same questions prior to co we also found that 39% of folks in a typical week are not commuting to a job in Bellingham so they are either working fully remotely or they're commuting to a job outside of Bellingham but they're not actually going to a job from Bellingham to Bellingham um which is also interesting to see and then finally about 16% of folks at least once a week are commuting somewhere that's at least 20 miles outside Bellingham so that they might be commuting to Seattle or somewhere else but somewhere where they're commuting there and coming back that day this isn't for like overnight travel this is just kind of a long commute so interesting to see those numbers as well

so that was just a high level description of a few of the kind of fun facts we learned in phase one that might be relevant to all sorts of work across the city but I'm going to dive into our phase two now and just let you know what we've been working on but then link that to the work that we anticipate happening in the Bellingham plan so we've been holding a series of open houses that's been really the big focus in this phase you can see them listed here um we're partway through these had quite a bit of attendance across them and really a lot of excitement and great input from the community um these are in-person events but also reflected online so all of the boards are online and able to be viewed if you miss this or if you want more time um but also there are activities and ways for people to provide feedback online if they weren't able to attend we do have an event tomorrow so this is a a tip for that housing types in neighborhoods is tomorrow evening so hopefully folks will will come join us for that but I'll talk a little bit about why that topic is important when we get to that chapter in particular um we also were able to focus as I mentioned on those demographic groups we held an event at Western um to get a lot of student input that was really successful um and then we also um held an event um very recently with the Hispanic community so this was an entirely inspanish event um and this was really great to um build those relationships get the word out hear from folks

that really haven't engaged with the city at all in the past and really try to build those so that's really important and then coming up in July we are also planning to have another survey on the Alternatives that Chris will go through in a little bit here um and that will be not like notified to every household again in a postcard this is just an image from some of those events to give you an idea of what they feel like um we have kind of an open house component and then also Round Table discussions where folks are able to talk to each other people who might have different perspectives and that staff are able to kind of understand where there's consensus and where there's disagreement so I'm going to um with that walk into a little bit more for each chapter of the plan I'm going to group a few of the chapters together what we're anticipating updating um the idea here is that um you know there will be more opportunities as we work through this process to dig into details but if there's something that you really think should be part of this update and it's a big topic and it's not mentioned on one of these now is the time to let us know so that we don't go too far down down the drafting process without addressing something really important so with that um before we dig into each chapter here's kind of a reminder of some of the state legislation that really impacts these in your packet you'll see that we actually broke down all of the updates for each chapter um and reference

which legislation kind of leads to that update or what we heard from the community and some of our Outreach and why that is important for this update um but we'll do it a little bit more high level for the sake of the presentation so you all have heard about hb220 this is the housing for all bill um there's two important components to this one of them is really um how we do that um growth projection planning that Chris went through and that now it's separated by income level and then another section is really about addressing racially disparate impacts and making sure that our policies um do not have disparate impacts and so that's a big piece of that legislation as well another bill you've heard a lot is HB 1110 this is the middle housing bill um this also has two important components for the sake of today's conversation one is is what you've heard a lot about which is the sort of middle housing component um and allowing at least four units per lot across most of the city um and planning for a certain number of middle housing types as well um but the second component of this that's important is that those middle housing types cannot be regulated more strictly than single family housing from a design perspective so when we combine that with the next bill on this list which is HB 1293 which requires us to have objective design standards when we combine that with the previous one we really will have to rethink how we look at design standards across our kind of lower scale

residential areas in the city and that's why the event that we're holding tomorrow is so important so at that event we'll be talking about housing types and how they impact neighborhoods and what you know design components are really important to retain and have um as requirements that are objective for both single family and middle housing and which maybe aren't as important to the community so that's something that we're we're definitely working on right now HB 1181 deals with incorporation of climate mitigation and resiliency and that's something that the city of Bellingham has found really important um for many years and has had a lot of work particularly on the climate mitigation component but we really want to make sure that that work is um integrated in and really reflected in the comp plan and then in addition really um bolstering the resiliency component throughout the plan as well and then finally hb1 1998 uh this has a note about not signed by by the governor of course it has now this is an older slide that that we used um but this is about co-living housing and that's a housing type that has the individual rooms are either rented or sold separately and there are shared kitchen facilities so there are many different ways this could come out on kind of a small scale and a large scale but this is um a required bill for us to address across Bellingham as well not necessarily in every neighborhood but if you um allow a certain number of housing units then you would

have to these types as well so that's a really quick rundown of the state legislation but when we start looking at the Housing and Community design chapters you can see how these bullets on the screen are reflected and directly coming from a lot of that state legislation so while we need to address these things based on state legislation we have a lot of leeway as a city to decide how we do that and so that's what a lot of this community outreach is and where you ultimately will be able to have some input as well is how we decide um what it means to switch to OB objective design standards how they apply to the different middle housing types which middle housing types are allowed where um all of those things are definitely things we are working on right now as part of this update um we also have found from the community that the co-living housing is something they're really excited about and this isn't just students um especially seniors have expressed a lot of interest in that type and then the final bullet on here is referencing really laying the groundwork for potential future updates to our mfte program or any other inclusionary affordable housing program and this is an area where we are currently um waiting on some some results from an mfte um study that that is being completed and once we have those we'll be able to come back kind of have a parallel track for for for this discussion but wherever that leads we'll want to make sure that that gets wrapped into this comp

plan update and that these these two projects work kind of hand inand from a multimodal transportation chapter update um there's a lot of really good work in there that we we we want to continue um implementing but from a policy update stand Point um there are two main points one is really focusing on increasing Street connectivity um for really everybody but also really emphasizing those active Transportation methods as well um so that those can go hand inand and then really um as the the parking discussion that that you all have had recently and that will be continued at the Planning Commission level shortly um that discussion will need to be reflected in this chapter as well um and really being proactive about how alternative transportation methods and how Transit um can can can really be reflected in our growth strategy um we also are hoping to have a new chapter called Community well-being um that will relate a lot to the economic development chapter so we've listed both of those here the new community wellbeing chapter is really reflective of the community's desire to discuss a number of issues that really just have to do with the well-being of the community so you can see them listed here really focusing on community engagement and tri engagement and emphasizing how important that is and some of the strategies that we as as a city should Implement um how this relates to planning on a neighborhood level um our community resiliency and making sure that folks feel welcome

and feel part of the of their community on multiple scales um Human Services a lot of what you were just talking about right before the this update would be wrapped into this chapter food security Equity um all of these topics relate to the well-being of the community and will be wrapped into this new chapter some of these policies already exist in the economic development chapter so we'll want to kind of separate those over um and then we also are going to um really focus on clearly identifying what the city's role um in the economy is in this chapter so that it's really clear who does what and how that relates to a lot of the rest of the plan but one key component is child care um in order to have a strong economy we we need to make sure we have good child care and so removing those barriers to child care access will be a big part of this chapter update as well um climate and the environment are two separate chapters climate will be a new chapter the environment is an existing chapter and so that the new chapter as I mentioned will reflect a lot on resiliency and incorporate a lot of the good work that is already outlined in the climate action plan and we'll have a much larger focus on Equity we also will be simplifying and streamlining the environment chapter to really focus on on the important components and incorporate um what comes out of the urban forestry management plan as well and and in the environment chapter the um Equity component will also be a big part of the

update and then finally the land use chapters and then the capital facilities and utilities chapters are very intertwined um of course the land use chapter will be updated um based on everything we just talked about and then also on the growth Alternatives that Chris will go through in a moment but we also want to make sure that that we're really um aligning these chapters with all of the other good work we are doing so when it comes to the urban forestry plan how that impacts um the type of development perhaps building a little bit more up in order to be able to preserve trees that that would be um reflected in this chapter um and then also there's been a really big interest in small commercial uses as I mentioned neor residential areas so figuring out um how to incorporate those and what our neighborhoods will look like is part of a lot of the work we've been doing with the community and that's also part of tomorrow's session with the community as well um and then finally really looking at our infrastructure planning making sure that it aligns with our growth strategy and any updates that that are needed to to encourage smart growth um are are implemented as well so with that I'm going to pass it on to Chris to go through the growth Alternatives all right thanks Elizabeth so the GTH Alternatives I think uh this was the slide we talked about uh last July uh showed you last we basically have a variety of of ways of addressing different growth approaches and we started out

with uh in the last part of last year talking about what a variety of those approaches are in some of our public Outreach sessions we've now crafted those into to three Alternatives um and again I'll I'll just emphasize that these are just placeholders for a collection of ideas they are organized in sort of a logical fashion to represent some different different approaches that we might entertain or might consider um and it's really just starting point for the conver ation with the community with you with our the Planning Commission um and then to feed into the countywide environmental uh impact analysis that we'll be coordinating with won County on and then the idea is that eventually we select a preferred growth alternative importantly the the preferred alternative doesn't necessarily have to be one of those three uh Alternatives that we've constructed it could likely include elements of of any of them and it could also include ideas that we haven't included yet in the the three kind of prototypes that we've put together so there's a lot of flexibility in that we just need a starting point to move forward with our analysis on and then finally once we do have a preferred alternative the uh the exercise the staff will go through is crafting evaluating our our current growth policies in the comer plan and then crafting new supporting policies that will reinforce that growth strategy over the next 20 years so again uh we have three Alternatives that we've put together for uh

again broad community consideration they all three do a number of things and then they have some ways that they differ uh the ways that they the things that they all have in common is they all continue our focus on and investment in urban Villages we've all again uh put a lot of effort into those the entire Community has over the past 15 years and so that will continue to be a Cornerstone of our infill growth strategy and um we will also uh meet State mandated Housing state state mandated housing and climate legislation and um and then finally uh we'll have make use of an equity lens to balance growth in high opportunity areas and really take a look at how uh different growth strategies might um if there are unintended consequences like displacement how we can mitigate for those those effects and you can see uh thumbnails from two of the guide books that the Department of Commerce provides one is incorporating those important climate elements and then also the uh the methodology and and guidance to address racially dispar impacts and that's um again uh um two things that we will be paying close attention to as we examine the the different growth Alternatives that we have in front of us so finally getting to those Alternatives I'm just going to walk through these uh in order from left to right and again these are containers that are or placeholders that we can talk about growth approaches in but they are not fully baked Alternatives or uh um complete complete con uh Concepts

yet so the uh uh the first one on the left is what we call our Urban Village focus and so that really again continues that emphasis on our current uh Urban villages in Bellingham and then you can see some question marks on the map it it makes allowance for a couple of new what we would call midsized Urban Villages and so think about maybe something on the scale of the fountain District maybe not as intense as what you see downtown or maybe on samish way but something in that kind of a midsize uh mid height profile that you'd see like in the fountain District so some locations for those are indicated on the map there um and then you see uh an emphasis on um areas immediately adjacent to Urban Villages those kind of circular buffers around those those darker pink dots those are areas where we would allow um or encourage incentivize somehow more infill development in close proximity to Urban villages in recognition that those areas already have abundant services and infrastructure and so seeing those as appropriate areas for more infill the uh middle alternative there is what we're kind of labeling as the transit oriented growth approach and um it does again kind of keep those Keystone Urban villages in place it allow uh anticipates a few more potential Urban Village locations importantly all of them are located in those dark purple areas which are the areas that are close to the existing 15minute Transit service or the the WTA go lines um it's not that those lines are

necessarily set in stone over the next 20 years but it's in recognition of that there's that that kind of hand inhand link between land use and Transit and that we would encourage uh higher density urbanization along those Transit corridors both to um again relieve the need for for uh personal vehicle use and also to um provide what that Transit needs to thrive and that's that's uh where people live and where people work so those are the kind of the transit oriented growth approach and then on the third third one over on the right is what we call a complete neighborhoods approach again you'll see the urban Villages located there and then you'll also see some smaller dots spread throughout the city those locations are just random at this point but those are representations of what Elizabeth was talking about about those smaller Commercial Services embedded in the city's neighborhoods we have some good examples in the community or different kind of favorite little markets and corner stores to go to or coffee shops but it would be envisioning more of that happening more organically around the city um so that people would have options to walk to within their own neighborhoods close to home and then you can also see that we've in this option included um an area at the North an area at the South for expanding our Urban growth area boundary we don't know if we would include one or both of those areas in a future land use alternative but when we hand off um some uh alternative ideas

to the county for the environmental impact analysis we want to make sure that we cover our bases for future flexibility for for us when we examine what we want to do as a community and so we're including both of those in at least one of those alternatives to and make sure we've got the the right analysis done to examine traffic impacts and infrastructure needs um across the county so that's kind of a just a highle thumbnail overview of what those all do um we're in the process of trying to determine how much growth each of these does accommodate we do know that just with House Bill 1110 and being able to allow up to four units on most residential lots throughout the city um that that we do have a lot more capacity on paper and we're in the process of just trying to trying to figure out what's a reasonable amount to expect over the next 20 years and then beyond that what else would we be needing in the way of of either infill development expansion of boundaries those kinds of questions so that's really that's most of what we wanted to show you today we'd like to open it up for questions and then just preface it with um the kinds of things that we're we're really wanting to hear from you today are not necessarily a deeper dive down into any of the Weeds on the top ICS we've laid out in front of you but are there any critical things that we haven't mentioned today that are that you have in mind that you'd like us to address in this update those are really important things as

we're getting into these growth alternative discussions if there are issues that are important to you that um that you feel like we need to be addressing now would be a great time to kind of get a a initial mention of those things um and then also just any other uh questions that you'd like us to ask the community because we do have some upcoming engagement opportunities we do have like Elizabeth mentioned the growth alternative survey that we'll be circulating in the community um and we have our ongoing opportunities on our engage Bellingham page so that again is an important piece we'd like to hear from you there too so with that I'll open it up for questions and thank you for sitting through it was a pretty uh intense barrage of slides com my question well first of all um M eron thank you very much for your portion and Chris for yours um I don't even know where to start but maybe I'll start where you ended Chris about things that are missing you're asking about any big things missing I don't think these things are so much missing but I would kind of like them given a higher profile I sent an email earlier today to you Miss Ericson and and Blake it had to do I you said we're at a concept review level right and there are two concepts I think that are important and are getting a great deal of attention at the state level the Department of Commerce has been delving into these uh two issues providing data and background information um they help guide our comp plan everyone's

comp plan those two emerging issues are risk of displacement residential displacement um and Broadband Equity um with regard regard to risk displacement and Broadband Equity there are there are are maps that go down to not quite the census track level but I think close to the census track level um on risk of displacement and with Broadband it's a little different because they have certain Geographic areas really have to do more with um like cell phone coverage and they still don't observe property uh boundaries um those are two key issues that I would like to see addressed I don't know if they're like call out issues on their own I can see them kind of threaded into a couple of topics but I do think that they need to be addressed specifically and directly uh in our policies and therefore in our actions um any uh preliminary reaction from the staff I don't know if you had a chance or already knew about the Department of Commerce uh resources on those two issues we have been um we've been paying close attention to the displacement risk resources that are available and we do have some additional resources um inhouse that we've been using uh mainly using the social vulnerability index that uh is based on the CDC uh model so we've been we've got some good data resources that uh we'll be um bringing those to bear on that question and then also just again that guide book number three from Commerce has a lot of uh good detail on how communities can can examine displacement risk and

quantify it um we have looked at displacement risk map for Bellingham that Commerce provides um at the census track level and I will say that I think you've probably looked at it as well the the high-risk areas in Bellingham are all related to gentrification um as no surprise to anybody we've had you know um all of our uh neighborhoods in Bellingham housing values have gone up significantly in recent years um and so that's just the displacement risk due to generification is is the primary primary piece we'd be looking at and then reflecting on as we look at land Alternatives how do those translate to what what might future home values be in those areas and and are we continuing that pattern and if so what can we do to mitigate that yeah go ahead um so city of Tacoma has an entire um Equity index that they have developed um we have done many Equity measures you yourself personally developed many of our Equity measures um is it time to have a more across theboard approach to equity issues you just referred to a social vulnerability index maybe that's not quite the same thing uh Equity was mentioned several times uh throughout your presentation so we use the word a lot we talked about using an equity lens um do we is there a next level of formality we need to go in Hing uh Equity measures um measure or measures um how are we going to formalize equity in the comp plan um I do I we we do we talk about it internally quite a bit and we do agree that I think it is time for maybe the

city to to explore areas that we can standardize that I know when you um you'll be talking later today about the the tip and there's a a discussion of equity in there and that is utilizing this new social vulnerability index kind of data methodology that will'll be that we're looking at um and so that's an example of of the methodology you'll see it won't be really discussed in detail there but the way that that was examined um is using some of these new data tools that use standard uh Census Data it's very repeated it's it's a not a not a blackbox approach it's one where you can kind of expose what's going on with the different variables um so it's a we feel like it's a good uh maintainable way of looking at Equity over time so those are the kind of things we can bring forward to you in future sessions dig into that a little bit more Anderson thank you um some of you were here for the last comp plan update and some weren't but there was a lot of community involvement regarding selecting the um the medium you know the low medium or high density projection like how many people are going to be living in Bellingham and some people had the um thought process that you know if we project it build it therefore they come and they wanted a lower amount to be looked at in order to um keep Bellingham perhaps a little smaller and there was a a lot of discussion and a lot of passion around what would be selected and I notice in here it it does focus on the county but it looks like it's

the medium projection and I'm just wondering how much leeway um do we have as a city whether we go with the medium projection or something different not saying that we need to but I just want to be prepared that as we get further down the line if is this mandated by the state are they more involved in saying wam county or city of Bellingham you're going to plan for this whereas perhaps 10 years ago it wasn't that way um it's kind of a question and also a bit of a concern because as we get this ball rolling I could see some people concerned about how much housing would be built with the thought process if we didn't plan for it therefore people don't move here which is not the case but um kind of a little bit more information on on um selecting that Medium um goal I I will say that there is a uh um I I we hear you and and there is a process um there have been three meetings so far over the last three quarters with the countywide elected officials those have been um uh called and hosted by the the county executive and they've kind of moved around to different cities Bellingham hosted the last one um in early May and the the conversation at the last one was around that that what what is moving towards that multi- Juris multi-jurisdictional resolution and um it sounds like there is going to be more conversation on that um proba it's a little bit different every time we do it but the idea is that the communities get to weigh in in advance of that resolution and kind of give their

initial uh opinions and desires about how much growth they think their communities may be able to accommodate over the planning period um and again I just want to really emphasize that that that resolution provides the enough for us to move forward with policy work but it's not a binding it's a non-binding resolution so if we get to the end of that and think that hey we need to nudge things up or down a bit to line up better with our own community's needs we we have the flexibility to do that thank you and again I just remember how passionate those meetings were and so just I don't know if that will repeat itself but wanted to be ready for it I my personal thought is regardless if we build it or not they're going to come so it's best to be prepared so that we have housing for people who are here now or who will be moving but um one area of interest for me um is going to be the economic development um where are our jobs and um one of the concerns that I've had is how much industrial land that we have within the city and there's been a few times where the decision was made to transfer industrial over to residential because perhaps the property was a bit encumbered with what lands and stuff and just didn't see um industrial happening and so um the economic development section I I would want to make sure it's pretty robust because as we're I know housing is a a big Focus but if we don't have that economic um especially more the living wage job um it's going to be very difficult

to afford to live here as it is already now um so planning for that how are we going to plan to bring those jobs here whether it's infrastructure land Building recruitment um seeing kind of a plan developed whether it's in here or is going to be something separate as an addendum I think a um Economic Development or a uh a public uh board will be very important in the next 20 years thank you for that yes and we do um the Elizabeth mentioned in the the list that was going through that the economic development chapter is getting some attention just all the chapters are um the the three roles that are described for the city and the current comprehensive plan the second of those roles is is exactly that is inventorying and maintaining an adequate supply of land for economic development so that industrial land Supply certainly falls under that category go ahead and follow up so that kind of follows up a little bit and it's something that I've asked in the past if we ever could get there and I don't know if we'll be able to do that with this comp plan but we have multiple areas that are part of the UG and I've been really wanting a ranking system of that ug before we decide to bring something in what are the what is the cost um um I know we're looking at one particular location now that Council had approved but um the concern is is as things come forward if any pre-work could be done is um if there's an area that could Supply a certain amount of housing but it's also going to be

able to supply increased industrial land or Economic Development how much infrastructure is going to cost the city if we kind of have a loose ranking of what would be most beneficial IAL to meet those goals especially in the economic development side of it um I personally would like to see that because that's going to be my criteria for bringing in um some into the ug is not just the housing but what is our economic Advantage um when it comes to creating jobs in a location um that's going to be vital cquest wow great lead in um Lisa you and I we need to have either a very long coffee or lunch because I've been looking into the industrial land issue I've been in communication with our planning staff Chris and Blake has to do with a um Port Le initiative um with to look at the industrial lands uh which being support at least at a conceptual level by the county executive it's a separate independent countywide review I'm hoping a working group looking on Industrial land Supply there is an industrial land Supply but what that does is much like these population numbers they tell you what's likely to occur if things just go forward which is a different from answering the question of how much do we want how much would be best to have so um I'm hoping that that countywide industrial lands work group can wrap its work up to feed into our own process uh fun fact most of the manufacturing jobs are in Bellingham and wam County you think of these large manufactur facilities and there are

out in the county but numerically it actually adds up there more jobs that are deemed industrial um in Bellingham than anywhere in the rest of the County so I also want to talk about population projections um I think a lot of people understand the population num it's backwards um they're trying to push on a rope which doesn't work instead of pulling on a rope which does work um people who often want higher numbers they think that higher numbers means bigger growth and bigger Prosperity it doesn't it actually means higher taxes and higher fees because we're now planning for big infrastructure and it directly factors into what we charge for impact fees right it's not what they wanted but it's what they think they wanted other people want to keep the population numbers low because they think that means we'll have a small intimate Community the one we know and love just as it is what it really means is you have more traffic problems and pumps breaking down because now you've under planned for infrastructure we have to realize that the population numbers are not about growing or shrinking our community they're about infrastructure planning that's directly what it does it drives our infrastructure planning and when we're doing infrastructure planning I have preferences about how much growth I want to see but on infrastructure planning I think we should do what's most prudent and so I'm sticking personally my preference is for the medium number the lowrisk number for infrastructure

but keep in mind the low risk number for infrastructure is not the same question as how do we want the community to grow what do want the quality of life and the housing and the affordability that's a separate question so I kind of don't want to get stuck in the debate last time on population numbers and instead pivot to these growth Alternatives and um qualitative aspects of how we want to grow rather than argue the quantitative aspects which as I say they're really about infrastructure planning and I think there's already a prudent course on that that's not a question but I do had a question about the land Capacity Analysis which is that uh the official land Capacity Analysis document that I saw the countywide document was 2022 what happens to our land Capacity Analysis now given the changes in state law where suddenly there might be four times as many many units available on most if not all residential well many residential lots it kind of seems like they've blown up the land Capacity Analysis and they've created this capacity for these large numbers that are not nearly as likely to be achieved as the old numbers were likely to be achieved under the old analysis how can we do a land Capacity Analysis under this new regime that will be in effect by the time we adopt these numbers are we going to have to redo that or we already redoing that land Capacity Analysis we U should you want me to take a minute and just give you a quick I'll give you the quick thumbnail version um

one we are in the midst of that exercise we took the the buildable lands analysis from several years ago which you're right did not incorporate any of the new state housing legislation we've been rolling that forward with the last couple years worth of building permits that have been approved so we have a good Baseline to start with um and then we are the only city in the county that needs to plan for House Bill 1110 so it's kind of a unique thing for Bellingham the other cities don't need to be doing that exercise so we're on kind of our own rail at that point um we have the uh the vacant land component or or partially developed land component is the same as before and we count development on that the the tricky part is all of those existing developed residential lots that now have some amount of additional capacity and so we're looking at at a lot of different things that we have mapped out um how many of those are on a fully serviced alley have access to utilities of a certain size what's the canopy cover like on those property so as many kind of pieces as we can pull together to to basically say which are the ones that kind of tick all the boxes where they might have greater opportunity versus which ones might present more challenges for property owners to accommodate additional units all all understanding that the law says they have this right outright they can do four outright and in some cases up to six um but we're doing our best to from kind of a data driven exercise

to come up with what's a reasonable guess and how many do we think might get built in the next 20 years that we would count towards our land capacity um we don't have a number yet but that's that's the exercise we're going through is trying to figure out what's a reasonable number um to assume across the city and all our different neighborhoods and the different property configurations we find in all of those areas I think it's also important to note that there are a couple realistic elements that we'd have to factor into that analysis as well right now is interest rates are still relatively high and so access to money becomes challenging so that would likely lead us to kind of a slower implementation piece of it the other part that's probably very relevant is the building code and discussions that are happening around the building codes and the need to address the IRC which is the international residential code being one and two family and the IBC being there and above um when you trigger the IBC it adds a lot more cost and and criteria to those and so one of the things that the state is looking at is ways to address those that distinction between those two codes and accommodate more of the middle housing component uh in a in a slightly more efficient and effective manner because right now once you hit three you trigger that the IBC and that may be a cost barrier to some so once we get that figured out in this in the building code and the fire code criteria that may open up

some capacity as well in years to come so Council M Anderson great thank you um since it does say provide Direction um I don't know I might be the lone voice in this opinion but what I'm hoping to see um when it comes to the draft um growth Alternatives I'm a big supporter of the urban Villages I don't think that's a secret I live very close to samish way and have been very involved since the visioning process of that um I would like to see primarily the urban Villages really focus on with the expansion um identifying a few other areas that could be beneficial of it um and if anyone in planning is not familiar with that I highly encourage you to go back and look at um the Ellis Street solution that the York neighborhood um when we uh designed our neighborhood plan um that was kind of a weird uh designation and so what we we really wanted to preserve the old housing stock but also because it's a transportation Corridor due adaptive reuse so all of those buildings along Ellis could have businesses in them um but we were able to select what businesses would be appropriate and which ones would not because you don't have large delivery um Bays that you could bring big trucks in so I would like to see a uh along our transportation areas um especially that cut through neighborhood areas be able to look at those High Transportation corridors where there could be an Adaptive reuse of the buildings for small businesses and then do the analysis of the locations around the city that are

not in close walking distance to those Transportation corridors where there services or close to an urban village where we could then do the small um complete neighborhoods but then have a very defined list of you know if it's going to be embedded within a neighborhood say you know somewhere in Columbia neighborhood what type of business and have that list of what would be appropriate um we definitely wouldn't necessarily want um certain businesses to be allowed um you know maybe we don't have a marijuana dispensary in the middle of Colombia but we might be able to have Cafe and tax and you know live work unit type um businesses that um help fill that that need for PE people to be able to walk and um have a primary service so it's not on this M but if I had my say that's the direction I would be going for the questions all right I and I want to just be mindful of the time here but Council M Stone and counc mquest and I'm going to take a turn after that I know that your question was about new things but um I just wanted to highlight that so that complete neighborhoods approach to me what I was calling was sort of you know Urban Village light but the idea that thinking about how we have transition since the pandemic and people are reenvisioning how they right work and and live and so I think it would be really meaningful to be able to look at how neighborhoods can yeah support a balance of right commercial and residential and also speaking to the point about you know House Bill

1110 and looking at how do we incentivize to that missing middle and really that development within the neighborhoods um and just seeing a I don't want to say a lack of interest but lack of need maybe in some respects for large retail right spaces that you might see more in the Urban Village hubs so I actually I on the other side of yeah that continum just thinking that I don't know to me that's the most um most intriguing of those growth options and I guess the question for me is with respect to the non-binding um multi- right jurisdictional um resolution is the not just for clarification so the non-binding piece is with respect to the fact that right now these are projected targets and recommendations but not requirements right or is the is the nonbinding piece of that something else that even when we have those targets while if it does become require a requirement right if the state change said this is the Mandate for us as a community to to accommodate this growth is it still non-binding in some some way that negotiation with the small cities and the county about how we're collectively going to accommodate that growth because I'm just thinking about the right yeah the meetings we've had feel like are going in a particular direction and how do we look more broadly and cohesively with the small cities and County about about that growth and if there are any new new creative ways right to look at this that helps to reduce the the tensions and really hope yeah the hope is to

bring us all to the table collectively to to look at this because right now I feel like we're gearing up for a standoff right I can give you just a really brief just I know you're short on time but those uh the non-binding component is basically the the jurisdictions can again Flex their numbers a little bit the Count's the ultimate Authority and they're the ones that that decide what the countywide number will be um so we get to weigh in on that process as a community as do all the other communities the guard rails we need to stay within are those ofm low and high numbers so as long as we're within those numbers and can show our work as a community we're compliant with what Department of Commerce requires it's just again working collaboratively with the other cities and with Waton County to come up with a number that we all agree is is reasonable and that as a region we think we can accommodate successfully C little question H just a brief comment I I try not to use the word targets because we're not actually aiming to hit them we're 50 units short this year no consequences what there really are is the expected result we have to plan ahead for um if if the number goes higher or lower we don't miss our Target um we just want to make sure have the infrastructure for them I have a question about design standards and I'm going to shift that into form-based approach to U zoning um as you indicated or suggested we have design review for commercial buildings for large residential

buildings we have design review for infill or design guidelines for infill housing we have uh design guidelines for urban Villages uh we have no design standards for single family traditional homes but those are now sort of poof or gone because I mean in terms of building code there's still a thing but in terms of zoning where you have four units by right it seems like form is now even more important to consider um will in this next update we be making significant steps towards what's often called form-based zoning at least within residential areas are we going to be adopting a hybrid form-based approach as a result of this comp plan because we're including design considerations more that that's certainly something that's on the table for discussion but let me take a step back and provide a little context and maybe some clarity um under the new state laws the the middle housing cannot be any more restrictive than your single family as you rightly pointed out we don't have anything currently it doesn't mean you can't it also there's another portion of state law that says that when you do design review it has to be administrative only meaning staff-driven and not subject to a design review board or some other additional process so if we can hit both of those where one's not more restrictive than the other and it's administrative and you're taking out the subjectivity and dealing with just objective standards then we have the ability to do that and part of what we're looking at

uh internally from the staff perspective is what are those defining features that um drive that discussion and get us to those housing forms that we want and what's the best way to do that and certainly the form-based code approach is one that is an option for consideration we have a fairly complex zoning code as it exists right now now uh the idea to to just absolve us of that entirely uh within the six-month time frame to do that is a pretty significant ask but we're going to look at it we're going to look at trying to figure out whether or not we can use uh components of that you and I have had a conversation about um the smart code which is kind of a uniform U open- sourced form-based code if you will there's a variety of different ways to address those as well uh and so that's part of the discussion that we're going to have and part of of what we're hoping to hear from the community at tomorrow night's events and the future events as to how we can address some of those opportunities so to be clear I mean I'm not talking about a whole rewrite to a form-based code I'm really talking about a hybrid approach where we use form-based approaches within the residential zones because now we're supposed to be less concerned um about uni count less concerned about who's related to whom but we need to be still concerned about whether or not it fits in the neighborhood and I don't mean like fits in terms of like character I mean in terms of architectural issues that have to do with

impacts on your neighbor scale form typology yes absolutely I'm going to take a turn real quick here um so I have two items one is um uh regarding Urban Villages also a fan um 4% of our land mass supposed to be up to um you know a third of our growth The Missing Link is the north end of town Cordata has no third space for people other than our Parks which are wonderful but I'm I'm talking an indoor space that can be used you know the the whole year round coffee shops breweries whatever the the case may be um so I would um love to see a plan for how we will be developing Urban villages in the Cordata area um and may perhaps other uh parts of North Bellingham I was just looking at a map here um King Mountain area we did a purchase um of some land over there for residential and perhaps a park that that area is going to be growing and continues to grow we're putting in a new roundabout uh at James and Baker view so there's significant infrastructure development there so would love to see that and then I don't know where this fits but um the mayor and Council mmer Stone and I were just down in tqu uh earlier this week and we it was pointed out to us that there's a there's a piece of public property that's associated with their Justice centers their Justice Center is the police department and their courts it's a wonderful new building that was built a few years ago and they project Wi-Fi out uh into this common area where sometimes it'll be like popup food trucks and kind of a

community center for people and they have seating their permanent seating and um and the Wi-Fi extends down the street to the high school and if you've ever travel in cities in Europe you'll you'll know that um City centers will of often have free Wi-Fi access for people who are just traveling through or Vis visiting the the city center and what I'd love to see and like I said I know if it fits here or not but um what I'd love to see is free Wi-Fi accessibility for our Urban Villages and our downtown core to help attract people to come to those areas if we're truly trying to um uh engender a uh sense of place when it comes to those Urban Villages I think that adding that amenity would be uh would speak to equity decisions for for folks that can't afford it um and also just um I think attract people to to come to those places further discussion go ahead I I'll note just really quickly we do provide free Wi-Fi in all city public buildings right now so we can certainly build off of that but I I just think it makes sense I I I I think the the the cost of doing that would would be worth the benefit to the public um as an amenity I think that we should be that kind of forward leaning City uh further discussion okay well we might actually get out of here a little bit early um we are uh we we are slated for an executive session is there anything else from from planning then I'm sorry yeah know I'm I'll get to that in a second but anything else from planning related to this item I

think that's all we had for our update today but we really appreciate your comments and again we're going into a kind of a busy season for policy development so this is helpful to get the feedback yeah thanks for coming today and definitely appreciate that's very comprehensive presentation okay we'll move along um old and new business Cil any any old new okay wow all right government operating ahead of schedule uh it's 3:26 we're going to go into executive session we have three items this afternoon they are all potentially property uh potential property acquisition two are with Mariner for 5 minutes each and one is with stams for 5 minutes and so that is uh 15 minutes total so I'll be back at 3 45 to to close us out recess us until the evening all right and we're in