Planning Commission

here Russ Whidby here Mike eses here Scott Jones here Rose leop here Jed Belo is absent and we had one set of minutes from May 16th of this year uh it was a work session uh they were sent out over email any notes clarifications objections to approving the minutes that were sent out not seeing anyone objecting or raising their hand so we'll consider the May 16th minutes approved um tonight's meeting we are continuing a work session discussion on the Bellingham plan uh and growth strategies um we also have an item for discussion a change to the planning commission's bylaws we are considering or probably moving our start time from 7:00 p.m.

um but so we'll discuss that at the end of the meeting I we're g I guess we have to introduce it and then we'll vote on it at another meeting so we won't vote on it tonight but that is coming um but before we dive into the work session uh we like to do public comment at the start of every meeting so if anyone at home or here in the audience would like to come down we'll do three minutes uh so we'll start in person if you want to come on down to the mic say your name do the drill and then if you're at home on Zoom go ahead and raise your hand we'll get to you in a minute and um can you double check the mic for me the microphone testing I think that sounds good thank you [Music] I did bring some slides with me fortunately one of them is slide 22 so that works really well uh this is locked so I'll foro that but good evening my name is Carrie Burnside Silver Beach neighborhood association president and an organizer with the Billingham Tenants Union longtime resident grew up in Bellingham and this evening um I don't know if I said good evening uh Commissioners that's nice to see a Community member here too and and staff I am here this evening to express my concerns about the Urgent housing crisis in Bellingham specifically the lack of affordable housing for individuals making 0 to 50% of the area median income according to the most recent data from wcom County Health Department this is the slide that you're seeing up there 51 56.1% of rent renter occupied households in wcom County

were were cost burden in 20 2021 2022 meaning they pay more than 30 30% of their income on housing given the rents that have have continued to rise it's reasonable to assume that this figure is even higher today for those of you that caught the story on King five this issue has been exaggerated exacerbated by the alarming poverty rate in Bellingham which rose 54% last year according to the recent census data currently 22% of residents live in poverty this is more than doubled the state poverty rate and nearly double the national poverty rate this crisis is putting enormous strain on our community driving more people into homelessness and further widening the economic inequity I'm also concerned or have some questions about the comprehensive plan itself it was identified that input from renters uh those it Spanish-speaking individuals and low income residents were insufficient uh during the survey process they these are precisely the groups of people impacted by our housing crisis and their voices must be the center of any solutions we propose the most vulnerable they are the most vulnerable to displacement and homelessness and deserve a real seat at the table when shaping the future of housing in Bellingham I'm urging the Planning Commission to prioritize affordable housing for individuals making 0 to 50% Ami within the comprehensive plan ideally it includes strategies such as support for non-market housing options like co-ops and policies that protect against displacement

I've also emailed all of you along our list of suggestions Bellingham must take bold steps now to ensure housing stability for all all of the residents thank you for your time and consideration thank you and the other slide just showed the poverty Graphics thank you uh any uh people on Zoom at home with their hands up no okay not mandatory uh thanks for coming uh okay not seeing any other public comment hands we'll go ahead and close the public comment so I'll turn over to Chris and sta for the slides great thank you me just get back to the beginning here good evening Commissioners uh so as Mike indicated tonight's a continuation of um General discussion of growth issues um as we move forward and and kind of keep introducing you to the different pieces of of the plan that we're working on um tonight I kind of revisit some of those pieces that are more specific to the land use map or the draft land use map at this point and how that Keys into the different ways that that we're looking at accommodating the growth uh projection that we've received from Washington State uh and in particular the housing component of that and um we'll also uh touch on uh some document format changes kind of give you a an idea for what the look and feel of the new plan will be because we are making some pretty significant changes to the format of the document and uh just so you're familiar with that and then um uh and also the housing inventory which we've talked about a number of times uh in front

of you and and at the last meeting again you get uh a couple of you expressed interest in seeing some of those numbers and it's a really good Baseline to touch on uh every few years with you just so you have a good understanding kind of what our housing stock is and how things like the infill toolkit are influencing the different mix of housing in our community um and other kinds of things related to that so we'll step through those and then like I said at the end just uh kind of see if we get head knots related to the uh to the bylaws uh meeting time change so uh first just addressing the the goals for the changes to the the actual physical layout of the plan um we had some some things that our our staff uh wanted to achieve and that we've certainly heard from the community um over you know the last uh couple of planning Cycles different different plans that we've been working under and that was that we really wanted to have a very clear expression of the Community Vision and growth strategy um part of that is is uh accomplished by just shortening the document a bit making it a little bit more efficient just easier to find what those really kind of higher level uh Vision pieces are uh reducing the uh the duplication between uh the roles of the and clarifying the roles of the Bellingham plan which is kind of the umbrella policy piece and then also uh the action plans uh examples of which would be like the the uh six-year tip the transportation Improvement plan the bicycle and

pedestrian Master plans our utility plans um that live under that document and are adopted by reference and provide all those kind of implementation details um so kind of providing a little bit more separation between those um so that the roles of those documents are a little bit more clear and along with that emphasizing that in the comprehensive plan or the Bellingham plan that's really the the big big picture why statements for the community why things are important why we're going to do something and then the How We Do It details are really in those action plans and really just kind of separating those out making sure that it's very clear what's going on there um and and one of the important reasons we want to do that is those action plans are more kind of nimble and dynamic and can respond to changing conditions in the community if it's an environmental plan it might be like best available science evolves on a particular topic um some of the ones that are more related to to land use issues um might treat just different development standards a particular way and so what we want to get to is that so that we can amend those documents more fre frequently and more easily to keep up with changing Trends in the community and not have to revisit the overall community plan every time we do that so just kind of keeping those things in in the proper lane so that they work efficiently together and reinforce each other and then finally just within the plan itself um we have many

examples between like the land use chapter and the housing chapter or the Environ chapter and um maybe the I'm trying to think what what other ones we have but between different chapters you'll have policies that will be almost word for word duplicated because they do fire in multiple areas they address different topics um and what we're aiming for is instead of duplicating those word for word we I'll show you examples of how we're talking about doing that we would link them um have the policy live in one particular place and then be referenced in others so just again kind of trying to make it a more effic document so those are some of the overall goals this is just an example of um I think this this is the transportation chapter in the current comprehensive plan and uh just illustrating kind of the the general uh length of a typical chapter right now the the plan is 360 some pages and um it's it's quite a weighty document to get through it's not something that's super accessible for just a a member of the public or a person in another agency to pick up and cons assume quickly and understand readily um this chapter's 40 some pages and the uh just to highlight kind of the two main pieces there's the first part which is kind of the narrative mixed in with goals and policies goals and policies are highlighted here in green just to kind of call attention to where they're at um and then the the last part uh the last two-thirds of the chapter are all um related to implementing

action plans so bicycle and pedestrian plans the the transportation um concurrency methodology and a variety of things that kind of live in um live in other parts of City documents and are are are discussed at length in this chapter which is is um not a bad thing to have that in there but it's it's duplicative and it provides a lot more for people to sift through and try and sort out when they're reading this document we're trying to make the plan to really truly live as a vision document so to make this first part the part that people focus on and and even shorten that up um to make it just really really obvious and clear what Bellingham is about with regard in this case to Transportation um or any of the other topics which which parts that get edited in between Cycles like when we update the bicycle master plan does it get edited here and replaced or is that something we wait until the cycle to do no it it so that's a a good point like like last year you made some changes to the uh adopted or recommended some changes and then Council uh adopted those changes to the uh Park Recreation and open space or the Pro Plan and those changes do get propagated through to the document that we we have online and then we'll you know when we get a request for printing a hard copy we'll incorporate that as well so those those annual docket changes do get Incorporated in um we generally don't do large scale format changes those are more just you know again they're typically just like yeah

we've updated a goal policy added something new or updated something with might might change a chart or a map here or there um so yeah so that changes takes place in the action plan the second half you've highlighted so so in the case of like like The Pedestrian master plan and the bike master plan we just updated um those have been um adopted at the council level uh there was a resolution adopting each of those in individually and uh this material now in the transportation chapter is not in sync with that anymore so so that's an instance of where it's it's um those plans haven't been the material that was pulled out of the old copies and print into the comp plan has is kind of living in this limbo it's it doesn't match what's in the newly adopted plan so again just another reason to kind of keep things because different action plans are on different update Cycles um to kind of keep them again separate and keep their roles a little more clear so our our Bellingham plan team did some sifting and combing through a variety of uh plans examples from other cities and found a lot of different ones that do different things better or or uh differently than we do and one in particular that really resonated with our team was the Denver uh comprehensive plan city of Denver in Colorado and this is just an example of the kind of three-page spread it's actually six pages but it's in landscape format so it looks like three big pages that represents their transportation chapter um and again

not not trying to say we need to have the same Transportation goals and policies that another city does but just looking at the layout um I want to just kind of show you the things that we felt could be um things that we could incorporate into our layout for the Bellingham plan one is it's it's obviously very graphically driven just kind of visually engaging for the reader um and also that there are some clear on on the the front page there are some clear purpose vision and context statements that kind of say here's what we're about around the topic of Transportation as a community and putting some like you said those kind of high Lev like this is how we we uh what we hope to achieve in this planning period on these topics and some things that are important uh to us and it's it's fairly concise and they're they're kind of grabing you know like not not sound bites necessarily but things that really quickly kind of give you okay these are what the priorities are hey Chris um for for the stuff that you're pulling out not pulling out but would add in right because they're in other plans I'm I'm thinking about when people are utilizing the comprehensive plan to support um different actions that they're bringing forward and will it reference those other like will the will the comprehensive plan said see the transportation plan to find these prudent rules and like what what we've been proposing as actions yeah I I guess I'm sorry I'm not making myself no no I understand what you're

saying I think I can I think I can answer your question so um there's there are um I mean there are examples for instance when a a a development project is being reviewed we staff will reference um particular goals and policies in different parts of the comprehensive plan to say okay is it in alignment with our transportation goals our land use goals our housing goals whatever the the different pieces might be um and they'll look for like supporting language or if we're applying for Grant funds or something like that we might key in on certain ones where it's like this is a priority for Bellingham here's where we express that priority and then we would be more competitive for those funds if they're like say state or federal funds um those kinds of things what what we've done is we've got a a tracking sheet with every literally every goal and policy and there's I don't know 400 or so of them in the in the document in the 2016 plan and we have um identified what where we think the most appropriate home in the document is for that goal and policy and some of them we've reordered and regrouped um into a little bit more logical structure and then if there're ones that we feel like hey that's really already expressed in an action plan we point to that and so those are the things where in the document we will have references and and I'll I'll point it out in just a second here there's places for active links to those supporting documents so that we'll have a way of if there's a you

know a particular piece that staff have said hey this is an important piece for us when we're reviewing this kind of a project um we we made sure and and that's part of our interactive conversation with staff and different departments is we want to make sure we preserve those links and relationships so that we can still support those kinds of activities that the comp plan has been a very valuable resource for in the past um and that we can make it even maybe a little bit more interconnected for people who maybe are discovering new ways to use it in support of kind of City priorities so so there is that that um attention to the connections and the details that's great so when people are trying to support a development plan or whatever the the proposed action is they can also refer to the transportation plan as a way to support that yes so so that's that's an important piece is that all of the um the like the multimodal plans the um uh consolidated plan the um the climate action plan when we have the new climate chapter in the document all of those pieces and even the util utility plans and and the the tip to the extent that that um it would be relevant you know whatever the whatever the uh piece the development that's being reviewed is um those action plans are adopted by reference under the comp plan so they're technically under that same umbrella they they're part of our CommunityWide plan they're just not in the um they're that next level down it's again it's that how we do

it detail kind of stuff um so it's it's it's all part of the CommunityWide plan it's just not part of the the highle goal piece okay so this is kind of looking at what the just one of the like not the front page but maybe one of the inside pages of a t typical chapter would be and you'll notice that um whereas on the the example from our current plan we had uh maybe a half a dozen pages with different pieces of narrative on it this is kind of like boiling it down to let's see if we can say it in one paragraph kind of the big picture ideas and main main goals of this plan or the The Narrative piece um and then these are the uh goals here shown in in a different colored typ pace and then the supporting policies for each of those goals just listed underneath and then this this is important the on the right side and it could be on whatever side we decide for the layout but the idea is that on that page with the goals and policies are links to supporting documents and those would be for instance those action plans this is where they live we have a direct link to it if you're looking at this electronically which 90 plus% of our users are looking at it that way you would link directly to whatever the current plan is and you would be right into that narrative for that document this could also have other things that aren't action plans it could be supporting like uh story maps and dashboards that have whatever the current statistics are that would be of interest to that it might be

links to Department of Commerce resources things at the state level um all those kinds of things could be resource links in this kind of a a scrolling list of things on the right side here but again it's all topically related to that chapter and then for things that are more either more complicated Concepts or things that just deserve a little bit more weight we take certain Concepts and instead of explaining them in a narrative paragraph or a full page we would want to take the time to develop infographics that really kind of help the the lay reader kind of really understand how complex topics relate and what the tie ties you know are between kind of the technical piece and the the goal and policy piece um and that could be things you know if we're looking at Transportation it could be things related to parking or it could be related to multimodal mode shift or whatever it might be but we would have um kind of a more a more graphically rich and a little bit more uh easy to consume sort of a a document that way to get those Concepts across instead of having people rely on you know going through paragraph after paragraph with text we'd kind of try and make it a little bit more easy for people to kind of understand what the story is that we're trying to tell just um again getting kind of just nerding out on the document format itself these are landscape format which aligns with the way most people's uh screen devices are these days whether it's a desktop computer with a WID

screen or a typical phone kind of held in landscape format and then um and it also preserves that page format so you can print it still at a letter sized kind of paper paper format and you'd have that Center Clear area for the binding and so those are all just kind of you don't really notice it right away when you're looking at it just on screen but we've the the format would leave those areas clear so you'd have the option of printing paper copies if you wanted to and so the links between chapters these are this is getting at that kind of eliminating duplication of policies that are listed currently in maybe two or three or more chapters and so we would find again um just make the Judgment call and that would be some of the things we would relay back to you as a body to kind of say hey did we make do we put this in the right spot do you guys maybe feel it should live somewhere else we'll we'll come back to you with some of those questions um but the ideaas we would find what we feel is the most appropriate home for that policy and then we would have icons that we're developing and we'll have an icon for each chapter that would then say yeah this is in the land use chapter but it also is very important for um and and helps us achieve some of our CLI CL action goals it's also a housing related policy and maybe you know could be Transportation as well and so it would it would provide those links to those other places and in those policy areas and those other chapters it would

reference also there' be an icon that would Point people back to hey here's there's a policy in the land use chapter that really deals with this and so again it's all it's all kind of cross-connected but we only have it really written out in one spot and that kind of again just condensing the content and getting that you know trying to reduce that page count um the example given here is the transportation mode shift uh policies and and those are probably most appropriate in the transportation chapter um but obviously there's a link to the um the greenhouse gas uh reduction uh goal that we would have in our climate chapter and also um in the land use chapter uh supporting trans and oriented development would be another logical place to link that so just again examples like that are where we're trying to eliminate duplication but also preserve those links between the the relevant pieces and then finally this is another example from the Denver the Denver plan and this is just again this is their goal and policy scheme that they come up with and their their kind of colors and things but just imagine we would have a page in the Bellingham plan that would have our main chapter elements and it would have the list of the goals for each of those in a in a one-page spread that could be kind of a um you know this could be be something that could hang in conference rooms for reference it could be something that that most people would be familiar with and the idea is that we're trying to

provide again just kind of a quote there um trying to provide as many ways for new and also seasoned users to kind of understand how to navigate the plan at a at a glance and also kind of see the major themes without really having to go through hundreds of pages of text to grasp that that we would have some of these relatively easy to access and consume resources in the document probably this would be something that will live like right up front in the introduction where it's just like hey here's kind of the big picture vision for our community that that you know for this periodic update this is what we've come up with as a community and what we really want to focus on over the next planning period um so that's again just kind of trying to um replicate what some other communities have done to kind of really streamline things and make it it very um obvious what we're about and what what we feel is important as a community this um reminds me of the goals and Legacies um and I don't know if we use those anymore or not but it it has a the same yeah it kind of hearkens back to that idea and those are those are still referenced periodically but it's kind of a I guess it's it's kind of revisiting that idea of hey let's put everything in a single list um not not that there aren't things that would be you know there's important details that wouldn't make it onto that page but just the Big Ideas let's let's put the Big Ideas there so that someone could get a sense of you know it's it's

the the elevator speech for Bellingham basically um that we would have okay so that so again just this is the in the intent here is to kind of show you what we're contemplating um we are working with our U uh Mig which is our consultant that's helping us with a variety of communications pieces and they're developing a template for us to start with on this and so that would be something where when we start to bring pieces of this back to you you'd probably see um we're going to we're going to have one chapter that we'll just prototyp Tye and bring back to you and say like here's kind of how this how this looks and feels and get a sense of level of detail how we've moved things around and how things are still connected okay so Switching gears to the housing inventory again this is something that we've talked about periodically um and uh it's something that I think is is probably a really relevant piece to run through with you um to give you a sense of kind of what our housing stock is and then some related related information to just um um talk about vacancy rates and a few other things that are kind of related to the housing in our community this is all information that we maintain um in a variety of places we get some of this from the county assessor's office there's a a lot of it that comes from our our building permit data as we approve and finish um housing units in the community and then um there's other information that we pull in from a few other sources but it all

lives in our our G GIS the geographic information system and so we use it on a daily basis in our department and across other departments so this is just kind of a a roll up of that and showing you what some of it what some of the bigger um slices of the data look like this is a just the overview map I'll zoom in on it here in a couple of slides but looking at the pie chart there that's the distribution of the all the housing that's in the city um at this point you can see there's uh the big yellow slice and the big orange slice um the yellow Slice on the right there is all of the single family detached units in the community and you can see that's just uh just under 40% and then a very similar size slice that's the multif family projects that are seven or more units and then um you've heard us talk a lot about middle scale housing um that all is the the kind of housing for instance that the infill toolkit is designed to um uh for projects that are in that kind of middle scale housing and we've also historically had uh a variety of middle scale housing uh duplexes and fourplexes and smaller apartment buildings that are in our community from for for decades um so that's that's the a slice that kind of lives in between these two you can see it's about 12% um so not nearly as much as the single detached or the larger multi-unit but it's it's a it's a growing piece of the pie and then um we have the purple slice here 2% of our housing is the the homes in the manufactured home

parks and um we have uh right around 900 of those in the city so that's that 2% slice uh we don't have that many adus yet somewhere between 3 and 400 but it's just under 1% and then group housing or group quarters and those those are a variety of different things uh the the largest piece of that would be the oncampus housing uh college dormitories at Western and then just a a we have uh one college dormatory building at watom Community College um Cedar Hall and uh and then the other piece would be um the uh uh jail Falls in that group quarters category for the long-term jail population and then the other big one are things like the memory care facilities and other Supportive Housing um that's related more to the the health care uh needs of different members of our community and I think Memory Care is probably the largest one that we have um we have facilities out in Cordata and along Baker viiew and a few other places around town that are um are uh long-term housing uh for people with with those needs so those are kind of the the bigger slices that you see and then I'll zoom in here and you can see the Distribution on the map so you see a lot of yellow you can see the throughout all the different neighborhoods and those are all those single family units these uh dots that appear on a lot of those yellow uh those yellow lots are the accessory dwelling units and you could see that some neighborhoods have more some less and then um the orange larger blocks here are those larger

multif family apartment buildings uh and the prop the properties that those are on you can see the purple are the manufactured housing Parks um and then we have some individual Lots with manufactured homes on them and then the blue are those uh those uh this does is doesn't have the uh Western's campuses off the south end here but um these are some of the memory care and other kinds of convalescent care facilities that are those group quarters and then you see um the green showing up inp in different neighborhoods and those are those middle housing forms those two to six unit housing forms and also single family attached Falls in that category so those would be like your town homes for instance this is kind of looking at the middle part of the city you can see the oratory buildings on Western's campus showing up here and then more of the like the manufactured housing parks and then downtown you get the uh predominantly the multif family housing forms whether they're apartments or condos and then the south end of town again with the again a mix um Happy Valley in particular has a a really diverse housing uh portfolio there with a variety of manufactured housing multif family some middle housing and then single family this is a uh table that rolls up a lot of those numbers um you could probably just make it out um and the uh again there's the single detach at the top here with the total number of units and then the percent of the overall uh that percent of that 46,000 number

that that represents and then here you can see within the middle scale housing those green uh that green category you could see that there's a variety of things um a single family attached in town homes and then two through six unit formats and then again the multi-unit um and we've got these kind of broken out by 7 to 19 20 to 49 and then 50 and more um and you can see that um it's pretty evenly distributed for the multif family through those we have uh about half of the total multi multif family uh stock is in these larger larger uh properties with 50 or more units and then the other half is kind of split between the 7 to 19 or 20 to 49 unit you can see the adus down here 365 of those at this point and then the manufactured housing and we broken the manufactured housing out um we've got the the individual home homes that are located on individual properties that are not manufactured home parks and then we broken out the ones that are um resident-owned communities because we we now have two of those James Street Estates and then also the sish court Park uh which became uh resident owned last year and then the um and then the ones that are in the parks that are the investor-owned parks you could see those separated out one thing we also added to this which is it's not something we maintain on a regular basis but we used our rental registration data to split out what the percent of owner versus renter is in each of these categories um and so I'll just kind of run down those

real quick you can see for the single family detached housing um it's about 20% renter and then 80% owner occupied and then looking over the uh the um variety of other kind of middle housing forms um you could see it it kind of varies by housing type um the uh single family attached which again the town home is the dominant one there is about 70% uh owner occupied and about 30% renter and then you can see kind of what the numbers are for the other categories the other ones the duplex through sixplex tend to have a larger percentage of renter occupancy as opposed to owner occupancy and then for the 7 plus multi-unit ones um the owner occupied ones in those cases would would predominantly be the condominium uh buildings that we have in town you could see we don't have as many of those uh most we have uh quite a few more that are renter occupied than owner occupied so more Apartments than condominiums in those larger buildings and then again with the manufactured housing um the uh the units that are in the Parks uh they they're renting their spaces um but they own their homes you can see that there are about 12% where those homes are actually rented as well um some of those are owned by other people in those parks and some are owned by just other people that live outside of them and then the accessory dwelling inits you can see it looks like it's right around a 6040 split uh just under 40% are owner occupied and 61% are are registered as rentals and then um and then the group

quarters um it's those are all um that's not really necessarily it's it's kind of a rental but it's more just like it's a either a student who's paying their their uh housing fees to the university or it's um or it's someone who's in a care facility and you know it's a a you could think of it as a rental but it's a an insurance payment typically that's paying for that overall you can see that the the 10e split where um just over 40% owner occupied in and about 56% um uh renter occupancy for all housing in Bellingham so we've we' have that um we've been slightly tipped slightly on the side of renter occupancy for um more than 10 years that's that's kind of been a long-term Trend we we kind of tipped that in the the early 2000s and then it's been pretty consistent around somewhere in the mid-50s for rent or occupancy um Citywide couple other things I wanted to call your attention to were the the land consumption pieces if I go back to these Maps you'll notice that you know the the predominant thing you notice is all the yellow on the map and so um and then looking at the the unit counts um it's striking that you don't see that much orange on the map but that is nearly half of our housing stock is that orange color and this these are the numbers that are related to that um these are the the total Acres developed um for that housing so it's not total acres in those zones it's just the Acres of the properties that actually have a home on them today the ones that are developed for

housing you can see it's uh just under 5,000 acres for the residential single um and then about seven just over 700 Acres um developed for those residential multi and I'm I'm going to ignore the other categories at this point just point out between the yellow and the orange um and you can see that the um percentage of the total acreage of the of um all all land developed for housing um so out of out of all of these types that the residential single accounts for 77% of all of that land and the residential multi is about 11% and then these are the average densities that those housing that the housing in those categories is developed at you can see that the average for residential single detached are average developed density in the city looking at all those lots is just under four units per acre and for the residential multi it's um just under 26 units per acre was kind of our average for the the whole city and then you can see the middle housing is is very much just right in the middle between those two about 11 units per acre on average couple other things related to our housing inventory uh we talk frequently about the infill toolkit which is our our middle hous in uh development code and um this is from 2009 forward so since that code was adopted um we've had a total of just under 700 total units that have been either either completed issued or in or in consideration right now in the pering process um you could see about 371 have been completed and then uh just about that

many again that are that are under um either under construction or in the application or pre-application phase and again of those you can see you can't really read these numbers here but um 80% of that total are town homes that's by far the most popular form of of uh housing style that's been applied for through the since we've had the infill toolkit on our in our development code um and of those Town Homes about uh 70% of those end up being built on individual lots that could be for sale um so that's that's just the thing we kind of track is how many are how many are built on you get multiple town homes on a single lot which qualifies kind of as a multif family form and then how many are an individual town home and it might be in a connected row of town homes but it's on its own fee lot that could be sold and then you could see the distribu the the map here highlights the different zones that that development code is currently allowed in um and I'd point out that there's there's a lot of them in uh the kind of central older neighborhoods of the city we got a few a few projects of note around the outer edges uh and then the single largest one is just North of Costco um the development along mahogany Road north of Arctic Avenue out there um and that's the the Aurora Court development which is 300 I think 330 Town Homes um eventually when when that project is finished um and then there's like I think 100 multif family units out there but it's over 300 town homes on their own

lots that are part of that project so that's our that's our single biggest uh project within that infill toolkit to date Chris do you have a sense of how many of those infill toolkit projects are like truly infill versus more of the Greenfield like that Costco project is like new development space yeah it's um just looking at the numbers you can see that Costco project by itself eventually will be um you know a third of these numbers at least um but again we're getting we're averaging just over a 100 units a year 108 units a year something like that in the infill tool kit um and I think I think of the ones that we've we've seen built um probably half of them are in are what we would call um you know they're infill like for instance an existing home and someone has space in the off the alley in the back to add um two town homes or something like that or or a Home gets removed and and town homes get prit in um kind of a variety of kind of different combinations um the small and smaller homes Cottage kind of style homes get built um or duplexes we've seen a number of those but again town homes are the dominant one and it's kind of a the town homes in particular are the ones that for the ones that we would call Greenfield projects that's been almost exclusively what they have chosen to build has been Town Homes the neighborhoods that don't have any of the circles are there covenants there like Edgemore or I see South than uh samish or even further north is there something in

those neighborhoods that cause that not to occur legally or is it just that this hasn't happened yet it's well a couple of things are happening I would say one some of those neighborhoods do have covenants and so that would be something when we do Implement House Bill the house bill 1110 code um so two things one when we do Implement that house bill code um the 1110 code what we would see is instead of just the the areas you see with the background color on here which is where the infill toolkit is allowed today the entire map would allow infill toolkit at that point because that's then we're in compliance with that new state law allowing middle housing everywhere um so that's part of why we don't see anything in these areas because they are the residential single zones in those neighborhoods don't have the cluster provision which is what right now it's only allowed in residential it's allowed in all of the residential multi zones and in residential single zones that we've that we've annexed since 1995 and also in other residential single zones that have the cluster provision so these areas that are just that kind of background gray color are the areas that um are either either zoned industrial like the ironate area or they don't have the residential zoning that currently allows the infill toolkit so that's part of that code update we'll be doing next year um to be in compliance with House Bill 1110 would be expanding that so that the infill toolkit type development can

happen in all residential zones so um but your point about the restrictive covenants is very relevant because there will be some areas even with when that code is available for people um there could be conflicts with uh established covenants in some of those neighborhoods and so that would be something where as a general practice the city in the past has issued permits regardless of whether there are restrictive covenants because we don't regulate those covenants and then it's up to the applicant to sort that out with their HOA if it's an activ HOA or to to figure out if that's something that they're going to pursue so those are those are um pieces that the city typically doesn't get involved in um through the process there is a a piece within that application where they're they're encouraged to check those things out before they go further down that road to you know but it's not something the city gets involved with um the other piece about House Bill 1110 what and and I think we've mentioned this uh on a previous occasion is that the um plats that are approved after that date of uh I think it was July of 2023 um they cannot have restrictive covenants that prohibit those middle housing forms so it was a the house bill 1110 was not did not retroactively repeal any established restrictive covenants but it did um prohibit any future ones so there's that kind of a a point in time we're going forward there won't be any more that are created Chris with the hodgepodge of different

like HOAs do we have a sense of which ones like I mean has there been any analysis done not a lot um we've looked at uh the University of Washington um had an effort several years ago to map historic plats around the state that um included Clauses that um were the like the historic red lining where there were like racially restrictive covenants within them um and a lot of those also were ones that prohibited like for instance anything other than single family detached housing um or accessory dwelling units for instance so we've we've looked at some of the mapping that they've pulled together it's it's available online and that was kind of a like a crowdsourced mapping activity where people would dig through auditor files and just post up the results and you know link that up there are quite a few identified in watom county and a number in Bellingham um but I don't know how complete it is we haven't we haven't dug into the auditor files in in detail to explore other you know areas that don't show up on the map to see how many might have those I would love to see that information just because I had just recently learned at the Covenant and ownership program where there's down payment assistance um of $150,000 um for folks to own in those areas and so if that is available I'd love to get my hands on it that's yeah we we would love to get more of that to get a better sense too of kind of where those kinds of things might impact future development I will say in our in our

forward-looking land Capacity Analysis for the what we're estimating the capacity would be for houseb 1110 we've assumed about a third of all current plats would have some kind of restrictive covenant just as a starting point we don't know how realistic that is but we've just said okay we need to have some kind of placeholder that just says yeah we know they're not going to be we know it's not going to happen everywhere because there are covenants out there um and and so we've we've just put a placeholder in there of about a third of the properties that would be eligible for that we we figure won't at least within the planning period who knows longterm whether those would be repealed or Not by the individual HOAs but um or maybe the state would take further action that would be retro active but at this point that isn't doesn't you know we haven't heard anything about that yet so um short-term rentals uh also known as vacation rentals um the city has a a registration program we license those there's a process for doing that and and also as part of that we track how many are active in our community um on a monthly basis um I would say over the the the few years that we've been tracking those we've kind of averaged between two and 300 has kind of been the the normal number and it's it is a little bit seasonal we get more in the the kind of better weather months and then they a lot of them will the listings will go away and then they'll pop back up during the better weather

months the next year um as of uh the end of August we were at 190 active short-term rentals that were registered so that kind of gives you an idea about what a little bit less than one half of 1% of our housing stock are are short-term registers as short-term rentals and that then do those numbers show up as rentals on page 10 the uh housing type percentages no we did not those are just uh those those were just strictly related to the rental registration program which are the longer term like the uh you know renting with like say a year-long lease kind of thing um the short-term rentals were uh we we don't have the connection in the on the data and to um for this exercise we didn't connect those up to that so these would be you know spread amongst probably many different categories on that housing chart um there could be you know Apartments it could be Town Homes it could be condos um single family homes could be a wide variety of things that fall under that category so and it's a small number so of a single detached house 17934 there could be 9306 uh homes in the in the community but because they're rented a short short term they don't show up on that chart so the the if they are if they are operating as short-term rentals then they would just be in this 190 active number um they would that that's where they would be they'd be registered under that program um and that's part of the monitoring of that is we the the monitoring service that we subscribe to is looking at like

Airbnb vbo and the other services to say like hey is this popping up and how do the how do the ones we see popping up in Bellingham how does that match up with the the licensed database that the city's got for short-term rentals so so we know um how many are being advertised as as vacation rentals within the community and that's that again kind of a few hundred of them as as opposed to like the the percentage of our community that's uh the units that are registered in the rental registration program is is you know more than half of the housing in Bellingham so yeah so it's a kind of two different programs um but that's just to give you context it's it's um yeah currently around 200 and we've seen it as high as you know approaching 300 During certain years during kind of the the tourist season for the short-term rentals are those is the are those um restricted by the the rule like you can only rent it for so many days and it has to be your primary resident yeah I'll I'll admit I'm certainly not well versed in that code but I did pull up the um we have this on our web page the kind of summary of this isn't The BMC version with all the details but this is kind of the primary um set of of rules and so um G gives some of the details but yeah there are time limitations and then there are requirements for um owner occupancy during a certain part of the year um and then different uh review type review processes that are uh invoke depending on the type of uh whether it's um what kind

of zoning it's in for instance is it in a residential single zone or a residential multis zone is it an accessory dwelling unit what's the housing type so there's a variety of of kind of different tiers of review that those go through um but yes they are they are um there are some time limits on how long they can be rented you can't you can't full-time ear BNB I think it's 90 90ish days a year so this are probably owner occupied people who travel leave the state rent it out while they're gone or something like that but it you know inherently you can't rent it out on a 12-month lease because then they'd be occupied so it's it's kind of this weird hybrid space of owner occupied but someone who moves around a lot yeah I mean that example you gave is could could be a very typical example yeah looking at the vacancy rate um this is something we we pay attention to and we get information um from the uh Housing and Urban Development at the federal level cooperates with the US Postal Service they kind of um blend their data together we get uh the the postal carriers um have information about addresses that they deliver to that have been uh persistently vacant for a period of time number of months that kind of thing and they they report um either short-term or long-term vacancies at a for all residential addresses and so that information um HUD serves that up and we can pull that up at the census track level and then report that for our community um and this kind of shows that

information going back to the um the pre-recession time period And I guess I'm just this is our chart that I showed you at the last meeting showing um housing completion from the early 2000s up to this year so like we talked about last time there's this big dip in the middle which is that Great Recession time period where housing production fell off dramatically and we're basically you know short about 2,000 housing units from this time period and and you can definitely see the ramp up in the years since then but we're still climbing out of that hole and so you know um we need more years like 2021 and then that can kind of help Spread spread that production out uh where we're kind of exceeding our normal average and then that would that will help us kind of get over the hump from that shortfall that we still are feeling the effects of this is the vacancy rate graph and you can see you know as you approach a drop off in housing production it took a year or two for it to really hit but as you get into this kind of like 2011 period that's right about the point where our vacancy rates our vacancy rate started to kind of drop off the cliff and um ever since then as as our numbers have have been increasing we've been slowly looking at the blue line here which is Bellingham kind of slowly climbing back up um towards you know that kind of average kind of three to three to four% vacancy rate um this last year we kind of jumped up over that that uh up to about two and a quarter percent

so so that's good news it's it's slow and painful to get there but um we like to see that line generally trending up like it is and it'll know we're going to have to be probably out here somewhere before we get back up to these levels but we're headed in the right direction and a higher vacancy rate then means like rental rates are coming down because there's more like competition or something yeah again it's I mean it's it's gross over oversimplification oversimplification to just say supply and demand there are a lot of factors that play into that but in general very tight vacancy rate makes really makes it a really challenging housing market both for for sale products and for rental so yeah that's that's where you know 2% I think everyone can agree feels too low and um it's it's you know any number of experts will come up with any number of like what what is a healthy vacancy rate but we know it's something more than 2% um and so you know getting up to these pre-recession levels feels like probably a good idea and so that's what we're really hoping to get up to is kind of those levels um you guys have studied this vacancy chart for a long time what I'm noticing that the Washington State the Western Washington and the Bellingham data is extremely closely coupled together in this chart um why do you think we're so Marching In step with the state trends like what other factors like you talked about the recession that was obviously like not unique to Bellingham um why did

things move so closely with the whole state I think I I I think it's just that the housing market um I think you'd see the same thing not just in Washington but all up and down the west coast and honestly probably on the East Coast as well um but certainly on the west coast you know through looking at Portland OR looking at the bay area or Southern California um their their numbers are going to be somewhat different but the pattern will look very similar that you know in the Great Recession housing production just ground to a halt everywhere um and that's just what the market because of the market so um I think you'd see again just very similar patterns ours are you know our blue line is you can see trending just just the last few years than Western Washington in the state um you know and again it's I I point to this housing production we've been building a lot of homes um in Bellingham uh not enough but a lot and um so that might be part of that there could be other things just happening with these are both much larger geographies than Bellingham so there could be just other things happening with the numbers across that bigger region um if we were to tease out like skic County or St homish County that their numbers might you know would almost certainly be different but but this is kind of that again the bigger Statewide Trend so I think I think this is instructive just to like you just s indicated I mean we're not the only place experiencing this kind of tight Market that

it's it's it's true for most communities I suspect there's some interplay with the unemployment rate in in like an inverse fashion um as as we the recession had a really high unemployment rate came down over time so kind of unemployment rate uh changing you know that affects people deciding to live with a roommate or living single or just sort of all these household moving out of your parents house the household formation patterns change you know in relation to the job availability of jobs um and then so a better unemployment situation means a tighter vacancy rate in many ways yeah I I think that's the important point is that those are all connected yeah and that yeah it's it's um you know like the the half a point change that the FED made yesterday I mean that feels like good news and just you know remains to be seen you know how quickly that might have any kind of effect on the local building market and how much things cost for you know just our regular daily needs so yeah chis hand up oh sorry Chris you you stole my thunder a little bit uh I I'll have to charge your bagel for that but certainly um that's where I was going about with the fed well I know I was expecting a quarter percent or 25 basis point but that half percent shocked even myself 50 basis point so I'm thinking I'm hoping and thinking optimistically that that might Inspire uh someone like yourself or the planning department to I don't know how you I don't know how you entice uh builders in the community to

start thinking about building more affordable housing but certainly um I'm hoping to see maybe that occur uh and maybe help to ease some of the challenges we're going through not only in our community but hopefully and the other what 38 39 counties across the state and I know it's not your job nor Blake's job to um promote affordable housing in that respect of promoting it to the builders in the community to think about that but um and I may be stretching a little bit I know you're fully staffed now but I don't know if any part of that is marketing to maybe attract some of the possible Builders out there to think about building more affordable housing so I Mayan that's a creative question or comment I don't know how you want to take it but is there any part of the planning department that may want to take on that challenge or is that be you say Russ that's beyond our scope no I I mean I think I guess what I would say is I think our entire Community Development staff is every day dedicated to exactly that working with our the incredible nonprofits in our community to produce those um you know the the subsidized rental housing in particular with the you know the the housing Levy dollars that our whole community's chosen to put up you know uh um to approve that that Levy to tax ourselves um and and the other sources the affordable housing sales tax and the other pieces that play into that and that we leverage with the federal dollars and um so yeah I think that's part of I know

in in Citywide that's part of the conversation every day but I think I I agree I mean I feel like that half percent that's that's great news we'd love to see more I agree thank you yeah it's good news all around I mean before nonprofit developers get loans with interest rates just like uh market rate developers so it's it's impacts everyone yeah kind of on the same topic this is recent Zillow research data um just looking at at uh home sale values and also rental rate values for Bellingham um Zillow has these indexes for most communities in the country and you could see the This Is 2020 to 2024 on the left is the home sales and you could see the very steep increase 2020 to 2022 and 2022 was when those interest rates changed dramatically went up and so construction tapered off and home home sales also tapered off um and that did affect prices you can see that the the this is not the median sale price this is zillow's observed um their their home value index which is kind of the 35th to 65th kind of the middle of the pack of home sale values so it's it's sort of equivalent to a median it's just not an official statistical median value um but you can see things definitely flattened out after 2022 um so again we'll see what happens in the next in the next year if interest rates are dropping and then you can see on the rent side um again the Steep increas is from 2020 up to 2022 um between 2021 and 2022 that was a that was a almost a 14% increase in rent um and then the two years

since then 2023 and 2024 that was closer to a 4% between three and 4% increase for those years so things definitely slowed down as far but but you can still tell you know an increase from 1770 some dollars to just under $2,000 that's still that's still an increase and if you're on a fixed income that's a big increase so still very challenging for a lot of the people in our community um but but also you know um good news is that 14% increase didn't repeat year after year um so again just kind of seeing what kind of recent Trends are for those uh those numbers and again the rent is the observed index between or observed values between that kind of 35th and 65th so kind of the middle of the pack there are definitely outliers that are higher or lower than this but that's sort of the the bulk of the the rates observed in our community that being said I'll go back to this slide that um Carrie referenced during her comments um that that despite that slowing in the increase in home sale values and the relative slowing in the increase in in rent um you know more than again more than half of the community are renters and um more than half of those renters are paying more than 30% of their monthly income to housing um so they're cost burden and and a 32% of those renters um that blue slice at the bottom there are paying more than half of their income um which means you're making you know anything more than 30% you're having to make make some hard choices anything more than you know 50%

or more um that that's a super challenging environment um we can all imagine to live in where you're you're choosing between Food and Health Care and rent and transportation so there's there's lots of things there that just compound and make life very difficult so so again just you know this is this is sort of good news but tempered strongly with you know a huge you know more people in our community um are you know like I said more than half are renters and more than half of those folks are super challenged with the rents that they are having to [Music] pay um I just wanted to point out for any members of the public watching or or if you um haven't been there yourselves we have a lot of this information is on our housing stats web page which this is our our interactive um you pull up the city's homepage and just put in uh cob.org housing stats it will pull up um this interactive page which you can scroll through and it has things identified keyed the same as the the colors on the map I was showing you this is like an interactive neighborhood by neighborhood breakout of total housing units um you can filter these for um individual um like just single just single family or just the middle housing Styles you can show the group housing piece which Western is the big one here and then the other neighborhoods have smaller amounts there's that map that you can zoom in on the map and see a little more detail um about the different mix of housing Styles in different areas then you can

click on any given neighborhood and it'll highlight the mix in that particular neighborhood colorcoded just like on the chart here so so I'd encourage you like explore that this gets updated every month um there's a variety of different different things that looks at the group housing here's that kind of permit chart that I referen once in a while that gets updated every year and then um there's a bunch of things you can scroll through on population and household data and then here's that vacancy chart and this is the graph that shows that kind of split between 54% renter and 46% owner um and here's somewhere was right around 1990 was when we kind of the community um uh went from having more owner occupied housing to having more renter occupied housing and then as of mid 2000s it's been pretty stable we kind of keep marching forward at about with about the same ratio um so that's just kind of gives you some of that information and then there's things in here about the the infill housing as well and the infill toolkit with that mapping so that's a resource I would encourage you to explore and it it changes periodically as we update like I said monthly that housing map updates and then the other pieces that are based on census and other sources update annually so um it's always a good resource to reference any more housing Supply related or or housing stock related kind of inventory questions okay so kind of continuing where we left off before on kind of the growth strategy

last time I gave you kind of a tour of the the um very draft uh future land use map talking about some of the different things changing across the map with respect to residential zoning in particular um we talked about uh this chart which kind of outlines a new way of of talking about and thinking about zoning and Belling him um after that implementation of that house bill 1110 and and really what that means is that all zones um allow multiple Lots or multiple multiple homes per lot um and again that state law allows four units outright um and again we're not imagining that every person who chooses to add units on their property will add four um that could be very challenging from a physical just space standpoint in a lot of instances and also very costly um but some will and and some will be able to to do that um a lot of them might just add an Adu um or a couple of adus or maybe convert their home to a duplex and maybe not add any square footage um so there's a variety of again paths forward that people will choose and we talked about this idea of the residential Watershed Zone which encompasses the existing residential zones in the lake watom Watershed and then an R1 2 and three uh scheme of zoning which covers today's residential single zones which are in that R1 category um and then the R2 and R3 which are the medium and higher density residential multis zones that we um have on the map today and in particular I want to emphasize a couple of things with the R1 Zone

because that's kind of the one with the biggest changes uh that we talked about last time um that uh we've talked about the idea of across the map today when you look at all the different neighborhoods we have a a wide variety of residential single zones that have densities um some as low as uh 20,000 ft lot size or a half acre lot um all the way up to um you know some of that are in the like the 4,000 squ foot um per home range so they're fairly fairly high density and so what we're proposing is that the the because House Bill 1110 will allow four units on a lot regardless of that lot size down to a thousand square feet per unit um we we feel like the easiest and most Equitable way and most efficient way to implement House Bill 1110 is to make all those residential single zones effectively the same across the city to treat them all the same way um the existing platting patterns in all of the already developed neighborhoods really mean that um the the the densities that are expressed in the zoning tables today really don't mean that much because every one of those develop Lots could add more units after after we adopt this code and so treating them all the same way is is more efficient it's certainly more Equitable be the easiest to administer um and the easiest for Builders to understand and for neighborhoods for providing kind of predictability um and also importantly that Equity across all neighborhoods um I feel like those are those are really good reasons to um basically

come up with kind of one flavor of that R1 zoning across the city um adopting uh a maximum lot size is something that we would really like to consider um we feel like that's going to um not really change much in already developed neighborhoods again because we have existing lots and and you can do four per lot today but we feel like in in neighborhoods that are either very low density and developed today or in those Green Field areas around the edge of town um that have not been platted yet we feel like that maximum lot size would probably make a big difference for our overall development capacity as a community and for the making sure that we can really Leverage The the really significant infrastructure Investments that we need to make to open those areas up for development so that's something that we're strongly um we're considering and we we'd love to get that idea um get feedback from you on that as an idea and then um eventually have that be something that you know could potentially go as a recommendation before Council so again that's something that we're we haven't done um the full analysis yet on like what would a reasonable maximum lot size B um you know whether it would be like a 5,000 or a 7200 square foot or some other number but but we feel like having a number for that maximum would would be an appropriate thing to consider um the R2 and R3 residential multis zones already have a minimum density associated with them and also a a limit on how much residential

single a project could generate as a as a fraction of the overall housing in a project um so they effectively already have um it's not expressed as a as a maximum lot size but it's another mechanism to ensure at least a particular threshold of development is is achieved so um so anyway that's I I would love to hear feedback um that you guys may have on on that as an idea so I think that makes sense in the I understand how that would work in the Green Field sense if you had uh an existing large lot is is any plat change trigger that maximum rule I think yeah I think that's the idea that if you had a large lot and you were to divide it you would um you would have like the the lots that you would create you would need to create um a uh a lot that was you couldn't for instance create one that would be larger than that maximum whatever you had a 20,000 squ foot lot and you're trying to make it smaller you couldn't go to 10 if the rule said maximum lot size 72 some yeah that's effectively what you're what you're doing three lots of 72 whatever the math is yeah yeah you would create a number if you're going to divide that land now there's there are some things that we would you know that are um you know if you chose not to divide the lot you could still do four you know based on how spill 11:10 even if you didn't divide it you could do four units outright or you could you could add one or you could add you know any combination of that um but if you're subdividing land then then

that's where that maximum lot size would come in I appreciate the um work to try and figure out how to make it Equitable and consistent and easy to administer and that's I I can't imagine how tricky it's been to consider all of the nuances of what this means for all the different types of neighborhoods and um treating them equitably feels like the right thing to do it's yeah tricky and and I think you know I would say we've been in conversation with um you know the city of Spokane and Kirkland and Redmond and many other communities that are you know their planners are trying to figure out the same exact things that we're trying to figure out um so it's you know we're not alone in that and we're also trying to learn from what others are are either ahead of us in or considering doing um but yeah that is the one one thing that we've realized is just maintaining the wide variety of kind of unique zones that we have is um is not Equitable that's kind of the simplest way to put it it's also a real challenge to administer but it's just the the equity piece is kind of where the part that the community would feel um so yeah it is it is uh that's a big part of it so that's something we can come back to you guys with with more like as as we get further into that um and start to examine like what what lot size might make sense given existing platting patterns um and given kind of what the what the current uh levels of development are in existing neighborhoods and then what how that might

um translate to some of those areas that aren't developed yet uh that are either in the in the city and undeveloped or maybe in the urban growth area and undeveloped at this point um again that's just wanted to kind of give you a preview of future things that you'll be deliberating on and that that that idea of either through a maximum lot size or potentially um a minimum density is another way to potentially do that but it's a a a little bit more of a challenge to imagine how that works when you're allowing four units per lot to start with so we we've that's why we've kind of wrestled with those ideas of of minimum density or maximum lot size um but again kind of looking at the the infrastructure Investments and things like Transit success of Transit how to make those things all work out that's again something that we're we're um what we've seen seems to indicate that that would be a good thing to consider see Chris on on House Bill 1110 I'm assuming the state didn't give any kind of shall we say guidance in that area about density or lot size they' they're leaving it to the various municipalities to have that creativity that's exactly right they really don't they talk about the the units per lot but they really don't there's no expression of that in terms of density the um the only uh uh mention of lot size in the bill is really that that thousand square foot minimum kind of lot Dimension would be the smallest um you don't you don't need if it's if it's a a very small lot

in that range you have to allow four units on that but anything larger than that then the the state law applies to it so so yeah so it is they're leaving leaving lots of discretion which makes it um you know it makes it challenging but again that's that's a good thing communities get to kind of choose their choose their own adventure so right thank you maybe jumping ahead here but it relates with the R2 and the R3 we had transitional high density prior is that being being looped in here somewhere and is and it kind of relates to R1 and that we have the R1 and then it transitions into R2 and R3 where does the transitional work in this coding system that's a great question so those are those are all within the context of the Urban Village areas those transition zones but we had transitions in other neighborhoods too right we have correct the um those are in the the residential like the residential multi transition zones those would be in those um most of those would be in those R2 in that R2 category and so we're not we're not suggesting changes to those at this point they would be called like R2 because we don't we're getting away from that residential single residential multi- terminology um so it's the the residential that R2 Zone would be again the the same medium densities that are allowed today that kind of 3600 down to 7200 100 foot lot size um or unit per acre um density that would go with that and those would allow um again a limited amount of residential single but

also all of the the residential multi-types the infill toolkit um those kind and then also adus would be allowed in those zones so yeah so we're not we're not suggesting those as transition areas go away there has been some internal discussion of what happens to the transition zones for urban Villages so like the edges of the fountain District or the um sish way Urban Village that would be something like a a follow on Project the next time we revisit those plans to see if we've got basically the same densities allowed just beyond those transition zones in those Urban Villages that maybe the maybe the boundaries would be redrawn to reflect that really it's just the core areas that are relevant and governed by floor area ratios instead of a a lot size um or we might leave them the same it's just one of those things that would be up for discussion when we when we revisit those when it whenever it's time to update one of those plans I'm noticing in R1 no F and I remember some discussion about how infill toolkit could be applied as part of so so so yeah so it it doesn't mention F but that is a component of the infill toolkit so projects that are built under that with using the infill toolkit that that could be part of that um there's also been you know the idea of well do we want to go to a form-based code and there are elements thank you Ana there are elements of the infill toolkit that are um very like a form-based code in the way that that they kind of govern development size

and scale um so that's those are all things that we're still discussing but at this point the the rules that are in the infill toolkit are kind of what we're looking at is they they seem to be working where it's applicable in the community and we feel like that's probably for Bellingham that might be the best approach to for a first implementation of code that's compliant with 1110 would be to to look at that code um to make the adjustments to the design review components that need to bring it into compliance with the new state rules to add a few additional housing types to again be compliant with the state rules and then to expand it to be available Citywide um would be kind of the the major those are kind of the three main modifications but to you know the way that it's working the development Community is getting more and more used to it and seems to be um working with it well and and we've seen some great projects land in the community so we feel like it's it's probably the best tool um that we're you know familiar with that we could just again uh reformat and roll out as as an implementation tool for that so okay um I showed this slide last time too but just kind of uh uh keeping this I guess in your minds that as we um you know the urban Villages are still kind of one of the cornerstones of our development strategy and will be for for the foreseeable future um we we are accommodating um you know a great deal of employment and about a third of our housing in those areas

and um and have you know um lots of capacity left in those areas that's just the way that the all of the urban Villages are you know they're based on a Redevelopment model um and uh we anticipate that they will continue to absorb a good fraction of our overall Community growth um in this next planning period we're talking about really taking those Transit oriented development policies that we've had in our land use chapter and and starting to um make some changes on the land use map that would go move towards implementing those and those are there there's a a variety of things that um are connected with that conversation um the parking conversation is part of that um density is part of it to have density that would support uh more frequent Transit service um there's also the the mix of uh uses that would be allowed along those those corridors and we've talked about in um all of our residential zones um there's been an expression from the community through our Outreach that desire to have more small commercial use is allowed outright throughout the city um so that we can um have more uh the option to walk to a few things instead of having to drive to everything and so certainly in those Transit oriented development corridors that would connect our Urban Villages along those like the goal lines would be the first places we would kind of look to do that um would be introducing commercial nodes along those corridors and so that's just again looking at kind of priority growth

areas Urban Villages are kind of that highest tier and then connecting those with those Transit Orient development corridors and doing what we can to really incentivize development uh within those areas and then anticipating some destinations between those Urban Villages um getting back to the kind of echoing the thoughts that WTA shared with us when we were with Transportation Commission that um it's not just the end points and having people go from point A to point B it's it's having a mix of things in between that to generate that ridership and to provide the options that people are looking for so just wanting to keep that in your mind um and that all of that prioritizing that kind of a growth scheme would be in alignment with our climate action goals trying to just make it possible for people to really minimize the single a keeping vehicle use and and take other options when when those are possible again that's just just an illustration of what those current goal lines look like and then um you know there are other ones that could be considered to be added to that the idea of like maybe the what used to be the red line connecting Fair Haven might be another one if you know if it was possible to get something in the way you know more more destinations between downtown and Fair Haven that might be something that would make sense to add that at some point there's also um the idea of if we grow further north like up into further north than Cordata that that there might be the

need for more frequent Transit going to the north end of town I think um those are really kind of the main points we wanted to talk about was just that idea of those that kind of Maximum lot size and then as we get further into um figuring out some of the details and what our future zoning code might look like before we bring those things to you um just just wanting to um have you thinking about kind of like that idea of Citywide um aiming towards kind of that the the ultimate goal of a like a uh zoning set of zoning descriptions that really fits on one page instead of having the many many pages that we have to represent all the different searies in town so we would have kind of an R1 to R3 and then maybe the idea of an R4 Zone that could be one of whatever the transit oriented development format turns out to be um and then we have our residential multis zones um that would go to those R2 and three zones so just simplifying simplifying the the variety of types of zones we have and really um allowing more flexibility within those to get like again those those middle housing forms um to be built and then really trying to encourage through the the different incentive programs we have um wherever possible to have affordability as part of a project and that's one of those things will be coming to you um after it goes to the city council bringing you an update on the the multif family tax exemption which is one of those incentive programs for affordability second go back to that

map yeah yeah um two comments the I was looking at the Adu dots um from the previous slides and I just observed that it's a very interesting signal of people that have families individuals that have independently elected to increase the density on their lots and and so the story that tells and you can see kind of there's this swath through the north of downtown area um but it's it's a signal that there is an appetite from a lot of different IND individuals for higher density in that area um and so you know mixing mixing together all the opportunity and points of interest and the transit lines and all that there's still areas of yellow that I think are covered by that some of that prominant Adu uh development um it's an interesting data point it's imperfect because they're not kind of evenly allowed in all zones but um it was interesting to see where those clusters were U for me um the the earlier data we looked at with um the amount of land that is there's this huge imbalance between the amount of land taken up by single family and the units it provides uh and then also the stats from last meeting around yeah so we're also looking for our Baseline housing capacity forward looking is assuming something like 65% of our unit count is going to come from the multi the orange band here um and you know the the avail able acres for those two different groups are it's kind of like completely opposite of of what you need OB but obviously you get a density efficiency of multi-unit so

some some of that will naturally work out but how I guess I I I assume you've already calculated this but how do we know we have enough area zoned for that orange to meet those numbers that we think will get us to the population um as we're looking at shifting what R3 is what R4 is is like you know a lot of that can go in urban Villages which are not changing significantly or they're not being reduced uh and there's a lot of capacity we have in in urban Villages but I guess how do you break down where that multif family growth will occur in terms of urban Villages or the potential from these new r4s or Transit areas yeah those are great questions it's it's done on a on a property by property basis so we do that you know in the with the database and so you're right that that yeah like two-thirds of the capacity we have on paper with our kind of Baseline analysis under under today's zoning not not including the changes for House Bill 11 10 are are in those multif family forms a good percentage of that is in the existing Urban Villages and I'll I'll say that and then and then you know the remainder of that would be in those those current residential multim medium and high densities zones we've only got a couple of the residential multi- low density zones and they're they're predominantly built out already um with with single family style development but those between the the RM medium and high and then the urban Villages those are that that is about two-thirds of our development

capacity um and and the densities that we've you know this that 25.7 units per acre is the Citywide average right now if you were to look at what we've um and and counts things that were built in the 50s and the 60s a long time ago um so a lot of kind of smaller scale residential multi if you were to look at the the like the when we brought the buildable lands report U brief to you folks a couple years ago what we've averaged just since the last comp plan was adopted in 2016 is closer to 50 units per acre for the RM projects um something like 49 or so units per acre so we're we're definitely making good efficient use of what land we have left for for multif family style housing we're seeing we're seeing those higher densities being built which means that looking forward to the land we have left we that's why we can pretty confidently say yeah we've got enough to accommodate you know a good amount through the rest of the planning period um that's not to say that's that that will run out at some point and and and a lot of the areas you know we that we could grow into are super impact Ed by critical areas already so they're you know those those denser forms would be what we would be relying on to make use of what little land we have kind of in that next tier we could grow into it all the trend might also change with like if you think of sish way as those some of those new uh five six story buildings are hitting probably 50ish per acre like what you quoted uh we're getting really

high density like one-bedroom units and we'll eventually saturate that market and we're not well serving like two three family bedroom like highdensity family units are kind of not being built so it might have been that the low hanging fruit was in the one-bedroom high density and we're probably going to have to change and so we might still see that building form but it needs to maybe not be as high density per unit if the yeah and those those bedroom counts are really critical that's something um I think we we showed you some of our the vision survey that we did last year and also the housing preference survey um the housing preference survey in particular really keyed into like how many bedrooms would you like to have versus you know what you're seeing on the market today and um that two-bedroom format was the by far the most popular format that people were expressing a desire for and we just don't have a lot on the market either in the the um for sale Market certainly but also in the the apartment Market you know it's just it's we do see a lot of studios and a lot of one-bedrooms and there are two-bedroom apartments being built certainly but you're right in that we we really need a mix of of of units that are that are appropriate for families of you know like say three or four people um and so that's something we we need to pay attention to going forward it's not just the zoning it's you know how many units you're going to build it's what's that what's that ideal mix

that's going to be best for the community and and that's a hard thing to regulate you know it's well what one thing um to that point um that was brought up recently is that um like sort of pre- pandemic they were um building a three bedroom unit was like a more efficient way to build so there was um like a flood of three bedroom apartment buildings and now there's um there's vacancies it's like the highest vacancies are three-bedroom apartment buildings um and they're having a harder time renting them because there's more of them and more people are now I think post pandemic and working remotely um so they don't want roommates um and so more people are now shifting and I think that two-bedroom is like an office and your bedroom and like more and more people are actually trying to live um less group group lifestyle um so it's an interesting shift but I think that's um indicative of how the market can shift Based On Demand right so like we we might want to you know like trying to social engineer it by saying you know we should have this many units and this is what it should look like um the market is going to reflect what's needed um and and we're seeing that now so people are shifting from three bedroom units to Studios and and one bedrooms and two bedrooms um yeah there's there's just a lag to all that yes so it the market adapts but it it's a three fiveyear cycle to to catch up in those areas yeah it is challenging I mean you're you know like I said we we've seen surveys

that say that and the whole work from home is a big deal cuz like you said people they don't necessarily want to be sleeping in their office so it's it's you kind of want to have two bedrooms and make that work and yeah it's definitely a kind of changes the dynamic for what people are looking for go ahead Barbara so is it possible that the reason that people aren't renting three bedrooms is they can't afford them and um also we heard back in the meeting where we were at the public works department um that there's a study that came out from the industry that says they can't possibly um produce any housing that is less than market rate and we still haven't seen that study what happened to that that is uh the mfte study is going to city council uh I I'm not 100% sure I believe it's the last meeting in September and then we would hope to get that in front of you folks for a brief to be able to look at that report um soon after that so um I believe it's the end I think it's the September 30th date that we were uh pushing for to get that why can't we see it before that we've been told about it so I'm just curious why we can't see it before that I think the the um I'm not the I think the staff that are preparing that for Council are the there there's a memo that's going with that and I think we would probably bring the same information uh before Planning Commission to just present that so I think that that was the thinking there was that it would go to city council first and then it

could go um I mean it's it's public information at that point but we would love to to bring it before you and have you give you the opportunity to talk about it and kind of dig into it a little bit so I think that was kind of what we were intending to do was benefit from that that uh memo and the reporting that goes into it uh like to push back a little bit I think we do this every meeting on adus and density uh seems like we've all recognized based on this chart here that with the 8% and the fact that a lot of it is owner related that it's not really people building and being uh interested in creating density for living it's density of buildings but a majority of it or at least super partial of it is that um they're buildings for people's own living space and we're not actually getting um new residents out of the adus and so just because you might see more density in certain neighborhoods doesn't mean that those areas are interested in higher density maybe but because they uh they want the building in the backyard but it doesn't mean that there's actually increase in density or interest in density for new residents or current residents it's definitely a hybrid I mean definitely a hybrid uh it's not if someone's spending $200,000 I think they for a lot of money they expect to get value out of that and maybe their 19-year-old kid comes and lives there for a couple years and that's not really a financial situation but down the road that'll have a different use it'll be a

different person living there it if you're spending that much money it's not going to sit empty someone will be using it for housing whether it's informal family housing that's a person who's not running an apartment so that's that's still a net one person being housed and then someone else is is renting that unit that that person would have lived in otherwise so it's it's they're not just sitting there empty as like toys like people are living in them and that is helping the community I would have to do uh say no that's not the case a lot of folks aren't living in them they're using them like we talked about the last meeting that they are uh being used as secondary offices man caves whatever the case may be and then on top of that they're extremely expensive to build and so they're extremely expensive to rent and when I've spoken about this before that with the numbers the study have given us we only need 10% of an increase in stock and supply of housing that's expensive what we need is a consider considerable amount of housing that is not expensive so adus do us no good for housing that we don't need I'm gonna go ahead and and just say like to push back when you look at this map and you look at the areas where there are a lot of adus and those are not high-end neighborhood s those are like um you know what would have been in the historically sort of more middle class areas these are people that I I mean how many of them are building $400,000 man caves I I just don't believe

that that's the prime like even a like a any percentage that is Meaningful that are not being used to House people to live in you where is the basis for this claim I I like the reality is people need homes and I believe that people I mean every Adu that I know there are people living in them um if it's a true Adu there are lots of man caves out there that are just like um old garages that are converted but not true adus that have kitchens and bathrooms um that would be a very extravagant man cave let's get back to the expense though the expense makes it so it's a stock of Supply that we don't need we have plenty of expensive housing we don't have enough affordable housing I would say I would argue that compared to what a single family new construction on a new lot with new Services New utilities all the things 400,000 while it sounds like a lot is still actually relatively very inexpensive for that type of housing type for for what is essentially a single family unit um compared to a new construction on a new house you are at well over $700,000 there's there's just it is the most affordable housing type we have even if it's still expensive and I know very well how much construction costs are right now as I'm working on three different developments in Bellingham and I can tell you like even with all of of the affordable housing subsidies that I can get we still can barely build them and and sell them for the razor thin margin of people that can afford the homes at 80% Ami and

that's with every single subsidy we can come up with and people donating time and Sweat Equity so there is there is not there's not a world in which we can change zoning or make things different to create more housing that's affordable is that's not there's not a solution out there that is like that we should just change you know like adus aren't the solution they're a solution they're part of the solution I have one because it helped me and it's given me now I have rental income from my main house and I get to live in there because I am downsized and I'm just a single human that's how that works I now have more income and my daughter I was able to afford for her to go College that's how adus are working on the ground for people that make a modest income that happened to buy at the right time back in you know early 2000s so it sounds like you've given up on affordable housing then for the housing stock that we need 125% of in the next 20 years I've given up on affordable housing that's what it sounds like that's an absurd statement I'm the executive director of kulan Community Land Trust I work I'm working every day to put affordable housing for home ownership in this community community so to say that I'm giving up on it I'm I'm highly dedicated and that's why I'm here to work on planning issues to help us find Solutions things like multif family tax exemption to try and increase our density so we have more housing stock these are the things that I'm like very impressed that

the city is working to try and get this house bill 1110 this is a complex issue and to use adus as this like red herring is um not it's it's ineffective we need to be finding Solutions instead of trying to point at things that are not problems folks like certain other planning Commissioners have been using adus for red as red herrings to increase housing supply for 5 years six years seven years so don't pull out the red herring when I'm saying it's not a housing Supply tool that will actually offer a solution and once again if it's a solution that is too expensive for 60% of our residents to afford then it's not a housing solution that we should even be discussing because it's not a housing stock that we need because all we need is 10% of it of 50% Ami and above in the next 20 years that will happen through market rate movement period it's not relevant I'm going to pause and acknowledge that I started the Adu conversation but I just want want to recognize that adus is not the focus of our comp plan changes or what we're talking about so I know we all have a few different opinions on this but I it is a good example of density and how it works it's an example of sure uh I just want to redirect us back to I think we got we got a little In The Weeds on adus which which we've done before but that's not the focus of where these changes are really going like the comp does not really have any significant Adu changes in it so want to make sure we're keeping on good uses of Chris's

type here well I I guess I would say just I don't have a a lot to offer to the the discussion about adus other than just to say that they um we've always viewed them as they're a point of um kind of flexibility in the housing market because there are so many ways that people make them work like example Rose gave and there's there's a lot of you know um I think the numbers up there showed something like 60% that we have are registered as rentals the other 40% you know some of them are probably not occupied but a lot of them are the the ones where it's a family member or a friend or somebody who's who's either living rentree or they're they're you know there there's some arrangement made there so there's they serve a purpose in our neighborhoods and they do for the ones that are being rented they provide an opportunity for somebody to rent and benefit from all the amenities you can get in a single family detached neighborhood you know proximity to a variety of things Services Parks or whatever else um at something that's less than the price point of other single family homes in that neighborhood so I feel like that's that's one thing the the um code amendments that that you recommended a council adopted last year that brought us into compliance um with house build 1337 I think especially since we they can now be up to a th000 square feet and 24 feet tall and you can do two on a lot um since then we've seen we we were averaging 40 to 50 a year between 2008 and 202 three and then

right now we've got kind of the the year total that we're looking at since we've adopted that house bill to uh 1337 code is just about double that we're about like between 90 and 100 that were that are in the process of being approved so we are definitely seeing an uptick um about 30% of the applications we've got are for two adus as part of a project so we're also seeing a good number that are are actually choosing to do more than one on on a single in a single project so um so we do they are part of our supply estimate going forward um they're not the majority of that by any stretch but they are a significant piece um and as as we move into that that realm of up to four per lot that might be just just by the nature of the fact that we charge half of the impact fees for those adus those might very well be one of the ways that people get to hey I want to add one or two units on my lot it's like well that might be one of the from an infrastructure standpoint and the fee standpoint right now that's that's probably more attractive than some of the other paths that people could take so so there's there you know again a lot of it just comes down to choice and the the lot configuration and kind of what people's intent is if they're if they're going to after the fact in an infill toolkit kind of project environment if they're going to do those um uh unit lot subdivision and actually carve up lots and sell those off or if their choice is to to build three or four units on a project

and then just rent them out and keep it as a single property you know it really just comes down there's there's a lot of different ways that could play out so um so it's there is no simple answer to that but but it is um I guess the the point I was trying to make is we've seen an uptick in interest in those as a as a housing form so Chris can you talk about at all the um just for those that are interested in affordable housing the um potential for additional density beyond the four and what the what staff I have had my hand up for a while I'd like to interrupt um I've had my hand up for a while and I feel like I'm kind of getting missed a little bit so may I please put my we can go to barbar come back to R sorry um twice in that conversation I heard uh what is an also commonly referred to as supply side Theory um and we don't need supply side Theory it's basically trickle down housing and there are other options um I don't see anything in what we're doing that make room for things like not for-profit developments and hybrid public Pro um uh public private projects and so I would know why to know where we are going to encourage those kinds of property um developments and and how we can include that in the comprehensive plan I think um if I'm hearing you right you're you're talking about like for instance the the housing projects that um like our our uh nonprofit Partners in the community um the Bellingham Housing Authority Mercy Housing the um the Catholic Housing Services um

have been able to to build in the community I think we absolutely are counting 100% on having that continue and we'd love to see even more of it um it's very dependent on the funding that's available of course but I think um those housing forms are allowed in all of our Urban villages in all of our residential multis zones um in our commercial zones um that are all those those developments that you talked about those hit the extremely lowincome bracket and and you know we've got that and when I'm talking about is um developments that are aimed at the people that earn between 30,000 and $60,000 a year these are the people that don't make enough money to pay rent but make too much money to actually get help on all of those properties that you just mentioned so um again I would like to ask what what strings can we pull what um what what things can we add to the comprehensive plan to put in room for things like not for-profit developments or maybe even some sort of hybrid public private Pro projects that are income based and and I'm adding the public private because because of the HR back from 1981 um we can't have rent control but unless you are a public entity so if we have a project that is a development that is a combined project from the public and the private together um we can actually um have case management that would make those units income contingent I I I I think those are all things that we're super interested in getting into the the updated housing chapter because

we need to be planning for um we need to have regulations that don't get in the way of and then be figuring out ways to incentiv all of those things um I think that when we do bring the multif family tax exemption uh report before you guys I think that will be a really good point to have that conversation um and we could talk about maybe what are some policy changes we can make that might expand the use of that program and make it more effective across the city um not just for multif family housing production but also potentially for ones that do get at that that affordability component I think you had a similar question I did yeah um just I think there's trying to identify and I think what um maybe Barbara is is looking for too is like what are the tools that we can to to develop that we can add within the comprehensive plan to help help uh Shepherd those things forward and one of the um one area that I'm interested in is this additional density for folks if you get to add to additional units um through House Bill 1110 and um is this like how is that being incorporated into the thinking around this um and then are there other strategies to help encourage those types of projects yeah I think I think that's definitely something we're talking about internally and I think as we like I said as we get to the housing chapter I think we need to look at the policies and figure again like like what we just talked about about the multif family tax program but also you know we're

talking about for instance for um projects that are adding you know even if they're not going to the fifth or six unit which would require affordability for those units for for 80% immediate income or below um we're talking about things like what are the things that present Financial challenges to people who want to add units to a if you've already got one home and you want to add two or three um add one or two more to get to like two or three or even four units you know at what point are um you know what are what are the extra charges for utility connections what are the U kind of the system development charges at what point are Frontage improvements um required if there aren't curb Gutter and sidewalk in front of a property um the the parking conversation plays into that what are the the impacts of of parking requirements or not having parking requirements or just having different parking requirements so um I think those are all part of that conversation is as you add units get get as you add units on a single piece of property what are the pieces that that where where we can make it easier to make that happen um with the aim of like for those that in particular for that kind of natural affordability finding ways to just keep the cost of production down so that that maybe the the sales price or the rental price that's required to recoup cost doesn't have to be as High um that being said you know we the estimates we're putting into our like our Capacity Analysis we are

looking at okay where where do we have lots with minimal tree cover that are on an improved alley that you know have adequate Water and Sewer in the the mains in front of the street and um you know and have a sidewalk on the street right now and you know it's you you start to do that kind of reductive exercise and the number of lots that actually have all of those things is is not the majority I mean it's kind of surprising you get you get down to um you know where you have sidewalks on both sides of the street and not a lot of tree cover and you have properties with homes that are the home compared to the lot you have like less than 35% lot coverage so you might be able to have flexibility to add adus or add a duplex in the back or town homes or something um the you know the number gets pretty small pretty quick so it's you know it it's kind of tempered our estimates where we've said okay well not everybody's going to want to scrape the existing home off because they probably love it they're going to want to figure out you know what do they do do they add a basement Adu do they convert their house to a duplex maybe they will add an Adu over the garage um but it's you know just trying to figure out what are the paths people might take to add units and how many can we reasonably expect by the end of the planning period um so you know that's where you know the numbers that we're putting out for those are um you know appear probably pretty modest to some people they might be

expecting higher numbers but we're just trying to be realistic and you know understand kind of what what might happen just by 2045 understanding that that doesn't mean that at 20 45 we're done it's it's that things will continue and just like in urban Villages it's that kind of Redevelopment is a cyclic thing that kind of keeps going I was just thinking the same thing like you know the headline is like the fifth and sixth unit are bonuses if if you do affordability component but with lot sizes like is unit five and six like physically possible and like what what like the state law is is that but can we take the spirit of that and say well what if you what if you do the third and fourth unit as affordable then can you get a break on you know some of the things you mentioned to bring down the cost and like add add an incentive piece there like we think of mftv mfte as like an 80 unit apartment building but what does mfte look like on like four units or like you know if you want the second or third if you just want if you want to build three units affordable can you get a break on something so that's like maybe actually possible MF is a minimum four yeah there's some there's some state requirements that we don't have flexibility on but but you know four a four unit is maybe more doable than a six unit and we could have an affordability package for a 4 unit if half of them are income restricted or yeah I think I I would say what I would encourage you is one hold on to those

thoughts because I think we absolutely should have those conversations when we have that I think the important piece we'll have the the report that talks about kind of what the current state of the market is and and then maybe what some policy changes we could consider would be going forward so I think those are those will be I I'm hoping those will be good conversations I think I think it'll be right in alignment with where the thinking here tonight is to be able to to talk about that stuff so um I pulled up the Denver comp plan while you were showing it off and they have a definition section about affordable housing and it includes the word affordable housing that is attainable and I thought that was lovely is that uh affordable housing is theoretical until we figure out a way to make it actually get built very important distinction yeah yeah we have to be realistic about kind of what what do we think we can actually do in the community okay um thank you that's this is a great conversation um and like I said I think especially when we get to bringing back bringing the housing chapter and the goals and policies and that I feel like this is all um that's where a lot of this is going to intersect um the land use map will come together with those how does that land use map interact with affordability and and what are we able to do from a policy standpoint with our regulations looking at this like I said we'll uh encourage you to vote on this at the next meeting and then it

would be the following meeting where we would start meeting at 6 o' if this is something you're in favor of but is is there General agreement that 6 o00 sounds like a good idea it kind of seemed like that was getting kind of General head not so okay that's great so what we'll do is we'll we'll include this in the packet for the next meeting and then you can just count on it'll there will be an agenda item we've got a a draft motion teed up for you so you guys can just act on that next time and um and uh generally supportive that seems great the only something came up when we were chatting beforehand is um cab meets the same night at 6 and so for the community or in your case if someone wanted to attend both meetings they previously could come at 6 and then at 7 and give comment um so I don't know I don't I'm not saying this is a reason not to pursue this but um just looking at the general schedule of conflicting commission meetings um when they overlap as a long-term issue maybe we can we'll we'll PR our heads together and figure out if there's any solution to be had to that it may just come down to being strategic with agendas trying to figure out if there are issues of larger general interest that maybe we we choose to stagger it to the the third rather than the first Thursday something like that I can't imagine it comes off up very often but it's an interesting conflict we can start at 618 exactly motion no thank you I guess I could do it all right thank you for the a

great discussion um we will uh aim to be back with you on the third of October uh with a discussion um well we don't have the agenda 100% set so uh please keep October 3rd open um it would be kind of the next uh discussion of kind of the the boundary issue and then the um some of the uh Capital facility topics um and how that works with things in the urban growth area and just talking through some of those things uh what we're trying to arrange with the city council is a joint session with you folks on the second meeting in October which would be October 17th doing a format similar to what we did with Transportation Commission and the operations room um over at Pacific Street and um that would be a a a uh meeting where we would we'd like to have you just all around the same set of tables and be talking through through kind of the the overall growth strategy have give give Council a chance to hear your thoughts on things and and you to hear their thoughts and to see just you know what the general um level of consensus is if there is any on some of the the variety of things around the growth strategy are so some of the things we've talked about at this meeting and the previous meeting and then some new things that are a little bit more kind of longer term growth issues related to the again the urban growth boundary bringing in new areas to the city and just kind of talking about overall growth capacity um there have been the the series of meetings that some of our elected

officials have been attending with with their colleagues from the the other cities and watk County and some of those issues of what they've been talk wrestling with and talking been wrestling with and to kind of get everybody's heads around the same table so that would be on October 17th um and we'll let you know within the next week if that's for sure going to happen or not we're just trying to get everybody's schedules the aligned so okay um thank you Russ do you have a comment just a quick comment to Chris so you said kind of save the date October 3D Thursday and that would be at 7 pm correct yes will be at 7 p.m.

and then the following meeting would be at 6 um okay so if you could keep the third open I will let you know very soon whether that meeting will happen or not if that one gets skipped then it would be the 17th would be the next meeting okay thank you okay if there's nothing else we will adjourn thank you all