Planning Commission

okay welcome everyone I'd like to call to order the March 21st 2024 meeting of the Bellingham City Planning Commission um since we have a crowd tonight um if you have a phone or computer please set it to silent mode while you're cous so we don't get interruptions and Heather when you have a moment can you call the role Russ Whidby Scott Jones here Barbara blasket here Jed Belo here Mike Estes here Mike mcau Ros Le is not with us tonight uh I don't think we had any minutes um okay tonight's meeting has one agenda item we have a public hearing on the Silver Beach neighborhood um rezone of multifamily zones and changes to storm water regulations um we are going to have a presentation from staff on that um we will hear from the public after the staff gives their presentation uh anyone here who signed up or is here or on Zoom that wants to speak we'll have three minutes to speak on the record for that public hearing before we dive into all that uh i' would like to we' like to start our meetings with general public comment so if you're here and you want to talk to the commission about something else besides the Silver Beach issue come on down right now we'd love to hear from you 3 minutes as well again if you're here for Silver Beach wait about 20 minutes we'll get to you um but otherwise um if you're at home go ahead and raise your Zoom hand otherwise um come down to the podium again this is not the Silver Beach time this is just general comment time do go ahead state your name

we'll do three minutes I don't think so is it on now yes okay thank you my name is Todd lagast and I'm a resident of the city of Bellingham I used to work for the city but I'm retired now my comments are my own and I'm here tonight to talk to you about the planning department and I want you to take my comments in context of when you review their work later tonight for the public hearing and the pack they presented in 2021 uh I noticed that there was a lot of mail theft going on in the city of Bellingham and I even went on some calls of a stacked mail that had been burned and set on fire stolen mail that had been set on fire and As A Firefighter for the city and I found some outside Al Lisa Anderson's house that had been dumped and what had occurred to me is that uh people were going around and stealing the mail in 2021 because of the stimulus uh cards that were being sent and I really noticed it in my neighborhood in Happy Valley and I put my thinking cap on and I tried to figure out how you could stop that there's a lot of those old school Koga wagon mailbox types in Happy Valley neighborhood where they have all those old apartments and they have the unlocking mailboxes there and I figured hey if we required landlords and I'm a landlord I own a couple rentals I made sure I had locking mailboxes on my for my renters but if we required landlords to actually lock put in locking mailboxes we could stop almost all mail theft in the city not package theft but mail theft in the

city and it'd be really easy to do so I wrote an ordinance for the city and I emailed Michael list cuz he was going to run for re-election in 2021 I said here's something for you Michael and his email back in a couple of days was uh quoted the planning department and to paraphrase basically they said it's no big deal because all the new apartments have to put in locking mailboxes and that was BS so I went back and forth with him about how old the older apartments are impacted but that was the work product that initially came from the planning department and three years later we're three years later and remember I wrote the or I wrote an ordinance change like who writes an ordinance change to give to them but I did and we still don't have it because they didn't like where it sat in city code and we still don't have anything and it's really easy to fix and if you think about the money cost each unit in the city of Bellingham is worth between 200,000 and $300,000 each bedroom or each unit depending on how many bedrooms seconds and so it's not a significant cost to the landlords but the planning department has not made that a priority and we could actually stop mail theft so when you look at your packet tonight and everything in the back is already pre-done for you think about what they did before and haven't done since and then read that critically thank you thank you next up good evening my name is Carrie Burnside I am the Washington low-income housing alliance's uh 40th

District LD lead and I'm here to talk to you about housing for all incomes as you know House Bill 1220 requires that every city create a plan for housing for all in incomes Washington low-income housing Alliance does have a very well researched uh road map for housing Justice I encourage you to uh look at adopt uh what you can it's an off-the-shelf package that can be adapted to any City and it's again based off of years of research and is applicable across the state of Washington as we are in a housing crisis I I really want to emphasize that every Department every day every individual start looking at how can we incorporate housing for all incomes and make that a priority weave that into every project and additionally stop using the term affordability because there's a lot of misunderstanding of what that actually means so quick example when we look at permanently affordable housing permanent actually means 50 years and affordable is based not on the individual's income but off of the income of the area median income so I encourage to have better definition of that and having housing that's for all the incomes that are you know the categories from extreme poverty to um higher up and that as we build more units that we are looking at um just simply adding more Supply will not address where we have a huge deficit on the lower end of um income levels and because of the time that it takes to build I encourage that we look at how can we take take existing housing stock and

utilize that um either converting them into resident-owned communities looking at uh opening more Pathways to home ownership through programs like culion or Habitat for Humanity and find create a uh Citywide right of first refusal for all renters we do have a rental registry program but adopt a first writer refusal so that when a home comes up for sale if if the individual who's living there isn't able to buy it there's organizations that can help them purchase that and get them into Home Ownership because of the state of our housing crisis we really do have to get creative in how we approach it and and building a loan uh isn't going to to do that and there are additional Avenues another excellent program is through Community Solutions it's the build for zero Model 30 30 seconds please and with that they have a will well-defined um definition of functional zero no more than three people experience homelessness for more than 30 days and it's achievable communities across the United States are doing it um it's a Well thr thought out program as well I've been advocating across the city to get this implemented thank you for your time thank you next up good evening all my name is Daniel lker and I'm a resident of the Brushwood neighborhood and I wanted to talk for a brief moment on parking mandates in the city Bellingham cons comprehensive plan as well as the city's bike and pedestrian Master plans all call for a modal ship and how modal shift in How We Do Transportation within

the city moving from overwhelmingly personal vehicle travel to public transit walking and bicycling as more opportunity driven modes this is driven on the basis of environmental health and public safety concerns um meanwhile the city is also facing as we just heard um issues with the supply of housing with prices and rents increasing out of the reach of many citizens both the modal shift and increasing housing Supply could be alleviated by the removal of harmful parking minimum requirements in the city these minimums require arbitrary amounts of parking for new developments increasing costs by an average of 25% for new housing and acting as a hidden subsidy for car ownership at the expense of other modes of Transit if I personally would like to bike everywhere and do not own a car I still have to pay for an apartment to have parking because the city required the building cut down trees and poor asphalt and spot that I will not use the most egregious recent example is the Millworks development down by the Waterfront which went for design review on Tuesday they are building a five-story parking garage for what will be a relatively modest number of studio apartments because the city requires it there will be more square footage in that development devoted to cars than actual living space for people these mandates hurt people they reduce opportunity and raise costs for everyone eliminating these mandates we wouldn't be alone 12200 cities Nationwide have been ditching the mandates

most recently Port Townsend as well as Dallas Texas if you can believe it removing them has the endorsement of the wam Democrats Bellingham Walk and Roll and the wam million trees project while also being highlighted in a recent recent Salish current article please consider amending the Bellingham municipal code to remove parking mandates or at least changing them from a shall to a May line item thank you for your time thank you um any Zoom hands no okay uh if there's no one else we will close the general public comment and move on to our public hearing Steve you want to kick it off please okay good evening planning Commissioners um members of the public thanks for attending this evening um I'm going to run through a brief presentation I want to allow the maximum amount of time for people to talk and then to have followup uh question and answer and discussion um I'm joined by other City staff here Curt Abel development and services manager for the planning and Community Development Department B importer our surface and storm water manager for the city of Bellingham from public works and Sydney prusac one of our new star planners from the planning department and uh thank you folks for attending as well and they'll be available for questions and discussions later so I just like to run through this quickly try to time myself actually uh I just want to start with just sort of some overarching thoughts how do we get here this slide is kind of a how did we get here um slide and so

just laying out a couple things really quickly in 2021 the Planning Commission and the city council um completed a multifamily uh zoning density project in 2021 we went through and assigned densities uh to all of the multifam zones and sub areas in the city um including uh the areas we're going to talk about tonight which are areas 89 and 13 in Silver Beach um during that process well I'll just keep I'll just move through here so um also in our existing uh storm water rules and our rules for the lake Wacom Reservoir also known as the Silver Beach ordinance there's been a sort of a longstanding intent to go back and revise the rules as they pertain specifically to multifam the multif family Rules currently just lean on sepa and we've always felt like we needed to be more precise what the rules is written uh that deal with multif family in the Watershed um so that's part of the effort here tonight and throughout the process that we've been in since uh almost two years now coming up on two years what we're trying to do here is to really strike a balance between providing uh opportunities for future housing and also making those specific changes uh to the storm water rules that will help uh address the ongoing uh phosphorus loading that's happening uh in the lake current ly there's mention about that in the staff report for these multif family areas the most important thing I want to mention is that uh this what we're considering tonight is just one element of the sort of full

frontal assault that we have on Lake Wacom and that is there's other programs that are currently in place we have the lake Wacom Management program which has various subelements and some of those are they range from the land acquisition purchase program um the um there's education on pet waste aquatic invasive species um the city has a home incentive program homeowner incentive program which aims to help people who wish to convert lawn to forested areas um and we also have a range of uh capital projects that we've instituted around the perimeter of the lake to take care of uh smaller basins that contribute to the lake that currently don't receive any storm water treatment the county engag in similar efforts so there's multiple things at play uh what we're doing tonight is not going to uh address or solve all the problems that are in front of us and the challenges that we have to protect and improve the water quality in the lake uh but this is certainly something that's important and so that's why we're addressing it here tonight I've handed out some maps multif family zones as you can see from left to right or south to North we're going to rearrange the compass tonight um um Area 13 which encompasses the mwh mobile home park and also Old Mill Village and there's one other additional multif family development that's right there area nine also known as the lake view condos at the foot of Alabama area eight which are the condos which you really can't see from Northshore because

they're kind of down on the slope you mostly see rooftops but it's the area right across from the Silver Beach Market Area 18 is a residential single family subdivision so we're not going to be discussing that tonight because we're not proposing any changes to that so we're just really going to be talking about areas 8 n and 13 over viw this is how this is going to roll out this is what um I'm going to talk about very quickly so we'll start with a background and some chology you can see the dates there this this uh the moratorium started in July of 2022 uh we put that in place so that we could take time to begin to do some analysis on resulted in basically the changes that we're proposing here we've done that several other on several other occasions the current moratorium that's in place expires in July of this year uh we're hopeful to be uh completed with this process so that we can lift the moratorium and apply uh new rules I think the couple things that are important to mention is that uh Council had placed this on the docket in November and they had decided that this is a project that could move forward out ahead of the comp planning process which is also currently underway was meant to be uh completed in somewhere between June and December of 2025 and then at the bottom there you'll see um staff went to the Silver Beach neighborhood quarterly meeting that was just about nine days ago last Tuesday um Kurt myself Jason and reene Renee lacroy from Public Works were present

and so we had a good opportunity to introduce the proposal and also take some questions and provide some clarity and some basic understanding of what our overall intent here is I want to hopefully you had a chance I'm assuming that you had a chance to read through the staff report on page 11 in the staff report or in your packet we briefly describ the density ranges and the density ranges are low medium and high and what low and medium do is they establish a lower density minimum requirement for units on particular piece of property but they cap it at a certain square footage the medi density then picks up where low stops and it continues up to a certain range as well and it it Caps or limits the number of units that can be on a site High densities which are currently areas N9 and 8 n and 13 uh those densities are high which means you have to establish a certain minimum number of units but there is no maximum so uh the most units that you can put onto a site is allowed provided that uh you comply with all the other existing rules like parking uh protection of critical areas Shoreline management um and height those are typically the things that you know are also sort of uh self-limiting but that's the way the density ranges work between low medium and high as I mentioned currently 8 n and 13 have high density and there's an analysis in the staff report I forget which page it begins on but it goes through and it talks about what that means means currently for each of the

existing multif family areas in Silver Beach and then there is an additional analysis that talks about what the um anticipated or potential unit count would be under the medium range and then under the low density range those numbers are reflected here so I'm just using rough numbers we don't just kind of did a back and mapin calculation on in terms of what's what's on properties now and what could be allowed and what you'll see here is is the difference between um medium and low as it says we might anticipate approximately 300 to 325 more units in the multif family area spread across all three the low would be significantly less than that and so part of our analysis and conclusion was that a difference of approximately 200 units I'll just use 200 it could be less um that's not an insignificant number of housing units to be provided um especially in areas think about those areas in Silver Beach where there's adequate Services you know Transportation uh Transit adequate utilities and so on proposer Visions to BMC 1680 1680 is the lake Wacom Reservoir regulatory chapter it's kind of a mouthful we call the Silver Beach ordinance um right now we have um specific rules for single family that limit the amount of phosphorus that can leave a site and that that amount is 0.15 uh pounds of phosphorus per acre per year there's a very low threshold in single family that says anytime you're doing Redevelopment or replacing impervious surface that's 300 squ fet or greater then what you

have to do is you have to achieve this metric but you also have to bring the entire site into compliance so it's a it's a retro it's one of those unique things where we're able to retroactively sort of apply the rules for the rest of the project even though it may just be a small addition that doesn't exist for multif family we don't have that capability right now and so the intent of the rule now is to specify that for multifam the protection standard is the same uses the same metric and it has the same very low threshold for R development in other words think about some of these multif family sites someone goes out and builds a builds a you know 35 square foot gazebo out on their site well now they're essentially they're required to bring the entire site into compliance and you might recall from the analysis when we talked about the storm water in each of the sub areas none of the multi family areas have any existing storm waterer treatment whatsoever everything is and everything was built quite a while ago so everything goes to a catch Basin it goes to a pipe and then it goes to the nearest receiving water body which in most cases is the lake so we felt like including this this requirement for multif family would be a huge gain for us over time in terms of water quality for Lake Wacom and this is technical but I'll just say it anyways these changes what all they do is they point to existing rules in our storm water management ordinance in 1542 which is what the last bullet

says there so all we're doing is saying multif family now is as protective as single family need reference the requirements in 1542 uh in the last several well the meat of the of the packet and the staff report goes through an analysis of how the proposal meets the comprehensive plan neighborhood plan Amendment criteria and that's in and what we've done is we've responded to section B and numbers one through five we've also responded to the rezone criteria uh also there in in chapter 030 that analysis is elaborate I'm not going to go through it because it's in the materials and hopefully you've had an opportunity to review um those things and then finally um what we're recommending for tonight and for uh testimony and discussion um we're recommending the medium density range as opposed to the low for areas 89 and 13 we are asking for approval of the revisions to BMC 1680 that now require multif family areas to be as protective as is currently done for single family um and then at the end of the evening if we uh we or if you feel comfortable uh with the discussion that we've had and are able to make a motion to adopt the findings conclusions and recommendation and make a motion to to move to city council um that enables us to keep on our timeline so that we don't have to um extend the moratorium again um that's just a that's just a a notion that I want to pass on and and let you know that that's available um you will make the decision on that so we'll see how that shakes out

in the end that's all I want to say for now leave the most time for public testimony and then of course we'll have some discussion afterwards thank you thank you Steve well just jump into public testimony okay did we get a sign up can you hand me this sign up sheet uh so we'll um we'll go in order the signup sheet anyone else who's here can have an opportunity to speak anyone who's on Zoom we'll speak after the people in uh person um we're going to do three minutes um please avoid clapping or wooing or signifying approval or signifying disapproval uh just like City Council meetings we like to have a neutral environment so everyone feels comfort voicing their opinion without being encouraged or discouraged from their what they're saying so um with that and so uh everyone gets one one shot um so the first three people are Michael fer Abby Abby and Brian Hennessy so um come on down you can use either Mike um and Michael you're at first hello hello I'm Michael fear a longtime resident of Bellingham and the uh leader of walk a million trees project I believe that we all recognize that healthy forests are one of the best allies for Lake Wacom water quality healthy forests do a better job than anything else to mitigate phosphorus and other Lake pollutants not only do they reduce very expensive storm water and treatment costs they provide numerous other environmental health and resilience benefits to our community especially in this climate change era my following comments are about

Area 13 and and around Old Mill Village I've walked that site and I encourage you to do likewise if you haven't a significant portion of it is open grass areas um that should be reforested and restored as part of any future housing project the existing decaying Alder dominated Woods there need help too lots of trees are slowly being killed by English ivy which the property owner has not addressed and very few new seedlings can survive uh to regenerate the existing Woods there due to extensive Himalayan blackberry and other invasiv on the ground which also have not been addressed by the landowner uh please recommend that any revised zoning specifies a significant buffer of forested area between the new residential development and the lake no matter what new storm water systems are provided um with the new development or what sea rules are followed the reality is is with hundreds of homes in adjacent medium density developments a lot of asphalt uh runoff oil and other pollutants will inevitably run or drift into the lake it's really easy to default that we're in a housing crisis developers do love to hear that that song sure more housing is important and as an organization walking million trees project is 100% behind infill housing especially when a significant portion of that is truly affordable which isn't even required yet yet is um in what's before you but should be as as um Carrie and others have mentioned the staff report states that its recommendation Rec represents a

balance of multiple factors consistent with the comprehensive of plan please vote for a better balance one where new housing is provided with significant Forest buffers maintained and enhanced along the Lake's Edge every tree retained or planted will be a big win for Lake WAM and all of us thank you thank you aby's up next after her is Brian Hennessy and then Carrie bernside hi my name is Abby I live in uh old Village while I'm going to read a letter uh it I sent a comment to this is a little more literate and fewer hos um while I'm aware that the dialogue about rezoning and lifting of the moratorium in Silver Beach is not all about Old Mill Village with areas 8 and N already built up it kind of is housing is important but the owners of Old Mill Village Peak Properties are not good people they are not ethical they don't care about the well-being of the community nor are they fit to be stewards of the Wacom Watershed I urge the planning department to find alternatives to development and Redevelopment for financing the storm drains Old Mill Village was purchased by Peak management of Michigan in July 2022 immediately all rents went up $220 also added was a water sewer gas fee the following Year everyone received another increase of $300 for the smaller Apartments 500 for two bedrooms that's a minimum of 500 increase for every tenant in an in toin calendar year with no improvements the apartments are 50 years old and they have single pane windows and our bills our electric bills

are just out of okay um I had an extra neighbor who was paying 1,700 and got an increase to 2,000 which was absurd because when new people came in they were only paying 1,600 she left and they rented enlisted her apartment for $569 she was not undesirable she was a respiratory therapist at the hospital and uh nearing retirement an attempt to make the most money they could Peak ruined many people's lives my building has 29 units currently only 10 are occupied by the people that live there three years ago 19 of the units have turned over cuz tenants could not afford the excessive rent increases for months P Peak ignored maintenance requests in more than one instance the requests were erased from the resident portal and that happened to me uh the lack of Maintenance led to a sewage leak which you guys are probably aware of the courtyard of my building was full of excrement and the manag management left it for two full days they claimed that they consulted the health department who told them they could wait to clean it up in reality it was a tenant who called the health department and they were not given 48 hours to clean it up I spoke with the health department myself and they assured me that agents would never use the word excrement and you can leave it for 2 days in the same sentence the sewage occupied a section of the property with storm drains that empty straight into the lake Peak does not believe rules apply to them they have multiple building code violations with the

city this week they were refined $1,500 for ignoring the no land disturbance Watershed regulations these are not the people to build houses they will not be affordable houses all they care about is making money they are not local they are greedy this is not a good person to be uh Steward of the Watershed thank you Brian Hennessy followed by Carrie Burnside okay I'm Brian Hennessy from Alabama Hill neighborhood and I actually signed the wrong paper so I didn't come for her to speak when I walked in but given given a mic I will take the opportunity to say something so uh I'm I'm support in total support of further scientific study of this issue we have some very uh powerful and educated scientists looking at this issue and I think we should listen to them over the developers and uh really that's that's all I prepared I think that that's uh enough so thank you thank you g good evening again I'm Carrie Burnside this time I'm gonna share I'm the Silver Beach neighborhood's uh president Association president and then I'm the mnac representative for the community also I encourage you to join if you live in the Silver Beach neighborhood join and help me spread off some of those responsibilities but I want to thank the planning department and public works for coming and talking to our neighborhood association they came late at night dealt with a bunch of angry homeowners who were very well behaved um but that that takes a lot of work planning on both sides and the planning department

was fantastic Public Works was fantastic really helped dispel a lot of um misinformation the last time that this came up as a public hearing there was a a a group of angry um residents with misinformation and so we we worked hard to to prevent that this time around um I I did send the Planning Commission our concerns you know we do really appreciate all the hard work the planning department has done in public works and recognize that the planning department is severely understaffed even to the point that I've stopped um making requests with the planning department because had to recognize they need to be able to get restaff focus on what they're working on and so I've I leave them alone it's hard but I but I do so I'm asking us to give them a break and give them more time because we the Silver Beach neighborhood is concerned about a few pieces of of the plan still and that's medium density we we have some questions is what will medium density do in one area of development where if there isn't if the storm drains aren't retrofitted in the other recognized area how will that increase because if you know 300 units could be potentially 600 or more people in additional cars people with that H how will that impact the lake so we're asking that the storm drains be required to be retrofitted in F for all of the parcels that are impacted and find ways to help offset the cost for the property owners and we're Al also asking for mandatory affordability but affordable to all incomes um

not just the are very a median income so I hope that you'll take a little bit more time with this I recognize we're up against the deadline and um you know I know the planning department is working really hard to streamline their process so that building can happen faster but given that this is our Watershed the drinking water for the entire city this is one of those areas that it's important to take the time to cross the te's dot all the eyes and um take the pressure off the planning department because they're doing an awesome job but there's only so much you can do in a day and I think this needs a little bit more more research and more re reforestation required because as Michael be has mentioned that is really the best way to keep phosphorus out of the lake and there's a lot of opportunity not just at Old Mill Village but also in the parcel number where Lake View Condos are there's another big opportunity there for reforestation that would um make a significant Improvement thank you very much thank you uh next up is John Sitkin followed by Susan Kane ronning um someone signed up as action in sustainability but if that was you you can go afterwards uh so John go ahead thank you thank you Commissioners good evening I'm John Sitkin schik Sitkin Davis 1500 Railroad Avenue there is an opportunity right now bring storm water improvements phosphorus reducing infrastructure to the Old Mill Village site will bring approximately 300 new housing units Apartments to the old Ville

millage site addressing the city's housing crisis that is Thoroughly analyzed in the staff report we agree with that analysis I do represent the owners of Old Mill Village one of the owners Representatives here Kevin mcra the owners are looking to partner with the city on the development of this site we can we have projected that by doing the development in a feasible manner we can meet storm water requirements that are proposed which will result in an 80% reduction phosphorus from this site that's what our analys preliminary analysis shows site has vast areas of Remnant imperious surfaces from the old male and other developments that exist today if you walk the site you'll see those City can act now to take these Lake take put these Lake Protections in place by allowing the medium density development while requiring compliance with proposed standards almost two years ago two months before the moratorium passed I approach the city on behalf of the prospective purchasers who say hey this is what we're looking doing we'd like to approach a development about medium density we have a floor the time on what you can do for high density we'd have to get an exception to do the medium density at that time we never propos a high density in fact if my clients came in I live in the Silver Beach neighborhood they came in seeking that I would sent them somewhere else it just didn't work the owners had the opportunity we consulted at that time three options file a building permit for high

density seek a variance or relief from the me that floor or remodel the existing units within the square footage you would not have to do the storm water retrofit because you did not expand the existing Footprints that's the rules as is outlaid in the staff report I was before the Mortor they told me no we're not going to file a building permit and try to vest a high development we want you to approach the city and we've been talking to the city about this since then har I want to thank you for the Silver Beach neighborhood meeting I thought it was very fair you were balanced to the whole process I was impressed but we must acknowledge that my clients chose not file investing building permit TR to gauge the city storm water management does not exist at the site today medium density is the win-win we can bring more housing and have the lake protections prior owners did leave the site without investing in Rehabilitation of the buildings describe what their conditions were which existed when my clients bought the properties there's no need to recover those Rehabilitation expenses and the prices and rents were artificially low as a result they did not have to recover Rehabilitation expenses over 40 years our owners the clients see this and the tenants let them know you hear about it wh safely make these repairs the tenants need to vacate the premises and the owners need to have the opportunity to recover those expenses on those repairs which are substantial by resetting the rents

and they're still after resetting rents are below current market rates the only feasible option medium density is medium density we cannot recover we have preliminary estimates of the cost 30 seconds please I'll try to wrap up we cannot afford and it's not feasible to do the storm water infrastructure rep fit at the low density that is not the owner's preference to avoid doing that infrastructure development look forward to the environmental review process we agree with the staff report this is a win-win more housing better housing and Lake protection we can achieve that now thank you thank you uh Susan thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight I'm Dr Susan Kane ronning I'm the Washington Sierra Club Wildlife committee co-chair and I'm also on the watcom wildlife advisory committee although I'm not speaking in that capacity tonight I lived in the Silver Beach neighborhood since 1994 I was the first president of people for Lake watcom and I wrote the department of ecology application to have Lake quom listed as an impaired water body under the 303d list I urge you to down List multif family zoning to low rather than medium density those problem those properties in the Silver Beach area mil Creek meets the fewest criteria of all the sample sites in the just released 2022 2023 Lake quam monitoring report program annual report on June 15th 2023 a Bellingham Herald article stated 16,000 pounds of dog waste is created in Bellingham per day harmful levels of fecal waste have

been found in all the Urban creeks in Bellingham this is especially a problem in the lake watacam Watershed and that's their quote Old Mill Village borders mil Creek increasing the number of additional units will result in additional fical entering the creek and Lake quam if you assume that onethird of new units will have have um dogs and that's 300 units that's a lot of feals entering the lake 2022 traffic study showed that 85% of vehicles are going 38 mph or more in the 25 M hour Zone on North Shore Road there have been at least six documented vehicle accidents on Northshore in the past two years vehicle the Bellingham Police Department verified on Monday that there are not traffic Patrols in the lake watacam area and none are expected for several years I'll scoot over increasing the number of vehicles on Northshore and Electric Avenue will only increase the speeding and traffic issues in addition to the amount of heavy metals including Benzene that flow into Lake watacam lastly Lake watacam Watershed residents pay an additional fee in our city of Bellingham sewer and water bills these monies have provided acquisition lands along with reconveyance land there is a total of more than 10,000 acres of protected Watershed land set aside side or managed as low income impact Parklands as a homeowner in the wa Watershed it is frustrating to consider untreated storm water is being allowed to flow into Basin one without retrofitting and then additional units which will exacerbate the

problem may be allowed when we are pain to help protect the lake there should be Creative Solutions to fund storm water retrofitting without increasing add additional units in the wated I agree that storm water retrofitting of multi-unit properties in the Watershed is needed I don't support lowering the density to medium and allowing additional units in the Watershed to achieve this goal I urge you to lower the density to zoning to low and keep the density low in the Watershed thank you thank you um anyone else here in the audience that has not spoken um would like to come come on down you can line up uh you can come come on down and then speak after her sure go ahead just say your name and hi there I'm Dr Deborah Benz I've been a physician here since 1990 and I live in the Silver Beach area uh I'm going to be very short in my comments because there really only a few success uh important things to impart first of all um the city of Bellingham depends on Lake watcom for our water supply it is the water supply we have if you place that in danger you are placing the health of the people in the entire city of Bellingham in Jeopardy secondly in order to build build more homes uh in any area in the Silver Beach area trees will be cut the soil will be disturbed impervious um uh areas will be increased uh there is no apartment complex that is going to have a gravel drive there's going to be Asphalt in addition to the Home Building or the apartment building we already have a storm

water problem in in the Silver Beach area and it seems that placing a medium density on these areas that we're considering at this time is only inviting problems down the down the line I ask that the board have foresight think carefully about the impact that this might have on the entire city as well as the Silver Beach uh neighborhood trying to catch up on pollution is a lose lose proposition it's very costly both financially and in for the health of our population I ask that Silver Beach these areas in the Silver Beach neighborhood be decreased to low density uh uh building thank you thank you just come down and and get in line next time right my name is Todd lagy and I'm here again as a private citizen I hope that this Planning Commission will push pause on this process and send it back to the planning department to incorporate affordability as a essential component in this rezone the city of Bellingham already has shown that it can and has put affordability over developer profits the city did this with the mobile home park overlay the success of that brave action to put affordability over developer profits was just seen this last Saturday when the samish mobile park became a Cooperative thus stabilizing rents and ensuring affordability the city can do a similar action with this rezone first the city must recogn that any development in the Watershed will degrade our drinking water quality so we are trading development for what we have a real opportunity to require

affordability let's face it the multif family tax exemption is not creating any affordable housing not even one unit the city's own website shows this on the planning department website so how do you get affordability in Silver Beach by using the RCW for rent control RCW blown right but the city isn't doing that instead the council gives us their thoughts and prayers in a resolution for support for House Bill 2114 not one bit of City instigated action to require affordability just hopes that the legislature will do something well they did in 1981 when they wrote that last sentence of the RCW I read through the current comp plan I used the search feature and found the word developer 18 times in the current comp plan the word profit five times but only twice in the entire current Bellingham comp plan is the idea of developer profit even hinted at and it sure as heck doesn't say it out loud but you know what it does say out loud in fact it screams it affordability the words affordable or affordability are in the comp plan 97 times and all but seven of those are about affordable housing the others are like affordable utilities affordable Transportation this packet has 58 Pages the packet tonight 58 Pages you know how much it says affordability twice so vote no on this reone send it back to the planning department and require them to put in affordability and this developer paid $25 million for the property they can afford some affordability thank you thank you next um hello my

name is Kendall um I'm a resident of the Roosevelt neighborhood um I have been really impressed with some of the approaches the city is taking and the planning zone is taking um in their attempts to achieve sustainability um I initially went into reading the agenda for today you know with an attitude of skepticism and I was really impressed to see that the city was trying to actually you know Implement better storm drain storm drainage and um put some regulations you know moving it down to medium or low as opposed to unlimited and while I do think that those are significant steps in the right direction in the case of these particular developments being directly on the Watershed I do have to agree with many of the statements made here that these are just simply not enough um I don't think it fits into the comprehensive plan um of 2025 I don't think it really meets the goals um I think it's section E2 to limit development and um EV for urban sprawl which pardon me if that's not exactly how you say it um I feel that I do feel that there are other Alternatives besides developing this area and there have been in my research I've seen that there was a variety of kind of human rights violations um against the companies that own the mil Creek development um there have been some discrimination on the basis of religion gender um people have been evicted um including people who are really at risk their housing is at risk um And in regards to that I think it is really important that the

city consider extending this moratorium looking more deeply into this issue um I understand that there's probably a lot of pressure you know to move this forward it seems like it has been extended multiple times but it is a really serious issue that's facing the entire community and I hope that um elected City officials will just consider really taking that time until 2025 to see are there other Solutions um how can the development if it does have to go on you know really be encouraged to be sustainable to be affordable um but because zones 8 9 and 13 all border um wetlands and directly border creeks and you know the water no matter what you do there any type of development will unfortunately um leech chemicals into the wed um I think we all know that even minor construction you know bringing in a bulldozer digging you know it it does leech even just a little bit of oil into the soil it it can make a huge difference um I think in this day and age what the community really wants is for us to take time to really assess these issues there's an amazing University with tons of students um coming here just to study this particular issue um um and this Watershed is home to so many animals um you know the owners put down Hawk Haron Songbird beavers um cocani salmon all those things deserve to be protected thank you thank you next up good evening I just had a quick point of clarification I was wondering I'm not totally scientifically literate and I was just curious what generates f

for us in human development whether it is I don't know if this is a question for the planning department or someone else um whether it's fertilizer concrete asphalt and if someone could answer that I would most appreciate it thank you can you say your name again oh sorry my name is Daniel blenker okay uh we'll add that to the list um staff will comment on that later um thank you next [Music] up hi um I am here representing action and sustainability it's a project of a world Institute for a sustainable Humanity it's called a wish uh we're a partnership a local uh community-based partnership in balancing uh conservation and development interests I'm here with 30 years experien as a PhD hydrologist who specializes in drinking water and I have some particular concerns uh I've spoken to Steve I also have a background in environmental planning and we have discussed the need for additional information this um before I before I begin however I am I would like to just uh make a statement about the uh legal representation of Old Mill it cannot go on notice that it is the same Law Firm representing this foreign uh owned private Enterprise that uh has been working towards developing this area and in the same breath working to evict the residents mostly lowincome uh most with disability and on uh and and with a history of as has been uh identified by the prior speaker human rights violations and right now hate crime investigations on site on the property so some of what was raised here I

must um disagree with uh Old Mill did not make the choice to just not apply for these uh uh building permits they actually uh had their building permit uh uh laps and so they actually wanted to build but they they weren't allowed to so just to clarify that that um we have one arm of this of this project uh stating that they want to develop what is our highly sensitive uh water sheds with the other arm uh stating uh basically moving to get people out so using the the ex the the reasoning that we're building to have housing uh brings some uh moment to reflect um as far as the zoning we totally endorse reducing the zoning from high intensity to to a lower one but we don't believe that those are the only options and the um bringing the uh zoning into play will immediately it sounds like take away the moratorium now Mort torum was put into place so we could evaluate and be able to put in educated decisions about what is our public drinking water supply in sensitive wetlands and riparian areas we have a natural purification and filtration capability that's there already that has both the impact of being uh destroyed 30 seconds please okay I just want to bring to your attention that to date there is over a thousand pages of code violations in the current uh development of Old Mill that includes sewage and includes chemical discharge that could easily get into the water supply there's over 250 reports of police calls to that same area that includes the manufacturing of bombs and ilcd

drugs all of which can get into the water supply there is no Baseline information to even identify the impacts that are already there and the cost of the community that is already occurring so we highly recommend that you extend the moratorium so that we have the time to have a knowledgeable basis for these decisions before uh you know saying that you want to wait for a development to come into play uh before you put in restrictions is like waiting to buy brakes on a car uh until after you've crashed your vehicle we really believe that without the extension of a of a um a way to assess that we won't be able to guard our public public drinking water supply thank you can you share your name with us it's Dr Susan Tosh thank you okay uh can we if if anyone remotely attending would like to give uh on the record testimony for the public hearing please raise your Zoom hand and we will accommodate that uh we'll do same 3 minutes I'll time you um go can you bring the first speaker in please Heather go ahead Randall when the city council last discussed the building moratorium around our Reservoir Lake watom City staff wanted time to solve the false choice between protecting critical water infrastructure and adding more development around our already failing water source continuing to think along these lines now the proposal is that limited but significant development is necessary at least two 300 units around our Reservoir to S solve our housing emergency so again development trumps

infrastructure no surprise I live in the Watershed I watch my neighbors use Roundup to kill weeds in their water permeable driveways I see puddles of oil and gas under their trucks all this material ends up in the storm that lead to The uncleaned catchment Ponds where Wildlife are exposed to these toxic chemicals some suggestions it is not illegal to use Roundup in the wed make it illegal when referring to Lake wakam always refer to it as our Reservoir stop pretending that any new development will not have negative effects on our water stop boating on our Reservoir to continue as the planning department has proposed will eventually result in a real estate Ponzi scheme whereby existing and new residents will lack the critical infrastructure they need that the city should provide and housing values will collapse if this plan is followed a terrible precedent will be set you can't have a city that lacks critical infrast structure you can never build your way out of a housing problem without enforcable rent control clean water is life rent control is essential spend our taxes on what we need not just development it's simple vote no and I'd just like to close by asking about what is going to happen in area one next to Area 18 that is already platted for development and I take great offense at an earlier speaker who described my previous appearance at the council as spreading disinformation everything I have said here today is true there is no disinformation everything I wrote in

the Cascadia week Cascadia daily was factual it was true and everything I gave in my testimony was factual and true it is time that the city and all of its departments begin to respond to the city's need for critical infrastructure whether it's the lake whether it's the sewage plant whatever it is because if we do not do this this entire Community will collapse thank you thank you next up anyone else last chance for Zoom hands please um anyone in the audience who did not have a chance to speak here in person nope okay um not seeing any other desire for public testimony we will uh close the record the public test record uh for this hearing and turn it back over to the commission and staff for discussion um thank you everyone for coming and participating um we appreciate your testimony um okay questions uh I think there was a few issues to address that staff may want to address do we want to is there anything you want to go address directly first before we have questions we might have similar questions yeah we're prepared to address uh some of the issues that were raised um so we'll do that now can I'll start and then other folks will can I start with one framing on I want to start with the phosphorus question yes that was asked from the public and just expand that out a little bit to like how do you think about single family development a driveway a lawn um like what what is the critical factors that we are trying to avoid in the lake and and how do different development forms

impact that um is it um impoverished impervious surfaces is it roofs is it Lawns is it trees like what what what is a net positive and what net negative in terms of uh phosphorus and other types of things that might be involved in the storm water and run off into the lake we go for it Jason Porter of Public Works there's a lot in the question um but I think I can start off where where phospherous is coming from it's a natural occurring mineral and and a nutrient so for a lot of the main sources it's coming from soils and then when we talk about impervious surfaces they aren't phosphorus generating surfaces they're conduits to transport that phosphorus into the lake now phosphorus can come from other forms can come from fertilizers but our state has banned the use of phosphorous containing lawn fertilizers um and it can come from detrius and bird droppings and pollen and a number of things what we do is we use existing published information a lot of it comes out of the tmdl itself the total maximum daily load which is the nutrient limits the legally mandated nutrient limit reduction of what kind of phosphorus loading are we anticipating off of various surfaces a forest releases phosphorus that's what we're trying to mimic that 0 .15 PB per acre per year that Steve talked about in the single family that's the forested phosphorus but what we know is that Lawns are one of the highest if not the highest source of phosphorus and it has to do with their growth cycle the way that you

mwing and maintain them um and the way that they can form these denser Turf mats which then could increase runoff so when we talk about different types of surfaces um Landscaping has a different amount of phosphorus that would come off of it Lawnwood but roof gutters sidewalks driveways are really just conduits for that phosphorus to leave a property any any more in your question I was um no that's okay um Steve other other aspects you wanted to address off the Geto yes thank you there are many things that were brought up this evening um regarding uh I'll just say behaviors and things that are occurring uh both at Old Mill Village and and at other uh properties other sites um and we don't take those lightly um however we through this effort are not able to address those specifically we are starting at sort of the highest level of our land use regulations by establishing a density for certain areas in in Silver Beach and what happens after today or after some decision is made regardless of the outcome it's important for people to know that the next level down is the Project Specific action that's taken and the Project Specific rules that are applied for continuing to limit the impacts of development on the lake some of those things include our critical areas ordinance where we establish buffers from Wetlands we have a shoreline Management program that establishes buffers from the edge of the lake we have storm water rules that we've talked about and the storm water rules uh

ALS they address a couple things most notably and that is um how storm water is handled during development in terms of minimizing erosion and sediment and water leaving the site and then how storm water systems are built and maintained and operate over time after development occurs so there's some there was some concern that you know all bets are off and we after this we just let allow people to do what they want to do and there's no other Protections in place there are um I would further add that there are some things that there are some impacts that may occur offsite um people mentioned traffic and speeding um congestion and those kinds of things at the time a Project Specific application is applied for and this is not just here in in Silver Beach this is everywhere in the city uh all kinds of uh multif family projects that are popping up everywhere we have the ability to use sepa State Environmental Policy Act and we have that ability at the Project Specific level to handle potential uh adverse impacts that may occur off site and we talked about people had mentioned cars not just the increase and the velocity but then also the um the storm water as well and the pollutants that come from using Vehicles we have mechanisms in place by uh which we can address that at the Project Specific level um we there was a several people mentioned the amount of time and for for us to go back and study this more if that's what you decide that you want to to do that's that's fine we'll do

what you ask um but I think it's important to note that you know since the moratorium was established in July in 2022 we have been doing this analysis um we've spent time talking internally about what it means to propose the rule changes that are before you tonight uh so I want to emphasize that that analysis has been occurring um and we felt like we've laid everything out in such a way that it shows shows the work we've done to date um there are some let me just go through the list here um talked about phosphorus just a point of clarification I think and that is that the um the specifically to the Old Mill Village site there was mentioned about you know when building permits were applied for and what happened on the site The Old Mill Village site is governed by a contract that was executed with the city in 1971 and it was further amended in 71 or 72 and that contract specified that at that time that 770 units were possible but in order to get to that number uh you had to continue to file building permit applications and if there was ever a 5-year lapse in submitting building applications to reach that total number of units the contract expired that contract expired in 1987 that was the last building permit that they applied for and and since that time uh the site has largely been as it is today and we heard various people talk about the state of that site and its um its current uh conditions sure I'll give uh um Curt ABF Feld uh planning Community Development Department for

the record um I'll give Steve a little bit of break and um maybe Jason a little bit of time to think about the comments that he'd like to respond to um I think some of the the concerns that we heard tonight um are really let me take a step back Lake walkom water quality is a very very important issue that we that we have to deal with um and that we have been dealing with for decades um land use and density is one component of how we are addressing water quality impacts um the lake Wakka Management program is where the vast majority of the concerns and issues that we heard tonight that program is is is was created and intended to deal with these issues that we've heard with how do we control the phosphorus how do we deal with our 303d listing um what are our paths forward how do we you know make improvements on our water quality we have you know historic development that's occurred in the Watershed that we have to find a way to to to deal with that we have to find a way to mitigate that one way of doing that is through development if by allowing some sort of development um we have that opportunity to require retrofits so that's one component that we can do it um you know part of the lakaka management program and other ways that we're addressing a lot of the uh discussion tonight is through our land acquisition program um through the hip hip homeowner incentive program um we get we do capital projects every year out there so um we are constantly trying to improve the water

quality of Lake Wacom which is a reservoir and which is our drinking water source um it's very important and we are constantly working on that again this is one compon component of that um approach to dealing with it um there was also some comments tonight about rent control and affordability um our our legal department um and City position is that rent control is simply not allowed in the state of Washington at this point it takes State uh changes state level changes in order for the city to attempt to do any sort of rent control um a affordability is something that we is very important and we are trying to address um one of the things that you've heard us talk about in the past is inclusionary zoning inclusionary zoning is that ability to require affordable housing an affordable housing component within development um the city is currently studying that right now so it's it's something that we are interested in trying to evaluate um I know that you've been briefed on that in the past uh through through through other sessions um we're you know like I mentioned um oh the one thing that I didn't want to um also allude to is that a lot of the the the questions and concerns about water quality that we heard tonight the the place to really um submit those comments next week we have the lake wcom uh Joint Council and commission so we've got Council me uh members from w County uh and the the city council um we hold a yearly meeting on that in the lake Wacom uh uh Water and Sewer

District Commissioners as well sorry um we hold a yearly meeting where they combine um and listen to what's going on with the lakew program um where we're making advances where um we need to continue to make improvements on so next week Wednesday night at 6:30 I encourage all of the folks that we heard ton tonight um to come to that meeting because that's really uh the opportunity to talk about some of the water quality issues that they they brought up tonight uh it's actually in city council chambers Jason yeah so I'm again with public works and so I come at this and really looking at the water quality um through some of the public comments that were provided I did hear a couple themes that came up that I thought I could provide some more information um to kind of I guess really just to provide more information so one of the things I we heard coming up Were Trees you know we know the importance of trees U we know they're important to our newly elected mayor um but I did want to point out one thing that Steve had mentioned and I know it's in the staff report is the storm water we'll say mitigation or the filtering rules that we're talking about that includes a requirement to place 30% of that property in a conservation easement hire an arborist design a Pacific lowland Forest which includes Ground Covers shrubs and trees put five years of bonding to ensure plant viability and have inspections and enforcement capability so with these storm waterer regulations that are being

proposed which are the same for single family residential they include that component that native vegetation component so at minimum of any of these as proposed multif Family Properties would develop a minimum of 30% of that property would have to be planted protected and inspected and bonded something else that that I've heard come up too were incentives for retrofits how do we get these properties to retrofit you know one way that we've been talking about which is actually part of the city's tmdl response when I say tmdl those are again those nutrient limits those legally enforceable nutrient limits is we do that through Capital Construction those are where the city builds filters in our right of way and we typically REM we remove pollution to the highest degree we can with those facilities but that's a lot of it's from public rideways and maybe some public properties that drain to those our analysis of the tmdl and what we believed we could do at that time was that we cannot achieve and meet the TMD waste load reductions purely through Capital facilities we needed to have private property retrofits in order to meet those aggressive nutrient limits so we did that in two ways one was new and Redevelopment requirements so any new development would have to put in these storm water controls and Native vegetation protection areas as well as Redevelopment and we set that Redevelopment Threshold at 300 Square ft now that's stor that's an area threshold of impervious surfaces that

threshold is 5,000 square ft in the rest of the city so you can see how we took that serious and we created a situation where we're looking at how do we get the phosphorous reductions we need but it was also a cost sharing right so our stormw water utility rate payers and the water rate payers through the SE charge are paying for the city's actions on this tmdl what we're trying to do is to find the right balance of having private property mitigate their own impacts and there's several ways of doing that but the direction that Council gave us was to have these stricter development and Redevelopment regulations with those low threshholds so those are how we found ways to meet that TM deal then another another thing I had heard too were maybe we're talking about incentives and I know there was some public comment about the land acquisition program um for storm drain retrofits which I'm taking as more of those water quality retrofits you know storm drains filtering that storm water we have that that's the homeowner incentive program the homeowner incentive program is funded through the land acquisition program Council allowed that through the development of that and the homeowner incentive program is a program where the city will work with voluntary voluntary homeowners to do water quality improvements on their properties many of the projects are native vegetation where the city will pay for a majority of the cost to take out lawn or other land landscaping and put in Native

vegetation again with soil amendments mulch Ground Covers trees and shrubs we want multi canopy but the hip program also if you are a lak front or Creekside property because those are properties we can't get their water into one of our Capital facilities one of our stormw water fac filters we also will build stormwater filters on their property and again the city will pay for a vast majority of that so we have an incentive program that is available to uh residents in the Watershed to do those retrofits now one thing it isn't available currently is to multif family development when we put the hip program together we had no interest from multif Family Properties to participate in the homeowner incentive program and also created challenges for the program itself in that we needed the property owner not tenants that would need to commit to these improvements and then sign an agreement that says yeah the city paid for these improvements and we promised to maintain and keep them there so there was some unique challenges in multif Family Properties because tenants may desire those but the property owners may not so those were challenges that we had in the past with multi family we're listening and we're hearing from the public you know this isn't the first time that we're hearing well it's a very it's it's a recent thing about maybe providing those incentives to multif Family Properties as well and so my group it's actually my group that runs the hip program we're looking at that

now we're going to start looking at can we then now offer the homeowner incentive program like we do for single family residential to multif Family Properties hopefully we have property owners that are willing to to participate in the program um it is a voluntary program so if people don't want to participate they don't have to but those are the pieces that the city also try to do to to get improvements on private property to help us meet the tmdl and these waste load limits that we have um why don't we turn it over to Commissioners now we'll give over an opportunity start on this side with Russ I'm just uh curious about a few things and maybe you can address some of them um with particular with 8 n and 13 I thought those are the areas we're trying to focus on um in the Silver Beach area um as it pertains to the Watershed has this been it seems like it's been historical that we've been very sensitive to this area to preserve the Watershed would that be a fair assessment or not are you asking if we have try to be protective yeah from a historical standpoint knowing that this is pretty much our Reservoir haven't we always tried to be protective of the Watershed historically and no okay no we did and Kurt might be here when we first adopted what we call the Silver Beach ordinance okay um I Kurt made in in 2000 so that the first time now the city knew and had information because we've partnered with Western Washington University and had seen the decline but it took a long time to

create the movement the support the funding to do a lot and in 2000 is when we started adopting special regulations for the lake wam water you can see in the packet how some development that occurred in the 80s and 90s had zero storm water infrastructure put in so you can see how prior to 2000 it was not a very high priority I'm leading to a point here you're trying to steal my wind and my sales here so some somehow or way we've kind of either 2000 or with the assistance of West Washington kind of known that this is kind of a reservoir we want to protect it and even the consideration going from high density to medium density or low density shows that we've got some knowledge that we're gaining right over this concern so it seems to me that uh we are gaining that knowledge and we should be fierce about protecting our res are right and so I'm just curious is that the general sentiment of the planning department currently would that be the consensus of where we are I would I would agree yes that um protecting our water qualities um drinking water source is um very important and we have been working on that um I think one of the things that um uh we talk about it is our approach to um the TMD tmdl requirement um it's it's I think uh at our meeting last week um at the neighborhood meeting uh Renee lroy uh assistant director put it in a a really good approach is that you know it took us a long time to get to this um point and it's going to take us a long time to get out of it um

the Lake Walker Management program you know the the plan um is a 50-year plan so we're implementing all of these new rules and regulations and it takes time for us us to see the change um the changes that occur so um we believe that through the adoption of our additional rules and regulations that we will be making progress on that um we know that we're making progress by just taking those properties um that were developed in the 70s that had no INF no infrastructure in place by doing capital projects now there's something that's treating the water before it's going into the lake so we are making progress on that I'm naive about how the water reaches the lake so if you could help me out a little bit I looked at the uh City IQ map and I don't see actually anything actually entering entering the the lake from 13 is that true does it go out in another way so I'm with Public Works City IQ does not map all private utilities okay we don't have their map we don't have their drainage system mapped so from areas in 13 it goes directly into the into the yes it does not connect or drain into the city's system yep they are they have a direct discharge either to the Wetland complex around it or the lake okay thank you and how many discharges are there from say Area 13 privately into the lake we have no idea and so when 300 ft are Disturbed for development and this triggers is it for the 300 ft for the entire complex is it per unit is it the entire property is it all the property that they

own in the area what is that 300 Square F feet trigger for it's the development site so the site so if it's a 100 apartment complex just building one 300 foot shed would trigger the entire site to have to retrofit yes correct and that would include the a vegetation protection area that 30% M planted as a forest and creating an engineered storm water system to then limit how much phosphorus is is in your runoff is there any understanding of how much say for Area 13 that would cost the developer like do we know what that retrofit both natural and engineered would be what we can say is we know Capital Construction costs um generally the number that we use is about $50,000 per pound of phosphorus per year is what we find we've been able to drive that metric down by doing some Innovation and some development of advanced treatment systems but generally about $50,000 per pound of phosphorus per year and I can give you estimates of how much phosphorus comes off of different types of properties I'm not going to hijack you here but I I took science class and that doesn't mean anything to me is there a way you can make that relevance to this conversation 50 yeah I was trying to get there okay like yeah um oh I lost my train of thought now well yeah we could I guess we an example may help right and so we have done some simple analysis and so I actually have some numbers in front of me with some even potential dollar amounts that go now want to make sure that this is clear this whole

process isn't just from Old Mill Village but when we're looking at and analyzing the highest potential for redevelopment it probably is the Old Mill Village site so we use that as an example to figure out you about these are rough estimates because we don't have all of the information because we haven't had an application from the property um the estimate of phosphorus coming off of the Old Mill property now the entire parcel which is the peninsula and others um is about 18 pounds of phosphorus per acre per year and I think that's pretty close to what the applicants had estimated and so then we looked at what would so if they were to reforest the lawn areas and treat the existing impervious right we don't we haven't seen an application we can't speculate what the developer would do so we looked at what's existing out there and so we looked at retrofitting the existing lawn areas to a forested area and then filtering the rest of the storm water so that strategy would reduce phosphorus to about 4.57 lb per acre per year um and so that's one way you could also reforest the site um if the city was to build a capital you know when I say Capital that's a city-owned storm water filtering system if we were to go to that site and have or have a site that had that kind of acreage and we could get all of that water in a pipe and get it to a single facility our estimate would be about a million $43,000 to construct that um and so that's rough estimate and those are using again our city

Capital Construction methods in that um so you can realize significant phosphorus reductions by having an engineered filtering system and these native vegetation planting areas um on a property and that's that would be a you know a million dollars that the city wouldn't pay for to then try to collect that water get it into one of our systems and filter it when you say 4.5 PBS but we're looking to get to 0.15 how do we get there correct so the natural forested that's 0.15 pounds per acre per year is the forested discharge rate I would have to look at I just don't have the data to be able to to provide an answer to that right now is that a requirement to get to 0.15 for this to happen the site would be required to discharge not the native vegetation protection area because the idea is you're planting a forest but all of the other areas your lawn landscaping roof driveway and all of that you would then filter that to reduce it down to that zero 0.15 lbs per acre per year but it's that acre component is the Mill site is many acres and so you would use that 0.15 lb time 3541 Acres which is a lot better than 4.5 pounds per yeah yeah pounds per acre y okay thank you um my concern here is our housing capacity across the whole city and the whole system we spend a lot of time on the multif family project a couple years ago and we had a big public process and we decided to do the consolidation to the three levels of multif family zones that included this area and I was surprised at the

moratorium because it came right on the heels of that process which we' put good good effort and information into a number of meetings here um I look at the map of the current usage in the silver Beast area which is different than the zoning map and it's a basically a of yellow there's an area area 18 is a single family neighborhood with culdesac it's it's not going to be redeveloped as multif family anytime soon it's all individually owned so the whole area is we're underutilizing the capacity of our Zone capacity and as we get into the comp plan and we're asked to do these analysis of do we have enough zoned capacity for our future growth we we missed these little details that you know Area 18 is zoned for high density multif family today there's no net new capacity there in in practice in the in the next 30 Years um and so I'm I'm concerned that we're doing we're even considering a down Zone with no equivalent up Zone in this neighborhood or in some other neighborhood like the comp plan is going to require us eventually the math has to work out we need to offset this somewhere and who is going to volunteer and step up to to to take that offset capacity that we're losing here so one of the things I was wondering in your slides is you had an analysis between medium and low density in the number of units is it the case that the high density current zoning is there an analysis of the number of units lost going from high to medium in potential Redevelopment capacity for us to

help weigh like what we're letting go of here in the systemwide housing capacity or is it that it's limited so there's kind of it it has a floor and no ceiling and so there's kind of hard to pick a number it was hard to pick a number um and we didn't do that specific analysis um the way that I characterized it this evening was um under current circumstances it's high so there has to be a certain minimum and that certain minimum is uh slightly higher than what would be allowed at the cap at the medium level so it goes from a little bit higher than that is where the floor is and then it's unlimited and so what I mentioned um is true and that um for for example for Old Mill um you know we there are other things that are required to be complied with that then take Max and Whittle it down for example we have a critical areas ordinance that says you have to be x amount of feet from Wetland features right and that that applies Citywide uh that can be anywhere from 100 to 150 ft also known as buffers we have a shoreline program that limits development within 100 feet of the shoreline Edge um and typically these areas are also usually required to also be planted in in addition to any mvpa standards so um and then the other things are parking and height and those are Citywide those are the things that limit the number of units so while we say Max other things limit it uh height for example at Old Mill Village there are no height restrictions because of its distance from proximity to

other zoning types that are different so there there has to be uh essentially 200 feet of separation from a different Zone type uh in order for there to be a height maximum that doesn't exist here um and then it then it comes down to parking a lot of times too and parking then can you know be done in any number of ways it can be done under building that's additional cost surface parking is still fairly common especially in the outlining areas of our town and then that is additional impervious surface and so then that again then that plays into how storm water is handled and what the associated costs of that are to to provide the facilities that are necessary Accord according to the code um both now and as as we propose so that's long-winded answer of saying we didn't do an analysis of what's what the total maximum is but instead just identifying that the floor of the maximum is probably anywhere from 20 to 25 units more than what the medium cap is does that make sense okay I think I'll just add on a little bit to that um since I was so much involved in the the residential multi project um the scope of that project did not include any sort of rezoning we did that on we did that on purpose um we didn't want to go in and start considering different densities for different zones throughout the area um we felt that that was better done at a higher level through the comprehensive Plan update process which we knew was going to be occurring so we specifically did not reone or change

the the um the zoning designations in any of the RM zones we simply took the existing zoning and put it into our land use um uh uh range of either high medium or low and I think one of the things to note that if you go back and look at some of these areas you know area 8 um prior to the RM project it was a 3500 squ foot that is a high density Zone um area 9 had an existing contract with no density limit established um area had that old 1971 contract no Express density or limit on that there was numbers throughout there so there was not really a change with the RM project for any of the properties out here um that we're we're talking about tonight um I think you know some of the the the questions about how do we deal with um the the down Zone um here overall uh we did a buildable lands analysis um so there's a lot of factors that go into to that um we pull properties out that we don't think will be redeveloped um we take a lot of safety factors when determining that um so there's there's different ways of of dealing with that um House Bill 1110 the missing middle bill is also something that we know that's that's essentially up zoning all single family lots or all residential lots in the city um where you could build one house you can now build or will be soon be able to build four units so I think when you start thinking about that long term you know we may be down zoning here but with that house bill 1110 implementation there's actually probably going to be a capacity

regaining capacity here um and as Steve was mentioning there's different limiting factors um tonight we're talking about a down Zone um essentially next week you'll be talking about increasing a height limit to allow more units to go into place so we are constantly dealing with um different projects and and balancing these um we don't see it like right now because we're focused on this one project but our workload contains um so many things where we're we're balancing all of these things and so we take it have to take it at that much higher level um and when we drafted this recommendation we were thinking about all of those other things and how they play into this decision that context helps me thank you Jed yeah I just like um zone 18 as an example if you were to take that um area and say we're going to tear down a single family residence and we're going to redevelop it with something new your options were a new single family house a missing middle something um you know up to a fourplex on a on a lot or something multif family high density like what in terms of phosphorus and pollution to the lake and potential of that like what's what's the comparison of those what what's the best and worst of those of those example types well I think um director Lion's GNA um step in um to help answer some of the questions that have come tonight but um from a a Redevelopment phosphorus perspective um we have to keep in mind that when you do redevelop we are eliminating that you know or

getting very close to phosphorus neutral um with new development um as for the missing metal housing additional units uh we actually worked with the with representative um Alex raml on that to ensure that house bill 1110 did not apply to um water bodies listed on the 303d list so the the house pill 1110 missing middle will not apply in the lake Wacom mershed that's the point I was going to make so thank you and Jed I think you were also talking about the impervious Services right phospherous from multif family phospherous from single family is that what you were yeah and I think it's just it I mean I live in the neighborhood on the lake and I'm in a rental so I I can't blame it on me but um you know I have a green lawn and not much buffer between the water from my lawn and so is that you know am I a bad example of what someone should be doing on the lake or you know um would we be better off if a lot of these single family pristine Lawns were to be you know something different altogether um like what's what's the biggest culprit here to our kind of current issues that we're having yeah our general information is that Lawns for when we look at the land how people use their land in for single family residential in Lake walkom Watershed it's the big green Lawns is is one of those things um but it doesn't mean that you can't have a lawn It's just sometimes it means where is that lawn located and what kind of we'll say filters do you have below that lawn um if you design a house

and the house is on the top of the hill and the lawn's down at the bottom and your edge of your properties there you've now lost an opportunity to collect that runoff from the lawn and do something with it um so Lawns are the big impact but there are ways to mitigate for them and that's why you still see when people are building new single family residential in the lake wam Watershed they still have Lawns they're smaller than what you may have traditionally seen and you do see a lot more native Landscaping but people do still have small lawn areas but they've done site design to figure out where to put that lawn to then be able to deal with any phosphorous runoff from it well I'm going to push on that a little bit more even besides the lawn even if 1110 doesn't apply in an area that's multif family if you replace a single family home with a duplex hypothetically that had higher lot coverage like the building area took up more space What would the impacts of that be correct so the idea is that you know I would say impervious surfaces are generally not sources of phosphorus besides the leaves and pollen and bird droppings and things that might fall on it okay in the world of storm art I'll never say pavement is the solution um it sounded like it I was that's why I had to say that um but it really is is you know you put pavement over soil and it's not going to leech nutrients but it does but it leads to other storm water issues and challenges increased runoff and there's other

pollutants of concern as well you know we're talking about phosphorus here um storm water does contain other pollutants as well so okay if if the state and assum I'm presuming you can't even purchase um a homeowner couldn't purchase lawn fertilizer with phosphorus correct it has been banned at a state level so how are the Lawns producing phosphorus uh because they're pulling it out of the soil so let's say you mulch your lawn which sounds like a great practice probably not in an impaired Watershed because the turf is bringing those nutrients from the soil it's naturally occurring and then you mow it and then it's there and it decays now if it the lawn is maintained right it may soak back in and you can recycle those nutrients but if you're on a slope or the turf is old and has is really thick and dense you could then can leech and run those nutrients so it's the way the gra grows in the way we maintain it it would be best to collect your grass clippings and compost them outside of the lake wam Watershed I think one of our goals this is my position I think one of our goals should be that the the Planning Commission helps the council um get further down the road with the goals that have been stated over the last several decades that I've lived here which is Lake Wacom protections right so I think that the the recommendations that we make to the council should air on the side of protecting the lake versus is anything else right so I think that everything we've talked about

tonight's given a lot of information about what's needed to do here and I I think that the the choice um for a lower lower density uh is the right answer here for Lake protection we aren't out of land to build more right we are getting all the state mandated up zones across the city uh we also have ug land right so if we're serious in this city about protecting our Lake um I don't think our volunteer program is going to get us there and I can tell you that my clients in the Watershed they typically find ways to avoid having to do the work that would would um trigger the U the work um the the extra protections on their properties right so it's not that they don't care about the water it's just that they don't want to pay the extra expense of having to deal with with what the the Redevelopment triggers right so I spend a lot of time um telling my clients in the mhed I don't want to work for you I don't want to do your project it's going to be really expensive and some of them say well let's just try to figure it out anyway and then we do this dance to trying to figure out how to not trigger any of the upgrades right so if that's the voluntary system that we're working with that I don't think it's going to get us there so I think that that when we make recommendations to the council they need to be airing toward protections airing toward doing maybe even more than we're doing now so that's um that's I think where I'm at right now um I I should say also I do have a client in area

8 but because this is not conferring a benefit this action tonight is not conferring a benefit to um that person I think that I'm okay with uh with voting but if anybody has a problem with that just let me know robk you um so if in this in these zones um are we're only looking at these this 138 um nine and not really 18 but sort of 18 but there's other zones in this area that uman can we that can offset this right this this land usage mandate right those other areas are single family and so we have rules in place that address single family well we don't really have single family zon zoning in Washington State anymore now right that's my understanding we currently have we're not saying that you know CU these these properties here are also privately owned and these are just up in question because you know those property owners are talking about it but potentially anyone someone in any one of these properties could decide that they want to suddenly upscale their property to no they can't no no that's actually um they can't and that's one of the things with the new house bill the house bill 1110 that we're we're all talking about that missing middle bill um and just so everyone's clear the missing middle Bill allows for where you could put one residential unit or one residential lot you could put now put four units on it the way that that state law was crafted Exempted certain areas and Lake Wacom Watershed is one of those areas so it will not apply in the lake W mershed but what

I'm talking about is these other surrounding properties that are kind of back further from from The Watershed everything on that map that I think that you were presented with mostly everything on the map all drains into Bas on one of Lake wam water shed okay that's good outside of that they it does not okay um and uh God I can't even read my own handwriting here um you said that that uh that you guys are looking at inclusionary zoning and um you're you're studying that now can you tell us a little bit about what you're finding so far is there something oh right now uh good evening Blake lion director of planning and Community Development we are actually underway on uh two different efforts with regard to that one is the study of the city's multifam tax exemption program the mfte is what it's referred to um you may be aware that we have an8 year option and a 12E option we're going through a study that's looking at U the viability of um updating and addressing those and also looking at a 20-year option to drive some affordability components inclusive of that effort or to be kind of a a phase two or a follow on to that effort is an inclusionary zoning study that will look at different options for um mandating different requirements if you're familiar at all with how inclusionary zoning Works how I'll be very high level on this um there's typically a voluntary and a mandatory uh component that you can pursue in different ways you can apply that geographically you can apply it

across the board and so part of the study when the city looked at that particular issue back in 2011 it did the whole draft code and draft ordinance and Then followed on with an economic analysis only to find out that what was being had been drafted in opposed couldn't be afforded and and wouldn't be afforded based on the economy at that time and so it never never went forward we're kind of inverting that uh approach this time where we're doing the economic analysis and saying what can the current Marketplace uh absorb and all that and then will that drive some of the discussion about whether we can move forward and what component of an inclusionary zoning would be appropriate if the city and the council were to go that direction so that's the effort that's underway right now and we don't see that any of that can be applied in in this area in these areas if it were if it were adopted then then it it can be I mean again we can apply it geographically across across the entire city you can apply it to particular zones within the city uh but we can't apply it retroactively so when you have a development application it gets vested in the rules at the time of that application so it's going to be whatever's a uh in place at that time okay um moving on to my next question um we we were looking at at moving it from high density to medium density and why have we not considered moving it down to low density because it's within the Watershed prioritizing The Watershed over the density

there's a couple things so one is uh and as I alluded to in my opener remarks the the net difference between medium and low density in terms of potential future units is a difference of about 200 that's not that's not insignificant um we found uh through our analysis that coupled with the revisions to the storm water rules as we've been discussing we actually are finding to be more compliant with the comprehensive plan as we are instituting things that uh we believe are more protective of the lake than they are currently as we said you know these multif family areas currently um discharge all of their storm water directly to the lake and so there's ongoing um point source or phosphorus loading that's occurring and so by choosing the medium and implementing the storm water rules we feel like we are being more consistent with the current comp plan and and we are we are going uh a fair amount of distance also to be compliant with what we expect to be in the new comp plan as we move through the process where we are going to have to continue to um uh strike a balance or thread the needle or whatever phrase you want to apply towards um continuing to provide housing and being protective of the environment but what's already been kind of said here tonight is that we're going to have like increased density across the city and this is maybe one area where we can probably not have that because it's more important for our city for this to have less development on it than more right so

again I I still not entirely sure I understand why we're not just going straight down to low density and just you know I mean it's you said it's an in are not insignificant difference but isn't it about the importance of the actual space and the importance to our city for this this water that everyone uses and we have now topped 100,000 people in this town and this is it so I don't understand why we aren't prioritizing that more I think one of the the key things to keep in mind is our approach to treating the water quality quality in the reservoir is um through different different Avenues and one of those is Redevelopment through Redevelopment a property owner has to upgrade his his their property excuse me um if you set that at such a low number they may not ever redevelop if they don't redevelop we don't see any um Protections in place unless the city comes in and does that so so having this balance of the city paying for um capital projects and going in and doing those types of projects and also having some level of development occur in the Watershed helps us retrofit everything but okay so but my problem is is that the city through taxpayer dollars is already paying for this constant cleanup from this not being done now up till this point right so the city is paying in perpetuity for ever to clean up after this that just isn't being done already and so if we put the money up front now then we're just in the long run the city is actually saving money and we have better

water quality so again I'm not pull the Band-Aid off let's just save our water I mean I I yeah and I don't know if Jason can add to this but um I I think we are we have pulled the bandaid off I mean if you look at the amount of money not at four and a half% or or um what was it the the the two numbers there that we were talking about we are currently at and where we want to be oh 18 pounds per per acre per year and where we can probably get it down to 14.7 pounds per um in reduction but that's not the goal the co goal is like the still Leaps and Bounds above where the goal is and why are we why are we dragging it out I don't understand yeah and again I don't I um I don't think we are um if you look at all of the different programs in place to to address the water quality issues in the lake Wacom Watershed it's a tremendous amount of programs and public dollars that are going into that so um I think we are continuing to do that every we have a 5-year plan that we update um every 5 years um and that's how we're tracking that that's one mechanism of how we're doing it and we are making progress on that um in implementing these new these new programs well we're 20 years into this 24 years into this I think it's unrealistic to say or to believe that one thing is going to get us to our goal we've mentioned already that tndl program is set up so it it lists a number of objectives to achieve the goal and and whenever we talk about goals we always talk about objectives if there's a

goal typically there's multiple objectives that we have to achieve that will get us there so this notion that um you know this is going to get us to our goal you know tomorrow or next year is not realistic we have these other things that we're that we're implementing to get there that's fair but if we move faster on this it'll get to our goal faster and and more to our goal like right now I mean from this number it's looking like we're we're way out of you know compliance for Safe Water where and then even with all this this these changes it's still not even going to bring us anywhere close to where we need to be having to have the the Safe Water Quality so um yeah so so the numbers that I was quoting before were just some phosphorus reduction estimates from a property how much phosphorus is coming off of it today and if it was to redevelop to these rules what's our estimate that that would result in from that um I would really encourage you to tune in to the Joint council's meeting that Kurt was talking about um you'll hear the full breadth of everything we're doing the amount of money we're spending and the the breadth of the programs that we're doing Redevelopment is one tool that we have um this is a 50e year tmdl that started in 2016 we knew we had declining water quality earlier and the city actually started action much quicker um because of that so we started actions before 2016 but this is 50 years at $100 million in 2016 um the city has made huge progress and I think

um I would just say view the The Joint council's meeting and you'll see where the city is at in our progress um we are meeting our amendments much much faster than 50 years but I don't want to spoil our presentation for next week sounds like maybe this presentation should have come after that meeting yeah it would have it just there's so much information that we that that's going to have to happen maybe that is what we do need to understand this better yeah does anyone else want jump in while rest come come back around and'll get back to you I'm just curious to the fact of um even going to medium density from high density to medium density and I don't know about the joint meeting or anything says I don't want to steal your thunder coming up there you seem very excited about it um but with that said I'm sure maybe one of the topics you're going to be discussing there is the fact even going to medium density um if we see the numbers not curtailing as we would like then we might consider maybe low density I mean is there a possibility if we're viewing and tracking this data and the resources maybe we might consider saying H the numbers are not going statistically the way we want or the way we had thought maybe we can change gears and ramp it up or ramp it down or whatever and maybe consider low density in the next am I making sense anyone here saying we can change course it's not a it's not a set thing where we have to stay if we go that right to way uh to medium density for the

next 5 years we can can't we make changes uh or put changes in place or are we set and bound that we have to stay in a medium density for a number of years or the state's going to slap us on the hand or environmental sea will slap us on the hand or something the medium density has a a low-end threshold as well unit count my yeah and so there is a there is a defined range that we're talking about I think the point that I uh I'll mention but I'll I'll do it cautiously because Lan use economics is a very complicated topic um but one of the things I think that speaks to both your points is and this is what Kurt was trying to allude to when we talking about Redevelopment is is we can go the route of the city doing the capital Improvement projects that we're talking about or doing the various different programs and there is a There's an opportunity cost and a timeline that goes along with that and that's what you've seen occurring and the and the voluntary nature of that there's also opportunities to leverage that Redevelopment or that private investment and have those things be able to drive some of the changes that will then result in community benefits and utilize that and and and leverage that component of it to go through there when we start talking about the high density again there's there's limiting factors and one of those limiting factors that didn't get addressed earlier was the land use economics there's a point at which it's cost prohibitive for elevators and

mechanical systems and other things that that are going to top out but you can also Imagine from a kind of a political perspective having a 20 story building on the lake that doesn't have anything in or close to that would would be a a bit of a uh different reaction and response from the community as well so part of that we part of what we have to look at in considering both the medium and the low is all that's been discussed here tonight the the water quality you know the zoning issue but also can we use private investment to help further those at a rate that you know drives that issue at a different pace and it's it's a it's a question and that's why why we're here to to talk about it with you all when you say that you're looking at a like a public private partnership or something as it comes to the expensive it's looking at it from the standpoint of we put the regulations in place right and then anybody that goes to redevelop under those scenarios then has to meet that obligation as responsible for the cost associated with doing that seems like we're still working on the phosphorus and it's really not even close to Prime Time uh but I'd like to talk about the inclusionary I asked uh director sepper when he was here when was the inclusionary study going to be done he said soon the cob website says 2023 you're saying soon it's not happening an inclusionary is the tool or one of the most important tools to deal with Workforce housing for those who live in Bellingham building

helps those who are moving here inclusionary zoning helps those who are suffering here right now and until the city actually figures that out and we truly get that type of tool we shouldn't be looking at this type of resoning without that included can you respond to any of that sure and I think um part of what dries the complexity of that is the changing in the uh in the legislative landscape that we've had in the last year and a half I mean we had significant amount of change with House Bill 1110 uh that and the 13 House Bill 1337 that has changed that the land use economics around that so part of what we've been trying to do from the planning side is look at where those again those kind of up zones or Those ads have been crossed the city across the state quite frankly and think through those different drivers that are changing that that landscape associated with it and we also knew we were in the comp plan cycle so looking at those two pieces is what we've been trying to do to mirror mirror up those two pieces like I mentioned earlier with the mfte and the inclusionary zoning with the Landscaping of House Bill 1110 and opening up all of this additional capacity so that's part of what we're trying to do so that becomes an informed position because we haven't had uh this is a Monumental I don't want to understate the value of that change that occurred in the legislation last year I mean that that's been historic uh you know we haven't seen anything of that nature so so much

of this and we've we've sat down and we've talked with um you know folks that that do this for a living and trying to gauge that out and look at that stuff and that's what's Driven the decision right now to get those pieces in line online and do the study we've got the scope where we're working with uh Eco Northwest on the um mfte stuff right now uh that's underway and under analysis and like I said the inclusionary zoning is following shortly thereafter I guess the issue is that this was supposed to happen before a year ago when that wasn't even on our radar so when is it going to happen so that we can actually help those who are suffering I can like I said I can tell you we're we're out there scoping it and we've got the the contract I I can't really speak to the Rick sepper piece I know that that was being evaluated and and it was been on our work plan U but we are as close as we've been since I've been with the city in getting that scope and doing that analysis and doing the work um coming back to the ordinance I just to reframe like where what we have today is highdensity zoning and no trigger for storm water retrofit in multif family we're in a high-risk situation emergency moratoriums don't last forever they legally can't last forever we need to act um you know I don't love going from high density to medium density but it doesn't sound like anyone wants to use the high density so um it's not clear to me that lower density development has that much of effect on the

phosphorus levels and that's kind of the key thing I'm I'm balancing here is if we force an even more inappropriate down Zone we're likely to see no Redevelopment and we're likely to see no storm water retrofit and that is a very risky situation to put ourselves in the balancing Point here as you outline in your introduction of the housing Supply hit we're going to take with balanced out with the storm water retrofit that we're likely to get under a medium zoning is balancing these very competing demands and that's why I appreciate and like the ordinance as written it is balancing out a really tough situation and going lower does not inherently improve the quality of the lake in fact it it's hard to predict what will happen we can set up some guard rails and then things emerge on their own in the community but going to low density has a higher risk of less phosphorus capture occurring in the next 10 years so that's why I support it as written I guess I was kind of making the same thing is like there's a lot of um people who have come up and talked about like making that connection with density to phosphorus or like that if we have more density more population around the lake that that automatically equates to that our Lake becomes more polluted and I guess I'm not really completely making that connection kind of as as you're saying like in theory Would we not be better off to have the missing middle be applied to our single family areas on the lake if we held them to that

threshold that we're saying that we're going to hold things to with any 300 square foot addition or change to impermeable surfaces on a single family residence as Michael said people avoid doing that because they don't want to go through the expense of upgrading their entire property to meet some criteria when they know that that's going to be cost prohibit um whereas you know if we give people the ability to do something that is bigger um such as you know uh multif family or at least medium density multif family um I guess we would be down zoning in that case from from uh multi high density to to medium but I agree I don't necessarily see the connection with um just outright with density being a trigger for higher pollution in fact I would say possibly the opposite is true I don't know I mean you might be able to speak to that as like is it is it actually in our best interest to have some of the single family not be single family because if it were to change it would actually clean up the lake it does need to be said though we're talking about phosphorus and so more cars could be more of other forms of pollution storm water pollution phosphorus is what the tmdl and the mandated cleanup requirement is for I just want to make sure that that's understood more more cars more pets without mitigation could be more pollution or impact so we have to remember though whether we do anything at all tonight like if we just say no we're not doing anything Kick the Can down the road if

someone wants to redevelop that kicks in anyway right so the lake protections kick in you that 300 that 300 foot is a single family zoning today that already happens no well if not for multi family zoning if we if we do say yes to this tonight even if it's medium or low either one's going to do the same thing right so Curr missing the trigger for multi you're still going to trigger it whether we say it's low density the areas that are going to get reson whether those are low density or medium density any Redevelopment is going to trigger the worry is low density won't have any Redevelopment I'm sorry what the worry is that low density low density won't have any Redevelopment cuz it's not feasible that's the worry yeah right I'm not worried about it I I work should be worried about the lake I work in this water ship but I want to make a point though uh what's the what what's the in the city's portion of the Watershed what's that uh square footage rule about digging is it 20 square feet so we have seasonal restrictions on land disturbing activities and it's 500 square ft okay what's the what's that 4T rule cuz I I've had actually had that happen where I had to wait to dig a footing for a porch for 4 months what is what is that I have to see the seasonal restriction is none right nothing okay okay now everybody notice on this map the little line says City Limits across that line it's year round 500 square F feet it's not even nearly as restrictive year round in the county right

so how much of this basin's across that line I don't have the exact numbers with me but a vast majority of Lake Waka shed is outside of city limit I know so that so just so everybody knows to be clear the city of Bellingham is carrying a large burden here all by themselves sort of like Washington state is trying to save the planet with our new you know gas tax right we're doing a lot by ourselves out here we're kind of out front and uh that can be a little hard right but I but I'm still going to stick to my point that any Redevelopment is going to trigger the trigger the upgrades to the properties right so if if if I've got a client in this wed and they've got an aging property that's that it's some point it's not worth putting money into they're going to have to tear it down and start over so these won't they they won't be there forever they just won't be there forever and if you hit that 300t threshold cuz this corner of the building rotted off boom whole property triggers it whether it's low density or high density or medium density doesn't matter so it's still going to we're still going to because of the other rules are still going to be triggering these these upgrades to the properties and aim for that 0.15 which is pretty dramatic it's pretty hard to do it's expensive to do am I right in saying what I just say I think if I could just clarify first of all um I just want to make sure that everyone knows that wam County does have regulations in place oh yeah and they're

very they're very similar to the cities when it comes to they're a lot easier tell you that when it comes to single family development um it City development it's Urban lot sizes are a lot smaller so the requirements are different um County you've got a lot larger properties to where um they they can manage there's opportunities to manage storm water in a different different ways right so I just wanted to make sure that it that it it's clear there and and again I think the difference between a high or between low and medium what we struggled with was if we if we did adopt the low or recommended the low we simply would not get Redevelopment and without Redevelopment we don't get changes we don't get improvements um and I think that that's that's something that is key to this discussion is that you have to set it at a at a at a level where we do think we'll get some development because that some development will help the water quality in like wac if we set it too low and nothing happens nothing happens we don't make those those achievements and so I think that's the the what we're really struggling with and as as Blake mentioned it all comes down to economics you know if you can get two units on a piece of property and you've got a $100,000 system that you have to put in the land it it just won't work and so you choose not to develop two units right and we don't make any benefit if you set that at maybe four units then maybe those four units you have the ability to cover those

infrastructure costs and it makes sense and we win so that that's the balance that we're trying to figure out here and through our studies and Analysis um we believe that that Medium Level is that is that fine point that's going to it's going to be just enough to get people to do something which helps achieve better water quality in in the lake walkom Watershed yeah we didn't want to set it so low or a at that low and not get any improvements may ask then about that uh percentage wise we've got 13 n and8 that are on the water uh on the lake itself city and county created phosphorus issues what is 139 and8 by implementing this what could we save in phosphorous input to the lake is it 0 1% or is it 10% is it a large amount or is it so tiny that maybe we're chasing our taals here we don't know I I I don't think this body knows yet Without Really knowing that we don't really know is it more important to get housing because the phosphorous levels of these specific properties although important are not worth it we need to maybe know that information yeah I don't have the exact numbers but what I can say is when the tmdl was published in 2016 and we did an analysis of how we would meet those reductions we weren't going to be able to do it the city wasn't going to you know so the city has its own waste load allocation the county has theirs we weren't going to be able to achieve ours only through Capital Construction we needed to have private property retrofits in order to meet those

tmdl reductions and that's why we came up with these development regulations short of just simply requiring these on property having a very drastic or strong Council action requiring these and so that's that's part of our TMD approach is we need properties to install these retrofits to reduce phospherous coming off of properties we have a homeowner incentive program as a voluntary program but we needed Redevelopment as a tool for us to achieve those phosphorous reductions and it's been working for single family residential we do have single family homes being built some are being sold for profit others are being enjoyed by the residents but we have single family homes building to these development regulations and reducing or eliminating their impacts to the lake um and so this just really kind of goes along that if we were to not at at least adopt these storm water regulations for multif Family Properties that would put the city in a situation we would have to find very very creative ways to reduce phosphorus from other sources because we can't any property that's directly on the lake we can't get that water back up to us to get it into a city owned filter so I just want to make sure that that's understood that this Redevelopment and these storm water requirements that we're proposing is part of the city's response to the tmdl and so as where as cost sharing right to minimize the amount of cost so that private property when it redevelops pays their share of their impact so

that the utility rate payers and the water customers um aren't paying the full brunt or the full cost of it it's an it's an interesting Dynamic that because past decisions put this city in and in a situation where we have a water quality problem and because we don't want to burden the citizens for past decisions we're now relying on a very small group of private property owners to solve a problem for us I don't see how we get there I know you got a 50-year plan and we're going to pay for it by even more development it's sort of like conscious consumerism is going to save the planet I'm just just not there you know I mean uh I came here in 1998 to go to graduate school this was a topic amongst my peers when I was in graduate school several of them studied this real papers and and thesis on it right so um we're we're still trying to get there but now we're now we're still trying to get there using voluntary private property owners to step up and do this for us and I just don't see I'm with you on this one this one I'm digging my heels in on right I mean let's talk about the rest of the city and I think there's some wiggle room but I think on this one it's are drinking water you know when I first moved here I was like wait a second New York City's got cleaner drinking water than we do you can even walk in their watered and they did that 140 years ago and we're still trying to figure out how to get private property owners to fix our water problem for us doesn't make much sense I

think and I started the stop tonight we need to help the city council get closer to our goals right so I think our recommendations tonight should do that for them should help them get closer to the goals I mean we can criticize this all we want and I'm certainly want to do it but um but if we don't make a recommendation to help this city move closer then we're not really doing much so uh the um development mandate you know and and the threshold is not actually our only option right we have other options we can choose to have other options like a mandate like just mandate that these get done we we have rules that were mandated to keep people from building in that area During certain times of the years and we mandated that we can mandate this um also uh the Wednesday meeting for the joint with the county and the city is happening at 6:30 but on April 16th the mayor's water um resource Advisory Board will be meeting for the second time as well and they're going to be taking up this topic and I'm curious to know why we have not waited for them to do their work and get their numbers and their recommendations before we are sitting here talking about this tonight yeah Jason I don't know if you can comment on The Advisory board at all um not much I mean The Advisory Board is a you you know the history of it um they're set to regular meetings and they're still in the process of developing and establishing their bylaws and going through their public process so they have the proper

training for that so it's a new group they've met once they'll meet again um it may not be a complete functional group in the sense of with all the training and everything they need to be able to to run a board like that um for a little while we're probably looking at at least four meetings before they can adopt their bylaws so it's it's a newer group and then the joint council's meeting is on the same not the exact same day but the same week within the same month every year so you know I can't talk to the timing of process with this but those others to have just been on their own independent schedules well um the the water source so Scott and I are on the shoreline advisory committee and we were assigned to this advisory committee over a year ago and we've yet to have a meeting and so I kind of feel like the Water Resource Advisory Board is going to supersede what we were planning on doing like they're kind of taking over that but we haven't this this this whole was you know back on December what was it December 4th December 2nd this was coming up and it should have lit up a meeting with us and it hasn't done that so um it just feels like there's some steps that have been missed here and um so that's that's one part of it but I want to I do want to go back to the to the yes I think we should be mandating these changes I don't think we should be just waiting for development and hoping that somebody might decide to to do this to step over those thresholds that we've set and so

and I I also think that we should also lower the um to the low density instead of the medium density I think if I could just add on to what what Jason mentioned and respond to some of your comments um first the shoreline committee does not review legislative matters this is again this is a legislative matter it's a reone opportunity the shoreline committee deals specifically with Shoreline development projects those Shoreline development projects come after the zoning is instituted so if someone wanted to develop um they would the actual development application is what triggers that Shoreline committee meeting so there's a clear distinction of powers and duties between the Planning Commission the shoreline committee as well as the water um The Advisory Board the water Advisory Board would not weigh in on this type of thing um either um this is a city council decision ultimately legislative decision that they would make when it comes to land use regulations and Zoning those um groups meet regularly and it's my understanding that the best practice for storm water management uh surface water management are not changing rapidly we have good development requirements today for storm water management um it's not likely to change much in the next six months it's that closing the Gap from the 70s to now is is really desirable um but th those meetings aren't likely to is it true that those meetings aren't likely to result in major changes to how we regulate storm water management

that's not my understanding of the group but Rene lroy would have been more appro and she just wasn't available to answer that so um I'm not fully sure the whole legisl what that group will be able to accomplish like what their primary tasks and outcomes would be uh question of you actually should we take a test vote to see where we're at if we were going to push this forward tonight and if not spend the rest of our time with offerings to what we would expect for the planning department to work on yeah I I would think it would be appropriate to consider a motion so moved what what is your to uh take a test vote to see whether we were going to push this to the city council tonight and if not we can have a conversation with planning on what we would expect to have them work on before it comes before us again um a test I'm not sure what a test vote means do do does your motion want to say what the action is are you trying to modify the ordinance are you trying to vote on an approval of the ordinance I think we had it done before where we just all say what whether we're going to vote or not yes or no and then we base the conversation on that because right now we're spinning our Wheels about you're suggesting like a straw poll on the ordinance as is support for the ordinance as is or with any modifications yes those are those are two different things usually you do your straw Poes when there's a variety of different things that you're trying to to talk about and you know you're

going into another work session and so you're trying to get your discussion at the work session minimized this is one item here so the really the discussion that you're having now should have actually happened way after a motion was already on the table okay yeah I think I think we should have a motion on the either proposed change or the the ordinance itself um given the July deadline if if this is able to move that would be nice if we need another meeting we can have another meeting is there a specific motion I move to not send this to the city council um take out the blue packet here I move to not accept the findings of facts tonight and to U have a discussion with planning on uh recommendations to come back before us in another Planning Commission meeting with modifications that we request is there a second I'll second that Heather do you understand a negation of our typical way of working to be a valid motion I could also move to accept and then have a conversation and then uh I would just let you know I would vote no yeah I mean Ty typically I say it's modifying or voting to forward a recommendation so um that could fail that would be more typical I offer a little context here um and please if I'm not getting your meeting correct please correct me um are you asking to go into a study session and further refine where the uh where the commission would want to provide some direction to staff and so we can come back in that and see if there's a refinement of the ordinance

uh as recommended right now yes offer Direction and to not be here till midnight spinning our Wheels with something that's not going to go forward tonight if that's the case and and to take the temperature if Scott's if if that has support right if if the consensus is to go to a work you yeah believe earlier this evening Steve mentioned that we do have a little capacity very little but a little capacity in the existing Timeline under the moratorium to take us one meeting further if the if the if there's some Direction by the commission this evening on the issues that you see if you don't agree with the recommendation for the medium density and you want you have something specific you'd like to come back and talk further at the at a subsequent meeting then we can we can take that action and and pursue that um there is a motion on the floor well I was trying to ask if the motion is valid because it's unusual to me um about this I moveed to accept the findings of fact conclusions and recommendations contained in the March 21st staff report as written foration can you withdraw your motion Council can you withdraw your other motion first I'm sorry can you withdraw your other motion then make the withdraw the other motion that I had on the table and now I move to accept the findings of fact conclusions and recommendations contained in the March 21st stff report as written and forward a recommendation of denial to city council no approval of to city council I apologize

recommendation of approval to city council okay there's a motion to accept um the recommendation and forward to city council is there a second second Jed seconds um okay I think I see your intention um uh any discussion before we vote on the motion i' I'd like to I'd like to offer a an amendment to that um I'd like to offer that we move from uh change the medium to low and low density in all instances where it says medium it should say low and then also that we use uh we suggested the council direct that land acquisition funds be um what I'm looking for given maybe to Public Works who will identify the hotspots that should be addressed most um judiciously uh regardless of who owns the property and we take care of these problems without waiting for the private sector to uh redevelop their properties the motion on the table is as written well that's what this is for discussion that's I'm offering an amendment so can you restate your Amendment oh I don't know you know what I what how how come I got the first part you know what on George Bush you know what I meant right really don't uh change medium to low uh density and uh we asked the city council to direct land acquisition funds to Public Works will'll identify the most egregious hotpots um that are contributing to pollution in the lake and address them without waiting for the private sector to do it um being triggered by a Redevelopment um project is there a second to the amendment well he would have to get there how about

this I uh I don't accept the Amendments let's go with table and vote no it's it's valid to amend the motion it needs a second from anyone okay it's not getting a second so I'm not sure the second half of that is like valid within land use or under our control well no that's what it's a recommendation that's what we do we recommend you know we we beat it up and we say hey Council I think this is a good idea and that's you know I think that's a good idea I am one of six people up here that thinks that's a good idea okay so when uh if we vote on this as is and it fails then the next step is let's make that clear to to everyone I would well that would indicate we need to go into another meeting but what the the challenge I have with the with instructions to staff I'm not I haven't heard a lot of unanswered questions or instructions to staff yet and we have a little opportunity to do that but I'm not sure what we would cover at another meeting from I agree I agree I don't need more information yeah I'm not certain how we would affect the land acquisition fund as part of this proposal that is a wholly separate item if that's what you're that's what you're saying that's that's not on the table before us it's the rezone question and the revisions to BMC 1680 then I'll withdraw that it doesn't matter nobody wanted to do it okay okay but I'm on the record and the council should see this so I hope they heard I think if I'm if I'm hearing what you're attempting to do you know the

Planning Commission doesn't have to make a recommendation to um set it up for a vote if if you believe that you need additional work sessions or you need something from us you have the ability to continue this meeting you don't have to make a decision to do whatever to come back I mean you you as a commission can say we're not ready to make a decision on this we need this types we need this information in order for us to make a decision and you can direct that to us appreciate that what I think we're struggling with is are we of the same mind on that question right and not sure we are perhaps uh a motion to continue the meeting to a date certain would be a simplistic way of getting there the question I think that also exist is whether or not you have enough clarity as a body as to what direction you'd give us that would answer those questions and well we do have this motion on the floor we can see if it has support um I you know I think a lot of the conversations we're struggling with in my understanding or outside the bounds of this particular change and and our jurisdiction so I I see low utility to a second meeting that's my position but um yeah we can see if there's support for the motion yeah So based on what Kurt said I withdraw the motion what I do want to do is have further conversation that digs us deeper into a solution and my opinion is that without inclusionary zoning in this opportunity to rezone it's a stopper for me I can't vote for that we need inclusionary

zoning in all rezones because that's the solution for our Workforce housing problem that's it and without it and if we have to force the hand of the planning department to actually get that done by stopping resoning like this then so be it but we need it our community members need it so I can agree with a lot of what's in this but without even a try at inclusionary zoning just to continue to build build build it's not a solution and I hope you guys hear that from the community because it's just not okay that we're letting people suffer to just build because all we're building for or people coming into our community we're not building for our community both are welcome but one's hurting and On's well off please listen to them with that understanding if there's no Direction uh and the moratorium expires then the existing would remain which is the high the high density no I hear moratorium be extended the moratorium can be extended absolutely but the comment that was made earlier is the fact it can't be indefinite it's got It's got to have a it's got to have a timeline to it and so that's the question and it may hopefully it could be extended until occlusion are yeah I mean if that's your dire well heard yes I I would also like to say that that I think that we should also have staff bring us alternatives to the the water and the phosphorus and all of that other than just density I'd like to see some other other options on the table for that not just relying on the low density

medium density high density to help us fix those problems I think we need to come up with a different solution and I think we need so we just need options Rob are you asking about how to pay for it like other ways to pay for all the options not just you know paying for it but also like making a mandate or doing something I I'm not I don't even know like out of the box thinking but we've been doing this for a pretty long time and it feels like maybe we should have some new options um two comments one is you we can certainly I hear what you're saying about coming out with other options I think the one point that is important to make a Distinction on is the the ability to may have those private options or options on private property property as as Jason was alluding to earlier we can do Capital Improvement projects we can do roadway improvements and other things like that what we don't have the ability to do is go on to uh and force somebody to sell or or to do improvements on private property we need a we need a trigger like a Redevelopment scenario to to do that so we can look at those other you know things that City can do there um Mr Jones one of the things I wanted to mention on on your statement too is that if if that's your objective in terms of affordable housing that can also be part of your motion outside of an inclusion I mean I hear what you're saying about the inclusion area and I don't want to make light of that but if your recommendation is medium or low with a

percentage of affordable housing in there that can be part of a recommendation as well that gets that goes forward to the council so we wouldn't have to necessarily wait for inclusion are zoning unless you specifically want that tool in place so that might be the reason for another meeting because I can't provide that expertise I would rely on you to do that and hopefully uh at another meeting that you could do that where we would get the most benefit but also not uh make it so that development doesn't occur which of course then inclusionary housing doesn't help us okay other items you want staff to look at for another for in order to help us move forward so it's I I get the sense that we want to have another meeting and and a motion to vote on the ordinance as is has do we still have a motion on the floor it was withdrawn did you withdraw I don't want another meeting last call for motions this is worth having another meeting over well I I I don't want another meeting but I also I don't want to afford it the way it is I think it needs to tweak I don't I'm not getting the love from the rest of the body here for my tweaks so then it's not going to pass right so so we're going to get another meeting because that's that's what's going to happen and is what it is I'm fine with that so as long as we can do it judiciously next week is fine with me tomorrow was fine with me whatever it takes but um sooner than later because I know you all are busy I get that and uh and and you are

too so you have a public hearing next week oh no I'm self-employed I got plenty of time buddy and and so and then the following week is spring break and so we do have a followup work session teed up and reserved for April uh I'm going to guess 10th or 11th whatever that second Thursday in April is so well I'd be I'd be okay with moving it if we can move it toward literally our next meeting and we spend 15 minutes on it and move on I'd be okay with that think we can that I think by then I hope that questions that need to be answered are answered and you're ready to vote when you show up otherwise there's no reason to do it I don't think we need a time constraint if we needed time we need time we yeah so you guys are under you guys know what your topic is next week right okay so we can pick a date Sur that is not out into April um so we have that option available also if you're you can keep this topic open and continue the the discussion to a subsequent meeting if you close it and you go to the April 10th or something like that then you have to redo your staff report and all that we close the public testimony but we can keep the meeting open till for a subsequent meeting where we'll can talk more and potentially vote at that time I think that's our intention MH and so the next obvious question would be I think who's comfortable with meeting on a day other than a Thursday because we're you know we're pushed out now to April 10th I'll just say so how do people feel about a date

certain that's not a Thursday I know Mike's on board with any date other than Saturday and Sunday what what's wrong with the 10th nothing's wrong with the 10th we can do that we have that set up is that pushing the uh 11th 11th oh thank you 11th what's the date 11th April 11th is Thursday and would be a regular Planning Commission time slot correct which we've already reserved can I make a motion that we postpone definitely this meeting until April 11th did yeah we we have that date identified as a potential work session so yep y if we understand the items of interest it's to what level of affordability we can uh incorporate into that type of um requirement now and that would be all four areas not just one project site um and then what other Alternatives that you were suggesting options you we need to not be in this one and only box so anything anything is shoot for the stars find something like I had a motion to postpone definitely until what 7 p.m.

on April 11th can I get a second I don't think we we can whenever staff is scheduling it is is fine we're we're we're doing nothing we're keeping the meeting open that was my motion sure we don't need to we need I'm pretty sure we do I don't know I got I got Roberts right here I just looked just give me a second and say yes I would also like to say I know you guys are short staffed and things are getting tight and I apologize for just adding to your workload I just feel like this is just so important thank you thank you for everything that you do thanks Barbara okay so we're good on scheduling and we're good on the topics we've want more information on yes okay we will uh temporarily stop talking about this ready Break um Mike you had us thing do you want to do that at a different time since no we're we're g to wrap up can we do your thing some of time so we will adjourn thanks everyone for coming