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Good morning.

The March 17, 2026 Land Use and Sustainability Committee meeting will come to order.

It's 9.33 a.m.

I'm Eddie Lynn, chair of the Land Use and Sustainability Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Foster?

Here.

Council Member Rink?

Present.

Chair Lynn?

Present.

Chair, there are three members present.

Thank you.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Excusals.

Oh, okay.

Oh, Council President Hollingsworth and Councilmember Strauss are excused from today's committee meeting.

Thank you, Clark.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you all for coming to this Wednesday morning meeting to discuss land use.

As always, thank you to our city clerks, council central staff, SDCI for preparing for this meeting.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comment should relate to items on the agenda or within the purview of the committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Currently we have one person, in-person speakers signed up.

Thank you.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

We'll start with in-person speakers first.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they're registered.

In-person speakers will be called first, after which we'll move to remote speakers until the public comment period is ended.

Speakers will hear a chime.

When 10 seconds are left at their time, speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open and we will begin with our first and only speaker, Steve.

Morning, Steve.

Well, your agenda looks very much the same as it has for the last couple of meetings, so going for the hat trick trifecta here.

And my speech is going to be very similar, too.

MHA has never been reviewed.

It was promised when it was passed that it would be reviewed if those low, low, low fees were too low.

And the consul, your predecessors, and you so far have not been willing to review those fees.

Now, everybody says they're for housing.

but I think you ought to put the whole truth there.

The city seems to be for housing as long as the developers say it's okay.

That seems to be the dividing line because raising those fees will provide housing and hopefully it will provide putting people of different incomes around the city in many neighborhoods These things used to be Seattle values.

It appears they are not.

And starting with this committee, but I think going much further up in the city, we have a problem.

We wonder why people don't get reelected.

When I was young, it was quite a coup to get rid of a city council person or a person in the city.

Now the coup would be to save one.

and look at the turnover and the closeness of the races of many of those that did survive.

And I think it's time we started to consider the citizens of the city of Seattle and bring back design review, something else your gods do not like.

Thank you, Steve.

There are no additional speakers, so we'll now proceed to our items of business.

Well, we'll now move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read item one?

Agenda item one, Council Bill 121152, an ordinance relating to floodplains adopting permanent regulations consistent with Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA regulations adopting the February 2020 updated National Flood Insurance Rate Maps to allow individuals to continue to obtain flood insurance through FEMA's flood insurance program.

Thank you.

As we all know, we've had this briefing and discussion before, but this legislation sets forth permanent floodplain development regulations to comply with federal law administration administered by FEMA.

These permanent floodplain development regulations apply to permit applications for construction on property within floodplain areas mapped by FEMA.

FEMA's require these types of updates across the country.

In February 2020, FEMA finalized new flood insurance rate maps for Seattle.

The 2020 FEMA maps and interim floodplain regulations became effective on August 19, 2020. The City has adopted interim floodplain regulations and interim maps ten times while working to adopt permanent floodplain regulations and maps.

The interim floodplain maps and the proposed permanent floodplain maps are identical.

Thank you for our representatives from SDCI and Council Central Staff for joining us to answer any questions Council may have and once ready please introduce yourselves.

Ketel Freeman, Council Central Staff.

Good morning, Chair Lin and members of the committee.

I'm Maggie Glowacki from SDCI.

I lead the updates to environmental regulations and I'm a fish biologist by training.

Great.

Thank you.

Do any committee members have any questions?

No.

Just since you're at the table, we did get a comment last time.

Any sort of update that you're able to provide?

It sounds like you met with the peer owners.

Just any kind of quick update you could provide.

Yeah, so we did meet with Mr. McCullough and the peer owners last Wednesday, I believe it was, or Thursday, actually.

And we had a great discussion.

Ardell Jalla from SDCI answered questions from the peer owners where they were looking forward as to what they expected, projects that they may see on their peers.

and Ardell was able to answer questions based on the proposed permanent regulations as to how those projects would be reviewed.

And we didn't get follow-up questions, so I believe that the questions were answered and everybody was satisfied.

Just to offer that council members may recall from the last discussion that sort of one of the complaints that some of the peer owners have has to do with how they are mapped.

and that mapping is reflected in the flood insurance rate maps that are promulgated by FEMA.

It's not something the city has the authority to change.

So to the extent that there is a remedy for that in the future, that remedy is probably largely through some action by the federal government.

So there may be something the city can do through the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, but the authority to make those changes is at the federal level.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

And I really appreciate you taking the time to meet with them and address their questions and concerns.

With that, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 121152. Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend passage of Council Bill 121152. We need, there's an amendment we need to do here.

Thank you.

I'd also like to move to amend Council Bill 121152 as presented on Amendment 1. Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented on Amendment 1. Council Central Staff, can you please provide an overview of the changes there?

Thank you.

All right.

So this is the amendment that was discussed in committee last time.

This corrects what is essentially a drafting error in the bill as introduced.

Specifically, it would replace an errant reference to substantial damage and the definition of substantial improvement to clarify that substantial improvement does not apply to improvements that are necessary to remedy code violations or for approved alterations by the Landmarks Board.

I'll just scroll down here to where, for the folks watching at home who may be interested in where this lies, it's in the definition section.

of the flood code and it essentially replaces the term substantial damage with this term.

This mirrors what's in the Code of Federal Regulations.

Thank you.

Always good to find the-correct those clerical errors.

Any comments on Amendment 1?

No.

Okay.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 1?

Councilmember Foster.

Yes.

Councilmember Rank.

Yes.

Chair Lynn.

Yes.

Chair, there are three votes in favor and zero opposed.

Okay.

The motion is adopted.

The amended bill is before the committee.

Are there any final comments?

Yes.

Please.

Councilmember Rank.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to take a moment to commend you for your leadership on this.

I know we had intended to vote on this during the last committee meeting, but some of the last-minute public comments that came up raised some issues, and I want to thank you for leading committee to take a brief pause, but also thank SDCI and the team for meeting with stakeholders to ensure we were addressing any outstanding concerns.

It's my understanding this has been in the works for six years.

and so I'm particularly excited to be taking action today.

And again, wanna thank you for your leadership chair.

Thank you all.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member Rankin.

I just wanna second the many years of hard work and super excited to be getting it across the finish line here, hopefully soon.

And with that, don't wanna jinx anything, but will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to pass a bill as amended?

Council Member Foster.

Yes.

Council Member Rank.

Yes.

Chair Lynn.

Yes.

Chair, there are three votes in favor and zero post.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council bill pass the bill as amended will be sent to the March 24th, 2026 city council meeting.

We will now move on to our second item in business.

Will the clerk please read agenda item two.

Agenda item two, council bill 121-171.

In ordinance relating to land use and zoning repealing ordinance 127191, which allowed residential use within the stadium transition area overlay district under chapter 2374 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you.

And our representative from council staff has joined us to answer any questions.

And once ready, can you please introduce yourself?

Thank you, HB Harper, council central staff.

Thank you.

Do any fellow committee members have any questions on this item?

So we did have the briefing last week.

I don't think there's any major updates.

We've been in continued conversations with various stakeholders, and we will continue to have those conversations.

I just want to be clear that our next meeting will be on Wednesday, April 1st, 2026 at 9.30 a.m., at which time we plan to hold a public hearing on this legislation.

Is there anything you would like to add, HB?

Okay, and thank you, colleagues.

So short meeting today.

We have reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

Is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

Okay, hearing no further business to come before the committee.

We are adjourned at 9.45.

Thank you all.