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Okay, the February 18th, 2026 Land Use and Sustainability Committee will come to order.

It's 9.32 a.m.

I'm Eddie Lin, Chair of the Land Use and Sustainability Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Vice Chair Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Foster?

Here.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Council Member Rink?

Present.

Chair Lin?

Present.

Chair, there are four members present.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Good morning, everyone.

I'm Eddie Lynn, Council Land Use and Sustainability Committee Chair.

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

As always, thank you to our city clerks, council central staff, and SDCI for helping us prepare.

A special thank you to Sonari Marshall from the mayor's office and Christy Parker from CBO for helping prepare for this meeting.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on the agenda and within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Currently we have one in-person speaker and there are no remote speakers.

Okay, each speaker will have two minutes.

We'll start with in-person speakers.

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 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 of their time.

Speakers will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open.

We will begin with the first speaker on the list.

That is Steve Rubestalo.

Good morning.

The agenda, as it was, a couple of meetings ago.

Looks like it might actually do the people's business.

You might, well, you'll help maybe a few developers, but a lot of people in the process.

So hopefully we will comply with the feds so that Seattle citizens and property owners will get the full benefits of the federal programs, which is mainly the purpose of this.

We also should probably be taking a look at where we shouldn't be building, but that might be a step too far.

The time I will use here is for your agenda for the year.

Trees are still an issue.

and not with citizens whacking them down, but with developers.

The loss of our canopy is startling and it's quick.

I know the Council's goal was to equalize the North End and the South End, the rich and the poor, but zero is not a good number.

and it was spoken, it was like we were going to raise the number of trees.

Well, we're raising trees but not in the number of trees.

And I'm concerned about the older trees, the ones that will take almost my lifetime or at least half of it to be of benefit because shrubs and trees have definite differences in benefits.

The other thing you should be looking at is design review.

Design review brings citizens back into the process who have been shoved out of the process.

Part of the compromises that brought about the urban centers was to have design reviews.

Design Review's idea was to make the building somewhat conform to the neighborhood, somewhat to be not the worst possible impact, but we've gotten the citizens out of that.

And let's take a look at MHA fees.

They were promised that it'd be 50-50, people using them, people not using them.

Guess what?

It ain't that way.

Thank you.

I'd like to note for the record that Council President Hollingsworth is joined remotely.

So there are no additional registered speakers.

We'll now proceed to our items of business.

We'll now move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read agenda item one?

Agenda Item 1, Council Bill 121152, an ordinance relating to floodplains, adopting permanent regulations consistent with the 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, repealing Ordinances 126113 and 126536, amending Chapter 2506 and Section 2509030 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you.

This legislation sets forth permanent floodplain development regulations to comply with federal law administered by FEMA.

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

FEMA has required 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 10 times while working to adopt permanent floodplain regulations and maps.

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

So our representatives from SDCI have joined us at the table.

Once ready, please introduce yourselves.

Good morning, Chair Lin and members of the committee.

Thank you for having us here today to talk about the permanent floodplain regulations.

I'm Maggie Glowacki.

I'm from SDCI.

I use she, her pronouns.

I've been with the department for 25 years working on environmental regulations, and I also have a background in fish biology.

Good morning, I'm Christina Postalwaite.

I use she, her pronouns, and I'm SDCI's Legislative and Government Relations Manager.

And before we have Maggie kick it off, I wanna just let everyone know that We will be scheduling time for those who haven't been briefed on this.

It's a very dense topic and we want to make sure we have a lot of time to answer questions and get into the nuance of this.

We will be scheduling time with those who haven't been briefed yet between today and the next time it goes to committee in early March when the public hearing takes place.

So please rest assured this is by no means the the only time we're going to hear this briefing.

We really want to make sure you understand what the legislation does and kind of hear how we got to where we landed and help us hopefully move it forward.

Thank you, Christina.

Please proceed.

Thank you.

So I've prepared a PowerPoint presentation to walk you through everything that we've done so far.

So I'm going to cover the overview of the floodplain regulations and the reason for the update.

So we've had interim regulations in place since 2020 with 10 extensions.

We also had permanent regulations proposed with a SEPA decision back in July of 2021, and the port appealed that decision.

So with the appeal, the department decided to to withdraw that decision and work on a second proposal and an addendum.

And so now before you is our final proposed permanent regulations.

So our permanent regulations are part of the city codes, and they provide development standards that makes homes, businesses, and people safer from flooding.

We have mapped areas, and those mapped areas come from FEMA, and those are called the floodplain, but we also have a responsibility under the Growth Management Act to regulate flood-prone areas as environmental critical areas, and so these regulations serve both purposes.

So our codes apply to permit applications for construction on the properties that are in the mapped areas.

So, whoops, I went the wrong way.

Okay, so FEMA, as we stated, establishes the maps, but they also establish the regulations, and these are the minimum standards.

And these requirements are in the code of federal regulations called 44 CFR 60.3, and they lay out where development can occur, the elevation of development measured from the base flood elevation, and I'll explain that a little bit more as we go through the slides, and the methods for instruction.

The State Department of Ecology also works with FEMA to establish a model code.

However, the model code is for recommended and optional standards.

so they are not required.

So the reason we have the floodplain regulations is so that our community can participate in the National Flood Insurance Program.

So this is also known as the NFIP.

And this allows for property owners to attain federally backed mortgages as well as it allows for the City of Seattle and our community to apply for and receive mitigation mitigation flood risk funding from the federal government.

So the property owners are required to comply with the regulations, and SDCI is required to implement and enforce the regulations.

So back in February of 2020, FEMA updated the floodplain maps for all of King County.

So this then made it a requirement for all jurisdictions within King County to adopt those floodplain maps and review our code in comparison to the federal standards and update the regulations as required and adopt the maps.

And this was, we had an August 2020 deadline for that.

And so here is a list of what the flood hazard areas are.

So we've got the mapped areas, and the mapped areas represent these different flood zones.

And so flood zone X is there's no floodplain requirements.

We've got an AE where we know what that base flood elevation is, and those areas are mapped.

The AO is for shallow sheet flow flooding.

And then our VE zone, this is a new floodplain zone that came in in 2020. This is a high-risk coastal special flood hazard area.

And so this is where we had a lot of change in our maps, and I will walk us through the changes as well.

So this map shows the maps before 2020 and then the maps after 2020. And I know the detail isn't great here.

I'm going to zoom in in a couple of the places.

So the major changes did occur both in the Duwamish area and along all of our shores of Puget Sound.

We also had some changes along Thornton and Longfellow Creek where the floodplain moved a bit.

So some properties were taken out of the floodplain and other properties were put into the floodplain.

So as we went over earlier, we had the draft permanent regulations in June of 2021. We published a SEPA decision in July of 2021. That SEPA decision was appealed by the Port of Seattle, so we withdrew the decision and we worked with the Port of Seattle since August of 2021 to resolve the issues that they raised.

We had regular meetings with the Port since August 2021. we updated our proposed permanent regulations.

A lot of the changes were clarifications on the standards.

And as we move through this process, every time that we brought new regulations forward for SEPA or an addendum, we worked with FEMA to make sure that we were still in compliance with the FEMA requirements.

So this slide kind of lays out the difference between our pre-2020 regulations So the Duwamish River was mapped in, as well as areas around Harbor Island.

Elliott Bay and Puget Sound changed from a Zone A and a Zone X to a Zone VE, so going from a lower or no no requirements to the highest standards.

As I stated earlier, shifts along Longfellow Creek and Thornton Creek happened.

Also, prior to 2020, our standards were for a two-foot elevation above that base flood elevation.

And that term is called called the freeboard, and what it does is it kind of gives us a little room for sea level rise.

And in some of the places, we did increase that two foot to three foot, but in other places, such as the VE zone, it went from two feet to zero feet, and I'll go into the reasoning for that, but a lot of it is because of where the measurement, where you measure that base flood elevation from.

We also included the minimum standards for storage where prior to 2020 we had no regulations for storage.

So now I'm going to zoom in as to where some of the major changes in mapping happened.

So here is where prior to 2020 and since 1995 The areas in green were actually mapped X.

And a lot of these areas were underneath our piers along the waterfront, as well as the east and west waterway.

So these areas went from X to VE.

So then this next map shows the Duwamish River, where this went from X to AE.

So again, prior to 2020, the Duwamish wasn't regulated.

but also I want to point out that a lot of this is within the river banks.

There's some areas that go onto land, but a lot of this is within the river.

And then over on the left-hand side, this is Longfellow Creek, so you can see where the shifts happened and where some of the properties were mapped in.

And then this is the area that represents kind of Elliott Bay and Puget Sound, where it went from an A to a VE, so a lesser regulated area to the highest standards.

So it was regulated, but the standards were different.

So now I'm going to talk more about the base flood elevation and how our standards play into implementation.

So on this slide, the blue dotted line shows the base flood elevation.

And so that is FEMA's minimum standards.

Prior to 2020, our regulations required you to go two feet above that base flood elevation, and some of our proposal was to go three feet.

So two situations I want to point out.

In the A Zone, I'm going to use this building on the right to explain this.

Going forward, if your project meets the threshold for substantial improvement, that's when the regulations would kick in, so you'd have to meet the standards.

If your building is at base flood elevation or above the code says that you don't need to bring all of your entire structure up to three feet above base flood elevation.

However, if you're below base flood elevation, then you do need to meet the requirement.

So this kind of takes into account the existing conditions for existing, well rather, for existing structures within our floodplain.

So then another thing to point out is that with the change in VE zones, where you measure the base flood elevation has changed.

And so it's not at basically the lowest floor, which, you know, let's use, again, the one on the right, the lowest floor would be that low blue line.

That's not where you measure base flood elevation from in the VE zone.

You need to measure it from the lowest structural member.

and so that's gonna be approximately three feet below your lowest floor, so that's another change that we are trying to accommodate through the new VE zone and that's one of the reasons for changing the minimum elevation standard to that base flood elevation.

So now the next two slides are gonna walk through our last SEPA decision was in 2024. We made additional changes to the code and that is one that we made is that we changed the minimum elevation requirement for the VE zone to base flood elevation to accommodate where you measure the base flood elevation from because it's three feet below essentially the lowest floor.

And then I walk through the development scenarios for the A Zone where we're gonna accommodate existing development.

So another change that we made was we replaced specific standards for storage of materials and equipment including hazardous material to a standard that says either that needs to be stored in a structure that meets the standards, or they're stored in a manner that is reasonably safe from flooding.

And that's a FEMA standard.

And then we also removed from the critical facilities definition installations that use or store hazardous materials or hazardous waste.

Again, that's a change that FEMA made.

They removed that from their definition.

And then the two last changes that we made is that we corrected information in the tables and we changed from using parcels and areas to just using areas because that was a clearer way to show how much change had happened between 1995 and the 2020 FEMA maps.

And we updated our maps to also clarify where, you know, people were very interested in, you know, where we changed from X to VE, where we changed from X to A, and from A to VE.

So we updated the maps to make that more clear.

and that's the end and I'm available for questions, thank you.

That was a lot, we recognize that, which is just reinforcing we wanna, we'll debriefing all of you and your staff multiple times again, but yes.

Thank you so much.

Committee members, any questions?

No, okay.

We couldn't be more excited to be talking about this in front of you after the years of working through this, multiple extensions, not gonna say how many, and Maggie's really led the charge working with the port.

We are very excited to be here and looking forward to talking about this with you.

Well, I just want to say thank you so much for the years of work that has gone into this.

Clearly it's a lot of work, especially when there have been areas that previously were essentially unregulated that now are regulated under that VE zone.

So understand why that took a lot of time.

So I appreciate you working through that.

Council Member Foster, I see a hand here.

Thank you so much, Councilman Berlin, and thank you so much for the great presentation.

I know we haven't sat down for my briefing yet, so I'm looking forward to doing that.

Can I get you to return to slide 15, please?

Can you just go back over this one more time?

I just want to make sure I understand.

You sort of mentioned that depending on the existing structure and where the existing structure sits, they are required to update or not, or can you just revisit that?

That was a little unclear for me.

Yeah, so if we use this gray building on the right-hand side, so use this as an example, say this was in the AE zone.

This development, if they reach the threshold for substantial improvement, and that threshold is greater than 50% of the cost of the structure, then that triggers the project to come into compliance with the existing standards.

And those existing standards would be, your elevation needs to be base flood elevation plus three feet.

Okay, and remember that the last code was plus two feet.

So this is an additional one foot.

So in this situation, you can see that the lowest, the lowest floor as represented by the horizontal line on the bottom of the building, that that's below the blue dotted line representing the base flood elevation.

So therefore, they would have to raise their entire structure up three feet.

if we imagine that that lowest floor, so the lower solid line was actually at the base flood elevation in the same scenario, they would not be required to raise their structure.

And another scenario or, you know, like say they were one foot above or one and a half feet above, as long as they were above the base flood elevation, whatever that elevation would be the standard.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other comments or questions?

Okay.

Well, thank you again for all the work and it sounds like we'll be hearing from you again soon and we'll be holding a public hearing soon.

Let's see.

So our next meeting will be on Wednesday, March 4th, 2026 at 9.30 a.m., at which time we will hold that public hearing on these permanent floodplain regulations.

And we have reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

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

Hearing no further business to come before the committee, we are adjourned at 9.56 AM.

Thank you.