Select Committee on the Comprehensive Plan 6/5/2025

Good morning, everyone.

The June 5th meeting of the Select Committee of the Comprehensive Plan will come to order.

It is 9.33 a.m.

I am Joy Hollingsworth, Chair of the Select Committee, and let me remind everyone, it is a great day to be at City Hall and in this chambers.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Kettle?

Here.

Council Member Moore?

Council President Nelson?

Present.

Council Member Rink?

Councilmember Rivera?

Present.

Councilmember Saka?

Here.

Councilmember Strauss?

Vice Chair Solomon?

Here.

Chair Hollingsworth?

Here.

There are six council members present.

Awesome, and let the record reflect.

Council Member Rink and Council Member Strauss are excused until they arrived.

Thank you.

We will now consider the agenda.

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

Hearing none, the agenda is adopted.

Good morning, colleagues and our faithful Seattle channel watchers.

Congratulations to all of us on passing the interim legislation for House Bill 1110. Seattle officially has middle housing legislation in place and now that we've accomplished the interim, the substantive, I can't even read that word, I'm sorry.

The substantive work will begin and we will start our journey to pass a one Seattle comprehensive plan and permanent House Bill 1110 permanent House Bill 1110 legislation before budget deliberations in late September.

Also, let the record reflect, we're joined in person by Council Member Rank.

Thank you.

Today, OPCD and the Mayor's Office are here to brief us on the final versions on two pieces of legislation they have sent down for deliberation.

The next two meetings, follow this.

The next two meetings will follow this.

Central staff will be informing us of policy considerations for these pieces of legislations.

And with that, we're going to get the meeting started.

I also, for a reminder, we're taking written public comment today because there's a lot of material that we have to get today.

We're also taking written public comment for the next meeting when we have central staff come and brief us as well and then after that we do have a public hearing here at City Hall and after that we are going to be having our regular comprehensive select committee for comprehensive plan meetings where we're going to allow public comment but we want to make sure that we can get through a lot of legislation and make sure that we have time for council members questions so clerk will you please read Item one into the agenda.

Council Bill 120985, an ordinance relating to land use and zoning repealing and replacing the Seattle comprehensive plan pursuant to a major update with new goals, policies and elements and a new future land use map for briefing and discussion.

Presenters are Michael Huebner, Brendan Staley from Office of Planning and Community Development and Krista Valles from the mayor's office.

Awesome.

It's a wonderful day to welcome you all here to Chambers to talk about the comprehensive plan and then also House Bill 1110 permanent legislation that you all sent down to our office.

So please introduce yourself and then you can go ahead and jump right into the presentation.

Also, just real quick before we start, and I apologize, colleagues, there's two presentations.

Let's hold our questions until after the first presentation.

And then we can jump in and just kind of see how it flows.

And then for the second presentation, we can see where we are on time.

And if people have questions back and forth, we can go ahead and do that.

So for the first presentation, we're going to hold.

I'm just asking colleagues to hold till the end.

And then we'll go ahead and jump in to the second presentation.

Floor is all yours.

Chris Tobias, Mayor's Office.

Michael Hubner, OPCD.

Brennan Staley, OPCD.

So good morning, council members.

Thanks so much for giving us the space to come and present to you on the legislation that we transmitted last week.

We thought we were going to be here actually back in March doing this presentation.

But as everyone knows, there were some delays with various appeals to our EIS.

So we appreciate you pivoting and getting the interim legislation done in time to make the state deadline to implement HB 1110. But I wanted to point out that we have already done a series of presentations for you related to this legislation that we're going to talk about today.

proposed growth strategy.

We also had a dedicated session on just the public outreach that we've done on the plan.

We've had special sessions dedicated to trees and our MHA program, along with additional presentations on various aspects of the comprehensive plan with all the departments here as well.

So it's kind of been a long haul, and some of the information you're going to see today may look familiar.

Some of that is just because it's been such a long time coming, we thought it would be helpful to review some of the information previously presented to you today.

But we really are going to spend the bulk of today's time getting into the weeds on the permanent HB 1110 legislation, which is pretty different than the interim legislation that we provided with you today.

It has a lot more aspects to it, such as our stacked flat bonus and affordable housing bonus.

So we'll be getting into that today with you.

And again, thank you for your time and attention.

Very much appreciate it.

Great.

Good morning, council members.

Michael Hubner, OPCD, and I'm the project lead for the One Seattle Plan update.

So to start with, and to echo what Krista was describing, the mayor released his recommended comprehensive plan back in January, the start of this year.

We briefed this committee in January, February on aspects of the update process, the plan itself, and the growth strategy.

And as this committee now takes up legislation to adopt the One Seattle Plan, today's presentation is a refresher on some of the high points from those presentations, as well as a review of some minor changes to the growth strategy that were made between then and now with this legislation.

This presentation will be followed by the deeper dive that my colleague Brennan Staley will be giving on the permanent legislation for 1110. I want to begin with a high-level overview of the comp plan update process and the requirements at the state and regional level that it responds to.

The One Seattle plan is a major update of the city's comprehensive plan.

The comprehensive plan can be amended each year, but every 10 years the city takes up a major update.

This is a 20-year plan for growth, so we refresh our 20-year outlook on how much growth we expect and will be planning for, and it expresses a vision for the future of Seattle.

We expect Seattle to continue to experience significant growth over the next 20 years, probably eclipsing a million people, a population of a million within that time period.

The plan draws upon the city's values and vision of the future that is grounded in community input, and updating the plan involves identifying what challenges the city is facing now with this 10-year update and what policy foundation we need to establish to support strategies to address those challenges.

This update is responsive primarily to our ongoing housing crisis in terms of affordability and supply in the city.

And our overarching goal is for Seattle to become a more affordable, inclusive, and resilient city as this plan is implemented.

Very briefly, we have to do this plan under the State Growth Management Act.

It's a requirement.

It coordinates actions across city departments.

Seattle 2035 is our current plan.

So this one Seattle plan will replace the Seattle 2035 plan.

And as I mentioned, we do this every 10 years.

Next slide.

And just real quick, and I apologize, just housekeeping.

Let the record reflect.

We're joined by Councilmember Sokka in person.

He was online.

So thank you.

And that Councilmember Moore is excused until she comes.

I forgot to mention her as well.

Thank you so much.

Yes.

The comp plan must comply with certain requirements that are set at the state and regional level.

The GMA requires that certain policies and topics be included in the plan, certain data, and that we demonstrate that we are accommodating growth over the 20 years, both in terms of land use and city investments.

There are several significant new requirements under state law that this plan responds to.

One is House Bill 1220, which had a range of new housing and housing affordability requirements.

You will see that reflected in our housing element and housing appendix.

House Bill 1110, which I know this committee is quite familiar with, has new requirements around allowing middle housing in all neighborhoods.

The comprehensive plan actually contains very little in terms of the details in implementing 1110. That's primarily addressed through zoning legislation, but the plan is amended to support that zoning.

And finally, House Bill 1181 requires a new climate mitigation and resilience element, and we have a new element in the comp plan that addresses that new requirement.

The Puget Sound Regional Council adopted Vision 2050 several years ago.

This is a growth management plan for the four-county metropolitan region, of which Seattle is at the heart of.

It includes a regional growth strategy that has certain expectations for a significant role to be played by what are called metropolitan cities.

Seattle is a metropolitan city in that regional growth strategy.

Once adopted, the city's comprehensive plan will be submitted to PSRC for review and formal certification for consistency with Vision 2050. This is an important step to ensure that the city retains access to federal transportation dollars which are administered and distributed by the PSRC.

And finally, within King County, there's the Growth Management Planning Council also recently adopted a set of policies and targets for local comprehensive plans.

This plan is responsive to and implements those policies as well.

And for both the GMPC and the PSRC, there are regionally designated centers, which there are several in Seattle, and are important elements of our own city growth strategy.

Next slide, please.

Just in terms of the process of developing this major update, I just wanted to hit on some of the high points.

As we presented on February 5th in more detail around all of our different phases of community engagement, this update engaged the public quite extensively across a several-year period with information about the update, multiple opportunities to provide public comment, We engaged the public in many different ways, online, in person, large meetings, small meetings, targeted outreach to stakeholders, and with a very important focus on equity and inclusion in that process.

There's quite a bit more detail about what we did to reach the public and what we heard in a package of reports that are available on our project website.

We did an environmental impact statement that studied five different growth alternatives.

The goals and policies in the plan were developed by multiple departments coordinated through OPCD.

On January 29th, we actually were here with staff from key departments to talk about their approach to planning for growth and how Their policies and plans were integrated into the One Seattle Plan.

And finally, promoting racial equity was a central tenant of this update, and we used the city's racial equity toolkit process throughout the update, and you'll see that evidenced in how we did engagement, the kinds of analysis we did of the plan and how it promotes and impacts different communities across the city, and especially the goals and policies in the plan, many of which are new or revised to reflect the city's intent to be a more equitable place for everybody as we grow over the next 20 years.

Next slide.

As illustrated in this high-level timeline, the overall comp plan update process has spanned several years, from initial concepts and growth alternatives to draft plan and EIS to final legislation and proposed changes to implement the plan through zoning.

Each phase of this work included targeted outreach and opportunities for public comment.

So turning now to an overview of the plan itself, which is attached to the legislation that you are now considering, The One Seattle Plan document is organized around three major sections.

The first are the 13 citywide policy elements or chapters.

Most of these are required by the Growth Management Act.

You'll see them listed on this slide.

What we did in updating the plan was review and update the narrative in each of the elements, the goal and policy language that you see in the plan.

There were some sections to the plan which you'll see relatively major rewrites of the sections and topics.

Others received a lighter touch.

Overall, one of our guiding principles was consistency and incorporation of work that other departments have done in their own planning to serve the city in the future, such as the Seattle Transportation Plan, the Shape Our Water Plan from SPU, as an example, the Parks and Open Space Plan, We reorganized the plan.

The order of the policies and sections is similar to Seattle 2035, but there are some differences.

And as a tool for identifying what is new and different in this plan, we provided the council and the public with a set of tables comparing Seattle 2035 and the one Seattle plan.

And so that's available as you consider this legislation over the summer.

The next section are the four technical appendices.

These are also requirements of GMA, and they meet expectations of the PSRC.

Highlights include updated data on existing facilities, estimates of future needs, and recent and future priorities for city investments.

There's new data in particular in the transportation appendix, which incorporates information developed through the Seattle transportation plan process, which was occurring in parallel to the comp plan update, as well as financing and project list information from the transportation levy.

And the housing appendix is quite a bit more robust than in past plans, largely to meet the requirements of House Bill 1220. And finally, the Com Plan document will include a placeholder section for sub-area plans for our regionally designated centers.

These sub-area plans are more detailed plans for land use and public investments within each of the nine regionally designated centers, including the manufacturing and industrial centers, and the regional centers such as downtown U District and others.

These are a requirement of the Puget Sound Regional Council, and OPCD is currently developing these plans individually, and they will be adopted separately into the comprehensive plans through the annual amendment process starting in 2026. This section replaces the old neighborhood plan section in Seattle 2035. So finally, I'm going to talk about the growth strategy, and I know that this committee is likely going to be focusing on the growth strategy during your consideration over the summer.

Just to highlight some of the major points from a more detailed presentation that we provided on January 15th.

So the growth strategy is a centerpiece of any comprehensive plan, and it certainly is a key centerpiece of this update.

It guides where and how development will be focused to meet our future needs to accommodate both housing, population, and also jobs.

As I noted earlier, the ongoing and persistent housing crisis in terms of supply and affordability is a major focus of this update, and informed by trends that we have been tracking that show a persistent housing shortage, dramatically increased housing costs, and impacts on our most vulnerable communities, including housing cost burden, displacement, and homelessness.

This growth strategy advances a vision for more affordable, inclusive, and equitable city.

This is the first major change to our growth strategy in 30 years, and it's designed to improve the supply diversity and affordability of housing types in neighborhoods across the city.

Key points in the key elements of the growth strategy include supporting middle housing in all neighborhoods, focusing housing around our transit investments, including new and expanded urban and regional centers, new neighborhood centers, zoning for apartments along frequent transit routes.

And overall, when implemented through the zoning proposal, it was released last fall, this will roughly double our residential capacity to about 330 potential new homes to meet future needs.

In the plan itself, what you will see in terms of mapped detail about the growth strategy is what you see on this slide.

This is the future land use map.

This is a fairly generalized map that shows the different types of locations across the city that have different roles in accommodating growth.

As we will discuss, more detailed zoning maps are adopted through separate legislation.

The growth strategy includes a hierarchy of centers, which are areas for denser forms of housing, a mix of uses, access to high-quality transit.

And it newly identifies urban neighborhoods as areas outside of centers.

That's where we are primarily implementing House Bill 1110 and also planning for additional housing in proximity to transit.

And then there are the manufacturing industrial centers in our growth strategy, which are delineated to support and sustain those crucial economic sectors.

A couple of high points about each of the center types.

So regional centers, there are seven of them in this growth strategy proposal.

One of them is, six were in the current plan, and one is added.

That's the Ballard Regional Center.

That's a redesignation of an existing urban village to the status of regional center.

Ballard already meets the regional criteria for designation by PSRC, so this is largely a recognition of the status of Ballard.

But it does open up the possibility for new planning options for that area in the future.

And there are some minor boundary adjustments to the uptown and First Hill Capitol Hill regional centers as well.

As noted, these are our largest and densest centers appropriate for anywhere from mid-rise to high-rise development.

And these are the places where most of our job growth is expected over the next 20 years, about 65%.

urban centers.

These are similar to the regional centers, but a little smaller, a little less dense.

There are 26 of these in the regional growth strategy, including a new urban center at the Pinehurst Holler Lake area.

We're calling it the Pinehurst Holler Lake Urban Center.

There's a new Pinehurst light rail station that is expected to open in the next couple of years.

There are also boundary expansions to eight of our existing urban villages, now called urban centers.

The focus of those boundary expansions is to ensure that we are capturing a full walk shed around light rail stations and that some of our very small urban villages are expanded to meet regional expectations for that type of center planning locally.

These areas are the focus of more moderate density housing between three and eight stories.

Neighborhood centers is an important new concept in the comprehensive plan and the growth strategy.

These are new designations.

The purpose here is to create a more complete range of housing opportunities in all neighborhoods.

Neighborhood centers are located around existing business districts and frequent transit, including bus rapid transit, so that more people will be able to walk and bike to meet their everyday needs in more neighborhoods.

The areas selected are based on four criteria.

Transit access, concentrations of shops and services, geographic spread to ensure more housing choices in all neighborhoods, and the ability to add housing opportunities for development within these local areas.

They're much smaller than our urban and regional centers, about a three to four minute walk from their center point or main transit access, 800 feet, give or take, encompassing a handful of blocks in a number of neighborhoods across the city.

The kind of development that we would be zoning for in these areas ranges from three to six-story residential and mixed-use development, with a heavy emphasis on the four, five, and six-story zoning that would allow apartments and condominiums and alternatives to the kind of housing that's currently available in these places.

The legislation includes in the growth strategy and the future land use map several boundary changes that I want to highlight for you.

It does retain all 30 of the neighborhood centers.

The boundary changes we consider to be relatively minor.

They affect nine of the neighborhood centers, five of the urban center expansion areas, and one of the regional center expansion areas.

The changes are in comparison to what was released in January.

The map that was in that version of the plan has been revised to reflect these changes.

There is an appendix or an attachment to this presentation today that provides a detail comparing the prior boundaries with the new proposed boundaries with this legislation.

I want to talk about the process that led us to making these changes.

So to recap, back in the fall, the mayor released the growth strategy map that had the boundaries which were in the January plan for public review, along with proposed zoning legislation.

We received public comment throughout the fall, ending in late December.

We received a number of comments from our local community members, both about the zoning and about the size and location of the neighborhood centers, the center expansion areas where we're proposing some changes.

Importantly, a lot of those comments highlighted very localized factors and conditions that created barriers to higher density development, represented areas where there may be impacts we might want to avoid, or other inconsistencies with the concept of a center designation.

Those factors included things like environmental factors, steep slopes, riparian corridors, historic resources such as concentrations of historic buildings, infrastructure constraints such as overly narrow roads or one-way traffic or barriers to circulation.

and access to transit and amenities, so areas that were a further distance from access to those things might have been less appropriate for designation.

We took those factors to account not only in response to comments about specific centers, but applied them across the entire map.

We did a review of all of the center designations to identify where such factors were present, And the result was the map that we saw on the previous slide and is in the appendix that is with this presentation.

Next slide.

So finally, just to, and this is a good segue, I hope, to the presentation from Brennan on the permanent legislation, is the Comprehensive Plan Future Land Use Map does identify urban neighborhood as a new place type, which essentially is all of the areas outside of centers, which are planned for residential development of any kind.

The lion's share of this area is area that is zoned currently for neighborhood residential in the city.

And the comp plan says two things about these areas.

One, it provides the policy basis for implementing House Bill 1110 in neighborhood residential and other zones.

And along arterials that are served by frequent transit, the comprehensive plan indicates that zoning for higher density forms of housing, such as four or five story apartments, would be appropriate with access to that transportation option.

This slide illustrates the range of middle housing types that we expect to see added in our urban neighborhoods to fully implement House Bill 1110, everything from duplexes, fourplexes, courtyard apartments, stock flats, and others.

One thing that we want to emphasize in talking about the Comprehensive Plan legislation is how it is distinct, again, from the zoning legislation, which will be forthcoming later in the process.

So on the left-hand side of this slide, again, this is the future land use map.

So what you will be considering this summer and with this legislation are the locations and boundaries of the neighborhood centers, the expansion areas around existing centers, the new urban center at Pinehurst, and the policies that talk about what kind of development and land uses we are planning for in those areas.

More detailed maps of the zoning, the specific heights and development standards that would apply to future development that would occur in those areas, will be transmitted to you in zoning legislation later this year after your budget deliberations, and that will include the neighborhood centers, the transit corridors, and the expansion areas.

change in approach.

We were originally thinking we would send all three pieces of these legislation down together for your consideration, but because of the delay caused by the appeals, we've been asked to hold on to that until after you've completed your budget deliberation, so I just wanted to make clear that that's why we're holding on to that last piece of legislation.

And just to wrap it up here, just to emphasize the next steps is adopting the comprehensive plan.

The comp plan does need to be adopted first as a predicate to the other zoning legislation that implements the plan.

The legislation itself includes the plan itself, which will replace Seattle 2035, and other edits to our existing code to update the terminology as it refers to the growth strategy, which has different nomenclature and different elements to it.

And that will be followed by the permanent legislation for 1110 and the centers and corridors zoning map legislation that I was just describing.

And with that, I'm available to answer any questions.

Awesome.

Thank you.

I will pause here to see if my colleagues have any questions before I jump into mine or some comments as well.

So I will pause here.

Thank you for the Council President Nelson.

Could you go back to, let's see, page 20, I think.

Slide 20. Talking about the changes made to the neighborhood centers since we first saw these in January.

So not from the last plan, but from Same 30, but slightly different boundaries, correct?

That is correct.

And what I understand is, is it the case, you said that you made the changes based on comments that were made that could have been applicable to all.

So you're not picking out certain neighborhood centers because of the volume of the input you might have received.

Is that the case?

Can you just give a couple examples as to some of those standard pieces of input that you received that caused these changes.

Because it is interesting that the change that I'm, the ones that are changing, and I'm sure this is a coincidence, are the ones mostly in the north end.

And let me see if I can go back to that in my map here.

Just want to make sure that.

the Madrona one, there was no change to any of the ones in the central district, right?

Because I think that that was when there was some particular concern about displacement.

So we received quite a high volume of comments during the fall on the proposal overall.

What we focused on in terms of the boundaries were comments that specifically were about the boundaries of the proposed areas.

The kinds of comments, we did receive more comments about some areas as opposed to others.

There were hot spots, if you will, across the map in terms of the volume of comments.

We considered the information that was provided through the public comment on some of the very localized factors that perhaps we had missed in the original mapping of the proposal, were things we hadn't thought about in as granular a way as neighborhood residents were aware of, that came to light through the comments.

But we were very aware that the comments were very unevenly distributed across places, and we considered it a more equitable and consistent approach to, for example, I'll say, let's say in Madrona, there's a block in Madrona that was proposed to be removed from the proposed center because of slope conditions and stability of the sites in that area.

We actually went out and did a walking tour to take a look at it and barriers to connectivity to the business district.

Those are some factors that were at play there.

Rather than just make that kind of change in Madrona, we considered those are the kinds of things we really should go back and look at all of the centers and see if we erred in including areas that had similar factors in play.

And that's what we did.

So that's just an example.

We wanted to be really fair and equitable across the areas.

I think the distribution of the changes you see on the map also reflects the distribution of where the neighborhood centers and the expansion areas actually are located across the map as well.

There are just are more in West Seattle in the north end because of the geography of our existing centers.

For example, In southeast Seattle, there are a lot of existing urban villages, and there are relatively fewer places where we are proposing changes.

So I think you see that reflected in this map.

Thank you for responding to input from community.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you, Council President.

Councilmember Rank.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for today's presentation and your work on this plan.

Just to start us off, on slide 14, bullet point six, can you please reiterate for the public's understanding the difference between expected housing growth and total build capacity?

Sure.

So I'll start with the total build capacity, and that's the number you see on this slide.

Under the Growth Management Act, the city does maintain a capacity model which quantifies if you were to essentially build out everything that could feasibly be developed in the city, how much development in terms of number of housing units or number of the square feet of commercial area or jobs could we anticipate over the long term?

That's what this number represents, is the overall space we're making for new development.

It is not a forecast of future need.

It's the envelope, if you will, that over time we have available to us.

It provides flexibility in the market for building sites that become available over time.

It is more of a theoretical number.

For this update, we also knew that we had a floor, a minimum number that we were required to plan for under the Growth Management Act.

I mentioned the targets that are adopted by GMPC.

On housing, we had, for the full planning period, about 80,000 units.

That's the minimum number.

We also assumed a higher number in the EIS of 120,000 potential housing units for this 20-year period, recognizing there's a lot of uncertainty about how much the city will grow in the future.

But we do anticipate there will be a lot of development pressure, a lot of demand for housing in the city, And the overall approach here is to provide additional capacity overall and a greater variety of housing types that can be built.

And I'll just add that the mayor's preferred alternative that we ultimately are sending down to you aligns with the higher number in the IS of 120,000 housing units.

And we thought it was important to go as robustly as we could on that number given the housing crisis that we're in.

Thank you both for that explanation.

I think it's important to delineate between these two because this number has come under a lot of scrutiny.

And if I'm understanding correctly and to put into lay terms, this number 330,000 really is essentially assuming if we tore down everything and then built to the absolute max capacity under what is proposed zoning under this plan, it would create avenue for this.

That's correct.

It's still an important number when you think about providing options and opportunity for where the housing goes.

Certainly appreciate that.

In my following questions, I want to dig into a little bit more just some of the justification behind the change in boundary lines between the neighborhood centers.

And so hearing and I want to express appreciation to the office of, to OPCD for your work in engaging with community partners to hear this feedback and hearing some of the high level justification points around some of these changes being driven by things like environmental factors, infrastructure constraints, access to transit amenities.

I just want to dig into some of those pieces a little bit more to understand some of that justification.

what were the environmental factors that were unearthed in this public comment process but were not identified in the FEIS?

Pardon me.

Yeah, let me give a couple of additional examples.

I've mentioned the slope example in Madrona.

And to be clear, the EIS wasn't where we were mapping the neighborhood centers, per se.

But, In initially mapping the neighborhood centers, the expansion areas around existing centers, we did review maps and mapped data on environmentally critical areas.

For example, the city maintains maps of slopes and wetlands and other features.

We did go out into the field and check these areas.

But it's a big city.

There are a lot of changes, and there were some things that I think the public comment highlighted that we missed.

These are really relatively minor changes.

If you look at the attachment to this presentation, they affect one to maybe several blocks in any given center.

These are not large changes to the initial proposal.

Another example, and slopes is one, this is a hilly city.

There were areas where there were some excessively sloped areas that were barriers to people walking and biking and to development, and so I think that speaks for itself.

There were some extreme cases that applied to multiple centers.

Another one is I mentioned riparian or stream corridors.

There's a block in the Bryant proposed neighborhood center, for example, that actually has an underground stream corridor.

It's day lit through some blocks to the north of there, and we learned through both public comment and then reaching out to SPU that the city may want to or need to daylight that stream sometime in the future.

And for that reason, it perhaps was not an appropriate block for higher density development or redevelopment.

So that was an important factor that we missed.

The other factors that I mentioned as well, it's not just environmental, of course, also things like the quality of the transit service.

For example, one of the BRT stops that we had mapped as an anchor point for the West Green Lake Neighborhood Center only served one-direction travel.

So it wasn't quite a full stop in the sense that other major transit access points would be providing access going both ways.

That was pointed out to us through public engagement, and we revisited the boundary to adjust for that.

You spoke a little bit to some of the infrastructure matters, but what were some of the other infrastructure constraints that were named, and are there opportunities for us to remedy those concerns in the other policy elements of this plan?

I understand one of the policy elements, there's a utility policy element.

Can we take steps to remedy within that chapter?

To be fair, infrastructure was, I think, one of the lesser in terms of the amount of land impacted by, we wanted to provide a complete list here.

There were really only a few very minor cases.

We received a lot of comments about infrastructure in the fall.

Most of those were very general comments about drainage, sidewalks, a lot of infrastructure improvements that are accounted for in the comprehensive plan.

Our capital departments are working to make improvements, especially focusing on areas where we're planning for growth in the growth strategy.

Those were not the kinds of things that resulted in boundary changes.

They were really just unique circumstances such as very narrow streets that only had one-way travel, for example.

Or I mentioned the underground piping of the stream, which in some sense is an infrastructure concern as well in Bryant.

These are exceptions.

There are larger issues around cities' needs to make investments in infrastructure, which we feel that the growth strategy and the comprehensive plan helps to focus exactly what you're talking about, is through our capital facilities planning to make the improvements we need to support growth and density in all neighborhoods.

Thank you for that.

And, Chair, I'll just wrap up my comments with this.

I think in this process we're caught a little bit in a chicken and the egg situation, whereas it has been my working understanding when we look at things like transportation planning, our partners at King County Metro are thinking about service mapping in relation to volume of ridership.

And so looking at opportunities where we're growing neighborhood centers and having more neighbors there than having the subsequent transit service come online, that has been my working understanding of how we build out these services.

And so trying to understand that balance as we're looking at being able to look at density in different parts of the city.

So thank you for answering my questions.

Thank you, Council Member Rank.

Was Council Member Kettle next or Council Member?

Kettle, okay, my apologies.

I didn't see whose hand went up next.

Council Member Kettle, you're recognized followed by Council Member Rivera and then Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much.

Thank you also.

How many meetings have we had as well as Mr. Hubner?

And thank you so much for coming and presenting.

I just wanted to note a few things.

One is thank you for answering the question regarding capacity and utilization.

That is such an important point.

let me say it again, that is such an important point because that is something that is pointed to often in terms of, you know, people having issues with different aspects of the comprehensive plan.

Understanding that piece, the utilization rate, traditionally, historically, how that number comes about is so important.

So thank you for asking the question, but also answering.

And that's something that, in terms of outreach and messaging and communication, really needs to be part of continued outreach.

Thank you for that.

As you know, I've had some amendments, which are in draft, but now that we have this, we'll reassess and look.

One that won't be reassessed, and you already know this, but I'm basically saying for the record, is that we do need a public safety element.

This is so important.

As our cities grow across the country, we saw this in LA.

L.A.

grows massively.

Did its fire department?

So when disaster strikes, the public safety element of a city needs to be able to respond.

And we're looking for major growth.

We need to ensure that our public safety aspects, police, fire, emergency management, and the like, need to be there.

And so I've been consistent on this.

I know it's not in here now, colleagues, but I will be looking to do this.

I've already started.

And for OIR, once this is done, I think the state should go into its law and also mandate a public safety element because this is important for every jurisdiction across the state in order to do public safety right.

Make sure that public safety is right-sized for these growing jurisdictions.

So I just wanted to throw that out there.

I really appreciate the slide, which I just moved off, of the urban neighborhoods.

Clearly, District 7 is very urban.

So it's a very interesting dynamic to see this on a map like this.

One thing I think, and by the way, I still support the District 7 Neighborhood Center, just for the record.

But as I mentioned, I think it's important for us to also look for those opportunities where we can create, and I know Director Karen Dango doesn't like this term, but neighborhood villages, these little locations where we have some transit, we have some commercial, look to whatever the area is, look to maximize the housing there to create a little test.

And I think if we have a lot of little neighborhood villages across the city, some are gonna take off.

Some won't, but those that take off could be in 10 years, 20 years from now when future councils go through this, that may be the germ for a new neighborhood center or something along those lines.

And I think that's an important thing that we should be looking at generally.

and to include in District 7, even though, as I just noted, we're already quite urban as already.

Thank you also.

Quick shout out for the manufacturing industrial areas, the two.

Appreciate the shout out on that.

At the end of the day, going back to all those public safety elements and all that, the key thing here, and this is coming up in different ways in other committees as well, is Land use, like what we're doing here, and transportation.

Absolutely two sides of the same coin.

If we're maximizing the land use, we have to be maximizing and improving our transportation.

And it's going to be so key because without one, trying to do one without the other is going to end up in failure.

And I just wanted to say that general point as I look at this, as I think about other issues that are surrounding us in the council and the city.

it's really important to have land use and transportation be absolutely in sync.

So with that, thank you, Chair.

I don't know if, is there a response needed or comment?

They love my public safety idea.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Michael?

I'm not, there were a couple of key, I'll just speak to a couple of the topics that the Council Member raised, certainly on public safety.

Happy to provide some background and context for consideration of public safety element.

I think as we discussed at a prior committee meeting, there are components of the comprehensive plan right now that do address public safety in our capital facilities element and appendix.

That's consistent with the Growth Management Act at a minimum, how we address public safety, fire, police, emergency response, with the intent, as you described, to right-size the investments that we are planning for and our priorities to match the growth we're expecting and the growth strategy specifically where in the city.

that we would be anticipating that growth, but certainly available to answer any questions or work with a council member on what an element might look like in that context.

And we wholeheartedly agree with the transportation land use connection there.

That's a basic tenant of comprehensive planning to begin with, and certainly what the city has done with this update, working very closely with SDOT as they develop Seattle transportation plan, really in tandem back and forth growth strategy and the transportation plan were developed together.

Look forward to working.

That one's already been started.

I'll work with Mr. Freeman, who's here with you on that, just to ensure T's are crossed, I's are dotted on that.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you all for being here.

I have a question about, I understand this is a growth strategy and a plan for the next 20 years.

We're not going to be able to build all these units.

Realistically, how many units can we build in the next 10 years with the existing infrastructure that we have today?

Thinking of sewer lines, water lines, et cetera.

I know we We just passed a bill to try to encourage the development of more connections to water, create more water means for that matter.

So I do think there's a communications issue with the public in terms of when they hear this big number.

And of course, in their minds, this is going to happen in the next 10 years, because we keep talking about 10 years.

Realistically, that's not going to happen.

But what can happen?

Do we have a number?

of units that realistically given the existing infrastructure we have determined, you know, there's opportunity given the land we have today that we can more realistically say this is actually doable in the next 10 years with our existing infrastructure, knowing we're not going to keep static with the existing infrastructure.

We need to, you know, it's aging first of all, and then we need to do more so we could do more building.

units, but what is the estimate of the realistic number that we could do with, like I said, the existing infrastructure and then even if we are able to do more infrastructure in the next 10 years?

So this makes me think of a couple of things that are responsive to that.

First is we don't do 10-year projections.

This is a 20-year plan, so most of our analysis is around the 20-year time period.

But that said, I understand 10 years.

Often people talk about 10 years.

The panel presentation that we brought to this committee back in January, February, where we had SDOT, Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle City Light.

That was really very, this exact question was the, I think the focus of the information that those departments brought to you to describe how they plan for growth and density and development in terms of providing necessary services and infrastructure.

The bottom line, I think, is that infrastructure provision, utilities provision is not the constraining factor on the amount of development that we would expect over 10 or even 20 years, those departments are planning for.

They have financing strategies in place to provide the infrastructure we need as we grow.

That's the purpose of the Comprehensive Plan, to coordinate across departments.

The amount of growth that we're likely to see is going to be shaped by things like the economy and demand over the next five, 10 years.

We expect strong development strong market conditions over the long term, and that's what we planned for in this growth strategy.

We, and as Krista summarized for, and I as well, with regard to the EIS, we made an informed estimate of how much growth we might expect and what we studied in the EIS of 120,000 units over the next 20 years.

We think that that can occur, and the EIS, I think, substantiates this as well.

And the EIS looks at utilities and other factors that we have many tools to mitigate the impact and the needs for infrastructure at that level of growth going forward.

Thank you, Michael.

That wasn't exactly my question.

How many units can we build today if we were to do these uh, neighborhood centers expand these boundaries, et cetera, with the infrastructure that we have today?

What is realistic?

Without making any improvements.

Yeah, yes.

I apologize if I missed that point of the question.

We haven't done that.

I, I don't know that number.

Um, there certainly are needed improvements as the city grows over time.

Uh, the full 330,000 units, many of those would require improvements to everything from street frontage to utility connections to, um, in some places, enhanced transit service over time.

Those are all needs that the city has.

I don't have a precise number to tell you today how many could be built of those 330,000.

It's a lot of units.

We have some very robust infrastructure networks in the city right now.

Clearly, we continue to grow now, and this plan sets us up to do that in the future.

But we do need to make improvements.

I think the capital departments are very aware of that, and they described how they're going to approach that over the next 10 and 20 years.

I understand that.

It's just that's still aspirational, and folks need to know, again, in terms of the worrying about, for folks that feel, and I support more housing, we need more housing in the city, let me say that.

But for folks who see that 330,000 number as, or even 120,000 is a big number, I don't think it is realistic today, I mean, these are all aspirational is what I'm getting to.

And so I'd love to see a number of what could we actually build today with the existing infrastructure to give a better picture of what people can expect rather than all these things have to line up in the next 20 years to actually build those 120,000 units, for instance.

that's still very aspirational, and so is there a figure that we know today we could build with our existing infrastructure, like I said, that is a more realistic, and I know that the comp plan is a, It is a aspirational, like what we hope to accomplish in the next 20 years.

But I also haven't heard a figure of today, what could we do in a shorter term?

How many units realistically could we accommodate for?

So I think to Michael's point earlier, the infrastructure constraints on any one parcel are not the overriding issue with providing more housing in the city.

One of the first things we can do to support more housing getting built in the city is to liberalize our zoning code.

And that's what we're trying to do through this proposal.

So a lot of the housing that gets built in the city is market driven.

So to the extent that more housing, I mean, more people and jobs are coming to Seattle as we anticipate with the growth target we've received from the state, we need to be ready to accommodate that housing.

So I'm not sure I understand your question, but we've blown through our growth targets in the past.

with the number of housing that's gotten built.

So it's really hard to predict with the very difficult market right now, what's gonna get built in the next five to 10 years, but hopefully the market will improve.

And then we anticipate, we will see housing getting built in this city as the demand and the market conditions improve.

Thank you, Krista.

Let me give you a little more information.

We just passed a bill to do cost sharing for the Seattle public utilities because they're hearing things are not getting built because it's so expensive to do the extensions to the water mains that we don't have.

And we don't have a lot of water mains across the city.

There's just a percentage and I can't remember off the top of my head right now.

So that does have an impact.

So it is, For us to have taken up that bill and have had that conversation, it's incongruous with what you're saying about the infrastructure is not the issue.

Infrastructure is an issue or we wouldn't have had to pass that bill to try to incentivize folks actually building units today where they can actually build them today.

And they're not because of the cost of the infrastructure.

So that's where I'm trying to reconcile these things.

Yeah, that's in very specific areas of the city, but certainly not all.

And I think we're talking generally, that's not the overriding constraint right now with the housing market.

Wait, go ahead.

I will say, so most of those are in neighborhood residential zones.

And to help create that development capacity model, we actually did do a kind of a model of kind of site by site model.

And that actually did look at the likelihood of the need for water main extensions in those areas.

So I think a lot of that actually is baked into some of that work.

So the development capacity number is trying to consider it.

Obviously, there are sewer main extensions, and there's a lot of other things.

And so there are definitely sites we're missing that probably are not feasible.

But I think we've done enough of that work that it's not a radically different number.

It might be like maybe 5% of sites might be not really feasible, even though they're in the development capacity.

But we did do a lot of work to try and understand that.

So it is somewhat baked into the number.

So I would imagine that the actual number of feasible, once you take away which sites might require mainline extensions, wouldn't be totally different than what we're talking about.

Thank you.

I have more questions, but I'll follow up, Leader, because I can't remember what percentage SPU said that we didn't have water mains across the city.

There's a higher percentage than 5%, but I don't want to take up any more of your time, Chair.

I'll follow up offline.

Thank you.

No worries.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

So, I think you already know what I'm gonna say.

It's not really a question, it's more just a comment.

I just remain incredibly disappointed I remain incredibly disappointed that the tremendous amount of public feedback that was given to OPCD was not really taken fully into consideration.

And I would take issue with the characterization that you really listen to everybody.

And in a moment, I'll read an email from a constituent.

I just want to note that in District 5, we have a regional center, Northgate, which actually goes up to Northwest Hospital.

Fantastic.

We need that.

I drive past that development every day.

There's a tremendous amount of housing going up there.

SHA housing is going to be mixed use.

There's going to be a lot of mixed use, mixed income, low income, fantastic.

We have urban centers.

a bunch of urban centers in D5, including up Aurora and all the way up to 145th, where there's been a tremendous amount of growth done by Shoreline.

Fantastic.

We've added a new urban center there.

We've expanded the boundaries.

We've added a new urban center, new Pinehurst-Howler Lake urban center.

And I know that the boundaries to that were modestly adjusted.

So fantastic.

I haven't gotten any feedback from the community of being opposition to the urban center or to the regional centers.

Neighborhood centers, we have three listed in D5.

We've got the Maple Leaf, we've got the, and then two other ones in the north end along the boundaries.

We haven't heard any feedback except for Maple Leaf and in fact there was a neighborhood center that was investigated in the EIS up along the Greenwood area and a decision was made not to make that a neighborhood center.

So there is a tremendous amount of growth that is going to happen in District 5 and all of that growth I think is appropriate and as I said is supported by everybody except in the Maple Leaf neighborhood where I did ask twice before all of this came down, specifically requested that it not be designated a neighborhood center and both times those requests were denied.

And then it came and we got this neighborhood center.

And we had people here, lots of people here from Maple Leaf, voicing their opposition.

We have a petition that has over almost 1,500 signatures on it.

I believe it has the most number of signatures of all of the community groups that have been upset about their neighborhood centers.

The mayor's office and OPCD were very aware of the opposition and the request to deal with Maple Leaf, and yet there was no outreach to my office.

And I know specifically that people from OPCD walked to neighborhoods where the neighborhood center boundaries were changed.

And there was outreach to other council member offices about changing the neighborhood boundaries, and yet that wasn't done for Maple Leaf.

The only one in which there has been strong, vocal, consistent public opposition and a request even to just reconsider the boundaries.

And it also has some of the issues that you outlined as a basis for reconsideration, such as infrastructure constraints.

There's also 12th Avenue as a greenway which was created by the city and it's working really well.

And that would be changed here.

There's serious infrastructure concerns around drainage, capacity, access to transit.

We have one bus that runs to the university district and that's it.

It's not a significant amount of traffic transit.

And yet, on Fifth Avenue, We're gonna, the urban center is gonna come down, the regional center is gonna come down to I think 102nd or third.

No consideration of making connecting that to a neighborhood center where it's actually possible to walk to light rail and where there's going to be a tremendous amount of housing and where the infrastructure exists for that kind of development.

And so I have said this before that I have often thought that that was a missed opportunity to really make a major connection and one that makes sense.

And we're not even at the point to be able to be talking about the regional centers.

And I think, unfortunately, that's part of the problem is that we're doing this in little chunks.

But that's neither here nor there.

Again, I really remain dismayed at the unwillingness of OPCD to at least reach out to my office, to at least offer to walk the district.

consider the legitimate concerns of the neighborhood group.

Again, right now, they are still willing to have the boundaries adjusted.

That's a big move from people initially being like, we don't want to be a neighborhood center at all.

Now that's become clear that that's not a reality.

So now the discussion is how can we adjust the boundaries?

Are there other places in which it would make more sense?

And also, I'm a proponent of throwing back in, adding an additional neighborhood center in the north end that was considered and for some reason decided it wasn't, you weren't going to pursue it.

So, and I just, if I may, Chair, read this email that I received on June 4th from a constituent.

Are you able to explain to us why, after working tirelessly to provide feedback to you, the council, and establish a change.org petition unifying our neighborhoods opposition, the Maple Leaf neighborhood was not one of the nine neighborhood centers that experienced a reduction in size?

Feeling helpless in this entire Something show of a process has been disheartening at best and infuriating most of the time.

I'm a mother, I work full time, I love this community that we have built our home in.

What else can I do before you and the council destroy it?

What options do I have?

My voice and the voice of over 1,400 of my neighbors are clearly not being heard.

Clearly, the voices of the neighbors in Gosh, some of the more wealthy enclaves of our city were heard.

Madrona, Montlake, Madison Park, North Magnolia, Magnolia Village, Whittier.

Like, I don't want to be in a position, this is one of the narratives that I struggle against and rail against is pitting rich and less rich and more privileged and less privileged.

But boy, this map sure looks like that.

regardless of the excuses and justifications that are provided, and to say that you're listening, you're not listening, and I don't understand why.

Is it because somebody's trying to put the screws to council member five district with some ideological position?

There are so many, district five is taking a lot of growth as it should.

And there are many ways in which to actually make this growth better, as I just said, to connect Fifth to Northgate.

But there has been an absolute hardcore resistance to this.

And I just, on behalf of the more than 1,400 people in Maple Leaf who are gonna have to live with this decision, I want to make that voice and that opposition and that frustration a part of this record.

and ask one more time, politely, to please work with my office to reconsider, at least walk the damn neighborhood center with us and explain to the 1,400 plus people why you're unwilling to reconsider the boundaries.

Why you're unwilling to look at other places that might be more appropriate and actually have people walking to the light rail that is so vital to our community.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to vent and to speechify as said.

I don't have a question.

Thank you Council Member Moore and I would love to give you all an opportunity to respond.

Yeah, thanks for that.

So a couple of things.

I just want to make clear this isn't personal, Council Member Moore.

It's not that we haven't been listening.

We've just arrived at a different conclusion.

So...

I just want to stress that we've done the best we can to come up with a plan that balances the range of interest across the city.

And it's not a fun position to be in.

We've had to balance the range of interest citywide.

And so we've transmitted a plan that we think does that.

It's in your hands now, and if you guys disagree or wanna do something different, you are welcome to do that.

So this is part of the legislative process.

We welcome your feedback.

We may not have gotten everything right, And I think we've always tried to be collaborative with all of you.

And this is a really tough issue all around.

And I mean, that's all I can sincerely convey to you.

We're not deliberately trying to, you know, signal you out or whatever for any reason.

You know, apologies if it's felt that way.

We asked OPCD to the extent that council members reach out to them to go out to the neighborhoods and talk to people, but we were not proactively reaching out ourselves.

It was if council members requested that we go out there.

So anyway, I just wanted to clarify that and just let you know, we, again, really tried to balance the range of interest that we heard And as you all know, there's plenty of people out there who think we're not doing enough.

So this is a really tough issue.

And we are here to support you in the coming months as you bring your own thoughts to bear on this decision that we've put in front of you.

Council Member Moore, did you want to respond at all?

Thank you for that.

I understand it's a difficult decision.

Thank you.

I understand that.

I have to speak on behalf of my constituents, and that's what I'm doing here.

And I will say on the record, I think at the very bare minimum, I think our expectations are always to be, how am I trying to say this?

I'll just say it.

At the bare minimum, my expectations, I would have thought, assumed that all neighborhood centers would have been walked and said, hey, these are the lines, these are the boundaries, and not on a map.

Something on a map is very different than walking a neighborhood and experiencing that.

And so I think when we were able to do that, thank you all, and Madrona, I think people were able to see some of the landscape and some of the...

some of what has been drawn on a map.

And oftentimes, I often talk to SDOT about that because we draw lines and we don't understand those are neighborhoods and corridors and people live there.

And we have to figure out, okay, so how are we gonna adjust this?

What is that feeling?

How are we gonna make it integrated with the neighborhood and not just a line on a paper?

And sometimes just talking to people helps diffuse what they feel and make sure that they feel heard and said, hey, we do feel heard, or hey, why did you make this decision?

And I'm telling you, just walking and talking to people, that has helped diffuse a lot of the feeling that people think that we as a city is just shoving stuff down their throat without like listening to them.

So I just wanted to highlight for the record, my assumption was that neighborhood centers, people were walking those and talking and just understanding, hey, this is what we're proposing to just see the landscape.

Anytime someone sends me an email and they tell me about something going on in their district, I drive to that spot or I walk there or I take the bus, whatever it is, and I actually look at it so I can visually see what they're talking about, whether it's the crosswalk down 36 that people were talking about, next to some street stuff going on, in our neighborhood, whether it's a park that might not be clean, I go there myself to see it, so then I'm able to articulate it.

And I think that is the type of level of government that people will just wanna see.

So I do hear you, I think at the bare minimum, it's, hey, can we walk the Maple Leaf neighborhood?

And I don't wanna take words out, Council Member Moore's mouth, but I think that's a fair question and request, I will say that.

So if I could chime in, I did part of the response as well, again, reflecting what I described on the slide earlier is initially, so number one is initially in proposing the set of neighborhood centers that were in the plan in the fall in January have been had modest adjustments to boundaries.

Now, we did walk of the streets in all of the neighborhood centers.

That was part of our process in determining locations and the original set of boundaries for the neighborhood centers.

That's number one.

Number two is we did appreciate, Councilmember Hollingsworth, I think the way you described, and I participated myself in some of those subsequent neighborhood center walks with residents.

I think that very well describes the kind of conversations we had with people, and I appreciated the opportunity to do that.

We heard a lot of concerns in those later neighborhood walks that were at the request of council members that we did not make boundary adjustments in response to a lot of the conversation was explaining the process and the rationale and the criteria we used, and that was a healthy conversation.

It was really just a small set of issues that were raised in writing and through some of those neighborhood walks that did feed into this boundary adjustment.

And the last thing I would say is, as I tried to emphasize on the slide, we very much tried to apply a criteria-driven, consistent screen across the city to all of the center boundaries so that there is an equitable, rational, defensible approach that we can stand behind.

You as council members, of course, can make different decisions, come to different conclusions about the criteria or any of the specific boundaries, but that's what we tried to do.

In the case of Maple Leaf, we were very aware of the concerns raised in writing by many constituents, very aware of that.

And we took a close look at Maple Leaf, and it just did not rise to the same level of some of the constraints and local conditions that were the reasons for making some of the other boundary adjustments.

So that's the approach we took, and that's what you see reflected in the proposal today.

Awesome, thank you.

I'm glad you all are telling me this now today that you walked all the neighborhood centers because this is the first time I have heard that.

honestly, so that's great.

Okay, so next, and just to keep us on time, because we have a really meaty presentation, the next thing, we have council member, I wanna recognize council member Saka, because he hasn't spoken yet, and I know we have council member Rink and council member Rivera, if you promise kind of make it quick, I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but if you can make it quick, but council member Saka, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I'll just say on that, with respect to the last portion of the conversation, And it's also good to hear that the department actually did go ahead and walk these neighborhood centers.

It sounds also like there's a clear perception at this dais and then publicly that that was not the case, and certainly with respect to at least one neighborhood center here in Maple Leaf.

And unfortunately, perception sometimes is reality, and that's just the uncomfortable truths that we all live in sometimes.

But I know, and your comment there was very prescient, This is tough.

This is a tough job.

I think you all did absolutely the best you could, did your best job, and balancing all the competing interests from a city-wide perspective.

In our system of government, we have seven of us who represent unique districts, but also represent the broader city, but we are laser-focused most on our direct electorate, our direct constituents.

And so that's how sausage is made.

But in any event, comment on that.

I don't have a question, just another comment on infrastructure upgrades.

Just to pile on some of the great conversation that's already been had, as chair of our city's transportation committee, I am an unapologetic, advocate of improving our infrastructure.

So part of the goal here is, and I think, planning, growth planning, one of the most important aspects.

It's not an ancillary or tertiary consideration at all.

I would argue that one of the most important aspects of this work over the course of this process is to ensure that we have appropriate infrastructure in place for whatever the capacity ends up being, or whatever the actual growth realized ends up being, because we're not just here to welcome new neighbors, welcome neighbors.

My goal in everything I do is to leave something better than when I leave, make sure it's better off than when I started.

The number one, my office gets hundreds, sometimes thousands of constituent emails and calls each and every day, depending on the issue.

Hundreds, sometimes thousands daily.

And the number one category of issue that we seem to get a lot of are constituent queries and concerns and complaints related to busted sewer lines, shared responsibilities that neighbors now have because of a sewer line went out that was 100 years old.

That's the number one thing.

And we try to help them as best as we can, essentially connecting them with appropriate city departments like SPU, for example, that have some programs that offer some assistance, usually not.

But because these pipes, in the case of sewer lines, are old, it happens all the time, over and over and over and over again, get constituent concerns and queries and complaints.

It's gonna cost them and their neighbors tens of thousands of dollars, in some cases over $100,000 to make appropriate infrastructure upgrades.

and I'm glad to hear that various utilities across our city have wrote, I heard you say, financial plans to plan for the new capacity.

I think part of our job and part of our mission, part of our focus should be determining the adequacy and sufficiency of those financial plans.

Because I think sometime, somewhere along the way, someone got it wrong.

in planning for infrastructure upgrades.

Hence the high volume of constituent concerns and complaints now tied to infrastructure.

So we need to make sure that we're not just welcoming new neighbors.

We also need to make sure we're welcoming happy neighbors.

And I would argue that people aren't gonna be happy.

They might have a 15 minute walkable neighborhood They're not gonna be happy if they can't flush their toilet or get their trash taken out regularly or have a 15 minute walkable neighborhood with no sidewalks.

So I think that's part of our mission, part of our charge as an unapologetic fan of infrastructure to make sure we get that aspect right, colleagues.

Thank you, no further questions or comments, Madam Chair.

Awesome, thank you, Council Member Saka.

And then we also have, just before, because we're gonna jump into our next presentation, so we'd like to tee it up, because you all are looking really happy here at the table.

I'm just playing.

Council Member Rank, and then Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I'll keep it brief for the panel today.

For the executive, was there any consideration in expanding existing regional centers, such as Ballard or U District?

No, we did not include that in the original scoping for the EIS and expansion of those specific regional centers.

They are already fairly sizable areas, and our focus was on identifying new areas for growth in a more dispersed way across the city.

Understood.

Thank you.

It was a point of curiosity.

Thank you, Chair.

Awesome.

Thank you, Council Member Inc.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

And I want to thank Councilmember Saka.

I get a lot of emails also, mostly on my neck of the woods, there are underground power lines and we've had power outages and we don't have the funding to fix those.

So folks are consistently having these power outages in their homes.

So when I say We have infrastructure issues and you say that's not the reason why we're not creating more housing.

That's not squaring.

So again, I'll follow up with you offline, but wanted to say that publicly.

I will also say I have six neighborhood centers in the D4 being proposed.

Bryant has been very loud, as has Maple Leaf.

And I see there's some boundary changes.

So thank you for looking at that.

I have more questions about that that I'll follow up.

offline and I would like to invite you to come meet with me and the Bryant neighborhood folks to do a walk of that Proposed neighborhood center because they have requested that of me and I would like for you all to come along with so you can answer questions I'm not going to be able to answer about why there I Know there is a bus line there, but it is a very tight a space in that proposed neighborhood center.

And this is why when we say, did you walk, you probably did not walk with the constituents.

You probably walked it on your own, which is great.

You should do that.

And you should also walk with the people that are going to be impacted the most or the people who live there.

I am a big proponent of outreach.

I've said this various times.

I started my career 30 years ago doing outreach and to council member Hollingsworth's point, people wanna feel heard and oftentimes you can just by having the conversation directly with folks in that way, you can get to either a meeting of the minds or you are gonna do what you're gonna do, but at least people feel heard and that is really important.

So I wanted to underscore that.

Oftentimes people think that Those of us that are asking for outreach or being obstructionist, not the case.

In my 30 years doing outreach, I have learned that you can deescalate most, not all situations by having those direct conversations with people.

And I'm afraid that sometimes the city of Seattle and the county for that matter and our partner agencies, they don't want to do the outreach because they don't want to hear folks being frustrated but if you don't do the outreach and hear folks being frustrated you can't get to a compromise or just a conversation sometimes folks that are frustrated don't understand what's happening also and if you give more information they it deescalates the situation.

So it's best to do the outreach on the front end because whether you do it on the front end or the back end, people are gonna be upset.

And I always err on the side of let's do it on the front end and try to address things as best we can.

That doesn't mean we're not gonna do things.

That just means we're talking to people.

on the front end and trying to, like I said, deescalate things.

So anyway, I will reach out to you on that neighborhood walk.

Thank you, Chair.

Awesome, thank you, Council Member Rivera.

And this is just a time check.

It's 11 o'clock p.m.

Our council members, does anyone have a hard stop at all?

Are we good to go to till 12 p.m.?

Is that awesome?

Council Member, Council President Nelson.

I have a hard stop at 1130 and I was just gonna let you know that I am open to adding another meeting if we need to.

Awesome, thank you so much.

Thank you, council president.

I just wanted to make sure we didn't lose quorum.

Okay, so we're gonna close this agenda item.

I know you were happy about that and we're gonna move to the next agenda item.

Clerk, I'll read the next agenda item.

Council Bill 120933, an ordinance relating to land use and zoning, implementing a major update of neighborhood residential zones and modifying development standards and other zones to comply with various state laws, briefing and discussion.

Presenters are Michael Huebner, Brennan Staley, I've butchered your last name, my bad, and Office of Planning and Community Development, Ms. Krista Vallese from the Mayor's office.

Thank you for coming back.

So I'm going to talk about the second piece of legislation this council committee will be going over, the permanent legislation to update neighborhood residential zones and comply with State Bill HB 1110. We can go a couple slides forward.

I'll try to make this a little quicker.

So obviously, the primary purpose of this legislation is to a major update of neighborhood residential zoning and to comply with that House Bill 1110. It also does comply with a number of other state pieces of legislation just like the interim did.

So the overall approach to this legislation is it first repeals the interim legislation, so it's effectively amending the code that was in place before the interim was passed.

It also repeals and replaces the entirety of the section that has standards for neighborhood residential zones.

So when you read the ordinance, the existing code is gone entirely, and the new code is simply what we're proposing going forward.

It also amends other chapters, both to comply with other state laws and also to meet other city goals.

And really importantly, this goes well beyond the interim legislation to, one, implement a complete overhaul of neighborhood residential zoning, to address a number of existing code issues, and also to encourage stacked flats in various ways.

As real quick background, again, here's a map of where neighborhood residential zones exist today.

They represent about two-thirds of our city, and there are four zones, neighborhood residential one, two, and three, and residential small lot, which has significantly different standards.

So why were we doing this?

Obviously, one reason is that we're required to under state law, obviously a good reason.

Also, though, neighborhood residential zones haven't been substantially updated since 1982. And for that reason, there are lots of sections that are pretty outdated.

It looks very different than all of our other zones, and that makes it much more difficult for the public and for permitters to use.

But the most important reason we're doing this is that is a key part of implementing the One Seattle Plan.

You know, addressing neighborhood residential zones creates a real opportunity to help us better meet our housing needs and also to allow access to neighborhoods that today are primarily composed of single family homes and thus are not accessible to a lot of people in the city.

And this proposal, we think, can have a lot of positive outcomes, both to increase the supply and diversity of housing.

But I think, really, neighborhood residential zones can play a really important role, especially in creating home ownership opportunities with family-sized units.

It also could allow a wider range of people to live in these neighborhoods.

Because of our history of housing segregation and a high cost of housing, many neighborhoods are really only currently accessible to high-income households.

And so allowing for new types of housing and more housing can really open these neighborhoods up to a wider variety of people and allow them to access the amenities like large parks and good schools that we have in those areas.

And then also can create opportunities both for different people in different parts of their life, younger people who can't afford detached homes and older people who want to be able to age in place in their neighborhoods to access new opportunities for housing.

So I'm going to go through the standards, first starting with the changes to neighborhood residential zones, then to low-rise zones, and then to other things that affect citywide.

For each of these, I'll try and say what the proposal is, how it's different than the interim that you recently reviewed and passed, and then also why we're making these changes.

So one of the key fundamental things is how many homes would be allowed on lots, and that's implemented through density and minimum lot size.

And so under this proposal, we would allow a proposing to allow one unit per 1,250 square feet of lot.

But then, of course, also to comply with state law, even for smaller lots, we'd continue to allow four units or six units if they are within a half mile of major transit.

or if you are affordable, again, consistent with state law.

So the way that this varies from the interim proposal is that larger lots would be allowed to have proportionally more homes on them.

And so again, if you have a 5,000-square-foot lot, you'd be allowed to have four homes.

But if you have a 10,000-square-foot lot, you'd be allowed to have eight homes.

This is really fairly similar compared to the interim in that the interim you can still subdivide to create more homes.

But we're proposing here to allow proportionally more homes on larger lots.

And the real reason for that is that we don't want to encourage people to be subdividing solely to get more units.

You know, larger lots generally have better outcomes because you have fewer driveway access easements.

There's opportunities for shared open space, and there's more flexibility for arranging the site to preserve trees.

So this is kind of a small change with this permanent legislation to allow people to get that higher density without subdividing because we think that will create better outcomes.

Similar to the interim, accessory dwelling units wouldn't count towards density limits.

Density, sorry, yeah.

Do count.

Sorry, do count towards density limits.

Thank you.

Moving too fast.

So accessory dwelling units would count towards density limits, and that's really to prevent people from avoiding the density limits by doing a combination of principal units and accessory and then condoizing them.

density on lots with environmentally critical areas would be reduced in proportion to the percentage of a lot that contains environmentally critical areas.

So if you have, for example, generally you'd be allowed to have four units on a 5,000 square foot lot, but if half of your lot is environmentally critical areas, you'd be allowed half as many units.

And this is really consistent with state law.

The state law is very clear that you cannot exempt environmentally critical areas or lots with environmentally critical areas entirely, but you don't have to treat them the same as other lots.

So this approach is really very much consistent with that state requirement.

And then lastly, the minimum lot size of 5,000 square feet.

And that's really there because, again, under state law, if we allow somebody to subdivide their property, then each of those new lots gets to have four and six units.

So it's necessary to kind of continue that minimum lot size so that people can't just keep subdividing to get smaller and smaller lots to get more and more density.

The next thing we're gonna talk about is floor area ratio.

So floor area ratio is a measure of how much building floor area you can have on a lot.

And to calculate the amount of floor area you're allowed to have in buildings, you simply multiply the FAR by the lot size.

So if you have a 5,000 square foot lot, an FAR of one would allow you to have 5,000 square feet of building, If you have an FAR 2, it would be twice that.

So our proposal, again, similar to what exists today and the interim, is that it would vary by density, specifically on a 5,000-square-foot lot.

If you build one home, you'd be able to have an FAR of 0.6, and that would increase the more units that you build up to an FAR of 1.2.

And just to make that really concrete, that means on a 5,000-square-foot lot, you could choose to build one 3,000-square-foot house you could build two 2,000 square foot houses, or if you could build four 1,500 square foot houses.

So the idea is you get more floor area if you build more units, which is an encouragement to do that, but the size of each individual unit would decrease.

But again, the overall idea here is one of the key reasons we set the FAR we already did is that across all these different outcomes, you're likely to get three bedroom units.

So we heard a lot from the public that they really wanted to see neighborhood residential zones as a place where we're continuing to see a lot more home ownership opportunities for family size units, and that's a lot of the reason for this specific proposal.

Just like the interim, there's a small change to height.

It would increase from 30 feet to 32 feet, and this is really to allow more livable floor-to-ceiling heights.

So most residential construction has a minimum floor-to-ceiling height of about nine feet.

This probably would feel very normal in houses throughout the city.

And then you generally need about a foot for the assembly between floors.

And so if you do that math, on a flat site where the bottom floor is right aground, that's about 30 feet.

But it means that on sites where there's topography or the first floor is raised, potentially to get a porch, or if you want to do more soundproofing, as we do for stacked flats, that that starts to cramp the floors.

And so that small change will just mean that we can get more livable, really more standard-sized floors in these buildings.

And then, of course, you can have an additional five feet for pitched roofs to encourage that, or an additional three feet for shed roofs, which are also important.

They're kind of the best for accommodating solar panels, so we want to encourage that as high.

And I just want to point out this building that is shown here is specifically a building that is 32 feet plus five feet of pitched roof.

So that's kind of what it looks like.

I've been in that house.

It feels like a very normal kind of floor to ceiling inside there.

The other important thing is setbacks and lot coverage.

Again, the proposal here is the same as we put forward as part of the interim.

A front setback of 10 feet, a rear setback of 10 feet, although five feet for ADUs, which is what it is today.

and zero if there's an alley, and then the same side setback of five feet, and a maximum lot coverage of 50%.

So you can see on the right what that looks like on a kind of a prototypical 5,000 square foot lot.

You get those green setbacks that no buildings can be built in, but then even with that limited area, you're limited by the lot coverage to a smaller portion of that.

As we were putting together this proposal, we did a lot of prototyping with maker's architecture.

We looked at prototypes that varied the types of buildings that were bit, the different lot sizes, how parking would be configured on a wide variety of lots, including those with alleys and not.

And that was really formative to this proposal.

There's a lot of different outcomes, and we really wanted a proposal that had the flexibility to You accommodate a variety of middle housing types on a wide variety of sites, but also that was still making sure that there was, you know, on space for amenity area and for vegetation at the ground floor.

So together is really important because, again, it allows for flexibility to accommodate, you know, that full range of middle housing on a variety of site layouts.

Also really important is that this allows people to add new homes while preserving existing homes.

Often that is the preferred outcome both for developers and for neighbors to preserve a home.

But when you do that, you need some flexibility because the existing home is where it is.

And so there are kind of more limited opportunities for siting those homes on the site.

This is also important for aligning with our parking requirements because we don't allow people just to pave their whole front yard to put in parking.

That means often to accommodate parking, you have to do that on some of the middle of the site.

And that means that then the buildings need to be kind of pushed out a little bit to accommodate that parking.

And so once you change these setbacks a lot, you might not be able to fit parking on many of these sites.

It also accommodates other circumstances that might occur.

You know, if there's parking off an alley and you want to have amenity for those homes, since you can't put it in the back, it's important to have some space in the middle of the property.

And this provides that flexibility as well.

and also can allow light access to homes and interior of the sites.

So I think the key thing is it's important to recognize there's a wide variety of sites out there.

There's a lot of different approaches.

There's a lot of cases like when you preserve a house and add new ones that you need that flexibility.

And we think this does a really good job of creating that flexibility while also still getting that ground level space that we want in these projects.

Amenity area is a brand new thing for neighborhood residential zones.

It does not exist today, but it does exist in low-rise zones, and so we're kind of using our knowledge of what's been happening there to create a new standard for neighborhood residential zones.

And amenity areas are basically outdoor spaces that are set aside for resident use, such as lawns, landscaping, patios, or roof decks.

And so under our proposal, 20% of the lot must be amenity area.

Those areas can't have any driveways or parking stalls or bike parking or solid waste storage.

They also have to have a minimum size and a minimum width and depth to make sure they're usable.

And at least half of that has to be at the ground level, but you are allowed to have some portion as roof decks.

But those roof decks only count half as much towards the area, so you'd have to have more to meet that same standard.

And on the right, you can see a couple of examples, one with parking off an alley and one with parking off a street.

Those cross-tashed areas are the amenity area.

The one on the right is about 20% or 21% amenity area.

So you can see that's kind of like the minimum that this would result in.

Obviously, trees are something that we've heard a lot about and put a lot of thought into, so we wanted to talk about that.

You know, I think one important context here is that we already have a slate of robust tree protection regulations that would apply to neighborhood residential zones.

We have a tree protection code that limits the number and size of type of tree that can be removed.

and has requirements for replacing trees that are moved.

We have tree planting requirements about what new gets planted there, street tree requirements that both limit tree removal of street trees and then require new planting, plus specific rules around environmentally critical areas and shorelines.

In terms of tree protection regulations, we are not proposing to change those, but we did want to talk about what exists today.

First, it's really important to remember that the tree protection rules in neighborhood residential zones are different than those in multifamily zones.

We've obviously been hearing a lot about tree protection in multifamily zones, but neighborhood residential is fundamentally different.

First, front and rear yards can be reduced by up to 50% to preserve a tree.

So that's both a voluntary, but it's actually a thing that you have to use if it would allow you to preserve a tree.

Tier one trees cannot be removed unless they're either hazardous or they can meet an extreme hardship exemption, which is fairly rare.

Tier 2 trees cannot be removed unless one of three things can be proved.

One, that you can't meet the lot coverage on that site, even if you use those front and rear yard reductions.

Or if it would cause a dwelling unit to be less than 15 feet in width, so basically kind of an unusably narrow home.

Or if it's necessary to accommodate infrastructure that's needed for that development.

So if you can't get water to the site, that would also allow you to remove a tree.

So again, this does actually allow SDCI to ask for different site layouts.

Basically, if they can't prove that, sorry, if it's possible that they could move their building mask around to meet that coverage, we can ask them to do so.

Sorry.

I also just want to point out the other key thing here is that there's been a lot of talk about increasing setbacks to preserve trees.

But as you can see here, increasing setbacks will not increase the number of trees that are required to be preserved, that the setbacks don't factor into this.

And in fact, it could be the opposite if the larger setbacks actually mean there's less space to locate that lot coverage.

And so having larger setbacks could, in fact, make it more difficult to preserve those trees.

We are also proposing to update our planting requirements.

Today, the planting requirements are based simply on the width of the tree at the time of planting.

So in that sense, five new Douglas firs that are two inches wide have the same value as one cherry tree that is 10 inches wide.

So instead, we want to move something from that just thinks about what is the size when it's planted to what is its canopy cover potential.

And so we're proposing a new tree planting requirement that would be based on the potential canopy of that tree.

And so new development would have to plant or preserve trees on public property in order to meet a certain number of points.

Lower density development would have to achieve more points, essentially because they have more space to do that.

These tree points would be in addition to street tree requirements, and so you couldn't meet it by your street trees.

We did extensive modeling to look at this to make sure both it was practical to meet the trees on the lot and also what it would result in.

That modeling suggests that tree points result in a canopy cover just on those redeveloped lots.

of 19% to 26% after 25 years, and 36% to 46% at maturity.

And again, this is just the measurement on those redeveloped lots.

So it is still possible to meet that 30% canopy cover generally, both because over time there will be kind of a short-term loss of trees, but you have that capacity for it to grow back over time.

And then obviously there's also the new street trees that result from development as well.

Lastly, in terms of development standard flexibility to preserve trees, again, under the existing rules, front and rear yards can be reduced by 50% to preserve a Type II tree.

With the proposed new setbacks, this would mean that it would allow the setbacks to be reduced from 10 feet to 5 feet to preserve a tree.

We're also proposing a new provision that is that we proposed to allow that parking could be waived entirely if it would preserve a type two or three trees.

There's an additional flexibility that is being proposed to add to help preserve trees.

Briefly, there are also standards on the location of parking.

Again, we don't want people paving their front yard to put the parking there.

So we have requirements that, one, access must be taken off of an alley if available.

Two, parking in that first 20 feet of the front line is very limited.

In general, if you're going to provide parking for every unit, that means you have to have a driveway into the site where there could be garages or surface parking or a combination.

But there are some pretty limited, if you're doing just one or two stalls, that can be in that front area.

And that's really because in those cases where that makes sense, it can create a lot more open space on site.

And then garages also must be set back 20 feet as well.

Another thing we're adding to neighborhood residential zones for the first time are design standards.

And so through this proposal, there'd be three new design standards that would be implemented.

Entryways that are on the front facade of the building would have to have a a clear entry facing the street that has at least a three foot by three foot weather protection.

And that is really to kind of help with that kind of trick or treat effect.

We want people to be able to recognize where do you go to meet a person from the street.

And also a minimum of 20% of the front facade would be required to be windows and doors, again, to make sure that they, you know, has that friendly look from the street.

And there would be a requirement for a minimum three-foot pedestrian walkway to be provided to each unit.

Since we've talked through each development standard one by one, I just want to take a really quick second to see what this looks like.

And so we have two examples.

This is an example of four-foot homes on a 5,000-square-foot lot.

Generally, these would be three-story homes, although some people might choose to do smaller two-story homes.

The next one is an example of where somebody retains an existing home and adds units.

This is often, again, the preferred approach for developers.

If you have a smaller home in which there's space to build units in the back, that's kind of usually the preferred outcome.

And so we are likely to see a lot of this happening on interior lots, but even more so on corner lots where it's easier.

And so here's a couple examples of what it might look like when people retain that unit and do some homes in the back.

I think as council is very aware, there is also a bonus for stacked flats.

So stacked flats within a quarter mile of frequent transit and on lots that are at least 6,000 square feet would be allowed to have a little more floor area, 1.4 rather than 1.2 FAR.

It'd also have a little bit more density.

And the result of that is, for example, on a 6,000 square lot, you could have nine unit And that really results in units that are a little bit smaller and are kind of more what people look for in a stacked flat, but still one in two bedroom units.

This map on the right shows that where the areas are that are within a quarter mile of frequent transit, shown in blue.

Overall, about 39% of the area of neighborhood residential zoning is within a quarter mile of frequent transit, and about 21% of single family zoning is both within a quarter mile of transit and on lots that are currently 6,000 square feet or greater.

So those are the areas that could have that stacked flat bonus.

As again, we've also talked about, we're proposing a bonus for low-income housing.

So if at least half the units are set aside for low-income housing, that's generally 60% of AMI for rental and 80% for home ownership, then they would also be allowed to build bigger buildings.

So again, a height of four stories rather than three, a little bit more lot coverage, a little bit more density, and a little bit more floor area.

Again, because of the cost of providing that level of those lower income units, we don't think that this is going to be something that kind of market rate developers will take advantage of.

But we do think it's really important for those nonprofit developers that we fund as a city to give them more opportunities in these neighborhood residential zones, especially because historically they have been a lot more exclusive.

So again, residential small lot is another of our neighborhood residential zones, even though it has a different name.

They are, however, located only in what are called urban villages today.

RSL's standards, though, do not comply with HB 1110, just like neighborhood residential zones and low-rise zones, so they do have to be updated.

Our approach to doing this is that we are proposed to eliminate the residential small lot zone and instead rezone those areas from residential small lot to low-rise one.

The reason for that is RSL is a zone today that has a density limit that's much more similar to low rise one, but a lower FAR.

As we're making these changes to accommodate more family size units, it begins to look really a lot more like low rise one.

And so instead of having two zones that look almost the same, we're proposing to simply rezone them to low rise one.

There is one exception to that rezoning rule, and that is for those RSL zones that are currently in the South Park urban center, but would be outside the boundaries of the proposed South Park neighborhood center, we would change those to neighborhood residential instead of rezoning them.

And again, that's consistent.

There is an RSL today outside of centers, so that would be more consistent with that approach.

So next, I'm going to talk briefly about the changes we're proposing for low-rise zones.

There are a number of changes.

The first two were in the interim legislation as well.

They're exactly the same.

One is adopting a uniform set of setbacks for all building types and also a uniform set of maximum structure widths.

So again, today, those vary by building type.

So they're different for detached homes versus townhouses, for apartments.

Under the new state law, we're not allowed to have things that work in that way, so we're proposing to have a single set of standards that apply across all building types in those areas.

The next is that we're proposing to remove density limits in low-rise zones.

That sounds like a big change, but it actually is not.

First, it's important to note that density limits only apply in very limited cases.

They don't apply in low-rise two and three zones that have mandatory housing affordability at all.

Within low rise one zones, they don't apply to any apartments, and they also don't apply on most corner lots.

So first of all, they really don't apply in a wide variety of cases today.

But secondarily, there was a recent change to the provisions of HB 1110 that clarified that any lot that is created through subdivision has to be allowed to have that four or six units.

Because low rise zones today don't have a minimum lot size, that means that today you could take any lot and subdivide it into smaller and smaller lots and get around the density limit.

So effectively, the density limit we have is now meaningless in those zones.

But we do want to remove it because it actually will be creating negative incentives that we don't want.

It actually encourages people to subdivide those lots to get around density limits.

But again, those small lots actually result in worse design outcomes.

A larger lot, again, can have fewer driveway easements, so kind of fewer interruptions to the sidewalk.

It can have shared open space.

It also is easier to preserve trees because it's a larger lot.

So removing density limits will not have much impact on the number of units that get built, but we will remove a kind of a negative incentive to subdivide these lots to avoid density limits, and that will result in bad outcomes.

Similar to the interim legislation, we are also updating our design standards because our current ones don't comply with state law.

But unlike the interim, we're actually kind of going beyond just kind of crossing out those things that are not legal, but rather putting in place a new set of design standards that look very similar to what we have in neighborhood residential zones that do conform with state law and would help with some better outcomes.

There's a couple things that we're doing to encourage stacked flats.

One is we're removing an existing facade length requirement.

This is a fairly complicated standard.

It basically limits the amount of your building that can be within 15 feet of a side setback, so it functions kind of like a secondary side setback.

It's been really problematic, though, for stacked flats.

It's easy for townhouses to meet it.

It's very hard for stacked flats to meet it.

Basically, it results in very complicated shapes, which are very hard to get the units that you want on them, or the right unit layouts.

And so we'd be removing that in order to make it more feasible to build stacked flats.

Similar to what we're doing in neighborhood residential zones, we're proposing a .2 FIR bonus for stacked flats in low-rise one and low-rise two zones.

Again, we get almost no stacked flats in low-rise one zones, and we get fairly minimal ones in low-rise two zones, so we think these would become another small step to help encourage stacked flats in those zones.

And then lastly, we're proposing to update the amenity area requirement.

And the purpose of this is to minimize the number of roof decks that we require on townhouses.

So the amenity area requirement in low-rise zones is actually 25%.

It's actually more than we're proposing for neighborhood residential zones.

We're proposing to bring that down to 20%, similar to neighborhood residential zones.

And so really, the issue is that the amenity area requirement is so high that on most townhouse projects, the only way you can accomplish it is by having a roof deck.

And roof decks can be a great amenity area, but they're also very expensive.

And so they add a lot to the cost of those homes.

They also mean it's almost impossible to do pitch roofs, or rather, if you have to do a roof deck, it's impossible to do a pitch roof.

And that's one of the reasons why we see so many kind of flat roofs today.

And so while we expect we'll continue to see roof decks in some cases, this change would make sure that we're not requiring it in the majority of townhouses, basically to reduce costs and to help make it possible to have some kind of more traditional building forms.

Lastly, gonna talk through a couple of changes that affect multiple zones.

The first is around parking.

Today, no parking is required in centers near frequent transit.

Those are the areas in dark blue on that map.

Consistent with HB 1110, no parking would be required within a half mile of light rail and bus rapid transit stops.

Those are those areas in the kind of purple on the map.

We're also, though, proposing to reduce parking requirements in other areas to one space per two principal dwelling units.

This is something that we think is a good outcome.

It makes flexibility for different sites that may have site issues that make it hard to do parking for every unit.

It's also really important for stacked flats.

Kind of that prototype we see of stacked flats is really almost impossible if you have to park it one space per unit, because in order to do that, it means you really need underground parking.

And at that scale, underground parking is way too expensive to make those projects feasible.

So it is important.

Also important to note, though, since we actually proposed this initially, this has now become the law of the land.

The state has actually passed a law that says we can't allow more than one space per two principal units for multifamily housing, and so this is now actually consistent with what's going to be required across the state.

And lastly, accessory dwelling units are currently exempt from parking requirements, and they would continue to be so.

Also, as we've talked about in the past, we're proposing to allow corner stores.

Again, this is an issue, a topic that really hasn't changed much since we proposed it in March and then updated it in October of 2024. The only small change based on the public is that we're proposing this would be allowed both on corner lots, but also on lots that both about a street and an alley, which often feel to people like corner lots.

But again, basically, they would allow more opportunities for people to walk to Daily Goods and also for people to start very small businesses in their house.

The last three are things that were already in interim legislation, so I'm not gonna go into them, just to kind of point out that we are doing other things to comply with state law, modifying parking space size and tandem parking requirements, modifying our standards for pedestrian access and circulation and access easement requirements, and also updating the EV charging requirements.

Again, this is the same language that was in the interim.

So that is a slightly sped up version of our proposal, and so happy to answer questions.

Thank you, Brennan, for the presentation about the permanent House Bill 1110 legislation.

I do see we have some quick hands.

Thank you all.

First, Councilmember Salomon.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I have a slew of questions, and I think it's probably best that we arrange some time to have a one-on-one rather than me taking up the time here.

But regarding the whole thing about can we increase FAR without increasing lot area coverage?

because it seems to me that the way we're going to build our density is to go vertical, since there ain't a whole lot of horizontal left.

So that's something I want to get into the weeds about, as well as getting into the thing about setbacks, because as I think about We need to design stuff so that we can have trees and housing density.

The one thing I did want to make sure that we're going to be able to make sure that we're going to be able to make sure that we're going to be able to make sure that we're going to be able to make sure that we're going to be able to make sure focusing on thinking for bringing up the corner stores because getting a lot of feedback on that.

And I see no reason why it has to be on a corner.

It could be mid block as far as I'm concerned, but let's allow the things.

The issue that has come up more and more, and this is something that I did want to address in this forum, is the building and increasing density along Major transit, as defined by rapid ride, light rail, increasing those areas, there is concern on the part of certain neighborhoods that regular transit, like say the 14 or the 7, that just regular routes of transit are being considered as those high-density areas.

So is there somewhere in the legislation where we can talk about, or is there a distinction?

Because again, there's rapid ride, there's light rail, and then there's all the other stuff.

And the concern from neighbors is that all the other stuff is going to be looped into that rapid ride light rail bucket.

So can you speak to that?

Yeah.

So there's a number of different ways that major transit and frequent transit things are used.

Frequent transit is a city designation.

And it is true that as we get more transit in those areas, we'd get more frequent transit areas.

It's based on the frequency of transit in those areas.

That, however, only affects the parking requirements and where the stacked flat bonus is allowed and where the low-income housing bonus is allowed.

So I think those are probably pretty minor in the scheme of things.

But again, if there's more frequent transit, those small changes would occur.

The next is major transit, and those are actually, again, major transit affects where six units are allowed on the lot and where no parking is required at all.

Those are state laws.

That's a state definition.

But again, it only relates to bus rapid transit and to light rail, so we don't have much chance to change that, but we're not making a lot of new bus rapid transit or light rail.

And then maybe, obviously, apart from this legislation, after budget, we'll be forwarding legislation to make broader changes in our centers and along corridors.

That's where we hear probably the most conversation in the public about.

These are places where actually we'd rezone from neighborhood residential to other zones.

Obviously not the legislation we're talking about here, but just to make sure we're clear, that is not something.

We do look at transit as a kind of factor in those, but it's not the kind of thing where if transit changes, that the rezone would suddenly change, if that makes sense.

I hope that answers the question.

Yes, it does.

And again, I would like to welcome the opportunity to have some one-on-one with you because there are some other zoning question changes that maybe could be part of the final legislation.

But again, I'd like to talk to you about that offline.

Great.

We'll look forward to that.

All right.

Thank you.

And for the record, it's Vice Chair Solomon.

My apologies, Vice Chair.

I forgot, okay.

Council Member Rink, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

With that, if we go to page eight, I wanted to focus in on one element here.

Why are ADUs, counted towards total primary unit count.

House Bill 1110 doesn't require this.

I'm concerned that this will reduce the number of new ADUs.

Considering they're one of the most affordable types of new housing, I believe we shouldn't be disincentivizing them from what we do today.

So one, you are correct.

This is a place where we have flexibility, whether we want to count them or not.

The reason we're proposing not count them is that since you're already allowed to have four units on a lot, there is basically always, we're not really limiting your ability to do traditional ADUs.

You can always have that one unit and the two.

Really, the only place it would come into play is if somebody chooses to build a larger number of principal accessibility principal units and do accessory dwelling units.

And that is something we see today, that people do multiple principal units and multiple accessory dwelling units, and then they condoize it.

That's really, though, just a way to kind of get around the density limit.

Really, it also creates not a great long-term opportunity, because instead of fee-simple ownership, it's a condo, but a very small condo that can be hard to do.

So the reason we're not is that we think that counting ADUs towards density limits will not limit people from doing accessory dwellings in the traditional sense, but it would prevent that kind of people from circumventing the density limit by doing this kind of combination approach.

That's helpful.

Thank you for explaining your rationale on that.

And moving on to slide 11, pardon me, slide 21. Looking here, could you help me understand also the rationale behind why we aren't applying the stacked flat incentive for 5,000 square foot lots or just removing the cap entirely?

Is there a reason that we're keeping this bonus to just 6,000 square foot lots?

Yeah, overall, the rationale is just that it's much more difficult to do those stacked flats on small lots, and you can have a lot of kind of strange outcomes that happen there.

I mean, I think practically, you're not likely to see a lot of stacked flats on those small lots just because it is difficult.

But that's the basic idea, is that it is harder to do.

You get kind of weirder outcomes, especially in terms of width, on those smaller lots.

And moving along to slide 26, what can we start to do to comply with the TOD bill, House Bill 1491 now?

Well, you know, high level, again, the TOD bill is something that we don't have to comply with until December of 2019. 2020. Thank you.

And, you know, it will take a lot of work to get there.

You know, we expect, obviously, there's new environmental impact statement that would be required.

You know, we'd want to do a lot, a community process around that.

So I guess there's a lot of different things that have to happen.

And I'll probably move it over to other people though to answer that.

But I'll say if council is interested, we too would be interested in maybe moving up that timeline on the TOD bill.

Separate from that, we are still planning on proceeding with some additional zoning proposals related to our supplemental EIS.

I would add that the TOD bill was, like House Bill 1110, was a piece of legislation that took several years to get through the state legislative process.

We were certainly aware of the kinds of requirements that might be coming down from the state.

Likewise, I think some of the thinking within the city was very similar to the thinking of the state legislature around how can we focus new housing opportunities around major transit, light rail, and bus rapid transit.

So the point here is our growth strategy proposal actually goes a long way toward meeting, already did before the passage of 1491. toward the kinds of densities, the kind of focus around transit that the state is now requiring.

There is more that we will need to do to fully comply with 1491, but this legislation and the comp plan, especially the density around bus rapid transit and light rail is moving exactly in the direction the legislature is now expecting and requiring.

Fantastic.

Thank you all.

And I would express my office's interest in working with mayor's office to explore opportunities for really looking at this seriously, so thank you for that.

And my last question is on slide 28, what changes will we want to make to align with the recently passed parking bill?

In the new law, SB 6015, all units smaller than 1,200 square feet will have no parking mandates, therefore exempting the vast majority of apartments.

Well, I mean, so, you know, so first of all, I think that there is a little bit of, we're still waiting for some guidance from Commerce about exactly what that means.

And so I think there's probably the first step is just to make sure we understand exactly what it means.

But then, yes, we will need to update our code to be compliant with that.

And I don't know if you, Michael, if you remember what the timeline for that off the top of your head is, but it is something we will have to work on.

For compliance with the new parking, early 2027. And I would add, similar to, and I think Brandon alluded to this in his presentation, we were already proposing a change to the one space per two units that ended up aligning with the new state legislation.

So this proposal, the set of proposals, is moving in the right direction.

This is still probably a little bit more work to do, but we've got a head start.

Thank you all.

And that concludes my questions, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Rink.

I see Councilmember Saka, you are recognized.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And I just wanted to hopefully, and on a somewhat positive note, just want to express my gratitude and appreciation to each and every one of you all.

Mr. Hubner, Mr. Staley, and Ms. Valles.

I hope I pronounced those names correctly.

But I want to thank you all for the presentation today, but most importantly, the work that it represents.

Many, many months and years of planning, expertise, outreach.

So I wanna thank you all, I wanna thank the department, everyone.

Director Kiran Dango, Seferiana Day, so many people, this is a huge strategic effort.

And so many people, we've had various stakeholders from the executive here at this table, but so many people were involved and worked hard on this project that didn't get a chance to sit here.

So the GIS specialists, the schedulers and the coordinators and everyone up until, including the mayor himself, a lot of work went into this.

And so wanna, want to thank you, recognize that work and say thank you.

And also speak my truth as well.

I know that you all tried your very best with this.

I know that you, I believe that you all balance various competing priorities.

Tough job.

I know 100% you approached it from a citywide perspective, which is a slightly different view and perspective, not better or worse than the system of government we have set up here where seven of us represent individual council districts.

But I know you looked at this from a citywide perspective, I assume and know the best of possible intent.

I know you all tried your very best to be collaborative governing partners with members of the public and certainly with me in my office.

And so for those things, the ball is in our court now.

So you'll see us and certainly me, some tweaks.

But I view that as building upon your work, not taking a shot at it.

So just want to acknowledge that the work and the effort that went into this and appreciate you all and look forward to continuing to partner together going forward.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

Really appreciate that.

And just echoing the words, really do appreciate it.

I know that you all come here and the work that you do is incredibly hard.

And we know that there's a lot of planning.

Our fun fact, our agenda for today is 4,345 pages.

And that is...

the EIS that you all did and also the comprehensive plan and House Bill 1110. It's a lot.

There's a lot of work that goes into it.

People get to see the two-hour meetings here, but there's a lot of preparation that goes into this.

So just wanna thank you all for your work and the partnership with the mayor's office as well.

I know that there's a lot of work that happens in the background, and we just really appreciate you all as well.

And you can smile, too, Krista.

It's okay.

I'm just playing.

Anywho, so...

I want to pause here to see if anyone has any more comments before I start wrapping it up.

Awesome.

Okay.

Looking to my left and right.

So thank you all for the presentation.

Again, we're looking forward to this process.

I just want, for the record, just so people understand, it is going to continue to be our council's intention to complete the comprehensive plan process.

We have a sense of urgency on this process and we know that there have been timeline changes and so forth and we are working as fast as we can, especially with some of the council rules that we have, which require us to have two public hearings.

regarding legislation.

It also requires us to post amendments for at least 30 days posted publicly so you all can see that as well and people can be able to absorb them and understand what those mean.

We also have a council recess which is August 15th.

or excuse me, August the 16th, which is a two week recess.

And then we have budget coming up.

So we are under a very tight timeline.

We have not stalled this process.

We have continued to push forward.

We have not missed any meetings.

We have continued to be dedicated to this process.

from when we received the legislation until now.

And so I just wanted to say that for the record that that has been documented very, very well.

And we have continued to push that through as well.

And I have to thank central staff, our office also as well for being adjustable as well.

We have put in a lot of overtime hours.

to get this through and for us to make sure that we are on track and we have never missed a meeting as well.

So I wanted to say that for the record because we have been pushing through tremendously, okay?

And also, I would also like to flag there is a public hearing that is going to be on the 23rd.

The public hearing session will be broken into two sessions.

kind of like we did for the, not kind of like we did, like we did for the last one.

Session one will be in the morning and we'll reserve for remote public comments Session two will be in the afternoon.

And I also wanna say it was brought up regarding to make sure that we had extended that time for working people that when they got off, they could still be able to sign up.

So know that we're gonna be working on that to make sure that window, I know that was brought up by council member Rink.

So we're gonna make sure that we have a, nice window enough so we can make sure that we are accommodating everyone as we possibly can to make sure that we have a good amount of voices for that public hearing which will be about the comprehensive plan.

and the permanent legislation for House Bill 1110. We're working on those details and we'll send those out shortly.

Also, real quick, last for the good of the order, June is Male Mental Health Month.

And I want to reiterate that because I know there's a lot of people Mental health is incredibly important.

Last month was May Mental Health Month.

This year is Male Mental Health Month.

I had a friend, his name was Ruben Canada.

He was smart.

He was intelligent.

He was a business guy.

He was phenomenal.

And unfortunately, he lost his life in 2019 in April when he succumbed to his mental illness and took his own life.

However, I say that because I know he would want me to share this story.

because if you are hurting, if something's going on, dial 988, call a friend, that person will be able to connect with you because you are valued.

So if you're watching this, you're on the Seattle channel, just wanna say you are valued.

And last but not least, We are so grateful.

She did not know I was going to do this.

She's in the audience.

Her name is TK Turner.

TK is from Seattle, and she's probably going to hide right now.

But just point of personal privilege, she's been dedicated to advancing equity and uplifting black communities with a deep commitment to justice and social equity.

And I cannot be more proud of her.

There's a special on her, on Como, about the full circle of of activists in our city who were on the front lines and did all the stuff in 2020, but now she is a, she attends Seattle U and she's a majoring in political science.

And I could not be more proud of the full circle moment to see her growth as a woman and for her representation in our community.

So I wanted to give that shout out to her because it's really great that she is here.

So thank you.

With that, do any of my colleagues have any more items of business on the select committee?

Seeing none.

Oh, Madam Chair, I was just going to do it.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I didn't see your hand.

Vice Chair.

I just have to give a shout-out to Seattle University.

I'm an alum, so go.

Get this right.

Go Hawks.

Awesome.

I think you went there when they were Hawks?

I don't want to...

No.

Yeah, you were the other one.

I got you.

It was so last century.

I got you.

Okay.

They were chieftains back then.

I got you.

That's where I was going for.

I wanted to know what mascot was back.

No, I'm just playing.

Okay, awesome.

Thank you, Vice Chair Solomon.

So, seeing none, this is going to conclude...

Oh, sorry, Councilmember Rank.

I'm so sorry.

That's my fault.

You're all good, Chair.

I wanted to take a moment to express my appreciation to you for bringing us through this process.

This is not easy.

It is not.

There's a lot of work to get done, but I want to publicly thank you also for working with each of our offices to make sure that we're heard in this process.

And I want to thank you again also for just what you stated about making sure we can have working folks heard in the upcoming hearings.

That's certainly a priority for my office.

And I really appreciate you naming that as a priority moving forward.

So thank you for your work and onwards.

Awesome.

Thank you, council member ring for that.

Really appreciate that.

And it's, it's been an honor to serve with you all and it's going to continue to be an honor because we are happy to be here and it is our job to serve you.

So really appreciate that.

Um, so there is not any, I don't see anyone's hands.

It is 11 56 PM that concludes our meeting for the comprehensive plan select committee.

Thank you all.