Seattle City Council Land Use Committee 4/17/2025

All right, the April 17th, 2025 special land use committee meeting will now come to order.

It is 2.04 p.m.

I'm Mark Solomon, chair of the land use committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Vice Chair Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Moore.

Present.

Council Member Rink.

Present.

Chair Solomon.

Present.

Chair, there are four members present.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Rivera is excused from today's meeting.

I move to adopt the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay.

Okay.

It has been moved and seconded.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be amended to move item seven, Council Bill 120949 after the Seattle Design Commission appointments.

Okay.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is amended and the committee will discuss item seven after the Seattle Design Commission appointments.

Chair?

Yes, Councilmember Strauss.

Apologies.

I want to let you know I will unfortunately have a 3 p.m.

stop today, 3.15 hard stop.

So if you need me, I'll have to leave by 3.15 at the latest.

Understood.

We will expedite.

All right.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted as amended.

Okay, hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted as amended.

So thank you all very much for coming to this Thursday afternoon meeting to discuss land use.

As always, I want to give my thanks to central staff, to our city clerks, and to the Department of Construction Inspections for helping us prepare for this meeting.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda, please, and within the purview of this committee.

For those registered to speak to item six on the agenda, we will accept comments on this item once we reach item six and open the public hearing.

Clerk, how many do we have signed up for today for comment?

Currently we have five in-prison speakers signed up.

OK.

Five in person, no remote.

I apologize.

We have two in person and three remote.

OK.

Two in person, three remote.

Great.

OK.

Thank you.

Each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with in-person speakers first.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

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

One, the public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they are registered.

Speakers will alternate between sets of in-person remote speakers until the public comment period is ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

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

The public comment period is now open.

We'll begin with the first speaker on the list, and that will be Mr. Zimmerman.

Oh, I'm trying to bring it up, sir.

There we are.

Okay.

You ready?

I'm ready.

Yeah.

Zeheil, my dirty damn Nazi fascist.

You know what it means, bandita and mob.

My name is Alex Zimmerman.

I'm President of Stand Up America, support Trump, MAGA member.

I have 6,000 days of trespass, and five times you prosecute me.

I want to speak about agenda number one, two, three, four, about you appoint a commissioner, and I talk about this many times.

Guys, I come to this place thousands and thousands of times.

I never see one commissioner here.

No one.

No one come and talk.

Why?

They all freaking idiot.

How is this possible?

They don't have a problem.

City fallen and fallen, we have absolutely idiotic situation in city for last 30 years and no future will be.

There's no matter how many idiot in this chamber optimistic.

This totally confused me.

But I understand this because you can do in everything what you want.

For example, I have Mercedes.

Consul ring, have Mercedes too.

So why she puts her Mercedes in console chamber?

So what does everybody who have Mercedes right now need talking like have Mercedes, she have Mercedes?

What is going on, guys?

It's supposed to be limit right now.

You cannot be absolutely idiot.

It's supposed to be small progress.

But I don't see this progress for 30 years.

What is I see is total regress.

Because all decisions that you make for every year bring Seattle to total collapse.

I will speak about this, about housing, because it's for me a very interesting point.

You know what it means, but we don't have nothing.

So, for last 10, 12 years, you know what it means, from 70, 75,000 average income, we have 260, 170,000 income.

60% of people cannot right now live in Seattle, cannot live right now in King Country because King Country number one fascist city in America.

Viva Trump, stand up for America, make America good, viva revolution.

Thank you very much.

Sorry.

One moment, Chair.

Next up, we have Ruth Deit.

My name is Ruth Deit.

I'm a retired land use planner and landscape architect representing Friends of Queen Anne.

We're concerned about the information council is receiving.

We hope it is clear that the NR Zone changes proposed in the city's ordinance are not all required.

Under HB 1110, the law does not speak to setbacks or heights at all.

Most of what is outlined in the middle housing ordinance is advisory.

We also hope you understand that the city-funded Eco Northwest housing feasibility analysis underestimates middle family development capacity.

It did not include ADUs and DADUs on a property with an existing home or conversion of an existing home into units.

a significant amount of what we see today.

So it excessively underestimated, I believe, the middle housing capacity.

Despite this, the study found that demand for middle housing was going to be less than supply.

I had to read that portion of the report several times.

The writing was imponderable, but that's what it says.

Given these facts, we see no reason to proceed with a complicated interim ordinance no one fully understands.

A simpler approach would be to adopt an interim ordinance that meets but does not exceed HB 1110, We think planning staff wasted its time on this study that only looked at comparing existing zoning to proposed.

NR is now obsolete.

Why didn't it compare a baseline HB 1110 to its proposed?

We would have gotten a lot more information if it had done so, and now we are missing that information.

We will now move on to remote.

First up, we have Danielle Duvall Solomon and committee members.

My name is Danielle Duvall and I am the Executive Director of NAOP Washington State.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Council Bill 120948. This pro-housing bill strongly supports Seattle's housing needs and continued economic recovery.

We encourage the Council to advance this legislation.

Passing CB120948 will save thousands of permitted housing units that will otherwise disappear when their building permits expire.

It also protects the tens of millions in unpaid MHA fees associated with these projects.

The pandemic and subsequent economic headwinds have stalled multifamily and office projects around the city.

Acknowledging this once in a lifetime situation with a 24 month hardship extension for a building permit addresses our housing supply and affordability challenges.

And it ensures that pandemic does not create new unintended consequences for renters and the housing community.

We applaud the council's leadership and willingness to address these tough post-pandemic issues and urge the council to continue to move this bill forward toward adoption.

Thank you for your time.

Excellent.

Next up we have Scott Koppelman.

Scott.

Thank you, Chair Solomon and committee members.

My name is Scott Koppelman.

I'm with Amelie Residential.

Amelie is a developer, owner, operator, and long-term holder of apartment home communities in the Seattle area.

I'm here also to speak in support of Council Bill 120948. We have two apartment home projects in Seattle with master use permits, both designed under the 2015 Building Code, These two projects combined will someday provide 706 apartment homes, almost 400 million in construction costs that would generate roughly 40 million in total sales tax of which roughly 15 million would go to the city and 4.4 million in MHA fees.

Both projects are type one construction and will utilize union labor.

We are committed to continuing to invest in Seattle, but we have not been able to move forward with these projects due to COVID, a lengthy land use appeal, and very challenging capital market conditions, which we don't see changing anytime soon.

And now new trade wars and tariffs, which could affect the price of everything from drywall to aluminum windows to steel, have added additional uncertainty to our ability to finance and break around in the near future.

Without this legislation, the time and added cost to redesign our project and the added construction costs to comply with new building codes would render our projects unfeasible for nearly a decade.

I want to say thank you for your willingness to consider this legislation given the severe shortage of all types of housing in Seattle and hope that you see fit to approve it.

Thank you for your time.

Last we have David Haynes.

Hi, thank you, David Haynes.

I just want to point out that we still need 21st century first world quality housing build outs with incentives for developers who would robustly build higher.

If you build higher, there's less sprawl and there's more housing in one little area.

That means less trees will be torn down throughout.

And it would give people better livable amenity spaces within the grace of the building.

But we still have restrictions that deny the developers to pencil in something to make all the inflated adjustments so that it's worth risking millions of dollars.

And it just seems like if you all could take the restrictions off the height levels and incentivize people to robustly build out the floor plans and allow for livable amenity spaces within the building instead of like the general public where you got to leave a park bench for people to act like you're giving back.

And you got to have like 21st century first world quality homes and choices and real equity instead of being stuck in the 20th century's watered down misinterpretation of housing.

It's all car centric.

It's like if you take a look at your presentation today on, I think it's slide 13, there's these two houses in one car.

And if you look to the right, there's the entrance to another house.

That's a violation that we need to design away from because one car ruins all three livable spaces because you've got to listen to the jerk with the door slamming, the car alarm, the horn honking, the headlights shining in one house, the toxic exhaust.

spewing into the front entrance of the other house and people are acting like that's the best based on the lesser of and we need to get past that we need to get like robust buildouts that go higher in the levels instead of all this modern third world sum to make it easier for unqualified non-profits to build crappy homes on this thank you mr hans

There are no additional speakers.

Okay, great.

As there are no additional speakers, we'll now proceed to items, to our other items of business.

Clerk, can you please read items one through five into the record?

Agenda items one through five appointments, 3, 1, 1, 5 through 3, 1, 1, 9 appointments and reappointments of Raymond W. Gastel, Sharon Masoudi, Phoebe Aaron Bogert, Ben Geist, and Kevin O'Neill as members CL design commission for term to February 28th, 2027.

Okay, great.

Thank you very much.

Looks like our presenters and potential appointees have joined us at the table.

So please take a moment to introduce yourself for the record.

Hi, good afternoon.

Michael Jenkins.

I'm the director of the Seattle Design Commission.

Good afternoon, council members.

I'm Kevin O'Neill, a current member of the Seattle Design Commission.

Shireen Masoudi.

I'm a designer and project manager, part of the design commission.

I'm Ray Gastel, appointed by the Mayor to the Design Commission.

Great.

Thank you very much.

So please proceed.

Thank you, council member.

Just a brief background about the Seattle Design Commission.

We have been in existence since 1968. The commission advises the mayor, the city council and city departments on the design and environmental implications of capital projects, as well as projects both private and public that want long term or permanent use of a right of way.

There are 10 commissioners, all of which are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by council, which we're doing here today.

The commission has a unique role starting this year and continuing on for several years, looking at the oversight of both the West Seattle and Ballard light rail extension investments, both the stations and the guideway segments.

So we're very, very happy to have three people join us in that work, as well as reappointment of two additional commissioners.

I'll just do some brief introductions before any questions that you have of the commissioners.

Kevin O'Neill is up for appointment as chair.

Our chair is appointed by mayor and confirmed by council.

And he's also up for reappointment as a second term.

as transportation planner.

Kevin has a long career in city service, both as a deputy director here for the Seattle Department of Transportation, as well as street use manager, as well as a career in the city of Bellevue in a variety of managerial roles.

Shireen Masoudi joins us as the at-large commissioner, and she currently is an architect and project manager at Gensler, which is a worldwide architecture and design firm.

Shireen specializes in strategic planning for new capital investments.

We're very pleased that she's able to join the commission.

And finally, Ray Gastel.

Ray has over a 30-year career in a variety of positions, both as planning director for the city of Pittsburgh, planning director for the city of Seattle, role with Carnegie Mellon in their urban design group, and numerous other positions in urban design and planning, which are detailed in your packet.

Finally, we have two additional reappointments for Ben Gist, who's one of our architects, and Phoebe Bogert, who is our landscape architect.

We're very pleased that both all groups of individuals here today and are able to not only serve in this capacity, but for the work that the design commission does, which tries to elevate and enhance the public realm and the design and environmental implications of projects that are funded by you.

With that, if you have any questions of the commissioners, I'm sure they're happy to talk to you more about their interest and desire to be on the commission.

Okay, good.

Thank you very much.

Do any of my colleagues have any questions for the commissioners or soon to be commissioners?

Okay.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

I won't go through the list one by one, just to thank everyone for their volunteer service to our city through the Design Commission.

Kevin, it's always great to see you, even if I am coming to you live from District 6. And thank you for stepping up to be the chair, I believe, once again.

It's always fun to run into you.

Keep up the good work.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Great.

Thank you.

Do any of the folks who are here in attendance want to offer any other words?

have the opportunity to serve.

Okay, cool.

All right, then let's get on with the voting.

Okay, so any other comments or questions?

All right.

I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 3115 through 3119. Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointments.

Are there any further comments?

Hearing none, clerk, will you please call the roll to confirm the appointments.

Vice Chair Strauss.

Yes.

Council Member Moore.

Aye.

Council Member Rink.

Yes.

Chair Salmon.

Aye.

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

Okay.

Very good.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council confirm the appointments will be sent to the April 22nd, 2025 council meeting.

Thank you very much for your attendance, and we look forward to getting that vote across the finish line.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, council member.

Thank you.

All right.

We will now move on to our next item of business as reflected in the amended agenda.

Will the clerk please read item seven into the record?

Agenda item seven, Council Bill 120948, an ordinance relating to Seattle's construction codes allowing for the extension of certain projects and building permits, amending sections 106.6.10, 106.9, and 106.10 of the Seattle Building Code, adopted by ordinance 127108. Okay, great.

Uh, so this is for, uh, briefing discussion and a possible vote.

Uh, presenters have joined us all.

Hey, our presenter has joined us at the table.

Please read, um, you introduce yourself for the record.

Lish Whitson, council central staff.

Okay, great.

All right.

So please proceed.

All right.

Uh, so council bill one two zero nine four eight, you received a briefing at your last meeting.

Just very briefly, this legislation would allow building permit applicants an additional 24-month extension on existing permit applications and issued permits for projects vested to the 2015 or 2018 Building Code requirements.

And just as a reminder, we're currently permitting projects under the 2021 Building Code.

In order for vested projects to be eligible for extension under this legislation, property owners would be required to attest that the project has been stalled due to financing issues and must have requested an extension prior to November 12, 2024. That's the date.

In the legislation, you have an amendment in front of you that would change that date, and I am happy to answer your questions.

Okay, great.

So any items, any questions, concerns for our presenter?

All right.

That was easy.

Okay.

So at this point, I believe we're ready to move towards a vote on this.

I move that the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 120948. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Any additional comments?

All right.

Hearing none.

Council Member?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss raised his hand.

Oh, yes, Council Member Strauss.

Sorry, my digital hand was a little slower than my physical hand.

Just to say we passed a similar bill during a pandemic regarding master use permits.

I do believe that this is a prudent decision at this time.

And I will also say that when we were making those decisions in 2020, about 2015 code, that was five years ago.

We're now at a 10-year mark.

So as we do get further and further away from the pandemic, I believe that again, this is prudent today, but this will be the last set of extensions that I'll be able to support moving out of the economic downturn associated with the pandemic.

It's important to keep these products, having to get them built.

There's a lot of benefit to our city and our community.

And at the same time, this will be the last of the extensions that I'll likely support.

So just wanna put that on the record.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you and understood.

All right.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to pass Council Bill 120948. Oh.

Would you like to move the amendment?

Oh, yes, please.

OK.

And speak on the amendment one more time.

So the amendment is very simple.

It changes the date in the bill for filing for an application to extend your permit approval from November 12th, 2024, which is in the past, and you would have had to have been very prescient to file anything before that date to November 1st, 2026, which is when we're estimating that the next building codes will be adopted.

Okay.

So I move that we amend the existing legislation to make that date change.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay.

It is moved and seconded.

Any further comment or discussion?

Okay.

Clerk, can you please call the roll on the improvement of the amendment?

Vice Chair Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Rink?

Yes.

Chair Solomon?

Aye.

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

Okay, great.

So the motion to adopt the amendment to the legislation has been approved.

Now, I move that the committee recommend passage of the amended legislation, Council Bill 120948. Is there a second for that?

Second.

Okay, items have been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to pass amended Council Bill 120948. Vice Chair Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Rink?

Aye.

Chair Salmon?

Aye.

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

Okay, very much.

The motion carries.

The committee recommendation to pass Council Bill 120948 will be sent to the April 22nd, 2025 Council meeting.

Okay.

Now, we will now move to our next item of business.

Clerk, will you please read item six into the agenda?

Agenda item seven.

An ordinance relating to land use and zoning expanding housing options by easing barriers to the construction and use of accessory dwelling units as required by state legislation.

Okay, so we will do a briefing discussion and actually have a public hearing.

This legislation regards Seattle's accessory dwelling unit laws and is responsive to House Bill 1337, which was passed in 2023. We will hold public hearing first and listen to community comments.

After the public hearing, representatives from Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections and council central staff will be available for any questions council may have.

As presiding officer, I am now opening the public hearing on Council Bill 120949 related to amendments to the accessory dwelling units implementing House Bill 1337. Clerk, how many speakers do we have signed up for the public hearing?

We have two speakers signed up for the public hearing.

Okay.

All right, each speaker will be provided with two minutes.

Clerk, I will now hand it over to you to present the instructions for the public hearing.

First up, we have Alex Zimmerman.

Okay, and just a moment, sir.

As a reminder, comments regarding that are gonna be offered at this time must pertain to the item in front of us, which is Council Bill, where did I put it?

1-2-0-9-4-9.

So again, please, each speaker will have two minutes related to Council Bill 1-2-0-9-4-9.

Hey, she told me 4-8, not 4-9, public hearing.

No, 4-8 was the previous one we discussed.

No, but it's not matter.

Okay.

My name is Alex Zimmerman.

I am president of Standard America, support Trump, mega member.

I have 6,000 days of trespass and five times you prosecute me.

I once speak about housing.

This is exactly what I understand.

And I have expertise for almost 40 years.

All decisions that you make for last 30 years never bring people back to Seattle.

In exactly for last 10-15 years, all minority or poor out.

Nobody can afford a city with a salary of $160,000, $170,000.

In price for rent and for housing, Seattle stay in one from first, almost first in America.

Situation totally different because when I come for a year, Seattle, nice, beautiful place.

And I live in Seattle for many years.

You're in Belize, not marriage.

My proposition is very simple, because all your decisions, as I see, look to me like a pure masturbation.

You're doing something, doing something, and nothing changes.

So my proposition, and I talk about this many times, we have Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and another big company.

And you have right for every square feet.

For one square feet, what is how this company or build this company?

Give one square feet to people.

For people who have low income, something between probably $50,000 or $60,000 or less.

When you're not doing this, nothing will be changed.

I give you a classic example.

Look, President Trump.

He shake all planet.

Why?

Because negotiable.

So many country come to him right now.

and negotiate, and everybody been.

Guys, when you don't start negotiating with this big corporation, you know what it means.

Nothing will be changed, and nothing will be better.

Viva Trump, viva new American Revolution.

You need doing this.

You have power.

Thank you, Mr. Zimmerman.

Next up, we have David Haynes.

Hi, thank you, David.

We really need to redesign the neighborhood to get away from the car centric 20th century police state blocks.

And I say this because when you add like extra dwellings, you got to go higher to get a reprieve from the road rage.

There's a lot of alleyways that split all of these residentially zoned neighborhoods and it ruins the quality of living.

and the mental health of a lot of residents all throughout Seattle's neighborhoods.

And we need to redesign it to stop allowing the modern wheel to drive through every half block and bother people.

And it's kind of sounds a little weird, but what if you had noise abatement walls that were four feet from the ADUs that would butt up against the alleyways that would give the residents who would have serious buyer's remorse if they acted like they were buying a condo in the backyard of somebody or in addition that had an overwhelming service alley that literally had disgruntled employees banging and clanging trash dumpster pickups right outside your bedroom and in your backyard practically.

You know, we need, When people want to, like, weaponize the tree ordinance to deny people a better choice in homes so they can robustly build out and go higher on their lot so they can get a frickin' view of the mountains or the lake or the Puget Sound, there's lowlifes in Seattle who are purposely trying to deny people to build a better home on their lot.

And there's counseled Democrats who appease these sellouts, who have voted on the local community and gentrified and denied for too long.

So we need legislation to robustly build out those housings and commercial buildings without...

Chair, there are no more speakers.

Okay, great.

Thank you very much.

As there are no further speakers, the public hearing, public comment period is now closed.

Will our representatives from SDCI and central staff please join us to answer any questions council may have?

And once you're ready, please introduce yourselves for the record.

The Schwitz and council central staff.

Dave Vansky, SDCI.

Great, thank you.

So please proceed.

And you all did receive a briefing at your last meeting.

We're here to answer questions if you have any prior to a vote on April 30th.

Okay, cool.

Any questions from my colleagues at all for our presenters?

Yes, Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to confirm that all of this is codifying the state legislation.

So I know that you mentioned there's a new section being added, but that new section is being added to incorporate the state law.

Is that correct?

It is.

It takes pieces of our current accessory dwelling unit regulations and adds to them requirements under State House Bill 1337. So there are provisions, for example, in our current code that says that you are not required to provide parking for an accessory dwelling unit.

That's not part of the state house bill, but it is in our current code and that's carried forward.

Okay.

Is there any other provision in here that's new or different from the state law other than that relating to parking?

I would say no.

There's nothing that's proposed that isn't required by state law.

This actually goes to the question I think you just asked, and maybe this will help flesh it out.

The new section that's in the code is intended to take the accessory dwelling unit rules that we have now, most of which are compliant with 1337 or many, and to regularize them across all zones because that's what 1337 calls for.

So that is a new section.

Anytime you create a new section, you end up having to figure out how to bridge the gap.

But I would say in general, there's nothing in the proposed 1337 compliance legislation that goes beyond what the state is asking us.

It's really about navigating our existing code constructs to make them make sense with that new legislation and that new section that you referred to.

Great.

Thank you for the clarification.

Thank you, Chair.

All right.

Okay.

Council Member Strauss, Council Member Brink, anything for our presenters?

All right.

Great.

Well, thank you very much.

Appreciate your time here today.

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

Our next meeting is Wednesday, April 30th, 2025 at 2 p.m.

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

All right.

Hearing no further business to come before this committee, we are adjourned.

The time is 2.42 p.m.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Have a great afternoon.