Seattle City Council Select Committee on the Comprehensive Plan 2/5/25

Special meeting of the Select Committee of the Comprehensive Plan will come to order.

It is 11.03 on the dot.

I'm Joy Hollingsworth.

I'm the chair of the Select Committee.

Clerk, will you please call the roll today?

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Kettle?

Here.

Council Member Moore?

Present.

Council Member Nelson?

Present.

Oh, sorry.

Thank you, Council President.

Council Member Rivera?

Present.

Council Member Saka?

Present.

Here.

Councilman Solomon.

Here.

And Chair Hollingsworth.

Present.

Eight present.

Awesome.

Eight present.

I want to thank you all for coming.

We're going to now consider the agenda.

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

Hearing and seeing none, the agenda is adopted.

Today for public comment will only be accepted in written public comment.

There will be an opportunity for comment this evening at the public hearing at 5 p.m.

where we'll conduct a hybrid public comment process with in-person and remote public comment period.

Please refer to the agenda to get details about different start times for in-person and remote speakers.

I'll go ahead and remind everyone today.

We're starting at 5 p.m.

for in-person speakers from 5 to 7.30 and then we will be doing back and forth between hybrid callers starting at 7.30 with the rest of our in-person in-person speakers as well.

We also will have childcare services here for folks that need it as well.

And so now we're gonna go ahead and jump into the items of business.

Clerk, will you please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, comprehensive plan, public engagement, presentation for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, and presenters, Director Rico, Kitty Dungo, Michael from Office of Planning and Community Development, if you come to the table.

I also wanna thank my colleagues for coming.

I know that we got a little snow today, and in Seattle, as we laugh at folks in Seattle, sometimes in Southern California when they get rain and sometimes don't know how to drive.

I'm pretty sure people back east laugh at us when we get snow here in Seattle with a couple inches of snow.

But some of this reminds me of while we're getting set up at the table, we're really blessed to have like great meteorologists like Rich Marriott.

But it reminds me of the great Steve Poole who would always smell snow a week in advance and let us know.

And you would see everyone at the groceries getting getting stuff because Steve Poole would smell snow in the air and he would always predict it right on time with the freshest, sharpest hairline in history.

And so just, he will be missed, Steve Poole.

And also wanna thank the staff too as well on the second floor who have been phenomenal.

and our security, everyone who is continuing to keep our city running.

We saw snow plows out last night.

We saw people everywhere.

And just thank you, thank you, thank you.

We have a great agenda today.

So today we're gonna be talking about the public engagement process that OPCD did and the mayor's office as well, and how they integrated that into the comprehensive plan.

I know that we are all eager to hear about how it was integrated in the plan and changes that were made and all this good stuff.

And I also would like the record to reflect that council member Rink has joined us.

Thank you, council member Rink.

And I believe we are ready.

And my teeing up is done.

Thank you, Director Kirirango and Michael.

Welcome.

Good morning.

Thank you all for having us this morning.

We are presenting today the slide deck that we didn't have a chance to present the last time we were in front of the select committee.

We'll be talking about the engagement phasing over the last two and a half years and the reports that are available online.

the draft plan comments and how we've incorporated feedback so far, including the zoning update comments that we got in October through December.

Next slide.

So we'll start by jumping in on our engagement facing and reports and I'll turn it over to Michael.

Yes, can you hear me okay?

Excellent.

So before getting into a summary of what we heard, especially during spring and fall of 2024, we just want to refresh your knowledge with an overview of the overall engagement process and where what we'll be focusing on today fits in with a larger process.

So to start with, as we briefed this committee on January 6th, Our overall engagement was divided into four phases, an early engagement during early 2022, which we call listen and learn.

From mid 2022 through 2023, a deeper exploration of issues and potential policy changes and growth strategy concepts, which we called Shape the Plan.

And then phase three, which commenced with the release of the first round of draft materials in spring of last year, we had with our review and refine phase, which we'll be going into more detail on today.

As well, we'll be going into more detail about phase four, which happened just this last fall when we released the draft zoning proposals.

All of these phases were guided by the goals you see here on the slide, and we'll touch on some of those principles and concepts when talking about the engagement itself.

At each phase of engagement, we have provided information to the public both on the front end and then at the back end about this process.

The one piece of documentation that we just released is at the top of this slide.

You'll see a link to the engagement This covers the entirety of the four phases and provides quite a bit of detail, um, which, uh, for your reference, you may, I may refer you to as we go through the conversation today, but especially, uh, what we put out there in terms of materials as links to all the public facing materials has lists of all the meetings and the stakeholders we met with as details about the open houses and other meetings, uh, some of our outreach and media public facing materials.

That's all included in this new, summary report which we've just released for the whole process.

We in 2022 and 2023 we posted report outs from our engagement process through that time period and we're poised to release for the last two phases for phase three and for phase four report outs on what we heard in 2024. I will be summarizing for you today what we heard in those two phases.

So first I'm gonna get, we'll take these on one at a time, talk about spring 2024, where we took in public comment on the draft plan and other draft materials.

So in March of 2024, OPCD released three key documents.

One was the draft One Seattle Plan, the comprehensive plan update itself, which included the draft growth strategy.

The second document was the draft proposal for updating our neighborhood residential zones to comply with HB 1110. This was an early concept piece.

It's not the draft legislation yet, but it had a lot of the details that appear in the final legislation, in the draft legislation itself.

And finally, the draft EIS.

I want to pause here and make sure that there's a clear understanding when we say draft growth strategy, What did the public see?

What did they have to react to and provide public comment on in spring of last year?

The map on this slide shows the draft growth strategy map that was available at that time.

It also had the larger growth strategy element in the comprehensive plan that was available in draft.

And in total, it showed the location and size of the new proposed neighborhood centers, for example.

It showed the approximate areas for expansions of existing centers.

it showed the frequent transit routes that were proposed for potential up zones.

And it had policies that described what types of uses, what the heights, the intensity of development that would be envisioned for each of those areas.

So it wasn't as detailed as the zoning map, but it did provide a lot of information to the public at that time.

And the draft proposal for HB 1110, as I noted, had a lot of the information you'd have in a zoning code.

It talked about the proposed development standards and just in broad concepts what the new zoning code would be intended to accomplish.

It would have additional elements.

We described an incentive for affordable housing.

There was at that time also a proposal to set aside areas that were at higher risk of displacement for a lower density under House Bill 1110, and we asked for public comment on that.

We provided more detail to you on January 6th, but I just want to remind you of some of the highlights of what we did during spring of 2024 to reach out to the public.

We had eight open houses, over 1,500 participants in these open houses.

They were in locations across the city.

We had an online option as well.

uh, we were encouraged and pleased with a lot of the, um, attendance and, and, and, and talking to the public in the open houses, but we also realized at that time that we didn't appear that we were hearing from a lot of residents of neighborhoods across the city.

Uh, there were a lot of organizations and folks who were following the policy process a little more closely that we just observed were, uh, uh, showing up at the open houses more so than other, uh, other communities in the city, we intentionally reached out to community councils and other community-based and other organizations and had over 30 meetings during the spring as well to enhance our outreach beyond the open houses.

We had a robust online presence, an engagement hub was our dedicated website, a lot of tools for providing comment.

Another website was there for the draft EIS, a story map website, very user-friendly.

And the comment period lasted for 60 days, actually more than 60 days for the draft plan.

We extended the comment period a little bit.

Who did we hear from?

We received nearly 6,000 comments on the draft plan, including written comments from open houses, emailed comments, and nearly 4,000 individual comments on the draft plan itself.

Some people It provided more than one comment, and of that, nearly 4,000, there were about 1,200 individual commenters.

We also received quite a number of letters from organizations, including three letters from coalitions representing nearly 100 organizations, and then individual letters from over 80 different organizations, community-based organizations, business, the environment, affordable housing, housers, and housing advocates, and others.

So what did we hear?

Again, this is in spring of 2024 in response to the draft plan.

Well, first, with regard to the growth strategy, we heard general strong support for more housing and the plan providing for more housing across the city, more diverse housing choices in all neighborhoods, more housing density near transit, and the concept of housing in more complete neighborhoods with housing near shops, services, and amenities, that 15-minute city idea which has been floating around, and now people talk about city planning in the last several years is certainly a concept that we tried to advance through this plan.

Generally, we heard from most commenters calls for the city to do more, that they liked what they saw, asked us to do more, and there were specific calls for the plan to include more regional and urban centers.

There were calls for the plan to include more neighborhood centers.

I'll remind you that the draft had 24 neighborhood centers identified as a proposal.

And we also heard comments urging us in the growth strategy around those transit corridors to extend beyond just the blocks facing the corridors to provide More housing opportunity, more housing on quieter streets, and more housing in more neighborhoods.

So we heard three main types of things we were asked to do more of.

On middle housing, we heard general strong support for the concept of middle housing and acknowledgement that there was a new state requirement.

And we received many specific comments about the proposed development standards and other details in our initial proposal.

especially to start with the proposal to have lower density in areas of higher risk of displacement.

We generally heard opposition to that concept.

There was an express desire for that all neighborhoods needed more housing supply, more affordable home ownership opportunities.

Other benefits of the new middle housing provisions should be extended to all neighborhoods and the property owners in all neighborhoods deserve an opportunity to invest in their property to add housing.

we heard a very strong call for the development standards to allow more floor area on a site.

The original proposal included a floor area ratio, that's the development standard that sets the total amount of floor in new development.

It was originally a 0.9 FAR.

The state model code was actually released just after we released the draft plan and set a higher expectation for cities of a 1.2 FAR.

And we received a lot of comments about that our original proposal, point nine, would have been a constraint on new development, meaning we would probably see less middle housing and would result in smaller units.

And there was an express desire for more housing units that were large enough for families.

We received comments suggesting that reducing setbacks would help encourage more housing development in the new neighborhood residential zone.

We heard comments in support of strong incentives for stacked flats.

The original proposal did not have a separate set of treatment for stacked flats.

They were seen as a more affordable housing type, one that was more accessible to older residents, to young children, people with disabilities, because they're single-level units without a lot of stairs.

and we were asked to look at ways that we could encourage that through this plan and the zoning in our neighborhood residential area in particular, and also support for the affordable housing incentive, I should say.

And finally, we received a lot of comments about parking and parking specifically to eliminate or reduce parking requirements for new residential development.

There was broad support for the corner stores, which are allowed in the mayor's plan under in neighborhood residential, even from folks who took issue with the higher housing density.

The corner store concept was very popular, both in the spring and then later in the fall, and even with some calls for us to consider locations that are not literally on corners.

So while we were hearing broad calls for the city to do more during the spring, we were also starting to hear concerns about density and really want to emphasize this because this was more muted, a little quieter in the spring, became a more prevalent concern in the fall, which we'll get into.

But we did start to hear concerns from residents of different neighborhoods, specifically around the potential impact of new development and density on trees and tree canopy.

We heard concerns about loss of open space generally.

We heard very specific concerns about the local impacts of denser housing development, including shade and solar access to adjacent or nearby buildings, potential traffic, noise, other impacts.

We heard concerns about historic resources and historic districts and what especially what the new middle housing requirements might mean for historic districts.

And finally, we heard concerns about displacement risk.

Could the new development, the new density exacerbate displacement in the city?

We did hear about other components of the plan.

I'm not going to go into much detail about topics such as transportation, parks and open space, climate and resilience, just to pick a few of the prominent topics we did hear from the public about.

But folks were interested in talking about these issues.

They were interested in generally and supportive of what the city is trying to do with the plan in these areas to encourage alternatives to automobile traffic and enhance mobility.

to provide access to open space as we grow, and to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also be ready for climate impacts.

And we got a lot of very specific ideas from the public on those and really welcomed those.

How did we use the comments from the spring?

So we closed our comment period in May of 2024. We did work over the summer to revise the growth strategy, and as we briefed this committee on, we increased the number of neighborhood centers in response to public comment from 24 to 30 in total.

And there were additional areas for proposed expansion to regional and urban centers, also responsive to some of the comments we heard in the spring.

On the House Bill 1110 zoning legislation, there were some key changes here.

We did change the allowed FAR from 0.9 to 1.2, again, consistent with the state model code in that area.

We removed the tailored approach to areas at high risk of displacement.

There was a new incentive for stacked flats, which we described to you at a previous meeting, and we are proposing to reduce the parking requirements above and beyond what's required under House Bill 1110, but not totally eliminating parking requirements in all areas of the city.

And there's revised policy language in a number of the elements, the document that actually is that the mayor's recommended plan does have some changes in the policy elements as well that were informed by and responsive to public comment.

So I'm going to move on and talk about the fall engagement.

In the fall, four documents were released for public comment.

So we remember we did the draft plan in the spring, the draft EIS, and a draft House Bill 1110 zoning legislation.

In the fall, the zoning legislation for middle housing, our new neighborhood residential zone, was revised and released as a report that described the approach and as actual draft legislation.

We also released draft zoning maps that provided more detail on proposed land use changes in other areas of the city and draft legislation that would accompany the zoning maps.

It's important here, I want to emphasize again, what level of detail, what information did the public have to respond to?

So the, first of all, as information to inform the public, we released the mayor's proposed growth strategy in September.

You see that map at the left.

It's quite similar to the draft that was released in the spring, but with more definition around boundaries of new neighborhood centers and some of the expansion areas.

And here in the fall, accompanied by our zoning maps, which you see examples at right, there is more detail about the heights and uses that would be proposed in new zoning within each of those areas.

You see an example of a neighborhood center, a transit corridor, and an expansion area around an existing center.

So more detail is released in the form of draft zoning maps.

that accompanied the release of the mayor's proposed growth strategy.

And you see those represented on the screen.

So we had a similar approach to reaching out to the public.

I would describe it as more intensive in the fall, even than in the spring.

We had an open house series.

We had seven open houses, one in each council district.

We had three different online open house equivalents.

We also had more online sessions as well.

We had virtual office hours.

These were several hour sessions where the public could log in and talk to staff and get their questions answered.

We did eight of those throughout the two-month engagement period.

We had a dedicated website with commenting tools.

And we did, I would say, did quite a bit more advertising and getting the word out about our engagement in the fall, including paid advertising with various media.

There were radio spots that ran on KUOW during that period.

And it's worth mentioning that both in the spring and in the fall, we got a lot of earned media coverage, I'll call it, is we had probably a half dozen spots on public radio featuring the comprehensive plan.

These were featured stories about different components of the plan.

We had TV news coverage, Seattle Times and others covered the process.

This is really helpful in getting the word out, but we also paid for advertising in the fall.

who we heard from.

It looked a little different in the fall than in the spring.

I think this was evident if you attended any of the open houses and hearing from constituents.

We continued to get broad citywide participation from folks all over the city, but we really started to hear a lot more from residents of areas that were proposed for zoning changes.

We received over 9,000 comments during the fall during the 60-day comment period.

They were, these included comments on our online mapping tool.

You see a image of this at the right where people could click on location by very substantive comments about their neighborhood or a block or a street that they were concerned about.

We had a online form of way to submit a comment without going to the trouble of sending an email, but we also received nearly 2000 emails as well from many individuals across the city.

There were nearly 6,000 unique commenters during this process.

And then we continue to receive letters from organizations, citywide, community, a range of interests and stakeholder categories from those organizations, nearly 40 letters on the fall drafts.

So briefly, what we heard to start with regarding the new neighborhood residential in response to the HB 1110 requirements, we, even from people who had concerns about the draft legislation.

We did hear general support that we need more housing in the city and that the kinds of housing that the new and middle housing requirements from the state would provide for were the types of housing that the city needed, especially family-sized housing, more affordable home ownership opportunities, and there was broad recognition of that.

But there were specific concerns about the draft legislation that we started to hear.

more specific feedback from the public about.

Concerns about the height, bulk, and scale of the new middle housing development, especially with respect to existing homes.

Concerns about the ones that had national or local recognition as historic neighborhoods.

Light and shade impacts, traffic and parking.

Again, this is in that middle housing scenario, in the neighborhoods where we would have more types of housing allowed.

Concerns about infrastructure, especially stormwater, was one theme that came up in a lot of comments.

An impact on trees, both existing trees, concerned that they might be removed through new development or redevelopment, and how much space we were providing for for planting new trees.

We've heard, I think, fairly equally about those two concerns, regarding trees.

Even while we received these comments of concern, we did also continue to hear strong support, generally for the city having a robust response to House Bill 1110. What did we hear about the zoning maps and the proposal for the rest of the city?

We heard quite a lot.

I would say there was more feedback on this component than on the HB 1110 zoning.

We heard very significantly, as I mentioned, from residents of the areas that were proposed for zoning change, the neighborhood centers along the transit corridors, some of the expansion areas around the existing centers.

And their concerns were on many different issues.

They were, to start with, just requests to remove some of the neighborhood centers or to greatly reduce the proposed density in areas that were seen as problematic for that kind of change.

But we also heard some very specific comments and concerns, again, about the scale of buildings, especially the proximity of five-story development relative to existing homes.

We heard concerns about the adequacy of existing transit service, about its frequency and what destinations that transit would be going to and whether all of those areas were indeed appropriate for higher densities along our transit routes.

We heard concerns about what was seen as limited access to essential goods and services.

How many stores were nearby?

Were there public amenities like post office, library, parks?

So a lot of neighborhood knowledge about the areas that we were proposing new housing.

Concerns about infrastructure, again, a lot of focus on stormwater, but also some of the transportation infrastructure of streets, how narrow the streets were, were there curbs and gutters?

Impact on trees with redevelopment, like with the neighborhood residential in our neighborhood centers and others.

So I'm concerned about trees.

And then a lot of localized factors.

We heard a lot of comments about, in my part of town, here is the issue.

Things like topography, historic districts again, other very specific local concerns.

So this is all really important information that we have been using.

While we heard those concerns, we also continue to hear broad support for the direction the city was taking from a lot of other folks who provided comment during the fall, including continued calls for us to do more than was proposed with the mayor's revised growth strategy.

And this is my last slide, and happy to take questions and welcome discussion, is what are we doing with that fall engagement bill we heard during the fall?

We're not quite as far along as we were with respect to the draft plan.

We're still going through all the comments that we heard in the fall.

There were nearly 6,000 comments.

They provide a lot of detail and important information.

And OPCD is using that to inform how we are revising the HB 1110, the new neighborhood residential zoning, that legislation, which is coming forward in March to you.

And then later in spring, the legislation that we're calling centers and corridors, that's adoption of the new zoning maps, other code changes that will promote housing in those areas.

We are also looking at those comments and informing any changes that we would bring forward, revised maps, revised code language.

We're taking that comment very seriously.

We're reading all of the comments and working closely with the mayor's office to bring a revised proposal.

About how we're using comments and the relationship between engagement and the plan itself.

Well, I think I want to open up for questions, obviously.

I think that it's...

I think that what you can see from the presentation and the conversation thus far is that we have gotten a lot of comments from folks, and we are doing everything that we can to ensure that in our collaborative work with the mayor's office that the comments that we're receiving, and I think that we've been able to share them with you as well, that they inform the policy decisions that we're making as it as it relates to what shows up in the plan, as well as it relates to changes and modifications to our zoning maps.

So with that, I would open it up.

Okay, thank you.

Before we started this meeting, and I forgot to, I apologize, I forgot to thank Council Member Strauss for, we're only here at 11 a.m.

because you shortened your meeting today, this morning, the finance meeting.

So just want to thank you for that.

My apologies.

And...

I will stop there, and I know that we have a couple questions from folks, and I see Councilmember Strauss, your hand is raised.

Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Chair, and the final point in our Finance Committee meeting this morning was a discussion on how many select budget committees we're having, and so we'll be circling up with each of you to understand where certain pieces of legislation will go, either budget or select budget.

Director, Michael, thank you for your presentation.

Thank you and your entire team for the extensive number of outreach events that you held this fall.

I know that we had some scheduling challenges and I was happy to make it to one of them.

I'm embarrassed by the photo that you had up there that I was in.

But one of the things that I did share with you at that time was my concern that it seemed as if we were not getting a wide variety of people engaged in these open houses.

And I say that because I attended the one in District 6, but I also attended the one in District 7 because folks in Magnolia weren't necessarily going to come to Loyal Heights and they were very habitual about going over to Queen Anne.

And so I attended multiple.

There were some concerns with even in those outreach presentations that it was so focused on the district that District 6 didn't have as much information about Greenwood as I think we would have liked.

All of that said, my takeaway was that everyday Seattleites weren't necessarily engaging in the process because it wasn't real.

for them at that point yet.

And sometimes that means just that there is a proposed map, but maybe folks aren't recognizing it.

Mr. Hubner, your comment about the earned media and the featured stories is true.

I heard those stories.

I read those stories.

And those stories were also at a high level about the whole plan overall.

And it didn't necessarily speak about what was happening on somebody's block.

And that's kind of where the concern for me is coming is that since about beginning of December, I've had a whole different group of people reaching out to me to have these meetings.

I'm getting to a question in a moment, but just, and I know that I shared this with you the other day, that I do have a concern that not everyday Seattleites were aware that they had public house opportunities this fall.

And now that this plan is real and before us, that people are now having desires to have their voice heard.

I had office hours just the other day with somebody that was so concerned that they didn't have a chance to have their comments heard and their voice heard.

And I reassured them that It hadn't been transmitted to council yet, and I was here to meet with them as their representative.

And so there's also a feeling that they don't have another opportunity.

Now, granted, if each of us council members wanted to host an open house in our district, that would be nearly untenable as each of us have four staff.

That would be, I mean, it could happen.

Whereas your department is set up to do these outreach events.

I'm not here asking for a specific solution today.

I am asking, Chair, if we could continue the conversation about how OPCD can continue an engagement with feedback and how that works.

And I say that because also if the FEIS is appealed, we have much more time.

If it's not, we're on a pretty short timeline.

But, you know, I'll get down to the question specifically is for folks that became aware in early December of the comment period that ended on December 20th, and you've always heard my feedback.

When I was land use chair, I wouldn't allow for comment periods to end during the holidays or to go over the holidays without an extension.

But for somebody that did submit their comments in those last few weeks or December 19th or December 20th, how were those comments taken into consideration?

Did they show up in your final FEIS?

Can you walk me through how you took people's comments and what the outcome of them commenting was?

As I mentioned, we are in the process of reviewing all of those comments now.

The purpose of the fall engagement was to inform the legislation for the House Bill 1110 New Neighborhood Residential Zoning, one, and two, the zoning for centers and corridors.

So neither of those has been sent to Council yet, and we're working to revise those draft proposals for Transmittal to you.

So first and foremost, we're using those comments to inform any changes to the legislation.

We are aware that there are comments that reflect on and provide input to the plan itself, to the larger growth strategy.

We did make an effort to take into consideration at that high level that the new areas for growth, like the neighborhood centers, are represented in the comp plan, that were there factors or issues that might suggest tweaking the boundaries, making some changes that we could make in a very short time period before releasing the plan in early January, and we did do that.

There were some, we did do a scan of what we had heard as to what it would mean for the growth strategy map, and there are some small changes there.

And when the zoning legislation in May comes to you for consideration, we have quite a lot of latitude to reflect and to make adjustments based on public comments.

So there's very little that's really set in stone.

in the plan itself, and the zoning legislation will be very substantive and will consider what people had to say.

It's a lot of comment, and a lot of it is very detailed, so we are taking our time with it.

Thank you.

Can you remind me when the comprehensive plan comment period ended if the comment period on the 20th was specifically about the zoning proposals?

So the comment period on the plan was in the spring.

That was the first segment of my presentation.

That was when the draft plan was released.

The engagement in the fall and the comment period was specifically around the zoning.

That said, sometimes comments about zoning suggest we might want to change boundaries around centers or other changes that are at that higher level in the plan.

And so we're endeavoring to connect those dots where it makes sense.

So let me repeat back to you what I think I heard is that the FEIS that was just published last week was based on comment period that ended in spring.

No.

OK.

So then if I'm saying no, so then when did that comment period end?

So the FEIS is on a separate parallel track from the plan itself.

In the spring, we released two things.

the draft plan, and there's a 60-day comment period on the draft plan.

There was a draft EIS that had a concurrent 60-day comment period.

We received over 500 comments on the draft EIS, and the final EIS, which was released last Thursday, includes responses to all of those comments.

Separate process, we respond each comment that we get in a draft EIS and all of those.

So that's all.

That was in the spring.

There was nothing new released on the EIS in the fall, and there were no new comments on the EIS in the fall.

So the comment period for the FEIS was this spring?

That's right.

Okay.

And you incorporated those comments to publish the document you did last week.

That's right.

And subsequent to that are the zoning proposals.

And that comment period ended on December 20th.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

And you have not yet transmitted those bills.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

And what are you doing to incorporate the feedback from the comments that you've received?

We're reading all of them.

identifying issues and potential changes and working with the mayor's office to prepare that legislation of what we would do with any set of public comments.

And we are going through it very, um, uh, meaningfully and in detail because people had a lot to say and we're taking it seriously.

Very helpful.

Thank you, John.

Thank you, chair.

Thank you, council member Strauss.

I see council member Kettle.

You are recognized.

Thank you, Mr. Hubner, for your brief, and Director Kareem Dungo for joining us today.

I really appreciate it.

I do appreciate the outreach that has been done.

I recognize some changes could have been made in terms of notifications, but I do appreciate director joining me for the Queen Anne Historical Society which is probably one of the most interesting outreach sessions there's been but we've had others with the Queen Anne Community Council at the Queen Anne Community Center and we have more coming up Magnolia Community Center I'm meeting with a Magnolia group related to Southeast Magnolia so the outreach is not limited to you I suspect my My colleagues are doing massive amounts of outreach as well.

It's interesting.

I have in my district three regional centers, and one neighborhood center.

in District 7, and then in terms of some of the major areas, because of, and then here's a question, so a lot of the focus is that one area, D7 Magnolia, but really Queen Anne is the center of this phase.

And so my first question is, just for confirmation, the centers and corridor zoning legislation, and with May behind it, that is for the urban centers, neighborhood centers, the transit-oriented development, so the regional centers, are that next phase in September, just for confirmation.

Go ahead.

The areas where the mayor's plan includes a proposed expansion of regional centers, like Uptown.

It's a small expansion area at the north edge of Uptown.

That would be included in the May legislation, the centers and corridors legislation.

But everything else related to the regional centers would be in that next phase for September or phase three?

It would be for a future consideration if there are zoning changes in existing centers.

That's something we're looking at.

There's no proposed legislation at this time, but it would come later.

Okay.

I think that's important, particularly for my district.

As you know, District 7 came in horizontally because we went vertical.

And the voices of the residents...

in those regional centers, um, really, you know, is something that, um, needs to be heard.

And it's similar to my experience talking to, you know, the other parts of district seven and really other parts of the city.

And that kind of goes to the 15 minute city, the livable city, you know, like we're really pushing for the, you know, commercial, the residential, um, conversions and downtown and, um, And my staff's going to bring director of the downtown community council's new flyer that I promised you at the last meeting.

I'll have them bring it to me here.

I'll have one for you too, Mr. Herbner.

So the downtown community council, we have so many residents that's coming up.

I've had recent meetings with Belltown and they're talking about that livable city too.

And here's the challenge.

Like how many grocery stores are in the greater downtown?

When I say greater downtown, You know, downtown itself, but also, you know, Pioneer Square, CID, you know, Pike Place Markets, Belltown, Uptown, and Southlake.

You know, like how many are there?

Pharmacies, you know.

There's a bunch of cafe and restaurants, but not the mix.

And some areas have less like Belltown.

They're really hurting it.

And then the small businesses, as you know, there's so many first floor kind of empty opportunities there.

And these are the things that really come across the entirety of District 7, but it's an interesting piece regarding the areas within the regional centers.

And both there and in places like Queen Anne was the idea of keeping historical pieces.

You know, I lived in three times in the D.C.

area and District, you know, has a great way of maintaining those old buildings and then keeping the shells and then building new within and then up.

but keeping that feature.

And we don't necessarily do that as well.

You know, there's a little bit, as I mentioned in a meeting recently for our District 7 Neighborhood Council, basically a council of D7s, community councils, you know, how the, as you come on Westlake to hit Mercer southbound, the old, I think it was Ford, I forget, the automobile, and they kept that facade, and then they built, you know, around it and then above.

you know, maintain that historical kind of pieces that are so important.

And then the transportation pieces that came out like in this meeting with the district seven neighborhood council and downtown, the greater downtown is also concerned about that pieces because as we do the, the housing and that the transportation pieces has got to be there.

Otherwise we won't have that 15 minute livable city.

And, and for, For a constituent, Suzanne, who's out there, and Sandy and everybody else, I'm going to say the word trees, which is obviously another big issue with this.

And by the way, regarding my District 7 neighborhood council, Mr. Anderson, who's out here, he participated in, you know, in terms of historical calendar, like a character like Denny Triangle.

and maintaining a way to keep that field, but then also do that densification.

And these are the things that really came out of the outreach that I've been doing as the District 7 representative.

So my question there is, have you seen anything specific to the regional center areas versus other parts of the city and the like?

Yes, we did receive some comments regarding generally a desire for planning for growth and density around our major transit investments.

Many of them are in our existing regional centers and some in urban centers as well, light rail, the existing stations and also the planned ones for you know obviously downtown has a lot of new locations for future stations some robust rapid transit lines as well we did hear comments urging the city to consider more density generally around station areas and also specifically in in regional centers it wasn't There weren't changes in the proposal that was in the draft plan that was released in spring of last year, nor were there very many zoning changes that touched the existing centers in the fall.

So there wasn't a lot to react to from the public.

I would suspect that the public would have a lot of comment about land use and density and housing in our existing centers.

I think I'm not at all surprised to hear that you're hearing about that from your constituents.

But we definitely heard that the public values and recognizes regional centers are a big part of how we are going to accommodate growth in the future.

And in fact, if you look at the distribution of what role the regional centers have in the mayor's proposed plan, it is still a very significant portion of the growth that we would be expected over the next 20 years, even with all of the other changes, would be in regional centers, and we have to be ready for it.

Okay, and I suspect some of that could be within, like, Council President's governance, accountability, economic development, that small business, you know, piece, that livable city piece.

I just wanted to note, because I know it's been an issue, that there's only one neighborhood center in District 7, and I, myself, am supportive of it.

It's in Interbay.

It really acknowledges what's already there for the most part, and it's kind of constrained because it's in Interbay.

But that is the one area in Interbay where you can have the housing.

So having a neighborhood center there makes sense to me, and I have not had any pushback on that.

So one less neighborhood center to worry about than for you.

And one of the conversations, to include the District 7 Neighborhood Council, which had other groups like Queen Anne and Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, is the idea of some mini-neighborhood centers, which I've brought up previously, and I could follow up with you on that.

There was some interest in that, kind of like a step-by-step approach to see which ones may grow organically.

So that was an interesting exchange.

Of course, I always keep the public safety piece front and center.

I won't ask you a question on that.

And another point, too, that came up in the outreach, and something that I've come to believe in as well based on my experience, is very important to have the varied housing types.

you know, in terms of the flex stats, the triplexes and all these different mixes of types of housing.

And really the idea that varied zoning is helpful in terms of creating that varied housing because in my, you know, interaction with developers, if it's one zone as far as the eye can see, you're going to get that one type of housing as far as the eye can see.

And so I think the, I look forward to working with you, but I would say partly that I'm anxious to not wait until May.

I think a lot of my colleagues are probably ready to accept the zoning legislation now because we've done our own outreach and we're ready.

And this was, you know, some of these thoughts were included in the newsletter I put out and the two-pager I'm going to put out.

We're anxiously awaiting, but in the meantime, the outreach will continue, like I said, with Magnolia Community Council, Queen Anne Community Council, particularly, because in this phase, that's where the center of it for District 7 is, so thank you.

No, you're good.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

I see Council Member Rink, and then we'll have Council Member Saka, followed by Council Member Rivera, followed by Council Member Moore.

Council Member Rink, you're recognized.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you both for today's presentation.

It is no surprise to me that so much of our community is eager to engage on this issue given the ways in which so many in our community are impacted by the housing crisis.

It is urgent, it is dire for many, and we'll continue to see that engagement play out with the public hearing later today.

But my questions for you on the engagement that you've been able to do with our community What methods did you implement to ensure that those who have been giving public comment are representative of our broader community?

Namely, how did you intentionally try to reach Black, Indigenous, and communities of color as well as renters?

Thank you for that question.

It's actually something that we were very focused on from the beginning of the process.

We actually started the entire arc of the comprehensive plan update began even before 2022 when prior counsel asked OPCD to do an evaluation of the existing Seattle 2035 plan, and we have public engagement around that.

There's a report.

produced by PolicyLink that we brought in to help us evaluate the current plan, and we did engagement then, very intentionally reaching out to communities that have historically not been as engaged or been able to engage in a comprehensive plan.

BIPOC communities, different cultural communities in the city, a wide swath of folks that we knew historically had not been involved.

So we started then in the first two phases of engagement, which we're not focused on today.

That's where we did a lot of the heavy lifting around the tent and our outreach.

Highlights of that would be our enhanced self-working with Department of Neighborhoods to begin with.

There are the Community Liaison Program and Department of Neighborhoods has staff who are available that are are members of or relationships with different communities across the city, bring in language, relationship building and outreach.

We work with Department of Neighborhoods during that period very heavily.

We contracted with community-based organizations.

This is a new model for OPCD.

Again, we had a call for proposals from organizations that represent or work in communities we wanted to heighten engagement with, and we had eight different contracts with community-based organizations.

Reports from the work they did to engage with community are available on our website.

They also made recommendations for the comprehensive plan itself.

And we did targeted outreach around communities that are at risk of displacement.

Those are just highlights.

There are many different in many different junctures.

We did the extra effort to broaden our engagement to reach folks we hadn't historically reached as much.

So if I can just add to that.

...plan web page, you'll see one of the rolled-up subject areas is engagement.

The last tab on that, or the last link on that, is policy recommendations from our CBO partners.

So in the spring of 23, we received reports.

So it was the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association, Estelita's Library, Kimer, Community of Seattle, King County.

Nowhere Pathways, Capitol Hill Eagle District, Wanawari, and Rising Tide.

So you can get...

We contract with each of those CBOs to do their own community engagement related to the plan and then compile responses from communities.

So that's where you can get a bunch more detail there.

We've also been working with other community organizations that are specifically engaged around black home ownership and providing resources for community members to either retain ownership of the home that they are in or be first time home buyers.

Thank you for laying that out and would encourage to continue to daylight that work.

That sounds, that's really incredible and encouraging to hear those kind of partnerships and that, how this work really began with fostering and engaging with those groups.

And kind of also to that end, thinking about, you know, our city commissions strive to be representative in so many ways.

They're designed as such to represent a myriad of different groups, backgrounds, and experiences.

So wondering about, you know, for the various city commissions we have from the renters commission to disability commission, LGBTQ commission.

How have some of our commission partners engaged on the plan and how has their feedback perhaps been incorporated?

So there's, there's detail in that summary report that I talked about during the presentation.

It lists all of the boards and commissions that we engaged with.

I can't remember the exact number, but I think it's probably a couple dozen different boards of commissions that we either provided presentations to, had follow-up presentation and discussion, and or received letters from.

I know a lot of them had comments during the process as well, so we put a lot of effort into boards and commissions.

It's a great way, as you've noted, to reach a very broad constituency and with folks that can come to the table hitting the ground running a little bit more and also provide for issue specific area, subject area specific feedback as well.

So all of those were benefit and value to the process.

Right.

I'll dig into that.

And going a little bit into the slide deck for today, on slide 11, you noted that the public asked for more regional and urban centers, more neighborhood centers, wider corridors of density along transit routes in response to the first draft.

And the second draft added more.

We went from 24 proposed neighborhood centers to 30, along with some expansions to regional and urban center expansions.

And there's a note on slide 22 that in addition to concerns that had been arisen, there still were calls to zone for more housing in more areas.

But ultimately, we saw little change between the second draft and the draft now before us.

And in fact, some of our centers seem to have reduced slightly in scale.

So could you explain how comments on the second draft with respect to considering the number, size, and location of regional urban and neighborhood centers were incorporated into the final proposal before us?

So, with respect to the number, location, and size of the centres, and...

So that feedback was feedback in the spring of 2024, and we incorporated that feedback between the draft plan in the spring and the mayor's preferred recommended growth strategy, which was released in September.

So we considered, I mean, I would characterize the comments as of two kinds.

One is broadly, just on the issue, there should be more neighborhood centers, let's say.

And also specific.

X location would be a great location for an additional neighborhood center.

So we had those two types of comments.

We looked at those and that helped inform the process of, for example, identifying the five or six additional neighborhood centers that were in the mayor's preferred versus the draft and areas that we are considering those additional expansions.

So both broadly and then specifically about locations that would be appropriate.

I suppose I was focusing on between the second draft, so the fall draft and ultimately- Between the spring and the fall.

So in the spring was the draft plan, and the fall is the mayor's recommended growth strategy that was released in September.

And then that is only very, very, very similar to what is in the-

mayor's plan which was released in january as i mentioned just briefly in my presentation there are some very small boundary changes that actually were made to the map but it is largely the the same as the mayor's strategy is released in september okay all right and moving us to also curious on slide 12 there was a specific ask around reducing or eliminating off-street parking requirements um and could you explain or tell me from a planning perspective why we still have parking requirements.

So first, I want to explain what in the draft that was released in the spring, there was not a recommendation specifically on parking requirements, rather just indicating that we were looking at parking requirements.

Second, just to acknowledge the House Bill 1110 does have certain requirements of areas of the city that we're not permitted as a city to require off-street parking anymore.

That's especially within a half mile of our major transit stations.

So that was kind of the landscape they were looking at.

From a planning perspective, this is something that we look very closely at and consider the balance between the benefit that parking in new development certainly has for having a place to put automobiles, especially in light of the limited supply of on-street parking, which varies across the city, with other considerations that has been, I think, studied quite extensively in the planning literature and that other cities are wrestling with, which is where you require off-street parking, at a certain point, it starts to become a cost, and a constraint on housing development, both in terms of fewer sites are feasible because of the cost of parking, but that also there's space in the building and space on a site that needs to be taken up by cars and not by people.

So this is a balancing act in putting proposal together, and we work closely with the mayor's office to take into account what new state requirement, What we heard from public comment and the proposal is to take the existing for the remainder of the city where we are still allowed under state law to require off-street parking to reduce it by about half that requirement from the current one space per principal unit to one space for every two units.

And given some of the positive feedback related to cornerstones, corner stores, pardon me, I know I definitely heard about that.

Was there consideration to expand their scope to non-corner lots and to other small businesses that maybe don't involve food just to help promote small business creation?

I'm thinking about things like hair salons, laundromats, or bookstores.

Yeah, that's a level of detail you're going to see in the zoning legislation itself, and that's something we're looking at right now.

So that would be in the May, the projected for the May zoning legislation we'd be transmitting.

Oh, pardon me.

I just misspoke.

That would be in the March legislation.

Fabulous.

Wonderful.

That concludes my questions.

Thank you so much for fielding them, and thank you for the time, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and my colleagues in the...

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you very loud, Councilmember Saka.

You're good.

We just wanted to make sure you're good.

You can hear us well, okay?

I can hear you fine.

Is the volume turned up?

Yeah, we corrected it.

It was a little loud in here.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka.

Boom, and I have a very loud voice that project as is, so...

all right well let's see i guess first off colleagues i it is always my strongest preference to join you properly in person and apologies can't do that today as councilmember strauss as we heard in that committee earlier this morning the his finance native communities and tribal governments committee i have two of three kids of my elementary school kids homesick today and then of course it's a snow day uh remote school, whatever that is.

So, you know, it's really, it's survival mode in my household right now.

And we're, so I appreciate everyone's patience and grace.

It is lunchtime soon.

I think it's Uncrustables for everyone, myself included.

IN ANY EVENT, DIRECTOR AND MR. HUBNER REALLY APPRECIATE THIS PRESENTATION.

I ALSO WANT TO SAY A SPECIAL SHOUT OUT AND KUDOS FOR EVERYONE AT OPCD WORKING SO CLOSELY WITH ME IN MY OFFICE EARLIER IN THE SPRING TO HOLD AT THE REQUEST OF ME IN MY OFFICE TO HOLD A FEW EXTRA SESSIONS SPECIFICALLY IN MY DISTRICT AS PART OF THE BROADER COMMUNITY OUTREACH.

SO THANK YOU FOR THAT.

WE ARE FAIRLY far behind the eight ball in terms of where we're at in the state statutory imposed deadline requirements for charting our growth strategy and plan for the next 10, 20 years.

But we are not going through this process alone, nor have we gone through it alone.

And so the downside of being a little further behind is that we're running up against the clock, tick tock.

On the other hand, we've been able to have the opportunity at least other cities and jurisdictions have already completed their processes.

So we could conceivably better understand best practices and what they did in terms of community outreach and engagement that helped or worked or didn't work for uh their own processes and so my my first question relates to that uh how did our city's own outreach and engagement approach differ from other cities uh around the state that we're aware of particularly other larger cities uh what did they do that we didn't and vice versa what what did what did we do that they didn't necessarily do

I'll take a cut at that.

Council member, I don't really know.

Do you have a detailed answer to that question?

We haven't done that.

That's a little bit of...

Monday morning quarterback look back, I think that there's a lot to look into and to take full stock of what other cities have done through the comp plan process.

That said, we do work very closely with other jurisdictions in the county and in the region because we all are on the same timeline for doing our comp plan updates.

We are in meetings with them at the Puget Sound Regional Council and other forums, and we have had a chance to compare notes on our engagement.

I would say that by and large, some of the things that we have been doing that are new are things that have set a model for some other jurisdictions.

I don't want to say that, and I know there's a lot of good work that other jurisdictions do that we learn from, but I think we've had the resources and some of the conversation within our city, for example, this concept of contracting with community-based organizations is something that I know that the State Department of Commerce has reached out to us for guidance on how we did that both, you know, just logistically and just how we worked it into our policy work.

Other cities have reached out to us to learn from what we've done.

Some of the online tools that we've used for engagement, we all started this process.

And I chuckle, you all remember back in 2022 or so, we were still in a very much a hybrid world.

How are we going to do these major updates with the inability to have very many in-person meetings?

So we did compare notes with other cities on that.

And we did learn from each other in terms of the tools, what software we were using, how we were reaching out to people, how we were having true interaction with the public, all of those challenges that can come with an online format.

Those are two areas where we did do a lot of informal collaboration, but I look forward to actually reviewing just as we're finishing up the comp plan and learning from all of our efforts and, you know, could certainly come back to council and talk about a list of what are some of the best practices that emerged regionally and what we could do going forward.

This isn't the last time we're going to do public engagement for a large land use policy effort in the city.

Yeah, no, thank you for that.

And yes, we do not need to recreate the wheel and we can leverage our shared learnings to get better on a going forward basis.

My next question pertains to like how some specific feedback was incorporated.

And you talked about that in the presentation, which thank you.

You indicated that there was specific feedback to go bigger, bolder, more aggressive, if you will, and in part to address missing middle housing, to go more above and on top of what the state requirements are.

AND AND I THINK IN ONE OF THE FOLLOW-UP SLIDES YOU MENTION YOU'VE DONE THAT IN PART BY GOING FROM 24 TO 30 I THINK NEIGHBORHOOD CENTERS AND AMONGST OTHER CHANGES BUT YOU ALSO MENTIONED THAT YOU HEARD SOME FEEDBACK ON THE OTHER END OF THE SPECTRUM AND PERTAINING TO CONCERNS AROUND DENSITY AND WHAT density and preserving the unique character and feel of each neighborhood might look like.

So just curious to better understand.

So two part question.

How did you, with respect to those latter concerns around density and preserving each neighborhood's unique feel, how did you go about balancing that delicate thread, threading that delicate needle, so to speak, in this proposed plan question one and how do you specifically anticipate that you'll further uh address some of those concerns under the pending legislation in march and may i believe council member can you repeat the first question yeah so the concerns around density and and uh that that you that you know you've heard, we've heard here in Council.

How did you go about addressing some of those concerns with respect to this proposed plan that's before us now?

And then how do you anticipate further addressing some of those concerns, if at all, in the pending legislation that's supposed to drop, executive proposed legislation in March and May, I believe?

So how are we addressing concerns related to density in the legislation that we're sending down?

I mean, I would say a couple of things.

In collaboration with the mayor's office, what the design of the plan that we've tried to base we obviously are obligated to comply with HB 1110. So that's not really at issue.

I think that beyond that, uh, we have looked at the Puget Sound Regional Council's requirements for, um, providing a framework for the continued growth of the city and providing some rationale and basis for where we believe that growth can and should occur, and trying to thread that needle between the proposals for neighborhood centers, expansion of urban centers, expanded density along corridors, to do that in a surgical sort of way and to be informed by the existing fabric of neighborhoods.

And, you know, I think that what we're hearing is that some people think that we got it right.

Some people think we need to do more.

Some people think we need to do less.

And so we've been trying to...

tailor our approach as it relates to the components that are outlined in the legislation.

So obviously the legislation that you're getting in, uh, would be getting in May, uh, related to, uh, corridors and neighborhood centers.

We're still working on that right now.

Um, I'm not sure if that's, I'm not sure that answers your question.

It's,

it's fine for now uh let's continue the conversation offline uh but am keenly interested in hearing how the department intends and maybe we'll see that during the final proposed legislation that's that ends up being transmitted but in any event moving on my final question pertains to uh mailing mailers and so we talked about some of the outreach that was done uh and targeted outreach and efforts to reach broader audiences not just like you know fringe policy wonk types uh talked about earned media which is great also talked about some limitations with earned media uh want to talk get your thoughts on mailers so We've all been hearing a lot of feedback, which I appreciate all the feedback, the tremendous feedback that we've received so far from the public.

Very insightful, very empowering from my perspective.

So keep it coming.

A few themes.

One specific piece of feedback that I've heard a few times now in council chambers.

Written comments, and I've actually heard it from a few of my constituents in District one as well individually, is that people would or wish there would have been some sort of like organized mailer.

Someone specifically said the city should have sent a mailer that said your neighborhood is subject to rezone or, you know, like something in a conspicuous notice type of bold prints of some sort, which I think is a really interesting idea.

And mailers are expensive, but doing some sort of mailer outreach um could potentially be helpful so i guess two-part question did you do any mailers as part of the outreach and engagement strategy any whatsoever and then the second part is what do you think of that idea of engaging in mailer like some mailer targeted outreach for people or mass outreach.

So to the first question, no, we did not do any mailers.

To the second question, what do we think about mailers?

I think, well, I don't...

I don't know if it matters what I think about mailers.

But I think that the question is, are mailers an effective tool to get folks engaged?

I think that when we looked at how we were doing outreach to people, what the constraints on our budget were, We did research about doing a citywide mailer, and as you mentioned in your comments, it is prohibitively expensive to make that happen.

And so we made a conscious decision that we would invest our dollars in the other forms of engagement that we did do that we talked about already.

but I have heard some of the same, like I didn't get a, I didn't get anything in my snail mail.

So I've heard some of the same comments.

Thank you.

No further questions or comments, Madam Chair.

Thank you, council member Saka.

Next we have council member Rivera followed by council member Moore, council member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for being here today.

And thank you, OPCD, for being here today.

I'm going to echo some of the comments from my colleagues, but I want to make sure that I add my voice for the record.

And you've heard me say before about my frustration on the lack of public engagement, and more importantly, the lack of information that led to so few comments in the spring versus the fall.

In the spring, you got about 1,200, as you stated today, comments, public comments.

And in the fall, you got over 5,000.

And I believe that is because you provided more information to constituents based on feedback you received from us and perhaps some constituents at those listening sessions in the spring.

that there were not maps by which people understood what the proposals were.

And director, you and I have chatted about that.

And we were together at that fall session at Magnuson Park where folks gave that feedback.

At the point of which those maps were released, then people knew how their neighborhoods would be impacted, and then they were able to give feedback.

Unfortunately, the feedback was too late to incorporate in the actual plan, which I have to say, when I got here in January and shortly in the spring, just three months later about, was when the first set of sessions happened.

Even I didn't understand that if they didn't get their feed, if community did not get feedback in the spring, it would not be incorporated in the plan.

In fact, your team told me the opposite.

There'll be another opportunity to give feedback, and we will publish the maps later, which is true.

You publish the maps.

It's true.

People could give feedback, but it was not about the plan.

It was about the zoning piece.

So those are two different things.

And I think people are very, the frustration you are hearing is because we're hearing frustration from our constituents about, or many of us are, if not all of us, about the fact that they just were confused about the process.

And by the time they gave feedback, it was too late to incorporate in the actual plan, which some people would have wanted rather than just as part of changes to zoning legislation.

So that's the comment I'll make about that.

And I will say also that the lack of broad engagement, I was also told by OPCD to tell constituents to give feedback to you all.

But knowing what I know now, back in the spring, I would have engaged in a number of public sessions that I would have invited OPCD to so that you could have gotten really broad broader engagement because 12 because it sounds to me like you did you receive 1200 comments about and then you reached you had some coalitions who wrote letters those are more organizations that are probably more engaged in these things as local people, how you've heard my colleagues describe.

And so you made changes to the plan based on what I believe to be limited feedback.

And I also want to say that when I talk to constituents in the D4, people acknowledge and support that we need more housing across the city.

I mean, they have a lot of constituents who have kids who can't afford to come back and live where they grew up.

So there is broad support for more housing across the city.

the frustration around this outreach piece has nothing to do with a lack of support for more housing.

And I will say that folks understand HB 1110 is what I call the law of the land and we're gonna be doing that.

I think people were caught off guard by the additional piece to HB 1110. And I think people were not aware that that was happening until much later, and then they felt like it was too late.

So if that information had come earlier, I don't think you would be getting as much frustration Definitely from me and more importantly from my constituents, because the frustration I have is trying to pass on the information I'm hearing.

I think people would have felt they were in a better place and they had been brought along.

through the process.

And so that really has been the source of frustration, not a lack of support for additional housing.

I will say that there are some pieces, and you've noted, Michael, when you went through the sources of concern related to trees and transportation and infrastructure that are things that people very much care about, And I'm glad to see that you've noted it here.

And so my big question is, how are you going to address these were not addressed in the plan because you didn't get these in the spring.

If you had received this input in the spring, perhaps you would have been able to incorporate some changes in the plan that would have addressed these concerns.

But now we are where we are.

We can't go back in time.

So I too, you've heard from my colleagues ask about how will you incorporate this these concerns as part of then the zoning changes that you will be sending downstairs.

And Director, I thought I heard you say that you could still incorporate, you know, we're not as far along with the draft plan, you know, we'll be using information to inform changes.

So I don't know if that's because if the plan gets appealed, there'll be opportunity to incorporate changes to the plan or if you said that because council can amend the plan or if you just were referring to zoning legislation.

So I just wanna be clear on when you say we can make changes, what you mean exactly for clarity.

Sure, so we're working on changes related to phase, well, no, we're not calling it phases anymore, sorry, related to the corridors and centers legislation, so that's the legislation in May.

We aren't currently working on changes to the plan itself, which has already been transmitted, not the adoptive legislation, so we are still working on that as well.

So I guess...

We aren't.

Does that help?

Yes.

So the plan, you're not going to make changes to the plan is what it is.

The zoning legislation, you're going to incorporate some of the feedback that you heard into the zoning legislation that you send down.

We are doing that now.

I would say that like because the plan has been transmitted to Council, I think that we are still, or I'm still of the mindset that, like, in your conversation with us, if there's other changes to the plan that is now in your hands, like, we want to be able to help, as it relates to your analysis of those, the high-level policy work that's in the plan also.

We aren't changing that text language right now, but that's something that we would work with you on.

Yeah.

I just wanted to tack on to what Rico had to say there, which is the range of concerns and issues that I talked about in the couple of slides that you were referring to.

That range of issues, I would say, primarily can be addressed and would be addressed through the zoning legislation.

These are a lot of very particular issues that relate to the impacts and the outcomes of development that are shaped by zoning.

So our House Bill 1110 zoning, the other legislation on zoning, that is where we would be looking and where you would be looking as a council in offering any amendments, but it's that legislation that has the biggest impact on everything from trees to parking to other issues.

The comprehensive plan, as Rico alluded to, is a higher-level policy document.

And even where there are boundaries, where you may be considering boundary adjustments to the comp plan, there's latitude in the direction the comp plan gives on zoning for you to consider tailoring even the boundaries you see on the growth strategy map.

So we built in some flexibility so that you can consider as a council, the more detailed proposal in the zoning legislation to respond, especially to all of the granular comments you've gotten from your constituents.

Thank you, Michael.

I will say that the comp plan, it is a policy document and it does state very clearly what we will be doing.

And in, in, And as far as it is that broader policy thing, constituents are concerned that these concerns like trees and infrastructure and transportation were not adequately addressed in this plan that is the roadmap for how we are going to be doing zoning legislation.

So I think constituents understand that you can always make changes at the point of where you're doing the zoning legislation, you can make changes, but they would have liked to have seen in the plan, some of these concerns addressed because they then feel like if it is not in the plan, that's supposed to be our 20 year plan, which I know gets updated every 10 years, there's a discomfort in knowing that there are things in the plan that they don't, that they have concerns with.

And if we had started this process earlier, as I said earlier, you might have incorporated some of these issues like trees or transportation in the plan, but they're not there.

So I understand that they can be addressed on the back end with the zoning legislation, but folks would have liked to have seen tweaks made to the plan that would be more in line with a balanced approach that they would have liked to have seen.

And I think that's fair for constituents to have expected that.

So I just want to clarify, I mean obviously in the plan there is a lot of, there are numerous policies both related to transportation and related to trees.

I think what I hear you saying is that there is an interest by community members to modify some of that 50,000 foot level policy language.

I mean, I think before the plan is adopted, because it isn't adopted, I think there's still the opportunity to make other changes.

Correct, but that would be at the council level.

You guys didn't do the work of making sure that those changes were incorporated because you didn't have the broad comments in the spring that you would have needed to make those changes before you sent it to us.

I understand what you're saying.

It is what it is at this point in time.

But just that is what folks are very frustrated by.

They didn't feel like the engagement was early and robust broadly and that only some voices got heard.

I understand what you're saying.

All right.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Next we have Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the presentation and answering our tough questions.

So let me just try to nail you down a little bit, because I hear a lot of sort of careful parsing of answers, and I understand that there's the mayor's office, and then you answer to a particular question.

different authority than the council but that said what i want to know specifically this is relating to neighborhood centers which i'll note hb 1110 does not require neighborhood centers correct correct so um and i will also note that i think we have three proposed for d5 two of which seem fine and actually the third was I don't entirely know why.

I think that that was a missed opportunity and might be looking at including it.

That said, are you saying that the comments that you've received since the fall can now be utilized to change the legislation that you send down to remove certain neighborhood centers designation?

specifically like Maple Leaf.

Can you, in the legislation that you're sending down, can you remove that designation?

Can you remove the Madrona designation?

We are not removing any of the designations.

Okay, so you're not actually utilizing any of the feedback that you've received from significant numbers of people who are going to actually live in the neighborhood where the neighborhood centers proposed.

Is that correct?

You're leaving that to council to deal with that.

So I would say while we are not removing any of the designations, we are still in an active process of analysis and consideration related to the zoning within the designations.

Right, which leads me to my next question, which is why would you bother designating it as a neighborhood center if you're then going to zone it down?

Why should we trust that we designated a neighborhood center and then 10 years down the road, it doesn't get fully built up as a neighborhood center and we change the zoning?

To me, that makes no sense.

to designate something a neighborhood center which has a particular, there's certain criteria that need to exist for something to be designated as a neighborhood center, and then to change the zoning to bring it down to something that's more palatable to the people in the district.

Why not just remove the designation?

So I want to be clear.

The neighborhood center designation doesn't designate what the level of density is within the center itself.

And I think that we've had this conversation in the past.

all neighborhood centers are not equal for any of a number of reasons, right?

Like what's there pre-existing, what's in the neighborhood and surrounding area, all of those things.

There were very specific criteria, and I apologize that I don't have it in front of me right now, but we can get it to you.

There were very specific criteria that were used to identify the...

all of the centers that were originally considered within the EIS and then the ones that were incorporated into the plan.

The reason I refer to contemplation of zoning within the centers, that that additional level of density or capacity for growth beyond what's identified in HB 1110. The intent with the neighborhood centers is to acknowledge what exists in neighborhoods currently and suggest that there is the opportunity for additional growth to build on what is there today.

So I don't know if that's helpful, but.

Well, actually I respectfully disagree because you've been here and you presented that a base, one of the reasons that you were pursuing neighborhood centers was so you could build five and six story buildings and that the zoning, the neighborhood center is what drives the zoning and that's where we're looking at five and six.

We're not talking about three and four.

What I'm hearing you say is, well, we can negotiate.

You give us the designation, then we'll negotiate the height.

My position is, why bother negotiating the height?

Because I think down the road, then, we are looking at keeping the door open to putting up five and six-story buildings because we've zoned it that way.

So that is not a sufficient response.

Secondly, I want to know about what are you doing about trees?

There have been comments, even from the spring, about trees, and I don't see any kind of really specific policy or strategy to deal with trees.

And simply saying we're going to put trees in the parking strips is ridiculous because we're not going to have parking, for one thing.

And also, as we see in Beacon Hill, where they just had to take down 30 or 40 trees in order to redo the...

drainage system there, the right-of-way, you're not able to preserve trees.

So where exactly are you taking all of this very, very concentrated and I would say across the city comments about truly, truly preserving tree canopy.

I'm not talking about replacing a 50 or 100 year old tree with three saplings.

That is not comparable.

So where is that going to happen in the legislation that comes down to us in May?

So the answer of where is it going to be in the legislation in May, I'm not prepared to answer that question.

Okay, so right now there's no, obviously I take from that answer, there's no intent to actually address the true concerns that are being expressed across the city about trees.

Thank you.

The next thing I want to talk about is...

Council member Moore, we had it.

Council member, I have something to add.

I do want to, so we are very aware of the comments about trees that some of which pertain to the comprehensive plan as a plan.

Some of them pertain to the zoning proposal.

Some of them pertain to the city's tree ordinance.

The trees is a very, I know that you're aware is a very multifaceted issue.

We are working with the chair, Council Member Hollingsworth, to consider how we could bring a more comprehensive conversation about trees and how that intersects with the comp plan with the growth strategy to later meeting.

Definitely not trying to sidestep that at all here.

We're taking it very seriously, and we could come back and give you a lot of information and have a conversation.

Well, I appreciate that.

It seems a little late in the day when people have been talking about this, but nonetheless, later is better than never.

So I appreciate that.

I also feel like the attempts to accommodate a greater variety of topology is not actually being appropriately dealt with.

We need to be looking at including courtyard colleges.

We need to, I'm not entirely sure that the FAR is actually going to incentivize developers to build stack flats, which is an important piece to this.

So I'd like to see more of how that's actually going to work.

And then I guess to Councilmember Kettle's comment, I'm not ready to vote on this.

This is premature.

We got a vote on 11-10, and I think there's a lot of room to actually make 11-10 deal with some of our affordability issues, which are absolutely a crisis in this city.

Simply building more rental housing for private equity to own is not the answer.

We've got some issues dealing with that in Olympia.

But anyway, that's a separate piece here.

This idea that we're going to solve all the problems for renters by just building a lot of housing If it's private equity that's owning it and they get an exemption for any new development for 10 years, you're not going to get stabilized rent.

So let's just be clear about that.

But basically what I would like to say, and I echo the comments of my colleague, Councilmember Rivera, this public process please let's not repeat this next time.

Let's do a better job.

We were able to get a flyer about the Initiative 1B.

I'm assuming that some of that was private money.

If we can send out a flyer about an initiative on social housing, we ought to be able to send out a flyer about a comprehensive plan that is going to completely remake the way the city looks for the next 10 and 20 years.

Not only looks, but operates.

You're talking about removing parking, which we need to remove parking, but that is going to have a significant impact on this city.

We need to do a better job of bringing in public comment.

And I think the very fact...

My takeaway is that when you actually manage to get broader engagement, you actually found that there was a lot less buy-in to the plan that had been put forth.

And what troubles me is that when it became clear that there was less buy-in from the people that are going to live with this development on the ground, there's still no willingness to truly engage and refashion this.

And that work is being put in our laps.

And I don't necessarily think that that's appropriate.

It also pits neighbor against neighbor, council member against council member.

It is not a one Seattle approach.

So please do a better job next time.

And I do not want to be rushing through this.

We've got to deal with 1110, absolutely.

But please let us have these conversations to make sure that this city truly looks like what it needs to look like and truly has affordability.

And I would also like to know, how many conversations did you have with the Master Builders Association?

How many conversations did you have with private developers and coming up with both in terms of what would work for them and also just allowing basically opening the floodgates to this sort of unlimited development, which is not going to get us where we need to be.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

I see that Council Member Rivera, you have your hand raised, but I want to recognize Council President Nelson, you haven't spoke yet, so I just want to recognize if you wanted to speak.

If not, no worries.

I don't want to put you on the spot.

I appreciate that.

I think that other people should go forward.

Awesome.

Okay.

We got council member Rivera and then council member Strauss and just want to let you all know we're about hour and a hour and 45 minutes in and this is scheduled for two hours.

So just wanted to keep that in mind.

Thank you, council member Rivera.

Just a very quick comment that conversely also, if you had done the public engagement, truly public engagement to residents broadly early on, you would have seen that a lot of people actually would have been in support of a plan that was really a one Seattle approach because if they have the information early and if they feel like they're able to make some tweaks to the plan early, I think you would have seen support for some of these things anyway.

But it's just people felt like it was a very backhanded way of doing it.

And I never want to be in that space.

I want to be in the space that we're bringing folks along, not where people are feeling like they were not given consideration and they were not given the opportunity to make any tweaks of any kind that were important to them.

So I say, conversely, if you had given them the opportunity, they would have supported some.

or tweaks because I've had those types of conversations from folks in the district that I represent.

So it's a missed opportunity to really get people on board and really get some of these hard issues addressed that we all support.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Hollingsworth.

I had a couple notes that I didn't end on in my previous comments, which is my comments were really outreach is never done.

Outreach is not done, but outreach also is a, circular loop where it's not just hearing from people.

It is making a choice and then following up with them as well.

And so in my own personal capacity as a District 6 representative, I've already said this to colleagues, saying it again here on the record, I'm going to be going out and walking all of these different neighborhood centers with residents.

I'm taking office hours.

I have people coming to meet with me about the Comprehensive Planet every week in my office hours, sometimes multiple office hour appointments in a row about it.

And so for me, outreach is not done.

No questions.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

I just wanna thank everyone for their comments.

And also I thought that this was, wanna thank obviously our mayor's office and OPCD.

I thought this was incredibly important presentation to have so we could talk about the transparency about information that has been received, how comments were being incorporated, who was at the table, who is at the table, who is not, what does that look like, the feedback that was received, and also the method.

The methodology is incredibly important about how we're receiving information from folks, which is important.

And what I have heard, and I will continue to meet with people, I want to thank Director Kenny Dodongo for going to join me with some meetings and really appreciate you opening up your schedule to meet with different groups and organizations and people that might have not, you know, did comments or before or whatever.

We're just, we're trying to meet with everyone as much as possible.

what I have heard from District 3 and then other district but that they want people want density to equal affordability and sometimes that does not match up and so you know we've heard about that have heard from people about anti-displacement and wanting to make sure that People can be able to grow and live here in the city.

It's not one or the other.

I will continue to say that no matter how much people think it's versus us, versus them.

Nobody is trying to fight.

People are trying to get along in the city.

We are done fighting.

I know some people want to fight and that's fine.

but we are just trying to get along and move forward and not feel rushed.

I've heard a lot of people talk about flat stacks, wanting that.

Family housing, we've heard a lot about that, that we have a lot of one bedrooms and a lot of studios that are in Seattle and people want two, three bedrooms.

And what are we doing in Seattle to create that better opportunity for people to be able to do that?

I also wanna highlight and thank you all.

I know that you all have done a lot of outreach.

so far in the city and I know that it's never enough and just double down on Councilmember Strauss's comments about outreach is consistent and I know that now people are outreaching to us because they know that we are now in you know discussing the comprehensive plan at the council level and so they are obviously going to outreach to us the front porch of City Hall is what I like to call the City Council where it's the first thing that people see and the first doorbell that people ring which is fine and so really appreciate that but I also know that people want to make informed decisions up here they want to make sure that we have all the information that that it's not just the political voices that are the ones steering conversations that this is from community that this is birth from people that are in community from community that are connected to this and and are going to be impacted by this people um all different walks of life.

And so I think that's incredibly important for us to understand and for us to listen to.

And I think you all have heard from our council members and my colleagues some of those feedback and comments because we are getting the brunt of it in the conversations and the phone calls and the emails and the people talking to us on the bus and the people talking to us on the sidewalk and the people talking to us in church and the people talking to me in the grocery line and the people talking to me right at my house as they're walking by telling me about the comprehensive plan.

As you can see, I can tell you all the ways in which I am accessible and where people are reaching out, okay?

Chair.

Council Member Strauss.

I'll add to that list at a backyard fire in my own backyard.

And backyard fires, okay.

And people calling my mother and her telling me about stuff, okay?

Can you imagine a phone call from your mother about comprehensive plan?

Anyways, so I just wanted to throw that out there because it is important that we are beyond City Hall, not just through emails and stuff.

We are constantly having conversations.

City Council is our life.

It's like you don't get to take that hat off and leave it at the second floor.

You literally have it everywhere you go in life.

And that's what we signed up for.

We are made for it, so I welcome it.

But it is here.

Okay?

So anyways, I wanted to, I don't know if you all have any closing comments at all about the feedback, but I really appreciate you all coming.

The only thing I would close with is I agree 100% community engagement doesn't have an end date.

It is ongoing.

That is why I am making myself available to everyone on the dais.

the community meetings, the neighborhood walks, like I want to be a resource for all of you and for our office to be able to work with you as you look at additional changes and opportunities within the plan.

Thank you.

Oh, I see council member Solomon.

Council member Solomon, you're recognized.

Thank you very much.

or recognizing me, I just wanted to let you know that I am engaged.

I have been listening and I agree with what most of what has been said from my colleagues regarding engagement and especially regarding preserving our tree canopy, increasing our tree canopy.

As has been said, our, our constituents are reaching out.

They have some real concerns about the entire process, whether they have been heard, whether their concerns have been taken into account.

And I am looking at how we can balance development with preserving trees.

I'm also mindful that just because we have density doesn't mean we're gonna have affordability.

I definitely want us to have affordability as well as increasing our housing stock.

And as you had mentioned, Councilmember Hollingsworth, about family housing, you know, the importance of having family housing so that there is that possibility to keep people in their neighborhoods, the possibility of the creation of generational wealth through property ownership and that's very important to the folks in my neighborhoods in D2.

So I just wanted to acknowledge that and I wanted to thank the gentleman for their presentation today and the information they provided for the outreach they have done to this point and looking forward to other opportunities to continue that outreach so people are informed You know, when we're looking at things at a 30,000 foot level, it's a lot different when it's like, okay, this is what's going to be happening on your block.

So that's where people are more engaged and having those discussions that they can definitely feel heard, I think is important.

So I just wanted to offer that and I'm looking forward to further conversations about this.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Solomon.

Really appreciate that.

And I do see two hands, still Council Member Moore, Council Member Strauss, but I'm assuming those are old hands.

Okay, old, old, old.

Council President Nelson, you just raised your hand.

You're recognized.

Could you please remind me, early on in your comments today, you spoke of the change from the first...

and it's now before us and you said that there were the decision to apply HB 1110 across the board evenly that the plan for anti-displacement carve-outs so to speak I can't remember the words you use but when that was when you when you decided against going in that direction do you know how what was the delta in units of housing that that would have what is the difference between the first one and the second one, not all over the city, but in those particular areas where you were looking?

I don't know the answer to that question.

I don't recall that we did rigorous analysis of that.

We did release maps, however, during the spring of 2024 that showed the areas where they would be applied.

They were, it was relatively limited area of the city, not insignificant, but it was far, it was probably in the 10 to 15% range of neighborhood residential area.

So it wouldn't be a lot of units because certain analysis we certainly could theoretically do, but.

I don't I'm not putting more work on your plate I was just wondering if that information was available thanks awesome well thank you if I don't see any more hands that is the end of the presentation thank you everyone there's no items on the agenda and I don't see any business other business coming before the committee I'm gonna take a point of privilege I just saw an article unfortunately that Shelly Brothers from Wild Rose, who's one of the co-owners, unfortunately passed away.

Wild Rose is a staple in nightlife, obviously on Capitol Hill, and just what it stands for and what it means.

And just unfortunate, sending thoughts and prayers to her partners and family during this hard time.

So I know people are hurting right now on Capitol Hill, and I just wanted to take a point of privilege to recognize that in our meeting.

If there's no other further business, this concludes the February 5th meeting for the select committee of the comprehensive plan.

We will see everyone back here at five o'clock sharp for our public hearing.

It is now officially 1256. Thank you.