Land Use & Neighborhoods Committee Special Meeting 12/321

Thank you.

Good morning.

The December 3rd, 2021 meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will come to order.

This is a special committee.

It is 9.34 a.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Present.

Chair Strauss.

Present.

Three present.

Thank you.

And Council Member Peterson did ask to be excused and has been excused from this committee.

The Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee of the City of Seattle begins our committee with a land acknowledgment.

This is a moment for reflection.

This is not intended to be rote behavior and not intended to be a passport to, after we say these words, to continue and do whatever we want to do.

This is a moment for us to reflect on where we are, who has come before us, and who will come after us as our time here on earth is short.

We will begin our meeting by acknowledging we are on the traditional and ancestral lands of the first people of this region, past and present, represented in a number of tribes and as urban natives.

And we honor with gratitude the land itself and the people of this land.

We start with this acknowledgment to recognize the fact that we are guests on this land and must steward our land as such.

This is here at the Land Use Committee because This is the land use committee, we take care of, we make the policy decisions for how we use our land in our city.

And as we make these decisions, it is important for us to recognize who has come before us.

Thank you.

With our moment of reflection concluded, we will carry it with us as we endeavor into these agenda items.

We have five agenda items on today's agenda, all for briefing and discussion as part of my policy of having items before the committee twice before going to full council.

So these are all just briefings.

We will be voting on these at the regularly scheduled council meeting next Wednesday.

So the draft of the Crown Hill Action Plan, Council Bill 120215, which waives some land use requirements for the West Point Treatment Plant.

facility, excuse me, Council Bill 120239, which updates the energy code, Council Bill 120206, which establishes long-term protections for manufactured home parks, and Council Bill 120214, which amends Seattle Municipal Code to implement the name change to neighborhood residential.

The next meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee is on Wednesday, December 8th, and it will include public hearings and votes on most of today's agenda items.

Before we begin, if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

At this time, we will open the remote public comment period for items on today's agenda.

Before we begin, I ask everyone please be patient as we learn to operate the system in real time.

As a reminder, public comment is limited to items on today's agenda.

While it remains our strong intent to have public comment regularly included on meeting agendas, the city council reserves the right to end or eliminate these public comment periods at any point if we deem the system is being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and in a manner in which we are able to conduct our necessary business.

I will moderate public comment in the following manner.

Public comment will be up to 10 minutes.

We currently have 11 speakers.

And so I'm going to ask, so it's gonna be up to 11 minutes.

Each speaker will be given one minute to speak.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

If you have not yet registered to speak and would like to, you can sign up before the end of public comment by going to the council's website.

The public comment link is also on today's agenda.

Once I call the speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt if you have been unmuted will be the speaker's cue.

It is your turn to speak.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item in which you are addressing.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are remaining of your allotted time.

Once the speaker hears the chime, we ask you please begin to wrap up your public comments.

The speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once you have completed your public comment, we ask you please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via the Seattle Channel or the listening options on the agenda.

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

On our list today, we have Chris Hellstern, Robin Briggs, Michael Ruby, Iris Antman, Holly Towns, James Dick is not present, Diane Cook is not present, Linda McCoy, David Haynes and Ed Marquez, you are also not present.

If you have signed up for public comment and are listed as not present, please make sure to call the number that you received in the email response from signing up for public comment and make sure you are not on the listen line.

So with that, Chris Hellstorm, then Robin Briggs and Michael Ruby.

Good morning, Chris.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Chris Helstern, an architect and sustainability director with Miller Hall in Seattle.

I'm here as a representative of the American Institute of Architects Seattle chapter in support of the ordinance to require heat pump hot water heaters for all commercial buildings.

I'll keep this brief with three main points.

First, the City of Seattle Energy Code already goes a long way to supporting the city's efforts to reduce its emissions, but exceptions like this one need to be updated to help ensure the city will actually meet its climate targets on time.

Second, heat pump hot water heater technology exists now in the marketplace and is something that our engineer partners know how to design for.

And finally, reducing emissions now is also a move to improve human health.

We know that fossil fuel-based emissions are harmful to all of us and especially our more vulnerable population.

Reducing emissions now saves lives.

Thank you for your support of heat pump hot water heaters for commercial buildings.

Thank you, Chris.

And Mr. Ahn, we are doing one minute for speakers today so that we can get through everyone on the list.

Robin Briggs, you're up next, and then Michael Ruby, followed by Iris Antman.

Good morning, Robin.

Hi, good morning, Council.

My name is Robin Briggs, and I'm calling in support of amending the energy code to require all new commercial buildings that have hot water heaters to use efficient electrical heaters in place of fossil fuel.

Greenhouse gas emissions from Seattle buildings have sharply increased in the last few years due in large part to new buildings.

We absolutely need the new buildings, but we need them to use all clean energy.

Developers who put in fossil fuel-based heaters aren't doing the building owners any favors because over the lifetime of the heater, the cost of running it will be more.

These heaters typically last about 20 years, and in 2042, what kind of water heater do we want these buildings to have?

And lastly, we all know that natural gas pipeline leaks are a big source of methane emissions, but new research shows that leakages from gas appliances are also far more than originally estimated.

These leakages of partially combusted natural gas are full of toxic particulates that cause all sorts of respiratory diseases.

So for all these reasons, please pass the amended energy code.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Robin, and I'd like everyone to know, Council Member Lewis did join us before public comment got going.

Michael Ruby, you're up next, followed by Iris Itman and then Holly Towns.

James Dick, Diane Cook, and Ed Marquez were not present at this time.

Please do call in.

Good morning, Michael.

Good morning, Council Members.

This is Mike Ruby from Wallingford, and I'm calling in to support the amendments to the Energy Code.

I've been an energy and environmental engineering engineer for the past 50 years.

I've worked with this equipment.

I've worked with problems of powering buildings and evaluating their energy.

I know this is important.

I know it can be done.

I know that you should act now.

And if you have any consideration about waiting on this, just talk to the people up in Linden.

They'll tell you we can't wait.

Please pass this today.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Michael.

Up next is Iris Antman, followed by Holly Towns, James Dick, and Diane Cook.

You're not present, so we will then be followed by Linda McCoy.

Iris, good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Iris Antman, and I'm commenting in support of the amendments to the Energy Code.

Being that buildings are the second leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions in the city, and that the climate crisis is upon us, largely caused by using fossil fuels for space heating, water heating, and cooking, it's imperative that you take the needed steps to end the fossil gas use for these functions and switch to clean electricity.

The continued burning of fossil fuels not only add to our warming climate, but also cause worsening air pollution both inside and outside of our homes and buildings.

Please pass ordinances that require energy that comes from clean electricity.

These rules already apply to hotels and multifamily buildings, and they should be extended to all commercial buildings equally.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Iris.

Up next is Holly Townsend.

Ed Marquez, I see you've signed in again.

but you are still not present.

So you filled out the form, but have not called in.

So if you'd like to speak, please do follow the prompt in the email that you've just now received.

Holly Towns, followed by Linda McCoy and then David Haynes.

Good morning, Holly.

We have, Holly, I see you there.

Press star six, not pound six.

Come off of mute.

Try one more time, Holly, if you wanna press star six.

There you are, good morning.

And now you might be on mute on your own phone.

We cannot hear you yet.

There you are, good morning.

Oh, you just went back on mute by pressing star six one more time.

Hello?

Good morning.

We hear you.

Hello.

Hi.

Hi, this is Holly Towns.

I'm a mechanical engineer and have worked in buildings for efficiency for the last 50 years.

And I'm a climate advocate because of my children.

and all those that will face this exponential threat to our planet.

I therefore urge you to pass the Energy Code Amendment to require efficient electric water heating in all commercial buildings, not fossil fuels.

OSCE has said that buildings represent 37% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the city, with 75% of this coming from gas, space, and water heating.

They also report that the city needs to accelerate by 17% per year its efforts to reduce greenhouse gases in buildings to meet its current climate goals.

The climate is known with the least resources and remember the heat waves and smoke.

This code changes a least cost way to reduce greenhouse gases in buildings.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Holly.

James Dick and Diane Cook, we are not seeing you present, so please do call in on the number provided in the email you received after signing in.

If you're on the listen line, you're not in the right place.

Up next is Linda McCoy and then David Haynes.

Ed Marquez, you are also not present.

Good morning, Linda.

I see you're there, Linda.

Press star six and we'll get you going.

Make sure you're not pressing pound six, Linda.

Also known as asterisk six.

I'm not seeing you come off mute.

Let's promote David Haynes and then we'll come back to Linda.

Oh, Linda, I see you're off mute.

There you are.

Good morning.

There we are.

Thank you, Dan and everyone on the committee.

Thanks for your work.

I'm calling in about the land use overlay for the mobile home park.

I did send an extensive e-mail to everyone on the committee yesterday, so you may or may not have had a chance to look at it.

I just had a chance to read the actual proposed ordinance, and of course I'm in favor of it.

We've been working on this for a long time.

I'm also speaking on behalf of Lynette Chase, who could not be here due to health reasons.

So she said I'm not just in favor I'm strongly in favor so that's for her vote.

And I am in favor too but I do have some concerns and I don't know if things can be equal or if words can be revised and still get this moving along as needed.

But so I guess I would just request that you tune in to the email that I sent to look at those considerations.

Thank you, Linda.

I know we have seen your email.

OK.

OK.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

Ed Marquez, I see you have again signed up.

I don't know if you're not getting the right email back, but you're still not present.

So when you sign in, you should get an automatically generated email response that gives you the right phone number to call in on.

We do have one speaker remaining present, David Haynes.

James Dick, Diane Cook, you're also not present.

So David Haynes, good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you.

Land use or abuse.

Seattle has a lot of modern third world slums and ill suited buildings that are propping up banks.

Democrats seem to want to keep us in rundown real estate where watering down the building codes and interpretations of what constitutes residential and commercial zoned areas is resulting in further oppression of the people and the workers presently forced to live and work close to the road sometimes on the corner of the low level to the street noise in industrial gentrified areas.

Well, council acts like they're helping with restrictive zoning and land use only to backstab a robust higher level requirement of buildings and homes away from the mental health causing corner lots of stop and go traffic that seem to have warehouse echo quality through the homes and the businesses, ruining the quality of life.

Well, no offense, but the council is endangering the community, lying about street cafe expansion.

claiming they closed Ballard Ave to through traffic, which they have not.

Yet council policies are allowing four-list dining on Slanted Road on Ballard Ave, where drunk drivers and loud delivery trucks park within inches of diners whose feet are soaked in a rain, because forced to dine in the gutter of the street next to the public sidewalk, where maskless spit-spraying people are walking past waiter carrying your food across the public sidewalk, out into the dirty street.

It's obvious Democrats are big-bang donor loyalists.

Thank you, Mr. Haynes.

appreciate you calling in this morning.

And Ed Marquez, you have become present.

Welcome to the committee.

I see you're off mute.

Please take it away.

Yes, I hope you can hear me.

My name is Ed Marquez.

Thank you.

I live in South Park and I'm calling about the neighborhood residential rezoning name change.

I just want to state my support.

My house was recently I'm a homeowner and I was recently rezoned to single residential lot.

And I just want to emphasize there's a lot of restrictions.

I wanted to build, instead of building small, small house, I wanted to have like stacked homes and I was sold as an exception.

And so I just think that there's like a lot of restrictions on developers sometimes and the type of structure you can build.

And I just want to encourage more density and also less restrictions on developers and homeowners, and also with the cottages.

I love the cottages.

I love high density.

That's why I live in Seattle.

That's why I moved to South Park.

Keep that up.

And thank you.

Thank you, Ed.

And thank you for sticking with us, getting through on to the, getting through to the right number.

James Dick, Diane Cook, we do not see you present.

clerks or IT, can you confirm we have no more speakers remotely present at this time?

Affirmative, there are no more public comment registrants.

Thank you.

Seeing as we have no additional speakers remotely present, we will move on to the next agenda item.

Item one, our first agenda item is a briefing and discussion of the draft Crown Hill Community Action Plan.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

agenda item one, Crown Hill urban village community action plan.

Wonderful.

I have been waiting for this for quite some time.

I'm quite excited that this is finally before committee.

We're going to start today with a presentation from OPCD staff on the draft community action plan before turning to Crown Hill community members who can share more about their involvement in crafting this plan.

Katie, would you like to introduce yourself and kick us off?

I would love to.

Thank you so much.

Um, so good morning, everyone.

Thank you so much for having me here today.

My name is Katie Hema.

I'm a community planner and urban designer with the office of planning and community development.

I'm super excited to be here.

And I'm also super excited that we've got Karen and Phillip here from the Crown Hill community.

So, um, let me get this sharing real quick.

All right.

Are we good?

Can you see this?

Good to go.

Good to go?

Cool.

All right, so today I'm here to provide an overview of the Crown Hill Urban Village Community Planning Process and Action Plan, go over some of the major themes in the plan, and then highlight just some of the strategies and actions that are included, as well as some of the work that is already underway and that has already happened, and just a couple opportunities for future coordination.

So I'll start with just a little bit of background, super high level, a little bit of community context just to get y'all situated.

So the Groundhull Urban Village, it's located in northwest Seattle, right about where I have this little circle with the CH in it.

I am showing this on the Waterlines Project map from the Burke Museum.

This is a rendering of the Seattle region from pre-indigenous settlement in the mid-19th century.

And so I just, again, as we're talking about the Crown Hill Urban Village Action Plan, which does set out a vision for guiding growth for both current and future generations, I do want to again actively recognize that we are on the unceded ancestral and current territories of the Coast Salish peoples, who have stewarded this land since time immemorial, and that this plan commits to working together as we continue to work towards a more equitable future.

The urban village is geographically centered around the intersection of Northwest 85th Street and the 15th Avenue and Holman Road corridor.

So while the Crown Hill neighborhood is partially within the urban village boundary, the urban village also includes portions of Whittier Heights and Loyal Heights.

And so I just want to point that out is that this isn't just Crown Hill, this is really bringing together a couple neighborhoods.

So today the urban village is home to about 2,500 residents, many businesses, services, and facilities that bring people not just from this area but from surrounding neighborhoods.

So the rezones that were implemented in 2019 as part of mandatory housing affordability extended the urban village.

So you can see the dotted line, that was the urban village before, it's been extended.

There were some rezones from single family to residential small lot.

Some other increases in density.

So it allowed for adding height, additional capacity in some of those areas that were already zoned for multifamily.

So this added capacity, along with the availability of frequent bus service that connects the area to downtown and to the surrounding neighborhoods.

And the Crown Hill Urban Village is really likely to see incremental growth over the coming years.

And we're actually already seeing some of that some new townhouse developments, some new apartment developments going in.

So just a couple other few contextual conditions to note.

So along the 15th Avenue and Holman Corridor, there are a lot of single story commercial buildings with large parking lots while they're underutilized.

And then also important to know is that the portion of the urban village and the surrounding areas north of 85th, much of it was annexed into the city of Seattle largely after it had been developed.

So there aren't a lot of formal sidewalks or sorry, it's like traditional curb and gutter sidewalks or formalized drainage in those areas and on those neighborhood streets.

All right, so with that super quick high level overview, I'll move a little bit into the planning process.

So as I mentioned, the community planning, sorry, MHA had started already.

So in the fall of 2018, OPCD in partnership with SDOT, SPU, And D.O.N., mainly, initiated a focused community planning process to explore strategies for maintaining and improving the quality of life for the community as the built environment would start to change to accommodate more people, largely with those MHA reasons.

So when we started this process, the outreach and MHA had already started.

It was already in the works.

and the Crown Hill Urban Village Community for Smart Growth had already done a ton of organizing and bringing the community together to discuss those potential future zoning changes.

So city staff was able to get a really solid understanding of some of the major concerns and community desires early on in this process, thanks to all the hard work of those community organizers.

some of which are who are here today.

So because the community planning process was not focused on zoning changes, that was all being considered under MHA, which is usually the case for a lot of our planning projects.

This was really focused more on collaborating with the community, partnering with our sister departments to explore neighborhood specific strategies and actions and identify how priorities for investments, for policies and programs could work together to improve livability for the neighborhood.

So we started the process in the fall of 2018. We built it around a series of four community workshops in which we invited community members to work together to, you know, talk about things they love about their neighborhood, talk about things they want to improve, and start to explore solutions and refine and prioritize those ideas.

So each one of the workshops built on the previous one.

And we gathered a ton of great ideas for what change would look like or how we could address certain issues in the neighborhood.

And we continue to refine and prioritize those over the coming sessions.

Obviously, we understand the limitation of public meetings.

So we provided multiple and varied opportunities for engagement to really try and reach a much broader range.

So some of the things we did were distributing surveys in Spanish.

We used a web-based storytelling tool to both share information but also host a mapping exercise.

We actually went door-knocking, mainly to reach renters.

We met with the residents and the staff at the La Botella Youth Home.

We conducted phone interviews with workers at senior homes and adult care centers, as well as the tiny village.

We talked to property owners and we did tabling and neighborhood events.

We also worked with the newly, at the time, the newly formed Crown Hills Village Association in an effort to build a working relationship and support the work they were already doing and their capacity for continued engagement.

So let's talk a little bit about the plan.

We wrapped up the last workshop in December 2019, and then in March 2020, everything went on lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

So we did have to put the project on hold as the city shifted our resources to address some urgent and immediate issues.

But in fall this year, community advocates, largely the Crown Hill Village Association, worked with Council Member Strauss to really get the ball rolling on this again and get the plan wrapped up.

So that's what we're here today doing.

And let's talk a little bit about what is in it.

So an action plan, which is different than a neighborhood plan, an action plan is sort of it catalogs actions and strategies to implement the community's vision.

And that includes responsibilities for the city and also responsibilities for the community and carrying out the aspects of that work.

So this action plan is really a roadmap for how the city and the community can continue to collaborate to bring about change.

And it really endeavors to articulate the community's aspirations, but also to identify opportunities for improving livability through growth, through community action, and through coordinated investments.

So the plan is organized into three community priorities, and each one of those has a list of strategies and then also actions that include opportunities for those coordinated investments.

So there's 11 total strategies, I think with 27 associated actions.

So the first one is titled A Distinct Neighborhood with Great Destinations and a Vibrant Public Realm.

So this section is really about balancing growth with open spaces and green spaces for social interaction and growing a vibrant pedestrian-oriented retail center that attracts small businesses and is a hub for social life.

The second one is streets that encourage walking and make it easy to get around.

So this includes strategies to address pedestrian comfort and walkability, especially in those residential areas of the neighborhood that don't have sidewalks.

It also looks at how to improve connectivity across those arterial roads and how to improve the pedestrian experience along those arterial roads.

And then the third community priority being connected, engaged, and thriving communities.

So this looks at strategies that work to foster a cohesive identity that can bring together those multiple neighborhoods, that supports economic opportunity and local businesses, and that continues to build the capacity of community organizations so that they can lead initiatives and really continue to bring their community together as they have done so far.

The plan also does include urban design recommendations that are based on community input to help inspire a vision for the character and quality of future improvements.

So I'm not going to go through all 27 actions.

I'll cover a few to give you a flavor of what the plan includes.

So this first slide is actually a lot of things that have already happened that the community has brought together in the sort of couple years since we started this process.

The desire to grow a new social and retail sort of heart of the neighborhood arose really early in the process.

The community has dubbed this idea Home and Grow.

And so as a result, we were actually able to work with Council Member O'Brien during the MHA process to add an amendment that would actually designate one block of Mary Avenue and Northwest 90th as pedestrian streets.

And so doing so essentially that supports the community's desire to grow that pedestrian-oriented commercial district.

It requires certain design of new construction.

It requires commercial uses at grade.

So it really does support that vision.

So to further this goal, the community hosted a series of summer street festivals in the summer of 2019. There was live music, there were food trucks, movies, games, bubbles, and very importantly, free popsicles.

They were super fun, really successful, really brought the community out.

And as part of the series, they planned and came together to paint a street mural on 90th, which is the top picture on this slide.

They also work to add a curb bulb with some colorful planters and have activated an unused portion of the right of way.

There's sort of an odd angle street right there to plant a community garden.

So all really amazing things sort of working towards being a catalyst for creating this social heart of the neighborhood.

So the plan also does identify opportunities to add pedestrian and bike crossings across arterial roads.

And so the example shown here on the very bottom is slated to be installed, I think, in 2022 at 15th and 83rd, and that's part of SDOT's Neighborhood Street Fund Program.

So this was also something that the plan sort of helped kick into action.

So, a couple other just examples that are in the plan.

A lot of the actions focus on leveraging future development to help shape that pedestrian oriented heart of the neighborhood.

So, opportunities there would be designating a portion of either Mary Ave or 90th as a festival street to continue holding those community events.

We can also look at creating development standards and sign guidelines for new buildings that would include mid-block pathways and some of those really long and large commercial lots along the main corridors.

We can also look at locating any on-site open space to really have more of a positive impact, not just for the development, but on the public realm to provide some of those social spaces, those green spaces.

such as like a plaza on the corner with seating.

And actually there's already a new development that's sort of in the works that is thinking about adding a corner plaza.

And that was sort of an outcome of what they heard from this community engagement.

And then many of the actions in the plan are aimed at improving walkability.

And so SDOT has identified some potential small scale improvements on 85th that could work to improve pedestrian comfort and transit services at that intersection.

Just a couple more we'll go through.

So, as I mentioned, many of the residential streets north of 85th don't have formal sidewalks.

They have drainage capacity challenges that can create hazards for pedestrians.

This is true, not just in Kern Hill, but in some other areas.

And so some of the actions in the plan seek to address these gaps.

The Home Zone Program is a great opportunity to implement low-cost sidewalks and traffic calming in those neighborhood areas that make streets much more comfortable for pedestrians.

And so to that end, the plan identifies which streets residents felt would really benefit the most from having some of those interventions installed, things like traffic calming devices, speed humps, cost-effective walkways.

Also working to continue to implement planned greenways.

SDOT completed the 92nd greenway that actually connects all the way over to the Northgate light rail station.

And then the crossing 83rd that I mentioned earlier is actually a key component of a future greenway on 83rd.

So the plan also highlights opportunities for coordinating investments between SDOT and SPU to deliver those cost-effective walkways alongside green stormwater infrastructure, GSI, to reduce localized flooding.

So to that end, SPU is planning to explore some GSI.

I think they are currently

improvements.

Katie on this slide actually yeah that last slide and Karen I know we've spoken a lot about how we get more of these cost-effective walkways and you've been extremely successful in getting more sidewalks in this neighborhood.

During my district six office hours yesterday I actually had a d6 resident from 13th avenue probably down right in that area that's orange on your map who is interested in getting involved to get more of these walkways installed.

Katie, can you give us a kind of rundown of what is required?

How do we get more of these cost-effective walkways in our neighborhood?

That is a great question.

It's more of a question for Estelle than for me.

But yeah, so my understanding is, so Sean Walgren runs the Homes Zones program.

And so they've actually done some work, I think, with the community already.

So the map you see on the bottom here.

They did some work sort of doing some draft ideas of what that could look like in Crown Hill.

And so I think for them, it was a matter of then securing the funding to do it.

So I believe that was part of the...

um budget this year so um advocacy community advocacy is great but i think it's the great first step that we already have some of that background work done um as i said the the plan actually we did some surveying and the plan actually does identify the which streets people thought were really the most important ones um to improve walkability to really like make sure that you can get around the neighborhood um But yeah, I would take that question.

Sorry.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right, I will wrap up real quick here.

So, in terms of next steps, so we published the draft plan in November for public comments, along with a survey.

So as most of the outreach for the plan was developed, the plan was developed pre-pandemic.

The survey is really aimed at understanding if and how any priorities have shifted or if new issues have arisen that should be included in this plan.

So the comment period today or closes today at 5 p.m.

And so we'll be making updates to the plan based on the community feedback that we get before finalizing it.

And so then my understanding is that Council Member Schrafs will be introducing a resolution to recognize the action plan and then we will continue to work with our sister departments on implementing the plan in 2022. That is what I've got.

So questions, comments, concerns.

I know we've got Karen and company here, so it'd be great to hear from them as well.

Thank you.

Yeah, we'll introduce everyone in just a second.

I just wanted to ask, since this plan had to be put on pause due to the pandemic when it was taken back up this year, what work needed to be completed to update the plan because it was put on pause?

Yeah, great question.

So what we try to do with the update is look at, so a lot of the actions in the plan are not necessarily tied to specific programs or actions.

However, the plan does say, to achieve this thing, look at these existing programs or policies that we have.

And so what we were able to do was look at things that have happened over the past two years, new programs that have come out, new policies that have come out, and again, sort of tie some of those together.

So for instance, One of the things we're going to look at is, so I think a couple of comments we've gotten are about, you know, having an indoor meeting center so super great idea.

So we're looking to incorporate that into the plan one of those potential solutions might be to look at development standards or incentives that we can I do with new development.

I'm also looking at sort of affordable housing.

So while that is really very much a city wide issue and hard to address one specific neighborhood, we could look to things like the religious institution for housing bonus.

and say, are there opportunities to work with those organizations in the neighborhood to sort of advocate for or partner with to build new affordable housing?

So those are some of the ways that we're kind of looking to update it.

It's just seeing what's happened in the past two years.

How can we make some of these actions more detailed?

How can we make some of them a little bit more real?

And then again, just as I mentioned, there are things that have come up in the past two years that maybe weren't as relevant a couple of years ago.

So we're working to include those things.

Wonderful.

And thank you for extending the comment period, a reminder community members have until the end of today and the business day today to submit any comments to the plan.

Thank you, Katie.

I also want to now introduce, we're joined by four residents of Crown Hill who were involved in the development of the Crown Hill Community Action Plan.

Can each of you introduce yourselves and share a little bit about background about how you were involved in the process and any information you think that we need to know before we start writing this resolution?

I'll start.

Good morning, Karen.

Good morning.

Thank you so much for having us.

We actually are three today, not four.

My name is Karen Labelle.

I am the executive director of the Crown Hill Village Association.

I'm a resident and a small business owner.

I volunteer with the Crown Hill Community Garden, and the garden transforms underused right of way into an edible landscape.

Food is grown for passers-by and to donate to the food bank.

And this year we've donated almost 3,000 pounds to the Ballard food bank.

I'm also an urban beekeeper, so the plan's inclusion of green space is especially important to me personally.

And, you know, I was hearing a lot of feedback that neighbors were frustrated.

They attended these workshops and then nothing came of it.

And, you know, working with OPCD and especially our lead on the project, Katie Hema, it was, it felt like this amazing collaboration between the city and the community.

And at the beginning of the year, we were really concerned that this investment of time and energy and city resources would be completely lost and forgotten.

So it's very exciting to see this process pushed over the finish line and the neighborhoods feedback incorporated into a roadmap that will guide the growth in our community.

So thank you very much.

Well said, Karen.

Thank you.

Should I go next?

Sure.

Hi, good morning.

You know, first of all, thank you for having us here.

We really appreciate that.

And I'm sorry we've never met personally on the walks that you've had when you've come to Crown Hill.

My name is Philippa Dugas.

I am the current president of the Crown Hill Village Association.

I am a resident at Crown Hill and also a small business owner.

I have two children and I've been very involved as the PTA president of their elementary and middle schools.

And a part of the reason why I mention that is because I'm really big on community.

I'm very big on finding community and pulling community together.

And one of the things why I love what we've done is, well, first of all, I want to thank Katie.

She has been amazing.

She did an amazing job working with her two years ago.

I kind of missed you, Katie.

We had so many meetings together.

The passion for community and what we've been able to do two years ago when we pulled together at home on Grove and have those events was just phenomenal.

We could see something that our neighborhoods and our community, they were missing.

Our families were missing it.

Our elderly were missing it.

Everybody wanted to be able to come together and have a space to do that in.

And so I'm excited because I feel like if we can keep going and move forward with the The work that we're doing towards home and growth, that's something that we can certainly.

make a priority to bring cultures together because I know we have so many cultures in our neighborhood that we don't even recognize are there but this will be a good space for people to come together and feel safe in and our hope is that at some point we can have a space that's also indoor a space where we can eventually have workshops and classes and as I said cultural events and just a space for us to gather and come together as a group of people that just want to hang out.

So I really am excited for the work that we're doing.

I really do encourage us to continue with it and to find ways to move forward in a way where we can really embody the people that live in the Crown Hill neighborhood.

So thank you very much for having us.

Thank you for all your work, Philippa.

And good morning, Anne.

Hi, how are y'all?

First of all, I would just want to thank everybody involved in this project.

I mean, Katie at the top of the list and OPCD and Dan and all of city council and all the city departments.

I first, well, first of all, My name is Anne Selznick and I have a daughter at Ballard High School.

I live in the Loyal Heights section of the Crown Hill Urban Village and I'm a bookkeeper and a registrar.

I first got involved in all of this way back in 2015 when I learned about the proposed rezones, and considering that I spent most of my young adult life in the New York City area, I thought I knew a good bit about urban density, and I volunteered to be on the HALA focus groups that met all throughout 2016. In the course of going to The meetings where I represented Crown Hill with a handful of other neighborhood representatives, we started to learn very quickly that Crown Hill didn't have some of the amenities that most of the other urban villages that were proposed for rezones did have.

And one of the outstanding things was that Crown Hill did not have its own neighborhood plan to guide the future growth that we were expecting to see.

What else was I gonna say?

In any case, what we've been working on recently, I do feel hits the nail on the head with the things that the neighborhood needs.

We need, as Katie was pointing out, we need a central meeting space.

Crown Hill, for the most part, was just a drive, or the urban village area was just a drive-through space.

with a lot of big box stores and parking lots.

And it will be great to see a location like Holman Grove where we can all meet and potentially an indoor space to meet.

We don't have a community center in Crown Hill.

We don't have a library in Crown Hill.

We don't have a light rail station like most of the other urban villages have, or we do have a bus stop, which has frequent transit, but it's not rapid transit.

So there's so many things that the action plan can guide in our future growth.

And I appreciate that very much.

And the other outstanding piece when I was involved in the HALA focus groups was the affordable housing piece, which Katie hit upon briefly about one of the changes that might need to be added to the action plan.

is a focus potentially on where we can find more affordable housing in the neighborhood.

As density is coming and growth is coming, we're seeing that our naturally affordable housing is quickly going away and we're not getting the on-site MHA housing in the neighborhood.

So hopefully we can look at something like that, the ways that we can bring more affordable housing to Crown Hill for the neighbors that may be being displaced.

And thanks again for everybody.

Thank you, and just touched on something that is was also brought up in my district office hours yesterday with the resident on 13th, sharing that with the increased density in this area without the amenities that many other places that received density.

It's creating a conflict where you have many new townhomes where.

there was only one residence previous and so you have tens and hundreds of new residents without more sidewalks and when I was growing up there were a lot of older adults living in downtown Ballard.

We don't have as many anymore and there are still a lot of older adults living in Crown Hill and so the conflict without sidewalks of more people, people driving A young people driving older people driving, there are a lot of conflicts that are occurring here.

Can you may and anyone can speak to this.

What, how has this process affected the attitude in Crown Hill towards the new development and housing.

that has been added in recent years and I know Karen you spoke to it that there was a level of frustration at the this year because the plan got put on hold but here luckily we're going again and we're moving forward but you know that this is a tension that we're feeling all across the city.

Without amenities and with increased density we're not meeting our the needs of our residents.

Can you share how this action plan has influenced that conversation in your community?

I would say that the concern about development happening without a plan for parking and also without the dedicated resources such as convenient, reliable bus service is one of the top pieces of feedback that I hear.

I was really glad to see that in the plan that there was talk about improving the rider experience.

Before the pandemic, I was a dedicated bus rider who honestly was finding myself choosing to drive more and more.

My partner, once offices reopened, he is going to start taking the bus to work.

My teenage son just got his first ORCA card And so public transit is really important, not only to my family, but to the entire neighborhood.

As you pointed out, Council Member Strauss, not only to bus riders, but also to pedestrians and people who are in cars, we all benefit from public transit.

And so we do hope to see some more public transit options in the future.

And we are hopeful that this plan will help us to leverage some power in order to get some more public transit and also to be included in the planning process for light rail.

We understand that a light rail station in Crown Hill is not on the docket, but making sure that connecting the residents of Crown Hill to the light rail in a really meaningful way is something that is part of this planning process.

Well, Karen, what I can say is that if Councilmember Juarez can get 130th Street Station, I'm going to be fighting for your Crown Hill Station.

We would love to see that.

I got you.

I got you.

And colleagues, I know that I've been dominating this conversation, but if any of you have questions about the Crown Hill Action Plan, please do ask.

And maybe for the group, Phillipa, Karen, and one more question for me.

What concerns were top of mind for each of you when the planning process began, and did that change throughout the course of these conversations?

Take it away, Ann.

I will say that really from the get-go, at the beginning of the HALA-focused group process, the Committee for Smart Growth really guided our key concerns from the beginning.

The affordable housing, the transit, the just overall need for some kind of plan to be put in place before the density comes in order to guide the density.

So I really feel that the action plan is what we were looking for from the beginning.

And it's just great to see that the work that we started so many years ago is almost here.

It would have been nice if it had happened before the rezones.

Or even before the reasons were in place, if we had something to guide all of that in the first place, but better late than never.

But I think it's been pretty consistent along the way.

Things have changed with the pandemic.

We have lost a handful of our anchor businesses, like for example, the Dane, which was both a meeting place and a coffee shop, did not is no longer, and that's partially because of the pandemic, but also partially because of rezoning issues.

So as just time moves forward, we see some businesses come and go, and that might be something that it's not necessarily addressing, but I don't know how it would.

Well said, Anne.

And when the Dane closed, I just It took me a moment, but looking around, there's so many more townhomes and apartments being built.

And I know that the pandemic really put a crimp on the Dane.

But it's an intersection that really, it's a walkable intersection.

It's not an easy intersection to drive and park at.

And I just look forward to that day when all of those new residents are able to walk to the new establishment there.

Yeah, Philippa, Karen, any other thoughts?

Yeah, Philippa.

I think that for me, you know, I think it's great just seeing the action plan.

And I feel that the one thing I do, I try not to look back on the past, right?

What's happened has happened.

There's not much we can do about it in some ways.

And so I just really hope that we really, truly look for those, walk the ways that we can put businesses in there that we can and want to walk to.

You know, the new, you know, and Anne mentioned the Dane, it's great that we have a new business in there, but it doesn't cater to, it's 21 and over.

So we need to also remember that we have a very vibrant youth population in this area and just finding ways so that these kids can also walk about and have easier ways to get around and things to get to that feel safe and secure for them.

So I think it's very encouraging.

I love to, you know, I'm excited to see us move forward with this.

I'm excited to see us, have a community that feels vibrant when you walk out there and people are excited to be part of it.

And I just wanted to just echo what Karen said about the new townhomes going up.

I think people are, you know, it's not ideal for some neighborhoods, but we're getting around it.

I think people will get around it.

We'll move past it and we'll get around it if we know that the infrastructure is going to come in for us.

So thank you again.

That's really well said, Phillipa.

And to put a finer point on it, we're not done yet.

We need to bring now the actual design guidelines before council, what we have before us, not even before us yet today, because public comment is open until 5 p.m.

on the resolution.

And once we have the resolution passed, we will then need to pass the design standards for the neighborhood.

And I will continue to champion that work until we get it done.

Colleagues, any other questions?

Katie, any final thoughts?

No, just again, wanna thank you for having me here.

And it has been such a pleasure to work with all of the community in Kern Hill and especially Phillip and Anne and Karen, they have been instrumental and amazing and we had a ton of fun.

So it was exactly how community planning process should be where everybody comes together and really focuses on how we can be the best version we can be.

So it was great, thank you.

That's great.

And Karen, can I put the resident that I spoke to in contact with you?

I think they're interested in getting involved.

Yes.

In fact, as I was listening to you, I was trying to think, I wonder who that is because they sound like they need to be looped in with us.

So thank you.

I would love that.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you all for being here.

I'm glad to be seeing this planning process wrap up so that we can move ahead to the design guidelines and other next steps in 2022. So after the comment period ends at 5 p.m.

today, I will be bringing a resolution to the December 13th City Council meeting to recognize and endorse the final version of this plan.

Thank you, Karen and Philippa, Katie.

It was really great to see you today.

Up next, item two of five.

Our next item of business is Council Bill 120215, which allows for certain development standards to be waived for the West Point Treatment Facility.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

And thank you to everyone who is presenting this morning for your patience as we move through each of these items.

Good morning, Mr. Freeman.

Good morning, Mr. Kessler.

And Mr. Ahn, could you read the abbreviated title into the record?

Item two, council bill 120215, an ordinance relating to land use review decision procedures amending the Seattle municipal code to authorize the director of the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections to administratively waive development standards for minor expansions of sewage treatment plants.

Thank you, Mr. Ahn.

I must say that each of our panels today have incredible guests.

We are now, this is the first meeting after the budget cycle, so we have the most important legislation before us.

So I'm very excited to be joined by Director Cameron Gural, Bruce Kessler, Sharman Heron of King County Waste Treatment Division, and Ketel Freeman of our Council Central staff, Dave Van Syk of Seattle Department of Construction Inspection.

Will each of you introduce yourselves and then kick us off?

Mr. Freeman, I see you're off mute.

or I'll start out.

Ketel Freeman, Council Central staff, and maybe I'll pass it off to Bruce here.

I had a little trouble with the mute button.

Morning, everybody.

I'm Bruce Kessler.

I'm the deputy director of the Wastewater Treatment Division, and I will pass it to Charmin.

Good morning, Mr. Chair, members.

Charmin Heron.

I work in government relations in the Wastewater Treatment Division.

And I believe that Cameron had to step out for a while, but he should be joining us if he can get a breakaway.

Sounds great.

Sorry about that.

I'm Dave VanSkyke with SDCI policy and technical lead in our code interpretation unit.

Great.

Welcome and good morning, Dave, Charman, Bruce.

Mr. Freeman, would you like to, are you running the presentation?

I think Bruce may be running the presentation.

I'll say a few words to kind of set the table here and then turn things over to Bruce.

So as you mentioned, Chair Strauss, this is an initial briefing on Council Bill 120215. That bill would modify otherwise applicable land use procedures to create a limited exception for an expansion of King County's West Point Treatment Plant.

People shouldn't understand the term expansion to mean an expansion of the boundaries of the plant.

This is an improvement within the boundaries of the plant.

First, Mr. Kessler from King County's Wastewater Treatment Division will set the context for the problem which this bill seeks to solve.

I'll describe what the bill does, and then it's very undermined the committee about next steps here.

So I'll turn it over to Bruce.

Okay, thank you.

I'm going to share my screen here.

Okay.

Hopefully you can all see that presentation.

Okay.

All right.

I have it on the wrong screen, so I'm going to be looking this way while I'm talking.

Sorry about that.

Yeah, so I'm here today to talk about our Power Quality Improvement Project at the Waste Point Treatment Plant.

I really want to stress the importance of this project in this presentation and the urgency of the project.

So I'm going to start out with a little background to put this presentation into context.

We receive power at the treatment plant from two different power feeds from Seattle City Light.

One's our primary feed.

I'd say we do our daily operations on that feed.

We're on it 24-7, 365 days a year, except for when that line is down, then we transfer power over to the secondary feed.

We have at the plant what we call bypasses occasionally.

It's unfortunate, we really work to minimize and prevent those bypasses.

A bypass is when we discharge either partially treated wastewater or untreated wastewater directly to the waters of Puget Sound.

And a lot of those bypasses are caused by poor power quality we receive from Seattle City Light.

And that quality comes in the form of voltage sags.

So these aren't power outages.

They're not blips in the power, you know, where it cuts off and cuts back on.

This is just where the voltage strays below what our equipment is rated to operate at.

And that causes that equipment to drop offline.

And when that equipment drops offline, it backs up flow into the plant.

I should say when the power to a major pumping system goes offline.

Flow backs up in the plant and it creates this potential to flood the plant, which is dangerous to our employees and also could damage equipment and put that plant out of commission for a long time.

So we have to bypass those flows to protect our employees and to protect that equipment.

In the last 21 years, we've seen 17 of these bypass events that were caused by these voltage sags.

And nine of those were in the past five years.

We've had seven bypasses of our secondary treatment process between 2018 and 2021. that were also caused by these power problems.

So what we're seeing is the frequency of the power quality and reliability issues from the Seattle City Light System increasing.

So we're having more of these bypasses caused by that system.

Ecology became aware of this because whenever we have a bypass, we have to report out the cause.

So early this year, the Department of Ecology issued an administrative order that says we need to correct this power quality problem and stop these power quality caused bypasses.

On the heels of that, on February 25th of this year, the King County executive issued a declaration, an emergency declaration saying that the wastewater treatment division, we need to correct that power quality problem to protect our employees and also to protect public safety and the environment.

So when we have these discharges, You know, there's the potential for human contact with what's discharged.

So it puts the public safety at risk.

And also there's the environmental harm that can occur from that.

So we're directed in this emergency declaration to get this work done as quickly as possible.

So the sooner we get it done, the sooner we stop having power quality initiated bypasses.

A big tool in this declaration is that we are waived on the procurement requirements so we can hire our design consultants and contractors without doing a competitive process.

And we've already got both of those firms on board and working on this project.

So what we did very early on in this project, early this year, we looked at alternatives.

How can we improve the power quality to our equipment?

And really what we're doing with this project is we're saying we're going to accept the power quality we received from Seattle City Light, but we are going to make that power quality better before we distribute it throughout the plant to our critical pumping systems.

We looked at five alternatives, and we settled on the best alternative, which was a battery energy storage type of solution.

It's called an uninterruptible power supply.

And it's going to condition that power before we send it to our critical pump motors so that we can maintain our pumping operations during these voltage sags.

This technology is highly effective at mitigating those sags.

So the sooner we get that in place, the sooner we're going to stop having those types of bypasses.

Another benefit of this product is it could actually power these pumps for about a minute.

if we were to get a full power outage.

And that's important because when we transfer from the primary feed to our secondary feed, it takes about 10 seconds.

So this is going to allow our pumps to keep going while we transfer over to that other power.

And one of the things that came out of this, though, is that this equipment is very large.

It's also very heavy.

So we need to have a very strong foundation and a fairly big building to house it.

On this slide here, you can see an existing building that we intended to repurpose for this project.

It's a one-story building, and it doesn't have a very strong foundation.

So we're going to knock this building down and replace it with a building that has a slightly larger footprint and is two stories in height.

The slide you're seeing here is a rendering of that building.

Yeah, well, this is also helpful and illustrative of the different elevation on the east side of the plant as compared to, I guess it might be the south.

Hard to tell there on the point.

The land bank side of the site is at a higher elevation.

You can see there by the shadowing.

And then on the water side, is a lower elevation.

You can see that shadowing continuing to move forward.

So before we move on to the next slide, I will just note in our last presentation, the Burke Museum water lines project was highlighted as a map showing our area and just denoting that this location is known by the Burke Museum and many others as being used as a village site for time of memorial before settlers arrived here.

I just wanted to take that moment to note the historical context for the land use here.

Moving on to the next slide, I guess I can finish my point.

Just being that with the land bank side being at a higher elevation and the water side being at a lower elevation, This building being comparable to its neighboring building, it's from my understanding that this will not be visible from the park.

Can you share any information about the visibility of this building as compared to what is already on your site?

Yes, thank you for that question.

So this plant, when it was built, it was intentionally built to be screened from the public.

It is very hard to go in that park and find a view of the plant.

There are a couple places where you can get a view of the plant.

And this building could be visible there, but otherwise, where you can't see the plant.

Now, you will not be able to see this building, it's not going to stick up above or stand out to make make that part of the plan visible.

we maintain that inconspicuousness, if you will.

All right, I'll continue on then.

So this building will be just under 50 feet in height, excluding a stair tower that you can see up in the upper right corner of that roof.

That's going to be just under 56 feet in height.

And I just want to say that there's a lot of shared goals here with this project, both Seattle and the county.

We want to reduce the risk of those future bypass events.

Excuse me.

We want to make sure that we're not impacting the environment.

Excuse me, I don't know what's going on here.

And we want to definitely keep our employees safe and protect the public.

So this proposed ordinance is going to streamline our permitting process and help us stay on schedule.

It's going to reduce delays and other projects we're doing.

So this is a schedule driven project.

We're putting a lot into this project.

We've delayed all the projects.

Those are familiar with the plant.

There's very limited space at this point.

It's a very large capacity plant.

put into a very small footprint.

And when we have multiple contractors on site, they get in each other's way.

So we deferred a lot of critical projects so we can focus on this one.

And when this one's done, we're going to pick up those critical projects.

So this ordinance is going to help us expedite that schedule.

And it will also help us comply with our ecology administrative order.

We do a lot of community outreach for West Point.

just ongoing outreach.

So that's been going on.

We've got a lot of contacts with community groups and individuals at Magnolia that are interested in this plant.

This spring, we started sharing information about this project by emails, web pages, and social media.

We're really stressing, you know, what the schedule is, what the chosen solution is, most importantly, the size, location, and shape of this building.

And we've included rendering so that these community groups and individuals are aware of what we're doing here.

Also letting them know that this building it's really just a house equipment so there's not going to be any and it's electrical so there's not going to be any odors there's no noise associated with this building it won't increase traffic flow through the local community as you're aware we have to drive through the park to get to this site also Magnolia community and over by Fisherman's Wharf.

So we're not gonna increase any traffic in those areas over this building.

We've offered briefings to the community groups and we continue to offer those briefings.

We have not been taken up on any yet.

So we're attributing that to that we're doing a good outreach by these other mediums.

And Bruce, have you heard any significant concerns from the community?

We have not.

The communities have stressed their concerns for years about the bypasses.

So it might be, and I'm speculating here, that a reduction in bypasses is very important to them, and that might be why they're for the project.

I couldn't tell you.

Yeah, maybe share that assumption that because the facility is structured in such a way that this building will not be noticeable, and I think our whole communities urgent concern of reducing the number of bypasses that occur.

I could see that that would have situated us in a place of low levels of concern.

I see your next slide.

You were moving on before I piped in questions.

I guess my question to you is can you, I know we had a really great conversation.

I understand the urgency of this in a very detailed manner.

Can you speak to the urgency of getting this work done?

Yes.

I'm trying to stop sharing.

Here we are.

Okay.

So, I mean, the big urgency is that You know, these bypasses to the county, they're just unacceptable that we have, and we're always working to reduce them.

Like I said, every time we have a bypass, we're putting the safety of our employees at risk.

We flooded the plant before.

Luckily, nobody was in it.

We have a lot of underground tunnels that house equipment.

So if this plant floods and somebody is in those tunnels, there are places people can get trapped.

And it is critical that we don't have bypasses.

And the other is when we do have the bypasses, you know, we're discharging sometimes raw sewage into the sound.

That's unacceptable for the environment.

It's unacceptable for public health.

both staff safety and ecological safety, both very important things.

Yes.

Anything else that you'd like to add, Sharman?

And then if not, I'll pass over to Ketel.

Mr. Freeman, if you could summarize your memo and share more about how this legislation facilitates a solution to these power issues.

I'll take it away.

So what would Council Bill 120215 do?

It would shorten the land use review phase of the permitting process for this battery backup power facility.

It would do that by categorizing the proposed expansion as minor and setting up sort of the criteria that an applicant must meet to invoke the expansion.

One is that the expansion has to be minor, so less than 10% of the site area.

That's certainly accomplished here.

And the applicant also has to be, the site has to be subject to a Department of Ecology order for corrective action, which is the case here.

The ordinance would authorize the SDCI director as a type one decision, so it's a non-appealable decision, to waive physical development standards, such as height, for the battery backup power facility, provided that the waiver is the least necessary to achieve the corrective action.

So we have this corrective action that's been identified.

by the county, and they have a proposed structure envelope, and it's likely the least necessary to accomplish what they need to do.

It requires a construction management plan to mitigate any potential construction impacts.

The site is in a park or adjacent to park facilities.

It's likely that most of the construction management, sort of the staging, et cetera, can happen on site.

To the extent that it can't, there'll be a plan to mitigate the impacts for that.

And finally, it declares a State Environmental Policy Act emergency, both for the ordinance itself, so the ordinance is not subject to SEPA review, and also for project level review by SDCA.

I believe, and Bruce can correct me if I'm wrong here, that King County has also declared an emergency, and King County will be acting as lead agency for the purposes of SEPA here.

So that's kind of the arcane of the land use modifications that will facilitate the backup power facility coming on power.

be able to do that.

I think it would be helpful if we could do that somewhat sooner than it would otherwise be able to under applicable land use procedures.

there's a public hearing on the bill.

that public hearing will happen on December 8th, so next Wednesday.

that's a requirement for any change to the land use code.

Thank you.

And can you maybe also just again highlight the parameters or the guardrails on this legislation?

there are not unintended consequences.

Yeah.

So there, I think there are a few guardrails here.

One is just who can qualify for this limited exception.

Um, there has to be a department of ecology order.

So, um, that limits it to, um, just those facilities that are subject to an order.

Um, and also the expansion can't be a large expansion.

So if, if King County, um, uh, tried to invoke this for something for some larger component of, of improvements at West Point, they may not be able to fit within the parameter, and that has to do with the size of the area of the expansion.

This is kind of more than perhaps you want to know, but there is a distinction between a minor and a major expansion in the land use code.

The major expansion triggers a council conditional use review, which is the lengthy review that this bill would allow King County to avoid, and there are some thresholds for what constitutes a minor expansion at 750 square feet or 10% of the site area, whichever is greater.

Here, there's a very, very large site, so King County will fall within those parameters.

Another kind of guardrail here is the construction management plan.

King County is somewhat far along, but I believe have yet to apply for a permit, so perhaps some of the construction staging is not known at this point.

to the extent that any of that construction staging, construction management would have impacts on the park, the construction management plan would be a vehicle for addressing that.

Very helpful.

Colleagues, I had a great long conversation with Bruce, Charmin, and Dave, so I don't have any more questions for the record.

I just want to double check with each of you colleagues.

If you have questions, we will be bringing this for a vote and public hearing on December 8th.

But I am not seeing any questions.

I think, Bruce, to our earlier point, we all get it.

We need this battery.

We need this building built so that we can reduce the number of outflows.

And we're here to be your partner.

Glad to see this coming forward.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you.

So with no further questions, I want to thank you all for the discussion today.

This legislation will be back before the committee on Wednesday, December 8th for public hearing in a vote.

Thank you.

Yeah, have a great day.

Up next are item number three on our agenda of Three out of five.

Our next agenda item is Council Bill 120239, which updates the energy code based on some unresolved issues from energy code update at the start of this year.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Item three, Council Bill 120239, an ordinance relating to Seattle's construction codes amending the 2018 Seattle Energy Code.

Thank you, Mr. Ahn.

We are joined now by Yolanda Ho of Council Central staff, as well as SDCI staff and two members of the Construction Code Advisory Board.

Before we begin, Councilmember Lewis, as the prime sponsor of this legislation, do you have any opening comments, remarks, or questions?

You can also feel free to save those for later.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Yeah, I'll just speak very briefly before Yolanda goes into the details, but I do just want to set the stage for where we are as part of a broader conversation that we last had in the early spring when we did some broader updates to the Energy Code, largely impacting hotels and residential developments.

At the time, I had brought an amendment along with yourself, I believe, as a co-sponsor, Chair Strauss, in order to further extend those energy code changes as relate to heat pump water heaters, also abbreviated frequently as HPWHs, to apply those mandates that new commercial construction also incorporate electric HPWHs as an alternative to fossil fuel heating systems.

At the time, there was some more work that had to be done to see the feasibility of a code change to that effect.

And as a result, we held off on that amendment, although we did promise at that time that we would revisit this once the stakeholder in work and the work of the department was finished.

This bill is the result of that work, and I'm really excited to be able to bring it forward here before the end of the year to consider it.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Yolanda for some of the details, and I might have some questions after her presentation.

So thank you so much.

Wonderful, and thank you for your prime sponsorship in steering this process.

Yolanda, good morning.

All right, Yolanda Ho, Council Central staff.

Let me load up my PowerPoint here.

Is it showing up OK?

All right.

I will be today providing the background on council bill 120239 that would amend the 2018 energy code, describe the legislation and its potential impacts.

As the chair noted, staff from the Seattle department of construction inspections are on the line to help answer So just a quick recap on what Councilmember Lewis mentioned.

In February of this year, the council adopted the 2018 Energy Code via Ordinance 126279. This update continued the city's practice of adopting an amended version of the Washington State Energy Code that requires new multifamily residential buildings, taller than three stories, and all new commercial buildings conform to higher standards than those required by the state.

These regulations also apply to alterations and or replacement of existing building components.

This went into effect on March 15th of this year.

Some notable changes from that update was the addition to the codes intense section that there was a goal of reducing carbon emissions to the existing goal of increasing energy efficiency.

And to this end, there were two key provisions in the 2018 Energy Code added.

These were restrictions on the use of fossil fuels and electric resistance for space heating, which went into effect on June 1st of this year, and restrictions on the use of fossil fuels and electric resistance for water heating in multifamily and hotel uses that will go into effect on January 1st of next year.

Rationale for limiting the water heating restriction to these uses at that time were due to their more predictable water demand.

During the committee's deliberations on the adoption of the 2018 energy code, as Councilmember Lewis mentioned, he along with Councilmember Strauss had proposed an amendment that would extend the water heating restriction to all commercial buildings.

that this amendment had not been considered as part of the larger suite of Seattle specific amendments to the Energy Code.

They were not included during the city's months-long outreach and engagement process, and it was not evaluated by the Construction Codes Advisory Board, which is the city's advisory body tasked with considering amendments to Seattle's building codes, suggesting changes as a fit, and voting on whether to recommend adoption of these proposals.

the amendment may have required some more environmental reviews.

So due to various complicating factors which would have resulted in the delay of the adoption of the 2018 energy code which had already been delayed due to a variety of other factors including the pandemic, the committee opted not to vote on the amendment and the council instead requested that the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections continue to work on the potential change so that the council could We have a lot of work to do to make sure that we can take it up later this year.

So as requested, the Seattle department of construction and inspections conducted outreach regarding the proposed amendment and the construction codes advisory board met and discussed it multiple times, ultimately voting to recommend adoption of the change with some exceptions included to make the new Also, Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection staff completed the required environmental review, which is an addendum to the original determination of non-significance, which is also known as a SIPA file that is attached to the legislation.

So on to what the Council Bill 120239 does.

It would require that all new commercial buildings use electric water heaters, with some exceptions, most notably that it does not apply to upgrades of existing commercial buildings.

It includes also some technical and clarifying amendments such as the additional option of ground source heat pump water heating systems and specifies a method of measuring upper air temperature for source heat pumps.

Just to note some of the potential impacts of the legislation, this would effectively eliminate the use of fossil fuels for water heating in most new commercial buildings, leading to a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from buildings and helping to advance the city's goal of reaching net zero emissions, which is also a climate justice priority.

There will also likely be impacts to workers.

While it will increase job opportunities for HVAC mechanics who install and maintain heat pump water heaters, there will be impacts, more negative impacts for those who work on The city does have a commitment to Finally, the required use of heat pump water heaters will probably add some cost and complexity to new commercial development in the near term as designers, engineers, and contractors adjust to the change.

I think this is anticipated to diminish over time as the requirement becomes the accepted standard and the market begins to offer even greater options for heat pump water heat systems.

In terms of next steps, the committee will be continuing discussion of this council bill and possibly vote on the December 8th meeting next week.

And then assuming that goes ahead, this will then go to the full council on December 13th.

But I conclude my presentation.

Thank you, Yolanda.

And before we get to questions, I would like to ask if Duane or Micah from SDCI would like to share their own analysis or perspectives, as well as Joel and Eric from the Construction Code Advisory Board.

Either Duane or Micah or Joel or Eric, I see Duane coming off camera.

Hi, Duane.

I think Yolanda did a great job of summarizing what we've done here.

I just wanted to mention that one of the big things that the CCAB review did was to essentially remove the requirement for this to impact replacement of existing fossil fuel water heating systems in commercial buildings, just due to their feeling that there was too much uncertainty at that point.

issue we can tackle with the next energy code as we get more used to this.

Thank you.

Joel or Eric, would you like to share anything now?

Otherwise, I've got some questions after Councilmember Lewis.

Okay, great.

Councilmember Lewis, as the prime sponsor of the legislation, would you like to start us off with questions?

I actually don't have any questions Councilmember Strauss I'm happy to turn it back over to you.

Okay well with that I guess my questions here are we got the record it's my understanding that the CCAB and I'm not seeing just see Joel is Eric still there's a Eric.

This proposal came before the construction code advisory board, and you were consulted on it.

Can you share a little bit about that process?

It's my understanding that this has come out as a compromise way of moving forward.

I understand not everyone likes these rules.

Other people really like them.

So maybe can you share with how we got to today?

I can speak to that.

I also appreciate Alondra's presentation.

I think that was a great explanation of how we came to this.

A lot of the concerns that we had earlier in some of the earlier presentations, we had, you know, restaurants and coffee shops that are going out of business.

So these are sitting there waiting for someone else to move into them and take over that new shop or the existing shop.

I'm sorry.

But making these rules to force them to tear out all of the existing gas water heating systems and then install a complete new, much more expensive water heating system is a concern to all of us.

And that was a lot of the talk that we had at that point.

Thanks.

That's helpful.

Eric, any thoughts?

I might expand on some of Joel's points right there.

Eric, if you're still with us.

please join us.

Joel, one of the things that you just touched on is that when people are renovating their building, oftentimes tenant improvements, especially in industrial areas, where the tenant improvements break the threshold and then have to meet new code.

And so what you're talking about here is that when we're making these major improvements, There is an exception, and this is part of the compromise, is that major improvements are not included within the code, within this, I guess, within this code amendment.

Existing.

There we go.

This is why I'm not a subject matter expert on energy code.

Dwayne, can you, are there other places that have this large, other places in code that have this large of an exception?

Well, I think actually what the exception states is that if you just need to take out an existing gas water heater and you're permitted to replace it in commercial buildings.

If you're doing what we call a substantial alteration, then it would need to follow that code.

But once you're into a substantial alteration, It's a serious indicator that you're probably doing a full gut and rehab of the building.

And in those cases, the department treats it much like a new building with certain exceptions.

And so with that level of change, it would typically have to meet existing code.

Today, we are saying it does not.

That and a lot of other things, including seismic life safety, all kinds of stuff.

But I think the concern of the CCAB was much more about your meat and potatoes sort of replacement of an existing system and whether there would be enough space, enough air movement, enough electrical power to handle it.

So for this code cycle, we're saying, no, we'll allow those replacements to go ahead.

Did I get that right, Joel?

I agree with your statement.

That's correct.

And I know that as we make these transitions, and Yolanda spoke about the just transition and how as our economy and how we heat and build our buildings transitions to a more environmentally friendly manner.

It's also important that we protect our workers and that we have a way to transition people out of the jobs that are no longer meeting the needs of our climate and making sure that their needs are met so that they can have a family wage job, serve their family, and be productive members of our community.

So that's also something that's really important.

I'm not seeing Eric joining us back.

I was hoping that he would have.

Joel, thank you for helping us out here today.

I guess we've already talked about the background.

We've talked about how the compromise is occurring.

I guess Dwayne or Joel or Yolanda, are there anything, any other aspects of this bill that you'd like us to consider or know before we move forward?

In Yolanda's presentation, she was talking about HVAC and farmers and pipers.

I represent Local 32 on CCAB.

That is plumbers, pipefitters, and refrigeration, HVAC mechanics.

So all of those people are in my group.

And what you talked about with family jobs is very important to us to make sure that we're able to continue on to provide these services and push the economy and the city forward.

I mean, I'm very engaged in the city.

I've been in this city my entire life.

I'm a big part of the community here and it's important to me as well.

I can easily say that we wouldn't have a water running or ability to use the bathroom without you and your members, Joel.

I do see Eric has come on camera.

Eric, we've had conversation about the background, talked about a bit of the compromise that has gotten us to today.

Do you have any thoughts that you'd like to share with us or any background information you want us to make sure that we know before we move forward?

Sorry, I had to step away for a minute for a couple of things.

So I missed part of the presentation there.

No, I think this is an important step for the commercial occupancies.

I think the code language is enforceable that we were able to develop through CCAB.

And are we still talking about the same implementation date for commercial?

I missed that part.

Yeah, Yolanda, maybe if you want to just do a quick summary.

I'm sorry that we're doing this for the folks that are waiting.

Yeah, no, it would be implemented slightly.

So it'd be 30. Well, it's kind of the standard legislation.

So it'd be kind of sometime in mid to late January, I would say, based on the council adoption and then the mayor's signature and all that.

So that so the hotel and multifamily will go into effect on January 1st, because that was already in the existing code.

And then this will go into effect slightly later.

Yeah, so only the one the one comment I do have is that, you know, we are seeing a very long lead time for some of this equipment right now, up to 46 weeks for certain projects.

So, you know, it's it projects definitely need, you know, we've been planning for on the on the residential side, we are seeing a lot of new product that is available for the US market now because of what Seattle is doing and what Washington is doing here.

Um, so that's very encouraging from an energy efficiency and design aspect for, for, for engineering folks in the city.

Um, but, uh, so, but yeah, there, there is long lead times.

The equipment manufacturers are gearing up to deliver this stuff.

There's a lot of different products that are now coming in.

Um, but there are very long lead times right now based on.

you know, COVID and other things, so.

Eric, thank you for that.

Maybe, and can I kind of set the table for, by the time 46 weeks is almost a year, a year is 52 weeks, with And maybe let me check my assumption here.

The buildings that this will apply to are buildings that receive their permit after the implementation.

Nope, Dwayne, I'm gonna step back from, I'm not a subject matter expert as much as Dwayne teaches me.

Dwayne, take it away.

This would apply to projects that have their application for their permit accepted after the implementation date.

So there's an implementation date, there's a certain number of months to get the permit, then you start digging a hole in the ground, and by that time we're in 23 or 24.

Yeah, since this is applying to new construction primarily, I think it's still feasible.

But projects are gonna have to plan ahead and to know, get their orders in earlier, plan their project around some of these lead times.

So we hope they improve, but.

Thanks.

With that said though, Council Member Strauss, would it be possible to, at this late date, set an implementation date in particular, rather than just the 30 day delay, say April 1st or something, so that projects that are already very far down development pipeline would be able to move on through.

I would be happy with that.

I want to make sure I've got Council Member Lewis as the prime sponsor on this.

I want to make sure that he has.

And we're also happy to follow up with you, Joel, and Eric, and Duane after this committee.

This is exactly why I have items that come before my committee twice before I pass them to full council so that we wouldn't feel like we were in a rushed, pinched place here.

Council Member Lewis, any thoughts on dates certain for implementation?

And no objection to setting a date certain.

Well, let's work between now and the next committee to understand what.

That date works best for everyone.

I guess I just want to pull out some things that I heard from Eric.

Even with some of these supply chain delays, and even with all of the work that I'm doing to try and speed up the permit process, the permit process is still also oftentimes a year long.

And so while we have a delay of 46 weeks, almost a year of some of these, pieces of machinery.

We also have a permit process that is also long delayed.

And then I also heard you say that, Eric, from passing this legislation earlier this year, we're already seeing new types of equipment being available in the United States.

This is equipment that already exists in other parts of the world, but is now coming to the United States.

Yeah, we've been seeing some of the first installation of some of these products in Seattle.

I know Mitsubishi just installed, you know, one of their first installations of product they've had elsewhere in the outside of the US.

So, I mean, we are using this technology and have been using it.

As a code compliance strategy for many years now, it's just now it's being more mandated for all buildings.

So obviously, that increases how many projects are going to be using it.

The implementation date, I think, is probably more centered around the commercial buildings that haven't been planning for this as much.

It hasn't been in the code.

So I'm good with the implementation date on the multifamily staying at January one, but the extending it's the new revision to extend it to the commercial, if we could set a date that's a few months out to give folks notice, I think that would be a good thing.

Great, happy to do that.

I'm happy to work with you all offline between now and the next committee meeting.

Micah, I see you're off camera.

If you have something to share, please feel free to, if not, always love seeing you.

I appreciate it.

I don't have too much to add.

Just about timing the implementation date pushed a few months would be very beneficial.

That date will also be in the code books for historical record.

That way folks down the road when they come back in to replace those systems when we do that research will know.

what they're supposed to have or what they were supposed to have based on the code.

And then when we talk about adopting this, just so council's aware, we are going to be coming back with the 2021 Seattle codes within the next year or so, because those should be implemented and ready to go even at the state level in July of 2023. So we are actually working on the 2021 codes and the national level 2024 codes already.

So getting this stuff in advance really helps.

So we appreciate it.

Oh, thank you, Micah.

Well, I'm looking forward to learning more as I love learning from you and Dwayne.

I will never know as much as you, but it's always fun.

And Council Member Juarez, I believe Dwayne is a graduate of Nathan Hale High School.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

Go Raiders.

We don't play up here.

Don't play in Lake City.

That's right.

Colleagues, any further questions for this panel?

If not, we'll have offline conversations and we'll see you next Wednesday, December 8th for the vote.

Appreciate everyone.

Have a great day.

Item number four on our agenda of five items, our fourth agenda item, is Council Bill 120206, which establishes long-term protections for manufactured home parks.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Agenda item four, Council Bill 120206, an ordinance relating to land use zoning, amending the Seattle Municipal Code and the official land use map to establish a mobile home park overlay district.

This legislation has been a long time coming.

We are very excited to have it here.

Council Member Juarez has been leading this effort for a very long time.

I started working on this effort as a staff member to Council Member Bagshaw, and I'm excited and happy to be able to continue this work as an elected official myself.

This conversation we're having today began at the start of 2019 when the council first adopted a temporary moratorium on the redevelopment of a manufactured home park to provide a long-term solution to be developed.

Since then, we've gone through two land-use chairs and four moratorium extensions, and today we are finally considering legislation that would adopt long-term protections for manufactured home parks in Seattle and their residents.

While I am now the third land-use chair to work on this issue, Council Member Juarez has been leading from day one for her D5 residence.

Councilmember Juarez, as the prime leader on this, anything to share before we hand it over to Ketel?

I'm going to be very brief because Ketel's been, as we say in Indian country, riding the range with me.

This actually started in December of 2018, came to more fruition in the winter of 2019. And I'm just, and this is all I'm going to say because Ketel has a great PowerPoint, First of all, thank you, Mr. Chair, for shepherding this and working with our staff.

Thank you to the great Noah the Great, who has been working closely with my district director, Dean Alsop, and you heard from our really good friend, Linda McCoy, and some of the residents up at Bella Bee and Halcyon.

And I normally don't go on and on about thank yous, but This has been a real, real big project for Dean Alsop in our office and working with Noah.

And this is where it really comes to bear when you have really good legislative policy staff that are on the ground working not only with people like Ketel and the city attorney's office and yourself, Um, but just coming together and the developer and the owner and the residents And i'm also a thank god and thank you and a shout out to council member shama sawant Who brought this to our attention as well and met with the folks up north as well?

So I want to thank council member sawant as well So i'm hoping that we can get through this that we will have this overlay district That everyone will be happy and that there is more to come and we will keep moving forward to save pockets of low to middle middle middle income, kind of that missing middle in our city, because we definitely need these type of spots so people can age in place, stay in place, grow in place.

And I will leave it at that.

So I'll let Ketel take over.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councilman Waters.

Ketel, take it away.

Sure.

Ketel Freeman, Council Central staff, and there is a presentation attached to the agenda.

I'll share my screen here and pull up the version I have here at home.

Does everybody see that?

Maybe I'll make this full screen.

All right.

So you all have recited a lot of the history here, and I'll walk through I'm going to walk through it in maybe a little bit more detail, but this presentation is in some ways a refresh of the presentation that you all saw back in April of this year.

It recites some of the legislative history and also talks about changes that are reflected in a new bill, Council Bill 120206. But with respect to legislative history, as Council Member Strauss mentioned, in 2019, Council passed Ordinance 125764, and that established a one-year moratorium redevelopment of mobile home parks.

That moratorium was intended to reduce development pressure on the city's remaining two mobile home parks.

At the time, the Halcyon mobile home park was up for sale and has since been purchased by a mobile home park operator, but it helped the council understand the pressure that was on mobile home parks, the remaining two mobile home parks in the city of Seattle, and has led to of that moratorium, so it's been extended four times before additional six-month periods, with the most recent extension happening in July.

At the end of this, I'll talk about another extension that the council will be considering this coming Monday.

So in May, Council introduced Council Bill 120079, co-sponsored by Council Members Juarez and Strauss.

That bill would have created a mobile home park overlay district.

That's still the primary regulatory vehicle here.

The SEPA threshold determination for that bill was appealed by the owner of the Bella Bee.

And in September of this year, we reached a settlement agreement with the Bella Bee owner and introduced a bill, Council Bill 120206 in October that reflects that settlement agreement.

So there are two remaining mobile home parks in Seattle, and they happen to be adjacent to each other.

There's the Bellaby and the Halcyon.

Both are located in the Bitter Lake residential urban village.

The Bellaby is about 3.8 acres.

The Halcyon is about twice that size, 7.6 acres.

The sites are both zoned, a commercial one with a 55-foot height limit and M, mandatory housing affordability suffix.

There's a little bit of confusion about the zone designation, which I think we've resolved now.

But in total, both sites are about 11 acres in size and located in an area that is intended for relatively dense residential development.

So cattle is not the only jurisdiction dealing with pressure on mobile home parks.

So while the Puget Sound region is urbanizing, more and more mobile home parks are being converted to other uses.

And also sort of compounding the problem is the fact that sites where mobile homes could be used, other mobile home park sites within the region, are becoming fewer and fewer.

So in 2008 Tumwater created a mobile home park zone that applies to six of Tumwater's 10 mobile home parks.

That zoning designation was subject to an appeal that ended up in the Ninth Circuit.

that ultimately was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit.

Since 1996, Bothell has had a mobile home park overlay to promote retention of mobile home parks with rental lots.

And more recently, in 2019, Kenmore introduced a regulatory regime that phased out mobile home park zoning after a 10-year protection period, but provided some longer-term protections for a couple of their mobile homes.

I am seeing Mr. Freeman's screen.

There we go.

Mr Freeman, could you say that last point one more time and then Councilman waters.

Just noting a couple of jurisdictions that are nearby that have regulations for mobile home parks.

Kenmore is perhaps the most recent, which introduced kind of a phased zoning approach with phasing out protections for mobile home parks in 10 years, except for a few that have longer term protections.

I think that their regulations were subject to an appeal to the Growth Management Hearings Board.

Thank you, Council Member Waters.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The only thing I wanted to point out in Ketel, because we both read these cases, was Tumwater the only one that was a product of litigation or all three of them challenged and a product and upheld in litigation?

I don't know about Bothell.

Tom Waters certainly was challenged and ended up in federal court.

Ken Moores was challenged to the Growth Management Hearings Board, so at a quasi-judicial administrative board at the state level.

I don't actually know.

It may be the case that may have ended up in King County Superior Court as well, but I'm just not sure.

So my only point about that and bringing it up, and we've all looked at those cases because we use that as kind of a template, is that kudos to you, Mr. Chair, and to Ketel and the folks in the city attorney's offices.

We didn't want this to end up in a courtroom with litigation because people don't always get what they want when they have to go into a court.

We wanted to listen to community and do it right.

So we looked at all three of these cases and kind of the roots of how this happened, if you will.

And so I'm happy, I'm actually really happy that we did not have to find ourselves in Superior Court or the Ninth Circuit addressing some of these housing issues.

So that's a credit to Ketel and our city attorney's office in your leadership, Mr. Madam Chair, or Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

Well, thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Well put.

As a former judge yourself, you know that the courtroom is not a place that you necessarily want to end up.

And that is the reason that we have continued in this last extension of the moratorium we were not going to engage in.

We were going to pass this bill previously.

And to avoid the courtroom, that is why we have this additional moratorium and this new council bill.

And so good work to you, Council Member Juarez, Ketel Freeman, and our city attorneys.

All right, so moving on to the overlay district itself, I'll maybe try to demystify some zoning jargon here.

An overlay district is really a set of regulations that sit over an underlying zone designation.

So the underlying zone designation here is commercial one with a 55-foot height limit.

There is an overlay that is more restrictive that sits over that C-155 zone.

So where the regulations and the overlay are more restrictive, those regulations apply.

A couple of examples of overlay districts within the city, all of our shorelines are within our shoreline overlay district.

That's how we implement our shoreline master program, which is a requirement of the shoreline management act and universities and hospitals are within major institution overlay districts, which is how we provide additional regulations and also allow for expansions of those.

major institutions.

So what would the proposed overlay district do?

It would limit residential uses to mobile homes and mobile home parks and low income housing on sites owned by a government nonprofit or religious organization.

That latter part, the low-income housing on sites owned by a government, non-profit, or religious organization, is something that flows from the settlement agreement with the owner of Bella Bee.

It's a very salutary change.

It would require relocation assistance, write a first offer, and there are some rent limitations that would apply if low-income housing is developed on the sites for current residents, if low-income housing is developed.

It would allow some commercial uses but limit the size of those uses.

It would remove some of the setback, density limits, and amenity area requirements that were in the prior proposal, Council Bill 120079. And instead, the current regulations that exist in code would be applicable.

And there is a set of regulations in Seattle Municipal Code, Chapter 22904, that would apply.

Those are specific to mobile home parks.

It would affirm the current C-155M zone, and it would also establish the city's intent to periodically revisit the overlay designation to see that it's just, you know, to determine whether or not it's accomplishing its purpose of preserving mobile home parks.

The first opportunity to revisit would happen within 10 years.

And finally, it would provide for the expiration of the overlay zone by January 1st, 2051. So absent some future council action before January 1st, 2051, the overlay district will automatically expire and development could occur under the, pursuant to the underlying zoning.

So next up, there is a public hearing and council consideration of another extension of the moratorium.

That's what happened this coming Monday.

Council vote 120213 is going to be the subject of a full council hearing this coming Monday.

That would extend the current moratorium to the earlier of the effective date of council vote 120206, which is the bill that's in committee today or six months, whichever is earlier.

So if council bill 120206 passes possibly on December 13th, as soon as that bill becomes effective, the moratorium would go away.

And that's because there's sort of a slip between cup and lip here.

The current moratorium will expire.

in January, January 10th, I believe.

And so there'll be a period of a few days when the moratorium wouldn't apply and somebody could potentially apply for a permit.

There's a public hearing and possible committee recommendation on Council Bill 120206. That'll happen on next Wednesday on December 8th, which means that a possible full council vote could happen as soon as December 13th.

So that is, that's all I have.

Thank you.

Council Member Juarez is our leader.

No more thank yous, no more comments.

I will just say, And maybe the final point hasn't been made this time around.

We've talked about this so many times.

This is important because people who live and own mobile or manufactured homes, I think manufactured is probably the best and most descriptive word because these are not mobile.

These are set in place homes that function as a home.

like anyone else lives out here.

The issue is that while folks own their homes, they do not own the land underneath them.

And without this legislation, folks who have their home, have purchased their home, could be forced to move.

And when you have to move a manufactured home, especially if it's older, it is most likely going to be destroyed.

And that is why it's incredibly important that we allow people to age in place and to continue being able to live in their manufactured homes in these locations.

I can tell you that from personal experience, my grandmother and grandfather lived in a manufactured home, in a manufactured home park, not so different than this.

And it is a place that creates community.

It's a place that creates an affordable option to live inside.

And it's really important that we're passing this legislation.

So just wanted to take a moment to thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Thank you to Dean and Noah, and thank you, Mr. Freeman.

And thank you, Council Member Sawant, for bringing this forward in the first place.

With that, if there are no further questions, colleagues, as Ketel said, I want to remind you that this coming Monday at full council, we will take up a final extension of the moratorium on redevelopment of manufactured home parks.

This extension will ensure the moratorium remains in effect until this long-term legislation takes effect.

This legislation before us today will be back before the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee for a public hearing and vote on Wednesday, December 8th.

If it passes, it will then go to full council on Monday, December 13th.

Thank you, colleagues.

We'll move on to item 5, our final item of today's agenda.

Hopefully going to be right on time.

Our final agenda item of the day is Council Bill 120214, which replaces single family with neighborhood residential as the verbiage in the municipal code.

Mr. Onley, please read the abbreviated title into the record.

And item 5, Council Bill 120214, an ordinance relating to land use and zoning.

renaming single-family zones to neighborhood residential zones and amending the style municipal code.

Thank you, Mr. Ahn.

We are joined for this discussion by Mr. Lish Whitson of our council central staff.

Mr. Whitson, please take it away.

Great, thank you.

I will share my screen and I have an incredibly short presentation.

Just a second.

Here we are.

All right, so this bill follows up on legislation ordinance 126456, the council adopted in October.

That bill amended the city's comprehensive plan to, sorry, can you see the presentation?

Yes, sir, we can.

Okay, great.

That bill amended the comprehensive plan to change the name of single family areas to neighborhood residential areas.

This bill implements that previous bill by amending the Seattle Municipal Code to make similar changes, changing the names of single family zones to neighborhood residential zones.

The bill would change single-family 9,600 zones, the least dense single-family zones to neighborhood residential one.

Single-family residential 5,000 zones would be changed to neighborhood residential three.

And the residential small lot zone would be renamed neighborhood residential small lot, but keep the same abbreviation.

If you are moving your PowerPoint forward, it is not reflected on the screen.

We're still on the title slide.

Is that working?

It is.

Great.

Great.

All right, so single family 9600 goes to neighborhood residential one, single family 5000 goes to neighborhood residential three, residential small lot becomes neighborhood residential small lot, or with RSL is the same abbreviation.

amends multiple sections of the code, the official land use maps, land use code, short-term rental code, traffic administration code, street use code, building and construction, and environmental regulations.

The one section of code that is not changed under this bill are the shoreline regulations.

There are extensive outreach and engagement requirements for and state approval required for changes to the shoreline code.

And in consultation with the state, it was determined, and the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections, it's determined that it would be better for SDCI to wrap up these changes alongside other shoreline code amendments the next time they do an update to that code.

This map shows the extent of our current single family and future neighborhood residential zones.

Approximately 60% of the city is zoned with single family zoning today, including most of the city's parkland, schools, and residential areas.

And let's just on that point, since you brought up the parkland, just bringing us back to one of our earlier bills today about the West Point Sewage Treatment Facility.

The reason that we have to provide them an exception is because, as you can see on this map, the West Point Sewer Treatment Facility is in a neighborhood residential zone.

and does not have, we have to provide them an exception to build that building because that building does not meet the legal requirements of the zoning of this area.

Thanks.

Because the references to single family zones are so extensive, both on the land use map, in the code, And in many SDCI documents, the bill provides 180 day effective date in order to provide SDCI with more than sufficient time to update all of their materials.

And before I get into questions, just want to thank Brandon Islip and Liza Anderson from the law department who provided extensive help on crafting this 218 page ordinance that basically just changes names.

Thank you, Lish.

And you don't need to share screen unless when colleagues have questions about your presentation.

I just want to start with, can you confirm, I know I ask this question every time it's before us, can you confirm that this legislation does not change any policies around what is allowed in these zones?

It only changes the name.

Correct.

The only effect is to change the names of the zones from single family to neighborhood residential.

Great.

Thank you.

As described earlier with the legislation providing an exception for the West Point Treatment Facility which is in a neighborhood residential zone.

And can you help clarify one more time for the viewing public the distinction between the comprehensive plan amendment which we adopted in September and this legislation which amends the Seattle Municipal Code?

Why are both necessary?

Yeah, the Comprehensive Plan is a 20-year policy document that provides the vision and policies to guide how the city develops over a 20-year period.

The Municipal Code, and in particular the Land Use Code, implements the Comprehensive Plan, provides specific regulations that translate that broad policy guidance into specific standards that development in our zones needs to comply with.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

And so we were able to set ourselves up to be able to make the code change.

And then this code change is just changing.

It's essentially a technical bill, just swapping the names out.

And can you speak to the implementation timeline for this legislation?

Why it is longer than usual?

Is it why I know Liza and Brandon were very helpful, but it sounds like a very long document for just changing names.

Yeah.

So in terms of implementation, it's to provide SDCI with additional time to update all of their materials.

They request that additional time.

And because there is no substantive effect to this bill, there wasn't necessarily an urgency to having it implemented under a normal timeframe.

And references to single family zones are found throughout the municipal code, not just in the land use code, but also in codes related to short-term rental housing.

Some of our traffic and street use regulations reference the underlying zoning, et cetera.

Very helpful and I can tell you as being a land use nerd I was on the STC I GIS website the other night looking up zoning in our city and notice many references that will eventually need to be corrected and so with such a long document that just documents this change.

the implementation timeline makes good sense to me.

And I know Council Member Mosqueda has led this effort even before I ever got involved.

And while she's unfortunately not present at the committee any longer for a pre, we already knew that this was gonna happen, she would have to step away.

I just wanna take the moment to recognize her and her great efforts in this realm.

Colleagues, any questions for Mr. Whitson?

I know that this subject has been before us a number of times.

Not seeing any.

I would like to thank you, Lish.

This legislation will be back before the committee on Wednesday, December 8th for a public hearing and vote.

There is no other business for the good of the order.

This concludes the Friday, December 3rd, 2021 meeting of the Languages and Neighborhoods Committee.

As a reminder, our next regularly scheduled committee meeting will be Wednesday, December 8th, starting at 9.30 AM, speaking on many of the topics that we discussed today.

So I foresee it to be a, we'll be able to move through those items that we've already discussed in a more rapid clip.

So I want to thank everyone for attending and we are adjourned.