City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay. And, you know, let's look at our agenda.
City of Lake Forest Park: Would someone like to read the, Land acknowledgement?
City of Lake Forest Park: I will. We'd like to acknowledge we are on the traditional land of a rich and diverse group of Native peoples who have called this area home for more than 10,000 years.
City of Lake Forest Park: We honor with gratitude the land itself and the descendants of these Native peoples who are still here today.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Welcome, everyone.
City of Lake Forest Park: Meredith, good to have you back.
City of Lake Forest Park: I welcome our guests.
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, thanks!
City of Lake Forest Park: So the first thing we'll do is include the agenda. I am going to make a recommendation, actually, at the very beginning here, that we…
City of Lake Forest Park: Our old business.
City of Lake Forest Park: that we start with the Critical Area Ordinance Update.
City of Lake Forest Park: and move middle housing, so we move… basically, we're just gonna switch A and B.
City of Lake Forest Park: In terms of orders.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, would that change, anything else then?
City of Lake Forest Park: Any other changes sent by, you know, we good with the agenda, with those two changes?
City of Lake Forest Park: True.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, Cherie, Hina… y'all, good… how are you, Johnny?
Hina: Agree.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, proposal to accept the agenda.
City of Lake Forest Park: With those two changes.
Cherie Finazzo: I second it.
City of Lake Forest Park: Second? Everyone in agreement? Aye.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, approval of meeting minutes from June
City of Lake Forest Park: Anybody see any discrepancies in my notes? What did they do?
City of Lake Forest Park: 15 to 20 minutes.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay. Is there a motion to accept the meeting minutes for June 9th?
City of Lake Forest Park: I'm gonna excuse my sausage.
Janne Kaje: So moved.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay. Second?
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, yeah, so… Cherie and Hina…
Hina: Yes.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, I'm in agreement.
Cherie Finazzo: Bye.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay. Great, thank you. Moving forward.
City of Lake Forest Park: Meeting dates, the next meeting would be September… Yep.
City of Lake Forest Park: And, everyone attending.
City of Lake Forest Park: Great, great, I mean, you're out of the country. Okay, where you going?
City of Lake Forest Park: Switzerland. Switzerland.
City of Lake Forest Park: I see. Internet there. A little bit of a time difference, but it's… Anyone else?
City of Lake Forest Park: think that they cannot make the September 8th meeting.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yoni, you are doing this, I'm not sure what that meant.
Janne Kaje: I'm fine, I'll be here.
Cherie Finazzo: be here.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yes, we'll go ahead.
City of Lake Forest Park: Item number… number 6, public hearings.
City of Lake Forest Park: Adventure.
City of Lake Forest Park: Tonight, hearings tonight.
City of Lake Forest Park: But we do have some guests from the public.
City of Lake Forest Park: Oh, Josh here.
City of Lake Forest Park: I imagine he'll join us, I haven't received a while, and there's no attendees to promote, so… Okay. And we put that off till later? Yeah. Actually, yes.
City of Lake Forest Park: Public comments? Okay, so public comments. We do have guests, Eric and,
City of Lake Forest Park: I know that you'd like to speak this evening. Yes. My only request is that, so, as the Planning Commission, we cannot speak to any ongoing cases, right? We can't make any decisions regarding ongoing cases.
City of Lake Forest Park: So… so my request is that you're sharing your recommendations, which I think is why you're here.
City of Lake Forest Park: Which is great, given that what we're talking about is the critical… updating the critical area ordinance. And of course, the,
City of Lake Forest Park: move the, you know, we'll be talking about all those important pieces to the creative abortions.
City of Lake Forest Park: So,
City of Lake Forest Park: And you said you'd like to have about 15 minutes to talk? That'd be great. Okay. Well, we'll share, she'll probably hear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you could just introduce yourself, tell us where you live. Yeah.
City of Lake Forest Park: Boom! My name is Jolene Jang, and I've lived in, Lake Forest Park since 2002, and I have a corner house, many people have gone past it.
City of Lake Forest Park: And we wanted to, Stacy and I wanted to share what it's like for all of you to live next to a RUB applicant sometimes. So you can have that first-hand experience to understand what that could be like.
City of Lake Forest Park: As you were thinking about the critical areas and how to come up with solutions, how to change it, if you don't know what the problems are and how they impact people, it's hard to make, effective
City of Lake Forest Park: solutions. So, we'll give you, some ideas around that.
City of Lake Forest Park: And… So, Green Voices of Lake Forest Park.
City of Lake Forest Park: That is a collection of environmentalist organizations and environmentalists and residents, who share their expertise with each other. And so, we've put together, websites and podcasts and lots of resources so residents, council people, and everybody can get to know what's happening. They have pictures and visuals to understand.
City of Lake Forest Park: So that is available. So tonight, we want to give you, in real time, what the impacts are of some of these ROEs, RUEs, and we have some examples.
City of Lake Forest Park: And both the past Planning Commission and Councilors know that it is a problem, it continues to be a problem, and so they did try and revise the RUB code and voted on it, and… because they all know it's a problem. However, there still are challenges with it.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, we're gonna give you data to help you understand where might those challenges be.
City of Lake Forest Park: From our perspective, and… and some of the other folks. So, for example, there is a CABA, so there are not… in 9 years, there have been 8 RUVs.
City of Lake Forest Park: And let me give you a few examples. So the CABA RUE, so this property, in 1998, it was worth zero. Unbuildable, zero. The next year, $99, it was worth $80,000.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then you move forward to 2020, it was purchased for $76,500.
City of Lake Forest Park: So that's an RUE that…
City of Lake Forest Park: right, it's unbuildable, it's empty, and an outside person from Edmonds is trying to come in here, do a gamble, and try and push it through. Let me have some connections or something, and push it through. So that's,
City of Lake Forest Park: Currently, that has taken 3 years, if you look at the last date. It started in 2023, and then in May.
City of Lake Forest Park: It says if it's, what is it,
City of Lake Forest Park: It's not… it's not gone through. I don't know if it's done or not, but it's been 3 years of time. So as we're thinking about how much do RUEs cost the city, that was 3 years, okay? There's the Gary RUE, that's the one that is right below, me. So, that…
City of Lake Forest Park: for most… that property, because it was unbuildable, is… has been worth $20,000 for most of its history. It was bought for $40,000, and right now, it kind of sits
City of Lake Forest Park: Right near… right now, I'm POTS.
City of Lake Forest Park: And there's another example of the Johnson property. So this was bought for $144,000, also unbuildable on wetland, and he flipped it for $1.7 million. So, if you look at these RUEs.
City of Lake Forest Park: Are there patterns?
City of Lake Forest Park: So they are people outside of… outside of Lake Forest Park, finding a cheap parcel that's unbuildable, and taking a gamble to see if they can push it through. And many of them have been successful.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, you can find that this
City of Lake Forest Park: A number of these RUEs have triggered a lot of, concern from the residents, from environmentalists. There's over 100 pages of detailed public comments against showing all the problems with these.
City of Lake Forest Park: And, and pointing out what the risks are.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, one of the big questions is, who should bear the burden of proof if this is going to be safely developed? Should the burden be on the neighbors? Should we have to pay all this money to get experts and spend all this time to defend our house from harm?
City of Lake Forest Park: Or should it be the city who has to do all the work? Or should it be on the applicant?
City of Lake Forest Park: So that is the main… that's the big question, because right now, what it is, the burden is on the resident to defend themselves.
City of Lake Forest Park: And is that what we want for Lake Forest Park?
City of Lake Forest Park: And then, so I'm going to give you a couple of… let's talk about operation… the operational breakdown that we have seen. So, evidence and case studies. So, we're talking about direct property damage.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then number two, systematic financial drain. Number three, municipal legal liability.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, direct damage.
City of Lake Forest Park: So…
City of Lake Forest Park: should the person who's just a neighbor have to spend 2,000 hours defending their territory from damage? Because that is the case. If you think about that, 2,000 hours is 8 hours a day.
City of Lake Forest Park: Monday through Friday for an entire year. Can anybody afford that?
City of Lake Forest Park: So, should that be a thing? Because that has been my case, and I don't want… wish that for anybody else.
City of Lake Forest Park: And…
City of Lake Forest Park: So, let's talk about damage, property damage. So, an unpermitted excavator, broke the sewer line. This is on the RUE Mark Cherie parcel, and so Stacy lives on top, and then I live here, and then our sewer is on the bottom on the empty parcel.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so, because Mark Gary is going… is… is applying for his RUE, he got a soil sample. So, he has got an unpermitted excavator, broke it, covered it up.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then we have this sewer leak that we are… have to pay $30,000 for. Can you imagine… you, or your residents.
City of Lake Forest Park: How did you do that? Is that fair? Is that a problem?
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, so that is, one of the damages.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then also, human displacement.
City of Lake Forest Park: You have… go ahead. Yeah, there were 11 people between 3 houses who didn't have sewer service. That means no bathing, no toilet flushing, no dishwashing, no doing laundry, for a very extended period of time. Because by the time we were notified that there was a sewer leak.
City of Lake Forest Park: It had already been going on for 6 months, and had been covered up. So, the difference is, had we been notified immediately, that probably would have been a $5,000 or $6,000 job to get in there to repair that pipe.
City of Lake Forest Park: But because that leak went unattended for so long, we took out
City of Lake Forest Park: my goodness, about 7,000 to 8,000 pounds of, two backer trucks. Two full backer trucks to take away the contamination of the soil.
City of Lake Forest Park: And when this occurred, June.
City of Lake Forest Park: 2026, and I meet people, they're like, oh, you know, I did smell that last summer, and there are people who have seen this. I… I didn't… I… I guess I'm in my house most of the time. I didn't know about it, but wow, it'd be great to be informed. So I think that opens up some liability.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, and then let's talk about,
City of Lake Forest Park: The financial drain. So, for example, I talked about the Gary RUE, that was 7 years. So, in 2019, when the senior planner is no longer here, that began.
City of Lake Forest Park: And 7 years, if you can calculate how much time, that is a ton of time. And…
City of Lake Forest Park: I just…
City of Lake Forest Park: I haven't calculated that, but I'm super curious, because the lawyer costs quite a bit of money. And, there are a number of conversations with the lawyer regarding the RUE. A ton of money. And I talked about the CADA RUE, that was 3 years.
City of Lake Forest Park: Who's monitoring all these RUEs and how much it is costing?
City of Lake Forest Park: Do you want to add anything to that with the costs? Okay. So,
City of Lake Forest Park: There is a tripling of, professional services.
City of Lake Forest Park: In recent years, and just in 25-26 budget… 25-26?
City of Lake Forest Park: So…
City of Lake Forest Park: Where is that? What happened to it? I think we need to have some systems that are more transparent.
City of Lake Forest Park: Because even though you may not have the luxury of being next to an RUE that goes bad, all of us are paying.
City of Lake Forest Park: for this, because we're all taxpayers, and so if, let's say that Gary REV costed, you know, $200,000 in hours and money.
City of Lake Forest Park: We're all paying for it, and what about all the other REEs?
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, do you want to talk about, legal liability? Yeah, I want to, address, first of all, I've been here 36 years. I own the two homes to the west, right above, Jolene.
City of Lake Forest Park: I've often housed five generations of my family there. Currently, we have three, so we have a vested interest in our city making good decisions. My goal here is to ensure that this doesn't happen again to anybody, particularly somebody who can't defend themselves, or don't know that they have a right to.
City of Lake Forest Park: I would very much like to see as part of the goal that a thorough review and revision take place to the Muni Code, Admin Procedures, or Permit Manual, as they would apply to each of those sectors. So, I went through, because I'm living through this right now, okay, so I'm seeing it from the user side.
City of Lake Forest Park: I identified several areas
City of Lake Forest Park: some which could just be a revision, and so that it's not a lot of work for everybody. This is pretty much based on, the remedies are based on Bothele. I know, they're bigger, they have more money, they have more money for monitoring and the rest of that. But the point is, that's the tightest
City of Lake Forest Park: code I have ever read in my life, and it's an if-and-Or code. So, you're not just getting, you know, the instruction, you're getting the other two, potential ways that you could use that information.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, I had proposed that there are processed deficiencies.
City of Lake Forest Park: And yes, we need an administrative procedure that requires milestone tracking, required documents, review status, and public-facing permit checklists. One of the reasons why that's important is we have not had any communication or confirmation or direction from the city since March, the day the repair took place.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, this leaves us to wonder, is this being improved? Are there going to be more soil samples dug? Are there going to be other things happening on that property that could potentially harm us? We also are in a very unstable, slide, critical slope area. So, I don't know every day if I'm going to come home, my house is going to be down the hill somewhere, because that person did something.
City of Lake Forest Park: That they shouldn't have.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, yes, we have to have a way to track this. Fixed application time-wise, you said 7 years.
City of Lake Forest Park: We need to lock that down. And if somebody wants to go over or can't get their things completed, fine, they can reapply. There's a $5,000 reapplication fee for that. We should not be paying for this. We need to restructure our fees and services so that at the very least, these groups are paying for themselves. They should at least pay for HIPSA.
City of Lake Forest Park: There's a failure to provide complete application, there's lots of voids,
City of Lake Forest Park: That could be strengthened through administrative rules requiring completeness before formal acceptance. I think that kind of goes without saying that you would want all the boxes checked. And to add to that, there's so many examples of the Gary RE that was just, wow, I didn't remember exact numbers, but it was like 50% were not available or blank, and it says, must fill out thoroughly. And there is code, so there's at least
City of Lake Forest Park: 12 violations, potential violations, on the carrying RDE, but if you look at that, there's falsehoods in it, and
City of Lake Forest Park: Should we allow people to… Use faucets?
City of Lake Forest Park: There's… there's a couple of pretty quick…
City of Lake Forest Park: fixes to this. They'll certainly be less expensive than what's been spent on one particular case.
City of Lake Forest Park: Buffal requires liability insurance and bonding. And if we… by the way, I should say, this… these are for non-resident
City of Lake Forest Park: undeveloped property developers. I don't think that much of this would apply to residents, and I wouldn't like to see that, but I would like to see us create that new category of undeveloped non-resident developers, because
City of Lake Forest Park: they should be picking up the tab for this. They're coming in, scooping up, you know, whatever's left, and making a huge profit on it. And going back to the cost, I also feel that there should be a cost-effectiveness discussion
City of Lake Forest Park: that takes place at some point early in the process. I don't know how long it's going to take to recoup that money from a property tax basis, or a city tax, or whatever. I don't know, but I can tell you, I don't think that one's ever going to be in the red.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, liability insurance and bonding, that should be required of the, the developer, person applying for the permit. It would also be smart for the city to take out an inexpensive liability policy.
City of Lake Forest Park: So that there's coverage, because if either of those things had been in place, and I wouldn't let somebody give an application if they didn't tell me they had liability coverage on the property, that your, your staff's gonna be walking on to take samples and to look around. It would have been so simple, pick up the phone and call and say, oh, hey, we have a problem, and the person on the other end of the phone might say, hey, I got the insurance coverage information you need right here.
City of Lake Forest Park: And it could have been taken care of in a week.
City of Lake Forest Park: This is months dragging on, with $30,000 worth of debt hanging on both of us, coming up with $1,000 to $2,000 a month. Fortunately, we were working with a lovely company, and I can't say enough about Sewer Friendly. They get a plug-in for them here. They were fabulous. They came in and took care of things, and they did it right, and they're still treating us right.
City of Lake Forest Park: We need updated hazard mapping.
City of Lake Forest Park: The one that you're relying on to make these decisions about critical use areas are, you know, probably 15 years old, because when you got the data in 2016 to start the mapping process, that was probably 2-year-old data at best, and that needs to be updated, and that should play a vital role.
City of Lake Forest Park: in any decision made regarding a fire. I want to add to that, because I just talked to the King County Flood Mapping Administrator.
City of Lake Forest Park: And she says she's looking at the flood insurance study, and she says, oh, Lyme Creek in that area looks like it never has been mapped.
City of Lake Forest Park: So we're… we're looking at this, it's never been mapped yet. We're… we forgot to say, Lions Creek runs right through the little piece of property that the developer bought, and there… there is no way to enact any kind of a buffer zone.
City of Lake Forest Park: Because you're gonna have to be too close to the creek. Let me add a couple of things. If I may, because we're at our… Okay. You sent out some information requesting that the, commission members review it. Yeah.
City of Lake Forest Park: Here's my recommendation by Marty the West. Yeah. Because I'm really interested in hearing, like, recommendations on. We have a lot. We're all right, and I think we want to hear what those recommendations are, based on your experiences.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah. Based on what you've learned. You've learned a lot in this process. I would like… fortunately, I didn't have an opportunity to look through you all, so I'm not sure what that entails. Yeah. But if you would be willing to write out your recommendations.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then come back. So we'll submit that information, you know, how we officially do that with the packet.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then we can, you know, come back to this in Satone. That'd be great. Yeah, we have a lot of the code, but I think it's important to note about the clear-cutting and stop work orders that are not being enforced as well. But I also want to open it up to the, commissioners to ask any questions that you might have. Great, thank you.
Janne Kaje: Yeah, this is Janne, Vice Chair. Thank you, Jolene and Stacey. Really appreciate you coming out and talking to us. I wish we had more residents showing up at our meetings and sharing their thoughts, and you've clearly done a lot of homework, and you know, that's…
Janne Kaje: That's just very appreciated. I've done some of that myself in my private capacity over the years, and it's a lot of work.
Janne Kaje: And, so, thank you. You mentioned something there at the end that I think is pretty important.
Janne Kaje: And I only had a chance to peruse your recommendations, but, you mentioned that we don't enforce penalties that are in our code. Can you say something more about that? Because
Janne Kaje: That is, highly aggravating as a resident, and, you know, in a city that has a struggling budget.
Janne Kaje: And it sounds like you have some experience with the city not collecting on fines.
Janne Kaje: that are required when we have things like stop work orders, so can you just say a little bit about that?
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, and also Maddie Larson, the past, chair, has done a… they were in her neighborhood, so she knows a lot about the stop work order that was ordered on the Johnson RUE. And so that was issued, and that was where the… it was $144,000, and he flipped it for $101.7 million, flooded the neighbor, no consequences, and that stop order was not
City of Lake Forest Park: Nothing happened with it. And, also, Paula Goode, behind her place, there was a stop order also that could have been collected the money for the city.
City of Lake Forest Park: and saving the environment, so that happened as well. And there's… there is routine, if you start asking around. And with stop work orders, depending on whether it's the trees or the water, there's, federal… there's state and federal, there's all these that you're gonna have a list of them that you could be making money. I mean, they should, I mean, at least to recruit some money, and it's not being done at all. So I think that is a huge problem, particularly
City of Lake Forest Park: when LFP needs money.
Janne Kaje: Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Any questions?
City of Lake Forest Park: So, thank you. All good.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I know you've been working on this phone.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yep, quite a while.
City of Lake Forest Park: Our other…
City of Lake Forest Park: Yes, Drew, and yeah, let me introduce myself. So, I'm Brian Saunders. I'm a lifelong resident of Forest Park, been there all my life, and I grew up on the banks of Mackler Creek on Hamlin Road.
City of Lake Forest Park: Where I had must have… must have had some kind of influence on me, because I did my Bachelor's in Biology, went on to my Master's in Marine Estuary Science, and now I teach at Cherline College.
City of Lake Forest Park: teach kids how to do the ecological analysis. And first of all, before I get started, I do want to just thank the Commission.
City of Lake Forest Park: for doing the work you do, because having served on committees, you know, I know that we are volunteers, and we're eager to really do our best that we can with our expertise, so I just want to say thank you so much for that, and also for letting me speak today.
City of Lake Forest Park: You know, one of the things that,
City of Lake Forest Park: Oh, by the way, I'm also on the stewardship board of the Lake Forest Park Stewardship Foundation, which you may or may not know is a non-profit environmental group. I'm not speaking from them tonight, I'm speaking mainly for a private citizen, because we haven't quite had a chance to
City of Lake Forest Park: really delve this over yet in our committee meetings, or in our agenda meetings, but hopefully we'll be able to also have an official proposal from them as well. But I'm here to speak mainly to the critical area ordinances because
City of Lake Forest Park: I just feel like one of the things that's the most difficult aspect of
City of Lake Forest Park: you know, redesigning or revamping it is that, you know, what are the things that we can and cannot do? So, first of all, I'd like to say that Lake Forest Park, actually, when you really do compare it with other cities, and I compared it with, essentially, Shoreline.
City of Lake Forest Park: Breyer, Bothell, and Kenmore. And we do have some pretty tough, you know, things, especially our wetlands, our Class 1, Class 2 wetlands. We have the greatest buffer they would have to give for those, which I thought was a fantastic thing. We also have some pretty good,
City of Lake Forest Park: some pretty good, ordinances for how big you could actually build an REU that is a developed area. So… so that's… those are all fantastic things. So… so I understand that you guys are doing some… some revisions. I'm here to just, give my two cents to say that what we can do is
City of Lake Forest Park: Add to these wonderful things that we already have, and really tighten up and perhaps close some loops on where we actually have some weak spots.
City of Lake Forest Park: So I put together… I actually sent a letter to Mark, I don't know, Mark, if you got that or not, it's an email. I asked you to, to distribute to the commission, commissioners when you get a chance. Should be treated the same as the other email I received.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, and so… and so I… a lot of the things I'm… I'm gonna just kind of give a quick repeat on some of the things that I've mentioned really quickly.
City of Lake Forest Park: One of the first things that I really want to stress is the uniqueness of Winning Portsmouth.
City of Lake Forest Park: you know, yes, we're a smaller city, yes, we don't have enough money, but… and this is the map you were talking about, I believe. The critical areas map, which unfortunately, when I printed it out, it left the key out, but as you can see, I don't know if anybody can… everybody can see that.
City of Lake Forest Park: We've got a lot of critical area. All that brown, and all that orange, and all that kind of yellowish regions are all critical areas. Well, not quite critical, but the major area, and you can see we've got two major watersheds that carry an incredible amount of environmental value.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, in my opinion, what that states is that we've got more to lose. We've got more valuable habitat that we need to protect. So, I think we should think about
City of Lake Forest Park: giving a little bit more stricting into our critical errors codes. And what I did with all these cities that I compared with, I took some of their really wonderful ideas, and I've kind of integrated them into this letter. So I don't want to go through them all, because there's, like, nine of them. It's a lot of recommendations, a lot of things that I think we could think about, but I did want to talk about my top three. I'll just do this really quick, if you'll allow me.
City of Lake Forest Park: One of the first things I think we should really, use is something that Shoreline, City of Shoreline has done. They really have adopted a science-based riparian buffer standard for streams.
City of Lake Forest Park: So right now, we currently seem to have not a really uniform science-derived stream buffer.
City of Lake Forest Park: way of identifying those things. Shoreline used something called the Riparian Management Zone. It's a standard based on the Fish and Wildlife.
City of Lake Forest Park: way of designating buffer streams, and it comes out to be about 200 feet, given the most sensitive and most valuable habitats, including, you know, large trees and things like that.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, it's a much more science-based way of doing it. I don't think it'd be much less an argument about how you could define those things if it's already done with fish and wildlife.
City of Lake Forest Park: I also think, my second thing would be, we need to really strengthen our no net loss. We already have that language in our codes.
City of Lake Forest Park: But, right now, it just doesn't seem to have the same amount of bite as it does in Kenmore. Kenmore's actually got some really, really well-worded statements to that. It basically requires the applicants, and this kind of goes along with Jolie and what Stacey were saying, it requires the applicants to demonstrate an inability to avoid or reduce impacts before restoration or compensation is even allowed.
City of Lake Forest Park: So basically, it puts the burden of proof on the applicant, not on us to go out there and show that this is actually something that needs to be protected. That's huge. That takes pressure off Mark, it takes pressure off the people in the city here to really try and get that work.
City of Lake Forest Park: The third thing that I would like to state is we really need to bar out… bar development outright in any, state or federally listed species habitat. So if there is an endangered salmon that goes up that river, it should be absolutely barred that anybody should be able to develop in that critical area.
City of Lake Forest Park: Shoreline has done this.
City of Lake Forest Park: I think, Kenmore has done this, and so basically, rather than relying on sort of a general mitigation sequence like we do right now, which currently allows impacts if they are compensated, this just says, no, you can't do it because there's an endangered species there, or a threatened, or sensitive species.
City of Lake Forest Park: So those are just the three top that I really wanted to mention. As I said, I've got up to 9 different… or 8 different recommendations here, so it would be wonderful for you guys to just have a look at those. I wanted to mention… the last thing I'll just mention is that each one of these recommendations that I've got here is all based on the
City of Lake Forest Park: models that are already provided by other cities. So it's not like we're going to be outside the norm.
City of Lake Forest Park: we are going to be developing or using Acquies in their language and their use and showing how it's already working for them. So it's not going to put a huge, you know, basically fall outside some kind of code or reasonable use.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, I think that is about all.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Easily.
City of Lake Forest Park: So we'll definitely place that, and we'll tag it for a September meeting as well.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you for something, absolutely. Thank you for the time you put into it. Yeah.
City of Lake Forest Park: Anyone else would like to… Good to see you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, I'll say a little bit. My name's Jeff Jensen, I've been president of LFP since 2012. I'm a fish biologist, in fact, a member of UW-Bothel, and I've read Brian's letter. It's awesome. It's so rare that you get that kind of specific advice.
City of Lake Forest Park: With the kind of research that he's done, looking at what some other nearby cities have done, and also to reiterate the idea that LFP really is a gym, when I tell people where I live, and I'm excited about fish and nature.
City of Lake Forest Park: We owe it to decades of people working really hard on maintaining what we have, and holding people accountable as best they can when there's damage being done, that we even have something to lose. And as Brian says, we have a lot to lose, much more than any other nearby municipality that I can think of.
City of Lake Forest Park: And as far as endangered species, we do have occasional Chinook salmon that come up, Baccalaure Creek, so we have that documented as presence, ESA-listed species.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thanks.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yum. Thank you.
Janne Kaje: Yeah, I want to thank you both, Ryan and Jeff, for showing up. Jeff, you and I have chatted in the past, and I love having, you know, some fellow fish biologists in the house, offering their, their, their
Janne Kaje: thoughts on our Critical Areas Ordinance, so thank you both for showing up.
Janne Kaje: I wanted to just say that, and I believe I've said this in planning commissions before, I actually think that
Janne Kaje: Comparatively speaking, at least.
Janne Kaje: Lake Forest Park, you know, the rules we have around things like buffer protections are…
Janne Kaje: pretty darn good. Could they be improved? Sure, and I don't… I don't… so I'm not arguing with Brian's point about, maybe our stream buffers could be… could be, you know, bigger and so forth, but I just want to say, I don't think that's where the… the weakness is. I think it's in more of how we…
Janne Kaje: how we implement. And this goes back to what Jolene and Stacy were saying, like, okay, we have all these regs, but it feels like our systems
Janne Kaje: For, kind of, evaluating actions, or permitting actions, just…
Janne Kaje: Kind of undermine the fact that we have good science in place.
Janne Kaje: And I totally understand, as a local government employee of 20 years, I totally understand that part of that is that a small city, it's hard to even have the staff resources to, you know, to have a
Janne Kaje: complicated scheme, right? To have something that requires a lot of analysis and interpretation. That is really difficult to do when you don't have a decent tax base.
Janne Kaje: So… and I'm not saying that to put… throw my hands up, I'm saying, you know, I would love to have us think about
Janne Kaje: Where we can make some adjustments, and taking some
Janne Kaje: recommendations from, like, the folks who have spoken with us today, and make things
Janne Kaje: frankly, easier for us to implement, and I think part of that is to what Jolene and Stacy said, which is putting more of the onus
Janne Kaje: On people who are proposing to develop in our critical areas.
Janne Kaje: So, you know, completeness of applications, you know, things like that, that we can just say, you know what, no.
Janne Kaje: you're not ready, so we're not going to waste our staff time on your application. You're not ready. You haven't provided what we said you have to provide. And I think sometimes… and I'm… I've worked all through King County.
Janne Kaje: and some other parts of the state. Sometimes smaller governments are hesitant to have
Janne Kaje: really firm regulations, because they're afraid they don't really have the capacity to enforce them, they don't have enough money for attorneys, and whatever. And I'm not saying specifically that's what anybody's thinking in Lake Forest Park, I'm just saying that it's pretty common
Janne Kaje: To see small jurisdictions not really have the tools, the resources.
Janne Kaje: To implement rules, especially when they're complicated, and especially when they put the onus on the city or the citizens
Janne Kaje: the residents to fight back on something. So, I really appreciate, kind of, all of you who commented tonight on, A, we can do better, B,
Janne Kaje: we really need to figure out systems to enforce the things that we've already said are really important. And, you know, our science is pretty darn good.
Janne Kaje: Very defensible, could be better, sure.
Janne Kaje: But so, thank you all, I hope you stay engaged, I hope you keep showing up,
Janne Kaje: you know, as you said, we're all volunteers, and, you know, we only have so much time to kind of sort through this stuff, so good ideas from all of you and from neighboring jurisdictions are absolutely things we should think about. Thanks. And I think Hina had her name up after me, or hand up after me.
Hina: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to thank everyone for coming in, and for your presentation, and, you know, especially Stacey, Jolene, talking about the problem, really.
Hina: and then really contextually talking about it, and I think it's just, like, important to know, one, from a personal account, what that means to the residents, but also…
Hina: elaborating on some of those points. And so what I got from both of your conversations was really, there is a…
Hina: policy, and there's a code part, but then there's also the idea about accountability and enforcement. And accountability as in, like, holding the builders accountable. And I think, like, that's a… that's a really…
Hina: interesting lens to look at, where a lot of our code is about, you know, what can be done. But when it comes to liability, or especially holding, the builder accountable, and also how we enforce
Hina: Having… and then having that language is going to be really crucial moving forward, if we really want to be, you know, the city where people
Hina: Understand that there's gonna be some strict…
Hina: strict guidelines to go through, and they don't think that it's a small city, it's a small town, so, you know, builders can do whatever they want to do, so definitely, I think that's going to be important to look at, so I'm really looking forward to reading your recommendations there. And then about critical area recommendation, I would love to see, and it's always good to see, like.
Hina: The contrast between all our neighboring cities and towns of, you know, how they, what they are doing, and then how, you know, it relates to us.
Hina: And what are the different things and learnings that we can do? So, it's, like, always great to see it from a almost, like, competitive analysis lens in that way, and really learn from those examples. So, really looking forward to reading all of those recommendations. So, thank you for joining today.
City of Lake Forest Park: additional public comments?
City of Lake Forest Park: I mean, I don't have anything really thought out to say, but I… You might Cherie name? Oh, sorry. My name is Dane Campbell, and
City of Lake Forest Park: faculty at the University of Washington Bothell, and a resident in Lake Forest Park since 2012?
City of Lake Forest Park: And I'm a biologist, and I'm also particularly concerned about climate change issues, and I just want to point out that these kinds of issues in enforcement and,
City of Lake Forest Park: Oh.
City of Lake Forest Park: Staying on top of protecting resources.
City of Lake Forest Park: is important, not just for people, but for our habitat, and for making
City of Lake Forest Park: Our city, you know, a place where Where since… And it's often…
City of Lake Forest Park: I think under-appreciated how important it is to have, A functional wetlands at.
City of Lake Forest Park: We have special product bodies that…
City of Lake Forest Park: Or, in context of money changing.
City of Lake Forest Park: Beautiful.
City of Lake Forest Park: One note from staff, one thing that hasn't mentioned is ecology, Department of Ecology.
City of Lake Forest Park: We are two years overdue for this update.
City of Lake Forest Park: The periodic update of the comprehensive plan and this critical area ordinance is our periodic update, and that was due December of 2024 for small city.
City of Lake Forest Park: We got the comprehensive plan, which is the policy document done at the GMA demo, but we are not done with our periodic update because of this update.
City of Lake Forest Park: We quickly pivoted to the other priorities, mental housing, which had a June 2025 deadline.
City of Lake Forest Park: TVAD. Four years early, we did the climate element, advantage of half a million dollar grant, that's why Professional Services Triple said it was…
City of Lake Forest Park: $648,000, and… Rent-funded work.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so, without… saying this is less important by any means. It's the periodic update that we're satisfied.
City of Lake Forest Park: or two years late. It's not a mandate. You have the time to look into this. There is guidelines from Ecology that mentions many of the things that are not in our current ordinance because they weren't in RCW.
City of Lake Forest Park: But they will be offered up, starting with their checklist of what's missing, what's required by the new legislation. We'll identify those, and then have the ability to choose
City of Lake Forest Park: At a local level, a fortune of this city.
City of Lake Forest Park: So that Department of Ecology guidance is why some of the surrounding cities with
City of Lake Forest Park: Bigger staffs, more departments, and so forth already have it in there.
City of Lake Forest Park: Will that be available to the public, too, to look at? Oh, everything we do, yeah.
City of Lake Forest Park: Starting with the checklist.
City of Lake Forest Park: Great. And then, without going into the process, the whole thing goes to Department of Commerce, Department of Ecology for review.
City of Lake Forest Park: Best Available Science, all the… all the things that, Janne spent talking about.
City of Lake Forest Park: So they're not really optional, because they're required now, they're just not incorporated into our existing Good color.
City of Lake Forest Park: So we have time.
City of Lake Forest Park: That's a precursor to the other big
City of Lake Forest Park: gorilla in the room, if that's appropriate to say, is the Shoreline Master Program.
City of Lake Forest Park: The city missed the last cycle.
City of Lake Forest Park: We're forgiven because they're going into rulemaking right now, and that rulemaking is done. They'll have another round of grants for the next
City of Lake Forest Park: cycle due dates for King County. We hope to be successful in that grant, and use this critical area ordinance
City of Lake Forest Park: And everything that goes into it.
City of Lake Forest Park: for the Shoreline Master Program, I think.
City of Lake Forest Park: Which is very similar, but it adopts its own critical area regulations for the shoreline jurisdiction.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, that's the work plan for this year and next year.
City of Lake Forest Park: Not fully funded, not fully budgeted, but…
City of Lake Forest Park: Jake, would you like to share it, too?
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay. I'll just say thank you, all of you, for coming out and sharing your thoughts, and it really does help us, because we do have…
City of Lake Forest Park: you know, we don't have the expertise that you do, we have limited time, and we don't… so it's so helpful for you to
City of Lake Forest Park: kind of highlight things that are important so that then we can spend our time less, and we do our research and try to figure this out. So, thank you for being here, and…
City of Lake Forest Park: read your email, and I'll look forward to yours as well, so thanks for being here.
City of Lake Forest Park: It is a perfect time to be involved.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, thank you. I guess I will toss out just, Janne Reed. So I've been poking around on this a little bit, and one of the recommendations came was to reach out to vibrant cities.
City of Lake Forest Park: Vibrant Cities Love, it's a non-profit, I mean, they work on all this kind of stuff, and they have sample code, and they're just hiring a new hire for this area. They promised to let me know who that was when that person came on board, but it might be a nice, free resource.
City of Lake Forest Park: That we could use. They already gave me a bunch of things to read and stuff like that. And the other was, specifically asking a question about tree code. I went to the Arbor Day Foundation, since we're a tree city, USA.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I wasn't aware of this, they have model code.
City of Lake Forest Park: You can look up different aspects of your code, and they'll give examples of code. One of the examples they have in their code is the postpart.
City of Lake Forest Park: Which is nice to see as the topic, too. But they, too, have a cadre of experts and some sample code that we might do well to look at. It's free, and there's people that answer.
City of Lake Forest Park: People are saying, let's do it.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, thank you. Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Dick.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you, Glenn. Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, moving forward, to…
City of Lake Forest Park: And I think I did see Councilmember Josh… Did they flash it on the development?
CM Josh Rosenau: Yeah, I'm here.
City of Lake Forest Park: Hey, dude.
CM Josh Rosenau: Got it a little bit late, but I caught most of that, and I will shout my appreciation also as they all leave the room.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, thank you.
CM Josh Rosenau: I always like to see public comment.
CM Josh Rosenau: So, hello all. It's been a couple months, so plenty to catch up on.
CM Josh Rosenau: the… the probably biggest thing that you may be asked about that the City Council has done in the last couple months was…
CM Josh Rosenau: Putting another levied lead lift on the ballot.
CM Josh Rosenau: which I'm gonna be… cautious how I talk about it, because the city can't use resources to advocate
CM Josh Rosenau: for or against it, so I'll just describe what we did, and you can do your own research. I'm happy to talk with you in other contexts. But it's… it's largely a rerun of what was on the ballot last year that came 19 votes shy of passing.
CM Josh Rosenau: It's, 22 cents per mil rather than 24, which was what was on last year, and there were some updates to the
CM Josh Rosenau: Financial processes underlying it, and then,
CM Josh Rosenau: Clarifying the language that it is…
CM Josh Rosenau: maintaining public safety programs, maintaining levels of service. It's not intended to expand anything that we're doing, it's just… it's maintaining, in the face of the budget environment that lots of cities and counties are facing.
CM Josh Rosenau: all over the place. So that is gonna be on the November ballot, and there will… there are… we approved the pro and con committees, each of which were one person.
CM Josh Rosenau: So, it's a committee of one, but still a committee, and those statements will be filed shortly, and heading on their way to ballot boxes in the general election.
CM Josh Rosenau: So that'll be… that'll be interesting. It'll be important for all… all sorts of other conversations to follow,
CM Josh Rosenau: As… as… when we… when we learn what… what comes out of that.
CM Josh Rosenau: At our most recent meeting, we also had a lot of really good public comment about… it was the first touch on
CM Josh Rosenau: a, culvert replacement
CM Josh Rosenau: an extension to a contract that would change the streets as a culvert is being replaced. Right next to the culvert replacement that is, thankfully, finally finished.
CM Josh Rosenau: at, at 35th and Ballinger, this…
CM Josh Rosenau: And understandably, the people who live right there on 185th, and were suddenly gonna have… were afraid that they were suddenly gonna have construction happening on their street.
CM Josh Rosenau: Were… had a lot of questions and a lot of thoughts about exactly what that was gonna look like.
CM Josh Rosenau: And so, one of the things that we emphasized there was that this was the first touch on a contract for the design, that it's the beginning of public engagement and the beginning of a public conversation about what that might look like. It's not the end point.
CM Josh Rosenau: you all who've been in these rooms more know that we do three touches on these sorts of things, unless it's not possible for the Council to have three touches at public meetings. And this is only a planning contract, it's not a construction contract, but folks who are not as familiar
CM Josh Rosenau: understandably, saw a map that looked like a new street, and got very worried about what that might mean, and that they had missed something, or that the city was going around them. So I just… I raised that because I… I love seeing public engagement, I love seeing it here, I love seeing it at City Council.
CM Josh Rosenau: And we all do, and but people don't always know what the procedures are, so when you're out in the community, if you get questions about these sorts of things, that… that's… that's the context for that, but…
CM Josh Rosenau: the more that we can be just spreading good information about how… how this works, and that the goal is no surprises, right? I think… I think there's some of the… the antagonism that
CM Josh Rosenau: we sometimes feel from the public is fear that there is something happening in secret, and you all know that the goal is that this is all out there in the open, and that we're… that we want the public to be engaged. It's way more…
CM Josh Rosenau: way more fun, I think, for all of us, hopefully for all of you, when we have engaged… engaged folks at the meetings, and when we're hearing from this, and when we get the awesome research
CM Josh Rosenau: Like, like you saw today.
CM Josh Rosenau: So… That's… that's something else that's coming, but yes, the…
CM Josh Rosenau: I believe they may be, like, still decommissioning some of the equipment at the WSDOT project.
CM Josh Rosenau: But that's… basically over, which means that the roundabout work has officially started. That started on August 4th.
CM Josh Rosenau: And the road closures… We'll start on the 17th, for the most part.
CM Josh Rosenau: And you may get questions about those too, which I won't go into details unless someone has questions right now. I didn't study, so…
CM Josh Rosenau: I'm not encouraging it. But all of that is on the website. There's a lot of really great information on the city website, and you should point people there if they have questions, and make people… make sure that people know what's coming, because it's gonna get… there will be some stretches where it's going to get complicated.
CM Josh Rosenau: But then, when it's done, it's gonna be so much better, and all of our lives will improve because of it. So, please, please encourage people to take the long view on that as well.
CM Josh Rosenau: Beyond that, it's been… At the end of… we're heading towards budget season.
CM Josh Rosenau: The council meetings at the end of the month, Are canceled for summer breaks.
CM Josh Rosenau: But otherwise, things are gonna start heating up for, the mayor's presentation, and then the council's work on the budget. So if there are things that you think the city should be spending money on that were not, now's the time to say something about it. It's the time to get those suggestions in, and to start
CM Josh Rosenau: start having that bigger thought. It's a two-year budget, and so it's easier to make those sorts of bigger changes now than it will be later. Although, again, speaking of the levy.
CM Josh Rosenau: there's not a whole lot that we can do right now that we're not already doing. If you have ideas for things we should spend money on, it's better if you come with something that we shouldn't be spending money on that matches it, please.
CM Josh Rosenau: I think that those are the biggest things, although it has been a couple months now, and so I may be forgetting something, and if so, I'm happy to chat about it.
City of Lake Forest Park: That's correct.
CM Josh Rosenau: Oh, yeah, Sound Transit…
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, no.
CM Josh Rosenau: No, I mean, so yeah, we… we… yes, I think we… I thought we talked about that, but maybe I'm misremembering when our last meeting was. But yes, we approved the contracts for all of the permit support that the… as the Sound Transit
CM Josh Rosenau: permits come through, and last I heard, they had started, but I don't think that they had put in a formal application, like, permit applications yet. Is that still the case?
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, they're not…
City of Lake Forest Park: They're still submitting, I'll leave it at that. Yeah. But it started, and so the contracts are in place. Now, when these applications are complete, the technical analysis or review will start. It'll be lengthy.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so the, the,
City of Lake Forest Park: the administrator's report for this Thursday night has a little blurb, and so it's just kind of getting out awareness. There are no notices or comment periods yet, but they are coming. It'll be extensive, and so we want to make sure anyone that has been following this for 45, 6 years
City of Lake Forest Park: Hypothetically.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, the applications are starting to come in, and that's when the reviewing team starts.
CM Josh Rosenau: And so those contracts were all just pass-throughs. It's… Sound Transit gives the city money, and we give it to these… these other agencies, and some of it is done as in-house review, or can be, but we have that surge capacity as well, because it's… it's a lot that's… that's going to be coming through once… once that all starts rolling.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, the next deadline, then? So, the contract's coming through, what's the next step?
City of Lake Forest Park: It's hard to talk about. It's all Administrative Planning Commission doesn't play a role, but to give you an idea, the city has, Type 3 ministerial permit responsibilities.
City of Lake Forest Park: Right? And appealable to the hearing examiner. So, for my department, it's critical areas and trees. For engineering, and Rebecca Davidson, it's the civil, it's the right-of-way permit, it's the corridor permit, and those are all typically acted upon by a department.
City of Lake Forest Park: and then appeal ability to take your exam, and then the quotes. So, it's… the way I've been characterizing it is, it's not a yes or no, and can you do the project, it's how are you doing the project
City of Lake Forest Park: In the context of the required local permits.
City of Lake Forest Park: And those low permit applications are just starting to come.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, the first tab's 28 days to find them complete. They're all different levels of review. Some are truly ministerial.
City of Lake Forest Park: But each one is important. We pledge to the City Council we're going to look at each and every tree, whether it's 400 or 600, so this will not be short. Critical areas is one of my responsibilities, and public works is charged up.
City of Lake Forest Park: The 6 or 8 engineering contracts for the analysis of the infrastructure.
City of Lake Forest Park: 6, 6, 3?
City of Lake Forest Park: What's that? 600? Or I need to…
City of Lake Forest Park: So, like… Well, we haven't done the review, they have a tree inventory that may or may not be accurate. We'll get to the point where we judge that, and so that's the part I can't talk about. Hasn't happened yet. It's a technical review.
City of Lake Forest Park: But the 3-year discussion has shifted from, this is coming our way, to it's here. So there's been a discussion about a large quantity of trees being removed throughout the quarter, replanting, and so forth. Now's the time to see each and every one.
City of Lake Forest Park: And it's not just the right way, it's the 500 feet on either side.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, it's the bulb impact on what's being retained.
City of Lake Forest Park: And now, and replanted, and where…
City of Lake Forest Park: So, so, so maybe an ignorant question, so if…
City of Lake Forest Park: If there's a critical area, or a critical area that's impacted, right? Does the… does sometimes have to go through the RUE process?
City of Lake Forest Park: How does that? Not for this, it's a state highway. It's a state right-of-way. They have a contract with WSCOT.
City of Lake Forest Park: They have standards with WSDOT on how to build this, that's the physical part, but they need local permits, right-of-way permit, critical area permit, tree permit, and they're administrative.
City of Lake Forest Park: So there… there are findings and processes, notification, and criteria that they have to achieve. They've done the studies. They are the lead official for environmental review. We act on those Type 3 permits, and so the findings for issuing a major critical area permit are what
City of Lake Forest Park: We analyze, and if we can make them, it's favorable.
City of Lake Forest Park: If we can make them and there's issues, we try and resolve them, and in the end, if they're not resolved, it's intuitive.
City of Lake Forest Park: So I just wanted to say one thing, because I live on 41st, and I think that runoff is a real issue, and there's a lot of consternation about that in our bottom of the hill, and I don't think…
City of Lake Forest Park: that Sound Transit, or even the city, is really aware of the degree of, difficulty that residents have with Omaha. That, you know, every week they have contractors trying to do repairs and so forth, so it is a real problem.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I just hope that the design is, you know, adequate to the problem that needs to be solved with
City of Lake Forest Park: The removal of all the vegetation, and so on.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, no, we're aware of the issue. 155th, prime example, diversity, all the water goes shooting down. No curb goes, sidewall. So the… whether it's a consultant or a city staff, drainage review will have a… the city has adopted the 20…
City of Lake Forest Park: 16 King County Service Water Manual. That's a no. They'll need to meet that. They'll meet the WSDOT standards, the highway standards.
City of Lake Forest Park: etc. And then our job is to verify in that review that that is the case.
City of Lake Forest Park: So we… we don't get to set what the regulations or standards are, that they're already in place. Now, these…
City of Lake Forest Park: Administrative and ministerial permits for compliance.
City of Lake Forest Park: And a local review, so they absolutely are required to get.
CM Josh Rosenau: And I assume it's… my understanding is that it is at a point where
CM Josh Rosenau: None of the RUE and critical areas conversations that we're having at this level
CM Josh Rosenau: Would affect these projects, but we can learn From them for…
CM Josh Rosenau: any updates that we make in the future, is that…
CM Josh Rosenau: Like, we're not changing anything that would change.
City of Lake Forest Park: different. RUE? Not part of the equation.
City of Lake Forest Park: Because it's a state route. Right. Yeah, but the… how we administer the findings for critical areas in the process and notification is a little different. This is a very significant project for this community.
City of Lake Forest Park: We are not limited to the minimum mandates of what the code requires for building a single-family home. This is for citywide impact, so we're going to go above and beyond for notice.
City of Lake Forest Park: To the point where I have no doubts someday we're gonna say, why am I getting so many envelopes?
City of Lake Forest Park: But we have the ability to voluntarily exceed that for awareness and comment.
City of Lake Forest Park: But, it'll be at the administrative level.
City of Lake Forest Park: But awareness, transparency, documentation, we're already starting that. We did some web page, very basic web page changes today. Everything that is officially submitted through our new electronic permit portal is marked for public
City of Lake Forest Park: To view. We realize the importance of this, so public records requests are, call them not easy, lengthy.
City of Lake Forest Park: So the more that we can show on the permit portal and the website.
City of Lake Forest Park: It'll be quicker and better.
City of Lake Forest Park: The next thing I'm waiting for between now and the weekend is a primary contact at Sound Transit.
City of Lake Forest Park: And their email and phone number, and I promise for them to actually respond, or go find somebody else. Oh, they have, but now that it's in, we want to, iron that out, because we're… we're going to telegraph that widely. We don't want to be in a position where we're answering for a soundtrans…
City of Lake Forest Park: they have, you know, talking about responsibility for an applicant and so forth. We also want to honor due process. We don't want to filter the comments and questions that come in and give Sound Transit the ones we think are legitimate. So, we want to contact for Sound Transit to receive all comments.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then respond accordingly for a local jurisdiction.
City of Lake Forest Park: And, hopefully openly and quickly.
City of Lake Forest Park: So that process is just starting.
City of Lake Forest Park: But the Planning Commission's role, feel free to…
City of Lake Forest Park: Community input, filter towards staff.
City of Lake Forest Park: Or council, and so forth. You don't play a role in the formal review, because there are administrative, and the policy and regulations are already in place, but you're members of the community, too, and it helps guide future processes.
City of Lake Forest Park: Items that you will be looking at, as far as how we do things.
City of Lake Forest Park: It's an important enough project.
City of Lake Forest Park: If you ever have any questions, just ask us. Our staff will prepare some background.
City of Lake Forest Park: I should just add that be one of our agenda items moving forward, given it's such a large project.
City of Lake Forest Park: Even if it's just awareness, yeah, yeah, as a… as a…
City of Lake Forest Park: A roll of feedback from and to the committee
City of Lake Forest Park: through the Planning Commission, I think that's… Safe ground.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then if you do comment on Sound Transit, make it clear that it's as a citizen. Private citizens, singularly.
City of Lake Forest Park: You're not speaking toward the Planning Commission, or soon.
City of Lake Forest Park: You're all residents, and… Yeah.
City of Lake Forest Park: human day, so… very cool.
CM Josh Rosenau: I thought of two other… if we're done on that, I don't want to cut off… it's an important discussion, but two other things I was going to mention for Council Report, and then I can move on. One was, speaking of transit, we did… we had a
CM Josh Rosenau: letter that the Council approved, talking about for King County Metro, the other transit agency, changes to the way that the 372 and 522 buses run on Bothell Way and through Lake City. So commenting on that, and then which…
CM Josh Rosenau: So we had representatives from Metro.
CM Josh Rosenau: come and present about what's happening, and what they're… what they're anticipating, and how they're gonna move forward with that. It was a… it was a good discussion, and we…
CM Josh Rosenau: had a lot… we've… that letter was, jointly signed by the Kenmore and Bothell City Councils, as well as, Alexis Mercedes-Rink, the council member in Seattle.
CM Josh Rosenau: and a number of… and the Lake City Business Association, other… other people affected by those changes. So, it was… we… it became sort of a regional discussion about
CM Josh Rosenau: the effect of these changes on… on this corridor that goes from Lake City all the way up through Botville, out to Woodenville. So it was… it was nice to see us taking that role, and I think
CM Josh Rosenau: there is an intersection there with what's happening with Sound Transit, and with the advocacy for better transit connections that we want to maintain through all of this work, and to sort of
CM Josh Rosenau: Make it clear that this is not… we're… to balance out the concerns and the conversation,
CM Josh Rosenau: that we're focusing on… on both parts of that, of great transit service and the effects of the community of… of all these changes, for both of those sets of changes. And the other thing that I will… I'll just mention is we've had presentations from… in the context of the budget, from community partners.
CM Josh Rosenau: which…
CM Josh Rosenau: these are groups that… that we're funding out of the city budget, and I won't go through them all, but it includes Third Place Commons,
CM Josh Rosenau: Hope Link, there's work that we do with the City of Shoreline for recreation services at, at Kellogg Middle School.
CM Josh Rosenau: And, the Shoreline Senior Center, the Shoreline Historical Museum, which, it's important to emphasize, covers Lake Forest Park. It is our history museum also. It's named for the region, not for the city.
CM Josh Rosenau: And, I'm probably forgetting something.
CM Josh Rosenau: important. Oh, surely carts. But really, really cool things that we are all part of, that we are…
CM Josh Rosenau: that we are making happen because of… of the City's work, and so that's… it was inspiring to be there for it. I encourage you to check out the council meetings where those are recorded, and… and look and see some of the things that the city's doing through those external partners in
CM Josh Rosenau: through and with our neighboring communities as well. It's… it's just always cool to see… see the great work that's happening out there, so…
CM Josh Rosenau: And on that positive note.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay. Questions for Councilmember Joffler?
City of Lake Forest Park: Yes. Thank you.
CM Josh Rosenau: Awesome. Good seeing you all.
CM Josh Rosenau: Since I missed you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, back to old business. So, we had a lot of… Guests here, let's move.
City of Lake Forest Park: Which is great.
City of Lake Forest Park: There seems to be a lot of energy around the critical area assortments.
City of Lake Forest Park: Buckets.
City of Lake Forest Park: Any comments, any… so we're starting with B here, right? Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that I'd like to say is I need to firmly on R&Bs, because I think we're getting into the weeds with REMBs, but I need to start at the top.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I believe there's some constitutional basis for RUVs, and I'd like to understand that pretty fully. I mean, it sounds like this is maybe…
City of Lake Forest Park: twisting things a bit, but… but I would like to just start from the top when… when we… and I think we probably do need to discuss RUEs, it's just that I need the full context to be able to
City of Lake Forest Park: The guest did mention a prior.
City of Lake Forest Park: process, or discussion, or effort, and that predates me, but we don't have to… we can honor it, we can, any remembrance of it, that's fine, but we can recreate it.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so one of the things that did get mentioned from that process was City Attorney Kim Pratt gave that
City of Lake Forest Park: That's the money to the Constitution.
City of Lake Forest Park: balance of property rights, and that it is not just go get what you want, right? And then, as a group, you can talk about process with that information. And she couldn't make it tonight, but is aiming for September 8th to… for as much time as you'll give her.
City of Lake Forest Park: Oh, yeah. I'll be recording, I'll check out the video. Okay, yeah. And any questions if, if you're not here, I'll catch up.
City of Lake Forest Park: This should… we were hoping to have her this evening, but it's,
City of Lake Forest Park: On her behalf, she's crazy busy, and I know Cherie Emily as she's addressing, right? This one. We'll be happy to have them sitting. Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Hopefully that will work.
City of Lake Forest Park: That's tinted in this vulnerable.
City of Lake Forest Park: She's firm, but the way Family Matters happen, yeah, we'll either give her some flexibility of voice.
City of Lake Forest Park: What are the costs? What are thinking? Yanni, Hina Cherie?
City of Lake Forest Park: What'd you think of that?
City of Lake Forest Park: the presentations this, at the beginning, don't mean.
Janne Kaje: Well, I actually wanted to respond to something that John just brought up, which I think you're exactly right, John, that we do need to kind of understand the context of reasonable use.
Janne Kaje: I think one of the things that…
Janne Kaje: Is clearer when you get into the details.
Janne Kaje: is that, you know, the… I mean, the basic principle, and okay, let's just remember, I'm not a lawyer, okay? But the basic principle is that
Janne Kaje: the government is not supposed to deny you of all the… all economic use of your property, right? You own a property, you should be able to do something.
Janne Kaje: The challenge we have is that that leaves a whole lot of gray area.
Janne Kaje: And… the example, they kept bringing up, the Gary.
Janne Kaje: Example has a really unique circumstance in that The previous owner took… actions that
Janne Kaje: Foreclosed any possibility of future development.
Janne Kaje: Or, it should have.
Janne Kaje: And that was reflected in the fact that their property taxes got locked in at almost nothing.
Janne Kaje: As an undevelopable property.
Janne Kaje: I know something about this. I own an undevelopable property.
Janne Kaje: But then you got a… somebody coming in from the, you know, coming in and buying the property and betting that they can beat the system.
Janne Kaje: So… They come in, even though it's been deemed undevelopable for over 20 years.
Janne Kaje: They're trying to use reasonable use to say, well, you have to let me do something.
Janne Kaje: I would argue that…
Janne Kaje: that was your responsibility as a buyer when you bought the damn property to know what restrictions were on it, and what actions had been taken by a previous owner. So this kind of gets at what I was getting at, which is, like, we can have great rules and great principles, but if we don't have the systems in place.
Janne Kaje: To enforce and follow through and, you know, and the resources, to be fair to city staff.
Janne Kaje: then none of those things matter. They can just lawyer us into getting a development, right? So, that's one example where it's like, nobody's…
Janne Kaje: Trying to say that you don't have a right to develop property
Janne Kaje: But, guess what? If a previous owner
Janne Kaje: Took actions that were very blatantly clear, that… Ruled out future development.
Janne Kaje: In the Gary case, they had a developable part of the parcel. What did they do? They sold an easement to a neighbor to use as a driveway.
Janne Kaje: That's Jolene Jang's property.
Janne Kaje: That's how she has access to her house.
Janne Kaje: That was a previous owner.
Janne Kaje: They made that deal, they knew they couldn't develop the property anymore. They kind of figured, okay, that's, you know, that's the best I can do here, is get a little money for selling a driveway easement.
Janne Kaje: Then, later, they sold to this guy, Gary.
Janne Kaje: Who now is challenging the city to force us to let him develop a house.
Janne Kaje: So, those are the types of things… I mean, I… so, back to what I started with. John, I agree with you, I think…
Janne Kaje: we need a little bit of a primer, or a primer if you're into the English, to say, what's the… what's the foundation of reasonable use exemption? What are we trying to get out here?
Janne Kaje: So that we don't end up in a situation where we are… Taking people's property rights.
Janne Kaje: What I want to get to is, well, I also don't want people abusing property rights.
Janne Kaje: Or perceived property rights.
Janne Kaje: By buying properties that were deemed unbuildable and taxed up in that way.
Janne Kaje: And then they come in 20 years later and say, oh, I should be able to build a 2,000 square foot home here in this critical area, right on top of this creek, or I'm gonna sue you for our takings.
Janne Kaje: So, John, I agree with you. I just had to say that because I weighed in pretty heavily as a private resident on the Gary RUE because I think there is a whole lot of dishonesty going on in that particular case.
City of Lake Forest Park: Which brings up an important point from staff. It's an active application.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, for this recording, staff has to say, I'm not talking about development radio. It's outside the presence of the applicant or any notice, because the public hearing is not over. But, what staff can bring
City of Lake Forest Park: To that conversation is processing.
City of Lake Forest Park: So the… at the staff level, staff makes a recommendation, the decision maker's the hearing examiner.
City of Lake Forest Park: That's codified. They said as an independent judge.
City of Lake Forest Park: on this decision, and receive feedback. So the… the…
City of Lake Forest Park: two functions that are codified, that are working, I would offer, or you should look at as part of this process, is the ability to comment and make a case at a public hearing
City of Lake Forest Park: For an issue like that.
City of Lake Forest Park: But the hearing examiner is the decision maker. He's the one weighing the private property rights with your case about did they extinguish
City of Lake Forest Park: a property right. The lot still exists. If it's a legal lot of record, it's for the hearing examiner to decide. So if we remove the process from that conversation, is the comment ability and the hearing process and noticing working?
City of Lake Forest Park: And is the hearing examiner process the correct thing for the city?
City of Lake Forest Park: It's common, but… Those are conversations that are fair game for critical area ordinance update.
City of Lake Forest Park: Not how the hearing examiner should act in this case.
City of Lake Forest Park: Anyway…
Janne Kaje: Thanks, Mark. You're totally right, and I want to acknowledge Mark is completely right, that there are aspects of this that are not about city staff discretion or anything like that. What I'm pointing out is the system as a whole
Janne Kaje: Has some real issues, and…
Janne Kaje: I believe some of that, and maybe it is around how comments, how the local recommendations are developed.
Janne Kaje: Maybe that's where it is, but I was not intending to imply that the staff were doing something wrong here. What I'm pointing out is that Jolene Jang and Stacy
Janne Kaje: have some really valid points, but, like, why are we even discussing this? Why is this even a live question when the person who owned it before him took actions of their own accord
Janne Kaje: to rule out future development. So why the hell are we fighting… having to fight, A development on top.
City of Lake Forest Park: We don't have to wait… we don't have to wait for that. The short answer is the code requires us to bring it in a certain fashion to the hearing examiner. They have that right.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, and that's not something any city can change. You can bring it to city council, you can change who the city… you can make it the CD director.
City of Lake Forest Park: I have no advice to do that. But what I'm saying is the process and so forth isn't a choice, it's codified, and so to remove the feelings or perceptions from that.
City of Lake Forest Park: as part of this conversation, Steph is very interested on how we can maximize awareness.
City of Lake Forest Park: Maximize, information from the applicant that frames our recommendation.
City of Lake Forest Park: Those are all process questions, separate from any individual project.
City of Lake Forest Park: And that we can address the concerns or comments that we receive, not just from neighbors in the community, but from Fish and Wildlife or other agencies, and really…
City of Lake Forest Park: Get at what that minimum development right is versus mitigation or impact to the critical area.
City of Lake Forest Park: That's fair game in this process. I would offer… this code is one of the strongest webs I've seen.
City of Lake Forest Park: It needs dusting off and improving, for sure, for RUEs. Every other city I've worked in in the region.
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, I won't even talk about it. This is good, but it could be improved.
City of Lake Forest Park: Other cities don't take that risk.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, so, to your point, Donnie, going back to your point, both of your Don's point,
City of Lake Forest Park: Can the city attorney give us enough of an overview of our UA process, or do we need to do a bit
City of Lake Forest Park: You know, there's something else additional to learning about the overall process.
City of Lake Forest Park: Can, can you…
Cherie Finazzo: Can you speak up just a little bit? I can't… I'm having a hard time.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, no, no, I'm sorry about that. I'm just asking, so, is it enough to have the attorney talk to us about the RUA process, or is there something else that we need to
City of Lake Forest Park: I see it as two primary things. City attorney talking about the RUE process and that balance. I'm certainly not an attorney either, and whatever's in that code, I will implement.
City of Lake Forest Park: and require, and so forth, and take those steps. That's my duty.
City of Lake Forest Park: The hearing examiner has his, standard operating procedures and discretion and independence. The other element that I see is a different chapter outside of critical errors, which is that process. Type 1s, type 2s, type 3, type 4.
City of Lake Forest Park: Ministerial permits and that process.
City of Lake Forest Park: there can be some awareness gained from that. Who does what, and when, and why, and then once you understand
City of Lake Forest Park: what those things factually are, then I'll leave the value judgments or the opinions to Planning Commission City Council as to what they could or should be.
City of Lake Forest Park: staff, Very clearly understands what they are.
City of Lake Forest Park: I don't see that as the issue, but it may not be…
City of Lake Forest Park: Achieving what the expectations of the community are.
City of Lake Forest Park: So it's notice, it's type, it's process, how many days…
City of Lake Forest Park: application materials, the findings, the purpose behind everything, why we do everything, and just looking at that as a whole. So, critical areas ordinance with the RUE chapter.
City of Lake Forest Park: City attorney. That'll give you that background.
City of Lake Forest Park: staff can very clearly walk you through land use process, which is a totally different chapter. It's fairly short.
City of Lake Forest Park: So who would you do? Do you do that? Yeah, okay, yeah, okay.
City of Lake Forest Park: And that covers trees, critical areas, so…
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, so how about enforcement, too? Because that seemed to be a big part of
City of Lake Forest Park: The discussion that there are things that…
City of Lake Forest Park: the laws or rules being broken that aren't then being fined or enforced, but how…
City of Lake Forest Park: We don't have a code enforcement department, but we are all responsible for code enforcement. This city has a code enforcement chapter. It's… I would characterize it, and I characterize it with violators and neighbors, that it's highly based on voluntary compliance.
City of Lake Forest Park: If somebody has an issue, we allow them time to fix it.
City of Lake Forest Park: That's the preference.
City of Lake Forest Park: Sometimes that takes a long time. Sometimes they dodge that. Sometimes they fix it and then unfix it. But our code is very friendly in that manner. It does not go from
City of Lake Forest Park: We witnessed a violation to, here's your fine, and it's every hour of every day. There's a legal process that includes the city attorney, and so for my level with my department, we investigate.
City of Lake Forest Park: We document, and we enforce the code, or at least clarify what code is being broken. That is happening, there's no doubt.
City of Lake Forest Park: But when somebody mentions jumping right to fines or making money out of it, you need a judge to declare an infraction or a misdemeanor through the courts and the judicial system. That's the city attorney.
City of Lake Forest Park: We don't have exactly a legal office at City Hall.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, but it's… it's an element of that. Is there a chapter for code enforcement? Yes. Is it heavy on voluntary compliance, and essentially more carrots than stick? Absolutely.
City of Lake Forest Park: But it doesn't get ignored, it doesn't go away, it just doesn't have a whole lot of immediacy.
City of Lake Forest Park: My opinion. Has only been so. When we first started on these kinds of things,
City of Lake Forest Park: The enforcement officers told us that they didn't have the right to go onto a property to assess whether or not a violation had occurred, or whether or not
City of Lake Forest Park: you know, the spith holes that were said had to be filled had been filled, so what sort of labor, without the property owner's permission. So if the property owner never granted permission, they could never be out of compliance.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I feel for the neighbors. We try and get…
City of Lake Forest Park: enforcement and conformance in all cases. We don't put blinders on it.
City of Lake Forest Park: It's a very time-consuming thing, but I like to start with
City of Lake Forest Park: That we can't promise anything, but we will look into it, and we will follow the code, and this won't go away. But one of the hardest things to do for anybody is to get somebody else to do something they don't want to do.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, unless they comply and voluntarily do it, say, you know, we didn't know, like, dog barking often is, Chief, we didn't know, we weren't aware, it's… it's a battle. And at some point, it goes to the city attorney, and then it's out of staff's hands, and
City of Lake Forest Park: Cord's not cheap or quick.
City of Lake Forest Park: So I wanted to ask, and just clarification, because I, you know, what I was hearing was, and I wasn't sure if…
City of Lake Forest Park: you know, it seems like this is separate from the RUE, is that a contractor makes an error.
City of Lake Forest Park: causes damages on a neighboring property. That could happen anywhere, right? So… It's a civil issue. Yeah.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, I mean… Six Step did discover it and acknowledged it. Is that separate from RUE, then? I mean, is that… Oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Now, it's due process, too. Somebody could come here and make a comment. I don't want to regulate what they're going to say, you know, or what their opinion is, or whether they're a lawyer or not. That's very valid.
City of Lake Forest Park: But how I do my job and how the city attorney does their job is role-based. And when it's a civil issue, personally, I could absolutely agree with it. That's unfair, that's unjust.
City of Lake Forest Park: I don't have a role in that, so… We didn't dig it up.
City of Lake Forest Park: And you don't…
City of Lake Forest Park: fix it. Some of the elements about, like, requiring the contract and be licensed blinded may have some relevance, but, yeah. Yep.
City of Lake Forest Park: There's those unintended consequences that are…
City of Lake Forest Park: They're… they're not easy, but, and they're worthy of being talked about, and ironed out, and resources, and so there's no harm in that, but…
City of Lake Forest Park: Jumping to conclusions is not helpful, because we then… we can't fix it, right? It doesn't actually fix the issue. So, wherever we get to one of those points in these regulations for critical areas and RUEs and so forth, that we can clarify.
City of Lake Forest Park: Or strengthen, or… simply tune up the words. Scott, so if you took 10.
City of Lake Forest Park: That's our marching orders, what's in that binder.
City of Lake Forest Park: Any additional thoughts? Subject?
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, so we'll talk about agenda a little later, but, the next week. So…
City of Lake Forest Park: We'll talk more about RUVs.
City of Lake Forest Park: Would you like to make that, the critical area topic?
City of Lake Forest Park: At the next meeting? I… one thing, because when I… the first… when I joined the Commission, the RUB was the first topic that I was involved in, so I can even go back and see if I can find the slideshow.
City of Lake Forest Park: But we, you know, I'll… I was just looking, and I hope I didn't, delete it, but,
City of Lake Forest Park: yeah, I remember these conversations, talking about
City of Lake Forest Park: the, you know, enforcement teeth and not being an issue. I remember all of that conversation. I remember that we added the language about,
City of Lake Forest Park: You know, previous owners and current owners, if they had done something to change their property, that it would then make it unusable, so we added that language.
City of Lake Forest Park: But they then would not be able to bring an RU lead.
City of Lake Forest Park: It's part of your comp plan.
City of Lake Forest Park: No, this was… this was right before it was… It was in the REV code. It was… yeah, that was the first thing that… that I came in, and they were… we… they was, like, the last of the signed legislation, and then we started the REB, so… but I remember hearing the, you know, the presentation about,
City of Lake Forest Park: Constitutional, is there now?
City of Lake Forest Park: The previous owner had covered it, then… Yes, we added that, we added that language. We added that language, as I remember. As a finding that the hearing aid examiner makes to either approve or deny an application.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, because I remember that language being in multiple other cities, and then we didn't have that language, so we added it in.
City of Lake Forest Park: So anyway, I'll see if I can find that slideshow, and then they really can…
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, that way you don't have to start from zero. I hope I can find it. Because I… not being here, I know that from Maddie, who was chairperson when I started, what did come out of that are the guidelines.
City of Lake Forest Park: Which I've never seen at a city.
City of Lake Forest Park: the actual square footage, but the Planning Commission and Council were careful to call them guidelines, and not mandated regulations no bigger than this. So that conversation is worth repeating, and then decided in this process.
City of Lake Forest Park: And Kim can guide the…
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, she… she works… she advises the City Council about risk. She doesn't make the determinations.
City of Lake Forest Park: But she is well-informed on this issue, is willing to come here. Kim Pratt, the City Attorney. Yeah, Kim. So when the recommendations for this CAO ordinance get to City Council, she will be having that conversation with the Council members.
City of Lake Forest Park: So it's worth having, equipped with… I'm pretty sure that she was…
City of Lake Forest Park: Has she been our city attorney for forever. Okay, well, I'm pretty sure that she's the one that delivered the slideshow that I originally watched, so she might still have it.
City of Lake Forest Park: Or an edited version, yeah. But, we'll record it.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yes, it's gonna be one shot, not like every meeting.
City of Lake Forest Park: She can't go there with me.
City of Lake Forest Park: If you want to jump down, I can give you some visits.
City of Lake Forest Park: That's helpful. Right. Well, I think, you know, the recording, I… I slot through the recordings, and it's not amazing.
City of Lake Forest Park: That's fine. Well, that's another thing, is going back and finding that the meeting, or that was, you know, going back to… so I'll try to find that, too, and send it your way.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, if you can see the little public dividing.
City of Lake Forest Park: No, no, I'm just saying, if…
City of Lake Forest Park: If that, you know, if, what was it, you know, 4 years ago.
City of Lake Forest Park: that initial, kind of, informational meeting we already have recorded, then… Actually, we could submit that last one, find it. They help us prep for the meeting with them. Yeah, that'd be great, yeah.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yes, we have one.
City of Lake Forest Park: Let's start with Matt.
City of Lake Forest Park: It's not my fault.
City of Lake Forest Park: Hey, speaking of, the former, Planning Commission chairs.
City of Lake Forest Park: I just want to acknowledge that Sam has resigned.
City of Lake Forest Park: And that we won't miss out.
City of Lake Forest Park: But, I think that…
City of Lake Forest Park: He's got adventures ahead of him, and, so, that is…
City of Lake Forest Park: You want to do 11A now? Was that… was that 11-A? Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry, no, no, let's just go back. It's a process, I swear. I wasn't paying attention to 11A, so… yeah, no, we'll get back to that.
CM Josh Rosenau: Before we move on, can I just make one observation? When Kim does come, and John, I'm sorry you're not going to be able to be at that meeting, but if you send questions ahead of time, we can make sure that they get addressed, and it's probably… I would encourage folks to do that regardless, not that things won't come up on the fly, but
CM Josh Rosenau: The more that… that Kim has an opportunity to do that research ahead of time, the more likely we are to get… to get the best
CM Josh Rosenau: Answers that… that are… are best researched and everything.
City of Lake Forest Park: Good. Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Alright, so… Next agenda item is middle housing.
City of Lake Forest Park: Next steps, direction, so…
City of Lake Forest Park: So the goal of this conversation is to… overall goal is to look for consistencies in code regulations
City of Lake Forest Park: That, hinder general housing development.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I've been thinking about this a bit, and and I was just looking at what's been happening in Seattle, in terms of mental housing, and so, Seattle stated their purpose at me regarding code updates.
City of Lake Forest Park: Being to unlock capacity, remove barriers, and allow more housing types.
City of Lake Forest Park: And what they've also continued to say, but that does not guarantee
City of Lake Forest Park: Contractors. It doesn't guarantee that, that, that kind of house will actually be built.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, so I thought that was a very…
City of Lake Forest Park: That's a good distinction in terms of the work that we're doing. We're looking at code and regulations, updating that to make sure that it's open to middle housing, but we're not developing code to ensure that that housing is being developed.
City of Lake Forest Park: Does that make sense? Because I think there's a distinction there, and many cities are making that distinction.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, I also wanted to say that… thank you, Mark. I asked Mark to…
City of Lake Forest Park: to dig up the item one, so that I was clear about what our actual focus is. And… because I think it… I, you know, looked at the video about the
City of Lake Forest Park: the June meeting, I guess, and it seems like there was a little confusion about, well, what's a blocker and what's an incentive, you know? And when you really think about that, there's…
City of Lake Forest Park: That's a little bit… there's a little overlap there. We're not talking about incentives right now. I know, but we could consider the lack of a blocker as an incentive, so I mean… So, I guess that's… that's… that's where it gets a little fuzzy, and so I think I understand, you know.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I can see that, you know, one of the things… well, that…
City of Lake Forest Park: there was something like pre-approved plans that were removed from option one because of that fact. So… so I'd be, you know, interested. I guess you guys have developed some
City of Lake Forest Park: More detail about what those blockers are.
City of Lake Forest Park: Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. That's, that's the workout. So, so the homework for this meeting was to look at, Section 818.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay? And start looking at what are some… what's… what's some of the language, what's some of the codes that are… that are the blockers.
City of Lake Forest Park: Or barriers, or inhibitors to, to mental health.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, and the Leland Report, which was good for me to read the second time, because I got a lot more of it in the second reading. And I'd be interested to know, the Leland Report came out in 2024. What happened with it? Were there decisions made on the basis of that?
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, you know, just so that we're clear about what our predecessors did with that cohort.
City of Lake Forest Park: It's, it's… Not the primary basis for the project policy.
City of Lake Forest Park: In the 2024 comp plan that is one of the primary ones.
City of Lake Forest Park: This is where it originated policy. It informed policy for the complement update.
City of Lake Forest Park: And I remember when Maddie was here talking about this, she was talking about some things that were just sort of unintended consequences of the, you know, state law being implemented, that… with our existing, code.
City of Lake Forest Park: But, you know, I don't know that I can come up with that. I thought she was saying something about, you know.
City of Lake Forest Park: like, DADUs.
City of Lake Forest Park: That, you know, we had an existing code that…
City of Lake Forest Park: that, you know, about PADUs, but… the state law?
City of Lake Forest Park: does it allow for block splits, so there could be separate ownership? And does that cause issues with respect to our code? So, I just thought, you know.
City of Lake Forest Park: She was talking about some things that were…
City of Lake Forest Park: You know, a result of the work on comprehensive Plan.
City of Lake Forest Park: The young youth at the end of it.
Janne Kaje: Hina had her hand up first, please.
Hina: Thank you, Yanni. Well, I was gonna…
Hina: point out that, of course, our… we're not… the distinction that you were earlier making about,
Hina: About, what David just mentioned.
Hina: That we are… one, we're not incentivizing, we're really…
Hina: And I would almost, like, say that we're not necessarily, like.
Hina: looking at the blockers, we are clarifying certain things. So, because we say there's, like, there's Title 18, right, and then, which is then…
Hina: overall. But there's also a link with Ordinance 25 on 309, so I… I looked at both of them, and it's almost like there's a… there's, of course, a connection between the two when we start to think about, like, ADUs.
Hina: As these auxiliary units. The fact that the lots can be divided,
Hina: Into multiple units, and multiple units being various configurations.
Hina: that's also mentioned in the… the Leland recommendations. And so, it's also part of Title 18, but I think with Leland,
Hina: that review, it's very visual, so you can actually see, like, what are the different compositions that can happen on the lot. But there are a lot of things that need clarification, or…
Hina: Some of these are much general ordinance, like, they're much general things in terms of, like, what can be done, but then there are other questions, so…
Hina: You could say that they're in, you know, they're… they're unintended consequences, or they're mostly things where certain things… a framework has been provided, but more details are required.
Hina: So, for example, if you talk about ADUs.
Hina: Well, the, you know, what is the egress…
Hina: for ADUs, and then, you know, what happens when ADU gets classified, or as a second property? And if it's, like, that part that gets sold as a separate unit, what happens with address, what happens with utilities?
Hina: where are the lots ending? So there are, like, things like that that need more clarification, almost. And so I think I would almost, like, not frame it whether it's, like, blockers or incentives, but clarifications that a builder would need, a homeowner would need.
Hina: Before they make certain decisions to either even buy a property. So I went and spoke to a couple of real estate agents about this as well, because this is happening a lot in Seattle, where an ADO gets built, and then it gets sold. And then…
Hina: becomes an issue with real estate agents. Now, they're trying to figure out, like, what is their policy? Do they want to… some don't want to touch those
Hina: Because it's the same address, sometimes the same address with a unit A, Unit B, there are insurance implications, there is utilities implications.
Hina: And so, there are things that we do need to clarify here, which need to make sense for, like, general public to even, like, understand and, you know, need to do what they need to do. And it's not just about, like, being able to build those, but
Hina: It has to make sense that people can continue to, like.
Hina: Buy or sell, you know, these spaces, and it just makes sense for the city in the longer term, rather than, like, creating a lot of conflicts.
Hina: Another thing that comes out is from an emergency situation, you know, like.
Hina: a fire truck being able to, like, get to an ADU, depending on, like, what is the, egress, ingress situation there, depending on, like, the lot sizes. So there… there are things like that that we do need to, think through.
Hina: So I have a bunch of things like that, that I've…
Hina: gathered, and I have question mark of, like, is this something that we need to consider? Like, is this something a valid thing to, like, go and inquire more? And…
Hina: I shared it, I shared it with Marty and David. I don't think they're, like… if I share it with the whole team, I think that's what mark it is, that it becomes, like, a public…
Hina: Yeah, we were…
City of Lake Forest Park: Discussing a subcommittee, and then bringing it back to the whole commission.
Hina: Yeah, so I think it's not there, so it needs to be more of a subcommittee thing, and I can share individually with people and whoever wants to continue to work on that, but
Hina: they're… the majority of the things are about, you know, either ADU, or if it becomes, like, multi-units, like, what does that look like?
Hina: But I think, like, ADU is the one which is a bit more vague than others, but, yeah, happy to share with everybody individually, so we can, like, work on it, but I think it's just not ready to even, like, you know, it's not, like, a formal recommendation yet.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, you know, so thank you for the work that you've done. It's really great, and I want to come back to that. Janne, what… what's the point that… you had your hand up as well.
Janne Kaje: Yeah, thanks, and thank you, Hina. That's really helpful, and I think, you know, yes, it's true, we're not… we can't have communications with the entire commission amongst ourselves, and
Janne Kaje: All that without making a public record, but to me, if you've put together some, you know, a…
Janne Kaje: a valuable discussion piece that highlights some issues, I think we'd want to just put it into the record and distribute it in the public way. That doesn't mean it's final. So I'm just saying, like, I really want us all to have the benefit of the homework you've done.
Janne Kaje: And I'm gonna trust Mark to help us not get sideways with the rules for how we communicate, so that's thing one.
Janne Kaje: I think there are two… so, what I wanted to say first was, I think there's two things here.
Janne Kaje: One is that… we passed, you know, many of us were on the commission passing our middle housing recommendations.
Janne Kaje: and yet… We don't have the code in place to actually make some of those
Janne Kaje: As kind of what Hina was alluding to, it's like an owner, a developer.
Janne Kaje: still can't do it, even though it's approved. And what I'm… what I mean by that is I'm aware of a couple of proposed developments in the city that are meant to take advantage of our new middle housing code, but
Janne Kaje: they feel stuck because they're not hearing back from the city, and I get it, because we don't… we haven't built in the specifics in the code
Janne Kaje: to match what we all passed as a planning commission in the comp plan. So it's like, we say we allow
Janne Kaje: Cottage, or we say we allow duplexes, and yet it sounds like people are getting stuck
Janne Kaje: When they propose something like that, that…
Janne Kaje: they're not getting efficient answers from the city. And again, my point here is not to point fingers at staff or anything like that. I'm saying, I think it's on us
Janne Kaje: And staff, if we've passed policy language, To say, we… Welcome!
Janne Kaje: Cottage housing, duplexes, what was it? Cottage, or Courtyard Apartments? I forget exactly what the words were.
Janne Kaje: then I think it's…
Janne Kaje: An obligation of ours to make sure the code matches that so that people can do it.
Janne Kaje: So that's, I think, thing one. The thing that I really appreciate Maddie raising over the years that I've been on the Commission is that when we start thinking about
Janne Kaje: kind of these, you know, little more infill-type development, whether it's an ADU, or it's a lot split, or whatever.
Janne Kaje: there are parts of our code that maybe we didn't think were that big a deal before, and now they are because people are close to each other. Like, the biggest thing I remember from her description from a property over near Grace Coal Park.
Janne Kaje: Was that there was a, like, a subdivision of a lot.
Janne Kaje: And then the people who bought the new lot
Janne Kaje: You know, built a building to, like, full height, just 5 feet away from the fence line, and basically kind of, you know, sort of stole the sunshine, you know, kind of
Janne Kaje: you know.
Janne Kaje: it had a sense of, you know, being overbearing over the original property next door that had actually… they're the ones who sold that property off, but they're like, holy shit, what did… what… sorry, apologize for my language. What happened here, right? So, I think those are… I think those are separate.
Janne Kaje: They're both important. One is more generally looking at… so in the Maddie's
Janne Kaje: Examples are, we need to look at our code overall.
Janne Kaje: To see how… are there things we need to adjust?
Janne Kaje: When we're encouraging, or at least allowing.
Janne Kaje: more dense development in some areas, or more subdivision, or more ADUs, because it can have a real quality of life impact on neighbors, right? Like, having buildings too close to you, whatever it is. So I totally support that. And that's separate from
Janne Kaje: what I've been kind of harping on for the last year or so, which is that
Janne Kaje: We passed policies saying we… Accept these other types of housing that we haven't
Janne Kaje: Accepted before. Granted, we did kind of what the minimum, what the state required us to do, but I believe it's our obligation
Janne Kaje: For our code to actually make that totally doable now.
Janne Kaje: It shouldn't be a freakin' hurdle for a…
Janne Kaje: Owner or a developer to come in and say, wait, you guys say you allow Duplexes…
Janne Kaje: But your code kinda doesn't know how to deal with it, so you're just not processing my permits. So…
Janne Kaje: I think those are two different things. They're both really important.
Janne Kaje: I feel like we have almost a greater obligation on that one I just mentioned second, which is that we advocated for, or at least agreed to pass.
Janne Kaje: Language saying, we allow these things.
Janne Kaje: But we kind of don't, because we haven't done the work on the code. That, to me, is just wrong. The ones that Maddie brought up are, I think, is a bigger…
Janne Kaje: Kind of a broader question of how do we need to look at our code overall
Janne Kaje: If we're sort of seeing that there are going to be changes in how we
Janne Kaje: allow subdivisions and buildings closer together in our neighborhood. They're both super valid.
Janne Kaje: The first one, I feel like, is entirely on us, because we passed the comp plan. The second one, we need a lot of help from city staff.
Janne Kaje: I think it's absolutely valid, too, it's just, I feel like those are slightly different. Sorry I talked so long, I felt like I had to get that out there, because we need to get to work on these things.
Janne Kaje: So… I wanted to just share my view of how I see these things splitting up.
Janne Kaje: Thanks.
City of Lake Forest Park: No, I just… I… I concur, I agree. That's good.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, so… We wrote… so the part… the homework was to start delving into to Title 18.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay? Some of us have started doing that work.
City of Lake Forest Park: And here's… that's what I'm proposing. I think, Janne, this gets to what you're saying, you know, actually getting into the work. I… what if we break it down into groups?
City of Lake Forest Park: You know, we break it down into, what, groups of three, so that we're not…
City of Lake Forest Park: So that we're staying within the parameters of…
City of Lake Forest Park: And it's not just 3 at a time, it's save that discussion for the 3 until you rejoin the group.
City of Lake Forest Park: If one of those three then goes to the pot of other three, that's a serial meeting. Okay, yes. So we've got to meet those parameters, right? But if we can break it up into three groups, and then we define up the code.
City of Lake Forest Park: And the regulations. And then we bring back
City of Lake Forest Park: those recommendations. So I read through all of PT and all of that stuff. I certainly… I took some notes and answered some questions. Could I… in terms of what you're saying, Janne, we…
City of Lake Forest Park: It would be really helpful to know more about what is it that
City of Lake Forest Park: you know, the people that are trying to pursue these new developments are from stymied. What is it?
City of Lake Forest Park: But then Steph has a perspective, I think you both touched on it really well, is what is the code that you're talking about?
City of Lake Forest Park: We did the comp plan, which is policy, then we did middle housing development regulations. It spurred applications, right? Permitted rights, ADUs, unit law, that's the clear part.
City of Lake Forest Park: The applications we have… that we've seen an increase in
City of Lake Forest Park: The lack of clarity has been in the codes that have always been around.
City of Lake Forest Park: Drainage review, building permit, fire code.
City of Lake Forest Park: stormwater, utilities, and when they come to me, and they submit an application, and I say it's permitted by right, my review line item is done. That's the code that we put in.
City of Lake Forest Park: Then they go to all these other specialties, dive in, and then ask me why it's such a hard time. I don't do building code, I don't do drainage review.
City of Lake Forest Park: Those were always responsibilities for
City of Lake Forest Park: An applicant… an application. And when they ask us to do it for us, for them, that's not our role.
City of Lake Forest Park: And so they need to hire somebody that knows filming code.
City of Lake Forest Park: And this is not universal, this is just general, this is what I'm seeing. We have an obligation to…
City of Lake Forest Park: educate, teach, and facilitate. The easiest part has been, yes, you can do two ADUs in that house, that's the easy part. Now, what else do I need? You need a building permit, tree permit, plumbing permit, mechanical permit, right-of-way permit, and those all come with other adopted codes. King County
City of Lake Forest Park: Street Design Manual, King County Surface Water Design Manual of various years that we adopted that we have no effect on, but we have to review. My experience has been, luckily, that in the first time.
City of Lake Forest Park: Did we adopt development regulations that achieved the minimum mandates and that were internally consistent? I'm pleasantly surprised to find that we did.
City of Lake Forest Park: There's no glaring mistake.
City of Lake Forest Park: Whether it's finding second improvement plan, unit loss subdivision, or whether they need to come to us for a condo, we got it right. But that's the easy part. Now you have to go meet all these other technical codes, and that's where the frustration and time is coming, and we can't necessarily do it for them.
City of Lake Forest Park: So that's what I'm seeing, but I don't have a suggestion to overcome them.
Janne Kaje: I guess I'll just… and my point here is not to, like, argue this, but I guess I feel like…
Janne Kaje: It feels a little weird to say we, you know, we changed a bunch of…
Janne Kaje: Policy language, and we feel like that's really clear.
Janne Kaje: And… but we're… we're not gonna help you, the developer or the homeowner, to…
Janne Kaje: sort of understand, okay, here's… here's how some of these other things now need to be… you still need to meet these, and we didn't change any of those, which is what it sounds like, what you're saying. And I'm not saying LFP has resources. What I'm saying is, like, it just feels…
Janne Kaje: wrong to me that we're kind of saying, well, we can only decide about these things, and the rest is up to you, without at least kind of helping, you know, people figure this out. I mean.
Janne Kaje: I'm an environmental scientist, okay? I'm not pro-development everywhere. I hope that's been clear from everything I've said in this commission, but I also don't think it's…
Janne Kaje: Reasonable to just say, well.
Janne Kaje: You know, we changed a bunch of things, and we're allowing a bunch of new stuff.
Janne Kaje: Which is great, but we're not gonna help you
Janne Kaje: understand what that… what the implications are for these other parts of the code, like drainage, like, you know, these other aspects. I just…
Janne Kaje: I don't know, that doesn't sit right.
City of Lake Forest Park: What I'm saying, Janne, is we have a process.
City of Lake Forest Park: That process involves review and comments. We are not designers. We don't design a plan.
City of Lake Forest Park: They submit it. We comment on it, based on technical knowledge of that reviewer.
City of Lake Forest Park: The majority is either the building official, state bill, public works, and engineer. Those are the difficulties.
City of Lake Forest Park: They use the rules in place, they provide comments, you get 4, 5, 6, 7 rounds, and people wonder, why does it take so long? Well, if you would have handed us something that was code compliant at the very beginning, there wouldn't be so many rounds.
City of Lake Forest Park: The review comments are the assistance.
City of Lake Forest Park: So I'm not saying we're not helping them, but we're not stepping over the desk and drawing their drawings be code-consistent, and then stepping back over the desk and reviewing it, if that better describes that.
City of Lake Forest Park: dilemma.
City of Lake Forest Park: The hell?
Janne Kaje: I'll just say, I haven't heard it described that way by folks, and I think this is really important for Councilmember Rosenau to hear, that… and again, my point here is not to point fingers at, certainly not you personally, Mark, or our system, but I just feel like
Janne Kaje: It feels a bit of a, you know, bait and switch, where we've, like.
Janne Kaje: You can do these things now, go figure it out!
Janne Kaje: And… because somehow, other municipalities Are seeing these things come through and get permitted and get built.
Janne Kaje: And I'm just not clear exactly what… what… what's so… what's so darn different about us.
Janne Kaje: and the way our code is written, that… that people can't seem to get approvals to do things. And I… I mean, don't get me wrong, if people haven't done their homework.
Janne Kaje: they haven't done what they're supposed to do, I'm with you. I'm not… I'm not looking for anybody to get free passes, but there's something going on here that just doesn't sit right with…
Janne Kaje: we made policy changes, but we kind of say, well, and now just… you're gonna have to just go and figure out the code. I don't know.
City of Lake Forest Park: So…
Janne Kaje: I just… Yeah, go ahead.
City of Lake Forest Park: Let's get towards meeting that objective, or that… addressing that concern that you've expressed.
City of Lake Forest Park: We've said that, you know, that we would go through the code in Title 18,
City of Lake Forest Park: Could that be one step, getting us closer to that?
Janne Kaje: Sure, it could, but we've also talked about, you know, the city trying to recruit some, you know, developers to help us identify all the little points where they're getting stuck, and we haven't done any of that.
City of Lake Forest Park: Right, Janne, so this is the homework that we gave… that we all decided on that we would do for this evening, okay? This is what we discussed at the last meeting.
City of Lake Forest Park: This is what we do, this is our goal.
City of Lake Forest Park: And our goal was to walk through our comments.
City of Lake Forest Park: on the work that we did on Title 18, okay? That's not saying that we're not going to follow up with those other activities. We talked about that as well.
City of Lake Forest Park: Now, what might be helpful, Jani, is that we actually put a project plan together. You and I can work on a project plan, so that we're… so that we can check off, you know, essentially create a checklist, so that we are definitely addressing each of those items that you… that you're, you know, that you definitely want us to…
City of Lake Forest Park: to address.
City of Lake Forest Park: like, you know, inviting a developer in. Could I ask a point of clarification? Well, let me just finish this with, Janne, though, because I want to make sure
City of Lake Forest Park: that… you know, that I'm addressing your concern, And also that…
City of Lake Forest Park: That we don't just keep coming back to this conversation.
Janne Kaje: Sure. I'm with you on that, and…
Janne Kaje: I'm not a developer. I can't diagnose our code.
Janne Kaje: And point out where, hey, you know, you guys…
Janne Kaje: Passed code allowing this type of housing, but here's the disconnect between a specific part of a required piece of code.
Janne Kaje: That's not my expertise. I don't think it's yours either, David.
Janne Kaje: Right?
City of Lake Forest Park: Nope.
Janne Kaje: So, it's like, yeah, we can look at some of this stuff and look for, kind of, those, maybe, policy inconsistencies, but I feel like we're… I'm not sure what we're waiting for to…
Janne Kaje: like, get… People who actually know this stuff.
Janne Kaje: as developers or advisors to developers, I mean, I'm not afraid from hearing from them.
Janne Kaje: We shouldn't be afraid from hearing from them. Tell us what… what is really stopping things, and let's… like…
Janne Kaje: really then identify where… where can we help from where we sit? Where do we need help from other entities? It just… it just feels like we just spin around this thing instead of getting something done.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah, yeah, to be frank, you're having us spin around.
City of Lake Forest Park: You're bringing this conversation right back to where we… what… the conversation that we had last… at the last meeting.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, so my request page.
Janne Kaje: Good reason.
City of Lake Forest Park: for sending this around there, and I take responsibility for that as well.
City of Lake Forest Park: Right? So, here's my recommendation, is that we do the work… we said that we would do the work on Title 18, okay? So, at our next meeting, we bring this back, and let's bring in somebody… let's bring in some experts.
Janne Kaje: Great.
Cherie Finazzo: Can I just say something? Yeah. Okay, I know we've been going around this for probably since March. I know I haven't been around in a couple of months, but it's… it's…
Cherie Finazzo: repeating itself. And so, I think the recommendation that we have from Leland, is fantastic. I think they went down, they broke it down, they said these were the things that they recommended.
Cherie Finazzo: and the reasons why, right? And I think that we need to address those specific recommendations. We don't… we changed the policy, and we don't have the code because we haven't done the code yet. So we haven't done the work for this yet.
Cherie Finazzo: And so that's why it's confusing to people, is because the policies have changed with the comp plan.
Cherie Finazzo: But the codes haven't kept up with that. So, I love the fact that when I read through what was recommended.
Cherie Finazzo: example, 23 feet in… or 30 feet going up to 40 feet. The reasons why, because developers will be able to go up instead of out, less footprint. That's what's happening in Shoreline. You have all of these condos that are going up instead of
Cherie Finazzo: you know, ramblers that are taking up a lot of room. So, I think the recommendations are already there. I think we just need to break those down, like you were saying, David, where we put lists
Cherie Finazzo: these are the list of recommendations, and we have subcommittee that, okay, that are willing to look at this list, and maybe, you know, I know we're not Kenmore, I know we're not Seattle, I know we're not Shoreline, but we can look at what their codes say.
Cherie Finazzo: and… and evaluate, you know, is that something that we also want to do as the code, so that we can increase density? And I think that that's the major thing, is the density part. And also.
Cherie Finazzo: having seniors be able to age in place. That was a big comment when we had done surveys before. A lot of our neighbors are elderly, and they would love to be able to stay in Lake Forest Park, but they have these big, giant homes, and they have no way of getting to a smaller place without paying a lot of money.
Cherie Finazzo: So, that's where the affordability comes in, right? And so, there's a lot of stuff that…
Cherie Finazzo: That we have to consider.
Cherie Finazzo: as commissioned, and I think breaking it down and having a list is a fantastic idea. I love that, because we have the recommendations already from Leland that we paid for. I mean, I mean, it's like this… this is perfect.
Cherie Finazzo: They did the work for us, and I feel like we're just, like, spinning our wheels. I said this the last meeting that I was at, is that I feel like we're just spinning our wheels every time we get together, and we need to start, like, having a real list, having…
Cherie Finazzo: Discussions on why we should accept or not accept or alter what they recommended.
Cherie Finazzo: That's… that's where I'm at, and…
Cherie Finazzo: I appreciate that this is a volunteer group, I really do, and I appreciate everybody's comment. You know, I think that we're all just trying to get to the same place. It's just taking a long time.
City of Lake Forest Park: You had something to say. Actually, you know, like I said, at this point, I just wanted to…
City of Lake Forest Park: the point that Jani was making, and you were responding, Mark, about all of these, you know, kind of onerous requirements that are kind of secondary
City of Lake Forest Park: Is that specific to middle housing, or is that… It is not. So there's nothing new. That's the discussion. When I hear codes, there are a lot of codes. Which one?
City of Lake Forest Park: The one we're tasked with is kind of 18. That's Sony. It's not building code, it's not fire code, it's not drainage review, it's not street design, it's not electrical code.
City of Lake Forest Park: I can't fix… What these roadblocks are.
City of Lake Forest Park: So I know what they are. So if we get feedback, and there's any feedback related to Title 18, middle housing, we have the ability as a Planning Commission to address it and fix it.
City of Lake Forest Park: If the feedback is, why does it take so long to get a building permit.
City of Lake Forest Park: talk to the State Building Code Council and the building official we do not have here at the City, because I talk zoning code. That's the distinction I'm making. I'm not saying we can't fix it, I can't fix building code, I can't fix drainage review, but anything you could identify that's zoning, we can fix.
Janne Kaje: I'll just, ask that both Chair and other commissioners who were there in person pay more attention to the hands. I think Hina's had her hand up for quite some time.
Hina: That's okay, I'm totally fine. I'm listening to everybody. So, in June, when we met.
Hina: we really had this conversation in May, and then we had this conversation in June.
Hina: And that's where we said our plan is…
Hina: review Title 18, and we're not coming up with code recommendations. We are flagging and identifying if we see that there are confusing elements, things that need further clarification, or things that are much broader.
Hina: And we might need to think a little bit more about, like, okay, if this happens, are there any ramifications that we haven't really…
Hina: thought about that will come? Like, should we just think about it? Because…
Hina: this is something that the homeowner or builder is going to think through. And as a city, we should be ahead off of that. So, that is what we were going to do. We were going to identify things that were just confusing. Yes, we're all laymen, we don't understand, you know, like.
Hina: Building code, like, just building code in general,
Hina: I do like Cherie's idea of looking at, as a contrast.
Hina: some of the other codes, although I would say that what shorelines, like, moving up, like, we… our code suggests three-story. Like, that's what Title 18 suggests.
Hina: And I think for legal and recommendations, they are a foundation to the amendment that was made. So literally, like, that whole recommendation is, like, a visual format, which is good to look at. It becomes very hard to read, it's very dense.
Hina: You know, Title 18, so those recommendations are a good visual representation of what's actually in the code for the most part. But if there are other things that haven't been thought about that we should flag right now, we should… that's the identification, really. And when it comes to, like, talking to
Hina: contractors or, like, builders? Like, what is their…
Hina: What is their lens? We did talk about in June that we can interview some builders.
Hina: And so, I can provide a list of questions.
Hina: to everybody, and, you know, if you… I think, like, Jani and Cherie, at one point, you did speak to some builders, and we had this… maybe in Jan we had this conversation, and so maybe you can take those questions back to those builders, and then we get a better idea.
Hina: if they can be very specific about, like, what is it? If it's just, like, overall, just building code, you know, that they're, you know,
Hina: worried about, or that's problematic for them, versus, like, anything that we've done recently, that is affecting them, or they need more clarification. So, that would help, and then that's how we can just, you know, move forward.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, I would like to say something, because I actually did go through the Leland recommendations pretty thoroughly, and I thought, well, you know, it would be great for us to actually go through those recommendations, stand them up, and evaluate,
City of Lake Forest Park: you know, for example, I looked at block coverage. They have some pretty compelling evidence about
City of Lake Forest Park: The ability of small change in plot coverage to enable much broader,
City of Lake Forest Park: segment of properties here when it goes to Park Renewal Housing.
City of Lake Forest Park: But, you know, what's… what's the trade-off? So, you know, I'm with you, Cherie, in favor of going through those Leland recommendations and really vetting them.
City of Lake Forest Park: Bye.
City of Lake Forest Park: Capital tonight.
City of Lake Forest Park: Meredith? Sorry, because I have been out of the loop for a few months, but…
City of Lake Forest Park: these Leland recommendations, and I re-read them speaking.
City of Lake Forest Park: We decided as a commission to
City of Lake Forest Park: really not go the way that they were wanting to go. We wanted a very… we wanted to do the minimum required, so a lot of these are not that.
City of Lake Forest Park: So I think that's something to keep in mind, that, you know, these recommendations we ended up not going with, and part of that is what we started talking about in this meeting, which was
City of Lake Forest Park: The more you develop, the more we're talking about building on critical areas, and
City of Lake Forest Park: You know, it kind of… it kind of comes full circle to,
City of Lake Forest Park: Another huge concern that we have, that we had all these people here this… this evening,
City of Lake Forest Park: So that's… that's my concern with kind of going back to the Leland recommendations, is because we sort of…
City of Lake Forest Park: Almost… Said no to those, and we said yes to
City of Lake Forest Park: The minimum… the state minimum requirements, and a lot of that was for environmental, you know,
City of Lake Forest Park: just for that.
City of Lake Forest Park: That was kind of… there were lots of reasons why we did that.
City of Lake Forest Park: So yeah, I, I… prob… probably…
City of Lake Forest Park: going to someone who's trying to do a build, and asking them where are the roadblocks, and making sure that those are things that we can actually address to the city, and not outside the jurisdiction of what the city can do.
City of Lake Forest Park: Ugh, sounds like a good way forward.
City of Lake Forest Park: So… It's 9-11 now, so we're past our, our, official end time. I just want to contract this for another 10 minutes.
City of Lake Forest Park: Your permission to continue this conversation for another 10 minutes.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yes, that's what we decided. As a matter of fact, as before… and John, you voted for option one.
City of Lake Forest Park: Right, right. Okay. So, we both… Option 1 was to, given the comprehensive plan has been updated to reflect middle housing requirements, we focus on identifying and evaluating, we said, barriers to middle housing development and city code.
City of Lake Forest Park: to Hina's point.
City of Lake Forest Park: Rather than barriers, it's inconsistencies. I think that's a better word. So, the homework that we chose to do, what the work that we chose to do at our last commission meeting, was to look at Title 18 for inconsistencies.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, so that was the purpose of this… of this meeting.
City of Lake Forest Park: Does anyone have just an example in that inconsistency? So, for example, code, so 18.08.615 still talks about single-family zones.
City of Lake Forest Park: We're not a super family.
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, I'm saying one.
City of Lake Forest Park: So that needs to be updated.
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, staff's open to all of it. The most extreme example I have is, the feedback is, I don't want to pay the fee.
City of Lake Forest Park: That's not a Title 18 issue, right? Right? Or it's too expensive, the property costs on it. That's not a Title 18 issue.
City of Lake Forest Park: But anything like that that can be adjusted is arcane.
City of Lake Forest Park: So… At our next meeting, On the agenda is walking through Title 18.
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, it's not the whole thing, right? I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's not on the end, you know, that we're not gonna address, like…
City of Lake Forest Park: the church. I mean, I don't know that there's a lot of…
City of Lake Forest Park: church that impacts middle housing. Maybe there's, I don't remember, I ignored that one.
City of Lake Forest Park: Church surrounded by idiots.
City of Lake Forest Park: So…
City of Lake Forest Park: But I think it's also… we can also put on the agenda to have,
City of Lake Forest Park: someone from the community or a developer to come in and talk to us. I think that, you know, I think that's…
City of Lake Forest Park: I think we're ready for that.
City of Lake Forest Park: And there's a beam.
City of Lake Forest Park: I'd be happy to reach out to…
City of Lake Forest Park: Brian, I encourage you on the top 10.
City of Lake Forest Park: Three of the projects are his.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah. Three of the projects that this spurred are his.
City of Lake Forest Park: And he's the one that tried so hard up front, and got, basically.
City of Lake Forest Park: delayed by the community. That's not what's accepted.
City of Lake Forest Park: In the public meeting, you know. But he's been through this process, he lives in Lake Fresh Park for a long, long time, builds a lot of houses in Lake Fresh Park. He's a really good guy. Are you all hearing this?
Hina: Can you, what's the name of the person that you're talking about? The builder?
City of Lake Forest Park: Brian Heiberger?
Hina: Okay.
City of Lake Forest Park: He just is a person that, I mean, he built our edition, I know him from that, but, he's a longtime Lake Forest Park person, and has tried to do some cluster housing and things in the past, and eventually had to give up because of the
City of Lake Forest Park: the money involved in pursuing it, and some of that was public. Was he heavily involved in that cluster housing study or effort that we hear about? That's new folks would hear about? He was the first person to try and do it. Okay. So, and it…
City of Lake Forest Park: just went down in flames, and as a small businessman, he almost went out of business from that. You know, you may know, Maddie was mentioning an examination of cluster housing and reports, but no development code update came out of it. I think that's…
City of Lake Forest Park: what I'm hearing, and he would be the right person, because now we have a.
Hina: Does anyone have contact information? Who would be willing to reach out?
City of Lake Forest Park: I can call him or email him. If you would like me to, I'd be very happy to do that.
City of Lake Forest Park: And we all agree that Gene has it. I just… Can we reach out on our behalf.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yes?
City of Lake Forest Park: Is that okay? I mean, I'm not trying to push it, I'm just saying ease of…
Hina: Oh, I think that would be wonderful. And I was… actually, the other thing that I wanted to mention was that Builder is, of course, wants to build and is… has the investment, but it's the architect who has to put together everything, so we should also speak to the architects, because they're the ones reading the code.
Hina: And making sense of it, and putting the proposal together.
Hina: for the builder, as well. So, I think, like, they're doing most of the code reading.
Hina: And we have an architect, like, right in town center.
Hina: So, worth having discussion with them. I can take a lead on that.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you. Yes, please.
City of Lake Forest Park: But Brian's well-versed, too, about obstacles, like.
City of Lake Forest Park: he builds McMansions now, and he hates it, because that's the only thing he… that's the only way he can really make money.
City of Lake Forest Park: on a project, because of the cost of the lots and the cost of the materials, but he understands a lot of the dynamics of forces that aren't in the code, too, but…
City of Lake Forest Park: And then the question is, do we really want the middle housing, or do we want to just meet the code, meet the law?
City of Lake Forest Park: to allow it so that we don't get in trouble, or do we really want it? And it's probably a mixed answer, because maybe we do want some senior housing. We've been crying for that for 50 years.
City of Lake Forest Park: You know, things like that, that would have come from it.
City of Lake Forest Park: So… so yes, please go ahead and reach out on our behalf.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, the… so the other, subject.
City of Lake Forest Park: Well, actually, no, so, Cherie.
City of Lake Forest Park: you… you actually reached out to a developer, you and Jani?
City of Lake Forest Park: I can't remember if you did that on your own, and Janne helped develop your questions that you sent, too.
Cherie Finazzo: Yeah, I did. I don't have the email anymore from that person, so I'd have to go back and see if I can try to find it.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, but didn't…
City of Lake Forest Park: I remember that you reached out, and Jani responded to your email with some questions that you sent to them. Are those questions still…
City of Lake Forest Park: Someplace?
City of Lake Forest Park: Or they respond?
Cherie Finazzo: I think they're in an email somewhere, I'd have to try to find it, yeah.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, John Hazm, so maybe we could send those questions over to you, so that you can send them to,
Janne Kaje: So, I have a question. I had my hand up for a while, and I can try to help find that thread, too, with you, Cherie.
Cherie Finazzo: Thank you.
Janne Kaje: It's been months, but I, you know, our computers have a way of storing things.
Cherie Finazzo: Right.
Janne Kaje: what I want to hear from Mark is that, you know.
Janne Kaje: I've, as I've shared with some of you before, I've served on another planning commission, and yes, we can take on the assignment of combing through a particular section of code, like
Janne Kaje: Section 18. Great.
Janne Kaje: How much time can staff put into helping with that? How much time can staff put into combing through and figuring out where some key points are, where we should probably be giving some thought to
Janne Kaje: Does this match some of the policy? Does this support? Does this inhibit?
Janne Kaje: any of the policy recommendations that we made. That, to me, is the model of how planning commissions normally work. Yes, we all do homework, but it's staff doing work to help us prepare for a productive discussion, and I want to know if that capacity is there.
City of Lake Forest Park: Depends on the specifics, Johnny.
City of Lake Forest Park: They do code enforcement.
City of Lake Forest Park: development review, building permits, I'm the acting building officials, zoning officials, critical areas administrator, CD director, department head, you name it. So, the more specific you get, the better for me. I can tell you I work day and night and weekends.
City of Lake Forest Park: My wife can attest to it.
Janne Kaje: Well, you know.
City of Lake Forest Park: Mark, Mark, Mark, I'm.
Janne Kaje: I'm just going to push back a little here. None of us are asking you to work nights and weekends, okay? What we're trying to understand is how much is the city prepared to support the Planning Commission in working through these issues?
Janne Kaje: We can't do it all. I'm just saying, like, that is a core part of the city's function in supporting volunteer commissions, is to do work that helps us get to where we can have effective discussions.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, Sirami, do you have a specific request? An example?
Janne Kaje: I would like to know if by next meeting, there's a summary
Janne Kaje: That we can have from city staff.
Janne Kaje: To say, hey, given our discussions to date.
Janne Kaje: here are some areas in… whether it's in Title 18 or somewhere else, here are some places where we see that it would benefit from you, the Commission, wrestling with these issues as someone… as a group that
Janne Kaje: So, you know, move the policy direction forward.
Janne Kaje: but the code is… is… is… maybe needs some… needs some work. That would be extremely helpful. We can all try to wing it, and then show up at a meeting, and try to kind of wing it, having a conversation.
Janne Kaje: My understanding of a model of a commission is that we're getting significant support on the substance from staff to help identify the key points where we should spend our time, instead of us all scrambling around trying to do it.
Janne Kaje: So, and again, Mark, I'm not saying you, Mark, I'm asking, is the city prepared to commit to that, and that may mean more help for you, or not? Maybe this is for Councilmember Rosenau, because it's frustrating
Janne Kaje: to, yes, spin in these discussions, but guess what? We need help. We need city staff to be able to lean into these things and help us identify the key points of discussion that will help us move forward. Then, we can be productive. Us going around and just doing our homework? Okay.
Janne Kaje: We can try.
City of Lake Forest Park: Let's, take this conversation offline.
Janne Kaje: Sure.
Janne Kaje: But please have it reflected in the notes that I am concerned that we're not getting an adequate amount of support from the city to support this commission to do its job.
Janne Kaje: I will look for that in the meeting notes for August 14th.
City of Lake Forest Park: An email to that effect, please, sir.
Janne Kaje: You got it.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, so I'd like to move forward. Your business?
City of Lake Forest Park: Is this…
City of Lake Forest Park: Reports and announcements.
City of Lake Forest Park: Sam is taking an opportunity with his family to go to London for a year or more.
City of Lake Forest Park: We'll likely be back, but he has resigned. This was supposed to be his last meeting. He wanted to, discuss with you and have a handoff, but he wasn't able to make it tonight. So, on his behalf, he's not here tonight.
City of Lake Forest Park: He'll… he won't be on the commission. My hope is that at some point, he returns to the community and can playable. So, I thank him for…
City of Lake Forest Park: His efforts.
City of Lake Forest Park: guiding, the Commission through those, efforts that we've been talking about for the last 3 years.
City of Lake Forest Park: The second part of that is Thursday night at City Council. We have one vacancy, and the Council is, going to have an agenda item to appoint Chief Reid as Planning Commissioner. With Sam's absence, we now have,
City of Lake Forest Park: Not the vacancy.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, Thursday night at City Council, we welcome you to be there, it's not required. I'm sure it'll go well, and I thank you.
City of Lake Forest Park: So that's the good news, but Sam, was not able to be here at the same time, so if he seems to me, please, can we take advantage of his absence by authorizing a field trip to London? I'm a little jealous. It sounds like a really good opportunity for…
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, thank you.
Janne Kaje: Good for Sam.
Janne Kaje: Love it.
City of Lake Forest Park: Anyway, that was, both at the same time, and then the mayor of his
City of Lake Forest Park: We talked about it, leadership has some ideas, but there's no immediate, built for them opportunity for people before… next month, yeah. Do you have alternate sponsors about…
City of Lake Forest Park: We're capable of it, but yeah. Other committees do have that, but I think our goal at Planning Commission was to do business, and then seek all the vacancies being built.
City of Lake Forest Park: And then if other people are interested in preparation.
City of Lake Forest Park: We're a little bit less formal than Council, so there's a question about whether they can vote, but they can certainly participate.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, alternate is… is an option.
City of Lake Forest Park: Kevin, goodbye.
City of Lake Forest Park: So, Jeep, we will express our official welcome the next meeting. You're gonna grill me about my thoughts, dreams, expectations, desires, or what I wish for you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know me.
City of Lake Forest Park: Okay, so it doesn't look like we have any additional comments.
City of Lake Forest Park: agenda for the next meeting, so our attorney will be here to discuss REVs.
City of Lake Forest Park: Mark, he'll do some…
City of Lake Forest Park: We'll try to find that, you know, that, presentation, send that out ahead of time for ourselves to review that. Some questions, perhaps some questions over to, as, Councilmember, Jasper has recommended. Send those questions over to Mark, so he can send them over to
City of Lake Forest Park: The attorney. In May.
City of Lake Forest Park: And… someone's gonna send me questions to pass on to Brian? Someone is… Or try to, anyway. Yeah,
City of Lake Forest Park: I think I have this question still, too. Yeah, so we'll send those over to you to see if he might be able to attend.
City of Lake Forest Park: the… the September date.
City of Lake Forest Park: Anything else?
City of Lake Forest Park: Good.
City of Lake Forest Park: So… Is there a motion to adjour?
Janne Kaje: Motion to adjourn.
City of Lake Forest Park: Second, second, all in agreement.
City of Lake Forest Park: Thank you. Nice to meet you all. Keep on you virtually.
CM Josh Rosenau: Seeing you off.
Hina: Well, good night.
Cherie Finazzo: Thank you, everybody. Good night.
City of Lake Forest Park: No, we had one or two really long ones for, plant.
City of Lake Forest Park: But, rarely pass 9.
City of Lake Forest Park: Yeah.
City of Lake Forest Park: Oh, Hey, I'm really happy.