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PC APPROVED Minutes 01-09-14 Approved Minutes Spokane Valley Planning Commission Council Chambers— City Hall, January 9,2014 In the absence of a chair, Planning Commission Secretary Deanna Horton called the meeting to order at 6:00 p.m. Commissioners, staff and audience stood for the pledge of allegiance. Ms. Horton took roll as follows: COMMISSIONERS Present Absent CITY STAFF Kevin Anderson lJ l John Hohman, CD Director Christina Carlsen F. Cary Driskell, City Attorney Robert McCaslin Scott Kuhta, Planning Manager Michael Philips 1— Gloria Mantz,Engineer Steven Neill — Christina Janssen,Planner Chris Sneider Joe Stoy l C° Deanna Horton,Admin Assistant ELECTION OF OFFICERS: Ms, Horton explained the process for election of officers. Any commissioner who has served on the Planning Commission for more than one year is eligible to hold the position of chair or vice-chair. All Commissioners are eligible except for Mr, Phillips and Mr. Sneider. Ms. Horton requested nominations for the chair position. Commissioner Anderson nominated Joe Stoy for Chair. Hearing no other nominations, Mr. St©y was declared Chair for the year 2014. Nominations were requested for the position of vice-chair. Commissioner Stoy nominated Christina Carlsen, Commissioner Anderson nominated Steven Neill. Ballots were distributed, collected, tallied and the results reported as follows: Four votes for Commissioner Carlsen, (Commissioners Carlsen, Neill, Sneider, Stoy) three votes for Commissioner Neill, (Commissioners Anderson, McCaslin, Phillips), Commissioner Carlsen is the Vice-Chair{for the year 2014. The meeting was then turned to Chair Stoy to run from that point forward. COMMISSION REPORTS: Commissioner Carlsen reported she attended the Wreaths across America event. Commissioner McCaslin reported he had been considered for the 411' District legislative position vacated by the retiring Larry Crouse but the County Commissioners chose Leonard Christian for the position ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT: Director Holtman welcomed the Commissioners back to the new year, congratulated Commissioners Stoy and Carlsen on their appointments; he also welcomed incoming Commissioner Sneider. He said the Commissioners had three major projects upcoming, work on the Permitted Use Matrix, the Shoreline Master Program regulations are almost ready and the annual Comprehensive Plan amendments. Planning Manager Scott Kuhta stated 'there had been a standing meeting with the previous chair the Monday before the meetings to go over the agenda and discuss any issues which might come up, but not to discuss the business on the agenda itself. He would like to extend Planning Commission Minutes 01-09-14 Page of 5 to the new chair and vice-chair and any other members who would like to attend, the same offer to keep these meetings if incoming chairs would like. PUBLIC COMMENT: There was no public comment COMMISSION BUSINESS Study Session on the Permitted Use Matrix Director Holman began the study session regarding the Permitted Use Matrix by explaining to the Commission why the decision was made to modify it, why staff is bringing it forward, and what it means in the overall context of where things are going with the Comprehensive Plan. Staff explained at the last session and will again tonight, the Permitted Use Matrix is a tool staff uses every day. The existing matrix is difficult to use, and has proven to be unfriendly for our customers to use as well, because it is too specific. Each use must be defined. If we have someone come in with a use which is not listed, it creates a problem. The process which begins tonight, to look at the Permitted Use Matrix in a revised format, is mainly a formatting exercise at this stage. Mr. Hohman also stated staff has taken the liberty to review the Comprehensive Plan and in some cases additional uses were included because we found they were consistent with the Comprehensive Plan. We have not removed any allowed uses from the Matrix. Mr. I-lohman said all the currently allowed uses are still allowed in the new format, they might be classified a bit differently. This review is simply an organizational change of the Matrix. This effort was not meant to open a debate regarding adding any additional uses, other than those we have informed you about, because we have already taken it as far as we can with the language which is in our existing Comprehensive Plan. Continuing, Mr. Holman shared examining the Use Matrix and the Comprehensive Plan we realized there are updates which need to be done, especially to the Land Use chapter. This year as part of the annual amendment process, Council has directed us to remove all references to a city center, so there will several blanks in this document as we move forward with the Comprehensive Plan. What staff is doing is preparing a road map for moving forward with an update to our Comprehensive Plan. We are not sure when this update will occur. However we wanted the Commission to understand the current proposal is to make the Matrix easier to use on a daily basis. In the future, the Matrix will be an update to the Land Use chapter in the Comprehensive Plan and the Land Use map. After this is accomplished, staff can return and a new process can begin to populate the Matrix with whatever changes were developed from the overall update. Mr. Hohman cautioned the Commissioners to take the update of the Matrix in steps and to focus on only the reformatting of the Matrix at this time. Planning Manager Kuhta explained the items included in the Commissioners' packets. In the packets Mr. Kuhta explained • The RCA with the basic information regarding the proposed changes the Use Matrix; • Proposed changes to Chapter 19.120, updated to provide instructions on how to use the Matrix; • A copy of the proposed Matrix; due to the amount of restructuring there are no underlines and strikethroughs in this document; • A copy of Appendix A, the Definitions. This section has all of the definitions of the entire Municipal Code, however any which have been added or changed are marked with an underline or strikethrough and those are the ones to be concentrated on;and • A copy of the current Use Matrix completely struck through. It was too difficult to try and show the old and new together since they are completely different, so the old one has been completely struck out in order to show it is going away altogether. Planning Commission Minutes 01-09-14 Page 2 of 5 Mr. Kuhta continued by explaining why the review was taking place regarding the current Permitted Use Matrix: • Many of the uses are too specific and do not have corresponding definitions; • If a use was not listed, then it caused problems determining how to permit the use and delays in permitting the use due to the need for an administrative determination; • The Matrix is long and hard to navigate; • Staff wanted to incorporate some outstanding code text amendments which have been on hold which can now be cleaned up; • The Matrix refers to the North American Classification System (NAICS) Codes, many of the uses do not correlate to the list of codes. Mr. Kuhta said staff began by moving the uses from the middle of the listing to the outer edge to make it easier to find the use listing. Staff moved all of the zoning districts to the right of the uses. To the right of the zoning districts are any supplemental regulations which need to be taken into consideration when permitting a certain use. Mr, Kuhta discussed the removal of the NAICS codes from the Use Matrix. Mr. Kuhta explained the NAICS codes are not generally used in zoning codes, it is too specific and yet not all inclusive. These codes are the standard used by Federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments for the purpose of collecting, analyzing, and publishing statistical data related to the U.S. business economy. Mr. Kuhta then explained the code text amendments which would be incorporated into this proposed update to the Use Matrix. Mr. Kuhta said with the new recreational marijuana laws staff wanted to layout where the different marijuana licenses could locate in the City. An administrative interpretation was made as to where these types of licenses would be allowed and staff wanted to bring those into the code. One of the other code amendments which needed to be processed was to allow office uses in the multifamily zones, which was a Comprehensive Plan amendment from 2013. He also said when townhouses were allowed in the Neighborhood Commercial zone it prompted a discussion as to why they could not be allowed in the Garden Office zone, language was found in the Comprehensive Plan to support this change so it has also been incorporated. Mr. Kuhta stated there has been some interest in community gardens recently and it is not addressed in the code, so staff felt this would be a good time to address the requests. These are the reasons these specific changes are being incorporated into the proposed change to the Matrix. Mr. Kuhta then turned the discussion over the Ms. Gloria Mantz to discuss how the changes in the Matrix came about. Development Engineer, Gloria Mantz explained to the Commission the process used to update the Permitted Use Matrix. Ms. Mantz stated staff reviewed several other jurisdictions' use matrices to see what some other cities were doing and what seemed to be working. Several other jurisdictions were using a matrix very similar to the proposed matrix the Commissioners are looking at. Staff discovered the most user-friendly matrices were organized into categories instead of long lists of specific uses. Staff then determined 22 broad use categories where the uses could be grouped. Staff feels these are intuitive categories and should be much easier for the end user to figure out. After determining the broad categories, then each of the uses in the current matrix was placed under one of the 22 broad categories. After grouping the uses, staff tried to find ways to consolidate the uses. Staff reviewed the definitions, how each use was permitted in each of the zoning districts, and then tried to remove the specifics and move them into a more general use whenever possible. By doing this task, the uses were from the Census Bureau web page Planning Commission Minutes 01-09-14 Page 3 of 5 reduced by approximately 30%. Most of the merging of the uses was accomplished in the Heavy and Light Industrial districts. Afterwards the definitions were reviewed, modified or added to eliminate inconsistencies or to clarify proposed uses. Some of the new or modified definitions have examples to help the user with determining if the use will be allowed or not. Afterwards all of the feferences to the Municipal Code sections identified in the Matrix were accurate. Staff then wrote an introduction to the Use Matrix for Chapter 19.120 so a user would have a bit of instruction on how to use the Matrix. Previously there were no instructions on how to use the Matrix, just the Matrix was in the code and an end user just had to figure it out. Ms. Martz stated the public hearing is scheduled January 23,2014. Commissioner Sneider asked why the NAICS codes were used originally. Mr. Kuhta explained the first Community Development Director had used them in building the Use Matrix in the beginning, he shared staff felt this was something for which she might have been familiar with in another city she had worked in. The NAICS codes can help you determine a use category if someone is confused however it could be confusing in the end, because an end use could be identical to another use if you were not using the proper root. It was intended to help with uses which were not listed, however, it has become cumbersome in the long run. It will still be a tool in the last resort if a use cannot be determined however, there are other ways to make a determination which would be easier to use than the NAICS codes. Commissioner Anderson wondered if staff was using the new matrix or the old one. Staff explained the old one until the new one goes through the process of a public hearing, through council and adoption. He also asked if staff had engineered a list of different uses to cross reference from. Mr. Kuhta answered no staff does not have such a list. Mr. Anderson stated there have been changed made to the new Matrix to allow two permitted uses which were not allowed in the old Matrix. He wanted to know if there was authority to do that without some formal proceeding where, he suggested the had a list of two full pages of uses which were not allowed but now it is allowed on a specific line item. He wanted to know that could be done just by the stroke of a pen and/or keyboard. Mr. Kuhta explained this was that formal process in which those changes are allowed. Mr, Anderson replied he thought this was fine; however he did not find how the changes were noted. Ms. Mantz noted staff had kept track of the changes made. Mr, Kuhta stated he understood Mr. Anderson's concern and staff would attempt to try and figure out a way to highlight those changes. Commissioner Neill asked about selling hemp items, rope, clothing, etc. Mr. Kuhta stated he would have to look into it. He was not sure it was legal to own it, but if it was, it would just fall under a retail shop. Commissioner Stoy explained he had handed out a sheet of items he felt would make it easier to read. He wondered the difference between a heliport and helistop. Mr. Anderson helped him by explaining a heliport has facilities for the helicopter, a helistop just allows for a helicopter to land and take off. Commissioner Stoy asked about the transfer of ownership in the definitions and wanted to strike some language, however Planner Christina Janssen explained that the definition he was talking about was actually related to a long list of definitions regarding the adult entertainment industry, and then Mr. Stoy understood why the definition was written as such. Commissioner Stoy asked about the definition of assembly, and wondered if it did not also apply to a gathering of people as well as to assembly of materials in manufacturing. Ms. Mantz stated the specific definition was to aid in the industrial definitions. Ms. Janssen further assisted by offering the assembly of people is controlled by the Building Code. Mr. Anderson suggested to remove the words "and/or metals"from the sentence, because it is a repeat of materials and redundant. Planning Commission Minutes 01-09-14 Page 4 of 5 Commissioner Stoy feels the definition of Bed and Breakfast should be modified to strike the words "single family". Mr. Kuhta offered a couple of points; he stated staff did not alter any of the definitions unless they were directly related to the changes of the proposed Matrix. Mr. Kuhta then went on to discuss, as a side note, the basic definition of a Bed and Breakfast is in a single-family dwelling. As a rule someone would not start a bed and breakfast in a duplex or a multifamily complex, so it would be appropriate for it to say single family house. Mr. Anderson requested that only the definitions, which were changing to be shown. Mr. Kuhta explained how the process worked and the entire document needed to be presented in order to be able to keep items in context. Mr. Kuhta explained only the items which are being proposed for a change should be reviewed. Tonight would not be the night to wordsmith or propose any changes. Those items are best left to the deliberations after the public hearing. A study session for understanding the upcoming topic, what the proposed changes are to that topic, not for making changes. Mr. Stoy then decided to hold the rest of his comments to after the public hearing. GOOD OF THE ORDER Commissioner McCaslin wanted to congratulate Chair Stoy and Vice Chair Carlsen on their appointments on the Commission. Mr. McCaslin stated he felt the Commissioners were a good group and he appreciated all of the staff. ADJOURNMENT: There being no other business the meeting was adjourned at 7:03 p.m. J s.eph Stay, Chairperson • Deanna Horton, secretary Date signed /"o? 7` /1/ Planning Commission Minutes 01-09-14 Page 5 of 5