2014, 11-17 Special Mtg Comp Plan MINUTES
SPOKANE VALLEY CITY COUNCIL
SPECIAL MEETING
STUDY SESSION FORMAT
Spokane Valley City Hall Council Chambers
Spokane Valley,Washington
Monday,November 17,2014 2:30 p.m.
Attendance:
Councilmembers Staff
Dean Grafos,Mayor Mike Jackson, City Manager
Arne Woodard, Deputy Mayor Mark Calhoun, Deputy City Manager
Chuck Hafner, Councilmember Cary Driskell, City Attorney
Rod Higgins, Councilmember Erik Lamb, Deputy City Attorney
Ed Pace, Councilmember John Hohman, Community Development Dir.
Ben Wick, Councilmember—arrived 2:42 Lori Barlow, Senior Planner
Mike Basinger, Senior Planner
ABSENT: Christina Janssen,Planner
Bill Bates, Councilmember Gloria Mantz, Engineer
Luis Garcia, Development Services Coordinator
Karen Kendall, Planner
Jenny Nickerson, Senior Plans Examiner
Micki Harnois, Associate Planner
Chad Riggs, Engineer
Chris Bainbridge, City Clerk
Mayor Grafos called the meeting to order at 2:30 p.m.
ROLL CALL: City Clerk Bainbridge called the roll; all Councilmembers were present except
Councilmember Wick who was expected to arrive shortly, and Councilmember Bates. It was moved by
Deputy Mayor Woodard, seconded and unanimously agreed to excuse Councilmembers Bates from the
meeting.
Agenda Topic: Comprehensive Plan Update Under the Growth Management-Act John Hohman
Staff and consultants will preview the comprehensive plan update process, including legislative requirements,
steps in the process, and timeframe for completion. The study session will include an initial opportunity for
Councilmembers to suggest potential topics and issues that the Council may want to consider in the
forthcoming public process. Items to Consider: Public Participation Process; Community Visioning
Process; Topics for Consideration; and Open Discussion.
Community Development Director John Hohman: Today we begin our process of our legislative
update for our comp plan. As you know the first comp plan was initiated and adopted in 2007 and we do
need to update it. We brought a consultant team together which we will introduce in a second, but what
we wanted to do is to kickoff this process,talk a little bit about the legislative requirements of what we're
doing today, and then talk about some of the comprehensive plan basics, and then talk about our
anticipated process and how do we expect to move forward, and talk about the next steps, and at the very
end we want to have an initial discussion with Council just to talk about the topics that are of interest to
you and that you would like us to focus on. Nothing will be resolved at this point, it's just something to
get the discussion and process started so we can develop our plans in the future and bring those forward to
you.
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And now I'd like to introduce our consultant team, and this will be a project update team similar to how,
you're familiar with the Shoreline Management Program, and how that was put together,various different
consultants and the staff worked together to do that and we expect the same here, although probably a
heavier burden will be on the consultant team to work on all these elements. And so we have selected the
overall consultant of Van Ness Feldman to do the majority of the work and we have brought in two
consultants to work with that on various aspects;. If you recall Tadas from our Shoreline Management
Program, he is here today to speak with you, along with him is Anna Nelson, and she'll be taking part of
this presentation as well, and then Doug Mclntrye right behind us; he's with Van Ness Feldman as well
and he'll be working on this program. We have two other consultant firms that are not with us today,
we'll be meeting with them tomorrow morning to kick off the staff portion, and that's Fehr & Peers, Chris
Breiland, you may recall that is the same firm that worked on the University Overpass Project; and then
we have Morgan Shook from EcoNorthwest, and that's going to be a very important element of this
update, where we're going to be integrating economic development throughout this entire document and
looking at things from a marketing prospective as much as we possibly can. So that'll be the majority of
the consultants' working on this; and again staff will have a role as well and we will look to plug in as
much as we can and provide that local information and work with the public as much as we possibly can
considering our current work load as well,trying to balance all those activities.
So, why now? As you know, we've had a lot of discussions over the years about some of the difficulty
about our comprehensive plan and our development regulations, and we will be working on a few of those
later, and this evening we'll be bringing back some of those text amendments back for a second reading;
and some of the issues with our development code. All of the changes we brought forth within our
development code have to be within the context of our comprehensive plan; and our comprehensive plan
as you know, is outdated and is really in need of a re-fresh; and that's what we want to do here now is we
want to start the process of looking at all the things that have changed over the last ten years, and bring
those forward into a document that will provide vision and clarity as we move forward into the future for
what is our twenty-year plan for the city, and how are we going to get there; so this is an extensive public
process that we'll be undertaking, and Tadas and Anna will be talking a bit more about that as we go
forward. The Growth Management Act requires that comprehensive plans be completed and those updates
have to be done every eight years; and what we want to do is to recognize that because our comp plan is
outdated and we may be able to bring certain aspects of the City's development back with our documents,
we want to go ahead and get those started as quickly as possible and get those completed as quickly as
possible, so that's why we are starting now. We do have a legislative deadline of June 30, 2017,that we'll
have to meet, but we hope to be well, well done before that date happens; because what we want to have
is a vibrant document that we can move forward; look at our different land use categories that we have
now and classifications and make sure that it matches what our needs our in the future, as well as
protecting those areas of the city that need to be protected, so this is going to be the beginning of a lot of
dialogue about land use throughout the coming year. So, with that, I'll turn it over to Tadas, and he'll talk
more about the specific requirements.
Consultant Tadas Kisielius: So most of you are probably already familiar with the Growth Management
Act, but the background here was important to highlight the scope of what we intend to cover, or what the
City can cover. As you know, the Growth Management Act sets the goals and requirements for planning
in the city, there's a big emphasis on deference to choices that accommodate local circumstances, so you
have room as a city to choose an approach that fits the city within the confines of those fourteen goals that
are listed on the slide, and I don't want to go into any detail other than just to acknowledge those are the
fourteen goals in the statute, and for every goal there's the corresponding requirements in the statute that
talk about what you're supposed to do in the parameters of those specific topics, so it's a wide ranging list
of things that the city covers in its comprehensive plan. It is a little bit different and I've worked a lot with
you all on the Shoreline Master Program update, it different in the statutory scheme that again focus on
local circumstances, it is you all who are the final authority in terms of the approval, it doesn't go to a
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state agency for approval; this is your document. As we talk about the comprehensive plan, that really is
the touchstone for implementing those goals and requirements. This is a quote from MRSC*, which is a
site that helps local jurisdictions with planning, but we put it up there because I think it captures the
importance and the primacy of that document, and it really is the touchstone. People refer to the comp
plan as the blueprint for everything else that follows. So, it's going to set the basics that are then
implemented through more specific development regulations. This little inverted triangle [referring to
slide 7 on the PowerPoint presentation] is meant to capture the levels of abstraction of planning here;
we've got the, the framework starts with the Countywide Planning Policies at the top, and that's a set of
policies that were adopted by the County and all the cities within the county, that are basically meant to
set the parameters and basic points of agreement in about how each city in the county go about with their
individual comprehensive plans. So that's going to inform to some degree, the task at hand. The
comprehensive plan, what we're about to work on, is then the next level down and for the City itself, it's
really like I said, it's really the blueprint for planning in the City that is then most sharpened by the
implementing development regulations. For everything in the comprehensive plan, you have goals and
policies, you then have development regulations that implement that approach. And for some, we'll have
discussion about changes to the goals and policies within the comp plan, and some we may have
implementing regulations that need to accompany those, so we'll have to talk about this concept a couple
times as we go through the process.
Consultant Anna Nelson: The development regulations, one team member that we didn't really highlight
on the slide but is part of the team is the critical areas ordinance, or updates to the critical area regs, so the
team member that we used for that SMP update, we will have to adopt critical area regulations for how
shoreline jurisdiction as part of the update, so we'll work with those regulations as part of the shoreline(?)
masterplan process,that's part of the team as well.
Tadas Kisielius: Noah Herlocker from URS is the person we'll be using for that. And again, I think that's
a good example, because that is one where you do need specific regulations, and again I think we
collectively spend a lot of time crafting an approach within the shoreline that we feel is going to be a nice
place to start as we look for what to do to protect critical areas outside the shorelines as well, so there's a
lot of advance work, if you will, that you have already done in the context of the shorelines master
program update that will pave the evidence here through this process.
Anna Nelson: The only other thing I wanted to, since this slide is up related to the Countywide Planning
Process is the population allocations, that's something that the County hasn't really picked up yet and I
understand that they're going to start looking at that soon so that'll be important to our update process here
as well.
Tadas Kisielius: This is a general timeline here of what to expect, and we'll begin where we are now,
which is updating the necessary background information and documenting existing conditions, and in the
first step beyond that is going to be to implement a public participation program, and before we
implement it,we're going to have to take a look at it and bring it back before you to talk about what is that
public participation program; but the notion here is that throughout this process there is robust
opportunity for public participation for the general public to come before you and before the Planning
Commission and give their input as to what they think the comp plan should address. It's an important
part of the GMA, the public participation, and so to make sure that we provide ample opportunity for
public participation, we will have a public participation plan that just documents those opportunities for
the general public to get involved. And we'll talk more about that in the details. With that launched then,
the task is really to come up with a vision for the development of the community, and then to develop
goals and policies and objectives that are consistent with that vision, that's really the body of your
comprehensive plan. And then finally at the end of it all, as mentioned before, you have implementing
development regulations and there may be times or places where we need to re-craft the development
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regulations to match the changes to the comprehensive plan. So that's kind of the sequence that we'll be
tackling as we'll be tackling these issues.
Ok, so project roles and responsibilities, as I said there's four different interests here on the slide, the
public, as I mentioned before has a role to play here. They're going to be coming to you and they will be
afforded the opportunity to tell you their ideas for what should happen with the comprehensive plan and
planning in the city generally. The Planning Commission's really going to be taking lead in terms of front
lines, as they did with the shoreline master program,they're going to be doing a lot of the heavy lifting in
terms of sorting through that public comment testimony, and preparing a recommendation for the
Council's consideration; but you all as the Council are the decision maker for this document, so you will
be very involved in this process as well. Finally, the bottom bullet there is staff and the consultant team,
we're going to be the ones to facilitate the process by drafting language, giving you background
information, providing technical expertise, and helping prepare recommendations for the Planning
Commission to consider then to hand over to you. So again, you're not starting from scratch here; you've
got an existing document so we're not going to throw that out, we're going to start by looking at which
you've already got, and we thought we'd at least put a slide up to show what are the existing elements of
your comprehensive plan. So there're a couple that the statute GMA requires, there are GMA
requirements that you got the land use element, housing element, capital facilities plan, utilities element
and transportation; you have to have those; you do. We'lI be looking at those to see what should be
changed, what can be changed. Additionally,the GMA allows you to have optional elements and the City
has chosen a couple of those: economic development, parks and rec, natural environment, neighborhoods,
bike and pedestrian,these are all optional elements that can be included in the comprehensive plan.
We divided this up, this update process, into three phases, and really we're just at the outset of phase 1,
and that's to start, we have to come up with a public participation program and start to gather input about
how to put, what is that community vision that's going to be the center point for everything that follows.
This meeting is part of that, we're going to be, as John mentioned at the end, we're going to be getting
input from you all if there are issues that you'd like to see addressed that's part of that process of gathering
information to help us focus our efforts as we move forward. We're gathering data, we'll be working
together with staff and with the other consultants to pull together all the necessary information we need to
move this forward. Based on that information,that's really going to determine what we're calling phases 2
and 3, because again, because this is an update process, it's how big this is, how targeted this is, it's all
dependent upon on what you want to see change through that community vision; and so it's kind of hard
to really say with any sort of certainty what phase 2 and phase 3 are going to look like. You're going to
see down there, something we haven't talked about at all yet; this is going to be accompanied by a state
environmental review under the State Environmental Policy Act, so for planning purposes you'll see the
beginning EIS, final EIS, we were assuming just for purposes of being conservative in a time estimate, to
choose for planning purposes, the EIS, the document that we'll use for that environmental review. We're
not predetermining the outcome of the environmental review and it might not be an EIS because that's the
more time consuming of the choices, but we kind of threw that up there for timeframe and planning; but
the environmental review's going to accompany this, we have to go through the SEPA process and the
EIS may be the outcome, and that we used for budgeting purposes, I mean budget in time. So with that in
mind, this is the time frame that we were looking at, the phase 1 we're kicking off now and hoping to
wrap that up relatively quickly so we can get on to the meat of the work,which will be phase 2 and phase
3. You'll see on there, as John said, we're really trying to do this aggressively, it's a tall order just to be
very candid, the timeframe here of doing it in one year is a tall order, but we won't really know until we
see more what's the scope of work we're tackling here;but that's what we're aiming for; and this is about a
reasonable time frame, especially for phase 2 I think, and phase 3 that that's about the ballpark of what
we're looking at.
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Ok, so before we open this up for input, the next steps, we're going to be compiling input we gather here
today and we're also in the works for preparing recommendations for the public participation program that
we'll be talking about tomorrow, the consultant teams and staff will be getting together to talk about this
among other issues; and we'll be presenting recommendations to Council prior to moving forward with
any of those items and you will be hearing from us relatively soon, and we'll also be working very shortly
on a scope of work for phases 2 and 3;that's really the next steps that we're going to be taking on.
John Hohman: So are there any questions on the process at all at this stage? No? Ok then. What we
want to do then for the remainder of the allotted time today, is really to just open the discussion with
council, some of the initial topics that you all have had experience with throughout the years that you
would like us to focus on. I've heard a lot of things about affordable housing, senior housing, other
elements like that, that's the level of topic that we would like to hear today and maybe some explanation
as we go forward as well. We're here to answer any of the questions or to take down notes, do whatever
we can to have this initial discussion,and we probably would have preferred to have more of a roundtable
setup but because of the meeting tonight that precluded that, but be that as it may, whatever topic you
want us to look at, we're more than willing to do so at this time. So feel free to open up the discussion and
let's hear your thoughts.
Deputy Mayor Woodard: From the housing part of it, I would most like to see a real serious look at
mini-houses, mini-housing development, higher densities for people that provide housing for start-up or
first-time buyer type thing, or even in the case of some of these social programs throughout the county,
particularly here in the valley, even allowing churches and houses of god, or synagogues, or whatever, I
don't care what brand they are, if they want to try to help some of their, the homeless, or the elderly, by
putting some minihomes or microhomes or whatever, I'd like to see us look at that both in zoning and in
housing, as well as in the zoning area, what's already on the ground; what's actually on the ground, not
what we'd like to have on the ground; and then there could be some areas that we'll need to focus on,
either expanding that into more useful property like Dean's said in the past, and that we have worked on a
little bit along Trent, kind of incentivize people using some of those dead lots or dead properties; and on
that note, I'd like to see even along Sprague, Sullivan and most of the main bus routes, a repurposing of
properties that are not, and I'll pick on one, and it's not because it's any particular property that we might
be able to use on Sprague, but University Appliance for example. That building's been vacant now for
probably three or four years; it's kind of an eyesore; maybe somebody wants to come along and repurpose
that for multi-family, high density because it's along the bus routes, and whatnot, a minimal amount of
parking, types of concepts with of instead of 22 units per acre, maybe they want to go to a micro or mini-
condo complex there, multi-level, maybe four stories or whatever. I want to look at options, I guess is
what I'm talking about, whether it's mini condos, boarding houses, microhouses. I would also like to see
us come up with real development regulations that allow us to get into the backyards of these 320' deep
lots, a lot of the people who own those lots for a great number of years can't do anything with it because
you can't get a 30' road past their house to get into the backs of those. I don't mean necessarily for
fourteen houses, but maybe they'd want to put one other house or a duplex or something like that so it's
better utilized. I don't know what it's going to take, you know better than I do, but those are some of my
initial thoughts.
Councilmember Pace: I've got a list. So, number one, this probably goes without saying, but I would
hope the comprehensive plan, the process, the actual end result from start to finish and all the way
through, is based on and driven by the City's vision and core values, 'cause those things were established,
those statements were established when the City was incorporated, and I think they've served the City
well all the way through, so that should just be fundamental. That should trump anything.
Tadas Kisielius: And on that point, that is absolutely something we're going to start with, because there
is the community vision statement in the existing comprehensive plan, so one of the first questions we'll
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have is, the first truth, is that still accurate; is that the right vision statement and if so, and what I'm
passing around is just one page from the comprehensive plan that captures and helps us with the
discussion, is it still the right vision statement, is it accurate, and if it is, how are we doing?Those are the
kind of questions that we'll want to get at in this phase I is looking at that very basic premise; ok this is
what we say we do, should we still be saying we do that, and if so, are we doing that.
CounciImember Pace: And I would emphasize also that the core values they come up with is in our
business plan; and then the next thing is, I know there's some disagreement there, this may raise some red
flags, but I would like to see our comprehensive plan block any future attempts to bring back SARP** or
anything resembling or derived from it and any language that refers to it or hints of it is just removed, and
not even there. Number 3, I would like to see any concepts, language, ideas that come from international
or national or state agencies or organizations; let's just use plain English, the language that's used by our
residents here and the whole point of that is let's focus it on our residents and not on outside
organizations, nothing wrong with them but this is for the city as you said; and then of course, one of the
goals that's already there, protecting property rights, that's just really important. The next one is be a tool
for stimulating economic development while on the other hand preserving Spokane Valley history,
culture, character and values; and I kind of tie those to the real history of the area and the incorporation,
so the incorporation, the vision statement and the core values kind of go together, and that kind of is all
about economic development, and the history going way back to when some of these folk's families first
settled here when it was just bare ground used for farming. That drives the culture and character and
values and all that. Next one is, needs to enable and encourage historical preservation but as a benefit to
property owners without putting constraints on them, and I'm thinking about you know, I like everything
that Mike Basinger presented to us and that we've been talking about, historical preservation; but I'm
thinking about something that happened recently in downtown Spokane where a car dealer wanted to get,
I don't remember if they already owned it or if they were going to buy it [Cary Driskell: redevelopment]
but yeah, there was two brick buildings that were listed as historical preservation, they wanted to tear
them down and use them for new redevelopment and they weren't allowed to do that, so I'd like to see that
not be a part of our historical preservation, and also included in that, I'd like to see it be such that if a
house is listed on the city's historical preservation list, that any modifications that don't affect the history,
or moving the building to another site, that the building codes be rolled back to what it was when that
house was first built, which may mean no building code. The next thing is, Arne already touched on this,
but it needs to be able to enable flexibility with use of residential property especially the other property
too, so that, and I'm thinking about things like allowing RVs to be used as accessory dwelling units,
allowing mini and micro houses to be added to existing lots, really tying single room occupancy of
boarding houses and so on. The next one is the comprehensive plan should encourage development and
improvement and stability of manufactured home parks without restricting the property rights of park
owners. Now all these things are constraints brought in a hard place kind of thing, but I think we've got
the creativity out here to figure it out. And I'm thinking about citizen input; in one of my previous lives in
the electronics industry I remember using, getting input from employees and customers about various
things using focus groups, processes that look like the so-called charrette process,and those always struck
me as being manipulative; boy top management had the answer already and they wanted to manipulate
the folks into coming up with the same answer and then go away thinking it was their idea. I'd like to see
true, honest, transparent input from all citizens. And then for the actual writing of the document, I'd like
to see, instead of having Growth Management Act boilerplate inserted in it,just put a reference to it. I'd
like to see incentives for locating housing on or near bus routes, and I don't mean money incentives or tax
incentives, but things like ok, if you put your housing within a quarter mile of especially a bus route but
even a bus line, you can go higher, you can have more density, you can have less parking. That kind of
thing. I think it's important to solicit the input from organizations like Building Owners and Managers,
home building association, the realtors, the chamber of commerce, but let's restrict that to organizations
that have a significant amount of membership right here within our city limits; so organizations from
Olympia and Washington, D.C., they're not helpful at getting what our city wants. And finally an
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annexation, that it gives guidelines for an annexation process based on either citizen request or city
request that ends up being the true, whichever it is, reflecting the true wishes of the citizens in both the
annexed and already the city area. And as Forrest Gump would say,that's all I have to say about that.
Tadas Kisielius: We took copious notes; I think that, and all of this is very helpful, but we'll look at all
those things; some of the subjects we can visit in more detail when we get to that point, there's certain
things that you touched on that are really governed by more than just the GMA, there's other compelling
laws, and so we may be limited in terms of what options we have for some of those issues.
Councilmember Pace: Right, and that's the old rock and a hard place, but there's a whole lot of creativity
out there.
Tadas Kisielius: Understood, so that's just a long way of saying that we will look at every single one of
those and come back to you with, as we go through the process; and just one piece on the, in terms of
solicitation input from organizations. I think, on that one,just to touch on that specifically, we, as part of
a public participation program, I think that will go toward the extent to which you weigh the input, where
we can't really stop somebody from, and I think that will be within your direction sort of thinking it
through.
Councilmember Pace: I should have clarified; I don't want to card people at the door.
Tadas Kisielius: Understood. But anyway, these are all very good points and we'll be looking at those
things.
Councilmember Wick: I mean just reading through the vision statement again, it seems like that is in my
mind, still where we want to be. We're all about the community of opportunity where individuals and
families can grow and play and businesses will flourish and prosper, is kind of at the heart of all our
decisions up here; so that is in my mind, still pretty right-on where we want to go; and then the other
things kind of in my mind is we also want to protect while, there's a lot of comment on infill and
development, and up and smaller, I also want to make sure we protect those that don't want to be sardines
and so in my mind, I also want to kind of highlight some of the community and identity pride where we
preserve our neighborhoods and allow us to do that stuff as well. But safety is our number one, and
infrastructure are our top two things that we try and go for here so that the community and pride, will be a
family friendly wholesome, safe place to live and raise a family, and preservation of neighborhoods is
also very high on my list. A lot of talk about trying to restrict different things. I really like the goal on the
open collaborative, if somebody has an idea, I'd much rather hear it or see it and consider the options, so I
just think these goals that were set off before are just kind of really right on from where I want to go. Not
much change there, but I am interested to hear more about the preservation. I think we're kind of looking
along at a historical preservation piece. I don't know how well we could build that into here. I don't see
that a whole lot in there. And then from my experience on the Economic Development Committee, try to
balance the three different types of zoning for our city with the commercial, industrial, residential, to
protect those zones, that's what I think has really helped us through the down-turn of the economy is
being able to protect the industrial areas as being industrial, residential as residential, so not having too
much of one or the other,but still protecting those. That's kind of my two-cents.
Tadas Kisielius: And the vision statement base would still be accurate,then that's great if that's what, and
that's how we sort of treat that; I appreciate your input now, and then we'll quickly turn to then, how are
we doing, interest captured and what can we do better, if there's agreement that that vision is still
accurate.
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Councilmember Hafner: I have three comments that are really not very specific, but I think that they
are aiming at exactly what we plan to do totally for our city. I agree with Ben and the rest of them, I think
safety is a primary concern, whatever we do that has to be involved in the equation. Secondly, I think
there is preservation of our neighborhoods. It has come up time and time again no matter whether we're
looking at apartments, or duplexes or whatever, the integrity of our neighborhoods has come up as what's
important and I think that needs to be looked at; and I think that all of the things that we talked about,
even what Mr. Pace has said, and Arne and so forth; it comes down to how does it affect our community
in the decision making; and whatever you come up with, how is it really affecting our community or our
citizens and I think that has to be the most objective in our mind as we're making all these changes and
whether it's for a little house coming in, housing or whatever, as whatever decision we make, how does it
directly or indirectly affecting the people that are living there in that community. We're not going to be
here, or at least I'm not going to be here ten or fifteen years from now, twenty years from now, how is the
community going to look like. I think that's very very important on how we use common sense.
Mayor Grafos: And I think we need to, as we move forward, I'd Like to look at this, I think the
preservation of neighborhoods is number one; and we're not Spokane and we're not Spokane County or
whatever, we have a unique situation here in the City of Spokane Valley. We have neighborhoods that are
pretty unique and I don't want to see anything happen to that through zoning policies that degrade what
we do in these neighborhoods. I think we have plenty of land, commercial land, and I would like to center
our attention on the commercial zones, take each one of those, one at a time, look at what we can do to
manage those commercial zones. If it's 320' feet deep like Arne was talking about, or we could do
apartments on the back of commercial areas where there's community commercial or regional commercial
I'd like to see that done. I think we have a gem in the rough on Trent Avenue over there where it's been
downzoned through a couple of processes over the years. I would not like to see another charrette process
of input from the community, and I think it's up to this Council to make those decisions based on what is
good for the community; and I'd like to see us go forward. I think the vision statement is great. We want
to be a city of opportunity, but we don't want to be Spokane, and we don't want to be Seattle, and we want
to preserve what we have which is kind of a unique style of life.
Councilmember Higgins: Is, the specifics have already been pretty much covered; I would like to second
emphatically what Dean, Arne mentioned about Trent in getting that out of the nonconforming statute and
enhancing that however we can. But back to a major, overarching philosophy here and that is, as we're
looking at this entire plan, that it be drafted or re-drafted as it were, with an eye to accommodating and
facilitating economic development. I guess we can do that. We have a lot invested in that and it's
whatever we can do to further that, we need to do. And lastly,historic preservation. I would expect Tadas,
that you have encountered in your travels, where historical preservation has been used as weapon; and I
would, as you're looking at this, I'd like to strike a happy medium between that happening and actually
preserving things that need preserving.
Deputy Mayor Woodard: Let me sum up what I was trying to say because sometimes I get too specific,
but I will make it a little bit more general. I want the multi-million dollar homeowner or business, the
billion-dollar business to feel like they can come to Spokane Valley; and I want the start-ups to feel like
they can come, or the starter home family to know they're just as welcome here. That's the options. It's not
a requirement that we have "x" set aside for only one kind of thing, but if the right person comes in and
they want to put their money up and put it at risk, and they want to try to do it, they have the options
within the development codes and regulations. Obviously it has to work within the neighborhoods we
have, we have very large lots in some areas and are quite frankly why people live here. I don't want to
destroy that. But there are people holding property which you can't access; that they would like to see it if
they could sell part of their lot or whatever, so I want everybody welcome to Spokane Valley regardless
of their financial or means in life; and have the options that they feel Like they can come here without
fighting us too much, and yes, I do want very much preservation, but a common sense approach to is as
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Approved by Council: 12-09-2014
opposed to what a study is talking about, a punitive, I don't want a punitive one. If you want to do the
historic preservation, how can we get out of your way to help do that whether it's the move of a home or a
home on its site where it is. And yes we want it safe, and obviously if it's moved any new foundation
would probably have to meet all the requirements today, yes, I agree,but I don't want to destroy a kitchen,
or destroy a back porch or whatever because now we can't get the staircase so they can get down there. I
know that this is really picky to us right at the moment because we have a situation like that. Otherwise,
people are just going to bulldoze; and it would really be a shame, if you saw the article on houses, we'd
lose every one of those rock houses in the valley because either they can't do something to modernize
them in a way that makes them comfortable and more appealing, or they can't move them. You can move
a rock house by the way, it is a lot of work but you can move it, so if they want to move them off of some
piece of property to someplace else where it may be more appropriate family neighborhood, I hope we
can encourage that. So overriding options, options, options. As much voluntary as possible and not
mandated that you must do it here with this kind of deal.
Tadas Kisielius Just to summarize,this has been really helpful; and we will be looking at all these issues;
and even in these discussions, you can hear some of the, some concepts that can be at odds with each
other, but we are going to try to thread that needle, and the good news is, I think that through the GMA,
there really is a recognition that the City should be able to choose an approach that satisfies the unique
level of service, so you've got the ability to, we've got the ability to help craft an approach that threads the
needle and that's what we aim to do. In closing, this was just a kick off; and there'll be lots more
opportunities to come before you; we'll be back here again with the public participation program so if it'll
be helpful at that point to have more discussion about general topics to address, we can raise that again.
But this has been very helpful,and we appreciate it.
John Hohman: I just wanted to thank you for your participation today. It's really helpful to point us in
the right direction as we start off on this trying to put together kind of a scope of work and what are the
different topics. What we heard today, and it sounds like a lot revolves around land use; we've known
that's been one of the biggest parts that's been outdated on the Plan. We have periodically updated certain
elements of that but we have seen a lot of different areas struggle with this, all the different high density,
residential comprehensive plan amendments that have come forward in the preceding years. It's all been
very difficult to go through. We know we have issues on that and that's one of the main areas of focus.
But we've also heard you're interested in protecting those areas, the low density residential; we'll look at
that very closely; and we do believe that there is a lot of the existing plan that is good, and a lot of work
went into that; so the areas that Mr. Hafner I'm sure you're aware of all the work that went into R1 zones
for instance, as an example; those we do need to look at, and give those a very careful look at protecting
those areas as you've brought up. We'll bring all that together. Staff has compiled another list of some of
the areas that we have experienced problems specifically with land use; we'll be bringing those elements
together and the ones discussed today in a meeting tomorrow, and as Tadas mentioned, we'll be back with
a public participation program and also talk more specifically about community vision and how we'll
going to proceed with that. Once those elements are done, we are going to work on a detailed scope,
phase 2 and you will be part of that process as well. So we just wanted to be sure that you know that this
is just one stop of many. In fact, one of the slides that you'll be seeing tonight during the shoreline
management program, Lori actually put together some statistics on all the different meetings, it's in your
packet, I'm sure you've looked at it already. We can assume there'll be a number of meetings as well in
this process, and we do welcome your participation,so thank you very much.
Deputy Mayor Woodard: One last thing that I hope will come out of this process is I was involved on
planning commission when we did the land use analysis; and if we honestly cannot get to the depth of
some of these lots, or we're never going to break up Rotchford acres into five lots per acre there or
whatever, let's make sure that we have in the next round from the county, a really really accurate land use
analysis so that; we'll growing, and we've got to be honest about where we're going to put the people. We
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Approved by Council: 12-09-2014
do need some more MF2 properties because we can't build houses fast enough to take care of the growth.
I wish we didn't have the apartments necessarily, nobody wants apartments, but where else are you going
to put them? But we don't have, I know one piece of property's going to be closed by the end of
December, that leaves us one left that's five acres or bigger in the MF2. We've got to figure out where
we're going to do some of this and make sure it's an honest analysis or we're going to be in deep trouble
here in about another five years.
John Hohman: That's a great point, Mr. Woodard. One of the areas that we're going to be looking at as
well is in our low-density residential classification. We know that our number of subdivisions have
dropped off even with the economy coming back and part of the reason for that is the difficulties in
compiling properties as you've mentioned,so we need to get a critical look at those areas as well.
Mayor Grafos: Anything else? Deputy Mayor Woodard: I move we adjourn.
A second was made, and the vote by acclamation was unanimously in favor. The meeting adjourned at
3:20 p.m.
ATT .;of Dean Grafos, Mayo
hristine Bainbridge, City Clerk
(Note: To ensure that all comments and concerns were captured,the minutes were transcribed verbatim.)
* "The GMA establishes the primacy of the comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan is the starting
point for any planning process and the centerpiece of local planning. Development regulations (zoning,
subdivision, and other controls) must be consistent with comprehensive plans. State agencies are required
to comply with comprehensive plans and development regulations of jurisdictions planning under the
GMA."
**SARP: Sprague/Appleway Revitalization Plan
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Approved by Council: 12-09-2014