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PC APPROVED Minutes 02-25-16 APPROVED Minutes Spokane Valley Planning Commission Council Chambers—City Hall, February 25,2016 Chair Graham called the meeting to order at 6:00 p.m. Commissioners, staff and audience stood for the pledge of allegiance. Administrative Assistant Deanna Horton took roll and the following members and staff were present: Kevin Anderson Erik Lamb, Deputy City Attorney Heather Graham Lori Barlow, Senior Planner James Johnson Christina Janssen, Planner Tim Kelley Karen Kendall, Planner Mike Phillips Suzanne Stathos Joe Stoy Deanna Horton, Secretary of the Commission Commissioner Stoy moved to accept the February 25, 2016 agenda as presented. The vote on the motion was seven in favor, zero against and the motion passed. Commissioner Stoy moved to approve the February 11, 2016 minutes as they were presented. The vote on the motion was seven in favor, zero against, and the motion passed. COMMISSION REPORTS: Commissioner Kelley reported he attended the Trader's Club meeting. The other Commissioners had no reports. ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT: Staff had no reports. PUBLIC COMMENT: No public comments. COMMISSION BUSINESS: A. Public Hearing: CPA-2016-0001, A privately proposed Comprehensive Plan Amendment, near Elizabeth and Utah, requesting a change from Low Density Residential to Light Industrial. Chair Graham opened the public hearing at 6:07 p.m. Planner Karen Kendall gave a presentation regarding the privately proposed Comprehensive Plan amendment, CPA-2016-0001. The proposal is to change seven parcels owned by Avista located along Elizabeth Road from Low Density Residential (LDR) to Light Industrial (LI). Avista owns the parcel to the west of the request, on which they have a natural gas equipment yard. Avista proposes to expand their natural gas storage facility in this area. Ms. Kendall noted she had received one comment letter from Mark Zink, 2420 N. Elizabeth. Ms. Kendall said she had some answers to questions from the study session. She said one question was the width of the right-of-way (ROW) the width of Utah is approximately 30 feet wide, Elizabeth is approximately 40 feet wide with 30 feet of pavement. Ms. Kendall said another question was regarding approaches. The City's street standards would apply at the time of development, but each parcel could have a maximum of two approaches but would need to meet the standard. Ms. Kendall said the parcels may be small enough they could only have one approach. Only if access was taken off of Elizabeth would frontage improvements be necessary including curb, sidewalks and swales. Ms. Kendall contacted the Spokane Valley Fire Dept. regarding response times, they indicated when a call comes in they notify the closest truck for any emergency response call. This would be any emergency call which came into the department. The department does have a haz-mat response unit,but it for larger spills. Commissioner Johnson asked if there were no approaches installed along Elizabeth,then what kind of improvements would be required. Ms. Kendall responded she could not tell at this time, this would be something which would be determined at the time of future development and would depend on what was being proposed by the applicant. Commissioner Stoy asked if the parcels would have to be aggregated into one. Ms. Kendall stated it would not be required. 02-25-16 Planning Commission Minutes Page 2 of 4 Ron Staton, Avista Facilities Manager: Mr. Staton said Avista purchased the property which fronts Dollar Road in the mid 90's and began transitioning the natural gas storage to this facility because of over-crowding at the Mission location. In 2008 and 2009 Avista purchased the adjoining properties and built a fleet maintenance building. In 2014 and 2015 Avista sent letters to the property owners along Elizabeth to inquire if they were interested in selling. Seven of the lots were sold to Avista along Elizabeth Road, one property owner was not interesting in selling. Avista also purchased a triangle shaped piece in the middle of their property. Avista is proposing to change the zoning to Light Industrial. They are going to use the property for storage of natural gas pipe. Mr. Staton said this was a non-project related request, meaning Avista does not have a specific project coming up in which they need a place to store extra pipe. Avista is out of room in their Mission Avenue storage area and need more room to grow their operations. They need more room to be able to store all the pipe, allow for contractors to come and maneuver in the yard with room to grow for future growth. Mr. Staton said Avista was not opposed to all of the properties in the row, including the one they did not purchase being zoned the same. Mr. Staton said Avista works with the building and planning departments to be a good neighbor and make improvements which are required when developing a property. Mr. Staton commented on the improvements Avista had made on Utah. Mr. Staton said one of the properties had a dump site on it, which Avista spent $65,000 to clean up. Mr. Staton said Avista is a quiet neighbor, the crews come in and leave the yard around 7:30 in the morning, they return around 3:30 in the afternoon, and there are is nothing going on at the property at night. He said Avista has no desire to build along Elizabeth Road. All of the trucks exit the current facility out of Utah or Dollar and travel out of the neighborhood on those roads. Commissioner Anderson asked if there is no project what will happen to the property. Mr. Staton replied the purchases came about because the site was running out of room to store natural gas piping. Avista would like to install some asphalt and begin to store additional pipe on it. They are going to acquire the proper permits and do whatever is necessary to make this possible. Commissioner Johnson asked about the soil testing and lead levels. Mr. Staton responded Avista had removed 68 dump truck loads of old bike parts, washing machines, car parts and other old metal painted items, along with a lot of other debris. Mr. Staton felt the lead levels were from the old lead based paints from the old parts in the `neighborhood dump.' Commissioner Stoy asked if there was enough room on the site for Avista's needs. Mr. Staton said they felt this should be enough storage space for the next 20 years,there is no natural gas stored on the site, only pipe, meter assembly sets, meter repair, gas lines. Commissioner Stathos asked if they would continue to only store piping on the property. Mr. Staton replied Avista has an internal environmental department and it is very important to them to be in compliance with all the required standards. Commissioner Graham asked about a curvy property line between the fleet maintenance facility and the Elizabeth Road properties, and were there any other places where Avista was storing natural gas piping. Mr. Staton said the curvy line is a piece of property purchased from the railroad,there are nothing other natural gas pipe storage facilities except one in northern Idaho. Chair Graham then asked for testimony from the public. Mark Zink, 2420 N Elizabeth Road: Mr. Zink said he was concerned about what would happen along Elizabeth Road, but that Mr. Staton had answered most of his questions. He said he was aware of the improvements which had occurred on Utah and he was happy with that. He wondered what kind of a timeline there would be for the improvements. Mark Shollenberger,2205 N Bradley Road: Mr. Shollenberger said the only access would be on to Utah and down Dollar Road. He said that is not true, that every morning and every night, the trucks are coming down Bradley. Dollar Road is backed up and so they use Bradley to get around the problem. Mr. Shollenberger said he had brought this up when the SCRAPS facility was being proposed. He said there used to be a sign which said no trucks allowed, however someone hit it and the county came out and instead of putting it back up, they just took it away. He says he has called code enforcement and they have done nothing about the many dead cats, dogs and squirrels caused by the trucks coming down the road. He is concerned that this will just increase the number of trucks coming from Avista, along with Mutual Materials and Standard Battery. 02-25-16 Planning Commission Minutes Page 3 of 4 Buddy Meagley, 2504 N Elizabeth Road: Mr. Meagley stated his daughter was buying the property which was the one piece Avista did not own. His was concerned the rezoning would make the property taxes go up. He also stated he would not be very happy if he had to look at the yellow pipe all the time. Ron Staton,Avista Facilities Manager: Mr. Staton said he would be calling the facility manager and have the drivers stop driving down Bradley. He would support the reposting of the 'no trucks' sign on Bradley as well. Mr. Staton said he will be happy to comply with whatever standards are necessary as they move forward. They do not have a large project moving forward, other than replacing old pipe which was put down in the 70's. He also said there is a brick house on the corner and there will be someone living in it until May. During the study session the sale on the corner property was not final, Mr. Staton said the sale was completed this day and all the cars had been removed from the property. Having no one else who wished to test, Chair Graham closed the public testimony at 6:55 p.m. Commissioner Stoy moved to recommend approval of CPA-2016-0001. Commissioner Graham asked if the fleet maintenance property was bought and improved in 2009 why wasn't a fence put along the properties on Elizabeth. Planner Christina Janssen explained that at the time of the development,the `curvy' piece of property between the Elizabeth Road properties and the fleet maintenance property was owned by the rail road and so it was not required at that time. Commissioner Johnson said, if this were not approved for Light Industrial but was combined for residential, there could be 23 homes built upon the same ground and that would be worse than what Avista wanted to do to it. Commissioner Johnson said he felt that the recommendation should be to straight line the recommendation and not jog around the one parcel. Commissioner Phillips said, if the zoning was different on the one parcel, Avista would have to fence around it, if it was the same zoning, then they would not. Commissioner Stoy asked if the zoning was changed to be a straight line for all the lots, would the landscaping buffers and setback apply because it was a residential use on the property. Ms. Barlow said the code protects the zones, not the individual uses. Commissioner Phillips said he would ordinarily be in favor of including the extra lot in the request but in this case he would prefer to go around it to protect the buffers would apply. Commissioner Kelley said he would be in favor of including the other parcel in the request. Commissioner Graham said she was not in favor of blanket zoning, and would rather leave the other lot as R-2. She said she had concerns about the project but would support it if the other commissioners did. She said she was glad to hear Avista was willing to put up a fence, but knows they need a place to store the pipe. Commissioner Johnson said he would support the one lot remaining residential. Commissioner Kelley said he had changed his mind and he would support the one lot remaining residential. The vote on the motion was seven in favor, zero against, the motion passed. B. Study Session — CTA-2015-0006 proposed amendment to Spokane Valley Municipal Code (SVMC) 19.85 Marijuana Uses, 19.120.050 Permitted Use Matrix and Appendix A Definitions Deputy City Attorney Erik Lamb stated the Commission had discussed the changes to the state marijuana regulations in order to bring the medical marijuana businesses under regulation. The state has aligned the regulations for `medical' to be more in line with those of the recreational marijuana. Commissioner Anderson said he understood that there will be no `medical' marijuana, there will only be compliant and non-compliant marijuana. He offered the retail stores will require a special license, training, labeling and tracking for the compliant marijuana. Commissioner Graham confirmed the five collectives currently selling `medical' marijuana can apply for a retail license or they must stop doing business as of July 1 this year. Mr. Lamb also confirmed with the current moratorium in place, the state did not issue the City any new retail opportunities. Based on the way the state was allocating new stores around the state, Mr. Lamb said he expected without the moratorium, the City would probably have been given three more retail stores to accommodate the 02-25-16 Planning Commission Minutes Page 4 of 4 change in regulations for the compliant marijuana. People could apply for the new licenses, however priority would be given to those who have been running a collective. The current recommendation from the Planning Commission was to not allow any additional retail stores or any more producers or processors and to ban any kind of club. Commissioner Kelley confirmed the Commission also wanted to expand the buffers to the maximum allowable between retail stores, should in the future the state say the cities cannot prohibit marijuana stores. There was discussion of the taxes collected from the marijuana; the City last year received $75,000 in excise taxes from marijuana, along with any sales taxes. These funds are not ear-marked for any specifically, except 10% at the state level is to be used for education. Commissioner Anderson asked if there was anything in the state being looked at like this related to home grown alcohol,Mr. Lamb was not aware of any. Commissioner Anderson said he would consider allowing additional compliant marijuana stores, but no more recreational marijuana stores. He also felt that the compliant marijuana should be required to be separated from the recreational by a physical barrier. Commissioner Johnson said Mr. Lamb explained there would be no legal basis for the City to require an operation to be compliant only or to require a retail store to separate their complaint and non-compliant operations with a physical barrier. Mr. Lamb said if the Commissioners wanted to allow additional `medical' or compliant stores they would need to allow more retail operations which allowed recreational as well. Commissioner Johnson said this would be a fine way to help with control of younger patients, but people of age were going to be able to go into a store and purchase whatever they would want to. He feels prescription drugs were a larger problem and there should be a clear perspective on what is trying to be accomplished. Commissioner Kelley commented the state of Massachusetts is trying to develop a prescription drug program. Commissioner Graham stated that as a school nurse she feels there is a transition from marijuana to other drugs. She feels there is a transition taking place now from marijuana to heroin. She feels the mistake being made is not providing enough education. She said she is seeing an upswing in children using e-cigarettes and underage drinking. Ms. Barlow stated there is an opportunity, if the Commissioners would like to take it, for the Commission to tour a producing/processing facility as well as a retail operation. If there is interest staff can set up a special meeting and make arrangements to facilitate this field trip. Thursday March 3, 2016 at 5:30 p.m. was agreed upon for the field trip. GOOD OF THE ORDER: There was nothing for the good of the order. ADJOURNMENT: There being no other business the meeting was adjourned at 8:17 p.m. --yhttkijA a 1V7a-4/.,%---i 3/ / b i t Chair Graham Date signed 4( ---,'. Deanna Horton, Secretary