Building_development + Forests_green_space

19:02 >> Okay. Is Rebecca joining us? >> Yes. There she is. >> You didn't think we'd be so fast, did you? >> No. That would be great. Good afternoon, council. >> Good afternoon. Okay. Let's see. I'm on time, sir.

19:38 Well, I'll jump in. I think the slide is coming up soon. So we are here tonight to talk to the council about the last two draft chapters in the comprehensive plan that we haven't spoken to you about yet. Those are the community experience chapter and then the annexation chapter. And so then after tonight you'll have reviewed all the draft chapters that were published in the full draft plan. Several weeks ago you'll have seen all the code -- major code elements and the plan -- we'll walk through this at the end, but the plan after this is to take all of council's feedback,

20:38 feedback from planning commission, urban forestry commission, the parks commission, transportation commission, CCRA, community, all of our working groups and sort of collate it into a change log, refine that plan into a more final draft and bring that back to you at the end of April for your review and to the planning commission in mid-April and then for a workshop and then a public hearing in April. And then we'll be moving towards consent first reading in May and a public hearing on June 1 with the council on the full plan mapping code. So tonight we're here to run you through the -- these two chapters and we'll -- Dominique will cover what she's done in the past, including sort of how we've organized these, why it's organized that way, what are the legal requirements. We'll be seeking your input and then again we'll go through next steps. Turn it over to Dominique.

21:38 >> Hello, everyone. So kind of a quick reminder. We've talked about this during the last couple of sessions, but, you know, this is all guided under Washington's Growth Management Act. It specifies what elements were required to include within a comprehensive plan and which ones we don't. And the Growth Management Act is implemented through RCW 3670A and then the Washington administrative code provisions. So the biggest things to look out for tonight are internal consistency. We need to have data that supports the assumptions and the arguments that we're making and we have to demonstrate capacity to accommodate growth. The biggest thing to know for both of these chapters are neither are required by law, but we find them to be chapters that are very necessary in being able to articulate the concepts. Community experience is non-mandatory, but it's one of the early asks that we had from

22:36 our community partners in terms of framing the comprehensive plan. And it functions as a plan-wide lens to support internal consistency and reinforces a number of goals around quality of life, public facilities, health equity, environmental protection. And the requirements are that if we do have this chapter, it has to be consistent with the other chapters and it can't have conflicting information. Annexation is also non-mandatory to have as a chapter, but there certainly are statutes that apply to that, not within the Growth Management Act, but within RCW 35A14. So annexation is, of course, limited to territories within the adopted urban growth area. And it has to occur in a contiguous orderly manner consistent with the GMA and countywide planning policies. So in addition to those specifications, we have to align with countywide planning policies and the language that we use within this. And I will just add that the city has typically over the last several comprehensive plans

23:35 had an annexation chapter because we have such a large urban growth area. So this is not like new we're adding this, this is consistent with past practice for quite some time. And on top of that, so the way that these chapters are organized are thinking about context, strategy, and implementation. So we spend the initial portions of the chapters kind of setting the stage and talking about what's going on, what's the data, what are we seeing today, what's our strategy for addressing it, and then what policies are we proposing to implement to address the issues. So they go through sort of the historical context and current conditions. Each chapter has a vision statement, and then there's a number of key challenges and trends that that supports too, and it really kind of focuses and ensures that policies are grounded in data and lived experiences. One thing that I'm not seeing on this slide that each of these chapters do have is a summary of community engagement that we receive that relate to each of the chapters.