Worksession re Planning Department’s Work Plan and 10-Year Targeted Comp Plan Update - May 30, 2025

Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back for our last work session of a very long work week. This is a work session regarding Planning Department's work plan and tenure advisory conference plan update. Today is Friday, May 30th. We're on the record from 1 to 2 PM.

It is now 1 PM. We'll start with introductions. I'm Roland. Yara Silvers. Zach Jostle.

Jared Gerford. Keaton Carr. Anne Raleigh. Christopher Cox. Tanya Rivera.

I don't believe we have anyone on the phone. We're joined by And again, I'm Ken Foster from the Planning Department, and I will let you take over. Thank you, Chair Constant. I'm going to hand it over to Daniel McKenna Foster, the Long Beach Planning Manager, to introduce the topics. Thank you, everybody.

Uh, today we're going to talk about Planning Department work plan, which is something we're required to provide to the Planning and Zoning Commission by code, and it's recommended to bring it here as well, which I think is a great idea. And also the 10-year Targeted Plan update, which is a process where— which is underway to to look at the comprehensive plan and its elements in light of new demographic information and data and see how that's working, if we're achieving the goals as intended, and maybe make some proposed recommendations for the assembly to, to approve later on. So to start, we'll start with the looking at the Department of Work Plan and PCPC calendar. So PCPC, Planning and Zoning Commission, is the commission we work the most with. So you'll see a lot of this is really geared to things we're bringing to them, but we do also talk about some of the other things that the department works on.

So not included here, we didn't talk too much about land use review, um, we're planning on the AMATS work plan. Those are two other sort of divisions within our department. AMATS is sort of its own thing, but we are all in the same office, so those are not really included here. Um, so here is just an overview of our rough plan for 2025, some of the items we brought forward. Title 21 code amendments, uh, 10-year Targeted Comprehensive Plan, and other plan items or other elements we're working on.

So sorry, it's kind of hard to see, but it'll be in the slides for everybody to see. So we always have certain cases as people come in, they want a variance or do a conditional use or something like that. Current Planning runs a lot of those. And then we also have other different types of sort of code changes, cleanup, reforms, or any other sort of projects. Those usually come out of Long Range.

And then currently we're having the Planning and Zoning Commission work on that 10-year Targeted Comprehensive Plan updates, and we'll talk about that a little bit more. And then some— we have some other stuff going on, some plans we're working on. The Streets and Highways Plan update will be happening later this year. South Edition Neighborhood Plan is ongoing. And then we have other stuff we do.

Green Planning and Zoning, like every year we review the Capital Improvement Program, also the school district Capital Improvement Program. That's a code requirement, so that's more general annual work. So what does Long-range planning, do studies and strategies, comp plan amendments, regulatory amendments, other implementation actions, programs and operations, board and commission staffing. This is the high level. The next slide is all the specifics of what we do, and I won't read through all of it, but it's just some of the stuff we're working on right now.

One thing that we do do that maybe doesn't show up as much is we also staff the Watershed Natural Resources Commission, Historic Preservation Commission, and the Geotechnical Advisory Commission. 3 Great commissions that provide us and are really here for the community. And, and they're also always sort of recommending that we get the word out that if people have questions or they want to ask for work on those commissions, are there to answer those questions. For example, we had the Geotechnical Advisory Commission looking at the building code update recently, and they provide their comments, which is great because these commissions are staffed by local experts, people who know what's going on. It's a really great resource, and it's a kind of fun part of our job as well.

Uh, current planning— does boards and commission staffing— they staff Planning and Zoning as well, but also stuff like the Urban Design Commission, the Zoning Board of Examiners and Appeals, Planning Board, and some of those. They do case reviews, like I mentioned, variances, conditional uses, that sort of thing. Process improvements— they're, they're always working on, you know, making it easier for people to bring in applications, getting more stuff online if people want that, simplified payment procedures, that sort of thing. And also increasing communication with applicants, agencies, and the public. So if somebody calls and they say, "I want to build a shed, can I put it here?" Current planning is usually answering that and they'll say, "Well, here's what you need to look here's the code section.

And other ones too, you know, if somebody calls another agency, calls the Army Corps, calls and they say, hey, what can we do here, what's the code say, a lot of times that'll go to Permit Planning, but sometimes it goes to all of us as well. So again, more specifics, I won't go through that. Questions on that?

I see no questions. Cool, without further ado then, I'll move on on to the 10-year comprehensive plan— 10-year Targeted Comprehensive Plan update. So a lot of the work we do in the planning department is guided by policy documents, adopted policy documents by the Assembly. We're sort of the stewards of the community vision as adopted in these policy documents. The main plan we have is the Comprehensive Plan.

The 2020 Comprehensive Plan was adopted, I think, 2001, and then the land use plan, the 2040 Land Use Plan, was adopted in 2017. Those two components are the biggest components of the Comprehensive Plan, but they're also a large number of other components like local area plans that are also part of that. So what we are working on right now is doing a 10-year targeted comprehensive plan update to look at whether we are achieving the goals of those plans, looking at high level and making sure that the policies and actions that we have written there are getting us to where we need to go. So why do this now? A number of reasons.

AR 2024-201 instructs us to do it. That was from the assembly last June, I think, last summer through June 25th. And it just said we want the planning department to look into this, start doing that. The other thing is it's also required in code. There's a part of code that says we should be doing these 10-year targeted updates.

And really it's just to make things consistent with economic demographic trends, recent proposed land use decisions, and adopted studies and plans. So, you know, acreage has changed a lot in the last 10 years and probably even more in the last 20 years. So it's probably just good practice to make sure, are we still achieving what the vision of these documents set out? Do those need to be changed? And again, any of these changes have to be adopted by the Assembly.

We're just sort of facilitating the process. We've made recommendations, but these are ultimately all policy decisions. Um, I won't get in too much into the specifics of how a plan works, but generally you have the goals, which is the big picture, like What do we really want to see in the community? Then you have the policies, which are sort of setting the rules for how we're going to achieve those goals. The strategies are like, how are we actually going to achieve those, those goals and implement those policies?

And the actions are the specifics of like, okay, adopt this new thing or change this process and do something like that. So our situation is kind of tricky because the 2020 Plan from 2001 has a bunch of policies and some goals and some strategies here and there, but they're in sort of different format. And then the 2040 Land Use Plan also has some of There's a lot of overlap, but there's some areas where it's not totally clear. So just in terms of structure and combining those, that's a really big priority. So we've already gone through and started on that.

And this is an example. This is a really big paper. That's why the arrow's on there for scale, because this is looking at 2020 goals, 2040 goals, seeing where they overlap. And if we could come up with recommendations of where— if we got a consolidated list. So that's actually a big priority of this process, to say 2020, 2040, combine it.

Because when we look through, you know, just based on our interpretation, these goals seem to reflect what the community needs still. It doesn't seem like goals have changed that much, but it would be easier if all these things were in one document rather than somebody saying, well, you know, this piece of 2020 supports this policy change, but this piece of 2040— it would be great if there was one document that says This is the consolidated policy guidance for the comprehensive plans. It supports it or it doesn't support it. So that'll be a major piece of this. So how are we going to do that?

We've gone through and we've sort of set out all the policies, strategies, actions, and goals, and we've given them to the Planning and Zoning Commission. So we're really leaning on the Planning and Zoning Commission to be our working group on this. And so we've asked them to go through and look at all of this stuff, and, you know, because they see a lot of cases and they sort of are representing the community in a different way. And we've asked them to go through and really think about, one, the high-level goals, which from our perspective seem good. They seem, you know, still pretty reflective of community.

So our recommendation is, let's— you know, I don't think we need to touch the goals. The goals seem good. But we should be looking at, are the policies, actions, and strategies implementing the goals? Are they still serving us the way we want to? Because again, the primary thing is we want to achieve the goals.

And if the actions aren't letting us get there, then maybe this is the case to change those actions. So we've prepared this information for them and we want them to kind of work through that. Everything is on our project page. We're also working on getting a more regular sort of a newsletter to come out monthly, maybe more frequently than that, to get people— to have everybody have the same information that we do when it's posted. So right now you can see on this page what we've done so far.

So far. We've had a couple of work sessions, but we're also building up to getting to where every month or every 2 weeks or something like that, the information is going out. So anybody wants to participate in this process, which will be a pretty long process, um, will, will be able to. Because ideally it'd be great as Planning and Zoning is reviewing this stuff, the public also has a chance to sort of look through this worksheet and say, you know what, I, I think this is a recommendation, and that can inform the Planning and Zoning Commission's recommendation. And again, Planning and Zoning will look through, they'll, they'll make a recommendation, Then it would go to the Assembly and they said it was a sign.

So here, this is what it— this is kind of what the worksheet looks like. And again, I'm sorry it's so small, but this is a really big document. So it's just— it's a pretty big task. This is a 43-page document to go through all the policies of 2020 and 2040 and figure out, are these still serving us to get to the goals that we want to get to? Timeline so far: in March, we announced the department, Planning and Zoning, Mayor's Office, WICDA Federation, Community Councils.

Did a little presentation there. In April, Planning and Zoning began an overview. So May until November, or until complete, we're going to have them be reviewing it regularly at work sessions and talking about them. They're recorded, they're open to the public. And then once they're done, we'll bring that all back, write it up as a case to go back to Planning and Zoning and then back to the Assembly.

So it'll be like sort of— we're using them as a working group, and then we'll take that product and we'll run it through the process again. So people can comment during the process, they can comment at PCC, they can comment at the Assembly, and we're working on getting even more information out there as we go through. And the next meeting is July— or June 9th at 5:30 PM in the Blue Room at the Seattle Library. Anybody have any questions? I do.

Um, so if you go back to that last slide there, prepare final report, consolidated documents for final review and recommendation to the Assembly. When you talk about documents, what do you mean?

It's a good question. We've been looking at what will this final policy document look like, because it's— and how do we maintain both 2020 and 2040. We were thinking a little bit that in the future we'll still have 2020 and 2040 separate documents, but we'll have one sort of consolidated document that says this is everything from 2020 to 2040. But consolidated in one place. And again, I should have mentioned the big focus on this is housing, and the Assembly resolution focuses on housing.

So there's a lot in 2020 and 2040 that didn't seem to be changed, and so it should stay in those places. But we're also thinking, what if we took all, all the policy guidance, all the strategy, everything, and just put it in one place? So just as an organizational piece. So that's why it says document, because I don't think we know exactly what it would look like. And that's still sort of, I guess, under deliberation, or if anybody has ideas.

But our thinking is that it would be be really helpful for everyone if all the guidance was in one place. So any recommendations on that would be welcome.

But, um, Chair Constantine, I think that the, the main idea behind all of this was to really address a, um, a need in the community to look at our housing situation and update the plans to support the changes that we might need to make in Title 21. Or in our, our complementary already, um, supporting the development of foreign housing. So when we look at the 2040 and the 2020, right now there, um, there are some conflicting or non-complementary, um, policies and strategies in those documents. And so my thought was that what we would like to do is combine those plans, keep a majority of them because we're not really talking about the industrial aspect of the plans. We're not really going to address most of those things having to do with the commercial aspect of the plans.

We'd really be focusing on the housing situation and how those policies, strategies, and actions relate to housing. So combining the goals, taking a look at the policies and strategies and so forth to see if there's some way we can maybe combine them, clarify them in regards to housing. And then putting everything in one document so that 2040 and 2020 still exist mostly as they are now, but with those updates that we make based on the recommendations from PCC and what the assembly approves, would live all in one document where we can look through and say, okay, these are the goals from 2020 and 2040. They're combined, so they're updated according to the recommendations. These are the policies from 2020 and 2040 that data to reflect the changes that were recommended for housing-specific issues, and then so on and so forth.

And most of the body of those two plans would remain as is unless there was specific data that needed to be updated. So just to put a point on the question then, so what we may be seeing is not just the review of the planning department, but some proposed new document that would kind of take a place within the pantheon of all these planning documents as a document unto itself that we would deliberate, but we would not at that point be seeing the recommendations and then saying, now go off and study these parts of it. It would be more of a conclusive document at the end of those time frames. Yes, that's correct. That's the goal, because we're not trying to rewrite the plan, we're just trying to update certain very narrow aspects of it, and we would not be Necessarily touching much of the body of the plan or really hopefully majority of the policies and actions, only those related.

So it's like a 0.5 plan identifying certain working areas. Okay, first Anna and then Dave. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate this is moving forward. As one of the sponsors of that resolution, I know it had a time frame, but that's okay because the goal was to get it done.

And I know there's a lot of other things going on, so So I appreciate the focus on the strategies and the focus on housing. I think, um, I won't speak for the other sponsors, but certainly our intent was not to open up the entire process, um, in the real estate focus. So my question is, uh, well, and I should also say I will opine briefly as a planner. Um, I am so excited to see that our plans will be simplified and more usable than they have been. I think there's a lot of good things in them and they're not easy to use.

So All that said, I'm curious, um, kind of what your general plan is for community engagement. So I see the timeline, I know it'll take a while. Obviously planning and zoning is publicly noticed meetings, not always accessible to folks. So, um, what additional kind of outreach or engagement, or what does that look like that folks can expect? Thanks.

Uh, to the chair, I, I think I'll speak to the first one. You said you really wanted to be targeted, and as we went through 2020-2040 We tried to exclude as many as possible and tell Planning Zone, just don't look at this, don't look at this. But so much of it does ultimately relate to housing, right? It'll talk about mixed use and it's like, well, that kind of relates to housing. And so that's why it is— there's a lot in there.

And you'll see in the— in our sort of worksheet, we grayed out the ones where our recommendation to Planning Zone is, don't worry about this, it's related to industrial or it's related to school siting or something like that. But a lot of stuff like, I want to live, you know, say there's more walkable, livable community, that also kind of relates to housing. So that's why there's a lot of that. In terms of the community engagement, yeah, right now we are really leaning on Planning and Zoning, and we're going through that regular, you know, public notification system, and the meetings are open, all the recordings are there. But we do want to do more, so we've talked to FCC, we're open to talk to any of the community councils.

But as I mentioned, we, we really want— we wanted to do this newsletter to go out to just anybody who's interested in trying to get that established. So Everybody can see, oh, here's what they talked about at the last work session, here's what they're going to talk about the next one. So we do have that direct contact because right now I don't think the planning department has any sort of way of putting out information directly to people who want to subscribe to it. Um, and then again, at the very end, it really will be just a case as if like a case came to us and went through the entire process altogether. So in that, I imagine we'll do the round of talking to community councils or other groups But we are pretty open to anybody who wants to learn more about it or has a suggestion of where we could go or how we could provide more information.

So really it's let's, let's do whatever works, whatever you recommend, I think. Thanks. And then I have one other kind of question. This is actually more related to the work plan. I know staff capacity has been a challenge for the department, obviously some turnover and so on, and just, you know, there's more more plans and more work than we have planners, right?

So I'm wondering also, so partly work plan but also this, um, how, how are you guys kind of prioritizing all those different responsibilities? And, um, and wondering kind of how much of it is following up or completing some of these plans, and then how much of it is implementing the things in the plans? Um, because I know there's that tension as well.

Through the chair to Member Brawley, um, sorry, through the chair to Member Brawley, uh, thank you for the question. It has been a little bit of a challenge because we have been short-staffed, especially in long-range planning. We have two positions that are empty at the moment that we are hiring for, but we've been incredibly lucky in that I don't think it has actually got to the point where it will impact our workflow. This—. The calendar that you saw was something that we started writing about 3 months ago, I think.

And I think we will still be able to stick to that, to that schedule, just based on the, the type of work that we're doing. And then also some of these things that you see on here are going to be multi-year efforts. So I think even though we're short-staffed at the moment, once we fill those positions, then we will be able to catch up, you know, towards the end of the year or during the next year. So I don't think that our staffing is going to present as much of a challenge as it could at other times. That's great.

And I'll just note, when I was in Denver in April or March and April for the planning conference, I made a point to go find some students from some of the local Colorado universities and say, Hey, if you want an adventure that looks kind of like Colorado but it's further north, please come north. So we'll see if maybe there's a crop of graduating planners out there we can convince to come out here. All right, thanks. Thank you. So I think it is important to maybe highlight the origin of the resolution.

It was sponsored by myself, Member Brawley, and former Vice Chair Solenthal. There's a little—. I feel like there's— I'm one of those cartoon characters right now. There's a little angel on this shoulder and a little imp on this shoulder. I'm gonna listen to the imp and just spill a little bit of tea.

Former leadership at the planning department was not supportive of the homeless movement. And why that is, I don't know. Were they directed from on high to not be supportive? I don't know. We had meetings where they said they were supportive, but then no work product was delivered.

We asked for their partnership in community outreach. It was not provided, even though they told us that it would be. And so we took that undertaking upon ourselves and had about 25 different meetings with various groups, members of the public, community councils, subgroups of community councils, underrepresented groups like the Alaska Black Caucus, the Alaska Native Sisterhood, and others. We worked with our legislative services team to do broad public outreach, created a website that tracked the evolution of the HOME Initiative as it went along, did a recorded webinar. In as much capacity as the legislative body, the Assembly, has to do public outreach, we did it.

And so one of the things that we tried to do as part of the HOME Initiative was to make some targeted amendments to the 2040 Land Use Plan, to goals and to some implementation items. After that robust public process that we went through, um, we didn't feel at that time that we had the community support for making those amendments. Folks wanted a longer timeline, more process, um, when it came to those changes on housing to the 2040 Land Use Plan. Despite the fact that I think we can all agree that conditions have radically changed from 20 years ago. And the decisions made 20 years ago are partially responsible for the housing crisis that we find ourselves in now.

So the sponsors of the HOME Initiative pivoted in response to that feedback, and we put it back in the planning department, that former leadership at the time, and said, okay, then you do the work. You do this 10-year process that we found in code that you haven't done for 20 years. And so I realize it's a big undertaking. I really appreciate the new posture of the Planning Department and the current leadership and the willingness to undertake this project.

And so I say all that just because I think it's important to know the background. I think as far as the document that Chair Constantine was asking, you know, what's the document that's going to come forward And what I, I guess what I'm wondering is, if you've outlined all those different changes from all the different plans and synchronizing all of those and putting in those into one document, could that then be an adopted element of the Comp Plan in the same way that like neighborhood plans or district plans are? And where that most recently adopted plan becomes the governing plan? I think that that would be the mechanism to where it edits the plan and carries forward all the goals and all the implementation items that we don't want to touch or that we feel are consistent with the conditions that we find ourselves in now. So I guess that would be maybe, um, my thought on that.

And then as far as, um, I guess my other input would be as far as the housing-related items and our land use goals and all that, I do hope that that this is targeted in scope, but also that it is— maybe transformational is too strong of a word, but that it does— it is responsive and it does address the conditions that we find ourselves in now.

Anyone else? Zach? Yeah, thanks. And I, um, And this is a slightly rhetorical question, I guess, this one, unless you guys want to engage with it. But I'm thinking in my mind, um, there's a prescribed process, right, for doing a new comprehensive plan.

I think some of that's spelled out in code, and— but this is not what we're anticipating here. But I feel like I could anticipate this question coming down the road. At what point are you going in and changing enough that this is essentially an update or change to comprehensive plan that that simply went through a truncated process, right? And I can imagine some community concerns if that is how— what it appears to be. So I, I hear you guys talk about, well, you know, there's a lot of it we're not going to touch, there's some things we are.

And it sounds like that's still a little bit of an open question, but I would think from the community perspective, like, the sooner we can kind of narrow it down and say what is sort of up for discussion and what is not I think would be helpful so that hopefully before we get too far down the road of what the changes are going to look like, people kind of understand what's coming. And hopefully it's presented in such a way that it feels like this is a reasonable action given constraints we're working under here, um, and not sort of bypass what would be a proper comp plan update, right? Because I think what it sounds like, the final product here will be the thing that we will reference when the comprehensive plan comes up in conversation once we're acquired, etc. I'm getting nas right now, that's where it leads. So yeah, I just, I think it'd be helpful for us, everyone collectively, to understand what we are doing here and feel confident that we're not redoing the comp plan in a way that's not being contemplated here.

Yeah, I appreciate that distinction very much, actually, because one of the challenges that we've already had so far is weighing the effort and, you know, making sure that we are keeping a limited scope, because I think there are a lot of community members and, you know, people in the department, PCC commission members who would like to see see a rewrite of the comp plan entirely. But we are— the department itself is not staffed and doesn't have a budget for a rewrite, so we will be making every effort to make sure it is limited in scope to just those things that touch on housing and just addressing the consolidation clarification of the policies and strategies, where a majority of the rest of it remains untouched.

Through the Chair, if I could add. Yeah, I think you highlighted a really important question to keep asking. And I think when we looked at it, because when we looked at the goals and you just read the goals by yourself— by themselves, it doesn't sound like— they still seem to resonate pretty well. I think if we start finding that as we go through these processes, we probably should change some of these goals, then you're probably right. It does look like more of a, maybe a bigger change.

And I'll just put on the screen here is, this is the document that we gave to Planning and Zoning, and it has some of these items. And you'll see where in this document where it's grayed out, these are the ones where we thought these probably don't need to be changed. It's stuff like, you know, reuse infiltration on-site stormwater stuff. Because if they're— and I'll include this link, but this is also for everybody's reference, just on this page. This is the 10-year target performance plan, and it's this one right here.

So yeah, just, um, long story short, I think it's— we looked at the goals and we thought that the goals seemed fine. But again, if the Planning and Zoning Commissioner wanted to go public, or the Assembly thinks, you know, these old goals probably need to be updated, then it probably would be a bigger process. But for our focus, working within the guidance AR 24-201, and I was thinking about it, is let's— assuming the goals are still— they still resonate with the community, let's just look at this as are the policies, actions, strategies serving our needs to get to achieve those goals. So not talking so much about changing goals.

Yeah, thanks, I appreciate that. That document looked helpful, and I know you kind of quickly ran through how to find it. Could you either send the link or just share with me that when I go to find it myself? I won't difficulty tracking it down. Yeah, through the chair, I'll send the link out.

And this is just if you Google tenure target conference plan. But there's another thing too, we'd love to get this out every week, whenever we get our newsletter out, and say, yeah, check it out. And we— it would be really great if people in the public could fill this out. We kind of tried to design it as a worksheet to say, yeah, I think this does make sense now. I think this maybe should change because that would help the planning zone even more to get other people adding in.

So, okay, thank you. Erin? Oh, go ahead. Sorry, I'm on air. Go ahead, Erin.

Just to build on that, for members of the public who want to engage in this process, we are hoping that they will be able to access this, the website, fill out the worksheet follow all of the planning and zoning work sessions. People can attend those in person, or we will be recording all of them. And then they will be able to— the public will be welcome to be in contact with us throughout the entire process. And then we will be available to give presentations if people would like to invite us to community council meetings or any other sort of community meetings. And then we are also are exploring some alternative ways of engaging with the public with members of Legislative Service, Claire, and potentially the library, putting up maybe some posters in the library atrium, just some alternative ways of, like I said, engagement that, um, the planning the Department really hasn't tried quite yet.

So we will be attempting to make sure that the public is very aware of what we're doing every step of the way through this process. That's very encouraging. Thank you. Erin? Yes, thank you, Chair.

For those of us who are interested in seeing the banana for scale chart in real life, Could we pay a visit to the permit center and actually take a look at that flowchart?

Through the chair, it's a member-only day. Absolutely, anytime. We have it up in the director's conference room right now. Or print it. Or we can print packets.

And we can also share the PDF as well if anybody is interested. That would be wonderful. Thank you so much. So I'll come back to my question, um, the same question before but with a little more context now that we've got this discussion. I, I'm not sure what specific additional outreach requirements are required for a comprehensive plan update.

We update the comprehensive plan often, all the time. It comes up with a zoning change, you have a comprehensive comprehensive plan update. And so maybe it's some kind of guidance document around what the legal parameters are, how much of a plan you can update. Members might benefit from understanding kind of all of the scope of that, because I think by hearing the title of the original resolution, it is a comprehensive plan update. It's a 10-year review.

It's a look at it, what's working, what's not, where are we going pick up and go. And so I don't want anyone to operate under the idea that it is not a comprehensive plan update. And so I think that, um, what we ought to do is make sure that it fits in context and that whatever process is there is meaningful and substantial enough that it meets the law and it meets, you know, the standards that we might need Which again gets back to what are we expecting at the end of this conversation, your first thing. Because if it's a completely updated subplan of the 2020-2024 plan, that's one thing. If it's going to be contemplated as an update, like a 2.5, 2020.5, 2040.5, that's another thing.

I don't know. And so having some guidance on what the legal parameters are for making such changes would probably be helpful. And as soon as we can have that information reasonably— it is summer, most of us are slow on the reading. Sure, Constantine, that's an excellent question, um, or point actually, and we will definitely work on putting that together. There is information in Title 21 itself that outlines, that defines, um, some of those things.

Do not just a minor update versus a 10-year targeted review versus a 20-year update. So maybe the language isn't very clear in Title 21 itself as to what's a minor update versus a 20-year. But we'll put— we'll throw something together and we'll use it. We'll look at our effort, our current effort, and try to fit that into the context of what the legal parameters of those different changes are. Or the other way, put a little one-pager up in front of it that says, this is the framework we're operating under, these are the rules, this is what we anticipate as the mechanisms we're going to go through, the code says it is like this.

And so just that way, everybody, when they come in contact with the conversation, can be kind of seeing the framework based on the code and then whatever additional guidance from the resolution might be available. And so that way, the rules of engagement are set out in advance of the game, or at least as early as possible, right? Because yes, we can all go read Title 21, right? Anyone can go read Title 21. We're all welcome to.

But will we, and do we, and when do we? That is a functional—. Matthew? Yeah, I was just going to say, legally there is no difference. The procedures for a targeted review is the exact same procedure as the —complete revision of— or sorry, targeted revision versus a complete review of the comprehensive plan.

It's the exact same procedure. The only difference is the—. What— by what authority they're initiated under. So the legal parameters would be the same for a single minor amendment. It's the same requirements.

It's that— I think the main difference comes as to what would be considered a best practice by planning Professionals. So now I get to be with you, Daniel, and, uh, so I won't hold this too long, but I understand as well there are some state law and charter requirements for comprehensive plans, and so we want to make sure it's all in play together. But I think I— my understanding is the same, is that essentially we will meet the standards of public outreach communications for any of these processes because that's what we do And then there might be some standards adopted by the planning team or by resolution of the assembly that says we want this or that, that structure that a little more, whatever way, choose your own adventure. So, okay, Daniel, and then Anna. Yeah, thank you.

Also, so first of all, I really second that recommendation. I think that would be great to set an expectation for Um, swimming around in my Title 21 brain soup is also, didn't we recently adopt an ordinance laying out various processes for— we have to do that, that's a project, where is that? The substantial amendments versus the—. I can't keep track of who did some of the things that we've gotten to it. Is that coming before us?

Through the chair, Robert Bullens, I I believe that that is— has been introduced, but it is going back to Planning and Zoning in September for consideration. Is that correct? Is that summary? So it's still out there as a proposal, but we have not brought it back to Planning. So it will be coming before us at some time.

That's correct. So that might be good. To have a quick review of the year, like what happened to you guys? How to speak to that might be— there's a substantial— when there's a substantial amendment, there's a certain process. When there's something else, there's a certain process.

Through the chair, Member Bollens, um, I think that this type of change, whether it's tenure, time, or— I think that they all would qualify as a major, you know, the third tier, whereas the other two tiers were more technical versus minor policy updates. So I don't— I think that regardless of what happens with that, we would still have just the question of, you know, can we outline what the legal parameters are for these larger changes? Okay, great. Thanks. Yeah, thanks.

Um, And, uh, yeah, I would, uh, I guess, third, the request for, um, what the rules are. I think just to spend a little more time on that, as again, I'm not sitting in the seat as a planner, um, but it's not so much the legal kind of public notice requirements that we have with ordinances and things. The general idea is that you go and engage the community and that what gets adopted reflects the community's intent and their will. So that's really the rules, um, in terms of urban planning. So So obviously historically, some groups or some people get more engaged than others.

You know, there might be intentional or unintentional exclusion of people from those processes, right? So that's the kind of thing that planners have dealt with over the years, but it's not like a— it's not the same as a public notice requirement. And then I would also say I think this is going to be a good opportunity to maybe reset or to update community expectations. I'm going to use that word strong because I think sometimes the expectation is that the longer something takes, the better the product is, right? Or that, that there is some threshold that is not stated, or it's not in code, or it's not a legal requirement, but it must be met in order for something to be legitimate.

And so I think that's really where a lot— I've seen a lot of the friction over the years just as a community member as well. And so I think that's really important to say. And also just to give another example, you know, we still haven't updated our community council boundaries. Like there's been a robust process, there's been a lot of discussion about that. It's not done and it's 5 years late at this point, or at least maybe after the— I guess after the census it's not fair to say it's 5 years late.

But I think so the goal here is to basically get our plans ready for implementation so that we can continue to work toward our goals. And so I think it is the balance of being robust in terms of engagement and getting to as many folks as you can, and also not letting a process drive the fact that we have an outcome we're trying to get to. And so I think that'll be a good balance. And I think in general, we've had discussions, or I've been having discussions with Legislative Services, other ways to engage the community, not just on planning but on understanding government, getting involved, participating. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there to leverage some of that work.

And I'm glad you're talking with FCC and other interested as well. So I think it's a really great way to kind of test out some new methods to reach to folks and see what we get back. So I'm excited about this. So, um, yeah, I, I second or third or whatever this conversation about kind of updating or resetting community expectations. We have experienced a phenomenon in the last 10 years, 5 years, really since the extensive outreach for the 2040 plan.

The information age has just changed, and that doesn't bring everybody along, but it brings most people along, and the pace of things is just moving more quickly. And so I second the idea that any conversation along these lines, 6 months to a year is plenty. 2 Years to 4 years is too much, because by the time you're done with a 2 to 4 year process, the material you were working on was the problem you're trying to solve is already not the problem anymore because new problems have arisen. And so I want— like, again, the Community Council boundary conversation is— we're almost to the point where we're starting to talk about reapportionment for the next census. And so, um, you know, anyhow, that's the rub of the tension of this whole conversation.

So it's fascinating, it's good that we're having it.

Others? Way down. Is it time to have your weekend, everybody? If not, then we'll go ahead and adjourn. Thank you for your.