2021-07-28 Planning Board MinutesCITY OF EDMONDS PLANNING BOARD
Minutes of Virtual Meeting
Via Zoom
July 28, 2021
Chair Rosen called the virtual meeting of the Edmonds Planning Board to order at 7:00 p.m.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
We acknowledge the original inhabitants of this place, the Sdohobsh (Snohomish) people and their successors the
Tulalip Tribes, who since time immemorial have hunted, fished, gathered, and taken care of these lands. We
respect their sovereignty, their right to self-determination, and we honor their sacred spiritual connection with
the land and water.
BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT
Mike Rosen, Chair
Alicia Crank, Vice Chair
Matt Cheung
Richard Kuehn
Roger Pence
BOARD MEMBERS ABSENT
Nathan Monroe
Todd Cloutier (Excused)
Judi Gladstone (Excused)
STAFF PRESENT
Rob Chave, Planning Division Manager
Eric Engmann, Planning Division
Mike Rosen: Calls the meeting to order. Reads the Land Acknowledgement. Asks Rob Chave for a roll
call.
Rob Chave: Completes roll call.
Mike Rosen: Mentions both Judi and Todd have excused absences. Announces the agenda. Asks Rob
Chave for any audience comments.
Rob Chave: Mentions there are two individuals in the audience.
Mike McCausland: Thanks the board and states he has condensed his presentation to three minutes.
Mentions this does not allow him to address all his facts and concerns. It concerns a rain
garden proposed at his property and would affect his ability to subdivide or, at the least,
add a rear facing driveway to his property.
I am a property owner at 548 Third Avenue North in Edmonds. My east property line runs
along Sixth Avenue North and the west property line runs along Third Avenue North. The
city of Edmonds Public Works Department is planning to install a storm water rain garden
along my property line on Sixth Avenue North. I am opposed to this rain garden and
believe my rights as a property owner are being compromised as well as taken advantage
of. I have discussed my opposition to this rain garden and subdividing my property with
the Edmonds City Council, Public Works Department, and the Planning Department. No
resolution has been received.
There is no process I can find to formally address my opposition. Therefore, I am here to
address my opposition and concerns with planning board. The proposed rain garden takes
away development opportunity for my property and the ability to add a driveway
entrance to my property off of Sixth Avenue North. The lot size of my property is
approximately 11,640 square feet. Current zoning for my property is single family RS-6
6,000 square foot minimum lot size. In accordance with the Growth Management Act and
optimum economic land use, my property lends itself well to be subdivided into two lots
for two single family homes to be built even if under the minimum square foot
requirement by 360 square feet. I have recently hired a land surveyor to address on the
exact square footage of my property. Taking away the ability to reasonably install a
driveway takes away the feasibility of subdividing.
If subdividing my property were not allowed, what if I wanted to install a garage in my
backyard, which would be permitted with current zoning and/or what if I wanted to build
an accessible dwelling unit, which I know the planning board is considering? The rain
garden and inability to feasibly install a driveway still impacts my property rights. Through
correspondence with Public Works, I've been advised that I may still be able to install a
driveway via a bridge built in the right away over the rain garden or with offsetting
mitigation at my expense. Can you see me building a bridge out in the right of way? I don't
think so. Why is the city not responsible for this accommodation and why would any
expense be my responsibility since the city is building something that impacts my
property? The rain garden will block existing access to my property and my neighbors' at
existing fence gate entrances on Sixth Avenue North.
Per correspondence with Public Works, I've been advised that they will consider in their
design and they should be able to provide a pedestrian walkway space to my gate but
not ADA accessible, which they say would be at my expense. Any walkway installed should
be ADA accessible to meet the ADA Accessibility Act as would be required by the city of
Edmonds for any private contractor or developer. Why is the city not responsible to meet
ADA requirements and why would any expense be my responsibility since the city is
building something that impacts my property? Thank you for your time and consideration
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of my opposition to this proposed rain garden. I am requesting your support to address
the Planning Department and Public Works to not install the proposed rain garden and
allow me to subdivide my property and install a driveway to access my property off of
Sixth Avenue North. If there is a way I can discuss and address my concerns with the
board, I would appreciate it. Thank you.
Mike Rosen: Thanks Mike McCausland. Encourages him to submit any additional comments to make
on the record to Rob Chave.
Roger Pence: Mentions he heard Mike McCausland's presentation at City Council, drove by the
property, and acknowledges the situation is as described.
Rob Chave: Mentions Natalie Seitz is also in the audience.
Natalie Seitz: Thanks the board for the outreach discussions on the agenda. Focuses her discussions on
the equity of the city's tree and environmental regulations.
I'm commenting tonight on planning for public outreach since I understand that that's the
only new business for discussion tonight. I'd also like to speak a little bit more towards
equity as well. I'd like to start by acknowledging and thanking the planning board and staff
for the concepts for consideration document. I greatly appreciate it. My education,
professional, and personal experience have led me to have some very strong opinions of
environmental regulations, including those surrounding trees. It will likely not surprise
you that when someone like me is on the market for a house, I check the critical areas,
drainage complaints, and other public sources of information before putting in a bid. My
house in Edmonds has no critical areas or easements. However, it does have trees. And
so, I called the city planning, the engineering section on November 7, 2019, to ask about
regulations.
And the city informed me that there are no regulations surrounding trees on private
property and mentioned nothing of the regulatory effort underway. I'm bringing this up
because I want the group to understand that a wave of anxiety came over me when I
received the notice from Mr. Lien about the emergency ordinance. Hadn't I called? And
since then, I've been attending every planning board and city council meeting save one
due to travel to express my concerns. Three minute chunks to discuss the trees and how
they relate to existing regulatory environment, private property rights, enforcement,
public health, climate change, SEPA, storm water. I did this because I have no other choice
to participate in this process, which, to me, seems very opaque.
I'm extremely supportive of the city creating outreach and communication plans for all of
its regulatory efforts and potentially having that plan approved by the mayor or council
president before moving forward for each effort. I would also like the city to consider
planning processes that do not engage the planning board as, certainly, there were some
code amendments recently that I know did not go through your group. Patterns of
empowerment and disenfranchisement and that even if people do not comment, they
should still receive basic city services. Traditional media outreach does not work anymore.
People do not consume news from a common local source anymore. Although it initially
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seemed creepy to me, the geofencing to place outreach ads, it does appear to be effective
at reaching geographically defined audiences. And I know that more municipal
governments have been using that.
The information provider to stakeholders should also be an important consideration to
help inform the discussion. Discussions should be informed. And information should be
evaluated for bias. With regard to equity, I provided a specific list of city decisions that
bias the parks planning process towards inequitable and, I believe, institutionally racist
results. That list is over five pages long. One of the parts of it identified that public
outreach for the 2016 PROS plan was very disproportionately focused on the bowl, which
I believe very much impacted the outcomes of that planning process. Five of the six
community intercept events were held in the bowl. So, to me, there was not a lot of effort
put towards providing in person outreach events to other areas of the city.
And I think that very much led to a second community park being built in the downtown
corridor within the service area of an existing community park being City Park while lots
of other areas of the city don't have those resources. For years, the city has been
redirecting funds from the SR99 commercial corridor to downtown neighborhoods failing
to invest in the SR99 community and address the critical and social and public health
issues created by the roadway. The concentrated public investment in downtown
neighborhoods has resulted in lots of parks, sidewalks, and public infrastructure with
ready access to downtown Seattle via the Sounder Train, which is ideal for growth.
And I ask those that would potentially be angry at that suggestion that I just don't think
it's fair to take the commercial and residential taxes from the SR99 "moneymaking
machine corridor" as it's referred to by some members of the council, for the benefit of
the bowl and then, expect the SR99 corridor to absorb growth. I know I was over three
minutes but thank you. And thank you for your service.
Mike Rosen: Addresses the new business. In several previous meetings, we have talked increasing
engagement and have further talked about that in a number of different ways that it's
not just butts in seats. It needs to be meaningful engagement that people need to have
the opportunity to participate and it needs to be in a meaningful way. It also needs to be
using opportunities that are convenient to them and not necessarily to the sponsoring
organization. So, you have to show up at this building at this time on this day isn't
necessarily convenient for participation. And even if you have those opportunities, if
people don't know about them, if you aren't expressing those at places where people
look for that kind of information then, we, too, are failing. So, we have expressed that in
a way saying we can do better and we should do better.
And the idea was it is not always necessarily to do but it ours to perhaps inform and try
to influence. And so, that is the spirit in which we're advancing this conversation. And
also, in the way of as opposed to saying here is everything that's wrong, I think the tone
in the voice is here is what success looks like. Here are the things we believe to be true
and hold valuable. And here are the ways that we think we can do it. So, I hope that our
discussion can be in that spirit. So, you have many pages in front of you. And as you know,
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this is part of my professional background. And I realize that what I found myself doing
was putting in, personally, an awful lot of emphasis on the values that drive engagement
because I believe the how should be led by the what. And so, these value statements are
intended to try to build a universal language and a culture around these values. So, that's
why there are so many.
And granted, I believe there are too many and they can probably be consolidated. But it
is intended to say as a starting place for here are a lot of things that I believe to be true
to make what is good public engagement. So, then there is how do we do it. What are the
tools? What is the tool chest? And then, there is the how do we make people aware of it.
And so, those are probably three different units. And it might be good to just, if you've
had the opportunity to review it, it might make sense for us to just go around and people
can just do a brain dump on any overarching comments that they have or any notes that
they have just to get those out. And then, we can go back and perhaps dig through pieces
of it and talk about next steps. Does that make sense as a process? Yeah, Alicia.
Alicia Crank: Thank you. I'm glad that this is finally coming to us as a focus discussion topic. It's one of
those be careful what you wish for because it's not as easy as one may think it is. And I
was surprised that it was only eight pages to be honest because I think what that's
indicative of is that we all take in information differently. And you can post everything
everywhere and someone will still miss it if they're not looking for it. How many times
have be driven by a business every single day and didn't know it was there until we were
looking for it? How many times have we seen a certain billboard that's been there but
until you've, actually stopped and look at it you see that it's there? So, I think one of the
things we should keep in mind is that no matter what our best efforts are, you're not
going to hit everybody everywhere.
Like set ourselves up for success but also realize that, again, you're not going to catch
everybody everywhere. It's just the nature of the best. I was a communications major
myself. And the first thing I learned in high school as a communications major, my high
school as, actually, the only one in the city of Detroit that had a radio and TV studio. So, I
was editing reel to reels in sophomore year. One of the things we learned is that you have
to communicate your point in three different ways. The same point three times in three
different ways to try to make sure that most of the people in the audience got what you
were trying to say because some people are visual, some people are anecdotal, and some
people are methodical in their thinking and capturing information. So, I think that's one
important point to think about as we're trying to put information out there.
Not everyone gets the information the same way. I think the other point is that we just
have to be careful with how we're trying to communicate things. I think that,
unfortunately, in the city right now, there is a problem with communication. And
sometimes, some of those criticisms are that communications are slanted a certain way
as well. So, we have to really be cognizant. And I'm thinking about something you just
said, Board Member Rosen, about influence. It's like we have to be really careful with that
because that could come and bite us in the butt if someone feels like we're trying to steer
something a certain way as opposed to putting the information out there and letting
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people absorb it and process it to come to the conclusion they want as opposed to
something that we may want or one of us individually.
Not to say that you would do that but that is, unfortunately, a pitfall that we can fall into
collectively or individually when trying to share information out about what we're doing.
And I think we've all been guilty of that on some level in some places. But it's extremely
difficult and you have to be focused in putting information out there that is general and
allowing people to come to the wrong conclusion. Another one of the things we've talked
about repeatedly in the past is how do we as individual board members utilize our own
social portals to be able to communicate out what's happening with planning board,
again, without falling into that pitfall of being slighting on opinion or being judgmental in
a certain way. And I think I've, personally, have done a fairly good job of it. And I think
we're all members of different social media groups where we have the opportunity to do
that.
And I would encourage us, as always, to be able to share that information ahead of time
in whatever public forums that we may belong to. And finally, if I had to say I had one
solid suggestion, even though the concept of portals is not very popular right now, I think
that my dream would be that there is one kind of comment portal on the city's website
kind of like when you go to an airline website or something like that and you go to contact
us and you can pick the department that you want to send a comment to that there would
be this one place where someone could pick the board or commission that they want to
send a message to without having to search each and every board and commission page
to find out what the appropriate email is for that.
And there is a way to collect that information ahead of time and be able to pull from it
and create a report that could come to us as board members prior to a meeting that we
could all look at and that the public could look at as well. Obviously, that would be a
matter of public record. So, maybe to do something like that. I think we just have to make
it easy once we put it out there for people to be able to give feedback. If we make people
work to try to find how to give their feedback, they're going to give up and it's just going
to make them more upset. It would make me upset if I had to do that for every single
group, which is what we have to do right now.
But if we could create that aspect of a portal that could collect all of that information for
all of the boards and commissions, even city council maybe that's just all in one place just
to make it easy for the average person who doesn't have as much time as some of us do
to be as involved in city engagement than anybody else. I think we have to take us out of
the picture and think about the average person, people that have full time jobs and
activities and everything else. They're not sitting in council meetings all of the time.
They're not sitting at board meetings all of the time. They don't have the time to do it. So,
how do we create a user friendly engagement tool to be able to do that? We're not going
to be able to hit all of the points. We're not going to be able to hit everything. But I think
if we start simple but effective that would be good.
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The other caveat I have to that is I know that there have been a few people that have
used one of the recent portal situations. And they came to find out that there wasn't an
automated response that came with it to say we received your feedback or any kind of
processing number to refer back to it. I would strongly suggest changing that immediately.
And if we do end up doing something like this for all of the boards and commissions for
people to be able to give their feedback that there should be some kind of automated
response that comes back so at least you know it was received and it didn't just go into a
black hole of information if that makes sense. So, I think whatever we cover tonight, we're
not going to cover everything.
But I'm hoping that if we can come up with some kind of simple, relatively easy from
existing infrastructure opportunities to start to grow from, I think that would be a success
in itself instead of trying to build something from scratch and being super ambitious and
not meeting expectation. That's it.
Richard Kuehn: I'll just go ahead and just share with you guys some of the things that I highlighted or
wrote down as I was looking at this. And shockingly, it's a lot similar to what Alicia
mentioned already. One of the things that I wrote down or highlighted, I guess, from part
of this was strive for the environment of no surprises. And I highlighted that because
that's really important. But I put a big question mark by it meaning can we, actually, get
there. And to Alicia's point, we're not going to be able to fix everything. We're not going
to be able to get to everybody. And it's not going to be to how everybody wants to get
their information. But I think striving for that is something that we can do and keeping
that in mind as we're doing this is really important. And then, I also wrote down
information first. That's the most important part with this kind of to Alicia's point and
some points that I read in here.
Not to steer ideals but information should be the key. And I wrote down also I'm a big
decision tree guy. So, what I do is try to find the information and it's like those old Hardy
Boys books. Choose your own adventure type thing. If you want to contact the planning
board, in one page, let's have here are the issues. Planning board, city council. And it goes
to an email box just to make things easy for folks that will utilize that venue for that way
of contacting. The easier we can make it will help with transparency and will help with a
lot of the issues, I think, that not only we're dealing with with our city but just a lot of
places throughout the country right now. Those are the main things that I wrote down
and highlighted. I'll add some other stuff as I'm going through my papers here. But those
were the main points I was looking at.
Roger Pence: I got a lot to say on this. And to begin with, I would distinguish between communication
and engagement. Yes, it's great and I love Alicia's suggestion for an all world portal that
people can send their inquiries and information into the city of Edmonds and have it
routed to the right agency or people and have it responded to. That's great and would be,
I'm sure, very helpful to us in planning board. To me, the next step beyond
communication is engagement where there is a back and forth with people. It's especially
important when there is a lot of misinformation and, frankly, ignorance out there in the
community on a particular issue that we might be dealing with at some point. I can think
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of the housing conversations that we'll be having at the point when the city tosses one or
more of those to us.
It needs to be a cycle. It needs to be going back and forth with people to respond to their
questions, identify areas where they may be misinformed, and try and provide the right
information in an honest way that they can digest. At Sound Transit, my experience there
as a community outreach guy, that's really what we did in a lot of respects, especially
early on in the project when people didn't have a good idea on with light rail really was
and what it would look like, how it would affect the communities through which we were
planning it. And we had to go around and around with a lot of people to bring them up to
speed with the subject matter. And I could discuss later tools that can be helpful in doing
that. But the bottom line, it's often an iterative process that we're looking at.
Matt Cheung: Just a couple of thoughts. Going off a little bit of what Alicia started out with by saying
was that we can try as much as we want to try to disseminate all of the information and
we still can never cover everybody. Partly, I don't think it's necessarily our fault. I think
there are also some people that just may not care. And you could try to communicate in
every way. You could have social media. You could be trying to send them fliers. At the
end of the day, they just may not be interested. Sometimes, you look at some of our news
sites and you look at how many views are, actually — on articles that are, actually, fairly
important to our city. Maybe a lot could be 1,000. We have 40,000 people in our city so a
lot of people are not even interested in some of the big issues that are going on in our
city.
So, I think it's just being mindful that we can try a lot of different efforts. At the end of
the day, people may not be interested. So, I think try to focus on targeting to the people
who, actually, do care and if they want to be interested and engaged, find the best ways
to communicate with those people. Every issue is going to be different. Some issue is
going to be different. You take an issue like personal property trees, all of a sudden, lots
of people are going to get really involved. If you talk about something about parks, people
can get involved with that. Talk about zoning, probably not that much. So, I know it can
be discouraging at our public hearings when only one or two people show up. But the fact
is a lot of people may just not care and they're not going to want to weigh in. And so, not
getting —just using that as a barometer for that.
We're not communicating effectively about the public hearing. I think, in some cases,
people may just not be interested in participating in those conversations. I don't want to
discourage us from trying to go out of our way to publicize as much as we can but just to
be also realistic that we don't always deal with the most interesting topics. And I think
some topics are going to be that we're going to want to really focus on more than others.
And I think it comes down to whether or not people, actually, want to listen or if it affects
them.
Roger Pence: I need to respond to Matt on that. It's one thing for citizens to decline to be involved in a
subject that does not interest them. But it's another thing to not be involved in a subject
because they don't know about it or they've never heard about it. My peak with the
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notification process for public hearings is that it is confined to a little, legal ad in fine print
in arguably legalese language published in the Everett Herald. And I can pretty much
guarantee that the number of people in the city of Edmonds who, actually, see those ads
and read them and make a decision on whether or not to be involved based on what they
read in a little, legal ad, it's vanishingly small number. It would lead me to make steps and
I've outlined some of them in my notes at the bottom of Mike's document.
We really do need to take at least some basic steps to put that information in front of the
people in the city of Edmonds using avenues that they — places where they are likely to
encounter that information. They're far more likely to be scanning The Beacon or My
Edmonds News about subjects of interest that they may be interested in than they are
the legal ads in the Everett Herald. Anyway, I just want to put that out there. People can
decline to participate all they want but it should be based on at least some awareness of
the thing they are declining to participate in.
Matt Cheung: And I get that. I guess just want to reaffirm is that we can put it in My Edmonds News. At
most, you might get 400 or 500 people seeing it. And even that, they may not still want
to show up. There are a lot of topics that — we can go overboard about how to try to make
sure all 40,000 people in our city hear about something. But being realistic, a lot of people
may just not care.
Roger Pence: That's quite true. But I think if we put it out there in several different media — I know one
place that I go to or I should say I want to go to find out about events and activities in city
hall in the city of Edmonds is the online calendar. Go to their website. Look at their
calendar. Well, they've got a new calendar function under their new website organization.
They just have declined or failed to populate it with any information such as our meeting
tonight. There is a fairly small list of places where information ought to be findable. And
yes, we can't get everybody to see everything but if we get the information posted on at
least a few of the areas where people go for information, it can't hurt and I expect it would
help. It would at least leave people with an awareness that the information was there if
they wanted to — it was findable. The problem now is we're not very findable.
Richard Kuehn: I was just going to bring up a couple of things. 1.)1 wasn't aware of that information being
in the Everett Herald. I told that to my wife and she got a chuckle and she said it makes
probably more sense to have it in the Seattle Times, honestly, than the Everett Herald. So,
and I think part of what I think that Matt's saying, too, is we're not going to hit everybody.
We can't ensure that we get all of the information to all of our 40,000 residents. There is
no way. But I think what we need to try to do, to Roger's point, is give them the ability to
in multiple avenues and multiple places have access to that. What they do with it is their
own issue. I think we need to be careful of seeing their silence as something as they don't
care. It might be something they care about really, really wholeheartedly. But people
don't care until they do.
Whether it's something that affects them and then, they start caring more and then,
they're going to become more involved. But I think that we have to be careful in not
seeing action or hearing silence from constituents and not allowing that to say well, we
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shouldn't try to get this out in multiple different avenues because I've talked to many,
many different people whether it's on Facebook groups or Twitter or My Edmonds News
or The Beacon, wherever, they see a snippet of information and they're like oh, I didn't
know that was going on. So, we talk about it. So, just try to give them the best opportunity
to have that information at their fingertips if they want to find it.
Roger Pence: One of the problems with this whole thing is that we often, we, the global we, when there
is something going on and somebody really wanted to know and they complain about not
finding out, about not knowing about the issue. And if all of that we can do is say, "Well,
we published a legal notice in the Everett Herald," which is our minimum legal
requirement apparently, if that's all we can tell them about how we tried to inform them
of this project, this issue, whatever that is, obviously, lame and unsatisfactory. If we tell
them that we published it in My Edmonds News, it was on the front page of the city
website, it was on the city website calendar, if we are able to give them three or four
locations where that information was put out in a findable way, they're far more apt to
go away feeling good about the project and the people running it.
Richard Kuehn: Real quick to that point, I think that it then also takes away the whole lack of transparency.
I think by showing the want to try to get it out to as many people in different ways as
possible, being transparent as you can, whether or not you hit everybody or not is a
different situation.
Mike Rosen: So, first, everything you guys have been talking about is true. People aren't necessarily
proactively looking, that it's relevant to me when it's relevant to me. We don't get
information from the same place or in the same way. People will always be at different
stages in the discussion. It's like I'm on Page 1 and other people are way down. Their
ability to comprehend or get stuck in denial, anger, arguing, depression, and acceptance.
All of that is true. That, to me, just means those are the rules of the game. That's our
starting place. Thatjust says these are the things that are true and that is our reality. Now,
how do we deal with it? And it should not be the public's burden to have to look hard or
to participate. That is our burden to make it easy for them. And they can choose.
So, if I were to go to a happy place, people would say yeah, I was aware that was going
on. And yes, I did know that I have the opportunity to participate and how I could do that.
If I did participate, I felt that it was a meaningful engagement. I understood how the
decision was going to be made. I recognize that I'm not always going to get what I want
in the world. I trust the decision makers and the process. And I accept the decision. That,
to me, through a sound process as opposed to where we are now and examples of it over
and over again lead to the kinds of things that you've all given examples of.
Alicia Crank: I would say I totally agree with everything Mike just said. And I love everything that
everyone has shared so far. I have to be the Debbie downer here because there are a
couple of things I want to hit on, which is I like the list that was put together and I
appreciate what Roger submitted as well and what everyone has said tonight. This is the
idealistic list. Now, we've got to think realism. And there are resources that have to be
implemented for all of these ideas, right. And so, I look at these eight pages of suggestions
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and ideas and thoughts and I'm thinking that's at least two full time people that would
have to ideally implement all of these things. And media also isn't free. So, there is a cost
factor into that as well. So, whatever we end up recommending to council to be able to
do should be somewhat centered around what resources would have to be deployed to
be able to do that.
And I almost have to imagine that, especially right now, there is an overstretched shortage
of people that are doing jobs across the board whether it's at our favorite restaurant,
grocery store, wherever you go, everyone is shorthanded. And I'm sure that city staff, you
don't have to answer, but I'm sure that city staff currently is also managing a lot within
this pseudo remote society that we're in right now. So, I think even in the best of
circumstances when we think about what we want to recommend that it would be
prudent for us to keep in mind what resources it would take to forward on whatever ideas
we have. And it would be slightly irresponsible to send a large wish list that would make
council and/or the mayor — I know. I just have to say it. I'm working on budget season at
my job right now. I have to think about these things right now.
I have to think about what is it I want to do versus what do I have the resources to,
actually, do. And so, I just want us to make sure that we are being realistic within the
optimism of what we're trying to offer because I think what we want to do and convey is
something to be helpful and not something to be burdensome because I don't think
anyone wants to adopt anything that would create burden as opposed to something that
would be helpful and thus worth the extra work. So, that's the only thing I would ask for
us in theory to keep in mind is that even with the things that we have listed right now
outside of what we talked about, I'm looking at two full time positions to implement all
of those things that we've put there. Not to say that we're going to do all of it, even
though in an ideal world, yes.
I just want us to be mindful and realistic. And I believe in building blocks. I believe in
starting with something that can be grown upon and expanded over time. But what are
the kind of simple-ish things that we could suggest to get the ball rolling that could then
increase and grow as resources and time allows us to do?
Mike Rosen: I would like to offerjust maybe a friendly amendment to that. Certainly, a box around it's
got to be real to the resources and not all the things on the list are equally effective or
equally costly. And they aren't necessarily always connected. My further amendment is
that not all efforts have the same burden of resources. So, the PROS plan will be doing
multiple surveys, multiple public meetings, and multiple languages. And they have the
resources to do that. We don't have that kind of budget to notify the public about a
hearing. So, I guess I'm suggesting that we don't apply the same measurement...
Alicia Crank: Across the board.
Mike Rosen: Right. Like the Housing Commission put out 22 memos, had 4 public meetings, did 4
surveys. That was a lot of outreach. So, that would be my only amendment, let's be
realistic to the resources but they should match the project.
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Alicia Crank: I accept that friendly amendment. And what I really wanted to say is that whatever we
end up moving forward to council, that we somehow couch it with the knowledge that
we know this is a larger undertaking. We will also understand that maybe only certain
things could be done, but we'll welcome those things that can be done.
Mike Rosen: So, let me see where I think we have consensus in concept. One of the concepts is that
we don't send eight pages. Another is that we seem to have consensus around the
concept of phases. That's not the way Alicia positioned it but we sort of build. And as a
part of that, we would say what we believe is at the minimum that would be the most
effective. So, please start here and then, here is how we think it ought to be phased. That
we would do that also perhaps recognizing different levels that for things like the PROS
plan or the Housing Commission or the exercise that the civic park went through or even
the connector went through that here are the things with projects like that that we
believe would have the most value in terms of engagement. The guiding principles and
values that we apply are things that we believe to be true no matter what you're doing
and that those should be there.
There is something that many of you said, that people join at different times and with
different levels of information and they're rarely on the same page at the same time. So,
that is one of the challenges. And I think that has been one of the sand traps of previous
experiences. And so, Roger, you had some experiences with how to manage that specific
process or problem of people entering at different times and being on different pages all
at the same time. And I'm wondering if you might draft some lessons learned or
recommendations just to help overcome that that we could include.
Roger Pence: Yes. I can do that. I keep coming back to one particular open house format that we did
often. And I found it very effective. And I can outline that in 45 seconds here. And that is
1.) these, of course, were face to face and not online. And so, we were dealing with a
normal environment. But we, obviously, invite the world and all of our mailing lists and
all of our advertising and public awareness avenues. People come into the room, into the
hall, sign in, give us their email address so they can get on the project list. Every project
and our planning board as a project should have a mailing list, people that want to find
out about what we're doing. And they should get notification before every meeting to
make sure they have an opportunity to get on the list for project communications. The
first part of the open house format is the displays around the room staffed with
knowledge of people so that people come with questions and issues about a project.
They can often go to the resource in the room around the edge and get answers to their
questions. They can also network with other people. We have people that love to know
what other people in the neighborhood are thinking about a given issue. When I was a
neighborhood activist that was one of the things that I appreciated the most was being
able to identify people on my side if it was a controversial issue. We have that first basic
step. Then, we convene and have seats in the middle. Everybody sits down and listens to
a presentation by the project manager. Ten or fifteen minutes, Power Point or whatever
to give everybody the common knowledge where the project is at that point and then,
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take questions in plenary session so I can hear what my neighbor across the street or
down the street is thinking or what their concerns are.
And people often have common questions or issues. And if they can raise those in plenary
session that can be extremely helpful. Then, at the end, we go back to the open house
format. People have a question that didn't want to stand up in the group and ask it, they
can go back to the resource people around. And every example I can think of where we
did that, no matter what the level of controversy, people left calm and informed about
the project and if not feeling warm and fuzzy, at least accepting. And I think that was a
very effective tool. I could see it happening similarly with the housing issues that,
hopefully, at some point after election day will come before the planning board so that
we can avoid the kind of anger and concern we were hearing last night at city council. I
was there for the first two hours of that. And it was very negative. And of course, that's
not the format where you can go back and forth and answer people's fears.
But we may have some folks come to the planning board on one or more of these housing
issues. And we would be far better able to respond in an open house format than we
would be probably in our own public hearing as their first encounter with one of those 15
issues.
Mike Rosen: So, I would argue that what happened at city hall is the poster example of failure and
everything we are trying to do would, hopefully if successfully done, mitigate that kind of
an experience. I would also ask — and I agree with you and I've sold many of those public
meetings. And I do think it is a good venue. However, there are many things it does not
do. The single biggest fear people have is public embarrassment and talking in front of
public. That environment is not conducive. It still means you have to come to this place
at this time on this day. And that is not at all what we're talking about. And you'll notice
in the list I did recommend there are some amazing online public engagement where it
sort of replicates the public meeting kind of thing. And people can post notes or see things
or comment or look at variations and vote and blah, blah, blah.
So, and technology also is another form of allowing people to do it at 2:00 in the morning
from their bed. But I agree with you. When you can sit in front of somebody and ask a
question calmly and be respected that is how the world changes. Friend to friend, face to
face. So, if you do have thoughts though, Roger, that you could jot down on the people
not entering the same place and being on different pages all of the time that does not
solve that problem. So, if you have thoughts about that, it would be helpful. Other things
people want to weigh in on? Richard, Matt, Alicia.
Richard Kuehn: I think, Mike, you hit on something important. And that's having flexibility because not
everybody, like you were just talking about, has the time or ability to meet at a certain
place at a certain time whether they have young kids, whether they're disabled, a myriad
of different reasons. And I think that with everything that we've gone through here with
COVID, it's showing I don't know if it's more engagement or more opportunities or
engagement for more people, potentially. Now, whether or not they take us up on it or
take the time to do it might be a different situation. But I think that having as much
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flexibility as we can will, hopefully, allow us to be able to touch more of those 40,000
people throughout here. So, just keeping that in mind.
Mike Rosen: Another question I have is, that one of the things that social media and COVID together
and separately is that it's easy to hate when you're using social media and those kinds of
platform. And it's harder to do that face to face. But it becomes normalized based on all
sorts of people who are exhibiting that behavior. And I'm wondering if, in this
conversation, other than modeling the behavior and doing good training on how to lower
the temperature, how we can insert that very thing into it that there is respect. That there
is, ultimately, respect. At PRR, we train all of our outreach workers and say you have to
not care what somebody looks like, sounds like, or smells like. You need to listen.
And so, how do we insert that into this. Alicia.
Alicia Crank: I hate to say it. I feel like the most effective way is to model it. I think about what my
public engagement looks like on various levels. And what I know and sometimes I don't
like it but it's the reality is that when I say something publicly, I'm not just representing
myself. I'm representing who I work for. I don't have a family. But if I had a family, I would
be representing my family and who they are. And I also represent any organization that
I'm tied to. And I think that gets lost for certain people who lean into the hate side or the
disgruntled side of things is I think they can forget that they're not in a bubble. And I just
think that we have to try to — it's painful sometimes. And trust me. I have to bite my
tongue a lot. But I have to remember that I'm not a lone entity. Whatever I do and say,
I'm also going to be known for my work at my nonprofit.
I'm going to be known as someone who is serving on different boards and commissions,
including this one. And so, I have to be cognizant of whatever I say and do that it doesn't
reflect poorly on those organizations. And so, we have to model it. That's, unfortunately,
the best way to do it and maybe the easiest way but also to maybe every once in a while
remind people that they are not a lone entity, even those that are retired. They still
represent a group or an organization that they're tied to or just their family. And there
are some people that are just not going to care. And we can't legislate behavior is one of
the things I like to tell people. And I wish we could but we can't. I think the best way is to
just try to be individual examples of that and understand that — hopefully, people will
mirror what you do.
And if they are mirroring what you do and you don't like it, you have to ask yourself what
are you doing that is not what you like because maybe there is something you need to
change about yourself. So, as idealistically as I would like to think of oh, we could just tell
people this and that and they'll get it, unfortunately, the best way is personal modeling.
And it's the easiest but, frankly, sometimes it's the hardest.
Roger Pence: Mike, I would appreciate hearing from Eric and Rob. We've got staff here with some
history and insights in this subject. Since they're here and having watched this for the last
hour, they may have some useful things to add to the conversation.
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Mike Rosen: Thanks, Roger. Pretend that we start every meeting by saying don't wait to be invited to
participate. We assume you're attached at the hip. And in many cases, your thoughts and
opinions are way more important than ours and better informed. So, I apologize for
having never said that. And Roger, I appreciate you doing that. Eric, please, your thoughts.
Eric Engmann: Thank you very much. This is a great discussion. And I want to say first and foremost, I
think it's so important that engagement is part of this process. Inclusivity and equity is so
important in what we do. And so, as planners, it's frustrating to us when we want to have
a discussion and you want to have this information out there; it can be difficult
sometimes. So, I read through the entire packet and I think they're great tools. And I think
more and more cities are starting to come together and realize that the baseline of just
putting it into a paper is not the right way. Personally, I think the way that it would be
helpful to have this go forward is set it up into two folds.
First, look at it as, what is the baseline. What do we want to see in all cases going
forward? Whether it's a website, web page, or social media. What would we like to see
for all cases across the boards, small project, medium project, large project? One of the
things I've done in other cities, is we take a look at rating projects not by quality or
importance. but by the level of outreach that we think we need to do for those projects.
If we do an omnibus clean up bill, we want to make sure that people know about it or
have the ability to know about it. But that's a lot different than the tree or housing issues.
Being able to scale that up, and knowing that we're going to scale it up, could work. In
Bellevue, we essentially called them Levels 1, 2, and 3.
Not levels based on importance, but how we rated them as far as the level of outreach
needed. I guess the last piece I would say is I really appreciated the comment that Alicia
made, too, that it's tough. We're in a smaller city. We have a planning staff of bout seven
or eight. We wear a bunch of different hats, so please keep that in mind with this topic.
Rob Chave: As has been said, every project has a level of effort that's allocated to it. The challenge is
always, do we have the right level of effort or the right level of funding available for that
particular project. Sometimes, we do. Sometimes, we go full on, do newsletters,
workshops, like Roger was talking about. We do and have done those in the past. But we
can't do it with everything. What I found, is we are lacking in basic resources like
knowledge of various media outlets.
For example, I don't think we know very well about what people over in the Korean
community or in the 99 community; do they have particular outlets or ways that they get
information that we're not tuned into. And that's one of the things the city is talking about
at different levels of trying to pull or find out some of those resources and do a better job
of getting information out to them.
I think there are several things that do on a regular basis. Every agenda on the planning
board gets distributed to all of the news outlets that we know of. My Edmonds News gets
it, The Beacon gets it. So, because those agendas also include the hearings, the papers are
getting that stuff. What we're not doing is putting out a specific display ad or something
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else that we pay for to get in those orbits. So, maybe that's something we have to do
more about.
But like Alicia pointed out, you'd have to figure out what your budget is, how much time
there is available, all of those things. So, it's not that we don't try to get information out
there. It may not necessarily always be the right or the best way. Also, on the website,
there are a number of things. There is a public notice section. It's under public
involvement. And the hearing notices for both the EV charging are there and the bicycle
parking. Those notices are, actually, on the website as public hearing notices, not just in
the agendas. Let me share my screen. It's interesting because there is something available
on the website that I don't think people utilize too much.
Anyway, if you go to the city website at the main level of menus, there is a section called
I Want To. And prominent listed in there is, Contact a City Department. And if you go
there, there is a large list of all the city departments, different email addresses. There are
other sections in I Want To that explain different services. It's a wealth of information.
And I'm not sure why it isn't used more but it may just be that it's not very prominently
noted.
Roger Pence: Rob, a lot of the problem, that was not improved with the new website, is how to navigate
to those very informative sections that you allude to. There should be a direct link from
the home page to those critically important areas you point out. There is a calendar
section with all of the dates of the month on it. And the standard things like board and
commission meetings aren't there. Maybe that's just because the calendar is new or
revamped from before. And it will take them a while to figure out how to put information
on it. The point is that having information on the web isn't very helpful if you can't find it,
if you can't get to it. And that's been my frustration as a semi naive user, which I think
corresponds to the level of a whole lot of people in the world and the city. We shouldn't
have to be techies to figure out how to find the information on the website. It should be
direct and simple and logical.
And when you enter planning board in the search box, it should take you to the planning
board page and not to a list of documents that just happen to have the words planning
and board in them buried somewhere.
Rob Chave: And it reinforces the point that everybody searches for information differently. And trying
to design something that handles all of those different ways people try to access
information is the challenge. I don't think anyone has quite figured out exactly what that
calendar should contain because- do we want to repeat everything? —there is an access
portal or point to all of the boards and commissions, agendas, etc. If you're replicating all
of that stuff in the calendar manually, I don't know. It takes a lot of people time to...
Roger Pence: All it needs is the planning board meets tonight. And you click on it and then, you go to
the detail page. You don't have to cram all of the detail into one little two square inch
calendar.
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Mike Rosen: And I would also argue that, as you just pointed out, Roger, you're sort of demonstrating
that you, too, search for information differently than others. You proactively want to
know what's going on. Whereas, I don't know that somebody should have to go to the
website every week to say I wonder if the council is talking about trees, because that's an
unfair burden. So, I think what you're talking about, those kinds of things should be
available. But I think we also have to, as we identify who is going to be affected by this,
who is going to have an opinion, and how do we find those people?
Rob Chave: I will say the things that Eric and I have been talking about is creating a code update page
that lists the various code update projects that are going on and trying to assemble
notification lists and all of that sort of thing. I think one of the reasons that hasn't been
done before is we could never keep it up. We just didn't have the staffing for it. But now
that Eric is here, we have someone dedicated to doing code updates. And we may have
the opportunity now to do things a little differently. The trouble is sometimes you're
darned if you do, darned if you don't because if we create a code update page and there
is some minor update that isn't there, people are going to wonder... why wasn't that on
the code update page? Or something that doesn't go to the planning board, why wasn't
that on the code update page?
So we have to define very carefully what's going to be there and what's going to be
tracked.
Mike Rosen: So, for next steps, I'd like to revise the document based on all of this input and bring it
back to this group for review and revision in hopes that we would get it to a place that we
would feel comfortable making it sort of a here is a formal recommendation from the
planning board. Rob, just to validate, we cannot have that exchange prior to the next
meeting where I would send a draft and people could send me their comments to that
draft because wouldn't that qualify as a meeting if we're doing it through emails?
Rob Chave: You don't want to do it that way. You could send it to Michelle and I and ask us to circulate
it. And if anybody had comments to send them back to us and then, we could distribute
those via BCC to the board just for information purposes. And then, all of that could be
assembled for the next meeting. So, the public would see exactly what the exchanges
were, who was saying what comments, etc. Because what you don't want to have is a
flow of information that, ultimately, isn't public.
Mike Rosen: Perfect. Thank you for that. I like that a lot. So, please anticipate that will be happening
where I will send to Rob and Michelle a revised draft asking for input. Just remember that
what you send back through them as will my document be on the record. And then, I'll
try to revise that to get it into the packet for the next meeting as a revised. Eric.
Eric Engmann: I just know, for me, the way that I work with things and this is completely up to you is how
it's set up because I like that it's a list of all of the possible tools that are on there. And I
like that it included those things, especially the ones that break down the components.
That's a great tool that's there. If I were to look at this, if you were sending this to me,
having it broken down by topic on what we'd like to see as the baseline and how you'd
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want to set it up for larger projects. It's just a suggestion, but I think that might be kind of
helpful.
Mike Rosen: Yeah. And I think others on this call have this as an expectation of what they'll be seeing.
So, I will totally do that. And I do think there is content that does have value like that
visual chart, too. Why are we trying to engage? Is it just to share information? Is it to roll
up our sleeves on the same side of the table? So, I think that stuff has value but it might
be more valuable in an appendix as a way to package it differently so it's not just this total
stuff. So, I will try to make it more consumable as well. But yeah, I think that the structure
of the specific ideas totally should do it. And I like the way you gave the Bellevue example,
the levels of 1, 2, and 3.
Eric Engmann: And if I can just make one more plug, too. It's hard for me to build community
relationships as the new guy. So, if you all have any contacts or people that you know that
would like to hear code amendments, I would really appreciate if you would send them
my way. That's another way of getting this to move forward.
Matt Cheung: I like that leveled approach, too. I thought that was a pretty cool thing because I don't
think that every single topic needs a full force of media blitz. Do we have anything like
that right now? Any way of categorizing that? I know, Rob, you said that there are some
issues that we spend more time publicizing than others. But is there an official: this is a
topic that's going to be a Class 3? As Eric said, they'll, actually, just label it. This is a Level
1,2,or3.
Rob Chave: No. It's project by project. It isn't this is Level 3 and we're going to do it this way. It's not
a stock process. Each one is designed separately, independently. But it's also based on
experience. So, we know that in the past, we've done XYZ on this level or this level of
effort for this type of project. So, it's not written down as such but it's similar.
Matt Cheung: If it was something that we were able to weigh in on and say this is a topic that we're
going to be dealing with like say trees, we would immediately all say Level 3. And maybe
it would indicate just to emphasize to the people who are going to be doing the publicity
that the board feels that this is a very important topic that maybe it wasn't something
that the planning commission thought they were going to publicize. But we want to do
more than just the bare minimum on this specific topic. Like maybe EV charging. Maybe
that, actually, is going to be a really significant topic that we think the community is going
to want to get involved in. I don't know.
Alicia Crank: One last thing. I would say that I do like the leveling idea, too. I would say that with
whatever we end up landing on to send for that recommendation, I would like there to
be an accessibility lean into it as well. Again, whether it's one, two, three, four, five that
there has to be something that allows for people that can't physically be somewhere to
attend or to, for whatever reasons, just to kind of make sure. I think we always knew that
that was an issue. But BC, before COVID, no one did anything about it. If it wasn't broke,
don't fix it necessarily. But COVID forced us to be virtual and, eventually, hybrid. And one
of the, for lack of a better word, good things that came out of this pandemic is that it
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allowed a lot of people who were not engaged before to be engaged, especially from
home because they couldn't physically get anywhere.
So, I think however we decide to message things or what we suggest to message things is
that we need to have that accessibility aspect, that accessibility lens to it for whatever
that reason is. It doesn't have to be a disability but just not being able to physically access,
to physically be somewhere because of life circumstances whatever that may be. So, I
would hate to lose the increased engagement that has happened during the past 16
months because people were shut in at home and didn't have distractions so they had
more time to pay attention to what's happening in their neighborhood and in their city
government. I would hate for us to go backwards as a city and take a good chunk of that
accessibility away.
Mike Rosen: I really appreciate you saying that out loud. And it's unfortunate that we live in a time
that we still need to. Really an important message. I'll share one anecdote of reaching
some populations. We would hire people who lived in the neighborhoods and
communities we were trying to reach out to who knew people in those communities and
spoke the language and had relationships with them. And in some cases, we were trying
to reach people who were not necessarily comfortable approaching that that was not
culturally necessarily acceptable. So, we would give away things that were very attractive
to children. And so, the children would run over for the free gift and the parents would
come chasing after them, which would then allow the conversation to take place. But it
was knowing your audience and overcoming those barriers. That's an example of one of
the approaches that we used to get into a community and have face to face conversations.
Asks if there is anything more to add. Asks about comments for the good of the order.
Roger Pence: The Department of Corrections is proposing a work release facility behind the Ranch 99
Market right on the edge of the city of Mount Lake Terrace. The location is, actually, a few
feet over the city line in Mount Lake Terrace. But the access point is off of 99 on the street
that runs on the northside of Ranch 99. Anyway, there is a big condo complex right there.
And it's been written up in My Edmonds News. It's generating some interest and some
controversy. And I'm just bringing it to everyone's attention. And Mike, you're on some
advisory panel or something involved with that. And if you have anything to add, we don't
need to dwell on this. It's not something that the city of Edmonds necessarily — I don't
know that we have any approval process or veto on it. But, clearly, Edmonds citizens are
concerned.
Mike Rosen: There is a very sophisticated process. And there are several of these in the state. Some
are located in residential neighborhoods, some in areas more like this. City of Edmonds
has been involved. The police chief in the past has participated and now there is another
member of the police force who is participating and members from all over the county
and city representatives and council members. But there are lots of reasons that these
things can be rejected and many things that even have to be possible to even get it on the
list to consider. And that's where they are now.
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Before we even engage in a conversation that is meaningful, does this thing even meet
the criteria? And that's sort of the stage it's at now. And they're still identifying and
reaching out to, literally, every city and government in Snohomish County to identify
opportunities. People will have opinions about it and so tracking it from the stages early
on makes sense.
Asks Alicia Crank if she has anything for the good of the order.
Alicia Crank: I have a couple of things. August 3 is National Night Out. And you may have heard that
the Police Department has asked neighborhoods to put on their own kind of gathering
and parties for National Night Out Against Violence. And so, I'm helping to host one on
the Seaview neighborhood at Seaview Park. So, to have people utilize our local parks to
get to know each other as a community. So, I'm looking forward to helping plan for that.
And I hope that others will do the same thing in their neighborhoods whether it's at their
local park or open space area that they can socially distance but also engage with their
fellow neighbors. So, I will definitely advocate for people to do that because I know there
is a lot of stuff happening on August 3 but that's a good one to do. The second one is that
you may have read that United Airlines will cease flying out of Paine Field Airport.
I'm not on the airport commission. Actually, it's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm fairly
certain that Alaska is just going to increase their services, which I'm excited about and just
kind of keep that in mind. Try to think bigger picture here. And, again, I, literally, just flew
in last night into Paine Field Airport at midnight. But as those flights continue and to have
later arrivals into Everett, there is an economic development opportunity that's there as
well because people are going to look for hotels or whatever that are in this area. Not just
Everett, but Lynnwood and Edmonds. So, that's something to think about what might
happen to our local economy with the increase of flights. And it was a full flight, let me
tell you, both ways. So, there is definitely something to look out for to see what happens
in our local areas as that happens as well as the increase of Sound Transit's link extension
into Snohomish county.
Mike Rosen: Thanks Alicia, asks for any other comments.
Mike Rosen: Adjourns the meeting.
ADJOURNMENT
The Board meeting was adjourned at 8:33 p.m.
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