Planning 2012-01-26 CODE AMENDMENTS - STAFF REPORT

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BACKGROUND Staff has grouped amendments to the Zoning Code Title 18, along with some minor amendments to Title 5, 8 and 21 of the Tukwila Municipal Code for your consideration. The topics range from minor housekeeping or clarification to policy decisions about the review process and development standards. Staff presented these issues to the Community Affairs and Parks (CAP) Committee on January 9, 2012. The Committee discussed each item and chose to forward them to the Planning Commission for a hearing and recommendation.. Included in this memo is a list of the proposed amendments with a brief explanation. The first two amendments involve some policy decisions, whereas the remaining amendments are just correcting inaccuracies or codifying existing code interpretations. Each proposed change is discussed below. DISCUSSION OF PROPOSED CHANGES A. Refine the Comprehensive Plan Amendment and rezone procedures to separate the legislative and associated quasi judicial process. The City Attorney has advised staff that Tukwila needs to revise the way it reviews and processes quasi judicial, site specific rezones to ensure that they are treated distinctly from legislative, area -wide rezones. Tukwila's Comprehensive Plan and Zoning map classifications are identical. Whenever a rezone of any size or type is proposed, changes to both the Comprehensive Plan map and Zoning Map are needed. At this time quasi judicial, site specific rezones follow essentially the same process as legislative decisions, except the Planning Commission and City Council are told that they are acting in a quasi judicial manner, appearance of fairness questions are asked, and members are told to avoid ex parte communication. Site visits are advertised to the public, and done in a group. Under the State Law a quasi judicial project should have only one open record hearing. The current process for rezone requests involves discussion at the Community Affairs and Parks Committee (CAP); public meeting at the Committee of the Whole (COW) meeting; Regular City Council meeting to decide whether to send the item to the Planning Commission for review or not; Planning Commission (PC) public hearing; CAP meeting to review the PC recommendation; public hearing at the COW meeting; and a final decision at the Regular City Council meeting. This process is identical for other legislative comprehensive plan amendments. Our current process results in the strong possibility that the quasi judicial matters will not be handled in compliance with the State Law, leading to potentially costly legal challenges for the City. Staff outlined three options to CAP for processing site specific rezones in a quasi judicial manner. CAP asked staff that the options that did not have a role for the planning commission should be removed from consideration. Per TMC 18.84.010, all rezones are currently Type 5 decisions. 1\1) Page 2 of 7 01 '23 '2012 Z: ,PC Lasertiche Packet PC Packet 01 -26 -12 ,Planning Commission staff report- 1. doe PC Lasertiche Packet PC Packet ol- 26 -12 Planning Commission 4 staffreport- I.docx