With a vote of 7-2, the Olympia City Council approved on Tuesday the first and final reading of the residential parking ordinance, which among other things, retains the current maximum of 1.5 spaces per unit for residential development with three or more units.
On June 6, the city council scrapped the Olympia Planning Commission's recommendations of no minimum parking requirement for single-family, duplexes, and townhouses and zero to 1.25 spaces per unit for multifamily units.
Instead, the city council approved Councilmember Dani Madrone's alternative proposals:
Mayor Pro Tem Clark Gilman criticized the proposal to reduce parking requirements, which he said was passed without proper public outreach.
"In our application to the Department of Commerce grant that funded this work, we said public outreach will occur throughout the process and involve more than just the required public hearing," Gilman noted.
Gilman believed there should be a high level of public outreach, especially since the reduction in parking requirements would significantly impact the community. "Instead, at our last meeting, we debated and passed a proposal created by one person hours before the meeting."
"The proposal before us, I don't believe, is reasonable, nor did it have the promised especially high level of public outreach," Gilman added.
Public commenter Walter Jorgensen shared the same sentiment with Gilman. He said the city applied for Housing Action Plan Implementation grant from the Department of Commerce to discuss parking reductions and not eliminating requirements.
Jorgensen emphasized that the city committed to the Department of Commerce that "public outreach would occur throughout the process and involve more than just the required public hearing."
"Despite your commitment to the Commerce Department grant, you have not given the public any real opportunity to engage on this issue," Jorgensen said, adding that the recommendations kept changing from Planning Commission to the Land Use and Environment Committee. "And tonight, you are poised to act on a proposal that the public has not been invited to consider."
Councilmember Dontae Payne defended the resolution, saying there was consulting with other councilmembers when Madrone offered the alternative recommendations, which they voted on in the last council meeting.
"There was an adequate amount of time since the Planning Commission took this up at the beginning of this year," Payne said as he addressed the complaint of insufficient public engagement.
"We did have the opportunity to hear from the public. We received hundreds of emails on this. That input was used precisely for me to come to my determination not to accept the original ordinance as proposed, which is why we're here tonight with a different proposal. The public did have an opportunity to weigh in and sort of shift perspective on tonight's vote," Payne added.
8 comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here
Halnor
I only heard about 1 public hearing last week on the original proposal. Having a calendar on your public site is not enough outreach. You're only ever going to get the same response pool. Everything about Olympia's long-term objectives and implementation feels so disjointed, out of touch, and imposing. Public outreach? Send out mailers like jury duty to let people know what's coming up and the agenda as early as possible. Fly a banner over 4th, State, Harrison/Division. Do radio spots on local stations. Set up booths at frequented local grocery stores, or even just have a newsletter stand with upcoming agenda items and an explanation of how to testify in store. If we're flush enough for the Council to continuously give sweetheart tax deals to developers, then we have enough for proper targeted public outreach for comment on directly impactful agenda items.
Thursday, June 22, 2023 Report this
Yeti1981
There WAS public outreach throughout the process with multiple opportunities to add comment. Mr. Jorgenson there, testified multiple times and added written comment. This is the argument that is always used when something doesn't go the way some folks want it to. Congrats to council for a step in the right direction. We need housing for people more than we need it for cars. Removing up to 13% of development costs is the right move.
Thursday, June 22, 2023 Report this
BobJacobs
"Outreach" is an active process. "Opportunity to hear from the public", in this case, is a passive process.
Dontae Payne' inability to understand this distinction does not bode well for city council actions in the future when he is mayor.
Bob Jacobs
Thursday, June 22, 2023 Report this
OlympiaUsedToBeANicePlaceToLive
Bob, let's hope he is never mayor. Alas, since I moved here over 25 years ago the council has rarely actually been willing to listen to the majority of citizens, only to the noisy special interests and developers (Bob Jacobs being an exception to that observation).
Thursday, June 22, 2023 Report this
longtimeresident
"Remove parking minimums within half a mile of frequent transit service." If you are talking about the area between Capitol Way and Eastside St. and Union and Legion Way, for example, there are 3 Credit Unions with parking spaces plus The Olympia First Baptist Church parking lot, plus other businesses with parking, who might be more than happy to rent spaces to apartment dwellers in the area. So much for removing cars and encouraging transit. I parked at the Baptist Church parking lot during the late 1970s when several units from Employment Security moved temporarily to the Dawley Building if you know where that is; it was a perfect arrangement.
Thursday, June 22, 2023 Report this
Yeti1981
I'm always impressed with the confidence of anti-growth advocates. They always believe they're in the majority. They always believe they know what's best. And they always put their own comfort and convenience first. This causes them to ignore all evidence that counters their argument and to cry foul and a lack of proper engagement when something doesn't go their way. It's the same cycle on every issue centered around growth. Meanwhile, we all know we need housing and we need to make it more affordable for everyone. We also know removing minimum parking requirements is showing a positive impact for building housing in hundreds of cities across the country.
Friday, June 23, 2023 Report this
OlympiaUsedToBeANicePlaceToLive
Not anti-growth. Anti-poorly planned and executed growth.. Slipshod planning is the only "planning" I've seen out of the Olympia council in 25 years. That and outright handouts to developers.
No coherent plan at all. Random actions here and there and a hope and prayer they will somehow coalesce into car trip reduction. Olympia's public transit is poor, even in the areas considered "frequent service".
I'd suggest looking at Beaverton Oregon where an apartment building was permitted right next to the Willow Creek transit center. All the residents just parked their vehicles in the surrounding neighborhoods (and no, that is not an answer). Beaverton has far better transit availability in that area than anything Olympia dreams of.
I realize there is a current anti-parking fad based on Henry Grabar’s book, but without alternatives, which will take decades to develop, all you do is make people's lives more difficult. Turn a 15 minute drive to the doctor into a 2.5 hour public transit ride (what it would take for me personally if the appointment happened to be when transit is even running near my home) is a non-starter.
If we want to be like European cities (and I personally love public transit where I've visited in Europe) we can't just make car use difficult, we also need to make public transit attractive. Of course eliminating parking is cheap and easy, developing transit is expensive and hard. So Olympia council, as always, only does the cheap and easy thing.
Friday, June 23, 2023 Report this
HarveysMom
The justification for the plans to reduce costs to the developers keeps changing. I read about reducing pollution from cars, promoting density, intentionally making people use public transit and the reducing of costs to developers to entice them to build something cheap enough to be suitable for low-income or homeless persons. Anything that will stick to the wall, eh?
I don't like this move. It is wholly unrealistic. People own cars, whether they ride the bus or not.
It is especially delusional to think developers will build low income housing, when given the choice to do something more lucrative. Profits are not wholly based on costs, they are also based on market rates. So cutting costs for developers (by making the rest of us assume transportation costs) will not influence them to build adequate amounts of low income housing.
I hope the public have ways to oppose and rescind the plan.
Saturday, June 24, 2023 Report this