Tumwater is working toward clarifying regulations for constructing new buildings, roads and neighborhoods.
Its TMC 18.36 PUD Planned Unit Development Overlay plan was last updated in the year 2000, according to the meeting packet handed out before the Tumwater Planning Commission on June 29.
Tumwater is working to revise its municipal code for submitting developments for new buildings and any submissions are submitted as Planned Unit Development. These new changes will help create more clarity for submissions and the decisions related to them.
The report in the agenda posted on the Tumwater city website showed there will be redefinitions of private vs city-owned streets, permitted uses for planned unit development such as mobile home parks within city limits, and a change to the name of the plan.
“The proposed amendments provide developers flexibility in addressing existing regulations in exchange for requiring quantifiable public benefits,” according to Planning Manager Brad Medrud
“Going back to the issue of public streets, private streets public streets in PUDs, the current regulations don't clearly address the requirements of private streets as part of a new development,” said Medrud.
Medrud said the proposed changes will help in defining how public streets are used, “how loud your development can be, where they can be used all that and also making changes.”
“The Tumwater Development Guide is our engineering standards, all roads, utilities, all that kind of stuff, all the construction details,” Medrud said, “this issue will be going specifically to the Public Works Committee of the council because they were responsible for engineering and transportation review.”
Critical Areas & Historical Sites
The minimum requirements for critical area protections will go beyond what the current code currently calls for, Medrud stated.
More important requirements would include “Dedication of a site containing a historic landmark, incorporation of energy systems that produce energy from non-depletable energy sources, or at least half of the development," Medrud added.
"Again, that would be wind or solar or something else. Along those lines.”
Incentivizing developers
They have also included a developer edition for passive homes, a standard, and certification of energy-efficient buildings.
Medrud went on to state, “if we're more than 50% of those [passive homes] – that would get points and that is also going significantly beyond the current minimum energy efficiency requirements. The comment that we received was that developers have the incentive to do the bare minimum. And let's incentivize them to do a little bit more.”
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curtzt
This piece isn’t very clear, at least not to me… As I understand the proposal it doesn’t provide new incentives for developers, except as a way of dealing with increased obligations. If they want to take advantage of the flexibility about various requirements that the city already gives them through the planned unit development process, the proposal would now make them provide some tangible public benefits in return. These would be additional requirements for qualifying to use the PUD process.
One option would be providing additional protections for critical areas. (This would get you one point of the two you’d need to qualify.) The article says another option is “incorporation of energy systems that produce energy from non-depletable energy sources, or at least half of the development.” I think this must be supposed to read “for at least half of the development”. It’s not for half of the houses, necessarily; it’s for meeting at least half of the development’s energy needs. That would get you two points and allow you the flexibility the planned unit development process offers. So would building at least half the residences with the energy efficiency of the Passive Home standards, or “going significantly beyond the minimum required efficiency requirements for at least fifty percent or more of the energy needs of the planned unit development” in some way the City agreed to.
Tuesday, July 5, 2022 Report this