AN ORDINANCE relating to land use and zoning; modifying the Design Review program; repealing and replacing Section 23.41.004 of the Seattle Municipal Code (SMC); amending Sections 3.51.030, 23.41.002, 23.41.008, 23.41.010, 23.41.012, 23.41.014, 23.41.016, 23.41.020, 23.57.013, 23.66.020, 23.66.030, 23.66.035, 23.73.009, 23.73.010, 23.73.012, 23.73.014, 23.73.015, 23.73.024, 23.76.004, 23.76.006, 23.76.008, 23.76.011, 23.76.012, 23.76.026, 23.76.040, 25.11.070, 25.11.080, 25.12.320, 25.12.680, 25.12.690 and 25.12.730 of the SMC; adding new Sections 23.41.015 and 23.41.022 to the SMC; repealing Section 23.41.018 of the SMC; making technical corrections; and adding new Sections 23.66.050 and 25.12.735 to modify the duties of Special Review District Boards and Landmark Preservation Boards by authorizing  these Board to make recommendations to SDCI on design review development standard departures.
The bill passes and the chair will sign it. I'd ask the court to please call to please read agenda item number six, the short title. Agenda item six Constable 1190 37 relating to land use and zoning. Modifying the Design Review Program, the committee recommends the bill pass as amended. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. So this is another bill that came through the Planning Ladies and Zoning Committee. There's a couple of elements related to this that I thought it would be helpful for us to address. But first we've got a proposed substitute to put in front of us and a proposed amendment. So I'd rather we we take action on those two items before we have further discussion of the underlying bill. The proposed substitute is in front of you, and that substitute makes technical corrections that resulted in a couple of weeks between the committee discussion and here. So I'd move to substitute council bill 119057 as outlined in the proposed substitute. For the discussion on that came all those in favor of the proposed substitute. Please signify by saying i. I many opposed. Okay, let's move to the amendment and asks ask you Council member Herbold to speak to the amendment that we've worked up. Thank you. I move Amendment one to Cancer Bill 11 9057 to reflect the amendment that was distributed earlier this morning. And it reflects the changes to specifically to rezone areas. To allow. LR one and LR to wait for a second. 1/2. Thank you. As far as what the what the intent is of the amendment itself, a previous amendment had actually been discussed in committee to address clearly concerns about new development in recently up zoned areas. That amendment passed out of committee on September 19th that established a lower threshold for determining if a project is subject to administrative design review. If the project was in an area that was rezone from single family two or three. Today's amendment bills builds on that earlier work. Under this amendment, projects in areas rezone from single family to l, r one and two, and are also between 5008 thousand square feet will be subject to streamlined design review if these two amendments were not included. The data that we have in the last two years, if replicated in future years, gives us an estimate of about 64 projects in low rise zones that would not be subject to any form of design review. And. WHEREAS, the the goal of one of the goals of the design review reform is to reduce the amount of time in the number of projects that are subject to design review. I think there's a strong consensus. Uh. Hopefully on the part of the committee that when we're looking at areas that are going to be experiencing changes as a result of mandatory housing affordability up zones, that those are areas that would benefit from this, this extra effort on the part of the community to sort of guide the development, making sure it fits in with their communities. I concur with those statements. Councilmember Herbold, very well said. And in response to a question that you asked earlier this morning in council briefing Councilmember O'Brien, this proposed amendment would put more projects through the administrative and streamlines design review process, but not the full design review board. So this was a, I think a really well received a moment well worked on by ourselves. Councilmember Herbold, and really intended to get to, just as you said, those single family neighborhoods that over the next two years, as we implement the mandatory housing affordability program in more neighborhoods throughout the city. This amendment would allow for more of those projects to get better design and better review by the city, which I think will be beneficial for the discussions about the amendment. All those in favor of the amendment please signify by saying I buy any opposed. The amendment is adopted. So any further discussions about the base legislation, folks? I might just take the liberty then to sing a few bars about design review. This is a very different product than the product that came to us originally, and I want to say thank you to the Department of Construction and inspections and for the public for working with us. Overall, our objective here was to encourage better design, provide more certainty for community members, as well as designers and architects to alleviate some pressure on design review boards and to achieve some time savings associated with reviews to allow for the design review board members to better spend their time on quality projects that they think they could really use their work. And so we really made some major shifts when this bill has come out of committee very differently than it came in. We gave a special review district and landmark board more authority. We encouraged the preservation of exceptional trees. We've maintained a level of design review that that we just talked about around allowing more projects to go through design review, particularly as they go from single family to something else. And we've also developed new design guidelines for neighborhoods and plan to see more design guidelines developed over the coming years , which I think will again be beneficial for a lot of the projects and locations that are in transition. Lastly, I just want to say thanks. The design review program got picked up a little bit in this process by all sides, but the folks who do that work do it really well and they have a lot of expertize and they are very committed public servants. So I want to thank them for the work that they are doing in the face of us being the one of, if not the fastest growing cities in the nation. I'd like to thank the committee members for hanging in there with us. We saw a lot of Choose Your Own Adventure options as we got into the design review, but I think the change as well will make the end product a much better product. So I. Put this. Tag on. I just wanted to also when you mentioned the Choose Your Own Adventure, the analysis that Ali Pennacchio and Central staff did made it a lot easier. To do that because she. Actually devised some analysis that helped us when choosing our own adventure on all the different options, a nearly infinite number of options with these different components to really take a look at what kinds of reductions and number of projects to go through design review and the amount of time it would take. And that was really, I think, essential to making good decisions. Well said. Further discussions, colleagues. Okay. I'd ask the clerk to please call the role on the passage of the bill. Flores O'Brien. So I thank John I. Gonzalez Herbold, I. Johnson five seven and favor nine. Opposed the bill passes as amended and the chair will sign it. Let's read an agenda item number seven, the short title, please.