AN ORDINANCE relating to land use and zoning, amending Sections 7.24.020, 7.24.030, 23.42.040, 23.44.030, 23.45.504, 23.45.506, 23.45.508, 23.45.536, 23.45.570, 23.46.002, 23.46.004, 23.46.022, 23.47A.004, 23.47A.006, 23.47A.013, 23.47A.032, 23.48.020, 23.48.085, 23.48.205, 23.48.280, 23.48.605, 23.48.705, 23.49.019, 23.49.042, 23.49.044, 23.49.045, 23.49.046, 23.49.090, 23.49.094, 23.49.096, 23.49.142, 23.49.146, 23.49.148, 23.49.180, 23.49.322, 23.49.324, 23.49.338, 23.50.012, 23.50.028, 23.51A.004, 23.54.015, 23.54.016, 23.54.020, 23.54.025, 23.54.030, 23.61.008, 23.66.122, 23.66.124, 23.66.320, 23.66.324, 23.66.342, 23.71.014, 23.74.008, 23.76.004, 23.76.006, 23.76.032, 23.84A.030, 23.84A.038, and 25.05.675 of the Seattle Municipal Code (SMC); repealing Section 23.71.016 of the SMC; and adding new Sections 23.42.070, 23.54.026, and 23.54.027 to the SMC; in order to promote transportation options, update the definition of “frequent transit service,” update bicycle parking requirements, update parking space standards, update SEPA environmental review parking policies, and make clar
The report of the full council agenda item one Council Bill 119221. You can read short. Title two if you like. An ordinance relating to land use and zoning amending section 7.2 for 7.0. I'm sorry. 7.24 to 3.4. 2 to 3.4. 4 to 3.4. 5 to 3.4. 6 to 3.47 a to 3.4. 8 to 3.4. 9 to 3 point. I'm trying to do the short title to 3.50 to 3.51 aim and two 3.54 to 3.2 3.61 to 3.6 6 to 3.7 1 to 3.7 4 to 3.76. You can read a short title if you like. I don't know how to love the Seattle. This will code repealing section to 3.71.01 of of the CMC and adding new sections to the CMC. Introduced March 26, 2018. Before I turn to Florida, Councilmember Johnson, were you. I apologize for interrupting. I should have instructed. Were we clear on the title being read in? Did I messed that up? Are we okay? We're good. We're good to go, Councilmember Johnson. For sure, sir. That's how long the short title is. When I want to talk about parking. Just we've talked about this a lot because it's been two plus years of discussion about off street parking requirements. But let me just remind folks about a couple of things that are in the bill. Well, then I think have a discussion about a proposed amendment. And then once we get through with that, I'd love to reserve a little time at the end to just talk about what happens moving forward. So several things to highlight here. The first of which is this bill is aimed at trying to make the city a more affordable place for folks. We're trying to do that in a couple of different ways, the first of which is creating a flexible use parking standard, which allow people who currently own parking lots or parking garages to facilitate shared parking between uses . Right now, that is legally prohibited. It would eliminate that prohibition to allow for currently underutilized parking to be better shared in neighborhoods. Why is this important? Recent studies from King County and other places have shown that even in very dense neighborhoods like Capitol Hill, as much as a third of the parking overnight in those neighborhoods is not being used. So what we've got here is a lot of parking and a lot of people looking for parking. And this allows us to marry those to the supply and the demand. The second thing that it does is it clarifies frequent transit service and how that frequent transit service is measured. Increases, clarifies the watershed to that frequent transit service and allows for developers to build build buildings in that neighborhood with parking if they want to, but it doesn't require them to do so. That's the big distinction here. Current rules require them to do so. We're not requiring them. Many developers still are choosing to build parking, but we're just not saying you have to build parking. A third thing that it does here is it unbundled the parking from the residential and commercial leases, which will allow for a renter who is renting a building with a parking space and they may not have a car to not have to pay for that parking space. Ditto for those in commercial leases. And that will increase a lot of transparency about the transportation costs and and who's paying for it. This would eliminate the parking requirement for all affordable housing projects. All throughout the city, we've talked to affordable housing developers in and around even our light rail stations where they were previously required to build parking. And those requirements have resulted in unused parking spaces in their buildings, which adds to the cost for those developers and really takes away from the housing opportunity for us. And in the final thing that it does is it updates and increases bike parking requirements. We could have spent probably the entirety of today just talking about the differences of the amendment strategy that we talked about on bike parking. But this helps to streamline and clarify some of the bike parking amendments to just for the sake of transparency. I want to push back a little bit on one of the comments that I heard during public comment that this is not a data based approach. We we wouldn't have done this for over two years if we weren't going to take a data based approach. And there's a lot of really good data out there on parking. I won't bore everybody with the nerdiness behind it, but I will say that the still Department of Transportation, this is a department of construction and inspections put together a really good map that shows the impact that this legislation would have in neighborhoods throughout the city. And you can really see there's a correlation, strong correlation between where folks live without cars and where frequent transit service exists. People are choosing to live in neighborhoods that have frequent transit when you don't own a car. And that's because that's the only way that you get around. So when we make it easier for developers to build buildings in and around frequent transit service and don't require them to build parking, it will end up being beneficial for everybody . So I'll stop there. Why don't we talk about the amendments and then let's circle back around for some closing comments. Sounds good. Any further comments before we turn over Councilmember Herbold? Councilmember Herbold. Thank you. Oh, I do. I need to move this, Amelia. Do I need to move it? I'm sorry to put the best legislation in front of us. I move for adoption of countable 119221. Well, I don't think it has to be moved because it did come out of committee. It's a good report. Oh, very good. So it's been moved in second. We're good. Thank you, Councilman Johnson. Good catch, Councilman. Thank you. I'm moved to amend Council Bill 11 9221, Section 63 and 65 through 68 of the bill as presented on the amendment. This amendment would allow SDI to mitigate parking impacts in urban villages with frequent transit service only where parking minimums are eliminated, and only in those locations where on street parking occupancy exceeds 85%. I'll Second Amendment. I think you may speak to the amendment. Yes, please, councilman. Honorable. Thank you. So I just wanted to start by saying I agree wholeheartedly with many of the signs in the audience today, specifically the signs that say that we should prioritize room for people, not cars. This amendment does not obligate SDI to require mitigation through SIPA. It only gives them the flexibility to do so under some very, very narrow conditions. The tools that are in the amendment are given as options. Those tools are transportation management plans, parking management and allocation plans, incentives for use of alternatives to single occupancy vehicles, increasing the amount of parking required for development and reducing nonresidential densities. This version of the amendment removes the option of limiting our permits upon the advice of the law department, and it prioritizes these five tools with increasing parking, parking requirements and reducing densities to be the options considered last. And it gives SDC the ability to craft a draft director's rule before this amendment goes into effect. The version heard in the Bylaws Committee did not include these particular elements in this version of of the amendment. Central staff last year or this year analyzed last year's data and looked at 136 projects. Of those 136 projects, only six of them would have triggered this super mitigation. Of those six projects, three of them provided parking for other reasons. So if last year's data is a good comparison, this tool would have only been a consideration of SDI in three of 136 projects or 2%. And again, it does not require them to use the mitigation tools. It is only a trigger for their consideration. The city has entirely removed the authority to use NEPA to mitigate the parking impacts of projects that that do have impacts when those projects are are in areas where the city has removed parking requirements. Areas referred to as frequent transit areas and states. EPA actually requires developers to do parking studies as part of the permitting process. But when those studies show that a development without parking is going to create a problem, Sky can't require mitigation in those instances. What SDI Stsci tells to the public is, and I quote, While impacts to parking could be substantial, we are unable to mitigate the impacts. In what instances will this matter? It matters in areas where car ownership is high and parking availability is low. Many of those still driving are renters. And with nearly 70% of our renter population in Seattle earning less than the median income, this is a little more than $200 a day before taxes. They are the ones who are likely to have the most difficult time getting by without access to parking options. These folks work in jobs that require car ownership. They have child care and elder care obligations. They are struggling already. And if they live in neighborhoods with more than 85% parking capacity, they will struggle more without some sort of parking mitigation. One of Donald Trump's most famous recommendations is to propose a policy that targets an 85% occupancy rate for street parking by modulating parking prices. This is a policy that we've adopted here in Seattle when determining what the proper amount is for pay parking. What this means is that by understanding parking demand is a price responsive quantity when parking is overloaded. Prices can simply be increased to return to a desired occupancy rate by depressing demand. Why the 85% standard? The 85% standard is used because it's a good compromise between optimal use of the parking spots and allowing for drivers to find a parking spot easily avoiding cars driving around for 5 to 10 minutes to find a parking spot. Seattle is in the top five of cities for number of hours, 58 hours a year spent looking for parking. Failure to mitigate parking impacts in instances where it is warranted is a very big environmental issue. CPA requires us to look not only the impact of decisions on plants, animals, air quality and water, but also on housing, public services and historic preservation. In a 15 block study conducted by Donald Shoup. He said a vehicle seeking a parking spot over the course of a year, the search for curb parking in that 15 block district created about 950,915 I'm sorry, 950,000 excess miles of travel, equivalent to 38 trips around the earth or for trips to the moon. This cruising these 950,000 miles waste 47,000 gallons of gas and produces 730 tons of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. And so, again, this mitigation tool is really only designed to be triggered in those extreme cases that without it, we are actually going to contribute more to the problem that we're trying to address. Thank you, Councilman Herbold. Any further comments on the amendment? Only we're just taking the amendment. Councilmember Johnson. Councilmember Herbold, you know, I want to say I love when people quote Donald Shoup. I'm wearing my to button today. You know, I appreciate his work and your reference to it. Most of that reference relates to the on street parking requirements, which is a little bit different from today's off street parking requirements. And let me provide you another shoe piece to quote, which is parking requirements. Reduce the supply. When parking requirements, reduce the supply of apartments, they increase the price of housing. And on some days, planners think about housing affordability, but on most days they think about parking and forget about housing affordability. So when we require a developer to build 25 to $35000 per parking space for parking that goes unused, I think that it results in more expensive housing. And so I'm going to be voting no on this amendment and encouraging my colleagues to do the same. Very good. Any further comments on the amendment only? Okay. I'm seeing any hands, so I'll just say brief remarks is no surprises based on our discussion this morning that I sort of want to give some context. I think the fight for clean air, clean water and fight against global warming is a noble fight fight by some noble warriors. And so I certainly don't criticize or denigrate or second guess those advocates. I'm supporting this amendment because I don't believe this is inconsistent with that fight. And I believe that it's just, again, a very limited basis. A mitigation tool in addition to CDC are looking at and before this tool is used, looking at transportation management programs that can help us out with the issue, parking management and allocation plans, incentives for the use of alternatives to single occupancy vehicles. So in other words, consistent with seep in can and consistent with an environmental analysis looking at other options. And then again, this being one tool that can possibly be used because of the parking issue that we have. And this particularly is in I think our public testimony today would be would support that the the argument that many communities of color, many of our poor residents are affected directly by this. And in certain situations, that could be one of many factors that should be considered considered when looking at how we are growing our city. So I support Councilmember Herbold amendment, and I want to thank you for doing a deep dove on this issue. And we're just going to talk about the amendment only now. So I see some hint and I see I guess I ask you right before I speak and then I but. You were of inspired. Okay, so I saw a councilmember who wants to go first councilmember but scalar, you get the Floridian experiment back show. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to say thank you to Councilmember Johnson for working on the underlying amendment and our underlying bill and to Councilmember Herbold for her work on this amendment. I've heard the positions and discussions on both sides of this decision that we have to make today. And ultimately, for me, this is about how we work to create more affordable housing throughout this city. In front of us is an opportunity, I believe, to reduce the cost of housing, especially near frequent transit hubs, and so that we can create more affordable units overall throughout the city. And that said, this is not, as I understand, an effort to try to change parking requirements citywide. I do think that the conversation that you've begun today will help us later on this year as we have a conversation about street parking requirements. So the comments have been well received and I think very much appreciated. And again, I appreciate the work and your commitment to bring this forward. I will be a no on this amendment today, but I want to underscore the importance of of why I think it's important for us to create affordable housing using every tool in our toolbox to encourage affordable housing, and also recognizing that this will be affordable housing near transit hubs, because renters like me are more likely to be individuals who don't have a car. In fact, 27% of us as councilmember horrible mentioned, don't have a car. And for our elders over 65, the majority of folks also don't have a car. So while we want to work together to collaboratively identify ways to increase transit transportation options, make sure that everyone in our community has access to affordable transportation means. I want to make sure that we all underscore our importance here of not just leaving the conversation today about parking, but really trying to underscore that this is about affordable housing, increasing our commitment to transit across this community and having a deeper conversation later this year when it comes to off street parking. So thank you so much for bringing this forward and I look forward to the future conversations around this. Thank you. Councilmember Square, that comes from a packed shop. Thank you. And this is piling on. Councilmember Mosqueda. Thank you for allowing this. Councilmember Herbold, I really want to. Thank you and appreciate the fact that you brought this forward last week and acknowledged the fact that we've got really strong, competing, good goals, that we are trying to make it as easy as possible for neighbors to get around. We are also recognizing the affordable housing. Today I am going to be voting against your amendment, but I want you to know and appreciate the fact that I clearly acknowledged the needs for the supply and demand. We got a lot more people moving into our city. We're trying to keep it as affordable as possible and affordable. Put that in air quotes, because we know that it isn't available. But I do believe that there's work that we can do on the off street parking and on street parking as this goes forward. And Councilmember Johnson and all on the Transportation Land Use Committee have been looking at this and all of you who have been out there advocating for various positions, I am I really acknowledge how hard this is and that we have these, as I said, competing goals where we're trying to get people inside, get them into housing, but also with the mobility to move people around. So I want to acknowledge the good work that people have been doing, and I want to move forward with your underlying legislation affirmatively and as fast as possible. Thank you. So without further ado, I'm going to call for the vote on the amendment only councilmember verbal there's we get to go on the vote. Okay. So all those in favor of the amendment, please vote I and raise your hand, i. Account seven and oh, all those opposed say no, no. Okay, the amendment fails. So so we have the it fails 2 to 7 and councilmember 2 to 6. I'm sorry, 2 to 6. Council Member Johnson Would you like to say any more words about the base legislation? I'm happy to. I don't know if any other of my other colleagues want to make any additional remarks, but if if there aren't any, I'm happy to close the debate on topic. I think we're good to go. Oh, no, we do. Okay. Councilmember Herbold. Thank you. So this is a tough one. There's a lot to like about this legislation in particular. I really appreciate the unbundling of rent from parking. This will save renters money. I also appreciate allowing the building owners to make unused parking in their buildings available to the general public. And I thank the committee for the inclusion in this legislation of two amendments that we're not discussing today, because they did pass committee, but that were very important to residents of my district. But here's my problem. Work was written in 2005. It was republished in 2011. A 2013 Journal of American Planning Association says ships failure to update the book also means that he only hints at the latest scholarship. Recent research suggests the importance of considering context when implementing planning and design standards. While Shoup provides examples of places like central business districts and universities where parking supply could be reduced because of the availability of other travel options, he does not develop a coherent argument for context sensitive parking policies. The use of academic theory should be informed by real world application and rigorous study of their impacts and their outcomes towards meeting our policy goals. Since Seattle's removal of parking minimums in urban centers and urban villages with frequent transit service, there's been no evaluation supporting the claim that the result has been reduced car ownership in these areas. In fact, car ownership has remained flat since 2012. This is despite six years experience with with with this policy. A particular importance to me is how policies that in some neighborhoods may punish people who need their cars. What is really important to me is that the growth of the gig economy, specifically driving jobs since sheeps work, Amazon, Flex, Instacart, Uber and Lyft were not the lifeblood side jobs providing supplemental income for struggling families back in 2005. We legislator values, but in legislating, we must balance our values in a way that recognizes our cities are not urban planning or public policy models in a laboratory. Our cities are made of people with unique qualities that don't always fit in our models of how we hope the world to be. And so sometimes we have to compromise around the edges. For example, we on the Council oppose discrimination, but in the last two years we've passed two pieces of legislation the source of income discrimination bill and fair chance housing that made an exception for small landlords, allowing them to discriminate against our values. We also believe that workers are helped when they know their schedules in advance via the secure scheduling ordinance. But we exempted many employers from this value. The compromise, I thought today is like that. Council supports the value of supporting people who choose to live car free lives. I do as well. I live in a neighborhood with driveways and plentiful on street parking. When members of the public who don't live in neighborhoods like mine and with lives that are different than mine, asked me to consider a compromise to my values. I feel it's my responsibility and duty to do so. So my vote today is not against a prior council's removal of parking minimums. In 2012, though, I am going to vote against this legislation, it is instead a vote against expanding these parking minimums without first evaluating our existing policies, without considerate consideration of the social justice impacts on low income folks who need their vehicles, and without accepting a very modest amendment that would allow, not require SDI, the flexibility to mitigate parking impacts in very, very narrow circumstances. Thank you, Councilman Herbold, Councilmember O'Brien. Thank you. I want to thank Councilmember Johnson, first of all, for your work on this. This took a long time and a lot of work to get through here. And I know that hasn't been easy. And I really appreciate your persistence on this. I want to say this bill has been really challenging for me, not challenging to support this. And I'm clear that I will be supporting this and I appreciate the work on this, but challenging and hearing the concerns that have come out of the community on this. To be clear, what this bill does is a modest change to the legislation passed a number of years ago. The councilmember. Herbold referred to. It will expand the elimination of parking minimums to a small handful of neighborhoods beyond where it has been for the last number of years. It also clarifies our definition of frequent transit based on what I think many of us here are about to vote on, to say that the hearing examiners interpretation of our previous one was not what we intended. So we will clarify that. The outcry I've heard from many folks in our community has been loud and very direct. And I want to make sure that everyone knows out there that I have heard that. And I believe I understand the concerns, the concerns about the frustration when you cannot find a free on street parking spot in front of or near your home or a business you're trying to visit. I share that frustration when I'm in that same situation. It's maddening. But I also want to highlight that this is a city that is committed to reducing the impacts of climate change. We embrace the commitment to be carbon neutral by the year 2050. We embrace work to fight Arctic drilling. We embrace work to fight pipelines. The work on climate we're doing and protection of free on street parking are mutually exclusive. We cannot do both of those and make those a top priority. As we move forward and start working on on street parking, I want to be clear where I will be on those issues, too. I will not support policies that discriminate against certain types of people in neighborhoods versus others specifically. I will not support policies that say homeowners should have access to the permits, but renters do not get those same benefits. I do not. I will not support policies as in this legislation. Does that say that if you're in the neighborhood today and you don't have on street parking, that's fine. But new people moving to the neighborhood need to have off street parking. I do not think that's fair. Katherine Herbold talked about punishing people who need to drive. What I think this bill does is actually allows people that are new to neighborhoods they cannot afford to afford on street parking, the ability to have access to on street parking and not require that they pay for that on street parking. That's why I think this legislation is fair. This bill is going to pass today. And the reason it's going to pass or one of the reasons it's going to pass is because you all have elected a council that is committed to doing climate work. Well, we'll continue to weigh in on issues like Arctic drilling and fighting pipelines. We also, as a community, have to take actions to change our impacts on the climate right here locally. We're going to have to take hundreds of actions like this one today. And these are hard actions because they require each of us to slightly change the way that we live in our communities. We have a question before us as a community, and this is the part that's been really hard for me, is which way are we going to go? Are we going to embrace fighting climate change and supporting a planet that can support life for everyone? Or are we going to shift to focusing on protecting our narrow interests locally? I don't want to paint folks that are opposed to this legislation as bad people. I know a lot of you and I have friends that have concerns about this. But we have to figure out how as a community, we make that transition to a carbon free. And sometimes that might be car free future. And it's going to be it's going to involve significantly hard decisions like this. I'm really grateful for folks that have pushed for this. I appreciate hearing from everyone in the community, including folks that strongly disagree with the vote I am about to take. But I want to question us as a community. Where are we going to go when it comes to how we fight for climate change moving forward? Thank you. Thank you. Kerry O'Brien. Any further comments from any of our colleagues? Councilmember Johnson. I'll be brief, Mr. Chair. So I just want to say a couple of quick things as we close up the discussion. Fundamentally, I come to this because I believe it's unfair for us to have a city where parking is abundant and free and housing is scarce and expensive. And I'm working hard to try to change that. And that's what this legislation is about. It's not as far reaching as the actions that are being taken by other cities around the world, where other cities are banning the construction of new parking or considering instituting parking maximums. What we're doing here is we're allowing the market to decide where a developer chooses to build parking or on a frequent transit service. They can choose to build it, or they can choose not to build it if they don't want to. We're also making that a targeted issue insofar as we're not eliminating this requirement in places that don't have frequent transit service. So we are recognizing the reality of the circumstance that the city that we live in. But we also just generally know that there are about 70 people moving to the city of Seattle every day, and we can't also absorb 70 cars per day and expect to live in a world that has clean air, is free from traffic violence and is cheaper. And so for me, this is about a sensible set of solutions that will allow us to take the 5 to 6 million parking spaces that we have in the city and allow for the 700,000 cars that we have in the city to be able to better utilize those millions of parking spaces. So I'm excited to bring this legislation forward to a vote. I just want to say a couple of quick thank you to a couple of folks, Gordon Flowers and Mary Catherine Snyder from D.C.. I have worked hard on this legislation. I'm grateful to you all for your work. Listen, Whitsunday of Council Central Staff put in a lot of time and energy, particularly in his free time, getting through a whole lot of very dense academic tome on this. So thanks. Listen to Amy Gore of my office, who dug in more on parking nerd stuff than I imagine she ever thought she would. This has been a fun one to work with you all on, so I'm grateful for the action and looking forward to us voting yes on this bill today. Thank you, Councilman Johnson. And with that, it's been moved in properly second. So please call the roll on the passage of the bill. Berkshire Gonzalez I. HERBOLD No. JOHNSON All right. Juarez, I must gather, I. O'BRIEN Right. And Council President Harrell. All right. Seven and excuse me, six in favor. One opposed. The bill passed and show a. Senate that's incorrect. Seven in favor. One opposed. The bill passed and the share was still. Sign it. Thank you very much. Parts of the Housing, Health, Energy and Workers Rights Committee.