From: Jeff Levinsky
To: Council, City
Subject: Proposed Ordinance Doesn’t Match Council Request (Item 9 on Monday Council Agenda / De Minimis Exceptions) Date: Sunday, March 8, 2026 4:25:07 PM
Dear City Councilmembers:
The proposed ordinance on tomorrow’s agenda doesn’t match what the Council requested.
The proposed ordinance begins:
Notwithstanding the requirements of Sections 18.70.080, 18.70.090, and 18.70.100, up to 250 square feet of non-complying floor area (i.e. floor area associated with a non-complying feature) may be relocated as follows, provided that the degree and manner of non- compliance is not increased
There are several ways that floor area may be “non-complying.“ The obvious one is that it exceeds the allowed floor area ratio.
But it might also be within a setback area,
extend beyond the daylight plane, and/or exceed the allowed ground floor size (aka the “footprint”).
Suppose a home has ground floor square footage that does not exceed the allowed amount but extends into the side setback, making that part of the home non-compliant.
The proposed
ordinance as written would allow that square footage to be relocated elsewhere within the side setback as long as it does not extend deeper into that setback.
It could thus be relocated
nearer to a neighboring home, potentially causing the neighbor to suffer greater privacy and noise issues.
While the proposed ordinance does contain some protection from this for square footage added/relocated on upper floors, it offers none for ground floors.
Similarly, the proposed ordinance would allow a first floor room that exceeds the daylight plane to be relocated nearer to a neighbor's
home.
Again, this could easily increase problems
for those neighbors.
The above scenarios allowed by the proposed ordinance are not consistent with your Council motion that initiated this.
In that September 15, 2025 motion, you explicitly said that allowed adjustments should be:
“not impactful to adjacent properties”
Yet the proposed ordinance clearly will allow adjustments that are impactful.
One easy way to fix this is to limit the allowed non-compliance to only excess square footage , which was the actual situation that triggered the Council to request this proposed ordinance.
With that limitation, any relocated square footage would still need to comply with our current development standards such as setbacks, daylight planes, footprints, and similar rules, thereby protecting adjacent properties.
Thank you,
Jeff Levinsky