Title
2026 Code Amendments Briefing
Recommended Action
Information only. No action requested.
Report
Issue:
Discussion on the draft 2026 Code Amendments.
Staff Contact:
Joyce Phillips, Planning Manager, Community Planning and Economic Development, 360.570.3722
Presenter(s):
Joyce Phillips, Planning Manager
Background and Analysis:
Staff regularly propose amendments to the Olympia Municipal Code to make updates, corrections, or provide clarifications. Sometimes the proposed amendments are to address new state requirements. During the multiple year process to update the Comprehensive Plan, staff kept a list of areas of the code that should be considered for amendment. Additionally, the state passed revisions in statute that require code amendments. Because of the wording in state legislation, some of these amendments are very specific and are to be adopted within 6 months of completing the Comprehensive Plan update.
Some of the proposed amendments are at the request of the Olympia Fire Department, some are at the request of the City's Historic Preservation planner, some are at the request of planners on the development review side of our department, and others are proposed to meet new state requirements. Given the multiple years without code amendments, the request to process amendments for other departments, and the necessity to address new state requirements, this list of proposed amendments is fairly lengthy. There are over 30 proposals combined into these 2026 amendments.
Staff have organized these amendments in the order in which they appear in the Olympia Municipal Code (OMC). Each proposal is identified by a number and includes the code citation and topic. Each Title has its own section, and then any proposals in that title are in the order they appear in that chapter, then by section. To help reduce the length of the complete proposal, only the subsection proposed for amendment is included. Some of these subsections are still rather lengthy.
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