To spark innovation and entrepreneurial investment, and make it easier for businesses to be sustainable, the City is pursuing opportunities to reduce red tape and encourage job growth while enhancing our commitment to the environment. Over time, some of the City’s regulations have become outdated, or redundant. Now is the time to update our regulations.
In order to guide future actions, the City Council adopted Resolution 31282 in March of this year. The resolution established guiding principles for strengthening and growing Seattle’s economy and creating jobs. In keeping with these principles, a roundtable of business, environmental, and neighborhood leaders met to develop proposals for regulatory reform that will help to restore and sustain a vibrant business environment and attract new jobs to the city, consistent with our growth management strategies in the Comprehensive Plan.
In response to the group’s recommendations for changes that will help to get people back to work, and jump-start development by simplifying regulations, the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) is proposing amendments to the Land Use Code and Seattle’s version of the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). These proposals would help people weather the difficult economy in three important ways:
- Get people back to work – encourages entrepreneurship and new business development;
- Promote flexibility in the Land Use Code to foster innovation, improve efficiency and eliminate unnecessary delay in permitting; and
- Jumpstart new housing opportunities – encourages new investment in affordable housing.
DPD has just completed environmental review of the legislative proposal, which is made of three ordinances (two of which are subject to environmental review under state laws and one is not). For detailed information on the proposal, including a Director’s Report that explains the complete package of proposals, please refer to the documents below:
For more information on regulatory reform, please visit Mayor McGinn’s blog. You can also contact Mike Podowski, Planning Supervisor, at 206-386-1988 or mike.podowski@seattle.gov.