Kennewick council reviews package to move administrative-code provisions into municipal code

Kennewick city staff presented a package of municipal-code amendments that would move public-facing provisions from the Kennewick Administrative Code (KAC) into the Kennewick Municipal Code (KMC) and update several standards.

Deputy City Manager Beaton told council the KAC dated to the 1990s and had not been widely used; staff recommended moving provisions that should be public-facing into the KMC for transparency and consistency. Public Works Director Jeremy Lustick and other staff outlined technical updates across multiple chapters.

Key items included revising the trigger for frontage improvements (modernizing a fixed 1980s $10,000 threshold to a percent-of-valuation test for residential and commercial work), adding mobile food vendor washing/disposal requirements and movable food-establishment definitions, and updating meter-tampering language to include AMI system components.

Staff also proposed formal event street-closure permitting for downtown markets and festivals, rules for oversized/overweight vehicle permits (including route review and bridge/turning assessments), minimum driveway-spacing and access-control standards near intersections, and adoption of Washington Access Management (WACCs) standards by reference to align local permitting with WSDOT. Parks and arts staff recommended incorporating Arts Commission establishment and duties into the KMC and aligning member counts to current practice (seven members plus a student member).

On surplus real property, staff proposed a KMC chapter describing criteria to declare property surplus, optional public hearings, and multiple conveyance mechanisms (auction, sealed bid, real-estate broker). Finally, a housekeeping amendment would align the city-manager performance-review reference in the code with the council-adopted governance manual.

Councilors asked clarifying questions about examples of "grandfathered access" on SR-395 and whether the arts-commission language should read "up to seven" or "at most seven" to allow flexibility; staff said they would refine the draft language. Council thanked staff for the work and had no further business on the item.