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Resident urges Mount Vernon to adopt missing-middle housing policies in comp plan update
Summary
At public comment Kevin Moss urged city leaders to use the comprehensive plan update to adopt zoning and policies that allow compact, mixed housing to retain local spending and reduce vehicle miles traveled; council and staff noted upcoming community meetings on March 1.
Kevin Moss, a Mount Vernon resident, told the city council on Feb. 12 that updating the city’s housing policy in the comprehensive plan could retain local spending and reduce vehicle miles traveled.
“Every year, over a hundred million dollars earned and gone,” Moss told the council. He urged the city to adopt “smarter zoning that allows more people to live closer to where they work,” and to develop tangible draft policies the council, planning commission and community could discuss.
Moss described a roughly half‑square‑mile area in the city’s northwest — behind the Walmart and between the railroad and river — that he said is largely commercial and underused for housing. “We can talk about specific policy proposals like, should we allow housing there? What would it look like? How big could the buildings be?” he said, urging the council to provide draft maps and concrete code changes to guide discussion.
Development Services Committee chair Melissa Beaton told the council the committee reviewed draft contracts on the comprehensive-plan work and confirmed a public community meeting on March 1 at the Library Commons that will address missing-middle housing and neighborhood-specific needs. Beaton said the Transpo Group contract the council later approved will support transportation-element updates to reduce vehicle miles traveled and meet newly added climate-element requirements in state law.
Beaton also noted the committee pulled one contract from the agenda for further refinement and said both the Transpo Group contract and buffer buy‑down review will be funded by the state Department of Commerce climate grant.
The council did not take action on housing code changes at the Feb. 12 meeting; staff and the planning commission will bring draft policies for public discussion at upcoming meetings, beginning with the March 1 community meeting.
Moss identified himself as a long‑time resident and framed his remarks as a request for specific, draft policies rather than general discussion; council members asked staff to place the topic on the appropriate committee agendas for follow-up.
