Council Member Pearson told Lakewood officials that SB 5184 establishes statewide parking minimums for residential and commercial areas and that complying with the new law will require local planning and, in some cases, costly studies to qualify for location-based exceptions.

"SB 5184 establishes statewide parking minimums, both in residential and commercial areas," Pearson said, noting the state mandate creates additional regulatory work for cities and strains limited local resources. He asked for the council’s support in pursuing a formula-based program to distribute funding to cities to help meet the law’s requirements.

Speaker 8 (referred to by the chair during the meeting as Branson) described Lakewood’s varied street right-of-way widths and argued that applying identical parking standards across neighborhoods would be problematic. He emphasized that the legislation allows cities to seek exceptions for specific locations, but that obtaining those exceptions requires consultant studies and technical review — work he said is ‘‘expensive’’ and was not funded by the state when the law passed.

Speaker 5 raised a broader policy consideration: exempting every city from parking requirements through state grants could undermine the law’s housing‑supply goals and the state’s broader aim of increasing housing availability. She urged localities to weigh exemptions carefully and emphasized housing supply as the principal tool for moderating rents.

No formal exemption requests or votes were taken at the meeting. Officials agreed the next steps are to explore potential funding formulas, estimate local study costs, and continue conversations with state leaders about how to implement parking standards without unduly diverting city resources from other priorities.

The discussion underscored a tension between state-mandated parking regulation and local variation in street design and housing objectives; participants asked staff to return with more precise cost estimates and options for pursuing exemptions where warranted.