Fife planner previews ecode360 migration and minor municipal-code 'cleanup'

Sebastian Bovold, the city’s associate planner, presented a brief update on the city’s migration of its municipal code to the online platform ecode360 and outlined a set of minor textual edits staff plan to propose.

Bovold said the ecode360 site includes a more intuitive advanced-search feature that will help residents and staff find code provisions by phrase proximity and other filters. "It's only 14 slides, so pretty short and sweet," Bovold said as he walked commissioners through sample searches and a preview of the code pages.

The presentation emphasized that the proposed amendments are clerical and non-regulatory: they replace outdated acronyms and shorthand, remove references to zones that no longer exist, and substitute current terminology (for example, replacing repeated references to "SFR" with "LDR"). Bovold said staff will also correct gendered language and fix hyperlinks from the city website to the new code-hosting pages.

Chair Waldner and commissioners asked about timing. Director Larson said the complete amendment package will likely return later in the summer and that staff intend to bring a final package to a public hearing and recommendation in a single submittal.

Staff said the full amendment packet will show each affected code section, the existing text, the reason for the change and the proposed revision. The commission did not propose regulatory changes in tonight’s discussion and treated the item as an administrative cleanup.

The city will return with the consolidated amendment package for formal consideration and public hearing later this year.