Thursday’s open house on the new zoning codes for Edmonds devolved into an out-of-control shouting match. About 100 people attended the information session put on by the City planning staff, with members of the Edmonds Planning Board and two Edmonds City Councilmembers there to answer questions.

My first encounter there was with a citizen who told me that remodeling the interior of single-family homes would not be allowed. I introduced her to staff member Brad Shipley who corrected that misinformation.

However, at the moment, homes in the Hubs and Centers still cannot expand their footprint. This needs to change. I hope homeowners in the hubs and centers will go to the city council meetings and speak up.

Those of us in the hubs are out of luck. One of my neighbors had already planned an expansion, but the city changed the zoning on him after the fact and won’t allow it. Another neighbor is shopping for a developer after she kicked out a young family of renters with a new baby. I have a three-story condo over my back fence, and at night I can see into nine of the units. Do they really need to add another story?

Brad and his colleague Navyusha Pentakota explained that codes for existing single-family homes (outside the Hubs and Centers) will remain unchanged; i.e., remodeling is still fine as long as the house covers no more than 35% of the lot. Height and setback requirements remain.

North Bowl hub resident Jonathan Allen asked why multifamily housing could be 30 feet in height and cover 45% of a lot, but he couldn’t do the same with his single-family house. Navyusha’s answer was that the goal was to increase density, and making a single-family house bigger would not achieve that goal.

Those height and coverage increases were added by staff; they are not required by the state, which was one of the main complaints at the meeting.

The new state law for “middle housing” does away with all single-family zoning. It requires us to allow a minimum of two units per lot, keeping the same heights, setbacks and lot coverage to match current neighborhood zoning. That includes attached and detached accessory dwellings (ADUs and DADUs).

Those rules do allow for denser housing but not enough. The state requires Edmonds to add about 9,000 housing units of various affordability over the next 20 years. Existing capacity along Highway 99 is about 3,000 units, Westgate about 2,000 units, ADUs and DADUs about 2,000 units, and hubs and centers fill out the remainder. The hubs and centers will have dense housing types mixed with commercial buildings.

Planning staff is recommending we allow larger multifamily housing (MU3 and MU4) in the hubs and centers.

After an hour of one-on-one interactions, informational posters and formal presentations by staff, people seemed loaded for bear. Brad and Navyusha took questions from the audience including multiple comments wondering why staff wanted to allow denser and taller housing than the minimums required by the state. The answer was hard to hear over the clamor.

As the questions got more heated, Brad’s answers were shouted down, including by one woman who yelled over him and wouldn’t let the rest of us hear his answers.

The meeting deteriorated from there, with people demanding a vote on these issues (the city council has the vote) and expressing outrage about various aspects of the plan.

Brad and Navyusha repeatedly and patiently said they were looking for feedback. Unfortunately, the uncivil feedback at this meeting was maddeningly counterproductive.

Some of us have been attending the weekly meetings and the walking tours and communicating with staff, board and council members who are Edmonds citizens just like the rest of us and want the same things we do – for Edmonds to remain livable.

As frustrating as these changes are, can we try to exercise patience and reasonable dialogue?

Author Marty Ronish lives in Edmonds.