Planning & Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

stream uh i will i'll check you're still booting up logan's aware so we are yep we're live all right

hello and welcome to the august 5th 2026 meeting of the asheville planning and zoning commission i am your chair jeffrey barton as a reminder for everyone speaking please speak directly into your mics whether you're up here on the platform or speaking into the mic as a presenter or public commenter also please identify yourself for the benefit of people tuning in

on the internet um we will begin with a welcome and roll call vote or roll call welcome uh yes thank you uh one second and uh there's the chair barton president chair cycle vice chair cycle president uh mr jonathan anzalito president miss jane margaret bell president Mayor Mrakas, Mr Lindsay and i'm so sorry, this is my first day as PZC liaison so.

Mayor Mrakas, rhymes of troll and scroll.

Mayor Mrakas, President and chair and as we have sky present.

Thank you, Mr. Starbaum. So we have a full complement of Planning and Zoning Commission members tonight. Next, we have the land acknowledgment for the Planning and Zoning Commission. As we are gathering today as the Planning and Zoning Commission, the body tasked with reviewing and advising on appropriate land use in the city of Asheville, it is fitting to acknowledge the storied history of this land. We occupy the land of the Cherokee people who have stewarded and been in the relationship with these mountains and waterways from time immemorial. This land is occupied through violence, oppression, coercion, broken treaties, and forced relocation. Please join me in expressing respect and gratitude for the present day Eastern Band of Cherokee, the Cherokee Nation, and United Gadua Band of Cherokee, and all of our indigenous neighbors, as well as the past and present marginalized community members as we seek to join in the healing of the indelible trauma that is embedded in this land.

Thank you.

Next up, we have the approval of minutes, July 1st, 2026. Any comments or questions about last meeting's minutes? I'll take a motion to approve the minutes.

Motion to approve the July meeting minutes.

Do we have a second? Second.

We have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Before we move into updates and reports, I do want to make a note. Later in the agenda, under the public hearings, we have a couple of items. There's been a request from our council liaison, which I think is a good request, to move the item three under the public hearings, the request for a map amendment ahead of item two, the text amendment. So any concerns with us doing that? City Council Chambers, All right, we'll flip flop the agenda when we get there to help these folks who are here for a development map amendment. City Council Chambers, Moving back into updates and reports we have update for from committee liaisons and work groups, do we have any updates multimodal. City Council Chambers, Any other updates from the Commission. All right, I'll kick it over to staff to share some recent legislative and administrative actions.

right i can go ahead on this one yeah so really the only update is from the most recent council meeting of course uh what you had seen earlier in july there were 130 units at 3862 sweeten creek the planning and zoning commission recommended approval six to one on that one The City Council did pass that unanimously. There were some recommendations from Commissioner cycle, and I think some others about looking at storm water as well as parking reductions. They did reduce parking, of course, that became moot, because by the time they submitted everything to Maggie Burleson, The State passed the bill that eliminated parking minimums, which brings us to our agenda item later today. So there are parking minimums were substantially reduced, and it is something where they did sort of tinker with the stormwater coefficients to to not get to the hundred year, but to a higher number and more in line with designing with the natural topography of the and the runoff that exists there in the north and west portions of that site. And then, of course, the rezoning of Three South Tunnel Road, which we all know is the Asheville Mall, that was adopted with a 4-2 vote.

Thank you. Next up, we have the recurring update on the Comp Plan and Development Regulations Update Project. Anything on that, Mr. Collins?

We are continuing and finishing up negotiations with the highest scoring responsive submittal from the RFP process and are aiming to have the contract on the August 25th city council agenda to authorize the city manager to sign.

Great, appreciate that update. And for those of you here listening, as you may know, the UDO and comp plan update is a longstanding initiative that we're really excited has some legs. So if you care about the zoning text amendments on our agenda today, stay engaged in the UDO update process, which there'll be many opportunities for public engagement on that.

And I probably should have updated, for administrative actions from council, I was just going to mention two resolutions of interest that were passed at the council's July 28th meeting. One was a resolution to support a comprehensive approach to minimizing displacement, supporting stability in neighborhoods that are adversely affected by and sensitive to local government action, and private development, gentrification, and housing. And this was done in response to work with the legacy neighborhoods who have expressed concern about housing initiatives that might negatively impact their communities and lead to more displacement. So the resolution was passed, and has a number of action steps, including that, from now on proposals will need to demonstrate that the these udo updates are consistent with this anti-displacement resolution and another part does talk about incorporating this resolution into the development of the city's strategic plan including measurable milestones, expected outcomes, and reporting structures. So we do think that this will address some of those concerns and the discussion continues to go on. The other resolution, oh, sorry, did you have a question?

Yes, the resolution didn't give the milestones.

No, it didn't give specific milestones. It's broad, but that is the intention to be, I think city staff, planning staff has talked about potential milestones that we would be addressing, but I don't think we're at this stage. We'll probably have to have another meeting with the legacy neighborhoods group to have that. And the other resolution that I thought might be of interest was the resolution approving the city's home repair policy. We haven't had a home repair program in a very long time that was done directly by the city. And this one will allocate $3 million from our affordable housing bonds to rehab of homes for members of the public who are single home owners at 80% of AMI or below, and with a priority for households that are 60% AMI and below that are senior households, households with families, and households with people with disabilities. I think the max grant is $40,000. It will be a grant structure, so max is $40,000. If someone gets less than $25,000, it will be structured as a complete grant. If somebody gets more than $25,000, it will be structured so that as long as they live in the home for five years, it will be paid down over that time period. So that's an interesting one to take a look at as well.

Thank you, Ms. Ashley, and thank you to the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee and the staff liaison from the city, Sasha Vertunsky, for really kind of bringing that program. It's a really important program and appreciate city council's support for getting those resources out in the community. Any question or further discussion about the anti-displacement resolution or home repair policy?

Do we have the resolution number? I wanted to Google it so I can get a visual.

Sure, sorry. For the anti-displacement, the resolution number is 26-161. It was adopted on July 28th. And for the home repair, it's resolution 26-160, also adopted on July 28th.

You're welcome.

Thank you, and I'll try to follow my own advice of introducing ourselves. This is Chair Barton. We can just remember to introduce ourselves for people listening in. Great, well, next up on the agenda, we have a presentation on the recently approved state legislation and the impacts on Asheville's Unified Development Ordinance. Staff presenting is Carly Gillingham, Ms. Gillingham.

Good evening. This is Carly Gillingham, Assistant City Attorney. So there was kind of a slew of new legislation passed recently at the state level, many of which have effects on our UDO and might require UDO amendments. So I just wanted to talk through them. This will be a very brief overview. There is a memo. linked in your meeting materials and i'm just going to quickly go over the changes focusing on udo changes because that is what will come before you so first the home-based business fairness act was passed this places restrictions on a city's ability to regulate no impact home-based businesses Any regulations have to be narrowly tailored towards public health and safety, compatibility with residential use, and illegal or high impact activities. And upon review of how we treat home occupations in our UDO, Our opinion is that we don't need to make any amendments. These home occupations are treated as uses by right subject to special requirements, and those special requirements all are narrowly tailored toward public health and safety compatibility with residential use. and prohibiting illegal or high impact businesses they regulate advertising employees on-premises sales parking nuisances so yeah in our opinion a udo amendment does not have to come your way does anyone have any questions about that one i had one question for that one sure

I just wanted to confirm that will have no effect on the regulatory tools we have for the short-term rentals because the short-term rental is not a residential use. Correct.

This is like, I don't know, like a daycare operating in somebody's home or a psychiatrist's office that's attached to somebody's home, a typical home-based business. It has to meet these special requirements like not producing noise and nuisances and having limited on site parking and employees. So moving on and. There was House Bill 162, which was approved. This is both for parking lot reform and stormwater control. So the important change about parking minimums is that no off-street parking minimums are allowed per development or structure in any local UDO. This was something that was coming your way already. It has kind of shifted from being a policy decision on the city's part to a statutory mandate. We cannot have any off street parking minimums per development structure in our Udm.

Any questions on that residential and commercial.

Correct. So the exact i'm not going to read the exact text changes for any of them, except this one, because it's very short. A zoning or other development regulations shall not do any of the following require an off street parking lot to meet a minimum number of parking spaces per development or structure regardless of occupancy or use.

And are there any exemptions?

There were exemptions for coastal areas, but that doesn't apply to us. So I didn't include those.

exempted municipalities, so it would only be in unincorporated areas.

It exempted certain municipalities in coastal areas, but I just didn't include that. But there is a link in the section 2 header if you want to see those, if you're curious.

Sure.

I'm wondering just a quick question. If this wasn't coming to us today already, what would the process have looked like? to make any updates?

I mean, it would basically look the same. You say if it hadn't already been kind of on the docket, it would basically look the same, except we would basically be coming to you and saying the state has mandated that we cannot have these parking minimums in our UDO anymore. It's kind of an odd position to put policy legislative bodies in because the parking minimums cannot be enforced. I mean, even if you as a Planning and Zoning Commission did not want to get rid of parking minimums, we would not be able to enforce them. We'd basically be enforcing an illegal policy. a provision of our UDO.

Yeah, I guess I'm asking because we're updating the UDO and so I'm just wondering would we have left it as is and just covered it in that process or would it come to a meeting before then?

He would have brought it to you, I think, just because this is a very specific, like no UDO can have this language and we don't, it just creates confusion if we have a UDO that's inconsistent with state law. So are we gonna add something?

I was only going to add it probably would have not come to you as promptly as that it was already on the agenda. But we would have wanted to clean up and had our you do on compliance with state law yeah.

Any other questions about that one.

Now, this is Chair Barton, just to mention that the effective date on that session law is January or July 1st of 2026. So it's already in effect. It's not a kind of forward looking. So I'm excited that we're doing the right thing because we have to.

Thank you. This is Commissioner Bell. You mentioned that it's a stormwater bill as well. What are the stormwater requirements?

I was going to go on to that one next. So the changes are that instead of having authority to require stormwater controls for existing built upon areas, the city may now offer non-mandatory incentives for stormwater controls that are not required. Those incentives can include waving, building zoning, connection or other regulation fees, providing additional tax and financial benefits, or instituting other incentives for development or redevelopment that implements additional stormwater control measures. Admittedly, I have not had an opportunity to sit down with stormwater staff and really go through this one and talk about what non-mandatory incentives we are interested in offering, but the main idea is that this does strip our authority to require stormwater controls for existing built upon areas, which is kind of defined in that text change. and instead offer non-mandatory incentives. And we are required to update the stormwater ordinance, which is in chapter seven, by July of next year. So that'll be upcoming. We'll do it well before the deadline, but this will require a lot of conversations internally about what kind of non-mandatory incentives that we would be interested in offering. So admittedly, I don't know how well I would be able to answer

too many of your questions about this one but um if there are any questions it says that you may offer right doesn't we don't have to offer right right right so that's going to be a discussion to be had i i just cursory under you know i think we're in compliance with this one already yeah we can however

regulate future built upon areas, is that correct? Right, yes.

Anyone, anything else?

I guess it's just kind of confusing. I was under the impression that we weren't able to regulate above and beyond state code anyhow. and that we already had authority to do non-mandatory incentives. That was my standing stormwater impression, so it feels like they just passed a resolution saying that this, I guess, I would love to see a deeper memo on this when time permits, because it's just kind of confusing as you read it. That's been my standing understanding.

I agree that it's confusing, Councilwoman. I agree with you that it's confusing. I'm not clear on exactly what amendments we're going to have to make, really. It looks like they kind of redefined existing built upon area as like a new term in the statute, where it used to say pre-existing development. And it changed it to existing built upon area and says that that area cannot be included in density calculations for additional stormwater control requirements. So it's it's kind of a rewording and I think you know, at a minimum, we will probably have to incorporate the new terms that are used tbd on the incentives part yeah just.

Very curious about is this much to do about nothing like just when the time permits to see like more depth.

Commissioner Faircloth here, a little bit on that same train of thought. Councilwoman Ullman, is there currently non-mandatory incentives?

No.

Okay.

We could have been, but we hadn't been.

Legislative intent.

That's what it sounds like.

And then we previously couldn't do anything regulatory above what the state said, and it's saying... Ditto. I don't know.

OK. What we learned about legislation is it often comes out of one instance in some legislator's jurisdiction that they want to address. And so who knows? Maybe there was a jurisdiction where there were stormwater requirements. on existing built areas and they said let's make it clear that you can't do that not that we were doing that so that's the only thing i can think of but you know you never quite know um where this the reasoning and that is one confusing that just the built just that definition was confusing

and one last thing well two last things uh councilwoman olman you know this is part of what makes our job fun is there's layers to everything what you see is largely conditional zonings because those are voluntary conditions they can also go above those there are also incentives which play into that for open space things like that and then just the second thing which is more about audio and me being a stickler can you please move that microphone to the chair and then use the one designated for your seat we are getting audio feedback issues and that's also why you're getting that no problem is that better yep yep yep don't even mess with that one any other questions on that one

City Council Chambers. Okay, i'm gonna talk about some of the changes from the budget. So these largely do not affect planning and zoning commissions business, because much of these changes are about administrative staff decisions and board of adjustment decisions. However, there are a number of You do amendments that we might have to make to reflect these changes, and those would come your way. So this is really just a primer about what what those are going to be about. So this first one has a lot of changes, but basically What this means is that parties who have standing and the standing test is they will have special damages resulting from a land use decision can challenge administrative decisions made by staff directly in court. Previously, and right now, the in our Udo. But in reality, this authorizes this private right of action. Previously, they could only be brought to the Board of Adjustment. So staff makes a decision, and then somebody withstanding appeals that decision to the Board of Adjustment. And then if they don't get a favorable result at the Board of Adjustment, then they can bring an action in Superior Court. Now they can actually go straight to superior court or even federal court if the federal court would have jurisdiction. So the only thing that you all have to worry about for this is that we may bring an ordinance amendment to Section 762 to clarify that appeals may be made to the Board of Adjustment or superior federal court. Right now it states that appeals of administrative decisions can be made to the Board of Adjustment. So it's it's rather a minor change. But that's just the background about what that is. That's kind of part A of the budget changes that may necessitate you do amendments. Any questions on that? Next, part B. This one is just kind of a new term that we might have to incorporate. Rather than using administrative decision or administrative interpretation, which is kind of how we always refer to administrative staff decisions on zoning, They inserted this new term of interpretive determinations. I think it's the same, but they added this language that says local governments are required to issue interpretive determinations upon request from a party withstanding. Staff already does issue determinations if a party withstanding, which is usually an applicant or an owner of property, requests zoning determination, but this just makes it a mandate if that request comes on. So we might bring a UDO amendment that brings in that interpretive determination language anytime the administrative decision is used, because that's the term that we currently use in our UDO, just to make it consistent, but TBD. Any questions on that one? Right? Next, this is also about appeals of administrative decisions. This actually broadens the standing standard. So before, this is a little bit in the weeds, but before, The statute stated that you have to meet the standing test that is applicable to somebody appealing a board of adjustment decision to superior court. And that's a pretty stringent standing test. It's usually either the property owner, the person directly affected by the decision, or adjacent property owners that will be directly affected. This broadens it a bit. it basically broadens it to the same as somebody um appealing a legislative decision so if um a conditional zoning ordinance was our conditional zoning application was denied by city council and the applicant decided to appeal that decision to superior court um the standard is is lower um they basically just have to show that they're they're affected by the legislative decisions They don't have to show special damages. They don't have to show things like increased traffic or decreased property value, which applies in the standing test. So that's all to say that we might be bringing an ordinance amendment to just add that statutory citation. Persons withstanding under Chapter 160D-1402. So again, a pretty minor change, but that's just so you know. And when we bring these changes, we'll obviously explain them in detail.

Can you say that one more time? This is Chair Barton. It's legislative decisions we're talking about. So this doesn't change who can seek standing in a quasi-judicial matter that comes before us, like special use permits? Correct.

This is once they're going to court about something. So appealing a staff administrative decision or a legislative decision.

OK.

I know this is all a little confusing. Permit choice changes. So permit choice, that is when, for example, somebody submits a development application and then the UDO changes between the time that they submit a development application and the UDO change is implemented. They can basically choose which regulation applies to their application. This really just kind of clarifies that, and it clarifies that it includes conditional zoning applications. So a CZ application comes in, UDO amendment comes after, but before the CZ is approved, that applicant can choose which regulation applies to their CZ application. My understanding is that the city has always treated conditional zoning applications as development applications for purpose of permit choice. But this statute just clarifies that so I don't think that we will need any ordinance amendments I didn't see any sections inconsistent with this Finally Mandatory attorneys fees if the city is found liable this will not require any ordinance amendments either, but just so you know Actions in court where somebody is appealing an administrative decision, which, like I said earlier, now can be brought directly to court and not have to go through the Board of Adjustment. If the city is found liable in that it acted outside the scope of its authority under the ordinance, attorneys fees must be awarded. Those are the budget changes, mostly quite minor kind of language-focused UDO amendments that might be coming your way, but that's all just so you know. Any other questions?

This is Chair Barton. I guess this is kind of a broad question, but is, you know, with all of these accumulated changes about the city's legal exposure and land use regulation, is there any Is there any concern of a growth in the number of lawsuits from zoning decisions?

I think so. So the... Fee to appeal a decision to the Board of Adjustment is, Sam, do you know? It's like $800 or something.

$832.

The filing fee to bring a civil action in superior court, I think, is $200 something, maybe $250. So it could be argued that that incentivizes just going straight to court and not even utilizing our Board of Adjustment because the filing fee is cheaper. Plus, they could seek attorney's fees. So yeah, I do kind of have that concern, but we just have to keep on issuing correct zoning determinations, as we always do.

And I think it creates further imperative for the UDO rewrite by correcting some of the interpretive gaps in our UDO. Hopefully we can create a more defensible position.

Absolutely. Anything else?

Thank you, Miss Gillingham.

Thank you.

Moving on into the public hearing portion of our agenda, as I mentioned earlier, we're going to flip-flop the next two items. So Mr. Starbaum already had queued up our zoning map amendment item three on the agenda, a request to rezone the property located at 23 Heritage Drive from residential multifamily high-density RM-16 to highway business. The property's pins identified on the agenda. The property owner is American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, ASPCA. applicant's contact is Jeffrey Moore. Planner coordinating review is Clay Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell.

Good evening, Chair, Commissioners. This is a street map amendment, so it's a rezoning that is not associated with the development plan that we commonly see in conditional zoning. The location is out on heritage drive off new leiser highway you see on the left, the dot gives it the kind of regional scope, the red outline is the existing parcel today. Which is comprised of a few parcels that were merged over time and also this property was subject to an annexation in 2004. which I thought wasn't too long ago to realize someone born in 2004 can now order a beer at a brewery. I wanna thank the commissioners for bringing up this question. I was able to track down the formation of the parcel back in 1952, trying to seek some explanation as to why the zone line was drawn through the parcel to see if there were two, and there has never been And I believe it was Commissioner Siegel who suggested that. So that red line indicates where the zone line is today. So on looking at the screen on the right is RM 16, looking on the screen to the left is Highway Business. On the right side of the screen is the annexation map that was used by the city during the discussions of the annexing what was known as the Heritage Business Park. And you can see that even at that time, the city kind of denoted the entire parcel as a commercial use. The differences between RM-16 and highway business are, as you can predict, the residential multifamily high density includes a lot of residential uses, some limited public institutional recreational uses, not a lot of commercial uses. On the highway business side, we see the same allowance for residential, but the addition of a wide range of commercial and business uses. One of the concerns that might automatically come to your mind is what about moving businesses or commercial uses closer to existing residential development? Well, what is interesting about this rezoning is that any development on that portion of the parcel would be required to provide a 20 foot wide type A buffer according to our landscape standards. So there would be a new buffer requirement that wouldn't be if that portion of the property was developed. of their Rm. Sixteen looking at the existing and proposed use. So our proposed zoning. So right now that very small portion here is is Rm. Sixteen again. This is one parcel, and the rest of this is highway business. The change would be to just change that course, and so this whole parcel is uniformly zoned highway business. The compatibility question about surrounding zoning, I believe in my professional opinion that whereas it's one parcel under a contiguous, it's similar use, it does represent an incursion of business into what was traditionally zoned RM16, but I think it is consistent with the overall use because the parcel is internal to the driveways on the Heritage Business Park. And so therefore, we find as staff recommend that there is compatibility with the surrounding zoning because it creates that uniformity for highway business use. In terms of future land use, this is where it gets interesting. Calling up the future land use map, we see that that portion of the property was actually designated as urban corridor and not traditional neighborhood. So here we have kind of a misalignment with the future land use map and our existing zoning. So in our opinion, Moving this from RM16 to highway business actually makes it more conforming with the future land use because of the reference in the urban corridor to consistency of commercial uses and nodes and offices for that portion of the city. The question of infrastructure doesn't really arise because we're not talking about development. The infrastructure serving this portion of the parcel would be the same infrastructure supporting and serving the remainder of the parcel. In terms of the comprehensive plan review, it supports the livable built environment theme, it encourages growth that is responsible, ensuring development has the proper infrastructure to support it, water, sewer, and access, a resilient economy, facilitates real estate development, struggling to develop this parcel under the RM-16 requirements while being highway business on the same parcel would be a real challenge. And so this is a much more consistent ability to establish commercial nodes. The property owner, the ASPCA, can now use this property consistent with the remainder of the parcel. Accordingly, it's our recommendation to approve the zoning amendment request, not a conditional zoning, sorry. And if you have any questions, I'm here to answer them. I think we're trying to get this onto the City Council agenda for the end of this month, and I will have less than 48 hours to put that together.

Any questions for Mr. Mitchell?

Commissioner Faircloth here. Thanks, Mr. Mitchell, for the presentation. I have a question just generally about this process um so when someone combines two pieces of property you know they hire the licensed surveyor get the new plaque go to the register of deeds get it recorded pay the fees boom you have your new piece of property from there does Does it like, is anyone informed about like these pieces coming together? Because I know, I guess what I'm trying to get at is like I realize there's always going to be one-offs like this of like parcels with multiple zonings in it just from the past. But like is it part of the process going forward of new properties changing that like planning and zoning looks at recombinations and changing of lots? Not that it should be. I'm just curious.

Normally that's a process that's handled administratively at the city. And I think that's why Commissioner Cycle's inquiry was so important. Looking back in time, I wondered, was this two separate parcels? And does that account for it? And it's never been two separate parcels. And it was combined with a lower parcel in the Heritage Business Park. At some point, the predecessors to the current owners, which I believe was Western North Carolina, Society for prevention guy it was a very similar use they combined a couple of parcels, but that was a kind of a north, south combination not not an east, west.

And I guess, and thank you for the answer. And where I'm going with this is Mr. Starbaum helped me come up with a number that I'm forgetting at the moment a few months ago when we were talking about the number of vacant lots left in the city of Asheville. And it's, I can't remember the exact number, but it was surprisingly small when I saw the number. It was like 2,000 or 4,000 or something like that. An exact number, but the point is like, As we move into the future, there's less and less vacant land, and we're going to, I believe we're going to see more and more developers and homeowners like. Moving around lot lines and creating new lots to make available land. So i'm just curious like as we carve up things more. How crazy does that make the zoning map and that's you don't have to have an answer i'm just thinking out loud and.

Yeah, I enjoy thinking out loud. And I believe a famous author once said, buy land, they're not making it anymore. Except in the cases when there's some kind of change in the river. But I might... is that that discussion will come up in depth when we talk about the UDO amendments. And I know that there are two schools of thought. We have overly complicated, unnecessary number of zones, and that there's a way to do that to make it more coherent and still achieve the goals of the comprehensive plan with fewer numbers of zoning districts. So I'm sure that all of those people will get into that. But it is a noteworthy thought.

sure well thanks everyone for indulging me on this thought experiment i always love it i don't have any uh specific questions on this project at the moment um shall we invite the applicant to speak if they wish to don't have to but um please introduce yourself into the mic

Good evening, thanks for having us here. I'm Jeff Moore, I'm the engineer for the project. I have with me is Eleanor Sprinkle from ASPCA. Be happy to answer any questions. I wanna thank city staff for helping us through this process. They've been very helpful and very patient with me.

And any initial questions for the applicant before we open for public comment?

Commissioner Faircloth here. Yeah, I'm always just curious about context. I mean, I love that you just want to change the zoning map out of the goodness of your heart, but is there a reason or like you're going down this process?

There is. The operations of ASPCA, this Bay and Neuter Clinic, in order to provide some real parking for the staff, it's not... increasing operations is just to handle the existing operations, we wanted to build a parking lot. And as part of that, we found that to build a parking lot on the land, there's a problem with the zoning. So that's just a way to get this cleaned up and hopefully move forward with giving the staff a place to park for these operations. Thank you. Thank you.

thank you for that question commissioner faircloth because it prompts kind of the larger thing that we always need to say with straight rezonings it's our job to evaluate all prospective uses of a straight rezoning so appreciate and understand the background and context as we look to make a recommendation on this we have to contemplate kind of all the changes so hb has a wider range of commercial uses that are allowed that are not allowed in rm16 Any other questions for the applicant? Thank you. We will open for public comment at 5.52. I should have mentioned at the top of the meeting, but failed to because I'm still getting used to the new agenda format. We receive written public comment in advance of our meetings, reviewed by all commissioners. If you are here to speak on any of the public hearings on our agenda for in-person public comment, we allow three minutes. uh for individuals or 10 minutes if you're speaking on a behalf of a group which has to be identified in the meeting for written public comment you may write to pz commissioners at ashevillenc.gov and we store all the written public comment we receive and review it prior to the meeting so with that does anybody hear from the public to speak on this item City Council Chambers, I'll open the public comment at 553 and close the public comment at 553. City Council Chambers, Any further deliberation questions. City Council Chambers, If not all entertain a motion.

I move to recommend approval of the rezoning request for a portion of the property located at 23 Heritage Drive from the residential multifamily high density RM 16 to highway business HB and find that the request is reasonable is in the public interest is consistent with the city's comprehensive plan and meets the development needs. of the community in that the request, one, ensures the new development has the appropriate infrastructure to support it, and two, establishes accessible and well-connected commercial nodes consistent with strategies outlined in the plan's growth areas.

Motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Best of luck. Jumping back on the agenda to item two in the public hearings, we have a request to consider a zoning text amendment to the Unified Development Ordinance, UDO Chapter 7 of the Asheville Code of Ordinances to eliminate minimum off-street parking requirements, increase the maximum allowed size of accessory dwelling units,

and permit duplexes as an allowed primary use in all residential and certain mixed use zoning districts staff coordinating review is chris collins mr collins give me just enough time to get the slide presentation back in the right place all right so good evening i'm chris collins with the planning and urban design department um and i am bringing to you what we give you an update on in june and this is a package of uh Here we're labeled missing middle housing updates. You've heard them labeled interim housing updates or just housing updates, but we're gonna be looking for three main sections here that we'll present to you. This is an expansion and duplex entitlement, allowing ADUs, accessory dwelling units, more broadly and with more flexibility, and one that has changed its nature a little bit, and that is the elimination of minimum parking requirements for all developments citywide. You've seen some of these slides before. For the sake of anyone at the public hearing, I'm gonna go through the whole deck, but I will go through quickly since most of these you've seen before, okay? Okay, first we are gonna take a look at the duplex entitlement updates as we're calling them. So main points we wanna make to start out is that duplexes are currently not allowed in any RS or single family zoning districts. The expansion of housing allowances and removal of regulatory barriers have been recommended by multiple plans and studies that the city has conducted and some adopted. And this amendment would allow duplexes in all residential districts in the city and provide some flexibility needed that could create ownership opportunities if they were desired with certain duplex configurations. Okay, so first the duplex is two units right the definition as currently stands is in front of you on there. It does mean a building that contains two dwelling units on one lot and the units must share a common wall floor ceilings so that gives you many options for how they can go, you see a couple of examples here. of duplex buildings. Talking a little bit about duplexes in Asheville from April to April of 25 to 26 that we had 18 duplex permits applied for so we don't have a deluge of duplexes coming along right now. They are currently allowed in 26 zoning districts again, none of those are single family districts and again this amendment would allow those duplexes in all residential zoning districts. and add them to some mixed use sending districts where this is not necessarily an increase in intensity, but just an additional use, such as those in the red form districts where duplexes are not currently allowed. Current zoning allowances, red on this map shows where we do not allow duplexes, and green shows where they are allowed. So they are allowed in 26 districts. That's about 51% of the city's own land. 49% of all parcels there. Disallowed in 14 of our zoning districts. This did not break down the foreign districts into sub-districts. That's why you're only seeing 40 zoning districts, although that's still a lot of zoning districts. On 45% of city zoned land, duplexes are disallowed at this time and that's 47% of the parcels as well. City Council Chambers, The proposed zoning expansion would add the districts, you see on the screen in front of you that's rs to rs for rs eight neighborhood business. City Council Chambers, rad residential rad neighborhood transition and red lemon hollow to duplex entitlements that adds about 12,484 acres adds about 41% of cities cities zoned land. And that takes the red and green map from what you saw earlier to this, where duplexes would be allowed everywhere in green, but not in the red. And those are really some of our industrial districts are more intense corridor and commercial districts where we may not even allow single family detached right now in order to keep that viability of the corridors. So that takes us from 51% of the zone land area percent allowing duplexes to 92% allowing display duplexes. All right. And again, you see some further stats there, but it does represent a very large increase in where you can build a duplex in the city of Asheville. in order to. We looked at this, and we talked about this in the report back in June. We looked at this in order to make a duplex not exclusively a rental product, but give an option for ownership in some configurations. We are proposing some amendments to the townhouse standards currently found the Udo. That is a section that allows flexibility, as you'll see. It allows a waiver of minimum lot size and with requirements for the zoning district. and allows a waiver of property line setback that is required to have a shared wall. So what this does is it means if you have an existing duplex, you could put each side on its own lot, even if it didn't quite meet the minimum lot standards, or and it would allow for that shared wall. So that creates a situation where in one duplex configuration that's a side by side, or at least a semi side by side kind of configuration and ownership opportunity can be achieved for those folks living in one of these duplexes. The way we did this was working with the supplemental use supplemental Standards and restrictions article sixteen of the Udo to add supplemental restrictions for two unit attached to townhouses within the Rs. Zoning districts. So you'd be able to take a duplex and have that shared wall in a smaller lot size and move forward with that ownership. External side yard requirements the side without a shared wall do remain in place, ensuring spacing between any duplexes, because we're not City Council Chambers, necessarily proposing going in with a row of 16 townhomes in our US districts that would be a little bit of a different conversation and engagement with neighborhoods. City Council Chambers, This is just an example of what I was just saying I should have pulled this up for you, as I was describing it, but, as you can see there we split it we allow a smaller lot we allowed the share wall. Last time we did hear from you that it's unfortunate this doesn't create ownership opportunities for different duplex configurations. Staff did take that into consideration, we, this is still the best we got for creating land ownership opportunities for those to put different configurations which may still be available for condo configurations and things we don't regulate through our zoning. All right, so duplex entitlement allowances staff have found that it does it is consistent with the goals to increase and diversify the housing supply and encourage responsible growth as found in the comprehensive plan. And i'm going to stop and take any questions before we move on to the next one.

Thank you, Mr Collins questions.

A slide or two slides back. So there was some discussion at our June meeting and some public comment and markup around the parking in front. Can you remind us what the regulation would be around this?

Yes, and I'm trying to get the right markup in my head. Hold on one second. So the current regulation while i'm digging for this is that parking must be to the side or the rear unless a garage is provided right, let me see. we've had a few iterations of this one here.

Okay.

And I will add the goal of that current provision is to we often have a problem with sidewalk clearance and vehicle parking. Right, and that is something we've seen manifest time and time again and developments around the city where, if we don't have enough room to park a vehicle. Then we're impeding the pedestrian zone. And, of course, this thing is not loading for me right here on the podium there we go. So the current provision, what is proposed right now is that all parking shall be located to the rear of the structure or the side of the structure unless garages are provided for each new unit. That does strike right now. What the code says is that and the majority of homes on both sides of the block have parking located in the front of the structures. So that provision is gone. So now the only test is are you providing a garage for front parking? and that it can be found on page, not page numbered, can be found on the final page of the markup, the strikethrough document ordinance linked to your staff report.

Yeah, my computer won't open these. I can't open any of that stuff. If it is billed as a duplex in the left example on a single lot with parking in the front, which would be allowed, correct? This is just for townhomes, the parking in the rear. yes right so if we have if you built it with parking in the front and then you wanted to subdivide you would have to then relocate the parking into the rear for this yes um so that's a good question though if you're not changing the build condition we're probably not going to enforce that but it could be clarified

I'm trying to understand the striking through of that last part. The majority of homes having parking in front of the home.

With the reason mainly being to With the reason mainly being to keep the pedestrians unclear as we've had come up and more fence neighborhoods we're not really concerned about the compatibility, the visual compatibility, which is really to me what that standard was addressing. it's more of the actual room for the vehicle itself. I have a couple questions, yes.

Okay. Um, I had a question about the addition to the definition of townhouse to include only sharing the president. Um,

yes the addition the addition of the sentence each townhouse lot must have frontage on a public or private street what would constitute a private street could this be a driveway that leads to a parking lot in the rear so a private street is just a privately maintained street within right of way in the city we see a lot of those asheville approves and authorizes a lot of streets that must be built to public standard that do not enter the public maintenance schedule or not dedicated for public maintenance. So in this case, that's that. And to dig a little deeper, this is a standard that is not very well illustrated in the code right now, but we're trying to clarify in order for a townhome lot to exist. in this situation, or in another town home situation. So you've got a block of eight lot frontage is required, and we do require that now. It's just not very clearly illustrated in the code. So our staff that administer that code often have difficulty having that conversation with folks.

And then my second question had to do with the, I wanted to pick up a conversation we had had part of this meeting about the possibility of currently in RSA townhouses are permitted and allowed. And then if we cap it at two units, is that going to constitute a down zoning? And so I know a staff's position is that this is not going to constitute a down zoning, but I was hoping you could just walk us through that.

The fact that townhomes as shown on the permitted use table right now exist without an S, which means they're shown as a permitted standard. What that actually does is not give them access to those special standards in 716. So they're not able to take advantage of a lot waiver or a reduced internal side setback. So they're not able to be built in RS8, even though a P shows on the table. because they're required to meet minimum lot standards and all setbacks. So practicality, we've often wondered if that was an error in the table or if it was intentional, but it has resulted in not being able to approve townhome developments in RS eight. So we don't believe that is a down zoning because it's actually adding flexibility to this. It's actually up zoning because those supplemental use restrictions are actually not restrictions in this case. Those are waivers of lot widths and setbacks.

If I could ask for continued clarification, if you had a large lot that was 28,000, 25,000 square feet that even with the setbacks could accommodate more than two townhomes, would today, they might be able to approve and have more than two townhouses on them, but after this change, they will be capped at two.

No. So the zoning districts, again, we're talking about this time are, let's put them in front of us, RS2, RS4, and RS8. Let's just, in all those you see, the RS2 and RS4 don't have any allowance for townhomes anymore. RS8 is the one we're talking about where a P shows up in the permitted use table. So in order to, a townhome which has to have a property line along a shared wall to be a townhome development, for the Udo in order for development to take advantage of that. It has to have that article sixteen allowance for that reduced. I reference that somewhere in here for that reduced interior side setback, right? Because otherwise your rs zoning districts are going to require that minimum side setback, which is, I don't I can't recall. I don't want to misquote it six feet, eight, six feet in whatever zoning district we're in. So even if you had a large lot, you still aren't able to run that property line down the middle of a party wall in these RS districts without that allowance.

Be completely clear like if you had what are the your how many units of townhouses could you put on an RSA lot right now is it complete.

Not existing could you put no townhouse right as it's written right now you just can't develop townhomes and RS districts. Because you can't access those flexible standards, because of the P and the table versus the S okay.

and so with in addition to the text changes being proposed the table of uses would be updated to have s's but then the difference and the special standards between rs2 rs4 rs8 and then the rm districts Correct.

So all the districts you see here would show an S in the permitted use tables, which is going to refer us out to that 716 section that associates with it, and then it breaks it down by zoning district groups.

And if I may just on this one, there is some more nuance here Sam star bomb PCC liaison. In your scenario, because if you're presuming it's rsa there are still lot standards right so it's still under the current code as it stands right now there's the 40 foot lot minimum there, it has to be 4000. square feet, gross floor area. And there may need to be new roads, whether that's privately maintained or public, that's probably falling under a major subdivision. So 20,000 is roughly half an acre, it's a little under. A lot of your land will be eaten up in doing that. So this is also why this is not a down zoning because this is, it's making it more permissive rather than less restrictive. And that is, the whole process is made easier by this. That is, that is one component, I just wanted to make sure you also understood if you look at the subdivision standards, if you look at. The review level thresholds that are required to make that happen that also explains why we have seen very few. townhomes if any that I could think of Chris in our essay, this is typically we see these as level one developments in other districts.

To kind of zoom back out, I really appreciate the, you know, there's a lot of technical challenges in enacting this in a broken UDO, so I really appreciate the work that staff has done to help get us there. I think the intent to open up the availability of more you know modest density within neighborhoods is is great and so i'm i'm hopeful that these adjustments achieve that i think the commissioner cycle highlighted a really important challenge with the parking standard relative to townhomes and duplexes so i would advocate to just sort of eliminate that provision given that it creates sort of differential treatment of something that from a built form is identical and i don't see another way to kind of correct for that other than just eliminate referencing b under like the rm6 section yes

or sorry, it's not RM6, it's for all other districts.

Yeah, 3B.

Besides RS248 and RM6, I think, right? Yeah, I was going to suggest the same thing. It's not clear to me, sorry, this is Commissioner Berle, why that pertains particularly to those other districts and It seemed, there's just so many different layouts of a parcel that requiring that could, I think, just have unintended restrictions on the ability to create townhomes or duplexes.

I'll just, but your staff would have no concerns with making that change, so if that makes you feel good about going forward with it.

Great. You know, kind of further, and this is probably conversation for another day. I think it's great that in our existing definitions for dwelling townhome, we do allow for waivers of lot sizes, widths, and side yards. I think that it would be ripe to reevaluate that across duplexes and the applicability and uptake of duplexes across our city. We oftentimes as commissioners on planning and zoning commission receive comment about differential treatment within the city and how our built environment is impacting certain parts of the city more than others. The common thing that we hear is so many apartments are being proposed in South Asheville and so You know, we hear that also with residential development. And as we look to promote smart infill, I think we want to be really mindful of all the other barriers and impediments that may create sort of baked in incentives for duplex and townhome two unit townhome development. in some parts of the city and others. So I'm hopeful with the city's anti-displacement resolution that talks about data-informed decision-making, we can kind of reevaluate lot size and width in the broader context of all the missing metal work we're doing. And I've kind of gone on a soapbox rant here, but to highlight some of the independent analysis of one of our fellow commissioners. Commissioner Anzalito has done kind of some good analysis. I think it would be helpful to enter into conversation at the full planning and zoning commission when the time is appropriate.

Just of course we're entering into a video update and we do anticipate some pretty big changes to zoning and how we zone so it's a great opportunity, if nothing else.

Yeah, I hear that. And I also know that that process is going to be a really long process. So as this heads to city council, you know, we had we had heard that there may be sort of a second window of zoning amendments coming in November. I know that we don't want to overwhelm, especially with the huge number of state law changes that will need to be enacted through zoning text amendments, but that the at least the ability to have a discussion about these other provisions that are City Council Chambers, Creating artificial barriers to missing middle housing might might be an appropriate time to do it, so we can hit this November window of additional text amendments.

But certainly as part of the broader UDO rewrite, we need to look top to bottom.

I appreciate that we're kind of creating surgical adjustments. There's several definitional challenges within our UDO that we need broader alignment with state building code. And that's something that we may not be able to accomplish today. But I think that how we define dwellings is something that we need to seek a broader alignment on and make sure we're not addressing piecemeal. So for today, I love these changes and I think there's more work to do. Sorry, any questions for staff?

This is Commissioner Bell. So in addition to removing the parking location requirement, Is there interest in talking about removing the four unit cap based on the block size?

You're talking about the RM6 standard that limits to four units? Could staff speak to that a little bit? I know that it's one of the existing special standards within the UDO.

yeah we didn't really analyze that with an rm we were focused on the rs and the duplex and this somewhat complicated method of simply allowing ownership of duplexes. So that is our. lowest density multifamily residential district, but it is a multifamily residential district. I can't speak to why that was added or. if it still pertains or has use or utility to those RM6 areas, but.

Okay, so I will advocate that we remove that in that case. I mean, especially given we have a lot of variety in our block sizes and non-conforming streets, and we want as much housing as possible in these infill sites. So other thoughts on that, other folks?

Yeah, I would agree. I guess my follow up question to staff would be what other barriers or what are the other natural barriers that would limit the scale of townhome development beyond just this sort of four units?

Well, let me back up on one reflection on this whole concept of eliminating that. Within an RM-6 district, multifamily units are allowed. You don't have to take advantage of townhome standards in order to get that density, and a townhome form could easily be created as a multifamily product. It would just limit the property lines. Right. So what I what I kind of want to say there is my initial analysis, not everything deep is This attached unit limitation doesn't actually make an impact on what the built form and the density of the district can and will be right so. that's a real quick analysis but it's most likely not impactful to remove it in a negative way.

So clarifying question so if the developer wanted to build more than four.

units then they would bump into an apartment building yeah or they could do they could do a four unit apartment building six unit apartment building they could do it in a townhouse form they could do it in a garden apartment form it's a multi-family district so the only thing this does is enable being able to put a lot line down the party walls right so it limits ownership

which seems like so so my my point being i don't see a downside to eliminating this if that's what you want to do okay yeah i think i think we want the ownership option i would say that

City Council Chambers, Any other questions of staff on townhome and I guess just a process question so we're going to have three separate motions on each of these three zoning text amendments do we do three separate public hearings or just one.

City Council Chambers, can do probably one public comment session chance yeah but but three motions is correct okay.

City Council Chambers, Any other questions on duplex townhomes.

All right, let me catch up here. All right, next we're gonna talk about the accessory dwelling unit standards proposed amendment. So accessory dwelling units, or what you'll hear me call ADUs tonight, are currently limited to 70% of the primary structure size, or 800 square feet is a maximum, right, whichever is less, right? So if your 70% is 600 square feet, your maximum ADU size is 600 square feet. This amendment would allow adus to increase in size up to ninety percent of the primary structure size, or a maximum of twelve hundred square feet, so a good increase in size. Right now, adus are only allowed on a single family lot, a lot containing a single family detached dwelling unit. This amendment would allow adus on duplex lots as well to increase the availability of these opportunities, and this amendment would naturally previously recommended, now state mandated, remove the minimum parking requirements for ADUs, which appears in the ADU section rather than the parking table. So it is a separate amendment. Okay, and a quick note here. I think all of you are aware there is pending state legislation that is not law yet that would force this 1,200 number to be a 1,000 square foot max. It's just a consideration. As I said in the pre meeting that same piece of pending legislation has quite a few things that we would have to come back and clean up the video for. So if you want to go with the 1200 we would already be coming back to change other things if and when this becomes law anyway, so if that helps with that. Okay, what is an accessory dwelling unit, so the video currently defines and we're not proposing to change and accessory dwelling unit as a separate and complete dwelling unit that is contained on the same lot as the structure of a single family dwelling or business. City Council Chambers, recapping recent ad you actions in May of 2024 this Commission recommended expanding allowable ad says to 1200 square feet, as a part of a suite of backyard housing amendments. City Council Chambers, In January of 2026 this Commission recommended approval of a zoning text moment to allow existing non conforming accessory structures to be converted to accessory dwelling units. All right, let's make sure this table got updated. Now here's the table summarizing what we're looking at. So tonight what we're looking at is an increase of the absolute maximum size by 50% from 800 square feet to 1200 square feet and increasing the allowable size relative to the primary home from 70% of the primary home to 90%. We are proposing the removal of the minimum parking requirement for the at you, we are proposing the allowance for one at you on a lot containing a duplex so that is one of you produce duplex lot not duplex unit and. There is. a very slight change to how we do height for adus, but we would cap it at a explicit twenty five feet. Right now it allows one extra foot of height for each foot of setback from the property line. As we're approaching ninety percent or more of the primary structure size, we feel it's prudent for neighborhood compatibility to cap that height and not allow that extra height moving in. All right, here's just an example of what that could look like. If you're looking at a two-story primary home of 2,462 square feet under the current regs, you're capped at an ADU of 800 square feet. This here shows that as a two-story ADU. under the same proposed regulations. This is the number that would allow someone to max out that adu at 1,200 square feet, and that's what this is meant to show you here. Anything over 1,333 square feet for a primary home under the proposed regulation would max out that 1,200 square foot allowance for an adu. City Council Chambers, Okay, a comprehensive plan review talking about what is consistent with comprehensive plan goals, the staff is bringing this to you tonight with the belief that this does support the goal of increasing and diversifying the housing supply and encouraging responsible growth. City Council Chambers, And i'm gonna stop there and take any questions on at us.

Thank you, Mr. Collins. I appreciate the overview of what we've already recommended approval of previously, and hopefully third time's the charm here. So the only question I have on the ADUs is related to this pending state legislation. And it seems like I think that it makes good sense to, to amend and adjust at the appropriate time when we have final text of that. So in the meantime, I agree with staff's recommendation of holding to the 1,200 square feet. One aspect that could create a little more flexibility to weather some changes in what's allowable in the state is by excluding the garage square footage right now. included in the square footage that is part of the calculation whereas other unheated spaces are not included so for me i think the question is um yeah what is what staff's feeling on keeping garages um included in the allowable square footage of adus so the the garage space to count it towards your 1200 square foot gfa versus not right

I think that if the garage space is not counted. You. i'm trying to figure out how to say this, but the absolute CAP of 25 feet and height is going to put you at a two story maximum at you right so generally your configuration is going to be a garage under a living unit. There is no footprint limitations so you'd be looking at it maxing out a garage edu combo with a 1200 square foot footprint if the garage was excluded from that. calculation that could be okay in some neighborhoods and some neighborhoods at 1200 square foot footprint could be big but. that's kind of a consideration. I mean, I think it depends on where it's going without a footprint limitation.

Yeah, I think that's the exact issue. It depends on where it's going. And so for some sites, having a garage makes more efficient use of the lot rather than pushing cars into surface parking and creating more impervious area on a limited residential lot. So not disqualifying sites where it makes sense, maybe due to topography to have some park under in a garage seems sensible to me. So I guess I would advocate for treating the garages along with the other types of unheated space and not counting it against the allowable square footage of an ADU.

Yeah, I will add to my answer I gave you. I mean, there is no footprint limitation. So a single story ADU can have a 1200 square foot footprint. So you're really looking at the impact here is the difference between a one and a two story 1200 square foot footprint.

And I think my point is that with precious 1,200 square feet to use, typically that's then going to become living space and then they'll push the car to outdoor storage, which is fine, but on some sites having the flexibility to accommodate garage within the footprint of the home may make less impervious area on the lot. So I think by having the garage included, knowing that a builder is going to get a better return on the most amount of buildable or livable area, they're going to push it outside. So I'd rather just kind of allow for the deduction.

This is Commissioner Cycle. Just as a thought experiment, if we're not including the garage, City Council Chambers, We have 1200 square foot single story livable space. City Council Chambers, And then, a three car garage next to it, could we potentially have a usage space that is now larger than the primary residence.

City Council Chambers, That might be a question for staff on there are some limitations on accessory structure sizes. Independent of at you, so I think that that would then be that would trigger limitations on the total square footage of accessory structures allowed on a lot that's correct i'm looking those up right now, so we can. So I think there, there are some other natural parameters. That would limit the you know existence of large garages accessory to the at you.

But it might be a little limits on it. i'd request a minute when we finish this presentation to look it up and come back to you with that info at this meeting if that's all right right i'm trying to find it on the fly and get it accurately to you right now there's the.

So I think it is all accessory structures for lots less than an acre have 1,000 square footage limitation on accessory structure size. And then one to three acres goes up to 1,600. And that's like all accessory structures. And once it doesn't count ADUs against that, that might be a question for you.

That's what I wanted to make sure I cover right for you. Yeah. because I'm pretty sure there's an exemption in there, but I want to find it before I tell you so.

And this is the challenge again. I will say, as Chris is looking this up, is this subordinate when you look at building heights, when you look at all these other things, it is very easy for this structure very quickly to become as large, if not larger than the primary structure. And this is a challenge not just unique to Asheville, but this is for any municipality dealing with accessory dwelling units.

So you'll see in the 714 There's a colorful graph in the accessory structure limits. The first sentence under that, which is not enumerated, so it's hard to give you a line reference, reads, the footprint portion of accessory structures used as accessory dwelling units shall not be included in this calculation of footprint for accessory structures. So what Chair Barton referenced earlier, the 800 square foot limit for one structure, 1,000 for all structures on a lot of less than one acre, Does not include the footprint of an accessory dwelling unit that is over and above an accessory dwelling in it. So you could have 1200 square feet of ad you want a lot less than one acre, then you still have a hundred square feet of accessory dwelling unit accessory structure allowance if that makes sense.

If the garage is attached to the at you. Is it considered an accessory structure or is it part of the at you.

So this is a footprint limitation this less than one acre 800 1000 square foot thing so it's not measuring the tfa or the cumulative square footage inside the structure so if it's a garage under at you on top it's just measuring the footprint. So in that case, the garage and the ADU count together. Now, if the garage is on its own footprint or if it's a side-by-side situation, then you're likely looking at counting that garage area towards this footprint limitation. There's a lot of scenarios.

right because you can have a garage with living space next to it and an upstairs living space

Other questions of staff, or have we gone down the rabbit hole far enough?

I will just play out a couple. I sort of have some definition questions here, and I admittedly have not been able to refresh my reading of the definitions the last day or two to recall all of it. But is accessory dwelling unit, as a definition, contained within accessory structure? It is a type of accessory structure, or is that a separate and a part definition?

So it is a type of accessory structure, but it's specifically excluded from that. This gets confusing because it's our you do, but it is a type of accessory structure and it does show up under accessory uses and structures in the video. But when we're looking at accessory structure footprint limitations for lots, the ADU footprint is just exclusively excluded from that. It's carved out.

Yeah. Okay. But other regulations that apply to accessory structures would also apply to ADUs.

Yeah, like minimum side and rear setbacks, things such as that. Absolutely.

Okay. If you had a basement unit in a house, could that be considered an accessory dwelling unit under the current definition?

Definitely, yeah. So we have different definitions right now for attached and detached accessory dwelling units. We really get hung up on the concept of a detached in here. So that is definitely a possibility. As we stand right now. If duplexes were to pass in our all rs districts, then you don't need to utilize the adu standards in order to have a separate unit in a basement anymore i'm making this more complicated but. it's true if we do pass duplexes and rs districts, then you can just have two units on an rs lot without utilizing adu standards so.

City Council Chambers, So, in that case, the at you would not be subject to accessory structure requirements right if it's within the same footprint of the main building, yes, okay.

City Council Chambers, yeah go ahead i've got a few of these just to complicate it a little bit more so if there is a basement apartment and we don't pass the duplex standards, then they cannot build in a detached at you.

They would be okay, so yeah right, so let me, let me back that up a little good question let's say duplexes are not allowed in our districts right let's say that doesn't exist and we're just looking at you standards. They could create a basement apartment that abides by the standards and then that attached unit within the same footprint as an accessory dwelling unit. Now. City Council Chambers, Compare that to a world where the duplex standards, the duplex amendment passes right and. City Council Chambers, Now we have that provision where duplexes are allowed, and you can have an ad you want to duplex lot, so now you could create that basement apartment right. City Council Chambers, As just part of a duplex and you could also create that freestanding at you on the lot.

City Council Chambers, Whereas now, you could not do both. City Council Chambers, Okay. Do you have more questions on that one?

Not yet.

If you have a separate standalone Like garage single car say or two car. Like, and you were to just build on top of the footprint of that is that considered an accessory dwelling unit like in terms of just being separate and apart, because the garage would if the garage stays tied to the primary dwelling if that makes sense.

Okay, so are we touching? I think this scenario happens quite a bit. Like a garage attached to the primary dwelling or not?

I guess both cases. Okay.

Well, both cases you could build an ADU on top, right?

Okay. And the garage square footage in that case, would that apply to the ADU square footage?

So right now we don't carve out that garage square well okay if it's attached the garage square footage is not counting with your ad you that's your house's garage it's attached to your house. The ad is an attached ad you at that point if it's detached under the current way it's written the garage. square footage can count against your ad square yeah.

Okay. I don't know how we square that challenge, but I think that. I do think there's a challenge here where the footprint of the accessory structure in whole could get very large if you exclude the garage. But I think that if the garage is continuing to be used by the primary structure, then it should be excluded. Do you see what I'm saying?

Just think a little bit louder.

yeah so if you have a garage that is a standalone separate structure from the house but it is continued from the primary structure like and it is continuing to be used by the primary structure it does not feel appropriate for that garage square footage to count towards your maximum adu square footage however if you exclude that entirely had say a you know the scenario jason was referencing the the three you know a two-car garage or whatever you like you could add to a 1200 square foot accessory dwelling unit you could add 800 square feet of garage to it and that would be allowed in less than an acre property correct that is correct okay took me a while to get there but thank you we got there 600 square foot garage 800.

Right, so the garage is a. accessory structure, but not an accessory dwelling unit so on an acre a lot of. One acre yeah a lot of less than one acre then there's a lot and then above the ad for 800 square feet of accessory structure okay well. It's a little simpler when we rewrite the code. But right now, this is what we got.

Okay. Is there anything else in the state legislation that would affect ADUs specifically?

The use?

The ADUs. Other than the 1,000 square foot. Is that the only thing?

I'm not aware of anything. Carly, Janice?

yeah yeah yeah i'm not i'm not aware of anything okay and it clarifies that the city is permitted

State legislation?

Yes, it has a definition which says ADUs, detached ADU is smaller than the primary structure. It doesn't say what percentage. And so there's nothing else that prohibits us except for the total square footage. But there's a permissive section that says cities can regulate the percentage of primary to accessory. And you guys, you have the 90%.

So back to the the conundrum right of including or not concluding if it if it to if it to guard garage is 600 square feet or less. And you're limited to two stories. Anyway, and you wanted to put something on top that's your 1200 square feet right there, so that would not be a problem in the current scenario where we're, including the garage.

you could put a 600 square foot unit above a 600 square foot garage you could put a 600 square foot unit above a 600 square foot garage is what you're saying yeah i think that's right yeah i'm inclined to just leave it as it's written personally so you're inclined to leave it as is i'm inclined to leave it as it is currently written

That staff that staff has.

Yes, sorry, as staff has presented it to us.

Are we ready to move on to parking or any more ADU?

I don't want to cut off Commissioner Brawl if you're still mid swing. Commissioner Faircloth. I brought it up the last time we looked at this i'm going to bring it up again. If we're raising it if the the revised maximum areas 1200 square feet or 90% of the primary structure, whichever is less. Why not just take it to 100%. i don't see what cutting off that extra 10 does to help the situation when there's already a 1200 square foot cap as well as i think that just further handicaps you if you have an existing smaller structure why not just make it 100 the size or 1200 square feet and the reason i'm bringing this back i don't feel like i got support last time which is fine but the reason i'm bringing it back up is It seems like ultimately the state's going to make us bring it down to 1,000 square feet anyway. We're losing ground. Why not? I don't personally see what that 10 extra percent does for the character or something, but that's my personal opinion, and I would just want to share that again with my fellow commissioners.

Well, I think this commissioner role to sort of hop onto that. And this is a came up in the pre meeting as well, but that this, this limitation limit is more impactful. If it's the lesser of the two, it's more impactful for smaller footprint, primary structures. It would limit, you know, a thousand foot primary structure to be a 900 foot accessory dwelling unit max rather than the 1200. Cause it is lesser of the two, right? I don't believe that is clarified as well as it needs to be in the table and the text. So I think that I think that change definitely needs to be made, but yeah I do I do think. yeah or whether just simplifying and having it be one or the other seems to me to potentially make sense.

I'm just gauging my fellow commissioner's appetite to change that really, because I i'm i'm happy to change it.

But I I agree.

I'm missing some other point.

I agree both with both Commissioner Faircloth Faircloth and Commissioner Brawl that The a the table is not like it doesn't say you know the lesser of the two. So I I do think it leaves some ambiguity. And then, in addition, I I agree with you, Commissioner Faircloth, that I'm not sure what that 10% discount is getting us. I I know that previous to us contemplating duplexes in all residential districts the attached adu was used as a way to build duplexes in our community and it was always strange that one had to be 70 the size of the other um now that we're going to allow duplexes this is more i think to enable the traditional notion of adus and i'm in favor of providing them more the most flexibility we can and not penalizing small homes

um by having just lesser allowed adu square footage so i that's a long way of saying i agree yeah and i guess thank you commissioner barton christopher cloth here and i guess the counter argument and i'll speak up for them even though i feel this way is that you know having the smaller structure preserves the character of the neighborhood by having a smaller structure i hear that but i don't think anyone on the street is going to look at a house and be like oh that's 10 smaller like If you're going to do it, make it half or something or something you're not going to notice 10% size difference on two structures. agreed personally, but thank you.

City Council Chambers, John Potter, Should we just kind of move us along what why don't we do parking will have more time to deliberate after public comment, we can kind of refine what we're recommending but.

Quick question. I don't think it was in this part of the presentation, but you mentioned it with the duplexes and it was in the staff report around the number of permits that we've gotten over the past year. Do we have information on number of COs we've gotten?

For duplexes?

For both duplexes and ADUs.

Did not run a CO number, just the permit number on that. I imagine with 18 being the permit number, it's probably... I mean, they're pretty simple residential construction. So most of them probably follow through, but that's just anecdotal. I try to shy away still from providing very far back ADU numbers because for a long time, our permitting system was not set up to accurately track ADUs. So I do not want to give you misinformation on that. And that's just my confidence level with our ability to pull that number out. I can at some point provide approximate numbers with an asterisk on them, but there's no way for us to give you an exact number for like the last ten years, or however long like that we can get like shorter time spans. But we're talking i'll tell you anecdotally. Sam, i'm going to look at you to double check me on this, but I mean,

adu's what do we have maybe i think it was 26 in the staff report yeah this is one of those things where staff can provide the data update to you at the next meeting uh comprehensively looking at what is in our system and how we've traditionally treated this and also what it has been since around 2021 when adu got its own permit category yeah um bear with me

i'd appreciate that because I think that can help us track ticket for at a point of comparison if and when the changes are implemented, we can track them now it's all set up now to be able to track so as far as metrics moving forward that's not a problem.

it's just hard to get accurate historical numbers on it to use in nashville. So.

I had a question before we move on because it's now that we've gone through duplexes and ADUs, my question applies. So if you have a duplex, two dwelling units, side by side, you can turn it into town homes and subdivide it, right? And then each of those could then get their own ADU?

As it's written right now. As it's written right now. That is a possibility, yep.

But currently as written a duplex unless it's subdivide couldn't have to ad use if it was on a single lot of duplex on a single lock and only still only have 180 you, you would have to subdivide to get the do right.

Okay, the the only kind of naturally occurring constraint there is when you create this townhome lots and you take advantage of that smaller lot waiver. you're still gonna have to abide by a lot setbacks and building setbacks that are going to kind of in most cases naturally limit the size of an ad that could go on one of those townhome lots. If that makes sense yeah because we're getting into lots that are substandard to our minimum lot size in that case.

And the setback would be six feet, right? It wouldn't be like the larger?

Six feet for the accessory dwelling unit. But there are some code requirements for separation from the main structure. I think that's six feet as well.

Parking?

All right. This one got a lot simpler. I'm going to take you through some of the numbers anyway, just so it helps kind of tell the story. But the main thing here is that recent State legislation has removed local government's authority to require a minimum number of parking spaces for all uses. Right. So that makes this amendment, which previously had a lot of comprehensive plan and backup information. Now it is required to bring our Udo and compliance with State law. We are proposing to retain maximum parking allowances really for the sake of limiting impervious surface and lot coverage. But we are proposing to simplify those since the table is going away. Okay. So there's a beautiful parking picture. Parking is to provide safe and adequate space for the temporary storage of vehicles straight from the Udo.

All right, excuse me.

All right. So recent parking actions in January, 2,025. This commission recommended approval of a similar amendment for transit support of corridors. But you did so with a recommendation that all parking requirements in the city be eliminated within six months. We are a little over a year late, but we're here tonight. We are proposing to remove parking requirements for all uses citywide. And previously, just so you know, what we were proposing was to retain them for hotels in the CBD downtown. We can no longer recommend to retain those. We're not authorized to. So it is now just all parking requirements removed for all uses. Again, for maximum allowed uses, we are simplifying that. We are retaining bicycle parking requirements. We do not believe the state law prohibits us from doing that. So you'll see that in your markups as well. Okay, just for your confidence building and what it looks like without parking requirements. Staff did an analysis of thirteen projects within the parking exemption area that is now in place. That's in the Cbd, and within a certain radius of the Cbd. We looked at thirteen projects that made up six hundred and eighty nine housing units. Every single one of those Projects provided parking at some level, even though they weren't required to, and in the end we only got 7% fewer parking spaces than would have been required if that wasn't in that parking exemption zone. So real world scenario. 93% of the spaces that would have been required were required anyway with these residential space presidential projects. Most recent changes, these are the ones from March of 2025, tracking the impact on that. we have approved nine projects that would have required or required parking since that time. This data actually goes up until June or June hearing when we prepared these slides. When aggregated, those nine projects would have required a total of 170 spaces before the March 2025 amendment, which eliminated parking requirements for most uses on transit support of corridors. Under the current ordinance, As amended in March, 2,025, those 9 projects were only required to provide a total of 47 spaces. I imagine that was on one or 2 of the 9 projects. But you get my point. However, when we put all those together, those 9 projects still provided a total of 228 spaces, which was more than would have been required before the amendment. projects still provide parking, even when we don't tell them to. It's something we've found all across the state, all across the country, and now I can show you here in Asheville. So compliance with state statutes, what does that mean? NC House Bill 162, which was also known when it came into law, Session Law 2026-39, was signed into law on July 6, 2026. And this was mentioned earlier in the legislative update, but what it does, it says, we cannot require an off-street parking lot to meet a minimum number of parking spaces per development or structure, regardless of occupancy or use. So that's pretty clear. It cars out some exemptions for coastal communities as defined by the State. We're clearly not. I don't have to read you that definition. We are not a coastal community, and then some further carve outs for historic districts within those coastal communities. So there are no carve outs for the city of Asheville. We are no longer allowed to require minimum parking for development. Okay, so i'm gonna that's all for parking do we have any questions about parking before I move on back where I bring us back around to all three. Okay, here's our projected timeline June 3 2026 we had a preliminary discussion on these amendments a lot happened since then today we're at the August meeting, this is the public hearing before you just to vote on these amendments and they are slotted to be seen by city council in August 25. The main points is that even taking even taking out the state mandate to eliminate parking minimums these three proposed amendments proposed that flexibility for housing development. They are all supported by the conference of plan missing middle housing study and the affordable housing plan, which are our three most recent relevant plans. I think this is less important now, but the amendments can stand separately, but they do work together to help. bring more housing. And then I added, you know, of course, minimum parking provisions must be updated to comply with NC State law. Staff recommendations are the same on all three. Staff does recommend approval. We went through on duplex allowance updates, accessory dwelling unit standard updates, and minimum parking provisions elimination. We went through the comprehensive plan back up on both duplex allowance updates and accessory dwelling unit standards earlier in the presentation. And that's it. That's all I got for you. Reminder, we did say one public comment period is fine. We would need separate motions for each amendment.

Mr. Collins, really appreciate staff's work on this and the community for being engaged in the process and keeping your enthusiasm for zoning text amendments. It's been a lot of work to get here and just really appreciate everything that's gone into some improvements in my mind to our UDO. With that, we will open for public comment at 7.01 with a reminder that if you're speaking just on behalf of yourself, three minutes. On behalf of a group that is identified, 10 minutes. Please identify yourself into the microphone. Thank you to everybody who submitted written comment in advance. That was really helpful analysis to shape our discussion. So we're open for public comment. I do have a sign-in sheet. I guess I should have followed that. Maybe let me follow the sign-in sheet, and then we'll open it more generally. So first on our sign-in sheet was Michael Fisher.

Is Michael still here?

Next I have Allison Ormsby. This might be from a prior meeting. I don't know. All right. Free for all time.

All right.

I'm Andy Paul. I am a lead organizer with Asheville for All. We are enthusiastic about these amendments. We also think we need way more, and that is, of course, the sort of two sides of this that we have to keep in our heads. In addition, I have a doctorate in American history. I teach history at AB Tech. And I have to tell you, I've been thinking a lot about the history of this stuff, really all day, because this morning I read one of the letters that you all received. And I've just been thinking about it all day. And so I want to read a quote from this letter that you guys received. It says, single family zoning has provided homeowners with predictable development patterns and helped protect neighborhood character and property values. And I'm sure everyone up here knows the history of single family only zoning, that it began in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision in Baltimore where racial restrictions were struck down. It popped up in California in order to exclude Chinese laundry workers from certain neighborhoods. Almost immediately at the same time, it popped up in New York City to exclude poor Jewish American garment workers from certain neighborhoods. And recent research, really interesting, has shown that single family only zoning, the way it popped up in different cities, actually follows the path of the Great Migration. And all of that aside, it's important to say that exclusionary zoning doesn't care whether you are black or white or purple or blue. If you are a young person, if you are a working person, if you do not have asset wealth, single family only zoning prevents you from being in a neighborhood. So when we talk about neighborhood character, we're talking about keeping characters out. We like to say that neighborhood character is made by characters. And so this is not to sort of name names or put blame on the people that sent in that letter this morning, but just to say I think sometimes it helps to step outside of ourselves and think about the big picture here and to think about where this single family only zoning came from. Aside from that, I just wanna say I'm a homeowner. I own a townhome in an RS neighborhood. I think it was built just before the UDO in the 1990s. It is the best neighborhood in Asheville. It's the most walkable neighborhood, most walkable residential neighborhood in Asheville. It's just off of Vermont Avenue. And I would love to have more neighbors in my RS neighborhood. I'd love to have more people around. I'd love to have more kids, more young families, more people to frequent the businesses along Haywood Road. So please don't let this be the last interim zoning updates. But I do think this is a big symbolic victory, just getting the duplexes everywhere in the city. Thanks.

Thank you. Next up.

Hi there, my name is David Copelman, national resident. I wrote something, but I'm actually just going to talk off the top of my head. I just want to encourage you guys to keep moving forward on the missing middle housing study. Ashville, as you guys know, is a huge supply problem. And I think this is a big step with the duplexes, but there's a lot more to be done with triplexes, quadplexes. I know there's been some movement with backyard lots and cottages, but that's not really addressing the huge problem. And there's a lot of work that needs to be done. And I just want to encourage you guys to, whatever barriers and log jams with Council, and you know that you guys face to keep please try and push forward, because as residents we need this. It's the housing market is crushed us so as all you guys know, especially you who are native and been here a long time. But yeah, that's kind of what I wanted to just come up here and say and wanted to support and that you guys please continue to, you know, we paid for this study from these experts and continue to follow it. And also, Brenton, totally agree about the 100% versus the 90%. It doesn't make any sense. And I've never seen anyone say that house looks 10% smaller than the other ones. anyways thank you so much appreciate you guys thank you

good evening my name is adam christian and i'm a small business owner and resident in asheville uh and i also work with asheville for all um i'm here to ask you to recommend the duplex amendment um just speaking of the numbers uh a starting salary for a north carolinian teacher um when in their first year is 48 000 the starting asheville firefighter salary is 52 000 who a Buncombe County child care worker makes around $33,000 and none of those folks can afford the $63,000 it takes to rent a modest two bedroom in this county. And so we need to build a little bit more so that we can help our people. Other cities have done things like this. Portland, Oregon legalized duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes in 2021. And what they have seen since then is that new middle housing is actually down $200,000 per unit. um since they enacted it and demolition has the demolition rates have stayed constant what that means is that not only their housing is more affordable per unit they also have preserved the neighborhood character by not demolishing by actually using infill um and i think that this sort of amendment duplexes are really gentle sort of evidence-based reform um it's the size of a house uh and so Asheville can't really subsidize our way into getting out of our housing shortage but we can stop making some of these modest homes illegal um so please give this amendment a favorable recommendation um I also just wanted to say thank you I know this is these meetings are long and this is a hard job and so I appreciate all you guys do uh thanks thank you

I also, oh sorry, Susan Bean with Mountain True. I also echo Adam in thanking you all for your service. This is a hard job, these meetings are long, and I am grateful to all of you. Also thank you to whoever provided the Pirate's Booty that really saved the night. I work for Mountain True, and we are an environmental advocacy organization, and we support a sustainable Asheville and also want more housing options for our community members in the city. Some of the benefits of multifamily housing include that smaller homes with shared walls are more energy efficient. Building up and taking advantage of vertical space for housing can create more open space and green space and is a better use of land, which we are grateful for. More people living within our existing neighborhoods means that our transit system can serve more people without costing any more to provide or to operate that transit system. And if more people can live in walkable and bikeable places, then this reduces our carbon emissions from driving around in single occupancy vehicles. So that's all on top of the affordability benefits of having options like duplexes and ADUs for people to live in. make these things great. And so we support them and encourage you to support these as well. Thanks.

Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak?

Thank you so much for being here and for all your work on this and thank you to the staff that's put a lot of hours into it. It's very obvious. My name is Megan Carroll. I'm with the Builders Association of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We represent four counties and you all are one of them. take part in and I just wanted to say that we are very supportive of these changes and very grateful for the process starting on this and the movement forward in this process. It's removing barriers and it's not changing, it's not removing standards I wanted to say. It's creating a lot more flexibility. And I think this flexibility really matters because regulation has a cost. Sometimes that cost is measured in dollars. Sometimes it's measured in time. And sometimes it's measured in the opportunities of homes that are never built in our community. Again, this I think will help to start the creation of a healthier housing ecosystem where more people can live and thrive. So thanks again and appreciate all your work.

I'm Joe Hoffman, born here in 1959. So I have watched a lot of change come through this city, including the interstate systems. But I have lived here for the last 20, 30 years, I guess. And I had my own financial crisis about 10 or 15 years ago. and I had to sell the house that I had. And when I sold it, I was shocked all of a sudden that I could not afford to rent anywhere in this area. And so I did a lot of thinking about that and I was lucky. I worked with a real estate person that I had bought from before and I'm renting from him at 50% of value and he doesn't raise the rent. And it was before all the prices went up as much. So I was very fortunate to have that relationship with him. And I try to be nice to him when things have to be done. But I just want to say, and I want you to know I've worked with a lot of people over the years that have jobs here as teachers or as lots of things, hospitality. They can't live here. They have to live sometimes 30, 50 miles away. And so what you're doing is so important. And I really want to say thank you for doing that.

Anyone else like to speak? Seeing none, we will close public comment at 714. City Council Chambers, Now it's deliberation time so we'll handle these kind of separately. City Council Chambers, In our earlier discussion around. City Council Chambers, duplex townhome we had a couple of revisions that we were recommending one was the elimination of the parking location provision and the second one was the limitation on for attached units. City Council Chambers, Anything else, and can you see that second one again. the limitation on four attached units and RM 6. And I've got the numbers of those ADU sections that I can read when the time is right. But is there any other qualitative features of the duplex townhome that we want to further discuss?

My name was invoked during that first portion. And I did want to just I wanted to offer up my opinion here that I think these are good. I think it's very clear that Asheville needs housing. I think a lot of what people brought forth during the public comment highlights that issue. I think in my professional opinion, I think what we're proposing today because it is not going to equitably be distributed across the entire city. I think if we're only changing the amount of allowed units, it's only one half of the density equation. And I do think that the size of the lot and the amount of land needed to build housing also needs to be considered. So I would, I'm inclined to... have a uh condition to this motion or yeah to the motion that we that council would look into and research reforms into land size um we don't have to do it right now i just think it needs to be looked into i think it's yeah i just think it needs to be looked into as you're saying just to make sure i heard that correctly Sorry, my captions. Can you say it again?

Was it minimum lot size that you were saying you wanted to look at? Minimum lot size?

I think minimum lot size, lot widths, setbacks, things that are used to regulate the size of the land.

I was going to add lot width to that as well.

Yeah, thank you for that, Commissioner Anzalito. I wholeheartedly agree. I think that a holistic analysis of where we are enabling more production of housing is certainly in order and falls within, I think, the duties of this commission to request analysis of things that help regulate the use of land. As we kind of gravitate towards a motion, I would certainly attach that so that council can see that we're excited about duplexes, townhome modifications, and we want to, in kind of response to some of the public comment we've received today, do more.

I'll chime in with some thoughts around the anti displacement resolution. So there are two points in that resolution, one of which says the goal is to incorporate new measures into the city's planning, zoning and development review processes to provide heightened protections for the identified communities and neighborhoods. And then point number four says, to the extent possible, demonstrate that the UDO updates are consistent with this resolution and neighborhood plans are considered. So just kind of rooted in that and rooted in, I know we didn't receive public comment tonight from the Legacy Neighborhoods Coalition, but we have heard from them before. I just want to

echo their previous comments that they are not opposed to this.

It is a matter of when. So I have concerns that we have this resolution and it says these things and we are still talking about passing amendments without these kind of guard rails that were presented in the resolution.

and I agree. I think that the resolution was an important affirmation of a lot of work that is continuing. I think we've heard reports from the anti-displacement affordable housing work group, We know that there's a lot more input to get. I think where I fall on it is the resolution was a council resolution and I would defer to council whether these text amendments adhere or do not adhere to them since the resolution didn't come out of this body. I'm kind of inclined to let that decision rest at council. but i hear the ongoing concern around sequencing and i think it's important to lift up that we need to remain engaged and understand the impacts that are unintended in communities that have been identified as vulnerable so i'm still inclined to support this tonight but certainly understand the uh the highlighted concern there

yeah and i hear i hear a lot of support from my fellow commissioners and i definitely understand everyone's perspectives on this i just wanted to say that i appreciate staff's historical data on the parking requirements and how that has translated um chris i think he said something along the lines of they're providing parking even when we don't require them to right And so if this passes tonight and at city council, I really would love to hear that statement around affordable housing. You know, we're seeing developers provided even when we don't require them to, because we're not seeing that all of the time. And my fear is that These regulations will provide additional housing, but not additional affordable housing, especially not additional affordable housing at the levels that we need in areas that aren't aligned with the citywide area median income. And what I mean by that is that there are certain neighborhoods, certain areas in the city where the incomes are actually much lower than the area median income. And so people are continuously getting priced out. So I just want to kind of share all that with the understanding that this might pass. And I want to see some of that data so that we can look at it and maybe revisit some of these regulations when we do the UDO rewrite.

I agree with that sentiment. I think that's, I think that's something the affordability piece of the area median, that often something that's like 80% AMIs in effects, you know, could have displacement effects on a neighborhood that is well below 80% AMI. So I totally concur. I think that it should, whenever we do the UDO update, I think that's something we should be looking into.

yeah and i can offer you know some other conversations that i've heard in different spaces as far as solutions to what this could look like for it to be equitable so i appreciate the portland examples there are also examples from across the country notably i think in new york city where the city provided tools such as funding for lower income residents to be able to take advantage of low or no interest loans to build ADUs. And so again, it's not a no never, it's a no when there are these kinds of opportunities so that all people really can take advantage of it because we know not everybody has the equity to be able to build an ADU in their backyard.

um mr commissioner cycle i i completely agree and i actually came in here today uh a little on the fence about the timing um of this in relation to the affordable housing working group and the movements that the city's been making. And the reason is I've seen some trust starting to be built back, but it's very fragile. And I do have concerns with The pacing, I mean, everyone here might know back, you know, I told Chair Barton this before when the presentation was happening that I can't believe it's been two years since we had recommended this the first go around. So, I mean, still strongly in favor of all three of these amendments. I just I kind of want both right I want this, but I also want to make sure that we are being cognizant and reflective of our whole community and the concerns that that lie in some of these lower income spaces. and i think that these things could be done in conjunction with with what you were saying as far as some level of assistance to have equitable access to all of all these things that we're proposing including the adus um you know since this is the the motion in front of us now i do i do think i'm inclined to go for it because we're not voting on a timeline but i would strongly recommend You know, because this is the timeline that's been put forth for us by council, you know, instructing staff for this particular timeline. And so I would recommend, yes, I agree with you, Chair Barton, that that decision now lays, I think, with council to determine, you know, the order of these things and to make sure that we are meeting the intent of this resolution that was just passed by Council. whether or not this is brought before them on august 25th or later or whatnot i don't know um but yeah i'm strong i just wanted to to share that with everybody that i'm sort of struggling with the same thing because i think i think we want we want all these things because it's good for for asheville as a whole but we want to make sure that it's good for everybody in asheville

Mayor Mrakas, Commissioner faircloth um Thank you for those comments and i'm glad we're bringing that up this up, I mean I know the public comment was overwhelmingly in support of it, but we know we did receive written comment. Mayor Mrakas, With those same hesitations echoed i'm not going to go through them again, since you all just did but. wrestling with the same things. You are Commissioner Cycle and Zubinskaya. I guess where I'm feeling is there's a lot of pieces to this puzzle. It'll all have to be figured out to make it work. I guess I feel like if we can define this one piece and hand it to council as we start to define the edges of the other parts, it helps us build in what the missing parts are, which need to be done. Like it needs to be in conjunction, but we're trying to create policies simultaneously without knowing what the other policy is going to be or do. I feel like defining this and sending it up the ladder helps us in some way define or start to define more what that anti-displacement is. That's my opinion. Thank you.

Yeah, and I think that to take a step back and look historically, a lot of what we're contemplating now is correction of issues that were created when we downzoned a massive amount of the city in 1997 through the passage of the UDO. And in 1925, when the first city plan was adopted, the Nolan Plan, it allowed for two-unit dwellings in every residential area. So while I understand we're kind of anxious and nervous about the moment we're in, I think to take a step back, we really need to ask ourselves what land use regulation is intended to do and what we have asked it to do over time and created kind of an ever-growing Frankenstein of the UDO And so I think that there's a lot of important work within anti-displacement. But for me, land use regulation is the use of the land appropriate. And if the use of the land is allowing more people to enjoy the same things that we do as residents of Asheville, then fundamentally for me, that's sort of the question we're here to answer. in the process of that highlighting and uplifting all the things that need to happen to make sure that there are no unintended consequences and that the pressures that have been particularly acute and vulnerable areas of our community have protections that that is super important but for me it's kind of City Council Chambers, The the provisions of the video emerging from the missing middle housing study and the robust analysis and presentation of staff robust amount of Community input we're really just trying to. City Council Chambers, Correct some some challenges and we're not going far enough, you know we really need to go a lot further, but in a way that brings everybody that's here along for it so um. City Council Chambers, And is anyone ready to make a motion on duplex townhome or further comments questions.

City Council Chambers, One question I just wanted to ask was. City Council Chambers, I know the resolution mentions neighborhood plans as well as staff familiar with any like neighborhood planning documents that. City Council Chambers, explicitly reference duplexes or views. City Council Chambers, um.

Didn't come prepared with an answer for that right now. So I don't want to kind of like anecdotally tell you. Yeah, I mean there's it's it's kind of a loaded question we have. We have like a couple of official neighborhood plans. We have some plans on a page that we're done. It depends on what you're talking about. There's a whole lot of different documents representing neighborhood plans. There are some that call for mostly single family that are suddenly call for mostly single family on the fringes and increasing density in the certain parts of the area to a degree. So I'm characterizing our neighborhood plans as generally having a support for a lower density development within their boundaries Without being able to pull them all up right this minute, but more information could be provided for sure In a clarifying question kind of adjacent this is Commissioner Bell I

Several months ago, I think earlier this year, we talked about mapping legacy neighborhoods as an initiative of stepping forward into anti-displacement. Was that done? Because I don't think that was presented back to us.

Go ahead. I'm sorry, you said mapping?

Mapping, yeah. I think we were talking about defining... You know, where are the legacy neighborhoods and where do the other neighborhoods, what are the boundaries? We talked a lot about that.

We have we have maps that show neighborhoods boundaries. They're mostly self-selected boundaries, right? It's it's not like a city limit that's established by a charter annexation or anything like that. But we do have generally representative maps that people seem to agree on. But I can't characterize them as like a like i said they're not like a municipal or corporate limit it's it's a self-selected kind of boundary situation we actually have even had events with the legacy neighborhoods coalition where we got together and we had a mapping activity to try and define those boundaries um big tables paper maps i think you were there too sam um and that for the most part that the boundaries are pretty much agreed on in all but like two legacy neighborhoods. So yeah, sorry, kind of a long-winded answer, but it's not a super exact science mapping them, but we do have representative maps, yeah.

I think I think as we've discussed that's really important especially as we're adopting and considering the neighborhood plans making sure where is as exact as possible so that there's not room for ambiguity

And I do want to be clear that we do also have a Gis layer and a neighborhood mapping tool, which is reflective of what is on those plans on a page. Those are the boundaries that are officially adopted. That is again. That is part of what is on the city website that is accessed through the city rest portal. If you're familiar with how to access that data, I can get all that information to you. It is again made difficult. staff hears you when you say that and that is a thing we have tried to do for some time now their culture geography and personal identity are three very different things and some of those are much easier to map than the others i think we need to be having the same conversation we have The geographic boundaries mapped I can answer that I think what you are hearing in public input is not necessarily a thing that can be mapped so much as felt and that's more a legislative matter than a staff matter.

Thank you.

I have one final comment. I just wanted to thank staff for talking through the . It's a new law, very confusing, and I just appreciate the walkthrough. I did also want to, I've made this point before and so have others, but whenever we go through the UDO rewrite, I think that that would be a piece, like the naming conventions of the different typologies I think is quite confusing. I think we're all on the same page, but I just wanted to highlight it here since it was a big point of discussion that I think this was just like, here's your parcel, here's the amount of units you get, and then just do it that way.

I'm prepared to make a motion if there's no further discussion.

Please.

Commissioner Faircloth here. On the duplex and townhome entitlement, amendment i move to recommend approval of the proposed wording amendments to chapter 7 of the asheville code of ordinances and find that the proposed amendments are reasonable around the public interest are consistent with the city's comprehensive plan and meet the development needs of the community and that the amendments will one promote zoning policies to encourage more housing and two promote small-scale residential units on residential lots With limits aimed at encouraging compatibility and creating flexibility with the planning permitting construction process with. Two edits that we are going to. remove or strike section 716 2c item 3b which relate which is the section relating to where the parking has to be located we're going to strike that and we're going to strike 716 2c item 2 which is the strike section limiting the number of townhomes. I think I got that correct.

Second.

Or in RM6.

So we have a motion. Before we take a second, could I seek a friendly amendment to the motion to at a condition of further exploration of the lot with lot size parameters that may impact the relative uptake of this around the city.

Sure, with the included recommendation as mentioned by the chair and fellow commissioners. Is that acceptable? Second. Sam?

We have a motion and a second.

Any last questions?

All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nay. So the motion passes six to one. Thanks for the great discussion there.

And I'm sorry, who was the name?

Commissioner Zudyevska. Zudyevska.

Thank you. Any last deliberation on ADUs?

No deliberation. I just want to thank the staff for the summary of the working group. I really appreciated that, and I really appreciated and want to again highlight the section that talked about where there are differing opinions and there are congruent opinions so really my reflection is that we all want the same things and the the differing opinions are in the how so i just want to reiterate and just give that shout out to staff i also really appreciated that summary too that's a great comment thanks

add a comment um we had a lot of discussion about the garage uh and then how that affects the building footprint and the accessory structure size um i'm inclined to remove it from the calculation for the adu i think the spirit of what we're voting on today is to build more housing for people And then ironically, we're actually also voting to eliminate parking minimums. And so keeping the garage as a calculation tort, so if you build a garage as part of an ADU and it takes away square footage for the house, I think the spirit of what we're voting on here, I think the approach that I would appreciate is if we lowered the amount of acceptable accessory structure square footage I know that's not what's in front of us today but I just wanted to voice my opinion here that I think we should yeah I would like more housing for people and I think the way that we're we could accomplish that would just be by taking the garage out of the calculation

I agree. I don't know that we had kind of consistent agreement on that point. Any other thoughts from the Commission on inclusion or exclusion of garage in the allowable max square footage?

I think I had a similar thought when discussing that, that it seems like a problem with the accessory structure regulation rather than with the accessory dwelling unit regulation. yeah I mean I'm not sure I have all the answers there, but I think I would prefer to address it in that requirement, rather than and take it out of the ad you. calculation. I don't have a proposal right now, but I do think there really needs to be a deep dive into the definitions of all of these. The ADU, the accessory structure, dwelling overall. There's just a lot of confusion. A townhome and a duplex. Like you could have a duplex that's also an ad you I mean it's it's very confusing and it's it's it matters for people that are applying to create you know one or the other to ensure that they're defined appropriately in order to be able to for them to continue to build something else in the future, potentially so. I think all that to say my inclination is to also remove it, but also to recommend that we maybe even take a look at the definitions of these terms, perhaps with a lot with lot size considerations, like whether this is something that needs to be addressed ahead of the UDO update.

I really second that, Commissioner Bell. I think looking at the definitions is really important. I think removing the garage from the square footage makes a lot of sense, and it gets really confusing when it's garage space for the primary dwelling versus garage space for the ADU. It's just going to lead to a lot more confusion. And I think overall, the lot size is going to dictate the size of the ADU, you know, up into the maximum.

This commissioner is like, well, hear me out for a second. We're governing square footage gross square footage of the unit. Instead of the footprint. Because my concern with with with taking the garage out was obviously the scenario where you do 1200 square foot on a single story and then do a three car garage on it, and then now you've got this massive structure right um. Why don't we consider. Instead of gross square footage just have the footprint be 1200 square feet. Keeping the garage we can still do two stories. coverage you're saying basic yeah that footprint right you're limiting the footprint and then so let's say you have 600 square foot of that. Is garage you now have another 600 on the bottom floor and 1200 you can't you've got up to 1800 square feet of gross square foot area. livable space. But you're limiting the footprint to 1200 square feet like I just i'm trying to wrap my head around why we're approaching this if we already have a height limitation, why are we approaching around gross square foot instead of footprint.

Commissioner faircloth.

Sorry i'm trying to put the words together in my head. I guess the intention in my mind, the intention of an ad you is. To have another person, you know we're not building accessory parking. Like, so I don't. I guess it doesn't bother me to leave it in there because I want people to be incentivized to do more housing and less parking in that scenario if you really want. attached garage another house you need to subdivide and do the backyard lot or the flag lot or the one of the other tools we've created right yeah you're saying it's essentially a disincentive to build a garage correct i think my question is you really want it you need to have a separate subdivided law and go through that whole process and be within the setbacks and follow all the other rules that a normal single family home plus garage has to follow i guess is my thought process

I just yeah I don't I could be wrong about this, but I really don't see a lot of detached garage production in Asheville and I think that we're seeing them included within the footprint. But I don't necessarily see that this is going to create the worst case of you get an ADU that's not deducted, that's not factored into your accessory structure limitation. And then you're also going to build a detached garage to sort of max out what you can build on the on your lot. I just don't see that being that typology being built around Asheville. Like it's a lot of expense to build an accessory structure. So to build an accessory structure solely dedicated to vehicle storage. You know, I know we see some sort of older accessory garages, but nobody's building that now. I think it's just because the economies don't make sense. So while I totally agree with the point, I think that we've got kind of a convoluted overlapping set of standards, and footprint is really what we should be driving at. Our last consideration was let's not regulate footprint. We want to make sure that ADUs are allowable as aging in place and age-friendly dwellings regardless of, you know, we don't want to push ADU developers into mandatory two-story ADUs. But I think what you're saying is yeah 1200 square foot footprint regardless kind of accomplishes that. But to me, I feel like the more flexible, we can be the better and so removing garages from the calculation, knowing that it just doesn't seem like we're. City Council Chambers, Building them as. City Council Chambers, But I mean that's I would support either way, I just my mind is that making the ad you provisions more. City Council Chambers, more usable and more flexible for it to accommodate the variety of lots that we have around Asheville. The other thing I want to mention is we kind of, we're talking a lot about the detached ADU scenario with garages, but when a lot are built as attached ADUs, I guess you can just build, you can follow the garage provisions on the primary residence and then just allow your ADU to park within it. I don't know, it seems like there's some some further challenges that need to be explored.

I think it's confusing if you have an existing garage attached or detached and then make an ADU that's attached to the garage in some way or another. That's more, I think that scenario is most frequent in my brain, but maybe not.

i would offer that we're probably going to look at this a couple more times so let's get something so if it's um if the primary purpose of this to commissioner faircloth's point is to create more housing i would encourage us to leave it as is and understand that we'll have opportunities to revisit the garage language in the future

No, I think it's still a valid conversation. I just think we're kind of gotten a little bit in the wormhole or rabbit hole. I agree that the staff have a strong opinion about this one way or the other before a motion is made.

I think I see what you're trying to get at. Yeah, so I mean, I'm not sure you can really If you're worried about a proliferation of accessory structures or an excessively sized accessory structure. Accessories excessively sized accessory dwelling unit with a large garage attached to it is excluded from the calculations, then probably setting that 1200 is both a footprint and total area maximum while excluding the garage.

think right yeah i i would answer more curtly and say that that staff does have somewhat of an objection to this as we're going into this negotiation of a new udo to answer uh vice chair cycle's previous question of why don't we do it this way all these things are interrelated as we're exploring a lot with as we're exploring uh the primary structure size our building height is not from the first floor elevation to the midpoint or gable. It is from where the fire department enters to the ceiling of the highest occupied floor. So what you could conceivably do is then build this huge flex space above the garage, above the ADU, which then makes that not remotely close to subordinate to the primary structure. We do these minuscule changes in the way we do and bring these to you because it's based in the research of the permits we see on the ground and in the trenches. And this is This is my pledge to you as the new PZC liaison is I'm going to make you a little bit unhappy because that's going to make a couple other people a little bit unhappy. And that's kind of how we get to compromise. And that's why it's the way it is before you. We can't really pull out that thread without pulling out that larger UDO. It needs to be done. And that's something we're doing now.

Heard. Yeah. So I think we've talked the garage maybe to Beth, but 100% of primary residents to Commissioner Faircloth's

previous suggestion that we go from what was 70 proposed as 90 up to 100 percent any objection or further conversation around that i think this is commissioner cycle i think since last month when you first brought it up i i've understood it a little better that it is the lesser of both and so i think now it makes more sense to me to have 100 because It's a penalty to smaller homes.

I'm not opposed to there being a cap. That's why I don't want to just say up to 100%. I think you've got to leave the or. You understand what I'm saying?

I do think the language needs to be included there that says the lesser of. It's not listed on the current text. But I'm fine with 100%.

kind of some general agreement around a recommendation to amend 90% up to 100% of primary residents?

I had one just legal thought on it. So by definition, accessory is less than. And so the common definition of an accessory unit is something that's a little less than the primary. Also, as we're looking at this upcoming proposed legislation, as I said, I didn't realize that they've never called out ADUs before, but this would be adding a 160D-917, which is not there now, that talks about accessory dwelling units, and they have the definition as just less than. The other thought is, and I know that Commissioner Faircloth said, people get this sense that that somehow changes the character of a neighborhood if it's less than, but I would say working with historic districts, the historic pattern, character of neighborhoods is an accessory dwelling unit is smaller than the primary. So your 90% is quite, quite enhanced from most municipalities across this state, which are more reflective of the 70%. And I would say that from a planning perspective, maybe the reason why so many municipalities have it as so much less than is because they're trying to go with the historic pattern. And then the other thought I had was sometimes, but not always, smaller does mean more affordable. I know 10% difference doesn't seem like that much, but we're in an environment where, as Commissioner Zuccaia said, you could build an accessory dwelling unit at 600 square feet, and it doesn't necessarily mean it will be affordable. So those are just some thoughts. It's not something that's binding on you, but I just, I wanted to mention that.

I appreciate that, Ms. Ashley. And I think what I would say is, you know, so in historic districts and areas that have a historic overlay, there are additional requirements and provisions that have to be met in addition to just of the baseline requirements of the UDO. But I do think to be kind of congruent with state definitions, what I would say is our maximum area instead of saying not larger than 100% of the primary structure should just say less than the primary structure.

Yes. Without pegging a percentage. 99.9% of the primary. No, no, no.

I think that's fine as long as you say and no more than 1,200. Right, yeah, both. And that gets to the point of when you have a 600-square-foot primary, why do you limit it to 90% or even 100% of primary? Okay, yeah. So I would say that the proposed revision is that the chart in that The chart defining the maximum size of an accessory dwelling unit should say the lesser the maximum area being the lesser of 1200 square feet or less than the size of the primary structure less than the gross square footage of the primary structure is that what we're saying. Yes.

But that doesn't fix the 600-square-foot primary house, does it? Because you're still less than that.

Correct, yeah. Correct, but I guess Commissioner Faircloth here. Yeah. To Legal's counsel, yeah, I agree. I don't want there to be a 600-square-foot primary and a 1,200-square-foot subordinate.

That's not how that works, but...

If we're the way it was written was to make the 70% have a noticeably smaller one if we're changing it and bringing it up I don't see what that last little. bit does to follow that.

yeah keeps it simple i guess if you're thinking don't think of the smaller unit think of the bigger unit that's 1200 square feet and then you build another 1200 square foot and if there is something to historic pattern character not just historic districts we we've seen a lot of some of the older neighborhoods that don't have historic districts that have garages that are smaller that could be converted into adus or they're just used to a smaller size. And I don't know, nobody's spoken out against it today, but that might be in some of your comments, so.

Can I clarify, if somebody wanted to put one in their front yard, that is, did you say that was an administrative approval?

In certain instances, yes.

Can you clarify what you mean by that?

City Council Chambers, yeah the excuse me, the ordinance gives the plan director discretion to approve different placement of accessory structures and they do use. City Council Chambers, In certain instances that are involving topography or yeah station removal and things like that Okay, but it is an administrative great.

OK, the last thing I was going to say is just that we have not talked about how this kind of correlates to short-term rentals. But I think I would just like to say that, I think there's certainly a potential tendency for ADUs to be used for that purpose. And I know that they are not permitted to be used, like potentially some of the concerns of the Legacy Neighborhoods Coalition that we really need to think about how to improve enforcement related to that in order to ensure that these are actually being used for housing units permanently.

noted uh noted as staff and um just to go on the record to say as you did and verify that they cannot legally be used for a short-term rental when constructed and noted about the enforcement continuity

But, I mean, there is methods to get the zoning enforcement there. Like, we did see a quasi-judicial in the last year where neighbors were coming forth with complaints about a certain instance. Like, there... I don't know how much enforcement there is, but there is some method for that, and we have seen something come up before us.

It's probably... When we receive violations reported, they are followed up on.

And I will also say, as the former BOA liaison, we did see a number of these come up in terms of administrative appeals for notices of violations. We do have code enforcement officials who are familiar with areas, with specific ADUs, things like this, and are constantly on your VRBOs, your Airbnbs, checking listings, things like this. There is some active mechanism. The city is well aware, and I think I had spoken to you in the pre-meeting, you know when we were going out doing this adu data collection going to east asheville having community input sessions legacy neighborhoods working with aarp that's the number one thing we've heard and we've put them in touch with everyone in code enforcement those are the hardest working individuals in the city just chasing those down because it is whack-a-mole but we are it is an active uh it is an active matter that we are involved in enforcement

Just out of curiosity, if there's a complaint, but the unit was grandfathered in, does the complainer get that information?

There's a lot of hypotheticals there, I will say, generally. we provide as much information to both parties and and you know this is I talk about this all the time at TRC you're going to hear me say it all the time I guess that's my second pledge like this is like math class you have to show the work so we show why there's this action or why there isn't of course if anything does end up as an enforcement mechanism and the party is made aware

and i would add that very few units would be grandfathered in because we have never allowed short-term rentals in residential districts you've always had to have a minimum of 30 days rental so the only ones might be a grandfather situation would be i think when we had a central business district when they condos could come in and request a change of use to a commercial use but i don't know that i think it's these whole house single family rental that really becomes a concern to people do we have a motion

I think what I would advocate for is just the adjustments to the maximum size chart to stipulate the lesser of 1,200 square feet or not larger, not to exceed the primary structure.

Is that for detached and attached?

I think it has to be because we don't define them separately, so you know until we do the deeper work yeah we can do that.

I would second that.

I didn't make a motion, but if somebody wants to make a motion with that. Commissioner Faircloth.

I make that motion. I move to recommend approval of the proposed wording amendments to Chapter 7 of the Asheville Code of Ordinances and find that the proposed amendments are reasonable, are in the public interest, are consistent with the city's comprehensive plan, and meet the development needs of the community, and that the amendments will, one, promote zoning policies to encourage more housing housing and to promote small scale residential units on residential lots with limits aimed at encouraging compatibility and creating flexibility from the planning permitting and construction process with the. edit on 71413 subsection be the table changing it to 1200 to a maximum allowable sizes 1200 square feet or. hundred percent primary structure whichever is less staff can word that how they need to i would second that motion so with a friendly amendment of we're not stipulating a percentage but just saying lesser than the primary structure size lesser than the primary structure size

Do we still have a second? Second.

Sorry. Can we add some kind of recommendation to an, I don't know, maybe it's not even a recommendation on the motion, but to investigate what Commissioner Zivskaia referenced in terms of like potential, you know, funding or support for low income folks to build ADUs.

I think with the recommendation to continue, for the recommendation...

While you think about that, I guess I would hesitate. I think that while I certainly agree with that, that seems like a programmatic activity and not really a zoning land use regulatory thing. So we can attach that recommendation for exploration, but I don't know that it really impacts the context.

We don't have to attach it to the motion.

I'm going to make it more broad and say with the recommendation that These changes come in conjunction with development of anti-displacement strategies, as we see those are critically important to go alongside this.

Yeah.

Kind of leave it broad. Or is that. So.

Some of what you were saying earlier.

Could you speak into the mic?

Yeah.

Sorry, could you repeat that in the mic?

I was just kind of wondering, with the way that you were wording that, in conjunction, what does in conjunction mean? Does that mean not pursuing this until there's anti-displacement things? So I think the in conjunction is contested. And so I think that language might, could you clarify or be more specific to what you intend?

Mm-hmm.

uh i'm trying to think through here guys with the recommendation that you know anti-displacement is sorry it's been a long meeting guys my brain is maybe the city continue the city continue exploring um anti-displacement strategies you could even say including funding um

yes with the recommendation that we continue pursuing anti-displacement strategies and just leave it at that so we have a motion you still have a second all right a motion and a second please say aye aye aye any opposed nay motion passes six to one with commissioners of the obscure name last but certainly not least uh complying with state law do we do we need to talk about this or do we just have a motion i'm done making motions someone else's turn it's not at the bottom this isn't the right one let me pull it up let me pull it up

Okay, are we ready for a motion?

Go for it.

I move to recommend approval of the proposed wording amendments to Unified Development Ordinance, Chapter 7 of the Asheville Code of Ordinances, and find that the proposed amendments are reasonable and are in the public interest, promote compliance with the North Carolina state statutes, and are consistent with the city's comprehensive plan, and that the request, one, promotes zoning policies to give more opportunities for housing, and two, promotes flexibility for builders and developers to self-select the amount of land necessary for off-street parking. Second.

We have a motion and a second. all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed the motion passes unanimously thank you all for the in-depth work on this thanks to staff thanks to the community and um yeah just looking forward to seeing the further discussion in council I neglected to mention earlier, we are waived from an annual report requirement at Planning and Zoning Commission. However, I would like us to still submit one since it's been a long time. We last submitted one in 20, capturing 2024. We don't have to discuss it now. We've gone far enough. But since we don't have to submit one, I'd say let's talk about it next month when we reassemble. So that next meeting will be September 2nd. At 5 o'clock right here, meeting is adjourned.