City Council - Regular Meeting

for that. And then if you want to speak on an item that's not on the agenda, there is also a signup sheet for that. So we'll give everybody a minute or two here. If you'd like to get signed up before we get started. Okay. Is it the audio is on out there?

You hear it? Close captioning. Okay.

Okay. With that, we will get started. Welcome to the September 8th Bentonville City Council meeting. If you will please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance and then remain standing for a moment of silence following. And I just want to double check we don't have a scout out there, right? Okay. All right.

but allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Call, please. Sanchez?

Here.

Patterson? Here. Acree? Present. Thiba? Here. Suter?

Here.

Grover?

Here.

Burkhart?

Here.

Hook?

Here. A motion to approve the minutes of the August 25th Bentonville City Council meeting.

Second.

A motion and a second. Roll call, please.

Patterson? Yes. Acree? Yes. Thiba? Abstain. Suter?

Yes.

Grover? Yes. Burkhart?

Yes.

Hook? Yes.

Sanchez?

Yes.

Are there any preliminary motions we made?

I make a motion we suspend the rules requiring three separate readings. And further move all ordinances and resolutions be read by the title only.

Eklund? Motion and a second. Roll call, please.

Acree? Yes. Siva? Yes. Souter?

Yes.

Grover? Yes. Burkhart?

Yes.

Hook?

Yes. Sanchez?

Yes.

Patterson? Yes. With that, can I get a motion to adjourn from our formal voting agenda into committee of the whole? Second. Motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? With that, I'll turn it to Chris.

Okay. We have several items to be presented to us. One, 2026 impact fee discussion. Who's going to present? Great. You have the floor. Well, good evening. Thank you.

Okay.

And I do have some slides. Right now. Well, it's been a few years, a lot of the same faces. But just as a reminder, I'm Colin McEweeney with Tischler Bice. We've been going through sort of a refresher, I think I called it a mid cycle refresh of your impact fees, just to address Some of the collection there to make sure that the projects, we've had recent capital improvement projects, infrastructure projects that have been completed. We want to make sure our impact fees reflect that, that we're not over collecting. So went through a couple of months here with departments. We sat down with planning to understand sort of growth projections, and then it was lease and fire, parks and libraries, just to sort of do that refresher on their capital improvement plans to make sure the fees are consistent to sort of future needs. So we have sort of a recommended adjustment revision to your impact fees. Wanted to go through that and a little sort of the nuts and bolts, but maybe not every single number because it seems like you have a lot to deal with tonight. But just as everyone is aware, impact fees are one-time payments that new growth pays to offset their new demand on infrastructure. So new subdivisions coming along, new commercial projects, generating more 911 calls, more visitation to our parks. We want to expand that infrastructure, build new parks, build new fire stations, expand our police facilities to accommodate that new growth. Doesn't go to operations, doesn't go to, unfortunately, personnel, just sort of following state statute. We can't fix issues with impact fees. If you have a leaky roof, that's not because of the new homes that came along that's a sort of deferred maintenance project that we funded through other sources um when we do these studies we sort of hit on three things for the nexus approach we want to show there's a need obviously in a community like bentonville you're a growing community fast growing community and so there's a need to expand our infrastructure to accommodate that growth to continue our levels of service as we grow in some cases in cities that that aren't growing Maybe there's not a need for impact fees, but that's certainly the case here. We also want to ensure that there's a benefit to your fee program, and that's spending the dollars in a timely fashion. State law says eight years. And so we want to have a capital improvement plan, CIPs, that are really directing, guiding where the dollars are going, that we're not just sort of stockpiling this cash, but we're expanding our infrastructure, providing the benefit to the people who pay that fee. And lastly, the fees have to be proportionate. So we're thinking about growth related infrastructure costs, but you see a handful of different development types in your fee schedule because retail, you know, looks different than industrial, which looks different than residential.

And you want to make sure the fee is proportionate to the demand coming off of those developments.

Yeah, so this mid-cycle refresh, hitting on a couple of things. So I actually wanted to reevaluate our growth assumptions that we did in 23. Probably no surprise, but actually you've exceeded what we projected and actually doubled what our growth projections were just a couple of years ago. Now, some of the approaches that we take aren't influenced by that, but some are, like you'll see in the fire example. analysis, we take a plan-based approach. We look at that capital plan and essentially divide it by the growth assumption. So if that denominator is getting bigger, actually the cost per unit, cost per home gets smaller. And that's sort of a driving factor there on the fire side. Evaluate those capital plans. For example, Parks and Rec built that rec center that we were collecting for. Now there's no more need to continue, at least at the moment, collecting for that component of the park. impact fee. And so we want to make sure that your collection is reflecting that or removing that essentially from the collection. There has been some inflation that has occurred certainly since 23. So incorporating that here. Importantly, we aren't elevating levels of service. We're actually looking back at the 23 analysis. So we're not sort of reevaluating everything. We're saying, okay, the level of service that was adopted in 2023, we're continuing that just sort of making these refinements here. And then also what you'll see is based on those capital plans, we match that up with projected impact fee revenue to make sure we're not overcollecting as well. Say, you know, based on these impact fee revenues, you're going to get $10 million as an example, but we want to see at least $10 million in the hopper, right, and your capital plans to justify that, or we should lower that fee to make sure we're matching those expenditures with revenues. So a little bit more details, you know, as I mentioned, Your growth rate is actually doubling since the 2023 study. We fell back on actually what the wastewater recent their facility plan I think was and a half or four percent annually in population growth um and that was you know doubled in what we projected just a couple years ago um on the parks and rec side as i mentioned removed our removed out the the recreation center component um actually some of those smaller neighborhood parks too because we're really just thinking about larger sort of city-wide benefiting parks um in that sort of same um thought we actually included Phillips Park and Memorial Park into that level of service, but excluded the ball fields, the baseball fields portion, because those parks were wholly excluded from the analysis previously because the assumption was the whole facility, the whole park was serving not just Bentonville residents, but a broader community. sort of catchment zone or benefit area. But the determination was it was actually the ball fields that was sort of doing that, that sort of high level sort of tourism attraction. So we excluded that, but kept in, you know, the playgrounds and other sort of amenities at those parks. Updated the capital plans. And then probably no surprise, but cost to build a mile of trail has gone from a million bucks to $2 million per mile. So we're seeing some inflation showing up there. Libraries, similar sort of dynamic here where we were collecting for branch expansion. That branch expansion has been completed and there's no more near-term branch needs. And so we wanted to remove that from your impact fee collection. The cost for collections, your library collections has increased. On the police side, we're moving out some items here like radios and councils. They made a purchase and now we don't need to make that purchase anymore. So we're reducing that out from the fees. Vehicles have gone up 20 grand. The cost to expand police facilities has gone from $384 per square foot to $550. So what does that mean? At least a 30% increase. And so we want to make sure if we're collecting this fee that we're not putting ourselves behind the eight ball, right? We're collecting for the actual costs that we're anticipating when we expand our facilities. Fire is the same way. That Station 6 was anticipated to be $4.5 million a couple years ago. Now it's $6.5 million. We did purchase, or the city of Bentonville purchased a fire engine recently. And so we've actually removed that out, though, from the plan. So there's sort of two dynamics happening there. And as I mentioned, under that sort of plan-based approach, since we're assuming a higher growth rate, that denominator is bigger. And so the cost per unit is actually decreasing. Here, and also maybe wait here for a second if we have any questions, but here's the results of that analysis. So parks, libraries, police, and fire, they all sort of have their own special revenue fund. Shaded in the red are the areas that have gone down. You actually have a few areas where they've gone up, especially on the single-family

attached side we looked at those demographics again and so those have gone up slightly more the number of people versus the other housing types yeah i the document that i presented to you is uh exactly this one expanded with the current fee for each one of the uh departments that have the impact fees because there it only has the total of impact fee affected the the whole thing

so the one that you have on your document is is uh indicating each one of the uh departments thank you the impact on each one of them yeah very slight yeah thank you for that i'm seeing that like you know for the parks and rec single family attached increase is four dollars um pretty much net neutral in that case but you're seeing decreases for the most part and decreases overall um so what would have been thirty eight hundred dollars for a single family home Our recommendations bring that down to $3,300 or about $500 decrease. On the commercial side, we're actually seeing some increases there. And that's just, in a sense, sort of shifting some of the demand from residential to non-residential using those updated numbers. So I'll go through some more slides. Just let me know if you have any questions. This is a little bit more specific. So this is growth, residential growth. We have about 65,000 residents today. That's projected to basically reach 100,000 in 2036. That's 18,000, 19,000 more homes. A lot of that being multifamily development. On the park side, you know, sort of went through this already, but made some adjustments, just making sure that we're collecting for what we should be collecting for. And if we're collecting for that, that the cost is sort of brought forward. We're looking at neighborhood park lands, so expanding our neighborhood park acreage. but then improving that land and concrete trails as well, using this sort of incremental expansion approach, which in a sense just quantifies that current level of service to find that fee. And this is only assessed on residential development. Worked with Parks Department and the director there to put together a capital improvement plan for at least the next three years here for Parks and Rec. I'm not going to go through every single one, but you can see sizable amount for 27, 28, and 29. Fifty-three million dollars is the total plan cost. And then that sort of second to last column is sort of the growth related capacity expanding portion of those projects. Some of these are addressing current deficiencies or sort of, you know, rusty slides, you know, squeaky swing sets, and that was not an impact fee eligible project. So the $53 million becomes $42 million for impact fees, and then $11 million would come from other revenues. Importantly, under the incremental expansion approach, we're not collecting for that 42 million. What we're doing is collecting for the current level of service. And so that would bring about 20 million over the next 10 years in a sense that that CIP, if completed with impact fees and other revenue, would be elevating current levels of service. So if you did that update in four or five years from now, if you completed that plan, you'd actually probably have a higher level of service that you could if you wanted to justifiably collect a higher fee under that approach. But you can see here sort of the breakdown. There's a gross total, and then we want to account for actually other revenues that have gone or are going to go towards this infrastructure that we're collecting for. Because we don't want to be double collecting for infrastructure improvements. And this follows what we did last time. But there's existing or future debt payments on debt that was issued for park expansion. You have a little bit of a fund balance that accounts for 3% of that capital plan. And then also there's assumption here that 75% of the concrete trails built in Bentonville will be funded through other sources. And so we want to only collect for the remaining 25%. So you're seeing sort of a marginal increase and decrease here. Libraries, again, actually what was looking at a plan-based approach for your library expansion has been completed, and so we've taken that off the list. It's $1.8 billion is the annual collection cost, spreading that out over seven years, or each year for seven years, based on the plan-based approach and population, gets the cost there per person of $82. Made a note in here is internally, when we were sort of updating this, we were going back and forth with, should we inflate these dollars for the collection? Because we know the 1.8 is going to be you know two million dollars in a few years um but you'll hear i think or at some point when you're going through this ordinance change is a recommendation to include an inflationary factor in the actual ordinance so instead of baking that inflation into these numbers that you every year address the inflation um really full sale for for all departments not just libraries so we're looking at current value here but recommendation is to include a inflationary ordinance or code within your ordinance So much smaller or actually much greater decrease here. I think that that library branch was taking up quite a bit of the fee itself. And since we've completed that and don't have any more plans, we should only be collecting for what we have plans for. That's bringing about one point eight million dollars. Um, police, um, same, you know, we kind of have some moving parts here, removing some of the components, but there's inflation happening. So we want to account for those, uh, and this is assessed on residential and commercial non-residential development. Um, capital plan here totals 12 million, $12 million. Um, this includes a facility expansion, but also expanding your fleet as well. So we had some back and forth with the department trying to understand what's a good balance of how many more vehicles that they're going to bring on in the next seven years. We landed on 20 and they recently made a purchase of two. And so we're actually got 18 left in the plan right now. Similar thing, we got some credits there for previously issued debt where there's future bond payments and also a balance that's going to help service that CIP. Based on these maximum numbers, we're going to generate $4 million in impact fee revenue. So that $4 million compared to the $12, we really want to complete that plan. We need to have other revenues coming in.

Lastly, fire.

Station 8 has gone up in cost. We removed out a $1.2 million engine from the plan. I'm still collecting for a, I believe it's a command vehicle, battalion truck, but much smaller numbers here, totaling $6.5 million. We actually have nearly 20, 30 percent already collected in the bank today going to this plan. So you're seeing that reduction show up as a credit here as well. So $200 discount or credit reduction for single family detached housing. Summary again, just kind of showing what we have here. $500 total decrease for single family detached. I would like to know like the multifamily fee that's per unit. So you build a 20 unit apartment building, you pay 20 times that amount there. Lastly, some just considerations is the CPI itself has actually gone up at least 12% in the last three years. So we are sort of departments are battling some headwinds here with inflation. And that's just the CPI, right? That's the cost of bananas. You're seeing, you know, trails going up 50% in some of those other facility costs even more. So recommendation is to include that inflationary adjustment in your city code to make sure you're at least kind of staying in step a little bit with that inflation. I think maybe Bonnie or Patrick is going to talk about this, but state statute has allowed for ADUs to be assessed an impact fee up to $250. We don't have that right now in Bentonville City Code, but there's a lot of justification and sort of nexus here if you wanted to assess that 250 because your multifamily fee is about $1,800 per unit, which would look very similar. That one apartment unit would look very similar to an ADU, but the max that the state allows is $250. And then also, I think also this will be in the discussion later, is removing the exemption for impact fees within the downtown area isn't going to influence the fees, that fee schedule. It will help with revenue generation because we're not waiving fees in certain areas of the city. But those levels of service that we're talking about are citywide, you know, development within the core, even if they're not paying an impact fee or still using fees. our public safety and our parks and all of that. So we actually account for that in the fee itself. So if you were to remove that waiver, it would just help on the revenue generation side, not necessarily the fee schedule. Yeah.

Question on that. When you're calculating your revenues, the amount coming per unit, you've exempted the downtown?

No, no.

You're including in your revenue, in your projections here, that all the downtown work is also assessed.

Yeah.

So if we don't remove the exemption, these numbers aren't accurate.

Well, the fee schedule, this is accurate.

Well, if the fee schedule incorporates all the units, including downtown where we have exemptions. So explain that a little bit.

Yeah, well, that brings up a great point is you can't, following state statute and making sure, you know, every unit is paying for the, specific demand coming from that address, we can't put additional cost on that address if we're exempting other households. So there's a lost revenue potentially in the downtown core.

We have included.

Well, in the revenue projections, but not in this fee per unit is directly the proportion of demand from that fee per unit. If you are exempting certain units, that's revenue loss.

Well, for instance, instead of exempting downtown, we could exempt affordable housing instead. Probably lose less dollars and have an exemption for affordable housing instead of exempting all the downtown.

And that's a great example too. Yeah, but you couldn't say, all right, that exemption is going to be half a million, it's not half, you know, $100,000 every year. We can't put that extra $100,000 on every other market rate home because that'd be disproportionate.

If all the downtown work is exempt, it's only $100,000. Thank you.

One question regarding the single family detached homes. and are single family attached to multifamily? What's the definition of a single family attached? And the reason I'm asking, because I've been studying a lot of the newer condos and townhome square footage is significant to a small single family residence. And I'm not sure that the fees that we're applying are equitable.

Well, that's a great question. Yeah. So we we were wrestling with how to address this in 23, because at the at the time we just had single family, multifamily and Bentonville and just the housing market nationally is just sort of changing. We're seeing different. Housing types pop up. And so we included single family attached at that time. Attached is essentially a single dwelling unit that shares a wall with one wall with another single family dwelling unit. And then multifamily is, you know, structures that have more than two dwelling units on it. Another approach maybe kind of to what you're seeing is you can assess impact fees by the square footage of the home. And so you would have, you know, different groups, not the type of home, but the size of the home. So that'd be, you know, 1,000 square feet and less, 1,000 to 2,000, 2,000 to 3,000, 3,000 and greater, let's say. That would be an example. that maybe gets to kind of the scenario you're thinking about where we're seeing small single-family homes that actually might be less square footage than larger town homes, and there might be a disconnect there. Importantly, we're looking at averages across the city, so there's going to be certain instances where there's some that are greater, some that are smaller than these averages.

I guess what we're looking at is the impact that a multifamily development will have on the utilities and on the streets etc and are we kind of waving that by calling it an attached single family and still having high density impact well you you'd pay you know it's per dwelling unit so um you know a 10 application for 10 um

Attached homes would pay 10x that amount. So that's, you know, $27,000.

Yeah.

Well, if I understand correctly, all of our methodologies based on persons per unit. You have a unit count, so many households, so many attached, so many multifamily. And then we're using the ITT for transportation and we're using the planning most recent data. And I think you're using 2.64% There was one area I wanted to question on that you had 2.679. I want to persons per household, but how they're arriving at it now is they're assigning different persons per unit at each level. Single family has more persons per unit than attached. Attached has more than multifamily because most of your multifamily is one or two bedroom, something like that. So it assigns a different level of persons per unit. I did want to confirm that you're using 2.64 people per unit on single family. in the report she had said 6.79 and I didn't want to make sure that there's the planning issue.

May I ask a question? Where were you seeing that? Where did you find the discrepancy in the report?

Oh, it's in the meeting.

Page 47.

What I would really like to do is go over all the impact fees when we get the next set of impact fees with water and sewer and discuss this as a whole, because we're seeing a piece.

I want you to find that if there's discrepancy, we need them.

Oh, yeah. Well, so, yeah, he's talking page 47. And this gets into, you know, if you want to go into like... Demography, you know, like USAID.

It's on the back pages.

Yeah.

Is it a discrepancy or is it?

I was just confirming whether he's using the persons per household in the green at 2.69 versus the 2.85, excuse me.

Yeah, so the U.S. Census, figure of 37 that you're looking at, there's certain data points that the U.S. Census gives us. The U.S. Census American Community Survey, ACS, is an update that the census does every year. But in those reports, there's a data point, a report that does not split out single-family detached and single-family attached. It groups the two. And so when you group the two, and that's in Figure 37, that's the 2.69. Now, the ACS is made up of what's called the survey that the census does every year, the public use micro data, public use micro survey, which is a survey of a thousand residents within your area. And within that survey results as public data, we can break that out into different housing types. Yeah, so a lot of... A lot of different terminology here. Figure 38 does list out single-family detached and single-family attached. And that figure 38 comes from the census. We're able then to break out the different single-family homes that way. And that's the persons per housing unit, PPHU, that we're using.

0.74, which is on figure 38.

Yeah.

I just want to make sure that confirms with the rest of our persons per unit.

Does that answer any discrepancy of how they got there for you?

I just want to make sure it aligns with our other studies that we've used when we use persons per unit. and make sure that we're aligning not only our impact fee analysis, but other capacity fee analysis as well. And if they don't align, we need to decide why it doesn't align with our other studies. But thank you for your explanation because it was confusing to me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't have it off the top of my head, but... These are done every year. And so would be what we're looking at right now is the most recent, which is the 2024 ACS five year. So if utilities is updating it, the 2025 might already be, might soon be available come the end of the year, because it's always staggered a few years, but there should be, we're talking about the whole city. So it would probably just hundreds of decimals.

Does that get updated? How often does that get updated?

Every year.

It's every year, right? You'd have to be redoing these to get the most current every year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This snapshot is...

You say it's the latest. I just want to make sure what persons per unit, because it's different than other studies that we've had. I just want to make sure of that. And your trips per person. I went back and pulled the 12th edition, which is the most recent edition. It didn't seem to match either. So I'd like to go over that with you offline and discuss with you the trips per person, because it is...

No, I want to address this here. So what's your reference? Because I want to make sure you're on here in front of you. I want to make sure whatever you think is discrepancy, we address it.

They don't match up with the 12th edition. And so if we could just, I need to get the copy of the 12th edition. And I looked up the class codes, which are a little different than 23. You didn't use all the class codes we did in 23. You remove some of those and added some residential. So I was curious, A, why did you remove some of those office and industrial where we don't have them in our trips this time. So I didn't know the difference between 23 and 26, why we'd remove classes, classifications of businesses for our trip count. And I believe all the trip count is on residential, right?

Yeah. So we are using the 12th edition 2025. So we'll just have to maybe cross notes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're using the latest and greatest.

But is there a reason why we didn't use all the same business classifications we did in 23 and 20 in this report?

What you might be referring to, maybe in the previous study, it actually showed maybe like 20 ITE non-residential categories. And then we highlight the four that we're using, which would have been the same codes we're using here.

So maybe that's just... Maybe we didn't highlight all of them. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

When do we expect the water, the other feed you're studying to be ready?

Oh, I wish I knew.

I'm not sure.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- The other.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Together, I think. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Yeah. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Yeah.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Justin is here to talk about that and we're working on that we've had a little delay in getting those numbers and we will get those to you before you have to decide. HAB-Masyn Moyer- You want to see everything collect right so that is coming could be as early as next meeting. HAB-Masyn Moyer- studied.

Am I understanding correctly, parks and trails are 100% on the residential share? So no businesses are picking up any of the cost for any of our parks or trails. And what was the percentage you used of out-of-city participants in our parks and trails when over 50% are not residents? How did you adjust for that for all your parks, for all your trails, all the tourism that comes into town that we're not picking up in that? How are you picking that up? Since you're putting it all on somebody buying a house, how are you picking that up for all those other people using those? And where's the credit in this analysis for all that other use?

Yeah, that's a great question. So a lot of it will be actually probably not apparent as like a credit that you're talking about, because we've basically excluded some facilities. I'm going to call it like slaughterhouse that I didn't. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Sorry. It's still kind of weird name to me anyways. That bike park over there. Right. We've just full sailed not included that. Right. That maybe maybe there's a benefit that the city residents are using that.

But like the 58 million that we have or whatever that is capital improvement plan. if those aren't all used by the residential share because you're putting 100% on houses. So if somebody buys a house, they're having to pay for that $1,900,000 per house to buy those. If all of that capital improvement plan that you say is $50-something million and less than 50% are used by current residents, where's the credit for that?

Well, yeah, so I don't have every spot.

Besides eliminating a property to... from that. But how do we justify the use of all of our facilities, even the trails where you have on here that it's going to cost a homeowner 1000 bucks to buy by the trail for them to move in. But yet more than half are non residents. So where do they pick up? How do we justify putting all on a person buying a home when we're already struggling for people to buy a house? And we're putting all the cost for parks and trails of all expansions on 500 units a year when more than half of the people using them are from here.

Yeah. Well, maybe if I thought I had more time to get into the weeds, we could. We can. Yeah.

I'm going to say you need to get into the weeds because this is the conversation. And so, and David, maybe you want to, I think David can answer this.

Bill, the number you referred to was at one time a couple years ago, and I think it's still pretty darn close, 50% of our youth sport participants were non-Bentonville residents. They were Bentonville School District, but they were non-residents. We've actually run numbers. We'll use Placer AI, that data that's picking up cell phones around Gilmore Park or around Slaughter Pin or around Austin Bagot Park, and what we see is that of that park space. So I don't 100% agree, but I agree that there are tourists using our park sites, 100%. But I do not agree that it's 50% of the people that are in that space.

Okay. It was just a number we used a year or so ago. So if there's an updated number, the question still remains for me of that capital improvement plan, say it's 40% is non-resident each, which may be a closer number. And the short-term rentals sure have picked up with all the trails that we have. I love the trails. I'm just asking, why are we putting it all on a residential? No businesses are helping to pay for that. And non-residents use it a considerable amount of time.

Yeah.

The discrepancy between a single-family residential and And how do, you know, the impact to me would seem more intense multifamily than with single family, and yet the costs are more for, the impact fees are higher.

So the number you're seeing, so there's not confusion here. The number you're seeing here, and what we did previously too, is we've excluded those facilities that you're talking about. We've excluded that. So what you're seeing here is solely just the facilities that Bentonville residents use.

in that we're looking to expand well i'm just looking at the capital improvement plan that you've based your park fee on well and and we didn't base the fee on that would be a plan basically go back so david you could help some of the parks that have been excluded that are not include i think that i think if you could give a little bit of that information that would be helpful for the context and and to send these questions we did When we looked at these in 23, we did look at how these were being assessed. And that's why we added that category. We told you back then, like, these are decisions you guys can make if you want us to calculate it different or think, but But those decisions need to be made on the upfront of how we, I mean, so this is how you've told us to go and calculate this.

And to address just the CIP question, these rates will bring in $20 million. Your CIP is for the next, this is $20 million over seven years.

the cip is three years and is 53 million dollars so we are not pegging the this impact fee to collect this full list i understand but in 23 we were looking at multi-family units being two bedroom primarily one or two bedroom or efficiencies now they're three to five you're starting to see developers put in bigger units

Oh, yeah. I mean, one thing that we wrestled with, I don't know if this was presented or not. It's been a couple of years. But again, could be breaking this out by the square footage of that.

You did mention that. But the direction was to do it this way and add the category. And that's I think I'm pretty sure that direction came from. But there was that option was put on the table. So again, I mean, that's the same thing here, but you'd have to go back and recalculate all this based on square footage.

Yeah, the thought this was going to be a refresh and not a... That's what I'm saying.

So that's probably a different conversation with our contract with them to do it. But so...

But yeah, to Bill's point is, yeah, that average multifamily home within Bentonville, one and a half people. Single family detach averages 2.7, and the fee's proportionate to that number of people.

That's an annual survey. You're using annual, so we use the annual survey or we don't. And if you don't use that, then it's going to be a whole different calculation methodology, cost approach, level of service, whatever we want to get to. I'm still wondering where that, no matter what portion of the capital improvement plan is funded by impact fees, I'm trying to find out where the credit is for non-resident use. Because you're shifting it. No businesses are paying for impact fees for parks or trails or anything else, which is Great for recruitment, great for retainment, great for all these things. We all enjoy it. But we've decided to place it all on somebody buying a home. So I'm just trying to find how to, besides taking out a credit about a couple of neighborhood parks, and you've listed them in here. So we've already got those, what's been removed in here in the report. I'm just trying to... Is there or is there not a credit for non-residential use in our impact fee that we're charging homeowners for parks?

Well, the credit, I was trying to think maybe there's a witty term here, but there's not a credit here, right? There's not a red line that says credit for non-Bettenville residents because above that, we're not including facilities that would be attributed to tourism, right? And so that could be a greater gross total per person. It might not be $1,700. It could be $3,000. And then we would have to include that credit to get to the same... Right, same thing.

zero dollars for that. Because they're tourism based, not residential. Because it's tournament play. That's exactly right.

Yeah, I'm looking more if you look down through there, whether it's parks or whether it's new trails or whatever it may be in the event pavilion. All the things that we cherish here and a lot of people come here to enjoy. I just hate to see us put 100% of it on a residential home. Because we're already struggling with home prices. I'd like to see at least a discussion about this. We don't have to have it tonight.

And I mean, this is a big conflict. know david's put together his cip plan so at the end of the day if council comes in and says don't do these then we would take it out of that but you're not doing those projects and so i just want everybody to understand that like you can't have your cake and eat it too you have to figure out how to fund all all of this so well we don't have to actually move it we don't have to you don't no you're right but it has to be it needs to be taken out and not be part of the plan so you need to make those decisions The other thing I think we also accounted to tell you is trails, we do think that we are getting 75% of the funding outside of this, right? And that's what I would tell you is David is very good at going and getting other funding sources. That's why he's saying impact fees are a piece of this capital improvement. It is not funding all of our capital improvement plans. So I want everybody to understand that piece of it. Again, if council comes in and says, I don't know, take whatever project that's on this list out, we'll take it out of there. You need to make the decision and tell the public you're not going to do this project, right? So you have to make those hard, tough decisions in this.

It is a hard, tough decision to make, Mary, and I appreciate that. Our last capital improvement plan for parks that were included in impact fees were around $20 million. That was three years ago. So we've completed those and much more with your help. Thank you. And all the extra funds that we had received, you've already calculated 75% of this funded by other. So that's why you've reduced the fee already. Plus you've removed some things that aren't on this list that to help bring the level down to 20 million. versus the 42 million that you have here, is 75% is funded by other, not including the 11 million. So he's already done that and recognized that revenue. So my question just simply comes back to, A, obviously, can we fund $53 million is a question outside of this discussion in a three-year period of time when that's a... when we have so much infrastructure issues as well. It's very concerning to me. But secondly, I'm still trying to get the answer that when you have, say, 30%, 40% of non-residents and tourism using our park spaces and our trails, how do we put 100% of this on our home buyer? That's something for us to discuss. That's all.

And just to add some flavor to that, it's nice to hear that you have access to the placer ID, basically using cell phone data to understand. And we've done this elsewhere in Denver where we use placer data and could say 80% came from zip codes within Denver. 20% came from all other zip codes.

I'd be curious in the six miles how many were in the zip codes. So the six miles is outside of our territory in some of the cases. So listen, it's all good questions. I understand what you've done now. I appreciate that. I'm hesitant to think that we're putting 100% of that cost of all of our quality of life here only on a single family home, 500 of them a year maybe at the most. And so that's more of an observation at this point in the statement.

We've done a nice job to reduce the impact fee as well through this approach.

Well, yes, but we also have a capacity fee out there. So we're really running $12,000. a house before permits, cost, time frame of doing business or anything else that's just on top of a house price for anybody that wants to buy a house. So it's part of the issues that we have or challenges that we have. So it's not just these impact fees. It's others that we've adopted as well that are costing considerable amounts on the housing. And we still have more to look at. So I'll have more questions. There's no reason to go through the entirety until we see how we're pulling it all together.

Any other questions on methodology or anything that anybody else have any, everybody understand how we got to these and how it was calculated and.

And just, yeah, I mean, high level, we didn't reinvent the wheel here. We just sort of refreshed for the most part, kind of what was adopted in 23.

And just to reiterate, could you also just the general understanding of what impacts the, how they're calculated and how they're calculated based growth and to maintain the current level of service, right? And so could you just,

Yeah, Mary, you make a great point. And this is where, you know, why you pay people, third party experts to do it is you can't just set an impact fee to a big wish list of projects. You can't just say we would like to. build $100 million worth of infrastructure without providing that nexus report that shows the actual demand, the actual sort of use and cost to serve that home. Because for the most part, you cannot use impact fees to elevate your current levels of service. It could come in tandem with other revenues to bring up sort of all boats to that new level. But for the most part, we set the fees to what you're providing today to everybody every homeowner every every resident bring that into dollars when we look at your capital plan and okay what's the cost to build a playground what's the cost to build a fire station um and so those dollar amounts you're seeing is is really um the cost to serve a new home to continue just continued existing levels of service so this new impact fee study takes into account of the current impact fee balances

moves those forward to these capital improvement plans, and then these impact fees are on top of that. So you're taking existing balances of capital improvement plan, impact fee balances, and you're saying, here's the capital improvement plans. You have this current balance that we're going to use for this capital improvement plan in addition to these fees. So you can't take the current balance and use them for other projects because you've now allocated them to everything on these capital improvement plans. So there's not gonna be, well, we'll spend these on something else. They'll have to be spent on these capital improvement plans. Great, thank you. We need to remember that clearly though, as things come through that only these items on this capital improvement plan can be funded by them.

And I think that's very clear in collecting impact fees. It has to be spent on what you've calculated in your CIP plan.

I just know when our current capital improvement plan is different than this.

And so we have an impact fee CIP and we have a overall city IP CIP. Please just remember that. And that's why we're saying this CIP is based on growth and that's how we're getting to those impact fees. And so- I think that I understand where you're coming from and I continuously see the confusion between the two. And so I just want to make sure everybody understands that.

Let me ask kind of a general question. You know, you were saying you have to charge the whole city for everything and then you can exclude. So you can't assess an impact fee to just a small area of the city. Is it a citywide? Like say, so we were talking about downtown, like downtown, one of their biggest growth things would be drainage. So, like, would it even be feasible to say, okay, well, we're going to add one for downtown, but only they need, say, drainage? Like, is that even a thing?

Oh, yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, the reason why we're taking a citywide approach, like for parks and police and fire and libraries, those are... large sort of citywide benefiting infrastructure, right? The police, you know, have their headquarters. They train their folks, right? There's a library branch. These big parks, even if you live downtown, you're recreating at those sites. So that's why we're not slicing and dicing the city here.

But it's not illegal to do so. It doesn't usually make sense.

But drainage would actually be a great scenario where it could be because how localized... draining issues can be. It's usually not issues citywide because of its topography and clay pipes under the ground and stuff like that.

In 2015, we used to have a level of territory for service territories for fire. And it was only a mile and a half from the station. So they'd only charge the impact fee within a mile and a half of the station that serves them instead of somebody across town that already has a fire station right next door charging them an impact fee for fire when they already have a station. So it used to be that way, but now we've gone citywide. So even if you have a fire station next door to you, you're having to pay for somebody else.

I mean, these are all conversations. Where is the new growth happening that's requiring the service?

The growth down DIP looks very different than the growth in Southwest Bentonville. And the needs look very different. Downtown, the infill growth we're seeing, drainage is what the development, the problem that development is causing, that's costing money. So as we add that, could that be a direction that we go when we add downtown to maybe solve one of our biggest problems?

Yeah, it's all about, it's kind of about that, the benefit zone of the infrastructure. And so citywide parks, citywide benefiting, big, large library branch, citywide benefiting, smaller drainage, stormwater improvements aren't benefiting the people who live, you know, five miles away. It's benefiting the people sort of within that area. So you certainly see those districts. And it just relates that nexus between the infrastructure. But yeah, to answer your question quickly, yes.

It's a possibility. Yeah. It's on the table as a possible possibility.

First, we'd have to come up with what our drainage plan is.

Yeah, drainage is really hard.

Well, the developers, hey, y'all, I'm talking about a plan for the city, whether we're going to do regional detention ponds, are we going to exit the barrier, are we going to clean our ditches? There's a lot of discussion to be had. What is our drainage plan before we can implement anything like that?

I agree. I agree. But long term, 10 years, when we're at 100,000 people, a lot of that growth is coming is down, you know, 20 years ago, it wasn't downtown, but now it is. And the drainage is becoming unsustainable. And I don't know. It doesn't make sense to use city budget. And yeah, just budget to fix, you know, problems that are just in a small and that are caused by drought. Increased development.

Yeah. Another example, you see this pretty often as well as in road impact fees, transportation impact fees. If you have a big enough boundary of a city, you know, you know, folks are commuting down certain corridors. You could slice that city into east and west, have capital plans for east and west and attribute those costs, you know, specific to those areas.

Yeah, we did a drainage analysis and had Sand Creek actually survey the entire downtown before 2010. We didn't follow through on any of it.

Well, we actually did run a bond for drainage in 2021, and we did dig the projects, and we have spent the money for those projects. And we just talked about PPI. If you look at the costs, you have an estimate by the time you get the design and the cost on those. So that's the other conversation is like, yes, they'll have to understand. You, I mean, it's a process to even get a design for whatever the project is, right? And then you're trying to find the funding and all the while your costs continue to go up on those projects. So it's a challenge to accomplish these things. You have to have... In my opinion, you have to have multiple funding sources. Impact fees is one source for us. It does not pay for everything, guys. We just showed you that, and we just showed you how it's calculated, but you do need to, if you want to maintain the level of service and quality of service you have in the state of Bentonville, you need to understand what your long-term CIP is. You don't But doing capital improvement projects right in a city that's growing. So you have to continue and this is one way. There are multiple ways that you can calculate that this is another decision city council has to give input on. If you want us to calculate it different, although I would have liked for us three years ago to have done it in square footage and not be because... we've asked him to go back and re look at this and update it we have not asked them to go back and recalculate it in a totally different form formula than we currently are doing it so that's there's costs and the consultants going back and doing that too just under understand all right not saying you can't go back and do it but understand there are choices to be made in this and how you move things and some of our other counties are based on purchase per unit

as well, not square footage. So we have other studies that we've ran on the past.

And how often you're updating. Just tell me if you're using census data that gets updated yearly, right? So if your study for whatever rates or impact fees or whatever isn't done every year, isn't updated every year, that That number might be slightly different in different things based on it. Every time you do a rate study, every time you do an impact fee study, there's a cost involved in just getting the formulas to get in front of you to put in place. If you redo those every year, just understand there's a cost in doing that. It's a complicated process and finding the funding sources for all the things that we need to do in the city as we grow It's amazing. We have a growing city. As you grow, you have to be able to pay for everything that keeps those quality of life services maintained, what we currently experience in Bentonville. And there's a real cost in that. And we have to understand that. So do you have...

And we had this conversation about the persons per unit or square feet of the building. We rejected the idea of square footage, and that's why we ended up in this particular conversation when we have persons per unit, which is the factor that we are using independently of being a minor difference between one year's value and the next year's value, which is minor in the total scheme of things. So, yes, we are ready to determine this. Thank you.

But when you're doing it every three years, looking at the growth that we have to six potentially, and the issues have changed. I think the items we're dealing with has changed. The square footage has changed. Sometimes we're going to have to readjust those, you know, the way we calculate those numbers. I think it's something to look at, and we need to get it right and make sure it's relevant.

Thank you. Questions for the council or part of this discussion is, when we do get the next impact fee study to where we have a collective group of impact, the whole package will we also have those alternate funding sources to discuss at the same time so we can see where all those other funding is going to be coming from bonds, whatever whatever other which is we've made a list about a year ago of all the additional funding sources, but what we have a a here is the total way we're going to fund these capital improvement plans in our hands before we approve again another impact fee without those solutions. Well, I guess I'm asking that. And second of all, I would like, as we move forward, before we follow this, I would like to have the discussion, depending on which way we go with downtown exemption. It's recommended again, it was recommended in 23, that it's an option to have affordable housing exemptions. If we want to encourage workforce housing, want to encourage people to be able to live where they work. And most of the people that work for our cities and work for our staff and fire and police and teachers, they can't live here, that I would like to have a discussion about, is the downtown exemption worth more than those people? So it was just a question I would like to discuss before we approve these. Do we finally look at, and we've already defined what affordable housing is through the workforce. We already defined what we define as affordable housing. So that question's already been answered, which was a question in your documents. And thank you for pointing out that we already addressed that in the affordable housing. Task force so we know what affordable housing is what is how we define it and so as we move to our next level discussions on this I just want to have people think about that or how do we do it or whereas there are other funding sources and things like that I just want to put that up.

I think that the question and could you tell me how we define affordable housing.

Well, it's listed in the approved documents, Mayor. Typically, it's 30% of somebody's annual revenue household. We base ourselves on an area median income, and we have an average area median income. And if your income, if your housing cost is more than 30% of your housing, if your housing is 30% more of your income, then it's cost burden. 30% or less of your income should go to housing. Anything more than that is described as cost burden. burdened. And so when we have residents running at 43 and 42%, but when you add transportation costs because they're driving in from out of town is over 50%, which is higher than anywhere. And so, uh, What I'm trying to do, using the approved definition of affordable housing based on what we approved in the recommendations and the findings of the Affordable Housing Task Force, all that information is in that document. It's on our website and is printable to anybody. So if you want to get the full breakdown of that definition, it's in that document.

Your understanding is 30% AMI, is that correct? Is that how you define it?

Well, affordable, we use the same definitions as housing and urban development. Housing urban development means that 30% of their housing costs should not be more than 30% of their annual revenue.

So the development on the front end would have to agree to those terms. That's who they're going to?

That's correct. And you would also have to have investment. You'd have to have criterias versus investment. So they have to be sold to individuals. They'd have to have the things that you could mandate in that. But there is examples all over the country for affordable. You gave a great one in Boulder. It does a great exemption for affordable housing. But if we're exempting the entire area, then we've already lost those revenues. And additionally, you don't have the revenues because you can't build the houses here. So maybe if you could build the houses, you would have additional revenue, and they would spend their money here and not increase their sales tax.

And that's why the impact fee exemption in downtown has been there.

Oh, I

I can't remember how many years, right? So that's why we were putting in front of you as we look at all of these fees, we need to understand there's been an existing... And look, I think that... exemption. I mean, I think when it was put in place, my understanding of it, I was not mayor at the time, but was that we wanted redevelopment to happen in downtown. And I think it's, and I think it is, it's, it's, it's accomplished that. And that's why we're bringing it back to you when you look at all of these things. So, you know, like that, that's why the conversation is there. So on top of that conversation, we want to understand what the definition of affordable housing would be and that those developments on the front end would need to We're here to that so whether it's over you know 30 years it has to stay at a if it's rental unit or whatever it is whatever that looks like we would have to define we would need to define that the other question I don't know what thing I had you did say I think the question for counsel is also you did say you could apply 250 to 80 units, it's not currently in this impact fee and so that's another thing I think that we would like counsel. Feedback on and within that and. I guess we could we could we could get those numbers from a mp who likes the and we don't know I don't know how we use. get for ADUs?

Yeah, so there's no ACS, like the census isn't capturing number of people that reside in ADU yet. Maybe it'll come along, but it'd be hard to address. But a lot of cases, cities will apply the multifamily fee to an ADU because that is a studio, one bedroom, maybe two bedrooms for the most case, right? And that it's going to look similar to an ADU.

So I want to build up something for my mom or my grandmother, and I'm going to have to pay another fee on my own property that I've already paid for, that I pay sales tax on the ADU anyway. So now I'll have to pay a fee to build my mom a house.

Yeah.

That's your decision. That is another question. As we look at impact fees and we consider that those are all things, the downtown impact fee exemption, These are the questions in my mind are still kind of out there to get feedback from.

Yeah, well, it's important. You know, what we show here is the maximum supportable, right? We wouldn't recommend going above it. But similar to the ADU, that's an option. I wouldn't recommend going above the $250 the state limits you at. But also, as I was sort of going through my answers here, You know, the eighteen hundred dollars here for a multifamily kind of quantifies the demand from that one apartment unit. Right. That probably looks very similar. I can make the argument that looks very similar to an ADU. That might be for a grandma. It could be short term rental. And so I think there's a lot of. a reasonability justifiable legal defense to assess, to say, we're gonna use the multifamily fee to assess ADUs, and that would be $1,800, but the state is capped at 250, right? And so I think there's a lot of breathing room for the city to defensively implement an ADU impact fee.

That's probably why they put a limit on it at the state.

help those grandmas, I guess.

Well, you, in this report, you're also recommending, I didn't see that in the calculations in inflation index. I saw the recommendation in here for an inflation index. So you're recommending an inflation based on the CPI. on an annual given December or however we choose to acknowledge that?

Yeah, there's a few out there. CPI is one. Again, I don't think it's the best because it's the, you know, grocery basket kind of thing. There's another one out there called Engineering News Record, ENR, Construction Cost Index, CCI, ENR, CCI.

I'm sure the engineers' costs are much higher.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this looks at, I mean, it looks at cement, you know, metal construction, labor costs.

It's like the 550 per square foot versus 550.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm not sure who came up with that.

But it would be every, you know, you just implement in your code, every July 1st, we'll address the... And sometimes it could go down, right? I mean, it... That's probably not the case, but we did see that in cities where if they came from the huge inflation spike, that they use this index and show, well, what was X is now 3% less.

We have the index on all our utility rates, the same inflationary index on all our utility rates. Anybody tell me that? So I know we did on water, right?

Yeah. So remember the contract of Bella Vista, we're using- We did that on that. We're trashed. CPI, we're applying that. And so the logic for our water rates is applying some inflation index We did. It would be the water, sewer, trash CPI. And we could apply that to our water rates annually to keep up with that level of inflation. The only thing that we actually made a decision on that you voted on was that CPI with the Bella Vista wholesale contract.

So the only reason I ask that if we're going to assign this to only new customers, but the rates are not picking up, which I'm an advocate for keeping up with inflation on our rates so we don't have to do these huge doubling every 10 years. But if we're going to do it on one side, should we do it on all of them to make sure we have the additional revenues to keep up with inflation? Or are we going to do it just on one side and keep having to make these major shifts in rates? I'd like all of us to consider that as we move forward.

I think that's something we're going to be bringing in those conversations. And I think that's a conversation everybody's looking at because that's in utilities in general. Nobody wants to go back and make that. You need to bring it along with inflation, right? And that's the challenge. So you don't have a large rate increase in the middle of that. You can say that. It's not just a conversation. Bentonville's having a conversation this morning with lots of, it's a big conversation. And it's really across the U.S. on how to do that. And so it's a big conversation. So OK, so and I thought I think I misspoke 80 years. I was talking. I was thinking Airbnbs and getting the data from A&T. So I apologize. We can't get that. I think I misspoke there. OK, so those for me, those were kind of a couple of questions. So that's the feedback that we would like from the council.

And we don't know when we might get Preston, you know, when we get the water and sewer impact fee study.

I was on the phone with him today. So the goal would be probably the next city council if we can get that memo put in place or just the next one. So we're fine tuning that memo. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much.

Okay. Good to see you guys. Yeah.

See you again. Yeah.

Yeah, you too. Thank you.

Are we going to have any additional information on the impact fee exemption in downtown or have we kept it there?

You will. It's up to you if you need more information. Is there a bit?

I was curious about that.

Can you tell me how much residential and commercial has been done in that?

A lot.

How much revenue would we have had last? I'm just trying to get an annual basis.

I guess I think it's been in effect since 2002. Were you on council?

The reason we did it in 2002. Okay. Okay. was because we were trying to incentivize development down, redevelopment downtown, and we had plenty of infrastructure in the downtown where we did not in the southwest side of town. We had water lines, sewer line, electric, everything was ready. Now we're facing a situation that's part of it. We have the need of our capacity because we've been so successful. So I think it's probably an outdated, yeah, exemption maybe.

And there was a lot of boards on the buildings downtown too.

Yeah, so from just the basic master map under planning data, if you hit on impact fee districts, it gives you an idea of the area we're talking about. It runs from roughly Highway 102. all the way up to Northwest 3rd slash Northeast 3rd Street, and then east and west along D on the west side, and then out to C Street on the east side. So to the point that Bill asked a second ago, I can come up with exact numbers, but there has been quite a bit of development has happened in this area since 2002. So we have had this exemption area as long as we have had impact fees, from what I can have. It was in the original adopting ordinance for impact fees. We also, just kind of knowing this conversation was evolving, I think it's important to note, kind of like what we did with the wastewater development fee, we're keeping track of knowing what projects are either in the pipeline or currently under construction that could be affected by any kind of changes to the impact fee exemption area. So we're tracking that.

So this might be a Bonnie question, but what, I mean, assuming that we're all kind of in agreement that this does need to come to an end, what are the steps kind of legally, what do we need to do to make that change?

Like what's the timing? So you'd have to grandfather everybody in the queue and even in the planning stage, because you can't raise somebody a million and a half, a million eight on a project that's already going to have capacity fees of another 11.

If it's something you would like, if it's something... There's consensus you would like for us to pursue. I think what we would bring back to you is sort of a phased approach that's fair for everybody that currently has land or currently under projects. And we would present that to you as a phased approach. But I think that would be my recommendation of how we would go about it.

Yeah, it would be finding that right stage in the process to use as a trigger point. If you've done your project or if you've submitted your project prior to whatever phase and whatever date we select, you still fall under the impact fee exemption area.

Is that how we handle the capacity? No.

No, but that is how we handled the community code.

Okay.

Well, we did. We did. I'm sorry. So we set a date whereby we said, if you haven't had your pre-con prior to this date. So we did do that. It's just finding the right trigger point. Is it permit submittal? Is it a pre-application conference? Is it pre-construction conference? And that's going to vary based on what it is.

I could just, any input on this? The pre-con is well after somebody purchases property, contracts property, goes through all the zoning, closes on the property. So anything that, like I'm involved in the zoning now for eight months trying to get something passed. I'm already in it. I'm already doing capacity studies. I'm doing engineering. I'm trying to do all the homework in there. So waiting till pre-con, which is well past planning and you're already engineered, you're already doing all these things to impose a new fee. I think it needs to be back. If you're in the queue and you're getting zoning, that means you're going to have a project. Maybe not, but you need to let people know. way back then that there's going to be a fee and it's triggered from any point from here on if you don't have if you've already zoned it fine if if you're going to large-scale development fine but uh we need to we need to this needs to be grandfathered back a little further than pre-con because sometimes you go from planning to pre-con it's three months yeah four months well maybe we could look at a few options Yeah.

Right. Because this one's a little bit different than the wastewater development fee was truly a development fee. This one with an impact fee, because they're assessed on the actual building permit, not all building permits require large scale development. So we'll have to figure out what the right trigger point is for those types of scenarios, too.

But that's quickly because I don't want us to just put everybody on notice. We get a rush and wait months and months and months. All right. As our property files there. Their permits. I think we tend to drag our feet sometime. We need to just make a decision and act.

We did something similar with the community code. We set it at pre-application gave. I mean, by the end of it, it ended up being about 60, 90 days notice on that. So.

Looking forward to seeing you.

Thank you, Tyler. Yep, no problem.

Can you confirm we do charge the new sewer capacity fee on ADUs, correct, or not?

No, we don't.

We don't.

If it's new construction and it's a separate connection, we don't charge it on that?

Well, it's not an ADU if it has a separate connection. It's not an ADU if it has a separate connection. By definition, it has to run off of the primary service.

No, it's a separate building. It's still the primary.

Right.

There's only one utility bill sent. The ADU is included for all services. Yeah.

So I might add that there's only one sewer connection for the lot for the house and that ADU existing sewer service. So we're not adding another sewer service. creating the need for the additional fit. And so that's how ADUs are going to be a little bit different with utilities is that they're using the existing plumbing. We're not going to add another meter. We're not going to add another sewer connection. And so those are going to be, you're going to see as we bring through the water, we're going to be looking at those a little different because it'll be based on a meter. And if we're not adding another meter, then there's not a meter.

Thank you.

I like doing a remodel and you're adding bedrooms or bathrooms. As long as your sewer tap still works.

good to know thank you darling yep no problem i think the next one too so maybe else oh wait no i bet the library will come up in the next one also though maybe oh do you want your okay um good evening

I'm so glad everybody's here to hear the library report. Right? Everybody's here for the library report. You guys have a packed agenda. So I'm going to keep this a little high level. I do know this gentleman right here, though, is here for the library report. He's the library's biggest fan. I'm a fan of his too. So I wanted to give you guys a high level overview of Arkansas Act 372. Some of you may be aware of it and Maybe you study it at night when you can't sleep. You need some good reading material. Maybe some of you aren't aware of it. But I wanted to provide information about some known policy changes that will apply to Bentonville Public Library and to the city of Bentonville. And I'll briefly discuss a few unknowns that may impact our library and the community. I'd like to focus on this as a general update and try to avoid a lot of what-if scenarios and book debates that could take us down a lot of rabbit trails. Chris, is that okay with you as the committee chairman?

Okay.

So the Arkansas Act 372 is an act to amend the law concerning libraries and obscene materials made available to minors, including criminal offense status. So a history is that this act was passed in 2023. But at that time, Sections 1 and 5 were immediately enjoined by a court of law and declared unconstitutional. So just this past July, another court, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled that it is not unconstitutional, and it revived sections one and five. So I'm going to talk about those two sections specifically. A team of lawyers is representing library organizations, specific libraries, and individuals, and they're petitioning for a rehearing right now with the same circuit court of appeals. So one major factor about this act is it's still not in effect, and we do not know when we will be required to comply with the law. So that's one thing to just kind of keep in mind, which again is why I'm giving you a general update and a heads up this evening. So Section 1 talks about the general intent of Section 1 is to protect children from physical materials that are considered harmful to minors. It applies to libraries, schools, booksellers, and actually everybody in this room. If you take a certain interpretation of the law, it literally says a person. So it could be any person that knowingly furnishes an item to a minor that's considered harmful to them. Could be suspect to up to one year imprisonment, if found guilty of that crime. Section 5, which I'll talk about a little bit more, establishes requirements for policies and challenges of library books. So the concerns that I have with Act 372 is that the law's text itself and the definitions are vague. They are left open to a wide range of interpretations. It kind of makes it hard for us to attempt to comply with the law. The effective date, as I mentioned, is unknown. especially as legal petitions continue to be filed. And really, it's not standard for criminal penalties to be incorporated in Arkansas law that governs employment. So that criminal aspect of the law is a bit concerning. So my job right now is not to be a lawyer. We've got good lawyers for that, right? But it is to make sure that staff who feel exposed to risk with this law is that we can implement feasible and practical procedures to best comply with the law, to mitigate their risk and to also ensure that we continue to provide exceptional service to our community. So what we're doing, the focus is we are waiting, which is really hard for me. We are waiting because we really would like to see some clarification, some sort of interpretation, either from the state or the court system, about what this law actually says. And until clarification is provided, we're kind of on our own, except that, of course, I'm staying informed with mayor, city legal, city communications, the state, and talking to local regional library peers. We're all kind of in this together trying to figure out what's the best way to attempt to comply with the law. We have really good engagement. I personally have really good engagement with the library staff and the library advisory board, which is why I wanted to talk to you tonight because our board meeting last week, we had a pretty robust conversation about this act, and it went well enough.

No gnashing of teeth or tears.

But we're working on it. And I wanted you to know what we're not doing is we're not making this political. We're going to do our jobs. We're going to keep moving forward. So I wanted to talk briefly about Section 5, which is revising our library's collection development policy, which is available online. And it relates to the challenge policy. So if someone wants to challenge a book that we own in the library, We have certain requirements now because of this law. We've always had a good policy. We've always had requirements. But now it's going to change a little bit. So currently, if someone wants to challenge a book, they fill out a form, they talk with me, we form a committee. We talk about the book, we figure out what to do with it, and then we make a decision as a committee in the library. If the patron who's affected by that book card-carrying member of the library, is affected by that book, if they choose to challenge or, excuse me, appeal the committee's decision, it goes to the library advisory board right now. So they take that responsibility, and that's their decision-making ability that we've granted to them. When Act 372, Section 5, becomes in effect, we will go through a committee review And if the person asking for the book to be challenged disagrees with the committee's decision, they can appeal it to the city council. Oh. And the mayor would lead that meeting. So what's very specific about the law, the Section 5 is black and white. It's real easy to just rewrite the policy. It may be difficult to implement it. But it does have time frames, and it has steps for hearing appeals to challenges. And you all will be the ones getting to go through that fun task. So that's what I wanted to bring you up to speed on. Again, I kind of wanted to just let you know this is coming. Again, I am not a lawyer. I don't have all the answers, which has been really hard for me not to really know what direction we should go or how we should move forward. But we're just doing the best we can to identify best practices in a changing environment for the library and our community.

Can you give us an approximate of how often this happens?

I've been director a while now. I don't want to show my age, but I joined the library when we were in the old Massey. When I became director, one of my first board meetings, or one of my first meetings was related to a book challenge. So I've been director since 2007, and I think we've had three formal challenges, Ms. Hawley. Those are from card-carrying members with good-standing library cards. That is another thing this law changes. It's any person affected can challenge books at Bentonville Public Library, so it could be any person in the world. And there's no limit on how many books they can challenge. So we're hoping that this will just be business as usual. Again, I talk to the mayor all the time. We provide something for everyone. We're here to support our growing, changing, diverse community. We're doing our jobs. We're doing great jobs. We're not going to make it political, but we're going to figure this out and keep moving forward. That's a good question. Yes, sir.

As you know, I have a passion in this space. And I want to say that I believe our library is fantastic. You guys have done an amazing job at getting ahead of any potential problems, which is why I think we have had so few issues. Congratulations and thank you. And you've also, through it all, done a very good job of making it not political and making it very transparent. And I've witnessed on your shelves that books are shelved in the right places for the right audiences. And I appreciate it very, very much.

Thank you.

Well done.

I attended the meeting in which this conversation happened at the library. And the subject is obviously worrisome in the sense of being serious penalties mainly for the librarians, which is our main concern. And that is certainly something that has to be clarified. No question about it. I have read the act completely. from beginning to end. And there is a background to it. There is a history on it. The first meeting that I attended as a member of the advisory board almost 20 years ago is the one that Hadi is referring to, in which we had a book that was contested by a citizen of Bentonville. relatively ugly situation that I certainly don't want to deal with anymore, and we have had just a few instances of that. However, it is important to consider what is behind, I think, the understanding of the legislators who presented that proposal, and it was approved in 2003. I went to the what is it, newspapers, website, and I found about 1,800 reference to Act 372. I also received this document from, I got it from Facebook, and it has a different opinion that I would like for you to see. If you'll pass this around, please, we will... will be in business. It is, as I said, it is concerning. And yes, we have to act on it in the best way, in the best manner.

Oh, thank you. And while Octavio is passing that around, he mentioned some of the ambiguity about staff. There's no clarity on what really constitutes furnishing a harmful minor. Is it the library director who approves the purchase of the book? Is it the librarian who selected the material originally who may be retired and long gone? Is it the person processing the book to get ready to go on the shelves? Is it the person shelving the book in the proper shelf order? Is it the reference librarian who's helping a child find a book when he comes to ask for a specific title or likes to read, let's say, books by Roland Smith? Could you recommend other authors? Not that you ever would because you'll just read Roland Smith. Is it that person? Is it the frontline staff member checking out books? We don't know. And that's why there's concern for staff with their security and doing their job and being a little bit fearful of perhaps something happening with this law. So the clarity is a little bit, the clarity is the biggest issue and the criminal penalty for someone doing their job is the other concern.

And I don't want to put you in a position of not being able to catch yourself. If I understand correctly, if a book is challenged, first it would have to be challenged, correct? Right. If it's even in the space, I don't know. Right. First a book would be challenged, and so it goes through the process that's been clearly defined. So unless somebody would refuse to remove a book that has been challenged and successfully challenged, Maybe this is the ambiguity.

Actually, Bill, I spoke too soon. It does not have to go through a challenge process for someone to make an accusation against any person as providing something harmful to a minor. It could be something that just happens daily in our operations.

It doesn't have to be a request first. Correct.

Correct. The challenge policy is separate from the criminal liability issue.

That's section one. That is the ambiguity.

Yes, section one.

Whether you're aware of a book or not, if somebody deems to be inappropriately, they're saying, if I understand correctly, they're saying that somebody can file charges on, and we don't know, somebody in the library for having this book Even though it's never been challenged or there's not a list. Right. We're able to get into a list of books. Right. How would you even know if one existed?

Exactly. We have 170,000 items.

Well, and you've got new collections coming.

And we do. I am very confident in our collection procedure, our collection development policy. We use professional standards and professional reviews, and we use discretion when we purchase materials. Is this the right book for our community? Maybe not. Maybe we don't purchase it. Is it the right book for the young adult shelf? No, it's not. We're going to catalog it for adults. We're very conscientious about that. We're also very conscientious, as Dan mentioned, about giving book recommendations because, you know, reading is an individualized situation, and we don't always know what the right book is for a child.

You can't know. I wanted to ask a question there. I know that the AG has to have a specific request from one of our representatives. You probably can. I think we ought to have the AG define that and clarify that. And I think that should come from either your office or our legislator to clarify what removed the ambiguity to this because you have 160,000 in your collection. And for somebody to be able to sue you criminally without you even knowing that one exists that they don't like doesn't give you a chance to remedy. So I think we ought to clarify who, what, how, when, and have the AG do that before this is brought out and asked to be enacted. So I agree 100%. I understand there's concerns and certain things. But to hold somebody accountable without even knowing that it exists, or they've told you this is the problem and we refuse to act there. I can understand why we would be held. City council would be held or somebody would be held other than a, an employee. Right. So, um, because unless somebody says we're not going to allow books in there, I don't think it's your role to do that.

Right. We, we really like to focus on parental choice for their child and parental, uh, informative decisions and conversations between a parent and a child or a caregiver and a child. And we certainly don't ever want to interfere with that. But the way some of the interpretations of this law, it puts us in as that kind of gatekeeper or parental role, and then we're the ones responsible if that were to come back up.

I read yours. Thank you for the additional question.

as far as the new policy for review yes is it still a committee or does that go from the patron to the board is the board library board the committee

We may reformulate in our policy how the committees formed. In the past, it was the library director, the librarian responsible for that material type. So if it's a children's book, it'd be the children's librarian, even if a former children's librarian chose the book. It would be the person responsible for that subject area and maybe one or two. We're a pretty small team, so it's usually our leadership team. But we can look at that committee adding library advisory board members who represent the community to us. And likewise, they're our sounding board for policies and procedures, too. So we would still do the committee to review the book while we selected it, reviews, circulations, what other libraries own it. We have a whole kind of list we use, and we all read the book, the entire book. It's not just taking an excerpt out of context. It's a complete review, each member. And then... we would make a decision. So if the patron who challenged the book didn't like the decision, that's when they would file an appeal, and that's when it would be moved forward to the governing body, which is you all.

It is the right thing to do, I think. We are the elected officials in this city.

I have in here, I saw obscenity standards. So those standards have been published.

Yes, there is a definition for obscenity and harmful to minors, and there is some vagueness in some of those too.

Subject to... And we know what is considered to be obscenity for minors. There's a legal definition.

But isn't there... There is also a...

obscenity defined list of things correct i think so that's what i'm understanding we we do not have obscenity in our library we have items probably in certain collections that someone may consider harmful to their minor child which is fine they're probably not going to be over there in that space looking for those books um i think that the primary factor i just want to reiterate is um Even with that definition of harmful to minors, it's a three-part test, and it has to meet certain community standards, and it has to be void of scientific, artistic, educational, literary value. So our books are written for a certain reason, and we're not leading small children over to the adult section to point out certain books to them. We think that's the parent's job to monitor what their children check out and read. But that said, now we may have to kind of figure out how to address that just a little bit.

Back on Becky's comment, the procedure, page number nine of the law, line number 15 says, if a person appeals the decision of a committee, which is the committee that was created by the library, the executive head of the county or city says, shall present the material, et cetera, et cetera, to the governing body of the county or city within 15 days of that committee's decision. It's clear in that sense. It's very strict in the time because we may not be able to read unless we have an extraordinary meeting for that particular subject, et cetera. But as I said, there is It is lengthy and it's intense.

I mean, the new part of it that would come to council, we just, I think Hattie just wanted to make you aware. We've had the process and like I said, I think maybe we've had three of seven. So we're hoping we can just continue to operate the way that we've been operating. And if we, you know, but if, but we just wanted to make you aware that there is a change in that, that if there could be an instance where a book can come here and that anybody can challenge it, not just somebody that has the Bentonville Library. I think those are the two things that, you know, could have more things. This one, just trying to make you aware of it.

I encourage you to read it. If you have questions, ask Nick.

All right. And I wasn't, but I did want to bring it because we have had some, some questions from the public, things like putting items on hold. Yes. And so that's, I think some of the things we're not sure, like somebody requests to put an item on hold and we put it on hold and You know, a lot of times adults will have their kids come in and pick up their books for them. So these are the things just behind the scenes we're trying to understand and navigate for employees. We want to be as transparent and about everything, but those are some of the things you guys might not. A lot of these things we deal with on the back end that you might not ever even think of could be something we're having to manage with employees on the back end. So just wanted you guys to be aware of that. We have a good process in place. So I am hopeful that it's not gonna be something that we have to really deal with too much because we do have to process. But some of those questions are coming from patrons and they're trying to decide what that looks like and how the interpretation of that. I guess the question is we have had, I do want to kind of help how to hear and give us some direction because my understanding, we have had a legislator say, tell us what we want clarified. Bill just gave us the charge to put something together. So I'm not sure what that.

And I don't know how much really say, I mean, I know that we have reached out to Arkansas municipal league for guidance. I know that Arkansas library association. and advocates for Arkansas Public Libraries. They've, I think, attempted to reach out to the Attorney General, but he's part of the court proceedings now, so I'm not sure that they will make any judgments or any clarifications until the legal proceedings are probably over, if that makes sense, because he's in the middle of that process.

So you're deciding who has standing and who doesn't. If somebody generally that's not a member of the library has standing since they're not part of the library system, can't check out a book, do they really have standing? So maybe this is some of the arguments.

Legal opinion clarifies these issues. We just do the best we can. Trying to comply with the law as we understand it.

Yes. And help me understand, because I'm probably the biggest world breaker, but you know this. Can children, like, take their card and check out anything at the self-check?

Currently right now, yes.

Okay. Yeah, good, because, I mean, my children have forever. Okay, so that is... Obviously, where some of this is coming from because of the self-check, because there's a good chance that you may not even see what somebody checks out. That's interesting.

There's no children's library card as opposed to an adult's library card that would flag these are adult books that aren't.

Currently, that's not how we operate. I'm not really wanting to dive into some of the ideas we've had. We've had some harebrained ideas now, let me tell you, in some of our staff meetings about, well, we could do this or we could do that. A lot of what ifs too, right? But that is something we're looking into is a leveled library card system. We do have... We have 170,000 items. I mentioned that. We also have, oh, I don't have my notes here. I thought I had it handy. We have, I think it's like 50 different patron types. And then we've got about 30 different user codes that have to coincide with the user and the patron type and the collection code. It's pretty complicated. I thought we could just push a button, but apparently we can't. So we're exploring what that looks like. It would take significant staff labor or a

some outlay of cash to the database provider to make that happen if that's the decision we uh move forward with it's tricky because you have movies that are that are clearly marked this is mature audience only this is restricted whatever books we just don't have that so it's up for yeah if you're doing what a reasonable person would do i think you've met the burden of proof for right now depending

pending on a legal definition of these issues. So I would just continue doing what you're doing. And reassure your staff that we got their back.

All right. I will, Ms. Cindy. Thank you. No, it is. Thank you, guys.

like the controversial subject nightmare do we have anything else hey you guys set the committee the whole agenda i don't know and we have music that's but we do come to me where do we file complaints about that move on so we can the parking discussion okay can you pull up that presentation i guess

Okay, thanks y'all. I know I'm gonna try to get through this quickly and efficiently, because I know a lot of people here wanna talk about an item later on the agenda, but I'll jump right into this discussion about downtown parking. So often we hear this, there's not enough parking. Well, that question really comes from four different areas. There's, is it a supply issue? Is it a distribution issue? Like is parking not conveniently located nearby where it should be? Is it a management issue? Like, are we actively managing our downtown parking? Or is it an enforcement issue? Are vehicles parked in a way they're not supposed to? So this first part, and I think the bulk of what I was asked to study deals with that first question of supply. How much parking are we actually requiring as development happens? So I'll go back to, because what I'm going to do on this question is kind of look at what the code required back prior to the new community code, what the new community code requires, and then some of those proposed revisions we're already thinking through as staff. So this is the old parking requirements for the core and edge districts. I'm sorry, I tried to fit as much as I could up there, but very generally, if it's a commercial use less than 3,000 square feet, there were no commercial parking requirements. If it were greater than 3,000 square feet, though, it kicks up to one space for every 500 square feet. Residential uses were typically one space per unit and then upper floors of non upper floor non residential uses for one space per thousand downtown edge, which was. the slightly less intense district compared to core. Same thing though, if it was less than 3,000 square feet, there were no commercial parking standards. If it were greater than 3,000 square feet, it was one space per 1,000 square feet. And then it did one space per unit. But then it also, if it were greater than two bedrooms, there was also a 0.5 space per units for every bedroom over three units. Those last two lines deal with what we did with existing or raised structures. So if it was an existing structure post, you know, when this ordinance was adopted in 2009, let's say it was a change in use, like some of our historic downtown buildings as restaurants and whatnot have turned over, we're not telling them, hey, you've got to build a parking lot to service your building. Those existing buildings in 2009 were kind of grandfathered in to the existing parking within the downtown area. Raise structures, though, like let's say it was a teardown rebuild situation, raise structures, you got a credit for the existing square footage. It was a subtraction out from these ratios.

And Tyler, on the code that was in existence until past this year, do we have any idea of how many waivers to that that went through?

Not off the top of my head. I can pull that, though.

The other piece of the conversation is that you can have these requirements, but they also then can come back in for waivers. And so I don't know how many during the period happened. I can check that.

So that was core edge is going to be for your central downtown areas. For RC2, RC3, and our downtown neighborhood districts or the DN districts, those standards looked relatively similar but slightly different. So you had one space per unit for residential. A mixed-use development had a requirement that you distinguish your residential from commercial spaces. And then it had some language in there about shared parking facilities, so the ability to do satellite lots or shared parking agreements so that multiple developments could share parking. Oh, let me flip back real quick. One thing in here, too, is where that parking counts, it's counted either on-site, on the street, or via a shared parking agreement. So this is from the new community code. So the commercial standards that I've got up on the screen now, all those numbers you see on the screen are per thousand square feet. So a food and beverage in T4 would be one space for every 500 square feet of net building area.

Sorry.

Institutional uses, so those would be, I mean, you can see like for a convention center in T5, it's the lesser of four spaces per thousand or 25% of maximum occupancy. K-12 has special standards. And then lodging at the bottom of the screen is spaces per guest room. And then your residential is, once you get above T4, and once you get into these other building typologies, it's one space per unit. One thing you may have noticed though, is when it came to the commercial standards, so T5, T6 is gonna be real similar, T5 is gonna be real similar to like core and edge. The adopted code did not have any mandated space requirements for T5, T6. It did for residential, though, and lodging. And then I think this is the discussion we had several weeks ago was about the codified reductions to those parking requirements. So I'll run through those real quick. You've got state licensed or assisted living facilities. The idea being if that is parked at one space per unit, that's not a use that's going to have heavy in and out vehicular traffic. Sites near the Razorback Greenway or the loop trail described in the Connecting Bentonville Master Plan can reduce based on distance. If it's near a premium transit stop, that's not a general ORT bus stop. That's meant to future-proof the code. That's like if we have BRT commuter or light rail. Until that exists, that reduction doesn't exist. And then you've got bike parking above minimum parking requirements. You've got tree preservation, which we've talked about before. If someone has to shift or move a parking spot to save a tree, we've allowed that before via a waiver process. It's in here as kind of a codified requirement. codified reduction, but they have to meet section 50-509, which says you have to flag the tree, mark the tree, have the drip line marked out. Like it's not just a, yep, you're preserving that tree. Like there's some actual enforcement behind it. And then you've still have that shared parking agreement language that was in the old code. So where does parking have to be located? So very similar to what we saw with the DN districts, it's on the same site as the related use. One thing that we changed in the adopted code from the old one that I think is very important, on-street and established built-out parking lanes along the edges of the site. So like if it's just willy-nilly free-for-all park on the street, that doesn't count towards your minimum parking requirements. It has to be actually built out designated on-street spaces. And then you've got that same satellite parking language about if it's within 660 feet, that's roughly a city block. You can count it via a shared parking agreement. So some of the things we've already flagged in here based on our conversation several weeks ago and some of our own kind of internal staff edits and looking at things was looking, okay, like reintroducing those commercial parking standards in T5, T6 at levels similar to what was in the old core and edge districts, which still allowed us to build out great places in downtown Bentonville. So just an example of what that might look like. It might be one per thousand for office or one per 500 for food and beverage or retail. The other thing I know we've talked about is those parking reductions. So if we're bringing back those reductions for core and edge, having those similar things we talked about for existing buildings, but not doing a credit for raised buildings. That greenway reduction, I think it's really important to actually say or make clear that's not necessarily as the crow flies. It needs to actually be feasible to walk or bike from the greenway to the development if you're claiming this reduction. And then we did have in there a reduction for public art, but there's really no nexus there between vehicular demand and public art. It was really meant to be more of an incentive. So we're going to take that one out.

Yes. One prior to the last paragraph. Yeah. This is a conversation we had some time ago in which we said, according to the, what is it, as the crow flies? Yes. It was a quarter of a mile.

An eighth of a mile or a quarter. Yes.

Whatever the distance was. But then you see the streets. You have to take the streets. You cannot go straight ahead. Correct. So the streets were much more than the streets.

amount that it was measured and that's what that's meant to reflect is like hey it has to actually make sense to be able because the the scenario when we had that conversation was well if we just do it as a quarter mile buffer you could end up in a scenario where and i'm not like you could have a development on potentially one side of the highway and the other side of the highway and then they're claiming a parking reduction when there's really no actual way to get to the greenway Thank you for that.

I kind of feel like that that greenway reduction should be limited to downtown. Like the greenway stretches the entire city. Realistically, this is saying that because it's close to the greenway, you won't have a car. You won't be parking. And I think... For the most part, most people who use bikes for commuting still have a car. Possibly in downtown Bentonville, it is becoming a possibility to actually not have a car. But I think in really any other part of the city, So I just wonder if that exemption, well, I think we're doing a fantastic job encouraging using, you know, alternative transportation and cycling for commuting. The parking requirement is because there's a car in the garage while you're using your bike to commute to work. And I kind of think outside of downtown, like that's still really applied.

Is that an issue of like residential parking standards or commercials parking standards? Because it sounds like what you're describing is questioning whether that should apply to residential. Because I think the idea there is if you are within proximity of the Greenway, it is more feasible to be able to utilize biking as more than just a recreational activity. It can be used as a mode of transportation. That's the idea behind that reduction. Now, I can see the logic behind the residential piece of it, but if I've got a trail-oriented development right up front on the Greenway, it's a commercial development, I It might make sense.

I agree with you completely. I'm thinking more of the residential. You've got a big giant apartment building and we're saying you don't need parking because all of your people aren't going to own cars. Maybe downtown, outside of downtown, even if you're close to the Greenway, I kind of don't think so.

There is an entire incentive going regionally right now to encourage development in all our Greenways and trails systems to be able to encourage biking and alternative transportation modes. If you leave it only to residential, why would, for instance, me go build a condominium complex directly on the trail so they could ride their bikes to all of their home offices within five minutes? So it does, I have about 20% of my residents that ride their bikes to work every day. And it's all residential. There's no commercial there. Now, it is in Midtown. It's overall between Walton and 102. It's not directly downtown. But the whole idea was to put residents where we have alternate trails and encourage that development.

Which is fantastic. And that makes it very desirable to live there. But I bet all of those people own cars that they leave at home while they're commuting.

Most all of them have cars. But would they have more if they didn't rely on a bicycle all the time? Yes. If they could use the bike, since they're able to use the bike, is there two cars or one? Do you have more people using only one vehicle than two? Or are you getting some participants that Uber and ride their bike only? Yes. Well, I mean, that's all the way over there up close to Walton before it goes to Rogers. If we're going to encourage development on alternative vehicles, Trails and methods to utilize something that's costing. We just had this discussion about how much our trails are costing. So do we want to encourage people to use those and actually have residences? Residents, people that live in these units actually use those or just out of towners and others that use them.

But they still have cars and they have to be parked somewhere. And so if we don't force developers to provide that parking, they're parking on the streets and they're parking in public lots and they're causing the very problems that we're talking about.

If they don't have enough parking for their residents, they fail.

Well, But they don't.

Like, the development right out here doesn't have enough parking. Across the street in the Walmart associate store. I mean, they're finding places to park, but that's... Do we want people crossing over J Street at 10 o'clock at night? Like, it's a safety and... They have cars that they need to have to have places to park them.

We're judging this whole conversation off one development, or are we talking about? The government has lots of parking, because I mean, he's not going to have a shortage of parking.

I don't even know what development that is. I'm just saying, like, I don't believe that just this blanket reduction because you're near a transit stop applies for every development. Because people still have cars, especially outside of downtown. And to not provide enough parking spots exacerbates our parking issues throughout.

Regardless of the whole exemption thing, the goal is not to build more parking than we need. Because we're eating up acres and acres of land. The whole community plan was centered around repurposing parking lots that are too big. But now we're talking about adding more parking. So we can have revenue. I don't disagree. I just don't think we should build more parking than we need.

But we need to build enough parking that we do need.

I think we're going to do this backwards. And we started this by asking for a parking inventory downtown. to find out what we have since the city doesn't own any of the parking garages that we contract to park in. We've put parklets on public parking spaces to facilitate access to businesses during COVID. It became permanent. I need to know in the city of downtown Rio, what public parking is available where we're not relying on private parking lots and how many of those are handicapped assistance.

Well, I'm already one step ahead of you. That's actually what I was wanting to conclude with. We talked a lot about supply. What does the code require? Well, what about these other three things? Where does parking exist? How are we managing or how ought we manage our public parking? What does enforcement look like? So a parking study would be a logical next step. So it would help us answer some of those questions about how much parking is available and when is it available, when and where does demand for parking exceed the supply that is actually available, How long do those vehicles occupy prime spaces? Where is additional off-street or on-street parking needed? And then finally, where might better signage management or additional parking itself actually help solve or mitigate some of these issues? So what we would like to do is start preparing a scope and a funding strategy to actually do a full-blown parking study and parking management plan.

How long will it take you to do that?

That depends on whether it's something we can get grant funding for or if it's something we put, you know, maybe we put something in next year's budget.

We've been talking about this for almost a year now. So you've got a lot on your plate. And I don't want to overburden your staff. I just am wanting to move forward with this instead of keep kicking the can down the road. So in light of that, do you have the staff to be able to just put together a plan? Here's how much it's going to cost. Here's who we can get to do it. Here are the parameters of what we need to look at and how long it would take.

putting together the scope would not be difficult. Putting together kind of a ballpark estimate would not be difficult. The question is going to become actually managing that project on a day-to-day basis. And that's something that I think we would need to go back, talk through and figure that out. And something when we're talking with the consultant, whoever that might be, as we're getting that ballpark, getting a better idea of like, okay, how much is subcontracted out, how much is needed from the city? Now, one thing we have done, Tanner, do you still have GIS open?

Okay.

So we did, though. You just go to the general GIS page on the website under our public maps. We do have already a... Where's my parking? Downtown public parking. Thank you. So we actually do have a downtown public parking map of all of those existing public lots we know about within the downtown core area. So roughly eight up to about Peel Compton and then out a few blocks off of the square. So if you zoom in here, it'll actually tell you how many parking spaces are in view and as well as how many accessible spaces are within these areas. So we do have some of that information for the core downtown area.

Tyler, does that include the agreements we have with our parking garages and what conditions we are allowed to use those parking spaces, what hours?

Those yellow ones are meant to reflect that. It's saying... yeah, it's public, but there's some additional criteria at play. We don't have a link on here to like the full-blown shared parking agreement, but we do have all that information.

We're getting ready to do a budget, so we need to know how much it's going to cost us and what it'll take to do this study.

Yeah, and the parking garages are up that we're coming, so, and I know one thing we also discussed, we have talked about a parking garage, but we were kind of waiting to get all of them up and see how they function. But also, are we able to get in a lot of these now there's the data of how many spaces are open and what time and can we and I think that's going to be important data to put into this if we can get it from those to really try to understand it. And we've also had discussions about you know, do we in the downtown, you know, not have on street parking, right? Well, this study would help us try to understand if we're going to go implement that and try to enforce, you know, parking not on streets like this. We really need the study to kind of help us with some of those things. If you decide those are directions you want to go, put them in place with a study. So that would be available.

Sure.

In certain hours, we could pull in the study so we can.

Yeah, I mean, in theory, it all should be reflected in there of what the times are and stuff, but putting it in an overt and really looking at. And I do think they can also look at. things like the, you know, developments that are coming in. But the other thing you're seeing a lot of is the mixed use, right, and trying to understand that piece of it. And this is, for me, this is what's been the most challenging is when we have requirements, but they come in on the back end and get a waiver. which then might be a 0.8 parking space. It's not even a full parking space. And like, I don't know how we're, I think that a parking study might be able to help us kind of understand those calculations. And also just, I do think the public is very frustrated with it. And I think we're all kind of frustrated currently. And so trying to understand that because we're gonna get, one hand, you're gonna get the argument of, you know, less parking requirements, right? Because you're right. I mean, we studied that for three years.

That's all we heard, three years.

On the other hand, you have to look at the reality of the people that live down here and what they're experiencing, right? And so we're trying to, but I think a study would give you, hopefully it'd be a third party that would come in and say, this is what we see happening on the ground level and here's some recommendations.

That would be our- It could absolutely look, those developments that have been approved at like 0.8 or 0.9 spaces per unit, going back and looking during peak demand, like is there, Is there a parking issue in those scenarios? And if there is, let's solve for it. If there's not, well, then we can look at what made that project successful.

And we talked about that several years ago about going to each of them and taking inventory during different peak time and, hey, is the parking space as large as it is or not?

Octavio. For many decades, this city, as well as many others in the country, have been associated with vehicles, cars. And they are an expense to the building. That expense didn't exist 100 years ago or 150 years ago. But today it is something, or at least in recent years, it is something that has been absolutely necessary because most people or most families have a vehicle and they have all the expenses associated with those vehicles, including obviously the necessary parking. Now, the lack of parking in this city has been in recent years, let's say 10 years to now, a difficult conversation and that that deteriorates the quality of life that the city sense of Bentonville have because they don't have parking. They don't have a place to put their car or there are many vehicles that are improperly parked, et cetera, et cetera. In one place that it is not far from here on the Northwest 5th, and C Street, there is a sign that a neighbor put in there saying, do not park on my grass. Please be nice. Go park somewhere else because I don't want you here. And that is something that creates conflict. The lack of parking is a serious problem that we don't need to allow it to happen. Thank you.

I'm all in favor of the study to find out exactly what our inventory is, where it's at, if we are short. And if we are short where so I'm going to leave it up to the study. Okay, so with the data.

The only thing I would add, I just need a little bit of direction because this was not would not have been budgeted for. So do you want us to proceed with trying to get an RF

I would say grant funding is the avenue we'll explore first.

I'm assuming you want us to do this sooner than January 1 is what I'm hearing. So I think that would be ideal.

Starting the process, I think, is a critical thing. I don't know if you'll get it done by January, but just starting the process right away would be great.

I'll start with some ballparks, and then that will help guide the direction we move from here. Thank you.

Thank you.

We didn't hear from Harry. Okay.

So we could consider for consent agenda item two, five, six.

Two, five, six.

7, 8, 7, 8, 9. And 11, 12, 13 and utility board number one.

Okay.

You say 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. And 11, 12, 13 and one. There's a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

I need to recuse myself from number 10. Oh, it's an appointment.

Do we have 10 on there?

We have 10 on there.

He did put 10.

10, 11, 12, 13. And then utility board won, okay? So that's everything that's eligible, right? Everything but the ordinances. Board one is there a motion to adjourn from video so.

All in favor. To adjourn to new business. Motion and if I get to do that.

Okay.

Item number one is proclamation recognizing national information technology professionals day. And. I've assumed everybody was in favor of going into the new. All in favor of going into the new agenda.

Aye.

Any opposed? Okay. All right. The proclamation for recognizing National Information Technology Professionals Day.

Dennis is here. Okay.

I need to recognize him and the team. Okay. I'll read the proclamation. So, whereas National Information Technology Professionals Day recognizes and celebrates the professionals who design, operate, secure, maintain, and support the technology, infrastructure, and digital services in which modern organizations and communities depend on. And whereas the city of Bentonville's information technology professionals provide the technology foundation that supports the employees, departments, public safety, utilities, facilities, and the services delivered to the residents of Bentonville. And whereas the city's information technology team supports a broad and complex environment that includes cybersecurity, network and systems infrastructure, enterprise applications, geographic information systems, telecommunications, end-user technology and support, data protection, facilities technology, and employee training. And whereas Bentonville continues to grow. The city's information technology professionals are called upon to meet increasing demands created by evolving cybersecurity threats, regulatory and compliance requirements, rapidly changing technologies, growing data needs, and expanding city services. And whereas the dedication, technical expertise, and commitment of the city of Bentonville's 16 information technology professionals help protect city assets, improve operational efficiency, support critical services, and ensure employees have the technology necessary to serve our community effectively. Now, therefore, I, Stephanie Orman, Mayor of the City of Bentonville, do hereby proclaim September 15th as National Information Technology Professionals Day in the City of Bentonville, Arkansas. And I encourage the community to observe this day in appreciation of the efforts and commitment of these employees. And we are doing this tonight because this is City Council Night. So if you'll come forward, Dennis.

I didn't.

Couldn't do it without him.

Yeah, it's a lot of, there is a lot of technology. Guys do a fantastic job, guys and gals. And we're always behind the scenes. Sometimes we get let out for good behavior, more drinks. But no, we really appreciate it and we appreciate being recognized. So it's not going to be very hard if you're trying to All of our systems from utilities, it's all technology and computer.

And they demand cybersecurity and just updated technology. It's a lot. I just want you to know that you don't see that. You don't hopefully hear about it because they're doing their job on the back end. But if you know about any technology systems, there's a lot of demand.

on the back end for those priorities and new policies.

It feels like daily on some of these things and they're managing all of that.

Great job.

Yay, Tanner. But if you want to get too much out of this, that's no means it's good news. That is true.

Tanner hears from me all the time. Tanner's like, stop calling me.

Leaving the fact we're looking at what we're looking at on the screen and how it works.

Well, major departments, each one of those are going to have major technology systems, but they run off that right so that we can be efficient. And as we go into budgeting, you will see there's needs in the technology piece of it. And you're going to see that in budget, right? All of these systems have to be maintained and kept up. OK. We will go into our consent agenda items, if you'll read those, please.

New business item number two, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to accept a grant from Fidelity in the amount of $21,790.43, amending the 2026 budget and for other purposes. New business item number five, in the city council for the city of Bentonville, Arkansas. New business item number 6, a resolution authorizing the Bentonville Police Department to declare 10 police department vehicles as surplus property available for trade to Superior Automotive Group under their trade-in program for emergency vehicles and for their purposes. New business item number 7, appointment of Thomas Bailey to the Construction Board of Appeals. NEW BUSINESS ITEM NUMBER 8, A RESOLUTION ACCEPTING FFY 2027 NWARPC GRANT FUNDS IN THE AMOUNT OF $2 MILLION FOR VAUGHN ROAD IMPROVEMENTS AMENDING THE 2026 BUDGET AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES. NEW BUSINESS ITEM NUMBER 9, A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR AND CITY CLERK TO ACCEPT TO ENTER INTO AN AGREEMENT WITH ROADS DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, LLC, TO PURCHASE REAL ESTATE IN THE AMOUNT OF $72,073 AND FOR THE PURPOSES. NEW BUSINESS ITEM NUMBER 10, APPOINTMENT OF HUNTER HOOK TO THE PARKS AND RECREATION ADVISORY BOARD. New business item number 11, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into agreement with Byrne and Jones Construction in the amount of $81,000 for turf installation at Memorial Park and for other purposes. New business item number 12, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into an agreement with Streamline Environmental LLC in the total amount of $413,732.50, including contingency for McKissick Creek Stream Bank restoration and further purposes. New business item number 13, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to acquire easements necessary for the Town Branch Interceptor Project and further purposes. Utility Board item number one, a resolution authorizing the mayor and city clerk to enter into change order number one, R.090512, 12-inch water main reroute with on-point excavation in the amount of $22,955.00 and for other purposes. Second. Motion and a second. Any other discussion?

Roll call, please. Deepa?

Yes. Yes. Over. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. And recuse from number 10.

Sanchez. Yes. Patterson. Yes. Yes.

Okay. I do see hunters here. So I always like to introduce when you put them on consent agenda. Hunters here. I didn't see Tom Bailey. Is he? He's here, but he was the outside. Okay. Well, if he's still outside, you haven't met him. So they're they both were here this evening for their appointments.

Thank you.

All right. That we will go to item number three, which is a public hearing and ordinance vacating a utility easement at this time is going to open the public hearing. Is there anyone in person or online to speak on this item? Seeing and hearing none, I will close the public hearing.

New business item number three, an ordinance vacating utility easement located at lot one of urban Bentonville of the city of Bentonville, Arkansas, Benton County, Arkansas, VAC26-0032.

Motion and a second. Any other discussion? We'll call, please.

Souter? Yes. Grover? Yes. Burkhart? Yes. Hook? Yes. Sanchez? Yes. Patterson? Yes. Yes. Acree? Yes. Siva? Yes.

Item number four is a public hearing and ordinance vacating a utility easement. This time I will open the public hearing. Is there anyone online or in person to speak on this item? Seeing and hearing none, I'll close the item.

New business item number four, an ordinance vacating utility easement located at lots one, two, and three of Forest Oaks subdivision of the city of Bentonville, Arkansas, Benton County, Arkansas, VAC 26-0033.

Motion and a second. Any other discussion? Roll call, please.

Clover? Yes. Clark? Yes. Hook? Yes. Sanchez? Yes. Patterson? Yes. Acree? Yes. Ziba? Yes. Suter?

Yes. And it's 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13, and utility board number one. We're on consent agenda. So that will bring us to planning item number one, which is a rezoning from R1 family to T4.2 neighborhood node. And we do have several individuals signed up to speak on this item. So at this time, I will go to public comment if that's agreeable for Council, now we'll just call you in the order that you are signed up. And if you could just come forward, give us your name and your address and keep your comments to three minutes or under, we would appreciate it. Janice Summer. Summer.

Hi, my name is Janice Sommer. I live at 338 Northwest Fifth Street. I have a lot of concerns about changing the designation of this property, primarily because it has the potential to be one floor taller than anything that exists in the whole surrounding area. we've run into this before where because we've got zoning that would allow for something, we pass it, whether or not it would look right or impede on the rights of the people around in that area. And I would implore council to take a look at this because this would be the first potential four stories that we would be going to in an area that is still primarily one-story homes. We had this happen on Fifth Street, and I think that was the first building that went in like that. It was three floors at that time, but I don't think until it went in, it came across as harsh as it was going to be to the residents. So that's one of my concerns. The other is, to Tyler's point about the parking, the numbers of parking spaces required for each unit doesn't really even apply because I know in the fourplex that went in on C, the very first unit that was sold has three cars. And of course, if you have three bedrooms, you've got teenagers even, you're going to have more than one or two spaces needed it also has to be practical that particular building had some impracticality to the parking so what we have is people being forced onto the street it's created a big safety concern we've got many schools uh two that are extremely close and people are parking right up on the parking on the crosswalks, practically on them. I mean, it's very concerning to me for safety. It's also causing traffic to go onto incoming traffic lanes to go around it. So I am opposed to this at this time because we don't have these things in place that address the parking. Thank you very much.

Eric Sumrall?

A couple of things I wanted to mention. I noticed in your earlier discussion today, Eric Summer, 338 Northwest Smith, sorry. The earlier discussion today on the fees and all, not one of you mentioned the coding, anything like T4-2s or DN1, DN3. So the point is, is that is not an actionable kind of number. I've been in planning my whole career in business and large companies. We had these kind of numbers all the time. I mean... indicators all the time because you need to be able to predict things in the future and their management tools. It's not actionable. You can't buy a T4-2. You can't sell it. I've never seen it on a contract, on a lease. You can't collect taxes against it. What you can do is buy linear square feet, lengths of wood, so many metric tons of gravel and things like that. That's the reality. So when we have this situation where those codes have changed in the last eight years that we've been here, it's not very long, three times. So now things have changed where we had property that we had go in initially as a DN-3. We pulled it back to DN-2, okay, across the street on one of his properties. He went in as a DN-3, and he's gotten that. Next to it, down the line, it's still being built. All of a sudden, the code's changed. Now it's a T-4-2. And now he's got in between two DN3, which is essentially a 40-foot high building. He's going to put a 50-foot. It's a 25% increase in height just because we've changed the codes. Had we had this discussion last year, it wouldn't have been a problem. In fact, I don't think he went for the 50-foot level when he applied for either one of the units that are already underway. The notion that you're going to have transitional properties. This is transition in the other way. I mean, where do you, we've had discussions in this council meeting about transitional and all of a sudden there's a proposal comes in and it does it exactly the opposite thing. And it's just, I'm getting a little bit of frustration because I, when you think about it, you know, we need to have some, you know, the common sense and judgment that says, if this is the direction, then we go home and, you know, we think things are. thought that way, and it can't be further from the truth sometimes. But we're looking at a 50-foot building. It's not a DN something. It's not a TR something. It's a 50-foot building versus what was there before, and it's left and right. It's a 40, okay? It's a 25% increase. And there was a big discussion in here when one of them went from 36 to 40. That's an 11% increase. It's not very much. This is more than double that, okay?

Because you can. Point of order, public comment has reached three minutes.

Because you can doesn't mean you should.

Nancy Hatcher. And you're at 405 North Main. Sherry Adkins. Be me.

Sherry Adkins. I live at 409 Northwest C Street. And so my property butts right up against this, was it 405? Is that what the, anyway, whatever the subject property. Anyway, but I also have one of the main people, obviously, since I'm right next door to the fourplex or the townhouses. that I have additional drainage that has not been addressed, that was not there before, that is there now, that just one estimate is $25,000 for me to fix it. I didn't cause this. The building and the planning and everything else that brought this on, that's what caused it. It was not there before. I've owned this property for 10 years. So I think sometimes we get the cart before the horse. And that's what we've done here. You know that it's causing problems. i would request that we just take a step back and maybe look back over the planning and see get some of these infrastructures done first before we just plow through and just because it meets the criteria of the zoning that we just pass it through with no regard to trash and and parking in the water and then just to throw up the hands and say it's not my problem that's your problem now when we didn't cause it. So anyway, that's my main thing. I've been having to park, we're parking, I've been having to park my daughter in my yard most of the time now, but today she's on the street. But anyway.

I personally did have a question for Sherry because I went and looked up, there was a 311 that you had put in, correct, for this? For down in Little Rock? For your property, I think there I saw where you had put in a concern through 311.

I don't know what 311 is.

Bentonville 311, because I thought, Sherry, you were listed as one of the.

If you had some drainage issue, did you put that into the website? Did you put it in 311?

Why you didn't?

I, I went, you know what? I don't know. I, um, we've been kind of just like trying to find anybody who could help. So, um, I do know that I signed up to speak today.

I know we've looked, I've, I, I went, and I think it said from 2025, you had put, usually we direct if there's a drainage, we probably would have. And so I just wanted to, maybe I wanted to confirm that you actually had put the complaint into 311 in 2020. I said, Thought it said April of 2025.

I didn't print that and bring it down with me, but I... Well, I do know that I have text messages with this developer from June of 2025. So there's a very real possibility maybe that I did because it's been going on for so long. I just kept thinking it would be better once the construction was done, and it's not.

I think there is documentation in 311 about your concern. So I just wanted to make sure that there is some documentation out there.

Is there a resolution to that?

Well, so that's what I, I couldn't, I was going to ask, like, what was the resolution from that?

But you don't remember any resolution from anything. I mean, I did recently just put in a call down to Little Rock to what is the DEQ or something like that. Anyway. I'm just, and then I've had foundation people come out for drainage and things like that. The main thing that they're, the one person that I've had come out so far, I have somebody else come in tomorrow, is what I suggested from them over a year ago was a French drain should have been put in at least. They're telling me because of where the different spots are that It's going to obviously be more than French drain. It's going to be like dry wells. I don't know a lot about that stuff. So I'm just telling you kind of what I've been told. Dry wells, things like that. But the problem is because my property is kind of in the middle of everything. Even if they fix it to where it takes that water off of my property, it's going to go right into this property that we're talking about. And there's nothing they can do about that. So I don't know what the answer is. That's why I'm looking and trying to seek

more expertise so you don't currently have curb and gutter in front of your house currently no no sidewalks you have the bar ditches the old bar ditches well there's a sidewalk in front of my home yes and you have just basic bar ditch drainage i don't know what you mean by bar ditch there's no there's no there's no pipe in the ground it just flows in front supposedly down the street in the bar ditch it's an old ditch i guess so yeah i mean i don't really see very much There's just runs out.

It's just even. Yeah. Which was even with the property that used to be what four 11 that now sets the word the, it was all kind of even there originally. Not, not anymore.

And they have a curb and gutter starting at the properties next to you all the way.

They have curbing. They have guttering around the front door. I don't know about what else they, I don't see any other guttering. So I don't know.

Thank you.

and i can go try to pull that but i do think there was a concern that i just want council to be aware that i think your concerns but before this i mean had been put in before too so i want people to understand that like i said i don't remember i didn't know what that was so and it's been obviously if it's been since over a year i don't know So I've never talked to- Your knowledge from that, there's not been a resolution to that.

I've never spoke to anybody else besides Mark, the developer, until very recently. So, okay, thank you.

Jeannie Davidson.

Good evening. I live at 403 Northwest C Street. I'll try not to read and be boring, but I get nervous, so I brought some notes. I just wanted to talk a little bit about the property that's in question today. That was owned by a gentleman named John, and he had a beautiful property. He took very good care of it. I spoke with him on many occasions, and one night I spoke with him, and he was deeply, deeply distressed. by his property because of all of the stormwater damage that he had. And he was dragging out these sandbags that he was putting on the side of the house. And he was telling me about how the 12 plex had basically blocked all of his light. And so he didn't have any more, he couldn't even have his garden on that one side. So he left. And the only person who could really buy his house was the developer. He had it on the market for several months and it just didn't sell. John's gone is his beautiful little greenhouse. It's empty on September 1st Commissioner Reggie Wright claimed that on the record that the property was not fit to be a single-family residence So that kind of stopped me because if a long-term residence property becomes unsuitable for single-family use after development What does that say? And I felt like maybe there should have been some more accountability in this particular situation. On the corner of C and 5th, the property, the elevation has been raised up. It's caused a lot of problems, not only for Sherry, but it also caused problems for John. And now we're kind of asking Sherry to do the same thing. So she's got to the north of her, she's got the fourplex. And then now we want to do a neighborhood node behind her. So now she's going to be surrounded by property that's overshadowing her on both sides. So I'm afraid that the same thing is going to happen. And, of course, this is not theoretical. I mean, this is actually Sherry's home, and she's a single mother, and she's been trying to deal with this for the last year. And all of us in the neighborhood have been, you know, over the last few weeks have been trying to help her. We're a little horrified, to be honest, and we're concerned. I feel like Sherry's had no other choice but to finally call that agency down in the state, the DEQ. The builder won't accept any responsibility. I've actually confronted him myself. I've gone right to him and said, Mark, what are you going to do about this? She's a single mom. And he said, well, I've done everything according to what the city wants. So I feel I'm next. I'm downhill of this. I'm downhill of this. I'm at 403. And so if something gets built there, there's a lot of stormwater. There's a lot of drainage. And there's also an alleyway that is potentially going to be used, which is definitely for residents. Children are on that alleyway. Animals are on the alleyway. There's bikers. There's no sight lines. I think it's going to be a really bad deal. Anyway, these are answers that, you know, like I have questions. I have questions about the infrastructure. I have questions about what's going to happen. So that's why I'm here.

When I was looking up 311s, I do think that, what was the previous owner's name? I think he had put a 311 in as well. Two 311s on it, and one had Sherry and one had that gentleman.

Yeah. So that's my concern, is that properties are, yeah, it feels yucky to feel manipulated out of your property. Thank you.

Dylan Shaddix? Okay. Lorena Sipes? Is that right? Or Lavina? Lorena? I don't know. Am I saying it correctly? Okay.

Types, I think it's the last name.

I think she left. Okay. Gail Baller. You said no. Okay. Okay. Um, Jeff Mulligan.

Good evening. I'm Jeff Milligan. I reside at 308 Northwest 4th Street, which is just on the opposite adjacent corner from the fourplex next to Sherry's place. Just a little history. In 2022, there were on this block, the entire block, there were 19 parcels. Fast forward to 2026, we've had an increase in 16 parcels. We've gone from 19 to 35. In 2022, there were 16 single-family homes. We're down three now because they've been replaced by a four-plex and now a 12-plex. There were originally on this block eight multifamily, well, I guess they're, single family I don't know what the two four plexes are there at 406 and 404 but I call them multifamily but your zoning may call them something different but eight total dwellings and now we're at 24 so that's the 16 fold you know it's 16 incremental You know, either one or two, whatever he bulldozed to build a fourplex. It was either one or two lots. Not sure. We've got one vacant lot now. But ultimately, we've gone from 24 total dwellings on this entire block to 37. And the question I have, because last week there was no plan. There wasn't any plan submitted. There weren't any drawings. There were no elevations. It was just, hey. We want to rezone this to the highest level and add commercial to it while we're at it since we're here, right? You know, what's that mean? And I've only been here a year and a half, guys. So this, like, last week was my first planning committee meeting in Bentonville. So I didn't know what to expect. But the ones I've been to in Little Rock and elsewhere is, like, people came in prepared. They had a plan. Say, hey, here's what we're going to do, especially when zoning was in question, right? So what I believe happened last week was a spot zoning exercise, which that's questionable if that's legal. It could be here. In some places, it's frowned upon. Some conversations about, hey, here's why we would withhold a zoning change is if it benefits one person or one landowner. Well, currently... The only person benefiting from this rezoning is Mark at this point. Now, when he sells and divests himself of the finished developments, no, he'll no longer be the owner. But until they're done and he gets rid of them, he is. And then just talk about the old infrastructure and the pressure that – 50 additional toilets is going to have on the sewer and the water.

No, I'm going to border public comment has reached three minutes. Thank you for your, for hearing me.

Yeah. Roll. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

No, I don't see him. I know him.

Okay. Mark Matthias.

Keith Paul.

My battery was down really low, so I had to shut my phone off. So if you give me just a minute, I thought I was going to be talking a little while ago. So anyway, but thank you, Ms. Mayor and council members for being here and doing what you guys do every day. And let's see, we just about got it here. Thank you. And I'm going to be reading off a statement because I can't memorize all of this. So please bear with me. What's that? Oh, I'm about to get there. I'm Keith Paul, my address is 303 Northwest B Street. And I come from a property management background and grew up in a construction world with my dad in a new developing town. And that town's motto was progress through thoughtful planning. I don't think this project would, it wouldn't be considered under those simple guidelines. I'm here today to respectfully ask that we not move forward with this rezoning request. I would like to say that Mark has developed some nice single family townhomes and duplexes in our neighborhood. And he said, as he said last week, he is also part of our neighborhood as he lives there. But Mark also developed the two adjacent properties to the lot that's in question. And both of those are three-story buildings, 40-foot tall, built amongst existing single-family, one- and two-story homes, allowing a zoning change to go to four stories and 50 feet tall would be totally out of place in our existing neighborhood. Those projects are three stories high, again, maximum 40 feet. uh, with medium intensity residential zoning. And I feel this project could do this. He could do the same and keep the neighbors happy. Keep the look of the neighborhood consistent with development with the development that's already there. Last week in the planning meeting, if I understood correctly, the difference between T4.1 and T4.2 was significant, especially for existing neighborhood like ours. The T4.1 would allow one building with four units, similar to what Mark has developed on the lot just to the west. T4.2 would allow one building with 20 units and commercial, which basically makes that an apartment with commercial underneath that in the middle of our neighborhood. And the closest commercial property we have right now is like an airship pump house that's six, seven blocks away. Okay. And the other thing is, where do the residents park? Mr. Sanchez mentioned earlier that people have signs in their grass at Fifth and C, no parking, and it's creating conflict, and it does already. Where do they park? In what old sewer system do those residents toilets flush? And there'll be, there's 48 new toilets in the two buildings that Mark's already built. And there'll be probably another, whatever it ends up being, flushing into that. And where does the water and power come from in a city that's growing as fast as ours? It seems, where's my clock? It seems the better option would be a T4.1 zoning or a development consistent with the existing buildings that's already been developed. If this was raw land or new build before and other surrounding land around it was developed, this might be an okay project. But this is all existing neighborhoods, existing homes, and everything is changing there quickly. So anyway, thank you. Please consider other options other than the 4.2. Thank you.

Brad Johnson.

I'm Brad Johnston.

I'm at 415 Northwest 5th Street. We bought that property June the 3rd of this year, so I'm a new resident. The thing that shocks me about this the most is that in this one little square block area, we're now anticipating commercial development. That was never on my bingo card when I bought this property. Shame on me. Maybe I should have checked better. But I just can't imagine why there would be any need for commercial development on this residential, small residential block. Second thing is, it would seem to me that it would make sense to see how this 12-unit thing works out. before we add on to that, because right now it's kind of a mess and who knows how it's going to be, but it would, with all the logistics and the infrastructure and the parking issues, why we would compound a new zoning before we know what already is being built doesn't make any sense to me. Thank you.

Also, while I'm walking up, my neighbor was waiting on her babysitter, and I don't think her name is on the list. If we could just add her.

Well, when we finish with those signed up, we'll ask it first. Thank you.

All right. My name is Jeff Clapper. I live at 412 Northwest Fifth Street. I'm a local small business owner, husband and father. We have lived on this block on Northwest Fifth Street for over 14 years. In this time, every parcel on our block, except for one, has undergone some sort of construction and change, including our own home, which we renovated in 2021. We love the neighborhood. We know our neighbors. We walk and ride our bikes. We walk our children to their neighborhood schools, and we're concerned about allowing T42 zoning on the block. We do not have an issue with townhouses or higher density. The real issue is allowing four stories and commercial use on the block. Rezoning is not permitted as a matter of right, but determined by the circumstances of each individual property. While T42 zoning is permitted in the urban neighborhood, it is simply not appropriate here. There are no other properties on this block that operate as T42 properties. The current adjacent parcels max out at 40 feet and are fully residential properties. This parcel should be in line with the neighborhood. One of the Planning Commission's reasons for approving the T42 zoning was that it was in line with the neighborhood and the adjacent parcels. It's not true. Both properties adjacent to the parcel in question were rezoned in 2023 to max out at 40 feet and allow only residential use. In fact, for the property directly west of the parcel in question, Mark originally asked for a zoning that would have allowed up to 50 foot mixed use. I myself appeared before the Planning Commission as that kind of zoning is simply not appropriate on this block. Several of my neighbors appeared as well. Eventually Mark agreed to a zoning designation, which again maxed out at 40 feet and did not allow commercial use. Furthermore, the north side of 5th Street is designated a traditional neighborhood. All of the properties are single-family homes. Again, allowing four stories and a commercial property on this block is not in line with the character of the neighborhood. Lastly, I will mention the safety issue. As I mentioned, my children have walked to school since 2018, and while we have all had to get used to more traffic, allowing a commercial property in the middle of the block on a residential street will cause safety issues for children walking to school, as well as citizens walking and riding. During the Planning Commission hearing, one commissioner mentioned the success of the airship coffee on Northwest A Street. It's distinctly a different situation. That property is one and a half acres of property, was already a publicly used space before it became a coffee shop, and already had ample parking. This parcel is half an acre, is currently a single family home, and has no parking. Mr. Haney will tell you that people will ride their bikes and walk to whatever commercial space he has planned, and that will probably be true. Most days, I ride my bike and walk. In fact, I rode here tonight. However, I do drive my car, and when I need to get to the doctor or pick up my groceries and all the other things we do as people in America, we need a car. My wife and I joke that living downtown, we only need one and a half cars, but as we all know, they don't sell half cars. People will inevitably drive to any commercial property allowed here, and that will cause traffic, parking, and safety issues for not only the neighborhood, but for many of the other citizens in Bentonville. Thank you.

Okay, that is all that I have signed up. Do we have some individuals that like to speak that are not signed up? Okay. We'll recognize you. If you'll just come to the mic and just give us your name and your address, we would appreciate that. And keep three minutes or under if possible, please.

OK. Roland Smith, 406 Northwest C Street. I did sign up twice, but it didn't work. And I think my neighbors have done a really, really good job. And I do want to take some exception. Mark does say he's a neighbor. He is not a neighbor. He lives six blocks down. And this doesn't affect his home at all. And I think that's an important thing to pound out. The other thing that we don't know is what is high density. I don't think it's been defined in the thing. Right now we have 12 coming and we have 16 units right now. So... Isn't that high enough density in one city block? I don't understand how that works. We do not have the infrastructure for it. The poor guy that lived in the middle basically was flooded out because of these two buildings. He did put up sandbags. He had to sell his property. And Mark comes forward and buys it and wants to make it a commercial property, T4, and 50 feet high. We do not need any more infrastructure. buildings in this residential plot. And we certainly do not need commercial buildings in this thing. We don't have the, you guys are getting way ahead of yourself by giving them these things. We don't have the infrastructure for this. And Mark blames everything on the city. It's not the city's fault because we don't have the infrastructure. The city, I understand, doesn't have the money to put that infrastructure in. And now we're talking about putting a commercial building right between these other buildings. And it didn't work for the fourplex. The 12plex isn't open yet. We don't even know what impact that's going to have. I think it should stay residential. I think we need things. I asked Mark if you wanted to build a house there. You should build a house there. And he says, well, I don't want to build my house there because there's two buildings on either side. Well, yeah, Mark, you put the buildings there. So please don't do this. This is a big, big problem for us that live in the neighborhood. And I think you guys are in control of the city, not the developers. and you're our elected officials, we vote for you and we wanna keep voting for you. I voted for both of my people in my ward and don't do this to us. I don't think it all needs to go in one area. I think these developers are jumping on this thing early so they can get the T4 development, the commercial development stuff and people are just breezing right through. I was very surprised that the building commission respectfully didn't vote for this. It's funny because they were against the fourplex, the building commission, and the council turned it around and let Mark build that fourplex. I don't know how the 12-plex got voted, and I wasn't told about it, and I didn't know it was going to happen. I thought they were just building houses here, and suddenly there's 12 units coming in. Unfortunately, I missed that vote. My fault. Please don't vote for this. Please reverse what the planning commission said. I think this is a good idea. Thanks.

I'm Kate McNeil, and I live at the Itty Bitty House on 413 Northwest 5th Street, right next to the 12plex. I do just want to introduce myself real quick because I think it's important. I'm probably the youngest one here to speak. I'm 32 years old. I have a toddler at home that I needed to get a babysitter for, and I'm pregnant with twins due in early March. So we're really excited, and we are first-time homeowners. we are also a little bit frustrated um i also want to add just to our situation we are super mobile so right now i ride bike 90 at the time with my toddler on the back when i have twins i'm gonna have to get some sort of tricycle i'll need a car to drive my twins around with the toddler. And my husband and I can't get rid of our two cars because work, kids, et cetera. So we need a place to have those cars. Our garage, because our house is itty bitty and we ride bikes, multiple bikes, houses, our bikes can't put our cars in the garage. So we park in the driveway. Note that a lot of people do that. My ask for you today is please do not approve commercial space. The planning committee, one of the questions they answered was we're approving it because our community guidelines that we all voted for said so. And so we're gonna approve it and it matches the rest of the space. There is no commercial on Northwest Fifth Street today. This is a brand new concept and idea. So at least wait to see the proposed plan. um don't look at it in a silo that's why we have you guys that's why we vote on you guys please look at this um out of the silo and understand what the repercussions may be reasons why to have pause they were mentioned today but on street parking all through construction there was a ton of on-street parking that we had to deal with from D street all the way up to a, and it's jam packed. It makes it very hard to ride bikes. It makes it hard for me to pull out of my driveway safely with Matilda in the back, not knowing and being able to see who's coming on both sides, who's going in either lane. And when we do ride our bike, I have to ride the line in the center, which is very unsafe for people pulling onto fifth street. So safety is my biggest concern there. Trash is my other concern. 12 units next door, 24 trash cans. They go on the grass or the curb now. And when the trash trucks come, they use their claw to reach over and grab it. But if there's on-street parking... They can't get to those trash cans. And they all get knocked over. It's a mess. Doesn't look good. None of us love it. Doesn't smell good. What are the trash people going to do? So we need to think about these things before we add even more to this space. So thank you very much for your time.

Is there anybody else that wishes to speak?

I do have one person.

Recognize them. Mary, can you hear us?

It's Marie.

Sorry. If you'll state your name and your address, and if you could keep your comments to three minutes or under, we would appreciate it. Thank you.

Yes, I'm Marie Smith. I'm at 406 Northwest C Street, and I'm here to respectfully ask the City Council to deny the request to rezone the property at 405 Northwest 5th Street. I think everybody already has said yes. some of the things that I thought I was going to say, so I'm not going to necessarily repeat them, but just the fact that I agree with them. And just to kind of give you my background, my husband Roland and I came here about five years ago, and one of the criteria that we considered, and Roland told me, okay, go buy a house, but make sure that you can walk around downtown and we can go to the library, go to the museum and, you know, park our car and never use it. Well, then the rains came and then the sun came and the ice and the wind. And suddenly that walkable, bikeable city turned into, we need our car. And we became a Instead of the hope that we were always going to walk to the reality of using our car, which brings me to parking, which on our C Street, it's so narrow and The alleyway that the developer is proposing to use as the entry is right across the street from our small little house. We're the smallest house on the block, I think. And the... alley, lights focus right into our window. So we're getting that. And then the parking around C Street has already been discussed very detailed. And the problem is that the people coming on C Street or going off C Street onto Fifth Street are really taking a chance because they cannot see. And I've had my family members tell me that they had to hit the brake because of the problem of turning onto our street. It's narrow. It's a walkable one to the school. So we love seeing the parade in the morning of the kids with their toddlers, with their school age kids going down our street. If you come by our house, you'll see that our door is open and And the shades are open. We like participating in our neighborhood. We know the people in our neighborhood. And I want to continue that. I don't want to give that up.

Point of order. Public comment has reached three minutes.

Oh, well, thank you very much for listening to me. And I just urge everybody to vote no to this proposal. Thank you so much.

We got through all the comments that will open it up for discussion.

And Tyler. And at the planning commission. There was somebody that so that I think it's a really good job of figuring out how we got here. How because My understanding was that Mark asked for three extra feet for some dormers. So I want that history because I think that's where, as I said, we may have messed up on the plan.

So the history there is right here. So that is that fourplex, these four townhome units. Originally, the request came through as DN3. Mark agreed voluntarily during the planning commission meeting to... except a down zone to DN2. However, he appealed that decision to you all who then approved that zoning at DN3, which is the Downtown High Density Residential District.

Which is how we got where we are today with the master plan.

Tyler, those four plexes could have been built on DN2?

Technically, yes, but it would have had to have been limited to the 36 feet in height. Which is probably what it has today. It's at 40. DN3 allows for up to 40 feet.

What I'm saying is that those buildings could have been done with the lower zoning.

Not with the height, but yes, that building typology of fourplex townhome development could have been done in DN2. Yes.

Thank you.

Heather, can you clarify the zoning of the 12?

unit it says on our agenda it's zone t42 is that correct correct it's when did that become zone t42 so both of these as we were going through the zoning process were zoned dn3 which is downtown high density residential so when we were going through the process of figuring out okay we have our old zoning districts what are our new zoning districts dn3 with what it allows is was basically slotted right in the middle of t4.1 and t4.2 So a DN-3 previously allowed for 40-foot tall structures. There wasn't a limit if it was end of block on the amount of multifamily you could put in a building. There was no limit on it. It also allowed in a multifamily building some very small percent of the ground floor to be utilized as commercial space. Compare that to DN2, where the difference there was it didn't allow for multifamily, but it allowed for the townhouse at end block. So when we're figuring out, OK, between 4.1, 4.2, 4.1 is limited to four units per building, whereas T4.2 is limited to 12 units per building. 4.2 allowed for slightly taller height. And then it allowed for some of those same smaller scale commercial uses. DN3 was floating out there somewhere in the middle. So as opposed to effectively down zoning people, we made the decision during that process that DN3 translates to 4.2. So that's how we ended up with 4.2 zoning. Now I will say, and I said it during the planning commission meeting, last week while these properties are zoned t 4.2 when you look at the actual building typologies and what has been built it is quite similar to a 4.1 as far as what has actually been constructed out there in the field But the fourplex on the corner here, Mark had a plan to do four townhomes and he stuck with it. With that D and three zoning, he could have done a multifamily structure on that development, but he chose not to. That's something I think when we're looking at zoning that I think many people have hit on tonight is you really do need to think about, okay, the moment you grant zoning, you're giving vested rights on here's all the things you can do in this zoning. And once that's given, well, Mark or whatever developer could do anything that is allowed in T4.2. So-

The two properties on each side are currently zoned T 4.2. So the same uses could be done in those buildings today, right?

If you were to raise it and rebuild it, technically, yes.

Tyler, can you clarify in this land use type all of the options for zoning that are standard review options?

One thing I do want to note while I'm pulling that up. I'm going to move this out of the way, Tanner. In an urban neighborhood, it's 3.2, 4.1, 4.2 are all standard.

So the request is out of the three standard review, the request is for the highest possible.

That would be allowed under standard.

Of the three standard review that we're saying fit in this land use type.

And what type of commercial?

So in a 4.2, there are some use restrictions at play in regard to the amount of square feet of commercial. And it's going to vary depending on the type. Like if it's retail, let's say it's limited to 2,000 square feet per suite. If it's food and beverage, it's 1,800 square feet. And then for office, like if someone wanted to do office development, it's 6,000 square feet floor. So there's some caps in regard to the amount of square feet of commercial you can put in a T4.2.

I have a concern that we may have made a mistake in what we allow in these single family neighborhoods. I think a community and the culture has judged a little bit about how committed we are to preserving our single family neighborhoods. And I think when we talk about appropriateness, we have to talk about the fact that no matter how much we need housing or density, we don't have the right to squeeze out these single family neighborhoods. And to be honest with you, I think that this is a situation where we could be overbuilding density in an established neighborhood. And talk about property rights, people next door also have them. So it's a balancing act. I get that. But I do think that this is a situation where we need to give some consideration to protecting those single-family homes in that neighborhood setting.

Can you talk to me about the differences in that?

I will say on that note too, while we've talked a lot about the 2025 future land use map, even the 2018 future land use map showed the area south of Northwest 5th Street, the land use category was identity residential at that time.

But did it include commercial?

If it was part of a multifamily structure, we allowed for some multifamily on the ground floor, or excuse me, commercial on the ground floor.

Yes, Ben, please. Can you describe to me the differences between the area of the lot and the setbacks between 401 and 42? A lot of what's being discussed is to take advantage, I think, of those. And I could be mistaken, but I know there's differences between the setbacks and the percentage.

Yeah, so when you get into the fours, we start creating a build-to zone. So they're both minimum setbacks and maximum setbacks. And for one, it's a 12-foot minimum front setback, 20-foot maximum front. It's a seven-foot side setback. Unless it's an attached structure, then it can be a zero-foot setback. The rear setback is 15 feet. And then the height of those structures is three stories, not to exceed 40 feet. When you kick up to 4.2, it's then a zero-foot minimum, 16-foot maximum front setback. An eight-foot minimum side street setback, so if it's a corner lot, whatever setback, Whatever side is not the front, it's eight feet. And then it's got the same zero foot or seven foot on the side setback, 15 foot rear setback. But I think the main difference there is the height requirement for stories 50 feet when you kick into the T4.2.

It's interesting because on the planning commission, a lot of those people who spoke aren't even here. So this is a whole different set of people. I think I only had one overlap, maybe two, which is odd to me. And unfortunately, this happened on a holiday weekend because I'm usually the one that canvases the neighborhood and say, hey, I need some force here because I'm I'm getting a lot of pushback on the traffic in the sewer. And just because we've learned, we've messed up. The traffic in the sewer is a hot mess over there. And I have said this. I feel like I shouted this from the rooftops. Just because we do something, just because we have this map, once we figure out it's not working, we've got to figure it out. Not keep throwing into the problem. And we have a problem here. And if I'm the only one that realizes that.

What is the sewer problem?

I'm not sure. The flooding and the stormwater drainage. Yeah. I mean, it's bad. I'm a frequent flyer on Fifth Avenue probably at least six times a week. And it's like playing dodgeball with the cars.

And I will say, like, when this came to my attention, I went back and researched, tried to research the complaints and there have been before this, people were complaining and it's not, not been. So, I mean, I'm struggling a lot with it. I told both people on both sides, like, This is a challenge for me because I understand the land use. I understand we did a lot of work on that, right? But you also have to, and I think, and this is just my opinion, legal may stop me here, but you have to look at the context of what's happening there. And so do we continue to say, well, that'll get addressed in large scale when we've got issues down there that didn't get addressed in large scale. And that's really hard for me to say to the public, trust us, it's going to get addressed. And that's not to say that our people are doing anything wrong either, like an engineer slaying off on it. But we still have issues down there. And I think, you know, for me, we just have this one, this is a real challenge. And right now, the 12 12 units that are down there aren't, like people aren't in them yet. So we don't really know how parking or trash or any of that's going to operate. And so then this would be in addition to all of that. And so this one is challenging.

I do believe that there's, and I'm just looking at the images of the buildings, there's parking in every one of the buildings. There's two car parking in the garages and a driveway for all those units, I believe. just looking at the pictures, the satellite images of the drive-by. I know the four plex have garages behind them, and they're two-car garages.

I've been over the point of order public comment is closed driven around the alley is very small the roads are very narrow and yeah there are garages in the fourplex and there's garages being built in the the other buildings as well that there's still cars on the road and it's still hard to navigate around it and I can only imagine how tough it gets during the mornings and and the evenings when kids are coming back and forth from school um so it's interesting to me that there's There is parking. There's provided parking on the properties. We're still having a problem on the roads.

Well, certainly because the public roads are accessible to parking. Sure.

But these are residences. There's not like they're parking here to walk to the stairs.

A lot of people that pull up. I grew up riding. I mean, I'm familiar with this. I've been talking about drainage issues across 5th, 6th, and 7th for a very long time. And it goes all the way down to R.E. Baker. where I went to school because we've never done any drainage improvements. And we hear this over and over, but yet we still have ditches to clean out. We still have things to get water to move. And we have that work to do. And that's been the same work we've been needing to do. But I also know a lot of people pull up to residences, park in the street. All the people that are living there, they have driveways and carports. Maybe they don't use their garage. I get that. But there's driveways to park in. So why would cars be parking there? Because you can. Guests can park in front of the garage. You pull up to the house and you stop. There's ample parking in the units that were built. And so if you have another person as a guest wants to park on the street, that's available everywhere in town. everywhere. If we want to do something and minimize traffic on that street, then make it a one-way and reduce the amount of two-way vehicle traffic. If we're not managing our traffic, then if it's too narrow, then what's making it too narrow? Because we don't have curb and gutters. We do at the corner now, but we don't have curb and gutters. We haven't widened the right-of-way. We hadn't fixed the street to accommodate the traffic. So why don't we rethink things? And if we have a trouble managing school traffic down there We have engineers that can talk about re-engineering our traffic flow, if that's the real problem. So I mean, I understand that the parking concerns, but if these didn't have garages and driveways, I would say, OK, but it's the same as every residence. Each one of them has a garage and a driveway. There's not any difference in parking on these units, and there is a house.

What if it's a commercial?

Are they going to park in the garage? Right. I understand the commercial. That's another discussion that we probably will have here shortly. I'm talking about the residential at the moment that we're talking about that the existing residential has already caused the problem, but they all have parking.

I'm just looking at the Google Maps image. That's what I was looking at, yeah. There's cars parked all around that block. That's construction.

Is that construction?

That's down here, down here.

That's construction.

And that's what we've been out for two more years. But there's no cars parked anywhere else on any other streets nearby. I get it. It's probably construction, but.

Well, whether it's.

I hear you.

I'm just all up to sound beast here.

I feel like there's a bigger discussion to the Planning Commission. There's some on the Planning Commission who kind of feel like we should always be highest possible within that standard. And there's some that think more we should look at everyone individually. And that's how I feel. Like, I don't feel like just because something is allowed under standard review that we need to always go the highest. I think this should have been T1. I think that's what fits here. And I do not... Sorry. When we had all the community. Sorry, yes.

T4.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, sorry. T4-1. And I don't believe that the T2 fits. And I...

But we're the one that adopted it. And we had neighborhood exclusions to that across the street. What did we adopt?

What did we adopt? And we made a mistake. No, we didn't necessarily make a mistake. We adopted a code that has, there's three different standard within.

Standard reviews, yeah.

within standard review. And that doesn't mean that the highest one is always going to be the right one. And that's what I think is really important for us to keep in mind. There's three in there for a reason. And we need to look at every single project individually and say, OK, which of these three fits best for this particular project? The answer is not always the highest. And that's kind of what, you know, that to me is a really big thing for us moving forward. I feel very strongly about that. And I feel like in this particular case, the highest is not the right answer. And so my vote will be no.

The law allows us to consider appropriateness. And in doing so, that makes it a case-by-case situation. And I just personally think that the people that we represent have a right to design a city they want to live in, and this is part of it. process and we have the ability to decline this.

It's really tricky because one of the reasons that we did our code is to make it very easy for developers to understand what they can do in the places that they're trying to develop. And so having something as standard review is a developer would be able to look at that and going, okay, if I purchase this property, I'm going to be able to do these things. That's part of the reason. I mean, that's a big reason why we adopted this.

Within the range, right? Within the range of these three. Within the range of the three, it should be their expectation.

If we thought 4.2 justified an enhanced review, which is a higher criteria before we approved that, then or if we want to do that in the future, then we need to make that adjustment.

Why are there three options? Why don't we just say everybody in this land use type gets four point two or point, you know, or the very highest. We don't do that because we don't just blanket rubber stamp. We look at things individually and within this land use, there's a range of usage. And so anyone that buys a property and sees our code should know that their expectations should be, I will build within these three place types. Because we stated at standard review that

long time before it got to here. The predictability is that if it's standard review and it doesn't require enhanced review or all the other considerations prior to zoning, then it's a predictable zone. And so how else are, if we continue to change the plan every time we turn around and the plan is not a plan,

believe in the plan doesn't need to change that's why the plan has three allow you know three standard reviews in there you know everything around this is like 4.2 so even like just looking at this going Well, not everything. There are single family homes also that are. Yes.

Yeah. Does the applicant have anything to say?

But when we approved the T42, it was basically because of the three extra feet of dormers. We knew what he was putting there. We felt confident about that. But now we've opened this up where commercial can go there. And I don't, it doesn't fit.

The plan that we did, I think it is in general terms good. The fact that it has three options for a particular rezoning in this specific parcel gives us the opportunity to approve or disapprove whatever of the three options are requested, especially the highest one, which is the one requested today. It is definitely... that it is not an automatic process, it is not an automatic approval, gives us the opportunity, this body, to have the ability to understand what it is happening in that particular situation and determine if the request for whatever is adequate or not. We have, if not the ability, at least the responsibility to determine what is the best for this particular situation. And that's why we have to determine, is it good or not? We have the ability and we should be doing that. I think we have already created our own mind and I think we are ready to vote. So I suggest that we go ahead with the process and forget about the deliberations.

I second. Is there anything that the applicant would like to say?

Is he here?

Well, we haven't heard from him.