Planning Board - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone and welcome to this September 1 2026 meeting of the boulder planning board. My name is Laura kaplan i'm the Chair will do a quick. quorum check, so I believe there will be six planning board members present tonight here in the room to my right viewers left, we have Vice Chair cloudy handsome theme and. Board Member Mark McIntyre. Over on the other side, Board Member Mason Roberts. Online, we have ML Robles. And has Kurt Nordback joined us yet?

He just popped into the attendee list, so we're working on getting him promoted to analyst.

Board Member Nordback will be here soon, and Board Member Max Lord is absent tonight. So I call this meeting to order and we have just a couple of major items on the agenda tonight. So I'll just go over those briefly what they will be. There is a public hearing on some changes to Title IX to establish an affordable housing expedited review process. And that is a public hearing item. And then we will be having a discussion under the matters item on the agenda about our site review criteria. Those are our major items of business for tonight, but we will start the meeting as we do every meeting with an opportunity for public participation during which members of the public can have three minutes to talk about any topic that is not a public hearing item tonight. So anything other than that expedited affordable housing review is fair game for the public participation portion. And I will be turning it over, I believe, to Vivian Castro-Woldrich from the city staff who is online to help us through the public participation portion. Thank you, Vivian.

Thank you, Laura. So I'll just read through these rules of public participation that apply to the entire meeting, open comment and public hearing. So I want to just start out by sharing that the city has engaged with community in the past to co-create this vision that I'm sharing with you with the goal to have productive, meaningful and inclusive civic conversations. And this vision supports physical and emotional safety for community members, staff, and board members, as well as democracy for people of all ages, identities, lived experiences, and political perspectives. And we have a lot more information about it on our website. Next slide. And I'll share some examples of rules of decorum from the Boulder Revised Code and other guidelines that support this productive atmosphere's vision, and all of these will be upheld during this meeting. All remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation against any person. Obscenity, racial epithets, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability to conduct the meeting are prohibited, and we ask that all participants in the meeting share your first and last name when speaking. And members of the public can participate in person and also online. And when we ask for public participation, you can let us know that you'd like to speak by clicking on the raised hand icon. You can find that at the bottom of your screen that way. Or you can also find the reactions button and then find the hand icon that way as well. Thomas, anyone in the room who signed up to speak for open comment, we could start there.

Thank you for sharing those slides for us, Vivian. We have a quiet evening here tonight in the room and nobody in the audience.

Okay. We have a couple people joining us online. So I'll just ask if either of the two people joining us online would like to speak for open comment. This would be the time to raise your virtual hand. As Laura mentioned, each person would have three minutes. And looks like we don't. So we can move on with the meeting. I will hand it back over to you. Oh, we just had one more person pop up. Lindsay, I see your hand. Please go ahead. You have three minutes.

Sorry I was at Bureau. It's like too many things at once. And I need to be at the police reporting thing because Julie Morris lied about Rachel Friend and me. And I need to know how to report the police a year ago. And it cost me $200 and $300. Misdemeanors for Rachel to lie. Pretty ironic. Anyway, so I don't know what's on the agenda tonight because I've been so scrambling around trying to work on my house popping up the roof. And I'm trying to just survive too. And so all I can say is like what I always say and what I get tired of always saying and what I need to think that we need a whole new council and we need a council to appoint more truly progressive leaders. candidates for these boards, and this one in particular, my most consequential board, I would say, aside from the Landmarks Board. But let's just slow down on growth in Boulder because we cannot afford the impact fees of all of this development. And I mean, just what they were saying at Bureau, they're talking about TIFs. and metro districts, and opportunity zones, and downtown development authority, and all of these growth stimulators like Sundance that we do not need. We do not need them. I know my dad came here in 1949, and this town was just fine then, although he complained that it was too big in 1949. So let's look at this realistically. This is just... I mean, today I was unfortunately at H&R Block regarding my IRS and looking across the street there at Coburn's Mondo development in the diagonal. You know, these soulless pogroms, I call them. They're like compartments that you live in. And when you live in a compartment like that, guess what? It's not fun. You want to get out. You want to get out to the open space. But we're $300 million in deficit on our maintenance and operations in the open space. So what are we going to do? We can't afford this level of growth. I mean, the Millennium 960 went by the bedroom when it was 256. hotel rooms that we actually got some sales tax revenue for, along with 28th Street that we once owned and got sales tax revenue for. Instead, what we get is, yeah, sure, plenty of sales tax revenue from the students going out to eat, but they have a whole meal plan. CU is a resort community. Done. Thank you, Lynn.

Okay, I'll hand it back over to you, Laura, to continue the meeting. No other hands are raised. Thank you.

Thank you, Vivian, and thank you, Lynn. So with that, the public participation item on our agenda is closed. The third item on our agenda tonight is approval of minutes. We have two sets of minutes in our packet. The first is the July 28, 2026 draft planning board minutes. Did everyone have a chance to review those? Any comments or additional edits?

If none, I would entertain a motion to approve those minutes.

This is for July 28th.

I move to approve the July 28th, 2026 planning board minutes. I'll second.

Thank you. And let's go ahead and vote, starting with our folks online. Kurt? Yes. ML?

I was not at that meeting.

Okay. Thank you. Mason?

Yes.

Claudia? Yes. Mark? Yes. And I'm a yes. So those minutes are approved. The second set of minutes in our packet is from August 25th, 2026, just last week. And these minutes were just added today. So I don't know if folks have had a chance to review them. If not, we can delay this and approve at a later date. So I see at least one person saying they haven't had a chance to review. So I would entertain a motion to move the August 25th, 2026 draft planning board minutes to a future agenda for approval. And Hela, do we need a date certain for that? Or can we just let staff reschedule it?

I think it should be, I don't have the procedural rules open, but I think it should be a two-date certain if they're on the docket right now.

To a date certain. Okay. So what's the meeting that's two weeks from now, the third Tuesday? Is that, I don't have a calendar in front of me. The 16th? Okay. Would someone like to move to?

Be the 15th.

Yeah. The 15th. So I would entertain a motion to move the August 25th, 2026 planning board meeting minutes to September 15th planning board meeting for approval.

So moved.

Do I have a second? Second. Shall we vote, starting with Mark?

Yes.

Claudia? Yes. Mason? Yes. Kurt? Yes. ML? Yes. And I'm a yes. And I want to thank staff for getting us those minutes to look at in our packet today, and we'll be ready to approve them in two weeks. So with that... Madam Chair. Yes, Mark.

I was... My question to you is... there, you express some urgency to have these minutes available for us tonight. And that urgency seems to have gone away. I'd like to, could you speak to that? Because there was several emails and communication.

Sure, so we're talking about the August 25th draft planning board meeting minutes. And the project that is described, that was the subject of that meeting, is the Fraser Meadows project. And that is on city council's agenda this coming Thursday in two days. for their potential call up and i was hoping that we could have a more complete and approved set of minutes for council to look at but speaking with staff offline it sounds like that's just not going to be possible there wasn't enough time to get the minutes approved and excuse me get the minutes drafted and get us a chance to review them and then to be able to put them into the packet for council, if I'm understanding correctly. So that's not going to be possible, but I do want to ask staff a question. Given that the draft minutes appear publicly in our packet tonight, can we refer council to those updated draft minutes that are in our packet, even if they were not approved tonight, since they have been publicly shared?

The draft minutes that are in the packet tonight are the version... that was attached to the council call-up.

Oh, okay. It's the very bare-bones version. Gotcha.

Yes, this is the action minutes.

Gotcha. Well, there goes that. So I did submit some edits last night that have not yet been incorporated, it seems. So we're not ready to approve those. And there's no benefit to sharing that with council since it's the same version they received, which is unfortunate. I have had a conversation with Brad earlier today just to talk about my perspective on, I do think that one of the key things benefits or utilities of our planning board meeting minutes is for council to be able to understand our deliberations and our rationale for our decision. And there is some complexity there because the whole city, citywide, is moving towards these very spare action minutes. So I think that there's some more conversation to be had about the content of our minutes. And staff has always been very gracious about letting us add to those very spare action minutes. But also the timing of getting the minutes completed. I really would like to see planning board be able to speak to council through our minutes before they have to make a decision about calling up a project. That's a key juncture for them. And they're just not getting the benefit of our minutes for that purpose. They're getting draft minutes that we have not reviewed. So there's more conversation, I guess, is the key point to make here. I don't know, Brad or others, if you want to add anything to that.

Good evening, Planning Board. Brad Mueller, Planning and Development Services Director. As the chair alluded to, we had a conversation this afternoon. We will continue the conversation, as she says, or as she indicated. One of the things I'll follow up with is the clerk's office on action item minutes and with our business support services and Thomas, just in terms of what our intended cadence is for that. But we appreciate the feedback.

I appreciate this conversation. I have a few additional comments, but I'm gonna save them for matters. And so we can move on. But under matters, I would like to address a couple minutes things and procedural things from the meeting that was referenced. So.

That'd be great, Mark. And if I forget, please remind me. Okay. All right, so we'll move on on our agenda. And so next on the agenda is our public hearing item, since we don't have any call up items. So the public hearing, I'll read the title. Public hearing and recommendation to city council regarding proposed ordinance 8781, amending title nine, the land use code, to establish an affordable housing expedited review process and setting forth related details we're all very excited for this presentation so i'm going to turn it over to staff i we have carl geiler in the room and i believe lisa hood online yes thank you chair um thomas could you give me sharing abilities saying that sharing is not turned on sure you should have those now thank you

All right. Good evening, Planning Board. Sorry I can't be there in person, but I'm excited to talk to you about the Affordable Housing Expedited Review. Here we go. All right. So the purpose of this review tonight is for you all to make a recommendation to Council on the ordinance. For those of you that were in our meeting just four weeks ago, we introduced you to the potential changes, and now we're bringing the actual ordinance. So the presentation will look familiar to you all, but I will go a little faster, but I know not everybody saw it, so I want to make sure to hit the key points as well. So essentially, this project is coming from Proposition 123, which was passed by Colorado voters in 2022. It created a state affordable housing fund, and that funding is available not just for local governments, but also for nonprofits, community land trusts, and developers. There's a number of different funding streams that support a variety of housing initiatives. But one of the key things about the funding is that a project has to be located in a jurisdiction that's completed an affordable housing commitment. So what that is, is a commitment from the local government to develop or create a certain number of affordable housing units within the jurisdiction. And then starting at the end of this year, another requirement for that funding is that the jurisdiction must have a 90-day fast-track review process in place by the end of this year. And so that's for the local government to be able to get money and also those developers, community land trusts, and nonprofit agencies in order to get money for their projects within the city. Every three years, the city must demonstrate that we've met our affordable housing unit count. That's kind of the accountability piece of it. So the code changes that are in the ordinance before you tonight are really related to the fast track review. Those are the changes that we need to make in order to maintain our eligibility for that funding. And in the first three year cycle of funding before the fast track review was required, Boulder got over $10 million in funding directly into Boulder, as well as additional regional and statewide funding. So it is an important funding stream that's supporting affordable housing in the city. The requirement for the affordable housing projects that would receive the fast track review are housing projects where at least half of the units are affordable. The state defined this pretty broadly. It means that folks are spending less than 30% of their monthly income on their housing. So for rental, that's under 60% of the area median income, and for sale housing, it's under 120% of area median income. We looked back at the projects that have been approved in the last several years and since 2021, five different projects shown here on the slide would have met this threshold for at least half of the units meeting that affordable definition. So we anticipate that if we stay on the same kind of trend, we would expect to see about one or two projects per year that would qualify for the fast track review. You might be wondering, unless you were at the meeting a month ago, because you would have already learned this, but what our typical review timelines are compared to that 90-day requirement. They vary pretty widely. We have several types of applications that already are typically approved within 90 days, like landmark alteration certificates, variances, minor modifications, and building permits even. The longer timelines are more in things that you all are familiar with, like use review and site review, as well as technical documents, which are engineering reviews. And all of those are applications that would qualify for the fast track review. I went through this in detail in the matters item a month ago, so I won't go through this again, but I talked about how staff has identified the biggest time savings related to These approvals are related to the call-up process and the automatic public hearings. I won't go through this all, but we looked at the last two years and you can see down at the bottom the typical time for projects that either are not called up, called up, or went to an automatic public hearing, and that's ranging between 200 and 500 days. So the proposed changes for specifically those affordable housing projects that you'll see in the ordinance are to establish this new affordable housing expedited review process, namely to remove planning board call up for several application types, as well as removing the automatic planning board hearing for certain site reviews. Most often you'll see these as site reviews that are requesting a height modification. In addition to the code changes, there's a number of administrative changes that we will need to make to ensure that it's feasible to review these applications within 90 days. We'll have work to do on tracking and completeness checks and, you know, when the start date really is for these applications, as well as extensions, which are anticipated in the state statute as well. We have a great example or analog to look at from our process streamlining changes that were adopted, recommended by Planning Board and adopted by City Council two years ago when we established the minor use review process. Very similar changes where we eliminated the call-up and automatic Planning Board public hearing for certain use reviews. So I won't go through each step of this, but this is a typical use review approval. Those changes eliminated these steps. And now because it's been two years, we have the ability to look at how that changed the timelines. So once we added the minor use review, so got rid of those automatic hearings and call-ups, we saw a 64% reduction in the total use review approval times. And 85% reduction in the city review time so the actual time that the application is in the city's hands. So really significant reduction in the days to approval by making those changes and that's why we are hopeful that these will be the changes that are necessary will allow us to meet the 90 day review timelines for these affordable housing projects. So again, these are the changes that are proposed in the ordinance tonight. I'm happy to take questions. The next steps actually are first reading at city council is scheduled for October 15th. And then second reading is scheduled for November 19th. We do have to have it adopted by the end of the year. As I mentioned, but we'll be working on those administrative updates are at the same time, and then the the changes are will be effective on January 1 of next year so there's a suggestion motion in your memo and on the screen and now i'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you Lisa very informative and efficient so questions from planning board members for Lisa.

Claudia. Thanks, Lisa. My question is, what is the difference between a call-up and an appeal?

That is a great question because they are often used interchangeably, but a call-up is... In the code, the call-up is when planning board calls something up, but oftentimes people will still call an appeal a call-up because essentially the process is the same. It's just the person who requests the review. So an appeals process can be, it depends on the application, but it can be an aggrieved party, an applicant, or two interested persons is what the code says. that can appeal an application then it's brought to planning board for a public hearing on that decision same thing with planning board when you all review a call-up potential you can call it up or two two planning board members can call it up then it comes to planning board for a public hearing so once it gets to you same process it's just a difference of um who requests it essentially okay so in the in the memo um you suggested that

that the state's guidance on this expedited review process allowed for appeals, right? Like it said that that would not somehow apply to the 90-day clock, but a call-up would, right? And so am I understanding correctly in the ordinance that you're suggesting here, it's removing the board or council option for a call-up that the appeal process, as you described, coming from a member of the public, essentially, or two members of the public, that stays in place. Is that correct?

Yep, that's correct. And that's how we set up the minor use review process as well.

Can I colloquy on that just real quick? So those two interested individuals that could ask for an appeal, could those individuals be council members or planning board members?

And I think, oh, I see Hela turning on her mic.

If those planning board members or council members recuse themselves.

Okay, so you could ask for the appeal, but you'd have to recuse yourself. Interesting. Okay, thank you. All right, Claudia, were you done with your questions? For now? For now. Okay, I see two hands up. It looks like ML was first and then Kurt.

Thank you. Thank you for your brief refresher, Lisa. So I have, and it looks like maybe this isn't on the table anymore, but you mentioned in the summary, it talked about projects that didn't meet the 50% threshold and that the city was thinking about potentially review the program to expand the criteria beyond. or state minimums? Is that off the table?

You know, we had some internal discussions, and I think we want to just have the, you know, one or two projects in the next couple years so we can see how this works before we expand beyond that. I think we need to, you know, have some lessons learned, and we can always make code changes that expand that and the states actually expanded some of the eligibility on their own as well. So it is expected to evolve over time, but we wanted to keep it limited for now so we can iron out any issues that we might run into.

And expanded essentially means that it's less than 50% affordable? Right. I am looking at the ordinance itself 9214G, it's saying that there would be no site review, which I think you mentioned for projects that want a reduced open space and increased height.

So it would still be a site review it's just that staff would do the review, so the same criteria would apply it wouldn't it just wouldn't automatically come to planning board so those. Those applications right now automatically are brought to the planning board for decision but and we'd still use the same set review criteria staff would just be making the decision on those.

So let me see nine to 14 I. Once a project is in the affordable housing fast track, planning board would have zero jurisdiction over it. Is that correct?

Correct. Unless it is appealed. So unless somebody, neighbor, applicant, or interested person, unless they appeal it, planning board would not see those applications.

So essentially, the path to affordability excuse me the path to fast tracking affordability um affordable projects is by removing a lot of what planning board uh planning board's involvement and so what i'm wondering is were any staff efficiencies uh looked at that could save time within the um staff current staff The view is being a practicing architect. I see. I see how that works or doesn't. And I'm just curious if all the analysis and trimming happened around the things that planning board gets involved in or these more public processes. Was that done at the staff level as well?

Yeah, that's a great question. So it really is a two part change. You're only seeing the planning board related things because that's what's in the code. But there's a lot of work that's being done on the administrative side of how do we do a completeness check to make sure that we actually have the materials that we really need before the application is technically complete? As well as how do we track the timelines? Do we have like a liaison who's helping all of these projects through the process and our one point like kind of one point of contact for applicants, as well as how do we work that into our online permitting system. So there's a lot of work being done through all of the different divisions that reviewed development review projects to identify how we can reduce that time on the administrative side too, because we need to do both. We need to do both the code changes related to call-ups and public hearings and the administrative changes in order to meet that 90-day. If you'll remember, some of our average times were 500 plus days. So it's significant. Right.

Right. Okay. So have there been, how long have the sort of staff tweaking, staff time tweaking been happening? And are you finding that efficiencies are indeed possible?

Yeah, and one thing that's really helpful about this project is that lots of other communities are making changes in order to be eligible for the funding. So we've been looking at other communities to see what they're doing. Some have really great examples of guides that they're going through with their applicants and things like that. So we're learning a lot from that. And then also, Carl could speak to this if you're interested, but we piloted some projects. over the last year just to kind of test it even though we you know it's not in the code yet but we kind of tested how how could this work with the 90 days and how would we do the extensions and how would we communicate within the different divisions so we've been you know working on this for over a year thinking about how to implement this within the staff and then like I said we're going to be working on it for the rest of this year in order to have something in place by December 31st excellent thank you thanks

Kurt. Great. Thank you for all this. Lisa, can you walk through how this relates to the affordable housing design review? Which, as I understand, it applies to only to 100% affordable projects. But then that's a completely separate pathway. Is that correct?

Yeah, and we have Sloan Walbert from Housing and Human Services. She's online as well. She might be able to speak to this better than me. But essentially, what I know about it is that that application type is one of the eligible types for the fast track review. But it's basically projects that don't need site review or use review. And we establish kind of like site review light where there's several criteria that we are still looking at for those. But it's an administrative review. Sloan, do you have anything to add? Nope.

Okay. So I guess my question is, do we really still need both these pathways? Or if the affordable housing expedited review is fast enough and efficient enough, could we clean up the code by getting rid of the affordable housing design review?

So I think the key difference is that you can't ask for any modifications to the code through the affordable housing design review. It's really intended for buy-write affordable projects so that staff can review, have some level of review before they go to permit, if that makes any sense. So we still need a site review in case you're asking for modifications to the code.

Right. I guess my question was not about whether we need the site review, but whether we need the affordable housing design review. Because it sounds like this, the expedited review might actually be more efficient for a developer. So would anybody ever still use the design review pathway?

Well, there is still a cost difference, so it's possible, but that's a good point. I think we'll have to sort of reevaluate in a couple years and see if that is something that isn't necessary anymore.

Okay, great.

Thank you. I might jump in real quick. I'm Carl Geiler, Planning and Development Services. Sloan, certainly jump in if I'm saying anything inaccurate, but the administrative review for design review for affordable projects was also developed for like off-site affordable projects. So when we developed it, there was a concern that you'd have the main project that's subject to the site review criteria, and they could fulfill their on-site requirement with an off-site requirement, but that project wouldn't be held to any kind of design standard. So that was the way we created a process to at least hold it to a design standard roughly equivalent to the main project.

No, that's right, Carl. That's a good point. Thank you.

PB, Peter Vitale PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver, heard any Thank you know that's it Thank you okay other questions mark oh mason. PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver, mason then mark great.

PB, Peter Vitale PB, Sarah Silver, Following up on one of them else questions. PB, Peter Vitale PB, Sarah Silver, If the you know here in a year after you had a project or two, as you stated go through this and you wanted to explore lowering the threshold I assume that's another ordinance that would come through planning board and city council.

Correct. That would be because it would be drafted into the ordinance. We could change that, but we have been frequently doing code cleanups and things like that. So it could be something that's, you know, doesn't need its own whole ordinance like this, but it's just part of more of a package.

On the one to two projects, I assume the impact might be small, but is there... Is there an idea if that might be a low estimate? Like would that demand go up given the reduction in time and costs? So it might not actually be one to two?

Yeah, that's a great question. And that's why we as staff have kind of landed on keeping the state definition in the ordinance of the 50%, just in case the last five years aren't representative of what the future is. And if we had three times as many, So that's why we wanted to keep it at those 50%, at least 50% affordable units in case there's significantly more than one to two. But yeah, it remains to be seen if it, it's obviously intended to incentivize affordable housing development. So we hope that it would increase the amount.

For sure. I can't, I can't imagine it myself, but I thought I would ask anyway, is there any reactions between this and the recently adopted BBCP?

Great question. Not necessarily. The memo was the first memo that I've used the new policies for the BBCP to review in our memo. So it supports a number of the housing policies in the new BBCP as well as the previous BBCP.

But nothing with, like, the land use or map or anything like that? Nope. Okay. I didn't think so. I thought I'd ask. And then my last question is, on the potential extension, I saw that it was if the staff can ask for more information to get 30 days. Is that – I'm wondering, like, is there a risk that this is too fast for the – The project group, like the developer or whoever's going through this. Is that what that's for? Or is this for the city? Is it for both? Like, is there any risk?

I think that there's a kind of joint, I guess, motivation for both the applicant and the city to make this happen efficiently. So a lot of those other communities I was talking about, they'll have like a pre-application meeting where they set out deadlines of you're going to get back to us by this point, and then we'll get back to you by this point. Those extensions, I think, are... the state that we had um copied what the state had put in the statute which is what most of the other communities had done i think that in the reality of development review there's often um additional information that's needed and so um you know we can't have eight we can't be waiting for applicants for 89 days to get back to us so we need the 30 days um so if it comes to that we would need 30 days to review and that's why we have that extension there um but there is um You know, it's advantageous for the applicant because if we get to 90 days and we don't have the information that we need, it's a 90-day review, not a 90-day approval. So if they haven't gotten us that information, they could just be denied, and that's not what they want either. So I think the intent, as we've talked to the state agencies, is that the applicants and the city are really working together to try to make that efficient timeline work for both.

Thank you.

Okay, I think Mark was next and ML, your hand is up. I don't know if you had more questions or if it's a lingering remnant.

I was trying to colloquy with the conversation about the affordable requirement and the potential for it to be reconsidered or lowered in the future, but I can wait to colloquy on that one. There's a big gap.

Well, let's get Mark in here and then we'll do a second round. So Mark.

So I'm going to begin with a bit of apology, because as I'm sitting here contemplating my question, I think I asked this when we first heard this item, and it was probably answered during one of Claudia's questions. And maybe it's the incongruity of two interested people being able to call up, potentially mess with the timeline, and have a level of authority far superior where her planning board has been essentially excluded from this particular slice of the review process. So what is our motivation for not changing the two interested party, two interested persons level of call up that planning board is completely excluded from and seemingly could be If someone didn't like a project and they got a neighbor, this could really derail things. So could you explain why we are not modifying the two interested person portion as well as planning board's ability to call up?

sure um so i i felt like hella might be talking to hell let me know um so an appeals process is a really um common thing for any zoning code or land use code to have to have some sort of due process for neighbors or applicants to be able to appeal to a board or a city council any kind of decision. And so I think it's important to have that opportunity. It's not something that's used very often in Boulder compared to other communities, even other communities I've worked in. I think we saw only one appeal in the last two years and maybe one more in the last 10. So it's not commonly utilized. And I think it is important to have that process. And again, this is a new review process that we're going through. So as we did with the process streamlining, we'll be continuously evaluating how things are going. If everything is getting appealed, we will need to address that. address that because that's not meeting the intent of what we're trying to do here, which is incentivize affordable housing and increase or reduce the timelines for review. So it's something we'll take a close look at, but I do think that appeals process is in general are an important due process part of implementing a zoning code. And the two interested persons is something that council adopted during that process streamlining. So that was something that we had modified the planning board call up to two people and they thought that it made sense for it to be two people for the appeals process as well. So that's a recent change.

Thank you, Lisa.

Brad has come up to the podium.

Please go ahead. Brad Mueller, I appreciate Lisa's comments, and I wanted to just offer kind of a global perspective, too. And, you know, I can't say this is scientific, but in my experience, the concept of a call-up is relatively rare in many jurisdictions because it proactively means you've got to set aside time to go into planning board and then council. as opposed to kind of the opposite approach, which Lisa was speaking to of appeals. And I've been involved in debates about, okay, if we're going to have an appeal, is it only the party that made the application that gets to appeal? Is it only council or planning board that gets to appeal? Does the entire neighborhood, does the entire world get to, those are all certainly legitimate things. I would say as we look at ways to tweak the code and, and, make some shifts for this type of efficiency, you may see more discussion around appeal versus call-up. But I would also double plus on what Lisa said about those are conversations we could have in the abstract on many different things. And if the two-person thing, which was really a council's direction, doesn't vet out well, then obviously there's an opportunity to revisit it. But that's why we're bringing that forward at this point.

Thank you, Brad. Hela or Charles, anything to add?

No, I think Lisa hit the nail on the head.

Okay. Thank you so much.

Hela, your mic is on, so. No, just I would have said, as Lisa said, there are due process considerations at play to give the right to an appeal by somebody who might be affected by the decision.

Okay, thank you. And I'll just add, I can think of at least two, possibly three examples in my time on planning board where staff proactively brought us something because they assumed it was going to get appealed. So I think that appeal statistic might be a little bit low, but maybe not super low. All right, Mark, did you have more?

I do. Follow on. So maybe I'm just feeling pessimistic tonight. Let's say a project is appealed or called up by two persons, and that messes with the timeline. However, going through the process, the project is approved. Does that affect that project's eligibility for funds from the state fund, or is that our determination as we get grants and we fund? I'm a little lost as to how funds from the state would be affected for individual projects First question. Second question is, if we had enough call-ups and appeals, then could our state funding be in jeopardy because we had failed to meet the expedited timeline?

That's a great question. I guess I'll let you answer, Lisa.

OK, so the eligibility for the funding is based on us having this 90 day review timeline. The appeals process automatically takes it out of the 90 day review timeline. So if we have lots of applications getting appealed, then ultimately taking a lot of time we're not going to lose our eligibility through for the funding however i would note that that's not meeting the intent of what this um these changes are so that's a that's when we would want to re-evaluate um um what's happening because it's not incentivizing affordable housing if the timelines stay the same but as far as reporting to the state um what we are required to do is make that commitment of a certain number of units and then um to um uh follow up on how many units we got within those three years and then establish this 90-day review process it's one that looks like you have something to add

I just wanted to clarify too that the actual funds that are distributed are not directly related to this review process. So this is a requirement, but any entity within the City of Boulder that wants to apply, that's separate of the expedited review. They might be eligible for a review or that project might go through it, but it's not necessarily the same thing, if that makes sense. And the city itself can be a recipient, but most often it's affordable housing providers themselves that are receiving the funds.

That's helpful. Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you, Mark. Is there anybody else who hasn't gone besides me? Okay, I have just a couple questions and then I think ML had some more and Claudia had some more. So let me jump in here for a couple. This might be for Sloan or for Lisa. The Prop 123 funding is cited in the ordinances. This is one of the reasons why we want to have this expedited affordable housing processes because of the Prop 123 funding. Can you remind us how long is the Prop 123 funding program good for? How long is that supposed to last?

Yeah, so there's not like a sunset date or anything like that. It's a 0.1% of state income. It's funded by 0.1% of state income tax. And so that will vary over time, obviously, but it is written into statute, I think in perpetuity. It's long unless I'm missing anything, but it's not like, it's not like some other things where we'll try this for 20 years or things like that. But it's, it's just written as the state income tax percentage.

Okay. So it's an ongoing program. It's not like a bond measure or something. Okay. Yes. Wonderful. Good to know. So next question. We've seen some projects come through that are phased and they'll build some things in the first phase and some things in the second or third phase. And I can foresee that that could happen with a project that has market rate and affordable on the same site, that they might want to do the market rate first to fund the affordable units. How do we make sure, and Hella has reminded us with past projects, that anything that is phased, the future phases are not guaranteed. They could change, even if there's a site review. So is there a way, is there some guarantee that we have that projects that happen through this expedited review aren't going to put their affordable components into a future phase that never happens?

Yeah, that's a great question, and we discussed this at length as staff, and there is a part of the ordinance that talks about an application requirement. for a sworn certification that they're intending to do an affordable project that would meet the requirements. The state requirements don't allow us to make it more restrictive. So we can't say this has to be permanently affordable as Boulder defines permanently affordable. you can make something more permissive, like include more affordable housing, more types of affordable housing. But in order to be eligible for the funding, we can't make it more restrictive. So we're kind of limited in how what we can do to ensure that. But we're trying to assume good intent. And again, we will continue to evaluate the program as it's put into place. And then Sloan, I don't know if you have any experience with the chair of the reality of somebody doing that.

So one thing is that we have concurrency requirements if they're intending to meet inclusionary housing, which they typically are. with the affordable housing. So they have to be built essentially one-to-one affordable and market. So most often they'll put the affordable housing up front or, you know, at least at the same time. So if nothing else, the affordable housing would be reviewed first and then the market rate would have to follow the typical process. But in terms of what's being proposed tonight, yeah, if they want to be part of the expedited review as part of a discretionary review, they'd have to include the affordable housing in the proposal.

Okay. I feel like there's a lot to unpack there. That was interesting to hear that it does not necessarily have to be affordable in our permanent affordable housing program. It could be they're just selling it for a price that qualifies as affordable, but there's no deed restriction for the future. So that those, those projects would be eligible for this fast track process. Did I get that right?

Correct. As long as it meets those, you know, less than 30% of the household income for the 60 and 120 AMI.

Okay. And then, but Sloan, you were saying that they probably would want to be in the inclusionary housing program. Can you talk more about that?

Well, so there's a couple different scenarios. So if they're building new housing, which is typically what would go through a site review, they don't really have any interest in building affordable housing unless it's going to meet their inclusionary housing rate. So in that case, they'd have to have concurrency between the market rate and the affordable rate. If it is, what I can say too, is that if it is new housing, it would be very, very difficult for them to meet that income, the under 120% AMI. Just from our own experience with the middle income housing is that the city has to subsidize that pretty significantly to even get to that AMI. But if you're looking at projects in the permitting worlds that are going through, there will be projects that they could probably say that, you know, this is an older, you know, maybe not affordable, but market affordable housing, and they might be able to meet it in the permitting process. But I don't think that that would apply in the COTLA process, the LUR world.

Okay. I'm not sure I understood all those distinctions. Are you talking about projects that are not new construction are the ones that are more likely to not go through the inclusionary housing program?

So, okay. So what we're discussing tonight is the call it process. So the land use review, use review, site review, but there are other projects that will go through the expedited review or a building permit. So say San Juan del Centro is, does a renovation project, which they're planning to do, they would be able to apply for an expedited review on the building permit. Gotcha. So they would be able, they're not, I don't know, they're not fully covenanted as permanently affordable, but they would be able to sign some sort of affidavit to say that we rent at certain levels and we would be able to accept that and put them into an expedited review. But in terms of new projects, you only need to meet inclusionary housing if you're building new housing. I think most of them are going to be permanently affordable at what we would require for inclusionary housing.

Okay, thank you. So like a BHP or a Thistle or some of the other affordable housing developers that are taking inclusionary housing funds from the city to subsidize their project.

Okay.

Yeah, right. Thank you. Sorry, that was too long, but I appreciate all that information. Just a couple more questions if you guys don't mind. In the packet, it said that when, you know, as Lisa mentioned, you're going to be reviewing how the process is working over the next few years and potentially updating the code criteria. Lisa, can you talk more about what that update of code criteria might entail and would planning board be involved in that code criteria update as we normally are?

Yeah, I don't know if I necessarily meant code criteria like the site review criteria, but more of this new expedited review language that we have in Section 9222 in the ordinance. You know, the eligibility, which projects are eligible for the fast track review. We can evaluate that and how it's going, but not necessarily that we need to change any review criteria necessarily.

Oh, okay. I didn't know if that was, I think I don't remember which project it was or which bill it was we talked about. potentially trying to become more like form-based code and more like a checklist.

Yeah, that was more for the TOC, the transit-oriented communities. Okay, that's for a different bill. Okay, never mind that one.

And then I think this is my last question. You talked about exploring how to best make information about the approved projects readily available to the community on the city website. I'd love to know more about what you're thinking there. And also, would the project information be available at the application stage or only once the project is approved? And the reason why I'm asking is, like, how does the community come to know that these expedited projects are even being reviewed, are in the pipeline? Because currently a lot of people sort of they monitor the agenda of planning board to know what's coming up, right? So how is the public notified about the projects that are potentially very significant large projects that are you know, the one or two per year that meet the criteria for this expedited process. And they know that they're in development and maybe they want to see the application.

Yeah, that's a great question also. So the way that we've drafted it is similar to the minor use or it's the same as the minor use review where there would still be public notice for these applications. So within properties within 600 feet would still receive the same public notice for those applications. So like if there's a site review with a height modification, the neighbors within 600 feet would know about it. It would just say that this is a staff review and talk about the opportunity to appeal the decision and connect them to a page. I've been working on looking at some of the other communities and what they're doing in order to you know, display what these applications are. So we're still working on it. We do have the development review map that shows all of our in-process permits and things like that. So I think there might be a way to tie into that our other parts of our website to be able to display both projects that are in review and approved. So we haven't figured that part out, but we will definitely be working on that over the next couple of months.

Okay, I'd love to keep the conversation going around that. I did look at the development review map and I find it, even as a planning board member, very hard to use and very hard to understand what are the projects that are currently, have an application and where are they in the application. It's very geography-based as far as I can tell, but it's not time-based, like knowing there are 70 applications that are open right now and here's where they are in the process and being able to look at it and say, here's the address and then click on it and see the application. I think there's a lot of ways that the city would benefit from increasing transparency about what's going through the review pipeline, where it is, and being able to link to the information.

Yeah, that's noted. I have a similar experience looking at that map, so I understand.

And I apologize. That was more of a comment than a question. Round two. Claudia, did you have more questions? Or should I go to ML? No.

Just just one. And this is going back to the appeals process. Is there a way to fast track proposals that are appealed?

We can certainly some other cities have like prioritized scheduling on for public hearings so we can explore something like that. We do. I mean, you you all know you've had meetings every week for the last month because it's challenging to get scheduling done. But I think, you know, in the spirit of what this these changes are intended to do if we have an appeals process, we would want to or an appealed project we'd want to get it before you as quickly as possible. I think the code actually requires that it comes to planning board within 30 days. Am I right on that Carl. returnals. I think there is a time limit.

It says 60 days. But I think again, we would try to do it as quickly as possible.

Okay, that's good to know. I wasn't aware of that timeline. And I was gonna ask if there's precedence for putting it in the code or if that would be an administrative priority that you'd have to work on. Thank you.

Thank you, Claudia. ml. Second bite of the apple.

No, I've taken my hand down. I'm good. Thank you.

Okay, any other questions for Lisa? Okay, so then I think we are at the point of a public hearing, so this would be the opportunity for any member of the public who wishes to comment on this proposed ordinance for an expedited review process for affordable housing. Now is your chance I don't think we have anybody in the room. And who would manage the online? Is Vivian still with us?

Yes, nobody in the room. Vivian is logged off for the evening. But for our online attendees, this is the opportunity, if you'd like to speak for this evening's public hearing, please go ahead and raise your hand to let us know if you would like to speak. I'll give you just a few moments here. And not seeing any hands, I'm going to pass it back to you, Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Thomas. And I apologize. I'm falling down as chair. And Hela, I apologize, especially to you. I should have asked board members if we have any conflicts of interest or ex parte communications on this topic. Or no, ex parte doesn't apply, right? Because it's not quasi-Judicial. Potential conflict of interest. Potential conflict of interest on this topic. Any disclosures? All right, seeing none, now is the time for a board member deliberation. Lisa, could you pull back up staff's proposed motion? And we'll take a round of commentary before we vote. Comments from board members? Emel.

Sure, I'll go ahead and start. I generally have no qualms with the ordinance as proposed. The only thing I would suggest would be that when changes do come forward based on observing the practical limitations and opportunities that come up, especially with regards to reducing the affordable requirement from 50%. I think that they shouldn't necessarily just come through as a bundle and not get, I guess, properly reviewed by the board and or the public. I think the point of expediting something that's going to get us 50% affordability is a great thing to support and get behind and find our way to enabling that. And I think any considerations of reducing that, I would begin to wonder is, why? Why are we reducing it? And I think that that would require a conversation and some deliberation, not just introducing these kinds of bigger changes into a packaged review and update. So that it's just down the road. My concerns are down the road and how we kind of uphold the original intent of the ordinance and the giving great benefit to people who are going to produce a high amount of affordable housing. No qualms with the ordinance as it's proposed.

Thank you, ML. Mason?

Keep my comments relatively brief. I think the staff is taking an extremely measured approach to implementing this. It's very much a wait and see while staying in compliance, which I appreciate. You know, I think if this is... Mason Fidino- A mission that we're truly behind building affordable housing removing some of. Mason Fidino- You know planning board and city council's discretion in these projects makes a whole lot of sense. Mason Fidino- So I really hope it has the intended. Mason Fidino- Consequences suppose.

Thank you mason. Mason Fidino- Claudia.

So thanks to staff for bringing this forward. I am looking forward to getting a state-compliant ordinance in place by the end of the year. Just two points to make about this. My primary concern here is that we have a functioning appeals process that both satisfies the state guidance on timelines and avoids a kind of free-for-all where the public rather than boards or counsel is driving what should really be a judiciously used appeals process. And like Mark, I am concerned that this authority is already somewhat misplaced or unbalanced in the code, right? And so then we're going further with this proposed ordinance because of the time requirements of COLEPS. I get that. I think it's important to have public trust that an appeals process supports, but also that we as a city conform to the spirit of expedited review processes rather than just the letter of the law. So based on discussion tonight, I don't know if I would propose any changes to the ordinance to ensure that. It sounds like staff has discussed it, but I do want to flag that. And then I'm also interested, alongside Laura, in a more navigable public tracking system for proposals that might qualify for this process. If we are moving to 90-day approval timelines with no automatic public hearings, That changes the timeline for public comment. And I do think that some public comment is well-intentioned and genuinely helpful in shaping projects. And I think people need to have the opportunity to give that input if we're going to preserve trust in affordable housing. Again, I'm not sure this is something that we would put into the ordinance, but we could, if we wanted in our motions, recommend that council direct staff to work on some sort of public-facing information tracking system.

Thank you, Claudia. Kurt or Mark, are you ready? Kurt.

Yeah, thank you. I support the proposal as it's coming to us. So thank you to staff for bringing this forward and keeping us eligible for these Prop 123 funds, which obviously are very important. I have two points. One, I share Claudia's concern about the appeals process. I think certainly having an appeal is very important. Hela outlined that it's necessary from the standpoint of due process, and I fully support that. However, two people is a pretty low number, it seems like, and so I could imagine changing it to a higher threshold. maybe five or something seems a little bit more reasonable or some other kind of threshold that raises the bar a little bit while still keeps it accessible for situations where there are real and valid concerns in the community about a project that's been approved. The other thing I will note is that the memo seemed to indicate that The majority of the projects that were coming have been coming to us that would be exempted under this. We're coming for height exemptions. And the height rules as we currently have them have been problematic, I feel, for quite a while. I think they lead to a lot of confusion in the public. And because I think the public sees or perceives that we are somehow letting projects go above the actual limit of 35 feet in most cases. And we know that it's not... by the rules, there are rules which allow you to go higher to 55 feet if you comply with certain standards and so on, or allow you, make you eligible for that. And so I think that this ends up relating, we would have a lot fewer of the projects coming to us in the first place, if we were to change our height rules to have the same kind of requirements for meeting the height community benefit, the height bonus community benefit requirements. But if that were a by right thing rather than a discretionary thing. So that's it's tangential to that to what we're considering right now. But I'd really like us to consider that in the future. I think it would add clarity to the public. And it would also reduce the amount of the projects that are coming to us for no other reason than because they're they're asking for height exemption. And I feel like we could 50% affordable projects, but all projects that way.

Thank you, Kurt. Mark.

Thanks to my fellow planning board members, because their comments, I concur with almost all of them. And I just have an appreciation for staff for being in the position, which is not an unusual one, but having to respond to state law and new state laws and things that, you know, may not... fit within our current work plan or whatever, but suddenly we pass a law. And I've been in favor of many of the state laws that have passed recently. But it does create work. I acknowledge it creates work. We have to draft things. We have to adopt things. and to come into compliance and to continue to be beneficiaries of that funding. So overall, outside of my concerns about two community members being able to potentially derail things, and it's never great once you're on a board for a while and to lose a, you know, your your your ability to provide input on maybe on a project that you absolutely love. So anyway, having said all that, I'll be supporting this motion without change.

Thank you, Mark. So I will comment and say, again, I will echo the thank you to staff for the excellent work that you've been doing, not just in the past couple months, but it sounds like over the last year, to really figure out how to make this process work. It's a worthy, worthy cause, and I'm excited to see this move forward. I will be supporting the motion. I am open to entertaining if people have additional recommendations they want to make. I'm going to suggest that we pass a clean motion if everybody is in support. then propose any additional recommendations if there are any I see some nods that that would be a good process I will just say my only two concerns are not related to the language of the ordinance but just replacing the functions of planning board with you know making sure those things are still upheld in some way in this process and those things that I think that we really do a good job of providing is public transparency and So the sharing of information. So I echo Claudia's comments about needing a really good way for not just people within 600 feet of a project, but for the public in general to understand what is going on with this program, what things are in the pipeline, where they are, and be able to access them as they go. So transparency of information is one function. Then the other thing is that I think we do sometimes have some good ideas and we help to improve outcomes. We have seen sometimes when we disagree with staff's judgment on something and I think we're able to make that project better. If there's no planning board input, then that won't happen. But maybe the changes we make are so minor that it doesn't matter. So I do think that there is a role for when a few of these projects have come through a few years from now for staff and planning board to sit down together and look at them and look at the outcomes that we've gotten. The design outcomes, not just the numbers of how many projects and how much time was saved and the average number of days it took. But look at the design outcomes of the projects and are these beloved projects? Are these projects that people tend to complain about? and see if we are getting the kind of outcomes from this process that we would have gotten with more input through planning board hearings or council hearings. So some kind of a review of the project outcomes I would love to see in staffs on your radar for the future. Okay, so with those comments, I would love to entertain a motion. Mark.

I move that planning board recommend that city council adopt ordinance 8781 amending title nine land use code to establish an affordable housing expedited review process and setting forth related details.

Thank you, Mark. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Seconded by Mason. Any further discussion about this main motion, and then we can after this is voted upon entertain any additional motions. Looking for hands online. Okay, seeing no additional comment let's go ahead and vote i'll start with the folks online we'll start with Kurt. Yes, ml yes. To my right, Claudia. Yes, Mark. Yes. Mason.

Yes.

And I'm a yes, that's unanimous. Congratulations to staff on that unanimous recommendation. Is anybody thinking about any additional motions? I do not see any. Going once, going twice. All right. Carl and Lisa, thank you so much. I think we are, oh, Mason.

I have one quick comment, and I regret not saying this during my comments earlier about the reporting mechanics. Although I'm very much for transparency and bringing data to information to the citizens of our city. I know that there's trade-offs in terms of building such an infrastructure for said reporting. And if it's one to two, five projects, the trade-offs might be too huge. And I also think it's a bit incongruous with other projects that are going through the planning department. So if it wasn't a part of, you know, information about more projects, all projects, something of that nature, then I wouldn't recommend putting forth that effort in that time.

Thank you, Mason. I just like to respond to that as an individual and say, I think that's a really great point. And I think I was thinking of something a bit more comprehensive. You know, we do have that development review map that's pretty hard to use. And so I'd love to see a more comprehensive map. website for the development review pipeline, and this would be a part of it. Okay, I see a thumbs up from Mason. Claudia, is that also what you were thinking? I see Claudia also nodding. All right, so take that for what it's worth. Thank you. It doesn't sound like we're going to make any additional motions on that. So that concludes the public hearing for tonight, and we can move on to matters from the planning board, planning director, and city attorney. We do have one item on our agenda here. I do want to ask, I think we do need to take a break around 8.30 if we're not done by then for some personal reasons for one of our participants. But do folks need a break now? Or shall we push through? Anybody need a break now? Okay, we'll keep going. So we'll move on to agenda item 6A. We have one matters item on our agenda. This is one that I requested, and I apologize that this is kind of late breaking, but I realized that we had Carl and Lisa with us tonight and a short agenda. So it seemed like an opportune time to ask for this. And so I'll just do a couple of introductory comments about what the item is and why I asked for it, and then turn it over to Carl and Lisa. So this is item 6A, discussion and questions about the site review criteria with staff. So here's the genesis of this. So over the years, Planning Board has seen several updates to the site review criteria. And the three of us who are the longest serving members of the board, that's me and Mark and ML, when we first joined, I think maybe even our first meeting four and a half years ago, we were doing a review of the site review criteria. And at that time, the thinking was that the site review criteria were too flexible, too subjective. and needed to be made a bit more quantitative or definitive or prescriptive and so we spent i don't know how many months going over the site review criteria word by word and updating them to be a bit more prescriptive and it sounds like staff were hearing from applicants at that time that there were just too many unknowns and too much risk in how planning board members might be interpreting the criteria and they wanted something closer to a checklist and this was before we did the form-based code for east boulder But then when those criteria were actually adopted, pretty soon, there seemed to be a feeling that the criteria were being interpreted too rigidly. And so there was kind of a balancing of the scales back towards a bit more subjectivity or flexibility. And we've had a couple of different code cleanup items since then to make that change. And I just want to make sure that all of us on planning board are on the same page about where we stand now. Where have we landed with this prescriptiveness versus subjectivity? And in particular, some of the projects that we have seen lately, not to name names, we have kind of gotten wrapped around the axle around which of the factors are required versus which of them are simply factors to consider. And I want to make sure that we see how that's written in the code and we talk about that together because what I am seeing is that entire sections of the code, the site review criteria, 9-2-14H, have become basically factors to consider. All of the access and transportation and circulation criteria pretty much are factors to consider. All of the site design criteria are factors to consider. A lot of the criteria for additional height are factors to consider. And I don't think that that means that they're simply optional or that some applicants have basically tried to make the argument that that means we can't hold them to any of that. And that's true. They're not strict checked box requirements, but it doesn't mean we just throw them out the window. I do think that we do seriously consider them and whether the context means that we should apply them. That's part of our judgment or discretion. So I want to ask staff to walk through the site review criteria with us so that we see where those big areas of subjectivity are. And please correct me if I'm saying anything wrong, either in the history or how I'm interpreting this. So over to you, Carl.

Thank you. Thanks for teeing that up. I think the way you represented it was what I was going to talk about with the history of the site review project and how it was very... The initial direction with that project was that it be very prescriptive, like a form-based code. And then as there was... you know, a change in council. I think our direction changed to let's try out some more flexibility in the criteria. And I think you represented it correctly that we have kind of like a mix in the criteria today. So I don't have like a formal presentation per se, but I did want to show some observations as we do the walkthrough that might help with this discussion. So there are certainly some criteria in 9214 that are more prescriptive. They're more firm. They're more like a measurable metric that has to be met. And I wanted to talk about the characteristics of those. So usually those criteria have language that's very explicit that says shall or will. And I've tried to go through the criteria this afternoon and like highlight the ones I thought were more on the prescriptive side versus the ones that are more on the discretionary side. So the ones that I viewed as prescriptive, I put in like a dark red color and the ones that are more discretionary, I put into a blue color. But just to call out some examples like that, you're familiar with the housing diversity criteria. There's some measurable metrics there. There is one part of that that's discretionary, obviously. But that's an example. Community benefit is a metric that has to be met. The intensity modifications have things that have to be specifically met. And then pointing out the factors, when we look at the discretionary criteria, as you noted, they're generally in that area of the criteria that relate to site and building design. And we did intentionally kind of loosen that up a bit just to put the We kind of viewed the factors as this is like an ideal project if you met all these things, but obviously there has to be a balance of meeting those. If you didn't meet something, there'd have to be really a compelling reason that you're doing something different to meet that overall project. criteria. And so I'll go over that. But you'll notice that the ones that are more discretionary often are more of a statement. They don't say shall. Shall applies to all the criteria, obviously. I want to make that clear that all the criteria have to be met. But the ones that are more discretionary, they're more written like statements. So or the landscaping provides, it'll have that kind of language. And we'll usually have in the beginning of those sections, like a paragraph that really sets out the intent of what has to be met. And then the last sentence of those paragraphs will say, in determining whether this is met, the approving agency will consider the following factors. And those are the things that where you kind of have to balance them out. So I'll just start going through and see if My observations kind of match your application of this. So we start, obviously, in the policy part, you know, compliance with the BVCP. The criteria as a whole have to be met, so that's why we have shall. So I wanted to show kind of where that highlighted language is. the BVCP first criteria, and we're really talking about meeting the land use map and the policies on balance. So obviously there's a lot of policies. We're obviously learning the new policies, but there's a balance between those policies. There's some competing values in those. So that's why it's on balance when we're doing an analysis about whether it meets the plan or not. generally consistent so again the blue is more of a discretionary criterion but when we get into the the more measurable ones you'll see it's it's in red and we have shall highlighted and you'll see that's different than a lot of the blue ones i'm not going to go through every criteria but if you want to stop me certainly feel free to jump in but as i noted the housing diversity piece um we did Go back and forth on this and we were preparing the updated criteria about whether this should be more discretionary or not. We felt that this is something that's a important city value to get more missing middle housing and that we should be getting certain diversity of housing types. So that's why we got pretty prescriptive in this particular uh criterion so that's why we depending on the size of the project how many qualifying housing types you need to have how many types of bedrooms you have to provide but we did we didn't want it to be so rigid that someone couldn't propose something different so that's why the last criterion in the section i put in blue because it does say if there's another at least equivalent community need that's met by whatever they provide they could do something different. But for the most part, this criterion is pretty black and white.

Can I just comment on this one briefly? It does seem like this, the blue little Roman numeral six functions as a little bit of an escape hatch where we have seen at least one project arguing that providing senior housing gets them out of providing different housing types. Or I could imagine somebody saying, well, we're providing student housing and that is a community need related to housing policies identified in the BVCP. or we're providing family housing and that is a you know bvcp exactly goal so i think we need to be careful with this escape hatch and applying that judiciously because you could argue almost anything is a housing need that's identified in the bvcp if you're providing housing and then we move on to environmental preservation um

These are written more in a discretionary manner, this is obviously for like sites that have. Healthy long live trees or wetlands is sensitive areas sloped areas that's where these criteria come into play.

As you're scrolling, can I ask Hella? So there are large sections of our site review criteria that are in blue here, and they are more subjective. And we have heard applicants argue, well, you can't condition a project or deny a project based on this because it's not black and white. It's more subjective. What would you say to that as the CAO representative?

I would disagree with that. There might be discretion in a criterion, but it still has to be met. And if the board finds that the criterion has not been met, you can create a condition to ensure that the requirement is met.

So even though these are subjective and they're not a checklist, we can still condition a project or deny a project based on our interpretation as a board.

Yeah, and in terms of not a checklist... you do have to find that these are met. The environmental criterion, for example, there's some discretion on how that may be met, and that discretion lies with you, but it does have to be met.

Thank you. Mason, did you?

If I can just add, this is where I always think of where the judgment part of quasi-judicial comes into play. I mean, Many people for many decades have said, boy, we just want a checklist, but really the intent is that there be these types of things that are not engineering standards, you know, must be two feet, things like compatibility and walkability and such that you get to judge whether it is meeting that criteria, but it's still a criterion.

Okay, thank you. This is very helpful, Karl. I'll go back to you.

Yeah, so this next part is where I think it's important to understand the overall criterion versus the factors. So like I said, it relates mostly to the site design and building design. So when we crafted this, the main criterion is really this paragraph. That really holistically tries to define what good site design is, what quality site design is. So that's really what would have to be argued to be met. And then the paragraph concludes with, in determining whether this is met, the approving agency will consider following factors and then there's all these subsets so the way we kind of wrote this is that everything under this is are there factors to consider but they they are a toolkit for success i think in our mind that if you address all these individual issues you will have a successful project that meets the criterion but obviously to what degree you meet all of them is is that discretionary element if there's one that may not be met maybe it meets it over here on another topic in a really strong way it's that on balance piece but overall it's like the argument is to make that first paragraph the argument to meet that but we do feel like these are important considerations obviously So they're not written to be like a form-based code where it's black or white, but these are the things that we are looking at. And if they're not met, there has to be some sort of alternative in that discipline that meets it in a different way is kind of how we look at this.

So again, this entire section on access and mobility and transportation is factors to consider. The entire section on open space in this part of the code is factors to consider. The entire section on site design is factors to consider.

That's right. But again, if we look at one of these and it's not met, we would then be looking at other parts of the plan of why is it not met and what other things are they doing that might make up for that.

Yeah, Claudia.

Just to bring that back to Laura's question to Hela a few minutes ago, if we have these large sections of the code that are factors to consider, does that mean that when we are making conditions, it is better to ground those at a somewhat higher level of this outline? To say, rather than satisfying we're so deep in the code here, I can't even say to a one or whatever, to go up a level and say, oh, to satisfy the site design criteria, as opposed to the site design criteria for access, transportation, mobility, etc. Like, what level should conditions be grounded in?

But even I think the site design criteria, you still have to go up another level to get to the actual you shall. Right? Isn't it? It's one level higher.

Well, the site design criteria, those have to be met. So what's listed right behind the two there, that has to be met. And it touches the different subjects for which we created factors. So if you feel like the open space is not really functional and meets the open space standard that's created in the site design criteria, it would be great to craft a condition around that.

So, this is one of those things where the opening is prescriptive and the criterion is subjective. So, I mean, it's actually common in our code that you shall fulfill, you shall meet, the this section of the code, and you should consider these following things. And there's a whole lot of words there that are subjective and up to our good judgment and discretion. Yeah, and anyway, I know sometimes it tears even at my own thoughts. It's like, well, wait, am I being, you know, willy-nilly in my thinking, or in fact, am I considering the criteria as it's presented, and that is it's subjective, and does it fulfill what I believe the subjective criteria requirements are that shall be met in the opening.

And part of the reason that the criteria are written this way is because of the direction we got from council on rewriting this was that the prior site review criteria were, they were not as verbose, didn't have as many words. And, but they were in some ways could be interpreted as vague, you know, like the building design materials are authentic and, and high quality. That was an old criterion that we used to use to evaluate projects. The purpose of these factors was to get really specific on what do we mean by high quality or authentic or long lasting, you know, things like that. So like I said before, it's kind of like we're trying to put a lot of tools in the toolbox for people to look at to like help them design a good project, but not to constrain them to the extent that there aren't other alternatives that might be interpreted. This is also high quality. It doesn't quite meet this, but this is a different way of doing it. We wanted to have that level of flexibility.

And the flexibility... I think the hope was would breed more creativity on the part of applicants rather than more similarity project to project. Okay, wait, whose project is this? It looks just like the one we saw last week, a different developer, same thing. And so I... I agree with our hope that it would foster more creativity. And while it's not a criterion, the site review criteria begins with the purpose is to foster creativity. That's like in the very first preamble. And yeah, so we want to continue to support that.

Yeah. So again, I won't go into all the details, but these are all the you know, factors we consider. This is one where I put it in red because it says it will meet the needs of the, you know, obviously we want to make sure that it meets the needs of the anticipated residents in terms of open space. So we get through the site design criteria and then we go back again to the broader criterion that has to be met. And that's this paragraph for now building, siting, and design criteria. So this is obviously the language that would have to be met in determining whether this has met the approving agency will consider the following factors. So again, we list all the aspects to look at. But it's really important to really focus on that first paragraph. And then it touches on a lot of the things that are in the factors.

But we could decide on a contextual basis that one or more of these factors we really think should be met if it is not met and that they have not compensated appropriately for it.

Yeah.

So, for example, one of my favorites, we have seen a lot of really long buildings, not just the most recent one, but several buildings that are much more than 200 feet along a public right-of-way. And we could consider the context and say it's fine in this area, but it wouldn't be fine in a different part of town. Is that... Like, we could be a stickler for one of these if we thought the context merited it. Correct. Okay. Collectively. Not just one of us, but collectively.

Yeah, and you are required to consider the factors. It also describes the intent behind it. And I think when it was drafted, Carl already described it. We thought that if a project meets these factors, then it should be approved, essentially. Okay. Or it's a pretty sure way to receive approval. Okay.

And if it doesn't meet those factors, those are things that we can consider in a denial or conditioning.

Okay. Thank you. And go back 10 plus years. If there was some debate about whether a criterion was met, there was a lot of discussion about certain design things. And if those things weren't in the code, it was... difficult to condition it. Whereas now, you can go to these criteria, these factors and go, this is one that's clearly not met. If you did this, it probably would make up for that. So that's where we have that discretion.

Carl, can I ask you a question? Sure. So has there been a process whereby buildings after the fact, they're built, And looking at the criteria that were used to approve them, so these would not be by right, criteria that were used to approve them, to see where our criteria might be failing us. Has there been, because if you were to take a, if you were to poll the vast majority of citizens in this city, residents in the city, people are not, happy with our buildings. We're not loving what's getting built. And to me, that is the biggest diversion from the Boulder Valley comp plan aspiration is on regards to a lot of the new construction of the last decade or so We are creating things that people are attaching themselves to as this is my city and I'm proud that we're doing these things. So I'm curious if the staff has ever undertaken some kind of a sort of reverse engineering to, well, we're getting the things we're getting based on these review processes and where in the review processes might have things gone a different way.

Thank you, ML. I see Brad has come to the podium.

Yeah, ML, thanks for those comments. And I guess a question to you, which is really a little bit rhetoric, so I don't expect... you know, that we can have a whole lot of conversation in this regard. And I'll preface it by saying that I both personally and we as staff respect the opinions of you as an architect and other architects and design professionals. But I will say kind of going out and about, I do sometimes hear the kind of general comment that the building's that had been built in the last 10 years, et cetera, are not attractive and the community doesn't like it. But I also don't know that we do universally hear that. And I don't wanna put Charles and Carl and Lisa on the spot because they certainly hear things from different vantage points. But the design standards in part are intended to make sure that there is a minimum standard of a minimum relatively high quality of things. And certainly that's an aesthetic at some level, not just the function, which is part of zoning as well. But I just have to say, I haven't heard universally that the buildings are of an unattractive nature. And I guess if that is something that we do here on a very regular basis, and we have some knowledge of that, I would say that probably would merit a bigger discussion, but I don't know that we've gotten that feedback universally. Maybe we can let Charles kind of weigh in.

That's well said. I think I would also add that A lot of these changes were a direct result from community conversations that we had through the Design Excellence Initiative. So it really kind of culminated in these changes to the site review criteria because the community was somewhat dissatisfied with what was being built. I feel like anecdotally, I don't know that we've really done an official post-mortem on the implementation. I think I would say that from the building assembly side and the quality of materials, I think we hear a lot less from the community about struggles with things like Ephus that's failing, you know, our products delaminating two years into their lifespan. So I think there are some successes that we can definitely report there. I think to Brad's point, some of it is somewhat subjective, you know, and somewhat rhetorical. So I think you can kind of talk yourself into circles about building design, but yeah, I think the key things we heard from the community about things like base, middle, top, building assembly, quality of materials, I feel like we've done a pretty good job of implementing.

Just for the new folks, can you say when that initiative took place and roughly summarize what it was?

I'm going to have to rely on Carl's memory.

Going back to, well, the design excellence project I think started in like 2014. And then the effort to update the site review criteria was a little bit later, maybe around 2018, but the form-based code grew out of design excellence that was 2016. So I totally agree with what Brad and Charles have said that I think You know, there's a broad range of opinions about buildings, whether before or after these site review changes. But as far as the specific criticisms on, I don't like this particular part of the building, I feel like we've seen less of that because the level of quality has gotten better, I think, through implementation of the form-based code and the site review criteria.

Right. Yeah, I guess I'm thinking about at the city scale. lovable places.

And so I'm gonna, I'm just gonna jump in here and say, I want to let Carl finish going through. And then I think we can have have more commentary about, you know, how are we using these criteria? How do we understand them as a board? But I think your comment is well taken that I am a big fan of postmortems and seeing are we getting the kinds of results that make the community happy and proud, which I think is a wonderful point that you made ml. So I'm going to go back to Carl if you'll all indulge me.

Just to continue with the theme of these are all the different factors under building design now. Again, you can see how some of these got a lot more specific to avoid specific things that we heard through the design excellence process. you know, what used to be one or two, one sentence criteria, like we've laid out a lot of different things here to try to get around some issues that were coming up on multiple projects that were noticed by the public and elected officials. So I put this in red because obviously there's a shell here, but there's a mixture of discretionary and prescriptive criteria in here so when we get to the building form and massing it's the same thing where this is the main criterion to consider and then we have the the same language as we used above and then there's a number of different factors that come into play and again certainly if like a building was over 200 feet and it the perception and the review is that it's too long then you you know, the board can go back to this criteria and go like, this puts a 200 foot limit on it, that it would probably be a better project if it was, you know, at or less than that. But there might be a different building that achieves that in a different way is kind of the point.

So I just want to go back to, I can anticipate that if we did try to condition or deny a project based on a facade being longer than 200 feet in length, if there was a majority of the board that wanted to do that, which so far there hasn't been, but if there were on a future board, I can anticipate an applicant pushing back and saying, but this is just a factor to consider, it's not a requirement. But I think I'm hearing that legally, we could say as a board, it is our judgment that this should be met for this project in this context.

Yes, and my recommendation would be to tie it back to the overarching criteria that I think in this case, I can't read it all, but I think it talks about permeability

visual permeability and design to a human scale yeah yeah okay thank you that's helpful when we get into the land use intensity modification section and community benefit you'll see a little bit more red just because there's are there's specific areas of like you if you do a fourth and a fifth story you can add this much or it gets a little bit there's more measurable parts of it that have to be met. This is in blue because we're talking about compliance with guidelines and plans. We're back to that same language in determining whether this is met, you know, consider the following factors. So there's kind of a mixture in this section. This section says will and it's pretty specific you know about polls over the height. Again, this is the intensity section so talks about specific floor area ratio additions that can be added under in certain zones in specific conditions, so this is a little more specific. More prescriptive. More shalls. And wills. And this is the community benefit section. obviously most of this is prescriptive but like the housing diversity section we have like you said on out for the like alternative community benefits so if there was something that we didn't really envision or some sort of community need being met in a different way somebody could demonstrate this to planning board or council. But again, it is to the discretion of the board or council about whether it is at least equivalent or more than what is provided by permanently affordable housing. So I showed this part in blue, obviously.

And I don't think we've ever had an applicant successfully argue this and get out of paying their affordable housing cash in lieu. Not to my knowledge. I did want to ask, I think we're coming to the end here, but Charles, can you help us understand how your staff uses this in both concept review and site review? Because I feel like what I have observed is that in concept review, staff pushes a little bit harder to say, well, you didn't meet this provision, you didn't meet this provision, we recommend that you meet these. And then when it comes to site review, staff's recommendations sometimes are taken, sometimes they're not, and staff doesn't quite push quite as hard in site review. Right.

That's a fair observation. It depends on the project. It also depends on the level of detail we get at concept plan and frankly, the level of detail that we get to opine on earlier in the process. Our job in concept plan review is to identify specific criterion in the site review section that we feel like may not be lining up preliminarily to help inform a subsequent site review submittal. So I think that's probably why, and it's concept plan. So we're kind of at a high level evaluating something. So I think we have a little bit more discretion to be a little bit more deliberate about the parts of a project that we feel like are kind of being identified as a red flag. Brad, did you want to add something?

Yeah.

Yeah, and as far as site review goes, then we're really considering all of the criteria instead of the ones that we're just considering to be red flags. Does that answer the question?

Yeah, I think it does. I think that's very helpful. Thank you. And Brad?

Yeah, and I just want to take this as an opportunity to – give some thoughts to the board about concept review. So this is a very common debate about how much detail should be in a concept review. We have a version of that for pre-applications too, even just casual pre-applications. And you know, the tension there is if you are asking an applicant to give lots of detail, the concept plan becomes the plan. And you're doing the review before the review, and there's no reason to have a review because you've already done it with a concept plan. And so it can be tempting for staff, for boards, et cetera, councils that look at concept plans to say, well, I don't know this thing or that doesn't seem right. And I've certainly seen this board be careful about acknowledging massing versus specific architecture and things like that. But we all yearn for more detail. And when that message gets out in the community, or if we press that message too much, you really lose the essence of concept planning, which is just to test the idea. Is the building the right massing? Is it oriented right? What are the main issues? We try to flush out all the red flags. My joke is like, we're going to tell you if we know there's a giant... radioactive pit that you want to build on because we know that stuff. So like we know about conditions in the area and we know, of course, about codes and we try to use that as the opportunity. But it is a balance and I would always encourage you all to keep that in mind with the concept plan because otherwise we discourage folks who feel like, well, I am going to just put everything into the concept plan because by golly, I'm all in on this development. And then they become very obstinate to things we try to change in the review process because they're like, no, I already got my thing. I already got all my answers. If you're trying to tell me to shift this over three feet, I already did all the engineering. I did all the work. Well, we didn't ask you to do that at concept plant. I don't care. I did that because that was the only way I thought I could get you know, favorable comments. So I ask you to just keep that in mind as those concept plans come to you.

Thank you so much. And Carl, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

I don't know that I have any more to add. We've got to the end of the criteria.

Okay, thank you so much. That was really helpful for me. Questions or comments? Mark?

The simple tool of red and blue to me was so helpful in just like seeing the blue and red, you know, it's like, okay. Did I pick the right colors? Yes, that is, anyway, super helpful. Super helpful to me. And we could do the same thing in use review. And I got tangled up in the shell, may, kind of subsections in the use review a couple of weeks ago. And anyway, it's just nice to see this. And it provides some clarity and reminders about what is subjective, what is under our discretion. where we use our judgment and where we use a numerical stick to measure things. So anyway, I'm super appreciative of this and I appreciate, Laura, you bringing this forward tonight because it was helpful to me even four and a half years into this. It's like, oh, okay. So.

Great, I'm glad to hear that. Other comments from board members? I'm looking online. Kurt, you have your hand up.

Yeah, first of all, I want to second Mark's comments. I think this is super helpful. So thank you to Carl for doing the work to do the highlighting in the appropriate colors. And also to Laura for prompting this to come forward. One thing that I had never caught before that was very interestingly revealed with this was the difference between how 9214H2 and 4567, those were all red, the required, but three was more of an optional one. And so just for the future, it would be interesting to think about, is that really the way we want it to be? Or should it be more consistent with regards to that, at that level, they're all required. So that's just something to potentially flag for the future. The other thing that I was going to say is, I can understand that we may not want to put this out publicly with the color coding. But if we could get a cheat sheet version of this for future reference, I would really appreciate it. I think it's really helpful to be able to quickly go through and say, oh, yeah, right. This is something that really should be required. And these are sets of things that are optional and so on. So if we could get this, that would be great.

I just want to call me on that and say, I might have a suggestion around that because it seemed to me that a lot of those blue sections, there's like an overarching statement that must be met that could be in red. And then the factors to consider could be in blue under the overarching statement. So if we're going to do a color coded version, I would encourage the overarching statement paragraph to be in red rather than blue also. So if that makes sense, but I agree with Kurt, I would love to have a printout version.

Curt Brown, Or can I respond to that yeah. Curt Brown, I agree, but it seemed like most of them were read, with the exception of three is that not correct.

I was just looking at you know, for example, the. Building. Let me find the section. So for example, two site design criteria, there's a paragraph, the project creates safe, consistent, and efficient connections for all modes of travel, promotes safe pedestrian, bicycle, and other modes of travel, et cetera, et cetera. Talks about usable open space, talks about landscaping. And that's the paragraph that is a criterion that must be met. And then it says, in determining whether this is met, the approving agency will consider the following factors. So I think those initial paragraphs that say this is the criterion that must be met should be in red. And then the following factors should be in blue. And I don't know if you want to comment on that.

Yeah, I think you're I forgot how Carl color coded the factors. But I think what you're suggesting is have one color for what's a criterion and another color for the factors.

Yeah. Yeah. that would help me because the criteria like hella said all of the criteria have to be met it's just that some of the criteria are written in a more overarching way and then they list these are the factors to make it successful these are the factors to consider and those are the things that don't individually have to be met but they together paint the picture of what success looks like kurt you look thoughtful yeah no i i agree with you and i think

thing. Yeah, thank you.

I think it does apply to 3, and 3 has an opening paragraph like that, and it also applies to 2, and maybe others that I'm not seeing right now. But yeah, I totally agree. Having a printout of that would be useful.

Yeah, I can make those updates, and we can provide those to you.

Thank you so much.

Can I just agree? the bit about those introductory paragraphs really embodying this is what needs to be met. Now the question becomes which factors are going to point to whether that is successfully met or not. I don't know that I had used those paragraphs in quite that way in the past, so I appreciate that input. And I think, Helen, I think you were sort of the one to clarify that tonight here. And I like that because there's always a challenge with the specifics being maybe too narrow. And those paragraphs, I think, are a great way to reference, OK, this is or isn't being met. and use them as kind of the ultimate sounding book. So I appreciate that revelation tonight, thanks.

I'll just colloquy and say, I think we're still gonna struggle because these paragraphs are written in very broad terms, right? It would be very hard for us to condition a project and say, well, I don't think the usable open space is arranged to be accessible and functional and encourage use. like it's just it's very they're very broad overarching things and i think we would have to reference some of the specifics and say i think these are the specifics that are important for this project in this context that this board a majority agrees this does need to be met for this project and i sympathize with the applicants i think that the balance between the prescriptive versus the subjective is very hard to strike and i think we will continue with the pendulum swinging back and forth We got too prescriptive. Oh, now we got too flexible and too subjective and there's too much risk. I think it's going to continue to swing, but we'll keep trying to dial it in and do the best that we can with what we've got. Okay. Other comments before we wrap this item? Big thank you to Carl for jumping in in a very big way with very little notice. So thank you so much for your responsiveness. I think this was super helpful. And I think we need to make Max watch it too. Okay. So that wraps that matters item. And Mark, you wanted me to come back to you during matters. You had some additional.

Are we on to matters?

We are in matters. This was a matters item. And now.

You want to go to matters from the board first. Do you want to go director, attorney?

Let's go ahead and do matters from the board, and then we'll close with staff, any additional matters. So matters from the board, Mark.

All right. Laura, a few minutes ago, you mentioned that you were a fan of postmortems, as am I from many years in engineering and design. And so I want to... I'm going to make some comments and I want them to be taken in the spirit of postmortem analysis and possible areas of improvement. So at our last meeting, we used straw polling as a tool. And I found that process to neither be a time saver nor did it offer additional direction or clarity that would not have been improved by a more formal process of motion making and amendments to a motion. I find there's nothing like the act of writing a motion in advance and then modifying that motion based on information provided during the hearing or during the meeting. And finally, selling or defending your motion. And I also find straw polls are not in our procedures. And my thought about them is they should be used rarely and sparingly only to immediately thin very big bunch of options and not to essentially be motion light or motion loose I found that again we spent a lot of time on this efficiency of straw polling only to get to having spent a lot of time on those items and then not being particularly productive. And I also, this relates back to this whole question of minutes and informing council. I think minutes and informing council are important. And regardless of what we wish, if the city is adopting action minutes, then straw polls are not actions and uh and so this draft set of minutes is actually less informative than if we had had a series of motions and seconds and discussion and that sort of thing because many of those many of those things uh straw polls uh might not have even gotten a second and we might have been dispensed with them pretty quickly so it this is this is just me speaking that I would discourage us from using straw polling in the method that we did in the last meeting and that and that more structure, formality and adherence to our procedures actually ends up benefiting us and informing council better. So that's that's my two bits.

Thank you for that, Mark. I have some thoughts and would like to respond, and I usually wait to see what other people say. But since the subject is the use of straw polling, I want to talk a little bit about why I used it and the benefits that I see. So first, I want to acknowledge you make a really good point that with the way our action minutes are being written and the format that that constrains, if that is indeed what we are limited to for informing counsel, then we might need to move to the motion making model rather than straw polling. If straw polls are gonna not be included in the minutes but motions would be, then that might be a strong argument. My experience when we did more motion making was that it led to very messy notes of like motion made, motion shot down, slightly modified motion made, slightly modified motion shot down, slightly modified, modified motion made and passed, right? And just very, and doing that in several iterations, I think becomes very messy for the minutes. Whereas the straw polling gives us a more informal way to craft motions, take feedback on them, withdraw them without it having to be a formal process of, okay, the motion's on the floor, it's been seconded, now we have to vote it down, right? So there's, I think there is some efficiency gained there. Also, if we had only been able to make motions rather than gather ideas and straw poll them, For example, we would have had a motion for every one of my ideas and every one of ML's ideas just to be able to discuss if any of them have legs. So that would have been five or six different motions that were all kind of related that we were able to discuss together under a straw poll that we wouldn't have been able to do in a motion making. So I personally think it's cleaner. I do like the informality of being able to just have a discussion rather than worry about, okay, there's a motion on the floor. Did it get its second? Does it need to be voted down before we can modify it? all of that. So that's kind of where I'm coming from, but I definitely, I take your input to heart and I understand why you like the motions, especially if that is the only thing that's going to get into our record. So you want me to ask others or you want to go ahead and respond before we go right ahead in the moment, please.

And just simply say that had we straw pulled on a more abbreviated basis, And again, I'm not criticizing you. I just felt like that the amount of time we spent hearing about and before we were able to poll, that kind of defeated the straw polling efficiency. So if it was, hey, OSBT, Dave Kuntz & i'm thinking about a big black line across the top of the rough line that I think needs to be there. OSBT, Dave Kuntz & Rather than me talking at length about the big black line if we had said, I think it's a really great idea let's draw pull it see what happens. and no one wants to, it's a one six straw poll, then I'm not in a position where I need to sell my big black line across the top of the building. So I think I'm not rigidly against straw polling. I think it needs to be used judiciously and quickly to help us move to motion making.

Yes, I hear that. And I'm trying to think about how to honor that and also make sure that good ideas don't get shot down prematurely because they haven't been understood. I also think that this board, we tend to indulge each other and say, I will second that so that we can have discussion. So I'm not actually sure that it saves a whole lot of time. For example, I'm thinking about Kurt's, well, I shouldn't use an example from the previous site review, but hypothetically in a site review that we haven't done, let's say that somebody was proposing a three-story underground garage and Kurt wanted to cut it down to two stories. Hypothetically, I feel like we should give him a chance to talk about that a little bit before we just vote on instinct, but. But that's where I'm coming from. But I do hear you that we could potentially use straw polling to sift out ideas that have no legs without putting too much time into them. OK. Do other board members have thoughts about this? What is your sense of how that process went and whether it would have been better with motions and votes rather than straw polling or ways to make the straw polling more efficient? Do other people have strong feelings about the mechanism that we use? Let's draw a poll. Does anybody want to talk about this more? I have two hands up. Okay, so Kurt and then Emil.

Thanks. Yeah, I think it's a subtle issue, right? And I think that there are places to do exactly what Mark is saying, and there are places where strong polling absolutely can be beneficial and efficient and save frustration and so on. I did find in the last site review that I was wishing that we had a motion on the table. There was a lot of discussion, and I felt like in that particular case, in, you know, just sort of viewing it in retrospect, I feel like it might have been more efficient or at least clearer at that point to have a motion on the table and start handling, you know, amendments as conditions and so on. But I don't, that's not always the case. So I realized making this decision on the fly is very, very difficult, right? Like, oh, at the moment, what is the most efficient way to handle this? And so I appreciate your, you know, doing the best that you can to try to keep us moving along and also make sure that everybody is well heard. So that's all I have to say.

Thank you, Kurt. Emil, you took your hand down, but did you still want to comment?

It's all been said. Thanks.

Okay. Well, I want to react and just say I do tend to err on the side of people should be heard, right? And if you have something to say that we should hear it, and maybe to a fault. So I will take that into consideration of maybe I have the group's permission to cut people off a little bit sooner if it doesn't seem like what they're talking about is going to get majority support. So I will certainly take that to heart.

I want to conclude by saying I have enjoyed your chairing and I find it to be at a level that is really great. So this is not a anyway, I enjoy your chairing. And if I had to default to a mode of allowing people to speak, then, yes, I concur. So.

Thank you, Mark. And I want to say I do not take feedback personally. I take it as you are supporting me in doing a good job for this group, and that is my role. So I appreciate and welcome any and all feedback. All right. Any other matters from or any other discussion on this topic? On this topic? M.L.? No? Okay. Any other matters from the board before I ask for matters from the planning director and staff? M.L. ?

I do have a question. I'm not sure which staff remains there, but I have a question. So now that the BDCB update is done, I'm wondering if there is a plan or a schedule for getting the commercial accessory use for the 15-minute neighborhoods. I think that this is one very real opportunity for residents to move all the neighborhoods to serve potentially unmet needs in the walkability of our city. So I'm just curious as to what can we see timing-wise from the city with regards to supporting those 50-minute neighborhoods and the potential commercial uses?

ML, it's a great question. I don't know that we have a great feel for it just quite yet. We're just starting to talk about what implementation looks like. So as soon as we have a clearer picture, and that'll probably take a while for us to get figured out.

Yeah, I find myself having to remind people it is a 20-year plan, not a three-month plan. So some things are not going to get done in year one, but we do have a process of thinking about things. And of course, a lot of that is going to be driven by council priorities, which are going to be even further refined as we move forward in the form of a citywide strategic plan of which the city has a history of one of those. We are embarked on a process as an organization to create that 30 or 40 strategic priorities that implement not only the comprehensive plan, well, yeah, in all cases are designed to implement elements of the comprehensive plan that are seen as a priority in the next four years and then council further weigh in at their retreat in February is where it's now. Whether that stays in the traditional 10 items or so or whether it kind of dovetails with the strategic plan remains an open question.

Yeah. Well, thank you for that. It's just that those 15-minute neighborhoods is like an exciting new thing. It is.

We are super excited.

Yeah. So someday, before the plan is next updated, maybe we'll get something going. I hear that there's a lot on the table for everybody, city council and staff. So thank you there, Brad, for giving me your perspective.

Thank you, ML, for that great question. Any other matters from the board? OK, matters from the planning director. Brad, do you have anything for us?

Well, it's a nice opportunity to talk through some of the more structural kind of things, as we did tonight. And just appreciate, again, all the work that you're doing. We're continuing to plug ahead. It is now, as you know, September. We have blessed all of us with four meetings in September, so we'll see you often.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Brad. Any other matters from staff or the city attorney's office?

Thomas, did you have anything calendar-wise?

Yes. It was brought to my attention that one of our regular meeting dates would be on November 3rd, which is election day. So we have moved forward with canceling that meeting.

Great. Thank you. That is much appreciated by the many planning board members who are involved in those elections.

Okay. And do we have a meeting next week? I have it crossed off for some reason.

No, we don't have a meeting next week.

Okay.

Yeah, next week is the second Tuesday. I think maybe we talked about having a special meeting and we're not going to.

No, we're just starting at 4 p.m. on the 15th.

The 15th.

Sorry, I'm in October. That's correct. On the 15th, we'll be starting at 4 p.m. with the CIP.

Okay, so our next meeting in two weeks, we'll be starting at 4 p.m.

Correct.

But we get next week off.

Oh, I see what Brad is talking about. I see the four meetings in a row. Starting the week after.

Perfect. And anything from the city attorney's office?

Nothing from the city attorney's office.

Okay. Then I think our business year is concluded. This meeting is adjourned at 8.20 p.m. Good night, everybody. See you in a couple weeks.