City Council - Regular Meeting

Sit down. Good evening everybody. Good evening. Happy new year.

Happy new year. So, I'd like to welcome everyone to our January 5th, 2026 um work sessions, any type of work session. And I ask that everyone please silence all electronic devices. And um as I say that, I'm going to go find mine and make sure that it's it usually is, you know, just what I think. Okay, now we'll know what it is. Okay, [laughter] so um we are ready to get started and we're going to start tonight with the auditor report. And so I recognize chief financial officer Katie Reese. Thank you, Mayor and Castle. Excited to be here tonight. And I'm pleased to introduce to you Patricia Rhodess who is partner that's on our audit. And then we also have Tom McGalli and Joey Person who also are with South School and I'm going to turn it over to her report. Thanks. Uh thank you mayor and council for allowing us to be here tonight uh to discuss the audit report for June 30th, 2025. Uh we we are here reporting to you tonight because as officers we work for the council. Uh this report was submitted to the local government commission for their review uh which is required by all governmental units every year. Uh this report was prepared in the prescribed format of the governmental accounting standards board. Uh the report is arranged so that the summary financial information is in the front and then the more detailed information follows as the report continues. Uh the annual comprehensive financial report for June 30th, 2025 was prepared by the city of Burlington finance staff. The sections of the financial report that

are actually prepared by Stout Short McGallen King are the audit opinion letter on Roman numeral page 12 and in the back in the compliance section the report on internal control over financial reporting on page 166. the report on compliance of each major federal program on page 168 and the report on compliance for each major state program on page 171 on Roman numeral page nine the certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting was received for the year ending June 30th 2024 marking the 26th consecutive year the award has been received by the city which is a great accomplishment especially due to all the constant changes that are being required in the reporting as stated in the opin on in the opinion letter on room numeral page 12. The statements are the responsibility of management. They are also responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of the financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Our responsibility as auditors is to express an opinion on the statements based on our audit which is conducted in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards. The opinion that we are rendering on the financial statements. It is an unmodified opinion which is the best and cleanest opinion that can be received. The management's discussion and analysis uh starting on renewal page 15 is an excellent overall summary of a very expansive uh and detailed report. Uh it contains financial highlights, financial analysis and economic factors and budget highlights for 2026. The basic financial statements begin on page one of the report. Uh the statement

of financial position shows the assets, liabilities and net position for the entire city for both the governmental activities and business type activities at June 30th, 2025. The statement of activities on the next page shows the revenues and expenditures for both the governmental activities and business type activities for the year ending of June 30, 2025. The report continues uh then with the fund financial statements. One new schedule uh that appears in this year's report that was not in last year's report is the schedule revenues, expenditures, and changes in fund balance for the municipal TDA fund. On page 99, the ste the city still has many capital projects uh for the general fund and the water and sewer fund from the prior year that remain open and will continue to have activity in this current fiscal year. In looking at the operations of the city, there are many fixed and variable costs to consider. Especially in the water and sewer fund, which is an enterprise fund, there are fixed costs uh that in um there are fixed cost um and variable cost um the the fixed cost that are incurred regardless of the number of gallons that flow uh to the businesses and residents. One important operating cost that is not a cash expenditure uh for the city but is an important financial tool is depreciation expense. It plays a vital role in planning for future capital expenditures as the city estimates timing and cost of capital asset replacement and upgrade. The overall citywide tax collection rate for 2024 taxes was 99.73%. And is shown in the citywide levy on page 143.

The city maintained a geo bond rating with movies of AA1. In the compliance section in the back of the report on pages 176 through 178, there's a list of grant monies uh that were uh expended during the year for federal and state grants. For this past year and the coming years, the grant money received will continue due to funds coming from federal, state, and local sources tied to the US Department of Transportation federal transit funds, the US Department of Housing and Urban Urban Development Community Development Funds, and the North Carolina Department of Transportation Power Funds, as well as funding for projects from federal, state, and local sources tied to the American Rescue Plan Act. We do consider internal control as part of our audit, but we do not express an opinion on internal control. We consider internal control in determining appropriate audit procedures. As part of our consideration of internal control, nothing came to our attention that we were required to report to you as a material weakness or a significant deficiency. If something came to our attention, we would have reported this to you in a separate letter. Uh I believe you do have a three-page letter um that you received that is uh required communication to the council as part of our professional standards about the audit. Uh just to summarize what's in that uh letter, we disclose that we have not encountered any difficulties with management and performing our audit, nor did we have any disagreements with management over any accounting reporting or auditing matters. The city did adopt general accounting standards board statement number 101, compensating absences. This statement requires a liability to be reported uh for leave

attributable to services already rendered uh and for leave that is more likely than not to be used for paid time off or paid out as cash or settled through non-cash matters. We continue to work with finance staff on the implementation of any new governmental accounting standards board statements issued and any effects those would have on future financial reporting of the city of Burlington. Uh we want to thank Bob Peggy and all the city staff for their assistance during the audit and but especially thank you to the council for allowing us to be the independent audit firm for the city. We're local and available any time for any questions that the council might have. But I can entertain any questions y'all may have now.

Questions. Good job. Like we're doing a good job. Okay. Go ahead and get 27 ready. [laughter]

Give me a week. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. And um next we'll hear the 2026 federal advocacy agenda um from assistant city manager. Hello. Good evening. Give me just one moment. Make sure that our guest can hear us. Jennifer, can you hear us? Okay. You're still muted. Let me make sure. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Turn this.

Was that overly loud? Because I tried to be I tried to uh use my my outside voice, but I also don't want to like hurt your I think we got it square away. Um, thank you. All right.

All right. Well, uh, before I turn it over to Jennifer, I want to thank you for the opportunity to present this draft of the city's federal advocacy agenda, uh, for your review and consideration. With us tonight is Jennifer Emma. She's the managing partner of advocacy with the Ferguson Group. Um, she's a North Carolina native, holds a bachelor's from UNCC and a JD from Wake Forest. Um, she's been representing the city with the Ferguson Group in DC since about 2020. Uh before each new Congress is seated, we typically ask city council to approve a legislative advocacy agenda from which the Ferguson group can represent the city's interests. Um and that agenda for the 119th Congress was approved by council last January. U but the version before you tonight represents an updated agenda which has recently been vetted by department heads and city management. And Jennifer is going to briefly review that agenda with you, answer any questions you might have, and also talk about what the person group does in representing the city um in DC. So, I'll turn it over to her to walk through this agenda and field any question I have for

Great. Um thank you, Rachel, and thank you, Mayor and Council. Um, I look forward to being with you all in person and and I know I've met um some of you, but um I look forward to meeting others and and working with you all in the future. Um I first wanted to start by giving an update on kind of what who the Ferguson Group is and and what we do for the city. Um indeed, I am a North Carolina, North Carolina native. I've actually been here at TFG in February. It will be for 24 years. Um it is my um real pleasure to represent a lot of communities in North Carolina which um uh you know I just have that that personal connection. So it makes me very happy to to work with communities in North Carolina. It also um allows for me to develop really good relationships with members of the congressional delegation. Um, so what does the focusing group do for communities like Burlington? Um, I try to think about it in sort of three different buckets, if you will, but they all sort of are are intertwined. And those buckets are legislative, regulatory, and funding. So obviously, a lot of what happens um in Congress um legislatively impacts local government. We want to make sure that you all are aware of that legislation that would have an impact on you, both positive and negative, to give you an opportunity to weigh in on that legislation. Um there's uh there's rules and regulations um that are promuggated through the federal agencies. So, we help with, you know, monitoring any changes to those regulations and giving you an opportunity there to comment and or

respond. And then everybody's favorite is um is funding. Um there are various ways to have access to federal funding. Um one is through uh formula funds like uh HUD's home and CDPG programs. Uh so each year we uh work with our delegation to make sure that we maintain at least level funding um for those types of uh formula program funds. Um there's also competitive grants um that you apply directly to the federal agencies. We do monitor state grants as well and let Rachel and and other folks know when something pops up that we think may be of interest to you. Um and then there is the earmarking process through the annual appropriations process and um of your delegation. Senator Tillis uh is actually the only member that participates in um in your marketing which is essentially um uh congressionally directed spending for a specific project. and we have had success um uh working with him and his office in um in uh prioritizing projects. Um so anyway, that's kind of the overview uh legislative regulatory and funding. And so, you know, you'll see that kind of throughout this federal agenda. Um and we kind of group it in um sort of in departments or or issue areas. So the first is community and economic development. Um the Oh, thank you Rachel.

Yes,

I see it coming up now. Um the first is uh community and economic development. The uh Western Electric property has been um a priority of um the cities for many years. And how we are engaging on in that process is working with the department of defense as well as your delegation to make sure that um uh funding for remediation is um is available and it is directed toward this project. So, um there is a program within the Department of Defense um the the formerly used defense sites program that we are actually and we may actually have an opportunity this coming year to work with Senator Bud's office and and I will say this, all three members of your delegation, Richard Hudson and um Senators Bud and Telus are all very um engaged in this project. So, um we are going to try to get uh funds directed through the fund program to the uh Western Electric site. Um and we've also been advocating with the Department of Defense as well as the uh delegation to ensure that um the remediation standards are enhanced from industrial to residential given the location of the property. So, that's been um you know, we've had we've hosted folks from um the uh the defense department there in um in Burlington. Actually, when it was um Congressman Bud, uh he uh helped us get folks there. We had a big round table discussion. So, there's there's really elevated support for that particular program. Round builds generally just ensuring that we have continued funding for round bills, which is not an issue

thankfully. Um I mentioned just a few minutes ago CDBG and home. Um obviously these are very important programs to support affordable housing and other related projects um in Burlington and nationwide. Um we you know there are uh and and historically this been the case um been uh concerns about um eliminating funds for these programs or decreasing them. And um you know often times a president's budget recommends eliminating uh programmatic funds for for uh these types of programs. Uh but Congress comes back in and and does indeed fund um uh CDBG and home which is what happened this past year. Um, but we just want to make sure that we continue to to explain to your delegation how CDBG and home funds are being used uh in Burlington to ensure that we have continued support for those particular programs. There are other programs like the uh low-inccome housing tax credits um and um and other you know federal incentives that we um we continue to monitor and make sure that we are um uh have continued support for those particular programs. [clears throat] Um kind of tied to affordable housing is homelessness. Um we there has been a lot of attention on HUD's continuum of care program. Um the uh the the most recent notice notice of funding opportunity basically limits significantly limits the usage of um of HUD COC programs on um for permanent supportive housing. Um this is a program that is uh heavily

utilized by many communities and so we continue to monitor what's happening with HUD's continuum of care program and make sure your delegation is aware again of how important that is to the city. Um thank you Rachel. livability initiatives. I think you know we are always looking at ways to make improvements um throughout the city whether it is for trails, bike paths, greenways, various placemaking initiatives um and um and so just knowing that this is a priority. we can keep our um you know attention uh uh focused on um you know highlighting that for you if something that's relevant comes to um comes to bear. Uh, another big issue that we've been working with and and Bob Patterson can attest is that um is PAS and um and is monitoring how the administration is handling um uh handling how um uh how to mitigate PAS in our uh drinking water. Uh the issue has historically been that um you know it's not the local governments that are uh adding these uh contaminants to our water but yet it's the local governments that are responsible for paying to ensure that you have clean drinking water. And so, um, making sure that we, uh, are following very closely, um, uh, uh, POS regulations and and ensuring, um, that the local governments aren't bearing the full burden of having to, uh, pay for that remediation. Um, and then just always monitoring for programs that would fund water and

wastewater infrastructure. Uh transportation is always a big priority. Um we have programs that we highlighted for um support in the transportation reauthorization bill. Um the a program is called the safe streets and roads for all grant program which is um which really is a a great grant program that funds um uh safety uh planning um to to create a safety action plan as well as implementation of what that action plan may be um or may identify. And so the Burlington grant uh NPO has received a planning grant and so the next stage is going to be implementation and that's where the big dollars come. So we [clears throat] want to make sure that this program is uh authorized in the next transportation authorization bill which will be um considered uh through Congress this year. Uh and then just we've noted some other uh transportation uh priorities here. the link transit system. Um the uh city and NPO applied for an FTA uh grant um and for a u a a a transit um a stop I believe um and not a stop but a a facility and um they were not it was not successful. So, what we plan to do is get a debrief from the Federal Transit Administration and ensure that you're best prepared to um when you the the solicitation reopens and we apply um later this year. Uh local road and connectivity projects. This is um just really kind of a general uh item here

because if we are uh seeing grant programs like the DOT's build grant program um that would uh fit for a local road and connectivity priority, then that's something that we would focus on in um you know and applying for a a grant whether again whether that grant is a federal grant or a state grant. Um, next, parks and recreation. We just want to make sure that, you know, we have we understand what's included um in your uh park master plans and uh and then identify funding opportunities for those projects that are included in those master plans. It's incredibly important to have that planning work done so that when an opportunity avails itself, the city can move forward and um and apply um for the relevant funds. Um under information technology, uh broadband access is obviously uh very important. Um we want to make sure that there you know policy initiatives as well as funding opportunities to um ensure that service is um is provided to underserved areas. Broadband policy is a big issue right now because there is um their efforts right now in Congress as well as uh within the federal agency, the FCC um to preempt local authority over public rights of play and land use. Um and this is relative to um both um uh uh wireless and wine communication. So a a a big issue right now. So of course you

know um local governments want to protect their local authority. Um nobody likes federal preeemption. Want to make sure that your delegation is very aware that this is not something that you all support. Uh there's also a program called the state and local cyber security grant program. Um it's run through the department North Carolina Department of Public Safety. Um this is a program that was actually created under the Biden administration and so um you know it but has been um touted as a great program by both Republicans and Democrats. So we want to make sure that this program is indeed um reauthorized. I know the city has um has secured grant uh uh funds under the state and local cyber security grant program in the past. Um but just because you get it once doesn't mean you can't get it again. Law enforcement and public safety. Uh this is where we have um worked um significantly on a um CAD RNS project for um the region um for the police department and frankly for you know departments throughout the region. um in fiscal year 2024 uh through Congresswoman Fushi, we got an earmark for uh close to a million dollars for this project. And um and then we had um uh Senator [clears throat] Tillis actually um uh submitted the project again in fiscal year 2025. Unfortunately, there were no earmarks in fiscal year 2025 because we had a one-year continuing resolution. So we um have have resubmitted for um fiscal year 2026 um because that pro that project

actually wasn't included in 25 um it it it did not by the the subcommittee not to get into the weeds too much but um it was not funded in FYI 2026. So, we have a strategy on how to um uh get this project funded in fiscal year 2027. No um no promises by any stretch of the imagination, but I think we have a really good strategy on working with Senator Zillis's office to ensure this project ultimately gets funded. um they recognized that um the million-doll uh funding amount just was not enough and we needed the funds to to to complete the project. So that's a a a number one priority through the earmarking space uh for the city. Um there is legislative um uh there are legislative efforts from both the House and Senate side to um support the health and wellness of public safety officers. Uh I think it's important to weigh in on that legislation indicating support for those particular bills. Um a lot of those were introduced actually during um police week in May of last year. Uh there was some movement of those bills um at the end of last year, but they never actually ended up being passed into law. Um there are efforts right now to um looking at emergency management, efforts to reform FEMA. Um we want to make sure that we understand what the um what the proposed changes are within FEMA and ensure that those are um changes that are favorable to the city of Burlington. Um we also have a general principles

section. Um I mentioned preeemption before but there's other things besides um you know FCC um and you know broadband um uh related preeemption. So we just have a general principle that the city opposes um federal preeemption of local authority. Um uh also the city um does not um also opposes unfunded mandates. So any mandates that come from the federal government um that uh you know are aren't aligned with any sort of funding source um that's not something that we're going to support. Another thing that we have on here is municipal finance. So the tax exempt municipal bonds um there was um there was a potential effort uh in the budget reconciliation process last year to take away the tax exempt status of municipal bonds as a way to pay for uh tax extensions um uh and through the tax cuts and jobs act that was actually passed in the first Trump administration. Um, fortunately, uh, they did not, um, uh, tap the, uh, tax exempt, uh, municipal bonds as a way to pay for those tax extensions. But there's always the potential that that could pay for another, um, uh, legislative issues. So, or, you know, legislative um, uh, program. Um, and so we want to make sure that your delegation is very aware of the importance of taxes and municipal bonds on um, uh, infrastructure projects within Burlington. So, that's the main um, those are the main points on the federal agenda. Again, this is like like Rachel said, it's continuation of um, of

the document we used last year, but we certainly made some changes based on um, the the the reality of where we are um in Congress and the administration. We also wanted to um you know uh generalize some things so that we it's it's applicable to um you know other um potential action at the federal level similar to the freedom and and the unfunded mandates. Uh and so we um are are also interested in hearing from you. We want to get your blessing on this document. It's something that we'll provide to the congressional delegation so that they know what your uh priorities are and um and you know hopefully be on the lookout for um both opportunities and threats to those priorities. We've got any questions for Jennifer? She's um available to take them now. You guys want to take some time to read, digest, and give staff questions. Um certainly allow time and opportunity for that. Um once you've satisfied yourself with the agenda, we'd love to put that on a future council agenda for your blessing approval so Jennifer can share that with our delegation and use it as they advocate for our needs. What's your time? Make them sooner, more so sooner than later or

Yeah, there's there's not, unless Jennifer tells me otherwise, a pressing need to do it immediately. Please take the time to lead with it. But we do want to make sure that consensus on that document and they can have that towards what you think and what others think, council members, what you guys think to make sure that everything is included. I'm fine. of course I was a part of implemented but I do want to know if you guys think that there was anything that should be a priority that was left off or you comfortable so we can take [clears throat] the time to do that are you okay with it you still good

I I have one question Jennifer this is just Mike so as police 26 starts to form up right that I assume will be February Marchish will you be able to then plug back in with us and share what those additional initiatives might be that would be of interest us?

Absolutely. And and I and I'm I'm glad that you you brought that up and I know that's a particular interest to you. Um and I um I share and I will share again there's a a u and I assume that those bills aren't frankly going to pass before May 2026. Unfortunately, we just don't move very quickly in Congress as you know. But um so I have a document that includes what those bills were, what passed in the House, what passed in the Senate, what still um needs uh congressional action. And I think it would be worth weighing in even in advance of police week um so that um you know because there there maybe there'll be activity in advance so that they can say hey this is what we've done um to uh create you know better programs for law enforcement officers and um and and the like. So, I I'm I'm happy to to share I think Rachel, you have the memo, but and you're welcome to share it with anybody. Um, but we do have a review of what some of the what the legislation was from this past year and it doesn't need to be reintroduced because we're still in the same Congress, right? It's just the second session of the Congress. So, we're just waiting for action.

A question on the broadband. Jennifer, this is the ambulus. Um, hey, under broadband act access, the the language there is just very general. Uh, and I know this has been on legislative agendas for decades now. So I was curious if it would be helpful if we got more information or provide more information about the very specific need especially as we've seen the landscape change in Burlington over the last few years about really what would be most impactful for increasing service rather than just saying yes three decades later we'd still like to see improved broadband access

right um and I think you know we we had changed this because I think at one point we had on here um digital equity which is not um it's that's not going to drive right now in this Congress in this administration. So we did change it but we can add any level of specificity to this and I do think that's helpful. what this is sort of a snapshot and what we what I like to do is if there are particular pro particular areas that you want to focus on let's say it's broad data then create a separate white paper to go along with the agenda that really details exactly all right so here's sort of our broad you know broadband access we want you know um we want to improve service to underserved areas well here's exactly what we want here's the situation in Burlington here's here's how many underserved um you know rooftops we have at this point that kind of thing. So if if if broadband is is an area that we want to really focus on then I recommend doing like a separate white paper that has real specific information.

Thank you. I like that idea and know from talking to our representatives previously they do like that area aspect. So if there's something council and all the staff pull something together complement that and really help direct where they should be putting their eyes and attention

and I think the same applies to the parks and recreation item. We've got some plans there. [clears throat] I don't know how many items on there aligned with federal priorities. Um, but again, I know we've done some great work over the previous years, and if we can tell that narrative and talk about where we want to go, then it might help connect some dots and find some opportunities there. So, I know we've got FEMA, we waste our water on here as well. One of the things I love about our Burrito project is it is also a storm water retention device in many ways. Um, and we have flooding issues and service creeks all across our community. The opportunity to create similar storm water containment devices on service creeks that are also active recreation spaces throughout would be a great opportunity. It's not technically within the city park master plan or the arbur plan as it exists now, but it's a continuation of the work that we did. So I'd be more interested in kind of sharing that story talking about continuing need going forward. So, it sounds to me like being more specific in an additional document, a white paper, um, on any of these issues could be helpful.

That's right. Okay. Same issues, just maximizing giving more information, right? Not that we're putting that on anybody's desk to do at this point, but

that's what we are here for. Um, but we would need to work with staff to get, you know, some of the, you know, local detail and data obviously, but you know, that's that's what we do is we we can frame those and it doesn't have to be, you know, a a a term paper, if you will. Um, my daughter's in college, so I guess I'm thinking that way. But, um, uh, but but just, you know, a more, you know, detailed policy paper or, you know, white paper um uh [clears throat] that's more than just a line on a on a grid here.

Thank you. So in the um agenda request here, the action requested date is tomorrow. It it would be as soon as tomorrow. If you guys would like a little more time to review and get back with staff on any modifications, we can take a look for the 20th, but there's not an urgency for tomorrow. That's what Okay.

If I may, also, um this is a it's a living document. um if you were say to approve it tomorrow and something comes up like you know I can guarantee you we didn't have anything related to co on um on you know legislative agendas from you know January 2020 right so if something comes up we're not stuck to what's just on this paper we can certainly respond to what's happening at the federal level we have to be nimble in that way um and this is just helpful for us to give us a framework of what our work plan will be for the coming year. So I don't want you to think that if it's not on this document, it's not something that we can't work on. [clears throat]

Okay. One item that I don't see is economic development in particular and I know it's full of that, but like if there's anything related to FAA and the airport and expansions are there. Um I know it's central to our economic development strategy. that help keep that represent. Yeah, SBA was included under livability and supporting small businesses, but we did not include anything related to

I know we want to do some strategic planning kind of and talk about with the council change some of our priorities and I think that will hopefully add some items to this approving the first draft and then bringing further items after further discussion. I'm fine with that. So fine to move this to the agenda tomorrow with the understanding we supplement with papers. Well, you get a little bit more information about police topics from last year going forward and a couple of white papers between staff and group to follow up on their items.

Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, take care. Thank you. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Thank you. Byebye.

Thank you, Rachel. Thank you. So, next we're going to um hear about the stormwater fee update and um recognize environmental programs manager Amy Barber. While Amy's getting that ready, I would like to announce that Amy is not no longer environmental programs manager. She's recently been promoted to assistant water resources director over our field operation. All right. Congratulations. [applause]

So, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Um we're here today to uh both give an update um and a little bit of background information on the storm water B structure change. Um in 2019 staff was tasked with um exploring different [clears throat] fee structures for storm water. Um, currently we are at flat rate $7 uh per month for every lot or every customer. Um, so whether it's the mall, whether it's Walmart, they're paying the same as any resident. Um, so we wanted to explore different options and we've uh hired Rockellis uh to explore those options for us, get us some different structures. Um we came back to council in 2022 and then again in 2025 just to provide an update of where we are. Um so we're here today to update new council members um new mayor um and then also give some direction for our next move.

And with that I'll introduce Mike. Good evening and I'm pleased to be here tonight uh representing Raph Talis and I appreciate the council um indulging us as we go through this quick presentation just to give you some background information. I think Amy said we are going to talk about the rate structure, some level of service u possibilities of course the outreach program and then of course some recommendations for council that will be coming forth in a couple of months. As Amy said, we did um respond to a request for proposals back in 2019 back in those days. Uh it has been solely wrapped for the past couple of years. We have made those updates that Amy referenced. And again, your every customer pays the same regardless of their impact to your storm water system here in Burlington, which is not unusual, but most local governments are beginning to move away from that as that that's sort of like the first step. And then the next step would be to go to more refined rate structure. last fall or last winter it was February I think when we were here as the previous slide said we did make a recommendation uh for a change to your fee. It is an impervious area based fee structure that we make um recommended. Impervious area is the typical u fee structure that you see here in North Carolina once a moves away from the flat fee. That way, as Amy said, the Walmart is paying their fair share where single family residents is paying their fair share, and there's more equity between the two. Uh, we did look at all of the structures here in Burlington, and the average imperous surface is 2,950 square ft, which we would then call an

estimated residential unit. So all of your residents would be paying one eru and then all of the commercial or non single family would be paying in multiples of eru if they exceed the 2950.

Does that make sense? Um you are currently receiving about $1.7 million per year with that flat fee. Your expenses are the 2.5. Of course, you've got some CIP projects in there. So, you you don't necessarily spend everything each year. You bank some of that in fund balance and then you can do those projects. Uh you can also leverage FEMA grants going back to the presentation previously in order to supplement those dollars. There's state dollars as well that are often available to help with storm water projects. Uh the structure that we have considered is that your residents would continue to pay that $7 fee, but again your commercial or non-s single family would pay in increments of that. Um staff had recommended a cap at 100 erus. So no one would pay any more than what the fee is times 100. uh and that you would phase that in 20% the first year, 40% the following year. Uh and we presented that information to customers back last summer in a detailed letter that was mailed to each non-s single family resident residential customer. Uh it detailed this is what your fee would be in year 1, year two, year three, year five. So that that information was available to them. We can provide additional alternatives whether it be $7 flat fee that you want to maintain or you want to change it. You can change it to $6, $10. You want to phase it, you don't want to phase it, cap it, you don't want to cap it, lots of things that we can do uh to enhance the program. So in the first year, if you move away from that flat fee to the originally

recommended $7 increment, you only get about $75 to $100,000 because you've got a transition period. Once you get folks started down that path though, your revenue could increase by as much as give or take, depending on your your rate, about $500,000 a year. So you begin to build money that can be used for those specific projects, whether it be a capital project or doing mitigation planning, uh responding to different things. It may it may be that you need new equipment. Um there's several different options that you can apply those funds to. Uh your 8020 cost share program, your main street culvert. I think that's all the stuff that I saw out here. Um it and again it can help with replacement equipment and help with enhancing staff if necessary. We have developed some educational materials. As I said we sent out some letters last summer. Uh there's additional work that we can do with the community. Whether you want to have an in-person public forum, whether you want to issue additional letters, whether you want um staff to respond to HOA meetings. There are lots of things that we can help you with in order to get the word out and understand what the customer's pain points might be. And we will be coming back um as it says on the last bullet and again on the next slide uh we have planned to come back in March to the work session and provide you an alternative to the currently recommended fee structure. Unless you're happy with the currently recommended fee structure, we can just say check mark, we're done. Keep moving uh and get start working with the finance staff to get it implemented. Or we can provide you some alternatives. And what those alternatives might be again with a cap,

without a cap, with a um phase in or no phase in or this dollar value versus that dollar value, but we'll show you the impact on the level of service. If you do this, this is what you can pay for. If you do that, this is what you can pay for. Uh so that you have your eyes wide open on the options. Um you do have you are required by general statute to hold a public hearing. Those are typically held as part of your budget approval process because it is a change to a fee structure. Um they can be the same public hearing as your budget approval or it can be adjacent to but they are typically held on the same evening so that folks understand the impact to um general fund the the stormwater fund budget um the way it would impact your general revenues. I think that's it. So I'm happy to take questions and I know Bob and Amy both are very well verssed in all of this and can respond as well. Tell me a little more about these I2 structure alternatives. Are you talking to classes?

Primarily we may be looking at whether or not it's phased and capped versus not. So that would be one structure would be the phased and capp that we've already presented and then the other one may not be phased or it may not be capped. Okay? uh depending upon how you know how much money do you need? [laughter] We sort of back into it and this is what we've said we want to do. These are the the costs of doing some of these projects. Therefore, we need to start generating this month's revenue and how can we get to that in the easiest manner possible.

I think one thing that absolutely clear is we're going to need more money being true almost anything we do. So, and I thought about it, you know, since we've been talking about I'm I'm for I'm for clearly a phase in. I wouldn't want to go from 7 to 10 bucks, right? And I just take what I have to up front. I thought about it for a while and I think I I think that's more I think you can sell it better, you know, to the res. So, but we do need to think in terms of increasing it back

and we can also provide credit programs that come on after the fact. Uh but for those people who are adhering to their permit requirements and are not impacting their next door neighbor, typically in a commercial process, um you can provide them a credit. They may still pay a fee, but it may not be as high as if they didn't receive the credit. Those are typically later on after the fact. Okay. wouldn't get away the next what you're hoping to do is come back in March and we make some decision here because it's sort of tied into the budget and obviously you know t that in. So I just thank you very much.

Absolutely. Mayor a couple questions on the agenda request document. It says based on responses to the letter. So apparently there was information sent out we got information back. Um, was that information that we got back presented to the prior council that gave direction to create options? I mean, I'd like to see the push back material to know how robust that is as I gauge what my decision might be in this matter. I want to know what the public said. Absolutely.

So, I'd like to see that. That's piece one. Um and then as we con consider the budget impact so my head just plays with okay how many nons single family residential units are there out of what's the ratio I assume there's some grand total uh erus single family is a piece of that right then there's multifamily then there's commercial I'd just like to see some kind of breakdown of the pieces of that puzzle as we start to say single families get seven bucks or 10 bucks, then these corporate entities get what? I'd like to see the math on the the bigger picture, please.

We absolutely have that. I didn't open my computer up, but we'll get that to you. I don't need it tonight, but but at some point in the feedback loop, I'd like to have those bits of data as we contemplate what we're going to do here.

Yes, I agree with that. two questions. The um what I'm hearing here though is $7 with this proposal, $7 would continue for an individual household, but the increase is for properties larger than the 12. That is what we have proposed previously. Okay? It does not have to remain that way, but that is what we have proposed previously. Yes. that the resident would see no change where the commercial the non-s single family I say commercial and it's not really just commercial it's anything that's not a non-s single family not a single family residence you would see the multiplier okay

yes a non-s single family residential could be apartment complex um a business church those types of

Okay my concern and feedback has came from the church um just running by just to kind of get some heads up because they're not a business, so they're not essentially bringing in revenue such as a Walmart where they're actually making money. Um, so on your nonprofits, especially small nonprofits, specifically churches, like our church, I think it was $11 a month is our water bill. So you spending about $120 a year with the fee changes, it was going to be about extra $200 on top of that $100. So that [cough] doesn't cause a burden

and and we see that because churches are tax exempt. They're not paying property taxes and this becomes to them an additional burden. But this is this is not a property tax to follow up on uh you and follow what Mr. Ward said when he talked asked the question about classes. uh you cannot turn around and distinguish between nonprofits and profits. That is correct. Because you're basing this fee based upon who's producing the water range. Is that correct? That is correct. And and we see push back from those nonprofits.

$11 compared to me. I mean, our home, we're paying about $120. So why would someone who's only using $11 in water usage want to pay more than my $7 for our home? This is imperous surface water. Correct. It's not for the water clean. This is for the heat.

It is it is for the runoff from hard surface whether it be parking lot, sidewalk, rooftop, um anything that the water does not penetrate. The water sheets [snorts] off of that and becomes public water as it enters the right of way. And historically and the courts have supported that measuring that hard surface is I think the slide said the proxy for the fee basis. So you the home we have generally said this home versus that home are close enough they're okay. can do that 2950, but things beyond that size um are are impacting the public roads. They're impacting the right of way. They're impacting by flooding. You know, whether it be their fair share or the Walmart's fair share or whoever, you know, they're they're contributing to the problem. And in order to equitably charge, the courts have upheld the ERU. Um, if if I'm correct, Mr. Huffman can correct me. Courts have [cough] that a legal way to assess a fee to a nonprofit or a commercial entity. You mentioned giving credits to those businesses that have retrofitted. uh their property to put in best practices.

That is correct.

That is an that is an alliable effort. It it does require additional staff time uh and and you have to verify that they truly are doing the things that have been promised in their credit application. But yes, it is very much most mature storm water utilities use a credit policy. Of course going forward you have uh in your UDO you are enforcing the state standard. So if you're disturbing piece of property larger than nature you're going to be having forced to put in best practices. So moving forward with development that's now in coming online. They've already done so much.

I assume the letters that went out were generic, right? They weren't property assessed, right? So, uh, if your church has no parking lot, we didn't even get one. We don't have a parking lot, no pavement. Right. That's what I'm saying. So, I mean, individual assessment would vary that this church has this massive paved parking lot, high uses of the RDUs versus a church that parks on gravel and grass. They're not creating the runoff. They're not going to have the fee associated with it. So it it ultimately is a situational assessment, right? That's correct. Gravel is an impervious area and the letters that were sent out were specific calculations for the properties. Okay.

Okay. They were specific. Okay. Good to know. So Smike Incorporated would have received a letter that said this is what your fee is going to be where I got Ward Incorporated would have gotten one that says their fee. Okay. All right. Great. And a lot of our push back wasn't necessarily um we had some negative push back of course some strong negative push back but a lot of it was actually asking about a credit program and that was part of us reapproaching Telus was we need to go ahead and not just say we're going to have one in the future but actually have one planned out to where we can also have I like the idea of the credit program. I mean that's improvement for the city.

Yeah. And and I think you know one of the big one of the issues in Burlington is that there's a lot of um development that predates our storm water regulations. So we have a lot of large and peruse areas that don't they required to have a storm water measure. So why would they have one? But you know a credit program it it also would it would encourage someone to go back and put in a storm water control measure um on a property that wasn't required to do it. And based on those businesses, it's basically going to be from $100 to 600 would be their gradual fee per month. Correct.

It really depends on their I mean it really depends on their erus. How many erus they actually have and what it's going to be based in. But um that's what was presented to me is that on the fee scale on the scale that five years that it was going to be no less than $100, no more than $600 per year for that specific fee. No, there's um it does go over there's a cap. Yeah, it's cap. So, it's not going to go over that $700 a month. 700. Yeah.

So, from 100 to 700.

I But I was going to say I have questions on kind of the other end of this equation, which is what this money goes towards. Um because based on what you presented, we're already kind of we've got a gap already. And I know we've had many budget requests, um including some for the 8020 splits and other projects. Um, so the need is that we're here. Um, I really would like to get a better understanding of what do we need to accomplish with these funds because I think that here is how many funds we need to collect because we're continuing to get concerns from residents about streets that are being overttopped and coverts coverts that are washing out. Like the issues are happening because we've got so much impervious surface that's already been built and we're the ones holding the bag on paying for it. So this is really about how do we make sure that we actually have the capacity to shoot for it especially with the feds kind of stepping from FEMA. God forbid we have a major another major weather event that wipes this stuff out we have to rebuild this is the fund that pays for some storm water infrastructure rebuild make sure that we can recover. So I'd really like to get a better understanding of that. What are we doing now? What haven't we been able to do with the current funding structure that we would like to do? And then how do we close that gap with this tool to make sure we're prepared and we can under the corresponding levels of service that that gets into that discussion of if you have if you're generating this amount of money, this is what you can do. If you you know discount more then we can add to the different levels of of service that would include drainage studies, cover replacements, things of that nature. And I I'll speak up and say that I like having the credit policy ready whenever we do this effect. That's going to be really important. Our goal is to incentivize moving towards less storm water or more

resilient system. And if we encourage individual property holders to to take their responsibility and make changes on that property that lessens our responsibility.

So based on um our agenda document here, what you needed was some direction from us. Absolutely. Did you hear enough? We wanted to before we went back to the drawing table, we wanted to make sure we have a clear path forward. So, um I think when we come back in March, we have enough feedback from you that we can bring it all together and give some more detail in March. Um along with some alternatives. Thank you. Thank you. It's great to see all of you. Happy to be here.

Okay. And and next we um I want to recognize executive director of planning and development services Jamie Lawson to um share the voluntary non-ontiguous annexation request. Thank you. Good evening Mayor and members of council. You will often see me come in front of you with these types of requests. So, I just want to give a little background on what these types of requests are and then I'll give you the specifics about this particular item. So, the city of Burlington has water and sewer lines that run within the city within the city's ETJ and beyond city limits. And so depending upon what the request is for a connection, whether it be water, whether it be sewer, um whether it be both, there is a process by which we have to follow. When when properties are within the existing city limits, it really just goes through the engineering department and planning staff and others don't really get that involved. Um when the connections are outside of the city limits then planning staff will get involved. The utility review will come from the engineering department down to planning with the specifics whether it's single family whether it's multif family, whether it's a commercial request. And then depending upon where the request the type of request and where the request is located, we follow different processes. Um for the properties that are within the ETJ um often times we're just making the

request for the utility connection um describing that and the item [cough] the consent agenda. When there's a utility request for um multif family or commercial projects, those requests always have to come in front of city council because under our statute, the general statute and our city code, those requests require your authorization and approval. Um trying to simplify this as much as pos possible just for an overview. So, for for tonight's request, we received a utility request um for a connection for sewer um and it was and it's for a single family residential dwelling. It's an existing home. Um they most likely are on septic. There is um sewer that runs along the frontage of their property and they have put in a request to now connect to the city services. This just highlights where the property is located. So you'll see that and included in the packet that runs with this agenda request form, there's a lot more information. You'll see the the utility request um application. and you'll see maps and descriptions. You'll see an annexation agreement. So, there's a lot that goes into this request, but for the purposes of this discussion, um the property, this is uh NC Highway um 87 South. So, the property is actually, if you get um sort of the bearings, here's the interstate. Then you have Maple Avenue running down this

way. um NC87, it runs through Graham and the property and so our utility lines run all through this area. Um and the property is located approximately about here. Um what's important to note about this map and it's a little hard to see but um this this shade uh is Graham's corporate limits and the ETJ. So the ETJ is in the darker shade and the city corporate limits of Graham or is in this lighter shade. You can see right here there's kind of a difference. [clears throat] Then on on this side where we are um in this particular map the I'm sorry this is not all that clear but the dark hatch shows the city's corporate limits and then outside of that is our ETJ. So what happens here is when is when a utility request is closer to another corporate limit even though we we have utility lines here um it's located closer to Graham's corporate limit than Burlington's corporate limit. the utility request can be heard, but technically you don't have the ability to annex the property because it's located closer to a different juris jurisdiction than your own. Um, the same comes true on the other side uh of the city where we have utility lines that um that run off 62 where they're closer to Elon than um our corporate limits. And you'll see other examples of this uh as well. 61

87 87 North. Um am I missing anything that you want to cover as an over? No, I think you

Okay. So, for tonight's purposes, um staff is presenting the item explaining that we don't have the ability to annex the property, but we are recommending the utility request to serve the property for the sewer. The lines are there. Um there's a existing uh annexation agreement. And it's a four-page document that you see in your packet that we prepared that the applicant will sign. Um uh city manager will sign, city clerk will sign, applicant will sign and upon all of that and upon your favorable um approval through consent that will get recorded um at the register of duties. and then we go back to the engineering department and say yes the connection can be made you guys go from here. So um that is that is the request that's in front of you tonight and staff is recommending that this be added to the consent agenda for tomorrow night's um meeting. So this property that's asking to be hooked into our sewer system is beyond is not in the corporate limits of Burlington nor Graham nor is it in the ETJ of either of the cities. So, what you're getting into here, and the previous council was always m very much aware of it, was the fact that you're extending a municipal service out into an area that has no zoning. You don't have countywide zoning in Alamance County. So the city council charged planning and legal to a certain extent to turn around and try to do the best

they could cuz you want to provide somebody if their septic field has clogged up or you know you want to try to provide the service. Okay, if you can but by doing so you're enabling them with no zoning out there. you're enabling them to turn around and after a year or so they say, "Well, you know, I'd like to put a mobile home park down here. That would be nice. That'd be a real cash cow." Okay? And it's kind of like, "Oh, wait a minute. What have we done here?" Or expand the use of the property beyond what you intended for it to be used for or they intended for it to be used for. And so you will read in the various paragraphs there that we have tried to address that by way of contract and that annexation in Italy is contract. Okay. It gets filed at the register of deeds. So when they try to convey that property to somebody, you recognize that there are limitations on the sewer service to that property that have to go with the land. Okay. As they convey it down. Help me. help me out if I'm wrong on any of this. Okay.

Yeah, it's it's very specific. Um and I and I should have made that point that these requests are for existing uses only and they're valid. Um any change in the type of use, any [cough] subdivision of the [clears throat] property is not um is not addressed through these agreements and would require coming back through another process. So all of that is very clear. I mean I've read through these. I understand so much more now but um have read through them. So that's

so are we able to eventually annex this and enforce the agreement? Well it all depends. You know, we have no annexation lines of agreement as you you can do

uh by state statute with neighboring municipalities at the present time. Those that were in effect have expired. Okay. And the most important thing is is that just like we've had recently, mayor, but you have a developer that is driving the whole situation and saying, "I don't give a rip. Who provides the the water? I just want to develop my property." And Graham had to look at and say, "We have no intention to run water lines." You know, you look at this and you say Graham has no intentions to run sewer mines out in this area. So eventually the [snorts] issues of where the various towns are going to look to grow has to be addressed. It will require on the part of our enterprise fund, you know, the growth areas that y'all choose to turn around and put utilities out into control of the road. Okay.

But there's nothing preventing us from annexing this should we want to should we want to enforce the agreement. At the present time there is because under the annexation statute you are closer to the ground. That's what that element is. Okay. Go ahead. That's why agreement is so important. And please tell me. So the older agreement well older last year the agreement with Graham that is null and boy we didn't get that.

We were trying to attempt that. That was finally agreed to by Graham. Okay. And yes, that's there, but that's not beyond, you know, if it only goes so far. We have agreed in that agreement to sit down with Graham and talk about this going forward. Not it's no agreement to agree, which is not an agreement, but it's it's we're just going to we're going to talk about it, okay? And and projecting the future. And with the new council here, it's very important that you you're well aware of this and what want to hear from staff as to where staff thinks Burlington's growth area is. These will be Elon. These will be cran and roll. Got it. And there is sewer available to this property.

Okay. And I don't think we should deny access to that sewer. Um in this case special is there a law radius with it? I think I remember hearing in those agreements that when you have one, we don't have one, but in that sample agreement or the one that we may have in RAM, is it a certain mile radius of that other area? Is it 30 miles can't be too close to their line within a certain amount of miles? You can't be

Okay. Well, the your EG authorization for ETJ extra territory jurisdiction for each city is only so far out up to I think three miles. Three miles with approval of the county one mile the approval of the county commissioners to go.

Yeah. To go three. Okay. So, that's the ETJ portion of it. understand that that line that we drew with KR really goes basically to make sure that that property comes into that side and there's a line down to it. Everything to the right goes to which I should say east everything to the west goes but that line's only partial line. So I'm just curious is there any opposition to meaningful really less a lot people philosophically I like people have

you know that's [cough and clears throat] I mean there are some there are some legal issues and I won't go back through this again but that's where I am but it but it also seems like the documents the agreements that are put in place. Well, he gives us the potential and it protects us, you know, down the road. So, we're doing the very best we can and and we do the very best we can with the people who request it. That's that's the way I would approach it. Okay. So, if there's no objection to that, then I think that definitely can be consent agenda to move forward.

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Explaining too. Thank you. You made this so much easier. And next we're going to continue to hear from Jamie on the board of commission report.

Yes. So again whenever we have our planning and zoning commission um following that uh staff will present the items that occurred at the planning and zoning commission. remember they are an advisory board. Um they will provide a recommendation or not on an action. Um for for tonight's item uh there was only one item on the planning and zing commission um docket and that was the video text amendment. Um and so this evening I am pleased to present Chad Meadows. He is the principal and founder of code planners and he's been working with the city for quite some time. Um he uh assisted us in the long process of developing the unified development ordinance um which occurred initially the change from the zoning ordinance in 2019 and he's been working with us uh ever since and um you'll you'll hear from him on a number of commitments that we're on but um let me turn it over to to Chad. Thanks, Jimmy. Um, good evening, Madam Mayor, council members. It's great to see you guys. Some new faces, some old friends, some new old friends. Um, I'm Chad Meadows. Uh, and I write development codes for local governments. And it's been my pleasure to work with Burlington for your breath, a very long time. Uh, we started this project, I think, back in in 2017, maybe even 2016. So, we've definitely been working together for a long, long time. And um over the course of that of that time period, we have not only worked with you guys to develop your unified development ordinance, but then also worked with you to amend it.

Um and I just I want to mention to you there's a variety of reasons why we amend your development regulations. Um the three biggies are the general assembly makes changes to the planning enabling legislation each and every session that we are obliged to comply with. Um the second reason why we make changes to the UDA is applicants bring things to staff that are new or different or weren't anticipated when we were preparing things. Uh and the last reason is staff in its daily travels about the ordinance and and working with the regulation uh identifies things that you know we missed or we need to fix or or conditions change. Right? So that's that's basically why we do these amendments. This is very much a living document. I think there's a lot of folks who think that development ordinances just set it and forget it and that's it and maybe every 20 years we go back and refresh it. That is absolutely not the case at all. Um this you you'll be working in this document every single year. Um I am happy to report that we are only on UDO amendment 225. Two

it's on this version. You'll see all of the amendments on

I'll show you that slide in one second. Let's go ahead and go there. Um is this the right slide? Oh yeah. Okay. Um this is our 16th round of amendments. Um and I know that feels like a lot and it is quite a few but uh the the vast majority of those are a result of changes in state legislation. Um again every year we have to deal with variety of amendments. Um this particular set of amendments has four areas of provision and I we've organized them into housing uses infrastructure and standards and housing is really the star of the show today. Um, and these amendments have been developed based on uh staff's work. Um, and this is a real issue that Burlington has experienced for for many many years and we've we've always talked about solving the problem. Um, and you and your staff uh have put in uh a lot of effort towards towards making that happen. So, I'm going to go through those. Um, for those of you who are new and don't haven't had a chance to talk with me before, um, by any uh any means imaginable, stop me whenever you have a question. Um, we want this to be a conversation, not a talking head. So, uh, something comes up, you got a question, please just just shoot it out there. I want to talk first about the transitional housing use type. Okay? Uh, and I'll draw an important distinction here. Transitional housing in this context is a principal use. Okay? This is the primary use of the property on which it is located. So, I'm coming to Burlington to get a permit to establish a transitional housing use type. Okay. Um, this is a new use. It does not exist in the current unified development ordinance. So this is a new

use with new standards and we are suggesting that transitional housing as a use type be permitted in two zoning districts. The ONI district and the GB district. Okay. So office institutional and general business. We're also suggesting that require a special use permit. So this is discretionary use permit. there are there's an additional level of scrutiny that's available to the city in consideration of these kinds of applications in recognition of the impacts on the community around them. Okay, so that's an important thing to keep in mind. The reason I'm belaboring this point is we have a variety of housing standards that are not principal uses and I want to I'll articulate this distinction for you in a moment. This is the principal use version. Okay. And so this is Bob, you have a question. Okay, good. No. All right. Um, these are housing for folks who don't have a place to live. Okay. But it's not incarceration. It's not a halfway house. I don't have a parole officer. It's not like that. Okay. It's not emergency housing. It's not, "Oh gosh, we just had a a flood or a fire or whatever and I need somewhere to stay tonight." This is uh a housing for folks who don't have housing or who are um unhoused. We used to call them homeless. Now we call them unhoused. Okay. Um they don't provide medical services. They can have a kitchen. They can have an office. They can have recreation facilities. There's dining. There's sleeping spaces. So this is a place for multiple unrelated people to have a place to live for [snorts] as long as that transitional housing use type permits them to stay. I think obviously there's an intention to move people out so that there's space for them. For newcomers, these needs don't

don't go away. But this is the transitional housing use. We have a variety of standards here that basically stipulate a few things, right? and we're dealing with compatibility and making sure that we we've creating a use type that functions properly. So there's a 100 square foot floor area requirement per resident. Okay, so that's an important standard. Another important standard is that you need to comply with all of the applicable ADA and building code standards. Okay, so that's really really important. Um, you've got to have a a nonresident staff member on site 24 hours a day. Whenever you're operational, there needs to be somebody who's in charge um to help with, you know, the things that come up when folks are in these kinds of of situations. Um, couple other things. We've got a half mile separation standard. That's a very common kind of a tool that we use here in Burlington to stop concentration of of these kinds of things because that can have a negative impact uh on the surrounding uh land owners. So we require a separation from a variety schools, family care homes, other transitional housing uses, etc. So there's some some separation requirements. If you've got outdoor activities, um that needs to take place within a secured fenced area so that you're not boilering um in maybe somebody else's yard or out to the street. Um there's some extra perimeter buffer requirements that apply. Our our largest perimeter buffer uh needs to be in place uh in order to operate this kind of use. Um, and so there's uh obviously the set of rules and then you know we don't allow these kinds of things to be operated as an accessory use. So I couldn't be a a church who

happens to operate one of these transitional housing uses. Now, it's important because I'm going to talk to you in a second about some other kinds of of these sort of emergency housing things that we've added into the suggested be added that could be operated by a church. This is not one of them. Okay? This is a principal use. I am Chad Meadows transitional housing use type. Okay? And that's what I'm here for. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I am nothing else. Okay? Anybody good? Okay. Great questions on that one, please. Um, one, have we had any permit requests for something like this before?

We have had discussions for uses that are like this. We don't have we don't currently have um anything in our principal use table to address it. That is why we're coming up with uh with these standards.

Okay. Um and then a couple line items on it. the 100 square feet per person. Does that guidance come from some other source? That's that great question. That's a fairly typical standard. A a square footage per patron kind of a threshold uh is is fairly common. Um and you know, I mean, uh I I don't know that I would call it arbitrary. Uh but it's certainly open for discussion if the board felt like, you know, that's not enough or maybe more. I'm not sure. um planning and zoning felt it was was adequate, but we're happy to discuss that. Again, this is based on other standards we're seeing from, you know, other communities.

Okay. [clears throat] Yeah, that one and then um G the type D buffer both. I mean, if we're trying to address a housing need and then we're applying strict square footage and a strict highle buffer, we're imposing a burden that could make that housing impossible to build. Um, and so I just want to make sure that those are the right prescriptions there and not something that's going to make it unfeasible to actually allow somebody to build this. I get that we need to buffer it and I get that we need like human decency. Sure. Just want to make sure that we're basing that on sound judgment. So

and and this is only applicable the buffer is only applicable where you're abing the residential district. So it's not if you're abing commercial district or office institutional and they are only going to be in general business. So they may have very limited ability to res

and also through the suggested process by going to the board of adjustment there can be some modifications as well. So that it's all going to be based on the individual um situation. I think that the likelihood that the board of adjustment would reduce any of these standards is is remote. Um, and if they did so, you know, that is that is a possibility that they could, you know, they could grant that condition of approval or they could suggest, you know, an alternate approach which might be a variance or something like that. But it's a good question. But to Jaime's point, the likelihood that you'll see a plethora of these uses coming in on lots that order residential, pretty low, I think. Okay. Um, and then on item B, which is the distance separation,

I'm not a fan of that, especially if we're restricting these to O and I and General Viscus district already. We've sectioned off a whole chunk of the city. These are just can't be built in anyway. And then we are allowing for view already through the special use permit process. So by drawing this extra set of circumferences around other these existing items that are listed there um we don't have a map to go with this say how much of the city are we also restricting but we could very well end up in a situation where there's only five parcels in the entire city that you could build this on um and those may already be constructed in feasible so I would love to see us strip it ID out of there um since it already has a high level restrict restrictions of where these are going to be. Um, and then two, [cough] there's a lot of research on folks who would be using this would likely need other services such as transportation. And by forcing all these to be desperate, we make it really hard for us to serve them with transportation. So, we're going to force people into less than ideal locations in the city while they're trying to get back on their feet, while they're trying to access support services. Um, I think this one is counterproductive to what we're trying to achieve by this into our ordinance.

I said taking the 29 out. Yep. That's right. Yeah.

So, I I mean I certainly understand um your point uh council member for sure there there is the potential that this kind of use might be put at a disadvantage given some of the separation standards. On the other hand, um you know, we we very typically apply these kinds of separation standards to very similar kinds of uses, right? Group homes, family care homes, uh drug and alcohol treatment centers. I mean, those are things that we commonly apply these kinds of separation standards to. Um, and so were you to um, you know, I think there's an open question about whether or not um, if you if you if you chose to strip these out, which certainly you could, the next question becomes, would we want to apply the the litany of separation standards that already apply to group homes or family care homes or drug and alcohol treatment? um would we want to apply that same separation in those use types to this since we are making this change here. So a question to you about about that.

No, I think it's a great question and it's something where those requirements and other ordinances are also less than ideal in some cases. I think the the question we need to ask ourselves is what other tools do we have in the toolbox to address any concerns that might come up as far as proximity to? And so if we already have other tools, a special use permit, then why add an extra restriction? Especially again recognizing that some of these uses require proximity to be effective, proximity to medical services, proximity to treatment facilities, proximity to transportation or food or employment. And so when we force them to be spread to the wind, we force people to have to go jump through more and more hoops in order to use those facilities. So again, we're only making our lives harder by doing that.

I just want to comment I think not um not to totally push back sensitive to those issues. Um, my prior day job put me in a place though where we looked at the ratio of group homes and other things in the city that a council decades ago made decisions about zoning and we ended up with the highest or second highest ratio based on lackluster prohibitions and I'm really hesitant to say strip all of that out. Absolutely. Very granular look to you say that there's nothing that they could do. Okay, we'd have to modify that thing, right? But absent of that granular look, I'm more inclined to say that some space requirements are appropriate to make sure that we properly manage the inflow of these opportunities to make sure that they're not going to overwhelm our city with outside actors in some way that we can't predict or prevent.

And I'm with you on that. And I think in the case of group homes, they're not restricted to general business district. They are not. So they're not. Yeah. So you're proposing to keep the half mile distance between group homes and family care homes and this sort of thing in place because what we had happened was

Yeah. I think what the conversation on the table is it's simply about the transitional housing and item E in this section of the ordinance. I think Mr. Meadows brings up a good point that we have similar language across the board in other areas. I think that would be something be interesting to dig into at a later date. I'm not saying we stripped all that language from the ordinance, [cough] but I think it's important to look at what are we trying to achieve. And as as Jeff brought up, like there's an importance to recognizing that when these things do cluster, when we get too high of a density, we do end up with other unintended consequences. And so let's let's try to negate those unintended consequences. But in that case, there could be a different set of tools that we use there. um whether it's zoning type, whether it's special use permit, whether it's conditional aspects. Um but just a broad base, 2,640 ft or half mile is a very blind rule that can create its own set of unintended consequences. Simply having one of these in an O andi or general business district area which those use types tend to be clustered now wipes out that entire district from another use of this type.

Do we have the map that shows the areas that the map of the city that has it broke down by like you know the um different types and zoning. Thank you. We have do you have that with you like to be able to say where those districts are in our city? [cough] I I can get to that um through the

just to get a better clue because I understand what I I agree with both of you cuz my concern with everything under it the daycarees and group homes was like well whoa whoa you know you don't want transitional homes and those together. So what are we really saying? But I don't think I'm truly understanding. I know that you're saying we don't want to put them on the outskirts cuz I'm assuming the OIa stuff is on the it's like in the outskirts corners of our city that's not close to the transportation or the services that they would need. They're more spread out. Uh I'm going to ask you in some jurisdictions the way they've addressed that is simply allow them to go into industrial areas only.

Sure. uh you know there's there's a variety of different tools and techniques that are available here. For example, um if there was discomfort about a separation standard uh but still concerned about you know casting open the doors too too broadly um you could establish a minimum lot size requirement for this use type so that only the larger parcels would be available for something like this. You could consider a smaller separation standard if you so chose. Um you could reduce the litany of use types that are s that this this user would need to be separated from. Um you could flip that on its ear and say we're only going to allow these in places where there are existing social services within within approximate location. Right? a transit stopped a hospital. Uh you know, whatever um you know, retail, you know, the ability to buy groceries, whatever, whatever the you know, the the the calculus might end up being um is an option. In that instance, you might find that to be as limiting or more so limiting than a separation stand. Um so there's there's a lot of different ways to go about this. Um I would love to tell you that you could look quickly at your zoning map and see these patterns. they don't emerge there. This is a very complicated set of of factors here.

So, um so this is our zoning map. The general business uh zoning district is in this um reddish color and then the office and institutional is in the blue. So, um you know they they are primarily along the commercial corridors. Um the just for context, the yellow and yellow and orange are residential zoning districts. Um and then the purple shades uh are industrial zoning districts. So those are more on the outskirts um within the city and down by the airport area.

A quick question. This is special used for this, right? So those five criteria that apply typically Yes. like like like value and harmony. Correct. But what I'm what I'm saying what I'm thinking is that those criteria may be a burden on the board of adjustment, but they they will address some of the concerns that's been identified here. Correct.

I believe so. I Yes. Um, generally speaking, the the the the kind of protection or harmony standard is often thought of through the lens of property value. Um, and would this use negatively impact property value of the surroundings? From the public safety standpoint, how that's usually kind of adjudicated by a board of adjustment is through traffic. Um, so there's usually a traffic analysis that's done. So, what we generally see with a special needs permit comes before a board of adjustment. There's usually a property appraisal and there's usually a traffic impact assessment. I chair the board of adjustment in Durham, North Carolina. I have done so for many years. I have never had a special use permit come before me that didn't have an appraisal that said this is just fine. I've never seen a transportation impact analysis that didn't say anything but this is just fine. So, you know, I mean, I I understand that we we we seed a lot of of confidence in those standards. At the same time, you know, um those are simply the purchase of of a study or an analysis, but but do you have a person that has pande [clears throat] expert?

That that's correct. Yes, you those two aspects, you would absolutely well, you could. And what I'm saying is if indeed that did occur that may cure some of the issues here because that's presuming that the people that have standing would do something but typically been my experience people want to want to testify that they're not experts. It cannot be admitted. So you got a problem and you know the neighbors want to weigh in [clears throat] but you know when it gets when you start using judicial standards it's not discretionary. I I I agree with you.

You got to meet certain evidential standards to be able to get that admissible and to rebut anything that may be put on by the petition party you know to carry the burden. Now I don't want to get too much in the weeds. But what I'm saying is the process here to some degree. We have some curative provisions in it. In other words, we can we can tune it in all that there there's some protection in the process of it. Of course, we don't know yet where that will actually occur,

but those are there. I just want to mention that because they are indeed will be there. And I'm assuming that's why you're doing special use is to give a dead layer of protection. And that's absolutely correct. Okay. That is absolutely correct. I think all boards of adjustments struggle with the issue of standing. Um if you receive notice, you have standing to come and testify at the hearing. Um now whether or not you have the ability to testify as an expert is an entirely different question. But yes, you know, if I if I get a notice, if I'm adjacent and I get notice of a special use permit, then I have standing to come and give testimony whether I'm an expert or not. Now, it's up to the board of judgment to to to make the decision about can Chad come here and talk about property value. Well, is he an appraiser? No, then he can't. That's, you know, their responsibility. But but yes, you are right. The sad thing about it is most typically those things are heard should not have been admitted but are yet used and make to the sea.

Yes. So I mean and I've seen that over and over. Yes. Yes. Indeed that's the case at the end of the day. However, if a petition party carries the burden and they establish, you know, well, carry the burden on the five criteria. Yes. They're entitled. Yes. Yes. So, well, anyway, I don't want to get into it. So, is there a way Oh, I'm sorry. move down. Is there a way to articulate separation distance of 2,640 linear feet is the ideal?

Exceptions can be made based on something. I don't know what the something is, but I mean I just thinking about the map with the red and the blue. Um, and where the schools that immediately came to mind for me, that doesn't leave a whole lot of space for transitional housing to go. Um, is hospital. No, hospital is not one. No separation, but but just thinking about schools and centers really limits. I mean, I'm not certain that there's too many places transitional housing can go on TV and OI, right? Correct. Okay,

that's great. And Bob, you brought up a good point. We have all these different boards and people on them who we've trusted to make good decisions and to weigh all the different elements. And that's why I don't like a strict number because a strict number turns a blind eye to all of that and just says if you don't have exactly that number or more feet, no. Well, you can get bumped out on that because one of those standards is have you complied with all the other regulation that come in and okay, you only got you only got 2,000 square ft. You you you're lacking what you know 640.

So, you can get bumped on that one standard. So, what you're said to take that out have that won't be in the mix when you carry when you petition to do it. Okay. makes sense to me, you know, maybe but even then I don't know because of the equal protection argument when it comes in with group homes and otherwise in the city, you know, how far do we go by saying no to those standards because you're going to kick into legal protection issues here. But but anyway, that'd be for another day. So it sounds like there's, you know, aside from the separation aspects which we've got some concerns about the balance of the standards are at least an okay start. So let's talk about how we solve this separation issue. Um some options are we could one go back and talk more about this and come back to you with another idea. Two we could strip this out alto together or three we could propose something alternate right now. Um, and alternate might be a reduced number. Um, and we might flip it on its ear and say you can't go to a location unless you are within 2,640 ft of a bus stop or a social service. I I I don't know if you if there's much interest in that or you'd like for us to go back and and think more on this this separation. Well, or lose it all together,

you know. You can either again either take it out, leave it in or come up with a number. But but I like to have some basis, you know, if if taking it, you know, just other than just taking it out because I mean that loosens the standard or it's arbitrarily, you know, do we look at the other standards and say what will fly from an equal protection point of view and come back and run through again with a distance or notice, you know, can you get by, David? Can you get by with uh taking out the distance requirements and you have it for group homes and all of those? I mean, you certainly have an equal tax. That's correct. So,

and but but again, I don't know where that would be. I don't where you come with arbitrary number.

Uh or you know, do you know my my guess is it's going to be hard to it's going to be hard to just take it out. It's going to be hard to come up with an arbitrary number. have have some basis for some kind of number, some kind of compromise, you know, maybe maybe we need a little more time, you know, I don't want to unhugely delay it at the end of the day. These kind of things, you know, may or may not get a challenge, but we we're getting into a new territory. Sure. Absolutely. And I think we need to go in with the comfort level, you know, have we, you know, have have we comported quite frankly with the equal protection as we understand it. Sure.

Because our code is ripped with all these other standards and they got to have some relationship to what you're trying to regulate. Yes. In other words, I mean, it's not it's not a strict recruitment standard. It's a reasonable relationship standard. And if we can meet that, I think we're good to go. So, having said that, I think we need more time. Yeah. And I think the other ones of these I'm generally supportive of. So if we need to set this one aside and it gets lumped in the next batch for the UDO, there's not an active petitioner who has a project requesting this this use type. So that gives us

there is there is not but there is interest in moving this forward um because we have received those requests. Um and you know quite frankly um a lot of time has been spent trying to get the initial language put together for that purpose. Um so I totally understand what you're saying. will uh wrap your pleasure. So I'm wondering based on what you've heard from us, is there a solution that comes to mind for you?

Well, how soon to get back to we we'll have to take a look at it further. Um really if we want to be we don't want to provide an arbitrary figure. That's my concern.

Yes. And of course we use when we put put it in we used the statutory enabling legislation to do so that the state sanctions require allow up to a half a mile distance. Prior to that, we had uh as the chief pointed out uh we had had uh a disproportionate family care homes and group homes go into concentrated areas.

Yes, we did. And of course, the whole idea in the middle 80s with this housing program was to turn around and make sure that these residents from they mental health residents or whether they're just youth and residents or whatever adults or whatever it be, we're going to be raised and housed in in a in a uh an environment that is more neighborhood like community. Okay. And what happened is that without any restrictions there at the time in Burlington, we end up having an inordinate number of getting grouped together which transition certain neighborhoods spiraling down. So uh and then cases after that after the feds did what they did in the mid 80s with the housing period. The cases came down after that that allowed for cities and the state enabling legislation and cities to go and put in these separation provisions realizing that what the unintended consequence was you were taking environments and putting so many clothes together that it kind of defeated the purpose of growing up in a community. it didn't cost to service uh were high very high guess that's how you remember this uh so well and you you're wanting to turn around and but you won't don't want to turn around and discriminate against this sort of use in compared to group homes family care homes and that sort of thing so I recognize if you can give us a couple months to work through this I think uh we try to come back with something that would address months months.

I would hope we could get it done years because it's an important narrative to share. Also, this is nowhere near the conditions we were in the 80s. Like there are already restrictions built into this ordinance that prevent them from just being everywhere. Yes. because of the ONI general business restriction and the special permit special use permit process. Now actually there was as long said there was a provision in our UDO for transitional housing. Yeah, I'm saying so in the 80s we didn't have this stuff that we have built into this ordinance that's in front of us. We've learned

and we're just talking about how many layers are we going to add. So, so your hope was to have this for a public hearing on January 20th. That's right. And that would require that we give you a go in tonight that uh you would set a public hearing date and it would be um advertised in the newspaper. Mhm. But you can do that for 75% of what's in front of us tonight. We will continue going through the rest. And I think that's the short-term win is [cough] all these other components, right? We pull this piece, we pause it, we gather more data, then we come back at it in an intentional way. Y yes, understood. Thank you. Okay.

I think importantly to address Bob, you said it in the lawyer window. It's the the concern regarding ordinances with similar wording, which is equal protection. Equal protection. So to get a clear understanding of what do we open ourselves up for if we pass one one piece that doesn't mirror the other pieces as far as equal protection and then if we want to negate that either what do we add to this ordinance or what do we strip from other ordinances and how do we make sure that we're not creating more than desired

unintended consequences particularly legal consequences and I support Yeah. Continue. Yes, ma'am.

Uh that that's good good feedback. Thank you. Uh we'll uh we'll continue to cook that one. I get back to you soon. Okay. So, switching gears now. We're still on housing and but we switched from the principal use. Remember that 365 permanent use to a temporary use. Okay. So, this is a use type that typically happens on a piece of property that has another existing use on it. Okay? Not always. Sometimes a temporary use happens on a vacant piece of property, but in this instance, that's not necessarily the case. We have three flavors of temporary housing. One of which you already have standards for, two of which are new. Okay? and they're they picked up and addressed some of the same kinds of issues that we're trying to address with the transitional housing standards in the first place, which is what do we do about the unhoused here in Berlin to make sure that they've got options. Okay, so the first of those uh I'll just give you some kind of housekeeping stuff. Your current regulation has something called a temporary dwelling and that was insufficient on its own. So, we've broadened that to now be temporary residential uses to pick up those three different flavors that I mentioned. And I'm going to talk about three flavors. Now, the first of them, uh, well, a couple more general things. Temporary dwellings are defined here. Um, you know, this could be a single building. It could be a group of buildings. It could be a part of another building. Um, it's not a passenger vehicle. It's not a truck, but it could be a trailer, right? Because we see some of this stuff um in in in a trailer. That does happen. No matter what, it's got to meet all of the applicable building code standards. Um, and it's got to meet the dimensional standards that might apply, right? It's got to be set back and can't run a foul of the the, you know, uh, lot coverage limitations, etc. So, okay,

first is the emergency shelter. Okay, these are um for the folks who are unhoused due to a direct sort of emergency situation, a flood, a fire, some sort of declared emergency. Okay. Now, we also have included within that that sort of scheme of of emergency severe weather events. Okay. So if there are folks who are unhoused out on the streets and it's particularly cold or it's particularly hot then you know that will pass muster as an emergency condition would that would authorize this kind of activity to take place. Okay. They are only allowed to be accessory uh or part of a religious governmental or other nonprofit use. Okay. said this can't be I can't run a emergency shelter out of my house. I can't run an emergency shelter out of my office. I can't run it out of a church. I can't run it out of a governmental institution. I can run it outside of another nonprofit principal use. Okay? It's got to be staffed. It is exempt from the temporary use permit standard, but it's got to meet the building code standards. Okay? Um and again, only operated in emergencies. So the thing to keep in mind is this is an emergency shelter. It's a temporary thing and it can only operate during emergencies and it's got to be part of church government nonprofit. Okay. Next construction.

Uh yeah, I do want to talk about a temporary construction building. Thank you. You see item C on the page there. Uh there's no red on that. Um that's because that exists now. um which is carrying that forward. Okay, that's for somebody who is building a house and wants to live on the piece of property while they're building their house. Okay, so I might have a manufactured home or a mobile home on my piece of property while I'm building my house. I might have a security guard uh or somebody like that on the property as I'm building something else. It's on the same property. It's serving another principal use and when that principal use is constructed that temporary construction dwelling must go away. It cannot stay. Okay. So that's what makes it temporary. No changes [clears throat] necessarily in the standards but we we kind of classed it with these three temporary uh residential use types. So, emergency shelter, temporary construction dwelling, and then the last one, which is what we're calling temporary housing property. Okay, institutional uses can have temporary housing. What's an institutional use? That's a school, right? Anything in your use table that's listed under an institutional use type can post one of these uses. Okay. Um, some of these standards should look familiar, right? There's 100 square foot per resident. Um, that got to apply with all the, you know, the applicable building codes. You got to have a staff member on site. Um, you don't have to get a permit, but you do have to provide or comply with building code standards. So, that is our temporary residential use. The difference between this and the transitional housing is this is intended

to be for temporary residents. Okay? And it's temporary in terms of not its duration because it can be occupied forever but rather the nature of the people who stay there. All right? They are temporary residents. It's intended that you would come, you would stay until you no longer needed those trans those temporary housing services and you would leave. Could that temporary use continue on in operation? Yes. Yes, it could. As long as it met the standards. Okay. So, it's part of something else, but it's not temporary as we typically think about it. It's temporary in terms of the residents who stay there. That's why it's classed as a temporary use type in hopes of avoiding confusion with the community. Okay. The last piece of this is uh just some clarification about the duration stuff that I just mentioned. All right. Emergency shelters. How long can they be in place? During the emergency. That's it. Temporary construction dwellings. How long can they be in place? During the construction and that's it. Temporary housing, how long can they be in place? Forever. Okay. As long as you meet the standards. The difference between this and transitional housing is this is part of a separate use of church institutional use etc. Okay. Questions on these? We we've been working to have these standards for you guys for years. Um, we've all we've really this is a very difficult set of of standards to deal with and staff's been working hard on this and and we finally been able to bring it hopefully next time we visit we'll have the the transitional housing in shape.

Okay. Similar question 100 foot which you sort of explained in the previous one but as you just mentioned kind of different duration possibilities right? Um, so I just I want to make sure that the 100 square foot here recognizing that this can be applied to a natural disaster which could have severity of many different levels and destruction and people unhoused to many different levels. Um, is that 100 square foot the best practice when looking at disaster emergency shelters?

Right. So the the emergency shelter does not uh doesn't have the size limitation on it. Okay. This temporary housing does have it, but the emergency shelter does. So our our anticipation would be in the event of an emergency, this, you know, the provider of that housing would follow the emergency shelter doctrine rather than the temporary residential.

And that what's happening here is you were trying to he's trying to work around the state building code. is what he's trying to work around here and the fire code too may address these things that's these numbers were not arbitrary. Okay. So [clears throat] if you want to is this part of what we're taking off so that no we we would like to suggest that these temporary these three temporary be included. you'll work on the transitional the the principle and and try to tweak that to get that separation stuff addressed.

But that's what I was going to say. So wouldn't this one would take care of what the transitional um homes could not with those restrictions because under this one they can stay long as they want. Yes. But it has to be you know a governmental agency or nonprofit churches blah blah blah. So that would give them an opportunity to be in other locations. Yes, it would. And still have access to housing. Yes, it would. Yes, it would. What the what this doesn't do is create an avenue for an operator of a transitional housing establishment as principal use. Right? That's what this doesn't do. I have to be part of a church, a governmental entity, something like that.

I just trust them more. So maybe I'm biased cuz I'm thinking, you know, children, family, things like that. So if they can't be in those areas of GB and OI, they could still have access to somewhere to stay,

right? You know, I mean, if you want to if you want to boil it down, you could potentially abolish the principle transitional housing use type altogether and rely solely on the temporary. And built into this temporary is the I don't want to call it a gatekeeper, but that sort of overseer role that would be provided by some sort of institutional use. And that's just been my concern the whole time since the conversation began because I'm just thinking like if we do allow children and families, I'm a mother and I have small children, so of course it's always a first thought if we have these transitional homes and we allow families and children in. um staff is trying to explain to me that, you know, in the special permit, we're not liable for what happens to those children or to those families. My concern is if if if it's 20 in there, who is there watching to make sure little Sally and Sarah and Jim is not hurt at night? And that's that's really not any of our business. Basically, it's what I was told. Like, we're not governing that. We're going to give them this special permit. So yeah, this one works best for me cuz I'm thinking of on the children and families. I want to make sure that if someone is operating these facilities that is someone that we could trust and believe them to do the right thing. It just scares me to think about who will be operating these facilities, where they will be and what are the after effects if it goes wrong. I think there probably are some lensure some state licensing things that do come into the transitional housing use but but your points well. Okay, switching gears now. So that's it for the housing stuff. Um let's talk a little bit about some uses. um these and as you as we work through these you you you realize quickly that we're just

going back and and and fixing issues or or solving kind of minor things that came up that we didn't anticipate when drafting. So back on page 4-44, we want to clarify that bulky item scale. So like a storage ship or pool, right? There's uses that sell those things. um clarifying that those kinds of things need to be set back from the right of way, not the pavement. Um sometimes that hasn't been clear. We wanted to clarify for manufacturing both heavy and light that they are in fact subject to the city's noise ordinance provisions. Okay. Why this is relevant is your noise ordinance is in your city code. Your your city code is applied where to your corporate limits. Okay. If you in your UVO clarify that we're going to [cough] stand outside of the corporate limits which you may do um then you need to put it in the UVO which we have done. So now it's clear to everybody even if you're an industrial facility you're not in the corporate limits you're the ETJ we still want you to comply with the noise standards. Okay. All right. Determination of an accessory use. This is an issue for us. Remember you've got a principal use that might be a restaurant. Okay. um and they decide we'd like to have a bar or maybe we want to have comedy shows so we're going to have live entertainment, right? And we begin to run into issues of how do we permit this? How do we regulate this? There's different standards for these kinds of uses. Enter the principal and accessory distinction. Okay. So now we have found that we need to have more clarity about when something that might be taking place uh adds a new use type and that new use type um you know overtakes that business right say for example I start Chad's pizza restaurant and then I decide I want to have a micro brewery and let's say I make really good beer which I don't but let's just say I did

and then people started coming in and buying beer nobody was buying pizza anymore I might turned from a pizza restaurant establishment as a principal use into a different kind of use, a micro brewery. That pizza happened to be the accessory. All right. The current standard has no boundaries or guard rails for how staff can make those determinations. That's why we're adding this section and we're basing it on revenue. Okay? Because when more of your revenue comes from one activity versus another, the the higher revenue generating activity is what's going to be your principal use and those will be the standards that we apply. Obviously begs the question, what if revenue is not involved? And that's a much harder question uh which we punted and said we'll let Jamie decide that uh when no revenue is generated which at least gives a little guidance to land owners that you know we're making this distinction and you need to be aware of that we might apply different rules to you based on the primary activity that's happening on your site.

Do we have a clear mechanism for receiving revenue information and being able to look at it? we can request it. Um, and they can choose to provide it or not. And then we might find ourselves in a violation situation where we need information to determine what use you are. You haven't provided it. You're in violation. Okay. Infrastructure 6.3D. Um, street dedication and construction. It's on page 610. So this clarifies that the developer uh who's developing property is responsible for the dedication of the land that's necessary for the street and the construction of all the street requirements. Okay, street pavement, the width that's required, the gutter, the sidewalk, the drains, everything that goes to the street. Okay. Across that site's frontage um in accordance with various regulations that apply with those cities, the states or the TIA self-evident but not in your regulation. So now it's in there. Um also we've clarified that this street vacation stuff section um chapter 6 is the subdivision standard. Um and some people might say, well, I'm not doing a subdivision. I'm just doing a site plan, so I shouldn't have to dedicate roads. Wrong. Um, we're clarifying that if you're doing a site plan, you got to do the roadway improvements and that you're responsible for that. Okay. Easements and permanent structures. Pretty simple. Um, if you've got an easement and you'd like to put something in the easement that's that the is not the easement holders. Okay. So, the most common example is the electric company, gas company, right? They've got a line, right? and that line is in an easement. Okay. Um, let's say I want to put a fence in that line. I need to get permission from the

easement holder to to to have that encroachment in their easement. Okay. If the owner of the easement damages my property, right? Um, and I never got permission from them to have my property in their easement. Are they responsible for for my damages? No, they're not. Um, it's my mistake because I never got permission. So, we're clarifying this for folks. Um, the easement holder is not responsible for repair or replacement if you didn't get consent first. Okay, so kind of common sense, but here it is. We're putting it in. This also holds true for you guys. You guys have easements, too, right? Okay. Um and so there's another cross reference to this in an earlier part of the code. All right guys, we're almost done. Um couple of changes to standards. We have some rules that talk about off- streetet parking location. Okay, and this is done in the commercial design standards to this is in furtherance of the comprehensive plan which tells us we want to be less auto oriented. We want to be more pedestrian oriented. We want to have a higher quality of development. In order to do that, we want to control how much parking is located between the front of the building and the street that it faces. What we don't want to do is have vast endless seas of parking in front of the buildings. Yes, there's the shopping mall. I understand that. But new development that comes in. The standard currently says that 50% of the parking uh can be provided between the primary facade and street it faces. staff had questions about whether or not this imaginary primary facade line stretched across the front of the property or just stopped at the edge of the building. The the intention was for it to stretch across the front of the property, which is what's shown in the illustration that we're adding. Okay?

So, that's what this is, just a clarification that when we say 50%, we mean across the frontage of the site, not just the building. Okay? By the way, secondary facads, tertiary facads, this limitation doesn't apply. It's only the primary. Okay. Uh same standard applies to mixed use. We have the same requirement for mixeduse design standards. So this clarification applies there as well. Okay. uh your engineering folks have requested more clarity on graded slopes and fills that there are some some engineering related limitations on how much when you deposit fill and make a burm you know that there's a limitation that your fill can exceed 2 and 1/2 ft of width for every foot in height. Okay. So the idea here is you don't have super super super tall BMS that are very very narrow and therefore unstable that the the base of the BMS is wide enough to accommodate the height of soil matter that's on the top of it. So that's what this is about. Um finally sustainability incentives um clarifying or adding to our table of sustainable development incentives. For those of you who are not familiar, these are voluntary things that an applicant can request. They can propose to do sustainable development features. That might be provision of affordable housing, following design standards. They're not required to provide u you know energy efficiency, preserving trees, a long long list of things that they could do um voluntarily. And if they choose to do that voluntarily, they may then avail themselves of benefits. Those benefits might be additional density. They might be additional building height. They might be uh waiver or relaxation of

certain standards. So that's the parameter of the sustainable development incentive. And these things have been in your book for seven years now. And I think you've had one person take advantage. you know, we're we're actually getting more and more incorporation um of the sustainability incentives. A lot of people uh like the ability to provide additional density. Um you you may get in a future UDO amendment a recommendation to increase those densities. Um as I've been told, our densities are not very high density density allocations not very high. and uh common practice maybe a lot higher than what we have now,

considerably higher, but we might bring that back to you for consideration in the future. Um but the the happy news is that this is finally starting to take root and people are starting to do, you know, green storm water infrastructure and energy conservation and tree preservation, all the things that we wanted to do. What's great about it is it's all voluntary. We're not making them do it. They're choosing to do it. And so what we are doing is trying to continue to encourage that by adding an additional option which is the ability to reduce the amount of required open space set aside by half if you provide some other kind of you know sustainable development offset whatever that might be from the list that are in the table. So that is uh an additional provision that we've added. That's it. Uh, I know we've we've spent a lot longer with this, but that's quite all right. Um, I will mention um planning commission planning and zoning board heard this um on I guess it was the 15th of December.

Yes. And recommended approval um to to move forward. So that that's that. what we've understood from you guys tonight, unless there's any additional questions, is we'll go forward with the majority of this package, but pull out the inclusion there that the um the one kind of kind of transitional housing piece uh for further consideration in the near future in as soon as possible. How about that? Um is that are there any other questions? I think that's good. Thank you.

Fantastic. It's so good to see you guys again. Those will tell you that I spent a long time talking, but you know, I'm trying to get better. Trying to get better. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have our city manager report and I recognize.

Thank you, Mayor Council. I do not have any items. I think everyone is excited to if there is nothing else. Oh, I see my finger. Yes. Um, I did want to at least bring up I know some of us have talked about wanting to do some retreat conversation or a larger strategic planning conversation. I just wanted to bring up the topic and start the discussion as far as what seems like a reasonable time frame in 2026. as far as folks comfort level to have that conversation and and you mean council and staff.

Yeah. Yeah. Um I think I enjoyed when we did our 2016 session. I think it was really helpful to learn about all the other council members and kind of where your priorities were. Um and I think it's really important as we go into budget process um to have that kind of shared understanding. Um, so staff meet they're already talking about budget. Um, so I think it makes sense sooner rather than later to at least have some level of discussion. So just wanted to put the topic on the table and get you all feedback about what makes the most sense.

I would love to be a part of it. I have not been a part of a debrief with council members thus far. So I'm eager to see what actually happens. We usually don't talk amongst each other discussing what's next. So I'm excited about that. I'm definitely love to be a part of it. Could we have some conversation with city managers office and the city clerk's office as to come back with a proposal on that um by the next work session? What happened in 2016? I'm sorry. like what is this cuz I've never been part of it. What happens when this retreat then?

Yeah. Bob, correct me if I'm wrong. We had an outside facilitator. We did a one or was it two days at a Macintosh? One day one day. Yeah. Yeah. So, we did one day, it was a full day, um that included some staff presentations of topics, but mainly kind of council feedback and clarification on a a wide range of different things that were either already on our our plans or have been brought up by individual council members and gave us the opportunity to kind of rank them and then request more information. Right. It it really sort of a combination. The issues were generated both by council and staff.

Yeah. Yeah. Um and again, I thought it was very helpful for us to be able to have the conversations that with all five of us there um about where our priorities lie, what things we're thinking about with some of the different issues in the community, what conversations we've had as residents um and to bring our expertise to the table. I think it should be part of our annual process. So

one one thing that I would suggest that you know when we get the rolling thinking about issues it's only so much you can accomplish in a day person five or 25 then they throw staff in another two or three here and there it's kind of hard to get in 30 other words uh what I'm what I'm suggesting is be circumspect with your issues But, you know, something really, you know, if we are going to try to do it, you know that. But I think it'd be I'd rather I'd rather do that than try to do a whole lot and wind up not really making much progress except for just introducing the topic to it.

So, you're saying make sure we have enough time. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And I know a lot of councils around the state do a a formal retreat whether they stay in their community or whether they go someplace else. They spend usually two days going through their issues. Um but just like any business that does it as best practice, it's really about making sure everyone's on the same page.

Jeff, I don't know if you have any feedback from what you've seen with police departments or other leadership organizations public. Yeah, I I think the make break point is choosing the right facilitator and doing the leg work up front. Like you can't just throw some stuff at the wall, see what sticks, and run with it. You really have to choreograph the time and space of who's doing what to have the value of the tail end of that. And so, um, I don't know that it can be done effectively in time to make real managerial decisions on budget this sequence. I don't think that's realistic. As much as I would love that to be the outcome as well, I I don't think that would work, right? So, we spend the next two or three months standing it up, making a monthly item that they say, "Okay, here's the next level of preparation that we've done iteratively." We look at that for a few months and then we say, "Okay, we're going to do this, you know, on this date and that might be June or July or something till we can pull it off."

Go slow and do it right. I think I agree with Jeff cuz I think probably you know we try to do it and try to incorporate with the budget. I just too fast. Yeah. I don't think I don't think we'll be able to do that. I think probably it would need to be a little more deliberate. I think two things. Number one, I think you need to think in terms of long term.

Longterm wouldn't necessarily be included in this budget. And then number two, you know, zero in on some real burning topics, you know, where it can be meaningful, you know, I I believe I believe that would be worthwhile. But again, I think let's think about the timing, you know, not try to rush it, you know, because I do think it'd be more do it a little later. planning and

I hear I heard you name as a way to really form as a team. Um maybe not ears but um that that would be the initial and then maybe next year it's to actually utilize that as part of budgeting process. Yeah. have a couple of

ifable I'm happy to work with with Jeff. I don't know if you want to work with us as well and Bob and the team and bring some ideas back potentially facilitator for facilitator formats for something kind of first half of this year and then maybe a model that we want to aim for going forward and have that for our work session. Yeah, whatever we think we can pull off on the timing, I'm happy to be involved to some mistake. So, I'd be interested in being part of those conversations. Anything else?

One other I've had a number of requests from residents about our chicken ordinance. Um, now good. It's always come to me. So, we did the very first community survey and we know there's chickens in Burlington. But, um I would love to see where we left off on that just a draft of what ordinance we had because I know I thought it was pretty well fleshed out uh years ago. I would just like to receive a copy of what that ordinance looked like and then bring up for discussion maybe in our February or March work session. What should I chicken or backyard chickens? Oh, okay. Yeah,

because we've done a lot of homework on that and I know staff have put in a lot of time about setbacks and where the crews could be and how we um took care of permits or any other cities who have wonderful design. Yeah. Well, we don't even have to remen our own wheel have authority. So, just we we can gather that information and get that to you. and discuss that work on the topics. Okay,

I'll put one more conversation about our rural advocacy reminded me that um there's a annual program called qualified allocation plan or QAP related to affordable housing and the guidelines for the 2026 um are already set but it's an annual process where they rewrite the guidance um with feedback from municipalities and affordable housing developers. Um, but those are the guidelines that qualify low-inccome tax credit housing. And so they're they basically designate which lots statewide will be eligible for low-inccome tax credit housing. And they change them every year. Um, and it really dra dramatically limits which lots can actually qualify for the tax credit. Um, and there is a process for public feedback. um which is most valuable from developers and from government entities um to basically say here's the things we're dealing with locally. Um we're talking Western Electric, we're talking about transitional housing. So we're dealing with this issue. Um and those guidelines can in the same way that physical limits and distances can make all of the property in your city ineligible for low-inccome tax credit. So, I think we need to at least be aware of it and it'd be great to be able to in the 2027 cycle have that on our radar to provide some feedback and make sure that the guidelines don't prohibit sites from being selected within Burlington. Just something to have on the radar.

QA qualified allocation. The area that is behind is it Academy Sports. I think that's Brooklyn Cook factory, right? Correct. Behind Academy Sports. The apartments affordable home affordable housing. Like those are really really super nice. Is that an area that obviously qualify for those tax credits because they are federal housing? Well, fally funded, right? So that would be what you're asking is what areas could eventually qualify for those tax credits for affordable housing such as Yeah.

In my mind, I'm just looking at wanting to see more of that. You talk about Yeah. Yeah. Those credits include lots of different variables. Access to transportation, utility access, elability, all these different things. um which makes it really hard to select sites. Um so first important to consider I think it was a research project while I was at planning school where they overlaid a map based on one of the years and it was like 13 sites statewide that actually qualified.

Wow. So for developers trying to take a spot um if they don't work in a region or a region just doesn't have sites then they just don't get any older traction. So it's bureaucracy hard work. Um, but as we talked about advocacy and I would make sure that we're never to just

Anything else? That's all I've got. Is there any objection to a journey? No, I don't think so. So, um, we will see you tomorrow night. Thanks everybody. Thank you staff.