Board of Aldermen - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Good evening, and welcome to, the 11/12/2025 meeting of the Carrboro Town Council. This is a work session about the development of our unified development ordinance. There will be no formal action or public comment in this meeting this evening. And before we turn it over to our consultant, I do wanna take the opportunity to congratulate mayor Pro Tem Nau, council member Palmer, and, council member elect, Fred Joyner, and me, you know, as we were, victorious on last Tuesday night and, you know, just really want to thank the Carrboro community that voted us to come back and sit in these seats of governance.

And so I did want to just briefly say that. And, of course, you know, we'll talk more at the swearing in next month. Chad, did you want to kick us off? Do you have you wanna Yes, ma'am.

Are we ready?

Yeah. I I think we are. We did spend a good bit of time in our last work session with you last month. The the impression that I got from council members is they feel that we are on the right track and that things are going well. But we also decided that a second work session will probably will probably be in order.

Maybe you have more information to share, which is good. I know one thing for me, council members, if you don't mind. Our downtown area plan, as you know, is in a draft form right now. We'll be in a public hearing next week. And so one thing that I have been thinking about is how our unified development ordinance could impact the downtown area plan.

We know the downtown area plan is a guide for the future. Our UDO is you know, it's kinda like the law of development or redevelopment. And so if you could provide some comments, there's some connection there. And just wanted to go ahead and make that connection tonight ahead of next week because the UDO will definitely impact anything that happens in our down town, in the future. Council members, if that's okay. You know, just get that information from him, and I'll just turn it over to you, and welcome.

Thank you. Thank you. And it's it's a pleasure to, to be back before you guys. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to come back and have more conversation with you.

We have some more questions to drill down on, some more things to cover, and and I'm here to answer questions or concerns, you know, that you guys have. So last time you received the 80 page 80 page summary of the current LDO with the implementation ideas for the new UDO included within it, I don't know if I mentioned the last time I was here, and this is relevant to the to the downtown plan. We have put together this document, which is called the land use policy summary, and it's dated February. And it goes in great detail, into Carbro Connects, the 60 or so percent of the policies that are in the comprehensive plan, and how we might go about implementing those. One thing that's noticeably absent from this land use policy, analysis is your downtown plan.

And the reason for that is it's not adopted yet. Certainly, you are absolutely right, madam mayor, that the UDO is the foundation. It's it it adopts and and creates the rules for your for your downtown plan. And I don't have tonight a lot of detail about what implementation aspects we would include. What I will do is as soon as the the town has adopted the plan, we will supplement this document, the policy guidance summary with a new table that incorporates all of the relevant aspects of the downtown plan that the UDO needs to address.

I will say, right now, there's a couple zoning districts for the downtown area, and the dimensional standards in those districts are very complicated to follow. There are a variety of different sort of instances and and and caveats that come with what's next to you or what's across the street or what kind of road you're on or and all sorts of things that make it complicated. Generally speaking generally speaking, most local governments these days, when when thinking about their downtown or their town center or whatever, you know, whatever they choose to call it, the objective for the development standards is to remove obstacles, is to lift, you know, limitations on development, whether those are procedural or substantive in nature. So we might decide, you know, again, depending upon what is in the plan. We might decide to simplify some of the regulations.

Maybe there's a single district or we contemplate, how we do, zoning districts in downtown. That is a possibility. There are obviously a lot of room and options for incentives. I know that we're talking about some taller buildings. I know that we're talking about some increased density.

I know that there's concern, about compatibility and making sure that, you know, we don't create new development that, you know, has negative impact on some of the most sensitive areas in town, and and how we handle all of that stuff. The other thing to be mindful of, you know, is the the down zoning bill. And what it does and and doesn't allow us to do anymore in terms of changes, reductions in density. I don't think that'll be an issue for us. Reductions in the range of uses, that might potentially be an area of concern.

We can certainly broaden the array of uses, and that's not a problem. The creation of nonconformities in nonresidential zoning districts will absolutely be something that we have to pay very close attention to. And, you know, if we have time tonight after we've gone through some of this other material, if you'd like to talk about the strategy for, you know, what we would suggest be done to deal with the down zoning bill, I'm happy to talk about that. But I don't I don't know, you know, how much time you've got and whether or not you really wanna go into that conversation now. It's it's it's we're certainly ready to talk about it.

It is a very nuanced discussion. And I I'm anxious to hear y'all's sort of reactions to what to to our strategy. But, you know, maybe tonight is the night, and maybe maybe we can cover that in the in the coming weeks, and that's okay. It's not gonna make much difference whether we do it tonight or in a couple of weeks or a month.

Okay. Okay? And, just one second. Councilmember Posada Orozco's joined us, virtually, so he is with us. And councilmember Oleg Fred Joyner is also joining us here, in the council chamber. He's over by the door. Welcome. Councilmembers, where do we wanna begin? Are there questions? Chad, did you have more or did I cut you off?

I did. Ma'am. You did not. I I was gonna give you just a quick overview of what we went through last time. Staff has given you a series of worksheets that we would like to use to organize the discussion. That said, if you guys have questions, by all means, let's jump into those. And we can do those first or we can do them as part of the worksheets.

So so you mentioned the down zoning. So I council members, was thinking maybe, in the future. What what are you what are you any comments or anything about that in particular? Council member Frey, go ahead if you have something.

It's been on my list to ask about advice for strategy around that. Right? This is

Councilmember Frey, sorry to interrupt, but could you get closer to mic? I could

Absolutely. Councilmember Bosora Orozco. Thank you. So it's been on my list of questions to understand better how we respond to a law that doesn't really contemplate how ordinances actually change That that makes it a little challenging for us. So, that's definitely something I want to talk about. I don't know that there's any particular reason to do it tonight. I'm interested in making sure we get through this material. If we have extra time, great. Or in a couple of weeks is fine as

well. Okay.

Thank you so much. Do have you been working on any strategies or have any ideas about that in particular as of your

Oh, yes. Okay. Okay. Absolutely. There are there are approximately 20 local governments across the state who are contemplating some kind of new set of development regulations.

Happily, they're not all my clients, though I have many who are in in this sort of holding pattern as we sort of try to figure out how to how to adapt to to this law that is is very difficult. And, yes, we could certainly cover this at a future a future time. I will say, last long session, there were 22 bills that sought exemption locally that affected around a 100 local governments. None, save one, were were adopted by the general assembly. Mills River was the one community who was actually exempted from the down zoning bill, and that exemption was, for a very short duration.

It allows them to to finish and adopt their unified development ordinance that they are working on. 07/01/2026, Mills River will become subject to the down zoning, bill. So that is an a strange instance where we are drafting a zoning ordinance as though it did not exist yet trying to be cognizant of the fact that it's going to, it's going to apply on the day that they adopt, the zoning ordinance. So that's kind of a it's a little mind blowing to get your head around, and this is a complex, complex subject. Suffice it to say there are still a lot of local governments who are contemplating seeking exemption, and y'all need to make the the decision that's right for you.

I will say that I do expect at least five local governments in the short session to to request exemption bills. We will probably see those exemption bills take on a similar complexion to the Mills River request, which was a short term duration that allows you to get your development ordinance adopted, and then you would become subject to it. And that's very, very helpful because the bill, as you know, no longer permits local governments to lower densities without consent to reduce the range of allowable uses in a particular zoning district, an existing zoning district without consent. And you cannot adopt any development regulation that would render or create a nonconforming situation for existing development in a nonresidential zoning district and and a very sort of sticky sort of wicket of things to work through. Interestingly, we can create nonconformities for existing uses in residential zoning districts.

So the new UDO could have new multifamily design standards or new development standards that we apply to apartments. Things like that are are allowable. But that kind of an approach to a nonresidential zoning district, we would have to get consent first. And so, yes, we have a strategy to to put forth on the table. There's a couple of different sort of of aspects to the strategy, not least of which is one, basically abolishing all existing nonconformities and recognizing everybody who exists as a conforming use.

And then changing drastically the definition of what we call new development to include any sort of minor alteration or expansion of existing development, would allow us to apply the the standards that we wrote to so called new development. So it requires a much more expansive definition of what is new, and it requires us to abolish existing nonconformities. And some local governments are even going as far as amnesty for existing unlawful development simply as a practical matter because they can't track, don't have the ability to track who was nonconforming, who was lawful, and with the loss of nonconformity or the the the murkiness of whether or not you could be considered nonconforming or not if you were unlawful, but you didn't grant consent. These these are questions that we're dealing with. I suspect most local governments will grant amnesty, abolish nonconformities, expand their definition of new, development to include more things, and then go forward writing the kinds of standards that they would write otherwise.

The other two things that are nonnegotiable for us that I don't think you guys would necessarily change drastically in any case is the reduction in the range of use types generally and the reduction in densities. Those things we probably need to to cope with and deal with. That doesn't mean we can't write new zoning districts. We can. I really think you guys are already kind of well into the conditional rezoning mechanism, that procedure.

Most local governments across the state who are not using conditional zoning will be moving to it. I would anticipate conventional zoning to largely disappear because once you've zoned something, you can't really change it anymore without consent. So those are some of the some of the kind of rough contours of the strategy, and I'm I'm happy to talk more about it either tonight or at some point in the future.

Same. Yeah. What you just said.

Hope hope

I'm sorry.

Hopefully, we won't see worse legislation. There are still open bills, as you know, seven sixty five, six twenty two, and a handful of others that are much, much more concerning than session law twenty twenty four fifty seven, the down zoning bill. And those other concerning bills, for the most part, are still in play.

Thanks for that update. Council members, any questions for Chad? Comments about what he has shared? Direction?

Council member

Posada Roscoe.

Thank you, madam mayor. And just really quick for my clarification. Can you give me the names of the of the bills again, please?

Seven sixty five and six twenty two are the ones that they probably won't go forward under those numbers in the short session. They'll probably be picked up and and introduced in new legislation. That's typically what happens. That said, the general assembly, as you know, still in session. They are doing these continuing resolutions to stay in session, and they'll be in session into mid December. And there's rules for what they can bring forward and and vote on at that time. And so it's really hard to know what to expect.

Yeah. And then and if this made the press crossover, they or not, they can just cut and switch any other bill that already

exists. That is correct. The so called zombie bill. Yes.

Yep. Okay. And, also, thank you for the information. The the the document that was shared out was really helpful. I just have those clarifying questions, madam mayor.

Oh, okay. Thank you so much. Councilman Pasar Arrozco.

Okay. So last time we talked about the five worksheets. Yep. You know, I'll I'll refresh your memory. We we talked about the eight key themes for improvement of the of on the, you know, LDO. Simplifying it. We wanna safeguard equity. We wanna adapt to climate change, address housing choice, integrate policy guidance, increase predictability, ensure legal sufficiency, and incorporate incentives. And those were the eight key themes that we've identified, and each one has a series of five to eight additional sub recommendations underneath it. We went through a series of five worksheets that post questions on development review procedures, climate change adaptation, the incentive versus the mandate.

We talked about some affordable housing incentives and, you know, preferred options for moving forward. And then we just talked generally about incentives. And I was hoping to to clarify some of that information and and dig a little deeper into some of those topics if that's acceptable to you guys. Okay. If if if it's okay, I'll start with climate change.

Mhmm. Okay. So last time last time we met, we talked about limiting flooding and storm water problems, that those were some important aspects that we needed to address. We talked about the notion that, you know, things like energy efficiency, an important strategy for adaptation, but likely less important than maybe addressing flooding, you know, and kind of teasing out a priority of of what's really, really important for us. We talked about tree protection, that the town should address tree canopy, amount, and health.

And not just in the development kind of lexicon or rubric, but also just kind of townwide generally, public property, streets. We should be thinking about tree protection holistically. We wanted to limit invasive species and have a more robust plant list. We wanted to add some incentives for folks who chose to oversize their either their best management practice or their stormwater control measure. So, you know, let's say you were doing a development, and you had to do a stormwater control measure to treat your runoff.

If you would build a larger feature or more than one feature that allowed additional storm water to be treated, whether that was from adjacent properties or public, you know, property, whatever, that there should be incentives for that. So that was kind of, you know, the the areas that we covered. I wanted to point out a couple of things for us as we think about this topic. We have a very fine line to walk when it comes to these environmental rules. So for example, the general assembly has limited our riparian buffer maximums to what the state has adopted.

Now town has special authorization, right, to to have bigger buffers, which is awesome. And and there's absolutely no reason at all to to not carry that forward. However, I'm not sure that we could expand our riparian buffer standards from what they are today without additional special authorization. So what I'm the point that I'm trying to make is, I believe, personally, that what you've got on the books now can and should be carried forward. I don't know when it comes to the issue of riparian buffers whether we're gonna be able to see them grow in any substantial way, whether that's a deeper width or more limitations on clearing or more limitations on what's allowed in them.

I I think we would have to go back for more special legislation to in order to achieve changes in that narrow realm. And, you know, maybe that's something that you would like to do. And if so, great. And and if not, then, you know, let's focus on some other aspects. The the general assembly has very specific feelings about tree protection.

Mhmm. And essentially, can sum them up with five simple words, which is don't do them unless you've got authorization, and that is their view. Personally, and I'm speaking for for myself, I believe that tree protection is authorized under the general police power. If you can have a landscaping ordinance, which you can, then you can regulate trees, which you do. And that's done under your health safety welfare protection doctrine.

In light of that, I personally believe that we could go forward with more restrictive tree retention provisions or additional tree retention requirements. We could protect heritage trees and specimen trees. We could retain a percentage of the existing tree canopy. We could limit mass grading as a means of preventing people from clearing all of the trees on a piece of property. We could do reforestation provisions where if for some reason you do need to reduce the amount of canopy on a site, that steps be taken after construction to reestablish that canopy.

It will take time, right, because we would plant smaller trees and they'll need to grow and mature and so forth. But this reforestation concept is a compromise that's very workable, particularly in urban environments. And then, obviously, there's always the mitigation kind of thing where somebody might make a payment in lieu, and the town would manage those funds and plant trees on public property or elsewhere, you know, in the community. Bottom line, we can go forward with tree protection retention standards above and beyond what you're doing today, but we need to proceed with caution. Okay?

There may be a desire for the town to take a broader approach to limiting development in the special flood hazard area, the flood plain. Right now, you already do that. There's a lot of limitations in place that that don't permit a lot of development in the special flood hazard area. There's discussion about growing that. Maybe we go to the 200. Maybe we go to the 500. Maybe there's some other limitations that we wish to introduce. Perfectly allowable. Can be done. Right?

I wanna be sure that you understand that any changes that we make to your flood damage protection or prevention standards have to go to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety for review, and they will have to authorize, and approve whatever changes that we make. So I just wanna be sure that that that's understood. After you adopt it, it still has to go for state approval. You already have storm water standards that are more restrictive necessarily than the state minimum, and that's perfectly fine, totally allowed, and you can continue to do that, and you can continue to to to strengthen that. So here's a couple of questions.

I wanted to be sure that I mentioned to you that I think, I believe, that if if we make some of these climate adaptation changes that we talked about, whether that's tree retention or additional flood protection or increased storm water standards, that is likely to increase the cost of development. And that, in turn, could work against some of our affordable housing goals. So my question to the group is, you know, should we approach these climate change provisions as mandates? Should we approach them as incentives? Should we consider waiving some of those mandates if we decide to have mandates?

If people provide preferred development, whether that's affordable housing or or, you know, local business or or, you know, any kind of employment generating kind of aspect. Where are you guys on this? This incentives versus mandates question on the environmental protection provisions. Again, I'm talking specifically about storm water, tree protection. I think riparian buffer is probably off the table. We should carry forward what you have, but I don't know that we should go necessarily any farther. So flood, tree, stormwater. Band aids, incentives, does anybody have any thoughts or feelings?

Right right off the top, this strikes me as an area,

I I

think we've discussed a couple different approaches to this question. I think we would probably like to mandate relatively strictly here. And this is, I mean, speaking for evaluation in this discussion, of course. With the idea my concern is cross cutting incentive structures. My concern is too many incentives for both climate and affordability, difficult to adjudicate, or possibly in the end, what we end up doing is having developers opt for climate incentivization that may be less impactful to our bottom line goals while leaving affordability, incentivization. You know what I'm saying?

Absolutely.

So I I think here, it's kind of on us to decide what we can take because I think with, like, the incentives and community benefit agreements that we wanna think about, we wanna prioritize affordability, which is not, to say that I think we should skimp on the climate protections. Just that I think those should be relatively rigid for if they're not gonna be inexpensive to develop, they should be clear and at least efficient in that sense, and they should not put at risk the incentives that we have in place for affordability. I think that I mean, I don't know, Chad, if you want to evaluate, is my fear of competing incentives well founded? Yes. That was quick.

I thought so. Yeah. So that that to me is, you know, it it strikes me as, I think last time we talked about a, like, primarily with some tweaks, reforestation based approach to tree, management, which I like. I don't want personally like, I think in in a in a in an ecologically responsible design, canopy is extraordinarily important. Carbon retention is extraordinarily important.

Cooling, water retention, trees rule. But I think we should not take too many lots off the table. You know, just but, you know, like, I I hear the appeal of of, like, eliminating masquerading, for instance. That strikes me as pretty tricky and probably not desirable for our goals. So I think, like, a like, what I'm hearing is, like, pretty, pretty heavy reforestation standards with a couple of the, I think there were some time based, tweaks that you had in mind, Chad, that I don't have in front of me, sort of like different points of evaluating compliance with those standards?

So the reforestation strategy is so the comprehensive tree kind of approach here has two or three legs often. And and, you know, this is by no means everything that you have to have. It commonly has some incentives for retention of existing vegetation in areas where required landscaping would be located anyway. Okay? So if I've got a perimeter buffer or streetscape or something like that, you know, we might consider allowing existing trees to have accelerated credit towards the the landscaping standards.

Kind of a no brainer. It does cut somewhat against a performance standard for a buffer. Right? Let's say for the sake of argument that the puff the buffer wants eight trees per 100 feet and the existing tree is big as big as eight trees, that 100 foot buffer in this credit system might have a single large mature tree and not have seven more smaller trees because that one tree gained all the credit that you needed for that 100 feet, if that makes sense. So that's something to kind of file away in your thinking as we as we contemplate the credit for existing trees.

The reforestation piece is we want every site to be covered with a percentage of canopy cover, some threshold amount, 10%, 20%, 30%, whatever it is. That's measured in a rough approximation way. We don't want to require somebody to have to do some sort of logarithmic correlation coefficient of how much of the site has trees. We simply say, be sure that at maturity, this site is 20% covered by tree canopy. Where that 20% is, we don't care.

That's what that's the standard. If under a reforestation scenario, somebody needs to remove some existing tree cover in order to do an access way or build a building or whatever, then there would be an expectation that a part of that site be set aside, not buildable forever, and be a tree protection area going forward. The amount that they set aside is what's necessary to create that canopy cover percentage that was referenced before. So those are the two kinds of pieces to this reforestation kind of a standard. It's fairly open and flexible.

One of the nice things about the reforestation approach is if you've got a site that's already deforested, right? It was a farm or a field or something like that. You know, these things can operate as a forestation standards. In other words, you can put trees back that will expect a 20% or a 30% or whatever the percentage number is for that zoning district to be, you know, retained to tree canopy, you know, at some out year in the future when the trees are mature. So that's the desirability of that of of that approach.

It puts the decision, the calculus more so in the hands of the developer than does a strict retention standard. The retention standard can create some friction and sometimes unintended consequences. You can't get access to the site. You can't build the site because the trees are where the building is. That makes it very difficult and it calls for complex mitigation strategies that you could simply sidestep with a reforestation approach.

So I'm a big you're probably getting this sense. I'm a big believer in the reforestation approach, but that's only because it's much more practical. The end goal is tree canopy. How we get there could be a little easier under a reforestation strategy. It does take longer. So

can I get you to talk a little bit more about street trees? Because we know that there are significant benefits to street trees. And in my very limited time on council, we've had at least one interaction where it it felt like there might have been a bit of gamesmanship about design that oops. Street trees aren't possible here.

Right. Street trees are, frankly, pretty difficult to accommodate. I'm a big believer in street trees. I think they're important. Oftentimes, we see them in the most urban areas, like your downtown.

Street trees should be in the right of way. If you own the right of way, and a lot of them you do, then you have control over that. And that's a much easier proposition. If on the other hand, the road belongs to DOT, that's a different matter. One of the biggest challenges for street trees, frankly, isn't the applicant, isn't necessarily the community. It's the town's own engineering department. Mhmm. And rightfully so. They have a responsibility too. Right?

They've got to, you know, accommodate the sewer lines, the water lines, the underground infrastructure, the sidewalk. And all of those things can, in some cases, be negatively impacted by the street tree standards. What I'm used to seeing is a twofold approach. One is basic requirements for street trees in the most urban parts of the community, that those street trees be in the right of way between the back of the curb and the sidewalk. Okay?

So they're between the traffic and the pedestrians, because that's where they make sense, with some rules about whether it's a canopy tree or an understory tree based on you know, the utility system in place. Some places, and I'm not suggesting that Carbara is one of those, but some places also utilize what we call a streetscape buffer, which is street tree like, but those trees are outside of the right of way. They're at the front of a lot line on private property. They're still protected. They have to be there.

Part of the development approval is that your streetscape buffer be in place. It's no coincidence that the streetscape buffer tree planting looks an awful lot like street tree planting. Right? Certain number of trees with a minimum distance on center, either canopy or understory trees based on the utility system that's in place there. It just the the the difference is they're not between the sidewalk and the traffic. They're on the backside of the sidewalk. But at the end of the day, you're still getting a tree lined right of way corridor. Urban, it's between the sidewalk and the cars. Less urban, it's on the backside of the sidewalk.

Thank you.

Did that answer your question? I know that was a long people are trying to counsel me on how to keep my answers more succinct. I'm practicing.

Camera later.

Those those make a lot of sense. And we've it's a particular challenge because of the way that our utilities are set up that street trees are so important, and you don't want to induce everyone, including the town and the developers, to spend a ton of money on trees that are gonna get one whole side whacked off Yes. By Duke Energy in a few years.

Right. Anybody who's been to Durham knows there's some some particularly egregious examples in in Downtown Durham.

Fidelity Street lost most of its shade in the last round.

So Right.

So in that instance, the streetscape approach has some utility. Pardon the pun. You can keep those trees outside of the easement, and therefore there's no need to cut them. So that's, you know, an exploration. That that would be my suggestion as a blend of the two with the application of the street tree standard in the urban districts, whatever those end up being. And, you know, we could create an option, an alternative plan option where even in the urban areas, if there's some utility issue that we can't overcome, then in that instance, those trees would be outside of the right of way, if that makes sense. Mhmm. Okay.

Coming back to the rest of the the topics here, I suspect, and I'm sort of looking around the room as I say this to see what y'all think, that we would all be on board with a mandate limiting development in special flood hazard zones that is stricter than it is today. Right? We have Correct. Developments existing in Carrboro today that had we known they were going to flood the way they have done now, we would not have wanted those to be built. That's a pure public safety measure. Right? So we don't wanna expand on that. Exactly which year flood plain standard that is, I think we've gotta figure out. I know we may have some new data coming out soonish, new maps. It would be really good to line that up so that we can make sure we get a strong standard there.

I don't see any reason for that to be anything other than a mandate.

Mhmm. Okay. Very good.

On the tree provision side, I I've seen a lot of I've seen a lot of projects do really go jump through an enormous number of hoops to save a a particular tree in ways that sort of twist the whole project and then

The tree dies.

The tree dies. Surely there. Sometimes directly because of the construction. Right? That the standards for tree protection of that existing tree were not good enough or it was the tree's time and we didn't know it at the time. And so we saved the tree, and then five or ten years later, it's gone. So that that makes sense. It sounds like that's an area where there might be a lot of, like, a lot of room for us to sort of right size that approach.

I think so.

I'm curious if you've if you've run into any instances for for the most urban districts for downtowns of thinking about shade requirements as apart from trees. We're going to need all the shade we can get in the summers, but there are a lot of lots in the downtown that don't currently have trees on them that are currently a 100% impervious. If I'm thinking about one of those lots being redeveloped is the best thing we can do to say, oh, and by the way, you need to find a way to somehow fit 20% canopy coverage on here, or you're gonna go through a variance process because it's not possible for you to meet our standard versus is there some is there a way we can structure that to offer our most urban lots shade alternate you know, shade options that don't require them to be able to support trees in that location but still give people shade? Okay.

Wow. Great. Great. Great question. So at the head of the discussion, were talking about downtown and about how a lot of a lot of approaches seek to to remove standards and requirements from downtown in pursuit of kind of increasing the development potential, the relative desirability of developing in downtown context because it's more expensive, because it's more trouble, because it's easier to develop in the greenfield areas, we don't you know, the downtown doesn't get the love that we'd like it to have.

And a common response from a regulation is to is to remove those obstacles, remove those stops. A new standard that would say, you're a 100% impervious. You wanna redevelop. We're gonna make you, you know, put in trees or or or pay money. Certainly something that you could do as a policy matter.

You need to balance that benefit against the potential disincentive to develop that redevelop that site because of the various things that are already stacked up against it. The notion that we could provide shade for pedestrians as part of a a set of standards or set of incentives because remember remember that pesky down zoning bill. That's probably the right way for us to go in the downtown. Having said that, you know, and I know this isn't necessarily a downtown issue, but, you know, it's very common for us to include shading standards in parking lots.

Mhmm.

That's very typical. And I think that that should continue. The street tree, I think we should continue with that. Oftentimes, the perimeter buffers aren't a thing in downtown. And other kinds of site landscaping, typically exempted in downtown.

Shade structures as an incentive, absolutely fantastic idea. And that's something that we could incorporate, you know, in these rules either or as conditions of approval. I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna forget about that. You can while while we couldn't write standards that render existing developed lots nonconforming in nonresidential districts like downtown, We can apply them as conditions of approval through conditional zoning. We can use development agreements as methods of getting applicants to participate in those kinds of valid public efforts.

Now, there are some communities in North Carolina. I've not had a chance to talk with your legal counsel about this. I don't know how you guys feel about this. There are some local governments that I know of that require development agreements as part of new development, particularly conditional rezonings. The the ones that I am thinking about use it as a means of a backdoor to concurrency requirements.

And more about that if you really wanna if you wanna learn, you know, hear more about how they do that. But the the bottom line is this, they require the development agreement. A development agreement is a voluntary instrument. An an applicant can choose to enter into that with a local government or not. There are some local governments in the state who require them.

You may decide you want to require them. If you did decide to require them, then you could incorporate things like shade requirements without worrying about the down zoning requirement, if that makes sense. We would need to talk about that and make sure that you guys are comfortable from a legal risk standpoint because that may lead to to litigation. And and again, it may not. But there are local governments who do this development agreement requirement as part of development in their community.

But I'm gonna write shade as incentive, sustainability incentive. Okay. Storm water.

Popping right along. Yeah. So popping right along to the storm water standards. I've observed that we have a pretty easy time for commercial developments in particular. We have not actually experienced a lot of pushback from developers on the idea of catching the hundred year storm.

Mhmm. I think mostly because they know that if they don't, their parking lot will be underwater. Mhmm. Something that makes sense to me is to Thinking about mandates versus incentives, the way I'm thinking about this is that we need to know what our floor what our our floor is for, as we're talking about, for public health and safety, that that part ought to be a mandate. For I think the I I agree with Danny that we wanna avoid sort of the incentive shopping, or ending up getting, you know, half of what we want in multiple different areas by setting up incentives that are a little bit too fungible.

But sometimes you get a property where it's where the there's a particular reason that that property, would would really benefit from going all out on stormwater management. Mhmm. I'm thinking here in in our town's recent history here, I'm thinking about South Greene, right, where we got an extraordinary stormwater conveyance that handled stormwater coming from way off-site. And that was handled as a as a, a negotiation in a conditional zoning. But I think if we were going to set up an incentive that's available in the UDO, it would be so in other words, have a mandate for what we feel is our floor, which I don't think our storm water detention standard should get any should get lighter.

Mhmm. I'm on the fence as to whether or not we should strengthen it as a mandate.

Mhmm.

Okay. And I think if we offer an incentive, should be for, like, really blow it out of the water Okay. Around stormwater. Like, there are gonna be some cases I I think there are some cases where you might say, yeah. Actually, we do wanna offer a stormwater incentive, But you have to really go for it in order to get to the point of being incented. Does that make sense?

This is very interesting. Mhmm.

What do you think?

I like it. And I I wonder and maybe this is not great thinking, but, hey, maybe it is. You know, we have these transitional districts out of downtown.

Mhmm.

You know, downtown, largely impervious with very few exceptions. You know, it's gonna it's gonna be relatively stable. But I wonder about these downtown transitional districts. That might be a place where the incentive to capture water from the impervious surface coming out of the high elevation in downtown, within these downtown transitional districts, if we do offer a heavy incentive for, like, something on the scale of the South Green, I don't think it would end up affecting that many developments in town. But three or four more of those in a radius from downtown would be notable. Does that sound practicable, Chad, like, in in these downtown I mean, because that's getting pretty fine grained.

Indeed. Indeed, it does. It I I think it would require to to to be truly functional, I think it would require the town to have a very strong regional storm water management plan, where when in the right development in the right place could be incentivized to to provide the regional facility, which is kinda what you're talking about. You this sort of idea of where can we do storm water in places that benefits more than that one site.

We already know that there are some key corridors and that catch a lot of water from a lot of lots upstream and convey it to a lot of lots downstream. There are certain choke points in the drainage system and the topography of the town that would have an outsized impact on our storm water.

I I think we could again, thinking about these as as incentives, we could structure the language to incentivize, quote, regional facilities, whatever that we end up defining that as. Probably the places that you mentioned, like these these areas that have a stormwater benefit beyond the lot lines where it would be located.

Can we structure that outside of the zoning? So in other words, the stormwater utility maintains a list of critical of critical locations for stormwater. If your lot, regardless of zoning, happens to fall into one of those, then you have access to an extra incentive for storm water Mhmm. Something like that. Is that kind of structure plausible?

Sure. It it it is. It is. I I part of me likes the idea of having it outside the UDO because that keeps you out of out of litigation. So I like that idea.

The thing that I that concerns me about that is I might not know, you know, that that it would be necessary for staff and engineering to all be very well informed about you're a candidate for a regional storm water incentive that your neighbor might not be. And so being sure that people understand that and that information's out there in circulation, I think it could work. And having it outside the UDO makes the UDO simpler, which is a good thing. And I think so the balance question is, does the benefit of a simpler UDO outweigh the potential negative of people not knowing because it's not in the UDO? I think that's the balance question on on that that line of logic.

I would love to know, if there are other municipalities with stormwater challenges that have have taken different approaches to this and how it's gone for them. Because I think it cuts across I think it cuts across zoning.

Certainly, it cuts I mean, certainly, it cuts across zoning, particularly with downtown where, you know, we're we are looking at trying to leverage our ordinance to improve. But, I mean, like, almost nothing built in downtown is going to worsen the current stormwater effect. You know mean? That

There are what? Maybe three buildings in downtown that have any storm water Right. Detention system. Right? Because they're they're all new. So Mhmm. Every downtown lot that is redeveloped acquires stormwater detention requirements it did not have before. Right? So it's a net. Yeah. Okay.

So if we if we just talk about these as outside of the UDO, is it this is just a town posse? I'm a little bit nebulous on the relationship of a community benefits agreement framework.

Right. So the community benefit agreement could certainly address this. Again, the community benefit question is, can we mandate this, or can we just make this voluntary, or do we, you know, allow somebody to to do this because they've done something else? That, you know, is the is the fundamental underlying question. There are local governments who require community benefit agreements for certain kinds of developments.

There's plenty of precedent out there for that now. The thing that comes to my mind is here is this development. It's in a location that can provide a regional function. We want to encourage that. We want to support that.

We want to make that easy. It seems to me, you know, that we would not wanna make we would not wanna lay down additional requirements, additional, you know, agreements that have to be developed. All of these extra things that are piled on to me simply because I wound up with a piece of property that had a regional stormwater potential benefit. So I think we should identify those sites. I think the next question is what should the incentive be?

If I am gonna do an oversized facility or a regional facility, do I get more density? Do I get more height? Do I get all of the above? How much is too much? How do we how do we balance that is is the next question.

I think the concept is a great one. And frankly, I think it's okay to leave it generally in the UDO with the expectation that the engineering folks and whomever else is gonna handle all this through a development agreement or through a a CBA community benefit agreement that is is voluntary in nature and explains the rights and responsibilities that the town has and that the applicant has as part of this regional facility, if that makes sense. So I think we should say, hey, guys. There's spots in town that could serve as regional facilities. And if you're a willing owner, you can avail yourself of some of these things.

You know, exactly what and how much will decide through the process. But that's an opportunity for you if you wish to take advantage of it. And that's where I would stop. And then I'd leave the process of how big and what do you get for it to the engineers who are doing the individual studies as part of the development, if that makes sense.

I think that makes general sense. Yeah.

Okay.

I gotta I noodle on that a little bit.

I I would defer to my colleagues, but I would I'm also very especially given that there are two terms that I heard. One is community benefit agreement and one is community development agreement. Right. If if that needs to happen in the context of a meeting or if it can happen asynchronously through more communication from you, I would definitely be more comfortable having that fleshed out a bit, how that would work before we go too much farther down that road.

Sure. Absolutely. Not to belabor the conversation. I know we got a lot to cover. The development agreement is a voluntary contract that is signed by the town and signed by an applicant. And there are a series of expectations of the applicant that are embedded in the development agreement. There are a series of expectations for the town that are also embedded in there. I might get a longer vesting term. I might get more density. I might get a taller building.

I might get, you know, any number of things that are structured in the agreement. The the difference between the development agreement or or or what makes it a development agreement is that it's voluntary in nature. Now I did say earlier that there's some local governments out there that require these things. That makes me a little nervous, But it's done. So, you know, depending upon y'all's risk tolerance, you know, we could we could add Carbara to the list of local governments that mandate these things.

The community benefit agreement, by contrast, is generally mandated. It's not a voluntary kind of a thing. It's a you wanna do this use or you wanna develop in that area, you're going to do a community benefit agreement, which is a lot like a development agreement, except it doesn't really talk much about what the town's responsibilities are because there aren't any. Okay? It's the applicant's responsibilities for the privilege of developing that proposed use in that particular location. So that's kind of the big difference between the two.

Can I jump in? Councilman Posada, believe maybe I've been ignoring you. I apologize. Did you have your hand up before a question a while back?

Yes. But I already forgot what that question was. So

Okay. Well when I

think about it again.

Yeah. Come on back in. Sorry about that. Okay. Go ahead, Chad.

This is great. I I think that this gives me a good sense. We wanna be clear. We don't want the incentives to interfere with our affordable housing incentives. Reforestation is preferred. We like this idea of street trees and streetscape. And maybe we keep that, you know, available to us with maximum flexibility. Not so sure about the limits on mass grading. We wanna increase our special flood hazard area standards mandate. That's not not an incentive.

We're we're going there. Consider the possibility of shade as a sustainability incentive. The storm water question was a really good one. There's a couple here. One is, what's our floor for basic public health and safety? And whatever that is, that's our mandate. If our current standard gets us there, keep the standard as it is. If our current standard exceeds the floor, then keep it where it is. If it doesn't get us, you know, if our current standard doesn't get us to the floor, then raise it. That's a mandate.

Had incentives for regional facilities or oversize, things that can serve more than one location. Keep it general and allow that to be worked out through a development agreement or community benefit agreement structure.

Yeah. Question?

Yes, ma'am.

Yeah. Chad, so regionally, folks in conversation about climate resilience and sustainability in view of the North Carolina state legislature are saying are talking about adaptations. Mhmm.

In

fact, you used that word yourself a few minutes ago.

Right.

How will how can the UDO rewrite be breathable enough for accommodations we have yet to

To understand? Mhmm. It's a great question. Just like it's almost impossible to write use standards for a use that you don't know exists yet, it would be very, very difficult for us to pre anticipate or anticipate important, even necessary sustainability resilience features. Say, for example, we wrote rules that said, hey, you know, we want to go to the five hundred year flood.

That's where we want to go. And then in five years, find out that it's now that the five hundred year flood is actually more is sort of today's one hundred year flood. And that we actually should have gone to the thousand year. And the answer to the question is we just don't know what we don't know. And you'll have to go back at that time and make adjustments. And unfortunately, we spend a lot of time talking about these incentives because six months ago, almost a year ago, you could have just done this. You could have just done it. And now you can't. Right. You have to you have to get consent first.

That's right.

Which makes it even more difficult for us. We can do it in the residential property, but we can't in the nonresidential without consent. And that's just that's a fight. Maybe in some instances, we can go there. In others, you probably don't want to go out and get 10,000 signatures. You just don't want to do that. I wish I had a better answer to your question. It's a great one. I don't know. We can continue to offer incentives and that's really where I think the future lies for us.

I I guess the only thing other thing that I would add is that, I don't know, ten years or so ago, we talked about giving more definition and, specificity regarding our own tree ordinance. We were starting to do that work before the pandemic. You know, we do not have a a tree advisory group, you know, and there are other Chapel Hill, for example, you know, they have they do tree banking. I mean, there's a lot of vibrant discussion about different ways to approach tree canopy. Sure.

Is there anything that the UDO needs to reflect in terms of of having that kind of programming?

Right. Good question. Generally speaking, where I've seen those kinds of advisory boards be most successful is on tree associated with trees on public property. Property. So trees that are on parks, trees that are in the right of way.

Having that kind of advisory board installed makes a lot of sense. But the point that you made is a good one in that communities that accept fee in lieu as mitigation or accept fee in lieu for planting of trees do need an administrative system Mhmm. For tracking those funds, tracking where they're gonna be spent. And let's be honest, in this world, there's a coming sort of maximum temporal duration before we spend the money. If you pass that sort of what's reasonable in terms of length of time, there's an outside chance that you could be asked to give that money back, which is very difficult.

So I would anticipate your UDO to include a fee in lieu procedure that would allow people to make fee in lieu payment as mitigation for removal of trees. Whether or not you want to hand the management of that system over to an advisory board, I'm not sure. That might be something that you want to keep with your staff. Having said all that, there is another topic that we need to talk about, maybe not today, but before we get to come to the end of this, is your staffing level. You have three staffers, and you ask a lot of those staffers.

And we are suggesting in a lot of instances increased administrative decision making, which is gonna place more burden on those staffers. So that's definitely something to fold away in the back of your mind as we think about, you know, the the the operational changes that we wanna make and and leaning into, you know, administrative decision making, being sure that we've got enough staff on hand to do the job. Right? Topic for another day. We'll come back to that one.

But, you know, I would I do expect a fee in lieu that you guys could certainly say, I'm sorry. We're not gonna accept a fee in lieu on this matter. You're going to need to plant the trees. Right? Whether you do that on your property or you do it on public property, that's you know, we can talk about that. But, you know, some kind of mitigation makes sense. At a certain point, you can't continue to shove trees in a in a limited area. You gotta have them you know, be able to spread them out. You have to. So having that flexibility will be important.

And I guess the only other point that I wanted to tease out that was mentioned before when you're talking about the storm water and engineering, and this was brought up by the, Climate and Environment Advisory Commission, is the the question of topography. And, you know, very specifically to the downtown area plan, you know, the consultant said something to the effect of that, well, once it's developed, topography doesn't matter. And that I mean, it was a bizarre response because the topography is what it is and it, you know, it's you'd have to do massive change to make that change. So, you know, is there anything with the engineering that you were talking about? Because I I found that very interesting when we talked to when you talked about regional facility to have some topographic, you know, work done so that we know holistically what we're dealing with.

Because you see, development tends to be very site or close to the site very specific. But then, you know, when we look at Carrboro and Chapel Hill's topography writ large, it's a very different picture.

Mhmm. I

think sounds like your engineers office has some beginnings of understanding about these are places that are are potential regional where where a regional benefit could be could be had for a practical amount of practical amount of money. I would say start there. And if that continues to operate well, great. If if you get into that and you realize this isn't enough or it's not doing what we wanted to do, then I would suggest a wider study that contemplated topographic issues in pursuit of other regional kinds of opportunities for more regional systems in in maybe the the clear cut areas that we already know, maybe outside of those, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Well, let let me give an example, and it it's not a perfect example, but it's the kind of thinking that I think is important. So when when the the developers for Jaden Creek off of 86, you know, they've done a massive amount of grading. They've done a massive amount of bringing in soil and raising that, the platform of that land is really nice and a huge plateau there now. Mhmm.

That impacts what will happen with the Bowling Creek down in Camelot Village in Chapel Hill. That's what I'm talking about. And so, you know, I just would like us to have that kind of thinking Whereas when we talk about a regional facility or we talk about anything else, we understand, you know, what happens on Old 86, you know, impacts Camelot Village. What happens at, you know, outside of our our urban services boundary on Jones Ferry Road is going to affect Morgan Creek and the University Lake.

So the issue of the downstream impact is definitely one that's coming into storm water standards now. And we're seeing that, and I think y'all are poised to to address that given the fact that you've got standards on the books. And I think, you know, I would defer to Hunter Freeman at McAdams, the guy who's doing the the storm water stuff on this project, for his thoughts about what tweaks are necessary for downstream impact to your current storm water standards. And then some sort of anecdotal assessment about what that's going to do in terms of of development cost. For me, I think it's an intriguing question.

And the real question is, how much do downstream impacts influence our floor of public health safety? Because if it turns out that downstream impacts don't have deep impact on the floor that we care about, then maybe that's not something that gets factored in. There's going to be a policy question, a balance question there about, okay. The the flooding that happens downstream, is is that a a a significant enough issue or concern for us that we're going to forego affordable housing because of the costs associated with it trigger our floor standard? And therefore, you know, we we recognize that that that improvement is gonna be so expensive that we could for we may need to forego affordable housing in that location.

Does that make sense? I realize it's a complicated sort of logic chain there, but that's something for us to better understand how much of the downstream impact there's state rules about that, but they're limited. And sometimes for good reason. And I don't know enough I'm not a stormwater engineer to know how your current approach is dealing with downstream impact. I do know this is becoming a thing, we're starting to see more get integrated in.

And then the question that that Hunter needs to pose and and put on the table for you guys to consider is how much of this downstream impact do we want to address? How much do we wanna take on? And are we prepare or, you know, what costs are we willing to bear to take that on as a policy matter? If that if that makes sense. So I will ask Hunter about that along with your other question, which is how are other communities dealing with storm water.

Mhmm. And and is there anything else, you know? So so thinking of what is downstream to Carrboro, one of the things that was put into place long, long time ago was the watershed protection around Carrboro. Mhmm. So one of the reasons why Carrboro has been fairly buffered is that the watershed protection immediate to Carrboro, like West Of Fayetteville Road, is a really good example of how having that pervious surface to accept the water.

Are there things in this UDO going forward in the rewrite that we need to do to fortify what was set with that?

Right. So a great question. And water supply watershed rules are great rules. Generally speaking, most of the time, those WSW rules apply to land that's residential in nature. We could in I I think, certainly, you should carry forward your current standards.

I don't see any reason to reduce them. Whether or not you wanna enhance them, we have to begin to ask ourselves the question, where? Because we can do this in residential districts without tripping over the down zoning provision. Cannot do this in non residential districts without tripping over the down zoning provision. And I realize that's kinda crazy and nuts because water is water, and it doesn't care where residential and nonresidential is, but we have to, unfortunately.

Can I ask a clarifying question? Sure. Which may seem very basic and silly, but for my own benefit and anyone listening at home, is a mixed use district a residential district for the purposes of this question?

Really? Yeah. Fair.

Fantastic. Fantastic question. And I I I will give you the answer that I've heard from the attorneys that I've spoken with about this. And and you guys can decide because it's kind of open ended. What I have been told from others is if the zoning district has the word residential in the name, then it is residential. If it does not, then it is not.

Oh, wow.

This has not been litigated.

And Sounds like it's going to be by

somebody at some point.

Truly No. Nobody knows the answer to that question. That was not contemplated by the general assembly in drafting the bill. So we don't know. And so that very simplistic, explanation is all I can give you.

Council member Posada. I'm sorry, Kath. Council member okay. Council member Posada, while you still remember, you have the floor.

Thank you, madam. I I wanted to follow-up on that question. Right? So, or just so that I'm understanding this, if we were to say we're gonna name everything even some of the non current nonresidential and just call it business residential and just or something rather and just add the word residential to every zone that we have in Carverhill in the countryside.

Only him. The Great.

Now I'm that's

that's Is is that a strategy?

That is

Is that a strategy? And and I I think the answer is probably not. Having said that, if I were a council member in a town and I was writing a new UDO and I was gonna add a new district, I'd probably call it residential. And I'd allow nonresidential in it by right, but I'd probably call it residential. Residential. Yeah. I'd That's

where I was going.

I think that's what I would do. And I I I it sounds crazy, but that's a way for us to navigate that strange piece of the law that we have. And in fact, we are doing that in Mills River. We are we have a mixed residential zoning district that allows primarily commercial development, but we are calling it mixed residential.

Primarily residential.

Well, it's

I'm just asking. It's

it it allows it we we are taking what is their neighborhood commercial district, and we are turning it into mixed residential. And that is what we are

is a commercial?

It allows commercial.

The extent uses are primarily

It is it is a residential district that allows a lot of commercial. But

it's a residential district. That way of thinking.

So did they. It it's not intuitive, but it at least it meets the test of the law as we understand it at this point.

Okay. No. Thanks. That's I know it was a little, chokey. It's not a word. Mhmm. Comical that I asked that, but I'm I'm curious. Right? How do we go around some of these, you know, NCTA sometimes not fully thought out, you know, pieces of of of law that and, you know, not allow us to do what we need to do in Carvero. And if that means thinking about a new zone that he's even labeled as residential, I'm happy to

Mhmm.

I would be more than inclined to look into what that looks like.

I would suggest to you that you should anticipate from us, if we are writing new districts for you, there's a pretty good likelihood that it's gonna have the name residential in it, simply because that keeps us from, you know, having to get consent if we decide to change the standards after the fact. Not necessarily great planning, but great law abiding. How about that?

We'll take it.

Okay. I unless there are other questions

Moving right along.

On the We're moving.

Okay. I have two tiny items that I just wanna make sure.

Council member Frey and then moving right along. Is that what we're

Yes, ma'am.

That's Something that we have occasionally bumped into is that the storm water control measures specified in our ordinance are become outdated or a little too specific or someone wants to try something that is more cutting edge and is not listed. Mhmm. I think we'd wanna make sure that we don't define the allowable measures. I we we want them to be reasonable measures, but we don't wanna define them so tightly that something that becomes state of the art requires us to do a code Mhmm. A code or, revision.

Absolutely. Understood. K.

There's actually a really good bullet point here. Should the UDO revise the current impervious surface limitations from 5,000 net square feet addition per project in I'm not sure that we should have a impervious surface limitation for net addition. And the reason I say that is because if the if the storm water of the lot is still managed and it still meets our other requirements for trees, for shade, whatever other requirements are, I'm not sure that just the fact of an increase in impervious surface by itself separate from any other performance of the lot Mhmm. Should be a trigger for us to restrict that development.

This standard interferes with redevelopment and densification. Exactly. It absolutely does. And again, another a policy balance question. You know, do which one do we wanna encourage here? The densification and and sort of intensification of the areas that already have infrastructure or not? And, you know, I mean, that's a really, really good question. Do you guys have a feel about this? I think you're you made your point clear, which is maybe this isn't a standard that we we wanna have or at least we wanna apply as uniformly as maybe we have in the past. Perhaps there's parts of town that we don't wanna apply this standard to.

Right? Maybe there's others that we do around University Lake, you know, maybe in the North North and transition, something like that, but maybe not in, you know, the downtown area.

I think where I come to this is that the the typical suburban lawn is a dramatically degraded surface compared to an under an actually undeveloped lot. Mhmm. People think that when they have green open space, that they have a lawn, that that is a stormwater facility, and it isn't by by any reasonable Mhmm. Measure. So if we have, a property that's already been cleared and graded in the past, I don't know what is the value of that being going from being 90%, like because that is already 90% noninfiltratable at that point.

That last 10% of infiltration, how much density are we willing to give up

for that? So yeah. Okay.

That's in the, in the bin of questions for mister Freeman to to work on.

I had a question, Chad. So where where are we as far as just thinking time and and what's left and what how far we wanna get?

I have a a few questions about affordable housing that I would like to ask you. And then I wanted to to circle back over, our procedural stuff generally and rearticulate for you, the the the conception about kinda kinda the parameters of the procedural changes that we'd like to suggest you consider and make sure that everybody's like, yep. That's what I understood you to say last time. And, yep, that's good or nope. We don't wanna do that.

So that those are the two more areas that I have to cover. I think the affordable housing probably will take a little bit of time. The procedure stuff, I don't think it will since I'm just summarizing for you what I what I think we're gonna what we'd like to propose and then making sure that everybody's, you know, understood that, and we're, you know, okay to continue with that along that line.

And council members, do you need a break? Are are we good to just move right along? Head shaking. Roll on. Let's roll on.

Alright. Okay. Last time, we talked about affordable housing. Here is our operational understanding of what we're doing and some some questions for you based on that. Okay.

So the comprehensive plan has a goal of creating a thousand units of affordable housing over the next ten years, fifteen years, years, seven years. The the LDO has a policy that 15% of new residential development should include affordable housing. Everybody realizes and remembers that we can't mandate affordable housing in North Carolina, at least not yet, maybe someday, but not yet. Okay. If we use the 15% number as a guide, alright, in in in contemplating how we get to the thousand, we'll need about 6,500 new units at the out year of our comp plan in order for us to to render the thousand affordable units that we wanted.

Okay? In other words, around 400, 430 units a year, every year for the next fifteen years, which is more than Durham sees, more than Raleigh sees. So we're talking about a fairly dramatic increase in residential development over the next fifteen years, year on year. Not impossible, certainly done. So to the questions, 1,000 units, is is that about right?

Is it too much? Is the 15% goal, is that should we raise that? If if are are we are we comfortable in contemplating, you know, 6,500 new new units and we got our 15%. You know, is is that too much? Is the 15 enough?

Should we explore how we count our natural naturally occurring affordable housing that we preserve over that same time frame and consider that as part of the thousand? Is that maybe something? I just wanted to get y'all's reaction to this notion about the thousand units, the out year. Is it 10? Is it seven? Is it five? And what does that mean, you know, in terms of, our 15%, you know, sort of, you know, LDO policy or or goal, I guess, is probably the right word. Reactions?

I have a a question. Barb, is it okay if I ask?

Oh, yeah.

Go ahead. I I wanna start at the at the very basic place and I wanna ask I wanna ask us to be clear about affordable housing. Affordable for whom? There's such a wide scale. What are we really talking about? You know, folks in the community ask me this all the time and if you talk to 10 people, you're gonna get 10 different perspectives on those two words. Mhmm. Especially when you put those two words together.

Absolutely.

How are we defining it for this UDO?

Right. Great question. How most local governments do it is they rely on what's called the area median income. Okay? And that number isn't something that we just pull out of the air. That's given to us by HUD or at least it has been in the past. Next year. Maybe not. We don't know. But every year by MSA, the AMI calculation, that number, what the what the area median income is established for us.

Generally speaking, right now, today, and conceivably going forward, a a percentage of that AMI threshold is is what is considered to be affordable. At this point, it's 80%. Okay? So if this particular rental unit or or for sale unit constitutes 80% of of what the housing, you know, what would be spent for housing for, you know, the area median income, then that is considered to be affordable. There's an additional kind of rule of thumb out there, which is the idea of who is cost burdened.

Who has to spend what percentage of their income on housing and what becomes unreasonable or, quote, cost burden. And that's usually 30%. Anything if you spend more than 30% of your income on housing, you're considered to be cost burden. Those parameters, those mechanics are are embedded in your current rules. One suggestion, one thing to think about, one one topic that was brought up by the the economist on the team is that 80 number typically corresponds with rental housing.

And that if you want to establish an affordability frame for housing that's for sale, then that 80% should actually drop to 60%. And so if you if you're looking for, you know, encouraging affordable housing that is that is available for purchase, that that number should be at the 60% AMI threshold, not the 80%. And so that's what affordable for whom is. There's another aspect, obviously, which is how long? How long is it affordable?

Lots of different schools of thought. A lot of places pick a thirty year time frame that it has to remain, quote, affordable for a thirty year time period. Others pick a longer term, a ninety nine year term. That's usually how it's done. The wisdom of that is open for discussion about the duration. There are a lot of people who say I can't bootstrap if the amount of money that I can charge for selling my house is limited, then how do I ever bootstrap out of that? And that's a valid consideration. I don't I don't have the answer. I'm just, you know, all I can say is that's that's some of the things that we've heard. But, does that answer your question about affordable for who?

In in part, I guess what I wanna I wanna get at is the fact that and I apologize. My son is trying to call me. The when you just talked about a thousand units, 430 a year, we don't know where on that continuum, you know, how many of those would be looked at as maybe being in the 80% AMI, how many would be units that could be sold or purchased. And I'm just gonna bring this up because I, you know, I I can't seem to get a really good conversation about this. Mhmm.

But if we're talking rentals in a college town Mhmm. We're not talking about affordability for the people who work here or work at the university. Right. We're talking about students.

Right.

And when we talk rentals, and and I really think this is a conversation that needs to be had. Rentals, in and of themselves, aside from the fact that we're in a college town, right, are a red line against developing intergenerational wealth. We have to grapple with that issue of inequity. We don't. And it so that's one of the issues that we're not talking about because we're not talking about creating homes that could be leased to own.

We're not talking about housing that can over time be starter homes. We're not talking about an entire stock that could lend itself for folks to build equity. I have a serious problem with that in terms of looking at a fifteen, twenty, forty year future because I know that our middle is shrinking, that affordability if you ask folks who are working through being in the middle, that their affordability has shrunk in the last year. They don't know where it's going. So you have the problem of a shrinking middle at the same time that if you are planning for this massive development and most of which would probably lean very quickly into rentals as in Chapel Hill, you're creating a red line for people to move into the community who would be in the community long term and develop, you know, community building by being here and developing equity within the community.

I I need to understand, you know, what are we doing that is not defining how folks can build into their own community long term?

It it it it's a great, great question, and we have a big limitation that I wanna get out on the table before we go any further. And that is we are not able to regulate rental versus ownership.

That's

right. That is not something that we can affirmatively regulate. Having said that, you know, there are covenants, deed restrictions, development agreements, community benefit agreements where an applicant could voluntarily choose to to to self regulate in terms of rental versus ownership. But but, you know, we as as the as the, you know, kind of local government, that is really outside of our purview. And we are under the fair housing laws not permitted to to make those distinctions, please.

Can I, you asked a question that kicked this off, and that was about naturally occurring affordable housing? And I wanted to give my personal answer, which is yes, that I would like us to count that, and I would like us to have a strategy for hanging on to it.

Okay. Okay.

Something that I wanted to pick up here and just and for just for anyone who's listening at home or hasn't hasn't been following the math, I'm gonna do this in terms of per month. This could be mortgage or rent. Right? But just ballpark, I'm using round numbers here based on the local AMI. The 80 is around $1,900 a month.

The 60% AMI is around 1,400 a month here. The 30% is about $712 a month, which puts a real fine point on, like, which of what which of these numbers are achievable on the open market Mhmm. Which are achievable if you have market rate units in the same building that can help subsidize, and which ones happen only with the town kicking in, right, or with light tech or something else like that because you just can't achieve it on the open market.

Right. Something you just said, I think, is very, very meaningful, which is, you know, in in a state like North Carolina where we don't have inclusionary zoning and where we can't have inclusionary zoning, the best we're able to do, frankly, is ask nicely for the private sector to provide this stuff. Or the local government can shift and move into providing, you know, this public good that is that is housing that's affordable. And I I think, you know, I'm not a housing planner. I think you guys are working on an affordable housing plan.

Any successful strategy is gonna have both of those prongs. A government kind of provision and incentives to incentivize the private sector, recognizing that those incentives, you know, are, you know, not not the silver bullet, not the panacea, you know, that that we can we can make these requests and and and we should. And we should make it a win win and make that easy to to happen and recognize that that is would would not likely help us meet our goals. That there's other things that we would have to do above and beyond the development regulation to reach success.

Mhmm. I'm gonna go to councilmember Pesaro Roscoe. He has a comment or question.

Thank you, madam mayor. So I just wanted to kind of jump me with a couple of questions. Right? Well, first, I I am with council member Palmer on making sure that we're accounting the natural like, the units that we're we're continuing to keep affordable. Right? There's some naturally occurring

Mhmm.

Trying to keep those over, and I wanna count those. But I'm curious, kinda along those lines, talk to me how we're currently addressing mobile manufactured homes and plan. Where do these where do those lie? How, is there anything currently looking at? How do we protect the ones that are currently existing within our town? Then those are several questions. I'll let you answer those, and they'll probably have some more.

So is that preservation or overlay? Is that what you're is something along those?

Yeah. Was thinking of, like, a preservation overlay. What does that look like that exists? All that fun stuff.

So I'm looking at I'm I'm looking at your use table, which is a beautiful table for sure.

Chad, it's okay. You can be honest.

The the the current standards allow, you know, the the the so called class a mobile home generally by right in kind of the middle block, most of, but not all of, not the least dense, but the middle block zoning districts that are there. These these class a mobile homes are allowed. You're gonna ask me what's a what's a class a as well you should. A class a, for lack of a better term, is a double wide. K?

A is a double wide.

A class b, which, by the way, is not permitted in your use table right now, is a single wide. K?

And On foundation. On a

So these are you that's a great, great question too, which is this kind of mobile home on a foundation, not on a foundation. I wanna keep this kind of on on point as possible. North Carolina does not use the term mobile home. It is not in the statutes. They use the term manufactured home. Manufactured home is also on a chassis. It's built somewhere else and brought on a chassis just like a mobile home.

Right.

Sometimes the wheels can stay on the chassis. Sometimes they come off. But most so there's not really a distinction between kind of permanent foundation, not permanent foundation. They're all on a chassis. Sometimes they get masonry skirting around them.

Sometimes they don't. Interestingly, there's recent law that a mobile home park can't have requirements for masonry skirting around the the base of the unit. But the point that I wanted to make is right now, your current code does allow the double wide manufactured home in many of the zoning districts that are residential. Does not allow the single wide, based on the table of permissible uses that I'm looking at right now.

Chad, if I may break in, I know this is not the main place you're going, but does anyone see any reason for us to retain the prohibition on single wides? Like, nobody's home is an eyesore in Carbrough. Why would

That would be one of my my follow ups, actually, council member Frey around, that distinction. I'm curious. And and and and, Chad, I know that there you were going somewhere else. And but do you have an idea of or where where are you seeing this before? The the reason for the distinction between the single and the double?

Yeah. I have a lot of yes. A lot of the reason for the prohibition is folks don't want single wide mobile homes in their communities. I'd why y'alls doesn't allow it, I I don't know. I'm not sure of the background behind it.

I think you can likely assume that it's similar to a lot of other small towns in the at the time that this ordinance was adopted.

Right. There is a a a growing kind of recognition of manufactured housing really being one of the best ways for us to accommodate affordability. And to that end, we are aware of numerous local governments who have mobile home sanctuaries where these uses are protected, where they're encouraged, and frankly, even local deed restrictions that bar them are brought into question. So I think there's kind of an awakening to these uses. There's there when I started practice in North Carolina, a lot of local governments were like, we don't want these things.

We don't want these things. Get rid of these. Now it's the opposite. People are like, let's keep them. Let's find a way to encourage them. We do wanna allow parks. We wanna allow these on individual lots. You know, we even wanna permit them on an existing lot that already has a single family home on it. So there's been a real kind of change in direction, and I would anticipate something along those lines for Carrboro. You know, if if not the full blown sanctuary, certainly a recognition of, allowance for the narrower manufactured homes.

Well and and while you're touching on that point, my kind of thought about bringing this up is because I would very much be in line with looking at some of the protection areas around the ones that we current the the spaces that we already have in Carrboro, not only for the affordability, but just the deep community that exists in in in, these spaces. Of course, this is one of the easiest ways for folks to get an affordable home to be, you know, like, coming from someone who grew up, you know, in in in a mobile home, like, then lived in several different parks in different states. It's easiest way to to to easiest entry to to to stable housing. So, that was kinda where I was going with with this piece as we're we're looking at not only, homeownership, which I will actually gonna and thank you council member Frey for breaking those numbers down because I was gonna ask what the exact look to that. I can totally see, bringing it down to 60, which, of course, you know, then we have to look at numb numbers and whether whether or not we're be able to meet those thousand mark mark or whatever.

But I would, you know, venture to say and ask my colleagues to support something around protecting the the existing mobile home spaces or manufactured home neighborhoods, because it's just just a key piece not only for our affordability for the community, but also the the the number of diverse folks that live in those spaces by, without creating that protection and then redeveloping into the possibility that those will be pushed out of Carrboro. Mhmm. And that that's just something that I know that all of us cannot accept.

Understood.

I wanted to come back to the the core question that you had here on the sheet, which is, you know, should the eligibility of an applicant be based on the number of affordable units or on the AMI target? We need the whole array Mhmm. Of affordable price points. I think as we're thinking about as we're thinking about the like, what is the whole the whole chunk of the thousand is 80 and below. But I'd like to see if we can do something that helps incentivize not just not just the 80% price point, but to, like, actually blend it in.

K. So the the spectrum, the scaled system is is what you're you're interested in. Okay.

Do you And and I'm saying that knowing that 30% is really hard to hit and that you can't do it with the UDO alone.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Mhmm. So wanting to make sure that our our UDO does not get in the way of some of those steeply affordable options, but knowing that that's that's not enough by itself. So if you just say, oh, hey. By the way, in order to do in order to get a benefit for affordability, you must include 130% unit Mhmm. Is more likely to drive down the total amount of affordability rather than to get us the 30% unit. You can't ask someone to do something that doesn't pencil out. Right. Understood.

I think in particular for the 30, we I don't know that this impacts the code too much, but what we'll be thinking about is, like, that's really where we need to be facilitating the like, we need to be permitting the development that we facilitate with land banking and subsidy from the town end, essentially. I I I I don't see 30% happening through zoning almost ever.

No. One of my goals with doing this is how do we make sure that our our PZI team is able to spend you know, is able to collaborate with our affordable our affordable housing team to spend time on making this happen and finding ways to get these steeply affordable units rather than on going through the administration of complicating building market rate units Right. Or 80% units.

One one way of thinking about this for us is if we look at the 60% and the 80%, 80% in 1900, you know, roughly another 20 to $380, 100%. So you're looking at, you know, a 60% unit is losing $700 a month to a developer in Carrboro, which means we are into them from their perspective of what we need to recoup from them. $8,400 a year per unit of value we need to deliver to make it pencil out. So that

It's a

lot. Isn't happening. I mean, it's Not at all. I I I think I think that if we I and for that reason, I think, like, what we need to do is facilitate sixty and thirty with our ordinance for, like, what we are able to do if we are able to, like, land bank, redevelop townland, find partners, we need to be able to not be in the way of thirty and sixty.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

80%, I think, is a feasible target for this because we need to be just because we have to move the needle. We have to we have to do something that is that is feasible. And I just you know, that that scale at 60% is not gonna be appealing. Developers are gonna walk away from it. We're gonna get the payment in lieu. Right. And so to me, think that it like, 80 percent is not the policy North Star desirable outcome of this council, but I think it is the best way we have to use this ordinance so as to make zoning work best for our affordability. I just wanna make sure that when we go to build projects with partners, we are open to go lower with ease and that our staff doesn't have to work too hard to do

that. Okay. As Okay.

You're as you're thinking about incentives, I mean, maybe one way to look at it is, listen, what we're a little bit like the storm water. Right? There there's a level that we are expecting when we talk about affordability, which is probably 80%. And then we say, hey. But if you really knock it out of the park, hey. What if you swapped out you know, if what if we you count a 60% unit double against that incentive? Right? It should scale it should actually scale pretty hard because a 60% unit is even more valuable, like, dramatically more valuable than an 80% unit because they're just harder to build.

Right. Right. And I I think, ultimately, one of the one of the questions we'll need to continue to grapple with is how far are we willing to go on granting incentives? And what does what does that incentive look like? Is it a density bonus or some kind of waiver?

Is it a density bonus or some kind of waiver plus administrative review and decision? I think that's an important question, One that I was gonna cover with you guys when we got into procedures was this notion about administrative review. And I think that that is a common strategy that a lot of local governments use. I think that I would strongly encourage Carrboro to move into a stance where there was more administrative decision making. And I just wanna be sure that the ramifications of that are are clear, you know, in terms of what that administrative decision making means.

The the notion of incentives kind of turbocharges those potential ramifications. Imagine a situation where somebody is doing a development that incorporates affordable housing that, you know, a year ago would have been a special use permit and a very long process, but going forward becomes an administrative decision. Particularly the situation where that development is an administrative decision and there's a density bump that is significant. And so being cognizant of the tradition of Carrboro in terms of public participation and people opportunity to participate. And and that stuff, we need to keep that in the back of our mind and balance against that too.

And, you know, I think that is one of the things that where where my my mind is is heading these days is, okay, How much incentive is enough versus how much incentive is is is too much? Y'all are gonna make that decision. You know, you we'll have to work together to kinda figure out where is that line. But that's definitely where my head is now. And I'm I'm a little you know, I don't I can't make the decision for you, but I wanted you to know that that's kind of what's rattling around back in the in the, you know, back reaches of my my brain.

I have a similar kind of a question. It's bullet number three. Let's just say for the sake of argument that we ended up granting density bonuses for affordable housing or exempting affordable housing from density counts, you know, altogether, which I think are both really rational responses to the goals that you guys are looking to do. Are there areas of town locations, districts, zip codes, geographies, whatever? Are there places where those kinds of bonuses or exemptions are inappropriate? Or is is could this be done everywhere?

I think everywhere?

In general, I think everywhere. And what I wanna as an example, you're talking about uses. Right? Now currently, have a separation between, in the table permissible uses between single family and multifamily residential. So it's like you're saying, oh, by use. So do you treat affordability benefits differently in multifamily than single family? No. I don't think so. No. Don't think If it looks like a house if it looks like a home and it houses people, I would want it to be it to have an even playing field.

Mhmm. Agreed.

I don't think that that is I don't think that's district specific either.

Mhmm. Okay.

Alright.

I I I I mean, I think our sense of density I mean, the way I think about this is I'm hesitant to, you know I wanna really strongly incentive. I, like, I I like I like a lot of density incentive. The only downside to the density incentive is I want our baseline to be pretty high. I want be withholding the density that we want. So which is to say that for my personal taste, I'd throw this out to evaluate, as we get denser in most places, I would think quite a bit of density for affordable com like, affordable commitments in almost every district in use.

So what I'm thinking about is, does density work as a as an incentive for affordability if you're already if you're already encouraging density. Right? And is it is there what what what else is left to give?

Mhmm. That's a good question. You know, we need to we need to get farther in our drafting to be able to answer that question. You know, after density bonus becomes relief, relief from other otherwise generally applicable requirements. You know, there's there's kind of density, then there's height, and then there's relief.

And relief could be even something like open space, relief from our very stringent storm water requirements. You know? And and so we get to this question of balance, right, about, well, we we really want to deal with, you know, environmental protection and so forth and all that stuff is really good. We also want housing, but we know that that's really expensive. So how do we it gets to your point, which is, are we diluting, you know, our affordability goals by offering incentives for other kinds of environmental features?

But if density bonus and height bonus doesn't do the trick, what's left?

I I guess my appoint my point amounts to, like, possibly being willing to go really tall, like, in a lot of places.

Well, the reason I was thinking about this is because height, as you say, similar to density but different. Well, it's it's different in a really important way. Height is an increase in density without an increase in storm water.

Right.

Right? No further impervious surface. So height is sort of the easy one. You're like, yes. Because it is not you're not changing know, when you have added height, you're not really changing the footprint.

Right. But but you wouldn't see a a six story single family home. Right? Would those buildings that have the taller height have a bigger footprint kind of de facto. Mhmm.

But but, yes, I I agree with you. Generally speaking, on the on the lower end of the unit counts, height does equate to, you know, a a three story triplex or a four story quadplex could fit within the footprint of a single family home, and you get, you know, more more That's exactly. Density bang for the buck without a whole lot of impact on the impervious surface provided you don't mess up your parking rules. Yes. Absolutely.

And the question becomes, okay, does that mean the strategy is, duplex, triplex, quad, middle housing? Or is the strategy we're really talking about townhouse, multistory condo? Is that the the way that we get to the thousand?

I mean, if we're getting to a thousand,

we are talking I think that's about a yes and if we're gonna actually

Probably both. About multifamily and condo. I mean, I I mean, and this is this is where too I think like, I wanna be really clear out about the thousand. I'm happy to have an aggressive North Star, but does it I I'm I am famously on the record for not wanting to adopt unenforceable goals and measures. Are we hindered by that goal?

I mean, I I don't know. I like, I'm I'm happy with, like, our like, it's pedal to the metal on affordability. That, I think, reflects our shared thinking. So I'm really just curious about y'all's temperature on, like, whether that number needs to, you know, like because to me, if we are considering whether it's a thousand I mean, 750 would be really aggressive. 600 would be really aggressive. All of those numbers to me are like we are talking about condo development in a lot of places. And so that is great, as far as I'm concerned. Curious what y'all think about those that series of points.

So are are we, like, actually tying this this density conversation to affordability? Can we

Well, the question we're we're we're height in particular as opposed to, like, density, like, one to four, that math is, like, on our side, but not as dramatically if we're talking to Chad's point. But if we, like, have a pretty wide range of town where we're, like you know, I think we've been kind of, like, back of the envelope. We've been thinking about, like, five downtown, three possibly elsewhere. Mhmm. And that that, like, broadly conforms with, like, the SUPs we've been granting.

It's, like, three is within the ballpark of things we like. You know, if it's you know, if it's seven downtown with affordable and five elsewhere for, like, with affordable, like, that floor, that added floor, that is where, like, you're starting to talk about $8,400 a month. You know, if you're, like, giving relief from statutory delays, a number I commonly hear is $300,000 of advisory board, like, faffing around. If you remove that, 12 units for a year. And so then you add a floor, developers pencils start to get, like, a lot better.

Yeah. So, I mean, like, I just like brass tacks here, you know, like, I I love the idea of, like, where we think of, like, single family Carrboro, you know, going to these these cottage courts, these townhomes that, like, a lot of the forums we've been discussing. But, like, as we're talking about, like, out old '86, as we're talking about, like, the greenfield that we have available to us as we get, like, possible zoning authority, I think we have to be thinking about condo. We have be thinking about second urban areas in order to, like, permit I mean, otherwise, we are strictly not talking about a thousand houses. And I'm happy to not talk about a thousand, but we're not talking about 600 if we're not talking about, like, wide scale multi family.

Mhmm.

I'm not particularly oh, I'm sorry.

I I I wanna just tag on to Barbara's question. Mia Fushi's question. Tying density to affordable housing. I think that's very tricky. I I grew up in New York City.

Plenty of density. And and I've seen all kinds of housing as a result of having lived in New York. And I don't see evidence that density necessarily equates to affordability. What information do we have in North Carolina with, because I wanna keep it to North Carolina. Mhmm.

What do we know about that relationship that can validate that that if you build it, you know, a high enough percentage will be affordable. I'm looking at Chapel Hill, not affordable. Plenty of housing built in the last six years. So, you know and we have taxed ourselves for affordable housing monies, and we will continue to do so because that is a goal to value we have. But they're not going to be significant enough unless, you know, we have land to build and we have partners and we have subsidies.

Mhmm. So, you know, having a density goal does not necessarily mean it's gonna meet affordability. I really wanna look at that, and I want the folks in Carrboro to understand that this is a primary question going forth with this council.

So I I think, one thing that it's that it it's likely incumbent upon the town as you guys move forward with this is that when development is coming in as affordable, that it's protected to remain affordable. And you guys are doing that now, and you should probably continue with that. And that is the limitation on, you know, it's being sold, you know, to to above the the AMI. There needs to be deed restrictions on the units that are built under your affordability, mantle. If you don't have that, then you really haven't achieved what you've set out to achieve.

And the point that you make, which is it's density, it's not affordable, or affordable for who. Certainly something that that your staff and I have been asking ourselves about a lot, and we have a lot of great examples locally of tons of density, not a lot of affordability. Right. And y'all are are, you know, good candidates for that kind of of of misfire. So the it it it draw it shines a bright light on the need for making sure that those homes are protected reg from a in a regulatory way so that they remain affordable.

And that should be part of anything that you do. The density piece is really I I think what we're trying to do or what I'm trying to do, what I'm suggesting, you know, is we can't require affordable housing. All we can do is ask for it and create an incentive for the private sector to provide it. I think it's a smart approach to have the the public sector provide that that least profitable affordable housing? And I think you guys are dead on with with that thinking.

The 80% number, can we incentivize the private sector to provide that? Yes. As long as it's protected and to remain affordable for thirty years or ninety nine years or whatever the number ends up being. The the reason we're talking about density or height is that's the inducement that we have at our disposal without the ability to require it. If we had the ability to require it, we'd simply require it. It would be you gotta, you know, have it, but but we can't. We're we're stopped from doing that, in North Carolina. So we have to create a reason for the development community to provide it. And that's the density bonus and the height bonus and maybe some of the relief things. That's why those are there.

But certainly agree and understand what you're saying, is, hey. Wait a minute. Affordable for who?

Yeah. Can we hear from, council member Frey, Merrill, and, Palmer, please? Or however y'all wanna do is fine.

Council member Palmer, would you actually like to hop ahead? You had an idea, and I don't want you to lose it.

Oh, no. It's it's just height has been mentioned several times, and I wondered if there, what the limits to that are, of, like, how because to the point of penciling out, what how how much can we give away and actually get in the giving away?

Another really, really excellent question. The the the underlying question behind a lot of incentives is how much is this worth? Is this really gonna move the needle? Mhmm. If going from you know, obviously, one of the reasons why we see a lot of three and four story buildings is they don't have to be sprinkled.

Right.

After four, you got a sprinkler. Cost just increased exponentially. There's probably I'm not a structural engineer. There's another point, another inflection point beyond which you know, we can no longer use the stick frame construction. We've gotta be, you know, with a with a, you know, masonry pedestal right.

And Or steel. And then, you know, so that's another big cost jump. You know, whether that's five stories, six stories, seven stories, I I feel like seven is those about the the spot. After seven, it it becomes, you know, a a new world of expense. So that's probably where you guys are, you know, make that's probably the sweet spot for you, you know, is between three and seven. This probably makes sense, at least with the building codes that we have in place today.

Cool. I do just wanna note that I I'm gonna I'm gonna stick to stuff that's UDO relevant, that that Chapel Hill's Chapel Hill has had a lot of visible construction in a couple of places, but Chapel Hill's organic growth rate of their residential tax base is, like, 1%. Right? It's not relative to Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill has built diddly over the last ten years.

It's just because they're bigger. But coming back to this, I I got a really good question, the other day about, incentives and particularly because Carrboro does not have a favorable we have a reputation for being a very difficult place to live, to build. I think we we have actually heard from people, I will not build in Carrboro again. I would never build in Carrboro again. I had a terrible experience.

I'm never coming back. Right? We we hear that a a fair bit. As we're thinking about rolling out this UDO and saying, look, we are we are making these changes to be a trustworthy partner where we want you to build these things, and we wanna make that easy for you. One of the questions that I had heard was, do we have an option of phasing in or offering a, you know, a preset sort of a a sweetener on the, I think the person who who asked this thought that we were doing the the Chapel Hill sort of semi required they they have sort of a Chapel Hill's got a weird structure, right, where it pretends to be inclusionary zoning while not actually being inclusionary zoning.

It's different from ours. I think they were assuming they were going the Chapel Hill route, which I'm not sure is the case. But they'd said, what if if you if you wanna get to 15? What if you said, hey. It's gonna be eight this year and nine next year, and it's gonna go up 1% subsequent. In other words, offer a offer some kind of extra incentive with an expiration date on it to say, we really want to give you an extra reward for taking the risk of being the first folks to try out this new ordinance. I didn't know if that is something that you have encountered or what your thoughts are on that feedback.

I I have not, actually. I've never had anybody ask me the, you know, phones are open. Call now.

Call now.

You know, I I mean, I think that's something that we could explore. I wonder what what flashed across my mind when you were talking was, how do we express a stance of partnership and also at the same time say, you better come in this year because next year, we're gonna you know, it's gonna be tougher. It's gonna be more expensive. I think that's something to think about. If you guys wanted to have a tiered system where we were we were kind of on this rolling sort of this year, it's this, and next year, it's that, and next year, it's the other.

That's certainly something we can do as long as we are all clear that these are voluntary and incentive based because we can't mandate them despite, you know, what anybody says. And that we don't run afoul, and I don't think we would as long as things are voluntary of our down zoning provision, which kind of limits what we can, you know it it's very difficult for us to say, you know, that was last year's number. This year's number is bigger.

That's what I figured. Did you wanna bring that up, though? I wanted to directly address one of the bullet points here. You said, should affordable housing provisions look different for rental versus homeowner units? I I don't I don't think so except insofar as we might have a higher we might have a we may benefit more as a whole from higher levels of affordability for rental than we do for homeowner, right, because of the the extra lift of getting the down payment together for for, homeowner.

Right. But Carrboro is 60% renters right now, and renters are a core part of our community and contribute to the community. Mhmm. So we we want people to have a lot of options, rental and homeowner, and people have all kinds of different reasons for renting versus buying. I don't think that those provisions should look dramatically different unless there's, like, a price point shift that we need to take into consideration.

I and I don't think that there is. And and, you know, I mean, I again, if if if we structured our standards to recognize owner versus rental, we're we're in this gray area where maybe we don't wanna be?

I I don't, I don't think that the that we want Carrboro to be one of those towns that tries to discriminate against renters. Right. That's not our vibe.

Right. Understood. Question about ADUs and and short term rentals?

Merrill, did you do that? Okay. Go ahead.

Because I'm I'm trying to be cognizant. It's I I love our time together, and believe me, I could spend hours and hours. I'm not sure everybody wants to do that, though. ADUs and short term rentals. So very different things.

Generally speaking, the input that we've received to this point from the community is that accessory dwelling units should be easier to establish. Yes. And I think that we've kind of taken that to heart. Along those lines, I'm staying with ADUs, is that something that that staff could consider? Are there any instances where you would want to limit ADUs to some kind of discretionary permitting process?

I don't think so.

Okay. No.

Alright. In recognizing the administrative review process, I know that Carrboro has a time honored tradition of public involvement that is really, really important. And we need to explore ways to do that creatively. But in its nature, the administrative review and decision process is not a public hearing process. And there's not an opportunity for somebody to come and speak before a group of people in an administrative process.

Okay? Okay. Do you guys have it right now, you have some standards that require larger lots for accessory dwelling units. You gotta be a 150% out the window.

K. You just put your finger on, like the reason I'm sitting at this table is the moment when I real like, if you had if I had to boil it down to one moment, it's the moment when I realized that we required a 50% larger lot for a duplex than for a single family home of the exact same footprint.

Mhmm. Okay. Should our protection overlay districts be treated differently in terms of this ADU, approach?

There's a there's a number of different protection districts in place right now, and you've given us different advice about different ones. So we have, like, for instance, we have Lloyd Broad District. We have the potential for some other protection districts with some of our other neighborhoods. Right? We have our current historic or

sort of

the Milltown area where you've advised us that since it is not actually a historic district, it needs to come off. Yes. Which of those are you thinking about when you're talking about ADUs?

I'm I'm contemplating the Lloyd Broads, the the the the Rogers Roads, that those areas, it does it you know, those areas have those standards for a reason. And, you know, I don't I I wanna understand the thinking. You know, obviously, is draft material, and we're gonna put something on the table, and we can talk about adjustments. You know, we're not getting married to this. But generally speaking, thinking this through, you know, does it merit, if ADUs are reviewed administratively in all of Carrboro or most of Carrboro?

Are there places where maybe they shouldn't be reviewed administratively? I guess is the question. Maybe. Maybe? Mhmm. Good answer. I like that answer.

I know it sounds real indecisive, but Just leave it open. Can't we just I would

I guess the considerations that come to my mind are the purpose of, I think, overlays in conservation districts in places like Lloyd Broad and Rogers Road is to prevent capital from displacing under resourced current owners.

What

occurs to me as possible I'm curious what you think about this is that one of the reasons the ADU relaxation is so broadly popular is because this is a pretty rare instance where a development deregulation can accrue to pretty small property owners pretty quickly

Mhmm.

Which which is which is to say that it strikes me as potentially pretty equitable to also have ADUs be much easier in these conservation and overlay districts. I this is not, like, something I'm interested in advancing tonight. Mhmm. We'll we're gonna have to talk about it and talk to some community folks about it for sure.

For sure.

But I'm just I just wonder what you think about the reasoning there or whether it that sounds specious

to you. No. No. I I think you're absolutely right. My I am plagued by a feeling about ADUs, and here it is.

The the lending rates on an ADU are 88%, 10%, and we have seen numerous local governments soften the ADU standards. And have we seen the floodgates open and there's ADUs everywhere? And the answer is no. We haven't. And is that reason because people don't have the space on their lot?

Probably not. Is that reason that people don't want that extra revenue stream? Probably not. We think the reason is because the financing structure of these things is such that I don't have a $100,000 to borrow to build an accessory dwelling unit. If I did, I wouldn't need an accessory dwelling unit.

And so I think it behooves us to to simplify the accessory dwelling unit process to make that more open and easier to establish. I also don't think that we should be under any illusion that this is gonna solve our problem. I I really don't think that it will. There are lots and lots of resort communities. This is not the answer at all because those aren't gonna become affordable units.

They're going to become vacation rentals. There are plenty of people who, in other college towns, not Carrboro, who see the ADU as a student rental machine. Whether or not that's the case in Carrboro, I don't know. But I think they're part of the strategy just like making missing middle housing easier, just like some of the other things that we're suggesting Exploring are are part of the solution. I think this does make sense. I think you should do it. Is it gonna solve the problem? I don't think so. And it's not because your rules are off. They're they're a little off, but that's not why it hasn't worked. It hasn't worked because they're too expensive, in my opinion.

Well, a really great answer. Thank you.

What about short term rentals?

That I think that ties in perfectly with this because the question that I have on should there be a difference in overlays is is there a unique displacement risk? Mhmm. Which is ex like, I think that to the extent it exists, the unique displacement risk is people coming in and creating short term rentals in these communities and driving people out. And do we have a mechanism in this UDO to prevent that?

I do not have enough experience with anti displacement standards to be able to answer that question. They in many ways feel extra regulatory in nature to me that an anti displacement strategy probably makes sense, is probably a good idea, and is perhaps not necessarily woven into the fabric of your development regulations, but is accomplished in some other ways. And and I am a student of this. This is there's there's no you know, when you look at other places that utilize these tools, almost none of them do it in a regulatory way. There's a rent control provision.

There's, you know, an inability to to to sell property, which starts to feel problematic in terms of of due process. And and we can't do rent control in North Carolina? No. We can't. Not yet.

You know, but but the point you make is a very good one. Those areas that that have high potential value relative to current assembly cost, that's where the action's going to be. That's where the action's going to be because that's the biggest profit increment. That's why people have the anti displacement provisions. The anti displacement provisions are a source of concern for me, not because I, you know, that I'm worried about their function.

I don't understand them well enough. The ones that I've seen generally aren't in the development rules. They're they're done outside of the development regulation. And I'm I mean, I'm open to to to talking about this and going down the road, but this is

It's strange that it would largely take the place of subsidy. Right? Or take the form of subsidy? Mhmm. So we've talked about a little bit, like, this idea

Can you can you get closer to the mic so that we

can We've we've, like, bandied about, like, a hypothetical policy, say, wherein I want to build you know, I I own or I I I wanna buy a single family home in Lloyd Broad. I wanna build four units there. There is some metric or or lever by which, say I build four doors, whatever form, there's some incentive for me to give like a right of first refusal to the original homeowner or like a discounted rate to the original homeowner. Because one of the things that I think about with anti displacement measures is what we want, we don't wanna we don't wanna be excluding folks from accessing the value of their, like, appreciating housing asset. And many long term homeowners are underneath that value.

They're they're not in a position to liquidate and, receive the benefit, so they see the tax burden, but they can't. And so in theory, it is possible to have humane development incentives that would allow that allow folks to access this capital that they've accrued but also stay where they live. But I think that there's nothing that we would do in the UDO for that. I think that that's like a lending program essentially. Is is that do I have that about right?

You absolutely do. I I I don't know of a development standard that would require you to offer a a first right of refusal or that would, you know, let's a lot of these kind of anti displacement rules make all of this kind of expansion of development potential provision available except in those in the areas where that that are that have been traditionally underinvested, and and it's in the name of anti displacement that that's done. And I I just scratched my head about that. I I don't know. I I'm sure somebody's figured it out.

I'm not the one who has. I I just don't know. It seems to me that tracking that kind of stuff would become very difficult and potentially legally fraught. Know? Through the ordinance, you mean, just generally? Through the UDO. Through the UDO. Not not, you know, as a as a town, you know, protocol or a policy, but through your development regulation under one sixty d. I I I have concerned about that.

Other work to do. I really appreciate that answer. Thank you for that. I

I wish I had a better one because it's a real issue, but I just don't I don't see how the development regulations can help us solve that problem without being so over so heavy handed that we've gone too far. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. Heard. Okay.

A couple of minutes about the procedural changes. I just want to summarize unless there's other questions about affordable.

Any other questions? No?

Okay. There's some very low hanging fruit about your review process that we wanted to suggest be changed, and I'm just gonna summarize it. And this is information that we've covered, but I wanna just mention it one more time. We believe that there should be one body that hears special use permits, not two. And that body should probably be this body.

We do not think there should be advisory review on quasi judicial matter. Y'all the decision maker shouldn't be swayed by evidence and testimony that's provided outside of the hearing where a decision is made. And advisory bodies, their sole purpose is to provide information for you to use in your decision making processes. It's very legally fraught. We suggest that not happen.

Okay? So this would simplify your special use permit process. There's one review body, not not two different kinds, and no advisory in the process. We would like to suggest generally that where we can and where that makes sense, we add standards to the UDO that allow us to reduce the range of nonresidential uses that require special use permits. Remember, said nonresidential uses.

I'll come to that in a minute. You know, one of the symptoms of development codes that have a heavy reliance on special use permits is they don't have sufficient standards. And it's necessary for them to have this discretionary consideration because there's not clear enough rules on the books that people are comfortable that compatibility and harmony is gonna be protected. K? I do suggest that we carry forward the special use permit requirements for residential uses unless affordable housing is provided, in which case that residential development be reviewed and decided administratively, which is an incentive that is not density.

It's a procedural incentive. It also squares nicely with the down zoning bill because you're already doing this for the most part. Okay? Okay. One of the questions that has come up and that I want to be sure that I mention and discuss here is, we've talked about the special use permit, the quasi judicial nature.

And I know that you guys have a lot of conditional zoning. And we have lots of room to maneuver in terms of affordable housing inducements to take advantage, inducements to provide it. The question on the table is how are we getting affordable housing provision from site plans and subdivisions? Right? How's that happening?

I think maybe in the past, there have been some text amendments that have been proposed to create processes where these otherwise administrative functions can incorporate affordable housing. We do not think reliance on text amendments is a great solution. What we would suggest is incentives in the form of, you know, sustainability incentives or just incentives that include affordable housing. And that if you do affordable housing, that you, you know, you you receive some kind of incentive. And this is where your earlier point about warring incentives really comes into play.

How do we make sure that our one incentives don't cut against our other incentives. We might decide that the site plan or subdivision standard, the site plan subdivision procedures aren't eligible for some of our other green infrastructure incentives, if that makes some sense. We are favoring and leaning into affordable housing. I don't have all the mechanics in that squared away yet, but I wanted to be sure that this was on the table, that you understood that there may need to be some balancing between the groups of incentives that we use, particularly as it pertains to site plans and subdivisions.

I think one bit of guidance I think we'd probably share, I think, if I take a stab at this is like, we want we want it all. But failing all of it all the time in perfect harmony, I think affordability at the top of our incentive pyramid. Then I think like climate

Mhmm.

Features. I which I here I make a distinction as opposed to like sort of like climate resilient Mhmm. So, like, I, like, I I can, like, under some duress, I can talk about, like, bike ped and sidewalk

Mhmm.

For affordability. But we can't talk about, like, storm water and canopy, I think. Does that make sense? Mhmm. You know you know, am I I I don't I'd I'd you know, this is not, a distinction I relish making. I just think that, like, we kinda have to weight these things in order to you know, like, if if we incentivize everything, we're not gonna be incentivizing affordability. Right? We can't we can't simultaneously incentivize, like, what what I'll what I'll refer to as climate amenity infrastructure and affordability. Though I would really like to does does does that square with the rest of y'all's thinking? I mean, I I just tossed that out to sort of clarify for Chad because I bet we're pretty close to aligned, but it does also kind of suck.

There

was a, I was chewing over some of the, some of the where's since you since you brought up bike pet amenities, and and I see that, council member Posada Orozco's got his hand up just to call that out, madam mayor. The Outside of our outside of our central or downtown district, there are a lot of there are a lot of districts right now where we often don't have sidewalks, where we need to add bike ped. The basic bike ped infrastructure is missing, and it needs to come in. But there are also if we're if we're thinking about I'm thinking about particularly about site division, site plan subdivision grade stuff, where I was wondering what y'all think. What if we switched to prioritizing the sort of greenway multiuse path mode over the sidewalk mode for the the the less you know, it's a sort of less dense, less less deeply urban areas because there's a like, I'm thinking about 86.

We can spend the next thirty years trying to piece together a sidewalk along there. But it's probably a lot easier to get a multiuse path that flows through all of those and picks up and connects into Greenway Network. And and then coming back to your point, Danny, I think I'm I would also I don't like to, but I think that's one of the things like, I would not give up on adequate storm water and adequate shade. But a lot of other things, like, it

Where we have to barter.

Where we have to barter.

You see, you know, I hear the point about Greenway. I'm I'm torn on this one. I I think, you know, sidewalks are a little bit more democratically accessible. You know, a like, a Greenway often has the function and I'm not necessarily opposed to this because I I don't wanna let, like, the values abstract, like, the de facto benefit. But, like, you know, for instance, the greenways through the northern neighborhoods right now that rock, like, are really beautiful and connect a lot of things, are pretty unknown except to, like, longtime experienced cyclists people in the neighborhoods, whereas the sidewalk is right there.

It's like, you know, if you can see the school, you can see the sidewalk. You you can you know? And and then I also hear and this, I think, is, like, not necessarily something I share, but as a big community, one of the things that you often hear is a sidewalk feels a little safer than a greenway. Greenways are dark after dark. You know, they like, you know, there's a lot of places, people in my life who don't always feel as safe as I feel in the world, won't be on in our Greenway network, but, you know, don't feel that same way walking down North Greensboro. So I I don't need I don't mean to

I think this may be more a function of location than it is yeah. I think the reason I'm thinking about this is because of the sheer cost per linear foot of sidewalk compared to multiuse path.

I I mean

If we're thinking about what transportation looks like around the town in the future, if we're thinking about micro mobility, right, then

I think the multiuse path is more desirable as, like, reducing VMTs. And, like, I I do.

That's really what I'm getting at.

But I wonder I I just frankly do not I I I appreciate it if y'all noodled on it a little bit so we could keep discussing.

It's a noodle.

Just because I I just don't like, as I this the first time I thought of it was when Chad brought it up in our last session. Mhmm. I was like, hell yeah. VMTs, yeah, like, hate them. Multimodal paths, love them. Started thinking about it, you know, bounced off my wife, bounced it off a couple other people. I love green ways. I use them all the time. I just wonder if they're a little bit less inclusive, in fact. I don't know. That that that may like I said, I don't want the sort of the values here, but, like, the sidewalk is a great triumph of society. Sidewalks and sewers.

Let's go to councilmember Fassada. I'll come back to you, councilmember Haven O'Donnell.

Thank you. Anyway, I was thinking about this question, and and and just wanted to kind of be a little clearer on my end. Right? So I do think that Stormwater and Canopy, I'm I'm I'm on board with that being mandated, but I'm also I wanna incentivize affordability more than anything else. And I can see very few instances where if the decision is between amenities versus affordability, I'm gonna go with affordability a 100% of the time.

Mhmm. So I just wanna be clear that I I do think we we need to find ways of, you know, being climate resilient, and and and I fully acknowledge that there's a lot of really great benefits to what folks are we're talking about right now, but I'm I just wanna make sure that everybody on on on Dia's notes were s 10. Like, I wanted to device affordability a 100% of the time. And if and and I'm happy that, you know, that other things were added to that. But if it comes down to a decision between affordability, and anything else, I wouldn't be strong on on on the affordability side because that's where where I see the most need.

And when I talk to community out you know, when I talk to work, that's where I see the most need. And I just so kinda chat to to where what I would wanna look at is, yeah, there's ways of incentivizing some of these, you know, like, environmental protect amenities is great. I'm happy to to do that, but not at the cost even of putting the two up for a fight in or a a debate in front of the council. Right. Does that make any sense?

It does. It totally does.

I totally understand. And I think we've been hearing that tonight, already, and thank you for that, council member Posada Roscoe. Council member Haven O'Donnell.

Yeah. And with that, and thank you for that, Eliezer, I think, you know, we have twin pillars and one is equity and the other is our our climate resilience and sustainability. And what may be an incentive in affordability to reduce down something as an adaptive response to climate in the short run may look valuable, but in the long run, it may end up being harmful. And I I can't caution you anymore to say that the the adaptations that we're going to need to address are unknown, and putting affordability in the short run with developers, ahead of holding the sustainability and resilience goals is probably unsound. Historically, that's what ends up happening.

That's what put us in this climate situation to begin with that that the the sound science was always put aside to be able to, develop. I understand the interest in development. I understand the interest in creating a scale of of affordability that can be, can meet many, many needs in in the in Carrboro and in in our area. But if we are willing to put something ahead of the climate and the let no. Let's not even use the word climate.

Let's use let's use severe weather because at the state level, that's how we talked about it, severe weather and severe temperatures. You know, we just we just may be putting more people in harm's way over the longer course. So I would just say be careful what you ask for because eliminating those or rather incentivizing the reduction or the lessening of certain green infrastructure or or or green, ways to protect our community and give us stronger resilience in the long run will end up hurting us. That's all I have to say on that.

Thank you, council member Heaven O'Donnell. Comments? Questions? Other? Chad?

That that's thank you. That's everything that that we have. We look forward to moving from the theoretical, into the the real. And so the next step for us is delivery of the code diagnosis based that includes these these, you know, eight key themes modified based on our conversations and your guidance. That goes to staff for review. We will, go over it with staff, and then it'll be sent to you guys. And then I will be back, and we will go over that. I have time for

that. Chad?

I think we probably want at least six weeks. Okay. Yeah. Staff needs time, and and you'll need some time Mhmm. To to review this. But this will be, the the blueprint for the UDO. It will be very much what we suggest be done.

Madam mayor, if I I have one question for you, Chad, which I would ask you probably not to answer tonight but to take away. It's about the table of uses. And it is about whether or not we're thinking about the down zoning law, we're thinking about the ability to remove uses as we're thinking about how we distinguish uses from each other, whether or not we have a use that currently would include data centers.

I I I'm I I will happily answer that question now or later. You just tell me what you want to do. I do not think you have a use that that qualifies as a data center. I think that you should absolutely positively only permit data centers via conditional rezoning. I think that you should require a community benefit agreement for those. And we are working now on a variety of limitations for those use types here in North Carolina in a handful of communities, which we're happy to share with you when when if and when you're ready to see them.

Malta Mene.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Did you get the question? No.

Alright. I'm ready to adjourn.

Motion to adjourn.

Everybody's wave. It has been moved improperly seconded that we adjourn this work session. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries seven o. We're adjourned.