Town Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the September 9th meeting of the Chapel Hilltown Council. This is our first meeting of our fall session, and we're glad to have you join us. And welcome back, council. This evening, we have one item on our discussion agenda, which is the land use management ordinance, or LUMO rewrite. Then council members, immediately following, we will recess the meeting to room 102 for a closed session. To get us started, we have three proclamations to announce. First up is Hispanic and Latino Heritage Month. For this proclamation, we'd like to invite representatives from El Centro and members of the Hispanic and Latino communities to join Councilmember Ryan up front to receive this year's proclamation.

Good evening, everyone. Tonight, the mayor and council proclaim September 15 to October 15, 2026 as Hispanic and Latino Heritage Month. marking this as a time to celebrate the histories, culture, and achievements of Hispanic and Latino communities. With this proclamation, we want to focus on this year's theme, Pioneers of Change, Shaping the Future Together, which highlights the enduring leadership, creativity, and advocacy of our Hispanic and Latino members who continue to open new pathways for opportunity, strengthen civic life, and inspire a shared vision for a more inclusive future. Additionally, we reaffirm our commitment to fostering understanding, inclusion, and equity through community partnerships and outreach that promote diversity and civic engagement. And finally, we encourage all residents to participate in events and activities that honor and celebrate the lives, history, and contributions of Hispanic and Latino people. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us for this announcement tonight. And Amelia, if you will please share with the members of El Centro team how much we appreciate all your amazing hard work and partnership with the town. Our next proclamation is for co-responder and crisis responder week. For this proclamation, we're pleased to invite members of the care team and crisis diversion teams to join Councilmember Nollert up front.

Good evening. Tonight, we are proud to recognize co-responder and crisis responder week and honor our community's longstanding commitment to compassionate early intervention for mental health and substance use needs. This proclamation highlights the serious impacts these challenges can have, leading to homelessness, incarceration, and emergency room visits, and underscores Chapel Hill's resolve to meet rising demand for supportive services. It affirms the critical role of co-responders, peer support professionals, mobile crisis teams, and the Chapel Hill Police Department's crisis unit, which for more than 50 years has exemplified collaborative, humane response. As we observe co-responder and crisis responder week, we invite the community to recognize and give thanks to these dedicated professionals who serve our residents each and every day.

Thank you all for joining us, and thank you for all the amazing care you provide to our community members, often in very difficult situations. We are always so proud to talk about your work, and you do Chapel Hill proud, so thank you. Then our final proclamation is for Patriot Day, and I'd like to invite members of the Chapel Hill Police and Fire Departments to join me up front for that announcement, followed by a moment of silence and a group photo. Yeah, come on back up. Tonight, we are proud to recognize Patriot Day and Day of Service as we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 innocent lives were taken in unthinkable attacks on our nation. This proclamation honors the 343 New York City firefighters and 23 police officers who died, responding heroically as well as the many who have suffered or passed away from related illnesses in the years since. It acknowledges the Americans, including heroes here in Chapel Hill, who were inspired to serve their communities and country as military members and first responders, And it reminds us of the families who continue to carry extraordinary grief. As we observe Patriot Day and Day of Service, we invite our community to pause for a moment of silence, engage in acts of service, and recognize the nearly 200 first responders in Chapel Hill who embody courage, sacrifice, and the enduring resolve to never forget. If you'll please join me for a moment of silence. Thank you. And council, if you'll come on up for a group photo. And I see Chief is already aligning herself in the front.

And of course, a huge round of applause.

For members of the public, each year as we come together to remember September 11, we are also reminded of the care, compassion, and sense of community that emerged in the days that followed. We'll continue that remembrance this Friday at police headquarters on Millhouse Road from 9 to 10 AM, where we'll gather to honor the heroes and remember those we lost. So please join. And that brings us to announcements. I do have two quick things to share from the town calendar. First, for anyone wanting to go behind the scenes and learn more about town services and to meet the people who keep Chapel Hill moving every day, the town will be hosting Open Chapel Hill Days on September 19 and October 3. The lineup of activities on September 19 includes a Public Works Touch a Truck, always popular, visit to the transit maintenance barn, a tour of Chapel Hill's emergency and command center, and activities at our new police department headquarters. And for more details, we have flyers available, or you can check out the Open Chapel Hill Days website. And both days will be fun and informative for people of all ages, so please check it out. Also, Council meets again next Wednesday, September 16th at 6 p.m. in the library for a work session. We have two topics on our agenda for that night, our Everywhere to Everywhere Greenway Network and another edition of our LUMO rewrite. Council members, does anyone else have something to share? Council Member Miller-Mafushi.

Thank you, Mayor. The community is invited to celebrate 30 years with Empowerment Inc. Empowerment, for the past three decades, has worked extensively to expand affordable housing, to strengthen our neighborhood, support economic opportunities, and to ensure that residents have a voice in decisions affecting their communities. And so on Saturday, September 19th, at the Story Venue here in Chapel Hill on Franklin Street, Empowerment will be celebrating their 30th anniversary. The theme is built on legacy and driven by community. So we hope you all can join us. Thank you.

Councilmember McMahon?

I just want to say I will be absent next week because I am going to the Impact Mobility Conference in Toronto as a board member at Code Triangle, but I will also represent us. There's some great sessions on transit-oriented development and integrating affordable and work-forward housing into transit corridors. So I hope to bring back a lot of good information for us.

We will look forward to hearing all about it. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. We may recognize this a little bit later, but I wanted to make sure that people were aware that September is Hunger Action Month. As one who is very grateful for the resources here in our town, please support where you can. We have many opportunities where you can do that. The person sitting next to you may be the one that you will be helping. Thank you.

Council Member Nallert.

Just wanted to state for the record here that there's a couple of important resources community members should be aware of relevant to the functioning of local governments in the future. The North Carolina Housing Coalition has released an analysis of how A proposed constitutional amendment could permanently handicap the ability of local governments to provide the services that residents rely upon. I'd encourage everyone to go to their website, look for that analysis, and see how it could affect communities around you. The Budget and Tax Center, another nonpartisan nonprofit, has released information about how Both that amendment and a proposed income tax amendment could permanently cripple government services at multiple levels around the state. So we are in a climate of financial scarcity, and these amendments will, in my personal opinion, make it worse. So I'd encourage everyone to look those resources up and help familiarize people around you with what we're looking at.

Thank you, and good timing in advance of early voting starting up. Anyone else? OK. Next up, we invite members of the public to comment on items not listed on the printed agenda. If you'd like to speak, you can stand up with the clerk up in the front. And if you're here to speak on a specific agenda item, there will be a presentation on the item followed by council clarifying questions and then public comment. I believe we only have one person signed up for now, so I am going to not give you all the rest of my spiel that I usually give you when there's multiple people, so let's get rolling.

Right. Jessie Basker, here to talk about support for the People's Channel. Welcome.

I appreciate your giving me some time here. I'm not used to doing this, so I will do my best. But I appreciate the time. I am a volunteer with the People's Channel. I've been volunteering with the People's Channel since about 2000, so I've been with them for quite a long time. I knew nothing about television production when I joined People's Channel. They taught me everything as far as what the equipment was, how to use it, how to do lighting, sound, all that kind of thing. And it really made me realize what a fantastic resource the People's Channel is. It may be easy to think about People's Channel as kind of like just a station that broadcasts content. But it's really much more of a community resource than that. It really helps with providing equipment for those that need equipment to do the video production. It provides training. It provides a place for people to come together and put projects together. And for somebody like me, I mean, I could probably find other opportunities for that kind of thing. But there are many people in the community that don't have those kinds of resources. And in particular, I think about one of the things that the People's Channel offers, or has offered over the years, which is camps for kids, where students can come together and learn how to do video production, form teams, take their ideas and put them into something that then becomes a final product video product so people's channel really provides much more than just broadcasting content it's really a resource for the community and i i really encourage you to continue your support i know that chapel hill has been a strong supporter of people's channel i appreciate that support over the years and and i encourage you at this difficult time to continue to support people's channel and recognize they've made a difficult transition from an old location to a new location. They now have a beautiful facility that's ready to open, but they need equipment. They need updates. And so I ask you to think about People's Channel as a valuable resource for the community to invest in. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Basker, you inspired someone else to speak. Billy Nicholson, also talking about the People's Channel. Welcome.

Thank you. I would just like to add to what was already said. And I apologize for my voice. It seems to go and come. But it doesn't listen to me as to when to go or when to come. But anyway. I sincerely would like to add my statements as it relates to the People's Channel. Carson and Dennis have helped me tremendously. I'm currently, within a couple of weeks, we will air my 100th program. The People's Channel to me gives a voice to the people And once you are on television, it's a medium that we will deal with forever. TV will not go away. It's simply a matter of whether or not you'll be doing it on an iPhone or an Android or in front of a TV station. And I believe that is something of value because many times people feel intimidated as it relates to personal. touch. For example, it used to be, I'm old enough to remember when you went door to door knocking. And of course, we don't do that much anymore. But most people have a television. And that way, the message that the community has can go out. And there's a variety of voices. It's not just one voice. There are a variety of voices. And the People's Channel offers that. They have also helped me with taping, and that's something that is good. And it's something that you can use in other aspects of your life. And I believe that if this council and the mayor would consider continuing support for this, that it would be a beacon of light for Chapel Hill, and not only for Chapel Hill, but for the surrounding areas. We can motivate each other to do good. And this is what I believe that the People's Channel does. It encourages other people. I remember, and I'll set this and be brief, I began the People's Channel some years ago after these issues that happened in Durham. But the only reason I'm on TV now is because a person invited me on their program. And that person is still producing today. But I would have never been on TV at all had they not invited me. Now, you have to decide whether or not it's a value me being on there. But at least the opportunity has presented itself. And I would ask you to sincerely consider funding this notable and worthwhile cause. Because as I said, it reaches across spectrums. it reaches across denominations, it reaches across all humanity, because most of us, for the most part, are visual learners. There are some that are not, but for the most part, we are visual learners. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. One more. Abdullah Muhammad, welcome.

Peace be upon you. I speak all the time, but you important people are a little intimidating. Speaking on behalf of the People's Channel, as one of the gentlemen mentioned, as one who was on the show to present and share the belief system of Islam, one of the most, if not the most, misunderstood religion on Earth. I think your support for the People's Channel is even more valuable and more important today because it's helping to build bridges. It's helping us to get the truth out of what the religion of Islam is. and so that we can be better partners in the work. And we are part of the human family, and we just encourage you to give people's channel the consideration and the support that it needs to continue giving not only us a voice to share with the general public so that we can be better citizens and we can be better partners in the work to advance the human society. The work that they're doing, we've been with them for the past, I believe, five years, starting way across the other, I guess, on the other side, and then move into the new facility. as a religious leader i know it's important to build relationships and build partnerships and to build trust and that's what the people's channel is allowing us to do to share our voice and get our message out so that we can all live together in peace and harmony thank you thank you thank you counsel

Pro Tem? Any requests? Oh, yes.

Oh, I get to make this request. I would like to ask if we would consider having the staff to look into funding for the People's Channel. We have heard from this group several times. I would love to learn more, and I'd like to know if the rest share that interest.

Councilman?

I think the last time that this council came before us, I posed a question to staff regarding this matter. And so it is of interest to me. I understand the funding. I don't know how to describe it. But just how they are funded from federal to state, and then through us. what's happening with that funding and how it's dwindling. Under the current pressures that we are facing, I would be interested in seeing what possibilities there are, but also still holding the understanding of just how much pressure we're all feeling. But I think it definitely requires a good look. So I would definitely support continuing supporting that.

Wonderful. So I'd like to make a motion that we ask the staff to provide us with more information about how we could fund and what the challenges are that make it difficult for us to do so. So I want to look at both sides. Could you second?

Can I provide some information, please?

I'm sorry. We're done with public comment right now. Motion by Mayor Pro Tem Berry, seconded by Council Member Miller-Foushee. All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes eight to one And staff I apologize I should have asked before we before we made the motion, but are there any details or any information That you need from council or is that a reasonable request that you think that sounds fine. We'll get your report great Thank you OK, that brings us to our consent agenda. Council members, do I have a motion to approve consent?

Move to consent. Second.

Moved by Council Member Ryan, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Berry. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay. The motion is unanimous. Next up is our single item for this evening in open session, which is item number 12, which is our land use management ordinance, or affectionately known as LUMO rewrite. And our presenter is Taz Lagou from the planning department.

All right, good evening, mayor and council. It's good to be back with you in the fall session to continue our discussions about the LUMO update. Just as a reminder of where we are relative to the schedule for this fall, this evening's meeting is the first of several informal discussions that we've got penciled out for you all to continue to discuss the draft LUMO kind of outside of the official legislative process. This schedule that's in front of you right now is just kind of preliminary, right? Ultimately, the schedule belongs to you all. If you see the need for additional meetings to continue these informal discussions, that can certainly happen. This is just a path forward. But ultimately, the schedule is very much yours. I also just want to put this schedule in the context of the last three years. I think by, I need to double check, but this is either the 21st or 22nd council meeting in which we've discussed the LUMO in various forms over the last several years. So we're really hoping to kind of bring this home. This is the home stretch and the culmination several years of really robust policy discussions. And so we're really excited to kind of bring this forward in a meaningful way over the next several months. A couple of other things I just want to mention on this schedule. The Planning Commission has completed their two informal discussions that were scheduled for earlier this month and late in August. There was an opportunity for them to continue those informal discussions into next week. But at their last meeting, they decided that the two meetings discussing the draft was enough for them. And they intend to come back whenever the official legislative hearings begin. And so with that, we'll kind of get into the meat of the discussion.

Kaz, can I ask you just a quick question on that topic? Do we have any summary of the conversation that happened from the Planning Commission or anything? I don't know, a summary or some sort of, or the public engagement that's happened so far? How can we see kind of that ongoing information or dialogue?

Yeah, so we can provide that information in a couple of different ways. The planning commission discussions were, to my knowledge, were intended to be just kind of discussions among planning commissioners. There was relatively low attendance at both meetings just because of some prior commitments. You mean of the members themselves? Yes, of the members. Yeah, there were four planning commission members present at each of the meetings. But they didn't represent that their intent in those meetings was to pass along recommendations to you all. It's my understanding that their intent is very much to use whatever their first official meeting as part of the hearing to really coalesce around a set of recommendations for you all. In terms of public engagement, we've been receiving a ton of comments, both via email and through the online draft that's available for comment. We can share those comments and emails with you all essentially whenever you want them. I think our intent had been to share them as part of the start of the official legislative process with some analysis, themes, general sentiments, that kind of thing. But if you want to see them earlier, that is not a heavy lift and certainly something that we can provide to you in kind of like raw form. It would just be, here's all the comments that have come in, and here they are for you all to look at.

Council Member Ryan? Yeah, it would be helpful to me to see that earlier rather than at the start of the hearing when things are pretty baked.

So council, is it OK if staff just sends along a raw file of public input so far via email? Okay. It sounds very reasonable. Thank you. Quick question.

Sure. Is that going to be different than all the letters we've gotten? I mean, I know we've all read the letters that we've gotten. The emails, excuse me.

I was asking for all of it, including what's on the Engage Chapel Hill site that doesn't come to us. Oh, fabulous.

Never mind.

Council Member Sharpe?

I don't know if this is the point we're supposed to be doing this, but people seem to be doing it. Do you mind going back to the thing with the schedule? Yeah. So if we don't get the planning commission's recommendations, like the ones that they've all coalesced around where enough of them are available to get until after they've met at least on October 6, Do you think that that gives, and if that's the point when we are meant to take into account their sort of consensus of recommendations, does that leave us time to make meaningful edits? Like if we get some recommendations from the planning commissioner like, whoa, we think that this is completely upside down in the draft, do we have time then to make meaningful edits and adhere to this timeline?

So a couple of things just to I guess just to make sure we're all clear on, the two Planning Commission meetings from earlier in the fall were work sessions, right? They were opportunities for, just as you're having kind of informal discussions, there were opportunities for the Planning Commission to have similar informal discussions. So to my knowledge, they have not yet kind of coalesced around a set of clear recommendations that the body as a whole has voted on or otherwise kind of built some consensus around. That being said, there's as much time, and I say this as somebody that is very interested in kind of getting this wrapped up, there is as much time in this calendar as you all need. So if the planning commission's recommendations do really motivate some major revisions, this calendar, this schedule is preliminary at best. It's a path forward. But if there needs to be more time to allow for more revisions, that is 100% in y'all's prerogative.

OK, I appreciate hearing that, because my main interest, as I am hearing is yours, and I would assume it would be, is that we arrive at something that we all want to vote yes on. So if it takes into March, which I hope it won't, I'd rather that that be the case than that we have an end product that we don't feel good about.

I just wanted to add, for the note of the slide and how this is written out, the yellow is actually extra opportunities for discussion for planning commission and for the council above and beyond the regular process. So we're not in any way condensing the time that you guys would have for that kind of feedback. So I just wanted to make sure that everybody understood this is before the routine planning commission. Here's the item before you get it and then gives you recommendations. They had the opportunity to speak and discuss and ask questions of staff and get clarifications. in the same way we're doing with you guys for this week and at next week's session. So we don't want you to feel in any way that you're behind the eight ball. We are early in the process and would definitely allow them the opportunity to provide recommendations and then staff an opportunity to respond to anything that you saw fit for us to make edits on.

OK, and I guess to be more to the point, I was kind of passive-aggressively sussing out whether or not you all felt behind the eight ball and whether or not we would be getting the response from you ever like, well, we don't have time to make that change because we have to vote on it on December 9. So I'm pleased to hear that that's not how you're functioning, and we won't either. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for letting me. get us off track would be the wrong word, because I think it's important. But thank you for letting me get that out of the way. And then please continue with your presentation, and I will not get in the middle.

Well, no, it does bear clarification. I think the goal, as we've mentioned on the schedule, is for this to be a discussion. So I won't invite too many detours, but certainly happy to entertain them. As I mentioned, this is an opportunity to have a discussion and revisit some of the key themes around the draft LUMO, both for this meeting and subsequent meetings. It's our intention to really use the organizing framework that you all developed earlier in this year, the five key interests that you wanted to use to frame out council discussions. This evening, our goal is to talk through three of those key interests, user friendliness, economic development and land use, and the built environment and the public realm. And then we're scheduled to come back in just a week to talk about housing diversity, attainability and supply, and environment and resilience. Just to try to put some kind of guardrails around the discussion, obviously we can take this discussion wherever you all see fit. If there are kind of more detailed questions about these other two interests, the housing and environment interests, we can definitely speak to them to some extent this evening. And if you want to get into a lot of detail about it, we can. But we'll be prepared at a staff level to present lot of information about those two topics next week and we'll have plenty of time to dig into those topics next week as well and September 23rd the meeting two weeks from now is kind of penciled out as as a reserve opportunity to continue this discussion even within kind of the preliminary schedule that we've laid out So that being said, I'll turn first to this user friendliness interest. The kind of structure I'm hoping to use for the rest of this presentation is to speak about each of these interests, some of the specific goals that were nested within each one of those, identify some of the tradeoffs that were associated with those goals, and then talk through the ways in which the draft LUMO is intended to meet those tradeoffs or address those tradeoffs. And then we'll certainly seek feedback from you all and be happy to answer questions about any of that material at the end of the presentation. So this first topic of user-friendliness, I think on its face, it seems pretty simple. There are a couple of key interests within the user-friendliness interest that speak to much more significant elements of how the LUMO is organized and what it means for potential new development in Chapel Hill. And then specifically the process-related interests, these notions of balancing efficiency with community benefits, streamlining processes that encourage certain types of housing, streamlining development applications while still making sure that we're supporting complete community outcomes. I think those are some of the most significant interests that are housed in this broader user-friendliness interest. And they implicate some significant trade-offs. I think the interests themselves kind of tee up some of those trade-offs. We face this kind of balance between predictability and consistency in decision-making on the one hand, and then also the ability to negotiate for community benefits on the other. We face this trade-off between public participation in a wide range of different development approvals, and then this notion of administrative efficiency and objective decision making. As we're talking through these trade-offs, it's impossible to come up with an exhaustive list. I think we're trying to kind of tee up some of the big picture trade-offs that are implicated here. And so some of the ways in which the draft LUMO attempts to kind of address these different trade-offs, first and foremost is this notion that LUMO itself, the core standards associated in, or, you know, in Lumo are a key way of implementing the complete community strategy. We've really tried to bake complete community principles into as much of Lumo's by right baseline standards as possible. You see that in things like expanded permissions for missing middle housing, expanded permissions for mixed use and neighborhood scale commercial development, streamlined development review processes that get us away from project by project decision making. And then you see it in smaller ways, things like mandatory EV parking standards, the elimination of parking minimums. you see again kind of baked throughout LUMO at the core element of LUMO these complete community principles are mandated where possible but we know that we can't mandate our way into all of our community benefits because many of the community benefits that we as a community desire we either don't have clear authority to mandate them or it's just it's tricky And so LUMO also includes kind of a robust set of incentives that pop up in different places throughout the ordinance, and I'll speak to those in a little bit more detail in just a minute. We also are looking to increase by-right development opportunities in various zoning districts, and I'll speak to that in just a moment. And then, again, speaking to this notion of administrative efficiency balanced against public input, the draft LUMO makes some procedural changes to how development reviews in Blue Hill would occur. And I'll speak to that in more detail in just a minute. So incentives for community benefits. I mentioned that one of the key decision points of when we would look to incentivize a community benefit rather than mandate it outright is just based on our authority. What can we clearly do and what can't we do in terms of mandates? So some of the types of community benefits that the new LUMO looks to incentivize are things like affordable housing, energy efficient design in new buildings, tree conservation, greenway construction, mixed use development. Again, I think these should resonate as we're speaking about complete community. These are all kind of core tenants of the complete community strategy. Not necessarily things that the LUMO can mandate, but certainly things that we can build incentives around. Another way of making sure that we're getting away from project by project decision making, as community strategy calls for, is increasing these buy right development thresholds. As a reminder, when we're talking about buy right development, this is basically just the simplest form of Here's what's regulated. Here are the rules on the books. And a project that complies with those rules moves forward. It's a kind of land use regulation 101. By-right development is limited. heavily regulated, and it does not have the same amount of flexibility that a project that comes before you all might have. And so some of the ways in which we've looked at supporting more by-right development is, first of all, to take these baseline LUMO standards, make sure that they are kind of imbued with a lot of complete community principles. and then say okay four projects that meet those clear mandates let's allow more of that type of project to occur without council approval and so some kind of clear thresholds that you'll see in the new lumo are these thresholds based on how much development can occur without a conditional zoning right a conditional zoning being the clearest exercise of town council's kind of project by project review. So what we're proposing is that for most kind of mixed use and multifamily districts, the residential component of any development at baseline could be 30 units or 30,000 square feet of floor area. And then an additional 40,000 square feet of non-residential development. We really want to accommodate and allow for mixed use development in almost all of these higher intensity zoning districts. So we started that 30,000 square feet of residential, 40,000 square feet of non-residential thresholds. And then as we move into higher intensity zoning districts that we expect to be used in higher intensity parts of town, along our BRT corridor, downtown, we ratchet up some of those thresholds, which is why you get from 30 units to 45 units to 60 units. And you see similar kind of gradations in what's allowed by right in terms of non-residential floor area as well. Ratcheting up as we're getting into more and more intense zoning districts One thing I just want to clarify in terms of what these thresholds mean the 30 dwelling unit threshold does not mean that any zoning lot in town could see 30 units built on it under the new rules. In order for any of these thresholds to be relevant for a particular project, the underlying rules for that property have to allow development that's large enough to meet these thresholds. So if you're on a quarter acre lot where, because of floor area ratio or impervious surface coverage, or just because of other limits on how much you can build on that site. If you're only limited to, let's say, 12 units or something like that, these thresholds aren't even relevant because there are other lower restrictions on what you can build. So these thresholds only become relevant for properties where the underlying rules would allow a significant amount of development. The last thing I wanted to talk about is the Blue Hill District and the role of the Community Design Commission. Currently, under the existing rules for Blue Hill, projects that move through the incentivized pathway in Blue Hill require two sets of approvals, one from the town manager through something called a form district permit and then another certificate of appropriateness that's granted by the Community Design Commission. What we found is that there is an opportunity to streamline how development review in Blue Hill works without really sacrificing what the quality of projects moving through the Blue Hill code would look like. And what that involves is collapsing those two review processes, the CDC's certificate of appropriateness process and the manager's form district compliance permit process into just one. It's basically only requiring administrative approval. So the Community Design Commission, under the proposed Blue Hill Code, would no longer be responsible for reviewing or approving projects in Blue Hill. What this sets up is kind of a question about the future of the CDC itself. Without responsibility for approval of projects in the Blue Hill District, the Community Design Commission isn't really left with many significant development review responsibilities. So there is an opportunity, if the council wants to move in that direction, to sunset the Community Design Commission, or basically retask it, give it more advisory responsibilities, but not necessarily have it move on in the regulatory role that it currently has. That would be a point of discussion over the next several months to see what council's interest is in the future of the Community Design Commission. I will say it's not a conversation that has to happen in the next couple of months. The draft LUMO basically creates a six-month sunset period before the Community Design Commission would be disbanded. um there's an opportunity to have those discussions sooner or later just depending on council's interests um so wanted to move on um the next kind of major set of topics to to discuss would be uh council's interests in economic development and land use um Housed within it, as you all kind of agreed to earlier in the year, are two specific interests. One that speaks to supporting neighborhood scale commercial uses, and the other is much broader, right? Talking about aligning land use patterns with complete community principles. And so just like the first set of interests, we see some significant trade-offs that are implicated here as well. On the one hand, you have this notion of preserving existing neighborhoods, but also kind of a challenge from Complete Community to find new amenities, to provide new commercial uses, new opportunities for people to work and play or recreate or shop in Chapel Hill. So those are necessarily going to be in a little bit of tension. Similarly, there's this notion of supporting mixed-use development and the shorter travel times that those can come with, but also then separating dissimilar land uses. If you look at large swaths of Chapel Hill, they developed at a time when the prevailing wisdom was that Residential uses, particularly single-family homes, need to be pretty strictly separated from other potentially dissimilar land uses. And so that's kind of a tension that the draft LUMO is going to have to reconcile with as well. So some of the ways that the draft limo looks to reconcile these different trade-offs is, first of all, allowing smaller scale commercial development more broadly, the type of development that has the opportunity to turn into little nodes of neighborhood scale amenities. And I'll talk through each of these in a little more detail in just a minute. The draft also looks to support incremental increases in residential density around town. It creates some new zoning districts that you all will have the opportunity to use kind of strategically around town. And then with that notion of as we introduce new development types or potentially new zoning districts into town, We want to be mindful of how they relate to their neighbors. And so there's these transition rules that we'll talk about that look to, again, create some kind of harmony between potentially dissimilar uses while still allowing them in close proximity to each other. So speaking first to this notion of additional residential density, what we're really looking at here are some of our lower density residential districts, the existing kind of R1 through R4 zoning districts that make up the vast majority of residential land uses in town. And so today, when you're looking at those R1 through R4 zoning districts, you're basically looking at districts that allow either two units per lot or four units per lot once you move up to the R4 zoning district. What the draft LUMO includes is a proposal to increase what we would consider that kind of baseline density in just one of those districts. The R3 district would see that baseline density increase from two units to four units per lot. But the baseline density in R1, R2, and R4 would stay the same. You also see the introduction of these RA, RB, RC districts that in many cases are just the successors of existing districts. But with that last district, RD, that's a new district that I'll discuss in just a minute. One of the things that we have heard and one thing that we are challenged to do based on the Complete Community Strategy is to find more ways to support infill development. Infill development is one of four core areas in which the Complete Community Strategy basically challenges Chapel Hill to direct growth, the others being its small and large infill sites, transit corridors, and then areas near greenways. And so what the draft LUMO includes is this notion that in any of these residential zoning districts, kind of these medium to low intensity residential zoning districts, You'll have your baseline zoning density, but then you'll also have proposed additional density along greenways, near greenway entrances, and then along larger roads. And so what you'll see in each of these districts is that we're proposing, or the draft LUMO proposes, to basically allow the next increment of density. where two units are allowed by right. Based on their location, four units might be allowed by right. And you see that kind of next increment logic kind of cascading down through the zoning districts as you get to more and more dense districts. But we know that residential density is only kind of part of the puzzle. There's also this strong interest in neighborhood scale commercial development. One of the ways to support neighborhood scale commercial is to increase residential density near existing commercial nodes. And so that's what some of these other changes around residential density look to do. The other way to support more neighborhood commercial is just to Create more opportunities for new commercial development to occur in town right to open up land those previously off limits to commercial development And as we're thinking about introducing these commercial uses into predominantly residential areas want to be mindful of what uses were introducing and the potential size and scale of those uses and so I The draft LUMO would only allow restaurants and small stores up to 3,000 square feet in a couple of our residential zoning districts. They'd be allowed along arterial and collector streets in the R1 and R2 zoning districts. And really with the mind towards making sure that these are going to be good neighbors, I think it's really important to note that Any of these commercial uses would be subject to things like stormwater management standards, potentially tree canopy standards, depending on the total size of the site, building coverage standards that would limit, again, the size of the building relative to the size of the lot that's located on. and landscaped buffer requirements. This is one of the few places in which we're singling out a particular use as requiring landscaped buffers because, again, we want to be mindful of this notion of not creating really bad or problematic neighbors. I've mentioned arterial and collector streets and greenways a couple of times now. These maps are way too small to try to read and don't want to ask you all to squint at the screen today. I mention these just to point out to all of you all and anybody listening at home that There are two, I think, very important maps for folks to start kind of looking at available online. You can view both these maps at ChapelHillNC.gov slash Lumo update. And they are going to be kind of a key part of how the draft Lumo proposes to allow residential density when we're looking at arterial collector streets and greenways or when we're looking at certain commercial uses those are really just based on street classification so I mentioned smaller retail and restaurants there's also some other uses commercial uses that get some additional kind of treatment based on arterial and collector streets. Things like daycares, for example, are limited in certain zoning districts, but get some more permissive treatment based on the streets that they're located on. And so both of these are, I think, important maps to start reviewing. And we can discuss the logic behind those maps whenever y'all are interested in doing so. I mentioned a new zoning district that's really kind of tailor-made at supporting missing middle housing. You'll see it pop up in the new LUMO as the new residential D or RD zoning district. One thing to just bear in mind, it is not currently on the zoning map and adoption of the new LUMO will not place it on the map anywhere. It could only be placed on the map through either adoption of a new town-wide zoning map or through kind of targeted rezonings that would all be subject to a public process and ultimately your decision. But what this zoning district gives us an opportunity to do is create some gentle transitions between more intense land uses and less intense land uses. It allows us to create some corridors of gentle residential density in a meaningful and strategic way. The district would allow of a range of medium scale commercial development. It would allow up to 12 homes per lot. And it wouldn't have a minimum lot size. So instead we'd be relying on things like impervious surface coverage, tree canopy requirements, all the other standards that dictate kind of how much stuff you can put on a particular lot. We'd allow those standards to dictate how dense this zoning district could be, but without creating an additional level of restriction on what that density looks like. So once you start looking at 12 homes per lot, it opens up a lot of different quintessential missing middle housing types. small apartment buildings, townhomes, cottage courts. A zoning district like this could be used to really great effect to support again kind of the quintessential bread and butter missing middle housing types. And then finally last thing I wanted to mention in this kind of set of interest is this notion of transition rules the the draft LUMO really tries to take care of situations in which Very dissimilar zoning districts are going to be near each other think of situations around the perimeter of downtown for example where you have Town center zoning districts which are among our most intense zoning districts right next to our three right residential three lower intensity zoning districts We really want to be mindful of those types of kind of hard edges between zoning districts And that's what these transition rules look to do So some of the things that the transition rules will do is kind of control the size and scale of development as it gets closer to these lower intensity residential districts. So in the diagram on screen, it's basically showing a building step back that's much more significant than the more kind of aesthetic driven step back requirement that we're proposing to have on the street-facing facade of a building. These transition rules would require step backs at the back of a building or at the side of a building where they might potentially be right next door to a smaller single-family home. You see a great example of that with the AC Hotel just on the north side of Rosemary Street and its transition into the residential neighborhood to the north, that building kind of steps down as it gets closer to single-family homes. And then we also want to make sure that we're not just limiting building size because we know that's not the only thing on a site that impacts neighbors. We want to be mindful of how potentially kind of noisy or raucous site elements are placed on a site, so things like pools, dog parks, other gathering spaces, we want to create at least a little bit of separation between property lines and those potentially kind of noisy uses that could make for worse neighbors. So the last topic I want to talk about this evening is just the built environment and public realm interest identified by council. Again, there's a whole host of different specific interests that you all identified as part of this kind of broader interest. And they all kind of congeal around this core set of trade-offs, which is this notion of private development potential. What is a private developer allowed to do with their land versus a public benefit? What sort of restrictions might we place on a private development that create some public benefits for the town? And so some of the ways in which the draft LUMO tries to take kind of a moderated approach to these two interests that we're trying to balance is it looks to incentivize the development of a lot of public infrastructure, things like publicly accessible greenways, which we cannot right mandate that a developer build a greenway and make it publicly accessible we can we can probably mandate that they put some some paths on their their property but we certainly can't force them to make those accessible to the public the draft lumo would heavily incentivize a developer to do that of their own accord It also looks in other ways to incentivize the creation of kind of pseudo public amenity spaces. Look at Weaver Street in Carrboro as kind of the quintessential example of a private public space. The draft Luma really looks to try to incentivize those through various sets of standards. There are some cases in which the draft just outright requires certain infrastructure improvements. That's something that today's LUMO does when it comes to street improvements. The draft tries to do it in a more kind of contextual way, a way that incorporates the comprehensive plan more clearly and just tries to put more clear parameters around what that public infrastructure needs to look like. And then finally, and this is what I want to spend most time on, is this notion of we know that there is a strong interest in having a high quality public realm in Chapel Hill. that can mean so many different things to so many different people. For some folks, that can mean really leaning into the aesthetic quality of a development. What the draft LUMO really tries to do is focus primarily on functional benefit. How can we ensure that for folks walking down the street, for folks biking down the street, the development that they're walking or biking through kind of addresses their needs. So by and large, and there are some exceptions, but by and large, the draft LUMO, when it issues kind of new design-related standards, it's looking to focus on that functional benefit rather than something that we could debate ad nauseum about what's the right aesthetic piece, DraftLumo looks to focus on the functional element. And so I'll just briefly run through some of those key function-related design standards, things like maximum building width. We know that building width really impacts the ability of a site to be what we would call permeable, the opportunity for somebody walking down the street to find a little respite, a little plaza, a sidewalk or a side street that then allows them to get off the main street and move into a site. Building width and regulations around that are key to that pedestrian experience. We also want to be really mindful of what we're asking pedestrians or bikers to walk past or bike past. We know that large seas of parking lots are one of the least hospitable places that we could create. And so the draft has standards that really encourage developers to pull buildings closer to the street. And we do this by very significantly limiting the amount of parking that's allowed between a building and the street. We allow some parking and some circulation so that, you know, there's still kind of fire access, the ability for some amount of what a lot of folks would call kind of teaser parking, and certainly accessible parking to be located between the building and the street. We also look to limit certain elements of a building's design that create kind of an inhospitable pedestrian experience. kind of large, blank, concrete walls. You can imagine on a hot day being sandwiched between a bunch of asphalt. You're just walking down a sidewalk, and there's nothing but just bare concrete next to you. That's a really inhospitable pedestrian experience. So the draft LUMO looks to regulate that as well. I mentioned this earlier, but creating amenity spaces, whether they are fully public, pseudo public, or private, the draft creates these amenity space requirements for multifamily and commercial development that call on developers to include site design elements like plazas, other communal spaces. It could also include recreational spaces, amenity spaces. athletic fields, things of that sort, really opens the door for what sort of ways in which a developer could meet that interest. And then, again, just two more quick things. This notion of active depth requirements, that would be kind of a new standard for the bulk of LUMO's regulations. What we're really looking to do here is limit how much of the ground floor of a building can be used for parking, structured parking that is, again, going to kind of Hurt that interest of having an activated street frontage Which is something that the future land use map is called for in many places for for a long time the community definitely calls for And we can do that through some tailored regulation and finally building step backs this notion that after a certain height the facade of a building kind of jogs back a couple of feet and This is one of all the standards that we've talked about. Given the scale of development that we see in Chapel Hill, we're not seeing buildings that are dozens of stories tall on streets that are pretty narrow. We don't see that kind of canyon effect that larger cities do. So the building step-back requirement trends towards or tends towards the more aesthetic side of some of these building and design standards, which is why the LUMO includes some alternatives, right? A physical change in the building's facade is one option for meeting this set of rules. But so are some other options that don't result in a reduction in buildable floor area. Again, to try to balance that trade-off between the public benefit and then the private development potential of a site. And so that's a not so quick run through of some of the ways in which draft LUMO tries to meet three of the core interests that were identified by council. Again, just as a reminder, this is the first of at least a couple more conversations with you all about the draft. At this point, happy to take any questions about anything we mentioned during the presentation.

Thank you, Taz, for that presentation. Thanks to everyone who's joined us here tonight and whether you're here in person or participating virtually. We really appreciate the time people have taken to attend the open houses, engage with the draft LUMO, and send us your questions, concerns, ideas. As a reminder, we'll begin this evening, like Taz said, with clarifying questions from council, and then we'll open up the floor for public comment, and then we'll follow that with our council conversation. Before we get underway, I just want to say a word about tone and about one aspect of this work in particular. Staff has put real work into this draft, balancing predictability for property owners against the community benefit that we're always trying to capture and building complete community principles into the baseline rather than treating them as an afterthought. My hope for tonight is that we treat this as an opportunity to really strengthen the draft and not to relitigate it. That doesn't mean questions and concerns aren't welcome. That's the whole point of this evening and others. But I ask that we approach them as refinements and that we're working through this together, not as a referendum on whether staff got this right or wrong. I also want to... just raised something I've heard a lot in conversations with people in the community, real questions about what LUMO can do and what it can't do and how the pieces fit together. And the LUMO is just one of the tools we have to address the challenges we face and in advancing our complete community vision. There are some things we can accomplish through the LUMO, and there are other things that will require a number of other strategies. In some cases, that distinction is shaped by what local governments have the authority to do under state law. And I think keeping that context in mind will help us to have a really productive conversation tonight. We want to understand what matters to you most and what you want to see the LUMO help us accomplish. It's also helpful for us to hear how you see the proposed changes affecting the places where you work and where you live. and spend time and what questions or concerns those changes raise for you. Then as this conversation continues in the coming weeks, we can work through the specific options, trade-offs, and those path forwards together. We want to make sure people understand what we're considering and why. And we encourage everyone to stay engaged in the conversation beyond this evening. With that, we're ready for council's clarifying questions. Council member Ryan, would you like to lead us off?

OK, thank you. And I know you've been doing this for forever. And Taz, every time you come up, you're an iron man. So thank you for all that. And thank you for making time this summer to talk about things more in depth. I really appreciated that. So you talked about the buy-write thresholds for mixed use. It was like 30,000 residential and 40,000 commercial. Is that cumulative? So it could be up to 70,000 if it was a combined residential

That's right. Yeah. So all those thresholds are cumulative between residential and non-residential.

OK. I had asked this question earlier in the spring, and I apologize if I missed a response. But in January, we made a lot of density changes with an omnibus amendment that we did. Do we have any idea of how or if there have been any changes in the kind of development applications we've been seeing since then? Is that something that some information we can get? Because it's been more than six months now. So I think it'd be informative to see if those changes made any difference in what kind of stuff we're seeing.

Yeah, we can definitely make sure to pull the actual numbers. I can tell you, at least anecdotally, the level of interest has been markedly different. The phone calls, the informational meetings that planning staff have with perspective developers, or even prospective homeowners that are seeing opportunities to carve off an extra chunk of land that they had. We're just having a lot more of those conversations, which is really exciting. Because six months is a pretty short time to see a full-fledged development proposal come to fruition for an application and all the work that that goes into. But just the fact that people are interested is a really positive sign.

Yeah, that's great. And if there's any way to estimate how much of that is folks coming in with commercial stuff or coming in for ADUs, that would be super helpful. Let's see. So will the CDC see and comment on any of the design standards? I know you were saying that their mandate has kind of shrunk, but it would be valuable to me to hear any comments they have.

We're not planning on that at the moment. As with a lot of these standards, I think as they've become more and more technical, we've leaned on the expertise of our professional staff. So I think in the last meeting we had, shared the comments from Brian Peterson, the town's urban designer, regarding those standards. Brian's been intimately involved in all of this work around Lumo. And so we've really leaned on his expertise, the expertise of our consultants, to kind of tee up a set of recommended design standards that we think are meaningful for the town. So at this point, we're not planning to put them in front of the CDC.

OK. When you were talking about step backs kind of as more of an aesthetic element, I have sort of a different point of view on that. So to me, it's a massing element, just in the same way you said we're changing the amount of distance of a frontage or things like that. So for me, it's not a design thing. It is a design thing, but it's not aesthetic. It's more the massing and how you how you approach things. So I'm actually a big fan of the step backs, just making things feel, especially as we're trying to make things walkable, that making people comfortable in a walkable place, I think, is really important. And height has something to do with that. So sorry, that was a comment. I snuck that in. Yeah, and so yeah, I think that is all my questions for now. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem, followed by Council Member Sharp, followed by Council Member Rivers.

Thank you. Will we hear more? OK, this is a leading question. Clarification. You stated that the LUMO is incentivizing public benefits, that it does that. But when will we hear how it does that?

Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to go into more detail with really any of those. Depending on the public benefit that we're talking about, the LUMO addresses those in a lot of different ways. I can go back to that slide about some of the types of public benefits that the LUMO incentivizes. So affordable housing. And we'll talk about this in much more detail at the next meeting. But I'd say for affordable housing, there's an entire section of the new LUMO that is tailored to incentivize affordable housing and new development. Energy efficiency is another one of those. There's kind of a basic standard that we're pointing developers to, and if they meet that standard for commercial development, it's a pretty lofty standard. It's the New Building Institute Stretch 40 standard, which basically calls on them to be 40% more efficient than kind of the generally applicable energy efficiency standards.

Tess, may I interrupt? I am interrupting. Excuse me. If there's any of these that we should hold tight for the next session, I'm very happy to do that. I just want to make sure that if there are some, the Greenway construction I think may or may not qualify for the next one. Are there any on this list that wouldn't be coming up in the next one?

I just talk about greenway construction and mixed-use development. I think the other three we'll definitely talk about next week.

Then I'm happy to wait so that we can really dig into that with the material that you'll be sharing with us. But I am curious if you can share about those two.

Yeah, absolutely. It would be helpful. So I mentioned with greenway construction, it's likely within our authority to say, hey, we have standards for connectivity on a site, that you need to have a sidewalk or a multi-use path or something that stretches from one end of your site to another. We don't have any ability to say to a developer that you must make that a publicly accessible amenity, that it's got to be tied into the town's broader network, or that it even needs to be something that the town is asking for as part of our E2E network or our broader greenways plan. What we were proposing in the draft is basically tying existing standards. For subdivisions, it would be recreation space. And then for multifamily development or commercial development, it's this evolution of recreation space, which is the amenity space requirement. Basically saying under either one of those scenarios, If a development site sits in a part of town that includes a greenway that's called for by the town's comprehensive plan, if that developer constructs the greenway and makes it publicly accessible, It basically fully satisfies their recreation space requirement if it's a subdivision or their amenity space requirement if it's a multifamily development or a commercial development. So it's basically giving them an opportunity to You know we're we're accepting this trade-off that we're gonna get less amenity space or less recreation space out of the development but we'd be getting this thing that we've identified as kind of a really cornerstone Public interest for the town which would be construction of a greenway so that's that's our kind of core set of incentives around greenway construction And then mixed use development, I think you see it. It's less kind of formulated as clear incentives, right? If you do this, then you get X, Y, Z. But it speaks to something that Councilmember Ryan asked about, are these the cumulative effect of some of our by right development thresholds that we're not making somebody choose between what do you do 30,000 square feet of residential development or 40,000 square feet of commercial development we're saying at baseline you can do both that both of those are for options there's also just the fact that and this is something that the the existing Lumo did as a result of the amendments that you all passed earlier this year is acknowledge at baseline that mixed-use development is just normal. We got rid of this notion that each property can only have one principal use, which, again, is just a basic way of allowing more mixed-use development. And then there are two zoning districts, the NC, so neighborhood commercial, and CC, community commercial zoning district, that are both currently used in Chapel Hill. They are, when you look at most of our commercial uses in town, If it's outside of downtown or outside of Blue Hill, chances are it's going to be zoned either NC or CC.

Can you give me an example of each of those?

Yeah. So the piggyback. Which is no longer there. That's hurtful. Yeah. The pig. Excuse me. The pig. In front of it, Chapel Chill, Cedar Falls Plaza is zoned NC, neighborhood commercial. And the family fair next to it is also neighborhood commercial. CC, so community commercial, is something you would see. There's some CC along MLK Boulevard. I think University Place, U Mall, and the surrounding commercial development is technically zoned CC. So that's kind of the scale of development, commercial development, that CC is intended for, kind of big retail, and the neighborhood commercial is the smaller scale stuff. So in those two districts, there are incredibly strong incentives for any redevelopment of those properties. to either maintain or grow the amount of commercial development on the site. What we didn't want to create was a dynamic in which the draft LUMO increased the residential development potential for those sites to the point that we would see like a net loss in commercial development in town um it would be a real shame for some of these neighborhood commercial locations to redevelop and lose that commercial component and so what the the draft lumo includes is a set of provisions that basically says um If you're growing or maintaining the amount of commercial development on that site, you get a massive increase in your floor area ratio. But if you want to redevelop it and just do residential development, you could do it, but you're stuck with a very low floor area ratio, which is basically the existing, like today's floor area ratio. So it's a really strong incentive pushing people towards mixed use development.

Thank you. That's it.

Council Member Sharp, followed by Council Member Rivers. Hi.

I want to go back to what Council Member Ryan was asking about, about the step backs. It is so hard not to say setbacks and step backs when you meet one or the other.

Step backs.

I pulled up somewhere, and I cannot remember where that the required step back in the town center districts is three feet I Can double check for that that doesn't sound off base three to four feet would be appropriate is that standard I?

There's no real standard. We see step backs ranging from, I'd say, 3 to 4 feet to 10 to 15 feet. There are examples in town of very different ranges of step backs. The Graduate Hotel is a great example of a more moderate step back. They're probably in the 8 to 10 foot range. Whereas 140 West has like probably a 40-foot step back in their facade, which is obviously too extreme. So three to four feet is kind of an opportunity to have some articulation in the building facade without, and this is where that balancing act comes into play, without significantly sacrificing the amount of kind of buildable floor area that you'd be able to take advantage of.

Yeah, so I think I echo Council Member Ryan's interest in that, for me, step backs are less about visual differentiation on the facade of a big building than they are about sort of light and air and making sure we don't have that canyon, start making those canyon. And I also have some concern that we don't tend to see those. But it seems to me like we are actively creating the environment in which we would see more of those. And I think that's sort of part of the intent. So I'm wondering a little bit. Well, some of this I'll save for a comment. But I did want to ask that about the step back. But then also. They can just not do any, correct? Because they can just put a band of a different material at that same height and just not do anything. That's right. In terms of creating that sense of space so that as you're walking next to it, it feels like a less tall building than it otherwise might.

yeah and so that's in service of this this really wonky architectural term called a datum line this idea that when when we look across kind of a streetscape it's very just like instinctively pleasing to the eye to see some level of kind of uniformity of what the the different buildings kind of how they're organized. They don't all have to be the same height, but something that just kind of is a through line across different buildings. It's very pleasing to folks. And so that's an interest that we're trying to advance with some of these alternatives to the Step Back. I think it might also be helpful, and we can work on some graphics that help to describe this, but one of the really key things to be mindful of when thinking about the potential benefit of step backs is the ratio of the width of the street that a building is fronting and the height of that building. You see step backs having a really meaningful impact when that ratio really airs in favor of tall buildings on narrow streets. That's where you see the most benefit from more significant step backs because they really do meaningfully give you more sky, right? You look up and the step back literally kind of parts the buildings and gives you more access to sunlight and just sky. in chapel hills context where at most we're talking about six or seven story buildings maybe the odd eight story building um on relatively wide streets the like marginal gain that you get from stepping those building facades back a couple more feet is marginal. It's less impactful than it would be in a different context. And so we can definitely provide some diagrams maybe that help illustrate that dynamic a little bit better.

Yes. And you had a slide where you showed all the different things you're doing to encourage a walkable pedestrian realm. And you had the trees there. And I'm wondering if there's any way, because I'm thinking, I think in particular because I am in this space a lot, I park at the new Rosemary Deck. I walk across the street past the launch thing up and behind all the buildings to get to my restaurant that fronts on Franklin Street. I find that area walking between our parking deck, which how many stories is the parking deck?

Four?

Seven? The parking deck is seven stories? The new one. The new one.

The only one people should park.

Yeah, right. The lovely, nice, new parking deck. Seven stories. And then launch across the street. Well, it's tall. It's higher than four stories. So let's go with seven. Seven stories.

Taz just looked at us like we were insane.

Yeah. There was a lot of blinking. There was a lot of blinking that just happened on Taz's part. And then the launch across the street. Does anyone know how many stories that is? I don't know. I think the launch is more in the six or seven. Six or seven. So even at the six and seven story, since I'm in that space a lot, it's dark. It's really dark. There's no vegetation. It's really unpleasant. I try to kind of get out of that space as fast as I possibly can. And it's generally almost always in shadow. And there's a lot of concrete, a lot of glass, not a lot of vegetation. And so if we are going to be allowing buildings, again, this is only six and seven story buildings, not eight and 10. And I think most of our town center allows for, there's a lot of 120 foot allowances and we don't have that core height situation anymore. So it's all like right there on the street. I'm wondering what else we can do like requiring planting of trees and other vegetation and landscaping things even in town center districts that would help with that feeling of being in sort of like a windswept glass concrete post-apocalyptic. I mean, it's not pleasant right there. It really isn't. And it's interesting. I know we've all been getting a lot of emails about parking and the Wallace Deck and stuff. The Wallace Deck is across from an open. Anyway, I want to know what we can do to mitigate situations like that particular block if we are going to allow these really I mean, it really is quite a bit taller buildings without a lot of variation required on the facade. So that's one piece. I'd love to look into that. And then with the outdoor amenity part, can you help me understand exactly what we're requiring 10% outdoor amenity in these buildings? town center spaces. So for instance, like Carolina Square, that's the one right there by the Target, right? You drive in there and there's like a little grass area in the middle of around about, would that count as an outdoor amenity space? And if it does, I can think of a number or Green Bridge, the apartments, and they have that sort of, I don't know what you would call it, What would you call it? Plaza. Thank you. That's a good word for it. Neither of those are particularly activated or useful outdoor amenity spaces, but I think they would probably meet the requirements of how we've written this out. So what can we do to get more Weaver Street outdoor amenity spaces and less plot of grass in the middle of a roundabout outdoor amenity spaces? So I'd really like to see us beef up some of that as we allow for this much denser town center stuff. So if you could come back to us with some ideas about that, I'd really appreciate it.

Yeah. Two quick things I'll just mention. And this is probably my own fault in which bucket I put things. So street trees. are going to be a major part of the new Lumos kind of design requirements. They're arguably also an environmental thing, so I think they're in next week's discussion. But the street tree requirement is going to apply in all zoning districts, including downtown. So new plantings downtown are going to become kind of a requirement that's baked into the ordinance. So to your point of bringing some more vegetation downtown and making sure that it's not just about trying to hang on to what we've currently got down there. That's huge. That's going to be a major element of the new regs. When it comes to the amenity space requirement, I think you're totally right that the area of Green Bridge and Carolina Square would likely be counted as amenity space. There are some additional standards in the draft that speak to the interest that you mentioned of how do we kind of activate those a little bit more. There's some mandatory tree planting requirements, so they can't just be a barren space. There have been classes after classes of planning students at UNC that study the 140 West Plaza and how to make that better. And one of the key drawbacks is that because it's built over a parking deck, we can't plant trees in that plaza. That's an issue that the amenity space requirement looks to address. There would have to be some vegetation, including trees. Some requirements around seating, some tools to make it a more active space. And then ultimately, we know it's all about let's challenge developers to make good use of their property. mandating kind of good design is really difficult.

I'm recognizing that it is ultimately their property and it's a private. It's a private property. Sorry.

That it ultimately is private property. So we are restrained on how we can require them to continue to program that property. Because sometimes when we say activation, we mean programming. And that's a little different than the built environment.

Yeah, for me it's definitely just like, do people want to go sit there and eat their lunch, and are they going to linger and chat and spend time there, or is it just, again, like wasted space? Okay, if there was a way that you could come back to us with sort of like an aggregated group of these design things that make us feel better, I'm sure they are buried in the Lumo and I have missed them, but it's also kind of hard to piece them all together through the different... So that kind of gets to my last question for you, which is that one thing I'm finding really difficult in this review is because different things, different interests, like tree canopy, stormwater, density, et cetera, are mandated along different lines. I am struggling to wrap my head around What do all of these different things come together to look like in a particular place in town? And I wonder, is it possible for us to get one giant table or something, or however you feel that we could get the information to us that would help us and the public understand better, rather than trying to be like, OK, this is R1, and they're this much density. OK, wait, but if it's this type and this, how much stormwater are they trying? Wait, what does this mean about design? Where does the parking go? I think it is really hard right now to understand how this all plays out on the ground, because it's all. And I'm sure you all are hamstrung by the planning conventions and how these things are written. But in the interest of user friendliness, could we possibly get something? This is sort of like just raising my voice at the end to make this a question. But could we possibly get something that helps us understand this all at once?

I think we can definitely look into it. The goal is to make this as accessible to you all as possible. I'll also just plug, happy to sit down and kind of talk about this in more detail, like how the different pieces fit together. But understand that doesn't meet the interest of the general public being able to put all the pieces together. So we can definitely look into some options. I will say it's tough. Even the notion, like you mentioned, of a giant table. I fear that that would confuse more than it would help. But there might be some version of that that we could put together that could be meaningful.

OK. Thank you. Can I just kind of piggyback on that really briefly? And then Councilmember Rivers, I have not forgotten about you. So if I think about a couple visuals that would be really helpful, like I walk that parking deck to the junction also regularly. And I guess I'm just wondering if there's a way to, on examples like that, say if this was built under the draft LUMO, what would it look like? Or how would it be different from what is there now in terms of tree canopy, I guess? It's like, you know, in terms of, that public realm or that feeling. And I know that that is also a place that is in flux and that will look a lot better once some things happen. So I don't need it to be so forward looking that it all needs to totally be coherent. But I guess what I'm wondering is if for things like street trees, which I think is of real interest and people feel like is really important. Is there a way to show some examples of some places of what would happen? Because right now, it doesn't feel great. So is it possible? Or can you just tell us if you know it in the weird recesses of your mind that has a lot of LUMO information? I mean, if you know it, that's great. But if there's a way to give us some sort of how it was and how it would be under the new rules.

I think we can definitely think about some ways to visualize some of this stuff. One, just fear in the back of my head is as soon as we visualize, there's a risk of over-promising, that there's some embellishment, some artistic flourish that wasn't strictly a regulatory element. And we certainly don't want to over-represent what sort of design the LUMO could bring about. Because it is really about mandating certain core building blocks, but then creating enough flexibility that there's still artistic creativity and interpretation behind that.

I think although we could give you Examples of certain elements, I think the hard part is this oversimplification that we could do it on one site. Because two sites on town can have the exact same regulations and they're going to present totally different projects. Not just because of two people, two different entities developing them, but they're each going to have their special constraints where they're allowed to have a certain density and they're required to have a certain tree canopy, but they can't keep that many trees on this site because of this element that's there. And so it's hard to give you this is what it would look like under the new LUMO, because we just can't guarantee that. And so it's hard to set an expectation of a perfect storm of one example. But we could think about how maybe, as we're talking through some elements, that we could give you some kind of visual. That would be great.

I don't even need a picture in the places where it's going to misrepresent, right? Exactly. But if it's like, oh. the what would downtown look like with the new street tree requirements it's either that it has none right now or it has some requirement right and so i think even that is helpful i know you're not going to promise where the trees will go And like what if you know I get it, but I guess like some kind of Previous for you know current versus what it would what how it would be different would be helpful, but that's just kind of an add-on Councilmember Rivers followed by councilmember Miller Fushi Yeah, thanks y'all for the work and the relatively pain painless presentation Taz was sitting.

I was concerned when I saw you sitting. I was like, all right, what are we about to do here? So thanks for that, and thanks for all the hard work over the summer. My question is more of a process question. I'm glad Taz is here, and maybe the council wants to step in. But what's the process for us making changes to the draft? So right now, I see a lot of discussion around the draft, but I'm not sure what is the process for us making collective changes to the draft. And then, so that's my first question. And then my second question is, it kind of falls on what Councilman Sharp and Mayor Anderson said. I just feel like it's still hard to get at this question of trade-offs. So I don't even want to zone down into a property. I want to think about larger trade-offs. So for me, a trade-off that I think about a lot is we want to encourage this city, but Density may not fit because of stormwater concerns in certain parts of town. So how are we thinking about those trade-offs within the document? So how are we going to discuss those trade-offs, and how are we going to have a decision process where we actually make changes in this draft as a collective?

So the The cleanest and most appropriate place for counsel as a collective to make changes to the draft is through the official legislative process. That's when the motions can start flying of move to amend, xyz, to reflect this or that. We know that that can be really cumbersome, but it's also the most I promised I'd lock it down. It can be, on some scale, cumbersome to awful. But it is the most appropriate and necessary way to do it.

Can I follow up on that notion? Yeah, that's going to stink. But I think we can structure it in a way where it won't stink. If we can have work sessions, and it's going to stretch it out, because I'm not sure if what I want to do can happen in the timeline. But if we can have work sessions where we have the discussion, kind of like what we did with the amendment. So here's a set of things that council's concerned about, or we think we need to see changes. We have a work session to actually discuss those issues. And then in the meeting, we come and do the votes. Because I'm concerned if we try to do it from the dais, it'll be a mess, like you're suggesting.

And I will say the other intent of having these informal discussions is, as Councilmember Sharp mentioned earlier, the goal is to put a document in front of you that most of you want to adopt. And so if we get some very clear direction as part of informal discussions, it's something that we can consider. It's obviously not we want to be mindful of this other kind of concern of pre-legislating, but it's something that we can consider. Are there some changes that we can make? to what even gets put in front of you as part of the legislative process that reflect kind of a consensus of council.

And how would that work? What's the tipping point in these informal conversations from something going from, like, one council member's concerned about it to, like, hey, we probably need to change this draft? So you need... No, like, should we be taking, like... So if we take, like... friendly votes to see how much someone's like say someone says like I think this is important to me we have some conversation about it then if we take a vote that says like hey we want to see this change in the draft that's what y'all need to see We can't call it a vote, but a straw vote, a poll.

Council Member Rivers, in answer to your question, for example, we're here in a public meeting, but nothing stops you individually from speaking with different council members on thoughts they have regarding certain provisions in the LUMO. If you were to have conversations separately over the course of this process where you land in a space that says, hey, I'm concerned about X, Y, and Z, and my understanding that a majority of us actually share that concern, too. And we would like some alternatives presented to us, perhaps in a work session. At that point, it would be very appropriate for you to approach the manager or perhaps the mayor and say, I've talked to folks. We're concerned about this. And we would like that added to the agenda as a specific item. We could add it to a work session that's already calendared out or new additional dates. In answer to your point, you're right. It's not one council member's interest. But certainly, if there's three of you that are concerned about something, then that's probably other folks are having those same concerns too, I would think. And so that's the way that I would recommend going about doing it. Also, you could do it in an open motion hearing. It just depends on how you as a council member would choose to advance your interest.

So sorry, Manager Voorhees, go ahead. Well, yes.

And I think that this is the beginning of the beginning of the beginning, where we're having these informal conversations. We're starting to digest the concerns from the public. We're hearing each other, and I think we're starting to say, hey, here's a few issues that need more thought. Here's a few issues where it seems like maybe some alternatives might be starting to come to be. So just having this meeting and a similar meeting at your next meeting I think will help reveal to all of us, what are the boundaries of discussion? Is it a whole lot of things, or a handful of things, or what kind of categories are those things? And while it still seems Not linear, maybe, but I think there's an organic learning that's coming where that can help us frame those next meetings up as, all right, well, obviously there's interest in this bundle of topics. Let's go back to those and start to see if we can get clarity. So we're here to help you structure those next meetings and see if things evolve to where we can put alternatives in front of you. Or perhaps you're going to have some that come to your attention from others or amongst yourselves, and you'll put them forward for us to evaluate and give you the professional pros and cons from our position. I wish I could say it was a very clear linear process, but this is such a large thing. I think we need some time for this sort of organic set of discussions and interests to happen. If we get all that right, we'll be much closer to a formal document that you're kind of ready to move through the formal legislative process, where perhaps then it really is just a handful of amendments that may still remain. But we can do the bigger work with you together over the next several weeks before you have to be making specific amendments. That's kind of what's in my head. I don't know if that was helpful or more confusing, but I thought I'd put it out there.

Well, I guess I think it would be helpful for us to just agree within the limits of our attorney's guidance about ways that we want to push forward something. And I thought we were past pre-legislating. I thought we had let that go as much as possible so that counsel could do our work. So please, don't take us back there, because I don't like that place. I guess within the bounds of what is appropriate, I think it would be very helpful to have some way for council to make some choices about things we would like to request more information or would like to request some sort of modification mostly. If we have to go through some terrible making motions and doing the whole thing in the legislative hearing, I'm happy to do it. But I just feel like then we are potentially asking you to do things that you have no time to react to, which doesn't seem like a great collaboration or very smart. I guess I would much rather be able to have some way of conveying council interest along the way, as opposed to like, because I do think we get a little, I get unclear myself about what we've agreed to at points. And so having some clear way of doing that and having people be able to be in public and stating what they care about or what they want, I think, is also important for transparency's sake. So I heard we could make motions or do a straw poll? Certainly.

Yes, that's correct. The thing to keep in mind, though, if we do make a motion, for example, we would like such and such provision change or alternatives brought to you, we can do that just by taking a temperature. It doesn't have to be a formal motion. Theoretically, even if you were to make a motion and everyone would vote unanimously on it, that wouldn't be binding for the legislative process. Yeah. And so it can be the temperature taking. It can be instruction from the dais if the majority of you are interested in that. Or it can be the more informal process I laid out earlier.

So if y'all are OK with it, I would recommend that we do, I'll try my best to collect things that have come up. And then if I don't hit them, obviously let me know. But then we can just do kind of a straw poll so that we can get the temperature. Does that sound reasonable to folks?

Yeah? Mayor Pro Tem Berry?

Thank you. A few of the concerns that I've heard tonight will be addressed in the next meeting. And I want to make sure that we give staff a chance to discuss it fully with us and that we're not trying to, I don't know what you're thinking about proposing, but from what I've heard and what you've referenced, I get the impression that you're talking about something that has been promised to us for all of us to discuss. And I don't wish to do a straw poll, I'm opposed to that, until we hear the full presentation.

next week i think it's on the items on on this one is that i i i literally just want to know the process for making changes like i don't have a no i don't have a motion right now i have like i want to know how we're going to make changes council member noller um you

Yeah, I think probably we've come too close to the end of this rabbit hole. But I just wanted to make a remark briefly of, to the extent folks are willing to consider it, if you do end up having conversations, you choose to have them with colleagues, and you think you've got five on something, I think it might be helpful. We might appreciate, even if folks are like, hey, I'm not with you on this, dropping everyone. Great to email the mayor, email the manager, but a heads up for everyone of like, just so you know, I think I got to five on this. It's something I would appreciate having time to sort of adjust to like, okay, this thing, you know, maybe I have a different opinion and I'm going to lose on this one, but I can kind of come to terms with that or whatever needs to happen, you know, eat an extra tiramisu slice or whatever has to go on.

Yeah, I think Councilmember Nolik gets my point. I want to have some type of clear process where we all feel like we're not getting surprised. So that's why I want to have a clear process. Yeah, I'm glad what you said. Because the email, do we call you Attorney Baker? Or can we call you Joe?

You can call me either. Thank you.

OK. So I agree we could kind of do the email thing. But then it becomes like a game of phone tag, or tin cans or whatever, depending on your age. um but yeah i like what you said councilman dollar and i don't have a motion for tonight i just i know we're going to want to make changes and the sooner we can get that process agreed upon the better it will be for all of us so do you all have a preference or something different than what i've suggested I prefer the kind of straw poll. I know it may be cumbersome, but I think doing it by email, I think we do one or another. I don't like the idea of doing both. So let's choose. I don't know how other people feel. I would say .

Yeah. Councilmember McMahon?

Thanks. I really want to get to Paris's questions here. But since we're talking about it, I'm on board for whatever we do. I do want to put out there that Orange County's process where they have amendments that are put out ahead of time before meetings and there's a sponsor. It was really helpful for me as a county resident to be able to see what was going to be proposed for an amendment publicly during the budget process. their budget process but um i think longer term when we get to our budget process or maybe it could work here this idea that if you're going to make amendments we don't do it at 2 p.m on the night of a meeting that they could be constructed and put out beforehand so they could be known publicly and then easily researched and commented on. So my request would be for all of us to look at how the county does it, to find out what restrictions there would be for us doing it, and if it would be a fit for us as a process at some point.

And you mean more generally just how we do our work, or do you mean LUMO?

LUMO or somewhere where we're going to need amendments to a major project that would have us negotiating live in a meeting late at night versus having the amendments previously outlined visibly showing support for those amendments publicly.

Gotcha.

OK. Is this on this topic?

Yeah.

It is on topic. Of course. Right. I like having as much as we know on the table when we start discussions. But I also think that it's very important that we keep our minds and the process open for the evolution of thinking during the discussion because, and Council Member Berry has very good points about this kind of thing, is that we can change what we think. Somebody may come in and say, well, I've talked to four other people and I think we should do X, and one person may say, did you think about this regarding X? And everybody goes, oh, and if you come in thinking, We got five votes for x, and by golly, we're just going to do it. We have to maintain that opportunity for us to grow and learn through these discussions, because that is why we're here.

So just to finish this up, I'm happy for us to consider other ways. I think tonight, since we don't have something else in place, I'm going to recommend that we do a little bit of straw polling just to not lose whatever people are feeling tonight. And then I think we can figure out governance for future meetings. Is that OK? Great. Council Member Miller-Foushee, followed by Council Member McMahon.

Great, thank you. I just want to say thank you to staff for providing the update on manufactured homes, that report that you gave us in May. And I'm bringing that up because it brings me forward to, I believe it's Section 5, Article 5, the use provisions. And I'm trying to get my thoughts together so it's an actual question. But in that report for manufactured homes, one of the things that you all stated that you explored zoning protections. And given the significant limitations we have with zoning authorities, like we really didn't have very meaningful regulatory tools to address things like displacement. And so what I'm hearing from community members around some of the zoning changes that we want to make, displacement is front and center. When I look at, for instance, The definition, the use definitions around the occupancy limits and what the exceptions are there and the classification of like rooming housing, for instance. Some of the concerns that I'm hearing from community members is definitions in the LUMO will trigger tax implications. And so as we are rezoning things and developers are able to come in and have commercial units within residential, but other folks who are long-term residents, what the implications are for taxes for them with these commercial properties is a real concern as it pertains to the zoning changes that we're making. And so I'm really interested in knowing what you all are thinking about that, what that means moving forward for us, and for us to be thinking about that as well. We know that in certain residential areas, like the Northside community, that's a real challenge that long-term residents are facing. And I know it's something that also dovetails with what the county is also working on. And so I'm really interested in knowing how you all have been thinking about that, what some of these use definitions mean, both with the development themselves, but also how it dovetails with things like tax.

The tax question is a really interesting one, and it's one that I learned more about tax valuation than I ever thought I would a couple of years ago when the council was considering some missing middle housing reforms, because I think it was a similar set of concerns there as well. So I've had some good conversations. And kind of looking back now at conversations from a couple of years ago, but I've had some good conversations with Orange County tax staff and the process that they go through when they're considering revaluing property. And by and large, just changing the zoning designation for a property isn't going to have major tax implications as far as they're concerned. What they're going to be looking at is sales data. What value does the market place on a particular property? and they aggregate that sales data over you know the four-year revaluation period and Zoning might come into play when they're looking at like comparable properties, so they wouldn't look at for example oh a property in a town center zoning district sold for a certain price and They wouldn't look at that and say that that's relevant to the valuation of a property in like a residential three, an R3 zoning district. But they would think about, What does the sales activity suggest is the value of a property? And obviously, the potential value for a buyer is going to be very different based on what zoning says you can do with the property. So I think that's kind of the chain of events that can lead changes in zoning to, over time, lead to changes in tax value that If we say there are different uses, not necessarily higher and better uses, but just different uses, that might over time start to get priced in to what somebody's willing to pay for that property. And that then has an impact on tax valuation. So it is definitely not speculative at all. It is a very clear chain of events.

Thank you for that. That also leads me to, and I'm glad that our economic developer is here, director is here, as we're thinking about growth How do we grow without displacement? I know that we have the powers to up zone certain things, and that may be an interest of ours. But if we are really looking for our economic development, like really be able to focus on local folks, I'm wondering, it's that trade-off, right? We want this benefit. Here's the trade-off, and I like to call them the tensions. How do we continue to think about, and now I feel like I'm making a comment, so I'm going to try to ask a question at the end. But how do we continue to think about, as a body moving forward, the displacement of local businesses? And I'm thinking specifically about our downtown area, because we want to make sure that our local folks are able to thrive. So I'm wondering how you all are thinking about that and exploring that, and if you all can bring some of your thoughts that you all have about some of that growth without displacement. Thank you.

Council Member McMahon?

Thank you. A couple quick things, first of all. Regarding process, I know back when we accepted petitions, we would receive and refer them, and staff would provide a response. I appreciate all the emails we're getting from folks and then how staff is forwarding and making sure that we see them. But a lot of the questions there that we should answer, that I would like to answer, I don't know the exact details of. And I would be looking for you to help find the answer to that. So my question would be, do you plan to provide answers to those questions in addition to providing us the questions that people send in?

To the extent that you are. be a tremendous strain on resources if we made any sort of promises that we would offer comprehensive answers to all the questions that are being asked through email. It could be done, but it would require really significant time and resources. Yeah, I understand that.

Maybe if there are some themes or something that keep coming in, we could provide an official response, just because I want to make sure that It's hard for me to respond to everything, right? And it's hard for us to respond to everything at the same time. I know people have concerns that aren't going to bubble up necessarily to the dais. But I still feel like there needs to be a way that we acknowledge their comment. And then also, this is why we're not going that particular direction. Again, helping explain the trade-offs that we're making to people that are concerned about it. A question is how we might, as a group, be able to respond to a lot of the comments that people are sending in that would ease the burden on everybody.

I've got a little bit of a response to that, Council Member McMahon. So staff generally doesn't respond to public comment. However, in the questions and comments that we're getting related to LUMO, as we see, as you mentioned, themes and things that we can speak to, we do try to add items to our FAQ page on the website. we can add questions and things that we're hearing and try to give feedback on some of those. Because we are hearing a lot of the same types of questions. So we do have those opportunities. But yes, it would be a huge drain if we started trying to respond to all the comments.

And part of it, too, is coming out of these conversations, and then the answers come out here, and then doing my job to make sure that people are answered as well. Another question is, I think this might be the place, I don't know if it's the place, but what kind of uses we would restrict in some of these areas, and primarily I'm thinking about Orange County has an ordinance that bans vape shops, tobacco shops within 1,000 feet of schools. Does that, I would like to know how that applies within Chapel Hill, and if it doesn't apply or is insufficient, if there's a way that we could look at banning vape shops near schools, essentially. I think that's an important issue. So my question is to figure out how the Orange County ordinance would apply within Chapel Hill, and if it's something we want to or not address in this limo. You don't have to answer that right now. That's just a question.

Yeah, I'd say for the second part of the question, totally up to you all. If we get that clear direction from you all, we can definitely look into it. Orange County's zoning doesn't apply in town limits. So that is only for areas outside of the municipal ETJ.

Can you pull up the collector and artillery roadmap for me, please, to the meat of my questions, which I will try to keep as questions?

It's a very small map on the plantation. Oh, on yours? All right. Well, if I can.

No, no. You've seen it 100 times, and hopefully people in the public have seen it as well. Some questions that you may not be able to answer, but I want to ask them anyhow. When were these public works designations made? And I'm particularly thinking of like, I can see in Southwark Village, the Collector Road designations had to have made after Southern Village was made. And looking at Willow Drive or just some of these roads, I'd be very curious to find out what Chapel Hill looked like when those roads were determined to be collector roads, if that information is available. And looking And looking at when they were applied, if you look at Rosemary downtown as a collector road, let's say perhaps Umstead as a collector. Compared to streets within Southern Village or Willow Drive within Briarcliff or Lakeshore Drive, for example, were people looking at a map and saying, these are collector roads on even scale with the right appropriateness? Do they serve the same function? I'm just curious how those designations were created. because they look like very different types of neighborhoods to me. And it would be curious to learn when the determinations were made and if they were like how it was staged out, kind of as we think about how these roads became designated as collectors. I think the history would be important to me. And that might have been a better email question, but it's something I'd like to learn more about. As we look at these collector roads, Oh, yeah, I mean, you know other council members have an interest also in understanding Yeah, the street designations right and you know I think for my next question That will tie into comments probably but let me ask the question now Can is there a way we could look at separating out the arterial roads from the collector roads? Is there a way that we could? apply the additional density looking at other factors in the zoning or overlay process? Because the collector road status doesn't factor in access to transit. It doesn't factor in proximity to schools. Another criteria that I think could be factored into making this decision. So is there a way that we could separate out the arterial roads, which on the surface may deem themselves to be a higher transit corridor initially versus the collector roads. Is there a way we could apply that designation in a zoning process versus in the LUMO? What would be a timeline for developing those criteria? And then how would it work as far as connecting with the LUMO process? So I think I'll have more questions when I get to comments, but just trying to figure out. Well, I mean, the comment will be as a question, but kind of like, how can we find a way to not use collector roads as the sole determining criteria? And if we want to pursue other criteria, how can we look at a map and identify access to transit, access to schools, that would create a difference between the southern village, for example, and other roads that might have more of the criteria applied to where it's appropriate. So a zoning overlay type of situation.

Yeah, so there are a lot of different ways that we could tackle this particular problem. The idea of using arterials and collectors as any sort of organizing feature comes from two notions. One, we do want to make sure that there's a good connection, like crosstalk, between our transportation network and our land use patterns. That's the non-negotiable. There needs to be that good connection. The arterial and collector designation is really a convenience. It's an existing set of designations that we've got on the books today, and it allows Council to kind of move the ball forward If you so choose based on this convenient, but very admittedly imperfect set of designations, right? It allows you to move the ball forward as part of the Lumo adoption itself and then you get the opportunity with the zoning map adoption because remember the We're not, we talk about the adoption of the LUMO is like an end. It is, in the manager's words, the beginning of another beginning, right? It's the beginning of the public process around the updated zoning map. The updated zoning map becomes this opportunity, as you mentioned, to think even more critically about the appropriate uses on a particular property. Think about areas where maybe the R1 plus the collector bonus Actually, maybe that doesn't go far enough, right? Maybe there is clear guidance from complete community and the future land use map and other elements of the comprehensive plan that an increase in the zoning designation from R1 to R2 or R3 makes good sense. And so that's an additional level of granularity that we will get into. And the great thing about that is that Those lines, those boundaries of zoning districts, we have so much more flexibility and freedom in how we draw those lines. So where we go with the arterial collector designation is entirely a matter of y'all's comfort. It is something that we can move forward. It creates some opportunities, but it is an imperfect system. We could look at pulling out some of it, just focusing on arterials right now, because I think there is the most clean That's probably the designation that there is the least doubt about, the least variety. There is a lot of variety among collector streets. Streets that look very different on the ground are all labeled collectors. And so it is painting with a broad brush. And so if you all want to get more granular, there's definitely an opportunity to do that, even as part of this process.

Great. Thank you.

I have a few questions and then we'll move to public comment. First of all, I agree with Councilmember McMahon on just the arterial makes sense to me. The collector doesn't, so I would love that. But we can do a straw poll later. Another, I guess, area of interest for me is the differentiated design standards for different zones. And I think we got answers to council questions, but I was working today, so sorry. But I guess I remember at the beginning of this process, like back in the Stone Age, when we talked about having some differentiation partially so that Places could feel different from each other and so there would be better sense of place and it then it doesn't necessarily look like we have a lot of Differentiation, but maybe I'm not understanding. So if you could help me understand that one and Whether there are focus area or kind of district specific design standards obviously downtown is a key one but I think there are some other ones too and

Yeah, so the variation is at the district level. So when you look at basically that first half of Article II, I'd really recommend that you look at the PDF in the two-page views. You're looking at side-by-side pages. When you're looking at the districts in particular, it lets you see all the standards for one district in kind of one spread. And so when you kind of flip through districts, there will be variation in some of those key design features, things like obviously building height is kind of an obvious thing to be different between districts. But you'll also see variation in building width, in transparency requirements. All of those kind of get calibrated and adjusted based on district. You're not wrong, Mary Anderson, that when we originally talked about how that kind of ecosystem of design standards was going to look, we had kind of more in the abstract kind of developed this notion of we would have differences based on focus area, differences based on street type, based on zoning district, and then even buildings like development specific standards. Once we started moving from more abstract discussions about that to, let's actually try to codify it, it became so unwieldy that we really had to refocus and take a much more streamlined approach. And that's where we settled on, let's have some meaningful differences between the districts, but not try to layer on additional organizing pieces there.

And the design manual is a place where some of that nuance also happens.

it is so the design manual i think the the best way to think about it um the thing that kind of comes up for us the most often are like trees right the lumo says how many trees you need to plant the design manual tells you you need to dig a hole that's this deep and this wide and put you know this amount of soil in it make sure that there are it really gets down into the nitty-gritty And one of the things that the draft LUMO does, we rarely, if ever, want to pull content from something like a design manual and bring it into an ordinance, but what the LUMO can do is be very clear that the standards in the design manual must be followed, that they're not just recommendations. And that's something that we're doing with the LUMO.

OK, that's awesome. A next question for you is, when it comes to those buy-write numbers, like the thresholds, I understand, I guess, the policy rationale for what the thresholds are. But I guess I'm still not seeing the empirical basis for why these numbers were chosen. I understand we're trying to hit that sweet spot of administrative efficiency while still getting what we want, given the limitations on us. And so I guess I'm wondering, like, Is there historical permitting data? Or is there a built-out capacity study or comparable benchmarking from other jurisdictions? How did we arrive at this place where we're saying this is generally the right number? And I know it can't be perfect, or that some of it has to be an estimation, or we're trying to go a little bit above where we know people will do certain things or behave in certain ways around development. I guess, how did we even get where we are with a margin of error?

Yeah, so it was two different sets of considerations for the residential thresholds and then the non-residential thresholds. For the residential threshold, the two most important elements were some economic analysis that we had commissioned a couple of years ago now that basically asked this question of, how small is too small for development to be able to provide affordable housing? Because when we talk about residential development, the most important community benefit that it can provide beyond just the fact that any residential development is a benefit in and of itself, there's this additional community benefit of affordable housing. And so we started with this question of how small is too small. That analysis from a couple of years ago resulted in this mid-teens number for us. But knowing that that analysis is imperfect, we have seen already in the last couple of years these massive spikes in construction costs. We wanted to just build in a solid margin of error. So we got that mid-teens number from the economic analysis. Then we looked, to your point of the kind of historical data, we looked at conditional zonings, basically since we started doing residential conditional zonings back in 2018. Because the other thing that we didn't want to do was kind of cannibalize from that world of conditional zonings. So we looked at conditional zonings. The smallest residential conditional zoning project that was not purpose-built affordable housing. So there were two purpose-built affordable housing projects that had to go through conditional zonings, Gaddis Court at four units and Peach Apartments at 10 units. Once you get past those outliers, the smallest residential conditional zoning since 2018 stand at place, a 47-unit townhome project. And so that started to give us kind of these parameters, right, of we've got this low number of how small is too small. Then we've got the lower end of the conditional zoning kind of universe of projects. um and and 30 kind of slotted in uh in a comfortable way um and then we thought about well how do we close the gap between 30 and 47 and so we'll talk about more next week that's where these affordable housing incentives come into play right so the 30 unit kind of at baseline project that meets our affordable housing uh kind of expectations for incentives could basically get up to 48 units. It closes that gap with conditional zoning, but only if it provides that critical community benefit. So that was the thought process around how we got to 30 for residential development. We obviously ratcheted up in some other zoning districts. And the idea there was just kind of a best judgment of what are some meaningful increments that we can move up from 30. But there wasn't more specific economic analysis on that front. The commercial element was really more just a temperature check in appetite. I think this was probably two years ago now where we basically had kind of a series of slides where we said, here's what existing 40,000 square foot commercial development in Chapel Hill looks like. It's of a scale that, yeah, if that sort of building were to pop up without a ton of council involvement, without significant public input, it's a small enough building that it would be, fairly unobjectionable, especially when you add on some of these new design standards. So off the top of my head, I think some of the examples we shared at that 40,000 threshold, the shopping center on South Elliott that includes Tanya's and Feeders, and the building on Franklin Street that includes Top of the Hill. Those are both in that 40,000, 50,000 square foot range. And then we moved up from there. That's the baseline. And then we kind of incrementally move up from there. And that's really just an exercise in what feels like an appropriate scale of development. One of the only clear threshold benchmarks that we were able to find in terms of communities in North Carolina that have, in the same way that we do, kind of explicit numbers of here's a limit that you can't go beyond before you're kicked into a council approval. This was early on. But at the time, at least, Asheville had 100,000 square foot commercial limit in many of their zoning districts. I don't want to say all or most, because I'm not certain about it. But many of their zoning districts had 100,000 square foot commercial limit. And I think the consensus at the time was that was too extreme for many of our zoning districts. There are some, like the industrial district that's included in the draft, that would surpass that by a little bit, go up to 120,000.

That's really helpful. My only other one is just I wanted to ask if we could have kind of similar visuals for next week for the housing for the our zone density changes if we could get. It's just really helpful I think to be able to kind of see what like beyond the numbers but like units per lot is abstract, but when we see it a little more and not so that you have to potentially misrepresent anything, but really just the actual building footprints or some way to understand what it'll look like and what it'll feel like to people, I think that will help us, but it'll also really make sure the public can see what we're considering and what it means. So I don't know if you can... Create kind of visuals that way, but that would be very helpful.

Yeah, I think a couple of simple visuals are definitely possible they'll be kind of Like sketchy right like we won't be able to incorporate all of the development constraints for a site but just that notion of at a high level yeah accepting the general Generalizations we have to make yeah, I think we could definitely do that.

Okay. That would be great Councilmember Miller-Fishy

Thank you, Mayor. I'm sorry, I forgot a question that I had. We are getting a lot of feedback from community members about mapping overlays, and I'm really interested in knowing with this process, with the zoning, how common that is to use mapping overlays as we're thinking about zoning, the benefits of that, the limitations, and just how it just fits into the process. that you all are going through, that we are going through, but also how our technical analysis that each development has to go through, how some of that work also speaks to some of the interest with these mapping overlays to understand typography and stormwater and all of the other things, how the technical analysis could potentially maybe be have its limitations, but also have benefits that maybe a mapping overlay may or may not have. I'm just really trying to understand some of the interests that community members are showing that I've also heard from some of my colleagues. That would be really helpful for me.

Yeah. I think best practice of the situation or set of circumstances in which you would use an overlay zoning district is when there's some There's some characteristic that you want to be able to account for across a town that kind of transcends the other ways in which you want to organize the town. So it's literally an overlay district because it's intended to sit on top of all of your other zoning districts. So an overlay district could be of a totally different shape than the underlying zoning district. It could end up covering properties that are in three or four different zoning districts, because it's intended to address some other set of characteristics. So things like environmental issues are definitely something that, when you talk about what's something that transcends the other ways in which we're organizing the community, environmental issues are a clear example. We, the draft, does not currently include any new overlay districts. So if there's an interest in creating those, again, it would be some significant time and resources to put something like that together. So kind of up to y'all's prerogative as to whether that is part of this process, whether it comes later. It's all doable. It's just a matter of what's kind of the clear direction and the trade-offs in terms of the time for the process.

I think my question is getting at the technical analysis as well. Each project has to go through that. And so I think that's what I'm trying to understand. Yes, you can have these overlays. Are we satisfying interests through this technical analysis that each project goes through anyway?

I see what you're saying. So the goal is to not have to have overlays because the baseline rules are strong enough that they meet those interests. So something like stormwater is a great example of that. We've definitely heard from some folks an interest in having stormwater overlays. There could be some benefits to that. The draft LUMO represents an approach where we're trying to meet those interests, like you said, through the technical analysis that an individual project would go through. And some of the standards that the draft LUMO includes that get to that are things like expanding what sort of development is subject to the 100-year storm standard, requiring things like downstream impact analyses, trying to make the baseline standards more robust, What an overlay could do is allow for a level of additional granularity to say, maybe the 100-year storm actually isn't necessary as a standard in some areas of town. Maybe in other areas of town, it actually needs to be 150 years, a 200-year storm, that there could be these other levels of gradation. That's the sort of thing that a stormwater overlay could potentially lead to. It would definitely require more analysis that we haven't even started to do analysis of that sort.

And so if that is an interest of council and it's an interest of community, we can still move forward with this process because this is just a draft. It's a living document. And that could be something down the road that we can continue to work for as we, as a body, decide where those overlays could potentially do precisely what you just And I think also being able to communicate, we do have that technical analysis. I'd be really interested in seeing how that helps, not for this process, but to signal to community that it is something that we can take into consideration, the typography and all of these things. The zoning is one aspect of it, but this technical analysis is another granular level that meets some of the concern or tensions and interests. That was a comment, but yeah.

No, you just go up at the end. Council Member Rivers? I think we're ready to move on to public comment. Sorry to interrupt.

Yeah, I'll be quick. When you were having the conversation with the mayor and you're talking about affordable housing, what's the AMI that we're assuming there?

So the standards would have the same mix as currently, so half at 80% and half at 65%.

OK. OK. Thank you for the great questions. OK. So, we're moving on to public comment. I believe we only have four speakers, That's great. If others want to add their names, they're more than welcome to. Please remember, first name comes down to the podium. And staff will start the timer for three minutes. You don't have to press any buttons these days. Then if the second name can come down to the front and be on deck. And please just remember, please no clapping or other noise so we can hear the speakers and so everyone can feel comfortable speaking. And with that, Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you. We'll start with Greg Gerdau, followed by Barbara Driscoll.

Thank you, Mayor, Council, and Manager. My name is Greg Gerdau, and I want to additionally thank you for your focus on complete community principles. This is an excellent exercise, and it's tough. You're doing a great job, and I want to compliment Taz, who I've worked with on several other matters in the past, for the work that he's done tonight. To go on, I've read the full draft of the LUMO, all 510 pages. Oh, Greg.

Okay.

Which one of you has done that? Don't answer. The real answer for me is that I have a vested interest in understanding it from a business perspective, and I want to see it. But in doing that, the word youth, which I was looking for, never appeared, not one time. The word children appears eight times only, and every one of them inside a daycare rule or the school capacity section. Complete community principles, I think, need to include children. Here's what it produces. Under section 5.3.4 , a place where children train, for anything is classified as general indoor recreation, defined by the example alongside arcades, axe throwing, go-kart tracks, and pool halls. Need a good pool hall. That category is prohibited outright in every residential district in Chapel Hill. The category. Outdoor athletic complexes are prohibited in every residential district and permitted by right only in commercial mixed use, town center, and light industrial. The one use that needs the most acreage has been confined to the land with the least of it. That's important. Meanwhile, the same draft opens every neighborhood in town to daycare, down to 1,500 square foot centers on local streets in R1. I think that's the right call. But the two decisions together mean that the code has found room in every neighborhood for a child to be supervised, with no room in any neighborhood for the child to move or play. Section 6.9 raises the recreation space trigger from five lots to 15 and removes multifamily from it entirely in the same document that increases how many families live per acre. More children, less required play space. This in a town that will fill an arena to watch a game and less written in a code with no lawful place near a child's home to play or learn how to play a game. We've zoned the grandstand and forgotten the sand law. I'm a homeowner here. I own no commercial property or lease no commercial property in Chapel Hill, and I have no applications pending, and I'm not asking for money. I've got people that will do that, but I don't. I am asking the staff to be directed to answer one question before the October 6th hearing. Where in Chapel Hill can a child play? The fix is small. Add athletic instruction to supplementary education in 5.3.3 or create a youth athletic use separately and permit it in the same local street logic that the draft already uses for daycare. Put it in there. Consider the significant impact of using the word amenity in place of the word activity. Thank you. That's a significant change. I've submitted the section citations and draft language in writing. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Sorry for going over.

Thank you. And as Mr. Grosdeau said, he did send it to us today at around 4.30. Thank you. Barbara Driscoll, followed by David Shanzer.

Thank you. I'm Barbara Driscoll. I'm the conservation chair for New Hope Bird Alliance, which is the local Audubon chapter for Orange Chatham and Durham counties. Our mission is to protect birds, wildlife, and their local habitats through conservation, education, advocacy, and outdoor enjoyment. First, I want to thank council for encouraging staff to have more than one public information. and meeting, and to also include planning staff hours for people who have concerns and comments about the LUMO. I also want to thank Taz for meeting with me on a number of occasions for clarifications on the LUMO. New Hope Bird Alliance is concerned about several aspects of the proposed changes. While this document improves on many of the current development practices, the new LUMO primarily addresses denser development without evaluating the impact of that density on stormwater, canopy loss, and as a result, increases negative climate impacts. The new LUMO will dictate how land is developed, profoundly shaping our built and natural environments for decades to come. The town should develop a more comprehensive approach, which merges development, stormwater, and greenway concerns to create a more complete community. And I understand that will take time. And I'm hoping that the town will take some additional time to address some of these concerns. Primarily, we are concerned about the loss of biodiversity. And that's recognized as being as devastating as the climate crisis. to life on Earth. To improve local biodiversity, the proposed limits should require a minimum of 100% native canopy trees and 75% of all other plantings being native plantings. This was just incorporated in the final Chatham Unified Development Ordinance, along with percentages of species diversity tables based on the number of new plantings. Volunteers spend thousands of their hours removing invasive exotic species from Chapel Hill public lands. The updated luma should reflect the latest list of prohibitive invasive species per the North Carolina Invasive Species Councils. I can provide that list. The luma should also require a new development to remove any invasive species from the list on properties that are developed. We encourage the inclusion of bird-friendly construction methods, including window treatments within the LUMO for new development. Window collisions because of faulty design kill over a billion birds a year across the country. Lighting at night both exasperates window collisions and disrupts breeding, nesting, and feeding. Therefore, a bird-safe building and lighting design should be incorporated up front, and it's also energy efficient. New Hope asked that we request planning to incorporate a stormwater overlay of vulnerable areas to identify which areas in town should not have dense development and where denser development will lead. And one question I had about the greenways, I'm glad that you provided a map, but have you provided also a definition for what a greenway is? So that would be good to know. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, and thank you. My name is David Shanzer. I am the new chair of the Lake Forest Association, representing over 200 families. The association's mission is to protect and preserve Eastwood Lake and the dam. And as you know, that's part of the Booker Creek watershed, where we had the catastrophic flooding into Eastgate Shopping Center and all the housing beyond that in this watershed. So my message to the council is that the Booker Creek watershed, and then we're talking about the area between MLK, Weaver Dairy, Franklin, 15501, and Estes Road, that square. We need more stormwater protection than this LUMO provides. The current regulations, combined with the council's development decisions and zoning approval for developments, is already inadequate to protect us from the flooding. I have part of Booker Creek run through my backyard, and it's a tiny little stream on most days. But at least 15 times in the last 10 years, it has turned into a ginormous, literally a river, 25 yards wide, with all chocolate milk-covered water coming through and into the lake. It then goes over our dam, down into the East Gate Village, and then beyond, where there are lots of vulnerable families, as we know, who've experienced the flooding. So a tremendous amount of damage and silt coming into our lake. We pay, and we preserve the dam and the lake. But if that dam didn't exist, the flooding would be even worse downstream. So we are doing a good job for our neighbors in our watershed. So the LUMO has something new, which is great, called downstream analysis. But what the new LUMO giveth, it also taketh away. If you look at the chart on 7, 28, and 29, All of these things are exempted. All these categories of housing are exempted from the new downstream impact analysis. All housing, even ones that create over 20,000 square feet of disturbance, are totally exempted from this new downstream river analysis and other forms of stormwater control as well. Even some commercial development is exempted. Subdivision lots that cover three zoning plots are exempted from all this downstream river analysis. We need more protection in our watershed. And an overlay, like Councilwoman Vouchy said, is very worthwhile. I'll make one quick point, if I might. We also, in this watershed, we have nine miles of so-called collector roads, nine miles, which will be more dense development in that watershed, more impervious surface, more water flowing into these two creeks, into our lake, over the dam, down into Franklin Street. We have eight greenway entrances. That's another quarter mile under the new LUMO for each greenway. That's another two miles of permitted area for large-scale dense zoning. Kenmore Road is designated as a collector street. You cannot bike up Kenmore Road. It is too steep. It is the steepest, one of the steepest places in all of Chapel Hill. That water is going to cascade. And Kenmore Road is a collector road, but it's only 100 meters from Brooker Creek stream. So that water is cascading and causing tremendous amount of damage. We need ordinances and stormwater protection where the developers, I'm not against development in any regard or density, but the developers have to pay for the infrastructure to protect, prevent the damage that the water from their developments is causing downstream to all of us. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next, Jeanette Bench, followed by Daniel Ying.

Hi. I'm Jeanette Bench, and thank you again for the meetings and meeting with TAS. Actually, as I've been sitting here, I've been a longtime member of the Parks Commission, and I also worked a great deal on the stormwater issues. So those are the two things that are foremost in my mind. I also live in the neighborhood that David does and have kind of at the bottom of the hill, of which my front yard is a big rain garden. And so the flooding issue is huge. And I really think... The net impact on the stormwater is creating more stormwater. For example, in our watershed, it's hard to believe it does include Cedar Falls Park. It's 80% impervious. surface right now. So even if we all did 50%, which means that we don't have to do any stormwater remediation, where the heck is all that water going to go? I think it's going to go down to Wesley's neighborhood and through Eastgate. So you look at the way the rules now, and I know you're hampered by the state, but you have to look also at what reality is on the ground, because almost every one of those houses doesn't have a lawn. It has large trees. And so you're taking away potentially a great benefit We just have to be very careful, very in favor of the stormwater analysis. And also, as I was sitting here, I'm thinking, well, what about the parks? Which Greg so nicely said, I think the US standard is to have a neighborhood park within a half a mile of a house. chosen to have really regional parks in Chapel Hill, a big park at the community center, Southern Village, Hargraves. But we don't have very many of these neighborhood parks. And so I echo the thing on where are the kids going to play. So thank you very much, and thank you for your time.

Thank you. Daniel Yame, followed by John Sadler.

Good evening. Thanks for this open forum. I happen to live in the same neighborhood as the last two speakers. First, I want to acknowledge the amount of work that's gone into the LUMO. So, yeah, I can see it's a very large document. So attempting to read the 700 pages was difficult. I haven't read them all like the other gentlemen, but I'm still trying. So I actually tried to use AI to process the LUMO, and I basically ran out of credits because the document is so large. So I'll just read the rest myself. And I feel for the council attempting to understand what is in the document. So process-wise, I think TAS has a very ambitious schedule to get this approved in one month, but good luck. So basically, I was looking at the arterial and collector roads requirements as well. And I think they need refinement because of the large variation. Basically, it's very inconsistent because you have like Kenmore Road is a collector, and so is Rosemary. And they're very different streets. Like parts of Kenmore Road are literally 15 or 20 feet wide, no sidewalk, no curb, and just ditch. where other roads are very large. So the arterials are very clear. Those would seem obvious and logical. But the collector roads need more refinement. They kind of need characteristics, so that way you can assign them correctly, basic criteria and how to classify them consistently. And because of the large variation, then you probably want to do something where you have, like, Using your convention to have like collector one collector to collector three I know that's more work But to be able to properly classify them because otherwise it'll be incorrect and then you know This is like I guess a 20 year old document, and then if you do it incorrectly now It'll be like another 20 years of incorrect assignment to the collector road so probably not good and that leads to just all the problems that we were mentioning and with the flooding because allowing additional density where the impervious surface will increase. And then now we'll have additional flooding issues, which I happen to live on Cameron Road. And I'm in a place where I'm lucky I don't get flooding problems. But I see the river going past my driveway when it's raining. And it lands on all my neighbors below. And when during the hurricane, there was literally a river running on the cross street. And it just flowed into the lake. And after the lake is even worse because it ends up at Eastgate Shopping Center. So basically, that's something that I think should be addressed. It should be something that should be considered. So that's all I have to say for now. Thank you.

Thank you. And our final public commenter will be John Sadler.

Good evening, Mayor, Council, Manager. I hope you'll pardon my voice. I'm feeling great today, but my throat was not on board. I want to echo and kind of just expand upon some of the things that everyone else was talking about, mainly starting from the missing middle housing that was talked about, the by-right development. First off, totally understand all the work that has gone into this LUMO. Someone who's rewritten a multi-hundred page plan before absolutely understand the work. And I think overall the Lumo is great. We're just concerned about ways that it can be abused and missing opportunities that we can get to. And so with some of this pyrite development, one of the fears that I've talked to people have is, along with the stormwater and among other things, is if you over-incentivize and don't retain some level of control from the city itself, then all of these pyrite developments that pop up all of a sudden are getting a greater surface area and having more impact. than what would otherwise be put in a large development that does get your oversight, that does get public comment put on it. And so that's a concern where the aggregation of all of those smaller developments popping up is worse than one larger development. And we've talked about the stormwater at length, but what that also goes into and what new LUMO has is things to do with traffic. So when some of these buyer development gets put up, they will have to do a traffic impact analysis now. Great, love that. But I'm concerned about if that traffic impact analysis says, oh, there's all this traffic here because we put these more dense developments here. We must add a lane to this road because this is what the traffic engineers say. If we just keep doing that all the way down MLK and all the way down 15501, then suddenly we're going to have more road than we actually have land to do anything with. So we have the opportunity there where it's not traditional, it's not normal, but nothing says we can't do it, of putting more emphasis on the use of streets and the land use. Mostly we just kind of... push all the street things and all the roads off to the traffic engineers and say that's your realm but it's really the council's prerogative as to lay the foundation for how do we want to use the streets and how do we want those to actually look like and then based on that based on what we want the streets to function look like whether it's arterial collector whatever then we say okay traffic engineers now engineer something that meets all your standards and looks like this So that's an opportunity that we can actually put into this LUMO if we so choose. And if we feel like it's not the right place for it, then perhaps it can go into a rewrite of the comprehensive plan, which I know there's been a lot of additions over the years. But we haven't had, to my knowledge, a real full comprehensive plan rewrite since in over a decade, to my knowledge. So I just want to put that out there as concerns. But otherwise, I think it's a good job. And I think the council has a lot of good things to think about for the future. Thank you.

Thank you. Council, back to you. I think this is an important topic, so I don't want to. Stop conversation. I'm also going to remind you that we have a closed session as well. So I would like us to be brisk. And if we can focus on things that you would like as part of a straw poll, I think that would be the most helpful. But obviously, any other questions? Brief comments is fine, too Councilmember McCullough followed by councilmember Noller.

Yes I just wanted and this is kind of process II but a lot of the comments have been about stormwater and the staff Presentation on environment is going to be next week, and I would like correct I I would like for us to be able to delay the discussions about stormwater until next week when that's being presented and that's the time. People who are expecting to comment on stormwater specifically may be there next week as well. So if we can put off those parts of the discussion until next week, I would support that.

Councilmember Noller?

Thank you for your work, and I appreciate the comments. A couple remarks on the subjects we were asked to consider tonight. In terms of user friendliness, basic response is we have too many zones in this. I don't know if it's possible to have fewer, but I do think it's ironic that we've added so many zones and have user friendliness as a priority. I don't know if there's a way around it, reaction if it's helpful. And I intend it in a helpful spirit. If you asked, I think that's a relevant consideration. I want to underscore that the neighborhood child care changes are really cool. And they couple with the concern about what triggers density. I just wanted to put out for colleagues to consider that school proximity of some sort seems like a really promising way to think about this. And for me, that's tied to another issue that you discussed tonight that I'm really thinking about, which is these transitions between zones. That a transition border, I think, could entail pretty significant trade-offs in terms of our environmental goals, that if we're trying to prevent the deforestation of Orange County, that having lots of transition triggers between our 30 billion zones inside of Chapel Hill is going to inhibit a lot of, school proximate, Greenway proximate, whatever proximate potential housing capacity. And if one of our goals is to say we care about the environment, then that housing needs to be in Chapel Hill. It needs to be in Chapel Hill with stormwater protections, which we'll talk about next week. In terms of design, one thing I want to flag as a concern is any time we are putting any design requirements in that might introduce inflexibility to changing conditions, that's a thing that I worry about in terms of supply chains, overall costs, possible new materials that maybe aren't captured. And we would have processes for revisiting those, but I find it helpful to flag if one of the trade-offs that might be introduced by an element of design that council votes to approve in this process would result in some level of inflexibility that could influence either the ultimate consumer cost of what is getting produced, which is on the table for me for valuable design things, but I want to understand what I'm uh voting on in that case or um if we're accidentally taking sort of new technologies off of the table by sort of over specifying things relevant to design that's a concern for me and i would want to have my attention flagged and say like watch out you might be trading this off um and i think the final thing i already sort of alluded to which was just that i think thinking about triggers in terms of proximity is really important. And I share the sort of curiosity about the methodology originally behind the collectors. I'm kind of willing to spend some time on maybe these collectors and not these collectors. But I also share an interest in just additional proposals for what the triggers could be that really sort of simplify the rules around how we add housing stock to the town of Chapel Hill. Thank you.

Council Member Bryan, followed by our Mayor Pro Tem Gary.

Hi, Bresk. So thank you, everybody, again. You guys have really, I know, have been doing yeoman's work on this. There are a lot of things to like in this LUMO, and I do. But then my interest is making sure that we're advancing our complete community goals. And that means balancing efficiency, generating housing, preserving the environment, ensuring good placemaking. And I know it's finding that, you said, the sweet spot before. It's finding that sweet spot for all of this. So for tonight's subject, my first concern is using the collector and arterial road metric for where we do the double density. Road designations are a traffic engineering tool. They're not a good way for us to guide density where we want it. I'm fine with keeping the arterial roads in that's a no-brainer. They they belong that fits our goal The collector streets are too varied. I think to be a useful metric and I would remove them One way that we could we could extend those districts is I know we talked about overlays before but having a complete community overlay, which means somebody mentioned having, you might want that density around a school. Like right now, everything is very linear. If we had overlay zoning, you could put it around a school. It would make things around Greenways more simple. The rules could change for different things in the overlay. So I think that I would like to explore doing that. And again, if... That overlay would basically have the same regulations that you have written now into the collector and arterial streets, right? It just would be creating the overlays and putting it in, then we have to apply it in the zoning map. But it wouldn't be a rethinking, a re-explanation, a re-examination of lots of stuff. So I think that's very doable. This is a really big issue for me, especially I know Attorney Baker, and I've been having some conversations about down zoning issues with 160 D which he said he would share with the council and It's just gonna be it will be hard for us to try things out and then say oh Maybe this didn't work and roll them back with that hang over our head So I think we just need to be a little careful so that that is my my very big issue I think it was the mayor who talked about being able to see visually what these build-out scenarios are going to look like. So what does an acre look like under the current rules? What if it was in the density location bonus? What if they added the affordable housing bonus on top of it? So zoning ordinance is really confusing. And it's taken me a really long time to get my head around this stuff. I'm trying to think how the public who doesn't deal with this stuff on a regular basis can parse out all of the technical information that you guys have. I think it's really important for us to understand what we're doing. And I think it's really important for the community to understand it, and especially for it to happen well before we have that public hearing so that people have a chance to comment. And just one final comment on public meetings. I think, Wes, I think you were talking about this. One of the things that we've moved away from in public engagements, and I know this is not strictly speaking your bailiwick, but we used to have sessions where people would come in and it was a question and answer. So there was some education from the staff. And then the people who came would be asking all those questions that they have. They could hear each other's answers. There was back and forth. And a lot of learning went on in that environment. And I know it is unrealistic to expect you guys to respond to detailed questions. with detailed technical information on things when you get emails. But we have a gap now in educating the public and letting the public hear things. So if there's anything we can do about that before the public hearing opens, that would be great. I'd also like it to be a bigger discussion when we talk about engagement and communication. And yeah, that's it. Thank you.

Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. Thank you to staff. I didn't say that earlier. Really appreciate the work that your team put into this, because I imagine it wasn't just the two of you who worked on this. Thank you. Or just the one of you. But I know you've invested a lot of time into this. So thank you, especially before it went live. Thank you to those of you who came out. And many have had to leave. It's been especially helpful to hear you share your thoughts. Also, know that we do read the emails. So I was revisiting some of the emails that we received from the people who are presenting today. I am a visual learner, someone referenced that, but it is very helpful for you to come out, so thank you. Here are some comments that I would like to share regarding tonight's presentation. Could you staff review with us what the CDC's purview is? Help us make sure that we're all on the same page. Since you shared that teaser that we may want to consider if we keep them, if we expand, if we change, I would like to have a very solid, unified understanding of that before we make that decision. My colleague mentioned child care. And this is something that I mentioned in the conversations, one of the office hours that I attended. As the way that the limo is currently written, if we reference child care as an opportunity, there are other small businesses like child care also available. So I just want to make sure that we're sharing for the public's understanding, making sure my understanding is correct, that when we say child care and the new limo, we are saying just child care in those venues. So is that correct? That was a question, but it was supposed to be a comment. Oh, Wes. I did what you said you were going to do.

I think it's common for folks to refer to it as child care. The LUMO actually doesn't distinguish between child or adult care. So it's just daycare. Thank you. All right.

But we're not talking about something else that currently is available, right?

That's correct. So that's one of those instances where we're specifically talking about a single use. There's other parts in the LUMO where we talk about uses in more broad categories. But for the daycare piece, we're literally just talking daycare as defined fairly narrowly.

OK. I also want to thank you for helping us to understand the difference between, or actually understand what they are, neighborhood commercial, the NC, and the community commercial CC, Chapel Hill Plaza, the plaza where Chapel Chill is situated. Last week I went for dessert and dinner, and yes, in that order. And I saw families arrive by car. I saw families arrive on their bicycles. And I also saw families arrive on foot. And I would love to see that in more places around Chapel Hill, that neighborhood commercial. So yes, I am concerned about safety as we think about putting trees along Rosemary. I park in that lot as well. And I often don't get to downtown until the evening and don't leave until the sun has set. And so I would like to, as you're thinking about the amenities, the trees and the shrubbery, the vegetation, help us understand, because my My perspective will be, how will people be safe, right? How will they be distinguished from the shadows of trees that may be cast there? So keeping that tension and helping us to understand, because I do think that trees are important. I also think safety is important. That also goes to Ms. Driscoll. When she was talking with us, and I need to follow up with her because hers was incomplete, her email, but she shared with us lighting concerns and also windows when it comes to birds. I also think about safety, and that's one of the tensions that I share. But, you know, Melissa keeps me grounded because she's like, okay, we've got to think about this, but I'm thinking about safety as well. Those folks who walk at night, so how do we balance that? Those are things that I will want to see explained. And then... I think that's it. Thank you very much.

Council Member McCullough may be followed by Council Member McMahon and then Council Member Sharp.

Like everybody else, I want to say thank you for all of the work you've done. Taking all of the things we've talked about and all of the goals that we have and putting them into this document has been quite a task and we asked you, I wanna make clear to the public too that the document that came before everybody reflects our priorities and our goals and so that's what we're trying to get out, we're trying to figure out where we can reach those goals and where those trade-offs have to happen, because there will always be trade-offs these days. We asked you months and months ago to be very honest with us about when this was your best professional judgment, and that's why we hire qualified professionals. And so I appreciate the fact that You are giving us your best professional judgments, but you are also giving us some data and some learning that you have from the user community, and I think that that kind of data is giving us grounding. In the past, we have not really well understood the, you know, well, why aren't we getting X? And I appreciate very much the fact that you have been delving very deeply into the why we didn't get X And how are we going to get X? And so thank you for that. I know there's a lot of complicated, conflicting factors. But I think we need to keep track of those kinds of things and to also create the context for us and for the public about, we'd like to get farther with this, but the state tells us we have to stop here. Or feasibility tells us we can't get that. Keep us grounded in those things as we have these discussions. Lots to talk about for stormwater next week. I also am a little worried about this arterial and collector street things. I would like to see some sort of ideas about criteria because I think that there are issues that will arise for those, and those are probably a lot of them going to stick over until next week with the environment. And so that's really all I have right now, I'm sure, given that next week is more my topics, that you'll hear more from me. Thank you.

Council Member McMahon.

Great. Again, real quick, thank you to your work. Thank you to you folks. I watched a lot of town council meetings across North Carolina this summer, and I like us. And I like working with you.

Why were you watching other town council meetings?

Well, AI data center stuff that's in the news, you know. So anyhow. Hey, look, I want to move this along, and I think one of our key points of our process that worked well with Omnibus is getting early wins, finding agreement, and seeing where we can get something off our list. I don't see a road forward using the collector road designation. I think I've heard enough rationale that it's not how we want to move forward. I would like to spend our time discussing how we want to pursue a different alternative, like whether it's an overlay or zoning, I think that's a better use for our time. So I would like to just straight up and ask that we retain the arterial street adjacency as a by right trigger, our bonus trigger on arterial roads, signal that we're up for density there. But I would love us to just drop the reliance on this collector road thing. As soon as we can if we agree on it have a conversation about it And then we can get into discussing what the other alternative is But I think it we've raised enough questions about this collector road status A lot of people in the community have approached me and they're worried about it if we are at a point of agreement Where we don't want to move forward with this collector road status. Let's get it off the table And I don't know what the process is for that

I'll put it on our list for the end. It's on there. Don't you worry.

I'll start there. Because we've been talking, it seems like there's general consensus around discomfort with the collector roads being a metric for densification. Do we want to leave the quarter mile from Greenways? Or do we just want to stick with the arterials? Because when you look at the greenway nodes, there's every bit as much variety and kind of craziness in the places that are a quarter mile from a greenway as there are in the collector roads. Our greenway network is pretty patchy right now. And so for me, that's as much of a concern as the collector roads, just because there are some places where we're creating a lot of density and places that have a greenway that kind of doesn't go anywhere right now. It's just like one little stretch. You're like, well, why are we putting eight housing units on a lot there when it isn't? So I would like to add that to the conversation. with the collector roads. And I'm really glad to hear that there's general interest, including from the planning staff, or willingness to find some other way around that, because I was not excited for that to be a third rail. I I have some anxiety around the denser development standards for the town center. As a downtown business owner, I firsthand see a lot of ways in which the market pressures of potential upzoning or people clinging to their properties as they're you know financial life raft really makes commercial spaces not viable for local businesses and in general we as business owners have seen that new buildings and new development they price their retail and commercial spaces in such a way that it is also not viable for local businesses. And so I really have some anxiety around that and just about what that will do to the A, knowing that residential real estate is currently a far more profitable concern than commercial real estate. And we sort of have to force people to do commercial stuff. How much we're going to end up with rental apartments lining the main street of our downtown. Yeah, I'm... I'm pretty anxious about that. And I'll just put that out there. And I'm really worried about us incentivizing the tearing down of interesting, viable places that are currently interesting and viable and housing active parts of our town because it is more profitable for someone to come in and tear them down and build higher in ways that are less vibrant and less interesting. Because it's only one place, right? The downtown is only one part of our town. And we don't have to add all of our housing on Franklin Street. So I would prefer to see us really focus on maintaining an interesting downtown that other people want to live around and want to come visit, rather than being like, well, we need to take every single place that we can build apartments and put them there. I think our downtown needs to serve a different purpose. I also just want to reiterate my interest around trees and landscaping and green space and truly active interesting spaces in the downtown as it pertains to what we're able to mandate around design. I haven't seen any design guidelines that get so granular as to mandate materials and stuff. I haven't seen anything that would make me concerned about that. Maybe you all know better, but that's one that doesn't make sense to me. I do share Council Member Nolert's confusion, not confusion, sense of overwhelm about the number of different zoning districts. And this is maybe, I should have asked this as a question, but my assumption reading the draft or going through the draft is that some of the new zoning districts are meant to ultimately supplant current zoning districts so that as we are adding all of these different ones, it's like, well, we won't have R1 and R1A anymore. We'll just have RA. And so ultimately, it will simplify if we choose as a council to change that when we redo the zoning map. But we could potentially just leave them all, and that would be a hot mess. No, we can't. So my understanding is that ultimately, it will be simpler if we do what you expect us to do down the road. I really like the point that the gentleman made about space for children to play. It had not occurred to me that that's something we could potentially accomplish in our LUMO. And if it is, I would love for us to do that. Because I also think that one of the things we've seen as we talk about the different spaces of our town is that one of the things that's that is best is when we can bring all kinds of different people to different places to do things. And so the more that we can have places for multiple generations to engage with spaces, I think, is best. I think it's going to be crazy town that someone could just put a restaurant next door to your house in residential areas. And that's just blowing my mind a little bit. And I'm kind of excited about it, but also What? But yeah, that would be interesting. Oh, but I did want to say that. If we're taking out, if housing density doesn't make sense along collector roads, do restaurants make sense along all of the collector roads? And do we maybe want to rethink that as well, if that's not maybe the best metric for where to put different kinds of commercial stuff? Because some of the collector roads also seem like crazy places for a restaurant. Yeah, just add that to the melting pot of things we want to think about.

Council Member Miller-Frucci, as I'm trying to keep track of the list.

Thank you. I want to echo a lot of what my colleague, Councilmember McCullough, stated regarding the work that you all have done, how you have been very thoughtful about trying to bring all that we have said over a long period of time and present it to us. I want to really say thank you. You've done exactly, from my perspective, what we've asked you to do. And you've done it in a way that I can sit down and consume. And it's a lot of work. And I'm really proud of the team that we have. So thank you. And I really want the public to know just how hard you all work for us and how it took many, many hours to get us to the point that we're at now to be able to have these productive conversations. So I'm really excited about getting this done. I'm also reminded that this is a process. And while we have a vote to make on a product, that it is constantly going to be revised and looked at. It is alive and well. And so I hope that our Our public can hold that as well. If they see something that we vote on at the end that may not be reflective of what their interests were, and we find that as well, it can be changed. And so I want to just keep that always out at the forefront of things. We don't wait 30, 20 years to do this work. And those are not best practices. And one of the things when you came on as the director of planning was like every three years, we're constantly doing this work. So we're at a different place. That's what I want to say. In terms of process and getting ideas, I need time to process not only what staff gives us, but what comes out of these conversations. And so I'm really a little uncomfortable with giving a thumbs up, a heads down, all of that. Because I need to process. I need to understand, Wes, where you're coming from. And I need to understand why staff put what they put in. That's important for me as well. And so there may be a consensus amongst folks to want to move forward and get rid of whatever. But I'm asking that we also hold space for us to be able to understand the perspective of staff. both from a staff standpoint of the why they put something in with the roads and this is that and the other. I need time to really understand and figure that out. And so I hope as we continue to move forward with this work that we afford that time and opportunity for processing. Thinking about the anxieties. I am really, really have some anxieties, too. I want us to move forward. I want us to grow. And a lot of times with that comes displacement. And that has not been neutral historically. And so really, if equity is a part of our complete community framework, making sure that we continue to think about what we do and what that means for certain communities. And again, we know that the LUMO is not going to be a tool. of many that we have, but as we are identifying where those challenges are, where Luma won't be able to get us to where we wanna be, that we are also thinking about the other tools that we wanna pull to address the things that continue to bubble up and come to the surface. And I'll conclude with our downtown. I'm starting to think out of the box of having multiple downtowns and how this LUMO can potentially afford us to do that. Franklin Street is historic, period. I was rushing Franklin from Durham. I'm a Bull City girl, but I'm a Bull City Tar Heel. And I rushed. after many, many games on Franklin Street. But we have an opportunity to also build multiple thriving places and spaces in Chapel Hill. And I think we're making history in being able to do that. So like Wes, I'm looking forward to doing the work together. I'm hoping to receive phone calls from folks as they are making decisions and coming to conclusions wherever you land. Y'all got my number. Looking forward to hearing from y'all. Thanks.

OK. I hope you've heard all the gratitude, truly. I won't. I won't belabor it given the hour and that the best gift for you is to go home. But truly, I hope you really do understand how grateful we are. I guess I want to start big picture by saying I support the overall direction. I think the incremental approach, the by right thresholds, tying bonuses to affordable housing and efficiency, and building complete community principles into the baseline rather than only at the council review stage. I think it's the right overall direction. I mean, I do have a few of my own concerns with the collector roads, with some of the visuals. Certainly, some of these I just would like to have options or understand. Stormwater is going to be an important one to me. I think right now what I'd like to do, and I want to assure folks that I think some of these we're asking for more information. We're not making decisions on all of these. I think a lot of these are asking for it to come back in some way. So I don't believe that ones that aren't ready, we're just going to make a decision. With a straw poll vote, but I'm gonna read the list Some of these y'all are gonna have to help me a little bit with what you're asking for or we can figure out what? What the ask is and then if I've missed anything just obviously let me know I heard visuals for the our zones to understand better with the kind of bonuses and and those things but what it looks like on the ground and

Yeah, even just one . Not all of them. It doesn't have to be just one. OK. Yeah, a visual example of what the different density levels would likely produce on a given plot of land.

And staff, is that pretty easy to do? Okay, council? Well, yeah, I don't think all is. Council, is that amenable? If I can see just thumbs up, that would be helpful. Okay, that one I think is good. I heard something both from Elizabeth and Paris, and I'm sorry I'm calling you by your first names, about the town center design, density, displacement, that there's some interest in something there, but I don't know what to ask for. Or is it just that it comes back with some sort of way of addressing or talking about some of those trade-offs?

I think for me, I'm not concerned about the density or... Well, I was combining you two. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I'm trying to disperse it. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not talking about the density, those things like that. I think my concern is what it means... for us as we're thinking about the upzoning, what it means for our current local small business owners. And I mean, y'all speak to this, and you have the language there that with these changes comes some level of displacement. I think what I am leaning on is, I'm not OK with that just being the status quo, so to speak, because it's not neutral as to who is historically displaced. And so if equity is one of the things that we are really keeping forward, Yeah, I want to give some thought to that, and I want us to be thinking about that, I think. I don't know what that means for them or what it looks like. I don't have the answer for it, but I just wanted to be able to express that that is a real heartburn for me.

So there's something potentially about a little bit more focus on the town center or on downtown as part of the LUMO, and then potentially if there are other projects other initiatives or other programs that have to overlay?

And Elizabeth, go ahead. I think for me the interest is that we not write the rules in such a way that it feels like the inevitable only way forward for our downtown is to tear down existing buildings and build bigger ones. And that we either in the LUMO, well, I would appreciate it if in the LUMO, if in the cases where that is happening, that we find ways to support small independent businesses so they aren't priced out. Or, you know, as Paris said, displaced and then priced out. And also that... Was the end of that thought? I think... And I don't think that the LUMO is probably the right place for this, but in pairing with the densification that we are allowing for within the LUMO, that we also find ways. I think I've talked to David about incentivizing upkeep of your historic buildings in downtown and not having those just fall into such disrepair that the only way forward is to have them torn down and turned into something taller, but that we find ways to pair things that that balances both new building and upkeep of current buildings so that we can be recognizable at the end of all of this.

Council Member Rivers and then Council Member McCulloch.

I want to run this by Council Member Miller-Foushee and Councilmember Sharp. I heard a lot of overlap between your two statements. I love Councilmember Miller-Foushee's idea of multiple downtowns. And if we were to take that approach, it would address that density issue and this upkeep of historic buildings that you're talking about, Council Member Sharp. Maybe downtown is this one thing, but it's not the place for our most intensive businesses. And maybe we have another downtown where there's more intensive businesses.

Well, maybe that's something that we would potentially get to in a... zoning map update where it's like, okay, we have these town center rules. Do we want to apply them elsewhere as well? Or, you know, some other kind of zoning district that is, you know, that creates kind of more of a multiple downtown in different areas.

I have an idea, but let me get to Council Member McCullough.

Am I, is that correct? Am I thinking about this right? I just want to make sure I'm thinking about it right.

I think for me, while I'm not against growth in our downtown, that's not what I'm saying, that displacement is a real concern for me. And yes, to another downtown, reimagining what other opportunities we have with this rezoning in areas and what that could potentially mean.

So yeah. We just can't figure this out tonight. But what I'm going to recommend is that we, first of all, I think we've talked about extending downtown, which is different than having multiple downtowns, right? But regardless, what if we asked to have a work session on downtown? And that way, we aren't trying to shove it into LUMO. We're not trying to. And it is bigger, but I think we can certainly have whatever components relate to LUMO can be part of a discussion. And perhaps if you all could bring back something that gives us kind of any of the pieces that are LUMO related that we might be able to make some choices on. And then we need a bigger conversation about downtown and whether we have five downtowns or two downtowns, whatever. Whatever. Yes, Council Member McCullough.

I just want to throw something in as part of that. Here's something to think about, and that is whether or not there's some sort of an overlay we can do on quintessentially historic downtown to provide that kind of protection for those. Yes, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Right. No, but I just wanted to be thrown into the hopper of fodder for that discussion.

Council Member Ryan, and then we're moving on. Yes, ma'am.

Yeah, I just think that one of the things about timing, I don't know how long the downtown discussions will take, but if we go ahead and pass the new town center rules, those will be the bigger rules, right? So just... If we're thinking about that maybe that's too much, then we need to know that before we pass the LUMO. And if we're thinking that's fine and we're going to do other things, then it will be fine.

So I'm hearing we want LUMO-related items to come back for consideration right now, whatever we need to consider right now. And then we would like a work session on downtown. Council, hands?

Sure.

Great. OK. And staff, the implication, of course, is that you all will tell us if we're asking for something unreasonable. But I will continue to ask you if any of these sound like they would take more time. there's something we need to know about what we're asking. So please jump in, or I will continue to ask you. I heard an interest in understanding if design requirements have implications on new tech and cost. Could I have a show of hands, please?

walk back, like, is that worth our time? Or would you say, like, look, this isn't going to happen. Don't worry about it.

I would say it's not particularly, like, fruitful discussion. Then I withdraw it.

Okay. Moving on. Thank you. I heard an interest in fewer zones.

So I think the downtown discussion is a really great example of why, even when we try to simplify, we actually end up adding zones. There was a discussion about an overlay for the quintessentially historic part of downtown. That's basically the 100 block of East Franklin, which is basically the only part of downtown that's zoned TC1. So the TC1 district is basically already the quintessential historic part of downtown. And then there's other gradations. And then we added kind of a special downtown district that isn't on the map anywhere, but you guys could use it strategically where needed. So I think that's kind of a good example of, When you really focus and zoom in, sometimes

We also don't have to apply them all.

Exactly. You don't have to apply them all.

They just exist so we can have some nuance across town.

Exactly.

Yeah. I personally don't think that fewer zones in and of itself is a value, but I'm happy for us to decide otherwise. OK. I'm not seeing hands for that one. I trust . I heard a ban on certain uses near schools, like the county has been working on. Does that go with the LUMO? Yeah, it's a use. And it's about getting more information, guys. We're not making a decision right now. So would you all like more information on that? Fine with me. I'm seeing hands. Great. That one, we would like more information. I have heard a lot of strong interest in eliminating collector roads and then considering some other options, including some sort of overlay or zone instead with criteria that could include proximity to schools, greenways, transit, that there would be some criteria that would help us make good decisions. So perhaps if there's a way to create it and then we don't have to apply it before we pass the LUMO, or you all can tell us more about our options there.

Not just positive Not just the positive criteria. We would like this and this and this but the negative criteria This would be bad. This would be bad. This would be bad. So I

great those okay do's and don'ts council members yeah and i'd like to include elizabeth's idea in there about the greenways if there's maybe a better way to do like you decided overlay is the right way maybe the greenways we designate them that way instead of just the blanket greenway description so if we have a more granular way of doing things so council can i see hands for that one

OK, great. I did hear an interest in overlay districts, but I'm assuming we want to wait. Well, you tell me if you want to hear if there's an interest in understanding more or if you just want to talk about it next week. I know there was the interest in not discussing topics for next week, until next week. But if you would like to have some sort of advanced signal on something to bring, then you tell me.

Yeah, I think it would be helpful if we heard just an interest in, is it something that's worth exploring more? I don't know that between now and next week we would be able to bring you, you know, significant, like, substantial input.

No, no, I'm not imagining you're bringing it, but if you would like to know if there's an interest now, I'm happy to do it. But if you would like to wait, that's fine, too.

Yeah, I think it's fine to hear the interest now. The more advanced notice we can get, the better, for sure. That was kind of my thought.

But also understanding we may have zoning districts that serve that purpose, similar to the TC1 example he gave. Great.

So it's helpful to know what you may want a overlay district to do, but that district may already exist in a different form.

If you tell us it already exists somewhere, we'll be very happy. OK, perfect. Council, I heard. Stormwater and some sort of downtown overlay, but is there any interest in understanding more about overlays?

I mean, I'm just interested in the job that we want to have done and what the tool is.

Well, zone overlay, but if there's this superseding thing that goes above zoning, And they say this is- Or whatever.

Or it can be dealt with in zoning, but it- No, I just, well, yeah, I just think that if that's the tool that's best to be used for a purpose, that's fine. I don't want to just start spewing overlays around town.

No, no, no, no. That was not the interest. So I heard stormwater and potentially downtown.

Is that- And then the complete community. Complete community. To replace the collector street designation in the greenway.

Okay, so there were three interests that I heard, which is stormwater downtown and a complete community something. A way of getting at those interests, if it can be done through a zone, if it needs to be an overlay, but just having some kind of options there. Council, can I get hands on that one?

Great.

I'm not raising my hand as much because I'm expecting to hear this in the next presentation. So this seems very redundant. I just want to say that.

I heard, in addition to daycares, understanding why there aren't other active uses or things where kids can play in certain zones. Is that right? Just understanding more, council, yes, no? Yes? Yes. OK. And I heard maybe an additional info on native plantings and trees and some sort of the kind of invasive versus not percentages, understanding what that is?

Yeah?

Well, we're just saying we want to know the options and we want to understand it more in particular. So that's all it is. It may already be there, but we're just saying what we definitely want to know. That is the list I have. Staff, is that all reasonable with the understanding that we're not expecting you to bring finished products next week or the week after?

Yeah, all of that is with the caveat of the timelines. We'll definitely need some time, but it's all reasonable.

I think informational for now, and then if you can let us know what timelines would be when we talk about it, I think that would be a helpful component. OK, great. So counsel, you are not done yet. I'm not in training for this. I know. We've been away all summer, and we're not used to being together this long. Smart. OK. So the regular portion of our meeting is finished. Could I get a motion to go into closed session?

I move that we go into closed session under North Carolina General Statute 143-318.11 to discuss options for 150 East Rosemary Street In North Carolina General Statute 143-318, A3 for attorney-client privilege. Thank you.

Moved by Mayor Pro Tem Berry, seconded by Councilmember Miller-Fushi. Y'all, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay. Motion is unanimous. We will now recess the meeting to Room 102.