Planning Commission - Special Meeting

I'd like to call this meeting of the Douglas County Planning Commission to order and ask Bryce to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. It's time for opening public comment and it's limited to three minutes per speaker on matters over which the planning commission has jurisdiction. The planning commission wants to encourage respectful consideration of all views by members of the public. If content is disruptive, disrespectful, irrevalent, or irrelevant or offensive, the individual will be asked to stop speaking. Public comment will also be taken on agenda items that are identified for possible action and we will have closing public comment. I will now open public comment. Please sign the roster. Say your name for the record into the microphone. First speaker, please. Hello. Thank you. Hope Sullivan East Valley. And I'm afraid I can't stay for the meeting. So I'll give you my comments and I'm sure Derek will be great. Um transfer of development rights relies on sending and receiving areas. You send the development rights from a property you seek to protect to an area you want development. The sending land becomes open space or protected land. The county has mapped the receiving areas but not the sending areas. If the objective is open space protection, then the sending areas need to be identified or at least the characteristics of those sending areas. This can't be done until the county agrees on what land needs to be

protected. Is the objective to protect land in Topaz? Is the objective to protect exclusively a land or do we want to protect hazardous land consistent with the hazard mitigation plan? TDRs are not the only tool available to protect land. In the 1990s, some of you may remember a book came out called Rural by Design by Randall Erin. This book advocated the use of clustering to protect the preservation of land. This is essentially applying the planned unit development tool, a tool that's far easier to use than the TDR. And I would suggest as you have this discussion, ask Tom Delair. He's a really smart guy. What's easier, the planned unit development or the TDR to administer? I suspect more land's been protected in this county through the planned development than through TDRs. Rather than trying to perfect an ineffective tool, pause. Focus on the objective. If you go to Home Depot, do you go to Home Depot and buy a bunch of tools and then come home and say, "Gee, I wonder what I'll build." Or do you decide what you want to build and then go get your tools? We need to figure out what land we're trying to protect. That sending area. This needs to be a community conversation. Perhaps the sending area could be an overlay zone in lie of TDRs. Perhaps an overlay zone mandates clustering utilizing the planned unit development. I don't know. But let's pause and articulate the objectives. Once the objectives are agreed upon, ask the consultant. Derek just won the planner of the year in 2024 for the state of Nevada. ask him what would be our best tools to utilize based on this objective. Thank you. Thank you. Hope next speaker

Jim Slade, the TDR process certainly has its merits and has so far preserved over 4,000 acres. That's a good thing, but the program clearly has flaws. Has not been very successful in recent years, but that's mainly due to the Great Recession that started in ' 07 and the after effects that lasted until 2014. Then as housing finally started to pick up again, we had COVID. Would have been helpful, I think, to have the number of acres preserved by cipla funds also be listed in this agenda. That program has been great for our county and hopefully will continue. I'm glad that on page nine, it's mentioned that the development goal to preserve the community appearance, charm, and character, which are all important to the quality of life here. also mentions the master plan goal to retain the beauty, resources, and rural agricultural character of the county, all of which are so important to the vast majority of our residents. Page 10 shows that the master plan goal to quote keep growth in Douglas County to a sustainable level that natural and fiscal resources can support. Even now, our most valuable resource, water, is an issue, especially in the Ruin, Stroth, and Johnson Lane areas where some wells have already gone dry. The county's fiscal resources as well are stretched with a deficit of around $5 million for road maintenance with traffic becoming more and more of an issue. The worst board decision this century that was the legally dubious transfer of receiving area from South County to the heart of the Carson Valley despite residents comments running 50 to1 against it. This was a windfall giveaway to Park Ranch Holdings worth tens of millions of dollars. We already had over 4,000 new homes in the pipeline before adding 2,200 more. That combined 6,000 plus homes will increase the population by around 15,000 with nearly that many cars along with an enormous increase in water usage. This will not only lower the

quality of life here, lead to further water shortages and traffic congestion and stress county finances even further since many studies have shown that growth doesn't pay for itself. Just look at the Don't just look at the benefits of TDRs, but take into account the real costs of the receiving area growth. Remember, only a small group of large land owners benefit from receiving areas and from the sale of TVRS while everyone else feels the negative impacts of growth. My suggestions, don't create any more receiving area until the backlog of approved housing is considerably lower. Utilize clustering. Don't allow further development in a primary flood plane. Separate the valleys and don't allow TDRs to be sent from one valley to the other. That should also allow the supply and demand to set a reasonable value in the Carson Valley without having to increase TDR valuations three times. Finally, regarding a TBR TDR versus land values chart on page 18, don't forget that the land sale would have substantial tax implications, whereas the TDRs would allow the homeowner to continue to own and work the land. Thank you, Jim. Anyone else? I'm Dan Greenley from the East Valley area. I've been in this valley for 35 plus years. Been coming to some of these meetings for almost nearly as long. The originally proposed TDR were to protect the green belt, the A irrigated land along our Carson Valley here and at the time I went to the various commissioner

meetings where this was discussed and I personally supported it at that time. Since then, it seems like it's just getting a lot of lip service. And as already been pointed out, the most recent use of TDRs was to transfer development rights off the Sleeping Elephant Ranch down in TR up here to Park Ranch and Cattle Company, totally turning the concept of TDR on its head. It saved sage brush and built over a irrigated land. The idea that TDR is going to save us from o, you know, from the development, create open spacees is certainly questionable at this point. I think the the county when they're looking at the TDR, I'll cut to the chase on this, should identify areas that are worth saving. They should identify the areas that they're going to transfer it off. If it's something that we want to save, we should pursue that, identify that, and put it out for the public to know. I think there needs to be transparency by all parties, uh, including the citizens that are funding this. It's our tax dollars and our community that are at risk. And I think the county needs to follow through and actually to preserve and protect this there. This planning commission just a few months ago went in and bought an easement and then turned it into a flood control basin. The easement was supposed to offset the growth that was allowed within that plan unit development area. In your wisdom, you decided to go and buy it, dig a hole, and now we got a hole out there with a bunch of weeds in it. And that's

not what people want with open space easement. It's not what I want with open space easement. And it goes to the core of the problem of how the county is going to be a good steward of the land when they buy these places or when they have the option to have these places. And right now, your track record in my opinion is lacking. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Anyone else? Seeing no rise, I will close public comment. I would also like to acknowledge those who didn't speak today but send in public comment and I would like to acknowledge and welcome all the members of the technical advisory committee who are present today and publicly thank them for participating in the process and for their commitment and contributions to putting together the TDR study that we have before us today. And also before we begin, I'd like to introduce Kate Morus O'Neal who would like to say a few words and also address what happens after the PC con um considers what's going on and after we finish our review. Kate, thank you. My vice chair, he's so wonderful. Reminds me I have to approve the agenda and the minutes. I'm so excited to get into this. May we have approval of the agenda. Are there any chair? I approve the agenda. Second. Second. We have a motion by Bryce, second by Lori. All those in favor? I. I. Perfect. Approval of the minutes. Are there any changes? No minutes. Wonderful. Move on from there. Now, Kate, please. Let's get going. Good afternoon, Madame Chair,

commissioners, everyone in attendance today. uh Kate O'Neal Planning Division. Uh I just wanted to give a brief overview of of how we got here back in 2022. Um I started here at the county and I got a a list of tasks from um our fearless leader Tom Delair and on that list was a TDR study. So it is something that the county has been wanting to evaluate for a number of years. um understanding uh some of the public comments that you heard today uh are valid just you know we we have to we have to either revamp the program or take a good hard look at it um see where the values are of TDR see where we can do better um the sending areas versus the receiving areas where those come from where are those coming from um so the first thing we did once we we were able to do the the RFQ and um contracted with Wood Rogers ers. Uh we developed the technical advisory committee which consisted of um current and past TDR owners um ranchers, farmers who have open space availability. Um and then a lot of people in the community that are very familiar with our TDR program. um their input and uh communications we had were um were very valuable just to to get that kind type of feedback um after today. So what we're looking at for today, you're going to get a presentation from Derek at Wood Rogers and um Jen from Leland Consulting. They're going to they have a PowerPoint that will explain where we are in the study and what we have learned thus far. um some recommendations. Uh this is just presentation only. So we're we're our parameters are here's where we are. We want your feedback. Um

if the TAC members or members of the public after the presentation would like any following uh comments, we welcome those also. Um once we have kind of direction and comments from the planning commission um and where we leave today uh then we will eventually get to the final report that will go to the board of county commissioners that we anticipate by the end of the year. So that's where we are today. I just wanted to kind of give a brief uh synopsis of of where we are and how we got here. And um at this time I'm going to invite uh Derek and Jen up to do the presentation after Bryce asks his question. [Music] Okay, I need to read this into the record. Item one for presentation only presentation and discussion on transfer of development rights TDR study that commenced in September of 2023. Wood Rogers will be giving an overview of the study, the progress and findings, the collaboration utilized during the study and recommendations to future pathways for the TDR program. Derek Kirkland Wood Rogers Incorporated and Jennifer Shut Shut Leland Consulting presenting. You may begin. Thank you. You [Music] want to run it? Uh, good afternoon members of the planning commission. Uh, Derek Kirkland with Wood Rogers. Um, and I have here uh, Jennifer with me as well from Leland Consulting. So we had kind of a whole group of consultants working on this.

Obviously TDRs aren't something you come across every day. So we had pretty diverse group with um some economics uh consultants uh FCS group um as well as Leland who um does a number of of these types of planning projects across the West Coast. Um and then obviously Wood Rogers we've done a lot of land use planning in Douglas County and around the area. Um so with that go ahead. Uh so what we're going to be talking about today in our presentation uh is basically the progress we've we've gotten so far. Um we'll talk a little bit about the existing program, talk about some of the key findings from our research and then we'll be talking about uh future pathways and kind of next steps and then obviously a discussion um and everything we're presenting today. Um definitely want to get your feedback and looking forward to it kind of where we're at in the process. Uh, so as as we kind of as Kate kind of mentioned, so the TDR program review was one of the first things we did. We sat down with staff um kind of went through um everything they were hoping to get out of it. Uh and we had our initial TAC meeting about April 2024 after we had done some um some existing research on the program. Um got a lot of feedback from the TAC and then we moved into uh stakeholder interviews. Uh, and also Jennifer um and myself had some expert interview um with other communities and other departments um around the country that also have TDR programs to kind of learn some of what they they do and how they do it and why they do it. Um and then we came up with some some initial recommendations based on all the the the interviews and the TAC uh feedback. Um and then we entered into the the financial analysis which we will talk a little bit about today in our um presentation. Um and then we moved into our second TAC meeting where we had kind of a a roundt discussion about some of the the draft recommendations. learned a

little bit more about um you know ideas from the TAC members and things that may or may not work and kind of some what basically have what we'll show today is some of the the kind of these revised or kind of the draft recommendations that we're presenting at this planning commission workshop going forward from here our goal is to take all the feedback from this um sort of like a TAC meeting and go back listen from the public comment from planning commission comments and update our recommendations s based on staff direction um from those comments. We'll be preparing a a final report that will then come back to planning commission for um review um andor approval and then on and then would move on to the board of county commissioners after that. Um so looking at the current program obviously there's there's a lot of goals um that feed into this program. Um and so this program is one part of the larger master plan um for the county and some of those the key um some of the key goals that we found just in the development code and the master plan. Um obviously protecting protecting the the community's character. It's a great place. A lot of historic value, a lot of agriculture. It's very unique for for Nevada and the West Coast, honestly. So um I think that's an important one. Um obviously enhancing property values. um looking at uh population and where concentrations of population are. Um avoiding the overcrowding of land. Um and then from a land use perspective, we really want to look at managed growth um and how that that plays into this program. Um and also the agriculture and conservation, you know, obviously a key component in protecting that. Uh we also looked at some housing goals and and looking at the other part of the program um in a little bit more depth. Um we you know we want to we want to see some growth but is sustainable levels and in uh areas where it should be um

close to utilities and close to where there's other communities. Um avoiding sprawling developments that are taking up some of the the area that we don't want to see it in. Um and then also some of the other goals were uh affordable h awareness of affordable housing but also like just not just affordable housing obviously has a lot of different meanings to it and in some degree but also home home ownership opportunities as well. Um where people um work in the community um service jobs especially um where are they going to live? How do they support the community? Um and then increasing opportunities for um households with special needs was the other one um in there as well. Um, when we looked at the existing TDR program, we actually worked with the University of Nevada Reno and we worked with a lot of Douglas County staff to uh basically create a map of um the existing TDR program. So, the the existing program was adopted in 1996. The sending areas currently are defined as A19 and FR19 zoning districts. So, they're specific zoning districts which in the map are basically all the purple areas. Um and then uh basically the um there was under the current program it does give you some incentives for um preserving in the flood plane. Um but this whole program is market driven. So basically the purple areas up there that you see and and the the blue ones that you see are the areas that have already been conserved through the TDR program um over the last few uh several years. Um which as that number was mentioned earlier about over just over 4,000 acres. Um and then the red areas are basically the receiving areas. Um, and so the way it works now is basically you, you know, somebody who wants to build a house in a receiving area would go look for these TDRs. So it's all market driven. Um, you know, someone would come

to the county or someone word of mouth would go acquire those um transfer development rights. They're certified by Douglas County and then they can be used uh in a receiving area. And so um and the minimum sending site size for that is 40 contiguous acres. So if somebody came in with 20 acres, they would not be allowed to utilize the TDR program as ex as it exists today. Um and so that just gives you kind of a highlight. Obviously, um going back to 1996, um some of the data, there's obviously some some gaps in data, but we feel pretty good about um a lot of the effort that went into this to kind of create this as a starting point. Um, and obviously we don't show the whole county up here. Um, but it just gives you an idea of just some of the mapping exercises we went through. And it was Wood Rogers GIS department, University of Nevada, um, and then Douglas County GIS department that kind of all got together and with staff and try to figure out, um, kind of the the basis of this. And I think that's one of the recommend recommendations you'll see um is from a transpar transparency perspective and also just looking at the program as a whole is is the data collection um is improving upon that so we can see where things are are coming from where they're going. Uh and I'll let Jennifer talk about that here in a minute. Um, so I'm going to go through some of our uh key findings, but I also just want to touch on what the existing process is right now if you uh, you know, were to follow the life of a TDR. So, um, an owner, a land owner who wants to preserve some of their land through the program would file an application that complies with the county requirements. The county would then review that application, make sure that it's in compliance. Um, and then, uh, confirms that the calculation of TDRs with the applicable bonuses is correct. Um, the owner presents and records a deed restriction or perpetual open space

easement to the county and the county issues that certificate of eligibility. So, when we're talking about TDRs, it's really that certificate that we're talking about. Um, and then the the landowner who received that certificate, they don't get paid until a developer or some third party purchases that purchases that certificate from them. So, a developer or will come in, purchase that certificate, and then record the certificate um, and provide copies to the community development department when they're uh, putting their their plan, their site plan together. Um, and the county maintains those records. Uh, for stakeholder engagement, I'm g to move this closer. Okay. For stakeholder engagement, we had a technical advisory committee. Um, as Kate mentioned, it had a lot of community members on it coming from a lot of different uh backgrounds. So, you know, county commissioners, planning commissioners, um people representing Minden and Gardnerville and the Ranchos, uh land owners. Um, we really tried to get uh um a lot of input from folks who who know about the community and know how how this program works. Um, we also interviewed some developers to get their perspective and to get information that was then used in the financial analysis that FCS did. Um, and then we talked to program managers and experts from a variety of communities that have uh similar programs. So, uh, King County, Washington, the Pinelands in New Jersey, Katus County, Washington, Summit County, Colorado, um, and then also TRPA. We heard um, from the people that we talked to uh, a number of benefits and challenges. So, a big benefit of the program is liquidity. Um, ranching is not always the most, you know, lucrative activity. A lot of times your wealth is tied up in your land. This is an opportunity to to get some of that

liquidity out of your land. Um tax planning. We heard from some folks who were talking about how, you know, they want to leave land to the next generation and they don't want to leave that next generation with this, you know, huge tax burden and by recording an easement, it can lower that tax burden. Um market-based transactions uh is a big program benefit. That's something that we heard from all folks across the spectrum was, you know, we like that the landowner and the developer get together, negotiate the price of the TDR. We don't want the county coming in and telling us what price the TDR should be. We want to have that private negotiation where we decide on the price. So, that was something that that people really liked. Um, also, it's targeted preservation in perpetuity. Once you record one of these easements, that land is preserved forever. Um whereas you know there there may be other types of conservation that um could be subject to change in the future. This is permanent. Um and then uh from the developer perspective it also provides density bonuses to build in receiving areas. There were a lot of challenges with the program. I think everybody who spoke today articulated some of these challenges really well. Um so transparency, uncertainty and access to information. This is what Derek was talking about where um there needs to be a you know publicly available information on this program where it's been used um how it's working um and how how uh land owners and developers can utilize it. um expertise uh because there was such a long time where this program uh wasn't used there, you know, there was some feeling that there was a need for uh the county to kind of understand the program better. I really applaud the work that uh Kate and Andrea and Tom have done through this process. They've been digging through all sorts of records and archives to to find out

about how this program has been used, how it works. Um and it's just been uh great to have their help. Um high land values uh that's a really big challenge with this program. Right now land values in Douglas County are very very high and tdrs can't really compete um from a price perspective. So if you're a land owner and you're thinking do I do I want to you know sell my land either now or in the future or do I want to uh save it in perpetuity and it can never be built on? um from a price perspective, probably you're going to lean toward selling your land unless you know that your future generations are going to want to ranch it. Um consistency of application of this program. Um we've heard, you know, there's some feeling in the community that maybe there were instances where um there was uh a project that didn't have the right amount of TDRs that got approved or a project that did that didn't get approved. Um and consistency of application is is kind of the basis of this program. If uh developers and ranchers and land owners don't think it's going to be applied as written, then there's no real incentive to participate. Um infrastructure is a challenge. Uh we heard that from some of the folks that gave testimony earlier that um you know there's a question about the receiving areas and whether they can accommodate the the housing that's uh that they're planned for. um sending and receiving area locations. I think we we've heard a bit about that already as well. Um and then permitting timeline and processes. That's again from a developer perspective. You know, time is money for developers. So if if there is something that's adding time or complexity to a process, there's less incentive to develop, which means that there's less incentive to use this program that preserves land. Um when we talked to the experts um they

uh they were pretty much in agreement with a lot of what what we've heard from uh the feedback so far um best practices. The first bucket that we have is simplicity and transparency. So making sure that there's marketing about the program um that there's publicly available information. Um that the there are opportunities to educate the public on how the program works and why it's beneficial. Um and then also making sure that there's a predictable supply of development rights. Um there's a bucket that one of the experts we talked to called institutional fortitude. So that's the kind of political um and and administration side of it. Making sure that um the the goals of the program are clear and that um you know everybody's on board with those so that the the program can work as well as it as it should. Um and then aligning with growth. uh this is that tricky uh equation part of it where you want to make sure that the programs uh aligned with local conditions. So when you have an imbalance like the the land prices versus the TDR prices um there there needs to be a way to get that into alignment. Um so I know there's a lot of text on this slide. So this was from FCS gave us some highlevel uh takeaways from their financial analysis. Um the final report will include more details on the financial analysis, but we didn't want to put a bunch of spreadsheets in front of you today. Um so there are layers of development constraints. Um which means that adding uh you know TDR to to that those layers of development constraints means that development in Douglas County is is challenging. And I know that there's uh a lot of goals aimed at uh sustainable slower growth here. Um but again, this program doesn't really work if there's no demand. So just uh you

know that is that is a concern from a a financial perspective. Um there's the high cost of land which I've already talked about. Um, the TDR market right now is constrained. Even though you saw all that purple land in the map of where people could be participating in the program, there aren't a lot of uh folks currently participating in the program. So, there's uh not that that supply that needs to be there. Um, the the market is the market, which is another way of saying that there's um market forces that the county is not going to be able to change. things like um you know land prices is not something that the county is going to be able to to do anything about nor do I think most people would want them to. Um you know whether there's a recession like uh one of the commenters earlier was talking about but um those factors will all impact the uh the TDR program because of the impacts on on uh development market um incentives. So, we're going to talk a little bit more about this in the next slides, but because of the imbalance between um the sale prices of land and the values of TDRs right now, um there can be ways to change the value of the TDR. That is not to say that the county would come in and say TDRs are worth X dollars now, but you can say a TDR is worth more units, especially if it's from somewhere that is really important to preserve. Um, so those are options for kind of leveling that that equation. Um, and then, uh, strategic planning. Next year, there's going to be a kickoff of the master plan process. There's going to be an opportunity to go into some of those community plans, do some assessments of of where the county wants to see development, where it does not want to see development. Um, uh, getting public input on those. So, that's going to be a

big part of this. Um so based on the uh the analysis that FCS conducted um right now uh from the information that we have and acknowledging that markets are always changing and the last TDR sale was a while back. Um the the sale price of land is worth about four times more than what a a TDR is going for. Um so this is you know pretty heavily caveed with this is based on current market information that we were able to get from um people who've participated in the program because these are private transactions that could be that could change you know um but um if you're looking at you know 140 TDRs at $5,000 each you're getting about $700,000 for those TDRs. um if the owner outright sells the land, which again um you know they'd still be able to work the land uh under with a TDR. If they sell the land they can't, but if they sold the land to the developer, they could get about $3 million. Um, and so that's when we talk about that imbalance, you know, that is, you know, even if you don't want to sell your land today, if you want to continue ranching, um, if you think that your your kids don't want to ranch or you think, you know, maybe when I retire in 20, 30 years, I'm not going to want to ranch anymore and I can make more money if this is buildable land, there's a real incentive to to not participate in the TVR program. Um, which is a challenge. you know, we want to make sure that that this land is getting preserved. Um, so when we talk about TDR and land value imbalance, um, if you if the county did decide to uh increase the price of a TDR, again, they don't have the power to do that. We're not recommending that

they do that, but if they they did, they said, "Okay, instead of 5,000, now TDRs are worth, you know, $20,000." um and they didn't change the incentives for that. Um there would be a degree a decreased developer demand for TDRs and again the the land owners who preserve their land don't get paid until somebody pays them for their TDR. So that means that there's less uh incentive to build or to uh to participate in the program from land owners. There's less housing built in receiving areas, less preservation of sending areas. But if you increase the value of a TDR by incentivizing some high priority areas that you determined through that master planning process um and saying okay if you go from you know the Carson Valley flood plane and now that's worth three three housing units instead of one um you can increase developer demand because now now a TDR is is worth more to them and you get more housing built in receiving areas and more land preservation which I know is is a a big goal of this program. Um, okay. I'm going to hand it back to Derek to talk about some of the future pathways. All right. So, um, through through some of our research, uh, through working with the tech, um, through a lot of interviews, we basically developed, um, a series of alternatives. Um, and so we wanted to look at kind of a broad range. So some of the things that we looked at and these were presented um at the last TAC was basically the do nothing alternative where there's no change things just keep going as they are today. Um we looked at kind of an a smaller option which is like maybe there's some administrative changes where we look at transparency we look at how the programs being administered and maybe there's some changes there that could help. Um and then we looked at an option um that

would include option one but also include more of a program overhaul um which would include looking at sending and receiving areas um through the through like a master plan amendment um and going with a full kind of overhaul. The other options we looked at was uh basically a TDR sunset where the program goes away. Um and then we looked at an option four where the program were to sunset it would go away but in its place would be left with um community plan updates which is I believe kind of what hope was uh was referring to. Um and so there in that case it would be left up to land use tools rather than the transfer development rights program. I think one of the things that we heard loud and clear um from the technical advisory committee um and just kind of our own recommendations was that the the TDR program, the fact that it's preserved 4,000 acres so far is is a successful program. Why get rid of that? Douglas County is one of the few places in the country that has the program and while you know maybe it's time for a reset, we didn't feel like it was it was a good idea to just sunset the program or get rid of it. Um, and so the I think where everyone landed so far, again, we're here to discuss this, but where everything's everyone's landed so far is basically the TAC preferred a phased approach, combining options one and two. Maybe there are some things we can do administratively to clean things up um while we move into the master plan process um and really dive deeper into the the sending and receiving areas. Um and then we also discussed and we'll get into here in a minute just some of these um some other opportunities with conservation and incentives. Um so some these just kind of overview of these obviously you know when we look at these program changes um nothing happens overnight and there's obviously a cost to that. So administrative changes, um time to implement it probably takes a year or two, but it's

something that um could be initiated relatively quickly. Um fairly low cost, mainly administrative and and working with staff on some some possible ways to accomplish that. Um and then really the issue that we're addressing there is transpar transpar transparency, excuse me. um and really educating people about the program, trying to be promote it more so people understand what the benefits are and what their opportunities are. And then phase two would start your excuse me overall uh overhaul program which is is probably takes a little bit longer obviously that would include um be part of the master plan process um which you know diving deeper I mean that can take a few years um to do that uh and then it's you know relative high cost to go through those processes because they take so long um but at the end of the day you you know we'd be kind of touching that transparency the education but diving deeper into the sending and receiving areas and phase Phase three um recommendation uh is basically to once you get through you kind of modified the sending and receiving areas is really start to target infrastructure planning on where you want development. Um put together some some medium and and long range uh infrastructure plans where you could you could start applying for grant funds and maybe try to incentivize development in those areas so that the development in those areas are now buying TDRs and maybe areas that we want them to buy TDRs in. um some of the administrative changes. Uh again, these are just kind of going through. Um I think one of the big things we saw was, you know, TDRs are basically a certificate, right? And so the administrative process is is timely and it's takes up a lot of staff uh resources and time. One of the things that we saw from some of our expert research was actually a lot of people have like a a database and that each TDR that's created ends up with a unique

identifier which means once that's used it can be tracked through the system. Um so basically once it's created uh when it gets that certificate it gets a unique identifier and then as that that TDR moves through the system it's not tracked it could be sold three or four times but at the end of the day once it comes back and it's used that there's part of that spreadsheet shows that it knows where that that unique identifier came from and it knows where it's being used so it can't be used multiple times in the system. So that seemed like the quick win to try to clean up from an administrative uh perspective, but also being mindful of of staff resources and time and and setting up a database that's you know they don't have to track individual sales of TDRs, but once that TDR is created, it does get a unique identifier. Um obviously there's like a website and a web page that you could do to really help with the transparency. People can go there. Um, and then one of the other things we looked at was um sort of a like a marketbased um where the Douglas County is not controlling the market, but it has a a web page or a user interface where people can see where do if I'm a developer coming to town, where do I go get ATDR? Um, and so it starts to put the buyers and sellers together. Um, but again, not linked to Douglas County, just something they put up and people voluntarily use it. Um, I think we see we've seen some similar things with TRPA. If you're up at the lake and you're trying to do something, they have interfaces where you can go and you can figure out where to go get your TDRs. Um, TRPA does have a database that's already in place. They've already paid for the infrastructure to basically the cost to build that. Um, and so there could be a potential way where Douglas County could leverage um, an already built system um, not using TRPA system, but using that infrastructure for Douglas County to build their own. Um, and so there are some, and I guess you call that piggybacking on TRPA's contract with that database developer, which would save some cost. So there's

things like that that you could do, um, that would help kind of expedite some of this and kind of keep those costs down. Um, did we talk about this? And so these are just some examples of of some what some of the other people are doing um to help educate people on on the benefits of the program and basically the transparency of it. Um the program overhaul. Uh again, whole bunch of different options here. Um but really this this program overhaul would be tied to the master plan because the master plan is where ultimately those sending and receiving receiving areas are identified. Um and so you would have to basically go through the master plan amendment process which is coming up um to determine where um where we want to make changes to the sending and receiving areas. So at this point it would be more of a you know recommendations for maybe areas to look at but the ultimate map changes to those areas would mostly come with the master plan amendment process um or a master plan update. Um and there could be everything from removing certain sending areas uh removing certain receiving areas um modifying the boundaries of those. Um and a lot of that would be based on infrastructure and where do we want uh the the future growth to be? Um where do we foresee infrastructure improvements? Where can it handle? And so those those would be a much um deeper dive into those. Um and then obviously um looking at the TDR values and looking at potential um incentives um for where like the flood zone in the Carson Valley if you're protecting a land and uh flood plane do you get a higher yield on those TDRs? So maybe the the land owners can charge more because you're going to get more but then the developer is okay paying a higher cost because they can use it um you know they can use one TDR for three units in a desirable area. So, there's a whole bunch of different

factors there, but we feel like that's probably from an overall perspective is kind of where we where we think it would need to go in order to try to create that balance between the buyer and the seller and preserving a land and and putting growth in a sustainable area. Slide, please. Um, and also on that one, we could look at some, you know, there could be some restrictive zoning. I think, um, Hope talked about overlay districts and certain things you could look at as well. Um, uh, but I think as of right now, the way the TDR market, and I think a lot of people express interest in it, is it's it's more of a market-based program. So, we're not telling you a land owner that you can never build here. We're asking you to basically, you know, help us preserve it. Um and so there could be cases and maybe there's a balance of of keeping the market base but also adding in some additional um zoning to limit development um in those areas to maybe intend u encourage them to sell some of the TDRs. Um and then the next uh recommendations would be kind of that that infrastructure assessments especially when we get into those sending and receiving areas is really needing to look um look really hard at where based on the capital improvement programs and where we see growth occurring is you know what needs to happen and and where should these receiving areas be based on you know obviously current programs. um and really looking at ways to get grant funds and other things to help maybe put in some of that infrastructure to relieve some of the burden um on the developers and and keep uh Douglas County kind of moving in the direction of the receiving area um and enticing those developers to go purchase TDRs um and use them in these areas. Um again some of the alternatives that we that were approached and we put these in here mainly they were um some of the things that dis that were discussed uh a

universal TDR application was brought up where basically you know the sending and receiving areas go away and you basically have a one for one. So basically if I'm going to build a house I have to bring in a TDR. Um a lot of we see that there's a lot of issues with that. um one being that it it's it doesn't really align with the goals. And so we've kind of outlined a little bit here. Um probably the biggest one is avoid undesirable concentrations of population. If you take away the sending and receiving areas, you basically open it up and it's a free-for-all. And if I want to go build, you know, a five house subdivision over here, 20 houses over here, 50 houses over here, there's there's nothing that prevents me from doing that. Um other than, you know, working with zoning. I could come in with the master plan zone change and then bring in my TDRs and I and so you start to limit um it goes against that sustainable growth. I think that also kind of hinders the overcrowding because now you're going to start um taxing your infrastructure because if I want to go build five houses over here and I can extend the you know some of the infrastructure and the countyy's going to maintain it eventually, it just it starts to create you know ultimately sprawl. Um which I think having the sending and receiving areas really targets where you want to preserve and it targets where you want the growth to occur. And so I think if you took that away and just went for a one to one, you would really end up hurting yourself probably more than than helping the program. Um, we also felt like for in, you know, again, in terms of managed growth and preserving agriculture, you know, if if people are going to buy TDRs and it's a one one, you know, someone that's trying to sell their land's probably going to have a reduced land value because it's going to be harder to it's going to be harder to buy land because I have to bring in TDRs um and then go find land to to buy. It's I think it just it's going to create a lot of problems in terms of managing growth. It's also very

expensive and I think hard to track um on an administrative purpose as well. And I I don't know that it would give you the benefits of actually preserving the area that you want to preserve. Um and I think that's uh summarized a little bit here. Um you know, cost of the county long term from infrastructure probably takes a hit because you're going to have a lot more subdivision spread out. You're going to see growth in areas you probably don't want it to occur. Um, and then for a lot of people probably discouraging home ownership because the cost of every single house is going to go up because got to go find a TDR. Harder to do. Um, so that's a little bit of an overview of we did look at that program. Um, didn't see a whole lot of value in it. uh our our thought is it'd still make more sense to look at the current program um administratively and then look at the sending and receiving areas and modify those before you actually went to a one to one. Um the other thing that's been brought up and uh could have some merit uh is basically separating the valleys. Um obviously there's you know when you when you look at there was talk of about like inbas and transfers and things like that. Our thought was rather than looking them at at basins, you would just create B TDR boundaries um more or less um where you would look at areas um you could have separate them out and so you could only use TDRs in certain areas, but what we came up with and thought might be a better consideration would be to in is create these incentive programs where if you you know, we're not going to to dictate, you know, market driven. We're not going to dictate where you can get your TDR, but if you get your TDR from a certain area, it's going to be worth a whole lot more, which makes the value of the TDR to the landowner worth more, but also uh the developer is going to probably lean towards buying a more a higher value TDR

from the Carson Valley opposed to going to kind of Topaz and um you know, maybe Topaz is worth is the TDR is worth one unit, but Carson Valley where you have a land flood, maybe that's worth three units. And so you create this incentive program where you're not discouraging people from preserving the areas that you want to preserve, but you are incentivizing them to preserve the areas that we really want to preserve first. Um, and then it that wouldn't preclude somebody from Topaz from using a TDR. It's just not worth as many units. And so I think this is just kind of highlighting that example where we could rather than you know having everything that purple color is every all A19 FR19 zones are um sending areas kind of to what hope was speaking to is we could start to define um different levels of receiving or sending areas. We could define different levels of receiving areas and we could create this incentive program so that overall the TDR program stays um stays market driven, stays incentive driven um and provides incentives for people to preserve different areas, but we're not precluding anyone from preserving something we still want preserved. um and obviously up for discussion um on what that would look like and we'd still have to do some more research if that's something that is desirable but that was definitely um one area one area we thought would be um definitely an advantage. Um so I think some of the the questions for consideration I think we're looking for today um from planning commission members of the public obviously um we have TAC members here too um so we'd love more feedback from them um but what are your thoughts on the TDR program today um are the goals still relevant I think that's the first thing we're thinking about is is there a goal that's different today than there was um even in 2020 master plan which um would impact the program um any questions concerns you know thought about the recommendations

um other recommendations maybe we haven't thought about um that we should consider. Um we talked a lot about incentives and the the idea of incentives. Are there other incentives out there that maybe you've thought about um that we could look at? And then just thoughts on the setting and receiving areas um you know does that recommendation that's something that this board feels or this commission feels very strong about um looking at that going forward? Um and are there other interest in kind of limiting development in certain areas? So, that's that's kind of where we're at. I know it's a lot. Um there's a lot more that that went into all this, but um I think we're here and that's why we wanted to do the planning commission workshop was to really um do some outreach and get some feedback before we move into the next phase, which is developing the report and the and the draft recommendations that will come back um to this commission at some point. Thank you very much. I'd like to acknowledge Commissioner Hailes and Commissioner Gardner. I hope you're listening carefully and I hope we don't step on your toes or making our comments. Thank you. Are there questions or comments from the commissioners? Jim, it's almost difficult to consider this outside of considering the master plan because any changes would require changes in the master plan. I for one would like to see more requirements for TDRs. I like the idea if when you preserve land in certain areas it's worth more than in other areas. I think that's a good idea. I think the um I'm looking at I live in the ranchos and I kind of look at a lot of this from that standpoint. We have a lot of receiving area. Probably looked like a really good idea in 1996 that this would be a great area to grow. The problem is there's been a lot of growth since then and no real connector roads. People would in growth would have

to go through for example residential roads to get to new development. So the thoughts on what's a good place to grow may be different now than you know 30 years ago. So, um I think that there's a lot of things that have to be done with the master plan to make changes in the TDR program work because I think we do need to change it. We do need to create more demand for TDRs that'll raise their value. They could be more valuable to the ranchers. We don't think we're ever going to get a point where it's more profitable to sell TDRs than to sell your land. We're hoping is people that want to continue to ranch but need to get some revenue now would benefit from this and help keep the ranches going in the short term and and hope that um that that value will preserve land because I think that's a uh that's a something the public's very interested in is preserving more land. We don't want to be u San Frernando Valley. We don't want massive growth. We understand there will be growth. I know a residents look at a piece of empty land owned by somebody and think, well, that should always be vacant and it's not going to be that. But, um, I think we need to get more out of the TDR program by creating more demand for it. And I think we can do that by requiring more. And we need to take a look at the borders of receiving areas. When a when a developer comes to a board and says, "Well, you know, this is a great deal because they could put 16 homes per acre." Well, you can't put 16 homes per acre. There's height restrictions. Doesn't work, but it's kind of a threat to a board, a town or a GD. So, I think we need to redefine receiving areas and whether we really need receiving areas or whether we should just say you're going to put a development in, you're going to have to

have TDRs. So, it's just kind of difficult to think about the changes we need to make without making changes in the master plan at the same time. Thank you, Dan. I guess we're going down the line here. Well, when I get into a new topic like this, and being a new member of this uh commission, uh it is new to me. I always ask what is the problem we're trying to solve? Um, and as I review the material, my first conclusion is, wow, this was a very successful program back in the day. I mean, 4,000 acres of of conserved land is nothing to sneeze at. So, I I want to start with that positive. Um, but as I read through the materials, I I struggled a little bit to determine what what is it that we're trying to solve? And I think one of the the commenters earlier, I I loved her analogy of when you go to Home Depot, do you buy the tool and then come home and figure out whether you're going to use that tool for your purpose? No. you you go to Home Depot or Lowe's or or Ranch Supply uh knowing what tool you want to buy. And those of us who've been around local government for, you know, a long part of our career, in and out on both sides of it, um you realize that that yeah, there's some really fine goals, but aren't there other tools to achieve these goals? and didn't this tool work for a while and now it's not working because of market or or whatever. And then my last thought was um how many land owners are we really talking about?

I mean as we talk about receing areas and I'm thinking is that like a half a dozen people you know do they control 80% of the sending area? I mean, are we really in this county talking about a very small number of potential property owners? And and then my thoughts go to, well, if there's just a handful of major potential or or major property owners in the potential sending areas, shouldn't we just go talk to them and negotiate and figure out what's on their mind and, you know, develop a program that that kind of fits the market that we're targeting? And so sometimes I wonder if maybe we're trying to develop a program that might work in a huge county with thousands of potential property owners that could participate as opposed to Douglas County which tends to be controlled by a much lower number of of both sending area and people potentially developing on the receiving side. So again, I'm trying to I'm trying to look for the problem that we're trying to solve. Uh obviously, I'm I am very much in favor of of, you know, process improvements. And so the alternate uh uh phase one uh administrative changes, things that the staff thinks that they need to do to better deal with with what we've got now makes a lot of sense. But as as my previous colleague just said about the sending areas and the receiving areas, maybe there's more planning that needs to be done. Maybe these receiving areas, maybe it would be more worthwhile to go through community planning efforts in those areas and try to determine what it is that the community really wants within these areas that we call high priority for development. Um, and you know, I could go on and on.

I I we've got some good housing goals there. It would have been helpful for me as as a new member here to get a little bit of a summary of how we're doing on those housing goals. As I look at them, you know, I don't want to I don't want to guess, but I I'm I'm wondering if we're doing as well as we thought we were going to do when we made them goals 20 years ago or whatever. Um, and I I you know, my background, I think a lot of you know me as a public works official, water water resource guy, uh, civil engineer. And so my uh, my background always takes me back to that sustainability questions. And one of our goals is to be sustainable. And yet I wonder, are we really being honest with our community? I mean, we're taking on, we the county are taking on responsibility for maintenance of these public facilities, notably roads, local roads. And yet, we just had a report, what, two months ago, 3 months ago, that shows that we are not meeting our responsibilities for maintaining the roads that we accepted from previous developers. Dan, we need to pull everything back to the study, but that's that was came up in here. And so it makes me wonder if don't we have bigger issues to deal with? You know, I'm looking for what what where's the where's the meat in this one? But where do we have issues that we really uh need to be working on? We heard from our our our public today that there's concerns on water resources. Uh it was pointed out that we've got a $5 million deficit in local road maintenance and we're wondering about how we're going to get more development in this county. I I would just submit that there may be some higher priorities that we could be working on. Thank you.

Can I just let I just wanted to let you know um when we give you the full report we will include some alternative um preservation programs that could be used alongside a TDR program or um instead so you should be getting some more tools. Well, thank you for that presentation and um I do appreciate all the effort that's gone in with the the consultants and with the TAC. I mean, that's a lot of work that you presented on the screen. And um I've been on the commission for about a year, a little year and a half or so. And um the TDR program has not really been we haven't really implemented it a lot um since I've been on the on the board. So, I'm not as familiar with it as I should be. But I think this idea, my one of my biggest concerns is the idea that we're going to go out to the community and say we have to incentivize growth so that we can preserve open space is a bit counterintuitive. And I think that that's in our community kind of a hard cell. Um, I believe that uh a lot of residents I mean I live in an area that I would love to have open space tdrs preserved but if I'm living in downtown mind I might not feel that same way. It may feel that these areas are for the people that have those really expensive houses on the other side of town and so why should I support this? Um, I kind of think that the idea of um, identifying better the receiving areas and the sending areas is essential. There's so many areas on that map that are just not going to develop there. The size of mountains and the development potential on those sites is just basically zero. U, if there's one house in 40 acres, so be it. that's not

going to um um be against our um goals and our plan. Um but some of the areas that we do feel deserve preservation and I think a lot of the residents out here like to see more cows than houses. So I think we'll um try to preserve that. I think that um those should have a higher priority somehow. and whether it's um increasing the the units per TDR or decreasing the units per TDR elsewhere. I think that maybe looking at going the other way so that the less valuable units you have to are only worth a half a half a unit uh or something of that nature would make the community more supportive of these changes that we're looking at. Um, and also on infrastructure planning, I um, like Dan, I'm a product of local government for many years and I have consistently in the past believed and I will consistently in the future believe that the existing residents of the county should not be subsidizing development at all. That development should pay its own way. And that may not be a popular opinion, but I feel that our residents have bought into our community with the idea that this is the community they want to live in and asking them to build additional roads, additional sewers, additional water lines to support develop that that they may not agree with. I think that's going to be um something that is difficult to support. So whether it is looking at the true cost of development and applying certain impact fees which may also even include an open space impact fee may be something that we actually add to our

toolbox to try to address some of these issues that we're trying to uh come up with. So um I know this is a lot of work. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg in all this work. I think this is an ongoing thing that we'll have to continue to come back to because as you indicated, it's market driven. As the markets change, conditions change, situations of property owners change. So, it is definitely something that's going to continue to evolve, but I do appreciate all the effort you guys have put into it. I think it's it's a good start. Thank you, Lori. Paul, thank you uh Madame Chair. This is a very valuable, at least in my opinion, a very valuable tool for us to ensure that uh development doesn't overtake the character of where we live and why we all may have moved here. I think that's very very important. uh development for development's sake. And I echo uh Commissioner Lyall's comment is is really not uh consistent with uh Douglas County's objectives as I understand it. Uh when we have a an opportunity, as we do with a TDR, so I don't think they should be um abandoned in the slightest, but rather strengthened, and I'll talk about that in just a second. uh it's one of the tools that we should use as distinguished from uh rampant growth. So I echo the comments that I've heard about development paying for itself. As a matter of fact, several uh developments that have come before us that we approved, we required amenities for the surrounding neighborhood so that it actually increased the value of the properties both for those that were

purchasing in the given neighborhood and for the surrounding communities. Now with respect to TDRs, um I think that the greatest idea I've heard is a focus on the sending area and the sending area value is critical because there are uh as the comments have uh been heard some sending areas that you wouldn't care because development would be so expensive uh rational in accordance with all of the requirements of a building in the first instance. it probably wouldn't get built. So the sending area is very important. Now you gave us good guidance and we also had a a comment about um the master plan. Master plan uh thus far has certain requirements and in addition you put up the other development requirements and and those could be strengthened a bit in my opinion so that you could identify those sending areas that would be worth more. And I put that in quotes because it's not really dollars, but it's probably in units. And how could you then make it incentivized for those that are in those sending areas that might valuable? Well, what you could do on one hand is not have an absolute uh abandonment of any development right whatsoever. So, you look at the easement and you can craft an easement for that individual or entity that's selling it that doesn't render it uh two cows per acre period. No full stop, nothing else you can do with that land. And that's a creativity on the easement side that was used in another in in my past that was very effective because then you pass the requirement. In this case, it was orchards, I'll be very honest with you. And uh in this case, you would you would

be able to use it for more than just orchards, but the easement went to the receiving area such that you had to have development was all right and you got certain units, but you had to have a heritage orchard or a buffer that had the trees on it, forest or whatever it may be. In that fashion, the TDR became kind of a tool that you could envision and then implement the kind of development you wanted in a particular place. And I think your comments about the use of TDR is just one tool very cogent, very cogent. And I and I admire and uh your thinking on this thus far and think that uh that it it not only was a lot of work for both the committee and for your agency, but but you you've gotten some good results here and with some further thinking, I mean, it's not going to be easy, but with some further thinking, the entire community could be benefited. Thanks, Kirk. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, and I do want to thank again Derek and uh, Jennifer uh, Tom and Kate for all your work. The advisory committee has done a great job and I particularly want to recognize former planning commission member Nedenrep for uh, his uh, work. He's long been an expert in this field and uh, probably is the the father of this this study. So, thank you for being here today, Mark, and thank you for your contributions. I do have one question before I'll launch into some of my comments. And Tom, uh, Kate, maybe you're the best person. When we talk about the, uh, the existing process for the TDRs, this was the the the graph chart on page 13. Do do we charge a fee for the, uh, landowner to get a TDR certificate of eligibility? Uh Tom Delair for the record. Yeah,

there is an application in a process that they have to go through and and submit and then there is some review of their packet back and forth with the RGIS department and their um consultant to verify the areas uh that they're portraying to us and and making sure that we can justify those areas and numbers of TDRs being developed. Is a fee a flat fee or is it based on the time uh the acreage the complexity? Give you a little edification there. It's a it's a flat fee. I don't recall the number the amount. Yeah, it's pretty minimal. Yeah, it's a minimal fee. And and then how how long would the time frame be? If uh if uh someone would come to you uh today, how long? Again, I'm sure it would depend on the complexity and the research that you had to do. Is it are we talking about a month and a half to get a certificate of eligibility or are we talking about a year and a half? Well, it depends on on what's being presented and and the accuracy of the numbers that we can justify and verify with our team and our information that we have at the county. So, I mean, it could be a couple weeks to process to a couple months just depending on how complex uh those those are. And and and in in the past couple records that we've that we've done and processed, you know, we we had to figure out the process oursel because it wasn't it wasn't really clear to us on on reading the code and and seeing what past applications were done. was very inconsistent between everybody's applications and and we fixed that um by coming up with some standard forms and procedures so that so that moving forward it is very consistent um and treating everybody equal. Excellent. Well, I appreciate you're doing that uh uh and making that as efficient as

possible because I do think uh uh time is money and uh as much as we can streamline and simplify that process would be helpful. Um, let me uh launch into a couple of things and I'm kind of working off of the questions for consideration that were on uh page 33 because I think uh Derek you uh developed those very well. So I'll try and just respond in order with some of my thoughts. Um uh what are your thoughts on the TDR program today? Need needs improvement. Uh are the goals still relevant? Yes, absolutely. Um thoughts uh about the recommendations? Uh I agree totally with the best practices uh uh uh slide that you put up there. That's very uh very important to get those in place. Um I do agree with the advisory committee. I think option one and option two are the best things to move forward with. Now um but I would uh be reluctant to go on further. Uh I think we do as uh a number of other people have mentioned need to integrate this in with a master plan. I think that's important. Um, and I I think that will be a helpful meshing of the goals of the master plan and the goals of the TDR program improvements. Um, uh, what incentives would be appropriate for TDRs? This is one where I I sometimes have a little bit of trouble. Uh, you talk about high priority sending areas. Um, when you get down to brass tax, that becomes very difficult for me to consider. How do you evaluate high, medium, and low priority sending areas? Do you get a committee together to do that? Do you let Tom do that? Do you put that uh by rankings in the master plan? Uh that seems to me to be somewhat fraught with with difficulty. Um the uh thoughts on changing and sending uh to sending and receiving areas in the future. Uh, and uh, does the planning

commission support revising community plans through the master plan update? Well, I'm only one voice on this, but I think some community plans might not have any TDR relevance. Um, and once we would commit to revising all the community plans, um, I think at least in my conversations with staff in the in the past, that is a very time consuming and a very costly process. Uh so I think that ought to be considered uh very very carefully. Uh and then u lastly is there interest in limiting development areas that are high priority for preservation. Um again it's difficult to say what's high priority. I think it's a little bit easier to say what's high priority uh for um development than it is for preservation. Um, but I'd be again reluctant in getting the county too involved in picking winners and losers. Um, I'm very big on the free market, let the free market determine what uh what's going to happen. Uh, if somebody wants to to uh sell u the TDRs on their land, they have a right to do that. If somebody doesn't want to, they have a right to do that. If somebody wants to to sell their land for a profit, that's the free market. how how whe whether Douglas County should incentivize those private actions. Um I guess I come down on the side of of less government intervention than um than more government intervention. Um and then uh just my one observation when we talk about this the phase two and phase three we've got options and we've got phases so I don't want to confuse those. options one and two. I like uh when we get to the phases, when we get to phase two and phase three, and you're talking about $500,000 for those, um that's a good chunk of change. Um I'm not on the board of county

commissioners, but I do listen to their uh their uh discussions and the difficulties they have in making spending priorities. And to me, I think those are something that would be h have to be looked at very carefully when you're spending that amount of money on this program. Uh which is important, but uh we have uh as uh the commissioners always said, we have many priorities. So, thank you very much. Again, the work that everybody in this room has done is outstanding, and I really appreciate the time and effort that you have spent. Thank you, Bryce. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, I too thank the two of you and everybody who's participated in this process and for the presentation. Um, you know, I always question why I'm I'm sitting here, but I I think it's because a small group of folks felt I was worthy. Um, there are times my career experience benefits my role as a planning commissioner, and there's times it doesn't. I was told as a young man that I had two ears and one mouth, and that I should listen to learn. Throughout my career, it's been important to understand what I know and what I don't know. There are several men and women in this audience today that I have a tremendous amount of respect for who are multi-generational neatans in this county or have participated in these discussions for decades. And so for me, it's important to hear from you and what you believe will be in both your personal and family's best interest and that of the long-term preservation of open space and agriculture in this county. If that's indeed what you want, I believe the best way to get anything done is to get your get the appropriate stakeholders in the room. It appear and it appears we might have accomplished that here. I believe there's a lack of transparency and education as part of this program and and that needs to be addressed. However, I believe the biggest issue is pure economics and market factors. This challenge very much resembles the growth ordinance issue

where we have spent a lot of time working on how to control growth when the market has held it at bay as much as half of the ordinance since its inception. I'm not a rancher so I don't believe I'm equipped to dictate to any of you when and how much you can sell your land. And so I want to hear from you as to what your ideas are that may or may not accomplish both of these objectives. Again, I'm here to listen and learn and to do my part as a planning commissioner to help, but I believe that ultimately this comes down to private land issues, market conditions, and how we collectively as a community can accomplish those goals. Thank you. With that, I would like to open public comment and invite the TAC members to come forward. Sign the roster, please. What? Paul, thank you. Um for um director, if as I have read the materials, there really is no public input with respect to either the definition or the characteristics of ascending area except for those that you put on the slide from the master plan and from the development aspect. So otherwise, those are the only guidelines that I could tell for a sending area that exists. Would it benefit or would it take more time, an unduly amount of time to have public input as to how valuable they saw, thought of and the surrounding communities uh the value of a particular sending area? In other words, uh they would have a very good idea about how valuable it would be. those that currently live here. Do you see what I'm saying? Or would that type of process just take too

much time uh such that it's not worth the juice isn't worth the squeeze? Well, um Tom Deair, for the record, I I think the juice juice is worth the squeeze on this one, but the the problem the problem we have is is which one's going to come first? The recommendations for the TDR and the code update. Once we get those, we don't have to implement the code and the ordinance until we get the master plan updated. But if this is something that we are going to move forward with, I heard that four times from the seven commissioners on on, you know, we got to update the master plan. Well, we do, but we need a program that we think will work and then we can incorporate it into the master plan. Um, the code code is really comes first and then the master plan comes after that and we develop what we need. I think we need sending areas located. Um I I think it'll be easier for us to calculate the the value of a TDR, the number of TDRs off of the property. There are a lot of forest and range lands in this valley that we have flood planes that haven't actually been modeled yet. Uh mainly the the airport wash and we're working on on getting those done. Um but right now we don't know where the flooding is. We we saw some areas um in 2023 where uh you know the pine nut areas um flooded and we have a lot of development that has happened since the 70s in those in those areas that are now flooding and it's not just that now flooding but it's it's it's flooding within the hundredyear storm type of event and which we are having and now we have a fire last week and and now we're going to have more water coming down of the pine nuts than out of the pine nut wash than we've ever had before. Um, you know, this is this is starting to get this is starting to get mission critical, you know, at this point. So, um, the direction I received from the county management when I first

started 5 years ago was that we needed to do a TDR study. U, the TDR study we felt needed to come before the master plan update. The master plan update uh, needs to be budgeted and we're planning on budgeting that next year. So, next March, we'll be having the conversations about how much are we going to budget for the master plan and I got to have a TDR study kind of giving us the directions that we're going to go. Um, I, you know, the public has been very vocal in in going back out to every community area and coming up with a new plan and if that's the desire of the board, that's what we'll do. And um, and that's what we need to we need to kind of focus on at that time. But in the meantime, we got to come up with some sort of idea on what this program looks like and if we really need it or don't need it because we do have, you guys are right. There is a growth management ordinance and and it hasn't done what it was intended to do and and and you know, we're running into we're going to be running into some issues uh here shortly with that. um you know coming up and we'll have to implement it per code and and have everybody who wants to develop uh houses in the future uh you know come and apply for that that right to do those and that's and that's going to cause some issues as well. So uh mainly management issues on our end and and how we're going to how are we going to divvy out these allocations. So it is it is something that's that's coming up and it's coming quickly you know is the other thing. So the master plan is is important and we definitely need to update it. Um and and we need to go through that expense but it is costly as you guys have reported. Thank you very much. So the answer is we need to do this first. Yeah. Okay. That was the short answer. All right. Thank you very much Mark. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. Uh, my name is Mark Nin for the record and I've listened to you guys

talk up here and the TDR program is very confusing unless you know all of the history and the history goes back to about 1980. So, um, what I'd like to do is give the board members a little history lesson here and also the consultants. Um, back in the early 80s, Douglas County prepared the very first master plan. At that time, the entire valley was zoned A1, meaning anybody in agricultural land or in this city could build a house on a 1acre parcel. No questions. Uh, just go ahead and do it. When this master plan came through, what the county commissioners at that time decided was, well, this is kind of silly. We want to uh have a little control. So, they downzoned all the agricultural land owners to A19. That's when the TDR concept came about. They the powers that be said, "We're going to take away your development rights, but we're going to give you a TDR instead because it's not fair to just take away something." And so they gave you the TDR. Now, unfortunately, back in the 80s, they only gave one TDR for every uh 20 acres or 19 acres. And that didn't work because no rancher wanted to get rid of his 20 ac or 19 acre TDR. and no person moving to the area could afford a 19 acre TDR. So, it absolutely did nothing. It sat dormant there for many, many years. Uh during the meantime, the commissioner said, "Well, gosh, we got to have some growth." And so, what they did is they started handing out zoning to developers.

Uh in 1996, the program was revamped. In 1996, they gave out many TDRs for every parcel. And they had a system that said, "Hey, if you're going to tie the water to the land, you don't get just one TDR for 20 acres, you get eight more." And that's where this bonus system came through. And uh it worked exceptionally well for many years. The trouble is the commissioners continue to hand out zoning. And so why as a developer would I want to go deal with a damn TDR if I could just go to county commissioners and say, "Hey, I get this for free. Just change my zoning." And that's exactly what happened. So, um, what needs to happen, you know, if I was if I was king, what would happen? I would say, "You know what? Damn it. We're not going to change any zoning. You want to come here? You want to build a project? I'm going to give you a receiving area. We'll let you go out and get your own TDRs. That way, we're accomplishing what the original goal was. We're saving some open space out there and you guys can build your houses based on how many TDRs you buy. Um, there's talk about getting rid of the receiving areas. I never said we should get rid of receiving areas, nor do I think we should. In fact, what we should do is enhance the receiving areas so that people want to get a receiving area versus um you know being able to do what they're doing now, which is just come ask for zoning and the county commissioners give it out. Um TDRs was a misnomer. What we should have called it back then is, you know, it's a tax. It transfers wealth. It transferred wealth from the new homeowner to the rancher who was, you know, saying, "Okay, I won't build." Um, we should call it an impact fee. We shouldn't call it a TDR fee for crying out loud. How

many impact fees do we have in a new house? You have a school impact fee. You got a road in compact fee. You got a fire fee. Hell, the parks even have an impact fee. And I'm sure I'm missing many, many of them. But for this program to be successful, what we have to do is unfortunately get the county involved because a poor developer isn't going to want to run around and chase down 10 damn ranchers who are all going to be gruff and cranky. He just wants to go to the county and say, "Hey, you gave me the receiving area. I now need 20 of these TDR things or uh whatever you want to call them." We should probably change the name. And that way uh the developer knows the set price before they walk in and it makes development a whole lot easier. Um should the TDR program continue? Yes, I believe it should. But is it working now? The answer is absolutely not. The trouble is we're handing out zoning without requiring somebody to have a receiving area where which would require these transfer development rights. But yeah, they in 1996, I don't know if Jock was Jock was there in the 80s when this thing was first originated. In 1996, I think it was Rob Anderson that came through and said, "Well, the reason it's not working is because we don't have enough TDRs." So he created this big bonus schedule that you know if you get if you have a 100 acres you get a bonus of one or two. The schedule's right in the code. If you're irrigated egg land you get eight more. Um only if you tie the water to the land and uh there were several other things that gave you additional bonuses meaning if you were in the flood zone you got some bonuses. So they did go through and try to come up with a bonus system to make this

work. and that's why it worked well. Then we had the recession and then everybody started handing out zoning and it went away. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mark. Jacques, we get to blame you. Uh for the record, Jacquu and I'd like to say how appreciative this community is of of your public service because uh and my background, my degrees in planning and I had a professor at UC Davis who always kind of chuckled and said, "Well, you know, asphalt's the last crop." And by God, he was right. Um so Mark covered a lot of the issues that that I was going to cover and he did it well as a as a accountant and a person who knows numbers far better than I. But when we adopted this plan in 1996, and we did win the the national planning award for the United States with this plan, and we're one of four counties, United States that had TDRs, and I'm here to say it is not perfect. It needs tweaking. I I hope you believe it's worth keeping. Uh because it has been successful. If we had tried to protect that 4,000 acres in today's market, we'd need a hundred million bucks. And that's already done. and through a couple other clients and and various mechanisms, uh we're up to about 18,000 acres forever protected in Douglas County, including humongous donations done on the Walker River down south. And uh so we're in a very enviable position. I always say when my mom grew up in Marino, it was smaller than Men and Guardville is today. And uh they probably wish they'd had a TDR program. It'll work. It needs some tweaking, needs some thought. I think you've got the right folks in the room to to get there. And just to put things in perspective, when we adopted this master plan in 1996, the median home price in Carson Valley was $150,000.

It's now $680,000, but the TDR price hasn't changed a bit. And as Mark said, uh, and I I'll go back to an old Carson Valley ranch saying, uh, Dalb Bington, who sat up here as chairman for 20 years. We did a 700 acre TDR conservation easement with him, but he said uh if you give the milk away for free, they'll never buy the cow. The same is true with development rights. Thank you very much for your time and effort. Thank you, Jacques. Next speaker. Didn't mean to cut you off. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is David Husman, Carson Valley Rancher, whose family has benefited from this program 20ome years ago, back when it was actually working. I think we're making a false comparison between the full value of the land and the value of the development rights because if you don't mind selling the land, great. Good for you. If you want to keep it and you want to get some of the value out, that's where the development rights are valuable. And when you walk out the door after you've done this, you still own the land, which is not worth zero. So I think it it all comes back to the landowner and how motivated they are to keep the property in its current state. As far as any tweaks that might be,

when we when we implemented this plan in the late 80s, um the idea was you could build houses, but you could also do commercial or industrial if the use was appropriate in that area. All I've heard talk so far today is it's only we're only talking about homes. I don't know if that has changed over the years. I think if it has, we ought to look at changing it back. I think about the piece off of Long Valley that just got approved for some housing. And I think that could have been maybe some neighborhood commercial, maybe even some light industrial if if people want a place to work. I don't know, maybe it's not appropriate, but I think it's worth looking at. So, I think let's keep the program because it it is a value. Um, the political will part that Mark talked about is very important. And uh I think if we have that we have a lot better chance. Thank you. Thank you m Mr. Husman. Any others? Commissioner Gardner. Thank you. And I never uh I never mind going behind uh the skills and talent of these three individuals that have spoken before me. Um so my name is Mark Gardner. Yes, I'm a county commissioner, but what I'm uh going to say is is not uh reflective of the board of commissioners and uh is primarily questions. Okay. Um as has been been mentioned before uh by you um uh we have a toolbox and this should we keep this program would just remain one tool in

that toolbox. That's the only comment I'll make. However, I do have three questions, okay? And I you began to touch on them, but I don't think we went into them in in a deep enough manner. Number one is uh we issue certificates for TDRs. How many do we currently have filed? How many do we have filed? Number two, the number that we do have filed, are they sufficient to meet the needs of the currently approved development? So, do we need more or do we need less? Do we have enough? And then, uh, Mr. Walder, you were alluding to it. How do we determine which are utilized first? Where's the prioritization? So, how do you determine that? Those are three key questions I think need to be asked. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Um, a question to that because I'm hearing this being used as a tool in many ways. I'm hearing that we want to use it for flood plane management. Now, who's going to buy that land? And how does that work? And are there other tools we should be using for flood plane management? And are we are we doing as Hope said, you know, going building what we've got because of the tools we've got? Are there some other tools that we should be considering using for some of these goals that we want that we have that are valid goals? We're not arguing about the value of managing our floods or or potential flooding, but is this a

tool to use for that? It could be, but how? And is that currently considered in in this proposal? And I guess the other thing I'm confused about is on the one hand, we have 6,000 homes currently permitted. I'm living in the middle of a ton of construction and we I think it was just asked do we need this right now or are we is this the right tool for where we are in our development in our community or not? Don't know it's an interesting tool. Um, I'm sure it has its purposes, but there might be other tools that might be more appropriate at this time or at least might inform how we craft this tool to meet where we are as a community. Thank you. Thank you. Any other speakers? Seeing none. Oh, Jim got to be quick. Jim Slade. Our local ranchers of course deserve our thanks and respect for their many years of stewardship of the land and the preservation of the open space that we all love. Um at this point, however, we also have to consider the other 50,000 residents of the county. I am always a bit suspicious of stakeholder groups. They tend to be principally limited to those who would financially benefit from the issue at hand while the general public who might feel the negative effects of the issue as in this case are left completely out of the discussion except on the periphery. When you have a majority of participants in a meeting desirous of maximizing advantages for large land owners, then that lobbying effect will affect the thought processes of the

attending county commissioners, planning commissioners, and consultants. I'd like to reference a couple of the charts that were out. Um, the TDRs versus land values. If you could put those up um with selling TDRs, as Mr. Husman indicated um they would still own the land and they could work that land and then later they could sell that land. That's not indicated. And when you sell the land for 3 million and once you pay your taxes, you might have 2 million. So that 4.2 number is very deceptive. We could do this one also on the TDR versus land values on the other page. Um, the idea of increasing the bonuses for TDRs is to me not a good idea. We already have incentivized high priorities areas with, as Mr. um, uh, someone else was saying there earlier, uh, my friend Mr. in Eden Ree. Um they increase the bonuses for land in the flood plane for including the water rights for parcels of 100 acres or more. Um I don't think those should be increased at this point. In fact, I like Miss Lyall's idea of of decreasing the value of the much less desirable land. But I don't understand the theory that by increasing the valuation that we would preserve more land. we would preserve less land. If someone needs 600 TDRs and it's one for one, that's 600. If if it's three for one, they only need 200. And so you're preserving le maybe you're accelerating growth, which is not what anyone wants. We we got enough growth

going on as it is. You would in the long run uh preserve less land. So there's that consideration. Um, I do also commend Commissioner Lyall for her comment that existing taxpayers should not be paying for additional growth. That may not be a popular opinion in this room today, but it is a very popular popular opinion in the co in the general population of this county. So, thank you for reminding us of that. Thank you very much. Any other speakers? Okay, seeing none, I will close public comment and pull it back to the commission. Any comments from the commissioners before I make mine? Dan, I there was a couple of questions that I haven't heard the answer and maybe we'll get them when you come back in the in the fall. Um, and and I I've got to say, uh, Commissioner Gardner jumped the gun on on some of my questions, so thank you for that, sir. Uh, and and being a numbers guy, I always need to ask, you know, what are the numbers? How many TDRs are out there? How many are needed? I heard one of the presenters state that the program is not sustainable because there's not enough TDRs. Uh so I believe I heard you I think you you said that didn't you? Anyways, but those are the kinds of questions that I would like to know more about. I already mentioned um we've got four major housing goals. It would be nice to to get a little bit of background as to how we're doing on those housing goals. Uh and as I said, my particular interest is is sustainability of of our commitments

uh to do maintenance for the things we've accepted. Um I agree with with the comment about the false equivalency between selling uh TDRs and selling the land. My first thought was, yeah, but you got the land, you know, so what's the value of that? I get your point. If if your if if your uh your children don't want to have anything to do with ranching, maybe that goes into your personal decision as to what you do. Um again, the sustainability question, what what is needed in terms of being a sustainable program? Um we've talked a little bit about the the valley the valley issue. it it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but maybe I don't have a a high enough appreciation for the Topaz area, but you've got all those TDRs shown on your map from that area, and I'm going, why would that be a priority for preservation over intensification of development along Toller and Buckeye basically in that area where where all the units have been approved? that doesn't make sense to do the valley to valley uh program. But then again, maybe the numbers are so small it doesn't really matter. So again, the devil can be in the details. Um anyways, those are just some of my my questions that I would hope that we would get to in the next presentation. Thank you, Chairman Jim. I um first of all I do want to thank that was remissed earlier in the um the efforts of both uh community development and and your organization. Really appreciate it. Um, I thought the most illuminating comments came from people

had been around a lot longer than I have in this valley. And it and I thought it just really hit me over the head when it was said that the program worked until the county started handing out zoning. I thought that one just hit me over the head as being very significant and what changed, why a program worked and doesn't work now. So, I really appreciate again Mr. NRI and uh and Mr. Chaguan and and just the comments that gave you a lot of background that that I didn't necessarily have. Thank you, Paul. There's been uh a lot of discussion that comes out of a fundamental understanding that when you transfer a development right, you're transferring all of that right. Let me um give you an analogy. Think of a piece of property. And I I basically I don't think that's necessary. That's consistent with my prior comments. If you think about a piece of property as a bundle of sticks that you hold in your hand right now, we're taking half or more of that bundle of sticks. If you're going to be selling the rights to someone for the privilege of putting more units on a given piece of property, the receiving property, if we put those sticks back in, so I have a full handful, I have the whole property, and we're looking at a sending area that's extremely valuable. Then maybe in this instance on a TDY with some creative thinking you take just a few of those sticks and you leave some residual value for some type of future development or other use and you leave that with the landowner. You therefore have a value that you're

leaving with the landowner on the sending and you're adding value to the receiving landowner because there's more units available but you tag something with it on that TD that transfer that right DR and like I may gave the exist and the example of an orchard is not good for this Valley. But do you understand what I mean? Uh, I just think that it's a valuable program and with some tweaking and some creative thinking, um, I think that it would be even more valuable in the future. And I echo um the commissioner's comments that that and also excommissioner Nitarup's comments that you don't want changes in the zoning to overshadow what the master plan was without a darn good reason. And then you should use the transfer of development rights. Thanks. Lori, I just have one comment. I the the concept that these this right would be available for more than just a residential unit is intriguing to me. So, possibly expand this so that it also can be utilized to um develop additional commercial industrial land I think would be something that would be is worth exploring at least. Kirk Bryce, my turn. I want to thank Mark and Jacques for the history lesson and to our speakers for your comments. I noticed Derek is writing furiously, so everything has been noted

and the information will come back to us when this comes back. A few things that I jotted down is that I do believe that there needs to be something with regards to uh the transfer of TDRs from the water sheds. It's something that when we dealt with the um the Buckeye Ranch, Buckeye Farms project and the transfer of development rights from the Walker River watershed to the Carson River watershed that was brought up. We thought it was codified and it wasn't and the confusion about that. Something needs to be written down. There needs to be something in stone that we can depend on. There needs to be something reliable that we have whether or not it's in code or or not. But there needs to be something definite with regards to transferring development rights between watersheds. And it was a very good question that Dan brought up. How many land owners are we dealing with? We know that Park and Bentley are very large land owners in Douglas County. How many other large land owners? How many small land owners are we dealing with? And yes, I think the opportunity to piggyback with TRPA is a wonderful idea. And I think as have the other commissioners that considering most of this with the master plan upper date update is very very important saves a lot of costs and a lot of time because we have to do the update anyway. And I think with regards to

infrastructure and the um housing providing quality of life issues cost is something that we have to keep in mind because with Everything that comes before us when we're considering a subdivision, we have to be mindful of the quality of life and whether or not infrastructure can be supported. We make a recommendation goes to the board of commissioners. they have to make a a decision based on our recommendation which we have considered costs and so when you bring this back that's something that I would like you to consider in this and I do seriously believe that this program as has been said this is just one tool conservation is something that everyone wants to do whether you're a longtime resident or whether you're brand new to the area, we can't stop growth. It's going to happen. And no one wants to see a San Fernando Valley or even um a Wo. No one wants to see that. But we can't look to government to do it all. And I think that's what's happening is you get people who come in here and say, "Fix it." and the government cannot do it. So we have this one tool that the government can utilize, but the message has to go out loud and strong that the

community has to pull together to utilize what they can do. Whether it's a land trust that's privately funded or it's an open space district through a quarter cent sales tax which we all know that 376A which is found in the NRS is going to sunset and we need to put pressure on the legislature to change that wording. where it has come back that they're not going to, but we as individuals can do what we can do to put pressure on the legislature to change that. And those are pretty much my comments. Again, thank you to the technical advisory committee, to our staff, to the consultants, to the planning commission, and to everyone who cares about the process and who cares for Douglas County for being here. With that, if there are no other questions from the commission, I will open closing public comment and ask anyone who has comments to come to the microphone. Seeing no one, I will close public comment and remind everyone there is no July public or no July planning commission meeting. Have a wonderful July and we will see you in August.