Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

This will be item C, approval of the agenda. So this is approved agenda for today, June 9th regular commission meeting. Move to approve the agenda for June 9th, 2025. All in favor? Any oppose? Very good. This is item D, citizens comments. At this point, we allow anybody who want to comment on any item to feel free and speak and place the first last name and their address. If you are here for the R1 uh open hearing and you can state your name, first last name during that time and speak at leisure. So, Mr. Chair at this point open comments citizens comments. Very good. This gentleman here is for the R1. It was already his favorite for the H1. Most of these people you probably know. So, looks like we close this. Very good. This is item E, consent agenda. So, this is to approve the minutes from May 12th, 2025 regular planning commission meeting. Just as a refresher, we have the resoning case number zone 25-3 site plan for Norwich Collision Center pre-plat for the villas at Pleasant Ridge Creek and the final plaque for the villas at Pleasant Ridge Creek. I'll make a motion to um approve the minutes for May 12th, 2025. Is that all in favor? I I very good. This is item F, board of zoning appeals. This is F1 R1, zoning lot width and depth modification. So, quick background. From time to time, it is considered good practice to review the subdivision and zoning regulations to determine if any modifications or adoption should be made. Post World War II, developers introduce smaller lots to increase the output of housing to meet the demand imposed by returning GI soldiers from World War II. Lots could range from 0.16 to 0.20 of an acre and homes are mass-produced. This was a

shift to the sub suburbanization of the American uh landscape in the rural past. And so, as the population increases locally, demand for housing goes up. However, with real wages not increasing at the rate of housing appreciation coupled with higher rates for mortgages and cost of infrastructure increasing special assessments, the need to introduce the variety of housing becomes apparent to allow people in different income ranges to live in Goddard. The planning commission is renewing introducing reducing the minimum lot size requirements of the R1 zoning district from 60 width by 100 depth to 40 width by 80 depth allow more blocks to be built when a new development is proposed. The planning commission is reviewing a policy amendment to change the lots minimum lot size width and depth from R1. Typical lots range currently in R1 from 75 to 80 by 100. Current dimensions are 60 width, 100 depth allowed as a minimum to R1. Proposed dimensions will be 40 foot width and 80 foot depth. And so as an economic review, I'm going to introduce a couple of slides and and proposals that we've seen with fiscal impact analysis. So I'm just going to go through these and kind of some of the justifications behind it. So for single family detached developments with an 80ft width by 100t depth, if we were to assume that 75 acres generates about 188 lots or 2.5 lots per acre and an average home is about 300,000 over time as we have to do maintenance on the infrastructure for that proposed development, it the total infrastructure cost comes out to about a little over 5 million about 5.8 million. So when you have that typical lot like you see in most development seasons, Spring Hill, St. Andrews, the amount of revenue that's generated over time over 35 years amounts to about $3 million. So upon review, when we look at how much revenue we're generating alpha development versus how much infrastructure maintenance cost we have, we actually generally on average have a deficit of about $2 million. So, one thing to help offset this deficit when we're looking at these projects that are being proposed coming forward,

we we consider the idea of shrinking some of the lots to introduce more output. And so, let's say that we use the same development and use the most minimum lot available size in current R1, which is 60 by 100. With the same metrics, we still are deficient about $1.1 million over a 35 year period. So, some of these numbers come up because you're thinking it's it's easy to think that you have x number of devel of housing units that are $300,000. They're all assessed at 11.5, you know, multiply that, you know, times our mill levy at 37. And you're thinking that's the amount of money we've captured out of that development, which is true, but then at the end of the day, you also have to subtract operating costs. You have to, you know, I have to get paid, you know, city administrator has to get paid, attorneys have to get paid. And at the end of the day, one thing that is really stuck out to me was that he only had about 7.9 mills actually being assessed to a development to actually capture enough money for road maintenance, which is still not going to be enough to actually offset the cost for road maintenance over time. And some of these road maintenance, they're they're small chunks over time. It's just like a mill and overlay, but over time you have to do a big chunk of money that has to be dedicated towards maintenance for like $500,000 over here. And then also water and sewer lines, you have to replace them over a 35 year period. And those are when the big ticket items hit. So development might be sitting there generating positive returns for up to year like 30 and then at year 35 a complete negative inversion happens because of the amount of offset for maintenance that we have to do on that project. So and we're seeing that now in a lot of areas like Oldtown. It could be a million dollars, $2 million, $3 million to rehabilitate the street, the sewer line, the water line. And so we have to anticipate this because, you know, generally it's good practice to try to put the city in a better place than when you leave than when you got

there. You kind of want to put it in a better place, at least physically speaking. So, if we shift again and say that we want to do the same thing, single family, but we're going to do 40 by 80 foot lots, we're assuming that we can get now about 4.5 lots per acre cuz we've the general assumption is that we've decreased the lot size by about 46%. So, we can increase the number of lots by about 46%. Now, that's a general rough metric, but it generates about 338 lots now off 75 acres. Now, the average home drops and but at the end of the day, the average home drops to about let's say let's say we set it at 300,000. We just keep the way it is. But then we're generating about a positive net of $810,000 as opposed to, you know, a deficit of 1.1 million or $2 million. Now, to keep this, you'd actually have to break even. to break even and say that the amount of revenue were collected over 35 years is equivalent zero sum gain to the maintenance over 35 years the average home would have to be about $233,000. So if you introduce 338 lots at 200 203,000 you have about a break even point for over a 35 year period. So all that to say that financially is going to be a small publication cost uh for the public hearing which we're going to have today. Um and then any consideration that goes before city council they would have to make final decision on that and then there have to be publication in the time sentinel for the ordinance legally approved as a form. It is recommended that planning commission have planning commission chair open public hearing receive comments close public hearing and approve the changes and subdivision regulations of the R1 zoning lot requirements minimum lot width and lot depth. And I will say that Ryan Shrek, thank goodness to him, he actually said, "Mike, what about lot coverage?" Because obviously if you reduce lot size and you keep the lot percentages the same for lot coverage, it shrinks the available footprint. And so we're going to propose

a um a lot coverage amendment in the July meeting as well to help offset that. But at this point, Mr. Chair, if you want to open public hearing. All right, we'll open the public hearing. Very good. Anybody wants to speak on this matter can first and last name and your address. Amanda Trebo 410 Richard Road in Gddard. Um I'm speaking on behalf as the chairwoman of the GD senior citizens advisory board. Um one of the things that we have been um doing is getting a lot of feedback from our seniors about different needs, gaps, and services that they need. Um the conversation has come up several times about housing and just getting some additional housing options for them. So, I'm definitely in favor specifically around the old Gddard area where we can now possibly build onto the smaller lots to help with infill um and put some smaller housing on there. Um so that way we can, you know, have some two-bedroom, one bath or, you know, look into some additional housing options that we can provide our seniors that is a little bit more affordable. Um, a lot of our seniors if if they go to Devastates or Silver Linings or another um facility, it's a minimum of 7,000 a month for them to be able just to get in there. Um, and then it goes up from there. So, when we look at, you know, different housing options, we've got a lot of great projects coming up, but for single family, um, specifically in Old Gardner where there's a lot more of that walkability. Um, I think having the option to have be able to build some smaller homes, lots of smaller lots, um, with infill would be definitely a bonus and a great opportunity um, for us to solve multiple problems. So, I'm definitely for it. Anybody else? Mr. Chair, you can close the public hearing. Close the public hearing. Very

good. At this point, it's deliberation. Questions, comments? Might make a couple comments. Of course, absolutely. you missed your opportunity. Honorable Planning Commission, I prefer to speak outside the hearing. That way, if you guys have questions, we could share a two-way dialogue. But I want to um reiterate a couple of points that my colleague made because I think that this right here is the least talked about issue as it relates to the housing problems that we have in our society, not just in the city of Goddard. And that is that if single family development is all a community primarily has, we are robbing our future selves. Single family developments are a losing math equation when you look at the revenue that is generated over the life cycle compared to the cost of the infrastructure that's required to serve those homes. We have about once everything that's cleared entitlements is built out, I think we're at about 2.5 single family units to every one uh two family unit. Just speaking in two family units, not things greater than that, such as class A apartments and a perfect urban planning ecosystem. You have a one one ratio of all different types of housing types. So for every one single family unit, you got one two family unit, you got one three family unit, you got one class A apartment, you got one mixeduse, maybe you live above a a retail shop. So I understand the immense value of maintaining our community's identity, which is single family homes on halfacre or greater lots. But again, the facts are the facts. This is a simple math equation that those projects are not contributing the revenue necessary to sustain them. And so I think the the easy question

after that is is then why do we continue to grow and approve them? Well, we we call it the growth Ponzi scheme. You have to continue to grow to have the additional revenue to take care of what you've already put in the ground. I'm talking about houses that have been here 50, 60, 70 years. My colleague gave a prime example. We're replacing oh seven or eight blocks of water mane and a whole new street here in downtown GDDARD. Uh first and third street. We're talking about multi-million dollar projects that have homes on them whose valuations don't even provide a small fraction of what's necessary to finance those improvements. Without the growth, single family, two family, or otherwise, we don't have the revenue to take care of our core and what we've already invested decades ago. And so what we look at is opportunities for smart growth. That's residential density. My colleague Micah put it pretty succinctly here. You start to see green the more lots and the more value we're able to generate for the same amount of infrastructure. So we don't talk about this a lot and I totally empathize with those that are clamoring that there's too many duplexes or too many of these certain housing types. You know, the the reason why you hear city staff advocating for these types of things is not because we're trying to help a developer make more money. It's because we're looking at the second and third generation that's coming behind us and the infrastructure that's going to be needed to serve the homes that are going to be there. So, these are things that we got to continue to talk about and dialogue on. This is a really simple opportunity here to achieve a one smart growth strategy and to continue to have single family homes and that's reducing uh as he shared with you those minimum lot sizes, increasing the total lot coverage and reducing the setback requirement. So this is what an affordable single family home looks like in 2025. That's why we invest in green space, nice park systems because the yard is becoming less of a thing if you

want to be in the low twos as far as a home price goes. So, Micah covered a lot of this in in a great way, but um I just wanted to belver the point a little bit further. Maybe you could tighten that up. This point is just deliberation questions that you guys might have. You mentioned uh next month that you would um potentially have a change in the lot coverage. What any thoughts on what that would be? Right now it makes 35% 50. It's currently 35, but we figured if we adopted this today, 40 by 80, that's a 3200T lot. Uh 50% of that would be a 1,600 ft building footprint. So that's kind of what we were thinking. Well, to the point of the previous speaker, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, the other alternative is you raise the bill, right? I mean, to be able to get to that get to these points. Yep. That's one that's one option. You know, we could try to pass a 1% sales tax. There's different ways you can try to increase revenue. It's going to be tax increase in in some capacity, whatever it is. Yeah. Typically, um, you know, as the administrator put it, it's like you approve one development and you're almost like you're going to hand off sort of an empty bag to your your future, your credit, you know, whoever's taking over in the future. You like hand over an empty bag with a deficit. And so then they go, well, I have a deficit. you know, I have a, you know, a new chief financial officer. We have a deficit. How do we make up for that deficit? We're g we'll we'll raise the mill levy. You know, it's fairly straightforward. That's the easiest

thing to do. This doesn't require necessarily a vote. Maybe they do a 1% sales tax increase to, you know, help offset it because then people coming in from out of town will help offset that cost. But yeah, typically it's going to be an increase. Does this cost of specials just cover the installation of drain sewer? That's right. So it's the upfront cost infrastructure. So specials when we adopt and receive specials, it's for the installation of the infrastructure, the existing infrastructure time and then there's we're fighting two battles um which you're all aware of. The two battles are you know the decline of the actual material itself over time you have to replace it and inflation. So you put in a million dollars of infrastructure now and you have to replace it at $1.2 million 35 years down the road. So the numbers that I have on the maintenance actually take into account two things. And this report's not like there's we have a report but it's not public yet and I'm still refining some of it but just to kind of give you some of the background. We're doing a a twofold sort of um statistic here at the same time. You're doing a depreciation of the real estate and an inflationary adjustment at the same time. And so we're saying that you have these two type of metrics that are that are competing against each other. The the appreciation of the real estate and then the inflation of the dollar. And so you know we're assuming we're assuming the appreciation in this metric stays ahead of inflation which is not unreasonable because it's real estate generally speaking tends to appreciate very well. And on average it's the metric I use was 3.88% annually which is at pretty accurate. It kind of does this thing. And inflation right now was about the reason why I did this study. So I'm saying that the appreciation is ahead of inflation, but it's still the inflation is pulling it down. So you're not going to get exactly, you know, it's kind of this drag metric as you're going forward into time, but you're losing value as you move forward into time. And you know, the further out you get in with

any metric, the less reliable it gets. But it's not unreasonable to say that inflation is here forever. And it's not unreasonable to say that something depreciates. something that's going to decline and the material composition is going to decline over time. So those are two fair assumptions but I can't tell you exactly what the inflation would be in 35 years. So what does this do to mitigate what we have today? I mean this is a proposal for future developments. That's right. We are doing maintenance so they can I shouldn't say can but are having to pay for. Mhm. Mhm. So what we do when we have projects like this, we put them on the CIP, which is a capital improvement program, and and we also will borrow money. So we'll put a general obligation bond, which the city at large will pay for it. So all everybody in city of limits will pay for that general obligation bond because it's dedicated with tax revenue generally speaking. And so that's how we fix existing infrastructure. We borrow. It's kind of like if the car broke down, you put on a credit card instead of having cash reserve. So, our cash reserves tend to kind of go up and down. We're doing pretty good. And I'm not the chief financial officer, so please don't quiz me on what our cash reserves look like, but um generally speaking, big ticket items for a city of our size, a million dollars plus, they're going to be bonded. Generally speaking, on a 40 foot 40 foot wide lot, what's the sideyard going to do? depending on where you put the building. So, you could sit it right on the lot line, in which case you would have more sideyard space, or you could put it closer to the middle. You know, it's it's hard to say until you actually see a building footprint. So, we're doing away with the setbacks on the sides. No, you'd still have a sideyard. It just would probably have to be reduced. But, we're actually going to talk about a project, a proposed project on H1, and then we can discuss a little bit of that as well because there there wouldn't be the possibility of how does that building actually sit at 1,600. Let's say let's say the maximum was 1,600 for the

footprint. How does it actually sit on the lot? We would have to see, but it's we would also probably want to reduce the setbacks either through a variance, which we're going to discuss in H1, or a setback reduction that we would consider approving as an amendment again to some of these regulations. So, that's something else that we want to consider. So, does all this take into consideration all the extra traffic that you're going to be adding to the infrastructure now? Yeah. So, it doesn't necessarily take into account all the extra infrastructure traffic like the traffic to the infrastructure damage because typically when you look at decline of a road, you're going to be looking at trucks and commercial freight, that type of thing. But ultimately, additional cars, I don't know if there's really a good metric, but that's probably not. I'm going to say that additional cars are going to decrease the value that you decrease the road faster just because you introduce a couple more units. I can tell you that definitively. Like I don't have a metric for that. I should say I don't have a metric for that. Can I answer that? Sure. Go for it. So again, it reckons back to what I mentioned previous. The more folks that you have kicking into the hat, the more revenue that there is to improve the street. That's the issue. I mean, without the growth, there's no money to take care of things. You got to have pressure first before we can go in and make those improvements. We got to have the taxpayers all contributing. If we can get, let's say, 100 lots in versus 50, now we have a better ability to finance the roadway improvements that are needed. Less revenue, less pressure. It's going to be further down the road before we can make those improvements. So currently the minimum lot width is 60 key but I believe but you said that typically developers were choosing to do 70 to 80 ft. 70 to 80 has been the

standard for a long time. In 2019 we reduced it to 60 as the minimum which was allowed. Um originally 75 was the minimum in 2019 and we reduced it to the 60t width. Um and then we but that being in that situation that was sort of ahead of the game and now we're seeing developments where they want to do 60 as their minimum. In fact South is platted at 60. 80 lots are 80 by like 100 but the rest of them the other 160 lots are 60 by 100. So there's it's they're choosing the preponderance of that development is the minimum which is interesting. So, I'm just trying to keep ahead of what I see the market starting to do. And I don't know since I can't read the future. I'm guessing that if we can reduce it to a minimum, it'll allow developers to be able to do that. But that doesn't mean they have to do that. That they still could build a development that's, you know, 100 ft by 100 ft. You know, the lots, they can make them as big as they want to be. It's typically what we see with a market correction. When federal fund rates go up and mortgage rates for the 30-year go up, people want to build smaller lots because then they can spread the specials further and then they'll actually be able to move the homes. But then they run into the subdivision regulation and say you can't go less than 60. So if we allow to reduce for sort of a more lz fair market and say you can go down to 40 if you want to then maybe they can put a mix of lots in there to help offset the specials that are developed in the board and then we would actually be able to generate a little more cash flow to help offset our long-term maintenance costs. So we have we have seen it and we are seeing a little more of that. What are our options here? So we've come up with a couple things. Um, so lot coverage setbacks. You know, we've had some things that are unanswered that would have to be submitted anyway for approval. What are our options as far as this particular one tonight? I mean, can we defer this if we I mean, and the

reason I asked my question is I I would kind of like to see the big picture like with with the other items with it. So, it's a 50% because if you're saying 1,600 square feet on a 3200 foot lot, um, you know, by the time you add a garage, these these houses aren't that big. Mhm. They're small shed. That's not, you know, I mean, all these things have to be taken into account. So, is 50% really the the number we're looking at, or should it be less? Should it be more? really it's just introducing a different type of lifestyle housing choice, right? Yeah. That's that's all it is. And so when you're saying you're reducing the requirements of the minimum size, it allows a developer to introduce a different housing style choice, but it doesn't deny anybody who wants to do a traditional development from being able to do a traditional. Absolutely. Yeah, that's that's about it. So this one, the recommendation is to approve it so that we can, you know, consider reducing it. So when developers ask me if we can do a 40x 100 foot lot, we can say yes or you know as an example. But in terms of do you want to see what the minimum lot coverage would look like or do you want us to do some sort of a mockup or something of that nature? Is that what you're asking for for like a lot? I guess I'm what I'm saying is I'd like to see all the proposed pieces together. All the proposed pieces together. So we're going to change it to 40 by 80. We're going to go to 50% if that's the chosen number and we're going to put the setbacks at whatever it is. at C instead of doing it in steps. Okay, I don't know if anyone agrees with that. I agree with him. I think it would be better if you um I don't disagree with this at all, but I do think it would be better if you brought all the pieces together and presented in one shot is I really think it' be easy to see how it's all intertwining effect cuz I think you're on the right track. Okay. I think

the 40 foot would have is just way too small. Way too small. Minimum 50. And that's kind of what I'm wondering. You know, 40 foot is fine, but if you have 10 ft on either side or 6t on either side, well, now all of a sudden you're you're really narrowing that building potentially. And if you choose to do that, I understand that that's that's a buyer choice. That's a build, you know, a developer choice. But again, I would like the opportunity to discuss it in in with all the pieces. Sure. Sure. Cuz it makes you 60% if that's even that way cuz again, you know, I mean, 1,600 ft² if you do a threec car garage is barely 1,200 ft in the house. Mhm. And so I just want to make sure that's what Yeah. today it would simply be whatever your recommendation is with a subision regulation change for this particular one. So, if you're like, I don't want to see it, then it'll go before city council and I'll tell city council plank commission doesn't like it, right? And if you do want to see it and you want to see the extra pieces added later, then you would approve it today. Then I would go tell city council that you did approve it and city council will make a deliberation if they want to either accept it or deny it or you know what they want to do with it. That way once it goes to city council they can table it. They can veto you with a supermajority. They can accept it with a simple majority if you accept it. You know basically do the same thing with your traditional Seattle zoning case. So same concept. So whatever you recommend tonight we're going to go before the city council and they will deliberate. And like I said if if you guys say no and they say we do want it, then they would need four out of five. If you guys say no and they say we're also a no, then they would just need, you know, three out of five as a simple majority. And then if you guys said yes and they all said yes, it'd be a simple majority of three to five. If you said yes and they said no, it would require four of

them to say no. So that's that's how possible. So let's let's say we say no under the pretense that we would like to see the rest of the pieces. Does that information get communicated? Yeah, absolutely. So they would understand the reasoning because again I'm not sure I'm opposed. I just I think I would like to see all the pieces. Sure. Yeah. So is that how that would be presented then? Yeah. So if you said if you said no and you and then of course there has to be a reason like and I convey that to city council like planning commission said no you know the the vote was whatever out of whatever and here's why they want to say xyz you know that type of situation can they table it so you can bring it back to them as a package and then send a recommendation on to the council. Um I think as a yeah technically I think you probably could table it since it's not a zoning so you could table it if you wanted to take it back. So I'm not I'm not obligated to have to take the city council within 14 days like a zoning. So you could technically table it and then I could bring it back in July if you wanted to and then you can make a formal decision at that point and then I would take it back to city council at that point. That's what I would want to consider that as well. Yeah, I can't make one. I mean, and again, I don't want to speak for all of you, but that's just kind of the way other than I don't like the 45. I don't 50 should be minimum. Used to be 60. How do we, you know, it seems like I I I wasn't on this board for a little over a year now, but um I mean I think every every housing addition that's come before the board since I've been on it, I think it's either been duplex or conditional that go smaller. I mean how how do we you know if we keep watering down the requirements how how do we for example to build another St. Andrews or another another seasons or another or even or another

Talia? I mean, how do you get that or is that just 100% market? And that's market. It's just market. It's it's a little difficult because ultimately a developer can build a million homes, but somebody has to buy them. Somebody could build a tiny home that's only 500 foot, but maybe nobody would buy those either. So, they could build a million 500 foot homes and nobody would buy them. They build 500 million homes and nobody buys those either. It's really just market. When the federal fund rate goes up, mortgages follow because banks have to borrow from other banks at that rate, at least at that rate. So then rates go up, people buy smaller homes, you know, if they can. So, and also there's something called an appraisal gap. If I say my house is only is worth 300,000, I go to sell it and a bank says, "Sorry, with a market correction, your house is only worth 250,000." That means you have to come up with $50,000 in cash to make up that difference or I have to drop the cost of my house. And so there's people think that homes just go up forever and of course 2008 said otherwise. But it'll dip and go up and dip and go up, but we try to stay ahead of the market so that when you introduce new housing styles, people can dive into that market right away and not go somewhere else like maybe just try to stay in the market. That doesn't prohibit somebody from building that. It's just radically expensive for them and us and us. And a developer told me that he wants to sell 30 houses a year. And the more expensive it is, that restricts your buyer pool. Million dollar home amount of buyers. You know, are you related to the hopes or not? You know what I mean? That type of thing. After that, the less expensive the house gets. Opens up the buyer pool. So, houses move faster. It's just it's just economics. That's all. is really just trying to move members around.

So you need a motion to table whatever the motion is. I make a motion to table for July and you bring back this all the corresponding uh other items that set back for okay size we can talk about that. I'll second. Okay. Can I ask is this is this going to delay anything from this point to that? I mean, is there anything in the works that would would be delayed because of this tableling decision? Um, no. No, we're not. We'll talk about his We'll talk about his project. We'll find wanted to vote. No, I don't think so. Okay. Anybody else? All in favor? I I very good. Bring back up in July. Old business, there is none. New business, this is H1. This is Garber presentation trails in phase 2 concept. So, I'm going to give you all this and I do have her brother behind me as agent for the applicant and we're going to go through this, but I just want you to know that I just found out that this is changing a little bit even now. So, even now this is old information even though I just put this together. So, uh on April 14th of 2025, plan review approved the preliminary final replat of the valley trails and development. On April 29th of 2025, city council approved the final reflat. Since that time, developers have considered the possibility of introducing modified single homes, single family homes on smaller lots to accommodate more growth and density in the development. This would require a replat of the area along with variance requests for minimum lot sizes and setback reductions. I should

also say not just um u yes minimum lot size and setback reductions. That's what we do. Planning mission is a new and preliminary concept to be proposed by the developer to replant the remaining portion of our trans development to introduce additional lots for single family development. The original plat remaining lots were about 58. So we had 58 lots left that would be replatted. The new plat would introduce 110 but I think we're moving away from that. So the additional was 52. This is all information. I think at this point I'm just going to hand it over to Eric. Yeah, I'm just down because he he's got new information. developers are changing tact. Uh thanks for this opportunity to speak. This is something that we're looking at. Um this is trails end. Uh the remaining lots available are in the light blue. Originally, the developers had asked me to look at redoing all of them to this this different product, but after having drawn it and sent it to them, you know, it was the first time they had seen it. This this thing is kind of on a rocket ship to to getting done. Um, they decided that the only area they actually want to redo is the top piece. So, this area right here was replied to what's known as trails in second and it has some narrower lots, 65 ft lots, uh, which fit within the zoning. They were bigger before. I think we were able to get four or five more lots out of that area by doing that. Uh, we didn't change any of the streets, just some of those more rectangular lots. We just um were able to squeeze a few extra lots by narrowing the lot slightly, but within the zoning. This would this would be the new concept and just focus on this piece up here. Uh it would be a mix of 40 and 45 foot lots. And essentially this new

product is you would take a duplex and you would pull it apart by 5 ft. So the distance between two of the halves will be 5T and then on the outside there' be a normal set back a 5ft set back. So on the other side, you've had 10 ft in between units. So you would just have the narrower setback on one side. And it's something that um I don't know if they'd seen it elsewhere, but I know of two other subdivisions, one in Maze, uh one in Park City, um that are doing the same unit. This this allows us a little more density in this area and it's it's a product that um the market's saying is moving. Here's uh pictures of of the units. I believe this is Falcon and Falls. Um this is what those units would look like. You you will not have threecar garages on these units. It's the the the lot width does not allow three cars, so it's going to be twocar garages. Um and this is that uh narrow setback. So 5 foot between units and um those would be 2hour uh fire walls in between the units. So just like a duplex which has the firewall in between the units. These units would have firewalls on that that narrow side. Uh this is these aren't these aren't indicative of the floor plans. Um these are these are just units. The spacing I I I believe they would actually center the units on the lot line. So it' be two and a half either side. Um but you could there's also you could one side could have a a zero setback. Um, I mean it's just just by zoning or HOA

requirements would say would give access to those sorts of things. Um, I guess do you have any any questions about this product or what we're looking to do? There's some new develop There's a new development on um on uh 21st Street kind of east of 157th that's got really close south. Is that the one you said was the main? No. Um this is I believe 53rd Street just east of K96 is the maze one. Uh Falcon Falls is the one in Park City and that is on Hillside just north of 254 on the east side of the road. Uh the one at 151st and 21st Street, it is actually duplex housing and they I think that makes it look a little closer than than they are, but those are actually 5 by foot setbacks, sideyard setbacks. So that's 10 ft between every unit. So yeah, that is uh that subdivision is 100% duplex. It'll be slab on grade. it'll be sliding on great and the the density helps. I mean, in 2019, if if I busted $150 a month on specials, my developers would they'd be very angry with me. Now, if I can get under $300 a month, I'm a hero. So, we we had a subdivision in Maze that broke 500 because of groundwater, so infrastructure was expensive. Um, but the the denser we can get these, that helps. I will tell you, we had a bid. Uh, we lost a bid on Friday on a small subdivision because fire hydrants, uh, valves, and fittings have all jumped

20 to 25% in one week. So, prices are just continuing to go up. So, density helps with those specials. So, with the with the change to what you're what's in our packet versus what you're saying, is there is there anything to actually vote on tonight or is this more information at this point? Yeah, just basically we're we're trying to get ahead of the game to make sure that you would you know we weren't going to get slaughtered if we spent a bunch of time putting everything together. We want to make sure uh that that we would you know the concept you're okay with the concept of it and we could move forward uh and spend the time to to really tie this down. Is that becoming normal for to put one side of the house right on the property line? That's what I'm seeing in the picture. Yeah, it's not it's highly unusual for us around here. We're used to the seasons. We're used to St. Andrews. we're used to. It's it's more of some of these products are coming from other places because now the market dictates that you be uh more available to make different choices and have different options. The single family homes on the big lots uh are getting too expensive. The specials are getting too high. So now our developers are looking outside of Witchah for different products just like the the house house apartment at 135th of Maple if you've seen that on the northwest corner. It's apartments with their single family homes in an apartment like

an apartment complex shape that I saw that came from Dallas which probably came from Vegas. But those those things are coming into our market simply to give them other options. So, this is fairly new for us, but like I said, we have two subdivisions going in right now with this concept uh in our area. How close are they to the street? That that doesn't change. It's a it's you have your 14 1/2 ft from the back of curb to the street right away and then you have a 25 ft building set back uh to the house. It's exactly the same as a normal subdivision. The only thing that changes is the sideyard. There is and from what I see in the sideyard on one side there's another that's right on the Yeah, that's a possibility. It depends on how you want to write your access. I think if you if you have a zero lot line on one side and this this would be getting into the weeds how how your access agreements are because obviously maintenance is going to have to happen on in between these homes. He's got a million. So, it'll be written into the HOA agreement and and it may make it easier to have one person have the entirety of that setback just for legal reasons. And what does that give them on the other side? The other side would be a a standard uh 5ft set back. So it would that would the narrow setback would only be every other lot line. The other side would be 5 foot. So you'd have 10 between units just like a normal setback. I get a picture of the other side. This

is kind of in the weeds too. I'm just curious the the what goes between the two units that are in the small setback. Is that determined by the homeowners or is that something that would be taken care of? Like they would all be rocked or See, that's another that's another reason to have a zero yard setback cuz then it would be the the one side would have to maintain that and typically and you could see here they typically use rock. It'll be difficult to grow anyway. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. So, financially non-legally approved recommended financial deliberate and advise Garber on any sentiment towards the project and the possibility of a variance. The reason I say variance is because when we splud, I was thinking PUB. Um, we talked internally. with staff and we were thinking what's the how could we address this in a way that didn't require PUB because PUD is just long- winded it's a custom zoning classification takes longer than any other type of zoning classification so we could do keep it the way it is as an R2 and do a variance which would a variance with specific provisions in there the variance would be to reduce the lot size requirements to reduce the setback requirements and you could do it that way. So, they'd have to still replplat. They'd replat and submit a variance to get to the lot sizes and setbacks that they want. So, that's kind of what I was thinking. I know be quicker. It would be faster. And so, that's kind of what we were deciding

amongst staff of how to navigate through the sub regulations to get to this type of product. Um, so that's kind of where we're at. And because of the replied wouldn't there wouldn't be any need to to stipulate it has to stay with this current owner or anything like that because once it's replened it's a big deal right with the variance included. Yes. Yeah. It's a big deal at that point. But developer especially traditional developer like this they're just going to build or they're going to sell lots to builders. So it's just going to be type of development. In terms of renter versus owner we don't we don't get in that. We just stay away for the attorney's recommendation. We can't tell you what to do with your own personal properties. But it's knowing these developers, they're going to either build them themselves or they'll sell the lots to builders are going to build the light product. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. We were when we had a meeting at Garba's office, Tina mentioned the idea of variability in colors and facades to help offset because we've heard that, you know, sometimes when you have a product that's replicated, it can be redundant and then it has a stale feeling. And so, Tina Pal mentioned the idea of asking the developers to vary it up a little bit so that you have different colors, different facads, different schemes. And so, I think we've all agreed that help better output Personally, I think it's a it's a a great concept because it is what it is what the buyers are asking for. Smaller yards, smaller houses, unfortunately, but and I like the fact that you're splitting them up. They're not duplexes anymore.

It gives it a different look, a different feel, I would hope. Um, do you know if there's any any plan as you as you make the yard smaller, kids have less places to play? Are they going to be a park? Do you know community park or uh this the subdivision does have a community park with a pool and I believe they're playing pickle ball courts. So that's further to the south, but this also backs up to the trail. So where's this at? 215 and 23rd back. Yeah. So, this is 215 and this is a trail. More of the developments down here and 23rd down here. You keep going up these distributions over here and 54 up here. Maybe I need to take you guys on party bus tour. Look at these recordings. I got an idea for Vegas. No, I No, I would I would second the chair's comments. I mean, I think that um it is the product the market's requesting. Um frankly, what our preferences are don't matter, right? I mean, sure, you know, but 20 years ago, somebody would have said, "Here's how we're building all these lost thought we were crazy at that time." So, reality is this is what the market's requesting. Um, it's better for the city as we just previously discussed. Um, so I think there's I think it's win-win all around.

All right. There's no other comments then this point we'll probably just go ahead and present the same thing to city council get a false check on them and then hopefully we can move forward to the refl. Yep. I appreciate it. Save for the rest of night. If not okay one very very long item. No. This is item H2. This is a site plan for the salt sand building for the public works. So the Kansas Department of Health Environment, KDH informed the city that the current salt sand building is efficient, needed to be remediated or replaced. The city decided the growth happening, it would be best to build a new salt sand building near the power substation off of 199 uh just north of the existing public works building. Since the building is considered commercial, the planning commission shouldn't view it in the same way as a traditional commercial building, but with understanding that staff compiled images and and the contractor submitted the renderings. And so it's not a traditional site plan like you would get like an architect because this is a building for the city that's been built by the city for the city. So that being said, plan mission is a general site plan of salt sand building for the public works department. It's located off of 199 current works building. The height is 32 ft 3 in. Width is 52x 60. The rest square footage is 3,120. It's the public works. It's NABC approved currently. So this is the location. So that's that substation. This is 199. The public works building is lower back here. And so we've already built a pad for it and gotten it ready and prepped. Obviously, we got a lot of rain, so we're going to have to check that out. This is a concept of what it looks like. Financially non legally approved as a form. It is recommended commission to approve the site plan for the salt sand building. We do have Nick Ball public works department here. So, if you guys do have any questions for them, feel free to ask Nick.

What's the likely expectancy of these covers in this Kansas weather? Kansas weather and wind. Depends on the storm that we have. Yeah. For what it's worth. Uh this is a similar building to what you see around KOT builds. Um, I can't speak to too many specifics. I've just jumped in the middle of this project. Uh, I would imagine uh those are like a 20 year lifespan or something like what you would put on top of commercial roofing or something. Cement pad. Um, they'll pour cement on the inside of it. Uh, the rest of it is just like a pack cement. And while they're all waiting, I'll just say it's uh it's to both protect the salt from the rain water mostly because it it causes it to crust up and makes it clumpy and hard to apply. Um but primarily as KDH is concerned it prevents uh runoff and uh then the salt pollutes the environment around it. Uh and our current building isn't big enough to house the amount of salt that we get um for almost a single storm event at this point. Um we used a lot of salt the couple of storms we had this year and uh required a couple of deliveries. This building um should be able to uh contain that and then some um so it would keep it uh out of the rain and keep keep the runoff from going down into the streams and stuff.

Yeah, pretty straightforward. Yeah, it keeps salt dry. Well, and also the uh the plastic covering um there's a lot of corrosion due to the salt. So, uh, any metal, uh, the more metal you have, the more corrosion you have. Uh, there's also a lot more cost in construction if you had an entirely metal building. And I would imagine that plastic is probably a lot cheaper to replace than uh, a lot of any other structure that they put there. I'm assuming that super structure aluminum is galvanized. Probably galvanized. Looks like it's it's been unloaded. It was prefab and it's sitting over on side of the building. So if you drive down 199, you can see through the fence there. It looks like you have a nice motion to approve the site plan for the salt sand building. I'll second it. All in favor? I I Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. This is item I the staff report. So I like to inflict my economic reports upon you. So this is no different. Um I went ahead and took the square miles of a select amount of cities from 2008 to present. Just kind of show you how big we've gotten over time compared to other cities. Um, surprisingly, Kai is actually a big city in terms of square footage, in terms of square miles I should say, but not a big city in terms of population. So, it's kind of interesting to look at how cities have generally grown. But annexation wise, Valley Center has grown pretty rapidly since 2022 and GD we sort

of had a a small uptick here as we um overpaced Hazesville and cashi and hopefully Bair. But that's kind of our footprint, our growth with square miles. This is a city's population. Reason why 12 is chopped off because I don't have data at but 2008 to 2025 for the city's population. Um, Derby obviously is ahead of everybody, but you can see here that our population, we were ahead of Kichai and kind of neck and neck in maze and then we were ahead of maze and it may start to outpace us 2016, 2017, 2018 and they've kept ahead of us and then we've had a sharp uptick here in 2024. We're starting to catch up again 2025. Um, we're catching up with center which is good. I consider it as a competitive thing. So, I just kind of when I say we're catching up, I feel like, you know, it's not the Kentucky Derby. I get it. But like we're we're c we're we're catching up. So we're all pretty neck and neck here. What's really interesting though is when you take this metric and this metric and so you take the city population I'm sorry, yeah, the city population divide by the square miles, you get a population density metric. And so what's really interesting is Hazesville is way up there. It's a very dense according to this information which is it's shocking. I'm not very familiar with Pazville, so I don't know what kind of land uses they have over there. But Bair also has had a sharp uptick in density um since 2021 especially. It's just had a really sharp uptick. So you guys are probably more familiar with these areas than I am. And you know, I'm I'm curious about the composition, but Valley Center actually has had a decline. So you see they were going up and up and up in density and then they started to decline. So as they've grown, they've actually lost density over time, which is really kind of interesting. Park City is not very dense. Maze is definitely catching up in density, but not as dense as we are. And so, ideally, we would like to see this trend going into the future where we become more

dense simply because what would be really interesting is to compare this information to their operating budgets because that's where you really get some really interesting information, the density relationship between that and their operating budgets because it'll be interesting just to see how much revenue they're able to generate off that density. And so I don't have their operating rates, but I'm going to look at that and try to do some analysis and determination there. But it'll be it's just kind of interesting to see how that plays out over time because some cities have really taken a march on that. Hazelwell, especially Bair and obviously we're there as well. We're introducing more density as well. Then some cities have trickled off in terms of density. Key obviously has a lot of land but not a lot of population. So they're very low in terms of density. That's it for me. So moving on to commissioner comments. No, we're using today. No comments. And then journ next meeting will be July 14th. I will bring the um reductions to the R1 as a compiled list. Maybe I can bring some examples of what we actually had on it. It might be helpful to kind of illustrate that. Okay. All in favor? I