City Council - Regular Meeting

So this has been a long process to get us here. But I'm very excited about what we're doing tonight. As we all know, we're getting through the land use code update. And it's been right about 40 years since the last time it's happened. So we're very excited to try to get this one passed. And ideally, it's about another 40 years till we do this again. But everyone knows the reason we're here tonight. It's a joint work session between City Council and our Planning Commission. We have a few, we have one agenda item, but a couple things within that agenda item. Just a few things before we get started, because we're getting right into the presentation tonight. It's a big room. There's 13 of us here tonight. Well, I think Chair Thomas is on the way. I could try to speak louder. Okay, I'll do that. I could also just hold this.

Well, that doesn't do anything in here.

All right. I'll speak loud. There's a lot of us here tonight. So there's a few things we want to make clear. First and foremost, we're not voting tonight. This is not a city council meeting or a planning commission meeting. There is no vote to be taken tonight. This is a work session. We're trying to get through a couple things tonight. The other things are, because there are a lot of us, We want to make sure we don't start speaking over each other. There is natural stopping points in the presentation. But really, what we want to make sure is when we start discussing things, let's be very respectful of one another. Let's be very respectful of who's speaking and who has a floor. I promise if you put your hand up, I will call on you. I will try to do so in the order that I see them go up. But let's not speak over each other. Let's try to be respectful. And the last thing is, let's try to be brief. There's a lot of us tonight. And if we all take over the microphone at any given point, it's going to be a very long night. So with that, let's just remember those as we start. And I will hand it right over to Seth, because I think we're all ready to go.

Hey, mayor, members of council, planning commission. Thank you very much for your time this evening. Phil Kleisler with the city's planning and building department. I'm joined here with team members from administration, from planning and building, as well as our consultant team with Clary & Associates. And we're thrilled to bring this item to this joint work session this evening. The primary purpose of this workshop is to discuss and determine whether or not modifications are needed to the draft land use code, specifically for the Old Town area and then to sustainability topics that were brought up in Council's August 18th meeting. So what we are proposing, we'll give some very brief background. We've kind of seen that before. But then we'd like to have some slides on the Old Town mixed use districts. as well as the working group recommendations from their meeting held last week we'll then stop with a question for planning commission and council for the discussion we expect this would probably be the bulk of the meeting most likely and then we'll have a slide on each of those remaining topics along with the council question As background, we've seen this a lot, but this is a major implementation project of the Legacy Lafayette Comprehensive Plan. Overall, that's our guiding document. We're also considering other city plans, like our multimodal transportation plan, wildlife plan, and so on. We're also looking to make the new code more user-friendly, easier to understand, more predictable, both in development outcomes and process. After restarting the project in late 2024, Clarion and Elizabeth's team did a code assessment. They looked through all of our regulations and looked at the work that staff had previously completed. And then with that in hand, we moved to drafting the code in three sections, what we called modules. We called it at the time a transparency first approach. So as we got the code language, we basically released it out to the community, to the working group, and so on. So it was kind of a concurrent review with staff and the community. And then once that full code was developed, we went out for community-wide engagement. And now we are in the middle of the adoption process. Council and Planning Commission may recall that during City Council's May 19th meeting, Council opted to defer several of the land use code items and kind of pull it out of the code for more analysis, more engagement. Two of those were neighborhood serving commercials. So this is allowing small scale commercial in existing residential areas. as well as building height allowances, so incentives for allowing additional height for additional community benefit. Those were pulled out. These were probably two of the most discussed throughout the project. But there wasn't necessarily consensus at the end of the day. And so ultimately, council pulled those out for further study. And then during that conversation on May 19, Staff recommended there was some discussion around changing the building heights for Old Town. We recommended further study on that as well. The Old Town mixed use. So the Planning Commission during its public hearings, they had public hearings in June and July, requested as part of that this joint workshop with council to reevaluate that OTX or Old Town mixed use zoning. uh specifically for the otx3 sub-district that we'll show in just a moment that's the area south of emma street there's a lot of we've heard some community concern concerns from planning commissioners and others around some of the things one of the big concerns raised was around the maximum building footprint size in that otx3 district of 25 000 square feet and what that would mean for the potential future character of that stretch of old town Overall, in developing the regulations and moving forward, our goal is just alignment with the comp plan in terms of maintaining the Old Town's distinct character scale and historic grid pattern. And in thinking through these, we've also had in the back of our mind whether or not we're creating a lot of nonconforming buildings and a lot of nonconforming lots. In terms of the progression of this zoning district in Old Town, existing today we have a single zone district, B1 Community Service Business District. This expands beyond Old Town as well. It includes basic standards like a 35-foot height limit, but does not include some of the standards in the draft form-based code, such as the maximum building size. Then we introduced form-based code zoning both to Old Town as well as some commercial and new neighborhoods. Form-based code overall are regulations that govern the physical building form scale and placement rather than focusing specifically on the use. And so they're good at creating and tailoring regulations to promote a more walkable human scale mixed use environment. The initial concept shown in the middle here was introduced at the working group in March. It included a two-district approach. So OTX 1 is the kind of salmon-colored area. And that's the buildings, the lots that are fronting Public, Baseline, or East Simpson, and then OTX 2, which are those lots that are not fronting those streets. It also included several form-based code elements, building orientation requirements, lock consolidation limits, and it included a building size limit of 5,000 and 16,000 as well. In that, since we were kind of reviewing this at the same time, the project team continued to review this and during that time kind of came to the conclusion that the zoning area could benefit from more distinct clarifications for different character areas, such as Baseline Road. And through that, we had some discussions and kind of came to the conclusion that south of Emma Road was also feeling a little bit different due to a number of the things that we'll talk about this evening. And so we also noted that the initial building size limits did create quite a number of non-conforming buildings in Old Town as well. So with that, the project team developed and recommended the Planning Commission a three-district approach, which would be OTX 1, which is the central area on the map on the right, OTX 2, which is along the south side of Baseline, and OTX 3, south of Emma Road. from a stream. And that set a number of things, a maximum building footprint as 10, 15, and 25,000 for the one, two, and three districts. Consistent with input we've heard from these two bodies, we decreased the administrative allowance for lot consolidations from 30,000 down to 21,000. Established standards for incentivizing adaptive reuse, which is a big goal in the comp plan, as well as numerous other standards in the districts. The Planning Commission requested some existing conditions information for this joint meeting. So staff created a handful of maps, primarily from existing information, such as the Boulder County Assessor's Office, the Denver Regional Council of Governments, and in some cases created some quick information just to share with you. This was shared with the working group this time last week in this room, and so that may have informed some of the conversation that the working group had at that time. We'll run kind of quickly through these different maps that were included in your packet. The first one related to lot size, and this is what we found here is that the lot size generally transitioned from a more finer-grained historic grid pattern in the OTX1, that central area, Averaging about... averaging 8,300 square feet to substantially larger lots in that OTX2 area along west baseline, particularly those lots you see at the western edge of that district, and then highly variable lot sizes in that OTX3 south of Emma, with smaller lots, particularly in that 8 and 700 block on the southern part, up to over 100,000 square feet for the former Flores site. With building size, we did pull Boulder County assessor data for finished square feet. And what we saw that the average finished square feet were generally relatively consistent across the different districts at about 3,800 square feet overall. With OTX-1, the central area having the smallest average footprint of just under 3,000 square feet, while the OTX-3 featuring larger building footprints averaging 7,800. But when you take the florist out, that decreases down to be pretty similar to OTX-1 at 4,000 square feet. Alleys and curb cuts, this is one that we just did a quick mapping of showing the existing alley network in the lines and the orange dots as curb cuts or kind of driveway access points. So if you look at East Simpson, you'll see that there's relatively few curb cuts here because the rear access along that street serves as the primary access point. We try to look at what's the apples to apples in these areas. And so that would be three curb cuts per 1,000 linear feet. And so that does enhance pedestrian safety, walkability, and overall sense of character in that area. Curb cuts overall in this area are somewhat comparable throughout the districts. They're shown here with the highest being that OTX3 area. The central OTX1 area does have a benefit in this case in that it is able to potentially reduce some of those curb cuts by relying more on alley access and access to parking through alleys in the future. We also looked at paved areas using Dr. Cogg data. Those were fairly consistent throughout the area, ranging from 23% in OTX1 to 31% in OTX3. So this would be like buildings, primarily actually parking areas and other paved areas. And OTX1, similar to the previous slide, also has a little bit of flexibility. That number may not grow as fast as some of the other areas because it has that alley access in more areas than not. Whereas those larger sites on the northern part of that OTX3 area would likely require interior parking, more traditional parking. And so that number may increase as those properties develop in the future. We also looked at building footprints. This is an average overall of 2,000 square feet across all the structures, but only looking at primary structures that increased to 32,000 square feet. The OTX 1 and 2 had pretty similar size footprints at 28 and 24,000 square feet. while OTX3 had a larger footprint average of 63,000 square feet, 100 square feet. But then that drops down to be fairly a little bit more in line with the others when you take out that existing flora site in this area. We'd like to walk through the recommendations from last week. So the working group held a robust discussion last week, but before doing that, I wanted to pause and ask Planning Commission Chair if you or others on the Planning Commission would prefer to walk through these, or staff, we can kind of quickly go through them as well.

I feel like staff could probably do a pretty good, we could jump in if needed. Sure. But I think we can probably do a pretty good job.

Yeah, so the good discussion, I think probably about two-thirds or so of these recommendations relate specifically to the Old Town area. And so we'll just kind of quickly go through these. This is an opportunity for, and then we'll ask the question basically, does the Planning Commission, does Council agree with these recommendations? And we can talk about what that means and how that impacts the process. And so one of the discussion points was the general character of that OTX3 area south of Public Road and a desire to amend the regulations to promote that more small-scale character that we see in the central part of Old Town down Public Road south of Emma Street. The next one is around lot coverage. So lot coverage refers to the amount of buildings on a site, and so that's a percentage of the site. So it's a recommendation to decrease that by 10%. And then number three, with the OTX3 building footprint, right now the current maximum, there's no maximum now, the initial draft included 25,000-square-foot maximum building footprint. And to note that that means that there can be multiple buildings on a single property, but none of them would be able to be larger than 25,000 square feet. And they're recommending that that be matched to OTX1 at 10,000 square feet.

Phil, you have anything to add?

Can we get through the presentation? We'll get to questions, I promise.

It's not a question. It's a point of clarification, I think, as well. There's just two things. before we get too far into that. You said that during this process you recommended to Planning Commission the three OTX districts. I just wanted to clarify that this made it through City Council before the OTX 3 came to us on the Planning Commission. I wrote it down as you said it, so we can go back to that. I just wanted to clarify that OTX 3 did not come to the planning commission before it came to council for vote. The other thing, and I know I brought this up the last time, when we look at the curb cuts along these two districts, the apples to apples comparison that I think is more apt, along public the curb cuts are relatively consistent. We have 9 to 11 along public, and East Simpson is the outlier with the average of three curb cuts per block. I just think that's And that's all.

Yeah, I think looking back, I had to look at the dates. But I think the OTX 1, 2, 3 was presented to Planning Commission for the recommendation. And then it was presented to Council as part of the adoption process. Yeah.

That's what I'm interested in. Yeah.

Let's make sure. These are the remaining ones around OTX. So there was a recognition and discussion around this area that's circled with a 4. And the recommendation is to actually zone this as OTX 1. It makes sense if you look back at the alley. There's an existing alley there. The lot sizes are pretty similar to what you see up north on Public. One clarification. 700 block, technically there's 800 addresses here. So the 700 would be three lots plus the pocket park between Kinbark and Spalding. And the 800 block would be just south of there and includes three lots down south of East Spalding. Number five, the future alley system. So in that as well, when you look at the larger sites there, there's alleys north and there's that alley south on the west side. And there was a discussion about whether or not we could envision something where future development actually creates that alley system that's not there right now. And so there was a recommendation that we consider ways to do that. And so we haven't, there's a lot of discussion that has to happen there, probably with legal as well, of how much we can exact from certain types of development applications, what those alignments might look like and what the responsibility of the city for maintaining those would look like. But that was another recommendation that we can explore as part of this process. The sixth one with building height in the OTX would be setting a maximum building height of two stories. They mentioned it in OTX 3 in adjusting the maximum height in feet. So right now the height stayed the same as 35 feet, but taking a look about whether or not that's appropriate. And then number seven is a request for an additional working group meeting prior to the second ordinance being adopted. And so to do that, plus the others, and we can show this in a second, but that does likely impact the schedule. We would probably need another month and a half or so to get that done. The final recommendations, unrelated to the OTX area, first is about a small detached home size. So in a form-based code district, like new neighborhoods, we have building type standards. And it includes separate from a regular detached home, a small detached home. And that has a maximum size limit of 1,200 square feet. And they're recommending 1,500 square feet. market forces other things kind of came up during that conversation that informed that and others can certainly chime in during the discussion period as well the group also talked about window well encroachments about whether or not those should be able to encroach into a setback so if you can consider like the side of a home has a five foot you know space between the home and the fence whether or not that window well can encroach into that there's some consideration of you know public safety like we want to make sure Firefighters fall in there if they're responding to an emergency or something. And so that's something that we can explore with our other agencies, other departments. Second to last is rear setbacks for alley-loaded garages. So just tailoring those to be a bit more nuanced. If the rear garage backs up to an alley, And then looking at a building height definition, there was a discussion that some of the lots are depressed and below the street level. And so in letting them bring that fill up before start counting that as the building height measurement. And so not penalizing them for an infill project where the grading isn't sufficed to meet building code. So what is shown here is a couple of things. Ordinance number one and two, we've talked about those a little bit with the groups. It may be hard to see on the screen, but one through six on both of these are folded, and those are generally the recommendations from the working group from last week. So ordinance number one is being considered on second reading next week. This incorporates the Planning Commission recommendations as well as most of the direction that we got from council in the August first reading. Ordinance number one also includes a 90-day effective date to allow for some engagement for properties that are being rezoned as well as working through some of these remaining issues. And tonight it would be really helpful to know whether or not the Planning Commission and Council supports these because we could get these edits into the code in time for the packet to be released Thursday or Friday of this week prior to your second reading next Tuesday. So ordinance number two, as you can see, has an expanded list of options here. And we would request, if the two bodies and councils would like to move forward with these, some additional time to work on these. Because we don't think we can get these plus another working group meeting in that 90-day time frame. And so we'll have some at the very end of the meeting, or we can pull it up any time, some specific dates to what this could look like. But I think in the meantime, we kind of just wanted to hand it over to Mayor and Council Planning Commission to discuss these items. Thank you. Thank you.

Questions before we start any sort of discussion?

About that question. So some of these, I would love to hear the rationale. behind what the working group was thinking before I could say how I feel about it. And so I'm wondering if we could, on that list, get the information about why or what the conversation was about all of that.

I think that's a great idea. We could definitely do that.

to tell the story of how we came up with these, or I end up with additional questions. Additional questions. Additional questions.

OK, no more questions. Are we sure there's no more questions? Councillor Friedman.

Thank you very much and apologize that I'm not on camera a little bit, running double duty. I'm curious, it seems like we've decided, and I wasn't sure, help me understand what the consensus from the working group meeting was around, do we keep OTX3 and amend it as you've shown today, or do we need OTX3? I'm struggling to understand the difference, I think, from just a non-architectural Can you help me understand why it's valuable for us to keep OTX3 with the amended changes as opposed to just getting rid of it?

So I think I can kind of speak to that. What we talked about quite a bit at the working group meeting was where this started and where staff came, why staff and the consultant kind of approached it in this way and what the actual intention is when you look at the comprehensive plan and when you look at some of the other, you know, the discussions we've had with the working group and with city council as well. The thought that they had was really, let's take a light touch. Let's try to keep more of what's there, adaptive reuse, and thinking along those lines. And the result ended up in something that would allow for larger building footprints and larger lot sizes. And it kind of essentially goes against the comp plan, which is why we have been having these conversations. So I think the suggestion that we landed on in the working group meeting was more, okay, we can see from the data that's been collected that this is a little different than what OTX1 has and OTX2, but how can we basically knit it together and keep it a separate zone district because it's got these underlying attributes that don't really lend itself to the same constraints that OTX 1 has. Does that make sense? I'm sure you could speak to that a little bit more clearly. But basically, the goal is still to try to create a consistent feel from OTX, from baseline all the way down to just balding and on, so that when new development comes to OTX 3 or whatever it becomes, It has the same feel. It has the same sense because the massing is controlled and the feel of the buildings are not large. They're turned over into smaller footprints. So that's why it's still there, why the recommendation is still OTX3. It's just not going to be what we've been hearing about and what everyone reacted really strongly to because it wasn't quite right yet.

that make sense yeah there might be you know as we get into it if council wanted us to move forward with that with that direction um if the standards end up being really similar maybe there maybe it would be it would or wouldn't exist we can walk across that bridge when we get to it but having that extra district does at least allow the city to address some of those things that might be unique on the larger lots like interior parking and what that looks like where we don't want to necessarily promote that elsewhere throughout the the Old Town area.

Does that?

Yeah, can I add? Yeah, go ahead, please. This first recommendation felt really important because this is where we actually all, I think, found some consensus that the goal was to make sure that public road, this entirety of this length of public road represented by these three zones, we wanted to ultimately feel kind of the same and consistent throughout. And we heard from a lot of public comments. There was a lot of anxiety about the idea of this southern region feeling really different really large buildings. We heard big box often in the comments. And so we wanted to make sure we were honoring that first public road character goal. But once we agreed that that was what we were aiming for, we concluded that the best way to promote that might be to actually have three different districts, because we need to write maybe different rules to make this true in those different places, because they have different underlying conditions.

So you've got lots that are larger. So if you apply the same setbacks to larger lots, for instance, if you just say, okay, OTX3 is now OTX1, the result is not necessarily what we're trying to get to. The result is not going to be effective or make it all feel knit together. And then, yeah, I'll stop there.

Commissioner Lehman.

Just tacking onto that, and I think you've all covered that really well, I believe that's also why we recommended the 7-800 block of South Public. It goes back to the OTX 1 standard because it more closely represents what is already present in OTX 1. And if the idea is to allow OTX 3 to be its own zone because of those underlying considerations and the potential nonconformities, then the 700 and 800 block of South Public that would not conform with what the intention of otx3 is so then if it remains as zones otx1 then we kind of reduce all the conflicts that would have been present with what we're trying to achieve in otx3 and it remaining that different zoning district in anticipation of what might be another question council further does that answer your question

believe it does um from my simple uh social sciences soft sciences background i will say that it's still uh confusing and it sounds like we're also thinking about otx1 coming back in the 700 block maybe just on the west side um or something so like i don't know we might be overthinking this i guess is my sort of like just honest impression where i recognize that we need to treat certain areas a you know, could we not do that in a simpler, more elegant way than like kind of narrowing in on a certain zoning for a certain area? When couldn't we? I don't know. I'm sure there's pros and cons either way. I guess it's just still a question in my mind, but that was helpful, although I'm still a bit confused if I'm going to be honest.

Well, perhaps I can throw something in there. So if you look at public road, how it evolved over time, you'll see that obviously the area that's OTX3 now had some very large things in it. But now that we are into looking at mostly infill, I think the big issue here is do we want to continue the public road look and feel with what infill potentially is going to occur there over time or are we going to, because of the current size of stuff, allow things that I think potentially unintended consequences if somebody wanted to build something extremely large and that didn't quite fit in with the whole look and feel of public road, that was a real huge concern, not only by, I think, members of the Planning Commission, but also by the public. And so looking at how we could preserve the evolution of public road, but in a way that preserved what everybody liked and did not encourage things that potentially we would not like. I think that was the compromise that we ultimately came to with what we did with OTX-3 and then the continuation of OTX-1 south of Kinbark.

Thank you, Mayor. I was at the working group in the audience and listened to the discussion. And one of the things that, you know, I had initially thought that they were going to just eliminate OTX 3 or recommend to eliminate it. And there was a few things that stood out to me. One of those, you know, we do have these larger lots. So if we had instead grouped that under the OTX 1, where the lot size limits basically exist that would be forcing the properties in otx3 to be subdivided and we i think they wanted to avoid kind of forcing that on a property owner but still giving flexibility so i think the idea was to you know modify the otx3 district as it stood to eliminate the things that they didn't like the things that they wanted to be more like otx1 but avoid kind of this forcing mechanism that would come through by zoning everything the same and in particular that that kind of forcing lot sizes and just allowing for flexibility in an area that just was, you know, distinctly different as far as the lot sizes went, just to allow flexibility. And I thought that was an interesting approach that the recommendation landed on. that made sense to me to give that ability to, you know, make these tweaks and achieve, you know, the goals that they talk about as far as how do we make this more like, you know, I keep using the phrase what do we want Lafayette to be when it grows up? We want Public Road, this section, to be like the rest of Public Road. And so it was, you know, keep the the building footprints kind of the same consistent throughout but allow flexibility to if you've got a bigger lot you can maybe build more buildings on it as long as they're kind of within the same size frame so there's flexibility that it looked to me like otx3 that with the large lot size needed that more flexibility that couldn't just fall under the otx1 without some of these other things being forced commissioner

I totally agree with what Councillor Giannullo was saying, and I agree from a legal standpoint, and we really don't want to wade into forcing people's hands to subdivide property and all those things. I think the idea is that we're respecting the property rights of existing property owners and all of those things while trying to maintain the character of the city. I think one thing in my imagining, especially when we move forward with our new civic building, In my personal dream world, on weekends, people can park at the new civic building and walk all the way from one end of the public to the other and have a wonderful pedestrian experience and coffee shops and stores and all of those things. And there's not this funny blitz. To elaborate on something that Commissioner Phillips brought up in terms of the historic development of the city, you can find these maps. I'm happy to share them. But one thing that we discussed at the meeting is the historic framework of the city. original Lafayette did not go west of public. And then the next maps that you see that incorporate all of what is old town Lafayette actually includes public road and the west side all the way down to what is now Monaco Parkway. So everything on the 700 block west and all of what's the, you know, a lot of the development when you see all of these things that are south of Emma. were part of the original Old Town. From maps from 1919, 1937, you can see this. So I think some of what we discussed is that when we're drawing these lines of what was original Old Town, a lot of the area in discussion of OTX3 is part of the original Old Town once it expanded to the west side of Public Road. And I'm happy to share those maps, but I think that facilitated a lot of our discussion about what should be included and what is in the character of what we consider old town or original town or whatever it is in that development scale.

Great. OK. I think we're going to get into discussion unless there's any general questions before we do so.

And one other question. I noticed a small change in the, I think, if I want to check. When we left the working group session, I believe we thought that the small detached home size was going to be 1,500 square feet or less. Here it's listed as 1,200 square feet to 1,500 square feet. I wondered if there was a reason for that. Well, is there some other distinction below 1,200?

I think that's just intended to clarify that we're making a change from a 1,200 square foot max. It's not supposed to be the range. So it will be 1,500 square feet as max. It's just trying to indicate that that was the pivot from one limit to the other.

OK, thanks. I just wanted to, I know there were comments about maybe the houses should be 900 square feet. So I just wanted to make sure we're not exaggerating.

Yeah, we're not trying to regulate on how small they are, just how big they get. So.

Councilor Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, everyone, for the discussion. A couple slides ago, I noticed that there were at least a bullet point regarding building height. But then earlier, I had heard Mr. Kleiser critically note that we had agreed to table building height. I just want to make sure that I was clear on what our current approach is to potentially amending or tabling the building height conversation. Thank you.

At the council's May meeting, that was brought up about whether or not to regulate by both the heightened feet and then the heightened stories. And there was some discussion at that meeting. At that time, staff thought that more engagement, particularly with the property owners in this area, would have benefited that, in addition to more analysis. And so we had recommended it just be part of perhaps the 2027 work plan in the planning division. In this case, the working group's recommending that, at least in that OTX3 area, And the group certainly can weigh in on more of this. But to limit that to two stories now. So what that would mean in practice is that the code would need to define what a story means and what it doesn't mean. So Matt, how tall is something before it becomes a story? Is an attic a story? Is a certain percentage of a floor's outdoor dining on a rooftop a story? And so there's some of those questions that we would need to answer.

We would we would do that if the council wanted us to So can I follow up on that solo Okay, I just wanted to make sure because I I got more confused after listening to you

Yeah, thank you, Councillor Jensen. I'm a little bit in the same boat as you, and I appreciate the explanation. I just want to be clear, and maybe similar to Councillor Fridlund, that as a social scientist, I'm much more in the what are we actually doing here. If we are amending and adjusting building height, and I agree with the logic that you laid out, Phil, if we are doing that, I feel like that does open the aperture to then look at building height up and down Public Road, which I understand, per your comment back in May, we agreed to table. So I just want to make sure I'm clear on that. Understanding as the mayor noted earlier.

This is not a decisional meeting But I want to make sure I'm clear on what the conversation is in the moment so that we can be best prepared for next week Thank you Did you have a question to start so yeah What I heard you say is we are going to recommend in this ordinance one that we change it to two stories and But then we're going to reconsider that in the bigger, broader conversation about building height. Is that clear? I mean, I don't really understand what we're doing.

So the recommendation from the working group was to, in ordinance number one, so by next Tuesday, limit the stories to two. So we'd have a 35-foot building height limit stay, but have a two-story limit for Old Town. And that's Old Town on Public Road, because I know the code is specific on a three-story building height along baseline. The comp plan is, I should say. So I guess that's a good clarification to make, because it wasn't really discussed last week. And then we would need to, through that same ordinance, because we're going to start talking about stories as a height control, define what a story is. And that's not something we got into last week. So Phil was giving some examples of a rooftop deck. Would that constitute a story? At what point would a garden level where you have a half, kind of walking down half a floor, constitute a story? That's not something that we've wrestled with yet. know this group hopefully provides us direction as to whether or not you want to move forward with that two-story limit now want to go back to what council recommended in may or and if we're going to move forward with the two-story limit now we just need to work on a definition for you guys uh ahead of next tuesday's meeting

It just accelerates the work plan item, essentially, for height. So instead of doing it in 2027, if council ultimately decides to have two stories slash 35, when we come to revise and clean up the whole thing, in the code, there'll need to be a definition of stories. So it's just an acceleration of a work plan item in a simple way to understand it.

But the larger conversation about 35 feet is still going to happen, and this is just for... what looks like OTX 2 and 3, right? That it would be limited to two stories in that section. We'd still keep the 35 foot height. You'd put some definitions in and then at a future date we're going to have a bigger conversation about

height in general is that the process that was my understanding of the working group's recommendation yeah so you mentioned council recommended in may what did council recommend in may that we'd come back to it oh okay just come back all right how would you how would you describe how we discussed it sorry um i i what i heard was that um

was an impatience with waiting to tackle this because it had been something that had come up a lot and so there was a decision to add it to our working group meeting even though it was not initially planned to be on the working group meeting so that we could discuss it and there was a strong sentiment from the public and i think the working group agreed with this sentiment from the public that there's this there's a desire for a two-story limit and so we should just go ahead and move forward with that. But we had a lot of discussion about the right way to balance the height in feet and the stories. And we talked about some complications you've identified even more now that you've seen. And we just couldn't answer all those. So we had recommended that the staff have more time to think through the best way to regulate that. But it did feel like there was an interest in locking in this concept of a two-story limit sooner.

COMMISSIONER TARULLO. Commissioner Luke.

The only thing I would add to that, which I think is relevant, is in a lot of the things that we discussed that are finer points that we're going to come to, there was this sort of broad discussion of, well, who makes this decision? Who decides what's the appropriate amount of housing? Who decides whatever the thing is? And I definitely mentioned, but we came back to, this whole land use plan is predicated on the comprehensive plan and what the community set out as its vision. And I think it's important to note that the community set out in the comprehensive plan as its vision that there was a two-story limit for Old Town. I'm not saying that other people don't have their own opinions about that. I just think that if the purpose of this land use code is to adhere to what the community set out for its vision for the city of Lafayette in the comprehensive plan, that is what the comprehensive plan indicated was and very strongly indicated was the high limit for Old Town. I just wanted to make that point that it isn't necessarily the opinion of Anybody on the planning commission or anybody who makes public comment, that is a direct reference to the comprehensive plan on which the land use code is supposed to be based. So there is sort of a greater community aspect to that.

Do you have that reference? Sorry? By any chance, can you point me to that? I'd like to see what it actually says. In the comprehensive plan? I do not have that on me.

I'll find it.

Yeah. Thank you. Sorry, I'm on Sam's computer, so I'm waiting.

towards the end of the comp plan there are these urban design principles for each of the land use typologies and for the old town mixed use i think it starts on page 156 or 158. there's a table that includes building stories and two stories as part of that i've seen it for a while i'm gonna go to council earlier

Thank you, Mayor. Appreciate it. And really appreciate this conversation. I think a lot of really valid points have been raised. I also think this conversation illustrates why we concurred as a council to table this specific question a few months ago. If we're opening it, Mayor, I'll look to you on how you want to proceed on this. If we're reopening that, That gives me some concern since I've been operating under the assumption for the past few months that we were just going to keep building height as is, get the land use code over the finish line, and then come back and revisit. But I'm hearing a lot of logic. And it's well laid out. But I'm hearing a lot of logic that would articulate reopening that. And I just want to be very clear on the implications thereof. Thank you.

Councilor Gino.

appreciate that council earlier i did want to just clarify or ask a question because i'm confused with the recommendation number six here in that i was under the impression that the working group talked about building heights across otx one and three and not just otx three basically all along public road and simpson is what i heard the discussion and so if there's a recommendation i want to make sure i understood it was the same thing i heard i had the same understanding it was all about tx was it two though as well on baseline in the in the land use code it's on paper in the comprehensive plan it's on page 161 principal maximum building height south public road main street um two stories east simpson and baseline road main street two stories on east simpson street three stories on baseline road other streets in old town two stories so it's that's where the very clear reference to that is in the comp plan

Yeah, and so I think this is probably us reading the notes from last week. And so yeah, if that's the will of the working group, then that's good for council to know as well so we could all be on the same page.

I think it was OTX 1 and OTX 3 that we were talking about. Yeah. All right. Chair Thomas.

I just wanted to add a little bit of color on part of the conversation last week was about thinking about, again, this is a topic that informs massing of a building and the way the feel of the building. And a lot of us in, you know, not in a super urban area, when we think of a two-story building, it's just, it's 10-foot floor-to-floor heights and it's maybe got a pitched roof. But when you, there's lots of different ways to do a two-story building within a 35-foot height. So for instance, you might have in 35-foot height, you can have a two-story building, but it will have 17 feet floor-to-floor. So that's very tall ceilings, and that's a much bigger feeling to that building than one that's got a 11-foot floor-to-floor height. So the two-story buildings that we are used to seeing in context here in Lafayette are not the same. So defining that for Lafayette, that's why this is so important. And so we need to really think about if we just say two stories or 35 feet, that can still be a really tall box. And so what begins to break down the mass of that, what begins to shape those buildings to be something that we want to see on public road and that will fit. So what I'm trying to say is I do think that having a bigger conversation about height Definition of it, having some really clear examples of here's a two-story building, but here's a, to Phil's comment, here's a two-story building with a garden apartment down below, missing middle housing, and it's only 24 feet tall or it's 30 feet tall. So that does a lot of things, but is technically more than two stories. And that's a conversation for council to have. Well, and you're, excuse me.

Just one more thing. I want to get us back on track and start going through this one by one.

Well, your comment was getting into more content and substance rather than process. And when we get to content, I have some strong feelings that I would like to talk about. But I think this question that Kyle raised is more of, what is it we're talking about tonight? And I want to make sure we're all clear what we're talking about tonight. And one option would be to pull height out altogether and make it part of the larger conversation we said we were going to have about height the other sounds like your proposal is to keep this at two stories define that in this ordinance one or soon thereafter and then Part of the problem is if we cap it at two stories now and then we try to change it, I think that becomes really difficult. And that is why I would prefer we not discuss it at this point and make it part of the larger conversation. And I could get into why, but that gets into content.

I appreciate it, Councillor Jensen. Hold those thoughts. I promise we'll discuss it. I'm hearing a lot, which means we should probably get into these. We'll go one by one because I just want to make it really, really easy for staff to know where we are as a council and as a planning commission. And the one thing I will leave on you, Chair Thomas, I heard from council and from the rest of everyone that we kind of want a little bit of an explanation, maybe a little rationalist behind why the recommendation. But we can start with the first one if you want to go into it.

I mean, the first one, I think I kind of covered that a little bit in my previous comment, because it's basically saying we're trying to knit together Public Road to have a more singular feel, a more similar character the entire way up the street. And that is the goal, whether it's, and we think it can be accomplished after our conversation by OTX3 being massaged generally.

so that it becomes more like otx1 but maybe they do stay separate some districts perfect this is something that would come in ordinance two um who wants to kick us off here if anyone maybe if you put up the list the longer list of items coordinates one and ordinance two so maybe because i think questions are what what's the rationale behind

various points I believe we're the student number one I agree I mean I like this idea I think the comprehensive plan does talk about making public road kind of uniform I think the downtown development authorities plan says make public road uniform I think that's what we want to be when we grow up

I think the reason it was put in ordinance two, correct me if I'm wrong, fellow commissioners, is that it's just going to take some time to go through because these are, you know, and we talked a lot, we tried not to, but talked a lot about specific lots in OTX3. And so there's just a lot to figure out there without getting too far into single properties.

All right. Any other thoughts?

So we were talking about both ones in that conversation? Is that what we were talking about?

Can we go back to the other slide? Sorry.

I'm unclear what we're supposed to be commenting on right now.

The public road character.

Which is a kind of general value statement. And I think it's hard to disagree with it.

Yeah, it's a general value statement. But I think why it was in ordinance two is because to put teeth behind that, we thought the staff would need more time to figure out what rules would you need to create now for this zone to promote that value. If it was just the value statement, it probably could go in ordinance one. For example, are they trying to incentivize new alley creation? Are they trying to encourage different setbacks? What would need to go into that set of rules to promote that outcome?

I think it's also the language is a little vague and loose because we wanted to give staff some flexibility on getting into the weeds between the two and understanding the code analysis and not getting very particular in the phrasing so that they didn't feel boxed in. So it has more of this character feeling language to leave it open-ended for them to really figure out where in different sections of the code they need to tweak it to adjust it for uh you know what needs to be the same what needs to be different so that's why it's a little looser but the intent is that that feeling of the similarity if that helps you know the thoughts from members of council

Commissioner, I'm going to ask you for your last name.

So can I ask, maybe this is along the lines of Councillor Friedman, when it does come to a vote, which is not tonight, is it going to be the three options of leave it as it's written right now in the draft, land use code OTX 1, OTX 3. Option two, move it south so the 700, 800 block is in OTX 1, but then you still have OTX 3 south of that. And thirdly, get rid of OTX3 and make it all of it OTX1. Are those like the three options that in the end we'll load on, or am I a little bit off there?

No, you're way off.

Is that something we get?

We're hoping to get direction tonight based upon the working group recommendations that appear to maintain OTX 3 with some limitations. Move OTX 1 to the 700-800 block. So basically, we're trying to get direction on whether council and planning commission, even though you are also the working group, are supportive of moving forward. And some of these changes we can make by next Tuesday. And some we need to make later on in the coming months. But for the two OTX topics, I believe those could be incorporated by legal in the next 24 hours when we post the packet. So if that's helpful. So we are trying to avoid, but again, council can direct us to come forward with three different options. We're trying to present an ordinance that, based upon tonight's conversations, has some consensus and buy-in. If that helps.

Okay.

Councilor Gallegos.

I appreciate all of the thoughtful recommendations, but I love this recommendation, this first one, about public roads character. My original opposition to OTX3 is that a chain's going to want to get in there. So I think by having this values-based recommendation, we can do our part to make sure the right business is coming into that vacant space.

Thank you, Councilor. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mayor. As I sit on the Downtown Development Authority, I thought it might be good to state from the Old Town Tomorrow Plan regarding land use in states to preserve the unique character of Old Town, continue to activate the central business structure of Lafayette, and encourage reuse of existing buildings and strategic infill. And I was asked why the DDA or how the DDA would fill up this, and I don't know that What we're doing is in opposition to what the DDA would like to see. It says straight up, retain and reuse. So I feel what we're talking about is maintaining, even though I agree it seems confusing, but looking at the area we're talking about, there are very different areas there. And I really appreciate the treatment, even though it might be ugly on paper. It treats the uniqueness of Lafayette, I feel, and is in accordance with what we'd like to see to minimize the stress on private business owners, changes, and to expedite the process a bit. I don't think there's anything that, even though it might not be elegant, I think it still works.

To respond to the Commissioner Schaumbach's question, I think that if we agreed that the direction we wanted to give today was in alignment with what's written for number one, that what would ultimately be voted on by the council when they hear Ordinance 2 would be a land use code with new rules in it for OTX that haven't been designed yet. So it wouldn't be the option one, two, three that you mentioned. It would be, here's a proposal. Here's OTX3's new rules to make sure that public road looks consistent from top to bottom.

OK. And then just to clarify, I mean, that would be option one. We'd have OTX3 as is. But you can always amend. I mean, the specific parameters of OTX3, I understand and agree, could be modified. Yes. OK. Understood.

I'm hearing general just agreement support for this first one. I will allow a few more seconds to see if any other member of council or planning commission wants to weigh in. If not, you can move on.

So can we just, again, this process, please. All right. So because council has to have two readings, you've had your first reading, as was. Then we had our next meeting of the land use group. And so the changes that are recommended here, which, if you amend what you already voted on once, are you going to have to have an additional reading and vote on? Yes. And so that's also why there's those two other ordinances, follow-on ordinances, that would give time for things to be worked out that we're still not clear on and then would ultimately amend what has already been voted on by council. Correct? City Attorney?

Yes. So anything that we cannot work into the packet that we're going to publish for council's second reading next week, As long as we can get amendments, proposed amendments, in and ready for that packet by tomorrow so that they are published and available and reviewable by the public by second reading, we wouldn't need a third reading. If there is anything that comes out of second reading or significant changes to what council reviews on second reading, that could require a third reading. But right now, as long as we're able to get it ready for the packet and have it published to the public before that meeting council could act on those proposed amendments next week and still pass that ordinance.

Can I make one or maybe a couple points of clarification? To begin, I think that this is easier to understand as a whole of this slide. And anyone from Planning Commission can correct me if I'm misstating anything. But my feeling was that OTX3, the biggest concern, which Phil stated in his presentation, was the massing. understanding why we're keeping OTX 3 we hit on but it's also not controversial or not as controversial and maybe not controversial as all at all when you think about the conditions two and three and three being the big one where the building footprint was reduced from 25,000 square feet down to ten and then the OTX 3 piece in terms of the mass and reduction lock coverage was also reduced to be consistent with OTX2, maybe OTX1, but an 80% lot coverage. So those two things were the biggest kind of mover in terms of people's perception of what OTX3 was, because the main concern was how big these buildings could be on those lots. And then the critical piece in keeping it which it's a really difficult discussion because it is it's starting to get into why we're doing our form-based code and what we can do with it and that also came in through module three so it hasn't been gone over in specifics with planning commission or city council but there are just a lot of tools in place with that form-based code the easiest one to understand is we have alley access and otx1 and so for our residential development right now when somebody comes in and builds a new house or substantially changes their house they can't keep their driveway and that is like an intended goal is to get rid of driveways because they're they don't make a very walkable neighborhood and because the alley is there for them to actually take access off the alley so if somebody redevelops they put their garage in the back and they have their vehicle access in the back and then they remove their curb cut from the front, and that creates more walkable streets. And we can do that for OTX, one in the commercial area. What we can't do, so we can regulate that, and we can And this kind of goes back to we want to have prescriptive and known outcomes for development. This is one of those things we can do for OTX1. And OTX1 is just as critical to understand as why we want OTX3 to be different, because we don't have allies there. So for those larger lots, what we heard from planning commission and the working group last week is we want to start working with them in order to like have an alley but like we're not going to necessarily uh if one block comes in we can't get an alley all the way down we're going to end up with like an easement along what would be the back portion of the property which we can get through their redevelopment but it would be like they'd still have to provide access off a public road and so we just have a different set of tools that we're going to have to work with and apply for otx3 than otx1 and that's why it's critical but it's also why it's not as contentious anymore because of the two uh big changes and the biggest one being um the building size limitation going down from 25 000 square feet to 10. So I can pull up a map and kind of walk through a little bit of that if it's more helpful. But I also don't want to take more time than you guys need in order to understand that. Commissioner Lehman.

Just because we haven't talked about this, and I feel like we can cover it really quick. You covered it in the presentation, but when you take out the one extra large building in OTX3, I think the reason that we made this recommendation is that if you look at the average building heights across all of them, the same size. So that's why we did this lot coverage recommendation and building size recommendation because it made this proposal made it consistent with what we're already seeing as the built environment in the OTS districts that exist. So that's why this number was landed on. Just to clarify that. Since he covered it, just giving you the reason behind our recommendation. Since we're shooting for consistency with what you plan and the downtown development plan, all of those things. That is why we landed there.

Great. Thank you. Speaking of OTX relock, our original move on to number two, Chair Combs.

The goal with this was basically there's a lot of open area between buildings and around buildings in OTX 1, again, getting that consistency carried down through this other zone district. If you have a 90% lot coverage, you're just going to have it covered with more building. And so this brings it down a little bit more while still allowing some building to be done. I would personally, and this is just editorializing, I'd like to see what this looks like in OTX 3. I don't know how much we can, because it's such a small zone and there's so few owners of, there's so few properties, I don't know how much of that kind of study can be done. But that would just be so helpful to visualize what do 10,000 square foot buildings look like on these lots, if there's 80% lot coverage, if there's 70% lot coverage. So right now it's quite open. That was the conversation there, the first part. I'm sorry.

Perfect. Commissioner Phillips. Just, again, another question for the city attorney. In regards to the states, I understand we are in a lawsuit with them. As far as the state's TOD, new development rules, because public road is a transit route, a owner could potentially If we do not overturn the state's rules, an owner could sue the city as far as the massing and or what they want to build and not have to be restricted by OTX3, right?

That's something I'd like to look into. And I could advise Council on the Planning Commission confidentially on that. But I wouldn't want to opine on whether a property owner could sue the city without researching that first.

People don't understand that that's actually still a potential no matter what we do.

Great. Any thoughts on OTX 3 law coverage?

Thank you, Mayor. I support this. It makes the OTX-3 and OTX-1 districts more similar. It makes sense to me that we kind of align those if we're trying to make them more similar.

Thank you, Councilor. I concur, just because I'm not seeing any more hands. Any other members of Council want to weigh in on this one? Or members of our planning commission? Councilor Gaius?

I agree with the recommendation.

Perfect.

Thank you, Councilor. Seeing agreement. Seeing support. Perfect. We can move on to number three, building footprint.

So this one is fairly straightforward. Part of the reaction to OTX3 as initially written was that it's quite large, there's quite large footprints. I do want to point out that this is the building footprint. This is the entire, this is not the total square footage of the building. So that means 10,000 square feet first floor, 10,000 square feet second floor. But that's basically, this takes it much lower than initially envisioned and more in line, closer to being in line with OTX1.

I agree with this recommendation as well. One of the other things that the working group talked about or maybe staff kind of raised is for OTX3, you know, there might be multiple buildings on a site because they have a large lot and, you know, could still fit more than one 10,000 square foot building in that 80% coverage that we just talked about. But that, again, to me, feels more like what we're allowing on the rest of Public Road and OTX1. So it made sense to just align those, even though you could have multiple buildings. They would just be the same size buildings.

Thank you, Councillor. Similar to last time, I don't agree with this. Councillor Jensen.

So I have a question about how this is applied. So if you had two stores that shared a wall is that 10 000 square feet both stores or is it one of them each how does that work if they shared a wall they'd be in one building and that total building couldn't ex wouldn't be able to exceed that maximum in this case 10 000 square feet and if somebody had a building that was 10,200 square feet or something slightly above this. Is there an appeal process where they can come to council and say, for reasons that make some sense, we would like to add an additional 200 feet or something like that, that could override this?

They can still do a PUD, and we're trying to eliminate PUDs, but they could do it that way, right?

Yeah, very narrow projects now could do PUDs under the new code. I think there's two, probably, avenues. One would be to ask council for a major adjustment, so this would be a 25% deviation from that. The second would be a variance if there's a unique hardship on the property that they think is unique to their property and not others'.

those are the two that i'm aware of elizabeth do you anything else depending on the percentage of the 200 square feet it could go through minor so that could be and i guess if they i couldn't hear you when you would turn that way i'm sorry about that i get that they'll have avenues um to make that request if they know early early on that that's what they need they can request it with their regulating plan because that's a place to allow adjustments If that 200 square feet is a very – I'm not doing math on the top of my head. That could be something that staff could approve during – Oh, because we have a staff – Depending on – yeah, exactly. But if it's a bigger adjustment, they can come to council and ask for that. And then there's variance. So they probably have three or four routes to say, I've got to do this because my site has some weird topography or something else or I'm doing, you know, an X franchise and I have to have, you know, 10,000 and 200's worth of use for it.

So I just want to say I really support this. I feel very much like the massing was far more an issue than the height issue to me. That in terms of creating the old town feel, we don't, aside from the florist, we don't have great big buildings downtown. and if you want to achieve the value in one i think this is really necessary and so i'm strongly in support of it i do also think i don't have a sense in my head of why some building might come in a little bit more than what we're expecting and so i wanted to to make sure there was an avenue, if there was a good reason for it, that, you know, it could be buried. So I feel confident that that exists. Somewhere, someday we'll write that down, right? And I'll be able to look at it. And so I really appreciate that. And I do think that is what makes our downtown gigantic, massive buildings are not, the the structure of what is downtown when we get to height i have a different opinion and i will share that when we get there perfect thank you counselor made front end great i am hearing support for this recommendation

So the thought here, as I recall our discussion, was 700 block has some history recently about getting rezoned, getting reconstructed, and that didn't happen. And everybody is excited about what's happening in 700 block. It has a pattern that matches what's happening in OTX1. There's really no reason for it to be OJX 3. It does not fit what's happening in that area. And it much more closely matches OJX 1.

And it has an alley?

It has an alley.

Thoughts on this one? Did you have your hand up?

This is my thoughtful look.

I can start. I love this recommendation. I think it just makes sense to me. But are there any other members of council that want to weigh in? I'm seeing support. I'm seeing nodding heads supportive of this one. Carver? On to number five, the future alley system.

The idea here, this has got a lot of precedent when it comes to redeveloping, again, reconnecting city street grids. there's a lot of this is something that is very possible and allows us to begin to again make otx3 part of the ally system in as much as possible it's it's going to be something that would be would have to be worked on with each individual property owner as it as it kind of evolves but that would be the goal of that's that's part of duplicating the character or continuing the character from otx1 commissioner lee

I also believe from our discussion that it was my understanding. In fact, I think take it with you that when building owners in OTX1 do some kind of major redevelopment, they're also responsible for reconstructing their portion of the alley. i think just because they're not that this is necessarily the same thing but there is a precedent for when redevelopment's happening in some of these other districts that there's alley reconstruction happening so i think it isn't totally out of the blue that this would be part of the redevelopment of these areas but there's property owners responsible for some portion of their alley commissioner wilson

Thank you. I think also the alleys will help reduce the traffic that will be appearing, coming out on public roads. And also, too, if they do have alleys, I noticed this year that the Peach Festival went all the way down and passed Lafayette Florist. And if we end up having apartments there in the future, which I'm sure we will, You will not be able to have the Peach Festival, and that seems to be kind of a popular little thing in this town.

I just need some additional clarification on the alley system. So I was originally thinking of it as an additional form of egress in the interest of public safety. Is that correct?

I would think.

yeah i think that's certainly part of it it would serve that purpose as well um but uh i mean i guess from a planning standpoint most of the conversation has been about not having curb cuts and and having a continuous sidewalk along uh public road so

Which is a safety factor.

Yeah, it's also a safety factor. So the more vehicle-pedestrian conflicts you can eliminate and reduce, the fewer incidents. That's the theory.

Great, thank you.

Another recommendation that just makes sense to me. Mayor Potem.

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to say I do agree that the DDA is looking to promote what we're talking about here. And there's a bit of a natural barrier in that area. And I do just want to put out there that it's important to be sensitive when activating the alleys through that area that have never been activated. Um, so I'm just need to throw that out that this is not, I don't want this to be done without the recognition that, um, that's going to be new for that area and that we need to treat that with respect to the history and the culture of the city.

Councillor Chenoweth. I also agree with this. And to that point, I like that this is a soft direct to explore. It's not saying we're going to do it. It's not saying we have to do it. It's more to evaluate is it possible, I think, is kind of what the discussion is. And so I mean, for all the reasons we've talked about, I think it makes sense.

Well, I mean, sort of arms. If you're working on the DDA, I mean, if this is kind of an idea that we all accept, then in the future, DDA could work with those property owners to precisely do that. So it's something that's done in conjunction with everybody instead of sort of a separate independent thing.

There you go. You got it. I'm hearing support on this one, so we will get to it. They're all fun, but this next one is particularly fun.

But I think here, limiting buildings to two stories, and it would be the first portion. That's the working group consensus. And then adjusting the maximum height accordingly in ordinance two. Again, allowing for study, allowing for staff to produce some materials with comparison and to have a better understanding of what the existing context is, I think would be really helpful on this.

Okay. Thoughts from council knowing that, yes, back in May we did talk about height and how we were going to push it for 2027 and just have a comprehensive conversation about this citywide. But, Councillor Jensen, I know you're ready to go.

Well, I feel like you guys have done a great job, the working group and the planning commission, on a difficult issue. I feel like there was misinformation provided to the public when the term like big box stores was being used as if any of us wanted that in old tech. That was never, I don't think anyone that I ever heard wanted that kind of a framework. So I think height was used as a substitute for, do you support big boxes in Old Town? And I feel that that was a bad way to frame it. But as I look at the urban design principles and the comprehensive plan, I feel like if we could have three stories in downtown and we had not one big monolith, but maybe a commercial on the bottom and apartments on the top kind of situation, we would be supporting the businesses of Old Town. We'd be creating people who live down there, who would go to the coffee shops, would go to the restaurants, create foot traffic, be the volunteers for the Peach Festival, which is very different than talking about a target that it was large and taking up a whole block which feels like that's where the conversation was pushed and if i look at the values um allows for um let's see integration of residential office uses on upper floors above active uses on ground floors ground floor use that would create greater activity, including retail, entertainment, lodging, or civic uses, additional housing types. Again, we're talking about apartments or even condos, you know, above commercial. There's a lot of things, values in the principles of the comprehensive plan that will get lost and not be able to be implemented if we limited it to two stories. And I personally don't see that 35 feet or 30 feet is significantly different in the visual appeal of Old Town. And so I am strongly in favor of keeping it at 35 feet and in fact, I think like Councillor Bollier, I think we should have this conversation at a different time and place and consider what value height brings to Old Town and not because I feel very strongly about this that we would be violating some of the other principles of our comprehensive plan and also not the fidelity that we as council when we all got together in our retreat and said we support small business and we want to do things to help small business those small businesses downtown are struggling many of them and if we create an opportunity for people to live downtown or even live and work downtown we create people who can go to those businesses so i would i would say either take this off the the or just make it go away entirely and just leave it at 35 feet and and not even talk about it at a future date but i feel very strongly about it thank you councillor jensen councilman

Thank you, Mayor. Just to slightly pile on Councilor Jensen's remarks, I think she really hit the nail on the head. I think a couple things for me. One, I would welcome a conversation and do welcome a conversation as counsel on the height question, as we discussed previously in May. But my concern is that I think that would be such a robust and engaging and deep question and conversation that that would potentially push us back to make it difficult to pass on second reading on the 15th. So there's that concern there. And then second, I pulled up the comp plan, and I know there's been a lot of discussion about the merits and demerits of height. specifically on public road and specifically in otx and to counselor jensen's point uh and with with great respect to the working group for this recommendation i think our logic uh in partnership with staff some months ago to table building i was was quite sound because of all the different uh avenues that we have to explore and make sure that we get this right for the community so pointing out just the resilience component and the element in the comp plan about identifying and implementing development incentives to include increased building height to encourage sustainable development practices. I really, I take the point that designing this land use code, as folks mentioned at the beginning of the meeting, so that it serves our community for the next several decades is really important. So I think a robust conversation on the building is needed. But I am uncomfortable with reneging on what we had provided as guidance a few months ago when we're so close to the finish line. Over.

Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Gallegos.

I also had a thought on that clear definition of story. So I'm just thinking if someone's in a basement apartment and someone else is maybe owning a business above that, then are we at that two story level? So I do think we need to continue that conversation on what defines a story.

I'll keep it on you for a second, just because I already have your thoughts on this particular recommendation. Is it to push to 2027 and have a more comprehensive look at this? Or is it just the story piece that you want us to look at closer?

I think for me it is the story piece specifically, because building more affordable housing is a part of our comprehensive plan. And having that option to include basement level apartments or garden level apartments I think is something that we shouldn't put off until 27. But at some point in the future, we do need to have that clear definition of what a story looks like and what is excluded from two stories.

This is not my personal feeling about any of this, and I am not making a recommendation at all for adopt this or don't adopt this. There's a question that I just want you to consider, which is I heard somebody say we have a comprehensive conversation about building heights in the future. I've had a lot of conversations with people in town because of this process, and I get approached by a lot of people who want to talk to me about this code update and everything. I'm curious why the comprehensive plan in everybody's mind does not constitute a comprehensive conversation about building height, especially as it pertains to Old Town. That is a question just for everybody to consider. You guys are the ones that are giving guidance on this. I'm not trying to interfere with that. It's just something that I've gotten a lot of feedback on. And so I just wonder why we're continuing to have a conversation. to me it's been made clear based on this. I'm just taking guidance from other people because that's the process that I've been trying to follow throughout this rather than my personal feelings. But that's something just to think about.

Councilor Gino.

Thank you for that comment. To the extent that Councilor Jensen could be more strongly in favor of three stories, I could be not more strongly in favor of two stories. I think the comprehensive plan was a robust discussion about stories. The discussion of height incentives in other parts of town did not focus on Old Town as far as I read it. It focused on the adaptable commercial areas where, you know, that's not Old Town. Old Town is a very distinct zone. I think if we're going to, and I do agree that we should punt on height discussion for whether it's Ordinance 2 or whether it's you know, further down in the future. If we're going to go, in my view, in a direction that couldn't be more clear in the comprehensive plan, we need good public engagement to really understand what the public wants for downtown OTX height limit in that area. Because I remember during the comp plan development, there was robust discussion and it was very clear So clear that it was put in the table in two words, two stories, three stories on baseline. So if we're going to go against that, we should really make sure we're engaging the public and understanding and getting their input on that. The thing that I struggle with is why this was not put into the draft code originally when I felt the directive for two stories was so clear in the comp plan if we're trying to implement the comp plan. I just have really strong confusion about that and the number of times it got brought up at the working group meetings

you know in 2025 2024 uh that it was just never incorporated into the code just as i'm flabbergasted by that chair thomas i think part of the reason is because there has just been a confusion about what what these definitions are so i'm glad that council is going to go through this conversation and really look at what does this mean what is height what is a 35 foot building look like on public road is there one there what are the heights that are there if you know i i don't i have not seen a drawing or a diagram or images this is how tall the tangerine building this is how tall um you know the the yard and and um venturi this is how tall these existing buildings are i think that would really serve to inform here's our projects this is what we like this is what our height should be this is what you know There's not very many two-story buildings on public right now. Personally, I do feel like there should be an allowance for an additional third story. It should only be residential. It should be very controlled massing-wise. But that's not the consensus that I've heard through this working group, through planning commission discussions. But I think what we really need to have is an understanding. Everybody has this different vision in their head of, what does a two-story building look like? And it's just not the same. Like I said, the Tangerine building, I think the floor-to-floor heights might, on that one, if I had to guess, I'd say they're 14 or 15 feet. Whereas another two-story building, they might be 10 foot from the first floor to the second floor. So that's a huge difference. And until that is understood, then it can be codified by staff into what exactly are we trying to do here.

Mayor Pro Tem, I would love your thoughts on this after Councillor Jensen.

I don't know if this is the right answer to you, Councillor Giannola, about why. I recognize that table does say two stories, but there are lots of other value statements woven in the comprehensive plan about transit-friendly, affordable, pedestrian-friendly, that all sort of contradict that two-story model. And it could be why it wasn't officially put in there. I don't know. But like most comprehensive plans, there are values that conflict within the comprehensive plan and i think it's hard to capture them all in our recommendations but i and part of the reason i feel so strongly about it is because of those other values you know that that we want to try to create affordable housing and we want to be transit friendly we want to be pedestrian friendly we want to support our small business and so i i didn't see i saw that sort of as an example table rather than a mandate table so i i i don't know which it actually is so yeah i mean i think this just leads us to the further discussion needed counselor

Yeah, thank you. I will just echo that, that this could be a really long conversation and I don't think we are served by having it tonight. In listening to the working group, and I would love for the folks that were in attendance in the meeting to confirm this or say that this is not the correct reading, I felt like their two-story recommendation was just a clarification because as Chair Thomas said, stories can be different, right? You could get three stories potentially in 35 feet. And they were just clarifying that 35 feet is the cap. two stories, right? Just clarifying so that there was no confusion and leaving the longer conversation about is two stories right versus three to a later date. So I don't feel like it was a recommendation of two stories has to be two stories. It was clarifying that we don't want three stories even if you could fit it in really tightly within 35 feet. Vice Chair Wilson.

I'm reflecting on this part of the conversation, and I honestly think we didn't entirely land that. I mean, I think it was not clear which of the options that were just presented we were actually doing. I do think there was a lot of discussion about what we were really trying to manage. Were we trying to manage the way it looks? which you might do with a height restriction or a massing restriction, and we talked about different ideas, or we tried to limit the way it's used, which you might do with a story count. We talked about that, but I don't feel like we were entirely clear. So just anybody else who was there, I think we were more clear.

Commissioner Lee?

I mean, I think the discussion was had, but I think that the direction that we gave to staff in terms of consolidating and providing some visual information on buildings that we're all familiar with and can all look at what does this look like in this town and towns that we're all familiar with. What does 35 feet look like at two stories and three stories so that we, the council, can have a visual compendium of what this looks like in order to further have the conversation in a really well-informed way. I think that was more the direction than anything specific. I think it was like, we all understand. And yes, we're all debating very technical building massing and solar shadows and floor plate heights and all that stuff, which I think is obviously something council does not want to get into at that level, especially tonight. I think it was really more like, we're talking specifics. from a very technical standpoint and giving direction to staff in order to have the conversation and to have you guys be able to have the conversation in a way that is like, what does this look like? What does this feel like? What does the pedestrian experience feel like when you're on public in a way that we all feel and recognize and can go stand next to in ways that everybody can understand? And so I think that was the direction that obviously that's not happening. before tomorrow. So I think that was why some of this came into ordinance too. This further elaboration is necessary and I think helpful for all of us to understand what those numbers and heights mean in the real world. So I think that was a lot of what our discussion was. focused on, I think. I mean, we did talk about the two stories being very clear in the comp plan and the table and all those things. That may be where I think this came from for tomorrow. But I think that the further elaboration in, it's not up on the screen, but in round two was that like, here's how I think from our technical standpoint we might help further the conversation with a little bit of guidance from staff and from everybody. in order to help you guys have a discussion about that.

I'm hearing support to keep this where we were generally headed, which is the direction to push this to 2027 for a more comprehensive discussion. However, Mayor Pro Tem, I did promise I would come back to you, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for holding your promise. I think we might be, this is what we're here for, is to have a discussion. And the Old Town Overlay, the Old Town Tomorrow, the DDA, public input, the comp plan, have made it pretty clear that we're in the right direction. I feel it's painful because it's a transition. It's coming to grips with how do we maintain that character, and I've heard it stated many times, character is at the forefront. There's a lot of the DDA is in line with maintaining that feel here. The public has weighed in. I look for the working group to contribute in helping us move that forward. There are issues that are facing local businesses that are should I say, a little more raw than the height of the building. So I would like to keep that in perspective and make it possible for progress to continue to happen through the city with local businesses being able to get access to what they need, code when they need it, clear code, processes, and bits and pieces like that. I know this is important, and I think we're on the right track. So thumbs up to number six.

So just to be clear, item 6 does not make a recommendation beyond suggesting limit building to two stories but then ordinance 1 and maximum feed in ordinance 2. Okay. So you're not making a decision tonight on what's going to be changed for Reading 2 as far as height goes?

No.

Okay. I just got a feeling people were kind of hardening into their positions here when this clearly states that there's going to be a lot more discussion and a lot more work on that particular item.

Yeah, I feel like we're moving in the right direction.

council jensen i i sort of feel like by saying it's limited to two stories you are really pushing the height limit down effectively in order to get that two-story limit we've had several people testify that at 35 feet you could put three stories on a flat roof building So effectively, you are saying that if we have further conversation on this in the future, we will have to undo, let's say we want to keep the 35 foot limit because we do want three stories, we would have to undo that two story limit in the future. And I feel like crawling back from that limit creates a lot of public confusion and angst that I don't want to do and I would rather wait and not make a decision on this until we have the further bigger conversation about heightened stories whatever you know how we're going to do that okay thank you counselor any final thoughts on this one

Just for clarification, with number six, is council, do you wish to see at least the two-story included in the ordinance next week or nothing at all and the whole thing is tabled?

I'm not seeing support for either of the two.

I just wanted to make sure we didn't miss anything. Okay.

So did you just say we're just not going to include it? Is that what? Okay.

OK, moving on to number seven. And I believe there are kind of two parts here. First is just asking for that meeting for you all to look at it, ordinance two, and then also making the effective date February 1. Am I correct? Or just moving out the effective date?

I'm going to have staff help me with this one.

um and we will we have the the dates um you know on a future slide but um working group uh wanted to have um a discussion around some of these topics as well as some of the other recommendations around new neighborhoods with form-based codes so a number of topics and to do that through a working group meeting before this next second ordinance ordinance number two goes to planning commission and council and i think that is too because

there was some, it felt like the working group was just kind of skipped over and coming back and making some of these changes, having more discussion. There was a lot of conversation we haven't really got to yet on the point system and what that looks like. And being able to, again, have staff provide some additional information, kind of gaming out what that looks like so that the working group can kind of address that. There's a lot of folks in the working group that have put lots and lots and lots and lots of hours of volunteer time into that. I think it's worth it. getting their input and taking advantage of those people in our community that are willing to do it.

I think this is smart. This makes sense to me, and I'm good with pushing the effective date. I'm seeing support from members of council. Does anyone want to jump in?

I actually just have a question. I wrote it down because I forget. I guess what, if any, are there potential negative consequences of pushing the implementation date to February 1st? Maybe there are, then. Do we anticipate there might be?

It would be projects that want to take advantage of the new code. So, you know, there's a couple projects out there.

They want to take advantage of the new code.

So, like, it wants to build an ADU, but they're slightly, a couple percentage over the current lot coverage. So that's, you know, things like that. And so there would be... a couple of projects that we're aware of that would be delayed a few months but that would be what we would expect um the other one is you know if we got an application and we could get an application before then so that extends the time period when we get more in under the old code potentially counselor so a process question uh could you put up the ordinance two options again

So even within these, we're punting on a lot of these. We're putting off the conversation because we're dealing with the things we can right now in the short term. But among these 13, I'm guessing there are some that are more controversial than others. And to not get in the situation that planning manager Kleisler just said, Would it make sense to divide it even further to do the ones that could be done quickly in a sort of ordinance two quick version and then in ordinance three the ones that require a lot more thought and are more controversial? Or are these all fit that category?

I think by adding additional time based upon these new kind of six and the ones we already had, it allows staff to not have to do another ordinance three to delay the cleanup even further. So we would be supportive of additional time and I think also supportive of the working group providing their input as well. I think we found this very valuable to get to a good conversation tonight with council.

And one of the main drivers for that working group meeting was to know what the conditions were, the regulations were for OTX. So that OTX 3 piece is a big piece of that lift for Ordinance 2, and they wanted to see what we came up with in terms of regulations before it went back to Planning Commission.

Questions? Just to be really clear, I think there were four things that the working group wanted to review in a new meeting. One was the new point system proposal. So we haven't talked about that, but the working group talked about two different proposals for how to amend the point system. So they wanted to hear a report back before a decision was made and something was put into ordinance 2. The second thing was around the maximum depth for buildings and the dimensional standards. We also haven't talked about that yet, but we spent time on that in the working group. And we wanted to hear from staff how they would recommend amending that maximum depth before it went into ordinance 2. Then there was the OTX3, what rules would be created in that zoning region. And then the last one was about the heights. So based on the recommendation we just decided on, perhaps that one would be removed from that next working group meeting. But the other three could still be discussed there.

Councilor Jensen.

So when I looked at, in the report we had for this meeting, the changing the point system, I had no sense of why. Like some things they lowered, some things they raised. And if we see that back again, it would be really helpful to know what was the thinking behind why they raised some and lowered some, because I didn't see any pattern that made sense to me. It's probably there, but I didn't see it.

There was a long, there is some thinking. But if this working group meeting were to happen, I think it would be a chance for staff to have done some further analysis on two options. The working group would discuss that and then be able to provide that to you as well, their assessment of why they selected the one they did.

Commissioner Lehman.

Are we proposing having another one of these? I realize we're proposing having another working group meeting before Ordinance 2 gets passed. Are we proposing having another one of these meetings before Ordinance 2 gets passed as well?

I think the proposal is just a working group meeting.

So I feel like given this question, maybe, and I don't know if this can get crammed into the time frame, but I feel like this may be another useful opportunity to explain the thinking of behind why we're making the recommendations that we are, so we have the opportunity to discuss and explain sort of the reasoning and everything behind it, because I think this has been incredibly useful, personally, to understand.

Well, and you could do that in writing or through staff. There are lots of ways to get that information to us. So I'm not against another meeting, but I'm also, you know, if it's hard to get people together, it could be done in other ways. I think we all made it pretty well.

We did it. We'll talk about the timing at the end. It's just more are you supportive of the working group at this point in time.

But based on the questions, I think it's clear to us at our next working group meeting that we'd be very clear when we recommend something, our reasoning behind it. So that can be conveyed to you very clearly. Makes sense.

Well, and we didn't have a ton of time to turn this memo around, so we also didn't do you guys justice in terms of clarifying why. We clarified what the direction was.

It's not enough time for you guys to do that.

It was a helpful discussion, though. Support? Go ahead. The brief explanation was looking at from a what type of housing do we have a higher percentage of or a lower percentage of and thoughts from different members of the working group on are there minor adjustments we can do to the numbers to slightly prioritize or deprioritize certain product types, but still not mess up the math so much that we have to, that staff would have to reevaluate the whole table and the whole math for the different subdivision sizes

well i think an example if my memory is correct is that you had an extra bit of a point for duplexes and less for triplexes and four plexes and i didn't know why that would be the case and so and it may be just what developers are providing on the market, that could be the answer right now, but that would also, if that is true and that's the answer, then how do we adjust that periodically to fill in gaps when we're not having certain things? I'd love to know if there are ways that we can adjust that periodically. If the market already has a bunch of fourplexes and we don't have duplexes, then maybe we shift those numbers. We'll get you those answers.

Well, the pressure from the building community, at least through our committee, was that they can't sell anything with a shared wall because there are legal considerations, blah, blah, blah, and they only want to build a single family, which I think personally is a load of crock.

I've been hearing that for 40 years. The pressure is coming from it. And every year we make changes in the legislation and they still save it.

And I think from part of the conversation we had with staff, too, is my understanding is of the sections of the code, this is... you know, one of the sections that's maybe more nimble in the future, because if it is just these minor adjustments every couple of years, that's a pretty succinct code update to bring to Planning Commission and Council. So to your point, Councillor, around are we saying flexible with the market changing, or if we have the numbers one way and we see, you know, oh my gosh, we're getting so many of this product type, I think it would be In my mind, it would be a non-controversial code update to just adjust the numbers.

Great. I love the discussion. Let's get back on track to number eight, which is our small detached home size.

So This again was a discussion about some of the conversation was from a developer thinking about what's actually marketable, what's actually going to be saleable. And the feedback was this was put out on the market years ago or a few years ago, and it was not as sellable as some of the larger homes. Their number was 1,800 to 2,000 square feet. And the conversation centered around, well, what is already existing in Lafayette? How can we kind of right-size this? 1,200 square feet feels a little small, but 1,800 isn't really small anymore, especially with a lot of us who are already living in 1,000 square feet or something. So the idea with this was maybe it needs to be a little bit smaller or a little bit larger, but not so large that it no longer

feels like it might begin to approach attainable affordable housing thank you thoughts on this one thank you mayor i think we've had a lot i've had a lot of conversations about affordable and attainable what does that look like and i feel like our planning commission has right-sized the question through a great deal of work so i appreciate that 18 does seem 1800 seems too large for me and i'm trying to figure out what people can afford and actually work through and what can be sold and i appreciate this recommendation so i think it's good thank you council gino i struggle with this i think the idea of a small house

being small is intentional and put in the code that way for a couple of reasons. One in part was affordability. Smaller square foot means smaller price. but it's also distinctly different from the big mega mansions that are four and five and six bedrooms. This 1,500 and maybe it was the 1,800 square foot was raised as a three bedroom, two bath, which to me doesn't sound like a small home anymore like we have around Old Town where we've got 800 square feet where you've got two bedroom, one bath. And for a developer to say, well, that's not a product that would sell, I call shenanigans and say, I think every product would sell in our community.

If I could just, yeah, I totally hear you. I think the difference is the beautiful small homes in Old Town are surrounded by old growth trees, established neighborhoods. And so thinking of this context, what this would mean most likely is a new neighborhood. It may be small. It may be a small infill, five acres and maybe 10 homes or something. So ultimately, if a developer can't can't pencil it out i mean we and and i i've never had anyone say this is how much money i have to make in order to no one will ever say that but if they don't think they can sell they won't build it so that's that's what we were kind of wrestling with last week understood i just this is my personal preference so just sharing that yeah i totally commissioner watson i agree with uh

Commissioner Thomas, my impression was the builders are saying we sell the house on the square foot. And that's where you make the money. So that's why I think we're moving up to this bigger size. Vice Chair Wilson.

Just to know, there was a discussion about the desire to have families be able to come and the thought that a family with small children may need a third bedroom. And so I just said that was part of the discussion, that this would be a way, by raising it politely, might create more diversity in the types of folks who could be living here.

I think if you have a 1,200 square foot limit, A lot of developers may look at that and say, well, I can't come close to that, so I'm just going to start. My baseline is going to be 2,000. My baseline is going to be 2,500. So they won't push down. Okay, I'll put up a few of these 1,500 square foot homes.

Commissioner Lehman.

I was just going to echo what the Vice Chair said. I can't remember exactly what it is statistically, but people have two kids instead of three, because if you have three kids, you have to get the car with three rows, not two rows, because you can't fit that many things in it. You are limited in where you live by, and this is definitely true in Old Town, there's not so many houses with kids because there's not so many bedrooms, and so I think that was really part of the consideration was making sure we, and I realized that people, somebody raised a kid in my house, families and preferences has changed. We wanted to make sure that there was not a disincentive to having multiple family types and housing types in our community so that people felt like they could have multiple life stages here and still live small.

Councillor Johnson.

I was wondering if it would be possible if we think that the really smaller homes have more value in some way to give the little extra points on the smaller side and keep a range of points for the small homes between 12 and 15. But then when I started thinking about that, I started thinking, This whole section on points probably needs a value statement anyway about we are giving points to things we value and here are some of those criteria so that as our community changes, maybe we don't have, maybe we have tons of kids and no place for old folks in the future or something. Whatever that might be or look like that we have a value statement that goes along with that that could be revised based on market forces, demographics, things like that, that would be really good to have in the code, I think. So that says, here's what we're trying to encourage. This is the kind of housing we're seeking that we don't currently have, like the cottage homes, you know, kind of thing.

Commissioner Phelps. So we have a couple of issues here. School district closing four schools. because the number of kids are dropping and the replacement rate or the current birth rate is less than two in this country now. So we're not looking at future large families requiring three and four bedroom houses. It's rather the opposite direction. The other thing is that we keep doing this circle where we go, oh, we want more affordable housing. What's more affordable housing? Smaller houses, higher density. And the developers come to us and go, oh, we can't sell this. So it's like, all right, we've got to make up our minds here what our goal is. Because if it's affordable housing, then clearly there are some alternatives there that the developers may not like, but they will be affordable. So what do you want to do?

Commissioner, any other thoughts on this one? I'm seeing support moving forward with the increasing the maximum size. But any other thoughts? We can move on to window well encroachments.

So this was a – there was a suggestion, I believe it came from the fire department, if I could be wrong, about not allowing window wells. This is an at-grade window well that encroaches into the side setback of a home. So the consensus in the working group was that, yes, we should allow these But consider public safety, for instance, firefighters needing to walk through between two homes. I would just like to point out that this is a very simple solution. You just require grates over the top of new. But there's a public safety factor because window wells are put in a basement to allow for egress for bedrooms. And they should be required. They should be allowed. But if you have a five-foot side setback and then a window well is still within that, that pushes the buildings that much further apart. I think this one is an easy one. That's my editorializing.

I agree. I think this one makes sense to me. But any member of council want to weigh in? Seeing no support. Fantastic.

We move on to number 10. So this discussion centered around if there is an alley-loaded garage, that there should be a... that you shouldn't necessarily have a 15-foot setback, that it could be five. Can you speak to this one a little bit? I think for some reason this one is...

I can, if you want me to.

Yeah, please. And it was an edit that staff had as well. But when we're trying to encourage that alley access, we do want to have a different setback. So the yard is really that 15 feet when you have a single-family home and a traditional yard. When you're trying to encourage somebody to park off the alley, it's typical to have that five feet setback. So this is more of a cleanup item. And I don't think we have much, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think anyone was in disagreement on that change. So yeah.

That's standard for full time. So yeah. We're continuing.

Perfect. Thoughts on this one? Seeing support. Great. Moving on to, I think this is our final one. Yes. Building height definition.

um this one is a reference again i think this is i was sick last week so my brain was beginning to just evaporate at this point in the meeting but this is a um reference to again kind of building heights but um making sure that we have adequate drainage across the site some of the sites some of the lots are below the street level and so allowing some fill um to come in there there's discussion about natural grade versus This is more as pertains to a single lot rather than over lot grade, which is a larger development. So again, where does building height start? Is it at natural grade? And in some cases, there should be an allowance to make sure that natural grade is adequate for site drainage.

Commissioner Layman.

I was just going to use the former Elizabeth's embellishments, which I do not know what to call the building at this point because it's got eight different things in it. But if you ever drive around that building, everything is draining into that building currently. It's an absolute nightmare. There's just basically nothing they can do to fix it based on where the building is located. The public came up and everything came up around it over the history of that building. As an example for if you're trying to imagine what we're trying to address and that if that building was to be, if something was to replace that building, to allow the grade to be brought up and then the building started from that so that it has positive drainage away from the building, which we were probably allowed to do.

Mayor Patel?

Thank you, Mayor.

Every meeting, I have to sneeze at least once.

I'm just looking at this in the sense of not just resilience, but excellent city services, and not having to push this down the line to have somebody else at some other point deal with it. We're thinking about this ahead of time. It's not an issue. And water's a big deal, where it goes, where it doesn't go. So I definitely want to make sure we're managing this. And again, in an old town, it's clear that we need to think about where the water's going. And everywhere in our city, we need to know where it goes, understand where it's going, and manage it appropriately. So I'd definitely like to see this considered.

Thank you, Mayor Proton. Any other thoughts from members of council or planning commission? Seeing support. I believe that was our last one. Our last staff, is there anything else?

There was two other topics, so we're almost there. For the OTX, that was it. Thank you. That was really helpful for staff to get that consensus and direction, or not direction, consensus. So there were two topics brought up at your August meeting when you were considering the land use code on first reading. first was a what we've kind of informally called a sustainability menu and so this is a site development standard that applies to multi-unit and non-residential projects in the code there's no site differentiation and so this would apply both to a large project, like a Medtronic project, but also to a small business. And what the code requires is that new development chooses two of these sustainability options off of this menu, and redevelopment chooses one. You'll notice that number 10 is something that they could propose, so it's not on the list. And they feel that it simply warrants. It meets the intent of that regulation, and they can recommend that. The question raised in August was whether or not to consider raising that for new development from two to three. As staff, we haven't modeled all of these. There are definitely some lower cost items here and some higher cost items. And so we haven't necessarily modeled what all of these would potentially cost a typical project. And so we were cautious in choosing those numbers. But it was brought up, and council was interested in having this discussion here. So we wanted to tee it up for your discussion.

I'll turn it over to Councillor Giannullo. I believe the idea originally came from him.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor. I raised this for a couple reasons. We did have a member of the Sustainability and Resilience Advisory Board come to our public hearing and weigh in on this and say, hey, should this be more? And I wanted to take that into consideration. But also, I just wanted to have a specific discussion about this with the Planning Commission, because I don't think we really ever took the time to engage, and I don't know if you all took the time to engage on this, to have a robust discussion about what does this mean, and really just evaluate it. So I thought working group is the opportunity to do that.

have a question clarifying counselor jensen please um not not a comment so where are big things like solar or geothermal that are not on this list are they a part of utilities rather than sustainable design features is that why they're not on this list the solar is number two would include i see energy right i wondered about geothermal myself and that might be at number 10 Well, I think it might qualify as that as well.

Yeah, I wasn't exactly sure why it wasn't a good item to potentially include. Commissioner Lehman?

OK, so staff's going to hate me for this. But like in the city of Boulder, if you do a new development application, they have basically a menu with points. And depending on the size of the development or redevelopment or whatever it is, you have to reach a certain amount of green points, essentially. which I feel like this is a very simplified version of that, which it may be a bigger thing, because I think there's a big difference between, you know, like, okay, here's a triplex. or I guess it's a multi-unit, right? So in my mind, there's a very big difference between a triplex, a Medtronic, and somebody building something downtown. And I think the scale of a Medtronic, like, oh great, they planted some trees. Congratulations, you've met your standards. I don't think that's necessarily appropriate in scale for how much I would expect a building of that scale to pick a menu of these items, whereas necessarily I wouldn't expect a triplex to have to meet two things off of this. I love this. I would want everybody to choose from a lot of things on this, and I would expect a development at the scale of Medtronic or something to do all of these things. Yeah, absolutely. So I do wonder if, with a little additional conversation being that this is new to a lot of us, if we could easily, or for further consideration, develop just a tiny bit of... a scale, a point system, or something depending on the scale of the development or redevelopment that requires some kind of point system. And that is an idea that I'm having.

Commissioner Watson. Oh, thank you. Looking at this list, I would humbly suggest there's some things on the list that we should make requirements.

I agree.

The simple one, the bird safe glazing. Let's give the birds a chance because we have so many free range cats in Lafayette. You know, the cool roofs. Those are just three things I looked at. So I think you counselors, you have this wonderful opportunity since we're redoing everything. Mr. Phillips.

So speaking for myself, but I suspect other members of the Planning Commission have been frustrated by some of the development applications we received that do the absolute minimum, which is basically code, to get away with what sustainability items they include in their design, solar being a very big one. And the pushback from staff has always been, well, the city adopts standard national codes every three years and right now the national codes are still back in the stone ages going well it has to be solar ready which just means it has to be wire and that's it and that anything additional to that then would require us to have some items in our code that are different than the national code and that would cause all kinds of problems and blah blah blah The problem is that if we don't push for these things, then they're not going to happen. So, yes, I'm 100% with you, Adam. The only item I would wonder a little bit about is item seven, what kind of landscaping are we trying to promote considering our water situation and what our water situation is going to be in the future. I think any landscaping that we're asking and promoting should be zero scaping or anything that requires, doesn't require water. And right now we have for our commercial standards, of course, we have requirements for limitation on the particular greenery that can be chosen and the amount of water it requires. But I think those have not changed in many, many years. So those should again be probably looked at and maybe tightened up even more now considering the water situation that we're in. Vice Chair Wilson.

Just to complicate things further, building upon the suggestion that there's a scale point system for the scale of the unit being developed, it also feels, you made the point, some of these things are cheap and easy, and some of these things are hard and expensive. And it might be good to have a point system associated with these choices as well if we want to encourage them to do one of the things that's not the cheapest and easiest. You've got to give them extra credit for that, I think. Mayor Proctor?

I'm going to make this even more complicated. This shouldn't happen. So here it comes. I have heard from local business owners and residents the cost of living, the cost of housing. We've been talking about affordable housing and attainable housing. And resilience, so the point system I think is valid and I don't think we've leaned enough into what SRAP can provide for us. Because I don't think it's choose one of these. Some of them are less expensive than others. There are also some that, even if they're super inexpensive, it still puts a real hardship on some residents and some businesses. And I agree that, yes, as Commissioner Phillips said, we've got to lean on them. Every member of Planning Commission is so charismatic. I feel like there's definitely a way. that we could convince people that the right choice is something that's really progressive in the sense of doing something that we need according to our climate action plan, which is going to be updated. And some of these, of course, number four, we need that, enhanced bicycle amenities. I'm joking. All of these are super important. And when it comes to landscaping and cool roofs, green roofs, definitions are genius. We're moving. If they can, we should encourage the Medtronics to go all out and do everything that they can. If there's a business or a resident that you can't afford them to do them, maybe they put in the bare minimum of one of these, but I think straight up requiring them to pick one I think we should even have points. How much does it cost? How easy is it for you to do? Can you get somebody else to do it for you? So I think we should really push those who can to go as far as they can. And for those who can't, because living here, we're losing people because of how expensive it is to be here. So do what you can and really encourage them to take up that space. I'm off my pedestal now.

Chair Thomas.

I think they actually had their hands up first.

Commissioner Lehman.

I was just going to, on that point, you know, maybe there's like a... I'm going to be very careful with how I say this, but maybe there's like a, I forget what it is in Italian, but there's like the pay, you buy coffee for somebody who can't afford it. Pay it forward. Yeah, but there's something like the free coffee thing. But maybe for some of our larger developments that have the ability to absorb some of these costs, there is a fund created in the city to help some of our people who want some of these things and some of our developments that need help with this when they do a development project of this size, that there's a fund that they can contribute to that helps facilitate these interventions for people who may not have the funds of a Medtronic in order to achieve these things is something to think about. Obviously, it's a volunteerier part of their... package or whatever it is.

And I just wanted to piggyback off Mayor Pro Tem. So I do think there's a difference between the starter bakery that can afford to put in a bike rack and the developer who can afford to put solar in. So I think I'm just hesitating with the more than two question. I think two is a good number for those businesses starting out. And then I'm wondering if there was something we could do in terms of education. For example, offering links to rebate programs for putting in chargers, for putting in other renewable energy systems, maybe having them hook up with SRAP about putting in a water-wise garden. So I think we do need to lean on what we already have established and not depend on our super tiny startup businesses to do these expensive changes immediately.

Chair Thomas.

Yeah, I deal with this kind of math and push and pull all the time. And I just want to describe a recent client. This is someone in Boulder County. This person wanted to start a regenerative ag farm, doing all these just really cool things. It has taken so long to get through the process and to get a residence done, to get a simple metal building done. This is a farmer. He's got sheep. we it took forever to get through the process and we had a what was going to be a forty thousand dollar solar array federal tax credits went away and now it's a ninety thousand dollar project um he still went through with it because he's he's really committed to doing this but um the cost for this person who's trying to raise vegetables and sheep in boulder county is um it's exorbitant and this was his second career he's able to do this but if you're If you're 25 and you're trying to become a farmer and raise food for people, and you want to, I mean, I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, but there was that example. There's another project I'm working on that it is a large company who wants to come into our county, say. they're struggling with a 2x number in cost because of so many of the regulatory requirements, all of which are important, all of which are really well intended, and yet Drive around Boulder and see how many empty businesses there are, how many empty buildings. It is really, and I will also add, the energy codes are not in the Stone Ages. The development of the building codes from when I first started working to what we have now, it's light years ahead. And the kind of energy savings, the kind of sustainability that is baked into the building codes that we've already adopted is quite high. I understand that the solar ready is like, why don't we just do it? Because it will cost someone how many thousands of dollars on top of starting their bakery business or on top of whatever it is that they're doing in order to get those solar panels put in place when they could get their business started. And then I'm going to come back and put the solar panels in. This is Debbie Downer, I realize, but it's frustrating, and I'm all for this, and yet we have to really right-size these kinds of checklists and things for a Medtronic. Okay, yeah, we can do this, but... For someone else, it's the difference between starting the business here and starting it in Weld County. That's what it comes down to.

Commissioner Watson, did I see your hand up? You did, but my statement's already been made.

So I have a sort of process questions. I think you guys have made some really good comments about balancing our small business needs and making people go elsewhere because it's too hard here with what we're trying to achieve in our climate goals. I guess in terms of what we do next with this, I think size might be a cutoff, where developments of a certain size have more requirements than small developments. If you're building 150 houses, you might be able to do three of these versus if you're building two or one. And I would like to ask, and I think, for example, on the tree shade, If you have your own water source or if you're using rain barrels or recovered water or something like that, you might have different points than if you're getting city water or if you're using some stream water somewhere with a pump. But I think this needs a little more massaging and I'm hoping that we can send this back to SRAB and that it'll come back to us either in our round two or ordinance or at another time because I think there's really good stuff here that we all would like to do but I don't think it's quite ready yet and I think also costing out some of these measures and giving more points to the ones that are really an investment and really get some results you know are we may need to evaluate these with that in mind, that we want to weigh them in some ways. So I think this is a great idea, and I just think it's not quite ready.

Thank you all. This is exactly the discussion I was hoping we could have. I agree that I think we're not there yet. I think what we have in the code is good and a starting place where we at least have something on the books that we're going to be implementing. But I think the idea of the point system is appealing. I think being sensitive to small businesses or those who maybe can't afford some of these things and whether that's you know, incentives, or maybe there's an opt-out application that they could do, say, oh, actually, I get to do zero because I, you know, qualify under whatever it is, to kind of keep those costs down for those folks. I think there's a lot of different ways this can be done, and I just want to, you know, think about the future, the kind of process. I mean, I see this more as a post- Second ordinance, when we revisit this topic, staff has some food for thought, and they can bring it back to us and say, hey, we heard this during your discussion before second reading, and here's the things we heard. We want to propose that as we continue to move forward towards our climate goals. We've vetted this with SRAB and got them to weigh in on the point system or some of that, but because we never had any of this discussion before, I don't think we ever knew to ask for some of these things.

I think two thoughts I'm having, one based off of Commissioner Liebman's point around the pay it forward. I am curious about other folks' appetites on a heightened fee in lieu to basically create that sort of a bank or fund where folks could apply. Because if there's a large development that maybe they do some of it or maybe they don't do any of it, OK, well, if you're not doing it, then you basically have to give a large sum of money. And maybe from an equity standpoint, folks in some of the houses or for smaller businesses or people who don't have the funds to do it, but if we're wanting to require it, giving them the opportunity to apply to get some of the funds from there. And then similar to Councillor Gallegos' point around what are the things already existing, maybe looking at what in this list are relevant and applicable criteria to things like the History Colorado property tax credits for historically designated homes, and just thinking through where are the ways that we can just identify and talk about not just in the code, but through mailers or things that aren't in the code that are still city legs that are more easily updatable on outside of city funds, what are the other programs that we can say that they can pay for that? Those are just two thoughts I'm having. Because this is very exciting, but it is. Everything's more expensive.

A good website. Yes, exactly. Question to Phillips.

It's two thoughts. Since people keep throwing up Medtronic, as you all probably know by driving by it, they have their entire parking lot covered with solar panels. And this was done at a time when there was no requirement for them to do any of that, yet they still did it. Hmm, interesting. The other interesting point is Boulder County Housing Authority, whatever they build, Lo and behold, has solar panels. How are they doing it? That's supposed to be the cheapest housing around. I don't buy that argument anymore that it's not affordable. I just think it's inconvenient and you have to force people to start thinking a little bit more creatively and intelligently about it because otherwise they'll always go for the easy out.

Mayor Procter.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to massage number 10, other sustainable site or building features. I want to make that one give this sense that if you can convince us that you have an idea that's not in our description of what makes you sustainable, argue that it's better than any of those, and then pick that one. And things are changing so quickly that there are things we're not going to know are really the best plan moving forward. And Metronic came up with things. We didn't require them to do that, but that's genius. Okay, maybe not genius. It's smart to do what they did. So I don't want to put restrictions on them. And I want to say, like, if you can bring the goods, go for it. The other thing is that the cash in lieu piece, I don't know that we, for sustainability, yes, for other maybe potential support for our residents, yes. But around the sustainability piece, and I don't know if we want to add or, just my feedback is that we can't continue, cash in lieu isn't keeping There's the urgency in front of who we are and where we live. There's a piece in the New York Times about what if America goes dark. We've got an infrastructure that's struggling. And there's somebody, at least one person there who's talked to me about microgrid technology. There's a lot of things that we can continue to... to see move forward. And I don't think a cash in lieu effort is what we need to see right now. If you're producing greenhouse gases and you don't need to, we should just get the cash in lieu out of that one.

Okay. I love this conversation. I really, really appreciate it. There's a lot here, and I think this is definitely going to be something that's going to come back. But, yeah, I was hoping I wouldn't have to be the one that brings up the business side of this and just the overall impact to the individual user in our city. So I really, really appreciate everything, and I love the idea of a point system, possibly a tiered system, because... I don't know, blanket policy like that just doesn't necessarily ever help anyone. One size fits all fits absolutely nobody. And I stand by that statement on absolutely everything. So I appreciate this a lot.

mayor what i'm hearing though is that we're okay to at least keep this in there moving forward maybe at this 2027 work plan do some work maybe between the two ordinances to start to daylight kind of some things that we're looking at yep i think take today's feedback maybe it brings a bit yeah it's all the things we're thinking about too fantastic any any final thoughts on the sustainability piece um i think i would just like to add if

Need some some nice enjoyable reading looking at the City of Boulder energy conservation code It's it's hard to kind of wrestle through it But if they have some of these levels in alteration level one operation for existing buildings But also if you're a new construction over five hundred thousand dollars, you know, you've got a different compliance path. So that's that's It's very in-depth. It may be too heavy for what we need in Lafayette, but I think it's a good, it's just one example of a city who is doing it and is ahead of the curve on that.

Commissioner Miller. I actually do have one question in front of us. I had it at the beginning, reminding myself. in somewhere in the code elsewhere i can't remember things like enhanced bicycle amenities is there something defined on what the floor of enhanced means yeah yeah it would be otherwise more than what the code requires but it's like if the code requires six bike racks and they're adding a seven is that an enhanced technically yeah unless we unless we quantify it differently i think yeah i i Just thinking about the other things that we've talked about around what are the floors that we maybe want to articulate for some of these. It's just something I'm thinking about.

So we're going to make them all requirements, but I...

Is there a code?

Oh, sorry. Commissioner Watson.

Okay. Well, thank you. No, I was just reading this, and I was thinking we've been talking about OTX 3 for like ever, and as far as the sustainability, would that be, would we be able to apply that to OTX and put more focus on keeping the buildings that are there? Is that something...

I mean, it does say, it says preservation and reuse of existing building or structure. Correct.

If you tie that in to the new regulations, that might help. Really, some of the public's concerned that we're just going to be a target store there. Councillor Jensen.

Do we have a requirement when we're redeveloping for recycling or use of old materials? Is that in our code now? And if it's not, could we add that?

I think that's a building code.

Yeah, and when we adopted the most recent building code, if you'll remember, there is a regional working group exploring that to see and that we anticipate will be a good... And I know Boulder's had one of those requirements in place for a very long time, and I understand it's pretty effective.

So I would think we could... somehow if just an idea to s-rab um that they would also consider looking into that as one of these items part of that broader conversation commissioner lee any final thoughts oh please mr mayor um so enhanced bicycle amenities is actually just shortened in the code it has um

publicly accessible by bicycle amenities such as bicycle repair stations covered by parking e-bike charging stations or similar amenities in excess of those required by the LUC so it actually defines the process for discussion thank you thank you mr. Phillips

So since we keep bringing up bikes, have we actually started considering recharging stations for electric bikes? They have become much more popular?

Yeah.

That would be an enhanced maybe bicycle amenity? I think so.

Yeah. She just mentioned that.

We included it in our list. Great.

Any final thoughts before we move on to Ruth? I think we can move on.

Just in a similar conversation in the council's August meeting, there was a discussion around whether or not it was appropriate or beneficial to have something in the code that would require buildings to be, and correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm mischaracterizing anything, oriented in a way that they can capitalize to the fullest extent possible on solar access. And so right now, the code doesn't include orientation standards such as that. And so the question is whether or not we want to apply something like that in the new code. One of the ideas that staff we threw around since that meeting was whether or not it would make sense to add that to a list as an 11th option or something, which was one idea we had. One of the other things that we were talking about is that we might want to look at areas like this is Horizon Avenue where buildings are going to be situated fronting the street. So the way the subdivision is set up, they may not have optimal locations for the building, orientation. And then we do have some standards in the code like needing to front public road, for example, in Old Town that may also could conflict in some cases. And so we'd want to like look at those things, but we recognize that that was an interest. And so we wanted to let the group discuss.

Councilor Giannullo, I know this also came from you.

Thank you. This is another one that I brought up because it's going to be in my bonnet about the great outdoors water park. Orientation of the roof is pointing north. It's got this big roof that could have just been flipped 180 degrees. why wasn't this just considered and so i i recognize some of the points we discussed earlier about cost you know if you're going to you know force orientation or you know require orientation a particular way there might be reasons why you couldn't do that or would be more expensive to do that But I kind of wondered, is there a way that it could be evaluated as part of a site plan or something like that, whether it is changed or not? You know, maybe that's a question for a different day, but if it could at least be evaluated and then said, oh, you know, optimally you'd point to the south. You know, just so that when they're designing the great outdoors water park building, they say, hey, didn't this say something? We should point the roof the other way if we're going to put solar panels on this someday in the future. And it just, you know, there's nothing in the code that says even look at it. And so that was my initial thought was, could there be a soft requirement that's low cost, low barrier, that just is an evaluation? And if not, why not? As opposed to I've heard from some of the other counselors of, well, does this go far enough? Should we actually have standards that say you're going to make an advance to solar ready where it's not just you've got the electrical panel infrastructure, but now you've got the rooftop oriented so that you can do it as a requirement. So I don't know. To start the conversation there, that was my reason for raising this, and through working group discussions and things, it just never got evaluated in the code. Thank you.

Councillor?

I think there's several ways that this kind of This could be approached in terms of requiring the roof to have a certain orientation. It makes a lot of sense when you're talking about a large building like Great Outdoors Water Park. If I had to put my hat on to guess why they did that, they wanted to open up the south side of the building towards the parking lot to encourage people to come in, create a low overhang on the north side so that people could sit underneath the overhang, go into the restrooms there. All that said, That, yeah, it seems like why wouldn't you do that? There could have been a solution there. But when you think about what that might do at a residential area where you've got houses with certain orientation already, if you force all the roofs to face south, for instance, and you've got a street that faces an east-west street, you're never going to have gable roofs. You're always going to have gables that are going east-west. The other part of that is the solar access, which is another Boulder requirement. If you start driving on neighborhoods and you see where they pop the tops, basically it's saying you can't cast a shadow on your neighbor's property. I don't know how many people are familiar. Or you can within reason, but not so much that you might take away their ability to put solar panels up or to sit in the sun in their backyard. You can't build a tower, which is a good idea generally. What it does do is make a lot of the houses feel like they're leaning to the south when we build up on the south side of the house and the north side because you can't build on the north side. So when you drive around Boulder, you'll start to see all the pop tops are on that, unless they're casting a shadow onto the street. Those houses are more valuable. If you couldn't cast your shadow on the street, it's not a requirement. Anyway, there's lots of ways to approach this. I would hesitate to just put a blanket on. You've got to orient it towards the south, because there's ways that you can rework those panels. But, you know, if you did say you've got to put the solar panels on day one for a new development, to Commissioner Phillips' point, then, yeah, you're going to start thinking that way when you design your building. So that's, yeah.

Commissioner Phillips.

So one of the oldest sustainable practices, thousands of years old, is called passive solar. and what it means that you build a house with the orientation that most of your windows are large windows are facing east and south because that's where the sunlight is something like that you could i think potentially regulate as possible obviously there are certain conditions where you can't face certain houses certain ways for whatever reason but if you say overwhelmingly you need to take passive solar into account that would then at least in the winter certainly decrease some of the energy consumption because they're getting it from the sun as opposed to I had personal experience of when I was having my house built, the initial design had a number of windows on the north side and I said, you're nuts, put most of the windows on the east and the south because otherwise I'm just wasting energy with windows facing the north. I mean it's simple. It's thousands of years old. your design, orient the windows to where you get the sign. Pure and simple. Chancellor Johnson.

Could this just be a part of review criteria for staff when review and asking them have you considered or what did you consider regarding both active and passive solar and not have to make any ordinance changes or anything but they just have to explain to us what they've done?

Commissioner Liebman.

I think, you know, I was all in for the point system, and I feel like for commercial and multifamily units, I think we could absolutely, you know, I think this is like a solar ready. I think we could add roof orientation as one of these points or whatever. I think given the nature of our infill development, the nature of I don't know, every consideration, the diversity of types of houses we want to see, the uniqueness of all these lots and everything, I think it's overly prescriptive, personally. I think it's just going to end up creating weirdness, increasing costs, and doing all these things. And I say this as a person who has literally not a single window on the south side of their house. It's very much a bummer, and like a giant overhead on the east side. I have no passive solar light whatsoever, which sucks, but you deal with it. I just think it's going to end up creating more complication than it's worth.

It's a great idea in theory. I just think it really complicates things. It's hard to have staff to have to analyze it.

Yeah. I mean, you want to be able to have the flexibility of people want this kind of house, you want this kind of roof. There's just so many things that are specific to a site, to a house, to a housing type, to a street orientation, all of those things. I think there's better ways to incentivize what we're trying to get at without creating just what is a huge administrative burden, not only on staff, but on architects, and builders, and homeowners, and all the things. SPEAKER 1.

Commissioner Watson.

COMMISSIONER WATSON. Oh, thank you. I'm just going to suggest, is this something you might want to add on to your available sustainability features? Put it in there. That would be my insight. SPEAKER 2.

Thank you. I respectfully request that this be sent back to Asherab, because I was working on a metaphor here, like if you have a house and you're draining roof water into a rain barrel, but it has to be a certain height to feed your horses, and the shore horses can't reach it, so you have to lift them. Make the house smaller. I mean, I think solar panels move. There's a place that has a new name, but it's the National Renewable Energy Lab. And one of the people who's on SRAP is a project manager there. And it's no longer on SRAP. But really, they have two-sided solar panels there. They have windows. They have windows. I think instead of moving the house, we should move the solar panels. If we require new orientation, all the houses that are already where they are aren't going to get panels because they have a house. It doesn't have what the commissioner claimed it to. But I think we should look at the solar panels versus the roof angle. And Great Outdoors Water Park could just get panels that go the other direction. And move with the sun, because some of them move with the sun.

And there are now shingles. You can put shingles on your roof that are silicon.

And nanotechnology with photovoltaic crystals. I mean, maybe that's a thing. So I think we should have SREP recook this before we ask people to orient their house based on where the sun is.

Councillor Beaulieu.

apologize the mayor cracked me up um sorry uh i really appreciate uh the mayor pro tem and a couple commissioners remarks on this i would love to take another bite at this apple down the line after it's baked a little bit more um i love the philosophy behind it but i i agree with a lot of the comments that have been made in particular the mayor pro tem's remarks let's let's make sure that this is right and potentially incorporate it down the line thank you mr wilson

I like where you're going with the suggestion that this is something we try to draw some attention to in the design process, but not regulate. I would agree with what everybody said. It can lead to some funky outcomes. I worked on leads for neighborhoods years and years ago. And this was one of the things that you could try to do to get points for your neighborhood was this kind of orientation of your buildings. And it just created weird, some weird outcomes as people tried to game the point system. So I think that it's interesting to draw some attention just to make sure that folks have considered it, at least explained themselves, like you were suggesting. but I would be really reluctant to make this a mandatory requirement.

Yeah, I agree. I think the mandatory aspect of it is challenging for all the reasons that we've talked about. I mean, I do want to raise to, I think, Mayor Pro Tem, you know, this is about new development, right? This is about redevelopment. This is not about existing development. The land use code really is forward-looking for if a site's going to be developed or redeveloped. And is it a burden for someone to at least question it? Maybe. But to prescribe it, I think that's where it becomes really challenging. Again, I come back to the case of Great Outdoors Water Park. Maybe there was a reason for it. I don't understand it because it's a giant area that points north. and it could have easily been achieved the same design principles. But I think, you know, having, I think it was Councillor Jensen, is this something that a staff review could address? I don't know. I mean, because we've Having thought about it or discussed it, I didn't know, is there a way to do this that makes sense or have it be on the menu? I mean, there's a lot of different ways this could be looked at that just has never been explored up to this point.

So I have over the years been repeatedly told by staff that when they're looking at something, the building, their major concern is, is it to code? They don't get involved in suggesting better designs or whatever because that's not their job. So I think what you're bringing up here is do we want to make it their job to suggest better designs or not?

That's a good question.

How do we answer that?

That's something you want to pursue or not, but that's one of the walls I come up against over and over again. We can't suggest that to the person bringing us an application. We can only say is this code or is this not code.

That's a good point, just to contradict my own previous point. If this were brought to us and the analysis was, they could have done the orientation, but they didn't. We as planning commission probably couldn't. We don't have anything that says.

We have no authority to say, well, do it.

I'm not necessarily saying that we require it. It's more, did you think about it? In the example that came to us of Ted's car wash, we all sat through the hearings with Ted's car wash. During the discussion, I think staff had actually raised, could you turn your roof around on one of these sections of the building? They said, oh, that's actually an interesting idea. We might consider that. But this is really all I'm asking for is that that gets incorporated into the process so that if someone wants to add solar panels in the future, they're set up for it. Can they move? Can they be incorporated as windows? All great ideas that go into maybe we do have a solar code at some point in the future. But I'm sort of thinking, what can we do with the existing code that we have now?

Thank you, Mayor. I'm having a little trouble with some of where we're going in this conversation, and I really want to build on Commissioner Phillips' point, sort of like what the bare minimum is. And I think it's a completely reasonable question to ask, do we add barnacles to the ship, if you will, But since we're six days away from the second reading, I'm a little confused how we would be able to incorporate potential additional barnacles. And so that's why I really agree with the suggestions that have been put on the table to refer these items to SRAP so that they can take their time, get it exactly right, and bring it back to us. But since we're coming up to the late hour and six days away from the second reading, I just want to make sure I'm very clear on what is within our collective manageable interest now, and then to set staff up for success to be able to potentially turn changes around in just a handful of business days before the second reading. Or, and this is a legitimate point if folks want to raise this, because we want to really investigate adding additional elements to the land use code, pushing the schedule to the right. I want to make sure I'm clear on what's on the table.

Councilor, from what I'm hearing, we're hoping this goes out, SRAP and maybe through staff, and seeing how this could potentially come back. We evaluate and see what the best path could be coming back to us. So this is not something that would be immediately turned around. It doesn't sound like it's something that we would I saw a couple hands up. Commissioner Medler.

Just from some of the other perspectives of how this would play out, similar to on planning commission, we can't really, if there's something we wish that could be done, but we can't require it, we don't like getting in the weeds. I'm having a similar feeling as a planning staff person for another jurisdiction. we really don't like getting in the business of being the urban designer for the project because it gets really tricky, especially when those projects do ultimately come before everybody. And not just the requirement, but even the did you consider type questions, I think become, it becomes like an extra layer of work with no reward at the end. And just thinking through Just that side of it is my perspective. It becomes a little bit of what are we getting out of it? Because I see the value and I see the drive and the desire for more solar and that these buildings are ready and that there's things that we want to do. I just don't know if looking at putting this in the sketch up and seeing does it meet the south orientation, I don't know if that's the best process. But to the similar points of... Does this become one of the identified categories in the list? Or what are the other ways that we can push for solar I think are really interesting and exciting? And is one of the categories solar over large parking lots? There's other ways where I think we can push this that don't get us into weird quasi-judicial kind of staff in a tricky situation type options. That's all.

Elizabeth, did I say your hand up?

Commissioner Mettler just said it better than I was going to. Thank you.

Any final thoughts on this one?

just thank thanks for the robust discussion on this you know something that i have been trying to understand and explore more in my own head and getting different perspectives i think gets us in a direction where maybe we can get a good recommendation in the future

We just have one wrap-up, next steps. Okay, so before these discussions, our current trajectory for this project is in that middle row. So we'd be having second reading with council on Tuesday. And then we would go to Planning Commission in November for a public hearing recommendation on that second ordinance, which would then be passed by early December in time for that December 15th date. So that was the schedule we've been thinking of. I think as we add these items that we've been talking about tonight, it sounds like we've added all but one. And so we would recommend this, considering this proposed schedule, which would plug in that working group meeting in November. That would give us a little bit of time throughout the next month or so to try to refine that information. There might be an opportunity where we can kind of visit with planning commission in the interim too if we have stuff ready. And then we would go into public hearings in December and then in January for the final adoption. So I think it pushes it back about 90 days to get those additional tasks done. And so that's what... We've been calendaring it out. It seems that could make sense. But we wanted to make sure the council was comfortable with that.

I think I heard overall support for this and pushing the effective date out unless I missed anything. Chancellor Jensen.

so the national league of cities begins on november 17th and i think some of us are planning on being there which creates an issue for that date that's the working group meeting which is oh okay never mind no it says city council that's the first reading for the second current pass if we change it won't be an issue oh okay