Planning and Zoning Commission - Regular Meeting

I'd to call to order the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, Wednesday, 01/14/2026. All the roll, please.

Commissioner Hampton. Present.

Welcome. Commissioner Easton. Here. Commissioner Cream. Present.

Commissioner Nachley.

Here. Commissioner White. Commissioner Adler? Here. Commissioner Burrill?

Here.

Commissioner Nelson?

Here.

Commissioner Brown?

Present.

We have a quorum.

This is the part of the agenda that we open it to public comment. Anyone here that would like to make comments that are not part of the agenda?

Going online? Alright.

Moving to approval of the agenda. Everyone's had a chance to review it. I'm looking for a motion to approve.

I want to approve the agenda.

I'll second.

Mr. Nochwe. All those in favor, raise your hand. Everyone online, either raise your hand or take yourself off mic and vote. Alright. Collect those. Yes. Last. Now we're moving on to planning and zoning commission business. First thing we're gonna do is, I'm presenting the minutes from the December 25 meeting for review.

Looking for

comments about changes. If there's no changes, motion to approve.

Gene?

I second.

Thank you, mister Brown.

Let's do a roll call vote if you would on that one. Commissioner Easton? I approve.

Mister Nelson?

Approve.

Mister Brule?

Yes.

Mister Adler? Yes.

Mister Naughley? Yes.

Mister Brown?

I approve.

Commissioner Cream? Yes. And commissioner Hampton? Yes. Motion passed.

We have presentations this evening. The first one is from Dan Osborne, housing update. He's our housing and special projects manager.

Good evening. Dan Osborne, housing special projects manager, and hoping to take, you know, about forty five minutes of your time just kinda walk through some of the stuff that I've been working on over the last little bit. I first wanted to take kind of a big step back. I started in 2023 and kinda got my, you know, got my feet under me a little bit. And the first thing that we kicked off was to get the affordable housing plan updated. We got that approved in 2024. That's kind of set then the stage for all of the other things that we've been kind of working on over the last couple of years. And, essentially, the affordable housing plan told us, hey. If we wanna have a vibrant community, we really need to have more housing. We need to have housing across all socioeconomic spectrums.

We need all income levels, all stages of life, working in different industries. And then once we got to that, we then wanted to justify increasing the amount of money that we were able to provide to support programs to provide affordable housing. Under MFA, the mortgage finance authority, they'd always put a cap on that at 80%. They raised that cap to a 120%. So we followed Our new affordable plan, we raised threshold of who we could help support up to a 120% of the area median income.

Since we did that, MFA has now moved that to a 150%. So we're we thought we got caught back up, and now we're back a little bit behind, but we feel like we're in a really nice sweet spot for us because that really hits that missing middle. So we got the plan approved in 2024, and it told us essentially, it told us, you know, like I said, we need more of the missing middle, but we also need higher density compact, and efficient housing and housing that's reserved and set aside for targeted incomes, especially low and media low and moderate income households. And that we need to be able to provide or support assistant provide assistance to the most in need, including rental voucher assistance, down payment assistance, and home rehabilitation assistance. And that kinda leads us then to what are our needs.

So, you know, we know who we need to support. What are those needs of the folks that are that are looking for that support? And to kinda keep the status quo, we found that we needed about 1,300 new units. So that's above and beyond what we've got. That's just the status quo.

That doesn't really move the ball on bringing down the cost of housing or growing the economy, any of those. So the plan told us is we need about 2,400 units to satisfy both the growing housing demand plus to be able to start to achieve higher levels of affordability. So hopefully sort of create a new baseline so we're not always sort of chasing the market rate. With that level of growth, that also gets us where we're hopefully able to start spraying the economy and some community growth. And I think that's a really important thing to kinda tuck away is that, you know, the density that we're we're gonna be talking about on some of these also really helps the small community.

It helps, you know, getting folks off the road, transportation systems, our sustainability systems. Yeah. So there's a lot of net benefit to having that growth in that 2400. That's sort of the bottom end of where we start to really be able to affect some of those other systems. And overall, we sort of set three different goals, and that was to grow our organizational capacity, our housing affordability, our housing development portfolio, as well as funding and resources.

And I'm gonna talk about each of those little those different sort of overall goals as we go through this. This is just kind of an overview of some of the housing you're already familiar with. This is just a map of the county. So the ones that are in kind of that magenta color, these are county supported projects. They're ones where we have the land, and we were able to get that out to the development community to have them start working on some of that production for us.

The green are the private. Those are things that are in progress. Those are things the private development community is working on. And part of the conversation also is if you look at the overall map, the general density in Los Alamos is less than 10 dwelling units per acre. It's pretty low when you start looking at more urban areas and and and some of those communities that we aspire to be. And in many areas, it's even lower than that 10 DUs an acre. It's down around the five to seven DUs an acre. And one of the things that the plan told us was, hey. We need to get to some minimum densities in the new development that we're working on to really start to move the needle on affordability. We need to get into that 10 to 15 dwelling units per acre.

And that's sort of what the little graphic on the left hand side of the screen shows you is that, you know, ten ten to use an acre is on the far left side of that. That's kind of what we've got, maybe even a little lower than that. But it's kinda just your typical suburban house on a quarter acre lot or four or five houses. On the smaller lots, you're looking at, you know, the the ten, fifteen, 20,000 square foot lots with the standard home. And, really, we need to sort of be in that middle bracket if we wanna start moving the ball on some of the affordability components.

And then you can sort of see what that translates as far as what the neighborhoods look like. On the far left hand side, that's just sort of your standard suburban neighborhood. You kinda get into that missing middle, that colored group. That's where you've got single family detached. You've got duplexes, triplexes, quads, small apartment buildings.

And then in appropriate locations like our downtown district, our DTLA zones, we're gonna start having some of those higher density four, five, six, seven story buildings that are allowed under our zoning code. So that kinda sets the stage. So then we've got the affordable housing plan. We sort of know what we need to start doing, some of the density targets that we're hoping to get with some of our new development. And so that first kind of the organizational capacity in 2025, we created we had it got a new contract with Santa Fe Community Housing Trust for our home buyer and home rehabilitation programs.

Those have been previously provided to us by the Los Alamos Housing Partnership and Steve Ruger and his crew. They did that for almost a decade for us and were very successful. They closed shop. Steve is now retired doing other things. So we had to go out and find a new vendor for this, and we're working with the housing trust.

And we've got them fully up and running now. They're actually over in the LA CDC office now. So they have they have a location here in the community where someone can go and talk to them about home buyer qualification or the home rehabilitation programs. A big part of that is getting folks prequalified, finding out what they can afford, what they need to do, do they need to clean up the credit, do they need to save a little bit of money, know, sort of what do they need to do to become homebuyer ready? And that's where we start to look at.

So under the home rehabilitation program, we had 23 inquiries, and we were able to fund four of those loans. So they met all the qualifications. They were able they had a project that we were to fund, and then we moved forward. Those are non amortizing loans up to $45,000 for home repairs. And then we have a second program. If it's an emergency repair, your your heat goes out. We can do an emergency loan to help fix some of those those types of things. Other ones are windows. Anything that sort of energy efficiency or livability in the home, we're able to help fund those up to $45,000 through that non amortizing loan. And with the homebuyer assistance program, we have four inquiries and two loans.

And we're very excited. We had no loans in 2024, and that program has sort of been sort of on the decline over the last little bit. So we've really been working a lot on marketing where you'll see a big marketing push coming out this spring. We'll then be out at all the summer concept series. We'll be at the different events throughout the community over the summer, really pushing that program.

And then the other kind of exciting thing that happened for us in 2025, early twenty twenty five, is the budget guidance to use the additional increment of GRT to to start paying into a housing fund to help us move some of these initiatives forward or other and new initiatives forward. Not quite sure what that's gonna shake out yet. We've got some other budget issues, you know, some other things that we're looking at. We've got a little bit of a GRT, you know, decline in GRT right now in those revenues that we're bringing in, but we do know that we got a little bit of money towards affordable housing. So look for more information on that as we get a few budget seats.

Moving into March, this is where it was real really starting, you know, starting to get some cool projects going. Under our new housing affordable housing plan, we were approached by a local property owner who was purchasing the 9th Street apartments. And with that, we were able to partner with them to buy 87 deed restrictions on those studio units. And what we did is we were able to deed restrict those for folks making 45% AMI or less for a period of twenty years. We're also providing another half little over a half million dollars to do improvements to trace some 88 units and do some upgrades around the property that you've already seen.

They're they're doing concrete work and and ramp improvements. So some of that work has already started happening, and we've so far, we've got $500,000 reimbursables. We've spent about a 100,000 of that redoing some of those 87 units. 75% of them had already been rehabbed. The other 25% of the units still needed some work to get those 80 units

there.

So you're doing the presentation. Presentation. I have lots of questions. Katie has her hand raised.

Oh, so you

want to take questions during the presentation or wait until the end?

I'll leave that up to you. I'd be happy to answer questions as we go. I'd like this just to be more like we're kinda riffing. Okay. So, yeah, if you've got

some mind, I have a bunch. Katie, do you have questions?

Yeah. I just wanted to ask that that slide that showed all the projects that were in progress and the different densities. On my laptop screen, it's way too small to read. I'm wondering if you could just send us the slides. And then

Oh, for sure.

Okay. Awesome. Thank you.

And if you wanna go back to that, I have a bunch of questions. And maybe they're not appropriate, and that's okay if they're not appropriate for this venue. That in particular, I'm curious about what the status of the Twilight Homes project, which was the housing partnership. We donated to that. It's the White Rock project. And this commission this commission approved their site plan, and it had affordable housing in it. Do we know where the progress of that is?

So the Sherwood Browns project. So the county is not actively participating in that project other than some of the road improvements and some of the other infrastructure work that's been down there. So is the is is the Los Alamos Housing Partnership was sort of, you know, disbanding any of their additional assets that they had. They had in order to dispose of those assets, they have to just put them into another, you know, affordable or nonprofit organization. So my understanding is that was a a private deal between Twilight Homes and the partnership to help them dispose of the additional money that they had sitting in their five zero one three c.

So even with, private, when this commission approves a site plan, does your group ever reach out to them and ask, is there any help you need? Are you gonna move forward? Is there any incentive?

So certainly, anytime that somebody comes and asks and wants to talk if there's an ability for the county to participate in projects, we always are willing to talk to developers and whoever the development community is. I'll talk a little bit about that a little bit more about that later in the presentation. We did not get approached by Twilight for any specific affordable housing through our program. For us to donate or to participate in those, we need to get affordable housing out of that. That kind is what gets us around the anti donation laws is we can provide some money to help support those projects. Any and it it's actually quite broad. It can be infrastructure. It can be design. It can be, you know, vertical construction. It can be lots of different things, but we do need to then get that permanent affordability out of that.

In this case, we did not We were not approached by them, and we knew that they sort of had this other, partnership going. So we we did not participate in that project.

If I understand from a zoning perspective, they are within the MRA, McMIROC could apply?

That, I'm not a 100% sure. No.

Am I I'm not familiar with the exact overlay on what that covers. I know it covers a lot of the White Rock Town Center. Mhmm. I'm unsure how far back it goes. It touches Sherwood, but I'm not sure if it completely falls under that. I'm familiar with some of the applications that have come in, but my director Isaacson, is there applications for the MRA, or does that project with Twilight fall under the MRA? Zooming boundaries. Yeah.

So I'm gonna look at the map. I should pull that up right now.

The very the very edge of it does. It it does appear to to fall under the MRA. Okay. So they would be eligible for for MRA funding. Okay. Sorry. I don't think we've been completely approached yet. We've only received one MRA application thus far, and it's not them. You know what I'm asking. Right?

I do. And I think that that, like, they're eligible in the sense that they're in the MRA. Sort of the MRA has pretty specific goals associated with the MRA plan that was adopted. So, it is likely sort of compatible with the sort of stated goals of the plan. I just would not like to you know, I wouldn't want to commit to say it's for sure an eligible project without, like, the specifics of what it is they're asking for, like, their program is for the project.

But in terms of the sort of go no go eligibility requirement being the MRA, it sounds like the site is is there. They could proceed with that.

From the affordable housing side of things, we would be really separate programs. If there were a qualified buyer, somebody who's buying a house within that development and they qualified, they could certainly approach the housing trust for one of the, you know, for the down payment assistance loans, or the developer could come in and deed restrict, and then we could, you know, and then make a commitment to provide those houses at a certain AMI or less. And then there might be ways that we could participate in some of the other infrastructure or some of those other things.

So with the Bluffs and the Canyon Walk Apartments, do you follow on once those are built to find out what their occupancy is?

We do. We get an annual report for them. We we actually I I probably talk with the Bluffs ownership group, and his group monthly to talk about just where they're at with friends, what their occupancy looks like, what their waiting lists look like, those kinds of things. And they have requirements that they have to also report. So they have to report not only to the county, but to HUD, to MFA. They've got a number of different organizations that they're regularly reporting back to to make sure that they're sort of following what the requirements are for the money and the the LITEC program guidelines. 2025, what their occupancy is? They're, I mean, they're full.

Both of them.

Both of them are full of them. And in fact, if we have land, we could probably pull off another LITEC deal with here. Great.

I have a a question over on this slide. Chair, if I may. Yes. The

can you just talk really fast about the so there's two different ways

to affordability. Right? There's density, and then there's subsidy. And they're kind of together, so you can just peel those apart a little bit. So, like, density is linked to affordability, but it's not the same as subsidy.

Sure. Yeah. So the density the more dense a project is, the quicker the return on investment per the developers typically are. So they're able to spread those costs across and bring the unit price down. The subsidy side of it, and especially if it's lower density, often because of the land cost and labor, they're not able to provide a unit.

You know, once you sort of factor all of those things in, they're not able to to provide a unit back to the market that is not at or above the current market rate. That's when the subsidy side of it comes in where we then try to buy down sort of what the cost of that unit. So, you know, just use very round numbers here. If, you know, if it's $400 a square foot, you build a small unit, it's a $100,000 per door, and a thousand you know, a $100,000 per door is not affordable to somebody. We might be able to participate and buy down then what that unit cost is going to be.

$30,000 a door is now $70,000 unit, And that's how the sort of the subsidy works. And in trade for that, us providing that subsidy, that's then when we will expect a team restriction or some permanent affordability mechanism to then provide that to the community for some period of time.

There's all kinds of different subsidies. Right? There's inclusionary zoning and there's lie tech.

Yeah. I mean, you can structure those subsidies, yeah, just like you said in different ways. You know, inclusionary zoning, that's one that's been very popular at different times. It sort of comes in and out of out of fashion over time. That's essentially where you you have a developer who wants to build a 100 units.

You say, hey. We'll give you a density bonus. You give them 25 extra units, and they make some portion of those units available permanently afford so you're essentially giving them more opportunity to get more profit, more off that, and then they use that to cross subsidize to lower the rents on some of those subsidized units. That's another way to sort of to do that. The general rule is when you do that, you can either provide the unit or you can buy your way out and just provide some fee to to back to the city for not having to build those additional units.

That's oftentimes I would even say more likely what we typically see is they will pay the fee in lieu to get out of having to provide the unit. And that's where it gets even more complicated because if you set the unit to where the the fee in lieu is high enough to actually build your own units, like, have to go build you know, we, the county, have to go buy that unit, you set the fee so high then the developers don't wanna develop. So it's kind of a very quick fine you know, there's a very fine line there when you set the the inclusionary zoning. It's something that you have to be very thoughtful of, especially when you're in a community or a rural area where there's not a lot of development pressure in the first place. That typically works.

Then just one more that's related to the housing updates in general you might be getting here. But, like, the Hill apartments are luxury housing, which is not obviously, by definition, affordable units. But in Santa Fe, they built a thousand units really quickly, and rent prices came down. So even luxury units help with affordability because they are supply.

Yeah. Absolutely. You're you're throwing softballs now.

Not everybody knows this stuff, so I just wanna make

sure it's Absolutely. And that's a very good point, commissioner. Part of the plan is we are not you know, we have a very broad spectrum. You know, it's not only low income and very low income housing that we're trying to supply. We're trying to supply housing across market.

Some of the other projects that I'll talk about as we go through this are very much higher end, top of the market units. Those also help pull out folks that are living in either maybe not their ideal you know, unit or somewhere that they might like to move up or out. Perhaps they're in a house now that they would rather downsize into something smaller. I know that I probably would have not bought the house I bought had I had some other choice that was downtown in a little cool three bedroom condo or two bedroom and an office kind of thing. And those are preferences that more the more diversity that we have in the housing stock, the more opportunities that it's going to be to draw people not only into our downtown, into our higher density areas, but it's gonna free up some of that naturally occurring affordable housing that's at the top of the market right now because the supplies are so constrained.

So if we get more supply on the market, it should pull those some of those people into the news, bring people into some of the new housing and then start to put some downward pressure on some of the new existing housing stuff.

Sure. And one last question. Do we know where we're at with the school's collaboration, the middle school's property?

I will get there in due time.

Sweet. Okay. Let's keep going.

Few more minutes. Thank you.

I got a lot of slides. And, seriously, if you guys are done, just tell me, and we can be done.

Anybody online? I don't wanna miss out. Thank you for noting that commissioner rule.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Don't answering that question.

Yeah. Of course. So in March 2025, we did the 9th Street apartments. Kinda talked about that a little bit. It's 87 total units. They're actually just right across the street here on 9th Street between Iris and Myrtle. Those were you know, had been in private ownership. Originally, they're UNMLA, then we had a local investor who'd owned them for a number of years when they were looking to sell, approached another local developer, and we worked with that party, the ninth Street Studio Apartments, and we're able to get those units. We're very excited about it. Right now, they've got about an they're about 80% full.

So we were actually a little bit surprised, and we're doing some lessons learned there. We're starting to have some conversations because they have not been able to keep those. With the 45% AMI cap on those, we're actually we've had to turn over 50 people away who have looked for that in their And so we're tracking, well, what are the AMIs for folks that are coming in there? And, typically, the AMIs that we're looking at, it's literally it's teachers, and it's first responders, and it's hospital folks, and they're making 55% AMI. So look for more on that in the coming year.

We may revisit that. We have a little bit of wiggle room in the deed restriction. They asked for us to start relooking at this about six months ago, and I said, no. We need to do more marketing, and we need to to see if we can get this into you know, see if we can fill the units under the existing 45% AMI cap. I think they've done a good job. They've got you know, they've been at Smiths. They've been at National Grocers. They've been at the co op. They've been at our small business community in downtown going and letting those folks know that there are units available. So I really do feel like they are trying to get those leased up.

But what we're finding is many of the people who are coming in are just above that 45% AMI, so we might wanna make some tweaks in there. And I think that's appropriate. So I'm hope we're I I hope that we're able to do that because I think it's an even worse thing to not have those units with anyone in them. I think that's, you know, that that that's the least desirable for any of those units to be, you know, for those units to be vacant. So look for a little bit more on that in the coming coming yeah.

Probably in this first quarter, we might come in and and essentially make it a tiered system. You have to try to rent them to somebody at 45% AMI. If that's not available, then you could go to the second tranche, which will be 50% AMI. And if there's nobody at that, then 55, and then that would be a a new cap. But if there's anybody on a waiting list of 45%, they would always get the first opportunity to go back into the But we wanna make sure that those units are full.

And then in August, we had the 20th Street redevelopment. So this one in the North Mesa. So I'll get into each of these in due time. But the 20 Street redevelopment, this is this is the one that I really this is where I kinda wanna get into the weeds a little bit because this is where the work the planning commission does is really, really important. And especially as we go into the new comp plan process, the comp plan the latest comp plan was approved back in 2036. It's been, you know, nine years now. And that's gonna kinda set the stage for part of this conversation. So I think everybody knows where this is at. It's kinda kitty corner from Ashley Pond. The the former believe we had bus yards and number of different things.

And for a long time, we had 10 buildings out there. The county's engineering department was out there. And then we we took it on the initiative to sort of clean up the site, get it developer ready. We upgraded the utilities in the street, water, sewer, gas, electric. All of those utilities are our own. We did new curb, gutter, new street. We kinda got it development ready. And then that's where the county then turned it over to CDD to say, hey. Go out and find somebody who can do some good workout on this process. Let's get this property into productive use.

And so that's where we start with the comp plan, and we look at the future land use maps. And the little green circle up there is kind of where this property is located. This is our downtown district in the future land use map. It said, hey. We wanna see mixed use there. We wanna see residential. We wanna commercial, and we wanna see things that are gonna be on a scale that would be appropriate for our downtown. So in 2016, we started thinking, hey. What do we want downtown to look like? And then we carried that thinking through in mixed use. That's that's the cool stuff. That's what's working around the country. Mixed use residential, cool little downtown. We then took that thinking and rolled that into the 2021 downtown master plan. And as you start to look at some of you know, these are the pretty pictures.

This is where the planners do the, you know, the colored renderings, and we all oh and awe about it. And then we have to figure out how do we make this a reality. And that's where it really that's where the development partner becomes really important, and that's where it's really important, who we partner with, how we go about selecting the development teams that we then work on. It is actually kinda funny. The one in the left hand side, clear back into the 2000 master plan. You know, we were talking about that mixed use downtown, residential above, retail below, carried it over, street improvements. You kinda noticed the intersection there and that sort of lower middle picture there. So we

I'm sorry to interrupt you. Please.

Get through. But just because you're on the slide, one of the big things that has to change,

I think,

this vision come true is not just the development part, but the zoning. Right? That's kinda where we come in and where council comes in. Because if you can't get that high, if you can't build that high, then you have a lot.

Yeah. So that's one of the things that's really important about the comprehensive land use plan. That's your umbrella document and then sorts to sort of instruct all of your your your zoning, your you know, all of the different nuts and bolts of land use in in in specifically zoning. One of the things that we had been trying to do over the last few years with the revamp of chapter 16 was specifically to be able to make it easier to do that kind of development. We, you we have a canyon protection.

You know, we've got a little bit of a setback where we have to be a little bit lower protect the canyon rim. But once you get past there, I think it's 87 feet. So now we're talking six and seven story buildings. Now we're really starting to kinda get to that density. But the comp plan sort of imagined it, and then we put it into practice through the zoning, the rezone or the zoning code, the development code.

And that's something that we continue to tweak. We brought forward a number of recent zoning, you know, chapter 16 updates, and those are things that we continue to do. And anything that goes into the comp plan can be something that we can then telegraph from a policy standpoint to put into the zoning code if and when it's necessary to do. Just a little bit more out of that to commissioner Nachalie's point, you know, sort of talking about what we want our to look like. We wanna have a commercial floor, and then we wanna have two, three, four, and up stories.

I think this ends up being seven stories total. A little bit of a step back on there to kinda give them the size and scale so it feels pedestrian, but we still get the density of the. So a lot of that work that the planning commission sort of telegraphed through the comp plan then gets put into practice with these other plans that then staff uses to go out and get the development partners. Literally, the slides that you just saw, we put into our solicitations to say, hey. Hey, developers, development community. This is what we're looking for. If you don't build this, you're not the right partner. But if you do build this, let's talk. And then that's what flips us into the partner that we got. This is RVMM.

It's Russell Brock and Marcel Montoya. They've got a presence in Santa Fe and then sort of through the Southeast. And you kinda see then how they've started to use that property where they you know? So we we see the street element there. You know, we saw that in the plan where they've got the nice crosswalk between Ashley Pond. So Ashley Pond starts to, you know, sort of meld into this new development. There will be street improvements. We're also working on the road diet that is something that's going through the public works and DPU now where we're gonna narrow that down a little bit. We'll have a pedestrian island there so you'll have a safe place to cross. You'll be able to go from one part of the traffic, have a safe place to land cross to the other side of the street.

There'll be two lanes going eastbound, one lane going westbound. And then, you know, we'll do something really cool there with pavers or with colored concrete to really let folks know that this is a pedestrian zone for crossing between sort of the heart of downtown and Ashley Pond and then moving over into this new retail development that also has some really cool, retail in addition to residential development.

So I have two questions regarding that. We don't control that. That's a state road.

Correct.

So how do we collaborate with them to get that accomplished? The second thing is the Canyon Rim Trail. Mhmm. Originally, there was conversation that we would get it all the way to here, and then it would be a feeder in. Is that still the plan?

Yep.

I don't see that on the appointments.

Yeah. I will make this a little easier for you to see.

So you think it'll go any farther than this, or do we really think this is gonna be the terminus to the Canyon Run Trail?

So I think I think there's there's gonna be a couple answers to that.

K. So

as far as so, yeah, without getting in the weeds too much on this, we went we worked on it. One of the reasons it took so long to get this project from the solicitation and selecting the development partner to actually getting to the point that we can start looking at entitlements is we needed to do a development agreement with them. Part of the development agreement was specifically to tell them, hey. We're already working with NMDOT to get the road that you're helping us pay for because it's your road state. So we got so it was the developers, engineers doing cost estimates to work with the state to look at traffic signalization, rightsizing the road in the way that our traffic implementation plan is is imagining, and then getting all of those groups to agree to it.

So we have that in the development agreement that it will go through those levels of review, but this is the vision that you just outlined is what we're going to get here, and that is part of the development agreement. When we got all the way down to the point of the cost estimates, all that water line that crosses under them, we have to replace that. We know how much that's gonna cost. So we have a line item cost estimate of what all of these development costs are going to be. We're gonna participate in some of that because some of that is on us. You know? We we wanna help with the light. We wanna help with the upsizing of the the water and sewer that are in the road. So the off sites we're participating in through that development agreement. Everybody's on notice.

They know what they need to do. They're going to build it on our behalf. We're gonna help fund some of those improvements in the road. So I think it's very likely that we're gonna get And then as far as the canyon walk, I'll show you it's a little bit better to see on one of the other slides here in a minute. But we also got an easement for the Canyon Rim Trail.

So the Canyon Rim Trail will go along the back of the property kinda where the laser pointer is. It'll come around that corner, tie in, you know, come around, up, and then crossover, and then to our new urban trail that is just here. So that improvement that we got, I believe that was a state grant that we're able to do, connect it to all the way down to the Peak Center. You'll now be able to start at the Peak Center, walk on that trail all the way through to this. And then as we continue, we're you know, our public works department is actively working with the property owners here to get those additional easements.

And they're actually to the point that they're doing some of the design work. Like, we're moving forward on this. You'll be able to go from here all the way to the co op on the Canyon Road Trail. Some of the hope then is that as we move forward, there might be another section to the west, and that would be a future phase. The phase that we've imagined so far, I think it's phase one through three, I think we're on three now, are are in process. And each of these developments of Git, we work with the development partners to get these easements. It's public easement. Everybody will be able to go there. And then it you know, with that so this is like if we're looking from Ashley Pond into the new developments. Would be behind me.

So you'd be able to take the you know, come across from Ashley Pond, walk the sidewalk. Have sort of what we call that third space. That's that sort of public private, you know, where the shops are before you get into the private space of the residences. You would imagine coffee shop, restaurant, perhaps the YMCA or some sort of a gym or something could be in there and really create that third space. So this is really what we're trying to do to build that downtown. And, again, these are gonna be top of the market. These are gonna be high end. It's gonna pull folks out of other housing that's available, hopefully get some folks that are in housing that may not fit their needs anymore or they wanna downsize. Perhaps they come to.

And they're talking condos?

These will initially be condos. Yeah. We always have that kind of construction defects. They may unload this in seven to ten years and create for sale. But right now, they'll be full rent condos. And then this one, you can really see that Canyon Ridge Trail nicely on. It's that kinda goes from east to west, and then you make that turn to the right to take you up to Ashley Park.

Can I just ask, not right now, but if we have time later for you to talk a little bit more about that condo issue? Because I don't I think a lot of people don't Sure. Know about that. Or later.

In the North Mesa, essentially, we started with we have long been in conversations with 30 acres of land up on North Mesa. This is the land that's adjacent to the middle school, of between San Ildefonso and I was on the other side. North Road. Thank you. San Oldefonso North Road.

And so back in '20 I think 2020, we did work with Wilson and Company to come up with a plan of what we would do with that property. And we we've got a letter of MOE or MOA memorandum of understanding or MOU with the school district for us to effectively go and look and see what the options might be for the property. What it looked at was that there was an opportunity to be to somewhere between two and three hundred and fifty units depending on the unit mix. But what we didn't do is really take the time to figure out what are our u what are our utility needs out there. We know we can put a bunch of houses on this, but do we have the utilities?

Do we have the water? Do we have the sewer? Do we have the electric, gas, transportation, all of that in place to be able to support this development? What I am happy to tell you is even with the development of this property, there's not gonna be much impact to the transportation system. Yeah. Everybody's gonna kinda roll their eyes and, yeah, there's an easy traffic in certain parts of the city. It's gonna be in the afternoon, and then it's largely gonna be no problem. It's gonna be, you know, the LOS a or b the rest of the time. And we actually did the traffic study from here all the way back through the system to Diamond and Trinity, clear back through that to see what the impacts would be, and they're minimal.

LOS is level of service.

Right? Level of service. Yeah. So that's the level of service and sort of what you well, an LOS of a, no wait. You just get it coming it's it's a it's a it's a crossroads with no stop signs, no yield signs. Level b, you kinda get to the yield signs. Level c, kinda get to the stop sign. And then with that, you kind of imagine the corresponding traffic backing up behind it. But we really don't anticipate much impact from the transportation. Where we do have some areas that we need to work on are the water infrastructure and the sewer infrastructure.

And this is just a quick, you know, sort of just quick diagram of the water system up there. We know that we're gonna need to upsize some of the water lines. We know we're gonna need to right size and loop the lines through there to where we can maintain pressure. With our our water tanks are pretty high up on the hill, and we've got a couple of other tanks. We actually have a problem where it gets way too much pressure coming down the hill from the big tanks.

We have to reduce the pressure to get it into the tanks on North Mesa, and then you have another that you have to get it out to the neighborhood. And if you have a single line, it's really hard to maintain that not only from a pressure standpoint, but also redundancy if something happens in the system. So we know we need to finish out some of the loop systems. So that's what this is going to do is to where we don't impact anybody further out on San I or, you know, out on further out on the Mesa. We're gonna loop the system, make sure that everybody's water pressure stays same, and that we're able to deliver water to the new development.

Kind of the same thing with the sewer system. What we found out there is most of the sewer system's in great shape, and it's got plenty of capacity. We have two little green bits here. Those pipes were put out. They're they're cast iron pipes put out there in the nineteen fifties. We have some pictures of a couple of guys lowering them down and literally bolting them off the back of an old wrecker. You can imagine old tow truck dropping those down. We go out there and we paint them. We put epoxy paint on them, and we sent the there's a little machine that they sent down there. It rovers through there and it looks at it.

There's actually places where you can see light coming through because all that's holding it in place is the epoxy. It's not a critical like, it's not gonna blow out in the next couple of days. It's, you know, it's not that level of concern, but it's something that we know we need to fix. We've got the capacity, but we have these things that we need to fix and work on. So we're building that into our capital improvements plan. What does that mean for the project? So we split it up into two areas. Area a is sort of the the school district site, and then we have Arbolada. All of the infrastructure and utilities are out there for Arbolada to move ahead. That sort of maxes it out without doing some additional costs.

So we broke those costs out. And between the two projects, it's about 14,000,000 dot it's a little over or it's almost $15,000,000. Area b is gonna take care a lot of their own costs. Market rate deal, they're gonna put in a lot of those costs. But on that area a, there's about another 8 and a half million dollars that we need to put into our capital improvements fund to go out there to be able to supply and to make this develop rent.

Lots of different ways that we can do that. We can put it into our capital improvements plan, can chip away at it over the next five years, and then maybe you develop it in five years. If we wanna do something sooner, we can just capitalize that into the project and tell the developer, hey. Here are all the things that we know about the project. And if you want this project, also going to have to do these other improvements to the system. And they do that on our behalf, and then we help pay for it. So there's a lot of different ways that we can skin that, but we do know that there are some real dollars up there to get that, you know, sort of development ready. So the pretty plans we did in 2020, we need to do some work to get them ready to build those plans. Any questions on that?

How long will it take about the dollars tomorrow?

I mean, you know, money and staff, we can get we can we can do a lot. It's just a matter of getting the funds and getting going. I mean, the projects themselves are not that big. It's, you know, maybe a year's worth of work, but then, yeah, you know, getting it bid out, getting it you know, either it's kind of a

process Two to three. Yeah.

I would say, like, we're really motivated. We can get it done in two, three.

Yeah. So that

that means my

timing perspective.

And then 08/08 a. So now we're gonna kinda come back in a little bit more with some of the affordable. And, again, this is where we we immediately look to the comprehensive land use plan. The comprehensive land use tells us, hey. We're really looking this is you know, there's not many neighborhoods that are gonna be impacted by this. There are really no neighbors. It's right next to our our whore downtown. So the comp plan contemplated back in 2016, high density, 15 plus units, and that's kind of what I have circled is. The green on the map is the area. It's it's actually the brown sort of the box and then the little tail that goes out.

And then circled over there in the corner is the high density residential where we contemplated 15 dwelling units an acre or above. That then gets translated into our zoning. The site is zoned mixed use, which allows the high density residential. We didn't think this was really appropriate for mixed use like commercial because we we we were targeting that closer into our downtown, and we want that more in the core. So we want just the residential uses out on this property.

And it's also then lines up with some of the other, you know, county council strategic leadership plan both in 2025 and again in 2026, the affordable housing plan, the economic vitality plan, and Los Alamos housing market needs analysis actually contemplated that property to have even higher density at about 17 DUs an acre. So that's sort of what we use when we put this out for solicitation to talk to developers. In this case, we are working with Servitas. They're out of Texas. They've been working in higher education military installations for almost twenty years.

So they provide housing for department of defense and higher education. So Texas A and M, different universities around the country. And they had been wanting to move out of that market into the municipal market. I got acquainted with them up in Summit County in Colorado on some projects. They're doing a project in Telluride and also Gunnison County, and they they were responsive to our solicitation and off to the races.

And what they're offering on the site is 380 units of one, two, and three bedroom. And then of the 380 units, 260 of those will be market rate, also one, two, three bedrooms. So it will be spread out throughout the entire development. And then of those, a hun of of the 380, a 120 will be deed restricted between 60 and a 100% AMI. So that's clearly in that band of missing room, and those will also be one, two, and three bedroom units.

So the LITECH is the low income that typically is that 30 to 60% AMI. That's why we tried to with the the 9th Street apartments, we tried to get that 45% AMI, so sort of that lower end. So now we're trying to kinda get into that 60 to a 100% AMI, which is more clearly our missing middle. So we're very excited about that. 120 de restricted units right in that missing middle.

One thing that I'm I'm happy to report, I actually just on a call with the state today. We put in for grant funding of $3,000,000 with the state to permanently de restrict, we think, the entire to a 120 or less. And so they will never go market rate, and we will have a cap on it that keeps them from ever going fully market rate. One of the things that is also a little bit different about this project is because this is not typical debt and equity funding. It's not I'm a guy who's got a lot of money and wants to give it to somebody to develop, but I expect a certain return on that, and I want the rents to go up with the market through time so I make more money for giving you the money to develop this.

It's not that deal. That's the type of deal that happens. This is a bond issue. So the only thing that we ever have to cover is the debt service. So the idea is this, that the rents don't have to grow with the market to satisfy investors. They only have to grow to cover the bond and the debt. The bond debt, we're gonna always know that from day one. So the idea is that anybody who's living there, you know, you'll have the 60 to a 100% that we know what your formula is. But if I'm working at the lab and I make more money, we're still gonna try to target it to 30% of your income. And that just helps out every because now I'm gonna be able to save a little bit more money so I can go buy that house that I want somewhere else.

So I can use this truly as a launching pad to go somewhere else. So I'm not always paying top of the market for my rental or my home. It's still tied to 30% of my income. I will then hopefully be even if I'm making more than that, I will hopefully then be able to save some money and then go out into the free market and buy a house. So this is a very different different deal and very exciting in many different ways, and we're really happy to hear that the state's gonna participate. We're in we're in the contract phase of finalizing that. With the state, you have to the contract won't be with us. It'll actually be with the developer, but we're partnered to that contract. So we have our finger in it a little bit. But the state is supportive of this project as well.

We're gonna bring an additional $3,000,000 that we don't have to provide or the project doesn't have to provide. And then kind of the typical things. We already talked to site plan approval. We'll be coming back to the planning commission, telegraphed what we wanted out of there through the comp plan and some of the other plans that we've done over the years. You'll be seeing this, happy to say, in February. We we entitlements should be coming in in early February. We're gonna be holding on February 5 a meeting at The Bluffs to introduce the project to the neighbors. It's just gonna be kind of meet the neighbors. So the development team will be coming in. We'll have a little bit more information on that going out here in the near future.

The boss is happily going to host that for us, and then we'll bring in development team. We'll walk through sort of the same thing that we're doing here tonight and then talk through the site plan and any concerns that they might have and just sort of start that process. It's not anything that's required by code, but it is something that is important to us and to the development partner for this project. And then we anticipate the submittal from the site plan shortly after that. And then just kinda walk you through the projects.

So over here on the left side, the west side, this is kind of the main the meat of it. This is going to be the apartment part part of the complex. This will be four stories with structured parking in the middle and then sort of they call it a Texas wrap where they then wrap the units around the parking garage. So you'll enter off a DP Road, come into the parking garage, have a secondary access coming out down to this area, which we're calling the pivot. That's gonna be sort of a community room, community space.

I'm anticipating they're also going to be because of the hills and we have competition, they're looking they'll also probably have an outdoor pavilion and a pool. That's going to be important to them to sort of keep that same level and tier. Even though this is affordable, we still want to be competitive in the market and provide a nice product. And then there'll be a secondary access, so it'll come back around on the backside of so this is the bluffs right here. So there'll be an access then in behind the bluffs. This is actually an existing there's a utilities easement with stations and other things there. So our utilities are already in it. So it's actually really beneficial for us to get really on top of it. Just gives us easier access through there. And then it comes down on with these are flats.

These are gonna be between twelve and fifteen unit, three story two and three story flats. And then we'll have some row homes, kinda classic townhomes down on the end. And then this will also connect in here to the existing canyon and trail, which comes in, crosses over, goes behind Canyon Walk, and then goes all the way down to Co Op. And then if you were to go here, it's almost immediately takes you in behind Smith's there.

So That's just a question. The townhomes are also built to rent.

Yeah. All of this will be a 100% rent. Another thing that's a little bit different in this is this is this is a true public private partnership. It's that p three concept. This is really a new thing and something that's becoming more and more prevalent in development, especially affordable housing development.

We are truly a partner in this. We are going to give the land to Servitas, who will then put it into a third party nonprofit, who then is the bond. Essentially, the bonds will be issued to the third party nonprofit. The third party nonprofit will then pay all the bills, you know, construction bills, all of those things on behalf of the county and Servitas, and then maintain that, and they're sort of the check and balance on the project. Once the debt service is paid off, third party nonprofit is dissolved, we get the project and all of the revenues from the project back at the end of the debt term.

Maybe about four years from now. Hopefully, none of us are still doing this. But what's exciting about that is we have an affordable housing project that's in perpetuity that we'll be paying into a fund due to the operations, the maintenance, keeping it nice through time, any of the rehab that needs to happen in twenty five or thirty years, and then all of the revenue comes back to the county. Once we pay off the debt, the debt's gone. We have an operating expense, all of those future revenues come back to the county to either go back into the project, to provide other affordable housing options, or to do other things that the county might want to do related to affordable housing. So it's a very exciting model.

I'm not super familiar with the history of that part of town, but is this all previously disturbed land that has had building on it?

Of it. So the the side the side over here, this actually used I think, originally, it was the incinerator building, then got taken down, and then there was a trailer park out there. And they literally just put all of the utilities on the ground and then backfilled on top of them and then built the house the modulars on top of that. So when that had run its life, I think, in the late sixties, maybe early seventies, they took pulled all of that, pulled all the utilities, scraped all the dirt back off of it, and then it's just been a number of different things over the years. It was transferred to the county.

And you can actually still go out there and see some of the curb and gutter from that when it was the trailer park. And some of that goes through down into this area, and probably somewhere in here is where the disturbance stops. But there are fence posts, and there have been people out there. We we we've actually had some homeless encampments that we sent out there, and we had social services involved to get some of the people off the site, get them into more appropriate care. But largely, the site has been disturbed over the years with the exception of that very, very far end.

Okay. And are there

plans for that far end, especially

is there any federal funding involved, or is it all state funding?

There's no federal funding involved. Okay.

So I'm just wondering about, you know, compliance for, like, you know, National Environmental Protection Act and, the National Historic Preservation Act for, you know, for mostly archaeological sites, because they're everywhere. I don't know what the rules are regarding state funding if New Mexico, like, requires you to do survey before breaking.

I don't believe there's any requirements to do the survey ahead of time. But if they found something, they they would need to report that. We would go through that that channel on that. And, you know, there's a process that you you would report, and then there's an opportunity to do finding and stuff. I would be surprised if we find too much out on this site, but there's always that potential. And one of the things, especially, we're not going below the canyon rim on that. We're simply. That's a k. Commissioner Brule?

Yeah. You you probably explained this, and I just missed it in all the numbers. But could you explain how the developer makes money on this? Because it sounds like you're just saying all the money goes back to the county.

Yeah. I'd be happy to talk a little bit more about that. Are typically there's two different kinds of or many kinds of developers. The two most common is what what's called a fee developer, which is what Servitas is. For the service and them providing this, we are going to pay them a fee of 6 to $9,000,000 to build this on our behalf.

That's where they make their money. They don't make money long term on the rents and the revenues coming from the rents. That's more of an equity a debt and equity developer where they then have investors who are anticipating a certain cut of the rents through time that come back to provide revenue and income to the development. So that's where this is also a little bit different is that is being that they're a you have the fee developer using the bonding mechanism to fund the projects. They get paid for delivering a project to us, and then they're they they also have an operate management company who will manage this during the term of the debt.

And perhaps beyond that, they will also get a base fee for managing it on behalf of the project. So they don't get, you know, constant revenue stream. They just get a fee just like a property management. You know? This is my job. I make this much money for doing the job, and that's how I make the money. It's not a long term investment for them. It's just a fee that they get for providing a service. Does does that help? Does

that Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. And the management company part because that was gonna be my next question. Are they county employees? No. So they'll just be under a contract just like the nature center or the senior center.

Effectively. Yeah. So so during the term of the debt, we we won't actually own the property. It will be held in that trust that will, you know, sort of hold that in trust for us, and Servitas will be providing the service back to us. Debt gets paid off, reverts back to us.

Gotcha. Thank you.

Of course.

Part of the negotiations as we were going through is it was very important to the community that get some trail access. One of the things that we did at the last minute was we got some additional trail easements out there, and those are dedicated easements that come back to the community. So everybody will have access to the trails that are listed here in green. It'll go out to a little cool little overlook park out on the end. It's got some fantastic views, ties into our existing trail system.

And see if I can get this to work. This is just kind of the cool flyby, and you kinda see the existing bluffs there. You can see the pivot points as we go down the Canyon Road Trail as it turns in. And then it goes down, you can see the mix of two and three story flats then transition here kind of at the end into the townhomes. It's a little sorry.

There's a little bit of lag on that. And then just kind of the overview. And then just kinda wrapping up here. These are just kind of the standard one, two, and three bedrooms. I didn't have a two bedroom a good two bedroom slide, but they're very livable units with all of the amenities of a modern apartment. Things are gonna be really nice.

I I just wanna point out that I there's not that many three bedroom rentals built, like, anywhere in America for families who really need them. So it's really great to see

When when we did the market analysis and we worked with LA CDC, we worked with Western Western Places, which is a marketing firm that I've worked with in Colorado and brought onboard onto this project. We really saw the need here with our demographics and sort of the folks that we're trying to get off the road who want to live here, be able to come here. Hopefully, they're paying that 30% of that income. They're able to save some money, have their family here, and then get into something else. So we think these are very, very livable units. There's gonna be a dog park. There's gonna be the pivot. There's gonna be trails. It's gonna be a very livable. I mean, this is just an example of one of the townhomes.

Kinda your living space is on the garage and living space on the Lower Floor, and then you move up the sleeping space bedroom and things. Is kind of what it looks like on the interior. So, you know, nice architecture. Some of this stuff will get tweaked as we go. You know, it comes through the site plan. We'll have public comment. The colors may change. Some of the exterior treatments may change, but largely, this is the vision.

Well, I hope you keep the courtyard element because that's so so great. Sometimes my daughter lives in a courtyard development like that, and so great for kids.

It is. We have two of those built in, two of those courtyards, and these are separate from. And then other things kinda looking forward to 2026, we've had a lot of conversations around Habitat for Humanity. I got the okay from council quite quite a while ago to get that project going. We've had a little bit of a hiccup with Habitat for Humanity. Their board is actually looking at deed restriction this week, so we hope to hear back from them. They had not done a deed restriction before. Even though they've provided a lot of housing in New Mexico, they hadn't done a deed restriction. So we were going back and forth with them, with our legal team and their legal team to get to a deed restriction that was gonna work for everybody. So that's what's been slowing us down a little bit.

They just got signed off from their national to be able to then implement that. We hope that we can replicate that again quickly. 36 in the Trinity, now that the Hills project is wrapping up, we have that little piece of property as you're going into the Hills development. We've looked at that for a number of different uses over the years. I'm talking with a couple of nonprofit affordable housing developers to see if there might be something to do there.

We think that there could be somewhere between four and six units, probably two two or three duplexes or triplexes on that. We would also anticipate those being deed restricted. We just kicked off an RV park feasibility study where we're gonna be looking at a couple of pieces of land that are zoned appropriately for RVs. It's where we could do something that might allow for some longer term stay for folks living in RVs than some sort of midterm stay and then some sort of tourist, you know, one to, you know, maybe a week or one day to a week or two so we can support local businesses and tourism and and look at that. We're probably looking to see if we can place somewhere between forty and sixty RVs.

We're looking into couple of different pieces on that, and we'll we'll report back with a little more information on that as well. Very excited about that. 1,000 Subrio, that's something that we're always looking at. We know that we've got a lot of needs down there. I would love to see some sort of either senior facility or care facility. Perhaps it could also be residential, but that's something that we're do a little on and then hopefully getting that also out for solicitation. Solicitation is the best way to test the waters with the market. Hey. Do you think this is a good idea or not? This is what we'd like to see.

Nobody responds. You know you've got a bad idea. If you you get multiple responses, you're on to something and you and you're going with it. One of the other big parts of my job is always the regional capacity building. I am regularly meeting with Santa Fe County, Rio Riva, Rio Riva County, El Calde, Espanol, as well as Pueblos, Santa Santa Clara, Puyaki, Buffalo Thunder, Namihui, and to say.

And we've recently been talking with the Hakana Land Trust, which is right next to Puyaki High School on some conceptual plans to do some this is kind of a sneak peek at the plan that we're we're talking with them about. We don't quite know what our participation would be in this. But one of the big parts that we're trying to do kinda out of CDD in the housing office is really to help build capacity on here's how we can get these things done. Here's what a here's what an RFP looks like. Here's what a solicitation looks like.

Here's what a development agreement looks like. Here's how to engage with development partners and bring them into your community. And this is something that the Ocala Land Trust has been working with Santa Fe County and Los Alamos for a couple of different things that we've been having some nice conversations with them. So it's it is bearing fruit. It's taking a little bit of time to build those relationships, but we have relationships with all those folks now that we can give them a call and vice versa. That's all I got.

But I'm happy to

answer any other questions that you've got. We really have made some progress in the last few years, and we got a lot more cool stuff coming.

I just wanna say that these are it's very ambitious and very needed, and this is going staff is going to really need Planning and Zoning Commission and County Council to help. So, I hope that we I hope we all lift and help out with this. Yeah.

We we will try to make the best case we can for why these things make sense for our community and make your job a little easier. We're gonna get some pushback, and we need to all be ready for that. Yeah.

Really appreciate the presentation.

Yeah. Of course. Happy to do it.

Exciting to see all the things that are going on. Gives us all this commission an idea of what's coming.

So for these events.

Yeah. Of course. Go ahead, mister Hampton. So do we know if anybody started to

move into the hills yet?

Yes. We have four buildings that have COs. And last I heard, we had nine for sure that are in, and I think we have 11 signed leases. And they're looking to bring on additional units over the next couple of months, and we're just gonna con know, we are continuing to chip away with them and bring on units as appropriate and safe.

So I heard a rumor today, totally unsubstantiated. It's probably just a rumor, but that they're doing short term rentals there.

I had not heard that.

I happened to to go on a little tour of the hills, and they at least they said we are not interested in doing short term rentals. That's good

to hear.

Okay. Yeah. I I I have not seen that in their marketing. I I can't speak to it beyond that.

And that brought up something else. So we had a short term steering committee short term rental steering committee for residential properties a couple years ago, and it was we stopped doing it because we were waiting to see what the the result of lawsuits in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. So is there any plans on reestablishing the committee?

So that that's a little outside of my wheelhouse, and so I would I would defer to the director.

Right now, we're sort of more focused on comprehensive plan, historic plans, some of these other sort of larger planning efforts. We'll see where some of those conversations go. If, you know, through that work, sort of, it becomes apparent that there's a need to sort of conversations around short term rentals or other potential, you know, things are happening. It's getting pressure on our housing. We'll certainly reconvene and and pick up those conversations. But at this time, you know, like I said, we're focused on some other things at least for the first part of. Thanks.

Good to hear people are moving in the hills, though. That's

Yeah. We we do

have someone recently who lives there.

Yeah. And so we as Dave mentioned, we we issued COs for four buildings. There's another building that is very close to being getting a certificate of occupancy. We're just waiting on some some of the grading and drainage, storm water retention, other things like that, those facilities to be signed off on by our public works department, then we can go ahead and do COs for that building. But then that outer ring of buildings is a little bit further down the road before they'll be ready for, you know, final inspection.

So I don't have a timeline on on that part of the project, but I think we should have this fifth building, getting a certificate of occupancy within the next couple of weeks. It it

looks like commissioner perhaps has a question.

Yeah. Just while we're talking about the hills, do you know anyone there? Is there still a plan for a road connecting those behind the hospital out to, like, under Omega Bridge and around that way?

I don't know.

Commissioner Brule, I don't know if the road will go that far, but, we are still, working with the developer and our county teams, to extend Finch Street through to the parking lot. I believe it's a dentist's office, just to the west of the Hill Apartments. So we are working on that, road connection.

Okay. Thanks.

I have a sort of general question. We've been getting some pushback from the community on, we're building too much rentals and not enough housing for ownership, but it is my understanding. I've read that if you just build stuff for ownership, it's not like magically people who don't qualify for that housing can get it. So it's actually really, really important to build a lot of rental housing. There's a market for it.

Absolutely. There's a market for it. That that's substantiated by both the market studies for the if there wasn't a market for it, they wouldn't come build. So they've done their market studies plus the affordable plan affordable housing plan points to to us to need to really grow that rental pool. One of the nice things is, as you do that, we're gonna, you know, hopefully catch a lot of those commuters.

We're also gonna start pulling some of those folks out of the existing neighborhoods into that other, you know, housing option that they might be looking for that we know that they're looking for. So, hopefully, then that will create some more opportunities for folks who want to buy. We we do continue to talk with developers and look for land and ways to build with the private sector. Longview is a perfect example of that. Took a little while to get that project moving, but the county is fully committed to that.

We're you we are relocating the road. We have been actively acquiring property in support of that project. And as those opportunity you know, as we sort of start to flex that muscle a little bit, we get developers interested, we get developers who have had some success, there are properties that we're going to find that we can develop. There are properties that will be discussed during the comprehensive land use plan process to develop. Is a perfect example of that.

You know, perhaps we make that a smaller county school district county school district project and we move little more of that to the private development team. There's lots of different ways that we can get that lead for us. It's a location for another wide tech project. We make the rest of that available to the development team. Those are all conversations that we need to have. And, again, you know, not not to beat it to the dead horse, That's where the comp plan is really so important is to be able to telegraph those things of our intent of what we may see

in the community. And then if

I may, I have a a more concrete question, which is about so we maybe a lesson learned in Mirador where we built north of a state road, and and now we've got a lot

of very unhappy people who can't seem to be crossed. Like, they

can't get across that road, and that's like a headache for the county. Is there any plan for something like a pedestrian overpass if it's already kind of dangerous there? I know I know you're talking about lane narrowing and islands to make it not terrifying to cross, like, because it's state highway. But I have always thought that there should be a pedestrian. Seems like there should be an overpass there. When I've talked to public works, they're like, utilities, and then they just stop telling me what that means. We understand what the problem is.

Because you're asking specifically about the 20 Street development?

Yes. I didn't conclude that at all.

Think I'm

glad you followed what I said. Yeah.

I I

I was tracking

with it. Yeah.

There has not been any conversation about doing a new boot pass there. With the design, we are seeing so much success with the design, and that's, you know, that's going to be a signalized intersection. So it will be you you'll you'll

23 will be signalized?

Yes. That'll be a signalized, so it's gonna be a stop. Right? There will be a stop sign there as this goes through. That is part of that development agreement that we talked to. I think we lined item. It was 5 it was either 500,000 or 750,000, specifically for those street streetlight improvements. It's quite expensive actually to put in streetlights, but all the conduit and everything will be in there. This project will meet warrants with the state, and then that will get built as, you know, as you see vertical construction going up, that intersection those intersection improvements will also be happening. The the the the the the lane rightsizing will probably happen first, and that'll just be striping and some other things.

But as the development comes in, then you'll see, you know, perhaps it's a raised median or, you know, a colored concrete median there. So it very much delineates the intersection where the pedestrian area is, and I would anticipate there will also be a median in the center of the street. So you can go across one side of you know, if you don't feel safe going to the other side, you can just wait and then make the second movement on the next light. Okay.

The signalized. I I didn't know that.

So the signalization should should resolve that issue, and it is unfortunate that we haven't been able

to get it done quicker, but

it's an issue that's But

there will be no signalized for the Hill Apartments. That's not going

I don't believe so. Do

we have any guests? It looks like there's four attendees. Do we have anyone we would like comment?

So Lisa has a question.

Lisa Hampton?

Hi. Thank you. I'm Lisa Hampton. I'm chair of the County Health Council. My question is, where are we, on studying the concept of of walkability, and particularly, in the area on Central Avenue between, say, Metzger's 15th Street and all the way down, past Ashley Pond to the library? I know we've had several pedestrian accidents, people getting hit by vehicles. Has there been any more discussion? Or or, Dan, would you know where we are on that topic?

So that that that's a little bit out of my project area. I haven't been involved in any of the pedestrian planning for that area. I don't know if you you wanna ask any updates on that. Don't.

I don't have those. I don't have any issues.

Can somebody tell me how many pedestrian accidents we've had? This is news to me. This is also news to me. Like, at least four in what time frame? Like, in maybe two years? So so Statistically, that's pretty small, kids, for how many people are walking up and down that street. So,

counselor Cole, correct me if I'm wrong, but, you know, I think we did have a last night at the council work session, we had a conversation about data dashboard and reporting metrics and things like that. And I believe this was one of the things that came up in that conversation as well. Some stuff working with PD on on traffic accidents, some specifically around wildlife, hitting wildlife. So that I think we'd also be talking about some of the pedestrian stuff as well maybe with that with that dashboard. Oh, I mean, we

can we can get that information Yeah. And report it regularly. You know, I know there was some discussion about the crosswalk from Oppenheimer to the the library entrance. I I'm not sure I I remember anything else about pedestrian issues in that area, so I'd to go

from the Yeah. Least she he was

concerned. Are

they near misses, or we had accidents?

People run over. I I don't know I don't

know the exact right next to Fuller right there? There was someone hit, on the crosswalk, I believe, by Fuller Lodge. There's at least one person hit central by the post office. You're a transportation board guy. You probably know more.

I mean, one was a a plein air painter in front of Fuller Lodge after she dropped off her stuff. And but I haven't heard about all of them, I don't think, but it's

Yeah. I was thinking 20th Street down. You're talking 15th Street all all the way through the downtown area?

Yeah. No. I was talking 15th all the way maybe past the library going down that hill. And my understanding was that the pedestrian was hit on that crosswalk, between that overflow Mesa parking lot and crossing over toward Ashley Pond. And I do know that, Karen Edwards was hit and and then injured by a vehicle with her seeing eye dog. Her fortunately, her dog wasn't hit. I don't know exactly where that happened. Commissioner Nachal, you might know more about that.

Yeah. I just happened to see that crash, but it was Connect

and Trinity. So That was over on Trinity. Trinity is a very

It was Trinity. Okay.

That she was trying to cross wrecked, and someone came out of Smith's hit her. It's a very bad

And I guess this is more public works, the pedestrian master plan, rather than housing, but I just thought you guys might have an update. So thank you.

Some of the road diet is expected to to address the issue on Trinity. Not sure what the traffic situation will be once we do the road diet. People will more if it'll convert more traffic down central, I I don't know. That's something we're gonna need to keep. But they'll wait downtown and altogether. Pretty nice. I I'd rather I'd rather close off that whole section between 20th And 15th and make it walking home.

You're talking about slightly different things. I'm trolling. We're talking you're talking about nice nice to close drivers often. You're worried about the businesses. Oh, well, yeah. If you minimize traffic on Central And Trinity to the point where it becomes impossible for them to get through town, they'll just simply avoid it, which will impact the economy downtown. They'll just

go truck route. There'll be two there's still gonna be two lanes going off the hill, so it's not it it shouldn't, know, discourage it that much on on Trinity. But, anyway, we can talk about that.

Any other attendees in the public that would like to ask any questions? Presenter? Is anyone? Thank you, Lisa Hampton. Appreciate your comments, questions. If not, thank you so much for

the presentation and the discussion this evening.

Of course. It's always nice to be here. Appreciate the invite. And if anybody wants to stop by, come talk to me.

Next item on the agenda is, Keith Weigs is going to present, training refresher.

Dang it. Excuse me. I'm getting over bronchitis, so I'm sucking down some lozenges and water. So I apologize for my coughing. So this is a just a refresher that I was asked to provide. And, I know commissioner Creen is, fairly relatively new compared to everybody else, but I think it's a good, refresher for anybody, everybody. And, please feel free to jump in, ask questions as we go through this, or save them to the end. But

more questions you ask, the

more breaks I get. So, so I'll, welcome those. Just to introduce myself, for those that don't know me, I'm, Katie Twitz, the deputy county attorney. I've been with the county, since 2012. And so I've seen a lot of change over, both CDD and planning and zoning in the county as well.

And we have our, relatively new ordinances for chapter 16, the development code, which was totally revamped in which is a very big project that was undertaken by the county and shareholder groups. And we're finding that there are some things that we need to revise as we're using the new code. But generally, duties of the commission are found in chapter eight of the code of ordinances, which chapter eight generally defines all of our, boards and their duties. So it's a very limited scope that says you're essentially covered and do you're the planning and zoning commission, how many commissioners are on the the board. And then we get into chapter 16, which is kind of the bulk of kind of it is the bulk of your your duties.

And under, so this here is a little section sign. So section 16 dash 69 defines the the roles and duties of the commission. So you have advisory roles, you have regulatory roles, and then appellate capacity, which, I've never encountered here, but it's a possibility. So advisory is, you're making recommendations to counsel on chapter 16 changes, which are gonna be like legislative changes to the text of the development code, for major zoning map amendments. The comprehensive and master plans, you heard a lot about that from Dan's presentation.

So that is, something that you will be participating in this year and, making recommendations to council for their approval, as well as landmark and historic district recommendations. And then for regulatory actions, this is where you have final decision making authority. And, if any decision is not, if party is aggrieved by your decision, they then appeal it to the county council, and the county council is the appellate body for the Planning and Zoning Commission. And then like I said, you have the appellate capacity where you would act as the appellate court, so to speak, on any decisions that are appealed from the community development director.

Oh, you said we can interrupt you.

Did you Yes, please. Packets on either of these. No. Correct. I I can send this out. I will send this out as well as I passed out or I did not. Danielle passed out, two examples of final decisions, and the people on Zoom won't see that. So I will send this out to the commission tomorrow including the the samples that I provided. The public does not then get a chance.

I mean, I thought that was why I thought everything that was presented to planning and zoning had the packet had to be part of our

No.

No. Okay. Didn't have it ready. I did this today. So but it is it will be on Zoom and on Granicus, so they can go and do this. And all of the decisions are recorded in the clerk's office. So they are available to the public. It just won't be available as a packet to the agenda. Oh, the decisions are also on the CDD website. So this I took from chapter 16, section one, just to kind of go over the purpose and authority of the development code.

I'm not gonna go through this. I would like I said, I will send it to you or you can look at it in the municipal code. But it's a good foundation from which the commission operates. This this is why you're here. This is the purpose that the community, the commission, and council agree that this is the purpose of the development code.

So what comes before you are both legislative and quasi judicial actions? Legislative are more so thought of like text amendments. So when we do the chapter 16 changes in amendments, the comp plan, all the things that I said are are advisory. You make the advisory, the recommendations to counsel. And then there's quasi judicial, which is what we're gonna focus on in a minute, which is more there's a lot of structure and rules and due process that we have to make sure that we are adhering to to afford everybody their due process rights and their rights to their their property entitlements.

So here's a little chart that kind of excuse me. Very basic sense, defines the difference between legislative. So any legislative is gonna be a community wide large area. So one example is, again, the comp plan, the chapter 16 rewrite. The goal is to establish new rules or laws or policies. Example is passing a new sign code. And the hearing style is flexible. You have to have a public hearing. We do have to have the notice requirements, but nobody is sworn in. You don't take testimony to the public comments.

It's very different to a quasi judicial process where property rights are involved and for either specific properties or projects. You have to apply the rules, the criteria the rules and criteria or the law to the specific facts that are presented to you during the hearing. One example would be, you know, granting or denying a variance. And the hearing style is formal. There are, due process requirements that are based in New Mexico case law and that are codified in our chapter 16. And, you have to make decisions based on the evidence, which is through witness testimony and exhibits.

So for example, our chapter 16 amendments, we they are legislative as a recommendation. They come to this body as a recommendation and then go to counsel for legislative action. Are they being heard as a quasi judicial public hearing? That word? Or are they being heard as a legislative hearing So legislative. With this body? Legislative.

Just a little more definition of what a legislative process is. It's the process of creating or changing the rules or the laws, policies that govern land use. This quote here, excuse me, is from chapter 16 section 72. It's a change in land use policy by decision making body that does not concern a single track parcel or land under common ownership or land predominantly owned by a single person. So including, these are the examples, adoption or change of the development code, the comprehensive plan, or text amendment that's changed to chapter 16, or the comprehensive plan or flu.

And a public hearing is required. Again, we have to have the notice. The public has to have the opportunity to provide public comment, but it is not the procedural requirements of a quasi judicial hearing, which would get into the ex parte communications, the emails, the people coming up to you at a coffee shop or at Smith saying, hey, this I want my thought on this legislative action. That's not gonna be the words they use, but you're gonna be hearing a sign code. And I want to give you my comments on what I think the sign code is.

It's not quasi judicial, so you can hear that. You can get the emails. You can take the phone calls, and people can talk to you about it. Judicial is very different and okay. It's judicial decisions, they involve an application of somebody asking asking for for an entitlement to their property or a project, which is defined by decision criteria in the development code.

And the facts presented at the hearing are is what is decided to determine whether the decision criteria is met or not. The decision criteria is met. The application has to be approved. If it is not met, then the denial is appropriate, and there's an ability to approve with conditions if the conditions are appropriate to the elements. They do require a public hearing. So it's not just open to the public to public comment. It is consistent with the standards of due process, which again, I said are based on New Mexico case law and also codified in our code in section 72. Just got stuck on

the last thing you said before this. If Carl at the supermarket is mad about housing development and wants to yell at you while you're standing in line, that does not need to be reported. Right? You're just listening to Carl, and you don't say anything back.

Right. Because that kind of

thing happens all the time. It's parties. I thought it was parties.

I'm gonna so it's gonna depend. That's gonna be my probably my general answer to any specific question. Yes. If Carl is you know, has no he's not a party. He's not affected by any decision that the body is making. Yes. That's just, you know, they're they're talking to you as a commissioner. Now Carl is a a neighbor to an applicant that is upset about something that is coming to you as a quasi judicial application. That's very different. And, generally, you're not gonna know about that until you have the case before you and then you see them coming and saying, oh, I did talk to them at you know, in the grocery store two months ago when I heard it.

If excuse me. If that's the situation, then, yes, you then when we ask, you know, is anybody having ex parte communications? We need to disclose it. But if you can be fair and impartial and the rest of the commission agrees, like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. We heard this from so and so as well, and that has no impact on the case. I'm gonna decide the case based on what I'm hearing tonight. So long as the body says yes, you're not you're not biased because of that, then that's okay. Okay. That's that's good. Thank you. That's a good question. And small town, everybody knows everybody, and you don't know whose interests are what until you have it in front of you. Right?

So I would, you know, recommend saying, you know, okay. I I don't hear you, but I don't know if this is gonna come before me or not, so I can't speak to you really about the content of it. Just to kinda have some things in the back pocket of this is what I typically tell everybody that comes up to me. So as part of a quasi judicial proceeding, you as a decision making body, you act as judges. And you have to investigate the facts, ascertain the existence of the facts, hold the hearings, weigh the evidence that's presented to you, make findings of fact and conclusions along, and exercise the discretion in the judicial nature.

So you guys are sitting there as quasi judges, which is why it's different than a legislative act where you can hear public comment and talk about it in a more flexible

form. I bring up, unless you're gonna do this later. But there's nothing wrong with asking questions. Just like a judge would ask questions, but what we can't introduce is our own opinion, our own circumstances, because then now you're giving evidence. Correct. Not asking questions. So questions are really what you want to be asking. So pose anything you have query about specific to the facts being presented to you in a question. Does that make sense, particularly some Yes.

But I wanna explore that a little bit.

Lines. This implies that I'm not allowed to look at the property. That's the subject of a variance request.

We are gonna get into that. That would be the recommendation because you're doing your own research. So and that that I do have that on another slide.

So

yes. So if you're inserting your own opinions, your own values, your own research into your decision making process, then it that is not fair. Because not everybody else has the research that you've done, and you are not a witness that is under oath presenting to the commission and be has the ability to be cross examined. So because you're sitting there as a judge, the applicant or staff or even an interested party, a neighbor, can't ask you, okay. Well, now this is your opinion.

You you drove by and you saw this site and you said that it's x. Right? But that's not actually correct. And I want to be able to regret your statement. But you're not under oath, and you're not subject to cross examination. So it makes it an unfair process.

Any questions about that? Can we online have questions about that because we've had some issues around this.

I've had some more.

This is the moment to really dig into this. You know, I guess my only question so the question. I mean, like, I we're all in the same town. I drive past some of the sites. Yeah. Very dangerous for me to close my eyes once I'm driving. So I assume, like, there's a difference between actively going out and and digging up research and driving past something that everybody can see. Right? We Yes. Yes.

That. And that's the perfect and that kind of goes to the quasi. Right? Because you're volunteers, you're citizens, and you're judges, but you also live here. You understand the community, and that is why it's a local board.

That's why we don't go to the courts to have a very rigid formal process for these land use decisions. So yes, a lot small town, we have small acreage considering within our county. So we've probably all driven past probably 90% of the entire county at some given point and are familiar to some degree of every property, majority of properties. The problem would be is if you get your packet and you're like, okay. This case is a variance for a wall, let's say.

Or for

a wall, a retaining wall, something. I haven't seen this before. So now that I have all the the application and staff's report before the hearing, I'm gonna drive by. I'm gonna walk by. I'm gonna look at everybody else, see what the neighborhood looks like because you have the context of the case. So if you're looking at it with the context of the case, then you're doing your own research and you're you're forming opinions. We're all human. We all form our own opinions whether it's good or bad or indifferent. We are creating bias. Say, oh, well, that that looks good.

That doesn't that I I don't think that wall is gonna look great there because what is this neighbor gonna think? And then if that neighbor never shows up, so then you're putting yourself in the neighbor's shoes, but that's not evidence presented to you. So I would say yes. Because you have a familiarity with the property, it's not a problem. It's going out and doing your own research going, okay. Well, this is gonna be a wall. How do I think that wall is gonna look? How do I think that it's gonna fit with the community? What is the neighbors gonna what are the neighbors gonna say? That's going and doing your additional.

So this is just in general. I mean, we've all been through, cases, and you've heard the script. It's very prescribed, and that's for, you know, for due process reasons. This is a very kind of slimmed down understanding of what is required. So we have to have a quorum, which is at least five members. You have to be impartial. You can't have involved yourself in the decision or or the discussion of it. If you do have an opinion and you can't put your opinion aside, then you cannot be you're not impartial. You have to recuse yourself. Or if you have a an interest in it.

If you if you are a prop you own some property in that project or any kind of financial or other conflict of interest, you're gonna have to recuse yourself from that. And I think that's probably part of the reason why we have nine commissioners because it is a small town, and we may have conflicts where we have people have to recuse themselves, but we still need to have five. So you have to be impartial. You're a fact finding body. Again, you're sitting as judges.

You're approving or denying the applications that come before you based on the criteria that is in chapter 16 and the evidence that's presented to you at the hearing. You have to disclose your conflicts and ex parte communications. So that's kinda the beginning of the hearing where the chair goes through. Has anybody done any of this? Any you know, you need to disclose that now. Then you have, excuse me, the evidence portion of the case. Everybody that presents to the commission has to be sworn. They have to be sworn to tell the truth. They have to be subject to cross examination. So that includes staff presentation.

It includes the applicant, any of the applicant's witnesses. Sometimes it's developer with some architects or, maybe just the property owner and a spouse or, you know, co property owner that's there. Any other interested party in the public has to come in and be sworn and, again, subject to cross examination. And that goes back to the the comment that I made that, you know, you as commissioners that are acting as judges, you're not subject to cross examination. But if a neighbor that's affected or a a member of the public that is not within the 300 feet is either for or against the application, They are also subject to cross examination.

So if somebody comes out and says, I don't think you should approve this because of x. I live you know, it's a it's a parcel in White Rock, but it's somebody in Los Alamos that is saying, I don't think you should approve this. They're not affected because they're not within the 300 feet. Then the applicant can cross examine that member of the public and say, okay. Well, you're saying this is not good for the public welfare.

Like, you gave no examples, didn't you? Right? You the the applicant can cross examine that person to kind of flush that out for you as the judges to determine whether or not that testimony is relevant and credible to whether or not the the criteria is met by the application. And here, you may ask questions of the parties. So you also have the ability and and judges do this too in in court.

If the parties don't do a good enough job of answering all the questions, you have the opportunity to ask questions. And they have to be based on the criteria and based on the evidence presented. So if you feel there's a gap in the evidence where, let's say, a variance where it talks about, you know, the hardship is not self imposed. And you don't feel like it was fully flushed out through both the applicant and the staff's report, you can ask about that and say, okay. Well, how did you know?

I don't know what the question would be. But, you know, that could be your question is, you know, explain to me how this is not self imposed when you're the one that laid the concrete there, and now you wanna take it off. Right? Like, I I that's very vague. But but that's where you, as the have the opportunity to kind of, you know, drill it down. Like, if you don't think the criteria has been met, ask the questions to that criteria. It's not based on your own view, your own research, your own opinions. It's based on the evidence, and you need to be able to show that what they presented was not sufficient to meet the criteria through your questioning. Can I rephrase what I heard from that?

If I just put it I brought it down

a lot, it is if you're going

to vote no on something, you need to justify or, like, explain. That

That's yeah. But Yes. That's one part of it. But, also, if you're gonna vote yes. You know, if probably more for the criteria. Yes. Yes. So if you if there's something that you don't feel is appropriately addressed, you have the ability as a commissioner to ask the question to flush that out.

Staff recommends denial. Does commission need to find a reason and criteria to then question our denial, or can they just vote with the note with staff recommendation up to that? We we try not to ever bring something to them with denial without working with the applicant to where we would need to deny something. But But they have the right to process. If we deny it, they still have the right to the public hearing as long as there is a complete application.

So if we recommend denial, does commission also need to find a criteria or ask questions? How how does that how does that type of case go go through? How do they vote on those type?

That's a

good question. Yeah. So that it is a good point that even though staff works really hard to get everything met and through both IDRC and just kind of flushing things out through the process. There may be a situation where staff says, nope. We don't think you've meet the criteria for x-ray variance. It is not this is clearly self imposed. Let's go with that. The the applicant still has a right to bring it to you, and you're gonna have two competing packets, essentially. You're gonna have the application and their testimony, which says the why. And you're gonna have staff's presentation and testimony as to the why not.

And you as the judges are going to have to weigh that evidence and say, okay. What is what is relevant? What is credible? Why why are they in conflict? And then you ought to make a decision. So if you, in that situation, go with the applicant, you're gonna, through your deliberations, say, no. It's very clear. The applicant made the case for it and all criteria are met because of ABCD. Even though staff says it wasn't met, we discredit or we don't feel like that is relevant because the staff the applicant came in with an architect or or whatever it is that is more credible in your eyes as to the why. And when I say credible, that's a legal standard.

It's not saying that you don't believe Danielle or, you know, Desiree. It's just when you're looking at the evidence, the evidence before you is more credible, not the the person themselves. So it's technical, technical, research. You're not saying staff is not credible. It's you're looking at the evidence presented and one side or the other is that the evidence is more credible, and that is what you are going to vote on. Ms. Bernalke, you had a question. I think need it. Okay. So then you close the evidence, you close the case, and then you deliberate.

And your decision has to be a majority of the members, but no less than four. So so if we just had who was present in the room here tonight, so we only have five, so we have a quorum. Let's say nobody was online, and it's a three two vote. That is not of the minimum of four, so that's deemed a denial. And one of the, examples I did get I gave to you, one of our orders recently is that and those denials can be are subject to appeal to county council.

So have to have so going back to the top of this, we have to have at least five members present for a quorum. Ideally, we have all nine every time. But we know that we may have, you know, absences and vacancies at some point. But the ability to have nine gives the applicant the the ability not to be stuck with a three two vote because we have to have a minimum of five present to hear the case before have to approve it. And the way the code is written for the the decision criteria is the shall you shall approve if the application is in conformity with the criteria.

So if the evidence shows that all the criteria has been met, have to approve it even if you don't like it. That's just the way the law is. You can approve the conditions. Only if those conditions reasonably are necessary to meet the criteria. We see if not very many cases with conditions, and I think that's because staff does a really good job working with the applicant through the process before it gets to you to say, let's just get this all tied up with a bow so we can all be on the same page and say, yes, the criteria has been met.

And then you deny if the if the evidence shows that the application is not in conformity with the criteria. And then once you make a decision, we have to have findings. We have to have an order or recommendation if it's going to counsel. I kinda touched on this, but just wanted to add a little more. So we have to have a clean record.

This is, again, due process rights and they're subject to appeal. And so when case is appealed, it's an on the record appeal so that they can't the appellant cannot present new evidence at the next level of the appellate review. And it's just an on the record review. So the record needs to be as clear as possible. That's why we have such a prescribed script or a prescribed order of the case.

And sometimes just because we're human and we like to talk, sometimes we can talk over each other. It's not intentional or or rude. It's just the way normal conversations happen. But if we ever had to get it transcribed, so if it were to go up to district court or to the court of appeals so let's just play this out a little bit. So if you hear a case, you have a final decision, and it gets appealed to account to county council.

County council will be the appellate body. They hear an on the record review. If the if a party does not like that decision, then they go to district court. District court is also another appellate review on the record review. And from there so all two of those appeals to county council and to district court are automatic if the if somebody appeals it. They have a right to an appeal. It's an automatic right to appeal. From the district court, they can appeal to the court of appeals, but it's discretionary for the court to take it at that point. And then same for state supreme court. So if if they were to go all the way up to the state supreme court, we're gonna have to have a transcript.

We're gonna have to have a bound record with all the exhibits. And so we need to have a really clear record. So when I don't know if you've ever read a trans a transcription, but if people talk over each other, there's a lot of inaudible kind of in brackets. It sentences that are cut off, and then there's a yes in the middle of there, but you don't know what they're saying yes to because they're cutting each other off. So we need to really try to have a really clear record in the chance that it does go up.

So what that means is, you know, all the parties that are present, their witnesses, and anybody else who intends to speak, one, they must be sworn in. So the cross examination again. They should not speak to each other during the hearing. You shouldn't say, hey, what's the answer to that? That's where you say, I'm gonna let Danielle speak to that.

And you don't say, this is what I think you should say. Right? Like so it's, again, to keep the record clear. And then also because we're doing Zoom a lot and we have some parties or witnesses on Zoom, it's also makes it a lot clearer because if you're not at the microphone, it's not gonna be picked up on Zoom as well. And so somebody might not be able to hear something, so we need to make sure that we're we're just trying to talk one person at a time.

Not speak over each other. And then if the evidence and testimony, if the case hasn't been closed, the commission has the ability to recall witnesses to kind of flush something out. And the parties can do that too. So, like I said, if the the applicant wants to talk to the member of the public that doesn't live in the same vicinity and say, okay. Well, you you testified to this.

Now I wanna call you back up, and I want to cross examine you, and I wanna I wanna rebut that. I want not only did I cross examine them, but I wanna rebut that with some additional evidence because they opened up the door to talk about this. Right? All the exhibits must be presented during the hearing, and anything that you relied upon has to be part of the record. So, again, kind of thinking of the record being transcription, the video, and then the documents so that if we have to create a record, we're gonna have a binder that goes up to the appellate body.

So for your deliberations, the decision criteria is your road map. Every application that comes before you is outlined in the development code, and it tells you what that criteria is. So that part's easy. You don't have to think about what you are applying the facts to. It's given to you in the in the development code.

You have to consider those who wish to be considered a party. So everybody within the 300 foot radius is a party by by law, by our law. We also have the ability for somebody that to come forward to say, I am not within the 300 feet, but I will be affected negatively or or positively by this decision. And I have standing, so you should hear from me as a party. So you get to determine whether or not they are a party or if they're just a member of the public.

And then the the level of weight you give that testimony should matter because if you're an affected party, the weight of the testimony goes up. If you're a member of the public, it's still it's still important, but if you're not an affected party that has standing.

May I ask who's a member of the what other people have standing is other than three hundred foot radius, what I'm hearing you say is it can be a little vague. Yes. Yep.

And it again, it's gonna depend. But that that will be so, like, for the instance where I said if the application is for in White Rock and somebody from Los Alamos is wanting to to be recognized as a party, And they don't, through their testimony, explain how they should have standing as opposed to just being a member of the public. And I would say probably 95 to 99% of the people that are gonna come before you are not gonna say, I'm I have standing and I'm gonna be affected by this. So you're gonna have to listen to what they're telling you. Is it, yeah, I think this is a great project or no, I think this is a bad project because it's gonna increase traffic, and I don't like traffic.

Now if they don't articulate that they have standing, that they're not gonna be affected, that's where you can ask the questions and say, okay. You know, you stated that you live in Los Alamos. You stated that you are not a fan of this project because of traffic, but how will that impact you? How will that impact you as a property owner or, within you're you're not within the 300 feet, so tell me how this will impact you. If they can't articulate that, then, again, if they're more of a member of the public, giving public comment than somebody that has standing.

I'll ask a question about neighbors within 300 feet are given an opportunity to comment on this request. If no one comments, is that strong evidence of support experience, Or is that should should that be regarded as just apathy and no evidence at all?

I Yeah. It depends. So let me so let let's turn to one of these examples. And for the people on Zoom, I apologize. I'll send you a copy of this tomorrow. But looking at let's see. I think it's on both. Let me get this and then add to that. So for the order on application variance twenty twenty five zero zero one five. So we go through kind of the introductory information and then on page two.

So we say, you know, present for the applicant was the property owner. Present for the community development department, bless you, was Desiree Livan and Danielle Valdez. Number six, no one present in opposition to the application. That could read no one present in opposition or In support. In support.

Right. And so you could the the ability to comment everybody gets we send a notice in mail. We provide notice in the paper. And we pro depending on the type of the case, there might be a sandwich board near the property as well. And there and there's notice at the municipal building at the library.

And the agendas are posted out here at both libraries. And then fifteen days prior to the meeting, people within 300 feet received the letter. It's published within the LA Daily Post, and I put a sign that's as big as me outside of the. So I would nobody showed up in opposition or in support, but the majority of when people do show up, it's in opposition. So I think if that were the case I mean, in some cases, and I don't know if it's been any that we've had recently, some commissioners have asked staff, have you received any comments about this case?

And that's a that's a yes or no question. Right? So they can answer that. But if they were to say, oh, no. I've received no nobody's reached out to me to to ask any questions about the process or in opposition or in support.

If they did say yes, and I received 10 letters and this like, those aren't that's not presented in the evidence because they can't be cross examined. So unless the a party brings those in to say kinda like a petition, you know, this guy and we've seen this in certain circumstances where the applicants will actually bring letters from their immediate property owner, neighbors, that say, you know, not only did they have the right to be here tonight, but they provided notarized affidavits or letter saying, I'm in support of this. I'm the direct neighbor. I'm the one that's gonna be the most impacted, and I have no problem with that.

Do you

advise the applicants that they should gather such

support from

their neighbors, or do they

I don't think that's anything we advise because they have the right to show up. That everybody within everybody within that 300 feet has the right to show up.

And some sort of comments, is that acquiescence by the neighbors, or is that his interest or apathy?

From a legal standpoint, it's no evidence. You have no evidence because nobody showed up.

You should not allow that to factor in for decision making. That's what you're saying to me.

It's a fact that nobody showed up.

So we had But you're

saying it's not evidence.

It's not evidence. No one showed up. So we we include in our presentations when we're when we're discussing the case with with the commission. If we've received any type support or non support of the, you know, objection of the request. So we always include that.

We don't include what, you know, the actual letter in the packet, but we can inform you that we received 10 letters of support or 10 letters of denial. We received a phone call at one point on one of these cases recently where the lady said, well, your letter said to call if we have an issue, and I don't have an issue. So we didn't we don't if you don't have an issue, we assume that you don't have an issue. Because if you did have an issue, you would make it known. But, again, it's neither support nor non support. Or

While we're doing a variance request, what you're telling me is I should get my neighbors to provide evidence of support, some kind of letters of support. Or to show up. Show up and say, yes. Do this because it'll make the neighborhood better.

Yes. I just subject mean generally understood. They're subject to cross examination. If if you were my neighbor that that showed up that said that, you as a commission might say, okay, why do you think it's gonna be better? Because you're friends with them? Right? Like So I mean, it's gotta go to the criteria. It's not just because, yes, you're my friend, you're my neighbor, and I don't oppose it. It has to go to the criteria. So even if people did show up to support it, say, yes, I think that'll be great for the neighborhood, but it's not a enumerated criteria. You can't consider that because it's irrelevant.

One more question. I'll reserve it till the end of the training. Okay.

I might cover it, but if not, like, that's great.

A couple of things. One, party is the person within 300 feet. That's a defined role. You have a legal standing Yes. If you're within 300 feet, and we make extra effort to get ahold of those people and let them know more so than anybody else. Yes. So I think that's important. Commissioner Brown actually had his hand up. So, commissioner Brown, do you have a question or a comment? Your hand was up earlier.

It was actually covered because the notices went out to all parties within the 300 feet. So the question that, was proposed is that people that were going to show up was gonna be in support or nonsupport. So if all parties that were involved within the 300 feet were notified and no one shows up, that means they were notified and they are in agreeance. So I think the only issue would be for those who, show up in opposition.

We probably should I mean,

opposition or or approval, like, how the neighbors feel about it is not the majority is kind of what I'm hearing you saying is my interest is, like, not really the thing to be focusing on because it's the criteria.

Correct. So even if you had 10 people, 15, a 100 people show everybody within 300 feet show up, give their own personal opinion about this variance, that they're gonna put a wall, a retaining wall up. If their opinions do not go to the criteria, then they're irrelevant Even though they're parties. Whether they're support or Yes.

In favor or not in favor. So

yeah. So so even here. So we say we let's figure out who's the party. And then parties have the right to to testify. But then you have to weigh their evidence. So is it just, I think the wall's pretty, and they're gonna put a mural on it, and I like the way they paint. And I think that's gonna be great for my my neighbor and my community and my neighborhood because we like art. That has nothing to do with the criteria. Another way to

put it is I think a lot of us who are sitting on these boards, I certainly, when I first sat here, feel like public comment or public weighing in is like a boat. It feels like a boat. Right? So you get five people who like the fence and four people don't, you're like, well, I'm making my decision, but that's not how we should be doing it at all. Correct. Yeah.

That's legislative. You can you can think of it that way legislatively because it's not criteria. If you're, you know, looking at the comp plan, then it's people giving you their thoughts about what the community should look like. Right? But, again, it's not a it's not a contest.

Yeah. Although, even in the comp plan, if you get 20 people who like a thing or don't like a thing and 10 people who don't, that is a tiny fraction of public. You really shouldn't treat that as a voting. Right.

Just because 10 people showed up over a 100 in one way or the

other, it's a

town of 20,000 people. So

what do we do?

And I know we've run into this problem in the past and had some spirited discussions when when the cases. But I like, for I would say most of the cases that we see, criterion a has to do with, you know, it doesn't, affect the or negatively affect the health, safety, and welfare of I don't know what the the community or the, you know, the surrounding like, the nearby whatever. Yeah. And it's, extremely subjective whether or not something affects the health, the safety welfare, and safety of the county. And so I think that's where we run into a lot of problems, especially when we're dealing with testimony from members of the public or parties.

And because the commission is made up of multiple people and each person might interpret what that means differently, how do we make sure that whatever decision we make has a solid justification that kind of shuts down the subjectivity of that criterion.

It's a great question. It's gonna depend. But that part of the purpose of the purpose here is this section, which is the very first section of chapter 16, talks about the purpose and authority of abuse regulations. And, yes, the first one is health safety and welfare of the county. But then you also kind of there was way too many words, so I tried to where it's not full citations.

I did the ellipsis, so don't think that I'm trying to hide anything from you. I'm just gonna fit it along here. But this is a good starting point as to what that means under the development code and for the county. That has been adopted by both by, you know, the Planning and Zoning Commission and the the council. To answer your question specifically, I mean, I think if if nine people are hearing different things as to what their criteria or what the evidence is, if some like, say you had nine nine people standing.

Every nine every person of the nine has a different view of that application as it relates to criteria one, and every commissioner falls in line with one. That's where you're gonna have to identify, okay, who what evidence is relevant, and credible, and what are we making our decision on? Because if you have nine different people testifying, you're gonna have to decide. And if they're all different, you're gonna have to decide who your vote who you're saying is the most credible to the criteria to base your decision on. So that's gonna be part

of your

deliberations. So kinda and you guys do that where you say, okay. Criteria one, this. And then we say, okay. Well, that usually, the staff and the applicant are all in sync. You say, okay. Well, it's, you know, clear clearly defined in the application and the staff report. Nobody else was there to provide testimony in in favor or in opposition, and we agree that that that criteria has been met. If you have nine different opinions, you're gonna have to decide amongst all nine of you how you're going to decide that criteria has been met by the evidence presented. And as I recall, to keep us all out

of the in the future, there are no minority opinions that get written up into the findings of fact.

Right. And that's why I brought these because I think if you're chair, you see these, or if you're vice chair acting as chair in the absence, you get to you get to work with me on these. But the rest of the commission, I don't think sees these. So I wanted to give you an idea of what it what I need to be able to write this. So, again, for the people online, I apologize, but I will get that to you tomorrow. So yeah. So if there's it's it's the majority opinion, which has to be at least four. And if you look at the the twenty twenty five fifteen, there is no there is no decision. We I go through kind of the introductory, what happened. It was a forum.

We did the notice. We did all that. But there were no findings because there was no majority because it was a three to two vote. And that it under the code is deemed a denial. So there there is nothing. I couldn't even put in there, well, three people thought this and two people thought that because that's not a decision. Okay. So we we have a party. We we look at the evidence. Is who's credible?

Is there is there expertise? Is it bias? Is it and then we apply the facts, the evidence that was presented at the case to the law, which is the decision criteria. And that's where you go through and decide what facts that were presented as evidence meet criteria one, criteria two. And if everybody's on the same page and you agree with all of that, that makes it really easy.

But when there's dissension, both either in the parties or in the commission, that's where we can question out. What are we voting on? Because if you if four of you say there's five of you and four of you say, yes, it was met, but there was conflicting evidence between the applicant staff and an interested party, I don't know what you're basing the decision on. And if it gets appealed, the appellate body is gonna say, you what did you base your decision on? And it's gonna get kicked back.

Okay. So what is evidence? There's four different types. Testimonial, that's the main thing that we deal with where you give oral statements under oath. Your documentary evidence, which is the the application, the staff report, you know, the plats, the traffic study, and impact study. All of those things that are submitted as part of the application that are part of your packet are the documentary evidence. There's demonstrative evidence. Those are visual aids. And when Dan was doing his presentation, I was like, oh, this is perfect. When you did that flyover, that's a very good demonstrative piece of evidence.

It's just a visual aid. It's not kinda based in fact. It's just something to give you an idea of it's conceptual, to give you an idea of what we're talking about. And we have physical evidence, and there's not really anything that I would think from a planning and zoning. But, like, if we were in in court, it could be it could be the gun. Right? It could be the the contract. It could be something that, you know, the phone, what whatever that is is the tangible physical evidence. We generally don't have that in these cases, but I'm trying to think of something that, like, maybe there might be a model, but, again, that's demonstrative. Demonstrative.

So I don't know what would be visible. But that is a type of evidence, so I wanted to include it. And then what must you consider and what can you not consider? So we've we've kind of gone over this and just gonna go over this slide. But if there's more questions, I'm happy to to answer. So you have to consider evidence presented by the parties that is part of the record. So once you open the case, introduce the the parties, the parties take an oath, and you start the introduction of evidence. What they tell you is evidence. What they present to you, the application, the staff report, the drainage plans, the architectural plans, that is evidence. That must be considered.

The testimony under oath by all of the parties. So, again, the applicant, any of their agents or witnesses, architect, It might be somebody that owns their property and their family member is the one that built something. They built sometimes they see variances after the fact. It's because they did it and didn't have the permission to do it. So it might be bringing, you know, a spouse or a family member that said, yes.

I built that wall and this is what I did. But I, as a property owner, can't speak to that, so I have a witness who did that for me. That is a witness of a party. And all ever all evidence presented in the case. So from the time you open the case to the time you close it, that is the evidence. It's not your own research. It's not your it's not the deliberations. The deliberations are not evidence. That is what has to be considered. That evidence has to be applied to the criteria. What you cannot consider is anything outside of the record. So emails, phone calls, that were not introduced during opening and closing of that case. Cannot do your own research. We kinda talked about that. You can't go out and say, like, for variance.

Like, we I think you guys just got a report from staff today about variances. You can't bring that up during deliberations and say, well, we got this report from staff about variances, and we're proving too many or we're denying too many. None of that is evidence. And rules and criteria that is not applicable or does or don't exist. So you cannot deny an application for failure to meet a standard that is not part of the decision criteria.

So, you know, if this retaining wall is brown, but you want it to be white, That's not a criteria, so you can't deny it because of that. Or if there's a fence requirement and they wanna do a chain link fence and you don't like chain link fences, you want it to be vinyl. So you're denying it because of that. That is not part of the criteria. That is reversible error that if appealed can be reversed.

We already talked about it, but any any other questions on that? I can see hands on this screen, so there's not. And

that has to do with, an opinion of mine that would be desirable that, during these requests,

we heard when there

are at least seven members present of the planning zoning commissioners. My question is, what would it take to change the rules such that you have to hear the finance request when there are seven rather than a five?

So that would be a code change. So we'd have to change chapter 16 through a text amendment through a legislative process, which would be a recommendation to counsel to adopt. We could talk about the pros and cons of that. You know, do we wanna limit it to only variances? Because there's property rights associated with everything, site plans, like, the developments.

We saw a lot of cool stuff about possible developments, which could bring out a lot of support and opposition and maybe not, or even dissension amongst the commission. And would seven be appropriate for site funds? Would seven be appropriate for everything or just variances? The thing that we would need so that's that's the mechanism to do it is to do it through a text amendment to change to chapter 16.

Who would initiate that? Is that through

the planning and zoning commission, or is it initiated somewhere else?

It would be initiated through staff if that was the request from the commission.

So it's

it's a matter of curiosity. Right.

And and there are practical things that play into that as well because, you know, the applicants have the right to have their application heard. So if we can't get seven because things happen, there's, you know, vacation sickness, fill in the blank of why I can't be here tonight. And if we can't get seven at any given point, how long is it till they get their hearing?

Not necessarily advocating. This is Yeah.

And I and I'm not I don't have a position either way. I don't have a position either way either. But just kind of those are the things that when you're thinking about those kind of changes, we need to think about not only from the the four having to pass. Right? But also, like, the rights of the applicants and the reality of we haven't had we didn't have a full commission for a while. And even a couple when Commissioner Adler was chair, I think we were short for a while.

I'm satisfied with it.

Yeah. So it's just hard. So those kind of unintended consequences. Follow-up. There is a mechanism that under the code, have the ability to reschedule a hearing within twenty one days without having to repost. We did that in one of these cases. So that is that is one remedy that if, you know, we're here and there's only five and the applicant's okay with it, that is one remedy to try to get all nine within the twenty one days. So there that there is that kind of off ramp that might save

you of seven would be acceptable for approval of that.

But she won't know the vote until you close the case. So the decision, you have financing conclusions. It's a requirement under under the law, under state law and and case law. So these are these are some just some pointers that, you know, maybe you wanna make a checklist organizing and tracking the evidence in your mind or on paper and testimony to say, okay, you know, Katie said this and I I think that's a really good point, and I agree with that. And it wasn't it wasn't disputed or refuted by anybody.

So, you know, Katie's testimony to criteria one, you know, it meets. Again, when everybody's on the same page, it's really easy. But when you have a lot of parties and a lot of dissension or opposition, it might be helpful to do that, you know, as you're sitting there, you know, on your bench as a judge to kinda track the evidence. Because it's coming at you. It's and it's you're we're gonna close it and then you're gonna be like, oh my gosh.

Who who said that and oh my gosh. So some way of tracking that. You unanimously determine that a certain criterion has been satisfied, provide a brief summary, touch on each criterion. We already talked about that. And here's kind of a template that, you know, criteria one, pass or has not been met because blank, which we saw and heard in testimony from blank. And we will disregard the testimony from blank because blank. Right? They're not within the 300 feet and what they provided was not relevant to the criteria. Something as simple as that. Again, it's not it's not towards the person.

You're not discrediting the person. You're you're taking their testimony and applying it to criteria. So it's not a person. Almost done. So common mistakes.

And this is this is nationwide. This is not from this commission. This is common mistakes of quasi judicial bodies. And they often stem from not understanding the legal requirements, which make sense because you're not law you're not lawyers and you're not judges, which is why we do the trainings and and try to go through all of this. So failure to address the the decision criteria, you're not explaining how the application, the facts that were presented through the evidence, meet the law, the decision criteria, discussing irrelevant issues, bringing up personal views or speculation that was not formally introduced as evidence, inappropriately considering opinions and views instead of the evidence presented, Ex parte communications or independent research.

You can gather your own facts that are not formally introduced into the record. Every everyone and everything must be subject to cross examination. Failure to articulate findings of fact and conclusions of law or making a vague decision. If you were to do that, I, you know, would chime in and ask for more clarification. But if you as a majority of the body says, no. This is our decision. I have to write it from that and it will be vague. And vagueness can be arbitrary and capricious and subject to appeal and reversible error. So if I'm asking you for clarification, it's not because I disagree with you or I'm not challenging you. I just need something to be able to put into the order.

And if I don't have that, it it will be very vague and probably subject to appeal. Everything is subject to appeal, subject to reversal. And then I touched on this, trying to change the law or criteria. You can't you don't have the ability to change the law during a clause

in judicial proceeding. In a

legislative action, you have the advisory recommendation authority to do that. Counsel will approve it or not. But you can't ignore the law or change the law because of your personal views or because of you believe you know, you you really felt compelled by what somebody testified to if it's not part of the law. You don't get to change the law. This is what's included, very basic in the order and introduction, the findings of fact, and the decision.

And I provided so the first one was the nondecision. Just to let you know, I think, Danielle mentioned a couple of meetings ago that we do have some going on appeal, and it's the two nondecisions are going to appeal, to counsel. So counsel will be the appellate body for those. And then the other one is the twenty five seventeen. I think these are both variances just because we've had a lot of variances lately. And this one just kinda shows the full you know, all of the criteria, all of the evidence, and, shows you kind of what an order looks like that I work with the chair on to, to get signed.

Can you tell me at which meeting, those appeals will be heard?

They're not scheduled yet.

They're not scheduled.

I have a question about the postponement that that you If so we we walk through the criteria, you know, and it becomes pretty clear who's going to vote yes or no. And if it emerges during that debate that it looks like there's gonna be there's five people in a yesno vote like happened here, you could actually post but you could probably move to postpone, right, if it looks like it's going to be messy.

The yes.

So you

have the ability to continue the case. The the wrinkle there is let's say there was only five commissioners for the first part, right, for today's case, and then we postpone it for another two weeks, and then we have a full commission. Those other four members were not here the first case. So they can't chime in now because they weren't part of first case. So it is something to continue like, where I would recommend you doing that is if it's we have a lot of parties.

We have a lot of testimony, and it's late in the night. And, you know, we're we're yawning. Everybody's getting kind of frustrated. And, you know, the later the night gets, you know, we we tend to stop listening. And I don't think it's because we don't want to. It's just the the The reality the of it. Yeah. That we have other things. Right? We have other lives outside of this. And so that is where I think it would be appropriate to continue to another night to say, okay. We have a lot of we still haven't got to four parties. Right? Like, we've done all of this, and we still have four more people that are gonna provide testimony. It's 08:00.

Let's reconvene in two weeks. So if you're doing it to try to get more commissioners, that is very tricky because the other commissioners didn't hear the beginning of it. And that would be transfer an appeal to say, well, these four didn't hear it, and now they voted this way. So now I'm challenging that because they weren't here on this day. I was just pulling up section where we do have the ability to postpone for twenty one days.

It's full language, but so it says a public hearing for which notice has been given may be rescheduled to a later date, a day not more than twenty one days than the originally scheduled hearing without repetition of notice. So we don't have to go through all of the the mailings and all of that again. Those of the new date, time, and place of the rescheduled hearing shall be prominently displaced displayed, excuse me, or otherwise communicated at the originally scheduled meeting. So it doesn't talk about the the when or the the why, but there there are logistical issues to think about if we're trying to get more commissioners. I wouldn't recommend doing that in the middle of the hearing.

I have another question if I need about appeals. People can use appeals in a malicious way. Is there a limit to them?

Is there a way to No. They can use litigation in a malicious way too. They're, you know, in real court. There there is an application fee, to appeal, because it does require a lot of staff time to get a record. It it's kind of it's it's not reflective of the time that we put into it. But it it Oops. Yeah. So staff has to get the record ready, which is all of the evidence, the the video. At at this level, we don't do a transcription. And if it goes to the court, we will. So it's, you know, getting the the the audio, the video, all

of

the exhibits, all the notice, all all that stuff. Then there's requirements to provide briefing. So there's a briefing schedule where the applicant has to submit a brief explaining why it it why they're appealing it, what criteria why they should get what they want, whether it's approval or denial. Because, again, this could be the neighbor. Like, let's say you do approve the application, and the neighbor is very upset about it and doesn't think the criteria was met. So the neighbor could have filed the appeal and explained why the criteria was applied inappropriately. So there's a briefing schedule, and then you have to come to counsel, argue that. So it's not I mean, there you have skin in the game. Right. That helps.

There are some states, I believe, that are that are limiting, I mean, awareness that are limiting the ability to heal consciously forever. I can't remember which ones. I think maybe California has some legislation. I think New Mexico maybe can.

Yeah. It'd be interesting to see what is, you know, categorized as maliciously. I think that's really hard to No. I think it I

don't think it I don't think

the word malicious is in there. I think

it just has a date and, like, number of appeals and then Yeah. Yeah.

Like I said, you have an appeal of right to county council and the district court. From there, then it's discretionary for the court of appeals to take it. So that that I don't think would change. That's under state law. The other the last thing is I assume, but what you do when you assume.

So I'm going to show you where to find the code because I added some language in the code into the presentation, but, you might not know where the code is. So let so let's say we're at the the county county government website, just the home page. And, if you scroll down to the bottom, down here by get involved, municode,

click that.

It'll bring you to, everything that's been codified. So we have our charter, which is part one, which is like the county's constitution. So the state has a constitution and the state has statutes. We have our charter, which is like our constitution, and then we have our ordinances, which are the laws. So, when you go down to chapter 16, this is the development code. And it it's all the good stuff's in here. So, if you ever wanted to read it in its entirety or, you know, a certain section as opposed to reading a citation or a quote in another document, this is where you can find it.

And

I'm done. If you guys too much, you have more questions.

Oh, thank you very Really appreciate it. Hope you feel better.

I feel better. I just don't

Well,

it's not. Awesome.

So then we're moving on to the commission and director communications. Do we have a department report?

We do not, but we have the on plan tech and steering committee meetings next week. Our consultants will be in town. And then February, our historic consultants will be in town. And that is we are moving along. Also, Katie showed you where to find the code. We're currently working on article five and article one, but article one is not very, sensitive. So look at article five, you know, take a look at it, see if there's anything that you see that is confusing. Let us know if we can address it. And it might be something that we, you know, that we need to change if it's confusing for you. It's probably confusing for everyone.

So, yeah, let us know. So that's really it. Happy New Year. I'm glad to see all of you.

I'll just like to add that I do need your 2026 disclosure forms. If you have not submitted them, please get them to me by Friday. And thank you for everybody who has done that.

For the chair's report, I just wanna welcome Commissioner Hampton back.

Very happy

to have you. As you all know or may not know, Commissioner Hill resigned after the last meeting. 2026 looks like anticipating a full schedule, especially with all the comprehensive plan activities. So I just wanna stress the importance of the commissioner's attendance. Is pretty disrespectful to our community members, the applicants, and the staff when we don't show up.

So if you're not able to attend a meeting, if you could let reach out to staff and let them know such that if we don't have a quorum, then we can just call the meeting. You know, we just kinda went through some of the issues we ran into last year by not having people show up. Obviously, we would love to have people in person, but I also understand why that is problematic for people. So appreciate everybody being here and the attention tonight. I know this is going longer than we usually do, but the important the information that was conveyed was very, very important. So thank you all for being here. The next meeting, we'll have are we gonna have our next meeting in two weeks?

We don't have any cases right now. So we're we were gonna discuss whether or not, we had additional trainings. I don't think we do. Presentation by transportation, we can add that to the next, to the following meeting if that's the only, item on the agenda.

It's

up to you and the commission. We can do that however you prefer.

And then the next meeting, whenever it is, is that you all need to consider, election for chair and vice chair. So consider if you're interested, send me a message.

Agent's face.

And then you

have three people. If if other commissioners are not aware, we have three people whose terms are ending in March, but one of them gets to reapply. And so, really, we're looking at two open positions. So if you can consider people in the community that you think would be interested in contributing in this way, please get direct them to staff on how to make that application, or you can go on to the website. That is all we have. So, counselor Cole, thank you for sticking it out with us.

Oh, they're being short.

Yeah. Very interesting too. So we've had two meetings since the beginning of the the calendar year. The the first meeting, we elected councilor Reidy as chair for 2026 and councilor Herman for as vice chair. So I I stepped down from that.

And, also, the other thing that I was trying to remember what else we did at that meeting. And the other thing that we did was we approved salary changes for all of the elected officials with the exception of the sheriff. And and the clerk is we're gonna consider that later. So, yeah, that was that was kind of important. And then we had a work session last night, where we reviewed a number of things.

Didn't make any decisions because it was a work session. We the regional development corporation did their annual report and talked about what their plans are for 2026. We had a a presentation on the North Mesa recreation plan, a big project. They broke it down into different phases. Total dollar figure on that is, like, 12,600,000.0, so it may take a number of years for that to actually occur.

And, actually, we didn't approve it. We I think we'll be looking at that on the twenty seventh. So don't

know

if if any of the counselors will have any reservations about that. We did talk about a a commission for the metropolitan redevelopment areas. Right now, there was a con a few concerns that were brought up by the public about the the council serving as that commission versus having a separate commission made up of members of the public. So we had some discussion about that. I don't know if that will come back as an agenda item at a at a meeting where we would make some kind of decision.

It's kinda hard to tell which way folks were leaning. And then oh, second to last was a waste to energy plant down in down in outside of Espanola. We're talking about they would like our trash. Want us to ship our trash to them. They have a process where they will expect to generate 10 megawatts of power on a daily basis.

So using 200 tons a day of trash, we would contribute about 60 to 80 tons. Yeah. That that's still in the planning stages and the design stages, so I'm not sure where that's gonna be. And then we had a a long discussion on performance indicators, just giving some feedback to a manager on what we think should be measured this year, and that's gonna be in discussion probably for a little bit longer. And I think that was it for last night. Any questions that y'all have

for me? That's it. A question.

Have you had any of the Diamond properties? Across

from the high school? Mhmm. The only thing I'm hearing is more food trucks potentially that, and and that the parking was supposed to be temporary, I thought. So those are the only two things that I've heard that are just we haven't received any specific requests.

I would just thank you for your previous Sure. Volunteer as a chair.

I have to I have to pull back a little bit. I have to just kinda yeah. Last night was was rough because we went till 10:00. So A little bit after ten. So We'll try to get you out.

No. You're good. This is good. It's gonna be early. Okay.

You be our liaison?

Oh, I'm sorry. So liaison, there's a a proposal that councilor Reidy sent Artira Reidy sent out. Right now, it shows councilor Haberman as the planning and zoning liaison. That'll be finalized on the twenty seventh. He's get he's getting feedback from counselors. I know there's been at least one change. And since councilor Haberman is out of town, I don't know if she's had an opportunity to to respond. So, we're not, like, you know, trying to not be using that impression. So, yeah, it's more who's who's done what in the past what desires. Yeah. This is interesting.

I'm opening up to commissioner comments. Anyone that's still left on? Commissioner Nelson or commissioner Brule, any comments or questions?

I just thought those trainings the training and the presentation were both very interesting and useful, so thanks for that.

This is Ron. I thought the training was good. I'm glad there's no test at the end, however.

I'll get your email tomorrow morning. I'll send you the presentation and then a test at the end.

Some comments?

No public comments. I don't see any guests online who's joined us. I do have one question because it's come up.

Columbus

Capital special use permit for the Old Smiths. Mhmm. It was five years. We'll be Five years, six months, and it

was approved in 2022. Its expiration

is Okay. And within that time, they needed to submit their land use application. They have done that. That is the site plan that for the mixed use property. Their storage use cannot go any longer than the five years, six months.

There is no special use permit anymore, and there is no mechanism within the code that we can allow them to extend any type of use. It was specific to five years, six months, and they have to move after the five years, six months, either on their site plan or within their storage. Additionally, they need to file an extension for their site plan this year by April by the April. So it has to come back to this to this governing body to hear it on the consent agenda for the extension of their site plan. If they do not extend their site plan, I don't know what the legal mechanism would be as far as they have now not fulfilled their requirements with their say, plan folks, special use permit.

And that will be, an issue that we'll need to to discuss with legal on how does that now reverse their approval because they have not satisfied that, or do they need to come back for another another application, another land use application within the next few month few years, I think. So they have until 2028 for the storage. Great. Thanks. It came up. It was a question. No problem. No. Just went over this. It came up a few times this week. So

Oh. Oh, so it's fresh. With that,

I I have one thing that I I may care. That's right. I just wanna Larissa Breen is no longer with the county. She moved down to Albuquerque, so that was a big loss for us. So we'll be recruiting for that position. So if you know anybody, please when to apply.