Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I'm just waiting for a couple of minutes for one other commissioner. Okay, we'll go ahead and call to order the Planning and Zoning Commission of Longmont, the May 27th, 2026 meeting. Roll call.

Chair Poland? Here. Commissioner Edgley-Wells? Here. Commissioner Forbes? Here. Vice Chair Earle? Here. Commissioner Wang? Here. Commissioner Boone? Here. Commissioner Jordan? Here. Chair, you have a quorum.

Thank you very much. Next is the land acknowledgement statement. We acknowledge that Longmont sits on the traditional territory of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Ute, and other indigenous peoples. We honor the history and the living and spiritual connection that the first people have with this land. It is our commitment to face the injustices that happened when the land was taken and to educate our communities, ourselves, and our children to ensure that these injustices do not happen again. Next item is communications from Grant Pendlin, Planning and Development Services.

Just like to say thank you all for being here and good to see many of you for the second time in two weeks.

thank you next is the initial public invited to be heard this is a chance for the public to come and speak for items that are not on the agenda today are not scheduled to come as a quasi quasi judicial item for us coming up there was nobody who signed up on the sheet but we will still open up if somebody in the audience would like to come forward and speak Seeing nobody coming forward, I'll go ahead and close out the initial public invited to be heard. There are no approval of minutes, so we can jump to the public hearing items. The first item is 7A, 1820 Juniper Street variance for enlargement of a nonconforming structure and three setback variances for an existing patio cover and concrete patio. Associate Planner Molly Day, welcome. Presenting.

Good evening and thank you chair. Good evening commissioners. My name is Molly day and I am an associate planner with planning and development services for the city of Longmont. This evening I will be walking you through a variance request for 1820 Juniper street. This variance request encompasses an expansion of a nonconforming structure as well as three setback variances. The property is located at 1820 Juniper Street. It is marked by the green dot on this map and it is zoned residential single family. The future land use designation in Envision Longmont is single family neighborhood. On this slide we have the improvement location certificate survey of the property which shows the home at 1820 Juniper Street in relation to the property lines. Highlighted in red is the attached patio cover which sits at the center of this evening's variance requests. In October of 2025, the applicant requested and was issued a building permit for this patio cover. After it was built, the building department was contacted by a concerned neighbor, and following subsequent building inspections, the permit was revoked. The applicant would like to keep this patio cover in its current configuration. Therefore, we have these variance requests before you this evening. More information on the building permit can be found as attachments in the staff report. And our chief building official is here this evening to answer questions after presentations have completed. So the first request is for a variance to allow an expansion of an existing non-conforming structure. The house at 1820 Juniper was approved and built under a previous planned unit development. It is set back three feet from the north property line. This does not meet the dimensional standards for the residential single family zone district. Therefore, any expansion of this structure must meet current dimensional standards or a variance must be requested. So this leads into the second request, which is tied directly to the patio cover. This is a request for a variance to allow a zero foot side yard setback from the south property line for the patio cover. The portion of the patio cover impacted by this request is highlighted here in yellow. And the third request is also related to the patio cover. This is a request for a variance to allow an eight and a half foot rear yard setback from the east property line for the patio cover. The portion of the patio cover impacted by this part of the request is highlighted here in red. The fourth and final request is for the concrete patio itself. This is a request for a variance to allow a zero foot setback for the existing patio cover, again, from that southern property line. The part of the patio impacted by this request is highlighted here in green. Again, just to illustrate holistically what the site looks like, here's the ILC again with the existing structure and the entire patio cover highlighted in red. So because we have four different requests, we have a handful of applicable standards, the first of which is found in section 1508070 for nonconforming structures. Because the expansion of the nonconforming structure does not meet the current dimensional standards for the residential single family zone district, a variance must be requested. So what are the dimensional standards for the residential single family zone district? They're highlighted here in table 15030202. The first of which is a minimum five foot side yard setback. And the second is a minimum 20 foot rear yard setback. These apply to the patio cover. Additional applicable standards apply to the concrete patio itself. And these are in table 15 0 3 0 8 0 1. Any uncovered concrete patio or sidewalk must be a minimum of three feet from any adjacent property line. Noticing requirements for this evening's public hearing were met on these dates. And the applicable review criteria the commissioners must review while looking at these requests this evening can be found in section 1502055, which are the review criteria for all application types, as well as in section 1502060I, which are the review criteria for variances specifically. On this slide, we have the review criteria for all application types. found in 1502055. Here they are continued. These can also be found in detail in the staff report, as well as the review criteria analysis from the applicant. On this slide, we have the review criteria for variances, again, found in section 1502060I5. And again, here they are continued. Once again, these are also in the staff report. So because there are four requests this evening, the commission has four decisions to make. The first of which is, does the variance request for the expansion of the existing nonconforming structure meet the review criteria? This evening, the commission can decide to either approve, approve with conditions, or deny this request. The second decision is does the variance request of a zero foot side yard setback where a five foot side yard setback is required for the attached patio cover meet the review criteria. The commission must decide to either approve, approve with conditions or denied this request. The third decision is does the variance request of an eight and a half foot rear yard setback where a 20 foot rear yard setback is required for the attached patio cover meet the review criteria. Once again, the commission must decide to either approve, approve with conditions or denied this request. The fourth and final decision is does the variance request of a zero foot setback where a three foot setback is required for the concrete slab patio meet the review criteria. Again, the commission must decide to either approve, approve with conditions or deny this request. Thank you. That does conclude my portion of the presentation. I will be available for questions later. Again, as will Matt Payette, Chief Building Official. At this time, I would like to welcome the applicant's representative to the podium to give their presentation.

Thank you.

Thanks. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for listening to these requests. My name is Jim Merson. I'm an attorney. I represent Teresa and Hector Chacon, Longmont residents. I'm going to go through my presentation here. I'm assuming everyone read my letter. It's not my intention to regurgitate everything that's in that. I assume you don't want me to regurgitate everything that's in that. However, I tried to just sort of hit the high points in my presentation for what it's worth. And so, In case you couldn't tell from the letter that I wrote, I think that quite a bit of this request is centered around the notion of justifiable reliance and basic fairness. I will admit that I have never worked in a city building permit department and I would imagine that in Longmont and probably most places in Boulder County, they are very busy and they receive quite a few applications for permits to build. And so, I don't know exactly what the procedure is, but the issue that I have with this case is that they theoretically did everything right. I think that if you go around Longmont, anybody that drives around Longmont, can see many instances where people have built without a permit, hundreds of people, maybe even thousands of people every year build a shed that's too close to a property line or a fence that's too high or a front yard fence or an HVA system that isn't in compliance with the code or something or another. I watched a few videos of prior zoning commission meetings and one of them may have been the most recent hearing that y'all had in March It concerned a woman that built a fence. It was a front yard fence. She obtained the permit. At some point, in any event, my understanding, and I could be wrong about the facts from that case, is that I don't know if she necessarily received a permit in that case till after the fact. I could be wrong about the facts. In any event, my point is that there's lots of people that break the rules. These people did not. They did it the right way. They obtained a permit. On October 16th, Teresa Chacon received the first permit, which is included in the packet of materials I submitted to you folks. If I understand correctly, that was the permit for the siding. She was told by a representative of the city that the permit for the patio cover would be granted and she could go ahead and start construction. Teresa refused to start building at that point in time. She said, look, I'm going to wait until I get the permit. October 22nd, 2025, she's given the permit. October 25th, 2025, with the permit now in hand, she spends $20,000 hiring a contractor to build the patio cover. A little less than a month later, Longmont revokes the building permit. If I understand correctly, this is the only revocation letter that was sent to the Chaconnes. The basis for the revocation concerned only one issue, which is that the patio cover on the north side must be reduced so that all components are within five feet of the property line. She then, Ms. Chacon and her husband Hector then spend $3,000 to comply with the, you know, request in the revocation letter. They did that. After making that modification, they're told, look, it needs to be moved back another two feet. And then eventually they're told, I believe sometime in January, look, we're going to tear the, you need to tear the whole thing down. I didn't get involved in this until January or February. And candidly, I am a criminal defense attorney by trade, so I'm a little bit of a fish out of water here. So please be patient with me because I'm kind of figuring this out as I go. And by the way, I want to thank Miss Day for helping me a lot. You have a really nice staff, and I appreciate her holding my hand throughout all this, just so you all know. Here are some pictures of 1820 Juniper. This is a picture from the street on Juniper. This would be the south side of the patio cover after it was moved, after the revocation letter. This is just that same southern portion of the patio cover looking towards the street, looking west. This is a different sort of angle. You're still sort of situated on the southern portion of the patio cover looking, you know, sort of towards the rear portion of the patio cover. Similar sort of angle here. A little bit closer here. This is more of a direct shot looking east. This is the rear portion of the patio cover. And then this is a different angle of the rear portion of the patio cover. Same thing here. And then this would be the northern portion of the patio cover. After Ms. Chacon received the revocation letter, as I indicated previously, she spent a couple thousand dollars moving the caissons back and everything back, which was the request of the revocation letter. And so those are the old concrete caissons. This is just a picture of Ms. Chacon and her family using the patio the summer of 2025. This would have been before the patio cover was installed, obviously. Again, I'm not trying to cast aspersions and I have no idea what the process is when someone walks into the city of Longmont and asks for a permit. But I have to assume, I have to assume that if someone comes in and requests a building permit. And they say, look, I want to build a patio cover. And these are the dimensions. I want to make sure I comply with the rules. I'm not going to get started until I get a permit. Here's what I want to do. City says, OK, go ahead. Here's your permit. Presumably, the city was in constructive possession of the plot lines and all the other relevant information when this permit was granted on October 22. I don't know what happened. And I, again, like I said earlier, I'm sure that like many cities in Boulder County, they're very busy and, you know, someone missed something, but they missed a lot. And so initially, out of the gate, you would think that the person that granted the permit would have realized, well, wait a second. This is a non-conforming structure. This is a non-conforming structure. You know, you're going to need a variance for this based on the fact that it's a non-conforming structure. Teresa, you need to ask for a variance. We can't grant this permit at the very least. The other thing that's concerning is that the revocation letter, I don't necessarily disagree with what was stated in the revocation letter with regard to the patio cover not being in conformance with that specific rule. But once again, there's nothing mentioned with regard to the other aspects of the code that talk about building or making an addition to a nonconforming structure or the 20-foot setback on the back or the other variances. Theresa Chacon, her husband, they move it back two feet, and then they're told, well, just do this one other thing and then you'll be good. And she's like, I don't know, I don't think so. I think that I need to maybe do something else. And so here we are. This is just what I would call persuasive precedent. Persuasive precedent, I understand that this is not a court of law, but there is case law in Colorado, not surprisingly, a lot of it is from northern Colorado, Adams County, some of it's from Boulder, that concerns situations where you have a government entity that grants a permit or authorizes a person to do something with this piece of land. And based upon that, that person justifiably relies on that representation and does that thing that the government says they can do. Subsequent to that, the government comes in and says, hey, look, we changed the rules. You can't do that anymore. In simple terms, it's not fair to turn around and order a modification or order that the Chaconnes completely tear this thing down after it was basically implied to them that it would be acceptable on two different occasions. First, when she was granted the permit, and then later on after she was told, look, just move it back two feet and then we're good. I... am not a contractor. I don't know what the entire policy is behind the zoning code. I would imagine that a lot of it has to do with safety, specifically fire safety. And so I just want to make clear, I know that the board can approve with conditions. And conditions can mean any number of things. And I want to make it clear to the board that the Chaconnes are willing and able to fire protect the patio cover. They are willing and able to make many other modifications that the board deems necessary short of tearing this whole thing down. It seems to me that one of the primary policy drivers of the code is safety and specifically fire safety. And so that's why I mentioned that there may or may not be other things. And I just want to make it perfectly clear that they're willing to make some modifications if that's what's being asked. But I think that really what they're after is some certainty that if they make these modifications, that will be the end of it. And they won't have to come back here in a month or two or be requested to tear it down or something like that after the fact. I think that's the last slide that I have. I'm happy to try and answer any questions you might have. I might not be able to, but I'll do my best. Does anyone have any specific questions? Again, I'm not gonna read through my entire letter. And it's Merson?

Merson. Merson. At this time, since this is a public hearing, what we're going to do is we're going to open it up for the public to make comments, and then we bring it back to the commission, and then we will be bringing you and other people forward for questions.

Totally. And in that case, I'll just make some closing remarks that I... You know, like many areas of the law, I don't think are black and white. I think there's a gray area, and the gray area is where collaboration takes place. And so that's why I emphasize that, you know, the board has before it the power to approve with conditions and strike an appropriate balance here given the equities of this situation. That's all I have to say. I'll talk to you in a few minutes, I guess.

Thank you very much. This is a public hearing item. At this time, we'll go ahead and open up for public invited to be heard comments on item 7A. This is a chance for the public. You get five minutes. We just ask that you state your name and your address for the public records. We do have one person signed up after that person is done speaking I will continue to have it open if there's anybody else in the public who would like to come forward and make us Make some comments. So we'll start this off with Patrick Barrett Good evening everybody I Yeah, your name and address please.

Yeah, I'm going to give you that. My name is Patrick Barrett. I live at 1816 Juniper Street. I bought my house in 1985. I've taken care of it ever since. And I'm retired and I have the house paid off. And now my property rights are being assaulted. The circumstances surrounding this matter are difficult to understand, particularly given the clear violations involved. The variance request fails to establish any legitimate hardship nor was any hardship articulated within the application itself. There is no confusion over the property line as they have stated given the original land plots and the fact that a new survey was completed in February 16th. Their contractor and Teresa and Hector should have pulled their land plots themselves and verified that. That's what responsible people do. Rather, the requested variance appears to be an attempt to retroactively legitimize construction that infringes upon my property rights and violates applicable city codes, ordinance, setback requirements, and easement protections. And there's been some history here, but it originated on October 8th, and the concrete work went in on October 13th. And that was, well, I'll get to that. During construction, a substantial portion of the gravel adjacent to my foundation was removed, and you saw that in the pictures where they put the caissons right next to my foundation, literally. The gravel area was approximately four feet in width, and was necessary for proper drainage around my house. They additionally caused damage to the lower edge of my siding with all these construction activities. They damaged my Japanese yew, and this is a thing that's really important to me. This was my grandfather's tree that my grandma, who was a nurseryman over in salt lake and my father brought it over in 1976. i planted it there when i moved into the house in 1985 because the original neighbors asked me to put something there to kind of separate our two porches and um so they've been grousing well theresa has been grousing about that tree for a long time And when I told her the story of my grandfather, she just said, well, he's dead. So that's the kind of mentality you're dealing with. So they did damage to it. They hang stuff on it. I've had to take stuff off. And as you've seen with the pictures, they had the awning within six inches of my house. And they have the concrete within six inches of my house. I informed them that the awning created a fire hazard and a security concern for my home. Those concerns were dismissed. When I attempted to discuss the matter directly, we were treated in a dismissive and condescending manner. Teresa stated it would be okay. When I raised concerns regarding future access to repair or maintain my foundation and siding, Hector responded that a professional will figure it out, implicitly acknowledging that any future remediation would occur at my additional expense. We subsequently contacted the city, which conducted an inspection and determined the construction was in violation of applicable requirements. The revocation letter, as you know, was issued. I won't go over it again because it's kind of uncovered, but the primary thing it was issued in error due to incomplete and inaccurate information provided at the time of the application. So there was something wrong right from the beginning. And you guys know what that letter is and you have it. Despite the city's findings and the revocation notice, Construction activities continued. That one always shocked me a little bit. Being a person of reason, if I would have received a revocation letter, I would have stopped all activity until I figured out what was wrong. But that isn't what they did. The current variance request appears to be an attempt to obtain retroactive approval for violations that were knowingly created after construction had already proceeded improperly.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Barrett. Your five minutes are up.

I've got a couple more paragraphs that are important. You get five minutes and your five minutes are up.

Sorry.

All right.

That's not fair. As stated earlier, this is a public hearing item. Anybody else who would like to come forward and speak on this item, you will have five minutes if you want to come forward and speak.

I honestly wasn't told I had five minutes or I would have tailored this.

Seeing nobody else come forward, we'll go ahead and close out. Public invited to be heard. Turn this back over to the commission for comments, questions, and or motions. Okay, we have Commissioner Boone.

Thank you, Chair. I have a whole list of comments and questions. Question number one. It appears that the north east portion of the patio cover was never part of the permit application. Is that true? There is a If I look at the permit application and the sketch from the permit application, and then I look at the as constructed, the northeast corner was not on that permit application. Is that true? I need someone from the city to answer that.

I'm looking up the permit. Okay.

Thank you, Matt.

Thank you, Matt. And then can you please come forward when you have that answer?

Okay, I'll go on then. Another thing that I see varies from the permit application. The permit application states that the concrete piers would be 24 by 24 by 24 piers. It appears from the photos that there may be 10 or 12 inch diameter. So they were constructed differently than the permit application. Is that true? And to follow up with that, for this type of structure, is a foundation inspection required or is the first inspection at framing? Hi, Matt. Thank you.

Yeah, not a problem. And I did find it and it was on the original drawings they submitted. Matt, can you please state your name for the record? Matt Payette, chief building official. The back portion of the patio was on the original drawings that they submitted.

Okay, it's different than what's in our packet. And if that's the case,

If I may, Commissioner Boone, if you go to page 41 of the packet, it's in the attachment with the applicant's variance application. I don't know if you have the full packet in front of you. I don't have the full packet with me. OK.

Which attachment is it? Is it N?

I think it's M. It's attachment M, as in Molly.

right I think it's attachment and M and that inside that attachment if you go to attachment II is that the dirt you are correct chair first

Okay, the one that shows the framing. Okay, that's different than this sketch that was stamped for approval.

Does that stamp have a permit number on it?

It does. B20-250-4949, 10-22-25. What I'm getting at is a permit application showed a covered patio square footage of 454 square feet, which would be that pink shaded area less the part that I'm talking about. So according to the information that I have in my packet, yeah, this whole piece right here was not on the approved permit from what I can tell. Okay. So then, and maybe that's up for question. But let's let's continue because I've got a lot of stuff here. Are you aware that the foundation was different than what was on the permit application? And do you care?

So that would have been discovered had we continued with our normal operation of inspections. But before we even had a chance to do the first inspection, we got the neighboring complaint, and my building inspector went out there and saw that it was an issue, saw my name on the application, and said, I'm going to refer this to the building official since he's the one who approved it. So we never actually got to see, we never really, really looked at the caissons that were installed.

Okay, there's just an inconsistency there with what was approved and what apparently was built. My next question is, okay, if I've got the timeline here, okay, the permit application was October 1st. It looks like it was approved on October 22nd. When did you actually start construction? October 25th.

Sorry.

No problem. October 25th.

October 25th.

I believe I looked at the calendar the other day. I think it was approved. I think the 22nd may have been a Wednesday. I don't want to say without looking at the calendar. That's OK. I'm sorry.

Okay, so it was started on the 25th, and then the complaint came in on the 27th, and the inspector went out on the 29th.

So that's not accurate. No, no, please, please. No, sir, sir. It's not accurate.

Okay, I'm going to have you verify that in just a second, just so that we can keep everything straight here. Okay, I'm going to move on to another question. I'm going to come back to the neighbor and ask him something in a moment. Yeah, because he's not the applicant. My next question is, the contractor, was it a licensed contractor?

It's my understanding that it was. If I could just have a minute to verify that, make sure that's accurate.

He's licensed, right? Yes.

I'm sorry. I came into a lot of this late. No, I understand. Yeah. Yes, he was licensed to answer your question.

I guess my opinion is that a licensed contractor should know better.

I don't disagree.

Okay. That's why you get a licensed contractor.

To be clear, they did have a licensed contractor.

Okay. Okay. It seems like the south side of this property really has some confusing issues. There's a three-foot easement. I don't understand really what that's all about. And maybe you can explain that to me. And then on the north side, And the north neighbor is not here because it doesn't really affect him. On the north side, the north neighbor's fence was put in the wrong place. It wasn't put on the property line. It was put three feet to the south. So it's almost like the whole thing was shifted three feet somehow during construction. And I know that happens sometimes. It's happened in my neighborhood. But that doesn't take away... the necessity for setbacks. Now I understand that this was originally a PUD maybe and that the PUD had three foot setbacks and the current code has five foot setbacks. I would tend to be more lenient to uphold the three foot setbacks just because that was part of the original PUD. But having zero setback is just, it's not okay. There's a fire safety issue. I mean, that's the biggest issue. It's a fire safety issue. And I know that you said that you could mitigate that. Looking at the construction that I saw in the photos, I don't know about that.

May I just ask which specific setback you're referring to, if it's the 20-foot one, if you're referring to the five-foot side setback, or if you're referring to the concrete?

I'm not referring to the 20-foot one yet. I'll get to that. Okay, all right. guess what I'm saying is that the side setback the side setbacks originally were okay at three feet and I would tend to be more lenient with that even though the current side yard setbacks are five feet because the whole subdivision was built with three foot side yard setbacks okay we got that but This owner has taken the concrete past the property line all the way over to the neighbor's house. And they've encroached on the other property with their concrete and their concrete cover. And, you know, I'm not okay with that. Now, with respect...

So they did initially, and then they moved it back. They did initially... If I understand... Oh, wait, no, I'm confusing issues. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I interrupted you. Go ahead. I was referring to the modifications made after the revocation letter, but I forgot that that doesn't have to do with... Yeah, they moved it two feet back or something like that.

Yeah, I acknowledge that. But... The neighbor's house, they moved it back, but they didn't move it three feet back from the property line. They moved it two feet back from the edge of concrete. The bottom line here is that the houses are supposed to be six feet apart from each other, and they're not. They are three feet apart from each other. which is a fire hazard that doesn't meet the fire code. So that's just a comment. And then I'm going to briefly just mention the rear yard setback. Again, I would tend to be more lenient with that because it's not generally a fire issue. But they do encroach into the 10-foot easement by a foot and a half or two feet.

I think it's a foot and a half, but yeah.

Okay. And you're not supposed to build into an easement.

You're just not. I don't disagree with you, which is why I'm asking the board to approve the modifications. I agree that an easement is a legal right and they shouldn't have built that there. You're not wrong.

I'm concerned that after an issue was raised that they continued with construction. I worked in the construction field for over 40 years, so I understand that Once you have your contractor on site, you don't want to lose them because they're going to go to the next job. I get that part. But that's not an excuse for moving ahead with something that might have an issue. So I'm going to relinquish right now and let somebody else weigh in.

May I just ask a clarifying question? Yes. When you said they continued with construction after they initially learned of a problem, are you referring to, is it? Mr. Barrett raising his concerns, or are you referring to the revocation letter?

Well, both.

Okay.

Yeah, both.

Okay. And so my understanding is that the construction that occurred after the revocation letter was exclusively concerning making modifications that were consistent with what was requested in the revocation letter, to be clear. So that's my understanding, unless I'm missing something.

Okay. Thank you for your responses.

Sure. Thank you for your time. Okay. Commissioner Earle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also have a few questions. I'm going to try to minimize who's going up and down from the podium. I'm probably going to fail at it.

I'm happy to give it back to, is it Fayette? Fayette. Fayette, I'm sorry.

Oh, I have some questions for him too, but I'm going to try to start with you, Mr. Chairman. And really, I think a simple question for you. Okay, it's probably not a simple question. There is a rear setback of 10, I'm sorry, a rear easement of 10 feet. And I'm a little confused on direction, so I'm just gonna say rear and side here. Rear easement of 10 feet. What is that easement? Who is it for? Kind of what was the purpose and why did it exist? And I'm happy to defer to the city if you would like me to.

I think you should defer to the city on that. I know that I looked at the... the information. I could have answered that a month or two ago, but I probably can't answer it with as much specificity as Miss Day. Miss Day.

Hello, Molly Day, associate planner. I believe that is a general utility easement across the back portion of the property.

City utility? No. Or any utility?

A general utility.

Okay, perfect. Ms. Day, well, I've got you then. I have a clarifying question about the variances we're being asked to approve. So there are four variances we're being asked to approve. Variance one, if I remember the numbers from your presentation, was an expansion of an existing non-conforming structure. We're being asked for that because the existing structure The setbacks that exist today are not legal under the current code, making it nonconforming, correct?

Correct. I can direct you to the specific section of code if you would like, but you have the general sense.

I think I have it. I just want to make sure I'm understanding this 100% right. If for... even if we approve zero variances here tonight, and this is a hypothetical, I'm not suggesting that entirely, in order to even have a patio cover that does not require a variant setback whatsoever, so in the rear it's possible to do so without keeping the 20-foot setback, we still need that variance to allow any sort of construction. Is that correct?

That is not correct. Any expansion of a nonconforming structure, as long as it meets the current dimensional standards of the zone district, does not require a variance. It's when that expansion does not meet the current dimensional standards that a variance is required. I know that's confusing. So I'm happy to answer that question again.

No, no, that's really helpful. So basically, if we are going to approve or approve with conditions variance two or three or four or any combination of them, we also must approve variance one.

If the condition for two or three means that that patio cover is not meeting either that five foot side yard setback or 20 foot rear yard setback, then yes, that first variance is required.

Perfect. That's enormously helpful. Thank you. I just want to make sure I've got that right. I'm sorry, Mr. Payette, is that right?

Yeah, that's right. Matt Payette, chief building official.

Thank you. A couple of questions for you. What's the city's process when you get a permit like this and you're looking at it, what's the process that you or someone else in the office undertakes to approve it and look through the evidence submitted?

First, we make sure that all the documents are there that we need. That is one spot where having an ILC such as is on the screen right now was not provided during the application. Yet we pushed it through. And then we proceeded to look through the framing drawings to make sure all the size members and spans meet the International Residential Code.

Why was it so in the, at least in the current residential remodel or addition building permit that's online, the PDF, one of the requirements listed for decks, patio covers, pergolas, et cetera, is an ILC survey.

Correct.

There was not one provided.

Correct.

Why was the permit still approved?

Um, pure human mistake.

Okay. Um, The city, if there was an ILC provided, I'm sorry, this is a hypothetical and so it may not be entirely fair. If the property lines were noted on the drawings or what, you know, I'm not sure where I'm going with that question. I reserve the right to come back to it. But understood for now.

I think I kind of know the direction you're going, if you wouldn't mind.

Please.

If we would have had an ILC such as, again, the one on the screen, we would have informed the applicant that doesn't meet our current setback requirements and they would need to redesign or abandon the project. Okay.

I'll defer to anyone else for it right now, Mr. Chairman. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Wang.

Thank you, Chair. So I just want to get back to a question from Molly with the definition of non-conforming structure. This whole neighborhood was built originally with a three-foot side setback and a 15-foot back setback. And now because we changed the zoning, it's 5 and 20. So it doesn't mean that every single house in this neighborhood is non-conforming.

Thank you for the question, commissioner. I have not looked at the other houses in this neighborhood. It might be safe to assume that if they're constructed on their parcels in the same way as this one, that yes.

So in theory, possibly the whole neighborhood could be nonconforming.

Yes.

So then if anybody, whoever wants to add anything to the house in this neighborhood, they would have to come back for variants for the sides. Is that correct?

If any expansion of their structure did not meet the current dimensional standards of the residential single family zone district, then yes, unless that expansion could be approved under an administrative modification, which is that 25% relief from a numerical standard. It could be approved in that. However, if it's not meeting the current dimensional standards and admin modification is needed or a variance.

Okay. Thank you for the clarification.

You're welcome.

Thank you. I do have a couple questions. I want to make sure that I get a rough idea of the site as it's laid out. Looking at attachment E for the attachment M and inside attachment M, attachment E, which is the drawing that was submitted for the permit. I want to make sure that it looks like they are showing, and is it correct, eight feet four inches from the applicant's house to the neighbor's house?

From what I read on that, it is from the applicant's house to the edge of the patio cover.

which at the time, as they submitted it, would have been basically to the applicant's house.

Between six inches and a foot away, yeah.

Yes. Okay, so I'm looking at this. Three feet is actually where the property line is, so they actually have five feet and four inches or so of their yard on that side. Does that sound about right?

From what I understand of the property is when it was originally built, there's a three-foot essentially neighbor's easement on that north side of the house. Okay. Yes.

Okay. And then I think the backside is – I'm not so – Outside of going into the 10-foot easement on the backside, I'm not so worried about the backside. I am worried about the work that was done on the, and I guess it's the north side, which is against the Barrett's property. Okay, that's the south side. Okay. Well, and that's where I'm a little confused. So they're on the south side, but it mentions that the city was asking just for relief on the north side. It seems like that might be... Can I speak? No, no, sorry.

me if i may yes i believe you might be referring to in the revocation letter is that correct where it says on the north side okay i will let matt answer that question but i just wanted to confirm yeah it says on the north side but it looks like the problems are on the south side really with the neighbors property that seems to me the biggest problem

Okay, thank you. You're welcome so so I guess Matt my question is and and I know that There seems to be several errors where they were short and and not having the proper setbacks is there a reason why it was only mentioned for the north side and not for both the south side and for the East side Because it appears then that three sides didn't have the proper setbacks.

So at the time, I wasn't really, we hadn't had any complaints about the rear one, so I hadn't fully investigated that.

Okay, thank you. And then I have a question. So in this case, and understand that they didn't provide the IRC... ILC. ILC. What they provided to the city was the drawing in attachment E, and so... my problem with when this was applied for and it kind of was saying that they did everything right well they really didn't do everything right because they didn't do an ilc and when they supplied attachment e attachment e does not show and does not label any kind of property lines so it's not on the city's fault to say that well you know we gave the diagram but they should have checked the setbacks you know first of all the ilc should have been uh set but second of all the diagram should have shown property lines to show what we were looking at so that's the problem i have with what was initially submitted for the permit and i don't disagree with i'm sorry

Thanks. I don't disagree with you, Commissioner Poland. I should have chosen my words more carefully and said they did everything right, because that's not true. I don't think anyone really has clean hands here, and I don't cast any aspersions on Mr. Payette or anyone with the city. Like I said, I'm sure that They're very busy. Like anyone else, they've made mistakes. And the Chicanos, you know, made a mistake when they submitted this. I think what, as I indicated several times, what they ultimately want to avoid is a situation where they have to tear the whole dang thing down, which is why we're seeking approval with conditions. But I don't disagree with your statement.

Okay, thank you very much. I'm done with my questions at this point. Do we have any other questions? Commissioner Jordan. Thank you, Chair.

This is, I guess this would be for Matt. Great. I'm sorry, I'm still a little confused on the order of drawings here. I'm looking at the attachment-y drawing, which looks like maybe a homeowner drawing. That was in the variance application. But I'm also looking at the stamped City of Longmont building inspection approved as noted by you. And a different drawing here. There are differences between these two. You've got 2x8, 16 on center. The hand-drawn one says 2x10, 12 on center. It's a different shape on the back patio. The one thing that's common with both is neither denote any property lines. I guess I'm trying to understand what was handed to you and what was the other thing. Or were they both handed to you?

So the drawing with the city stamp on it, if you take away all the stamps and the wording that is kind of horizontal on the paper, that is what we had received with the application.

Okay. So that doesn't show a... In other words, it's not like a U shape that wraps around that little notch on the back of the house. It looked like it was a 19 foot wide section that went all the way back. And the another section, I guess this would be to the northeast. I don't know if we could pull that attachment. Do you do you guys have that attachment? And this is a it's a it's hard to say without Jane, is there a way to get the packet onto this computer? Here's where I'm going with this. So if this is the drawing that was submitted, what's this other drawing then in attachment E? We can wait just a moment while Jane pulls it out. Thank you, Jane.

That's what I'm here for.

So if we go right to attachment N there, Jane, that's what I'm looking at here. N is in Nancy.

Am I on the right one?

Yep. So actually, this is what I'm curious about. This one says, so in the applicant's presentation, and we'll get to the applicant in just a minute, so please be prepared to answer this one. You said they spent $20,000, but the evaluation was $4,500 on the app. We say it's 454 square footage. And Matt, hold on real quick. This drawing, the one in the bottom here, this is what was submitted? Correct. So that note that there the patio doesn't go the whole width of the house in the back. It's like that, I guess would be that we're looking with east facing up, I believe. Correct. And so the northeast corner, there's no patio there. So this is what was approved.

Right.

But they build it go basically all the way out. So they didn't follow the drawing that was even submitted. But they're also saying, hey, it's 525 square feet on the drawing they submitted. Unless that's your notes?

No, the 525 is their notes.

But in the app, it says up to 454 square footage on the app.

Which that, I believe, is my handwriting. I think I added that after talking with .

OK. Fair enough. I don't need to zoom in on that inconsistency then. But I guess here's where I'm going with this. And I'll let the applicant speak here in just a moment because I'm curious on thoughts there. But it looks like mistakes were made. Definitely. Not all of the materials that should have been part of this sort of approval were made. It passed a gate that it shouldn't have passed. Correct. But as far as I can tell, the applicant didn't even build to their own plan.

It would appear so.

Okay. I'd like to hear what the applicant has to say about that.

I don't disagree with you. You're not wrong. I don't know why that happened. Like I said, I didn't get involved in this situation until January. as I've indicated, I think ultimately we're asking for here is approval with conditions. Not an all or nothing type decision. But you're not wrong. I don't disagree with you.

The other question I had is, was this $4,500 to build this patio or was it $20,000? I was told it was $20,000. Okay. That's a pretty big... between what the permit fees they paid to the city was as a result of that.

That's the information I was told. I mean, when you look, I'm happy to bring up the pictures again. It seems like that would align more with $20,000 as opposed to $4,500. Agreed. But that's the information I had.

I guess those are all the questions I had. I'm just going to toss out some thoughts. uh i'm just going to echo some other commissioners and say like because of what was built in this development i i don't have an issue with a three foot side yard setback because that seems consistent with the other houses but i have a real big problem with going into the utility easement and the um the fire break basically that zero foot setback i i'm i'm not in support of that so anyways that's i'll yield Thank you. Commissioner Wang.

Oh, sorry.

Sorry, Commissioner Earl. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sorry, Commissioner Wang. It's me or Mr. Payette.

Maybe both. Okay. All right. I'll do my best. And then I'll give you both a break.

It's a question for somebody else. That's what we're here for. All right. So I'm going to pick up Commissioner Jordan's question a little bit. So what we have up on the screen right now is what's in our packet is attachment N, which is the building permit. Sure. What is... What we have in our packet as attachment M is your application, your review criteria. It's the 45 pages that I believe, Mr. Merson, you submitted. And you have an attachment E within that.

That is a diagram. That is not the diagram that was submitted when the application was submitted. What is that diagram? That is a diagram. Oh, sorry. That is a diagram that was created before Ms. Chacon did the ILC. As part of this process, as I indicated, I spent 15 years as a public defender, zero years doing this type of law, but Ms. Day has been unbelievably patient with me. She said, look, there needs to be an ILC. And so, as indicated, the ILC was eventually done on April 9th. It was really the last thing that was done in the packet. that diagram was created before I sort of understood the importance of the ILC. But that diagram that you're referring to was done in between the diagram of the initial building application and the eventual ILC.

So if I may paraphrase a little bit of what you said and correct me here. That diagram, attachment E within attachment M, is effectively, it was a work in progress and it's presented here for our benefit, not as a part of the application for the building permit.

Yeah, that's correct. And I'm sorry for the confusion on that. Candidly, I should have been more aware of the diagram that was submitted in October.

Honestly, it's helpful to see both of them, so I don't begrudge you at all for submitting it as long as I understand what it is and what the purpose is. So that's fine to me. I am curious, because it does vary a decent amount, does the attachment E of attachment M somewhat reflect what was built as opposed to what was applied for, or...

Should I not read it that way? Well, first of all, what I'll say is the ILC is probably the most accurate depiction of what was eventually built. I'll start with that. And so I candidly probably should not have even included attachment E. based on all the confusion that it's causing. Once I did the ILC, I should have just said, look, this isn't really necessary. But in any event, it is included. And so that's sort of a not-to-scale drawing that was done before the ILC, which is really the best and most accurate depiction of what was eventually built.

Okay.

No, that's helpful. I mean, I think we're...

I mean, frankly, at some point it's an irrelevant difference in the record, but the building permit, if I'm saying this wrong, it's for simplicity to make sure I'm referring to the right things here. The building permit drawing that was in attachment N, as in Nancy, shows an eight-foot patio cover on the side. The one that's attachment E of attachment M shows eight foot four inches The ILC ultimately shows a seven and a half foot from the house to the property line. So every one of these drawings not only showed encroachment into the setback, but also over the property line. And that's just, I mean, I believe that's just a statement of fact. If I'm looking at that right, it's not really a question for you necessarily. But that's how I'm reading that. If I'm not, please correct me.

Well, I think that after the Chacon's made the modification that was requested in the revocation letter, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong about this, but in any event, after that modification was made, that they were no longer encroaching into that three-foot easement along 1816 Juniper, if that's what you're referring to. And I'm trying not to confuse myself.

No, it is what I'm referring to, which is different than the setback. So there are two different issues, but there is a, you know, effectively there's a property line issue and there's a setback issue. Understood. And the way I look at the permit attachment N, or attachment E of M, in both cases, it was drawn in such a way that it would cross the property line.

Go ahead. I'm sorry.

No. Mr. Payet, does that sound accurate from the way I'm looking at that?

It was definitely accurate in the original submittal.

Right.

I'm not 100% sure in the other diagram. if that measurement is correct, because the eight foot would be before they had cut it back.

Correct, yes. Yeah, and I'm only referring to the initial state.

I'm not referring to what was modified. Yeah, the original state, it does look like all of those measurements look like it goes over the property line.

And frankly, like, not to put Ms. Day on blast yet again, but it seemed... I just... she's probably the best person to ask with regards to whether or not it still encroaches after that modification was made as requested in the revocation letter. I don't think you're not wrong about the setback. It's still in violation of the setback, but with regard to encroaching on that easement, I don't believe it did after the modification was made.

Okay.

Understood.

And the question was really pre-modification, so. Understood. Okay. Jeremy, a question for you. So normally when we have a variance application, we are looking to make sure it meets 1502.060, our review criteria, 1502.055, all the normal things. We've had a concept introduced by the applicant of equitable estoppel and kind of that basic fairness doctrine. Is that something we have the capability to take into account as the commission given our role and responsibility under the city charter?

Good evening, chair, members of the commission, Jeremy Terrell, senior assistant city attorney. Commissioner Earl, great question. The commission's mandate is limited to what's in the charter and in our code. So in reviewing the application before you, I would reiterate that you should be looking at 1502055 and 1502060I for variances in making your decision.

Okay. Thank you. I will just make a comment then. The reason this is complicated in my mind is because the city admitted to making several mistakes along this process in issuing a permit that probably shouldn't have been issued because it did not have the required portions of the submittal up front. It should never have been approved. Because it was approved, because the applicant then built based on that permit, there does seem to be a challenge of fairness here. Under the way I view our requirements meeting 1502.060.I.5, 1502.055, I haven't seen any evidence that it meets the criteria for the variances. I'm willing to entertain the discussion around the rear. Admittedly, I have some concern about the utility easement, but I understand the rear. I'm not really concerned about that big picture. The side, I don't see a path towards approving that, even with conditions. That is not a motion at this time. I certainly defer to any other commissioners, but I just wanted to throw that out there for right now.

Thank you. Commissioner Edgley-Wells.

Thank you, Chair. Okay, so I would like to start with the criteria evaluation 1502.06.015A. And under that one, it does impact surrounding properties. And then under 1502.055, It is not compatible with properties in terms of land use. Back to 1502.060, it is an immediate fire code violation. But I also would like to bring to your point that what you're requesting is approval upon condition of fire mitigation. Attachment U provided by public comment does also bring in stormwater pooling and drainage issues. I'm interested in learning upon condition other than what, like fire mitigation, stormwater and how that impacts both the house's foundation and neighboring foundation and what sort of conditions you would be proposing to mitigate that.

Well, I'm not an expert in that area. And so what I'd tell you is that the Chicanos are willing to make modifications that would alleviate those concerns. As they indicated previously, what they want to avoid is a situation where they spend a bunch of money making a modification after they're told by the city, just do this one thing and then you're fine, which is kind of what was implied to them in November. only to have them told later on, like, look, now you got to tear it down or do this other thing. And so they just want to know with specificity, like, what exactly do we need to do? I'm not an expert in the subjects you just brought up. I brought up fire because safety seems to be a major policy issue. But what you brought up is a great point, too. I don't think that Chacon's would have any objection at all, really, to, you know, alleviating those drainage issues. I know that Mr. Bear brought that up. And that's a legitimate concern. It's a fair concern. And it is just, you know, that's fair, but they don't have any issue or any problem making those modifications to answer your question.

Sorry, I just had a follow-up to that. The only reason I asked is because the conditions that were proposed were for fire mitigation only. I didn't see anything for any other sort of concerns. So that's why I bring it up. But thank you for your comments, and thank you.

You bet.

Commissioner Forbes.

Thank you, Chair. I'm going to sum up what I'm seeing hearing so far based on what we've discussed. One of the biggest points for the applicant has been that they got approved for a permit, by the city and then they went and built and then it got revoked. But as we're going through and discussing this, what it seems like we're finding in real time is that even what they built isn't what it was on the permit is what I'm understanding unless anyone else has something to the contrary. And then the other part that seems to be coming up over and over again, um, is something that I had confusion when I was going through, like I had to look at a bunch of times in the packet and is this is the, the easement and like the three foot like on side on the south side of the house, which is there's, it's not just, um, canopy on the top it's also the actual patio on the bottom because the canopy at the top is has it may have three foot clearance at at the top but there's also they built the actual concrete patio on top of the easement and like looking at i'm looking um at uh attachment n and an attachment f in there right right now the picture actually shows like where the patio furniture is right now is actually sitting on the easement it's not even on the property like on on their property because that's where the that because if you built three foot off Because, yeah, based on that diagram, based on the diagram you're showing up there, you'd have the neighbor's house, you'd have a three-foot easement off the house, which includes right now part of the patio that's there. And then you have these setbacks from there, which I think is a big part of the confusion. And Molly, am I right on that?

Thank you, Commissioner Forbes. Can you repeat your question? I was trying to figure out who was driving. Okay, so I missed part of it.

Okay. So there's a three foot setback from the neighbor's house. And then there's a then you have or sorry, a three foot easement from the neighbor's house. And then you have a setback from there. And that's how we get are getting our totals, correct?

Partially correct. So we're getting our setback for that side yard, the five feet, from the property line. So regardless of where that easement is, the easement is not taken into consideration with where that setback is for either the house or the patio cover. It's going to be from that property line.

Gotcha. Okay. And to me, having the three-foot easement right there... For one, it seems like there's a rain gutter that goes right into that spot. And then there's the other part is that there's, if the neighbor needed to like repaint that side of the house or anything like that, there has to be some sort of way to access that side of the house, which to me makes sense why there needs to be an easement right there for whatever reason. So those are my thoughts for the moment. So thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Jordan.

Thank you, Chair. My thought is that regardless, it seems like the way I'm reading the room here that some of these things are probably either going to get denied or approved with conditions. But I would motion that we move with PZR 2026 10A, which is the approval of the three foot setback for the justification that there may be modifications to the structure for this applicant in the future. And having this variance would allow them to build in consistent manner with the rest of the neighborhood with the three foot side yard setbacks. So I would like to get this one out of the way. I'll put that motion on the table.

we have a motion do we have a second commissioner boone i will second that we have a motion we have a second uh is there any further questions discussion for item uh the first time was pcr 2026 10 a as motioned okay uh commissioner sorry first it's commissioner earl

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm so sorry, Commissioner Wang. I keep stepping on your toes there. Commissioner Jordan, quick question about your motion. I just want to clarify, you are suggesting we approve PZR 2026-10A as written. You made a comment about a possible three-foot setback, but I want to clarify that the three-foot setback is not as part of the motion. It was just part of your thought process and why we might want to grant that. Cool. That is my only clarification. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Commissioner Jordan. Commissioner Wang.

Thank you, Chair. This is a question from Molly again. So I just want to get back to this three feet. setback from the original planning and the current code. You're saying that because most of these houses in this neighborhood are non-conforming, anytime that anybody needs to expand onto their homes, they would have to get a variance for the sides. Is that correct?

Thank you for the question, Commissioner. Again, it does depend. So if they are not going to be meeting that five foot side yard setback, 20 foot rear yard setback, then yes, they would have to request a variance unless they could fit within that 25%. OK.

The question I have is 25%. So you're asking for a two feet encroachment on five feet setback, which is more than 25%. Is that correct?

So which requests are we looking at?

On the side setback.

For the patio cover?

On the side, yeah. No, no, just in general. No, I'm not talking about this particular case. Anybody who wants to expand their house, not this particular applicant, anybody who wants to expand their house because if their home was built according to the three-foot rule and they want to expand on it, they have to get a variance to make sure that they're up to code. But you're saying that the two-foot variance is 40 percent of a five-foot variance.

Yes.

So that means that anytime anybody wants to add anything that that can't be approved administratively, it has to come to council. PNC. Is that correct?

Correct. If it does not meet the requirements for an administrative modification, and I can direct you to the section of code for nonconformities that basically outlines this requirement. But yes, they would have to request a variance to expand a nonconforming structure if they're not meeting the current dimensional standards or if it can't be approved with an administrative modification.

I'm going to leave you on, but I'm also going to go ahead and .

May I, Commissioner Wang? Yes, go ahead. Molly, can I just clarify really quick? So what I think is being said here is with no variance in place. Expansion of this property would be allowed with, for simplicity's sake, I'm only considering the side yard, as long as it met a five foot setback.

You are correct.

So you could do anything you wanted to do, meeting the code, all the other things that are required, as long as you had a five-foot setback, even though this was originally built to the three-foot setback.

Correct.

And so to do the expansion at a three-foot setback requires a variance because it's greater than the 25% administrative.

Correct.

And so 25% of five feet is a foot and a quarter, so you could, in theory, build to a... 3.75 feet and get an administrative approval. And you would not need a variance to do that. Which is, to be clear, that's not what's being requested here. I'm just making sure I understand the process.

Hypothetically, yes. You are correct.

Does that help, Commissioner Wang?

So that's, wait, 3.75? That's 75% of the setback. So what the 25% allows. Oh, right.

Okay.

OK, I think so. I'm thinking this means that this could fit within the administrative approval.

If it's three and a third quarters.

Oh, three and three quarters. But this is three. OK, got it. Thank you. Yeah, I just want to verify, because if other houses in this neighborhood in the future want to do anything, then if they are at the three foot setback per the original code, then every single one of these homes will have to come to planning and zoning. Just want to point that out.

And this one was at zero.

Yeah.

Commissioner Edgley-Wells.

Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Earl, I would like to circle back to a comment that you made about conditional approval on, let's see, on PZRA. And what that means. So you were saying earlier that in order to approve certain other variances that we're looking at today, that A would have to be approved. And I just wanted to circle back and get clarification on what you mean by that.

Oh, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sorry. Commissioner Edgley-Wells, my understanding here, based on the conversation we had, is that if we wish to approve sorry, I'm going to pull up my list here. If we wish to approve PZRs 11A or 11B or 12A or 12B or 13A or 13B, which are either approving the variances or approving them with conditions, 10A is a prerequisite to doing so. I'm not sure the order we approve them necessarily matters, but unless you guys tell me otherwise, but if we want to do one of those, we do have to do 10A, which is what the motion on the floor is.

Are we good right now, everybody? Any other questions, comments? Are we ready for a vote? I think we are ready for a vote, Jane.

Commissioner Edgley-Wells? Yes. Commissioner Forbes? Yes. Vice Chair Earle? Yes. Chair Polin? Yes. Commissioner Wang? Aye. Commissioner Boone?

Yes.

Commissioner Jordan? Yes. Chair, that passes unanimously 7-0.

Thank you. Should I read the announcement at this point for this one? Okay. Okay. This is for item 7A, PZR 2026-10, and we're approving 10A. This item now enters a seven-day appeal period. During this time, any agreed party may appeal the commission's decision by submitting a written appeal letter stating why the Planning and Zoning Commission's decision should be amended or reversed by the City Council. All appeals must be in writing and must be received in the City Clerk's Office and the Planning Office within the seven-day appeal period. The appeal period begins Thursday, May 28th at 8 a.m. and ends Wednesday, June 3rd at 5 p.m. That is one item out of the way. We still have items 11, 12, and 13.

Commissioner Earl. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to preview what I would suggest for 11, 12, and 13. I will make one motion for one of them so we can debate them individually. For PZR 11, which is the request of a variance of the zero foot side yard setback where a five foot five yard setback is required, my suggestion is going to be approved with conditions, which is PZR 2026.11b. condition being a three-foot setback to match what the original PUD was. I'll motion that in just a moment. For PZR 12, which is the 8.5-foot rear yard setback where the 20-foot is set required, I will support PZR 2026-12B, which is approved with conditions, condition being no encroachment into the 10-foot utility easement. And then finally on the concrete slab patio, request for a zero foot setback instead of the three foot, my motion will be to deny that variance and adopt PZR 2026-13C. So with that out of the way, so you all have the preview of coming attractions, at least from me, I will make a motion that we approve with conditions PZR 2026-11B. I'm gonna pull that up, so sorry. This is a resolution of the Planning and Zoning Commission approving with conditions of variance request for a zero foot side yard setback for 1820 Juniper Street. And the condition attached to that is that there is a three foot side yard setback.

We have a motion. Do we have a second? Commissioner Jordan. I would second that motion. We have a motion. We have a second. Are there any comments or questions regarding that? I do have a question just to make sure that I understand this correctly. I'm going to take a seat. Yes, please. Matt, with what we're putting forward as a condition for a three-foot setback, is that what that's what I what you proposed and what's been motion seconded I'm looking at the picture in attachment M on page it's page 19 I want to make sure I get a I can visualize what we're asking for there is a picture with the the current awning there can we get to that picture

You know you're going to get better than I do.

Attachment M, page 19.

Where were you in the attachments? I'm just going to stand up here and try to find it.

That's true.

Chair, what page? 19. 19.

Yes. So Matt, given the three foot setback that we would be conditioning, where does that put the footings?

Roughly at the bottom of the bottom step.

okay everybody understand that okay i just wanted to get it in my mind so i could see it and make sure i understood visually what we were conditioning so i'm good with that are there any comments questions or are we ready for a vote we are ready for a vote jane commissioner edgley wells

Yes.

Commissioner Forbes. Yes. Vice chair Earl. Yes. Chair Poland. Yes. Commissioner Wang. Commissioner Boone. Yes. Commissioner Jordan.

Yes.

Chair that passes unanimously seven to zero.

Thank you very much. Uh, let's move on to, I believe, uh, we'll take item 12. Are there any other questions, comments, or motions somebody would like to make?

Commissioner Earl. I'm just going to go down my list of coming attractions here. So I'm going to motion approval of PZR 2026-12B, a resolution of the Planning and Zoning Commission approving with conditions of variance request for an 8.5-foot rear yard setback for 1820 Juniper Street, with the condition being that there is no encroachment into the 10-foot utility easement.

We have a motion. Do we have a second? Commissioner Edgley-Wells.

I will second.

Thank you. We have a motion. We have a second. Are there any other comments, questions? Oh, I do for the other one. Yes. Okay. For item... 11. This item now enters a seven-day appeal period. During this time, any agreed party may appeal the commission's decision by submitting a written appeal letter stating why the Planning and Zoning Commission's decision should be amended or reversed by City Council. All appeals must be in writing and must be received in the City Clerk's Office and the Planning Office within the seven-day appeal period. The appeal period begins Thursday, May 28th at 8 a.m. and ends Wednesday, June 3rd at 5 p.m. that finished up item 11 item 12 we have the motion we have the second um i do have a clarifying question does that basically mean that uh it's basically going to be actually a variance of 10 feet yes okay i just want to verify that Any other questions? If not, Jane, let's go ahead and take a vote.

Commissioner Edgley-Wells? Yes. Commissioner Forbes? Yes. Vice Chair Earle? Yes. Chair Polin? Yes. Commissioner Wang? Commissioner Boone? Yes. Commissioner Jordan? Yes. Chair, that passes unanimously, seven to zero.

Thank you. This item now enters the seven-day appeal period. During this time, any agreed party may appeal the commission's decision by submitting a written appeal letter stating why the Planning and Zoning Commission's decision should be amended or reversed by City Council. All appeals must be in writing and must be received in the City Clerk's Office and the Planning Office within the seven-day appeal period. The appeal period begins Thursday, May 28th at 8 a.m., ends wednesday june 3rd at 5 pm let's move on to item 13 do we have any comments questions motions commissioner jordan i motion that we go uh that we uh adopt pzr 2026 13 c

to just read this out. I'm not as quite as eloquent as my other commissioners. This would be to deny the requested variance for the three foot setback to zero for the southern property line for the concrete slab.

Thank you. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Commissioner Edgley-Wells?

I second.

We have a motion. We have a second. Do we have any further questions? Commissioner Wang?

Okay, so question for Molly. So a patio concrete patio counts as a structure.

Thank you for the question commissioner. No, it does not count as a structure. However, we do have setback standards for concrete patios and it does require a minimum three foot setback from any property line. So that's why this variance request is also included because the existing concrete patio does not meet that three foot setback.

Okay. Mike, other question is would a concrete path be subject to a setbacks also?

I don't know about the semantics of concrete path, I can say that in, let me go up to the podium. And I'll pull up this slide with the applicable standards again, because it does mention sidewalks in that table. And I just want to have those standards in front of us.

Can you take a look at that, please?

So in table 15030801, it does say uncovered slabs, patios, sidewalks, and driveways.

Okay. So sidewalks does count as a structure also subject to setbacks.

So I don't think it's a structure, but it is subject to setback standards in the Longmont development code.

Okay. Would a gravel path count as a sidewalk? It's permeable.

I do not know the answer to that question. I would assume not because I believe that these are in the code for drainage purposes. I don't know if Jeremy has a thought. No, he doesn't have a thought on that. I can always pull up the definition in our code for sidewalks, which I will go back to my computer to do if you'd like me to.

Sure. Okay. Thank you.

We do not have a definition of a sidewalk under the definition section in 15-10-020 for all other terms defined in the Longmont Land Development Code.

Okay, so a crushed gravel path would not fit as a definition of a sidewalk?

I don't know if I can answer that question. Go ahead.

Um, in your commission, um, map head chief building official, um, having gravel walkways, um, next to houses is a standard building practice. And, uh, we don't typically look at those for setbacks.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Um, and paved is counted as a sidewalk. Correct, yeah. If it's paved across, that would count as a sidewalk.

So concrete, pavers, that kind of stuff, that counts as a sidewalk. So with pavers, as long as there's space in between, I wouldn't count that as a sidewalk.

Okay. So they could replace the concrete with pavers.

I said as long as there's space in between. As Commissioner Boone is saying, it's all about the amount of permeable space. surface that you have on the property. Thank you very much for your answer.

Commissioner Boone, or sorry, Commissioner, Vice Chair Earl. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be really brief here. I've already previewed how I'm going to vote on this. So there's no surprise here. I did want to make the comment, though. I believe we have to make the decisions we're making tonight based on the code that we have. I want to protect the three-foot setback. I think that's really important. I think it's important to protect the property rights. I'm really disappointed that the city issued this permit because I think it put the homeowner, well, the applicant in a really awkward position. And I know you tried to do the right thing on this. And I do not like that we have to require the modifications. I think we have to, based on what's in the code and what our sections require us to do. I am really disappointed in the city, and I hope that the city is able to do something to address that going forward that's outside of our purview. But I'll just put that comment out there.

Thank you, Commissioner Boone.

Thank you, Chair. As harsh as I sounded in my first set of comments, I would agree with Commissioner Earl that there were some mistakes made and this is an unfortunate situation, but we are here to uphold the code. We have to. That's our job. But I did want to make the comment that for item 13, that it would require cutting back the existing slab five feet, not three feet, because it already extends two feet past the property line. So I just want to make that clear because there seems to have been maybe some confusion about where the start happened when the first denial happened as to where you were measuring that from. So really, it needs to go back five feet. And that's where the concrete or the patio cover would go to as well. But the existing concrete would have to be cut back five feet and to address the previous discussion, it could be replaced with gravel or some kind of permeable material that might suffice the same use. Okay, that's it. Just wanted to make that clarification.

Thank you. Do we have any other comments? Seeing none, let's go ahead. Jane, we're going to vote on PZR 2026-13C.

Commissioner Edgley-Wells? Yes. Commissioner Forbes? Yes. Vice Chair Earle? Yes. Chair Polin? Yes. Commissioner Wang? Aye. Commissioner Boone? Yes. Commissioner Jordan? Yes. Chair, that motion to deny passes unanimously seven to zero.

Very good. Thank you. This item now enters a seven-day appeal period. During this time, any agreed party may appeal the commission's decision by submitting a written appeal letter stating why the Planning and Zoning Commission's decision should be amended or reversed by City Council. All appeals must be in writing and must be received in the City's Clerk's Office and at the Planning Office within the seven-day appeal period. The appeal period begins Thursday, May 28th at 8 a.m. It ends Wednesday, June 3rd at 5 p.m. Thank you to the applicant. Thank you to the city staff for the work on this. Thank you for the public for your feedback on this. We will go ahead and we will move to the next item, which is 7B, amendments to the City of Longmont Land Development Code, Section 1505080J, bicycle parking, and transportation. Planner Ben Ortiz. Before we go ahead, we'll go ahead and take a five minute break to allow people to resettle and take care of anything we need to take. and we work and we work this is good okay we'll go ahead to public hearing item 7b amendments to the city of longmont land development code section 1505080j bicycle parking transportation planner ben ortiz welcome back

Thank you. Members of the Planning and Zoning Commission, my name is Ben Ortiz, Transportation Planner. Tonight, for your consideration, we'll be looking at amendments to the City of Longmont Land Development Code, Chapter 1505-080J, bicycle parking, which is a subset of the larger parking code. So subsequent to the city of Longmont adopting the transportation mobility plan, they directed staff to come back with amendments to the Longmont bicycle parking code based on land use. So presently bike parking is required as a percent of the amount of motor vehicle parking that's been provided in a development. So in the first step of my planning process was to review a whole bunch of different codes and resources. They're shown here on your slide. And I made an attempt to incorporate some changes that I felt made sense for the city of Longmont into our current code. The second step, I presented the first round of changes to the Bicycle Issues Committee. The Bicycle Issues Committee is a group of Longmont residents and they're bicycle advocates and they act as a sounding board for us when we are presenting bicycle related projects. Some of those could be engineering-related projects, street design changes, or policy-related. In this case, it's a policy-related. So we incorporated the ideas from the Longmont Bicycle Issues Committee into the draft that I came up with, and we also requested feedback from planning staff subsequent to incorporating Bicycle Issues Committee comments And we received no feedback from the planning staff. So the third step in the planning process was to present the proposed ordinance to the Transportation Advisory Board. We did that in March and April. And in both cases, we incorporated recommended revisions from the Transportation Advisory Board. keep pushing the wrong button. So I have a few slides in the show just for context. A typical motor vehicle parking space is nine by 18 feet. And so that is per code in the city of Longmont. And so that's 162 square feet. That same nine by 18 motor vehicle parking space or 162 square feet, it can accommodate one car or up to 10 bike parking spaces. And so in the proposed ordinance, we're recommending that for inverted U racks, like you see here, that the spacing would be three feet between each rack. So those are five racks. Each inverted U rack is equal to two bike parking spaces. So that's up to 10 bike parking spaces. So I just wanted to show you the land opportunity cost associated with providing parking. As you may know, the city of Longmont has had a minimum parking requirement basically forever. And so this, within that red box, are 100 motor vehicle parking spaces. And so when you multiply 100 times 162 square feet, that's 16,200 square feet. Now, that figure doesn't include the 24-foot drive aisles that directly provide access to those parking spaces. By contrast, 100 bike parking spaces will fit inside the equivalent of 10 motor vehicle parking spaces, or 1,620 square feet. So my first apartment, which was there right down there on the right in West LA, was 700 square feet. So in the space of roughly 10 bike parking spaces, I could get two of my apartments in there. So the reason why this is important is because the city no longer has a minimum motor vehicle parking requirement. And so as I said, the bike parking requirement is based on the number of motor vehicle parking spaces that are provided. And so without that minimum parking requirement, we're starting to see fewer motor vehicle parking spaces provided in newer developments. It's still up there, but that would constrain the amount of bike parking that gets provided. So what you see here on this screen is basically the current bike parking ordinance as it stands today. So again, as I mentioned, 5% of off-street motor vehicle parking spaces would have to go towards bike parking. Bike parking is required to be near building entrances no more than 100 feet from the land uses they serve. and placed in highly visible locations. We do that for theft prevention purposes. The required design is the inverted U bike rack, and each rack equals two bike parking spaces. And in multifamily developments, at least one bike rack is required in each multifamily building with eight or more units. So the proposed changes to Longmont Land Development Code 1505-080J, the first is that the Bicycle Issues Committee recommended we add definitions. And included in that is the bicycle corral, cargo bike rack, inverted U bike rack, short-term bike parking. And the reason why they ask that is because these are new concepts that we've never seen before in our present land development code. And then we added on to the bike parking location requirements. So we're now mandating that the bike parking has to be within 100 feet of an outdoor destination. So in a city park, for example, that would be like a tennis court. So presently bike parking is required to be placed within a hundred feet of the land uses that they serve So basically that would be new developments. So that would be a restaurant a bank Multifamily building that sort of thing So because we're requiring bike parking based on land use It necessitated adding a table and So we do show the amount of bike parking required based on use. And so this is the very first part of the residential uses. It's just a snapshot of what the larger table looks like. So cargo bike parking is now becoming more popular. But cargo bike racks, as you can see here, are somewhat different in design than a standard bicycle. So the cargo bike on your left is eight feet long by 18 inches wide. And the one on the right is a cargo trike. It's about seven feet long and three feet wide. And so we're now proposing that there'd be a minimum number of cargo bike racks added at each new development. And so what we're saying is one cargo bike rack would be required for every 10 inverted U racks, but no less than one cargo bike rack. Now the photo in the middle is actually not a cargo bike rack. This is actually motor scooter and motorcycle parking. It's at the East Lake Station at the end line. And I couldn't find any real world examples, but this is very close to what a cargo bike rack actually looks like. And again, they are meant to accommodate the different style frame of a cargo bike rack. So we're also proposing to allow the replacement of non-conforming bicycle parking during a change of use or redevelopments when addition or an expansion increases total gross floor area by more than 25%. And so we frequently see these types of racks at existing developments in Longmont. And so if one of those existing developments were to come in and do a change of use or do an expansion of 25% or more, or more than 25%, I should say, then we could tell them that they have to remove those racks and replace them with conforming bike parking racks. So one of the things that the Bicycle Issues Committee told us they wanted was that they want to see covered bike parking. You know, motor vehicle, all their working components are sheltered from inclement weather, but a bicycle is not. And so what we're proposing here is that in new developments requiring 20 or more bicycle parking spaces, That would be 10 inverted URACs, or roughly the size of a motor vehicle parking space, which is one of the reasons why I showed that photo. A minimum of 20 covered bike parking spaces, or 50% of the total, whichever is greater, shall be covered to protect bicycles from inclement weather. and to go along with that the bicycle issues committee recommended requiring lighting for covered bike parking consistent with the city's lighting standards and the intent of that was to provide additional security so the parks department they asked if we could uh Install artistic bike racks. This is an example of an artistic bike rack that leaves there from the Art in Public Places program out of the museum. And these are called leaves bike racks. And this is over at the Memorial Building. And so it would specify when an artistic bike rack could be used along with the design requirements. And the first criteria is that the minimum amount of short-term bike parking requirement would need to be met first. And then they would have to have two points of contact, such as this, which is similar to the inverted U bike parking rack. And it would give the planning director the ability to administratively approve the racks. So now that we no longer have a minimum parking requirement, what was recommended was that we could allow the conversion of motor vehicle parking at existing developments into bike parking. But it would stipulate design requirements. Some would be protection, like for example, providing bollards so that cars could not enter into a space like that. requires bike parking access ramps with 50 feet of bicycle parking areas placed at the sidewalk within 50 feet of the bicycle parking areas placed at the sidewalk level one member of our bicycle issues committee as well as the transportation advisory board um rides a cargo tricycle like you saw in the photo and um She says those are very, very heavy bicycles. And so when there's no ramp, it makes it really difficult for her to access the bike parking. So she specifically requested this provision. And then lastly, it encourages bike parking to be placed at a parking lot drive aisle level for ease of access. And again, amendments would also include design requirements such as protection with bollards. And again, the reason why is because it would just make it easier for a bicyclist to access bike parking without having to lift their bike over a curb or ride up a ramp. So the next steps will include an update to the Transportation Advisory Board. At the last meeting in April, they specifically requested that they wanted us to report on what the Planning and Zoning Commission decided on with respect to the proposed changes. And subsequent to that, we intend on going to City Council, but the date to that is yet to be determined. So for the Planning and Zoning Commission's consideration, we have three options before you. And the first is PZR 2026-14A, which would recommend approval of Chapter 1505-080J, bicycle parking without conditions. Option two is PZR 2026-14B, recommend approval of Chapter 1505-080J, bicycle parking with conditions. And then option three is PZR 2026-14C, which would be to recommend denial of Chapter 1505-080J, bicycle parking. And with that, I would be happy to take your questions.

Okay, thank you very much. This is a public hearing item, so I will go ahead and open up for public invited to be heard. There is nobody on the list. Seeing nobody in the audience, I'll go ahead and close out public invited to be heard, and we'll move to comments, questions, motions from the commission.

Vice Chair Earle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Ortiz. I appreciate the presentation. Helpful to understand some of these things. I do have a couple, I guess, administrative questions and then a whole bunch of policy questions. Administratively, I just want to understand, so the Transportation Advisory Board has seen this. Did they see it in this format of what we're being presented tonight?

Yes and no. So we have also included a long-term bike parking provision and we presented that to them originally but they were really there seems to be a lot of hang up on that side so what we thought we would do is break it out break out the the ordinance just showing the short-term bicycle parking minus the long-term bicycle parking and And then eventually, when we're looking at the city is going to be tackling a transportation demand management ordinance in the not too distant future, we thought we would fold in the long-term bike parking in that process. Now, for those of you who don't know what long-term versus short-term bike parking is, the inverted U bike racks that you see around town, those are all short-term bike parking. long term bike parking would be things like like lockers, bike lockers or the shelter at eighth and Kaufman that that provide additional security and more weather protection. So those are the examples they add a lot of cost to this. There was a lot of disagreement as to how that was approached. So we thought we'd we'd presented in more what I would say, more digestible chunks.

It's helpful. And the real reason I ask here, because I think it's a little bit weird for us to be seeing proposed code changes that are then going to go back to an advisory board who may recommend additional changes that we didn't have a chance to weigh in on before it goes to city council. So it feels a little out of order. given that our recommendation is to City Council.

Understood. Well, first, we don't need the TAB's recommendation to go to City Council. We could have not gone to them. We did it because, you know, they're a Transportation Advisory Board, obviously. They specifically requested that and made that motion at the last meeting, and I said I would report back, but we're not going to be entertaining any more changes from them. Okay.

No, that's helpful. And then the truly administrative thing, in our planning and zoning communication form, we have available motions of approve, which say move to approve conditions. We are not approving the conditions of the changes to the development code. Just to be clear, we are solely making a recommendation of what we think that should happen despite the way it's worded.

Correct. That's right. My apologies for that.

No, no, that's okay. I just want to, I want to be a hundred percent sure that we're making the correct motions when we say that. All right. So then in the code itself, I had, do have a couple of questions and I'm going to try to be brief and I apologize because I probably won't be. Um, I'm curious why, so this is all in section 15 0 5 0 8 0 J there's a section three, which is by parking location. And one of the things that was struck was allowing the director to make an administrative modification, basically to allow indoor parking for offices. Why is that taken out? What was the rationale to no longer let the director have authority?

Yeah. The Transportation Advisory Board also had that question. So I did development review for a lot of years, for about a dozen years. It's kind of like the middle of my career here in the city of Longmont. And I've worked with a lot of developers. Some of them are very honest and very decent people, and then some are not. They're the opposite. I hate to use this description, but they'd sell their own mother for a dollar. And so what I see them, and at the time we were looking at, we had long-term bike parking included in this. And I would see that as a way of a developer circumventing the long-term bike parking requirement by saying we're gonna dedicate a room to indoor bike parking. Now, from my perspective as a planner, have no reason to be inside of a building but generally if I see bike parking that was required on a site plan driving by visible from the street and then six months later I don't then I know they have a site plan violation and I can go to to the code enforcement and say we've got a potential site plan violation here if it's an indoor room and let's say the market the rental market or the leasing market for office space is really hot and they run out then they can tell their their tenants sorry no more indoor bike parking i'm converting this to an office we would have no way of knowing that the only time that i can go into a building is when i inspect it and so Basically, I'm tailoring the policy to the bad developer, the ones that's not trustworthy.

Yeah, I understand that logic to it. I can't say I love the fact that we take away the ability for the good developer to have an indoor parking, but I'll just leave that be for now.

And just one more aside. The vast, vast majority of people that occupy a building, whether it's an office, regardless what it is, they're very unfamiliar with the planning process. They would not know that that building, that that specific room is part of a site plan and that taking it away would be a site plan violation. They wouldn't know to call a city. Sure.

I'll move on to cargo bike parking. I really want to clarify one thing here, because the way I read this as written, so bike parking designed to accommodate cargo bikes, fine. One cargo bike parking rack for every 20 short-term bicycle parking spaces, which is 10 inverted Ute racks, but no less than one cargo bike rack per development where bicycle parking is required. So if you have a single inverted Ute rack, you have to have a cargo bike spot. Correct. So if you are a single family attached house that has to have an inverted URAC, you have to also have a cargo rack.

So that provision sort of assumes that there are no garages devoted to that particular use.

Yes. Yeah. So the answer would be yes. So, I mean, when we're looking at townhomes without garages, we now have to have, if it's, say, single-family attached lists, you have up to four units. So you have to have two inverted URACs and a cargo bike space for that requirement.

That is a very good point. And I didn't think of that.

Because I don't have a problem requiring it when you have a certain number of them. And I don't know what that number is. I know you said per 10 inverted URACs. I mean, I get it that we want cargo bike parking. I have no disagreement with that. I have a little disagreement with the way it's written and kind of the practical application of that.

In your example, so if we're talking about Detached. Detached.

Detached says zero. What was your example again? The example is a towed home. So a single family attached. So, you know, common wall. You have two, three, four units. Sure. No garages. Right. You have to have one short-term bike parking space for each unit. So a minimum of one URAC and therefore also one cargo bike spot. Right.

So in a lot of ways, these townhome developments, as well as, well, I'd like to say condos, but we don't really have those here in the state any longer, do we? We frequently see multiple units on a single lot. So they wouldn't have to necessarily be devoted on that area that would be devoted to that one single family unit. There could be a separate space devoted to simply the bike parking. But as long as it's close and central, that would work.

Yeah, I still think because, and I know I'm going beyond what's in the code, but attached is maximum four per whatever section that is. That's right. So I still have an issue with just that small development like that, having the cargo. I don't need to beat a dead horse.

If it's five or more, then it becomes multifamily.

Correct. And I don't have a problem when we have to start doing, you know, call it five, ten inverted URACs when we have one or two of them. It seems a little onerous to require the cargo, in my opinion. And then the other comment, and I will defer to other commissioners because I apologize for monopolizing things. I have some concerns with covered as well as well as the lighting, really not from a practicality standpoint or the way it works. is beneficial to bike users or anything else, but just as an extra requirement and imposing costs on some of these developments, which I don't love doing as a matter of practice. I also find it a little ironic that we've gotten rid of parking minimums and yet we're putting onerous parking minimums for bicycles in the code, which seems to be going in the opposite direction. Again, I'm not opposed to bike parking or it being a part of these developments or being required as the developments. I just find it a little bit of a strange process that we're going through for this, but I'll yield with that.

That's understood. Again, this is following city council's direction. And that was subsequent to the transportation mobility plan being adopted, which sort of flips the script in terms of transportation hierarchy. So now it puts pedestrians at the top, then bicyclists, and then cars way down here at the bottom.

Commissioner Wang. Thanks, Chair. Hey, Ben, I have a question. So the table, the required bicycle parking, how did you come up with the numbers for each uses? That is a great question.

So a lot of bike parking ordinances around the country take a similar approach. The problem is that they're all Similar, but they're all different and sometimes dramatically so and what I found was that the city of Longmont's bike parking approach is Was different than most communities that I researched so the reality is It's a little bit of guesswork involved in that. I have about a dozen years of development review behind me. I plan to implement a bike parking program for the city of Los Angeles. I deal with bike parking exclusively here at the City of Longmont. So I really just use my best professional judgment. But at the end of the day, you could have two similar uses in two different parts of town that might have completely different bike parking generation rates. And the reason is maybe your origins and destinations in one are really close together, making it a very bikeable distance with really good bicycle facilities between those two origins and destinations and then maybe over here the exact same type of use has origins and destinations that are really far apart and no safe bicycle facilities to get between the two. So one is going to more likely get ridden to, one destination is more likely going to get ridden to, compared to the other, even though they're the exact same use. And so it sort of begs the question, how do you apply a number to that? And the reality is, it's best guess.

Okay. Given that, because I was wondering about this, if it was, you know, copied from other communities and Lamont's a little bit different itself, too. Is there a way, since we're going to be piloting this policy, is there a way to build it in to have this tested out for, you know, a couple years and then come back and revisit this number and change it administratively instead of having to come back to the board and city council to change it every single time that it needs to be fine-tuned?

Yes, I think that's a doable thing. It would be incumbent on the planners who are here to take note and do some bicycle parking studies. In advance of us removing our minimum motor vehicle parking requirement, we did have a grad student from CU Denver do a multifamily parking study, and he came up with some really interesting results. And so it was one of our motivations for eliminating the minimum parking requirement. What we found was that we were asking for way too much motor vehicle parking, but we could not really know that until it was formally studied. So it is something that we could look at.

it can we build that into code so that it doesn't we don't need somebody to remind council you know coming back like a couple years saying hey let's take a look at this and because that's that's required on somebody keeping up to date on this i believe the city attorney is stating no okay so the only way that you could revisit this is to have somebody say hey let's do this instead of having it triggered automatically

Well, we could get direction from city council or the public can reach out to city council or they could tell us and we could provide the city council with with what we're hearing. But I mean, I think that would be the mechanism.

Is there a way to like put in a sunset clause or anything like that?

Not into the requirements itself. But I think what Ben is talking about is, you know, if five years down the line we're seeing a problem and there's either too much bicycle parking or not enough bicycle parking because we... or everyone's riding bicycles now, we could revisit at that point internally and then bring it back to council. I mean, it's not uncommon for staff to initiate the process of changing code where we see problems. If we find a problem in our code, staff can certainly initiate it, bring it to council for direction, saying like, hey, we think this is a problem. Do you want us to go forward with making changes? Council says, yes, do that. And then we work on making it. Certainly a concerned citizen or a council member could also direct, you know, bring it to council attention or bring it to staff's attention for us to look into. But I would not recommend having something in the code that we revisited every five years or ten years. I would be hesitant to do that.

Okay. Thank you. And one last comment I want to point out. The bicycle rack parking looks like a great place to practice your skateboarding. Thank you. Thank you.

So and to clarify, There really could be four ways that this could be looked at again in the future. A public could come and they would either go through development services, they could contact somebody in development services, they could contact somebody in city council, or technically then they could also contact somebody on the planning zoning commission. The planning zoning commission could ask for that to be reviewed. Correct. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Commissioner Forbes.

All right. Thank you chair. Okay. Um, I went through the, the chart and I was of like the different types of buildings and structures. I was curious, um, what type of building would like the lawn justice center fall under?

That would be a public, considered a public building.

Public building. And now I'm assuming that would, like the Civic Center, or this building would fall under the same type, which...

Yes, yes, that's correct.

Okay. So I'm looking for...

If you give me a moment, I'll just look at the... The table. Let's see, where is it?

Bottom of page seven.

Bottom of page seven.

I'm not finding it.

My apologies here.

Oh, public, institutional, and civic uses. OK. But there are several underneath that. Library, museum, or art center would be for the library, for example. And other community uses, services, and facilities operated by a government and not listed elsewhere in this table.

Okay. So, so for both, for both of the, like for like this building and the lawn justice center, it would just be the, it would just have a minimum of two space like, um, bikes spots for these buildings.

So, yes, the requirement would be based on the most similar type of use in this table. So the Civic Center would probably be more closely resemble an office.

Okay.

I would say. And then a library, obviously the library. Okay. The library, for example, over here would be one per 25 occupancy capacity. And so we can get that figure from the fire department.

Okay. The other question I had was... was based on the requirements like so if like this went through and the the the change went through would uh what like i'm thinking about businesses on like main street how would this like would it only affect them once they were like doing a major renovation or something like that and what would they need to do to be up to code because they're Some businesses where they have, like Ziggy's, for example, where they have plenty of U racks right in front of them. But there are other businesses where there's not really any spots in the vicinity. And they would have to do a lot to make up for it. And then on top of it, not only do they have the business on the bottom level, they may own...

all the levels above that and does that square footage count towards the number of racks they would need to have yeah that's an excellent question that was brought to my attention as well and so traditionally in the city in the city's parking code when it comes to motor vehicle parking a subset of the longmont downtown development authority is is called the general improvement district or gid and historically we've had no parking requirement in the gid so we have no minimums no maximums so whatever works so uh we thought we would mirror that policy so under j2 required amount of bicycle parking we added a provision and you'd see it in blue in your packet and it reads in the general improvement improvement district The bike parking requirements as to number and type are waived in instances of development or redevelopment of a site. However, developers in consultation with planning staff are required to provide suitable bike parking on behalf of customers and staff to the greatest extent feasible given site constraints. So there would be some room for negotiation.

okay so like for the the the downtown and then like for example now there's a tourism improvement district which includes most of the hotels in town they would like if a new hotel wanted to pop up they would have they would basically say they wouldn't be required to put up any minimum bike bicycle parking but it would they would I guess, provide suitable bike parking for customers and staff to the greatest extent feasible is what the code would say.

Yeah, and we actually did provide bike parking for the new hotel over here. If you look, you'll see some on Kimbark Street, and then some along Third Avenue, and then actually some inside the parking garage itself. No, I take that back. LDDA was proposing to add some inside the parking garage. They haven't pulled the trigger on that, but they could. But again, the 10 bike parking spaces will fit inside the space of a single motor vehicle space. So when we're thinking about the cost of bike parking as well as the footprint of bike parking, it's very minimal. You can get to an inverted URAC for anywhere between $150 and $200. A single motor vehicle parking space, the last estimate for surface parking was And this has changed depending on the market, but on the low end, it's $5,000 per surface space. For garages, you're looking at $20,000, $30,000 per space. For subterranean, you're looking at $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 per space. So the amount of money that developers have been throwing at parking forever has been astronomical. The amount of money that would be required and the amount of footprint that would be required for bike parking is just a drop in the bucket.

I totally appreciate that. My main concern, and I'm still thinking about it, is the is mainly for like let's if like for like a business that's right outside the improvement district like on main street and if they let's say they have they're outside the square footage and they don't have any u racks out out front and they're like what what um what would be counted if they like is it just this the their customer facing side or doesn't include any storage or anything that they have within the business as well. And then would how like they would need to get all the racks like basically on like set up in this code.

So There's a way for them to seek administrative modification if for some reason they feel like the number of racks that we're acquiring is too much, for example. So administrative modification is something that the planning director can approve. It would allow up to a 25% variation on a numeric standard. So depending upon how many bike parking spaces are being required, you can request up or down a 25% modification. Now I would My guess is, though, that most buildings within the LDDA or just outside are on smaller lots. So the buildings, those particular buildings, are not going to be that large. So most likely, we're looking at a couple of racks. And if you look at what we did on Main Street with the bike parking, they have wider sidewalks. We're able to fit a bicycle parking rack fairly easily in front of a lot of businesses on Main Street where they have no off-street parking whatsoever or any room. Those particular buildings are built to lines, so there's really no extra space for bike parking. But what we found is that the bike parking that we're providing seems to be adequate and it seems to be getting well used, despite the fact that there's really no off street space available for any kind of motor vehicle parking or bike parking.

Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Jordan. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Ben. I had a quick question, just some thoughts. Maybe I'm not quite seeing the picture entirely. The first question was on the artistic bike racks. Did I interpret what you said correctly, that first the minimum had to be met before any additional is put up? Why can't we just have the artistic bike racks satisfy the minimum?

That's a good question. And the answer is actually pretty simple. And I use the two examples of the Senior Center and the Memorial Building, and both of which have those Art in Public Places leaves bike racks out in front. So the Senior Center has no other bike parking, just the leaves rack. In only one instance, which was the city's open house, did I ever see anyone parked on that bike rack. At the Memorial Building, the bicyclists that visit that site, they always go to the racks first. And rarely have I ever seen anyone park on the Leafs bicycle racks. So there seems to... The U-Racks is known as an actual bicycle parking rack. People know what it's for. Typically, what I've seen is that people will use those artistic bike racks as really a last resort if there's no other bike parking available. And so that's the reason. So the bicyclists prefer the URACs. We know what we're going to get with the URAC. We have two vertical points of contact for the bicycle to lean against. And it is the general... It's the accepted standard throughout the Denver metro region. And the reason why I say that is when I was, my first job here in Colorado, I was a transportation planner with the Denver Regional Council of Governments. And I worked with a lot of local governments to put together a model bicycle parking ordinance. And they all said, we want the inverted U bicycle rack as the standard for the Denver metro region.

i mean that answers the question it does dovetail into some thoughts i have though i think you either need to say you can't do artistic bike racks or if there is a desire to alleviate some of the burden of putting them in and give the business owner some creative artistic license you do say in the code that Any design would have to be approved. I mean, I prefer to park in a covered parking garage with my car, but I'll take parallel parking if it's the last resort. And so in my mind, parking is parking. And if the desire is to give business owners flexibility, let's give them the flexibility. Let's not say, oh, if you want to do something extra after you put in all these inverted U-Racks, which are non-negotiable. I would say either don't allow them or allow the artistic ones to go at the minimum. I will also echo Commissioner Earle's point about the cargo bike. I understand that they are becoming more prevalent, but I also think of these code inclusions as sort of a build it and they will come. We're investing. We're trying to encourage, we're building the infrastructure, and I understand that's important to encourage biking, but I feel like mandating cargo bike spaces at this point in Longmont's very still car-centric period of time is a bridge too far. That's too much burden, in my opinion. And I would recommend that you stick with more simpler language, like if you have 20, add one for every 20, but up till that point, you're not required. Um, my only other thought here is you, I hear you when you're saying that, yeah, you can get 10, 10 bikes in the space of one car spot. Um, and so there's that efficiency point, my issue. Uh, and I think the spirit behind removal of parking minimums was to allow development opportunities to flourish that wouldn't have been possible before. Um, And it's about improving land use. Ultimately, it's not just about reducing cost burden to developers. And so I would ask that we look for to mirror that with a bike parking to some of the fellow commissioners questions about what if the site doesn't allow it and it's not within an improvement district? Well, now we're back to where we were when that site was now, they couldn't do their development project because they couldn't get the number of car spaces. Now they can't do it because they can't get the minimum number of bike spaces. And especially if the administrative modification isn't, numerically a percentage, it's they can't do any. And so I would want to make sure that while we are investing in our bike, you know, our biking strategy, and providing that infrastructure, I would request that we consider that as a secondary goal to empowering local businesses.

Okay.

Thank you. Commissioner Boone.

Thank you, Chair. I have a couple of questions and maybe a comment on some smaller uses. In particular, ADUs that are licensed for short-term rentals that are required to have one parking spot. And according to this, they're also now required to have one bicycle rack. And I'm wondering if that is being enforced. Is that part of a short-term rental license?

Presently there is no bike parking requirement for short-term rentals that I know of because they're typically in private residences And no, well, there's no bike parking requirement what I was thinking is your bike tourist who you know, husband and wife, for example, on a tour, stopping in at an Airbnb, or that that may be an ADU. And perhaps the owner doesn't want to have people bringing their bicycles inside their, their ADU. But there would be a place for them to lock their bike.

So this is not really I mean, it says short-term rental, two per unit, but that's not really applicable to ADUs.

If the ADUs are short-term rental, they would be. But no, it would not be applicable to an ADU on a private residence that they built for, you know, grandma or, you know, it wouldn't be.

Right. In my neighborhood, it's full of... full of ADUs, and many of them are being used as short-term rentals, and I've yet to see a bike rack. And a similar comment for mobile home parks. Now I can't find it. It seemed, I think it was one per unit. And is that realistic and being looked at in the field?

Well, the mobile home parks, we only have a couple in town. But in all of those cases, there are no private garages. So their choices are to, you know, they're really their only choices to bring their bicycle inside unless there is a post on their particular lot which they can park their bicycle to. What I was thinking is something similar to what you see at multifamily developments where you have like banks of bike parking. And so if you have, you know, a mobile home development with Let's come up with an even number, 40 mobile homes. That would be 20 bicycle parking racks. That would provide enough bike parking for every single one of those units. You're assuming that there would be at least one bike per unit. And there may be more and there may be less.

OK. Just questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner Edgley-Wells.

Thank you, Chair. Okay, so my question I think kind of touches on what a few commissioners have maybe expressed some concerns about. On number three, it's J3, bicycle parking location, and how It states that bicycle parking facilities shall be located no further than 100 feet away from a building entrance or outdoor destination. As we address density, both as the ADU or commercial business, what would designate how far and where that 100 feet limit is for these areas when we're talking about bicycle rack locations?

I didn't quite catch the example that you used. Could you repeat that?

Thank you. So let's say we're talking about downtown or we're talking about ADUs or we're talking about mobile home communities. When you're addressing density in an area and also bicycle parking and the availability of it 100 feet away or less, what will designate where that bicycle parking will be based on the number of spots that need to be available?

Sure. Thank you. Sure. Well, so the criteria is 100 feet from the land use that they serve, whatever that is. And let me see from a from a building entrance. So multifamily buildings, for example, may have multiple entrances. So they can, so let's just say in one multifamily building there are 10 units. They would be required to provide five inverted U bike racks in that instance. And let's say you have a, Let's say you have an entrance on the north side and an entrance on the south side. They could put a portion of the racks on the north side, and they could put a portion on the south side, or they could put them all on one side. As long as it's near the entrance, The concern is that you want to have eyes on those bike parking locations. And typically, when you have building entrances, that's where most of the people are going to be coming in and out of the building, obviously. And that's where most of the eyes are going to be. You don't want to have them hidden, say, behind dumpsters and that sort of thing, because It's just too easy for a thief to take a bike. But basically, we'd be looking at building entrances.

My follow-up to that would be what if the scenario is you don't own the link like the property or development isn't yours past like I just I'm trying to I'm trying to figure out there's no way that these bicycle parking spaces could be Encroaching on a different development is what I'm saying.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so I Here's the process in a nutshell. You own lot A. You want to build a bank on lot A. You own that lot. You come to us and you submit a site plan for our review and comments and ultimately approval. We know that those property lines are years and years alone. So all of the requirements that the city has, and the bike parking is one of them, would only be applicable to that specific lot.

Okay. I have a couple comments before I move on. So first of all, on the cargo bicycle parking, I also feel uncomfortable saying but no less than one cargo bike rack per development. I get a little twitchy sending that kind of minimum. The other thing is It says one cargo bicycle parking rack for every 20 short-term bicycle parking spaces. Is there a way that we can say that replaces one of the 20 short-term bicycle parking spaces? So overall, we still have 20. It's just 19 regular in one cargo instead of 20 in one cargo. It's kind of nitpicky, but... I wonder if we can do something like that for the cargo. That's a comment. The covered bike parking, I also have the same kind of concern where it says a minimum of 20 covered bicycle parking spaces or 50% of the total, whichever is greater. and you had lined out at least 50% of the bike parking, why did we add a minimum of 20 covered bicycle parking spaces as a minimum instead of just leaving it at 50% of the total?

That was the recommendation from the Transportation Advisory Board. And so we just went with it. I don't have a good answer for that.

Because the other question I have is, So in here we state that it's 11 inches wide. 11 feet wide. 11 feet wide. We don't have a depth listed as far as how deep it has to be to cover the bikes. And it appears to indicate that it could be like an awning covering coming off of a building. I'm just wondering, should we put in some kind of designation on how deep the depth of it should be to make sure that the bikes are covered.

So I pulled up an earlier slide. So this is, again, 9 feet wide by 18 feet long. What that requirement would look like, it would be if there is, say, a rooftop over this parking space that is roughly as long and as wide, it would go one foot outside of each of those lines. Now, for an 11-foot roof structure... and then uh four feet on either side on either end and and the reason for that is as a standard bicycle is about six feet long um cargo bikes as we've seen are eight could be eight feet long um and so what if you're removing if you're taking that six feet 11 feet minus six feet then that leaves you with five feet, so roughly two and a half feet either side of the bicycle. So that 11 feet is intended to provide weather protection, not just for the bicycle itself, but the rider as they're inside the shelter and removing their bike or locking it, whatever the case may be. It's a little bit of an arbitrary number, but I felt like we needed to have a little bit of overlap for the bicycles themselves when you have a driving rain, for example.

I agree with that, but we gave the width but not the depth. I'm wondering if maybe we should put some kind of depth measurement minimum to meet. That's just a thought.

Oh, we could do, yeah.

It's not a hill I'm going to die on, but I'm thinking that since we have a limit or a distance for the width, maybe somehow come up with a distance for the depth. Sure. At least look into it and see if that makes sense. The last thing I have is, Do you have an example for the access ramps? I'm trying to wrap my head around those, what that might look like and what that might incur upon a builder.

I suspect that it would be very similar to an ADA access ramp. In fact, we probably would just use an ADA detail since someone in a wheelchair may be using those ramps as well. So it would have the little domes, et cetera, and then the flared wings. It would be something of that nature is what I'm envisioning.

Okay. Thank you.

Vice chair Earl. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to just ask a couple of clarifying comments in order the comment from commissioner Boone, then actually Wells, then the chairman. So starting with mobile home parks, which I don't think is where we expected to go tonight, but I'm going there. My question is very, is I'm good with requiring that we have to have bike parking for mobile home parks. Fine. I'm trying to understand part section three where we require it to be no further than a hundred feet away from a building entrance. Does that mean every hundred feet within a mobile home park, you'd have to have a bike rack?

That's a great question. This is why this is so hard. I don't have a good answer for that. And we may need to readdress that.

Because I understand the intent. And you said, you know, we have them in a few sections, you know, it meets the needs of communities. Sure, fine. I get that. How those two intersect is a little bit...

Right, because a mobile home park, for example, is sort of like a multifamily development where you have multiple mobile homes on a single lot, whereas a mobile home subdivision, on the other hand, you have a mobile home on its own individual lot. Correct. Yeah, I see that point.

And then you tied it perfectly to multifamily, which was Commissioner Edgley Wells' comment. We were talking about, I mean, hypothetically, you need 10, you need 20 parking spaces, you have 10 inverted U racks. You had said they could be all on one side of the building or the other. The way I read section three, though, is that at least one bicycle rack shall be located at each building near main entrances. Main entrances is not a defined term in the code. I'm trying to understand if that means that bike racks have to be distributed near every entrance of the building.

Not necessarily. No. But it would just need to be near a main entrance.

A main entrance.

Yes. I mean, we could write it that way, but... When we were reviewing a site plan, for example, we would be looking at the code and just saying, is it near a main entrance?

I mean, I understand that from a practicality. The way it is written, you know, in quoting, at least one bicycle rack shall be located at each building near main entrances. And entrances is plural, which certainly implies to me it's at each one. Since main entrance is not a defined term, I interpret that to be any entrance. And that really ties into the chairman's comment about covered bike parking, because I read that to then mean every single entrance needs to have covered bike parking next to it once you trigger the requirement for covered bike parking.

I don't think so. I think it goes to the total number.

But you have to have a minimum of 20 covered bike parking spaces or 50% of the total, whichever is greater. And so if you have to have 20 and you have to have them distributed between main entrances, you have to have all of them covered. And so you have multiple covers, multiple lighting, multiple... I mean, I'm just... I understand the intent. I think the way it's written and the way it layers on becomes a little bit over onerous. And I don't think that's what you guys are trying to do, but I think that's the way it reads.

Right. I understand.

That makes sense. Last comment on the covered bike parking, the way it is written right now. Um, sorry, looking for the exact wording here, shall be adequately covered to protect bicycles from inclement weather. Again, I get your intent here. I understand what you're going for with the overhang and everything. We also know we've had a whole lot of sideways rain and 40 mile an hour winds, and no matter what you do, unless there's four walls, that bike's getting wet. And so I think the way it's worded here that you are requiring them to protect a bike from inclement weather is probably not practical. Everything you've written there in terms of what you want it to do, sure thing. I'm drawing a complaint strictly with the wording, not the intent.

Commissioner Jordan. Thank you chair and Ben and fellow commissioners. I just noticed this and perhaps maybe I'm just reading it wrong. But in my is it correct to say for developments with fewer than 20 bicycle bicycle parking spaces cover bicycle parking shall be provided equal to 100%. So I'm reading that as it doesn't matter how small of a development it that has to be a covered space.

Right, yes. That was the TAB recommendation to us. One of the things we don't define is what that covered parking looks like. So if it's an ironing or a building overhang or if it's a roof structure, we purposefully did not identify what that would look like to give the developers some flexibility in how they would address this provision.

I personally feel that is too burdensome for small developments. The folks that are doing the really big developments that would have to go over the 20 or more, I think the cost burden for them to put in... you know, cover bicycle parking is going to be a small percentage of the project. And they would have under previous code with parking minimums and all that had to have been doing a lot of asphalt. So, you know, I think that's fine, but for small developments, this is going to hurt them disproportionately. And for an app and I don't want to say aspirational, but it kind of is, it is a build it and they will come strategy. I think that's unfair. I think having the parking,

period for bicycles is fantastic and i think that's gonna give people a place to hook up their bike um i think having it covered is a bridge too far for the small small ones thank you do we have any other comments i'm just wondering ben did you go in front of like the ldda or any of the other economic groups in the city and just kind of get their thoughts on this we

we didn't go for the ldda the reason why is because in the ldda you see all the bike parking that's along along the main street and then along some of the avenues all of that bike parking was added by me in consultation with the ldda so we've had a very long-standing working relationship in addressing this of the transportation puzzle. So I haven't, but that's a good point. I could raise it with them.

Okay, yeah, it does sound though that in the past you've worked with them, you have a good feeling for where they're at on the subject. I was just wondering if that had been done. Thank you very much. Any other comments, motions? Commissioner Boone?

Thank you, Chair. I'm just unclear as to what we do tonight. We've had lots of comments. many of which are probably very valid and might be thought about and incorporated and some maybe after talking to other folks are dismissed so i have no clue how to proceed tonight if we make a motion to accept what you're doing here that kind of discounts all the comments we made I would say... So I would like some clarification.

Yeah, I would say it doesn't discount the comments because this is still probably going to go... I think you mentioned it's going in front of the tab again. And there's still a chance for minor modifications. And I think it's safe to say that you may go over some of the comments we've had and still make modifications based on our comments. What I would say is if there's something strong that somebody feels about, let's make a list of conditions... If there's something you feel really strongly that you want to see edited in or modified or at least considered, let's add it as a condition. We'll take all the conditions, rope them together, and put it into PZR 202614B.

That would be the way to go about it. Because like you said, there have been a lot of comments and concerns about certain aspects of these provisions within this code. You can always approve it with changes or conditions on the condition that the following changes are made, something of that nature.

Vice Chair Earle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That's exactly where I was going to go with this as the recommendation is 14B. At least where my concerns are for starting a list of things that we feel strongly about. I feel strongly about the cargo bike parking minimum as the way it's currently written as being onerous, similar to what Commissioner Jordan brought up with the covered bike parking, that if you have fewer than 20, you also have to be covered. I have a concern that with two townhomes, you have to have covered bike parking and a cargo bike, as this is written, and both of those are onerous. And I would... I don't know if this is a condition. Because it's a recommendation, it's weird to call it a condition. But our comments on this, at least for me, I think the 100 feet standard should be looked at a little bit. Not that it's a bad standard for many types of development. But in this very broad terms, we brought up the example of mobile home park or multiple entrances. I think it should just be clarified a little bit. So those are the three I have that I would add to the list.

I counted two.

Cargo covered 100 feet.

Commissioner Wang.

Thank you. I would also like to add to revisit the short-term rental thing because if there are people renting out their rooms right now as extra income, you don't want to force them to put in bike racks.

I guess the question is, so we have four items. Is everybody comfortable having those all included so we don't have to take a vote individually on those? And we can just, I'm not seeing anybody.

What about the autistic thing? I don't know if I'm fine letting that one go if it's not commonly helpful.

Yeah. I think we're good with the four. So if somebody wants to go ahead, Commissioner Boone, who's taking the list, and make a motion for PZR 2026-14B with the list of those conditions, I think we might be ready for that now. Are you looking at me? You're the one taking notes.

I can't have her word these motions correctly. I would move to approve. with the following conditions. PZR 26-14B. PZR 26-14B with the following conditions to revisit the requirements for the cupboard parking and the cargo requirements and the 100-foot standard and the short-term rental requirements. per the discussions we had tonight.

I think we're good. We're getting a nod from Jane. Good. We're good on that. Jeremy, no concerns? I think we're good with that. We have a motion. Oh, do we have a second? Commissioner Jordan. You have a second. Okay. Is there any further discussion, comments? Seeing nobody jump in, Jane, let's go ahead and take a vote.

Commissioner Edgley-Wells? Yes. Commissioner Forbes? Yes. Vice Chair Earle? Yes. Chair Polin? Yes. Commissioner Wang?

Aye.

Commissioner Boone? Yes. Commissioner Jordan?

Yes.

Chair, that motion passes unanimously 7-0.

This item will now be forwarded to the Longmont City Council for action. If you are unfamiliar with council procedures and intend to appear before City Council, please contact the Planning Division for further information at 303-651-8330. Ben, thank you very much for the presentation.

Thank you. I appreciate the feedback.

Next item is final call, public invited to be heard. Seeing we don't have any, well, there's a couple people in the back, but I think there's city staff. I'll go ahead and open up a public invited to be heard final call. I'll go ahead and close out. Final call, public invited to be heard. Items from commission.

Vice Chair Earle. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very briefly, I just want to thank Ben and all the Transportation Advisory Board, Bicycle Board, whoever you've worked with on this. You guys have done amazing work on this. I hope you recognize our feedback is nitpicking in how it gets implemented, not on the vision that you have established and the work you've done, and really appreciate that. Also, shameless plug, it's tied into the single-family attached discussion, as you heard it referenced a few times. So, Director Penland, I'm once again hoping that that's going to be on our future agenda. That's all from me, Chairman.

Commissioner Jordan. Yeah. After last meeting, I wanted to ask my fellow commissioners whether or not we thought it might be a good idea to do a study session with staff about the things that we would expect to see as minimum criteria, whether it's an annexation, a concept plan, or preliminary plot. I felt like we had a lot of discussion last meeting around items about whether or not they should or should not be in a concept plan. If that would be helpful, especially for some of our newer commissioners, I thought it might be good to do a study session on that, especially with the context of will we see this thing again? Because I know sometimes we tend to apply more scrutiny when we feel like, okay, this is the last that's going to come by. But if it's just a matter of like, okay, does it meet the criteria for the next step? I think we could streamline some things and just focus on that particular decision. But that's all I had.

Yeah, so I think adding out to that something where this is like what the city views as the minimum requirements for what goes into a concept plan. There are questions about, well, this one before had streets and we don't see streets here. A presentation by the city, what's included in that? Preliminary plats, the same thing. What needs to be into a preliminary plat so that we all kind of have a common base and maybe we don't go down some, I hate to say rabbit holes, but rabbit holes that we probably don't need to be too concerned about. Prairie dog holes, yes. Anything else from the commission? Council Representative Popkin is not here today. So items from Planning Director Grant Pendlin.

i will be brief um i think everyone knows if they don't um the longmont gateway northwest annexation zoning concept plan um that was not uh completed or reviewed uh last meeting uh we have tentatively scheduled for june 17th and then upcoming uh also like a broken record we still have one ura item that is still yet to be scheduled uh then we have a couple items that will most likely land in july But again, nothing definitive yet. So just plan for that expectation. There'll be at least one meeting in July. Going back, timing of the single family attached and single family residential. I think last time I said May, June. I think we probably slid into the June, July timeframe. just based upon other things we have going on. It's still on our radar. We haven't forgotten about it. So hopefully by the next meeting, I'll be able to give you a more definitive timeline. And then just to chime in in terms of the request for a study session, yes, we can definitely do something. We can put something together. Timeline-wise, we'll obviously look to see calendars, what makes sense.

But yeah, happy to do that. Very good. And so are we looking at one or two in June, do you think?

June right now, unless the URA item pops up, just one meeting. Okay, thank you.

And then we are in adjournment.