City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. The city council meeting for August 18, 2026 will come to order. And we'll begin tonight with the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Clerk Beck, could we please get a roll call?

Mayor Tapia Vega?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Barnes? Counselor Goliar?

Here.

Counselor Friedland? Counselor Gallegos? Counselor Giannola?

Here.

And Counselor Jensen? Here. Mayor, we have a quorum.

Thank you so much. Mayor Pro Tem Barnes and Counselor Gallegos both told me they're running a little late, but they are on their way. So we will see them here shortly. And we see the hand up. I'm assuming it's just for attendance, Counselor Friedland?

Sorry, the room is muted. So I just want to let you know that. And also just wanted to, I'm worried I may not make it all the way to counselor comments. So I just wanted to say it's good to see everybody. Thank you for the kind words. And I appreciate your patience with me as I get into life balance as a father and will do my best to be as present as I can tonight. But I appreciate your grace if I go off screen to deal with a crying baby. But good to see everybody. Happy to be here.

No worries. Thank you, Counselor. We appreciate having you back. As always, we'll begin with the Pledge of Allegiance. Sorry, not the Pledge of Allegiance. Roll call. And then public input. Jesus Christ. I'm tired tonight. It's been a very long week.

It's Tuesday.

If you want to speak tonight, you want to address council, please just fill out one of these speaker request forms. They are in the back through that glass door. When we do call your name, you will have five minutes. Just come on up to the podium, state your name and address for the record. And then you will, again, have those five minutes to speak. I say this a lot because it's hard to gauge just how long five minutes is if you don't know exactly what you're doing. But don't worry. There's a little clock in front of you. So when you're standing up here and speaking to council, If you look down and to your left, there's a little clock that tells you exactly how much time you have left at those five minutes, just for the sake of making sure everybody gets the exact same amount of time. I'll tell you your time is up. But with that, the only other thing I have to say is that if you're not here today, you still have the opportunity to speak. It's something that I love about the city of Lafayette. If you're watching us at home, all you have to do is call in, and you will also have your five minutes to address council tonight. OK, with that, we'll begin tonight with Frank Archuleta.

Frank Archuleta.

Anyway, thank you, Mr. Mayor and council members here. And this evening, I'm going to educate you all here. I'd like you all to pay attention here. Council and staff, I will speak about the power of the truth in history. It's made every day. I have always stated education is our greatest tool in understanding and combating racism and discrimination. It is the most essential weapon against oppression. Last night, your Human Rights Commission Board voted to approve, to recommend a new park at South Public and King Park to be named after Rosabella Lueras and to have a plaque put up telling her story. Council, we must put the power of inclusiveness, diversity, equity into action. We must build a healthy community where human dignity is honored and people feel safe and are appreciated and valued justly. It is important that everyone is able to feel to have a sense of belonging in our community. The principal functions of the racist ideas in American history has been to suppress resistance to racial disparities, racial inequities, and racial injustices. Let us all stand up for social justice, social change, and respect all human rights here. It is not possible to be in favor of justice for people, for some. and not be in favor for justice for all people. I am asking council this evening to champion for the name of Rosabelle Valera's Park at King Park and South Public Road, and also with a historical plaque telling her story here. Now I'm going to share some dark history with you all. I'm directing this. We've had two-hour conversations, but now we're going to go into the Wanaka family here. Wanaka Lake. Chuck Wanaka, as stated. Gus Wanaka was Ku Klux Klan member. We have Wanaka Park up here. The Harmon family. We have a Harmon Street name, was a Sand Creek Massacre. They were also involved with the Ku Klux Klan. Fred Audrey, town clerk. In 1962, he was still clerk. He went down in 1925 representing Lafayette at a state convention in Colorado Springs here, basically. We have the Miller family now. The Millers were studying heredity, which is eugenics. They wanted a pure white race in this community here. J.P. Miller was sent down by Mary Miller down to the local 1388, the Union Miners Hall. Do not hire the Greeks in town. We had in this community, tar and feathering was going on in Lafayette. Basically, we had a lot, a lot of racist discrimination that was happening in this community. And all those early gays and all that here. But basically, hopefully, we can make change, basically, for the betterment of our community here. I'm going on the street signs and all that. They're all up here. They're all up. And they are dark history, branded names that are insensitive names in this community. Now we have, but we should not be honoring those names. They're not honorable. But Rosabelle Loeris was a young Latina, innocent, harmless little girl at 13 years old that the Ku Klux Klan ran her mother, Rosabella, out of town because they wanted to swim in the Lafayette swimming pool. The Lafayette Fire Department had a conspiracy with the town board of Lafayette not to allow the Latinos to swim in the pool. They put up a sign, white trade only. She was harmless, like I stated. fighting for the struggle for civil rights to be able to swim at the Lafayette swimming pool. She was innocent, just like all of you are innocent right here. But these other family members, they were deceiving folks.

Mr. Archuleta, is it OK if you address council? And we also want you on the microphone. So if you could just make sure you're turned this way.

Oh, I was just addressing the youngsters here. OK. I recommend you all to champion for this small park and honor her. It is time that we do proper dignified honoring in this community instead of honoring deceitful people. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Next, we'll hear from Toni Munoz.

Hello, counsel. I'm not as confident in my speaking skills as Frank, but I am here also to encourage us to name the park Rosebella. Name it after her. I was not educated in what the vaccines were going on when I was growing up. I don't want to ruin the vibe of Lafayette. There's people in our community, there were people, and I'm sure there still are, that come into our community and they want to encourage taking advantage financially. They want to encourage people that just look like them. And I was raised on Miller Avenue. I didn't have any idea what was going on. I lived next door to some very interesting people. And I never quite understood what the, why wouldn't my parents talk to them? What was going on? It was Dutch Clemens. And that has a lot to do with Frank. Frank had to walk by Dutch Clemens' store every day, guys. It was bad. My parents hid a lot from me because, you know, I'm just a little bit younger than Frank, so, you know, different generations. So by then they knew to hide it a little better. They were hiding it. Education. They told me Mary Miller was my idol. I believed them. She owned the bank. She was giving loans to women until I learned about Alma White. And really, if people want to serve in the city of Lafayette, they need to learn the history because it will repeat itself. And so instead of encouraging street names in the town and just, you know, This was bad behavior, and so we're awarding bad behavior. Well, let's award some good behavior. Let's turn it around. Let's do the Lafayette Five, guys. I know we can. And I know that there's discrimination. The KKK might be gone, but I watched it today at lunch. I watched a car pull in from Florida. We were at a taco stand, my grandson and I. There's already a letter of intent on that property. And there they were asking about, we'd like to talk to someone about purchasing this property. The lady at the taco stand told them, we're not interested. Well, I had inside your information. I knew there's a letter of intent. They've already got a buyer on the hook. So it's really important. It's a small town. It's a small community. We all work together. And we try to keep our Lafayette vibe going. And so I just think that that would really help educate everyone. to work together that's a very good thing they did and we need to encourage good we really need to encourage good instead of animosity and you know I'm trained to work really hard to get over that history but not forget it to work with it to learn from it and to make certain that everyone else learns from it too so that we don't ruin the Lafayette vibe thank you thank you

Next we'll hear from Rosario Rusi.

Rosario Rusi, 721 Pasco Drive. And I'm going to talk about the capital bond and the proposal for the city of Lafayette. And first of all, I would like to thank the council for their attention to this very important matter. I have been a resident of the city of Lafayette since 1992. I use the rec center pretty much every day, where I was also a fitness instructor for 25 years. Like many other taxpayers, I have serious concerns about the plan that is being proposed for the fitness facility and how little the city of Lafayette seems to be planning to incorporate the community's input about this very expensive project. According to the results of the survey conducted in July, The top three priorities were improving the fitness and wellness space, as well as the weight room and the functional training space. There was also a strong emphasis on a multipurpose room for seniors, additional parking, and an outdoor hot tub. It doesn't seem, though, like these priorities are being contemplated by Davids' proposal. Davids is the architectural firm that's being granted the bid. There are some very nice renderings on the Lafayette Listens portal, but they seem to have been provided by a different architectural firm called Senza. Davis's sketches were added recently, and they do not include the many windows and green spaces of this other firm's original draft. They look instead more like a detention facility with considerable amounts of metal on the outside. I would like to know why that nice plan was abandoned, and ask if maybe we can go back to making reality the original and very thought out sketches from a census that are still up on the webpage. I would also like to know why our feedback is not really being taken into account. The proposed fitness area is not big or inviting. Sorry, the proposed fitness area is not big or inviting enough, and revamping the weight room is not even a thought. I know people that won't use the weight room because the machines are so exposed. Another important consideration is that these priorities were voiced by just 598 overwhelmingly high income white older adults in a city where about 30,000 far more diverse people live and play according to the 2020 census. There are two meetings scheduled for August 22nd, on the same day, almost back to back. I have a vested interest in both meetings, but I don't have enough time for the two. Which one should I choose? Will there be an opportunity for providing feedback? And more importantly, will any community input provided at these meetings be welcomed and incorporated into the plan? We need a functional space that serves its purpose for everyone, regardless of age. This is a fitness center with limited options for grandiosity, but with a lot of our money at stake. There are other private options for working out, but we choose to support this space that we cherish so much. It would be wonderful to have a large gathering space with a kitchen, but this need can probably be addressed in a different way. Cosmetic improvements would be nice as well, but they don't seem to be a priority for the community at this time, nor the best way to invest our property tax money. My suggestion at this point would be to take a pause, redo a bilingual survey that reaches out to more stakeholders, and for the city of Lafayette to listen to what we, the taxpayers, have to say. If they don't want to hear our opinions, I would ask that at least they stop pretending and explain to us why. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next, we'll hear from Catherine Saar.

Good evening. I'm Catherine Saar. I live at 300 West Cannon Street. And I'm also here to talk about the capital bond issue. So I moved to Lafayette in 2020, knowing almost no one. Shortly thereafter, I went to a spin class at the Bob Berger Rec Center. It was the end of the pandemic, so we cycled outdoors in good weather or indoors with masks on when it got cold or rainy. Since then, in the last six years that I've lived here, the Rec Center has become a hub for wonderful friendships, staying fit, and getting to know my neighbors. When my boyfriend suggests that I move to another L-town like Louisville or Longmont, I am vehement about staying here. And one of the key reasons that I feel this way is our rec center. It is a gem. It's a place that truly creates belonging, something that I believe that the city council wants to foster to keep residents loving it here and a way to attract new residents. The Bob Berger Rec Center, as wonderful as it is, is also frustrating at times. Our cycle and our fitness room are often overcrowded, and there are wait lists for popular classes. When I get waitlisted, I go to Erie or the Louisville rec centers instead, because they have larger facilities than we do, and they can accommodate more patrons. So when I'm there, I sometimes run my errands in those towns. I may buy my gas there. I go to the Walgreens there. I may get some groceries, creating a loss of revenue for Lafayette. So considering how the rec center actually impacts us economically in a broader sense. While I love the community, Bob Berger as a facility is also a bit run down. So when I heard about the bond issue, I was very excited. The promise of a more spacious and updated fitness environment would be worth the additional tax dollars that I would be paying. Unfortunately, my excitement is waning. It sounds as though the heart of what was promised has shifted, as you heard from Rosario. I first started to worry after I filled out the survey that was presented to me. Having spent decades in marketing management, I know how to write surveys, and the one that I filled out felt biased in that it did not ask questions that allowed me to say what I really felt. So my voice was not heard. Things continued to unravel when my fitness community at Bob Berger started sharing details of the plan and expressing their dismay about it. There was a public meeting on July 23 in which their concerns were all but dismissed by the architectural firm. I think this should be a concern to the parks and rec management and the members of city council. From a profitability perspective, In the business world, there's something known as the Pareto Principle, which you may also know as the 80-20 rule, where 20% of your customers account for 80% of your profits. At Bob Burger, the fitness community is comprised of regulars who work out there five to seven days a week. It's the seniors, the swimmers, the families who bring their kids. That's your 20% that is talking to you, and those are the people that make the rec center what it is. Those are the people who want you to know what they need. And running the risk of disenfranchising them can be very expensive for the city of Lafayette. Those Bob Burger patrons are not sure why we need a ballroom and a commercial kitchen, or even a coffee shop. Those additions don't feel as though they serve the needs and desires of the Bob Burgers Loyal Fitness community. We have at least five excellent coffee shops in a five block radius already. Do we need to take business from them? I also understand that seniors hope to keep their current senior center for a number of reasons, including ease of access to the facility. In general, there's a feeling that there is a lack of transparency around why the promises made during the bond appeal seem to be different from what's being offered. We'd like to understand what's driving these decisions. Perhaps there is hope that some of these additions will be a major revenue source for the center, or will they simply ruin the sweetness and the magic that Bob Berger brings to our gem of a community? I respectfully ask the council to take note of what is actually happening and the loss of faith in the system that may occur if patron feedback is not taken seriously and appropriately incorporated. There is a great deal at stake to both the heart of our community as well as to the city coffers. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next, we'll hear from William Hutchison.

WILLIAM HUTCHISON Thank you. Thank you for listening. I'm impressed by the eloquence of the speakers tonight. My name is Bill Hutchison. I live in Old Town, a few blocks from here, just around the corner from the new park. Very happy to see it after a long time coming. I'm going to speak about ADUs. And I spoke with a council member recently. He encouraged me to speak here. I've also spoken with staff over the years. I'm not a building professional, but I've had contractor and electrical licenses in the past. And I built myself a complete house in Newlands Boulder. Got to pass 20 inspections successfully, though I don't have those licenses now. Since moving to Lafayette seven years ago, I've wanted to build an ADU at my property and was excited when the state passed the ADU supportive law two years ago. Lafayette finally is near to having the program fully implemented, so I've been getting ready to build. Lafayette does not require a contractor's license when a homeowner does any kind of work on their own residence. I could build a 1,000 square foot addition with all its electrical upgrades, new kitchen, plumbing, et cetera, without a license. Though, of course, I'd have to get my plan approved and then get all the inspections. As a skilled builder, I can construct an addition for about one third the cost of hiring a contractor. But I discovered recently that if the addition is exactly the same, but gets classified as an ADU due to having its own separate entrance and separate kitchen, I would not be allowed to do any of the work. Zero. I would like to argue that this makes zero sense since in both cases I would have to submit a detailed plan to be approved by the building department and the work would have the same detailed inspections to be sure it is done according to code. Neither case would involve any new utility hookups. Both cases would ensure quality construction that benefits our city. I see no defensible basis for not allowing a homeowner to build an ADU while allowing a virtually identical addition on the same location. Lafayette is or will be soon officially considered an ADU supportive community. but this provision is anti-ADU. Perhaps fixing it along with the other ADU fixes the council approved last year was simply overlooked. So if the building department cannot offer a valid justification for this seemingly illogical barrier, I would encourage the council to direct them to clarify the definition of construction by a homeowner on their own residence to include an ADU on their property. Meanwhile, I'm open to a logical reason. Thank you.

Thank you. Those are all the speaker request forms I have tonight. I will remind everyone, including council, that we do have a public hearing later. So if you filled out one of the speaker request forms for the public hearing, that will happen a little bit later on in the meeting. But with that being said, because that was the last speaker request form I have, is there anyone that hasn't had the chance to address council that would like to have their chance to address council tonight? If not, I will turn to our city clerk to see if we have any calls. Oh, we saw.

We have one. Please come on up. I filled it out online, and I didn't know if that was before.

If you could just state your name and address for the record, and then you can go ahead and start.

My name is Tamara Grunwald. My address, like where I live?

Yes.

Oh, that's 437 Elk Trail. Mayor and members of city council, my name is Tamara Grunwald, and I'm here tonight because I have serious concerns about Lafayette's use of the flock security cameras. I want to start by saying I understand the purpose of these cameras. I support law enforcement, and I want them to be able to investigate serious crimes and keep our community safe. My concern is that we have adopted a system that creates a searchable record of where vehicles have been, and I don't think Lafayette has adequately demonstrated that that is something that we need. They don't have the security, the privacy, or the oversight protections that are sufficient for that kind of system. Flock has documented security problems, including an incident where live camera feeds were viewable on the internet. Independent security researchers have also demonstrated vulnerabilities in flock systems. So my question is, what independent security testing has Lafayette performed on the system it is paying for? Are we really relying entirely on the flock company to tell us that their methods are secure? Is Lafayette done any independent security testing to make sure that the system that we are using is secure? Second, I'm concerned about who is monitoring access to this information. On the Lafayette website, it does say that officers must have a clear justification to search flock data and that the searches are monitored. But what does monitored actually mean? Like who is reviewing these searches actually? How frequently are they being reviewed? What happens when an officer searches for information without a legitimate law enforcement purpose? What is the punishment for misuse? How many violations have occurred in Lafayette? Flock itself says that searches are logged, including user, date, time, purpose, information used in the search. If those records exist, I think the public deserves to know who is reviewing them and whether that review is actually happening. I'm also concerned about what the system can reveal about ordinary people's lives. Flock says it connects license plate, an image of the vehicle, vehicle characteristics, date, time, location. It matters when we look at where Lafayette is putting those cameras. One third of all of Flock cameras in Lafayette are positioned around the hospital. The cameras are positioned at the entrances and exits of the hospital parking areas. This means that every time you enter or leave the hospital, Flock has that information. They have the specific time and the location. So I'm not saying this is a HIPAA violation, because HIPAA is a specific law with specific requirements. But do Lafayette residents deserve to have their medical facility records stored in a private company? If authorized user searches for a particular vehicle and finds that it repeatedly appears at a hospital, what safeguards are preventing that information from being used to learn about a person's private records? And this isn't limited to hospitals. Flock says its system can record visible vehicle characteristics, including things like bumper stickers. You know, if you're a Democrat, if you're a Republican, any of that information is on your bumper sticker. Its own documentation acknowledges that searches involving content that could potentially implicate First Amendment rights, it triggers a warning. It's a pop-up in the system. And the user can choose to proceed with violating the First Amendment rights. And what it does when that happens is it sends a note to the person superior, and then it does give them that information that does violate the First Amendment rights. This is on their website. I want to know, what are Lafayette's safeguards? Who is the superior that's looking at this information? Who is actually reviewing this information? What prevents somebody from using vehicles characteristics, like bumper stickers, to investigate somebody's political or religious expression? These aren't theoretical questions about a future technology. These are actual questions about the actual system that we are right now using. I want to ask whether or not we actually need this system. Other Colorado communities are reconsidering flock. Fort Collins canceled its flock contract. Denver ended its flock contract. Boulder is reevaluating its flock contract right now. So why does Lafayette need to continue paying for flock? Surely we're not all that much more dangerous than Denver.

Thank you so much. Unfortunately, your five minutes are up. Thank you. If you wouldn't mind, could you fill out one of the speaker request forms and just hand it over to our clerk? That would be fantastic. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would wish to address council tonight? Seeing none, and understanding there are no calls. Correct, clerk? We'll close public input. And move on to tonight's consent agenda. A few items tonight, including agenda item A, August 4, 2026, city council meeting minutes. Item B, July 28, 2026, city council workshop summary. Item C, second reading for ordinance number 14, series 2026, amending section 5-40 of the Code of Ordinances to revise the name, scope, and duties and responsibilities of the Human Rights Board. Item D, resolution number 2026-21, authorizing assignment to the Housing Authority of the County of Boulder Colorado of the city's private activity bond allocation for 2026 pursuant to the Colorado Private Activity Bond Ceiling Allocation Act and providing other details in connection therewith and providing an effective date. And finally, item E, which is a contract for A to Z recreation LLC for Yarrow Park playground equipment replacement. Are there any items council would like to pull? Councillor Jensen?

I don't want to pull it. I just want to point out to council members As I was reading the narrative that went with the Yarrow Park playground equipment, something caught my eye, and I thought, oh, this looks cool. And I went to look for it in the picture, and it wasn't in the picture. Turns out we had the wrong pictures. So if you haven't looked at your packet since 1.45, the pictures that are in there have been replaced with different pictures. Is that right? Do I have that right? Okay, so disregard the previous pictures and note that there's cooler pictures in there.

Disregard the previous pictures, look for cooler pictures. Are there any other? And, Counselor General?

I just also wanted to, you know, ask maybe about that same topic. You know, it says the contract was updated at 145. Were there other edits that were made to the contract beyond that?

No, truly just the picture. So now you see the rope and the jumpy technical term.

Spin. Spin. Spinny thing. Great. Thank you so much.

So thank you to Councilor Jensen for noticing the discrepancy. The paragraph in the memo was correct. The picture was not. But we're very excited to update that part.

Great. If nothing else and no items to pull, I'll take a motion.

I move to approve the consent agenda. Second.

We have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll do a roll call vote.

Councillor Friedland?

Aye.

Councillor Giannullo?

Yes.

Councillor Jensen? Yes. Mayor Tapia Vega?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Barnes? Yes. And Councillor Beaulieu?

Yes.

That motion passes unanimously.

Great. Thank you so much. Moving on from our consent agenda to council appointments. Only one tonight. It's for Eliab, the Lafayette Youth Advisory Board. I don't believe we have a presentation for this one. Great. OK. I wish Councilor Gallegos was here, because I know she's the liaison for the Lafayette Youth Advisory Board. But I know she's also running a little late. However, I'm very, very excited about this. And I know we have all of our folks here tonight who are ideally going to join that board here soon. This one is relatively straightforward. I don't think there's a lot here for us to do. But I would love the opportunity for counselors to weigh in specifically about our youth advisory board and just if there's anyone who would like to counselor.

Thank you, Mayor. I wish Councilor Gallegos was here this evening with us at this moment. I know she's joining later because I know she does tremendous work with this particular board. But I am so excited to vote for these appointments. I've been so tremendously impressed with the young folks who serve on this board and the interactions I've had with them in the past year, their insight, their expertise, their digital fluency. Frankly, I think we should all just get out of their own way. One thing I have said occasionally to some of them that I'll say to everyone is nothing will disabuse you of the intimidation factor of public officials more than spending time with us. So please have a blast in this role and give us your ideas. I'm so excited to see where this group of LEAB goes and to take your guidance. Thank you, Mayor.

Great. Any other members of council? Councillor Jensen.

You know, I don't know the people who have been nominated for this board, but in just looking at the diversity of names, I'm very excited to see what looks like a very diverse group and hope that that diversity brings us fresh perspectives and insights that those of us who are old and young Been around a while, maybe don't have, so I'm very excited as well and grateful to the young people who have submitted their names.

Great. Any other members of council? Mayor Pro Tem, I see your hand going up.

Thank you, Mayor. I was just waiting to make sure that Councillor Frohlim did not do something. I'd just like to say I'm really excited about working with the Lafayette Youth Advisory Board every year. And we did have, for the first time ever, a Juneteenth celebration in Lafayette. And Lafayette Youth Advisory Board members stepped up and literally saved the day on a specific occasion. So thank you all for what you have done and what you will do. And I appreciate the fact that you are volunteering to get into public service.

I'm not seeing anything. That's great. Yeah, I'll say a few things, mostly just kind of seconding everything that's already been said, echoing the thoughts of my fellow counselors. Law Youth Advisory Board is so cool. I mean, Juneteenth, but also the MLK Day celebration, which I know is spearheaded by the The Youth Advisory Board is just such an incredible event. And the work that you all do is incredible. And yes, I'm one of the old people, unfortunately, now. I used to be young. But now I'm ancient when it comes to the ages of the Youth Advisory Board. But being a relatively young elected official, especially working at the Capitol and being one of the younger people in those rooms and in those buildings. It's just so, so cool to see young people get excited and just come to the city with so many ideas and so many things they want to do for the future and bring those ideas and get just engaged. because I think that's incredibly important for the future, for the future of the city, but especially for the future of this country, just have an engaged electorate. And that means going out to the youth and have them be part of the decisions that we make. So thank you all so much for just willing to put your name in the hat, and for being here tonight, and ideally for serving on the Youth Advisory Board. So if there's anyone that would like to read the motion in.

Mr. Mayor, I move to appoint MJ Albanberg, Brady David, Philippa Chittenden, Abigail Aguirre-Garcia, Nava Green Leibovitz, Lillian Heartstones, Gwyneth Knight, Philip Lurch, Grace Pilarski, Shabani Sentikumar, Mason Widman, Suniva Wood, and Lara Zhang to the Youth Advisory Board for one-year terms beginning September 1, 2026 and ending August 31, 2027. Second.

We have a motion. We have a second. For appointments to the Youth Advisory Board, is there any discussion?

Sorry if I chopped anyone's name up there. I did my best.

Great. Any other members of council? If not, we will do a roll call vote.

Councillor Giannullo? Yes. Councillor Jensen? Yes. Mayor Tapia Vega?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Barnes?

Yes.

Councillor Follier?

Strong, yes.

And Councillor Friedland?

Yes.

That motion passes unanimously.

Fantastic. Well, congratulations, you all. And the only thing I want to do is I want to make sure we bring everybody up for a picture with council. That would be OK. So anyone? Yeah.

So are we going to stay here or go down there? You can go down there. Whatever you want.

Let's go down. Let's go down.

Let's go down. Yeah, maybe do a little swish in.

Oh, my gosh.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. One, two, three.

I think you're taller than me.

congratulations congratulations everyone

Great. Thank you all so much. That concludes our council appointments for tonight. And we'll move on to regular business. Just one agenda item tonight, which is our public hearing for the Lafayette land use code and the new zoning map. And we'll turn it over to our staff. I know there's a few of you coming up tonight, but whenever you're ready.

little bit of technical difficulties, the screen, so just bear with us. Hey, Phil Kleisler, Cities Planning and Building Department. Thank you very much for your time, Mayor, members of council, members of the community. In person and tuning in, we're excited to present the draft land use code for your consideration on first reading this evening. So the official objective of this agenda item is to consider the ordinance on first reading. This will repeal and replace chapter 26 of the Lafayette Code of Ordinances with the Lafayette Land Use Code. as well as repealing and replacing the associated zoning map. The recommended agenda for this particular item will be a staff presentation. So I'll provide a brief introduction If you want to flag. Yeah. IT is doing something. There will be a few stops throughout the presentation for council questions. And so Elizabeth Garvin with Clarion Associates will be walking us through the draft code. Then it will be followed by a public hearing. We'll hear public testimony. And lastly, a city council deliberation and vote. Should I keep going?

Not to cut you off, would it be helpful to get a short break just to get? Sure. Okay. Let's do a short break. We'll come back shortly. Council's in recess.

I just took my shoes off.

Thank you.

We'll go ahead and get started. Yeah, so we'll just pick back up. The objective of this agenda item is to consider an ordinance on first reading repealing and replacing chapter 26 of the Lafayette Code of Ordinances with the Lafayette Land Use Code and to repeal and replace the associated zoning map. The agenda for this item is proposed to be a staff presentation. We'll have several breaks throughout, so council members can ask questions as we go. And then we will have an opportunity for any other broader questions council may have prior to opening the public hearing, hearing public testimony, and lastly, council deliberation and vote. In terms of a timeline, we are here tonight on first reading. Second reading, unless directed otherwise tonight, is scheduled for September 15. In between there, Council has a workshop that was just scheduled with the Planning Commission on September 9th. That'll be an opportunity to dive into issues that you might flag tonight. And I know the zoning in Old Town is also going to be one of the major points of that discussion. And then there's a recommended 90-day deferred effective date. And so this would allow some of the additional changes, recommended changes from the Planning Commission to be incorporated, probably some additional cleanup items that we would recommend. as well as anything council may have in store for us tonight. And then during that time period, that 90-day period, there'll be an opportunity to do the outreach with affected property owners of the rezoning, as well as likely run a potential additional ordinance to do additional cleanup items prior to that December 15th date. So paths forward, it kind of gets confusing. So we wanted to have one slide just highlighting these two things. So there's ordinance one, which is what we're considering tonight. And changes can certainly be made to that. We'll have a slide at the very end of the presentation kind of summarizing this a little bit differently. But those will be discrete changes, because there's a limited time period between first and second reading. And so we can do a bit, but we can't kind of overhaul the code. And then the second code ordinance could be larger discussion items. So those would be, at a policy level, we want these kinds of things to change. And so we would go and do that work. It would also be to encapsulate any of the consensus that's made during the September 9th workshop with the Planning Commission. That ordinance, too, would replace the first ordinance that we're considering this evening. Some of the outstanding Planning Commission items. So we had a workshop recently with Council and we kind of dove into quite a bit of detail with all the Planning Commission's recommendations. The memo talks a bit more about that and There are a few things, particularly in blue here, that would probably be helpful to get your direction that we could probably actually do prior to second reading. And so those would be whether or not council has a preference for the public land dedication private facility credit. So that's where if a property was dedicating land for a park and now open space use, a portion of that could be credited for private recreational facilities. Second would be whether or not to allow greenhouses in the OTX Old Town area. and then whether or not to allow short-term rentals within the manufactured housing community district. So we can talk more about those as we get into the discussion this evening. Those ones we could probably get through in ordinance two. The others would need some additional analysis and discussion. So the project goals have been shared with council a number of times. But in general, this is a big implementation project of the Legacy Lafayette Comprehensive Plan. Comp plan's kind of the umbrella document of a lot of different choices the city makes. And so we're also implementing, in addition to the comp plan, a number of city plans, such as the multimodal transportation plan, wildlife plan, and so on. But we're also going out to update our 1986 zoning code to be now a modern, more user-friendly, and easier to understand, have more predictable development outcomes, and right-size the development review process. In terms of the project steps, after restarting the project in late 2024, Claring Associates did a code assessment of our existing regulations and the work that staff had done up to that point. We've developed the code since then in three sections, or what we've called modules. This has been a unique approach. We've tried to have a transparency-first approach. we would get the code almost at the same time as it was released to the community and the working group members. What that means is that it was very iterative. And so as we would hear things, we would be amending things in the background. And then once developed, where we really worked with the working group to get just a full code in place so that folks can have a clear and full picture of the code, that's when we turned to more citywide engagement with this consolidated draft. And now we're here at the adoption phase. Planning commissions provided a recommendation. It's detailed in your memo. And we're here at first reading this evening. And speaking of which, we'd be remiss not to thank the working group for all of their hard work. They were really instrumental in just working through some really tough things, from what should our zoning districts even be, all the way to different key issues that council ultimately decided on a couple of months ago. The membership included the planning commission, reps from city boards and commissions, as well as a handful of community members. When we charted this group out, we had a charter for the group. And so their official role was to monitor and provide input to staff on the draft code language and community engagement strategies, and to identify and weigh in on policy issues for the benefit of subsequent planning commission and council discussions. And so through this process, they've met a dozen times and really rolled up their sleeves and helped us a lot. In terms of community engagement, again, we focused on the working group to get the initial draft drafted, and then when we shifted to community-wide engagement, we informed the community through the project website, through a postcard mailing to all the city addresses. We had a survey that garnered over $1,000. responses and then held a number of different pop-up opportunities, events, one-on-one meetings, went to city boards and commissions. And each of the modules had an online version where folks could also comment on as well. During its May 19 meeting, council opted to defer a few items in the code for additional analysis potentially in the future. One of those things was neighborhood serving commercials. So this was two specific uses in the code, neighborhood retail and neighborhood cafes, which would have been allowed in existing residential neighborhoods on corner properties. So in going through the public process and considering that, council opted to take that out of the code. And if council desires, we could always look at that at a future date and kind of broaden the scope and think through that more with some additional engagement. Building height allowances were also discussed, and council opted not to include that here, but may want to visit that when we're talking about affordable housing in the near future, specifically as it relates to incentives. And then lastly, there was some discussion at your May meeting about potentially looking at and doing some further study about building height within the Old Town area. With the post-adoption amendments, we do expect to have more regular code amendments, especially in the first few years. So it's not uncommon six months, 12 months out, you're having a block of amendments come through. Minor code amendments, even outside of that, typically take about three to four months. And that goes through the typical process that we're going through now. So it would still require a planning commission public hearing recommendation and then two readings by council via ordinance. Some of the quicker amendments we've done more recently are included here. And then in addition to the minor updates, we'd like to, as staff, just get into the habit of doing a more major update to the code every 10 years or so, which generally aligns with best practices for updating our comprehensive plan. And with that said, that was just a brief introduction. Elizabeth's going to walk us through the different sections of the code. Thanks.

Thanks, Phil. Mr. Mayor, council members, good evening. Nice to see everybody again. I'm going to walk us through the code. We have a couple of stopping places. This one's for the record. So I know a lot of us have heard this before. So settle in. We will talk it through. The updated land use code, we have been thinking about ways to get everyone to conceptualize the magnitude of change that the city is making, going from primarily negotiated development to more objective, standards-oriented development. In the recesses of my mind, it was funny to think about it as the difference between a 1986 rabbit and a 2026 What did I put on there? An atlas, I think. And so thinking in terms of cars is perhaps something that we all experience at different times in our lives. Things can jump and change over time. One of the things that we want to make sure that we're expressing to the council and to the members of the community is that in updating these regulations, we took the whole car apart. And we came back with a new car, and we didn't necessarily fix the old pieces. So if you had roll-up windows on your 86 Rabbit, we brought you back with electric windows on your new Alice. And so sometimes that can be confusing because people want to see that a problem was fixed and they look for the problem where it was and the fix to the thing that it was. And we've done a more complex overhaul to the regulations. So when we talk about making this change from planned unit development to standards-based regulations, That's kind of a big internal change in how the city works. And this will align the city with Legacy Lafayette. It will help with some of the feedback that development is complex and takes a long time. And what you're really doing is saying, we're putting our basic expectations down in the rules. Everyone can read the rules. You can see what our basic expectations as a community are. So that's one of the reasons we want to make sure, as we've done through this whole process, that we're listening and we're reflecting what the community wants to see, primarily led by the plan in these regulations. And this theme will play out a little bit as we go forward. So I'm going to kind of jump in and talk about some of the big picture changes that we've made moving the city into a new code. So first and foremost, some of the places where we've really done some editing and some thinking through over the period of time that we've been doing this is tailored zoning districts. We want to make sure that the city has opportunities to put the right zoning district in the right location and not go with one size fits all. Which is what happens to a code over time when you do PUDs. The rest of the code becomes not as relevant. It just kind of ages out. So we're bringing those districts back. We're making them relevant to development. And in doing that, we make it easier to update development over time. We have new and updated standards that establish objective regulations. So that's kind of a more legalistic way of saying, hey, we took the things that you normally want to see when you're looking at an application, and this is based on years of experience of applications coming into Lafayette, and we said, well, every time Puppy training comes in, we want to see, you know, how much parking are you providing or how, what does the dog run look like and how far is it from the neighbors? So anytime that we could standardize something in the code, we took the opportunity to do that. When we have those standards in the regulations and we've said this is what you need to do for this approval, then the fastest way forward is to send it through staff for approval. Staff approval is looking at does this applicant meet these rules? Pretty straightforward. We have been building Lafayette-specific form-based districts. So these are our zoning districts plus a little more looking at building types and looking at how the buildings relate to public spaces. through their frontage types, and looking at how do we put civic space into places where the community can gather to create more cohesive development, to put all the elements in, to create that walkable community in the areas where it really matters. We've added procedures that account for both predictability and flexibility. So knowing that we're moving more things to a standardized development process, we also know some applicants are going to have something weird on their site and the standards may need to be adjusted. Two sites are exactly the same, so we've created processes for that. The minor adjustments are staff approved, and major adjustments come to council. So if someone needs to do something where they're really changing up regulations, you're going to get a chance to look at that, along with Planning Commission. And then finally, we've done some cleanup about things that belong in external standards. Everybody's probably aware of the state's new wildfire resiliency code. So wildfire is out. The city has public works standards. So things that duplicated public work standards out of the zoning code in the right place. We want to have the right rules in the right location. And so we eliminate overlap that causes confusion. So we're going to go kind of top to bottom in the code and just touch on some of the highlights and also talk about some of the things that we're still talking about. So the general provisions at the beginning of the code, this has some of the background legal stuff in it. This is intermittently important, just depending on what's going on in the city. It's not a day in and day out section of the code. The one thing that you will find yourselves referencing for the next, I don't know, six months to two years is if an applicant has come to us and they have a project that took maybe two different kinds of approvals. So if we look at here, they needed to do a PUD preliminary plan, and that got approved under the old code. What happens when the new code is in place? So this is just roadmap for if your project got split somewhere, which code are you under? So we try not to put an impossible hurdle in place for someone who thought they were developing under the old code. And so this is intended to keep it straightforward. So then we go into the zoning district. So we have two types. We have conventional zoning districts, and we have form-based zoning districts. We did two things here. And I apologize, the font's a little small. So bear with me, and I'll kind of read through some of this. There were a lot of neighborhood districts in Lafayette, and they kind of just had narrow strips of differences. It was great for when it was built about 40 years ago. That's exactly how we did zoning then. I'm sad to say about the feeling old category, I was almost doing zoning then. And that's certainly the type of code I wanted to do this with. And so where we are these days is let's get a little broader. Let's be a little more inclusive and easier to get different development in different places. So we rolled some of those one-off districts together, particularly for residential. And we came up with this list of zoning districts that's a little broader and that express that the city is really looking at neighborhood development. So we've got neighborhood rural, the neighborhood two, three, and the old town neighborhood, which is a carry forward of the old town neighborhood overlay converted into a zoning district. So no changes in that. Then we have one neighborhood center. So this is a mixed use district and this is mixed use at the scale of serving a neighborhood, not the entire community. We went the other direction with the M1 industrial districts. So here the city had one size fits all. And that can make neighbors a little nervous. It can also make it hard to plan when you have A future land use map that has gradations of where do we put employment and what kind of employment do we put there. So instead of sticking with one district for that, we split it out into employment mixed use. So that's going to be employment, which is going to allow some residential. Light industrial, which is generally completely inside. industrial, no external impacts. And then the general industrial, to the extent that Lafayette sees anything a little heavier than light industrial, that's the appropriate place for it. So special context districts, as instructed by Legacy Lafayette and discussed here, a few times we have a special zoning district for manufactured home communities. We have split the parks district in this draft into parks as a district and open space as a district pursuant to that discussion, which has come up over the past month or so. We have a civic mixed-use district. This is a version of allowing residential on a campus, so maybe religious institution campus or hospital campus, to the extent they weren't approved by PUD to allow that. This is saying, hey, if you want to put some residential that serves people on your campus or serves your neighborhood, that's great. That can happen here fairly easily. We've got our three form-based districts. Those are kind of umbrella districts. We're going to talk about those a little bit more. And then the code still has PUD, but it's slightly more constrained than it was previously. And it's not intended to be the default mechanism anymore. You should have enough to get applicants through development without that. But you may have something come through where you're like, it's PUD. That's what it should be. So the form-based districts are three umbrella categories of districts. The form neighborhood is really intended for new neighborhood. It's likely going to be used with annexation properties. It is designed based on the size of the parent parcel that comes in. And it has a few things going on that we'll talk about in a second. Old Town Mixed Use is the character of Old Town, so it goes north and south along Public. We have some East Simpson on there and then some Baseline on there. We've got some more specific information about that. This district is intended to capture the historic character and think about infill and think about How do we make sure that we're sticking with walkability as we go forward? And then we have the adaptable mixed-use district with the sub-districts. And this is going to be areas that are likely developed that will redevelop over time. new areas where taking this approach is determined to be the best use. And so this is kind of, we don't want to lose the commercial, all of the commercial that's in the city, or perhaps even some of the manufacturing. But there are places where there's enough space on the site to infill with some residential or some smaller development where maybe we could lose a little parking along the way and the city will still be in good shape. The difference between these districts and the conventional districts, so conventional districts are zoning like we know from applications coming forward. I have a parcel. Here are the rules about what we do with it. And then applicant brings in an application. Form-based code is a little more specific in terms of the applicant's going to bring in a regulating plan. And that'll be for planning, commission, review, and council approval, council decision. And that is going to take a look at Everything that's going on on the site is kind of the development version of a subdivision preliminary plat. It's going to have enough information that you'll know that the applicant is meeting the requirements of code. It will need to show building types, so we do go into, you know, what residential building types do we have, what commercial building types do we have. As I mentioned earlier, we have frontage types, so that's as simple as please put a porch on the house so we can have some people hanging out up front and we're interacting with the street to, you know, what are we doing with an office building, how do we make sure people can find the entrance, and it relates to what's going on around it. And then finally, civic spaces. I think we've all educated ourselves about the difference between parks and open spaces. Civic spaces are public-private spaces. They're privately owned. I think almost 100% now we've separated out the open space. And so this will be perhaps easiest to think about along public, where we've got space where you could do needing a gathering space or just a nice green yard for people to walk through. And so those are civic spaces, and they are required in some of the districts. So the four neighborhoods, this gets at housing within Lafayette. We have three sub-districts in here, so just a general neighborhood. This is just a residential neighborhood, houses on streets, and all of the things that people want to see in their neighborhood. We have a slightly smaller version of that in terms of scale, and that's neighborhood edge. You'll see that when we have a neighborhood maybe butting up against mixed use or butting up against commercial. It provides that transition between neighborhood types. And then in developments of a certain size, and that's going to be 40 acres or larger, there is a mixed use center requirement. So it is not going to come up super often. I don't think the city has that much acreage that you're going to see. But if it does, the requirements are in here. And let me go a couple slides in and talk about that one. The big thing with the four neighborhoods in reflecting Legacy Lafayette is we've incorporated an idea of housing mix points. And so the plan calls for a mix of housing types in multiple neighborhoods. And I came up with a complex approach that would have given you all my grants on a regular basis. And we worked it down to something far simpler. the more straightforward and reflecting city priorities. So each housing type that we speak to in the regulations has a certain point value associated with it. And then an applicant needs to do the math of figuring out the size of their development and the mix that's required. So we have some examples in here. If I have a parcel that's five acres or less, I only need one housing point. So if I go back to the chart for everyone to take a look at, I could do it for one housing point completely in courtyard development, or I could do a combination of detached houses and accessory dwelling units. So that is kind of the math of how this works. You figure out what size parent parcel you're starting with, and then what mix will get you to the minimum point requirement. So I've got one point here, and here are the two ways I can do this. If the applicant opts to do ADUs, we did set a minimum threshold of 35% of the units, including ADUs. That could be internal or external, over the garage, in the basement, however it gets built. As the parcel sizes get larger, the point values, the total point values increase. So when we're at 20 to 40 acres, we can develop that a couple different ways. And we did want to give applicants some choices. So I could do something that just has three housing types for 4.75 points. So that puts me over my four points. I'm doing a certain percentage of small residential with ADUs, a certain percentage of duplex, and a percentage of townhomes. These percentages are also written into the regulations, so they apply in a standard manner. If I wanted to, if I felt the market was going to be okay for duplex, triplex, I mean for triplex, fourplex, I could adjust those percentages and make some of my housing product triplex or fourplex. So we did want to go with some flexibility, but we also wanted to make it so that the city is really seeing the housing choices and opportunities that it's been looking to see. When I get over 40 acres, I'm at five points. So again, you see the mix based on the percentages of types and their associated points. And the commercial center requirement kicks in. We've had some back and forth about the commercial center requirement. The way it's drafted in the code is 30,000 square feet of commercial space. So in theory, that could be maybe one Walgreens, should anyone need more Walgreens. or it could be that ground floor commercial. It should be mixed, but I think what we're going to see is the market ebbs and flows, the market for commercial ebbs and flows, and so over time you may see different presentations of this mixed use. What we wanted to do was set it up and include it in the regulations to say this is an important aspect from the plan. The city is looking to provide this. It helps provide services, basic services to the neighborhood, helps keep areas walkable. We can get some of our daily stuff nearby. But we recognize that the market doesn't always support it, or the market is saturated where development is going in. So there's an opportunity for an applicant to put together a market study and bring that in with their application, which can show, hey, the market can only support 10,000 square feet, or we're in a complete glut here. And this is not going to fly in this development. We think that gives you a chance to have an educated conversation about the city's policies as you weigh it against the tension of wherever the market is for commercial at that point in time. So it is a requirement in the code, but there's clearly an avenue to have a discussion about how it applies in any particular development. Okay. Old Town. So that was the neighborhood. Now we're in Old Town. There's a different set of districts. Old Town has three districts. Hold on.

Nope?

OK. Old Town has three different districts in the draft that you have. So it started on this slide. So before we started redoing the code, Old Town was zoned B1. It has height limits of 35 feet, and it has no building size limits. So that's today's zoning. So as we started trying to figure out where to map Old Town, we started with two districts. One was for those structures that face the main streets or abut and touch the main streets, Public, East Simpson, and Baseline. And then, so the thing about doing form-based regulations is, but when we do conventional districts, we just draw a line and we're like, you're all this district. You're all R2. All of it, we're not looking at individual lots. Because we are looking at building types and we're looking at how the sites relate to one another, and the scale of the development, we go in in form-based districts and we do more of a lot-by-lot analysis. And so you can see in this middle map, there are mostly light pink, depending on how your eyeballs see this color, all along our main streets. And then when you get out to the edges of the area, we're seeing some salmon, red, darker color. And the conversation here was, okay, those structures don't touch any of our main streets. They don't need the regulations that say you need to front on public, and you can't have a bigger lot, and you need to adaptively reuse your structure rather than tear it down. So as we explored what that was doing in the OTX1 and OTX2, we added the height limit of 35 feet, and we had building size limits. The light pink was a 5,000-square-foot footprint, and the darker pink was a 16,000-square-foot footprint. So we're trying to recognize the differences in the built environment today and try to work through what the plan is calling for to figure out what that change over time looks like. As we did more of our on the ground, sort of studying the character of these areas, We looked at baseline and the area south of Emma a little more closely to figure out what our proposed regulations were going to do to those properties in terms of either keeping the development that's there and keeping it thriving or moving to a different, more walkable development pattern, but in a way that's meaningful for both property owners and for the community. So where do we go with this? We ultimately ended up adding the OTX3 district. You can see on the bottom of this slide, we're still at the 35 foot height limit, but we've added in a larger building size limit. So in the OTX3, the darkest color to the right image, we have a 25,000 square foot maximum size for a building footprint. That's intended to reflect the built environment there. There are larger structures in that part of the community. When we went back and took a look at it, if we had just pulled the OTX 1, the light pink, all the way through, like in the middle, we were going to make about a third of the buildings in that area south of Emma become nonconforming. means it's just slightly harder to redevelop. It's another set of hoops to jump through. It can have the effect of delaying redevelopment or stalling investment in properties. If this is an area that's critical to Old Town, and I'm not saying if, it is an area that's critical to Old Town, we kind of want to look at it and say, what's our best statement of their conditions now, and how do we turn that ship over time? So the district, as it's drafted, takes a look at the physical layout of these areas south of Emma. We don't have the basic alley structure that we have north of Emma, and we're missing some of the existing development coming up close. So what we were trying to do in bringing this forward is recognize there's something different on the ground here right now. where does it go over time and how does that time get measured is a good discussion to have and we recognize you know that there are people who are coming to council coming to staff and saying the way this is drafted doesn't fit and so that's a discussion that we'd be open to getting more feedback on I've given you kind of the kind of the consulting staff reason for, we think this is today's fit. Where does it go when it goes forward? It's still subject to the Old Town regulations, so some of those structures are going to have to realign over time to be closer to or facing public. It's still got the limitations on the lot combinations. And it does have some limitations on where residential can go. Is that going to be the right place? Give us some feedback. Let's have a discussion about this so we can figure out what those answers are. So I digress on that one. Adaptable mixed use. This was a conversation we had. It took us away from the great colorful images to the far more boring, here's where the streets and walkways are. This is a bit of the same idea that we're talking about for this OTX3. These are existing commercial centers, primarily. So this is, for everybody who hasn't done this conversation with us, the prototypical abandoned Kmart site. And so what do we do with it over time? Because it developed as a large site. We want it to scale down. We want to add residential to it. So we have two districts, two sub-districts in here. We have the mixed-use center, so that's just literally a larger lot, a larger parcel that we're starting with, and the mixed-use corridor. So this is going to be narrower and have different types of connections than the center would. Key standards in this district are it's for new development and redevelopment. There are specific adjustments in the draft for larger format development, which is something that communities are still seeing. That's the nice way to say big bucks these days. As we are trying to interpret and place the plan on the ground, And, you know, we're between the tension between what does economic development look like and what does a fully walkable community look like? We tried to go a little more up the middle with these districts and say, you know, we recognize that there may be some larger structure stores for the time being, but we want to think past that date and think about what that redevelopment looks like. So there's a conversion plan process. And then allowance for residential. These are set up so they don't go fully residential. The city doesn't want to lose that much space for commercial, especially in a hot market. I don't know if we're still hot. Maybe we're cooling off a little bit. But residential's been pushing everything. So that's something that we're trying to not allow happen. So I'm going to stop on those districts and see if you want to dive into questions now or carry on with your call.

Yes, thank you so much. I think they've broken it down in different sections. So this is our pause for zoning. I'm sure there are a lot of questions on zoning, if any counselor wants to get us started.

OK, if there are a lot of questions, I'll mute them.

Possibly no questions.

Mayor?

Councilor Giannullo.

I'll start us off. I want to talk about that, the housing points. Yeah. Because there's some things in there that I like and some things that were confusing. OK. It seems to me that the goal of doing the housing points is to encourage multiple types of housing, right? Yes. If you have a requirement of one point, well, there's a couple different ways you can achieve that. That was really helpful. If you require five points on the example that you provided, we show four different housing types. But they could actually achieve five points just with three different housing types. If we lost the detached house at 0.75, I think that still gets us to five points. Is there a mechanism in the code to help us achieve more housing types in the case where than just the points allow? Or the points require maybe is the right word?

That's a good question. We set this as a minimum. I suppose if you want to achieve more housing types, we can change up the points assigned. That would be one way to do that. That was not a soft one. I mean, we could, in the code right now, we have the percentages set of 30% of this, 30% of this, 30% of this. So if we adjusted the overall system to up the points and adjust the percentages, we could get at more. It's not, I mean, this kind of system works different ways for different communities, right? So if we haven't hit Lafayette's preferred mix here, this is something that could be adjusted.

Yeah, and I appreciate that. I mean, this is all a learning process. Form-based codes is all very new for us, and this type of diversity of housing types as well. There's a reason we're doing it is because we just don't have a lot of certain types of housing in the city. In the case of large parcels, which is where I think I'm looking at this as that's the place where we probably can achieve the most types of diverse housing, the most number of diverse housing types. And I just want to make sure that if that's the case, we have the ability to say it's at least four or it's at least three. And I guess I'm not super familiar with this part of the code.

I see. So if we set it as a range, and that was part of the approval discussion based on where they're located and what the streets look like. So instead of just saying this is a minimum, saying more along the lines of, based on XYZ criteria, Your range is three to five. And this will be something that gets discussed during project approval.

Yeah, and I don't know what's the right answer. I'm just sort of trying to make sure that I understand it correctly, how it's baked into the code right now as it stands.

I'm going to just give additional clarification, I guess, more than anything. And this is just for you guys to give us direction, right? So we came at this mix of housing points. And we've weighted these. So you'll see that the triplex, fourplex, which we don't see very often in the city, gets two points. Multi-housing, like our apartments, also gets two points. And this was just based off what we, like housing stock, kind of like what we're, and it's also... kind of geared towards affordability as well. So right now like this is all independent of inclusionary housing and market rate housing. So the thought is like if you're building market units that obviously these housing types are more affordable, more accessible than just single family detached. So it all kind of goes into how we're trying to get like a, it's holistic, in the sense that we're trying to get walkable communities, we're trying to get a little bit more density, because that's what allows you to have that commercial and you get the mix of, and that is all based off of a comp plan. But if you have more direction on like, you're really just preferring more diversity, what we heard from developers is that we're making it really complicated. For a developer standpoint, sometimes it's easier to deliver two or three different housing types than to deliver six. So we got some pushback and feedback on that. And so we really did focus on, well, we want to lean in and try to incentivize the things that we don't get. in Lafayette. And then I know we have apartments, but apartments are the most accessible unit type too, so we weighted that heavier. Does that help?

Yeah, that's helpful. And I think I want to avoid the policy discussion right now, because I think there's time for discussion later, and just hit the technical questions. So that's really helpful. Thank you.

Did you have other questions, counselor?

I'm going to step back for the moment, I might.

Great.

Councillor Fredlund.

Yeah, thank you. Councillor Giannullo, thanks for that question because it really teed up things well. That's where my brain was going as well, just trying to understand. So the point system, and yes, I agree, not to get into the policy discussion, but I'm just trying to understand the way the points are currently designed, what does that encourage? What are we trying to incentivize with the point system as it's currently designed?

So I'll reiterate Stephen's comment. It is weighted towards more of the single unit attached dwellings. So that's going to be a duplex or townhomes. Highest weight values are to triplex and fourplex, that's one category, or to multi-household, so that's apartments. Second highest is a tie of three, so that's a small detached house, which has specific standards for what small detached house means, a duplex or townhomes. anything where you're going to get more units in the same space where you would typically have a single family detached. So we're bringing down the effective price of the property per unit, which helps with the unit price also.

Okay, thank you. I think that then comes to like sort of two questions in my mind. The first one being, So we bring down the unit price because we're attaching them, we have triplexes, fourplexes, and that leads to increased affordability. If we checked that assumption, we're like sure that that is what leads to it. And I have another sort of similar question of certain types of building make sense in certain areas of the community, right? higher density along along transit corridors as one example. But are we by trying to use a point space system for all all the developments that would fall into this? Are we then prescribing something that doesn't make sense somewhere else and thus leading to less building in those areas that maybe smaller detached makes more sense, but they can get the points. So then they go to duplexes, triplexes, apartments, in a place that maybe doesn't make as much sense to do that. Do those two questions make sense?

That's two questions. I'm going to defer to staff on the second one. On the first question, it's our understanding from our work with the state through DOLA and with root policy research that going to the smaller attached units is one way to get to greater affordability. And it's not necessarily uppercase A affordable housing. It is housing on the market that costs less than a single unit detached standalone. Okay. Thank you. Can you speak to that? You can speak to the second question.

Yeah, I think the second question was about more location-specific. And you'll notice that on the zoning map, there are no form neighborhood zoning districts that are mapped right now. And so we'd expect that most of those will be annexations that will come in. And so there probably will be also a degree of negotiation with annexations as well. And so frankly, it's kind of a soft entryway into that form-based code district, because that would allow counsel a little more leeway to fine tune those standards for those specific applications.

That makes sense. And do we map anything onto like, you know, the comp plan, planning areas where we say we think this would be, I'm trying to recall if we go to that level of detail in the comp plan. I don't think we do.

Yeah. Outside of the city limits in the comp plan, there's this housing areas, land use, and that does extend to certain areas. So we would anticipate when those areas annex, we would be applying this for our neighborhood.

I understood. And so if I'm hearing you correctly, it sounds like those would be annexations anyway, and there would be a level of conversation and negotiation to get to what makes sense for the developer, obviously, so they can make their project work, but also for the community to deliver the benefits that we're seeking. So sounds like you feel like the way that we have the point system structured currently, it gives us enough flexibility and leeway to meet both of those needs. If it's along a transit corridor and we're trying to go, you know, you know, no detached at all, you know, attached to your apartments, et cetera. And then, you know, the other scenario where it's maybe a little farther on the outskirts and it does make sense to have more detached as part of that mix. We have the ability to do both of those things as currently designed.

This leans towards attached. So this does lean more towards attached housing types. Depending on, yeah, so it would be probably more in the transit-oriented development or transit-supporting development approach.

Okay. Thank you very much for those answers. All my questions for now.

Thank you. Councillor Judson.

So, if this point system is trying to reflect the values of the comp plan, which affordability was one of those values. It seems to me there were other values that this point system reflects, like transportation, pedestrian friendly, walkable, neighborhood based, could you sort of, in addition to affordability, could you talk about what the values are of the comp plan that you're trying to incorporate into this point system?

So in the current comp plan as well as the previous, there's a policy that we want a variety of housing types. And so how to do that was then just how to implement that policy through a regulatory framework. And we found that this would be just one way that would be easiest to administer. And then it does get to the more policy question with council of this is heavier on the attached housing types. And so that's a question that was just brought up. In general, some of the things that we've heard throughout the engagement process have been that even if it's not affordable, if it's smaller, even if it's attached, that gets me into potentially home ownership or even a rental in Lafayette. And so I think from what we've heard, regardless of the type that's shown here, having more variety allows us for more opportunity.

So that's the affordability piece. But what are the other elements of the comp plan we're trying to bring in with this point system?

So I think we have to zoom out just a little bit from the point system and look at the four neighborhoods all together. So we're looking for pretty much all of the elements of a healthy neighborhood. So that's the walkability, like you pointed out. It's the making sure that we are locating things in a way so people can walk. And we can put a lot of sidewalks in, but if stuff is all spread out, people tend not to do that. So as we get into the smaller units or the attached units, we tend to see perhaps a more dense form of development. It makes the most of the city's investments in parks and infrastructure. This is certainly a way to reinvest in the community. And then, you know, kind of in the bigger picture, it is a little more neighborhood creating to develop when we have all these pieces in place. Maybe I want to say more interactive neighborhood creating. I don't want to discount there are people that just don't look for that in their neighborhoods, that they want to go home and be alone. That's me 80% of the time. But this is perhaps where Lafayette has a lot of that opportunity available. This is a different way to be a neighborhood, to be that more compact, bringing it all together, which studies tell us is appealing, certainly to the under 40 crowd as they're starting to buy homes. So we're also providing opportunities you know, our kids to stay in town or new folks to move in. So it touches a lot of different things. It does that by being affordable, but it also does that by the sort of the place making that you're doing by bringing all these pieces together.

Well, and I want to just piggyback and make sure I understand. So when you talk about infrastructure, so you've got a fourplex over here, and over here you've got a... detached right and you're bringing both road and water and sewer to both of those but the cost per mile is the same to do the fourplex as it would be to do the detached so in term or approximately the same And so the city is actually saving resources by encouraging these kinds of developments per capita. You know, we could have less people. But, okay, that's what I'm wanting to get the values of the comp plan that we're trying to bring into this. And placemaking is another good one. I appreciate that. I mean, one thing I'm thinking is don't we have some data about the energy efficiency of a fourplex versus a detached home in terms of climate change and emissions and things like that? Do we have some data that shows us that it makes more sense from a climate change perspective to do that kind of housing?

not at our fingertips, but broadly speaking, when you look at the climate action plan, that pretty much aligns with the direction this is going. And you're absolutely right that compact development is more financially sustainable for a city in terms of its infrastructure and services it provides.

It certainly reduces water demand also, because most of the water that we use in a residential setting is for lawns. So where we have smaller lots, smaller lawns, we reduce overall water use.

I think I have seen some data about the emissions of single family being detached, being per person much higher than something that is more dense. And so that contributes to our climate change, trying to achieve our climate change goals. So that makes sense that we would be pushing towards things that are not detached if we can.

Mayor Pro Tem, did you have an answer to that?

Yeah, absolutely. The general, and I don't have the emissions numbers right in front of me, but generally the more walls you have or the larger space you're heating, the more emissions you're going to have to generate to keep that keep that at a livable temperature and condition. So generally, yes. I don't know if we can drill down into the minutiae, but yeah, you don't want to keep putting spaces between places and try to limit the amount of energy that you use in those spaces. And the less square footage you have, the more efficient you can be with the energy to use generally. So I don't know if you want to add to that.

I mean, I guess the other thing I would say is transportation is a big component of emissions. And when you have compact, dense neighborhoods with a lot of people, per capita emissions go down just because people are not driving as much. They're doing more walking. They're doing more biking. It's more transit friendly a lot of times. There's lots of good reasons from a sustainability standpoint to want to encourage more dense housing. I mean, public transportation is another big piece of that.

Are there any other questions? Councillor Jensen?

No, thank you.

Mayor, I have a couple questions. Thank you all so much for this. I know this has been a long ultramarathon, so kudos to you. And also it's noted the Planning Commission for their outstanding work on this. I personally am really excited for our joint session with Planning Commission in early September, but bear with me as this is new for me as well as for a few of us. I guess a question I have surrounds the slide you had with the current zoning in Old Town around height. My understanding is that we provided guidance to table adjustments to height in Old Town. Is that still the case, that we are deferring that for the moment? It's remaining constant. Remaining constant. OK. Because there's a lot of chatter in the community about adjusting it. But I'm hearing it's remaining constant. We just kept the same limit today. Keeping it the same. Fantastic. Thank you. My second question is, in regards to rezoning, and I don't know, maybe you'll come to it later in the presentation, but as RTD has their new route coming to Lafayette, as we continue to encourage transit, bike lanes, et cetera, I know that there's been some talk about decreasing parking minimums. Can you talk to how the adjustment in the new zoning affects parking regulations?

The parking regulations should be a constant. And so what this code does do, it did kind of right-size parking. In a lot of cases, that did mean decreasing it in some uses. It also allowed some kind of automatic parking reductions. Like if you're near transit, if you have on-street parking in front of your property, there's a shared parking kind of calculation you can do. And so there's things that are built into the code so applicants don't have to ask for it. And so we still do require minimum parking. There is some state things that are happening, conversations between the state and the city about minimum parking requirements, but that's not resolved yet.

Thank you. Those are all for me for the moment, Mayor. Thank you.

Any other questions before we move on to the next section? Mayor Pro Tem.

Go ahead. So unfortunately, I'm going to refer to the Old Town Because I'm with the DDA, the Old Town Tomorrow Action Plan. And obviously, there's a lot of overlap between what we're seeing in the OT, Old Town Progression that's here. I'm just looking at the action plan, the Old Town Action Plan. And originally, there was a South Public Road area that the DDA was looking at, and then the South Boulder Road transition. So south of Spalding, we're moving into. So we want to align with, make a gradual transition. And I know that we're looking at neighborhood mixed use in what we're seeing here. And in the Old Town Action Plan, there was like, Old Town makes use before that. So it's a bit of a transition already in the idea of Old Town. But then when I go there, when I've been there, I'm there a lot.

Right now?

In that area. Yeah, we're there right now. It feels like a... And on the Old Town plan, there's like these little... roulette wheels or whatever, starburst things. I don't know what they're supposed to be, but they burst. And there's a big one at the top of Public Road at Baseline and the bottom one at South Boulder Road. And then we transition through, and there's just not a lot of flair on the Old Town plan. That area has so much history and energy and culture. The pocket part's going to be amazing right in the middle of that. But I struggle with why. And I know we're going to have a talk with planning commission about all the things that could possibly happen. But I'm going to try to come in at 40,000 feet. If we're looking down on there energetically, that feels like the next place that we could welcome into redevelopment. And it feels like we didn't consider the cultural aspects as much as the standard way of bringing in business. I mean, it seems like more of an economic focus than a celebration of the culture and the history of the city. The OTX3, I really don't understand that, but we're going to talk to Planning Commission about that. And I just struggle with why we went from the OTX1 and OTX2 to OTX3 in that one area. That's just feedback. In the comprehensive plan, it's neighborhood mixed use, which I guess the feedback during the working groups and whatnot, that's one of the things I guess would be more clear. What do people mean by that? Because it seems, it feels a little tone deaf when we look at what's actually there right now. Because there's so much history of Lafayette that's there that I don't know what neighborhood mixed use actually meant.

so i don't have this this is just general feedback i'm not asking a question it's just a little feedback yeah so we're taking notes um i would also mention that that area you're you're talking about the neighborhood mixed uses in the planning area for the south boulder road area plan that's underway right now and so there's we are in pretty active discussions with property owners and others and so it's something that you'll have opportunity to weigh in here in the pretty near future when we come back to council with some ideas some more specific ideas thank you so yeah

I think listening to you made me sad that zoning is so boring. But what we've tried to do, and I think this is maybe our question as we dig into this, is we tried to put the elements in place to let the property owners or let the community bring out the cultural pieces of it. We also tried to put the protections in place, so saying we have a preference for reusing existing buildings. We have a preference for civic spaces. It doesn't read as beautifully as a plan would read, because it's code. But I think maybe the question as we go through it is, do we allow everything that the city wants to see here? Did we do a good job of capturing that and bringing it down to regulations? So what comes out of it can be the continuing vibrance of this part of the community.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Chancellor Ginola?

I just have one more, I'll call it, set of questions on the zone districts and the kind of, I'll call it, mapping of the current zone districts to what the future zone districts are going to be. A lot of these make sense to me. And I think what we're trying to do is align the new zone districts with what is in the comp plan. The comp plan is very generic when it comes to housing. It says housing. And so we're sort of looking at what's there. And I think actually, and maybe that's right, is we're looking at where we have rural, more rural, and that's going to the neighborhood rural. We're going to where we have more single family, and that's becoming neighborhood two. And where we have multifamily, that's becoming neighborhood three. So a lot of that makes sense to me. There's just a few, if I zoom in on this map, which I can't do there, but there's just a few things that I would love to have an answer about. that I don't quite understand. We have Willoughby Corner, which I think is looking like it's N3, which makes sense. We have multifamily. We've got these big units there. There's a little tiny parcel there that says M1. And I have never gotten an answer. I don't need an answer tonight. But I would love to have an answer of why that is M1 when in the comp plan it says housing. I don't need an answer now, but I want to have an answer at some point soon. But I do appreciate that we're doing our best to do this mapping, and for the form-based districts, we're not mapping any of the existing housing into form-based districts. It's only the commercial zones that are becoming, or I guess it's in the case of some places where we're going from an industrial zone to now a mixed-use commercial zone. Those commercial and industrial zones are becoming mixed-use, and even in some of the M1 employment mixed-use, although Maybe I'm confusing myself. We have adaptable mixed use as our kind of primary commercial mixed use. And then we have the old town mixed use, which is the other form-based district. So none of the existing neighborhoods are becoming any of these form-based? Correct. Okay. Yep. I'll have more questions about the process with which developers will undergo as they're proposing to make changes. But I think you have more in the presentation later about that. Is that right? I'm about to cover it now.

Yep. Yep.

OK. Great. I think we're ready to move on.

All right. Carrying on. Thank you for those questions. Okay. So the use standards, we simplified the existing use table, have gone through it a few times. I think staff did some work groups, working groups to go through it on their own, not the project working group, but they got to see it and talk about it, and then staff combed it and went back through it. Again, along the lines of trying to make it simpler to get to the development the city wants to see, this is the place where we look to move uses to that simpler approval process. And we've added some new uses to make them easier to get approved, live-work dwelling, food truck court, and then a variety of distinctions in drive-throughs. So natural resource protection is a category of regulations that's pretty important to the city of Lafayette. And we've had the opportunity to work with some of the city's plans and policies in addition to Legacy Lafayette, and are at a place of working with mapped areas within the community to let applicants, property owners know on the map those places that are subject to natural resource protection. And so on the map, within 100 feet of any area that's mapped for natural resource protection, the new code has Standards that apply to existing development regarding fencing, outdoor lighting, and domestic animals. Most things in the code don't apply unless somebody voluntarily makes a change to their property. So unless we bump into life safety issues, if you have fencing and it's out there and you never change your fencing, you probably aren't going to have to make any change in compliance with the regulations. Outdoor lighting tends to turn over a little faster than some things that are built, so we'll probably see people come into compliance with that a little more quickly. And animals live as long as animals live, so those standards will apply then. For new development and redevelopment, the standards include the existing development standards for fencing, outdoor lighting, and domestic animals, An ecological assessment or ecological assessment, whatever your preference is on that, to do a site-specific study of what's going on before development takes place or redevelopment takes place. Setbacks to protect areas that could be more fragile or could be subject to being damaged or polluted. And then wildlife corridor connections. And so taking what the city has planned for and moving it into regulations that recognize private property rights and also try to balance the importance of these protections across the city. We have an article on site planning and development standards. So that is taking a look at how are you laying out your developments. If you're looking down on a set of plans, that's site planning. Where does everything go? How do you meet the parking standards and the lighting standards? the connections that are required of you. The city has some of this stuff in current regulations. We went through, we talked to people about is it working, is it not working, does it meet the plan, and we've come through with a set of updates that we have generally had either good feedback on or positive thoughts about it so far. So we have substantially updated the bike parking standards to align with The ABPB Association. I get this wrong. It's like pedestrian and bicycling professionals, people who do this. They have standards. And so this photo is an example of a bike corral in Lafayette. And so this is to show how you can make this a good looking amenity. It invites people to bike. We know at Clarion from doing this in other places, lack of bike infrastructure is the thing that keeps a lot of people from doing more bicycling. They're afraid they can't store the bike at the other end or they can't get there. So really focusing on that bike infrastructure is important. We've put in the water-wise landscaping standards and the wildfire firescaping standards. The state has taken over the wildfire resiliency code, so that is not in here. We have sections that require both internal and external connections for pedestrian, bicycling, and bus networks, connections to bus networks. We don't speak to bus networks. It's a different topic. We have, as Phil talked about, right-sized, the off-street parking, provided more flexibility, trying to get to a place where the need for parking is recognized. People still drive their cars in most of the metro area. Lots of people bike and walk. And we want to be able to balance those out. And then finally, we have standards for some sustainable design and newer, clearer standards for outdoor lighting. We have dark sky standards in parentheses here. The standards go a long way towards shielding lighting to cut light pollution and light trespass. To fully go dark sky is a process and a program that the city would need to opt into. And I believe the dark sky International Dark Sky Foundation gives you a guide and help doing that. So we took you to a place where you should have darker skies, but not full-on qualification for the program. And that's a conversation you can have if you want to go down that path. We've had multiple conversations with the community, with the working group, about public land dedication. We brought forward to you proposed changes that came out of Planning Commission, but we wanted to back up and talk about how does public land or private space move through the approval process to make sure that whatever applications come through, there's a checkpoint to see do you need to be dedicating something or do you need to be providing private civic space or private amenity space. So we just wanted to walk through this with you to show you that in subdivision, we're going to do public land dedication through the Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Plan policies. That's required. Same for commercial or industrial development and same for mixed-use development. So our three big development types are are all going to be checked to make sure that dedication is given if it needs to be given. Some properties have already gone through that process. So you may see something come through where there's no dedication. It likely means the dedication took place previously. This isn't a place where the city is allowed to double dip. It's a one-shot deal on that. So there are places, though, also development types where you're going to see private. amenity space. We moved away from calling that open space because open now in Lafayette is kind of very chill. It is not activity space for the most part. So when form-based development comes through, Courtyard, multi-household, so apartment development. And then kind of any development that comes through, not kind of, but any development that comes through, there will be a check to see if that development needs to provide the private space. So in addition to having done the dedication, do you need something on site? And the easiest way, I think, to think about that is apartments where we want to be able to get humans and pets outside. So we may want a balcony or we may want access to a park or we may want some on-site open space. So we just wanted to confirm to everybody that we don't think anything is slipping through the cracks and not doing their part for providing some sort of public outdoor space on the property. Okay, we get into subdivisions and infrastructure standards. This is the section where the public land dedication language is located, the version on the website and the version that you guys have that has the track changes and the yellow highlighting in it. Some changes that we made here, to get to walkable blocks, we added a maximum block length requirement. So when an applicant is doing a subdivision, we are moving away from super long blocks because studies show that that is not as walkable as providing the connections or bikeable, particularly in the case of kids. We are adding that pedestrian cyclist easement through a cul-de-sac. So that's a space where, not a car, but a person who's walking or biking can go through. And then we cleaned up some of the language within the public land dedication section about whether detention ponds and medians are included in the dedication and excluded from the measurement of the dedication. So we have a lot of eyes on this section, got good input, and we think we've done a good job cleaning it up. to everybody's satisfaction, and we're open for more comments if there are any. Finally, we get to administration. So I touched on this really early. What we're looking for is clarity of process here. We've got the standards in place. We've got expectations in place. We applied policy to the regulations. Now we have applicants coming in. We want to move them through the process as fast as reasonable. And so what we do is we set up clear review procedures for the applications. We've broken that up and specified all the usual steps and then most of the one-off steps. That doesn't mean somebody's not going to come up with a one-off, one-off. But we have most of everything in there that limits what Mary Lynn has to deal with on a regular basis. We're here for your happiness this evening. We have kept the PEDs in there. I touched on that earlier. But they're limited projects that provide community benefits that align with the above and beyond that Lafayette wants to see in projects. So as we've touched on, that could be like providing truly affordable housing or providing additional open space. It needs to be something that is working for the community rather than just we're doing a PUD, And so you can kind of change up the standards that you've got applied to your property. We do have adjustment processes in place for site constraints. So that's the major and minor that I talked about earlier. If somebody comes in, if it's an older community, sometimes you might find something super surprising underground. Somebody might have a sewer pipe that nobody knew about previously. And we need to work around that. That's a way for an applicant to come through and say, OK, got to do something different there. And then finally, we've refined the site plan review criteria. In all application types, we want to be clear about the review criteria, and we want them to be the important criteria that we're focused on. This is what we're telling an applicant. They have to be able to show when they bring an application in to you. So these are their instructions. We want to make sure that those instructions are clear for them and also clear for you, so you can apply them consistently project after project. We have the regulating plan in there. This is a new process, and we wanted to stop on it for a second. I touched on this early on. This is going to be a fairly detailed application that comes through, again, Planning Commission and City Council. It is where the applicant is going to tell you how they're laying out the lots to meet the building mix type or to meet their civic space requirements. And so we're asking them to show pretty much how the development is going to lay out. There's streets, alleys, blocks, and lots. This is a place where they can ask you for adjustments. So we have in there in the OTX district, we touched on this earlier, you can only combine lots until you get to about a 21,000 square foot lot, because we're trying to keep that character in smaller lots. If somebody in OTX says, hey, I can get these three lots, it's going to put me at 22.5, they can show that on their regulating plan and you can say fine. They can come in and say, I want 50. You can say fine or I don't think so. That needs to come to you and it needs to be shown as an adjustment to the underlying standards. So we want to show the multimodal transportation back to how are we creating community and getting people moving around. Utility easement's pretty critical because if they're not shown on this early plan, we can get a lot of moving stuff around later, and that's problematic. Building type by lot, frontage type by lot, we want to see what's going on with the porches and the patios, whether or not there's civic space and or public land dedication, where parking is located, and the location of hazards, environmentally sensitive areas and stream buffers. So you have the opportunity to double check that development's pulled off of those areas and placed in a way that they're not intruding So this is the shortened up, simplified version of the list. It's in more detail in the code. Again, we want the applicant to know what they can bring in. But we want you to see the level of detail that goes into planning this and your approval as counsel so that when we get to site plan, that can be approved administratively. And I do want to say, once a regulating plan is in place, if an applicant needs to subdivide, that goes through the regular subdivision process also. So some of these, probably many of them, you're going to see it twice. They do regulating plan, then they subdivide, then they go to site plan. So you'll have an opportunity to discuss those. Okay, we're coming around the corner. Definitions and measurements. This falls into the wonky zoning nerd category of the better we define terms and the better we define standard measurements, the fewer opportunities there are for miscommunication between staff and applicants. So this is just putting the easy stuff in the regulations. After that, we have oil and gas and wireless. Those are simply carried forward from the current code. as is floodplain so those last three long sections are beautiful and fabulous but don't look for changes in there except to update the zoning district names i'm going to stop again and see what you want to dive into on that counselor jensen so i'm going to start at the beginning of this part of your presentation with some questions that i have um

On the land dedication public spaces page, which is 28 on your presentation, I don't have a ton of experience with development that's come before us currently that asks for land dedication. One that we did have, The Open Space Board recommended we not do a land dedication on that site, but that we give them, they do the cash in lieu. And I think we were more interested in some sort of park or recreation facility on that site. So I don't really understand if in this new process and the the board needs to review this, where does that come in and How do we work with the developer to make sure that they know whether they're going to have to do cash or whether if council doesn't take an action until later and what we want is some land and not the cash, that creates an awkwardness for the developer not knowing what to do. So how does that work? And help me with that.

I'm going to slow roll the answer until Phil gets over here to answer it.

Yeah, so that's actually a council decision. So the code right now reads that if city council at its sole discretion determines there is insufficient unsuitable land, then it can do this cash in lieu option. And so that decision would rest with the council.

And the Open Space Board can advise us and give us input, but we are not bound by that in any way. But where in the process do we do that to facilitate that working out the best? Is there a dedicated time in the process that we do that?

Yeah, so we added a section in the draft code specifically requiring that annexation applications in particular, because those are the ones that will typically go through this land dedication. It has to go to the Lafayette Open Space Advisory Board early in the process and prior to it getting to council. So you'll have their input prior to making that decision.

okay so we don't have to wait until our final approval of the project though to say to the developer we want to park in this and they they can get that okay that's awesome and then would you explain the private i i know i think you had this in the definitions but in the form-based districts private civic space I'm not really sure what would be a private civic space, like a clubhouse? What is that?

It's probably going to be more of an outdoor space, actually. So we have a list of civic spaces in the farm-based districts, which is going to be used probably permanently in the Old Town mixed-use district. So it can be like a plaza area, which could be covered in yard or covered in concrete or some other surface like that. You could get two or three property owners that want to do something together for we're going to have an activity area. I think we gave probably, I think, six different choices for what that civic space can be. And it's intended to be built into the fabric of what's going on.

So let me look at the list instead of... Well, I'm struggling with the private and civic because it's either a private space or it's a civic space, it seems to me, and they're not the same.

It's kind of open to the public. That's part of the agreement with the property owner.

OK. Thank you. OK. All right. So that would be then part of the public land dedication. And that would satisfy their requirements so long as they keep it open to the public.

Actually, they're going to keep ownership. They're not going to dedicate, because the spaces are small. And typically, small spaces are more expensive to maintain if the community owns them. So, this is fairly common in downtown areas or main street areas to say, as part of what you do, you're going to have some outdoor space that's open to the public.

And that's permanent?

Permanent.

Okay. Yep. Awesome. again under multi-household development this private or courtyard development private amenity space whether or not that's allowed depends on we had a big conversation about this in our workshop that we were not excited about public land dedication being used for things that were exclusive in any way and um i'm not quite sure what that means then in that yes for a courtyard development

which if you picture it, it is like literally houses around a courtyard, which is, in theory, private space that's open to the public. My thought is, depending on how large it is, you may get requests for that just to be HOA property. That might be the easiest way to deal with that. That might be something that we want to drill down on a little bit more. The way that this is done typically is that it is open to anyone who lives there. And I suppose if you're across the street and you want to go have a picnic in their big lawn or whatever they put in there, that would be something that could happen. So I think just based on your question, we probably want to clarify, like, can you do it as HOA property, which is going to take away from what you're asking for, that public accessibility. Although we do work with communities who say you can't tie off all the HOA property, and that's a different conversation that I'm not going to get into. Or do we need to say, yep, it's small, and yep, you have to maintain it, and yep, everyone has to be able to use it, because that's part of courtyard development. So I think you kind of stumbled into a place where we could provide a little more clarity as well.

OK. All right. And the next page, 29, where you have the cul-de-sac. So I happen to live on a cul-de-sac just like this. And on the right side, it is no longer the subdivision. So in this example, where you have a little road going, how do you make this work? if that property on the far side doesn't belong to the development and there's no road or anything to connect to? If you're trying to create walkability, I get why you would do this. But if you don't own the property on the other side, what enforcement mechanism is there so that this actually does become a walkable cul-de-sac if somebody else owns the property?

I think that I'm going to look to you guys. In some communities, they're going to say, put it all on your property, and then they can do a later development agreement with the next person. You guys do have these, maybe?

well i mean this is now that we're looking at it through your eyes of a cul-de-sac kind of a triggering illustration but really this slide's just trying to clarify that we're doing a better job of coordinating these things so what generally happens in practice if you're going to have a dead end subdivision like this is that you get this half of it and i'd probably prefer not to show a road on the other hand because that is just like well if there's a need for a connection or if there was a need for fire access easement there. We established it through this. But I think what you're getting at is when you have a development and then you have an adjacency to it, we would have that subbed out for connection, assuming connectivity, because that's what our comp plan's goal is. And then the next subdivision would be required to connect in practice. what happens is the existing subdivision has concerns about additional traffic going in there so we just want to make sure we're setting that expectation as much as possible that this is coming and this is the you know and you do that either by plotting the road and not coming back and trying to get something like this. Does that help answer your question?

So it's an imperfect mechanism that is not necessarily going to create throughways, but to the extent you're able to, you will.

We're trying to set a better expectation with our new code. That connectivity needs to be established through phase one in order to get phase two in a place where we're not working backwards or working uphill.

Okay, and I have just one more, is that okay? Okay, so this whole administration on the regulating plan, to the extent that a plan requires some action by council to create a variance or, you know, not meet the standards, First of all, what's the difference between a regulating plan and a PUD? I haven't been through a PUD development. And these feel like some of the things that are in PUDs. So how have we helped this situation where I thought we were trying to get away from more individualized approvals. Now we have this regulating plan, which looks very much to me, I don't know those of you who have been on council longer, it kind of looks like a PUD to me and so what's the difference? Could you explain that?

So there's two instances where we're using PUDs right now. We're using them for larger subdivisions and that is kind of a general expectation kind of across any development area. And then we're also using PUDs in Old Town. In order to get exemptions from setbacks, parking, height, whatever, you need a PUD on the lot specific. So I think I could use the, and I don't think you were here for it, but at the corner of the north, I guess it's the southeast corner of public and baseline. We have an approval that is coming through the building permit process for a food hall. That application needed a PUD as well as a site development plan and took like six years to get through the process because they needed so many exceptions to our old planning standards. So we're fixing PUDs in one regard by not needing them for site-specific developments by establishing a bunch of criteria. when this regulating plan is easier to think about and more applicable to the larger subdivision. And there, it's going to feel similar, but it's not going to have, like, one, that whole point system. Like, you're going to come in for a regulating plan when you have a residential subdivision, and you're going to tell us that I have 30 acres. That means I need to hit four points this is how i'm proposing to do it right now that pud process is completely open-ended like it's zone residential i want to build entirely single-family detached product our comp plan says we need housing diversity somebody could come in and say i want well i'll add like six adus to you know a handful of you know of lots or whatever. And that's housing diversity. Here, it's not just one thing. This, I think, is a streamlined version of what you need. And there's process improvements, too. It's not just one area of the code that we're fixing. Like, in order to get that PUD process easier, it is more streamlined and more predictable, it's several different portions of our code. But it also is dependent upon whether or not you're talking about a subdivision or a lot-specific development, because we've been using that historically, that same process, which is a little bit onerous for a single lot.

So if they require some variance of the standards, Does that kick it into a different process, or we just have to approve that one variance, or how does that work?

and right now we have what we also folded in like a 10% administrative allowance and a 25% so it's like we're trying to set some parameters to what that variance is so if the height says it's 35 feet and they want to have 75 feet that's not going to be within a 10 or 15 percent allowance so but you know like if they're asking for some sort of relief let's say that they're not able to hit that five points and they're coming in at four and a half points. That's coming to you and they're telling you why, right? Like, hey, we're trying to deliver X product and Y product and we feel like that is good for the market and that's what we can deliver at this point.

But it doesn't kick a different process in place just to get a variance on one element of this.

So we had a discussion to try to get to, like, Hey, here are the things that we might want or might be supportive of in a PUD, and one of them was affordable housing one of them was economic incentive you know like or some sort of economic benefit and those are still kind of sprinkled into the code but we didn't get direct feedback as to we were trying to create a lane for hey if you know these are the things that we would support a pd pud of we didn't quite get there a regulating plan still gives somebody that flexibility and for a project of like that size i don't think any

city has a zoning code that has thought of every type of application that might come in the door so some sort of relief uh through it and i'm good with that what i was concerned about is that if you ask for a variance in one little thing and then it kicks it into a difficult more different process that might be more cumbersome

No, it can still get addressed through the regulating plan, but it would be highlighted. And now we have a heck of a lot more standards for them to, like, an expectation. So, like, say, you know, I thought I was going to create lot sizes at, you know, 4,000 square feet in order to, you know, have a small house, you know, a small detached housing type, and couldn't do that or whatever, and I need X amount of relief. Okay. Does that help? Yes. I'm trying to provide examples, but sometimes that's... Maybe not as helpful.

That's very helpful. Thank you.

Great. Councillor Giannullo.

Thank you, Mayor. Like Anne-Marie, Councillor Jensen, I'm going to go through these slides because I have some questions on a few different ones. On slide 26, natural resource protection, I had some questions. First, thank you for putting this in the code. I really like how this is structured. My questions are about the ecological assessment, wildlife corridor connections. Who does that under this? plan under this zoning code? Who does that ecological assessment? Who evaluates the wildlife corridor connections? Is that done by the developer? Is that done by staff? I just kind of want to understand that a little bit better.

So we are just pulling up the exact It needs to be prepared by a qualified professional approved by the city. And it needs to include a statement of independence and disclosure of any conflicts of interest. So this comes from the applicant, but it's done by a professional who does that. So if it came in from someone who wasn't qualified, we would likely just reject it.

Ask them to do it again. Yeah. On to the next slide, I wanted to ask about parking maximums. What does that mean? And is it what I think it means?

It's a cap on the amount of parking that you can provide in certain situations. So, yeah, we flipped. We used to have minimums. That's kind of the American way of doing parking. Now, in more places, we're seeing do what you want to do. Here's the maximum.

Excellent. I really like that. We have so much, a sea of parking, and sometimes it's too much. So I really like that. Moving on to... I have a question about PUDs. So that was Article 26.7, slide 30. So here we say PUDs are limited to projects with community benefits. What is a community benefit?

So yeah, to be eligible for a PUD, it would need to be a larger site of at least 10 acres. And it would need to include one of several options. One is affordable housing, permanently affordable housing. Two is a unique development or opportunity that advances the city's economic development objectives. So a large project comes through that the city council deems is significant in economic development reasons. Another is the construction or improvement and dedication to the city. or other quasi-judicial government of park, trail, recreation facilities. So things going likely above and beyond what they would typically do through a public land dedication. And then lastly, some stuff around historic structures.

OK. And who decides if those qualifications are met?

I think that would be likely the planning director and that person if they felt that was incorrect, they could appeal it, that decision.

OK. I have one more, and it's on the same slide, talking about the clear review procedures for applications. Help me understand what's changing here for applicants. Are we requiring them to do more, do less? Help me understand what's different under the new code.

it's gonna the lawyer answer that depends on what they're bringing in what we're trying to do is be very clear about the steps that they have to go through with what they bring in so they can have some realistic expectations about how the city will process their application in some cases it's going to get easier, shorter. Easier and shorter go the same, usually. So where we've moved approvals from a full public hearing process to an administrative review, and the applicant brings in an application in compliance with the regulations, that's going to be pretty straightforward. Applicants do what applicants do. So not everyone's going to come in compliant, and they could take a longer time because of the discussions around getting them into compliance with the regulations. In terms of things that are impactful to the community, that still need to go through planning commission and city council, that probably isn't going to change process-wise a whole lot. But with the clearer standards and the regulations, and also then as staff moves on to update the application submission information, it should reduce the guessing game of what does the city want to see? What am I going to need to show to get through? It's like, OK, the city wants to see six things, and they're going to review you against four criteria. Bring that in, and that's the conversation that's going to take place around the application.

Thank you. Very helpful.

So hopefully shorter in the right places.

And as just- Clarity is always good.

Yeah. Yeah.

Councillor Bullard.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank you all for this. I know that you could do this all night, but I'm weak. I cannot. So now that we're a few hours into the questions, I have a million questions, but I guess I turn to Mayor and also staff and our excellent consultant in terms of what's the most effective way forward, since I'd love to dig into the discussion piece, but I don't necessarily know if it's helpful to our process to rabbit hole on various questions. A number of excellent questions have already been raised by fellow counselors, but I'm really keen to dig in a little further into how fellow counselors see it.

Yeah, that's a great question. We knew this was going to be a long one. And I guess that's what you're referring to a little bit. We don't want to get into discussion until after the public hearing. That's first and foremost. So right now is just the time for questions. I know it's a really simple answer. But really, it's just we have to get to these questions, just make sure the council doesn't have anything pending that they want to further clarity on. And then we'll get to the public input and then come back for discussion. So that's just the process that we're going to move forward with.

And I'll add that I also have a lot of questions about the code and all these details, like detailed questions I've dug into the code. I'm not diving into those here, because I think as we get into the discussion, we may also figure out how do we do that? How do we offer those up to get addressed?

I'll pause for a moment. Any other questions from council on this section? Mayor Pro Tem?

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. It's not a question, more of a... Observation and comment. And I know this, I think, this is not part of the lane use code process or the multimodal transportation process. The cul-de-sac triggered questions for me. And there are a lot of efforts around well-intended development around bicycle transit. Cul-de-sacs are awesome when they go somewhere. And I know we have a heat map for transport on the MMTP for how people are moving around. And we don't have one for bicyclists and how people are moving around. I've asked cyclists, how do you move around? So in the future, that might be something that would help inform where these cul-de-sacs should be asked for. But that also requires that we have more emphasis from the MMTP You know, what's really important? And I ask every developer who comes, like, why did you put a bike rack there where you think people are coming from? And some people know. Some developers don't know where people are coming from. So that's one of the missing pieces. And I appreciate all the efforts of the bike racks and bike facilities. I don't want to see us putting things in places where people aren't going to use them. Like, initially, the 36 bike path was going to be a bike lane on Highway 36 until they asked every cyclist, and they were like,

not in this lifetime we're going to write on that so just an observation steven would if you said to the earlier question that the city is trying to set expectations appropriately if the city goes one step further and gets more into the mapping and not everybody should be providing that well that'd be for bicycling though we still might want all of them to have connections for walking.

Absolutely. But cyclists will go farther than pedestrians, except for a couple, four people that I know of. So cyclists could go all the way across the city to minimize how many cars are on the road if there's a way that they can get there.

To make sure that that connection is going and to let people know how to get around.

Yeah, and it's not, it can't, I don't think it's in the land use code or the MMTP. I think it's fine. But it might help inform changes to the land use code. That it would.

Unless there's any other questions on this section, I think we're ready to move forward.

Okay, it's been fun. I'm going to sit down for a little bit. Thanks, everybody.

So this final section of the presentation just relates to the zoning map. So most properties in the city of Lafayette were using that one-to-one conversion we had talked about previously. So for example, if you're in RE2 or RE1, you're now a neighborhood rural district. Those were pretty similar apples to apples types of conversions. There were a limited number of areas that received some site-specific updates to address unique conditions, policy objectives, or correct an error. We want to highlight a few of those for council. I also want to note that noted earlier around the M1 by Willoughby, that is a residence, I think two residents on one lot there, where yes, it was a one-to-one conversion from M1 to M1 in the new code. whereas the comprehensive plan envisions housing. And so there's going to be some cleanup items that are likely we're going to have to look at. And so I think as we zoom in neighborhood by neighborhood and block by block, we'll be doing that prior to the second ordinance. I wanted to just kind of make that note up front. Some of the ones that we specifically wanted to call out, this is kind of ascending in potential impact, would be Aspen Ridge Drive as number one, over by Walmart off 287, South Boulder Road Tech Center, number two, number three, Downs, number four, Golf Plaza, Blue Heron. So the first one, Aspen Ridge Drive, this is an existing area along Aspen Ridge. Again, it's near the Walmart. The comprehensive plan identifies this as adaptable commercial, which is intended to evolve into a walkable, high-quality district. And this is unique because the adaptable commercial is typically applied to commercial areas. But in this case, it's applied to an industrial area. And so there are uses within this area Things like self-storage, warehousing, and so on. that would become a nonconforming use with this map. And so to take just a moment on that, a nonconforming use is something where somebody went through a process, they got legally permitted, they're in business, and then the city changes the rules. So that's what's happening here. When that happens, that use can continue indefinitely, as is today. But there are some limitations to it. So the use can be changed, but it would have to be to a conforming use. So it can't go from one thing that's not allowed to another thing that's not allowed. A change in ownership can take place. That doesn't trigger anything. It can expand throughout the existing building that it's located. And so if there's unused space, they can make better use of the building. Though one of the critical things, so probably the two biggest pieces with nonconforming is the inability to expand your operations. And two is there's a one-year discontinuation clause, where if they discontinue the use for one year, then the use needs to then convert to something that's conforming. So those are some of the big takeaways for nonconforming uses. In this case, it's zoned M1 light industrial, again, adaptable commercial. So based on that, this map has it as AMX2 adaptable mixed-use corridor. The South Boulder Road tech center area includes two parcels that we wanted to, two areas we wanted to call out. The first, which is the top left one, is zoned single and two-family residential. And that includes at least two churches on the property. On the south area, that is in the tech center area, is zone C1 regional business. And so in the comprehensive plan, the church property was designated as adaptable commercial, whereas the other property designated as a collective flex, which is more of a mixed use employment district in the comprehensive plan. So doing that one-to-one conversion here brings that left property, the church property, to AMX 2 and the other property to M1, employment mixed use. In this case, the existing uses, both the church and the peaks at Old Laramie Trail, the assisted living facility, are both permitted through special use review, and so they could expand and continue on. They're not nonconforming, but they would have to go through a special use review. We did get some public comment from the church that's included in your packet this evening requesting a different zoning district, neighborhood mixed use. And so that would allow the church by right. We've talked a little bit about this at the council workshop about how a special use review for a property that size, given the local street access, is probably something that would be useful in evaluating an application. Dow Street, so very early in the process, we started to get a lot of calls and interest, and we met with a lot of people that were making requests for their neighborhood. Most of these we have declined. This one, what we wanted to bring to council's attention, this actually involves two lots. One on the left is zoned Old Town Residential, and the other half is zoned R2. I'm sorry, R2. And the one on the right is strictly R2 residential in our code. The issue here is that the one on the left is as a split zoning. And so that creates just some challenges to which one do you apply. In this case, the comprehensive plan guidance we have is just housing areas. And so this is one of those situations where we look at the surrounding area, look at the underlying recommendations and goals of the housing area's designation. And so in this case, what the map does is it moves that Old Town neighborhood zone to encompass fully that left property. The property has some similar characteristics as some of the other areas to the east or to the west within that Old Town neighborhood district. And that property on the right, as requested, this map would allow the N3 district. So this would allow something other than a single unit detached home. which is similar to the properties above it are duplexes, I believe, and then to the south and east are also attached housing types. And then lastly, this area is at 95th and Arapaho. When initially annexed, three corners of this intersection had commercial zoning. This is where Forest Park is on the southeast. And when the residential subdivision was built, it was built inside, partially inside that commercial zoning. And so some homes are fully commercial. They may not know it, but they are. And then there's some allots that are half and half, residential and commercial. Comprehensive plan sought to kind of provide that remedy, as you see in the middle. And so what this map does is it brings that down and corrects what we believe is likely just an error in the previous zoning map. So we're going to pause there for questions about these particular items or the zoning map overall. Any questions from council?

Councillor Jensen?

So we've talked before informally about the a couple of small industrial businesses in the Aspen Ridge industrial area who would be non-conforming and who have plans for redevelopment in the future. Or expansion, I think is a better way of saying it. And they are very small businesses, like one or two employees. So I am really concerned that we as a council have decided that supporting small business is one of our priorities for the year, and yet these two small businesses are saying, if you make this special use review, I'm not going to be able to afford to do this. So I had suggested that there be some sort of time frame that if they're going to expand, we give them a grace period of a year or some amount, even two years. I don't know what is reasonable. But I am concerned about that for those few businesses in there. But there may be other. I noted in the materials you sent us there was a process for applying for alternative zoning if you didn't like the zoning you were given. So it could be that is their solution is to apply for alternative zoning. I just want some feedback on what you think might be a good solution to supporting those small businesses in that section and how we might help them.

Yeah, I think some of it's going to be one-on-one conversations with them because sometimes their expansion might be like a retail or something that's allowed, and so they could move forward with that and still keep what they have. Other cases, yes, we did want to make it easy for them to come in during this grace period that we kind of have in the ordinance right now during this effective daytime where they wouldn't have to pay a fee. We would process everything for them, and we would... hear what their plans are, and have a discussion with planning before giving a recommendation to council on those requests. This is probably the biggest rezoning piece that we're looking at. It's potentially the most nonconforming and biggest change. And so there's also a question of if council needs more information or if you think another alternative is out there, that's something we could certainly do separate from this process as well. Similar to some of the other things that we've deferred that just need more time, that's something that we can always talk through as well.

So how would that work exactly? Then we would just go ahead and rezone it with the thought that We would come up with a solution for helping these small businesses after we get done with this process. Is that what you're thinking?

Yeah, it's not going to be we rezone it and then we go silent. We want to send out all the letters once we know it's going to happen. We didn't want to have a false alarm. And then we'll probably learn more and would probably come to council with either some potentially rezoning changes with the comprehensive plan amendment or Some different ideas for uses that are allowed in those areas and so forth Kind of strikes the balance of wanting that adaptable commercial Zone, but also supporting the small businesses So I know some of the residents in that area also have some concerns around just straight industrial zoning Okay, and then

The church situation, we did have a lot of conversation from some churches about the The South Boulder Road Tech Center. So I was having a hard time following exactly how this is going to work with the churches. So can you walk me through how they will be zoned and if they wanted to expand what they would do under this new zoning, please?

Yeah, it would be zoned, this adaptable commercial to zoning district. Under that zone district, the use standards allow a church use through a special use review process. And so if they were to add a church or expand or do whatever else, demolish, rebuild, that would trigger that special use review process, which would go to planning commission and council. That does add some cost to the application and some time, but it would allow planning commission and council to assess those impacts, especially as it relates primarily to transportation, parking and transportation to and from the property through that neighborhood.

Can I follow that one? Yep. Just to follow on that one, it's my understanding that as a lapsed Catholic, the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church is zoned NC. So they would not have to do a special use review to expand? It's zoned. That's allowed by right. It's allowed by right. So I'm trying to make a joke about the schism. Why are we viewing these differently since they're both on the same major quarter?

It's that one-to-one comprehensive plan conversion, whereas the comprehensive plan here had it as a different but adaptable commercial. So we almost just automatically just switched it to this AMX. The other one was, I think it was T1 transitional business. So it automatically got this neighborhood commercial one.

Thank you. I follow the logic. And I think if we didn't have immaculate conception of the community, there'd be a bit more ground to stand on. But since we have another church on the same major corridor, I'm having a hard time justifying this decision.

Yeah, it's something we can certainly revisit with council. Obviously, it's at your discretion. We've just been using the comprehensive plan as the guiding document for this. Yeah. Thank you. Sorry to steal.

That's right. And I guess following up with that, I know there are other people who want exceptions to various things. And we have said the comprehensive plan is guiding this. to the extent you want an amendment, you need to go to the comp plan and amend that first and then come back and get a zoning code amendment because we need to be consistent. And I'm a little fearful of just creating exceptions to the comp plan in this process.

If I could jump in, you know, I don't think that's the case. I think in the comp plan, The proposed zoning for these two locations we're talking about could be either or, but it's the way that the current zoning conflicts or doesn't conflict with what's in the comp plan. In the current zoning in the parcel that's over here on 287 and South Hold Road is under residential. And in the comp plan, it's shown as mixed use. And in the case up on northern 287 there, not zoned residential. It's zoned to more commercial use, which is compliant with the current comp plan designation. So it's more of they just would need to ask for the correct zoning that they would want, I think, rather than a comp plan amendment, which is, I think, an easier ask. Did I get that right? I think I got that right.

Yeah, I think we can, if there's a policy direction from council about this, there's an interpretation the city makes about the comprehensive plan map and how that translates to zoning, right? And that's done through a table at the beginning of the code. So there might be a policy choice that like this, in certain situations, this zone district might be appropriate, right? And so this might be one of those situations where council can make that call through this.

Any other questions, Councilor Chips?

No.

Any other members of council questions here?

Councillor Belair. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you. I really appreciate that. I know this is a challenge since I was one year old the last time we had a land use code. One of the things that I'm really keen about doing is getting past this comp plan land use code misalignment. So charting the path forward is very exciting and integrating this. But with what you've just put on the table in terms of the different areas, there is a great deal of confusion and misinformation in the community about the implications of some of these changes. So obviously, that's our collective job to address. But I wonder if you can speak a little bit to the values as you see it to what AMX 2 is supposed to afford us.

Yeah, so when thinking about AMX 2 versus 1, so on the far right, you see the lighter color red is the AMX 1 with the darker being 2. The intent of the AMX 1, when you look at the comprehensive plan, there are diagrams that show the large lot the Kmart that went out, and now it's going to be divided up kind of into more of a walkable environment. So those lots have a greater depth. They're able to have an internal street network that can separate some of those uses and have public spaces, whereas the AMX2 was shallower lots, pad sites, so like a Sherman Williams, a drive-through, things, but they're still along a corridor. So it's probably more heavy leaning towards automobile use and visiting via that than the district that we are envisioning as the AMX one.

Absolutely. No, thank you. I love that. I'm so excited about it. And I think it dovetails nicely with much of what Councilor Jensen was just putting on the table in terms of recognizing where we want to head while not shafting, for lack of a better verb, existing community businesses, churches, residences, et cetera. So I guess I'm curious, as we look towards the joint session with PC and then the second reading, to what extent we can zones such that we lay out our long-term strategic vision, the next many decades, but also build in a grandfathering, as I know a term that means different things in different contexts, but protect existing community benefits, assets, what have you, so that they don't feel that they're being pushed out in favor of that strategic vision and the values that you just laid out.

I had another question. Sorry. I think it was actually in the previous section, and I forgot it. There was something in our packet about administrative review for drive-thrus or the approval process for drive-thru restaurants. And I guess I was surprised at how friendly this land use code is to drive-thrus. And I have heard when we had the range proposal before us and it had several drive-thru restaurants. People are saying, that's the kind of thing we're trying to avoid in Lafayette. We're trying to create community-oriented things where people meet each other, sit down with each other, not just whip in and whip out. And I guess I wondered, in this process, have you talked about, plus the emissions of drive-through, have you talked about drive-through restaurants as not being as much of a plus as it seems like in this code they are?

Yeah, and Elizabeth can keep me honest, but I think we tried to differentiate between drive-throughs that are part of a mixed, not a mixed-use building, but a multiple-tenant building, so like the Starbucks on 287, and drive-throughs that are a standalone fast food restaurant. And so the ones that are a standalone and they're more impactful land-wise and visually, those require, I think, a special use review. They're allowed in maybe fewer places. If it's part of a building that has multiple restaurants and offices and whatnot, then it's, I believe, allowed by right in more places. And so we saw the benefit of having that more compact mix of uses within that building as something that kind of give and take with the drive-through.

And we've not talked about this as a council at all at any time that I'm aware of. But I'm not excited about that. And I think some of the feedback we've heard from the public is that's what we're trying to stay away from in creating community-oriented development. And I don't know if there's a further point at which we could have a conversation about that. I just want to earmark it, because we've never talked about it. And I don't know what my fellow council people think about that at all. But I'd like to put a pin in that for further conversation.

Any other questions? I don't want to get into the policy discussion quite yet. But any other questions from you, counselor?

I think to kind of start wrapping it up, we dove into the Planning Commission recommendations pretty heavy in the July 28th workshop, so we weren't going to go recommendation by recommendation this evening. As context, Planning Commission did have public hearings both on June 24th and July 8th, and they provided a recommendation that's included in your packet as a resolution. Those included a number of recommendations, and there's different timelines attached to each of them. So some of them are prior to first reading. And so those ones, I think we've knocked out all of those prior to tonight. Prior to the effective date, so that's that 90-day window. And then requires further counsel discussion. And so those might be things like moratoriums on a data center, things we'll talk about at your workshop next year, or next month. Next month.

For audience.

And so this is just showing that we've largely have completed a lot of these. Some of these are kind of bundled in with numerous recommendations that some are complete and some are not. And specifically, before going to the next slide, the Parks and Recreation District, that wasn't intended to be done until the effective date, but we ended up just trying to make the map and make the district so you see something. And those can still be tweaked. as we move forward through the process. The first three on here, the private facility reduction for public land dedication, the greenhouses, whether or not to allow them in the OTX district or short-term rentals in manufactured housing communities, those are things we could easily get in the second reading of the ordinance. Those are small changes. If the council had policy direction, we could implement that. Some of the other ones, like replacement of manufactured housing, and rethinking and ensuring the lot size dimensional standards work as per some of the public comment we've gotten. That's going to take a little bit more analysis than we can do during this first ordinance. The staff recommendation for this is approval of the ordinance 15 series 2026. that's adopting the land use code and zoning map. And there's several options. This is the last staff slide for this. For council this evening, first is to pass the ordinance as presented. So that would, the red line ordinance that includes those initial planning commission recommendations, that would pass that on first reading. You could pass the ordinance as presented and direct staff to prepare specific amendments for consideration at second reading. You didn't know exactly what it should be, but you knew there was some specific things that you want done that we think we can get done in a week or two time frame. We can get that done and have it in your packet for second reading. You could pass the ordinance with amendments tonight. So if you knew a red line or add this use or delete that use, drive-throughs and so on, that's something that we can put in the Or we can make that change immediately. Or you could continue this discussion to a future meeting where we would pick up where we left off. Those are the options that we wanted to make staff aware of, or make council aware of. Next steps, we have our workshop with the Planning Commission next month. followed by council's second reading, and lastly, the December 15th effective date. Thank you for all the questions and getting through this. Per the agenda that we suggested, we would recommend the public hearing.

Great. I'll go back one slide. I want to make sure there's no final questions from anyone on council before I open the public hearing. Yes, but is there any questions before we move into the public hearing? Kaiser Genoa.

I just have a comment, and I just want to thank the staff for all the incredible work that you've done, all the incredible work that you've done up to this point. It's been a heavy lift. I thank the working group, the Planning Commission, for all their work. I've been part of the working group and attended some of the Planning Commission meetings. And it has just been a Goliath amount of work to get here. So kudos to you all for the hard work. And thank you for collecting all the public input and trying to address it. You know, it really can't be said how much work has gone into this. I've seen only a smidgen, and can imagine you all have had many more late days than I have had on this project.

Thank you. We appreciate it. Great. OK, we'll move on. And well, first I will say, we've been here for a while, and I understand we want a break. However, there's been people waiting, and I just want to make sure we get to the public. Oh, Councillor Friedland.

Yeah, agreed. We've been here a while and want us to keep being efficient.

I guess I'm confused.

Are we going to have a discussion about the Planning Commission recommendations, the changes that were made because of those, the outstanding Planning Commission recommendations? Does staff have an opinion on those? We just kind of jumped right through those. That's our expert body that advises us, right? So I think we should Yeah, where do we go with those?

Yeah, I think we didn't want to, we have slides on each of those recommendations, so if you want to dive into any particular one, as staff, I think we've accomplished all the ones to first reading. And if council, I think when we get to that discussion point, if council agrees with those other recommendations, those are ones we can continue on, like the other ones through the effective date. But then we did call out a few that are going to need specific council direction, either tonight or at the workshop.

Thank you. And does Planning Commission agree with your assessment? Do they agree that their recommendations have been

We have not presented these specific red lines to the Planning Commission, but that's a good question, and it's something that we could share with them ahead of the workshop. We do have kind of a method for them to provide their input on this draft code, and we're getting some comments from them that we'll be able to share at a future meeting.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I think that would be pretty valuable to have, I feel like. They have opinions, and they obviously thought long and hard about 17 conditions, quite a few. So I would love, it would help me to understand if they feel like, yep, we got it, move on, or nope, still need to do some work. I don't know if I can really effectively give you an opinion without them advising us, which is obviously their role. Thank you.

OK, thank you. As I was saying, counsel, bear with me just a little longer. I want to move right into the public input section on the public hearing, just because I don't want to make public that is here with us that has signed up to speak wait any longer. So I will open tonight's public hearing. This is, of course, for ordinance number 15, series 2026, repealing and replacing chapter 26 of the COVID ordinances with a new chapter 26 titled Land Use Code. We will do tonight's public hearing as any other. You will have, when I call your name, well, actually before that, if you do want to speak, there's one of these, you can fill out one of these request forms, speak request forms there in the back through that glass door. When you do come up, when I call your name, you can come up, state your name and address for the record. You will have five minutes to speak. And again, just in terms of equality and equity and making sure everybody gets the exact same amount of time, at the five minute mark, I will ask you to stop, and your time will be up. With that, we'll begin tonight with Carolyn Leland.

Good evening. Is there a mic? That little thing, you can move it closer to you if you want to. Can you hear me?

Do I need it?

It'll pick you up if you speak. You can just start.

Hi. Good evening, council members and mayor. My name is Caroline Leland, and I work for a climate nonprofit called the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, or SWEEP. I'm here to testify in favor of the proposed zoning changes. Middle housing is often called the missing middle because it is so scarce in comparison to its popularity. As has been pointed out tonight, smaller attached homes are more naturally affordable and more environmentally friendly. I have the stats. Middle housing uses 18% to 50% less energy, depending on the type of structure, and up to 75% less outdoor water than single family detached houses. And enabling more people to live in existing neighborhoods close to daily destinations reduces transportation emissions by at least 15% in high growth areas like Lafayette. This is huge when transportation is our biggest source of greenhouse gas. Walkability and bikeability also reduces costs for residents as transportation is Colorado's second biggest household expense behind housing. ADUs also create naturally affordable housing options for individuals and families who want a smaller, lower cost home in desirable neighborhoods. And they open up a revenue stream for homeowners who might be struggling financially. ADUs are an excellent option for older adults who want to downsize in their own neighborhood, young adults who want to leave the nest but aren't quite able to afford it, and adults with disabilities who wish to live independently but near family. Like middle housing, ADUs are a more energy and water efficient housing type that can be built near existing infrastructure services and jobs. When Louisville allowed ADUs, staff noted that they expected a minimal water impact as ADUs often replace irrigated lawn space. Sorry, that was a typo. I also want to comment on parking mandates, which make housing more expensive and less feasible. Required parking can add tens of thousands of dollars in construction costs per home and often equates to wasted space. These costs can be a non-starter for new construction. And when homes do get built, the costs get passed on to renters and buyers, regardless of whether they own a car or use all of the mandated spaces. Parking requirements also force homes and businesses to be spread out, making it unpleasant, unsafe, or simply impossible to attempt walking, biking, or otherwise wheeling. Along with middle housing and ADUs, increasing parking flexibility is key to achieving our climate goals. In conclusion, enabling more housing diversity through middle housing, ADUs, mixed-use development, parking flexibility, and a form-based code, all of which was proposed tonight, will help Lafayette achieve its housing goals and become a more affordable and environmentally sustainable place to live. Thank you.

Thank you. Next, we'll hear from Tony Munoz.

Council, I appreciate you listening. I'm a little louder than she is. Four things I'd really like to have addressed in this is sustainability, ICFs, geothermal, and solar. We need to push all four of those items as best we can, giving people incentives to do that. It's expensive, but in the long run, it's needed. It's deeply needed. And the builders in our community, they're not interested in learning about any of those things. I've tried. I love the fact that restaurants, you can eat anywhere you want in Lafayette. You can go to an Indian restaurant. You can go to China. You can go to Italy. You can eat all different types of food. I do understand why we need some drive-through convenience, yes. And also, sometimes those restaurants are a little more affordable. But do they have to be in downtown Lafayette? I don't think so. Not appropriate. I don't think it. Yeah, I don't think it's a good idea. I think it would add too much to the pollution with cars idling in the middle of downtown Lafayette. We need to spread it out a little bit more. When we're talking about there's a new development, I think there's a letter of intent, and they're thinking about three to five story buildings, I really disagree with that in our old town Lafayette. I walk a lot. I walk to church. I walk to the city hall. I walk to the VFW. I walk to the grocery store. I walk to go have coffee. They tore up all the trees in front of our city hall. It's hot. It's really hot, and it's only going to get hotter. And we planted trees, but they're not going to provide any shade for me in my lifetime. We also took down some trees over by the Lafayette Public Library. Again, there's no escape from the heat. I'm hot when I walk to Walgreens. It's uncomfortable. When I get to Mother Cabrini Drive, when I walk to church, I actually can feel 10 degrees cooler. I mean, I can actually kind of calm my body down so when I walk into the church I'm not offending anyone. So I really think we need to push more trees. I understand they take water, but I think they also provide for cooling of the earth. So if we could have a professional maybe come in and help us with that. I don't know who decided to take the trees away. I don't understand what happened there. I'm sorry I'm all over the map. West Baseline. The new buildings on West Baseline. When I walk on West Baseline, again, there's no trees. It's got those, they're townhomes, I think. But they're right up against Baseline. And it feels very much like I'm in New York. It's just very. It's different. The setback should have been further. I built on baseline, but I built on east baseline. I didn't ask for a variance. I built with a 20-foot setback, and then I buffered it by about a couple feet, just in case if they ever make baseline larger. So it's something to think about with those setbacks. I don't think it's a comfortable lifestyle for Lafayette. We're not New York. We're not Florida. And it kind of makes me feel that way. I've been there. I've been to both places. Let's see. Last but not least. Oh, Willoughby Corner. OK. They had a plan. I've been running out of time. They had a plan, and they wanted to change it from duplexes to single-family homes. I think that was just for the builders so that they could incur bigger profits. I don't think it had anything to do with bettering Lafayette. And last but not least, in the 90s, I built a duplex. It has. six bathrooms, five bedrooms. It was on time and in budget. I just built an ADU in Lafayette, and I almost had a stroke. I have to build another place because the property I own is falling in the crawl space. It doesn't have a foundation. I don't want to touch it. It was horrible, you guys. So think about it. Please, really, really work on this. It's really important to our community. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we'll hear from Karen Norbeck.

Karen Norbach, 800 East Geneseo. Good evening. In 2018, I was appointed to the Community Advisory Committee for the comp plan update. There are parts of the comp plan that were put there by staff and consultants, not the community. Future land use is in the term a collectiflex, for instance. But it's easy to see what was important to the community when asked. That small town feel, mom and pop stores, our beloved downtown and our open spaces and wildlife. One proposed zoning change in the current LUC update almost wrecked our open space philosophy by combining open space and parks into one zone and thus allowing uses like golf courses and private recreation clubs and facilities on our open spaces. I spoke about this to the Planning Commission, as did LOSAB's chair, and thankfully they agreed there should be a zone for each. Please consider removing or lowering the public land dedication language allowing developers credit for private facilities. I believe that was written before we had a rec center and it is no longer needed. The comp plan emphasized community support for the small one-of-a-kind buildings on public that allow for indie mom and pop shops to flourish. Following our commitment to sustainability, adaptive reuse was highlighted as a way to retain those buildings rather than see them scraped and replaced with something new. Another benefit of that is that chain stores don't move into small, unique buildings. But the larger the building footprint, especially in a newly constructed building, as proposed in the OT3 zone, the more likely it is for a national chain to get a foot in the door. Laura had its sights set on an end-to-end condo complex for the 700 block until the community spoke up and the project was abandoned. We must protect our downtown from this. Smaller building footprints that reflect what is already on public And following the comp plan that says a maximum of two stories will do that. Look at the 700 block now. A city park, a bakery, and an ice cream shop have been added. Public is vibrant and alive, all done within existing small-scale buildings. Vicki Uland, who is a member of the Code Update Working Group, has raised concerns about OTX3, as did the majority of our planning commissioners, who are also members of that group. She created an online petition called Keep Our Public Road Quirky, Stop Big Box Developments. It currently has 1,060 signatures. Mine was the second one. She can't be here tonight, so I have the pleasure of bringing it to you. It says with its eclectic mix of architecture, buildings dating from the early 1900s to today, small businesses owned by people of many ethnicities, affordable housing next to trendy restaurants, Vibrant art scene and multiple community gathering spaces, Public Road is quirky and uniquely Lafayette, but that's in danger of changing. On August 18th, Lafayette City Council is scheduled to vote on a new zoning and land use code that would allow the historic section of Public Road between Emma and Spalding Streets to be developed with three-story, 75,000 square foot big boxes, more than six times the size of any building that exists there today. Encourage scrape-offs of public road small buildings that provide affordable rents for local mom-and-pop businesses, replacing them with market-rate commercial residential mega-buildings with the potential for high vacancy rates. We don't support this proposed zoning, which is called OTX-3. Instead, we support a zoning called OTX-1, with a two-story building cap that would stretch along the historic core of Public Road from Baseline to Spalding. This OTX-1 zoning would ensure new buildings could only be a maximum of about 55% bigger than the largest existing buildings, as opposed to the nearly 500% size increase the proposed OTX-3 zoning would allow. No building would be taller than what exists. Any new building would be required to have commercial space, on the first floor, which ensures Public Road keeps producing sales tax. Retail office or residential could be built on a potential second floor. We're asking Lafayette City Council to keep Public Road's quirky character and stop big box development by approving OTX1 zoning on public from Baseline to Spaulding, keeping building heights on public at two stories or 30 feet tall. On next door, a resident spoke for many community members with these words. If this moves forward, my heart will shatter. This is a little slice of small town paradise. It's been years since I stood in front of council with this plea, but tonight calls for it. We've got something special here. Let's not mess it up. Thank you.

Thank you. Up next, we'll hear from Jack Bestall.

Good evening. Jack Bestall, Bestall Collaborative Planning and Development Advisory Services. I'm here as an owner's representative of Boulder Ranch. And that's the project, 34 Acres, that we've submitted an annexation application for. I've been monitoring this process for I guess since about a year now last since last August And it is a ton of work and I've only seen what less than half of the whole process And we I appreciate that having been a planner in a former lifetime I'm only 39 by the way. I want to point that out age discussion earlier, but They've done a lot of work, and they've really brought together a lot of concerns and issues, and I think we should really respect that. They've also been accessible to the staff, that is, in terms of when I've been able to talk to them about issues and the concerns. Taking a word from the last speaker, quirky, that's what I'm concerned about. This has become quite formulaic. And what you're trying to do is get diversity by layering points and percentages. And what really drives good design and planning is market and good design. The problem we've got, I guess, is that we're all judged by the worst in our field. And so when someone shows up and just does 50 brown houses with all the same roof, that's not what we want to do. And that's not what a lot of us want to do. But I wonder if we've gone too far with this pendulum. And specifically, the point system might be fine. And certainly attached is less expensive to build. However, when you look at that, then you add percentages, and it can be done if we use, for example, a lot of small detached units, holding that to just 50%. And I can solve the energy issue as well, by the way. But I have the good fortune of having either developed or have in the process about 600 affordable units. So what I'm really trying to explain is, If you want accessibility, it doesn't always mean formulas. And you won't get that quirky, the diverse thing that you're looking for in Old Town could also be in the other parts of your community. The other part that I wanted to touch on was commercial. There's been a lot of concern about making sure you have kind of sustainable neighborhoods that have commercial and then, for example, 40 acres and plus. But I don't think there's been an economic baseline study done for the community. So I'm really, what needs to happen is to really understand what's the marketplace and how does that apply to different properties. And what you're asking is for the developer to come in and prove that it doesn't apply. It's kind of a reverse logic, and I'm not sure that's possible. I think the other aspect of this is there's been so much work done by the community, by your planning commission, by the working group, and now by you, I would ask you to step back from it. And there's more work to be done. But step back from it in terms of allowing now more. Once you have the standard set and once you have the process set, allow more work to be done by the staff that's going to be a real cost effective way in the communities that I work in where I can do affordable work more effectively that's what happens there's more administrative control and I think that I would also ask you to consider that. You've already handled the big questions. Let the details now go, because you've set the framework. The other thing, I guess, would be I think this idea that the review processes have been right-sized, I would question that, and I would ask you to question that. My legal advisor on our Boulder ranch team, he came up with six to 10 review steps from annexation through to zoning. And I only came up with seven, so maybe we're framed all right. But I think what's happening here is you saw the regulatory plan that was up there. That's going to require to get zoning. That's going to require engineering. It's going to make easements. And it's a lot of detail and a lot of investment to make sure that the property has zoning. So I would really let, in the next few weeks and months, I would really ask you to look very carefully at the review process. Thanks for all your work. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much. Next, we'll hear from Cindy Lurie.

Good evening. I'm Cindy Laurie, and I have lived in and loved Lafayette for 30 years. And I currently live in Cold Creek Village, where I've owned a home there for 15 years. And I'm here tonight because I strongly object to the OTX3 zoning code. Old Town is the jewel in our community's beautiful crown. It's unique to all of Boulder County and indeed to all of Colorado, and it should be carefully grown and developed to reflect our vision. In the Legacy Lafayette Comprehensive Plan, the community went to great lengths to clarify and communicate our vision for Lafayette's future, and it specifically addresses Old Town and its future development. The plan restricts Old Town Heights to one or two stories on most streets. The OTX3 proposal, which advocates higher-profile limits and broader building footprints, not only dwarfs existing buildings, it abandons the voter-approved transitional guardrails. The community character framework in Legacy Lafayette mandates that we protect our extraordinary historic fabric, cultivating diverse small businesses in our beloved and increasingly rare small-town feel. It's my observation that the code updates in general are much more focused on dollars and economic concerns and seem to bypass our community's devotion to the city's culture, its character, and its heart and soul. The OTX3 zoning specifically would forever change the look and feel of our downtown and has the potential to squeeze out our beloved small businesses and squelch the eclectic landscape and vibe that draws us all together. The buildings that would likely come from OTX 3 would be a bell we could never unring. OTX 3 seems to ignore the cultural framework of our comp plan that pledges to preserve the historic and cultural fabric of the community. It treats our unique historic downtown like a cookie cutter regional highway corridor, violating the very identity this council promised to preserve when it adopted our comprehensive plan. You should also know and do now, as Karen just talked about, that the community is not staying silent. Over 1,000 of your constituents have already signed a petition against OX3. And we're not going to accept a vote in favor of this part of the code update. We expect our city leaders to listen to the community and to show respect for the time and money invested by our residents to develop, clarify, and articulate our city's vision through Legacy Lafayette, not just in its letter, but in its spirit. As you do that, we expect that you will vote down the proposed OTX3 zoning in favor of OTX1, which is more in keeping with the community's vision for our future. I think I can speak for many when I say that we look forward to growing and evolving our city alongside you with a passion for both its history and its future and with the utmost respect for its very intentional pace and direction. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we'll hear from Rob McClure.

Mayor, city council members, thank you for the opportunity to provide comments today. My name is Rob McClure. I've been a resident of Lafayette for over 25 years and in Colorado for my entire life. I grew up in a time where I've seen the impact of growth. I grew up in Arapahoe County, and I lived through the build out of the tech center down there and Highlands Ranch. And so I've seen some of the things that Lafayette is trying to face. I think that the choices that we need to address, we need to be cautious about the preservation of our city core, particularly the walkable city core. We've heard a lot about that already. I live south of Wilson Garden, which means I'm south of Emma and down from where on the 701 Pocket Park is going to be, which may be renamed, which would be great. That area is very walkable and is a part of the historic public road, which you've also heard about. It has a lot of perkiness to it that is valuable. And I think Lafayette would benefit from preserving And I'd appreciate further consideration with regards to that. I'd like to say I appreciate and take this time, actually, to say that I appreciate the substantial time and effort it's taken to put into crafting the land use code. It's clear that that's been a lot of hours, a lot of people. And so the kind of comments that you're hearing are, I think, targeted and aren't necessarily directed at the entire land use code. It's a fantastic piece of work. I should also note that I'm a member of the Sustainability and Resiliency Board and also the Mental Health and Human Services Committee of the latter, which I'm the chair. But tonight, I speak as a resident of Lafayette. And I'm not representing SRAB or the Mental Health Committee at all. So my comments. First, I'd like to say that I'm in support of the Lafayette Planning Commission recommendations. That sounds like you're going to spend a little bit of time later on going over. I'm particularly happy to see that the submitted LUC includes a requested change to create two distinct zoning districts for parks and open space. I think that was really critical. Those two are not the same and they can't be managed the same way. It actually impacts some of the things we're going to talk about in a second. I see that staff has noted that council needs to discuss the recommended changes to the PLD credit structure. And I think that I would very much look at what PC has suggested and be very cautious about providing the kind of credits that you might be considering into the code. I also agree with the prohibition on data centers until you can put together a specific set of recommendations around the inclusion of data centers. like PC is recommended. I think we're going to hear a lot, and I'm going to mention it later, about the further study that PC has recommended with regards to OTX3. And I certainly encourage you to not only consider that, but maybe even strike it tonight. And that would include a reduction in the maximum lock combination that would be included in OTX3. Second, I'd like to speak specifically concerning section 26.5, the site planning and development standards. And in general, I'm very much in support of that section, particularly 26.5.5, the site building design section B1, sustainable design, which you I think you might have also seen a little bit of. But in Section 2655 , I'd ask council to consider requiring more than the proposed minimum two features for development and one feature for redevelopment and the listed additional sustainability features. The list that's there I think have some breadth. They're reasonable as a kind of eclectic list of things that can be considered. It does include, no surprise, at the bottom, hey, you can come and ask for something else, and we'll consider it a way to get out. And because of that, I think that we should be expecting more from our developers with regards to these kind of sustainability features. One and done, or even two, given the list that I'm sure you're going to spend some time looking at, is not enough. In addition, I'd like to...

Thank you so much. Unfortunately, your five minutes are up. We appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Up next, we'll hear from Betsy Ellis. Betsy Ellis?

I'll take her spot.

Claire Scott.

OK. Good evening. Thank you for hearing me. I'm Claire Scott. I am a part of Immaculate Conception Church, the social justice ministry. And I'm here tonight on behalf of them. Truth be told, I do not live in Lafayette. I spend most of my time in Lafayette. And I am representing our social justice ministry. So we are very excited that you are doing something with middle housing. It is so desperately needed. For anyone that's new or I don't know or doesn't know us, we've been working on affordable housing for a long time. are really glad to see the inclusion of some incentives for triplexes and fourplexes and duplexes, ADUs. Great. Haven't quite figured out how to incentivize them to be affordable yet, but I'm sure you'll get there. You guys are good. The other thing, the mobile home parks, I have to admit, I had to run out and get something to eat because I was mistakenly thinking I was talking at 5.30. So I had to go get something to eat. So I don't know. I didn't see in the rest of the presentation, did you zone for mobile home parks? Thank you, because they are affordable. We need to keep them from being developed into high-end housing. I'm listening to a lot of stuff tonight. And wow, I'm impressed with the amount of work you guys put into this. The complexity of the whole matter, I will say I don't see a lot of difference between 35 feet and 30 feet on a height restriction. To me, if it allows more density and makes a more walkable downtown area, I'm sure we can figure out how to make 35 feet attractive. and fit in with the town so anyway those are my thoughts um thank you dave for misinforming me that i could speak at 5 30 and you guys have a good night thank you so much next we'll hear from daniel coogan daniel coogan bonnie freeman

Hey, guys. My name's Bonnie Freeman, your resident GIS person back here again. I've lived on East Hamish Street for about 30 years. I own a home business there. And while I'm generally in support of the proposed land use codes, I'm here to speak about the new Old Town Mixed Use Zone that was added to the proposed codes, namely OTX3. It appears that OTX3 was added by the staff and the consultants with little to no weigh-in from the public, the Land Use Code Working Group, or the Planning Commission. At the July 8th Planning Commission meeting, commissioners asked staff to compile data on the existing structures in the OTX zones, namely building sizes and current uses. Being a GIS person, I thought it would be really good to have that data before October when they asked for it, since it's difficult to visualize square footage without real-life examples. So I mapped out all of the structure footprints, the building footprints in the three OTX zones, and I generated some statistics for you. I did send you an email about this earlier. I will send you, tomorrow I will send you an email with my actual spreadsheet with the raw data and summary, so you can just sort it any way you want to. The proposed footprint sizes and heights for the OTX zones are OTX 1 is 10,000 square feet for the first floor, OTX 2, 15,000 square feet for the first floor, and OTX 3, 25,000 square feet for the first floor. And since the max height is proposed to be 35 feet, you could potentially have buildings that are 75,000 square feet total in OTX 3. The key takeaways are only three building footprints come close to the 10,000 square feet in OTX 1. That's the Lafayette Commons building down on East Simpson, the Noble Treasures Bear Boulder Design building, and the Post Brewing Company. So they come in at like 9,800, 9,400, and 9,200 square feet. And then the next largest footprint building in OTX 1 is 7,600 square feet. So these are way below 10,000 square feet that's going to be allowed in OTX 1. That's where Bee's Thai Kitchen, Old Town Barber, and the Colorado School of Herbalism are located. The only building in OTX 1 that is 35 feet tall is the one containing the three-story townhomes located in the back building of the townhouse complex on East Simpson. And there are no buildings that come close to 30,000 square feet. The closest one is the Lafayette Commons, 19,000 square feet. And in the very top of the takeaways, the very first table, I actually calculate a percent change and not larger. And so you can kind of see that any building with a 30,000 total square foot, which is 35 feet high, 10,000 square footage, would be a 52% change. In OTX 2, there are no existing buildings with a building footprint of 15,000 square feet. The largest one is Take a Break Children's Center at 9,800. There are four buildings in OTX 2 that are 35 feet tall, and all of them are recently built townhouses. And there are no buildings that come close to 45,000 total square feet, which would be a three-story flat-root building in OTX2. The tallest one is the Take-A-Break Children's Center with 20,000 square feet. There are no existing structures of the building footprint of 25,000 square feet in OTX 3. The largest footprint building is the former car dealership with office spaces and formerly Elizabeth's embellishments. The tallest building in OTX 3 is Senior Gomez, two stories. It's 30 feet tall. The next two are 25 feet tall, Lafayette floors and H&M mechanics. There are no buildings that come close to 75,000 total square feet. which would be a 35-foot, three-story, flat-top building with a 25,000-foot footprint. That size building would be a 979% change of what we currently have in OTX 3. That's not what the residents asked for in the comp plan. Before voting for changes, please consider the recommendations in the comp plan that ask to preserve the historic character and eclectic, funky, and small town nature of Old Town commercial areas. And I'll send you guys .

Thank you so much. Your five minutes are up. Thank you.

I know. I saw. Thank you.

Up next, we'll hear from Mike Cooper.

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council. Mike Cooper with Boulder Creek Neighborhood, 712 Main Street, Roseville, Colorado. I've been part of the working group over the past few years. So that's been a great process to be engaged with the Planning Commission and other community members and departments. I was a little frustrated when we got to the part of the code that I'm an expert in, in the housing. Being a housing developer, I was a little frustrated that the working group didn't meet after the code was kind of published in its full form. So we kind of relegated to having side meetings and red lines and all that. But had productive meetings with city staff over the past couple months. And I think we made progress on some of the building standards and lot standards and building height measurement. So I think those are going in the right direction. I want to talk about the housing mix and point system. And I think that format is fine in terms of encouraging housing diversity. My recommendation was to lower it by one point on all of those categories, and you'll still get a good mix of housing, I believe. And I kind of pointed out some examples of that. And the reason why I say that is because if we add the one point to where it is now, it's really forcing attached housing. And you guys have had a good discussion about is that more affordable to have smaller units, attached housing? Absolutely. The smaller the footprint of the home, the smaller the square footage, it's going to be a cheaper home. lower sales price. However, I've brought up construction defect litigation and the unintended consequences. If you force that type of housing, it's most likely going to be rental. So if that matches with the comprehensive plan and the mix of housing that the city envisions, I'd say fine. Then that's what you're going to get. But don't expect that a large percentage of attached housing over a duplex will be for sale housing. So I just wanted you to be aware of that. And I think if we do lower it by one point, we can work with staff to kind of prove out that that will still provide a good housing diversity. And in that, loosening lessening the forcing of attached housing, but increasing or loosening the standards on the small detached house. So they're restricting the small detached house, which is a great category to have because that's a detached townhome, and it's not subject to the construction defect risk litigation. So if we loosen the standards on the small detached houses, that will provide that missing middle housing type that will provide the density and the affordability. So currently, they limit that to 1,200 square feet. And I think we should increase that to more of a townhome, maybe 1,800 square feet or something like that, because that's kind of the cottage homes that we're building now are more in that range. And that's what the market is demanding. I would like to see, and also the dimensions of that. Really, none of the dimensions on the house standards are meeting any of the products that we would build. Limiting detached homes to 50 foot depth and limiting cottage homes or the courtyard developments to a 40 by 40 box. I just don't understand why those dimensions are in the code and they don't match any current building products that we're seeing in the market today. So I think, though, we're going the right direction with staff on that. And then the last one was the commercial development. I recommend that you make that an option on parcels that are 40 acres or over. Mandating commercial use in any context on a parcel that's over 40 acres doesn't seem to make much sense. And it really doesn't meet the demand for commercial development in Lafayette. The cost to provide new commercial development to spec build is extremely expensive. And inline retail is going in the opposite direction than what's being prescribed here. So I would like to make that an option. And also, mandating vertical mixed use as part of that is extremely risky. So I would like the consultant to advise if that's ever been done with a form-based code, is to mandate land uses like that as part of the form-based code. Because my understanding is a form-based code, like they did in Denver, is to allow the market to provide the uses, and you provide the form. So you can build whatever you want inside that box as long as it has the shape, the setbacks, and the characteristics that you want to see. I've never seen land uses prescribed as part of the form-based code, so I'd just be curious if there's any examples that they're following in other municipalities where that's been achieved. So that's my take on the commercial part of it with the form-based code. Lastly, the review process and timing. I would like to see the staff come up with a flow chart of what the processes are, how they can be combined and made concurrent, and also put review timelines on each review cycle so that we can have more predictive timelines. Right now, to get through one process in the city takes several years, just one process. And so that's the part that I would like to see. What can we combine? How can we get those timelines down, because that's Whether there's 14 different processes to go through, it's not a big deal as long as we can combine them and we can do them quickly and get through the process and get through and minimize the risk as we go through that. So right now in Lafayette to get through prelim PUD, the prelim, not even final. Thank you. There's no discretionary hearings. Your five minutes are up. Thank you so much. Five minutes? Five minutes, yeah.

Cool. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next we'll hear from Kristen Dean.

Hi, thank you. I'm Kristen Dean. I just have a couple of, there are more questions, I think. At first, I do want to echo Mike's comments about a defined timeline for the development review process and predictability around that for the developers and really the opportunity for things to move through more efficiently. And I'll ask these questions. I don't necessarily expect them to be answered. And I can follow up with staff to get more information. But I'm just curious. why in the OTX zoning districts was there a maximum building footprint prescribed versus a floor area ratio? Since the lot sizes do vary, and especially in OTX 3, you have one significantly larger lot, and the floor area ratio may actually result in more opportunity for that site. You know, there are a lot of goals that this code is trying to achieve in terms of activating spaces, reducing parking, um, having a mix of uses. And so, you know, the, just a flat limit on the building square footage could, and maybe unintended consequences there, or, you know, so some of the larger lots, I'm just curious if there's an opportunity to look at an FAR, um, versus just a flat limit on building footprint. And then, um, In the AMX 2 zoning district, I appreciate the opportunity for property owners to come in and propose something different and go through a process there. So thank you for being open to that. We'll certainly come back and have some ideas around that. I do question why childcare and daycare are still not a permitted use in AMX 2. There's an existing childcare center there. If there is a very strong need for childcare in Lafayette. So why restrict that childcare center from being able to grow and expand and also allow additional childcare centers in an area where you're proposing mixed-use residential commercial development? So I don't know if that's an oversight, but it seems like it's an appropriate use in AMX 2. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next we'll hear from Brad Edwards.

Good evening. My name is Brad Edwards. I'm the senior pastor of the Table Presbyterian Church, and we leased a 50-year-old building at 700 West South Boulder Road. Ours is one of the two church-owned properties labeled for rezoning as AMX 2 within the site-specific adjustment number 2 of the zoning map presented tonight. It is late, and I already submitted a detailed written comment this morning, so I'll date myself and give the Cliff Notes version. To start, I support the adoption of this code overall, and I'm especially grateful for two parts in particular, the right-sized parking standard for assembly uses and the provision in Section 5B. I know Steve Owings, our landlord and the senior pastor of Cash the Fire, intends to submit a Section 5B request for the same thing that I'm going to be talking about tonight. Specifically, I'd like to request an amendment to redesignate the two church-owned lots at our corner as neighborhood mixed-use center. Retaining AMX 2 would require multiple separate code amendments and recurring discretionary adjustments. And requiring special use review would be a significant and prohibitive financial burden for a small church hoping to purchase and renovate our building. An NC designation is a far simpler solution for three reasons. Number one, consistency. To my knowledge, no other house of worship in the draft map is designated AMX to. And the vast majority are already designated as neighborhood-centered mixed use, including the First United Methodist Church of Lafayette, Lafayette Unitarian Universalist Church, the Church of Scientology, Boulder Mission, and, as has already been noted tonight, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, which sits on the same arterial corridor, Highway 287. In fact, the only religious assembly properties mapped to AMX 2 on the entire map are on this one stretch, and this stretch has only churches on it. My second reason is historic and present use. These lots have been in continuous religious assembly use since at least 1976 on land that the Wanaka family originally gifted to Mountain View Baptist Church for that purpose. Today, they're the weekly home of four congregations, making up about 400 people, including two of Lafayette's three congregations of color. the Boulder Chinese E-Free Church, and Tabernaculo Biblico Bautista, a congregation of largely El Salvadoran immigrants with whom we share our building. According to the city's consultant's description earlier tonight, AMEX II is expressly designed for the development and redevelopment of new or existing commercial sites. Please correct me if I am misstating or misquoting that. That's just my understanding. These lots are not commercial, they never have been, and nor are they awaiting any redevelopment in that vein. My third reason is the comprehensive plan and use table. The staff report argues for AMX 2 because it conforms to the comprehensive plan, but so does NC, and without a very glaring disparity. In NC, assembly is permitted by right alongside museums, government facilities, and public recreation facilities. But in AMX II, those same civic uses are also permitted by right, while a sanctuary of the same size requires a special use hearing. It is not a stretch to think that that is specifically targeted to these two lots and locations. I'm not a city planner, but transportation considerations seem insufficient grounds for that disparity. Respectfully, our 50-year-old building does not need redevelopment. It needs an inclusive zoning structure that reflects, preserves, and encourages how it has been used for its entire history. Thus, I urge city council and planning staff to redesignate these two church-owned lots as neighborhood mixed-use center. And I'm happy to discuss any of this further and wherever and whoever with it would be helpful. Thank you for your time. And since I have a minute left, I do want to share the joke that I was cut off from two weeks ago.

That's okay.

Which is I tell people all the time that there are three things you don't want to know how they're made. Number one, sausage. Number two, politics. And number three, ministry. And so it is in solidarity that I offer you my thanks and my prayers for all the work that you are doing.

Thank you. Thank you. That was the last speaker request form I had, but I will ask, is there anyone present that has not had the chance to speak that would like to address council during this public hearing? Seeing none, I will just check with our city clerk to see if we have any calls.

We do have one caller online, Mayor. A caller with the phone number ending in 757. Talking is now available. Caller ending in 757. Hello.

Yeah, my name is Christopher. I live in basically Old Town at the Voluna Community Co-op. I just wanted to say the buildings in this town have already gone crazy. I think we need to take a huge step back. Stop building everything and get the town's view on exactly what you have currently watching. 12 people online and what a half a dozen maybe a little bit more there watching that doesn't look like the whole town's putting their two cents in i think we need to get a more uh robust view of what the town folk really want for this city that's all i really have to say thank you that was our only call correct clerk

Perfect. Thank you so much. With that, I will close tonight's public hearing. And before we move on to city council's deliberation of the vote, I will have us take a short break. So council's in recess.

Our public is gone.

OK, thank you all so much. I will bring us back. And Councilor Fridland, I think I missed your hand earlier, but I still see it up. Is there something you wanted to say?

I put it up again. I just wanted to let you know I have a hard stop at 10. I've got a 2 AM shift starting for the newborn, so I got to get at least a few hours of sleep.

OK, we'll try. I don't know when we'll be done by 10. But for you, we will try. So first off, thank you to everyone who's been part of this. This has been such a big lift. This has been a multi-year process. And just genuinely, thank you. There's a few things that we want to do. And I want to keep this as structured as possible, just because there's a lot to get through. I don't want to jump into the specific things quite yet. So I kind of want to open it up to council before we to anything specific about just general feedback. Is there anything that council wants to question, opinions, whatever it is? This is your time, Councillor Giannullo.

Thank you, Mayor. I have a general support for this new land use code. I've been involved with the process for a long time, maybe since early in the process of its preparation. I think the plan outlined by staff get the code on first reading, give us some options for flexibility in making amendments on second reading, and having our joint workshop with the Planning Commission.

I think it's a good plan.

I think we're almost there. So that just general comment. I do have some specific comments that I would love to be able to include on tonight's first reading, if at all possible. I don't know if we save those till later. Maybe I think we do.

Before we get there, I would like to have staff respond to a couple of things that were said to make sure I'm verifying that what people said is actually what's real. And so would that be possible?

I have a couple of those questions, too.

Please.

Go ahead. Because I'm still looking at my notes from the ones I wrote down.

We'll give staff a little bit of time to respond if that's OK with you.

That's fine. And I can jump in if there's.

I'm so sorry. And feel free to overlook me. But to the mayor's initial question was sort of like broad initial feedback. I do fear that we're immediately rabbit-holing. And I would love to get the answers to the important questions. But to Counselor Field's point on the hard stop at 10 PM, I have a lot of those questions as well. So I just want to make sure we address the mayor's initial question, sort of broad feedback first.

It's OK.

If that's OK. OK. Is there anything else?

Is there anyone else who wanted to jump in on the broad feedback?

I have broad feedback, but I will defer to Councilor Friedland first.

Councilor Friedland.

Yeah, sorry. i have to respectfully disagree with my colleague counselor gianola i i feel like the fact that we have a lot of specifics that we have questions about that we maybe have comments about to me demonstrates that this is not ready to be passed on first reading today i will also add that the fact that the entire land use code didn't ever go back to the working group is really frustrating to me. I don't understand why we have them if we don't use them. There were some really good comments tonight from folks on the working group that I think we should consider and I would be really curious what staff's response is, you know, but I think those things should be worked out before they get to us. I will also say the fact that the Planning Commission hasn't been able to look at sort of the resolution of their conditions and they have open ones that we haven't resolved. to me also says we're not ready. And so I recognize all the work that's gone in. It's been a great effort and we are close, but we are not ready in my view to pass this on first reading tonight. And there's a ton of comments and questions that I could bring up as well. I mean, but again, I think that's not our role, right? The fact that we have all of those things to me shows that it's not ready. And I'm sorry to say that, but I would say I think we have the PC meeting coming up with us, the joint meeting. Let's have that. Let's talk about OTX3. Let's talk about all these other questions to try to listen to our experts to inform us and then come back, make changes. I think also should go to the working group again, and we should get their expertise. That's why we have them. So that's my general comment.

is i don't believe this is ready to be passed on first reading tonight council friedland just a point of clarification there the there's a few options in front of us um the last one i'm seeing is continuing first reading to a future meeting i just want to make sure that's not what you're saying you're saying this isn't ready for us at all it should go to planning commission to the working group and then come back to us at a later date once things have been worked out

it could be continued to a future meeting i think it would need to be right with a date certain um and contingent upon those things i think it should go back to planning commission should go back to the working group probably working group first and then planning commission but you know however works with the schedule but that would be my recommendation thank you counselor counselor

Sure. Thank you, Mayor. Some broad brush feedback. So I appreciate both Councilor Aginola and Councilor Fridland's comments and points. For me, navigating the process, it's my understanding that we could pass on the first reading with policy direction, and we still get another bite at the apple. So I'm sympathetic to that. But I also largely agree with Councilor Fridland's points. Something I've struggled with is, To me, it feels like we could dig in on any of the 400-plus pages and ask questions, get clarity, and so forth. And this is why, frankly, I had hoped that we would meet with Planning Commission before having the first reading, because a lot of this is a bit of education, a bit of what's the meaning of this word. But I think I'm very comfortable providing a series of policy recommendations, directions, questions tonight, and then coming back to it. broadly agree that I wish it was a little bit more buttoned up. And I don't say that as a critique of the team. I think it's simply just the way this process has unfolded. I would very much like it to go back to the land use code working group, as I've been asking for some months now. I can't wait for the joint planning commission meeting. But I also think there are some elements that we collectively as council can resolve in recommendation tonight without discussing with PC. And then I think there's some things that we really do want to huddle with the planning commission to get clarity on. Sort of my broad feedback, sir.

All right. Thank you. Other members of council?

Councillor Gianella. If other folks have comments first, but I'm happy to kind of jump in one more time and say I don't disagree with you, Council Friedland. There's a lot of work to be done to get us to a final land use code. We did receive a recommendation from the Planning Commission that we pass the land use code with their conditions. So we do have some experts who've weighed in and say, It's OK. And part of my acknowledging the timeline and plan of pass on first reading, workshop, pass on second reading, option four, second, you know, ordinance that does some of these technical corrections or incorporates the feedback from the working group or other staff's own edits, you know, our additional edits. I mean, I think we do have the option for that as a kind of future step. And that was forecasted to us in the workshop that we had a couple weeks back, that we would kind of do this in a two-part evaluation. One is let's get what we have in place and kind of ready to go. And then we have the ability to amend that so that these other changes are activated at the same time. And then I also did have a discussion with the city attorney today to say, what could we do to delay that activation timeline? It's just a simple ordinance from council. And so that's always on the table in the future. We can sort of always pull that back without the planning commission, but we can't push it forward without the Planning Commission. And so if we were to say someone made a motion and then we voted against tonight's ordinance, I think it has to go back to Planning Commission certainly before it comes back to us. I'm not 100% sure on that, but I wonder if that ends up delaying us further than we really would like on this. But I don't disagree that there is still a substantial amount of work to be done before this is finished.

Councillor Jensen.

We have, like, what, a 500-page document in front of us, and the items that we are disagreeing about or where the public is concerned about are few. They are significant, but they are few. I think the group that has been working on this, the working group, the planning commission, the staff, have done a pretty good job of creating consensus around taking the comp plan and actualizing it. And there aren't that many in my mind. There are issues left to resolve, but they're not that many. And I think to the extent possible, staff have tried to find outs for us so that we can, for example, the OTX, to have a separate meeting to discuss the OTX and try and figure out what we want to do about that. So in the interest of not getting ourselves in the position we were in in the past with the storage facility that we were bound to an old land use code to approve, I would like to move forward knowing that there are still significant pieces that have to be dealt with. And I think it's really a matter of just framing it. Are we almost there and we need to go back to the drawing board or are we almost there and we can go forward and hold off the pieces that are still yet to be determined? So I'm comfortable with the agenda the staff have presented to us tonight with the steps that they have suggested for us. We still have to talk about the Planning Commission recommendations. And so I would suggest we follow that process. And we may have to vote on who wants to go forward tonight. But I think we can go forward knowing that there's still other work that needs to be done and identifying what that work is very specifically for staff.

so that um they know what we need the next time we meet thank you counselor counselor i just wanted to apologize for my tardiness this evening and i also wanted to state for the record that i am prepared to vote this evening i feel that i've thoroughly reviewed the packet and i've had the opportunity to review all of the public comment that came via email and also attached to our packet. I am approaching this evening as this document is a work in progress, and this is first reading. So I look forward to the upcoming discussion with the planning commission before making a final determination.

Thank you, counselor. Mayor Pro Tem, do you have any thoughts on this?

I think I'm ready to move forward with it tonight with the understanding that all of my colleagues definitely have things that they recognize still need to be worked on. But I feel like the process is what can work. And I look forward to the PC meeting to ask some more hard questions before second reading.

Thank you, Mayor Perkins. I would agree. I think there's been an incredible amount of work. I'll just finish. I'll be really quick, Councilor, I promise. But I believe there's small things that we're going to grapple with. And I'm really looking forward to the Planning Commission joint session. But ultimately, there is a lot in our land use code. And the recommendation from the Planning Commission, those experts that kind of guide us on this, is to pass this with the recommendations that they brought forward. Chancellor Ferdinand.

I just want to point out, with the conditions that they put in place, that nothing in the presentation referenced how we've satisfied those conditions. So, you know, I agree, right? They passed this up to us with 17 conditions, and they haven't yet had a chance to weigh in on have those conditions been satisfied appropriately. I would also say too, I know folks are like tied to this process that was decided at the workshop. But I just want to remind you, the joint planning meeting is the 9th of September. Our second reading is the 15th, less than a week in between the two. I don't see how we could possibly or staff could possibly, if we have material changes, make those in less than a week. So I hear you. I recognize we don't want to get in the way of the process. But I just, it doesn't, logically, it doesn't make sense to me that we could make that happen. so you know i i also am very much looking forward to that planning commission meeting but um i don't know it doesn't it doesn't seem possible to me that we could really do this in the way that we should with the timeline that we have and i think it's totally reasonable for us to say let's just couple extra weeks first reading so we can get the planning commission to say yep great job we're good and we can have some of these other details ironed out. But obviously, I'm in the minority on this one.

I'll say two things there. I appreciate the comments there, Council Friedland. The first is that, yes, there's kind of a quick turnaround if we stick to the schedule now, if we stick to the current calendar. However, we've talked about a second, well, first off, we talked about a deferred date for this implementation, but we've also talked about a second ordinance that would essentially allow us to make those changes, and that would come down the road. The second thing that I just want to point out As counsel, we have the ability to delay that second reading, and we feel we need a little more time that doesn't have to come back immediately. So I hear you. I understand where you're coming from. However, I feel like there are options on the table for counsel at the moment.

Yeah, and with all due respect, I don't need to convince any of you. I'm just stating my opinion, and we as a body decide where we want to go.

great okay just one more general please counselor you know counselor jensen to your point of you know the number of questions i mean i i posed 56 very specific questions to staff on the code yesterday and today or the last couple of days And I didn't get an answer to those questions. I might have gotten an answer to some of them. I haven't had a chance to look over that. And I don't believe those questions have been addressed in the code. And so I think there's a fair amount of work left to be done. But I think we have a plan to achieve it.

Yeah.

Sorry, just for my own edification, Councilor Juneau, you gave staff one business day to answer 50-plus questions?

No, I started this process on Thursday, and I think I gave them maybe 20 yesterday or... Okay. I mean, I have a lot of specific questions.

I believe it. And I think something that I very much align with some of what I'm hearing from Councillor Fridland, I don't view it as, and I respect other ways to view it, but I don't view it as a councillor's job to develop or acquire the level of expertise that a planning commissioner has on the land use code. And I'm uncomfortable by any expectation that that's on us. That's literally why we have the PC. If we... don't need them we shouldn't have them and so leveraging them listening to their 17 recommendations charging bills forward to me makes the most intuitive sense and then glomming on the handful of broad brush strip policy guidance that we collected collectively may or feel makes sense to add to that list is kind of how i would approach it as opposed to like diving into page 342 and being like, why is the rubles in Russia this price? You know what I mean? I'm struggling with that.

I mean, I'll just answer that. I've been involved in the code for a long time. I'm very familiar with it in the process. And so it felt natural to me to read the packet. And as I'm to Council Friedland's point, there's a lot of work to be done. I read this, and I'm not satisfied. And it's easy for me to make those and flag those things that I'm not satisfied by, despite not really being a planning commissioner expert type person, but having a familiarity with the code. But I do think if we can address the planning commission recommendations, I do support this way to move forward as you've suggested.

Okay. I'm going to jump in here because we are in a time crunch for Councillor Friedland. I was going to give staff the ability to kind of speak to the public hearing, but we'll wait on that. Councillor Friedland, according to my watch, you have eight minutes left before you have to go. Is there anything specific you want to hit? Is there any direction you would like us to address? Is there anything at all you want to touch on?

I mean, specifically, I'm curious about the Planning Commission conditions i'm also curious i mean as i look through the presentation and as i listen to the presentation you know i don't what what policy questions high level questions the staff need from us right other than just approving this um i don't see it so um other than just approving it outright, you know? So those are the two things. It's like where do you need our direction at this point? And specifically Planning Commission recommendations, how did we satisfy all of those, those 17, and what are the ones that are still open and you need our opinion there?

Great. I will say there's two things that I've been asked that we need to get. on, which are the Planning Commission recommendations, which we've all hit on at this point. And then if there's anything on the site-specific zoning that we want to hit on, if anyone disagrees with anything like that. So those are the two. And then on top of that, just anything that we feel concerned over, anything that we feel should change, anything that just policy-wise we would like to see implemented in the potential second reading.

So I have an amendment on the site-specific zoning.

OK. We're going to get to that in a second. But is there anything there, Council Friedman? I just know he has to go soon.

I know. That's why I was hoping he could vote on it.

On the site-specific zoning? Again, the level of detail that, like, I don't know if that's as deep as we should be getting. And the fact that there's outstanding questions on that level of detail. again it makes me so i would appreciate the outstanding planning commission recommendations that need council opinion if we do need that i think that's the lowest hanging fruit okay

So we did not go over each of the Planning Commission recommendations and how they're addressed in the existing code. We can do that if council would like. We have slides for all of them. Though a few of them that stuck out that we could get accomplished prior to your second reading, three of them are shown on the screen here. One would be whether or not to reduce or eliminate the private facility reduction for planning public land dedication, whether or not to allow greenhouses in the OTX district, or if council would like some more information, we can come back at a later date with more analysis, and whether or not to provide short-term rentals in the manufactured housing community district. Those were some open-ended recommendations that we would need council to weigh in on. Some of these other ones here, like lot size dimensional standards, relate to some of the public comment we got this evening that we want to do more analysis on. Otherwise, there are a slew of other planning commission recommendations that we could continue to move forward on prior to the effective date that just take longer to process. So everything prior to first reading, I believe we've accomplished thus far. And we're happy to go into detail with any of those council ones.

Would you, is direction on those three in particular something that you would want tonight?

If council wishes, they're not hard edits. We could do those prior to second reading. It's something we could also bring up as a quick rapid fire item kind of at the workshop as well. So I think the ordinance can move forward either way, with or without these. But these were ones that we could do quickly. Councillor Jensen, I saw your hand up.

Yeah, we talked extensively about number one and only briefly about number two and three at our workshop. So I would need, I'm especially concerned about the short-term rentals in mobile home communities and what I remember being said was that this could be used as a way by mobile home park owners to displace residents of mobile home parks by using them as short-term rentals and that's very concerning but we didn't talk about that in any other length so like are there processes we could put in place to keep that from happening so that we could vote for this so that maybe a mobile home park renter could sub-rent their mobile home during special occasions or whatever. But we haven't gotten into any detail about that at all. And I don't feel comfortable talking about that. I think greenhouses in the OTX is more of a value statement that we either support it or we don't. I don't think it's complex and needs new information. So from my opinion, we could vote on that. The public land dedication, I thought we pretty strongly said last time at our workshop that we do not want to give private facilities that are exclusive in any way credit for facilities that not everyone has access to, and that was consistent with our inclusivity and diversity, equity, and access principles. That is our statement on our website, and so I feel pretty strongly that we could vote on that one, and maybe even the second one, but I don't feel I have enough information to vote on the third.

Great, thank you. He has two minutes left. So I'm going to go to Council Ferdinand just to see if he has any thoughts on these three. Sorry. No, that's fine.

Yeah, I've said my comments around, I think on those. So I think I think there are some, I guess I would agree with Councilor Jensen. I think a structured conversation around these things, if they are needed to pass at first reading, then then we should have that. But if they're not needed at this time, then they're not needed this time. And we should have a structured conversation on them later. I would have loved to have seen the changes that were done to reflect the conditions uh that have been finished um sounds like those were a higher priority so to me it seems like an important piece that we're currently not getting um but um i recognize that i think i that's just my opinion at this point so uh thanks everybody i really appreciate your time and i wish you the best of luck this evening thanks thank you counselor councilman

Mayor, would it be helpful to provide a few overarching on top of this, at this juncture? Because I agree with what Councilor Jensen has shared. Yes. I guess the main thing for me, a gap that I'm seeing is regarding OTX3. We've heard robust feedback from the public concerning OTX3. So for me, I would recommend that we fold OTX3 back into OTX1 as original. I disagree with Some of the other ideas we've heard floated on reducing the height limit. I think keeping it at 35 foot, as Elizabeth's presentation noted earlier, makes perfect sense. But simply killing OTX3 and moving forward. Heard a number of folks talk about simplifying the ADU process. So I'd be very supportive of that. Number three, I agree with aligning the church parcels at 287 and South Boulder Road with immaculate conception. It seems... Doesn't make sense to me to do it otherwise. I like Ms. Dean's comment on child care centers and streamlining in the code as much as possible. So everywhere feasible, we allow day care, child care centers, et cetera, to be built. We have $2,000 a month is the average cost for child care in Boulder County. Fifth, the gentleman who talked about streamlining permitting and basically developing a flow chart with the specific timelines I think would be really helpful to kind of take the nuts and bolts of the code and then graphicalize it and make it very clear to applicants, to developers, to the community, how does this process work since most folks don't have the bandwidth to dig in. And then lastly, I'm going to ask this as nicely as I can, please, set up a meeting with the land use code working group before second reading. I've raised this a number of times, and I'm starting to get a little frustrated. Let's set up that meeting. Let's have the dialogue, even just to check the box and shut me up. But we have them for a reason. They have expertise. Let's have another meeting with them. Those would be my asks, Mayor.

Thank you.

Second.

OK. Any other overarching thoughts from council at this moment?

Well, I'm a little confused.

Councilor Jensen?

So I thought we were responding to what was up here. And then you went off in different directions of things that are not on here. So I'm not sure what we're doing.

Yeah, I think Council Bullier agreed with your comments on these three. And then he raised some other issues. And I said I agree with him, meaning I also agree with you. So I think that's the dialogue as I've heard it.

OK. Well, if the door is open to lots of other things, then I have a whole different spiel.

I would like to talk about the Planning Commission recommendations if we still have time tonight. Yes. because that's not something we've gotten into. I know that staff provided a redlined, edited version of the code, which is what we have in our packet and what I've reviewed. And it sounds like they believe that some of these things are complete. And I personally have some disagreements with a couple of these ways they've implemented the planning commission's recommendations, whatever, conditions.

Well, could I make a process recommendation that we talk about the three in blue? And we did talk about mobile home community replacements at our workshop. So I think we could talk about that. Those other two, we didn't talk about and haven't discussed. So I don't think we should talk about them. And I would say greenhouses and OTX can be part of our OTX with the planning commission. So the first and the third, Well, the first, can we talk about the first? How about we start with that?

I want to do all three. I hear what you're saying. And, Counselor General, I see where you're going. But I want to structure this as much as I can, because this can go a lot of different ways. So let's talk about those three in particular right now. I heard from Counselor Jensen. Is there anyone else who wants to weigh in on just the public land dedication, greenhouses, and OTX, and short-term rentals? I'm also happy to jump in and go first or second after Counselor.

I agree with Councilor Jensen, so go ahead.

Fantastic. Well, I also agree with Councilor Jensen. I think it's fun. It makes sense to talk about greenhouses in the OTX, in the Public Planning Commission meeting. Mayor Patel?

Sorry about that. Just to clarify, the public land dedication private facility reduction, that is to facilities who are private, but they would allow public in their spaces. Uh-uh. No.

All right. Just a point of clarification. Thank you. It's the Medtronic trying to get public land dedication credit for their private gym type issue. So can we vote on that one?

And for the first one, I don't necessarily think we have to vote. I think we would vote. Would these be amendments, or would it be giving direction to make an amendment? What would be the process?

They asked for our feedback on their recommendation number one on reducing the credit for public land dedication. And when we talked about it last, we said we didn't want to reduce it. We want to do away with it. And so I think if we have objections, somebody should say that.

Yeah. No. What I'm asking staff now is whether these are going to come as amendments now, or are we just giving you a direction that's going to be implemented later?

slide that you guys saw earlier that kind of gave you the option one approve it as is option two approve it with changes option three like approve it with actual direction it's kind of similar to where we were at with planning commission's first reading they got through like and just gave us verbal direction and instead of wordsmithing what that condition was they chose basically okay there it is um option two which um is basically telling amendment that meets our intent and then a red line and then we'll evaluate it at the next meeting so that's that option if you want to go through That's option three. We could do either, but the shorthand version is option two.

And just from keeping score, it sounds like the majority of councils on board with option two. So we'll go that route. OK, great. I'm hearing overall just for the, sorry, can you put the recommendations back on the screen? The public plan dedication private facility. I'm hearing council is not on board with this, or is on board on the reduction. Elimination. Elimination. Elimination. Greenhouse and OTX. I'm hearing the majority of council saying we should come back to a planning commission meeting where we're set to speak on OTX and just consider that there, speak to planning commission. The one I haven't heard. at least enough on his short-term rentals in this third one. I'm torn on this one because I am in favor of allowing this to happen. However, I understand that there's We need protections for those people in our community. I think it's a great thing, especially with Sundance coming. Short-term rentals, and anyone who owns any property or rents any property should absolutely be allowed to do so. But I am with Councillor Jensen where I think protections need to be there to make sure that we can do it in the best way possible. And I'd love to hear other councillors' thoughts on this. I saw a thumbs up from Councillor O'Leary. Councillor Giannullo.

Yeah, I agree that this is something that causes concern. I think we need to think this through carefully. It's an opportunity that we should allow those residents to have, should they choose to do it on their own accord. But I don't want them to be displaced or have any issues because of it.

So this sounds like a legal issue, that maybe we need some help from our legal office to try to figure out if there's a way to finesse this to protect our mobile home park residents through some sort of language or contract or something. Is that something you could do? look into for us?

Do we have a short-term rental policy or ordinance?

We do already have a short-term rental code and ordinance. And it does require or does provide that they're only allowed in owner-occupied units. So you couldn't go buy a home and use it only for short-term rental. Same would apply if this was allowed in a mobile home community.

What if you own the unit but not the land? Is that explicit about that?

I think our current regulations also address rental, where a tenant can allow their rented unit to be used for a short-term rental, as long as they continue to occupy the unit most of the time. But I think it has to be with landlord permission. I'd have to go back and review those regulations. But Lafayette has a relatively restrictive short-term rental ordinance.

But most mobile homeowners own their mobile home. Right. They just don't own the land. The space, right.

And I don't know that we can trump the, if the park has its own rules or regulations, our ordinance would not supersede that. So it would be only if the park would also allow that in the mobile home community.

Right. That's why I think it needs a little homework on what we can do to help protect them. If they own their unit, that landlord can't rent it out from under them. Does this belong in the land use code?

Some of the provisions are in the land use code. Some of it's a licensing concern. And so we can also ask our colleagues in the area, since they're amending their short-term rental, if they've thought about this at all.

I'm trying to read between the lines. There's a question there. Can we do this outside of the land use code?

I mean, is it appropriate to do it in the land use code?

To allow the use, as of unit as a short-term rental in a mobile home community zone district, yes, that would need to happen in the land use code.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Point of clarification, is it restricted right now? Is it disallowed right now?

I don't know if .

It was not an allowance because we didn't know we had the protections. So we took the safe route and didn't allow short-term rentals within mobile home districts because we didn't know whether or not we could prevent a landlord from pushing somebody out. We just need to look at it further. I think Fort Collins. landed in the same place where they and they just updated their code so i'd like to reach out to them and see whether or not that's why they landed in not allowing short-term rentals in local home districts um because i think they may have looked into it further or maybe they just didn't debate it so um but um i think we could i mean i might we need to look into it further to see whether or not we can get comfortable with it and then we can certainly try to do that in time for your uh time for your discussion with planning commission if you want to have that there or you just want to have like a draft and then again like the other thing I guess I'd like to write like I think most people understand this I don't know like we had new members of the public but this is with that second ordinance lane anything that's going to

come back to it so that is an option for any thing that we're not able to resolve before September 15th so great um to me this is one of those parking lot items is there any member of council that disagrees with us okay it sounds like we kind of have found where we sit on those three at least Okay. I think, do you have the direction you need on the planning?

Yes. Okay. Yep. So we have one condition of approval that you'd like for us to eliminate the private facility reduction in the PLD section. So we can do that prior to second reading.

Fantastic. Okay. Before we move on completely from planning commission recommendations, I'm going to turn back to Councillor Giannola. I believe you had concerns about other recommendations from the planning commission and how they're currently being executed?

Yeah, and the one that struck out to me as I read through the code is how data centers are defined. I thought we had a definition, and then it moved to a very broad definition, defining data centers. And I'm worried about that new definition being overly broad.

With this one, what's shown on the bottom is the original one, and it was replaced with this one that has a little bit more information. This is the red line version now.

Yeah. And in particular, number two and number three are incredibly broad.

That's true. They are. Mr. Mayor. Councilor Jensen. In our workshop, we had, I thought, agreed on the moratorium for both data centers and air mobility. And this definition, while it is quite overly broad, could be narrowed as a part of the reason we did a moratorium was to figure out what we want to define as data center, what we want to include or not include. And if in the short term, knowing that this is overly broad, could you live with that between now and the time work on the data center moratorium and try and figure out if we will ever allow data centers and what they would look like. There's a whole lot of work that needs to be done there.

Yes, I could. As I read it again, I could live with this.

And just to clarify, the question there is, knowing that a moratorium is coming, will we use that moratorium and then possibly define this further through the time we have with the moratorium? Does that work for you?

I just want to remind everyone, all of this doesn't go into effect until December 15th anyway. So yeah, you could get the moratorium in place. This definition wouldn't matter then by December 15th because you'd have a moratorium that would work.

So it would, because what you're moratorium, or whatever the right word is, would be what's in the current code for data centers.

Which is nothing.

Which is nothing. Right. So you have to have some definition of what you have a moratorium on.

We would need to define data center in a moratorium ordinance. Yes.

Yeah. And as I read it again, I feel better about the definition. on a further review.

Okay, great. Was that the only concern you had with the Planning Commission recommendations?

Yep.

Okay. I know there's a few things on our list, but the next thing I want to move through just to keep it structured is the site-specific zoning adjustments. So there's four in front of us. And I think we can go one by one. And what I'll do is I'll just ask if anyone views it differently or is on board with what is recommended to us, if that's good for council. So Aspen Ridge Drive Industrial, is there anyone who wants to see a change here or has a concern? Councillor Jensen.

So in looking at the and I don't know this by heart, but there is a process for if you are zoned in a way that you don't like to request alternative zoning. So if there are businesses in this section of property that feel They can't live with the new zoning. They have a process for appealing that zoning. And they appeal it to us? Or what happens?

Yeah, and Marilyn can weigh in, too. But the ordinance has a process set up for that. And so they can come to the city and talk to us. And we can talk through that. And then the fees would be waived. We would probably process those as a batch of approvals that we would seek approval both the planning commission recommendation and council approval on and so it might be that they're recommending that they revert back to the m1 district it might be that when we talk to them it makes sense to change some of the proposed regulations and allow another use or something like that and so i think some of this will be a case-by-case basis yeah i would say it's gonna i mean i don't know that we're gonna get

something that comes in and we want to keep in one zoning i mean unless we get direction from council that you didn't feel that the comp plan was correct in this in this direction um i think it's more likely that we get a better understanding of what the uses are out there um and then we can come back to you in that three month period and let you know what our avenues and options are for non like non-conformities either like i think you've suggested whether or not we have like a deferred time like you are not going to be non-conforming for six months 12 months or whatever and if you want to come in with an application in that period of time that's your window but if it's five years from now that's not necessarily consistent with what we are trying to achieve um with this but i do think it's going to be more fine-tuned like the conversations that i've had so far is like well i was explaining an expansion what kind of expansion it was retail expansion great Retails and allowed use, right? I do think that Sister Carmen may need a different definition and a better understanding of what actually they do there so that they're not classified as a warehouse when they are, you know, there's a lot of objectives in our comp plan that support a food bank and all the other things and services that Sister Carmen provides there. So that may be a totally different type of an adjustment that doesn't require M1 zoning it. make that use allowed in adaptable commercials. So those are just two examples of where I can see those conversations going.

So would you give a report back to us then? We would definitely, yeah.

We'd come back as part of that ordinance, too, and let you know, like, hey, this is how we tweaked AMX 2 based off the feedback that we got through this three-month deferred enactment effort.

I'm happy with that.

OK. Councillor Beaulieu, I saw your hand.

Yeah, thank you. Very similar line of questioning to Council Jensen. And I think if I understand it correctly, it also works for kind of the concerns that has been shared. And I think, Stephen, you're tracking one of the main asks. It's like, hey, I've been here for a long time. I do want to expand. Maybe it's not retail. And for me, kind of the broad philosophical policy direction I would hope that we convey is not to hinder, degrade existing businesses simply because the comp plan has a different long-term strategic vision if they've been here for a long time and are part of the community and paying taxes. So I guess my question further to Councilor Jensen, is there a way that, because if I hear you correctly, We pass this, it goes into effect, and then there's a fair amount of churn with folks asking questions. Hey, look at this. To me, it almost feels like we're making a little bit of unnecessary work in an area specifically that we can anticipate there will be some of those questions. Is there a way that we can kind of grandfather in some of these existing businesses because we know they've been there for a long time and they're going to be nonconforming but still have that long-term strategic vision?

Well, I mean, that's part of the education piece. And I think we've tried to explain it to those users. And some of them haven't come back. We haven't had an expansion in this area that I know of in recent history. And you can continue to operate just like you are. This co-change doesn't change anything in that regard. If you have a lapse, and we're fairly generous in Lafayette, it's got to be 12 months where you were inactive, and then your use goes away. It's the ones that have aspirations for an expansion that we're now hearing about, and I think that's a handful of them. The ones that are existing small businesses that just want to continue to operate as they are, they can. There are really just two thresholds. When you try to expand a non-conforming use, that's typically not allowed because the code is saying this needs to transition to something different over time. So the expansion and the lapse of use are the two things that actually trigger them to have to go away. And I think that was an initial misconception was that you're no longer permitted. You're going to have to find a different location as soon as this land use code is updated. And that is not. And that's part of our... Education and discussion with them as well just to make sure there's no misunderstandings about what this actually does so Waving the fees also makes law sense.

I just want this as you know Less onerous on both the business owners and then also on staff So that we can just move forward one the last piece I guess I'll respond to is like

know the timing of this doesn't feel great right like it's kind of coming at the end but at the same time we've had a lot of moving parts and so like up until recently we haven't been able to tell them that hey here's zoning to amx2 and here's like the land use table that's allowed in the amx2 so it's like they've known a rezoning was coming like that has been you know at least they let publicly to like the whole community since the comp plan and then again through this effort And we've been trying to get people to be engaged and be paying attention It's just I think the reality is kind of setting in and there's more like we can actually tell them Concretely what's happening and that's why it's happening at this at this stage in the process Thank You councillor Janela so does this require a new zone district if we're gonna apply kind of different rules to these folks that we may not want to apply to the rest of AMX to I mean, that's a consideration, right? And that's what we have to think about whenever we get any kind of requests, even church requests tonight. what does that mean and is it better to put somebody in an AMX two zone district and require a special use review and then allow that special use review to be another AMX zoning or is it better to rezone that to a neighborhood serving commercial and which one's more disruptive to the overall objectives of the land use code and those are things we're gonna have to think about and respond to if that's the direction you give us on the property on South Boulder Road.

OK. Speaking of, I think we're going to move to the property on South Boulder Road. We've heard a lot about this. So the first thing I'm actually going to do is I'm going to just ask staff, because this was the main point that I wanted you all to respond to in terms of what we heard in the public hearing. What would the recommendation be for something like this to get us more aligned with what we're hearing from the community?

So we could have a couple of conversations with staff. There's a civic mixed use district that could be probably applied here. We could also, there could be a policy decision at council. There's a kind of a conversion table in the beginning of the code that says, here are the comp plan land uses, and here are the appropriate zoning districts. really a policy decision from council about what's appropriate and how to translate that. And so if you felt that that NC district was, in certain situations, appropriate in this adaptable commercial area, the middle amount, then that's something that, without men in the comp plan, we would be able to rezone as NC. We can also bring back those in a more fleshed-out version in your memo for the second reading if you wanted those two options, but a little bit more detail on how it would work.

Do you have a recommendation?

I think we have not talked to staff in detail about this. Yeah.

Yeah, I'd hate to be wrong or pivot after thinking about it more. But I think the context I want to provide tonight is that that adaptable commercial was done at a very high level when we were talking about the comp plan, right? And then I think we had a graphic earlier where it's a puzzle piece. It's a whole puzzle, and then there's last missing piece. You don't necessarily know you're missing a piece of the puzzle until you're getting closer and closer to finishing it. And then you're like, oh, crap. And so it kind of crystallizes in terms of these things. So I don't know that we could have foreseen that adaptable commercial would require a special use review for a church use until we actually put all those pieces together. And then that's what I think I'm hearing tonight sounds onerous to folks, is that they need to take this extra step. And when you look at it, even in terms of access, it is through that process. it's through a neighborhood right so i think an argument could be made that this is you know maybe better suited as neighborhood serving commercial um and that might be the easier fix and then we but it does going to take council direction right because at the end of the day we're also kind of well not kind of we're also competing like with we have a limited amount of commercial zone properties and they're important for uh sales tax and you know retail uses here there are established uses already so i can see an argument for moving it that way and it still is a commercial zone district it's just a commercial zone district where a church is looked at by right versus needing a special use review so that might be the path at least resistance

Mayor Pro Temp.

Thank you, Mayor. I mean, the word adaptable is in the title of this zone. And we could make an exception in the description. And yes, it's through a, the access is on the local streets. Is that how we're describing it? It has been on. That's not a new thing. It wouldn't add. just by giving them that certification or that zoning. So what I'm hearing is that we could make an exception for things like this. And the word adaptable is in there. I mean, I think that's on purpose, right?

Yeah. So the way we're looking at it for adaptable commercial is if we put it in adaptable commercial or AMX2, and then we allow it by right then we have all these other areas up and down 287 that allow a church by right where that's where i'm going to get more protective or probably make more of a recommendation that we protect those retail uses because that's also something that's an objective in the comp plan here i think the least impactful and gets them to the same place as a neighborhood serving commercial And it's still a mixed use, it's just that the smaller scale, so that's where our transitional zoning used to be, and that also makes sense from the sense that transition zoning was placed next to things that go from commercial to residential and that's what this does as well so that would probably be our recommendation um data will involve us having to update the comp plan but we have a plan and a requirement to do that next year so next year this year technically it's second through this year we're running out of time uh to do that anyway so we can wrap that up with um with that effort if we need to if that's your direction

Great. I'm hearing a lot. I love the idea of it coming back at second reading with the recommendation. I appreciate the fact that you pulled a recommendation so quickly. That's incredible. But I will turn to Councilor Boullier. I saw your hand, but you also were the first to bring it up. So I want to hear your thoughts on this.

Yeah, thanks, Mayor. I don't want to belabor it. I just don't find it. I don't think we can justify zoning two different church parcels differently on the same transit corridor. I just don't think we can defend that. I understand the logic. I understand where we're going with the comp plan. But we have four churches on one parcel and one larger church on the other parcel, like less than a mile apart or a mile and a half apart. We should zone them the same, either NC both or AMX 2 both. And I imagine Immaculate Conception would have some thoughts if we were going to zone them AMX 2. So my recommendation would be we zone the church parcels the same up and down 287. And I'm sorry, I really struggle to understand why we wouldn't.

I actually could disagree with you on that, because I think we have places along the roads where some abut neighborhoods, some where we have decided we want more commercial development than others, others that might be near an open space or a park where we would have different requirements. I still agree with your conclusion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, thank you. But I can see along one road you might have different kinds of characteristics and circumstances that would change that. But I'm all about, I like the NC...

I am struggling to understand what the land use framework map in the comprehensive plan recommends for each of these two parcels. Is it the same or is it different?

For the two shown on the map?

The parcel that we're looking at on the map and this other church that we're witnessing, are they the same land use designation? And my problem is the colors are almost identical in the dark.

They're not showing it on this map. They're not showing it.

I'm looking at it here on my screen, and the colors are almost the same between the two, and I can't tell. Like this orange and that orange are almost identical. Yeah, it's lighter. That one's lighter, but when I go down here, what is that one? If that's the darker one and that's the darker one, then they're the same.

Just for council's reference, can you tell us where you're looking?

Yeah, I'm looking at the land use framework map on the comprehensive plan, which shows South Boulder Road and 287 has a dark salmon, which to me looks like it is the adaptable commercial.

That's the middle map here.

And then if I move north to the Cabrini Drive area, it is also that dark salmon. And I can see a lighter salmon. So it looks like they're the same. And I think maybe there's, what I want to understand is, is there a mistake? The colors are, I can't tell. Are they identical or are they different? And if there's a mistake, then I think we have the answers. But they should be zoned the same.

Any other councilor want to weigh in on this one?

I guess I would like to know, does anybody object to making, grandfathering or figuring out how to make these two churches in the zoning that they are asking for?

As of now, I've heard from the majority of council that they would like to keep them the same. Is there anyone that objects to this? No. OK.

Number three. So this is the split zone lot and the request that we wanted to bring to council.

This one, the whole time I listened to you, I had no idea what you were .

The lot on the left is split between two zoning districts. And so we want to make it only have one. And that one district would be the Old Town neighborhood, because the character of the home matches that of some of the other areas in that zone district. The property on the right, owned by a private party, requested the neighborhood three zone instead of the neighborhood two. The neighborhood three allows for some attached housing types, which would align with the areas to the south, east, and north. And so otherwise, reverting to neighborhood two would allow likely one single unit detached home. And so in looking at the comp plan guidance, we saw that one as a potential one to bring to council. Councillor Gianella?

The homes that are across the street are zoned in the proposed zoning N2, despite being attached homes?

They were in the duplex zoning that we have right now. And so they were built legally that way. And so there's a number of N2 properties that were already built that way. And they can continue to exist legally.

And so they're conforming or they're not conforming? They're conforming. Yep.

OK. Because we combined the single unit, single family zone district and the duplex zoning district. Got it. Yeah.

And so the parcel on the right is asking for a higher intensity zoning that is in line with what is now to the south and to the east. That's correct. Yeah.

Is there any council that disagrees with the recommendation?

No.

I don't agree with it, and I don't disagree with it.

I'll also take that. And then we can move on to the fourth one.

This was the cleanup mapping.

Thank you for fixing this.

Yes.

Fantastic. Do you feel you have the feedback you needed on those? Yes.

Thank you.

Okay. I think I have feedback from the two things that I wanted to make sure I hit. There was a few things that were told to me, so I'm going to circle back to them. Councillor Bollier?

Yes, sir.

The first one was simplify the ADU process. It's something we heard. I just want to clarify here, is this something you want as a long-term process to try to simplify? Or is this something you're trying to present a new piece of some sort of policy to simplify now?

Definitely not trying to present a new policy. I don't want to complicate things. But as we heard from several commenters this evening, our policies, in their view, are a bit too onerous, opaque, et cetera. So I guess, coming back to the four-point slide, for me, it always comes back to the number two. Like, the broad policy guidance, from my optic, how can we make this more streamlined, more straightforward for residents to build ADUs, to streamline the permitting process, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't have line-in, line-out edits, but we heard those comments in a few minutes from professional builders, from hobbyists, from folks who are somewhere in the middle space. So my request or guidance would be, if there are areas within the language as is that we can maybe make it a little bit smoother, I would support that. Great.

I'm going to ask staff. Sorry, Councillor Jensen. I remember maybe like a year ago, a year and a half ago, when we were talking about this in a workshop, when we talked about ADUs, could you kind of give us a broad level overview of what exactly has changed and what Someone building an ADU after this is implemented of is to pass would to expect.

Yep So today you can build an ADU pretty much anywhere any zone district It's an accessory used to a single unit detached home. It can be detached or interior and We don't require parking There's a number of other things What this does though it does expand to allow an ADU inside a building within a duplex. So that's a unique thing that, like a basement, your basement in a duplex could be an ADU. We also have a size incentive for accessible ADUs. So if it's detached, you can go have an extra 150 square feet to accommodate the wider openings and whatnot. And then third, to help promote fewer tall ADUs in backyards, particularly in Old Town, The subterranean floor would not count towards the square footage. Those are the three main. Those came out of the working group, but those are the three main changes. I think some of the comments tonight also reflect the building code requirements. So like being able to be your own contractor was one that was brought up, which is something that we heard before that we can talk about. GREG MCKENZIE. Councillor Jensen.

So I think that is a barrier to building an ADU. If you're able to be a contractor to an addition but not to something that's five feet away from your house, that doesn't seem to me to make sense. But when I was on the land use working group, I continued to push for more work on programmatic elements of ADU and was told that would all happen after we got done with the land use code. If we want to have ADUs and we want them to be more affordable, there's a lot of work to be done on how we do that. I would be happy to work with staff on a subcommittee to come back with a report about what are the barriers to building ADUs. One example I have heard is that financing is an issue and that Banks don't always allow you to use your future rent as income in qualifying for an ADU, but some do. So who are the good banks? How can we funnel people to the right financial institutions? Other communities have done pre-approved plans that also help make it faster and cheaper. Some communities have gone so far as to hire a general contractor to help you if you agree to keep it affordable. There are all kinds of options out there. And I believe if we want to increase affordability, we need to really pursue those options. And I would be happy to do that. or work with whoever else may be on the subcommittee that would like to do that and bring that back. And we could bring this, the thing that you're suggesting, back as a part of a whole package of ideas about how to make ADUs more affordable, because I've been promised that.

It's definitely something we have on our workplace for next year, because we have one fill, and we're trying to get this over in the south border.

We did start. We sent a survey to all the people who have ever pulled an ADU permit, so we have some good data to start with.

And I have some good national data. It's a little old now, but about all the different programs that people are doing to make ADUs more affordable. And I'd like to see us be a leader in this if we can.

I would second all of that.

Yeah, I love this. And I totally get it. We have one Phil, and he's busy right now. But yes, I think this is a long-term project, but I love simplifying ADU. The second thing I heard is OTX3 to OTX1. For me, this is something that we're going to talk to Planning Commission. However, we want to expand on that now. I just heard you say it.

Sure. Thanks, Mayor. I guess a couple of things. One, I think some of the concerns over OTX3 I don't necessarily agree with, the math or the conclusions. But I respect the robust feedback we've heard from the public. And I think we will all consider that seriously in how we navigate this forward. And I also think OTX1, by and large, gives us the flexibility up and down public road to do pretty much what we need to do. I think for me, the juice isn't necessarily worth the squeeze for OTX3, but I'm happy to have the conversation with the Planning Commission during second reading. But I think given the near universal opposition to OTX3, that counts pretty heavily. for me and the fact that I think we can get done most of what we want with OTX1. And I would just add an amendment that while I understand OTX3 does this and there are some percolations in the community about doing something different, distinct from OTX3, I really like the presentation that we heard in terms of the 35 foot up to three stories, et cetera. I think that's where we need to go.

Great. Thank you. Does anyone else want to jump in on OTX? I understand this is going to come back. We're going to talk through this with Planning Commission, but is there anyone at the moment

I have a couple of process questions that may influence the OTX. So at some place in this document, I read that height modifications of any amount can be considered by counsel on a case-by-case basis. So what is the process? So if somebody wants to build an OTX 1, And they want to put 40 feet. So what would they do and how would they bring that to us?

Typically, it would be probably associated with a site plan application. And as part of that, they'd be requesting that. And so when council receives that, if it was a staff level review, then we would have to push it up to council for that piece of the decision.

OK. And then similarly, on things that you are now making administrative decisions on, $5,000 for the site plan review, 5,000 square feet or 10,000 square feet or 5,000 in Old Town. Can we call those things up if we're starting to get letters of opposition and we wanted to do something about that? Then the reason I ask this, because the OTX policy If we have flexibility to do things outside the boundaries of any district anyway, if we really think it makes sense, then some of the arguments over what ought to be in any district are kind of moot because if we really wanted to, we'd have the authority or power to do something about it. Anyway, and that's what I'm trying to get at.

So for any building in downtown and Old Town, over 5,000 square feet, it's going to Planning Commission and City Council for approval. So we started this conversation with a universal request for 10,000 square feet to be the ask. And the working group didn't support it. So we moved that to be specifically less for Old Town. So, yeah, any – I don't think you're going to get a three-story, you know, over 35-foot building that's less than – or that's, yeah, less than 5,000 square feet. So there's different thresholds that are going to bring these applications to you anyway. And then if they're over a high request, like, they're going to need to get that approved through council as well. The opposite side of that argument that we're hearing from developers is that's – not streamlining the process enough. And 5,000 square feet, we just had an application that go through LURA and Planning Commission. It doesn't go to you. It goes to those two bodies. And it is largely aligned with where we're headed with land use code. So it was a redevelopment of a property on East Simpson. They built a commercial building in the residential form where it looks and feels kind of like a house in the front and has a garage in the back. But it's an architect kind of slash developer that fits right in the fabric. And that's not going to come back to anybody next time. It's going to be by right because it was like $33,000.

But if we were getting a bunch of complaints about that, what would our options be?

about the i mean you're going to see them all as they go through so if they're complaining they're not just complaining about staff they're complaining about finding commission and city council uh not finding that the the use fits with the um with the fabric of downtown so um but i mean we're also i think we had this conversation previously is that like in some jurisdictions these buy right developments where it is meeting setbacks it's meeting lot coverage requirements and height like they if partners and city council really can't deny them they're administrative and we're not there yet and old town sensitive and i i get all that but i mean you're going to be in a place where if it's meeting all of the code requirements, just like you are today, like it is difficult for city council or planning commission to say that it's, to deny something if it's meeting all of the zoning regulations. And we're actually adding in more zoning regulations for Old Town. So the only other thing I guess I'd clarify to the OTX3, you know, we thought we were coming in with a regulation, because right now there is no building foot regulation. So there's concern about the number that we applied to these districts, and there's more concern about 25,000 square feet, but we did that based off of not wanting to create nonconformities in Old Town. Like our past, and I think the corollary that you guys are very familiar with in Black Diamond is we have a comp plan saying this is supposed to be adaptable commercial. So everyone's expecting changes there. For Old Town, we're Trying to create a new zone district, but we're creating that zone district with a complete opposite set of tools because we're trying to preserve What's an old town and so I mean, I think property owners in the whole town could be like, whoa, whoa Why are you saying I can only build 25,000 square feet when there was never a limit previously or 10,000 or 15,000 depending upon your districts so we were we were a little surprised to hear the concern because it's it's a control not an allowance because it's unlimited right now correct yeah and there's other controls in place which we'll get to with this workshop that you know and just analysis right where there's only three lots in that old town district that could probably build a structure of that size and right now that development allowance is greater for those properties that are that big

I totally respect that. Just to clarify, what was the planning commission's read on what to do with OTX3?

They had, that was their straw poll vote where they voted four to three that they didn't feel like it was necessary. But they also told us at the end, like, hey, we want you, this is why we're recommending this joint session. We want all of this different data in order to inform that analysis and get understanding as to why we did something different for that area.

We have a few more things to get through, but knowing that we're going to have the Planning Commission joint session, is there any final thoughts on OTX? Councilor Giannullo?

Yeah, I appreciate everything that's been said. I mostly agree across the board. In my thorough review and my 56 questions, I had many questions about OTX 3, and the conclusion that I came to is that it's not ready in the code. There were a lot of... Maybe it was typographical errors or oversight, but it wasn't there. I wasn't satisfied that it was something that someone could look at and say, I know what to do with this. There were missing things from tables, and I just didn't feel like it was ready. So I'm excited to have a discussion with the Planning Commission.

I am also excited. Fantastic. I'm going to try to get through a few. Oh, Councillor Gino, please.

I do have one other unrelated to anything that we've talked about tonight. I don't know if you want me to wait, or you want me to- Can you hold it?

I'm going to try to get through these as quick as possible. Yeah. The first one, they all came from . I'm going to do a yes or no here as quick as we can. The land use code working group. Is there any council that disagrees that they should look at this again?

OK. I heard the flowchart idea. I love the flowchart idea.

Is there any council that disagrees on moving forward with this in terms of giving our staff direction?

I don't know really what you mean when you say flowchart. Are we trying to have, like, when staff gets an application, they have 30 days to do this and 40 days to do that. Is that what we're trying to do, get real concrete about our part of the permitting process where a developer knows that when they turn in something, then within a certain amount of time, they will get a response? Is that what we're trying to do?

I think that's what they would like. I want to hear from staff. The one thing I know for sure is that the flow chart will tell us the process. In terms of timeline, I would love to hear just where you are and if that's even a possibility.

We're working to get, I mean, so what I heard were two different things. And one was that they want to understand, well, the flowchart piece, I think, is in part to understand how they can couple applications and so they don't have to go through so linearly through the process. And we couple those applications now. And I think what there's some lack of understanding of is the other kind of big movement piece on, at least for residential development, is we're going to get a regulating plan. You tell us how you hit that mix of uses. And you're, you know, unless it's an apartment building, like your home development is then like you've done your subdivision you've done everything else council and planning commission has agreed that if you have x amount of duplexes x amount of town homes and x amount of apartments this is what we're expecting you to build you're getting building permits for those afterwards and so like there's no coupling at that point it becomes an administrative review and approval which i don't know that all of the developers have totally understood otherwise i don't know that they'd be making the same concerns about the process. That's going to be a huge fix in the review process. And then secondly, in terms of the review timeframe, we are still working through the backlog, and so for me to be able to quantify what we can commit to guess i have two answers i don't know that i'll ever want to do that because it puts the pressure on us in order to like well that's 45 days or whatever and we have to you know get you comments out and we have all sorts of things that we're doing on a fairly uh you know whatever lean staff at the city level and it's not just me that does in my department that does development review either it's public works and a bunch of other folks that get pulled in all sorts of directions all of the time so um but i also think that we'll have a better expectation to be giving these people that when you get an application in you can expect review comments within x amount of time and our new software will also help us track how we're doing with that. So within six months or a year of having that, we should be able to start tracking that and be able to quote, but maybe not commit to what these review time frames are, so.

This is the 1986 rabbit.

Do you mind coming up to the microphone?

Okay. The change in process goes way back to that first slide. This is the 1986 rabbit, 2026 Atlas. because the black box of development approval is going to change. And so the things that weren't working before may have just been taken out altogether. And it's going to take running a few things through the process to get an understanding of how fast it goes and what that means to everybody. You're kind of at apples to oranges at this point in time. If I move away from cars, I'll switch to fruit. Yeah.

Councillor Bullard. I appreciate that. And I think I'm here for two tracks. One is graphing a flow chart process, which if we can't graph it, we don't have a process. So I believe that we could graph it. Then there's the time frame. And I don't want to shackle folks to unreasonable So I'm more interested in the flowchart as requested, simply because there is out there in the ether, there is a notion that it's difficult to do business in Lafayette. Fair or unfair, that percolates. And so we've heard from some folks this evening about kind of being a little too graphic. I think that would be interesting. I think it's a separate conversation about timeframes, and I'm not interested in that this evening, Mayor. But the flowchart I think is pretty cool.

Well, I am interested in the flowchart eventually, but I hear very clearly that it's going to take a while. And we do have to, at some point, expedite our permitting process to get Prop 123 funding, and at least for affordable housing. So in my mind, being able to... flow chart is the first step toward getting eventually meeting the Prop 123 requirements. So I'm cool with all of that. But at some point I do think it's not unreasonable for the development community to have us have a, you know, you will get a response between 30 and 45 days or something that is, you know, can have a range in it. But I think it's reasonable to, meet the expectations of the public with something that holds us accountable to, you know, so they have a sense of what it's going to cost and how long it's going to take.

We would anticipate the flowchart's probably living outside of regulatory code, and so this would be, yeah. Right, right. Yeah, yeah.

Great. I'm hearing support from counsel on this one. So I'll move on to the last one I wrote down, which is child care as an approved use. We heard it earlier. Counsel, do you want to expand on this one?

Sure. Just as I went through the code, I think there's some areas that have escaped my brain in the moment. I apologize. But there's some areas where it's not approved by right. I guess my broad request would be, can we make it as easy as humanly possible everywhere within reason so that these businesses, if they do want to get off the ground, we've done our part in the code to enable them as much as possible. And then separately, since I had the con, I had some great dialogue with our city attorney about there's a distance requirement between the child care center and an establishment that serves forms of alcohol. And so if there's a solution that we could explore as a council there so that we can put daycares next to bars. I'm kidding. But anything as a community to make it as easy as possible for more child care centers considering the huge cost of child care in our region.

Is there anyone who disagrees with this or has thoughts on this?

I don't want child care centers next to bars.

One door down? The kids need jobs. But in terms of the direction to make health care easier. And that's the last one I've written down. So now, Councillor Giannulli, you said you have something separate.

Yeah, unrelated to everything we've talked about. We did hear from a couple of members of the public about sustainability issues. And we have not, as a council, discussed this as a former member of the Sustainability and Resilience Advisory Board. Love that we had a current member come and talk about the section 26-5-5b-1, sustainable design, where we have this. I think we've presented it as framed as a menu of sustainability options. where the applicants for a project, for a big project, they have to pick two. And for a redevelopment, I think they pick one. Is that the current setup? And just would love to share what some of these are. And I did hear also from Tony Munoz at a point about geothermal. And I flagged that as a missing item from this list. And so some interesting items here about renewable energy systems, EV charging in excess of the minimum required, publicly accessible bicycle amenities in excess of the requirements, preservation and reuse of existing building, green infrastructure, or stormwater runoff reduction, tree planting, community gardens, cool roof, green roof, and then the broad class of other. And the requirements of two, the question is two, in my mind, is two enough? and wondering if we might push that to three. I don't know if Steph had a reason or an analysis of the one versus two versus three.

Two would probably hedge a little bit against just picking one in a very inexpensive option, like a bike repair station or something. So two at least gives you more likelihood of getting more benefits. This was a Clarion recommendation, and I don't think our staff felt like it landed in a good space, but... Yeah, and I know this was also discussed at the Land Use Code Working Group, and

Didn't hear a lot on this topic in particular. And when I brought this up with the Sustainability Resilience Advisory Board, I was hoping to hear more from them tonight, because I think none of them had had a chance to review the code. Glad we heard from one. And that was at least that one member's thought.

Is council familiar with this section?

Have any thoughts about? My concern in the past had been originally it was things like low flow water fixtures, which I think are like easy lifts. If you're going to pick one, you're going to pick the cheapest one. It's going to be low flow water fixtures in your building. And then you've satisfied. But you actually haven't done anything to really, because you're going to do that anyway. It was a freebie. It was a get out of jail free card on this. And so I pressed hard to remove that and to up it to a larger number. I'd love to hear any feedback. I would love to see this as a larger number personally.

Okay, so you want feedback, but the recommendation is to increase that number. That's my thought, yes.

My problem is I don't really feel I'm comfortable enough with each of those options to know, are these really hard? Are they going to stop people from doing them because we ask too much of them? And I'm not prepared. at this point to say yes or no, because I don't feel I have enough information. I'm with you in concept, but sometimes if we ask too much of people, then they just don't do it, because it's too hard for them. And I don't have any way of evaluating those. different options right now.

Yeah, understood. Mayor Pretem?

Thank you, Mayor. I think we should sign. I think it would just be prudent to follow Councillor Giannola's recommendation and ask for an increase, and then lean on SRF to give them back with some more guidance on that in the future, but stay with the word increase. Because we don't, as Councillor Jensen was saying, we're not the experts on this. Councillor Gianella has a lot more input on it. So increase for sure, but to what number, I don't know.

And I don't know if increase is the right answer. I mean, I think your point, Councillor Jensen, is a good one. Are we asking for things that the development community just won't do?

I don't know.

Yeah. And so I do think the list here is reasonable. I mean, we did hear from a member of the public talking about tree planting or landscape improvements. This is asking for that in excess of the requirements. And so some of these are reasonably easy, right? If you could do bird-safe glazing treatments and tree planting or landscape improvements that exceed minimum landscaping, you've done it. And I think in Lafayette, we pride ourselves on being a leader with respect to sustainability and that being a council goal. And that's why I push for maybe having a third option for those new development projects. Redevelopment, I feel less strong about. because that might be a small project where it could be onerous to do some of these things. i'll trust your judgment if you think they're reasonable i i'd be okay to increase i i just i don't have them in front of me right now and i i don't have a good frame of reference you know it would be ideal if we could even discuss this planning commission because i don't know that they really took a deep dive into this and so i'd love to have their thoughts maybe as someone who's a little closer to the development community and can say no this too is could get some good adoption of this. So maybe that's the way we can get some feedback on that.

I would love that. I would actually love to add this to the Planning Commission meeting joint session. However, I saw you come up. So did you have something to add here?

We can prep it for Planning Commission discussion. The whole code is predicated on walkable compact development, which is the most sustainable development pattern that you can do. So, you know, and then a lot of things that we initially thought belonged on this list are really sustainable building issues, right? And so that's all out of this code. So I think that this is a good topic for bigger discussion about what's already baked in and then what is an add-on that's meaningful. But, you know, in implementing Legacy Lafayette, A lot of the code is doing the lifting for you to get to sustainable. So let's just prep this one for discussion.

OK. And then just on the same topic, the bee in my bonnet I've had forever is the pitch of a roof of the Great Outdoors Water Park facing north. I'd love to have the code require at least an evaluation of roof pitch. Again, I think that might be a good thing to discuss with Planning Commission, and given the late hour and not anyone else has seen this, I'd love to have their feedback, honestly.

Is there any counsel that's opposed to adding these two items to our Planning Commission joint session?