Town Council - Regular Meeting

um good evening everyone welcome to chapel hilltown council september 16th work session we are of course as always pleased to have you join us This evening we'll be discussing two items. First is our Everywhere to Everywhere Greenway Network, focusing on the feasibility study, which is underway, ending soon. Second, we'll discuss the Land Use Management Ordinance Rewrite. Before we begin, I just wanted to remind everyone that the format of a work session is different than that of our business meetings. Work sessions are an opportunity for the council to dive more deeply into specific topics. We don't vote during work sessions, and they are less formal, and topics that we discuss will come back to a formal business meeting for action as appropriate. Finally, we value public input and do want to hear from you. There'll be opportunities for the public to speak at upcoming business meetings. Our next regular meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, September 23rd at 6 p.m. in Town Hall. Another way to give us your input anytime is by emailing mayorandcouncil at chapelhillnc.gov. Before we move into our discussion items tonight, we have a couple of quick announcements. First is the reminder about Chapel Hill, open Chapel Hill days. which will take place this Saturday and also on Saturday, October 3rd. It's an opportunity for community members of all ages to go behind the scenes in different town facilities and departments to learn about town operations and to meet the people that keep our town running day in and day out. We have heard rave reviews in the past, so be sure to take a look. Second, to accommodate the significant number of proclamations that come in September, We have two proclamations to announce briefly tonight. In the interest of time, photos have been taken in advance of the meeting. You're welcome. First, we're proclaiming September 17th to 23rd as Constitution Week in Chapel Hill and across our nation. Constitution Week is a reminder for all of us to reflect on how the Constitution, in addition to forming the foundation of our national government, reaches all the way down to the local level. Much of what we do here as a council, representing our residents, making decisions that affect our community, and providing a forum for people to be heard is part of that larger tradition of self-governance. important, particularly these days, to not take that for granted. And one of the best ways to recognize it is to participate in it, to stay informed, and of course, to take an active role in government at all levels. And you're gonna have amazing opportunity coming up, because midterms are coming. And Theo may have something to add briefly about your ballot coming up. Just another reminder.

Don't vote for any of the constitutional loans, I guess. But you may have sales tax. Sorry, I woke up from a nap. I didn't imitate and it's a good example. Well, I cold called you.

I just wanted to give you another shot. to make sure folks know about the important election coming up. A special thanks to the Daughters of the American Revolution here in Chapel Hill for reminding us of this important observance. And next up is Diaper Needs Awareness Week. Camille, would you share that announcement with everyone, please?

I'd be happy to. I'll start by saying, as a proud Rotarian, Chapel Hill-Carborough Sunrise Rotary Club who are proud supporters of the Diaper Bank. It's my honor to recognize that from September 14th through the 20th, 2026, Chapel Hill is recognizing Diaper Need Awareness Week to spotlight a critical issue affecting families across our community. Nearly half of US families struggle to afford enough diapers, impacting children's health, and limiting access to childcare, education, and employment. To address this need, the Diaper Bank of North Carolina, with help from a cadre of volunteers, distributes millions of diapers and other personal hygiene products through trusted community partners. We are grateful to them for the vital role they play in supporting local families year-round. During this week and year-round, we invite all residents to support this essential work and help build a healthier, more compassionate Chapel Hill I also want to just thank Sebastian Rios for being here with us tonight, who is a community navigator with the Diaper Bank.

Thank you. Council members, does anyone have any other announcements before we get underway?

Louis? Not an announcement, but maybe... So I was thinking, like, for our discussion tonight, if we could try to have it be a little bit more natural. It's like... I know you have to control, like, make sure we don't talk to each other, but maybe you could try to be, like, a little bit more freeform with the discussion. And, like, if it's getting out of hand, you should step in and then take control. But I trust my colleagues to kind of be, you know, respectful of everyone.

Council, does that sound reasonable?

That sounds great, and what we try to do in work sessions. So, thank you. I did have a question.

Oh, yeah, Harris. Yeah, so I just wanted to remind everyone that Empowerment Inc. will be celebrating their 30th anniversary this coming Saturday. of September 19th. We will be at The Story on Franklin Street. We will be hosted by Phil Ford, who is a legendary UNC and NBA basketball player and a long-time community leader. So please join us for this wonderful event. It's for a great cause as we continue to try to increase affordable housing and affordability in our town. Hope to see you all there. Thanks. Great. Thank you.

Okay, let's move on to our discussion and feedback on the Everywhere to Everywhere Greenways feasibility study. And we have with us Bergen Watterson and Ben Berlsheimer. Did I get it?

Yes.

Thank you. From our OMG team.

All right, thanks, can you hear me all right?

A little louder might be better, but yes.

Okay, yeah, so I'm Ben Berlsheimer, the town mobility and greenways planner, joined by Bergen, the manager, and we also have Rebecca Buzzer, our community engagement manager, and Christy Carter, our project lead from McAdams who are here tonight. Didn't quite feel comfortable sitting up here in front, but they can come in later. We've got about 25 slides for you all tonight. We're hoping we can knock it out in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's hop right in. We are here to give you all an update on the Everywhere to Everywhere Greenways and hopefully it generates some discussion amongst you all that leads to some good policy level recommendations and feedback that we can take and incorporate into the project. so some of the greenway routes that we're studying are very feasible but maybe less than ideal other ones that we're studying are maybe more challenging but provide a really good experience for people and we're hoping for some direction on how you want us to balance those trade-offs moving forward so we can shape the final route recommendations that we're getting ready to make And really the bottom line is we felt like things were starting to maybe move in a direction that wasn't totally aligned with the original vision that we all maybe imagined and thought it would be a good point to check in with you all on that. So I mentioned the vision. There are two parts to Everywhere to Greenways. As we see it, there is the high-level vision that was laid out as part of the Complete Community Strategy in 2023. This is what Complete Communities told us in our attempt to make it plain language that Chapel Hill will be a place where people can, and then you fill in the blank here. We've highlighted two of those that we feel like are most relevant to Greenways, but I don't think it's a stretch in any way to say that Greenways can really play a part in all five of these things. So what did Complete Communities say specifically about greenways? It was very explicit. Goal two, expand and deliver new greenways for everyday life. And what that does is directs us to pursue a network of connected greenways that make it safe and easy for people to get around outside of the car. That also means shifting the way we're thinking from greenways as a purely recreational facility to more of a transportation corridor. There's plenty of people that use our greenways for transportation currently, but the vast majority of folks are still recreational users. It also says to utilize stream corridors for greenways where it makes sense and to continue to link, you know, at a high level, continue to link our transportation and our land use decisions.

Ben, would you like a quick question now or would you like me to wait? It's a sincere question.

I think our intent was to go all the way through, if that works for you all.

Yep.

Okay. Things will hopefully start coming into clearer picture. So, speaking of picture, this is probably what you all maybe pictured after Complete Communities when we were talking about everywhere, everywhere greenways. It was definitely something that we were picturing. All of us are anchored in our Greenways around town, like Bowman, Booker, and Fan Branch. And in many ways, that's what Complete Communities describe, I think, this ecolic Greenway experience, getting people all around town In reality, when you think about a truly connected network and one that everybody everywhere describes as being able to walk out of your door and walk or bike a short distance to a greenway, a full network is going to have a lot of different elements. And that's really the crux of what we're here to talk with you all about tonight. So that brings us really to the second part of complete communities, which is the feasibility study. We are about a year and a half into what we envision to be about a two-year process, which is a feasibility study being an in-depth study of 25 miles of greenway that would really help us achieve that complete network that was envisioned. So a quick reminder, just what is a feasibility study? I'll try to breeze through these. The top line is that it really, it turns our maps, it turns our minds on a map, what we've planned over the years into constructible projects. A simple way of thinking about this is it takes what we've planned in our mobility plan and it puts them through a series of tests. Those tests include looking at property impacts, a whole host of environmental considerations and impacts, thinking about how much each of these are going to cost, and looking at road crossing safety, that sort of thing. And all of this is done through a combination of field work and desktop analysis. And we're not doing that work. That's what we've got our great folks at McAdams here helping us with. And really, this feasibility process, it's not that far off from our typical process of designing greenways. It just helps us know more before we start designing it. So our typical process would be we hire a consultant firm, we think about all the different options that are possible for a given greenway, we engage deeply with the community, we weigh all these trade-offs, and then at the end of that, we move forward with our selected route. This is what we would call our preferred alternative. So why do we do a feasibility study? The bottom line is that it reduces risk and uncertainty in projects. Sometimes things look better on paper than they do on the ground. We thought that a useful way of demonstrating the value of a feasibility study might be to give you a quick example of a project that didn't have a feasibility study that we're currently working on right now and some of the challenges that have come with that. So the tenure branch connector is what I wanted to highlight as a project I'm intimately familiar with and working on daily. It is a really high community priority. It's a great project. We thought it was going to be a slam dunk. It was a really excellent line drawn on a map in terms of what the network could look like. But when we got into it, we ran into and still are running into all kinds of challenges related to the railroad, historic cemetery, HOA property, all sorts of different things. Fun and very challenging and frustrating all at the same time. It's rare that a project's ever going to go completely according to plan, and I'm not here to say that a feasibility study would have completely solved all of those issues, but it will give us a really good idea of what we're getting into before we decide to get into it. So back to the value of why we do one. and especially one that covers our entire Greenway network, which isn't common. Most communities aren't doing a network-wide feasibility study.

They're looking at one corridor. We're looking at 30 corridors all around town.

So it's really doing that process I described with hiring a consultant and engaging the community and playing all the trade-offs. It's doing that process at scale. rather than the one-off approach, project by project, so that at the end we'll know what all our preferred routes are, we'll know the challenges we're likely to encounter, and ultimately the hope is that it results in, you know, we can save time and end up with better projects overall. So where are we in our feasibility study that we're doing with the help of McAdams? We narrowed down our greenways to 25 miles of the highest priority ones that we wanted to study. We developed multiple possible routes for each of those miles. That's a really, really important part that will come into play later here tonight. We're in the process of recommending which of those routes should advance into the next phase of the study using criteria and public input. And we are still actively engaging with the community on this project. So how does engagement fit in? It is a very big component of this project. Our town engagement staff led by Rebecca worked hand in hand with our consulting team from McAdams. They developed an engagement plan specifically for this project that was rooted in the town's engagement principles. That engagement plan put forward three pretty clear goals. We wanted to inform and educate folks about what Everywhere to Everywhere is, both the vision and the study. we developed our own look and feel thanks to our great comms team for taking our new newly adopted town brand and turning that into into a look and feel for the project the other goal was we wanted to consult the community ask them for feedback on the routes the different Greenway routes and we wanted to be really transparent and upfront with folks only asking for feedback on routes where public input would actually make a difference in the decision, letting them know how their input would impact decisions, and also letting them know that public feedback is one of the many factors that we consider when we're making a preferred route selection. This is what that looks like. A lot of engagement and tactics. We've got our Engage site with interactive tools and information. We've been holding focus groups. This one picture is led by some of our summer youth employees. It was a really great experience. We've been at community events like National Night Out, pop-ups all over in town. We've got some of our posters that we use in the back of the room. You see some Gatorade spills on them and all sorts of stuff from being out in the world. We've been meeting with key property owners and stakeholders like UNC and OWASA and CDOT. And all of this has been vetted through a super project steering committee that we created at the beginning of the process. We put together for the work session some pretty preliminary takeaways from engagement so far. There's no surprise that there's a preference for off-road separated facilities. ones that provide direct connection to everyday destinations, and ones that prioritize safety. None of these came as a surprise. There's a little bit more information attached to the packet, and we are going to do a really deep dive at the end of engagement in the next month or so. So while we were determining all the different route options that are possible for a given greenway, we were also coming up with a set of criteria that we would evaluate them against each other with. We came up with constructability, so how complicated would a greenway be to build? Cost effectiveness, how expensive is it to build, but also to maintain? Environmental impacts, looking at stream and wetland encroachments, steep slopes, tree clearing, that sort of thing. Property impacts is straightforward. How much private property do we need to build this greenway? And then user experience, which includes the ADA accessibility elements, brings in our Vision Zero safety components, and just thinks about the overall experience that a greenway might provide. This is what it looks like when we put that criteria in action. We can put route A versus route B next to each other side by side and see how they stack up. This is just an example, not including which route this is for necessarily, but it sets up the dynamic that we're continuing to see. We have one route that is more feasible, cheaper, less impact, but maybe provides a lower user experience. versus one that might be more expensive, a little more complicated, takes some more time, but provides a pretty nice experience. And these are just the technical objective criteria. Community feedback is being layered into the criteria as well. So earlier I described the feasibility study as putting our lines to the tests. We thought it would be useful to give you all some examples of the types of tests that we are running on the lines that have been on the maps. The first example is thinking about property impacts. On the left is a line that's in our mobility plan. It envisioned a greenway that would use a clear utility easement to build a greenway. And when we looked into it a little bit more, we see that building that greenway would require easements or acquisition from over 60 individual property owners. So when our team from McAdam sees something like that, they give us a nudge and say, you know, this might not be what you would want to consider as a feasible project, and maybe we should look at a couple different other options to try to achieve the same goals. Here's an example of some challenging topography. Chapel Hill has hills. That is a truth, a reality. The left, you see a nice line, a nice greenway connection using some molassa property. But when we put that line through the test, we see that even with substantial amount of switchbacks, it's still really difficult to meet ADA standards, which again, with all these greenways, we're thinking about paved greenways that meet our accessibility standards. So again, we get the nudge that this one's probably not gonna meet the standards that you all are thinking about. We should look at some different options. All right, one more line. It uses some town property in Owasso Easements on the left. A really important part of town to have some of these connections. When you put it to the test, you bring in some additional data. You see that that line lines up with a floodplain, and not only is it in a floodplain, but there are other structures in that floodplain, which really complicates the permitting, the design, and ultimately impacts construction costs. So just a few examples. These are the things that we've been running into, not necessarily just these specific projects, but around town and where we kind of had a flag raised that was like, okay, we're getting a lot of recommendations to shift away from some of the original intent. Let's check in and get some direction from people. So I'm gonna hand it over to Bergen to talk about some of those trade-offs.

Yeah, thanks. Y'all hear me okay? All right, great. Ben did a really good job of explaining some of the things that have come up for our team recently and some of the things that we're looking at and the reason why we are here tonight so that we can get some discussion from you all about the priorities and trade-offs of these different types. So I think I want to be clear and say that these are not issues that are across the board. We have a number of greenways that are included in this study that are traditional off-road greenways that are clear. The route is, there's one route, it's a good one. We're set on those. We're not necessarily collecting input on those. Those are good. The ones that are a little bit more complicated are the ones that we want to get some feedback on tonight. I think it's important to note that There are, in addition to the traditional greenways that are clear, there are a number of them that have multiple possible routes. And within those multiple routes, we have different options. You know, we have this traditional greenway, like it's shown in the middle, the one that we all kind of envision, the ones that everybody loves. We also have neighborhood greenways, as shown on both sides of that, or starting to look at a hybrid of two. So we can combine sort of the best elements of each one into a different type of route. So what is a neighborhood greenway? These are sometimes also referred to as on-street greenways or bicycle boulevards. They're typically combinations of pavement markings, wayfinding signage, maybe some sidewalks, traffic calming elements. And they're typically done on neighborhood streets with low traffic speeds and low volumes of vehicles. So you're not going to put a neighborhood connector on MLK or on Franklin Street. These are quiet neighborhood streets. They're not just shared lanes or share-o's as we call them. There's different elements involved. These also aren't new to our town vernacular. They were called out in the mobility plan. They call for on-road greenway connectors. We just haven't really defined them yet or fleshed out what exactly that looks like because if they're meant to be connectors and we don't have the two things on each side, there's no sense in putting down signs and markings on the road yet. But we do actually have one in the works. McAdams is also the consultant on the Morgan Creek Greenway East extension, and they're designing a neighborhood greenway connector as part of that project. So we will have one, sort of a pilot that we can look at and learn from in the near future. Also, as we're refining the lines on the map, we are really starting to see how Chapel Hill's roadway network and the neighborhood streets can play a key role in our greenway network. It maybe wasn't quite as apparent when we first set out on this, and we're just looking at the lines that were put in the plans. As you might imagine, these neighborhood greenways are cheaper, they're easier to construct, and starting to take come up as viable alternatives to the more traditional greenways that we can all imagine as we're progressing in the study. So what does this look like in terms of the feasibility study? Here's the same floodplain example that Ben was just talking about. You can see Route B in white there going north-south That is the more traditional greenway route that looks really great on paper, and then you add that floodplain in, and it makes it a bit more complicated. So we sort of started fleshing out the yellow route, A, that goes, similar connection, goes from the same place to the same place, but follows sort of quiet neighborhood streets instead. This is another example up in the northern part of town where Route A uses an existing utility easement and town properties to run along I-40 there. There's some real topography challenges in that location. So we started to look at an alternative route B there. It says E on one end, B on the other. The brown route that goes from the same place to the same place, more or less, but follows sort of quiet neighborhood streets as well. I can take a minute here to point out that it doesn't necessarily have to be an either or in these. Like I was mentioning, we can look at some hybrid options, sort of taking the best of each route, what we like about each one and combining them into a Route C, for example, that meets the need and can be our preferred alternative there. Before we get into the discussion, I just wanted to highlight the next steps. We are planning to wrap up this phase of our public engagement by the end of September or early October. We have a few more pop-ups and stakeholder meetings to do. We will incorporate the feedback from the public input and the feedback that we get tonight, work with our consultant on how to incorporate that as we finalize the route recommendations and then bring them to our steering committee. We will share the recommended routes back with the community in the form of an open house, probably in late October, early November, as well as the Engage HQ site. Continue to have our coordination meetings with our key property owners and our stakeholders. Develop the implementation plan and then come back to council for a vetting of the recommendations and then adoption. So that's where we're heading after this. As we get into the discussion, I wanted to just summarize a few of the key points that we made tonight. We've shown that the various elements that can be included in a greenway network, you know, we've got our traditional greenway, we've got our on-road greenway, the hybrid approach, or something else that we can talk about tonight is looking at a phased approach as well, that maybe we build the on-street stuff first and try to save up and save resources and plan ahead to do the off-road facilities. It really, all the studies show, experience shows that in order to get people to use the greenways in the ways that we want them to use them, they need to be safe, convenient, and enjoyable. They also need to be designed for a population in mind from eight to 80. That's sort of the going best practice. You want kids as well as elderly folks to be able to use them comfortably. costs are not going down they're going up significantly it seems like hourly based on the projects that we're working on currently so the longer we wait to do this the more it's going to cost to do it our public input so far has been noted has really revealed a strong preference for the off-road type of facility and you know we can discuss the merits of different types of greenways all day long, but I think at the end of the day, sometimes the best greenway is the one that gets built. So we'll leave this slide up while you discuss, but what we're looking to you all for guidance is on a few things. How to balance the everywhere to everywhere vision versus what it looks like on the ground. What are our preferences? What do you all prefer? What should we be focusing on more? How important is timing? Do we want something soon or now? Or do we want something better later? How long do we want to wait? In addition, Ben kind of touched on this. What is our definition of feasible? How far are we willing to go to get those off-road facilities that we all had envisioned from the beginning? Do we want to chase that traditional greenway and a floodplain all the way to the end, regardless of the resources and the time that it takes to get there? How many property impacts is too many? We're trying to sort of establish some general thresholds that we can do. Do we want to just go all the way to the end on this, or are there some kind of take steps back? What's the guidance on that? And then in terms of prioritization and recommendations, do we want to prioritize what we can build the fastest, or do we want to prioritize the best user experience? Should we pursue hybrid options where possible? Should we approach it from a phased implementation? And I'll turn it over to you all to discuss. It doesn't have to stick with just those things. That's what we're hoping to get out of tonight. I know it's all kind of complicated. But Ben and I and Rebecca and Christy are all here to answer any questions that you may have.

I had a couple questions, but I also was trying to think about how we have this conversation, because it feels a bit difficult. So I wanted to run something by you all for your input. First, well, I'm trying to think about it, how we give you a framework or kind of work within a framework as opposed to looking like AB by AB, because I don't think that's what you need or want. i think one thing that it would be helpful to do is to make sure that the criteria are the ones that council agrees with are there any missing and then i would kind of and staff you'll have to tell me if this is possible but i was thinking about it like what are the types of places like near a school or last mile or just like areas of town so that we could think through which criteria or what's really important in different types of places so that you all could then just take that apply it and come back and then say you know council now you get to look at it all and if you need to tweak things fine but then we've kind of pushed forward some general guidance without getting too in the weeds. Is that reasonable?

I just have a question based on what Jess just said, to what extent does the feasibility study take those things into account already?

I'm sorry, could you repeat the end of that question? How's the feasibility study?

Yeah, how much of what Jessica stated already is considered in the feasibility study?

We did use a lot of that type of criteria, like proximity to schools, proximity to transit, housing density, affordable housing, currently and in the future. I think we touched on some of those in the answers to the questions that came out, I think, this morning. So those sorts of things were included in the step where we narrowed the greenways from 87 miles to 25. So the ones that are currently being considered, for the most part, meet a lot of those needs. I think we can drill down even further on the ones that we have. The way that I sort of understood your question was, you know, if we want to make sure to prioritize off-road facilities near schools, is that sort of thing?

Yes, like which criteria would we really be honing in on for certain types of places? so that we can kind of break up the town into types of places, as opposed to looking at each segment, which would be horrible for everybody, and I don't think we'd do a very good job. So what I'm imagining is, I tried to create a list, but it's just an example. Like, you know, there's recreational or destination greenway segments. There's gap fill or last mile connectors. Like, to me, I would imagine those could be, like, the quick win, less off-road. You know, that's just, like, what I'm thinking. But just for us to go through. Then there's the new growth or the Lumo upstone corridors. There's complete community focus areas, there's environmentally sensitive places, there's downtown, there's major arterials and school routes or K-12 kind of important areas. So that's how I broke it out in my mind, but there could be different areas that people want to talk about too. But if we break it out that way and then just say for this type of place, we want you to really focus on XYZ criteria, then we can just have it be a framework as opposed to individual one-off decisions. Does that make sense? And if anybody has a preferred method of getting through this, I am happy to hear it.

I have a quick question. On slide 15... Can you speak in the mic? Yeah. On slide 15, or just in general your criteria, are those criteria weighted? They're balanced. They're not waiting.

That's what I'm imagining is we can start waiting them for different types of places. Sorry. Yeah, sort of similar. Similar question to

to Louise is in some places, it seems like in some places, some of these things would matter more than in others. And in some places, we might be willing to take on a large amount of invisibility because of the importance of the connection. So I guess that was my piggyback question on Louise is with all of these things that, OK, it's completely invisible, but it happens to connect. I don't even know, every school to every grocery store or something, whatever. It's a really important connector, but you know, so how, I guess that's the piggyback is that even if all these come up as like really terrible things, do we just forget it or then what?

I would hope that our staff would give us additional analysis in those cases where we would have competing things and they would give us a recommendation. And so I think helping us understand how you make decisions when it comes back so then again we're not kind of going looking through the whole map block by block. But if you could give us some analysis and help us understand like what the important factors were there that maybe we didn't know about or maybe we did but that would be super helpful i think so we don't have to be so we don't have to know all those pieces right so when it comes back to us again we're like like flagging those these are the ways to taking all of these things into account and the importance of certain connections these are the ways laid out so i can count that around the time staff is that a reasonable a perfect does that feel like something doable

to come back with the why of that?

Yeah, like to come back with that analysis, yeah, the why, so that then we can just look through it and be like, oh, we thought we wanted this one to be... just you know an easy breezy one but oh actually there was this other competing thing that you all know that we don't and so you know just kind of highlighting those or flagging those in if there's like something where we said this is our framework and you're like oh but this one's funny you know like within an area if there are things that we just need to be aware of or to review a little more closely or just understand

yeah i think that aligns with what we were actually talking about just just before this meeting um really you know recognizing that some of these criteria are red or red in one place may not be a red in another place right where where those differences are and being able to describe the why one over another

yeah i just wanted to ask a little bit about the floodplain issue because i know that a lot of our greenways currently are in floodplains the one at horn creek does really well was getting wet and then drying out is that is that like a deal breaker it depends it's we don't want to build any more of those or we know how to build those and we can make it work can you give me a sense of

To clarify, you're saying is building in a floodplain at all a deal breaker? Is that the question? Yeah. Okay.

So do I need to keep holding? Okay. Thanks for having me. I'm Christine. Nice to meet you all. A few things about that, that has come up a lot in our discussions, particularly with the steering committee, it's come up in probably more so in focus groups than in our just broader community pop-ups. When we were talking to Ben and Bergen and Rebecca about coming here, this is kind of one of the questions we wanted to wrestle with you all. You can build in floodplains, your, do I have the right district, conservation district. Yeah, that allows, greenways are an allowable use in that district. Your complete community strategy says along streams where possible. So layering those things on together kind of says we as a town have a vision, or at least this is an acceptable use in our floodplains. So then it becomes a technical question of you're allowing it or you're accepting of that as a use in that area, but how hard is it? I live in Asheville, and as an example, Before I got into transportation planning, I did a lot of affordable housing work. And we would look across our mountains community and say, there's no more land. We can't build here anymore. All the flat land is gone. But now when you look back, when I was doing that work 20, 25 years ago, and I look at those places and things have been developed, they have been developed. They could be developed because people weren't willing to pay for the cost of developing in those areas that we once thought were too hard to develop. And so that's the question that would be helpful for me to hear. What's that kind of just general sense of tolerance of we can design and build a lot of things, but when you get in the floodplains and you're talking about topography and effect on downstream, effect on existing structures, You can build it, but is your tolerance, do you have enough tolerance as a community to do that? And that's not a technical question that we can answer from our technical analysis. That's a policy direction of, As an elected official, you're willing to go out and say, I think we made a good decision and I'll go stand in front of my community and say, this helped people move around, it made affordable housing more accessible to essential community services, even though this was an expensive greenway because of the floodplain issues. It's a long response, but those are the kind of things we need from you.

One of the things that I love about Greenways and have loved forever is that they do multiple things, right? You're not just accomplishing more goals. We can do transportation, we can do connection, we can do all these things. We can also do environmental preservation as well, and I know Some folks have harbored about building near streams, but I think if you do it responsibly, and you then are preserving the land around that, I think it can be a really valuable thing. So as we move forward, I'd like that to be one of the criteria that we think about.

So when I say that, I mean the criteria being, I'm putting this pretty simply, but okay to build on flood plains, but do we go from a best practice standpoint where we're being as environmentally light as possible. Ms.

I think that's part of it. I think also putting the greenway in there and getting the easements that we need can help us protect actual land that's down there and forested land and help with keeping things away from the streams that we might not want. So I think we can have an environmental, a positive environmental impact as well.

You all should just start talking. You didn't want me to manage it. So don't look at me.

One thing that I would find really helpful in making decisions and the kind of value that I would sort of commend in general is just like we are able to make some assumptions about which option is going to move the most people. I will weigh very heavily whatever is going to have the highest number of people using it on a regular basis. That's more important to me than cost, although it was evolving. Bring me a $50 million one-mile freeway, I'll revisit that statement. But assuming it's something reasonable, then to me it's sort of like I'm I would imagine most of the off-road trails would also be likeliest to have the highest utilization rate, given how unused to riding with cars most people are. But I would be interested in seeing from you all some methodology where you say, we're making these assumptions about how ridership will be based on housing units in proximity based on destinations along route you know if it's a wonderful greenway and you're like Saturdays it's going to be packed because it's recreational but it doesn't go anywhere and so it's only ever going to be recreational I'm sure it's a complicated matrix to build but I would find it helpful if you had one where like these are the assumptions we're not 100% sure but it's what we're working from yeah you go I already talked to you

That's one of the things that I was putting as important as the destinations.

Can you talk into the mic? Oh, sorry.

That's one of the things that I thought was really especially important was that What destinations are we connecting and how important are the connections? Like we talk about commuter routes, heavy commuter routes when we talk about transit. So I'm definitely in there. And I think that that's something that could go in as criteria and perhaps some of it is in the in there somewhere, but to pull it out would be helpful. The other thing that would be helpful for me in pulling it out is how close are we already? And so there are some places that are, you know, if we just fill this gap to this gap, that's a really important corridor. And so, you know, I guess maybe that's in a cost effectiveness thing, but the connections per cost I think would be a really valuable thing for us to be able to look at. So how close are we to getting something? That would be really valuable. It may be more expensive per mile, but finishing it will get us a long way.

Yeah, and I want to piggyback off of what you just said, like how close are we to completing something? That is a criteria. The whole destination thing, like meaning, like your mind goes, I have where meaning? Where's it taking us? I'm thinking about, you know, my neighborhood for instance, I'm near the Bowling Creek Trail and the Tanger Trail. Being able to go from downtown and go through that neighborhood greenway that takes you past Hargraves down and you're moving. What's the feasibility of that? And then you've got Northside Elementary there, and so there are a lot of touch points there, downtown, a community center, a school that leads directly into, those types of things make sense to me, and I think you all know. what that connecting is. It's just a matter of what do we have in plan already? Are we looking at a new route to add as a part of that neighborhood greenway? And I really like the idea, the calling of it neighborhood greenways and the ways in which we're thinking about it differently. Cost is a thing for me, especially in our current geopolitical situation. That's just the thing. And it's been a huge barrier for us to getting to some of our goals. And so I think that hybrid option, when possible, is great. I think it affords us the kind of creativity that we want. It gives y'all the kind of creativity that you'll need to maneuver. And definitely that bang for the buck. That's really what I'm looking for. so the connectivity what's already being built versus what we're thinking about is new that can you know get us closer I do want I think timing implementation what I'm hearing from community members is it takes so long because we have to wait so long for the money to flow in. And you already at the top of this conversation stated that it ain't getting any cheaper. And so I think timing is another huge factor for me as well. I'd love to be able to see some quick stuff going. I just

I want to go back just because I want to connect several things that people have said really quickly. If you go back to your last slide that we're looking at where and what you're hoping to find out from us. Further. Last slide. So in the prioritized recommendations, the one that I would add and that is the most important to me is what routes are most likely to get used. I don't want the fastest deliverable if nobody's going to know it's there and nobody's ever going to use it. And I don't want the one that's the most paved space in a traditional Greenway, like the pictures that you first showed us of what we're all picturing in our heads if we can't ever get it. So for me, hybrid options, I'm more than open to the neighborhood Greenways, but I would love to have some examples of places where those have been done really well so we can see like, oh, because I think it's hard for people who are not familiar with an area, but you only need to get from point A to point B, and there's a path that doesn't stop, and you know it goes from point A to point B, then it's really easy to get people to use that as a route. But if it's a winding neighborhood thing, they're like, OK, well, I'm going to turn right here. But then what happens when this block ends? And where do I go? obviously signage is really important, but it would have to be really good signage and really well laid out, I think, for people to understand how to use those kind of winding neighborhood routes as an actual means of transportation. And so, yeah, if we could have some examples of where that's been done really well, I have no doubt that it can be, but it does feel like, I really like the idea that that would be faster and cheaper, but if then nobody uses it, what's the point? I know you said that those neighborhood greenways are not just sharrows. The pictures that I saw looked a lot like sharrows. So if you could elaborate a little bit on how they aren't just arrows on the road, that would be great.

For example, the one on the left, you can see, it might be hard to see because it's kind of in the shadows. It's a green paint. Yeah. The shero is kind of leading the person onto what looks like going off of the road onto another.

Well, what happens like between the rest of that road where they're supposed to get to that place with those green lines? Like how is the rest of that neighborhood greenly not just a shero?

There would be signs. I think, again, it's kind of hard to see. There's like a green bike sign with an arrow. on the side of the road there. I see other places that have like big stencils in the middle of the road that we actually have designed some in the past that, you know, Tanya did with an arrow that goes like that. The signs over on the side, we actually have a bike and pedestrian refinance strategy So we have a lot of that ready to go, just haven't had an opportunity to implement it yet.

Are you saying that's a hybrid? Like it's a traditional greenway that then goes into a neighborhood greenway?

That one on the left could be, I mean, it's hard to know what that bike is turning onto there, but that could be turning from the road.

That's where I also got a little confused was about what a hybrid really means. I can guess, but is this a good example of a hybrid approach or does it mean something different?

I mean I would think the way that I from my house to Bluebird is probably a good example if it had any of this stuff like I go through a bunch of neighborhoods and then I go on to a little thing over by Glen Lennox that has like a little neighborhood vibe and then I go on to the sidewalk over but it's like it took me like five years of looking here to figure out how to do that so like making those things obvious and I think if you're adding a segment

then yes, the entire route is a hybrid. But if we're adding something, how is that a hybrid?

So I think the expert is about to tell us. I hope you are considering that.

I just want to point a couple things out. Let's pretend that these are two segments of one route or one section of a route. So paint is just one thing that can be done. I think what's important about this particular picture Anytime we're doing bike and pedestrian planning, we're also looking at what can be done from an engineering standpoint. And this is a good example that may not be obvious, but it's much more than just paint at some point in time. And making this particular road better for people who are walking and biking, particularly probably mostly for biking, this curve came out a little bit. So you're narrowing up I assume this was probably a two-lane street at one point in time, where now it's a one-lane street, where you brought this curb line out, here's your center line, and kind of made a bike lane to make this street more bicycle-friendly. And so that's one feature. Bergen already mentioned the signage. From a signage standpoint, what you're doing with neighborhood greenways, or hybrids, whatever you want to call it, a lot of neighborhoods like this, if you have Like this is a street and you have cross streets. The way you orient signage means you prioritize the people who are walking and biking through here. So there are a number of things that can be done that way back when we started bike planning in particular, we just painted these all over the place and that's not good. We don't want to do that anymore. and so it's combining the paint with the engineering and the signage and the wayfinding that was one of the community engagement points that we heard a lot of we want better better refining for what exists today okay now i'm confused because you just used the neighborhood greenway interchangeably with hybrid are they not different fair point and you go to

Here we go.

One of the maps. Let's just use this one for example. So for example, the white section is all off-road. The ideal separated from the road. The yellow is on-road.

So we go out there to a can't-quite-reach where the yellow line crosses the white line.

So if possible, when we say higher approach, all the planes aside you can hop on here on the white line on an off-road greenway and then we decided at the top we can't do that section for some reason and then i hop on to the yellow line which becomes my on-road section or my neighborhood greenway section um and then i go on up so that combination of off-road greenway and on-road greenway to make the complete connection from here all the way up to Elliott Road. That's what we need by hybrid. It has both types of facilities or both types of uses on one point A to point B connection. Is that verified for you?

I'll just keep it for now.

Okay.

I'll wait.

Yeah.

To build on that, so I'm thinking specifically of the north side, where like, are we thinking about, is it feasible for us all to think about changing traffic patterns? So in our neighborhood, if you're gonna make streets one way, it'll just make it much safer, and you're never gonna be able to build sidewalks in those neighborhoods because the streets are too narrow. So is that also on the table?

Yeah, we'll look at that. the width of the road, what's available, what changes are possible. One thing that we did miss on the right one is it's actually a one-way street with bikes going the opposite direction. So only bikes get to go against traffic. So it sounds similar to what you're giving. But yeah, what's the curb-to-curb width of a road? What do we have to work with? We don't always like to go to one-way streets because it has downstream impacts sometimes of what happens when you're looking one-way a street. But everything's on the table. I think each street has its own context.

How would that work if you've got in your mic? Oh, sorry. So the mics are going against traffic. But what about the bike traffic that's coming the other way? Are they going as sharrows with the traffic sign?

That's likely how that's designed there, yeah.

Can I just get a, I know we're a little all over the place, but we'll get there. But I guess one of my questions is, if public engagement is saying we want the gold standard everywhere, then how is it helping us make decisions?

So we just talked about this earlier today.

We have a lot of community input to analyze, to investigate, to find out what it's saying for different options. And what we talked about, and what we want your feedback on, is using that when there's too much pretty decent options, and then bringing to you, you know, these ones are decently both possible, feasible, and here is what the community would prefer, so that then you could use that in your final decision meeting, or we would use it in what we bring forward to you as a recommendation.

But then wouldn't it always just be the more extensive one?

We've heard a lot of varying recommendations from the public, depending on the routes, so I don't know that that's always the case.

So if it's more granular, there's something in there. Absolutely. Okay. But it's not at the level of like hybrid neighborhood or traditional.

Well, I think that would even rely on your staff to digest what we've heard. And if they're saying state B is the top area here because it's near a school, then for them to say, this drought, this road here is a very low traffic road. We feel comfortable saying we do a hybrid option here that will be safe in the community's interest, something like that.

OK. So from what we read today from the questions answered from staff, it sounded like we could do, if we do something that's a neighborhood or a quicker, cheaper fix upfront. It's not gonna preclude us from doing it more completely and more lovely down the line, correct? And so that makes sense, it's just more money. But I wonder how, The funding scenarios go, if we're looking at down the line, trying to make the off-roads, the more green greenways, and they're replacing something that is a quick fix, or the Fed's going to look at us less generously than a completely new route.

I mean, it's hard to say, and especially it's hard to anticipate what the funding sources and criteria are going to be in the future. Speaking how it is currently, I don't think that that would be a thing. I don't think that they would look at us less favorably if we had some signs and pavement markings on our road and we wanted to build a greenway. I do think, and it may have been mentioned, I don't remember if it was in the presentation or in the questions or in the memo, we've done a lot of writing lately, that it's good to have the redundancy. I think that became very clear with Chantal and the Fordham side path. Some of our other greenways were shut down and people were like, how am I supposed to get anywhere? There's no other viable option for getting around. So to have A network that has both of those, I think, would be the best in the future.

So as I'm listening to all this, I mean, I think from where I'm sitting right now, I think we're going to have a little bit of everything, right? And so it's trying to decide which piece of everything goes where. Like, we're never going to be able to afford to have beautiful, bucolic greenways connecting everything, right? That's just not reasonable. I think that we're gonna have to, some of it is the when we can do it. And Theo, I take your point about number of users getting the most people on these, in this ultimate mode of transportation whenever we can. So I think that that would be one place to say, look, if we know this is gonna be a really popular route and we've got the money to do it a little bit now or the whole thing later, maybe that's something we prioritize for faster. If it's something that we know who's using it, like school children, right, then we say, okay, for these people, we really need this to be safe. Like, I still think if you wanted to do a neighborhood greenway to a school, I think it would have to be kind of a more protected, I would be happiest if it was a more protected greenway and not just a sheriff. Greenway near a school, for instance. So I think that it's going to be balancing that, how many people are going to use it, and how fast we want to get it into the system, and then who the users are and how we can best address that. And again, a little bit of everything. I really treasure our big Greenways. So wherever we think we can do those, I would love to. And if it takes 30 years to get the next big one, you know, somebody four years from now will have a really great Greenway, so.

Well, I guess to that point, though, like, if we're doing redundancy, then that to me feels like the potential to have a quick win somewhere and then also be thinking that the future allows for, like, a beautiful Utah Greenway, right? I mean, I don't, we don't necessarily have to do one or the other, right? Like, paint can happen. Great, and then the longer term can still be the goal.

I would love a term to jump into.

Things like if federal funding becomes available again or like then we're ready, but we're not thinking we're doing it right away.

I'm gonna shift to something that we talked about earlier. Well first, I want to understand what was shared with the public when you told told public that their input is one of many factors did you did you detail what the other factors were certainly on the age page it's spelled out you know what are the evaluation criteria that will be included right but when you engage with the folks in person when we're out there we have

Well, they're more granular, not so much, but they have zoomed in maps of what else, and we talk about topographic features, we talk about other constraints, and we say, you know, we're talking about where this will get you, you know, what this connects you to, and these are the other things we're looking at. We try and tell everybody the general overview of what we're doing, what we're considering, and how their feedback will be included.

Okay. I think that's always important to hear that there's, you're simplifying it for us, But if I am the public, I'll want to know, what do you mean instead of just a vacuous many others? Thank you. And I do think that you and your team have done an excellent job of engaging, and I appreciate that. The, another question that came up, and the answer that was given, I want to revisit, and it was about the floodplains. And the example that you all shared with us is the one, too far, the one, yeah. So, is that the? Yeah, so there, I heard, I forget your name because we don't have, what is it? Christy. Christy, you said something about downstream, the effects of downstream. Can you be a little bit more specific about that?

So let me give a little bit of a story of this one because this is an important connection because it kind of started us on this conversation. We, from the technical side, looked at this particular greenway and came to the steering committee and said, we are recommending Route A because of the flood impacts. rebecca and some other folks said the makeup words that rebecca said but that's unfortunate because route a is really important from direct connectivity and because of the southeast there's a public housing community right there who residents have said that they really want to be able to easily get on the great way to get places yeah but you're saying route b is Yes, Route B is the one that has, you know, from a connection, if that floodplain wasn't there, that is the better connection. But that floodplain is there, so then what do we do? So that's, we felt like the flood impacts, both from construction, trying to get it permitted, and In this particular area, kind of the engineering look at it, the feasibility level engineering look could have flooding impacts on structures that already exist at the top of that, at the top of that corridor. And so for us, for us as professionals to say, I'm going to make a recommendation that might flood your basement or your house, that's hard to make. So we went to route, we came in with Route A This, when we were talking about this one in particular, that's when we kind of started having this conversation of a lot of these are shifting to off-road or on-road. We're not sure that was the original intent of E2E. Let's have some more conversation. Because what you're not seeing on this map here is just because you are in a floodplain doesn't mean you can't do some things to lessen the impact of development in that floodplain. this area in particular could be a really good area or project to do an overall flood mitigation project so this is an area where you could look at some town-wide projects that are bigger than just greenways and transportation and connectivity so the greenways could be part of that mitigation yeah yeah for sure um it's not the same thing reminding me of the main one behind development project the booker creek part and it's behind um thank you um that's that greenway that has the kind of go out on the platform and look over the big retention plant which is kind of nice and feels like you're in nature That's a greenway in a storm water retention pond to help mitigate flooding and control water. So you have some of those in your town where you've already done that type of work.

Okay. I am very interested in looking at, as we do connect people, making sure that we are not increasing the risk. And if there is a way to mitigate that risk while creating connections i'm for it that's a very sensitive area i took a ride with a resident who took me all through there and i'm very sensitive to my my blue ribbon mentee's family lives there she's in college right now but they live there and they get flooded there are still families who are in the hotel that are there so that gives me That gives me great pause, but if there is the opportunity to do more than one thing that the Greenway can help towards, I can't imagine that it fixes everything, but if it can be a mitigating factor for this floodplain and nearby areas, then I'm for that. And I think that we can't,

give you a blanket and that's what I'm hearing from my colleagues is we can I think it's going to have to be more of what are the trade-offs you have this I ask a question about that yes so as we're talking about I think what I just heard you saying is that the greenway would help with the mitigation but like what I thought you were saying so I want to check my assumption is We could do a stormwater project and then the Greenway could be part of it. It's not that the Greenway itself is doing anything, it's that you're making it less problematic for the Greenway to go there because you're doing something else.

It's kind of a what can you first, the chicken or the egg type of conversation. There are communities where, well we worked on a project in Hendersonville and it was a flood mitigation project and that gave the opportunity to build a greenway at the same time. So it was flood first, greenway second. because they had it on a line on the map in the plan there have been other projects where we have done greenway plans our primary project was planning the greenway and oh by the way we get to layer on some of these flood mitigation measures um because we're doing this greenway project so it's it's okay so what camille is saying is like that's correct like that there are opportunities to actually just

like put something in there while you're doing the Greenway that it's not like a full stormwater mitigation project. Yes. Okay, that's all.

And then one last thing. Have you all, and I missed it, identified spines that could go and then the little neighborhoods could connect to them? Are there some major arteries?

I think as part of our prioritization process, the NS rapid project, we thought of that as our multimodal spine for the entire town. We did that very heavily if it was intersecting NS Rapid, that's an important greenway. I think that Bowling Creek Greenway serves as a pretty good east-west spine for the town. But other than that, we're mostly looking at lines that are already on our existing plans and understanding how useful they might be in different forms, like A or B. Okay, awesome.

Thank you.

we used to hear a lot from Adam Searing about natural quick fix natural service and it sounds like we're not really considering those and I'm wondering if those are being discussed in there and are there some of those that could quick fix some connections that maybe our town staff could do just thoughts No. Well, some of them.

You two need to talk first. So we can hear you.

I ask Melissa, when I hear quick fix natural surface, I worry about ADA compliance.

In the long run, I think that would be a concern. But in the short term, I think it would be better.

Can you talk into the microphone?

I think in the long run, we absolutely have to keep our eye on ADA compliance. But in the short term, it might be a way to get some people out of cars. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, we have looked at some of those. In fact, we have also talked with McAdams, not seriously yet, but about having sort of a an alternative to all of these, like have the off-road, have the on-road, and have maybe in some cases a natural surface trail, just again, to get at that redundancy. They are not ADA compliant. They're not always, I think, as easy to build as we might think. Like we still kind of need to grade them. You need to clear some. It's not just, you know, laying mulch down on top of whatever. It's a trail now. But it is something that we're considering as part of EDE and outside of EDE as some other sort of ideas that we've been tossing around.

Yeah, can I just say, just anecdotally, I live on the Battle Creek Trails, and both my 80-year-old father with dementia and my children have long used the unpaved route, scattered, really uneven Battle Creek Trails as actual transportation. It has gotten both my children and my elderly parents to a lot of places that they need to go. So I think it is worth thinking about not just having to take on the cost of painting in order to create off-road paths. Like my dad will walk to the grocery store regularly. My children ride to the community center. I mean, they ride their bikes on these trails, so I don't know how they do it, really. Although, actually, I'm going to do not gracefully. But anyway, yeah. Paving is expensive and takes a long time.

What are we as a municipality required to do for that, for EVA? So it comes back to funds.

And the simplest answer as it comes to funding, if you are going to have state or federal funding, or probably even your local funding, I'm probably looking over at your attorney for that question, that generally public money in a project is going to require the trade league ADA. There is a There is a loophole for natural surface trails that is classified as a recreational trail. The standards are different. What you're building to is different. So that could be a consideration. But for some of these bigger trails or greenways that you're thinking of, the cost and the scale the town's probably not going to be able to build those with their own dollars so you're going to be looking for outside dollars and most likely those outside dollars are going to require that those paths be compliant so i think it's important for us to be aware of that as we give direction to the staff are there any examples of places where like

groups of residents just do stuff and and the town is not necessarily giving a ton of money to them yes i didn't want to like point a finger at us former council member adam searing often worked often said

that he and teams would do that. Even on, so I think we need to be careful because they did it sometimes without permission, right? So I think we need to be careful.

We're not calling out any individuals, but yes, like I'm not saying.

I just did.

Well, I know.

In a more formal example, Going back to Asheville, we did a plan for Asheville. It was their Greenway 80 transition plan and pedestrian plan all in one plan. And there was an offshoot of that. It was Asheville recognizing we can't build all of our greenways to the desired standard. So part of that process was called Asheville Unpaved. And they identified, that plan identified five or six areas where natural surface trails, formal natural surface trails were a good alternative. The city didn't want to take it on as their own thing, so they worked with the local mountain biking group. There is the local greenway group called Connect Buncombe and a couple of other nonprofits that got together, and they're the ones kind of packaging and managing and committing to the trail maintenance.

So that's a formal example. That was, I guess, kind of where I was going. Like, instead of having people just going out deciding on that their own that they're going to do greenways on federal property for example like are there is there an opportunity to say this would be an amazing place to do this we would appreciate if you did it and and it would make sense here. And maybe it's a redundancy, maybe it's because we just don't, we won't have the funding for something else for a long time. That to me feels like, I guess to Elizabeth's point, like something is better than nothing. So like in those cases, can we direct people's energy in a positive place as opposed to like, go on other people's property and do stuff. So I guess, I don't know, Council, how you feel about that, but it sounds like there's some precedent that it can be done.

Yeah, I like the example that you just provided us, where there was a clear effort it was aboveboard it had community input and buy-in and it was community driven and so I'm pretty sure that it was pretty you know coordinated they may have worked with the town in some sort of way helping to identify opportunities, but the real heavy lifting was done by nonprofits and community members and stuff to move forward on community identified values.

I'm just, I'm kind of uncomfortable with natural circus trails. So, like, I think it may be okay as a redundancy for a system, But I think those things become deterministic. We create this natural surface trail, and 30 years later, we still have this natural surface trail. And it never gives up the ADA compliance, or we never find the money to do it. So once it's there, it's there. So those things make me uncomfortable.

I think that's fair. I mean, maybe, I don't know, I could imagine saying as a redundancy, because there are places that when they have a problem, we'd rather have something, right? And we know that there's going to be a commitment to repairing.

And I would think that there are a number of civic groups that would be interested. I belong to one. There are the scouts. who are interested in doing this. We have a lot of people in this community who want to be of help, and I think if we're able to give them something, I was about to say concrete, tangible, finite to do, where we're creating a companion or a redundant trail, I think that would be met

really well by this community so i think we should look at that where does it make sense to have redundancies so if we could add that to the mix so maybe then just for the sake of like our official everywhere everywhere plan we stay focused on the permanent paths that are paved for hybrid or and then other quick fixes

find out what adam searing's up to these days and see what he wants to spearhead well but i think identifying where we want them is the point right and i don't think we have to like problem solve the who right now but i think if we can ask um the consultants and staff to figure out where those redundancies and where we would like to deploy our amazing residents to i think that would be a good use of our i think that would be helpful is what i'm hearing yeah i think this conversation is um

the community kind of needs this kind of like, hear from us this kind of conversation. And for us to be on board with that, I think that's important to get the ball rolling, so to speak.

So can I just give a, Just a time check that we have another item. I do not, I'm a little lost to be honest on like what our feedback to you is. So I don't know if it's helpful to go through places where certain values are more important or if you just want to come back to us with places where there are trade-offs because there's more than one, I don't know.

Can I just say that I would like to support something that I heard Paris say earlier, which is we would like some, I would like to see some early wins, right? So if you can identify some that are easy, they don't have to all be highs, but some that you think we can deliver on because the cost is not high and it connects people that already travel there. So those two.

Can we add that as a kind of type of place? Like that to me is a category. Like there are places that are quick wins that are connectors. And so what do we care about in that place? What I'm hearing you say is we care more about like speed, efficiency, and low cost there. with the caveat that it could be wrong.

add in that that it would be quick wins quick quick fixes but that would fill gaps for important connections because the connections are the important things but where we can facilitate a quicker connection yeah that that's really important can we have all three you know so which of those three would you say are the more most important two

three right because I listed two what I'm asking you is you said fastest and then connect tell me what your three are the fast things that can be done quickly that will fill a gap to for an important connection

So that's weighing a few different criteria. But the outcome is one outcome that's making an important connection as quickly as we can.

And for clarifying, just to continue on the vein of thought that you all have, early on I asked what the feasibility study does. And baked into that already is the identification of important locations.

definitely definitely so anything that's brought to us is already gonna have that there I think for me there is the point is though what are the things that you are willing to trade off in those places right that's the piece that I think they're like the guidance there well the biggest part is where are the easiest to fill gaps for those important connections

I think for me what's going to be the driver to try to answer your point is cost, quick win, and go to my notes so I'm not trying to go off the top of my head. So bang for buck, like the destination, that connectivity, And I just just the cost really at this point is a real driver for me. And so thank you. And like really increasing that connectivity that when I say connect to me, I mean also including like folks will really like this is where folks are like looking to go. It's a number of users, right? Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. That's what I really think that there's a kind of a criterion which is getting low shift like that. that we're getting people to behave differently in some way. There are places that it's just nice or that people already use and we're trying to make it better. And then there's places that are actually impacting behavior where people are actually choosing to walk or bike or roll instead of driving somewhere, right?

Well, I mean, a long time ago, Ron Stevens. Ron Stevens. He was talking about connecting the Rogers Road neighborhood into the retail areas up at North End, OK? Right? So I don't know if it's so much changing use patterns as actually opening up options, like actually making it an option. Well that's for sure. But they could do the same thing.

I guess, like you know there's opening opportunities that people just don't have any option and then there's also like changing behavior too, right? And I think both are important and some of those like complete community focus, equity was a big part of it. where are the places where we're currently not addressing a need where people need one.

Good evening library patrons the time is 7 30 the library closes in 30 minutes at 8 o'clock again it is now 7 30 the library is closing in 30 minutes thank you.

So another idea at least that i heard was that schools that something about school routes or k-12 corridors needed kind of a certain you know that there are different criteria there than there are somewhere else yeah it feels like we've come full circle because if i understand what you suggested earlier just is that we almost want

So we want to weight these criterias, but the weights are going to change depending on the section of town. So for us to get to that activity of weight criteria, we probably need some systemic breakdown of how towns divide it. And then go through those different parts of town and actually create the weights for the criteria as a group. Then I think that would, I don't know if that's too much, but it seems like that's what we are kind of asking for. Because Paris, you're saying cost.

is a big factor for you but maybe cost won't be as big a factor in other parts of town if you think it's really important so like it feels like we're coming back to that i don't know if that's too granular for us or like if that's what we need to know i don't know that it feels like part of what we're running into is we we set a sort of initial priority list that captured the important distinguishers it it feels to me like we can't we're not producing feedback that is going to narrow down the list, it feels like. And so to me, one of the questions is like, do we kind of want to say, like, bring us five and then tell us, hey, pick the five, but five so we can choose. Or do we want to say, well, this is detail work. We're going to need to review every option. and discuss the trade-offs. That's what it feels like to me, to be honest with you, is that we're gonna have to review every option.

Before we go to every option, I think the opportunity to look at every option is when this kind of draft final report comes to us. And so I think that's the place where we can say, yeah we set this kind of rule for this type of place but here we actually either see something that outweighs that or staff says to us we heard you but like in this particular place like this was a k-12 corridor but there was also this other factor that we that we you know needed to take into account right but at least if we can make some general kind of interest, then I think staff can come back with something as opposed to having them like leave here tonight with not much of anything. So if you guys can come up with where are the types of places that you care about certain things and then it is going to be, it's not that simple, but I think at least it gets us somewhere.

Can I say, I actually think that we've contributed a lot of thoughts and ideas about what's important to us. And I think that we are not going to be able to look at the criteria. We've talked about things that we think ought to be considered that might not necessarily be in here already. People with great experience, they've done it, they know it, they've heard our conversations, and we have asked for best professional judgments before, and I think that this is an excellent opportunity for us to say, you've listened to what we've said, use your best professional judgments and tell us what you think might be the ones we ought to prioritize. Does that...

So I think I partially agree with you, but I think they're, that's perfect, and y'all can jump in. I think what they've done as professionals is provide the criteria, but weighting that criteria is a value judgment. And I think as, you know, representatives of the count, we are the ones that at the end of the day make those value judgments. So like, how do we get to a place where we can actually make those value judgments weighting criteria as a collective body. And I think we're trying to figure out how do we get there.

But I don't think we can do that without looking at the routes.

Yeah, that's what I think. I think for each different route that you bring to us, we may have different, the different criteria may weight differently. So, like, as Amy said, like, you know, if it's a route where kids are primarily going to be using it to get to school, then safety might be a higher priority than cost. Or if it's a route where, you know, people are going to walk but not bike, maybe. You know, it just, I just think that, like,

we can't do that with the information we have I guess what I'm saying is if we can give some guidance so that the information we get back is more in line with some big picture priorities then I think it will be easier to get this approved and get it done but i certainly think we're going to have to rely on the expertise of our staff i mean there's no doubt i don't see a second guessing it's not about second ways that they have they're saying to us these are values or these are things that council needs to decide we've given you

the expertise and now you have to make some decisions right and what I'm saying is I think I think we said a lot about values tonight it wasn't it wasn't site-specific it wasn't you know detail specific but we've talked about all of us talked about what are the important things that we thought about these things and I'm willing to let them take what we what we said and bring us the next round

I would love for the staff to be frank with us and say, but we need or that is sufficient. Because I would hate for you to leave and say, we did not get what we needed. So please be frank with us.

No, I was gonna say, I think it has been helpful information and we don't wanna put you in a situation where you're picking this route and picking between routes. We do agree that that is staff's realm and that they should be making that determination based off the information we get in the feasibility study. But as Bergen mentioned, there are some routes where it isn't even as much of a toss up. But I do think listening to what you guys have prioritized and the things that you've thrown out tonight is helpful for us to reevaluate what we're thinking on some of the trickier routes. I don't know if we need the specificity of more information as you guys I'm picking segments, but I do understand how examples could possibly help you flesh out what your values are in certain areas. But we are trying to keep you guys at the 30,000 foot realm and not bring you into the weed zone. once the recommendations are made, you would get the listing of the routes. You would see that and we can talk about, if you do have questions or concerns about a route that was picked, we could then have those conversations around the preferred route and what's being recommended and if something needs to adjust in that way.

So the only thing that I'm going to add though is that I think we govern as a body and not as like people just saying stuff one off and that's where I'm really trying to get us to is not that we get in the weeds but that we make some decisions as a group because I don't I heard us all have amazing thoughts tonight but like I don't know that it's the board's thought I know it's maybe some people's thoughts I don't know and so that's I guess where I feel like the feedback loop gets lost for me and I think the public too is that then they say well where did that come from or who made that decision or then it's like then it ends up on staff which is actually what i really don't want is then they say well staff did this and staff is like we're trying to listen to the board like you know so i think like having something where we can just have the board weigh in is really, really important for bigger governance, not for, not because I don't trust that staff will make good choices.

Yeah. I mean, it sounded like I saw heads nodding. I mean like quick wins with good connections, everybody on board for that.

I mean the people will use quick wins with good connections.

I think the only pushback I heard tonight really was around, um, the natural trails because of the ADA. But for the most part, I don't object to anything that I heard tonight. In fact, I feel like it's a bit of an echo chamber.

What did you all hear that you can use?

I have to go review the tape for sure. I think when we hear quick win, when we hear cost is important, those type of things, the trade-off that we're talking about is something like this probably, right? These are no greenway that we're going to hire consultants and design, go through permitting is going to be a quick win. It might be quick in terms of how we can build, you know, our typical process of the fundings in place, but this is cheap and quick and can, in some cases, make connections. That's kind of where my mind goes to what we've been hearing. I'm not going to labor the point.

But we can't go route by route. But I feel like these valuables aren't fungible. They're going to change depending on the part of town. It's like if we were to divide up the town, we're saying we all want quick wins. Well, a quick win differs depending on part of the town. Our values will differ depending on the part of the town. Yes, we seem like we all agree now because we're at the 30,000 level. But when we actually get to the point where there's going to be conflicts in our value trade-offs, who makes the decision about those trade-offs? And right now, I don't see us driving the trade-off process in terms of values when it comes to weighting the criteria. And if we're cool with doing that, let's be cool with doing that. But I don't want us to walk away saying that we've provided clear values to drive that process. And I hate to be pedantic about it, but that's where I come out of this conversation.

I don't see identifying me moving from one part of town to the next doesn't change. In terms of like, if it's going to be cost effective or it's going to give us the connectivity or user, you know, up the user, all of those things still apply depending on which part of town. I mean, each part of town is going to have its own separate required special thing. I do not agree with that.

I understand what you're saying, and I think it's totally reasonable that you have that value judgment, right? It's just I don't agree necessarily.

It's a value judgment.

That's the thing. I don't want the quickest, easiest, cheapest thing in certain places. But that's not what I said.

but what I'm saying though is that that's why looking at different parts of town or different types of places helps you to decide right right if if for instance it's going to bring about the connectivity and it's going to bring about the most usage then that is the value that I'm applying to that part of time yeah doesn't mean this could be the most cost effective though but how can you determine Right. That's what the work that they would be able to do to bring back to us. So I've given you my list and then you can show me based upon what you bring back to us that This leans into this value that you identified. It may not lean into the other value, but it leans into this one. Can we make everyone name their top value? I'm saying I, not in the... No, no, no.

I don't think you're trying to speak for the board. What I'm saying is that the process isn't getting us to what the board thinks, right? And if they bring it back and then we're all evaluating it on our own being, then we're just stuck again.

Can we make everyone name their top value? No one's allowed to say two things.

I don't think we're getting any farther tonight than we are right now. because we've got still LUMO to do. The question is does staff feel like they have enough, for me, the question is does staff feel like they have enough to do a reasonable job of the next step to bring back and we then talk about it at that point.

I think Ted wants to.

I'm just going to make this observation. I think if we did not have this meeting tonight and we just did the best we could with all the criteria and brought you a final draft and gave it to you and said we'd like you to adopt this, you would be going through all these same conversations but at the dais going, who made these decisions? I don't know about this one. So I'm glad that we did this tonight because it demonstrates that this is not an easy thing. It's not as obvious as it originally seemed to be when we had those lines. So I think we heard helpful information. But I still think it is gonna be some bit of professional and staff, who are also professionals, judgment call work to do the best they can with the criteria that has been publicly articulated, that has also been spoken to tonight, to then go back and try to create a 90%, 95% design document, and then come back and say, We think this is the best recommendation we can give you. Now that you have those very specific recommendations, if you want to start pulling one or two or whatever out of that and say, yeah, I think this one and that one needs more conversation, we'll take that conversation. But we would hope that much of it might be acceptable because we are trying to go through a logical framework as best we can. to make a challenging recommendation and including public input as well. So that's how I sort of see this.

So what I needed as the consultant and kind of communicating to the technical folks on the team, I actually feel like we've heard because what I from taking a broad stroke of it is What I heard by listening is all conditions ideal, we want off-road. There's one condition that that's hard. And because that's hard, We don't fully understand this, but we've started to understand that there might be some other options other than off-road, and those may be acceptable, but we want to see how that fleshes out a little bit. We understand that balancing these with the environment is really important, and we probably want to see, when we bring things back to you, We kind of show here's the environmental impact, here's possibly what could be done from a mitigation factor. The data and kind of the connection and the pieces of, you know, kind of wanting to know and understand some of that, I will say that every one of these hard ones that we're thinking about are important to your network. and your network in this case is a little more important than the actual area of town. Because it doesn't matter if you really focus in on one part of town and you don't have the network elsewhere, because you're not going to have the network. It's not going to work. So I would challenge you to maybe Let us, let the data work, the data and analysis that we have done, dig into that. I think it has been shared because we, you know, affordable housing, employment density, housing density, all of those things that I think I've heard you say are important are in our foundation and our data analysis. So if you pluck one of these out, you kind of tweak with the whole network. So they're all important. So you didn't say that, but based on some of the things you've said, I'm saying that to you. One of the things that we've had a lot of conversation about is kind of how we have done the storytelling behind what we've done. There's a lot of information, and the steering committee struggled as well of feeling like they had to make some decisions, and we realized we haven't given all of the information that we have, so our next phase in our work is to flesh the story out for each of these corridors a little bit more. And I think that's what you're asking for. The one sticky wicket I'm not quite sure what to do with in what I've heard is like which corridors do we think are gonna generate the most use? So I kind of think I need to think through with Ben and Bergen and Rebecca and steering committee, we think through that piece a little bit. I think a little bit of that is build it and they will come. Once you have a network, people start using it. A well-built, safe, three things that Bergen had up was safe, whatever, her three things. If you build that network in that way, people are going to use it. So I think in my mind of going back and saying, okay, we heard from council, how does this shift our approach? I feel like I have direction. Now, whether you all feel united on that is your call and not mine, but I think I feel like we have good stuff to work with.

Can you be really clear about what you're going to bring back then so that we can understand how these decisions are made or like what what we're looking at because I don't feel like, I just want us to have an easier process and also to be able to go through and do what we need to do because this is too hard.

Yeah, and I agree with what Jess is saying. Yeah, you're telling the story, but I think what we want to see is how you build that story. Yes. And the assumptions that you use to build that story. And right now, that's not super clear to me.

Yes, so we had a meeting at 1.30 today where we went through a different PowerPoint presentation of how to retell that story where it is more of that. Attention everyone, it is 7.50.

The library closes in 10 minutes at 8 o'clock. Again, it is 7.50. We are closing in 10 minutes. Please gather your belongings and head to the nearest exit.

Thank you. What we will bring back, I don't know specifically because this is something we wrestled with today, but what we talked about is kind of like a chapter, for lack of a better word, on each greenway or each corridor where you kind of understand Here's the connection point from point A to point B. Here are the options that we had. Here's how we narrowed down. And here's how community engagement fed into it. And it might be our team sitting together at a table saying, we have all this information. What do we think is the best one? And that's probably where we'll come back and say, this is the best judgment from all of us, all of the community input and the steering committee input. How that looks. what format it is in. We just had this discussion on 130 today. So I don't know. Does that help?

Kind of, yeah. I mean, it helps a little bit. I think the piece that I would just like to make sure that we can do is have a way to affirm those things that is like, easy to get through and coherent and chunked in a way that makes sense to you all or something some way to get us through understanding it and making choices or affirming what you all have decided because i think right now it just feels too like nebulous and too kind of um confusing to feel like I just am always thinking about what is the board saying versus what are individuals saying, and I can't suss that out right now. And I guess I could go back and watch the tape a bunch of times, and even then I'm not sure I would know. So I think that is something that I don't, I don't care what the options are necessarily as long as they make sense. I just need some way for us to get through it so that it's board decisions.

Well, I will affirm that I am comfortable with your interpretation of what you heard tonight. I'm curious if others can affirm that as well. Do you think that she heard as well? Okay. So I think going with that and then coming back, and it probably would be clearer when you do present it, even though we don't know what that will be. We trust that what you present, we will be able to understand, because it will be more concrete.

Thank you. And I think that, to Louie's point, when you come and you tell us your story, then council can then say, wow really you know we thank you for sharing it now we understand what your thought process were but our value here is different or you hit our value on the head like whatever that's right whatever it is i think when we get to that level of granularity we'll be able to have those important discussions yeah that's right okay thank you so much thank you for working through it and thank you for um whatever you're going to bring back

I believe we're talking about environment and housing.

We'll see you after class.

We've lost friends. And Taz and Brittany, who need no introduction at this point, are weekly checking. I think we can get started, and then if there's anything that you feel like you need to pause, because people really need to hear it, but a lot of it may just be kind of your intro.

I'm sure this will take like five to ten minutes. Stop it. Taz is doing it again.

Oh, it's like literally two of us. It's getting a little weird. I was hoping we were going to start, you know.

Do we need a break?

I think we can take a little break. Okay.

How much money could we save if we turned your building seat up by three degrees?

Or just turn it off. How do you turn it off?

So it's really cold in here. Is it because the other end gets so much sun, and it's like one system, so it's cooling back effectively, but it floods? No, it can't be.

When Sabrina was at work, she used to give me like a shovel.

they were already three of us were having Alright y'all, we're going to get started. We have some people back. Let's do it. um um mentioned, just to reiterate, this is a set of, this conversation is part of a set of informal discussions that are intended to kind of precede formal deliberations about the draft LUMO that will hopefully start later this year, in the next month or so, if possible. Our goal in these informal discussions is to use As a framework, the main interests that you all identified earlier in the year, at our last meeting last week, we talked about the use of feminist goals, economic development, and building government in the public realm. And then tonight, we're going to talk about Two other goals, housing diversity and sustainability in supply, and environment and resilience. And so, as we've done in the prior conversations, the goal this evening is going to be to kind of work through the framework of goals and interests that you all have identified, talk about some of the trade-offs that are associated with trying to meet those goals and interests, and then talk through some of the ways that the draft will attempt to address those trade-offs there are going to be a couple of important items for us to get feedback on and so um we generally found that the framework that it all established last week was really helpful to get an indication to do that again So again, in that housing, diversity, sustainability, and supply general interest, we all identified five specific interests tied to housing. And I think generally, we try to boil that down into some of the most significant interests and trade-offs. The ones that rise to the top are

It is now 8 o'clock and the library is closed. We are open again tomorrow at 10 a.m. Have a good night.

Some of the most significant tradeoffs that arise to the surface are this natural tension that exists between supporting housing that's affordable to low to moderate income households and then just generally supporting market rate housing, the overall housing supply in our community. We know there's a tension between potentially supporting residential infill, which is established as a kind of interest through the community strategy, but also preserving established neighborhoods, and similarly, another community interest of supporting housing diversity, and then balance that against the interest in protecting immigrant character. So some of the ways in which the draft MUMO is attempting to balance some of these mysterious trade-offs are updates to the town's inclusionary zoning ordinance, and creation of new incentives for affordable housing. Updates to the town's residential occupancy limit for unrelated people. Draft modals to allow more residential density in some zoning districts and in some areas in certain zoning districts. And then as part of that balancing act, the draft will include some standards that are intended to limit the size and the impact of new housing in some of our existing neighborhoods. So the first topic we're going to talk about is inclusionary zoning. We're going to kind of make sure we're all on the same page in terms of what the current inclusionary zoning ordinance does as a jumping off point to where the draft BUMO will take us when it comes to inclusionary zoning. So just as a reminder, the existing inclusionary zoning ordinance in LUMO today includes mandatory requirements for subdivisions and mandatory requirements for multi-family development. But those come with a couple of important cabinets, right? So the mandatory requirements for subdivisions apply to subdivisions with five or more lots. In the four plus years that I've been working for the town, we've only seen one subdivision that's come through with five or more lots. But as part of the omnibus tax amendments were made earlier this year and as further improvements in the draft LUMO, we're really hoping to see more subdivisions, right? We don't know that there'll be but we do want to see more subdivision-related activity. An important caveat for the mandatory requirements for multifamily development, we know that as a matter of state law, those have only ever applied to for-sale projects. They do not apply to rentable projects. So that's kind of the status of the existing LUMO. At some point it will be the old LUMO. um as we've proposed some changes in in the draft when it comes to inclusionary zoning one of our guiding principles is to not take away meaningful tools that have been proven to be effective for the town we want to put the towns kind of tools in a more robust position. We want to make sure that we are adequately equipped to deal with our challenges around affordable housing. We do not want to take away meaningful and effective tools. So with that in mind, here's what the draft blue line includes. It continues to include mandatory requirements for subdivisions. It no longer includes mandatory requirements for multifamily development, but it adds Voluntary incentives for subdivisions and voluntary incentives for multifamily development. This might seem like we're creating kind of a gap, right? I've just broken the core principle that I mentioned a couple minutes ago. But I think what's really important to keep in mind is this context for how the town has regulated multifamily development and how we've received commitments for affordable housing from multifamily development for the last many, many years. Both under the current LUMO inclusionary zoning framework and under the draft framework, conditional zoning has really been the operative tool that has help the town get affordable units out of multifamily development, whether those units were for sale or rental. And the numbers really bear out in a pretty stark way when it comes to the track record. Basically, law and predecessors have established when it comes to just how effective the tool conditional learning is. If you look at the last couple of decades Capitol Hill's work with affordable housing. Before 2011, which was when inclusionary zoning was first going to click onto the books, we had 200-something affordable units committed through various processes. From 2011 to 2018, the town received commitments for 11 affordable units. Those were all for sale units, and there was outside of those for sale projects that included those affordable units, there was a lot of rental development. That's from 2011 to 2018 without conditional zoning. From 2018 onward, the town has received commitments for over 600 affordable units. About 400 of those have been commitments for rental affordable units, and about 200 of those have been commitments for for sale units. So again, conditional zoning is a It's a workforce. It is getting a lot of affordable units, commitments for affordable units for the town. And we don't intend to make changes that really significantly or at all degrade the town's ability to get units through the conditional zone. What we do want to do, though, is make sure that as we're trying to open up other opportunities for development of pathways, development of review processes, the conditional zoning isn't the only kind of way for projects to move forward. We're trying to create these buy-write opportunities for development to move forward, and that's where these voluntary incentives become really important. And so, DraftLumo is going to include these incentives for buying affordable housing, Some of the things that they're going to include are higher buy-write thresholds. Basically the ability for a project to be larger than it otherwise would be allowed to be before coming to council for approval. We have examples we've talked about in many of the multi-family residential zoning districts. we talked about my rate thresholds of 30 units or 30 000 square feet of residential floor area the thresholds and the bonuses that included in the draft would allow a project that meets our current affordability goals to go up to 48 units, or 48,000 square feet of residential floor area. So pretty significant jump in, 60% jump in the number of units in the amount of floor area, without having to come to council. And that means projects get to forego not just time, but also risk, right? And we know that coming before an elected body is always going to be a risky proposition for a developer. So being able to forego that is a really significant benefit. We've also got some kind of bread and butter, more traditional bonuses packed in here. Dimensional bonuses that would increase height, local floor area, reduce setbacks. kind of the traditional bonuses that folks think about when they talk about density bonuses. We're also including some bonuses that are intended to apply to much smaller scale development. The first two generally speak to much larger scale development, but, you know, we're constructed by examples like gas port development, right, a four-unit project that had to go through a conditional zoning. It's really not something we want to replicate if possible. So one of the bonuses that's involved or included in the draft is this notion that a fourplex could be built anywhere the two unit development would otherwise be the maximum allowed as long as there are two affordable units in that fourplex. So again, just allowing tactical density in a couple of areas or really anywhere in town, if it meets that goal of providing affordable housing. We're also, when it comes to subdivisions, proposing a 50% reduction in the minimum lot size for subdivisions that meet affordable housing markets associated with these bonuses. So basically doubling the density that would be allowed with a subdivision if that subdivision is meeting the town's affordability goals. And so these incentives, I think there's been some questions around, based on how do we know, how do we have a reasonable basis to believe that these are gonna be effective? We got some really robust economic analysis done a couple of years ago as part of this project, and it basically told us two things, that density bonuses only work if they are very generous and paired with some other form of relief. So that's what we've proposed to do here. We've got really generous, conventional-based density bonuses tied to procedural relief, tied to this ability to not have to go in front of the council if you meet these affordability targets. kind of general basis to believe that these bonuses are going to work. And we have an opportunity to experiment. I think one of the things I mentioned earlier is we're not trying to replace conditional zoning. We're trying to create new opportunities outside of conditional zoning. what I'll point out is This 47 unit project, Stan's Place, is the smallest kind of traditional conditional zoning that the town has seen in that six year period. And when I say traditional, I mean market grade, mixed income projects. There are obviously much larger projects, but we haven't seen and traditional multi-family or town-run projects come through the conditional zoning process smaller than 47 units. The three outliers here, two of them, Gasport and Peach Apartments, so dedicated, purpose-built, 100% affordable units, There's a really weird outlier right in the middle. That's the light bridge project they all approved within the last year. That was that mixed use project on Weaver Dairy Road with the potential for a daycare up front with like four town homes, like five or six town homes out back. Under the new rules, that sort of mixed-use development would not need a conditional zoning, but I think there was some quirks to that property that really required it to come for a conditional zoning. So for all intents and purposes, 47 units is that lower amount that we've seen over the last six years doing conditional zoning. And so when we're talking about development incentives, what we're really talking about is this space, right? The space where we're just not seeing mixed income properties being developed. We're not seeing market rate multifamily or townhome development. It's what fills the gap that's left by that lower bound for conditional zoning. So again, it's an opportunity to kind of shore up our overall strategy towards getting affordable housing, making sure that conditional zoning continues to be a really robust tool, and that we're adding something to fill in the gap. It's going to be something that we really monitor closely, and if we find that the incentives aren't working, they can always be ratcheted up. That is an easy thing for us to monitor and propose to you all just in the course of discussion of continuous improvement in the draft.

Are we allowed to ask questions?

Is it okay if we ask questions as you go?

Not even a question, but like, we put a pin in this conversation to think about our next conversation because I think this is a place where, and maybe I'm wrong, but I see trade-offs here. So we're saying that we want to incentivize density that could be available all over town if you're meeting these criteria. But then I'm concerned, what if this is a sensitive area for stormwater? So how do we address those trade-offs? And to me, if that is an accurate kind of synopsis of what could potentially happen here, again, that's a value judgment, where we have a value comp, where we have a trade-off. And we're going to say, maybe some of us are like, yeah, let's risk it. Some of us may not be more risk averse. But does that make sense? Is that Taz? Is that too off-board, or is that?

It's not too awkward. I will just say for this piece in particular, the only element that we talked about that directly implicates Is the four pluses allowed by right if they include affordable housing? The other pieces are obviously are tied to density, but they're ultimately gonna be based on what zoning district are we talking about? Multifamily development is still only allowed in certain zoning districts. This isn't getting at the notion that we're gonna increase that density in certain areas. as opposed to what was thought about right. still going to be subject to all our stormwater standards i would certainly imagine that any development that's having to hit that threshold where they're taking advantage of more buy rate developments like 30 units or more that's going to be large enough that they would come under the new standards for 100-year storm downstream impact analysis kind of the whole nine yards when it comes to stormwater management

That goes with that conversation. Next slide.

Can you also give a little bit of more information about the bonuses? You said it needed to be really generous. But I guess as I'm trying to understand, we want to make it effective, and we also don't want to overcompensate people. I don't know how to say it. So how did you get to the very generous? Like, what's the empirical evidence for that?

And before you start answering his segues with the question that was just asked and what Louie's trying to get at, how do we hear also that when we're incentivizing things, when we're giving the bonus to make it effective, that we aren't somehow also negating other values?

Yeah, absolutely. So again, I can start there. One of the things that we're very mindful about what we're tying to these bonuses is that is how we do that. We're very mindful about what standards we're tying to these bonuses. We're tying standards like floor area, ratio, height, setbacks um we're not tying rcd stormwater impervious surface i think that's when it comes to dimensional standards in particular the standards that can be that can actually move the needle the most in some cases are environmental standards. But I think that's that clear point where I think we heard it loud and clear that there was early on in this process that there was not an appetite to tie environmental standards to affordable housing bonuses. And so I think that's the biggest values judgment that is factored in here. and we're really focusing on other dimensional standards that are a little bit more like value neutral. And so in terms of how we achieved the actual numbers, right, 60%, I think we were basically kind of squeezed on both ends, right? On the one hand, we heard from our economic analysis that, again, we've got to be really generous. I think the baseline of at least 50% was established by our economic analysis. But to your point that we were interested in, we don't want to go so far as to basically just throw the little books out the window, right? So we basically took what is It seems a little arbitrary, but what's a number greater than 50% that is not so extreme that we're doubling the height or doubling the overall building mass that you might see out of one of these larger multifamily projects? unless we're including incentives for even more significant um affordable thresholds some of those do get to kind of close to doubling height or floor area ratio but in exchange for offering 40 affordable units right so it's a it's a really significant jump That's really tailored to LIHTC projects, right? We know that we can create an administrative pathway for LIHTC projects, 75 unit is kind of the sweet spot for a lot of LIHTC projects, and that's built into these incentives as well. So it's an opportunity to, again, test something out in the world. There's no amount of analysis that's going to be able to pinpoint the absolute optimal bonus. So we are admittedly testing in a safe sandbox. And that notion of creating a safe sandbox is demonstrated by the comparison to to the conditional settings right we're not cannibalizing from the world of conditional settings where we know we have proven tools to get affordable housing we're trying to kind of like fertilize ground that just hasn't yet provided us any sort of housing i have other questions but i feel like maybe it's better to just like keep going So the next thing I want to talk about beyond those changes to inclusionary zoning, are real changes to residential occupancy limits in the draft LUMO. So, as many of you all know, today's LUMO, in a pretty roundabout way, limits occupancy of single-family homes in at least the R1 and R2, so the Residential 1 and Residential 2 zoning districts, to no more than four land-related individuals. And the R3 and R4 zoning districts have the next increment of density up. It's technically allowed to have a single-family home with land-related individuals, but those homes are just subject to a really restrictive floor area ratio. So it's allowed but difficult in those more intense zoning districts. The draft FUMO would do is allow up to eight unrelated people to live in most single-family homes in the R1 and up zone districts. It really relies on this notion that The most effective way to implement land use policy and land use rules is to make sure that we're enforcing impacts and not people. You know, we have heard a lot about the potential impacts, the real, the lived impacts of folks that maybe neighbors of the homes with more than four unrelated individuals. And we know that, especially here on campus, those are real, lived experiences. But most of those experiences are things that can be directly enforced on. Things like excessive parking, noise, litter. Those are objective, measurable, and visible impacts that can be enforced against. A major problem with the existing limit for unrelated individuals is that I think we all know, both internally and in the community, that it is an extremely difficult and essentially unenforceable rule. I want to just paint a quick picture of what it would look like to enforce on this four unrelated people limit. So let's say we get our code enforcement staff get a complaint from a neighbor. They have a notion, right? They have a really good notion that more than four unrelated people live in a single family home and exported them. It's not enough for a complaint, right? clear evidence that a violation has occurred. If our code enforcement officers were to knock on the door and ask how many people live here, I think it's a well-known practice that nobody on your campus is going to tell code enforcement, oh yeah, I have six other roommates. Okay. Admission by the residents is unlikely to be evidently received. It's not enough that there are five cars parked outside. That's not evidence that more than four unrelated people live in the home. To really gather objective evidence, short of some sort of smoking gun police that's been signed by seven people, our enforcement staff to get an administrative warrant and serve that warrant by going to the home with law enforcement having Chapel Hill police basically remove all the residents from the home while code enforcement staff enter the home and look for physical objective evidence that more than four people not just live in the home, but that they are unrelated, right? That they're not married, that they're not related by the various relationships that we define as counting as being related. As you can imagine, that's a pretty intrusive kind of action in service of the particular interests that we're trying to protect.

Yeah, I have a quick question. When we talked this summer, I had asked the question of how the enforcement is different if we go to the eight persons. And you said that the actual policing mechanism was the, or I understood you to say that the actual way that you have to send the officers and you have to prove those things, that that wouldn't change things. Is that correct? So it's still, no matter where we set the level, that situation is still what you have to do for enforcement.

That's absolutely true. And sorry, I have some more words.

Well, yeah, after you answer. I didn't want to interrupt the answer.

Yeah, got it. So that is absolutely true. That's where I'm going next. What that sets up, the current dynamic of how our main tool for enforcing for unrelated persons is limited. There's a pretty wide gap. There's a disproportionate relationship between the intrusiveness of our enforcement action and the interests that we're trying to serve. The eight unrelated people limit is based on the building code, which is at its core a life and safety code. It's a set of rules that are designed to protect life and safety. And so when there's a violation of that code, again, same action in terms of how we enforce against that code, but a much more proportional relationship between the interests that we're trying to protect, which is the life and safety of the occupants, and the intrusiveness of the action. So as we're thinking about how do we create a more equitable code and make sure that our enforcement of that code is as equitable as possible, making sure that there's good proportionality between the tools that we have at our disposal and the interests that we're trying to protect is really critical. So as for that, even though, again, it's the same action, but it's in service of different kind of core interests.

To me, it seems like a difference in definition. I could make a case that eight people living in three bedrooms is a health and safety violation. It just hasn't been defined that way by the state. So anyway, yeah. But I think it's just important for everybody to understand it's not like we have a, at the lower level, there's a horrendous enforcement action that has to take place, but it's much better at a higher level. It's the same action.

Yeah, yeah, not at all.

But also that we're not enforcing, would we enforce eight? Or nine? I guess I'm not understanding that. If we're focused on impacts, not people, then it seems like that number isn't gonna lead to more enforcement even at the higher level, right? I apologize.

I don't think that that holds true. In talking to code enforcement staff, there is much more zealous enforcement when it comes to building code because of that life safety justification. We do not want to put residents at risk. That is one of our core missions is to protect the life safety of folks living in buildings within our jurisdiction. And so I think we know that there is more sales enforcement when it comes to building code because of that really critical life safety motivation and the risks involved with not enforcing when it comes to building code.

So to build on this, if we change from four to eight, does that mean that we'll see different types of structures?

It's possible, Ray, that over time, if folks are building purpose-built rentals, that the move from four to eight would motivate them to do that. And right now, we don't have a particularly large stock of homes with more than four bedrooms. If you look at the typical housing stock across the entire town, Only about 15% of existing homes have five or more bedrooms. They're not particularly clustered here in campus. They're kind of spread out. Yeah, you can imagine neighborhoods where you see clusterings of five or more bedrooms. So it's possible that over time the market would kind of react to that.

But they wouldn't be built to different safety standards. So is that the question you're asking, Louis, or would they be different?

If we go from four to eight, are we going to start seeing people building structures that can accommodate eight across our transit corridor?

Yes. Well, we haven't allowed for that, though. We don't have these zones where you can build an eight-bedroom.

I think you can. It's a rooming house or whatever that designation is, right? No, you can build a, I'm sorry.

You can build a single family house with as many bedrooms as you want.

Yeah, yeah.

you just can't admit that you're having unrelated people living in it but we can't enforce it no matter what the number is single families exempt from all like size regulations anyway it's not but the the regulations aren't about size it's about the people living in there well but if we're talking about shape of structure that's what it's like a single family home doesn't we exempted them from all the dimensional standards can i suggest we might we might be in a discussion format and it might be better for let to let pass keep going

I do have a question. I guess to me this one feels like if there's a way that we could just I don't know if y'all are ready or still want to talk about it more but this one to me feels like something that we talked about during the omnibus and you'll remember better than I did I know we didn't do it at the time and so to me this just feels like one that perhaps council would like to just make its decision on and keep moving, or we can add it to additional discussion for later. But if there's a majority who would like to make a decision on it, then I think we should do that. Because we also have a lot more to do. Right.

I have a basic question that I missed in the materials and tonight. The benefits, what are we gaining from making this change?

Thank you. So, a couple of things. I think, one, I mentioned this more, you know, less quantifiable benefit of we want our code to be more equitable, right? We want to make sure that there's good proportionality between the sorts of violations that we're creating, the sorts of tools we have to enforce against those violations, and the risk that folks incur when they are, knowingly or unknowingly, in violation of the code. I think when you think about the risk of having an interaction with law enforcement, is not a risk that all people in our community kind of weigh equally. You know, there are vulnerable populations that weigh that risk very differently than others. And so we just want to be mindful of if there are opportunities to have fewer people be subject to the risk of being a violation of our ordinance, whether they know that they're doing it or not, I think that's an important and equitable consideration. There's also this kind of notion of what about the folks that are in violation? What does it do to them? What is the risk that they incur despite the virtue of living in a home that is not fully sanctioned by the town? We have heard stories of predatory landlords that take advantage of that gray area that they potentially are knowingly putting their residents in But then residents are stuck in a, between a rock and a hard place. The hoarding violation against the landlord potentially opens them up to private eviction because they are living in an unauthorized home. That's another kind of dynamic. This piece of equitable considerations.

We did hear from someone who addressed that. Keep going. In terms of, I'm sorry. Could he finish listing? He's still answering the question I posed, which was, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that. Go ahead, sorry.

Yeah, so outside of those more equitable considerations, we do also know that congregate living is a genuine tool that folks are using to be able to live in increasingly more expensive communities. And that holds true for for students, for young professionals, for older adults that might be looking to live in some sort of congregate housing situation. So one of our opportunities for just creating more housing diversity, one is to have diversity in the built form, where the buildings look like themselves, but also allowing more diversity in housing arrangements is another potential benefit of a rule like this, or a change like this. And ultimately, we know that there are growing pressures on the town's housing stock. We know that university is a major source of that pressure. We have some inclination of the expected increase in enrollment over the next several years. We also know that the university is necessarily planning to account for all of that enrollment growth with their own housing. So this is an opportunity to relieve pressure from other parts of the community by allowing existing housing stock near campus to be used by more individuals.

Two more questions. One, there are some things that we can enforce, and we probably will have to hear from Chief Lakehue, but how are we going to be accountable if we say that we're shifting from four to eight, we're allowed to believe in the home, and one of the chief concerns has been parking, and then also noise from parties. How are we committed to enforcing that.

I think like you mentioned, that's a great question for the Chief. I know that our track record is really good. In Northside, for example, there's this limit on the number of vehicles parked on our property. That's easy to identify. It's easy to know that a violation is occurring. And you can, on a very objective basis, provide fines and that sort of thing. Right. They have to be reported, right? Exactly.

So that's one thing that we need to say to the public. And then the last question, thank you all for your indulgence, is there's a theme in emails that we've gotten of, If we say, if Chapel Hill says that we're about creating more affordable housing, missing middle, shifting this to where it is legal and acceptable for this type of population, right, the number of people in these homes will lead to, their theory is it will lead to more investors buying up homes in order to do this do you see this as being a change that this will drive it more or what's your help us think about it because we need to respond to these folks well help me again because I'm dense

So I think that there's a lot of dynamics there. When you look at areas near campus, homes near campus are really expensive already, both for professional reasons and because I just find it to be fascinating on Zillow or Redfin, not infrequently. I think right now the One of the more affordable homes for sale here near campus is like a 1,800 square foot home, three bedroom, two bath, $719,000. There's a two bedroom, two bath home west of campus, $750,000. It's going to be like 1,300 square feet. So the homes here in campus are really expensive as it is. I mean, think about the AMI, the area up there, household income that's required to make homes at that price affordable. At minimum, just barely cutting by based on our definition of affordability, homes in the $750,000 range, that's like 150% AMI household income. So again, it's expensive to live near campus as is. It also means it's expensive for an investor, right, that's focused entirely on cash flow. Some of those investors may be able to have things penciled out. So I can't say whether it's going to be this massive rush in investment or not. But we know that those dynamics are just really fraught near campus. It's an expensive place to buy. It's an expensive place to live, as is. One of the things we typically see is that there's a strong preference among students to have their own bedrooms. don't see a strong rush for students to get off campus only to then share a bedroom. So this notion that three or four bedroom homes are going to double in occupancy, I think that's not really borne out by the behaviors that we typically see among students. We know that there are extreme examples. I think we have all had friends who lived in these unimaginably when we were in school or you know we've all seen those examples but by and large um i think we know that there's a preference for a single bedroom occupancy thank you council um i just want us to be making an informed decision so

we need to stop at a same time tonight and so either way we're either going to need another work session or we need to move through some stuff and you won't tell me what you want to do but there is a choice maybe i mean i have talked to many of my colleagues on this and i'm not hearing a lot of support for the for the shift to eight so i don't know if we take a temperature for that now or

what the best procedure is, but I think, again, it's quarter to nine.

I think anything if we're ready to make a decision on it and give an indication, a straw vote, we do not vote in work sessions. If we can give an indication, then I would love for us to do so so we can keep moving. Because I was not one of those people. Council, do you have an interest in shifting to eight? Council? should uh staying at four okay so straw poll is that we are staying at four um certainly anything council if you need additional information or understanding of the issue to explain to the community i'm guessing that staff is willing to have those conversations or help us out that would be great thank you i would also just like to note that i think enforcement i've always been told that enforcement has been about capacity but if it's about the the zeal for enforcement then i think that's kind of concerning or i guess i would like to understand that a little better because either it is a ruler isn't and i wouldn't really want to not enforce things just because it's not a number that enforcement staff cares for but i also think that if the parking limitations like the northside neighborhood initiative was created to address this issue and so if parking limitations has helped then how do we consider that for other places too where we're trying to not have things go to student-only housing it's that students of course should live anywhere but we don't want it to be not appealing to families and other people

I just want to say something. The recommendation that staff has put forward, I want to make clear that I'm not in disagreement with anything that you all have put forward. I'm really not. It makes absolute sense to me. The points you're making around equity make absolute sense to me as well. And my lack of support is not because y'all are bringing something that I don't think is of value or anything like that. I really sat with this and I talked with community members who were real advocates for keeping it at four. I spoke to other council members who in the past made decisions regarding that four as well. And the feedback that I got was a constant keep it where it is. And living in the Northside community, even though this would continue to support it, being able to see how we are still struggling even with that at the core where there are developers coming in and using single family homes as commercial properties and what that does to the taxes for surrounding residential family homes is one of the driving points for me knowing that that is a potential that they can you know rebuild, remodel, and create these dynamics for eight people. I'm sandwiched between commercial properties with students, and so I live with this day in, day out. And I've seen how the Northside community has been impacted by very predatory developers who are not working in the interest of students at all. It really is about the bottom dollar. For me, those are also equity points for me as well, and so I just wanted to be, like, just let you all know, let my colleagues know why I'm making this decision that I'm making. It has nothing to do with the lack of, like, everything you said, Taz, I agree with, but I also just don't.

Thank you, I think that's helpful. Okay, let's roll.

All right, so another way in which Stratham was willing to meet some of the housing needs of the community is to allow some additional residential density by some certain districts. and within those zoning districts to potentially allow further density based on specific characteristics so uh this is something that you've all seen before uh this notion that um you know in many of our residential learning districts today uh kind of top out at a two unit per lot density um the draft limo with both up really only one district in the r3 district really kind of converging the r3 and r4 districts it also creates a couple of new districts specifically the rd district r a r b and r c are just kind of analogs of existing districts but rd would be a new kind of missing middle oriented district that isn't mapped anywhere in town today it becomes a tool for you all to use either as part of adopting a new zoning map or in a more targeted way going forward and as a more targeted approach going forward when there are properties that merit that additional density The other thing, and I wanted to circle back to this because we discussed it a little bit last week, is this notion of some within these zoning districts, is there an opportunity to allow for additional density based on certain kind of location-specific criteria? When we talked about those location-specific criteria last week, I think what we heard was this notion that many of these districts are located along arterial roads, which are going to be our larger capacity roads. MLK, Weaver Dairy, Fordham. Pretty clear that you've been saying yes, additional density along those roads makes a lot of sense. We heard some significant skepticism around this notion of collector roads, which was kind of that next increment of our road classification down. And I think there was also a little bit of questioning around this notion of additional density here in Greenways as well. Question marks around both of those points here, and I'll touch on both of them in just a minute. The printouts on your desk will be relevant to that discussion, so get them ready, but we'll touch on one thing before looking at the maps. I mentioned that one of the notions we want to make sure we're balancing in the draft is as new housing types are allowed in various parts of town, as additional density is allowed in certain parts of town, we have to balance those against these interests of preserving existing neighborhoods, preserving some notion of neighborhood character. And so some of the ways in which the draft of LUMO does that, it includes size limits for duplexes, on-up, missing middle housing types, are all going to be size limited. And generally speaking, as we get more units, the total floor area increases but at a slower rate, right? So the average unit size kind of decreases as we get more and more units. There are existing front yard parking restrictions that are going to apply more broadly to these communal housing types, basically limiting the amount of a front yard that can be devoted to parking because we know that A lot of front yard parking can detract from that pedestrian experience very quickly. Street tree requirements are going to apply for essentially five or more units, right, once you get beyond just a fourplex. street trees, so some prescriptive standards around landscaping in front of a home. Stormwater management is going to apply to various iterations of these missing middle housing types. And then RCD buffers, we haven't discussed in a ton of detail, but I think one thing to really kind of wrap our heads around when it comes to RCD is that a lot of existing single family parcels in town, right, existing single family homes are built in places that wouldn't be allowed to be built under today's standards. They were built before 2003. They're subject to much smaller RCD standards than our current rules would impose. And that grandfathering only applies to existing kind of one and two family homes. The grandfathering wouldn't apply to a three family or four family development. So the RCE is another one of those kind of limits on where some of these more dense missing middle housing types could go and check on where it could fit into existing neighborhoods. I wanted to follow up on a request from the last meeting to kind of conceptualize what some of these different density levels look like, especially once you start to add in things like density bonuses for subdivisions. So if you'll bear with me for a moment, I'm just gonna kind of walk us through a quick, as hypothetical as you can get exercise, because these four squares represent Parcels that more or less just don't exist in Chapel Hill, right? These are perfectly flat, perfectly square, no RCD, no steep slopes, no environmental constraints whatsoever. These are in these pristine, hypothetical, non-existent parcels. Each one of these is an acre in size, and I just want to use these as an example using the R1 zoning district. to just get an understanding at a gross level of what some of these different density changes look like. So as a reminder, our old standards for the R1 zoning district was a minimum lot size of 17,000 square feet. So if you have an acre of land, you could Basically, two lots with some change. Obviously, if all you had was this one acre, you would just split the lot in half. But just keep the math simple, right? So two 17,000 square foot lots and some change. If you had two acres, you could fit five minimum size lots on two acres.

You're talking about subdividing the lot right now? Yes. Not the structure.

No, not the structure yet.

I'm getting a little tired, so I'm asking ridiculous questions. No, no, no, not ridiculous at all.

Here are the structures, right? So under our old rules, we could do two lots. I'm realizing the... The colors are a little difficult to see here. But you can do two units on one lot under the old rules. We made it easier to do two units on one lot with the missing middle, how to twist this from a few years back. It used to be that if you wanted to do two units on a lot, the lot had to be twice the minimum lot size. So it wasn't actually getting that increased density. People all improved that a couple years ago. two units either detached or attached. As of the omnibus tax amendments, they all approved earlier in the year, which were meant to be part of a broader Lumo rewrite package, but they could be accelerated. the minimum lot size in our one zoning district was reduced to 10 000 square feet so on that same one acre you can now do four minimum size lots and have about 3 000 square feet left over and again two units on each of those lots arranged in whatever fashion is kind of reasonable, right? Attached units, detached units, as long as you're complying with the setbacks and impervious service limits, all those standards for each lot, it's a good deal.

If you're in this perfect lot, let's say part of your perfect lot is the RCD, you can't do this, right? Exactly.

If part of your perfect lot is the RCD, none of these little blue squares can be in the RCD. It's not perfect anymore.

There are no tree coverage requirements on these perfect lots.

This is just looking at that minimum density, minimum lot size, and the number of units you can put in that lot. I mentioned earlier, one of the things that's included in the draft LUMO is a pretty substantial bonus for subdivisions that provide affordable units. That bonus is a 50% reduction in minimum lot size. So again, on this perfect one-acre square, where you would otherwise be allowed to do four lots, with a 50% reduction, you can do eight lots and have some change left over. and on those eight lots you could do two units each with the 20 affordability target that will be tied to that bonus you basically look at at least three affordable units or some sort of associated with that when you do the location density bonuses would it be the same

as the affordable housing. Are you going to get to that?

Yeah. So with the location-based incentives, again, whatever those location-based incentives may be, I think that is really good ground for conversation. Those location-based incentives in the R1 zoning district, based on the table we saw earlier, would bump that per lot. allowance from two units per lot to four units per lot. You start to get some cool cottage port type configurations when you're looking at densities like this. Opticos Design, the founders of this notion of visiting middle housing, identified 15 to 33, I think was the oddly specific upper range to their density estimates, but 15 to 33 units per acre is what they consider to be kind of quintessential cottagecore density. So this is kind of getting us to cottagecore density, again, in a perfect world with these perfect zoning blocks. We know in practice, right, Parcels around town don't look anything like this. They are oddly shaped. They have existing loams on them that oftentimes have to be worked around. And so in practice, what we might be dealing with is You know, a large home that splits off its backyard and has some duplexes built in there. Example on the right, you know, a large home has some extra land off to the side, I guess, to subdivide a couple units on there. The example on the right is a good example of where RCD would come into play. You know, our RCD kind of grandfathering doesn't just go away and try to build more densely. It also goes away if you try to subdivide. So in this example, on the right side of the screen, you've got a stream adjacent to these properties to the north of the street, assuming as most of our parcels were parceled out before our current RCD rules, these homes are subject to a much smaller RCD standard than our current 150 foot buffers. If those lots were to subdivide, the new buffers would apply. And so they become a further restraint on density. So all that is to say that there are these kind of idealized versions of, or depending on who you're talking to, they're either idealized or like worst case scenario versions of what additional density could look like in town. But ultimately those gross numbers really got to look at that in the context of what are the real conditions around town. We just know that there are so many different constraints from existing conditions, existing lot layouts, environmental factors that are gonna limit the rate at which those new rules actually going to lead to on-the-ground changes. Again, depending on your perspective, it's either a benefit, a feature, or a bug of the standards. I think what it ultimately does is it speaks to this notion of what are some rate-limiting factors in the real world outside of the ordinance that ensure that we're neither blocking neighborhoods in amber or subjecting neighborhoods to massive changes in a short period of time. We know that these individual decisions by individual homeowners, individual property owners, tied with all these various constraints, even if we open the door, these other real-world factors are going to slow the rate at which those changes can actually be implemented on the ground.

Taz, is there a way through, I don't know, like GIS mapping or something, to get a sense of I don't know, where the maximum build-out potential tends to be versus places where it's just totally ridiculous to even think that you would get more than one more unit out of a current person. I know it wouldn't be perfect, but well, yeah, I hear you. I guess it's just hard because everything is so...

usual and then we layer on all these other rules i'm just wondering if there's any like patterns that one could discern where there's more or less opportunity there are some very crude and that's where it's like we can do some very crude kind of gis work um and at least i think make it very clear that we're not talking about every lot or really anywhere near every lot, right? In a lot of our existing neighborhoods, there's so many parcels that would be impacted by an expansion of RCD. It's not the case that every parcel is large enough to subdivide. I think where it gets tricky to go much further than that is What's the relationship of the location of existing homes on the parcel? Even if the parcel is technically big enough, would it actually... Are you actually going to tear down that home and build two? Yeah, so again, it's at the most crude, most gross filter. I think it's easy to do beyond that. We get into, like, much more sophisticated analysis.

Well, then another variable is HOAs, right? Which supersede us every time.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thanks. Okay, so now is when the mouse starts to to come and play, because we wanted to follow up on this last week's discussion about what these potential location-specific changes in density could be based on. Just like the OMG team did before, I want to focus on recentering us on what the community tells us about where we want to direct more growth. This comes straight from the community strategy, and it says that the strategy states that Chapel Hill direct road to greenways, transit corridors, and then both large infill sites and smaller. So that's really going to play a grounding principle around where these complication-specific enhancements to density could come from. So we're trying to think about what could those criteria look like. This is what we're going back to. showing it up here but much more legible in the impact that you've got map one is basically our our original proposal that we shared last week this notion that We would use arterial streets, collector streets, and then proximity to greenway entrances, or in the case of greenways that are just adjacent to the road, we'd use the entire greenway itself. We'd use those three criteria as an opportunity to have more density in some of these districts. As I mentioned earlier, the arterioles, I think we got clear consensus that we're good with that. A lot of questions about collector streets, which is that next rung down in the classification system. One of the biggest takeaways that I got from that discussion was that the definition of collector just encompasses the casks too wide of a net. That the on the ground kind of Infrastructure, the on-the-ground conditions that get popped out once you apply that collector filter, there's too varied. There's too much diversity. And at least one end of the spectrum, those on-the-ground conditions do not meet our vision of a complete community. And that is very true. I think we took a second look, a harder look, at what those collector conditions are. there are some blue ovals on this map. And they kind of identify some of what I think were kind of like the head scratcher roads from that collector classification, roads that made it seem like, hey, this collector classification really isn't working for us the way we would hope it is. And when you look at some of the on-the-ground conditions, Kenmore is a super steep road with no sidewalks, but our classification calls it a collector. Google's review was kind enough to offer this image of a parent and child walking down Dixie Drive, partially on the road, partially on the shoulder, on what is labeled as a collector's street. These are clear head scratchers. This is where that why met the collector's tree classification is clearly breaking down when it comes to on-the-ground conditions like this. That being said, the collector classification is still a helpful starting point. But I think what the discussion last week really made clear is that it should only be the starting point. It shouldn't be the end point. So we look for some other options. What can we add to that filter? What additional criteria can we add that get us to a more meaningful place? And when you talk about the community, the streets, key features we spent the first half of this meeting talking about is bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. So the collector's streets also conveniently have a pretty strong correlation to where our sidewalks are in Chapel Hill. So not all of them, obviously, but the first couple of examples, but when you apply this filter of where are sidewalks in Chapel Hill, the collector street classification starts to make a little bit more sense. So on map two, basically stripped out all the collector's streets that do not have sidewalks. So what's left are collectors with sidewalks, roads that serve an important vehicular function. They are thoroughfares through town. They help drivers get further into neighborhoods. But they also represent a commitment from the town, a commitment to maintaining infrastructure that's dedicated to more than just cars. It's dedicated to pedestrians. It's not mapped here, but when we tend to see bike lanes, bike lanes tend to go where sidewalks already are, because we've already identified that these are meaningful on-road connections. And so map two, again, this is a narrowed down list of streets, collectors with sidewalks. It starts to get much closer to this notion of where is the national density in the vision of a complete community strategy appropriate. A couple of quick caveats to map two. Any of these colored roads, the location-based density enhancements are only relevant where there's like a colored uh zoning district right so if you see just gray on the map that's not subject to these enhancements because those gray areas have some sort of zoning classification that's just not involved in these enhancements right so things like uh southern village like all the southern village for the most part of all that red and green in southern village um southern village is actually zones like R5, CZD, or something like that, that isn't subject to these classifications.

Why?

I think I know. Yeah, so R5 is really a multi-family district, or it's kind of evolving into a multi-family district. The location-based enhancements, we really wanted to tailor those to the more, like, lower density, missing middle types of homes. So we just didn't add that piece to R5.

Would NCDs and HOAs preempt being able to apply these bonuses?

So HOAs are, again, based on your perspective, for better or for worse, they preempt everything. What about the NCDs? So what we're proposing is that we want to very much follow this notion that we're respecting the letter of the NCD rules. There are some NCDs that explicitly prohibit things like duplexes. There are other NCDs that don't have explicit limitations on the type of housing that's allowed in those NCDs. They just have things like larger setbacks or different minimum lot sizes. And so in those cases, If there's a change to the existing zoning district, those would apply in the NCD, but in places like Northside, for example, where basically, Northside basically tops out at duplexes. So even though there is a lot of R3 and R4 in the Northside and Nine Rolls neighborhoods, these kind of location-based enhancements wouldn't apply in those NCDs because they explicitly limit the number of units that can be built on the lot.

Yeah. So do others and for different reasons. there are a lot of one house per acre NCDs. I mean, not a lot, but I can think of at least one. And those kind of look like they're grayed out as well.

at least some of them yeah so depending on the zoning district um again there are some zoning there are some ncds that impose a minimum lot size you might say the minimum lot size is an acre but we would follow whatever kind of explicit rules there are around what the ncds say can or can't be built on that plot. So if the NCD says no more than two units per lot, the way the NCD rules are generally set up is that they're all written to supersede the underlying zoning district. So if there's an explicit prohibition on more than two units in the NCD than that would require.

So when you said Northside's topped out of duplexes, does that include stuff like tiny houses or peewee homes or stuff like that? We could it any more than that, right?

So I was actually on the phone with Clinton for peewee homes yesterday. We know that that's a limitation in the current way that the roadside rules are written. And there's definitely an opportunity in the future to revisit those rules. I think one of the early kind of core principles of the blue marie so we weren't going to make substantive changes to the ncd rules because of how much kind of paper local engagement would be needed before we jumped into that yeah because like i can see i would be supportive

I would be supportive of, like, significant, like, bonuses, like, for Habitat for Humanity, or, like, assumptions, like, if it means that, like, they could put, we're gonna let them slide on some stuff to put in, like, a project that'd be all a portable house, and I, like, I would want to see that, you know?

But that's, like, elevate, like, peach. That was in Pine Hills. And so that's 10 units.

Yeah, so Peach did have to go through a rezoning to be able to do that. So it's definitely a possibility. Since Peach Apartments went through a conditional zoning, we've made a lot of strides in how fast we can move projects through conditional zoning. So one of the major improvements, and we hear people in the development community talking about this really significantly, is how much less painful it is to go through the additional zoning, right? So that's always going to be an option. But if we can create some higher rate opportunities, that's good too, but there's always going to be some areas where there's just not a good fit.

So when we talk about the bonuses, for affordable and, sorry, I lost my thought. I'll get it back. Oh, well, like to Louie's point around something like Habitat, I know we can't prioritize Habitat over other providers, but there is this like light tech geared towards Pathway, right, that is for people who are providing a huge number of affordable, if not all, right? So I mean, is that your interest, Louis, or is it something different? So it seems like we have that, just in a different, it's around the bonuses and the process speed, if you're above a certain percentage affordable.

And I'd say one way to meet that interest, I mentioned the the fourplex bonus, right, the notion that a fourplex could be built anywhere two units is allowed if there's 40%, so essentially two units of that fourplex are affordable. If there's an interest, if there's direction from council, we could, in kind of a targeted way, say that that fourplex bonus would apply in Northside. Although Northside is otherwise topped out at two units per lot, if Council's interested, we can make sure that that fourplex bonus applies to Northside. So that, I think, Council Member Rivers could be a way to make sure that, you know, Highly unlikely that one of our great developers is going to be building a fourplex with two of the units as opposed to four. So we're not calling out a specific for-profit or non-profit, but we know those mission oriented developers are going to be going to that kind of building.

But Taz, what we were talking about, also these incentives, also dovetailing with what you presented earlier with the inclusionary zoning,

Yeah, so that, the four-unit incentive, I mentioned it in relation to inclusionary zoning, because it's part of that bucket of incentives that we're creating to augment what we're doing with the conditionals.

I would be supportive of something like that, because I think northside in particular is a good place for people who may have like transportation limitations need access to bus routes to be able to live so like if we could get if that just led to one more development i think it'd be worth it agreed yeah i don't know anything dealing with northside without input from the community um that really requires a lot of just

um and do we need to make sure to have those discussions um so council is there an interest in considering with appropriate engagement what considering what the um the ability to do more plexes as long as 40 percent of them are affordable I don't care. Council? Yes. okay i'm seeing we would like to consider it sure but of course i would agree that i think having consultation and and a lot of transparency with the neighbors would be really really important on that one um could i ask you a question about the the iz before i forget because it's kind of related at this point um I think some of the things that I've been hearing from folks who were part of the original creation of the IZ is that it's not just that it actually gets units. I mean, we're so down zoned that it's like conditional zoning is going to be the way anyway. So like it feels like that number is not proving the point exactly. But I understand that it's a data point. But I guess what I've heard from folks is that it also sends a message in advance of people coming to a conditional zoning hearing. So I'm just wondering are there things that we could do even knowing that that cds are our method of getting the units after a certain size but are there kind of processes or internal policies or something that would that would send the interest in advance so people weren't coming and being like, well, that's not part of my financial model. Like, why did you tell me that type of thing? Or I'll try my luck and council might just go for it without or whatever.

I would just say it's a very, as a messaging tool, it's one that's very expensive and very risky. and exposes us to a lot of risks. I'm not arguing that.

I'm just wondering if there's another way to do that without you having the idea. Absolutely.

So I think one of the things we know is that Chapel Hill's reputation spreads far and wide. For a long time, Chapel Hill had a very... Because we're awesome, but go on. And so we can use that to our benefit. For a long time, Chapel Hill's reputation was... Don't go there. It's a difficult place to build. We are actively working on making sure that that reputational work reflects what it looks like to build in Chapel Hill today, which is driven by the community strategy, which is so crystal clear that if you are bringing forward a project that fits the town's needs, you're not gonna get run out of town, right? That we will work with you, we will make sure that, you know, the product gets in fair shape and moves forward. And ultimately that is a team effort. That's all of our elected representatives making that case as clearly as they can. That's our housing and community development director making that case. That's our economic development director making that case. And those are, like, some of the first people along with the planning staff that people are talking to. They're even, when developing a job, they're even twinkling their eye, right? They're talking to the staff. And so it is very easy to make the case, especially when we've got a council with such a strong track record of here's what what we're looking for um and you know here's our best advice about how to put your best foot forward remind me in the new luma where does the mandatory ic kick in it kicks in somewhere right so the mandatory iz for subdivisions um would apply for subdivisions of five or more lots but for a multi-family there there's no longer a mandatory iz the threshold for multifamily would be really important is are you going by rate or are you going through additional setting and so the trick

I remember running into there, I think it's sort of twofold. One is that we have seen some condos brought recently, and we did get, I mean, I'm thinking of South Creek, we got units there through mandatory IC, right? So we have gotten actual units from mandatory IC in a multi-family project, and of course there is, I feel like the condo is what the mandatory applies to and large apartment buildings are just rent analog for that. So I think the stick is still there with subdivisions. I do find it difficult to figure out how to answer the question. for the multifamily. You know, obviously we don't get a lot of condo projects, but the fact that we don't get a lot, I think, is tied to how they're financed and not really tied to the IZ. It has been my market analysis understanding, and so it hasn't been super clear to me that the IZ is a high cost for us there in terms of disincentivizing development. Would you disagree with that assessment?

I don't know that we have the proof to suggest that IZ has been a disincentive to development, right? There are so many factors, right? And so I wouldn't try to suggest that there's a clear causal relationship or that we have proof of that. I think one of the things that we do want to be mindful of is when we attribute what is the operative in our toolbox that we can say this is the reason that there is affordable housing or a commitment for affordable housing in a particular project. So South Creek is an excellent example project that both went through conditional zoning and had a for sale component. We know that our authority for conditional zoning is very different than our authority in terms of the general baseline standards in our ordinance. And so for a project like South Creek, even though the inclusionary, the mandatory inclusionary zoning rules technically apply to South Creek, in the future, it's going to be South Creek's conditional zoning ordinance that we point to first and most strongly to say this is the thing that's created a lasting commitment to affordable housing on that site. Thanks. That's an interesting emphasis.

per our current procedures manual i'm doing a 9 30 time check i don't know if we should get into the resiliency tonight so can we can we agree on a um another work session or something for the other big chunk of work. Great. Is there much more here? I'm assuming we're definitely walking through the rest of the maps. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's the end of the housing piece.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. So the other thing I just wanted to briefly touch on, are some other things that we could look at when we're thinking about some location-specific enhancements for density. These are quarter-mile walkers around all of our public schools in Charlottesville. I absolutely could, I'm sorry for that. I forgot my title on the tree, on the map. So again, I think this is something to think about. It could be something we factor into our thinking around additional map. If there's interest, proximity to schools could be added as one of the factors. What I would not suggest is that it becomes You must be on a collector street with a sidewalk and crossing into schools, but it's another.

It helps unqualify. It's not eliminating anybody. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

My imagination, though, like when you went from map one to map two, you did, I don't know, it just jumped out at me that those collector streets just kind of like popped out all of the red. as well as the . I don't know, it just popped out for me. What do you mean? When I went from map one to map two, just conceptually understanding the why from your recommendation, it just popped out for me. I was like, oh, OK, that makes sense. I saw how the blues and the greens and the reds were congregating. within themselves, and that became even more apparent with the blue circles there.

Absolutely. And that's the last thing I wanted to talk about, right, are the little red lines. I think they're the most apparent on that, too, because the little red lines and the little red dots represent the red dots are entrances to our greenways. We're defining greenways in a couple of key ways here. We're looking at existing on-ground infrastructure that's at least a thousand feet long and at least seven feet wide we're doing that just to have a clear definition for greenways based on existing conditions what we're also proposing is that anything you know once the ed map is finalized once the mobility and connectivity plan is updated anything that's identified as a greenway as part of the comprehensive plan would also qualify for for this kind of location-based enhancement and so what you see is that this creates some additional little nodes i think it's it is really great to see that we are seeing this apparent, very obvious connection between where are our schools located, where are our greenways going. It shows that there's already been some really good thought put into where existing infrastructure is. And so what the little red lines show is just an opportunity to create some additional nodes of density where if you were living on a home that is on one of these little red lines, you're not going to be more than a quarter mile from the entrance of a greenway. So a quarter mile from your door at most, you're on a greenway, kind of on your way to somewhere in town.

So to help you with the collector road definition because it is so varied and diverse, how then are you all thinking or rethinking about how that applies to the renewal of the language?

I think the key piece is we know that the collector road There's an existing definition for collector roads in our design manual. That's what this existing map is based on. And it basically says, these are the roads that are not arterials, but they all kind of drive traffic into neighborhoods. So that definition has given us this map. And that's kind of, at that point, we can just kind of leave that definition be. It's those additional criteria that we add that become so important. It's that element of whatever the reasoning was back in the day when those lines were drawn, the fact that In the ensuing period, we've invested in sidewalks along those streets. We've invested in the maintenance of those sidewalks. In many cases, we've invested in adding bike lanes to those streets. That's what Map 2 really shows. It's like narrowing it down based on where we've already invested in improving the condition of those roads.

I have a question about map three where you highlight most of the public schools. What's the purpose of that?

So there was an interest in creating some additional criteria under which development could get these additional density incentives, right? So the notion would be, and this is Council's direction, we could say kind of regardless of your street classification, right, even if you're on a local street, if you're within one of these buffers around a school, more density is allowed with the notion of you know these are all walk zones right so in the areas where folks are walking to school our walk zones are much larger but you know really close into schools it's kind of a natural place to get some more residential density okay so a concern i'm going to finish this thought concern that i have is if we move forward with that

what is the public's expectation of us in protecting the schools should the school board decide they need to make changes, right? We just faced that this year where the school board, where the parents were convinced that we could dictate this. I'm really concerned. I see it, but I think we need to have a conversation with the school board

So I did at least ask the schools if they would be willing to do kind of more regular like once or twice a year or something check-in so we could just kind of let them know about things like this or have that overlap but I think I think what are you talking about Like school closures? Right.

So there were three schools that were proposed for closing. Responding to Paris's look, there were three schools that were proposed for closure. One of those schools, the PTA was convinced that this body had jurisdiction to give input and to contribute to the decisions. And one of the things that they pointed to was development that we have promoted in the area. So I don't want to, I want us to be mindful of what we're doing and how it can impact other governing bodies and also the perceptions of the public.

Yeah. Well, I think we have to be really clear about like jurisdiction and just local government understanding, right? And then I think certainly we could like staff could connect with the schools to make sure that at least in the imminent future, they're not talking about getting rid of a blue circle. I mean, you know, I think there's like, I think that's at the school board level.

I don't think it's at the school level. I heard schools at the individual schools, I think we need to communicate with the school board.

The school administration, I mean, which is connected to the school board, but I mean, if they're not going to be, they're going to talk about redistricting, but they're not, as far as I know, talking about any other school closures. But I think your point is, you know, fair that we just want to coordinate with our partners to make sure that we're not putting something on a map that isn't relevant.

can i just add to that um i wonder because we don't control what where the schools are and what stays open and what gets closed and where new things are built Would there be any downzoning complications with this if schools do close? And then we're like, oh, well, now these things don't apply. And then it's like, oh, well, is that downzoning? And how does that work?

Yeah. And what I realize is another school I've gotten to be on here is ,, which raises a really good question. I think the safest way to structure something like this would be once the the zone kind of applies doesn't go away that we don't say oh suddenly your home is not conforming because the school has been closed because one of the things we know about the school district they're very reticent for good reason to ever sell property that even if the school closes The notion that that property is no longer going to be in the public use, I think we've got a strong indication that they're still going to hold on to it, try to put it to some sort of productive use, hopefully sooner rather than later.

I want to, sorry it's late, but I want to make a connection between these maps and our previous conversation. So if you look at Sewell School, that blue circle, there are no trails out there. It's a dead area. But that area could benefit from connectivity to other parts of our trails. And I'm concerned in our previous conversation, that's going to be expensive. There may not be people supporting that because they don't recognize us there. So I think just the way we structured our previous conversation, those things could get lost. So that's what I'm talking about, how values could change depending on parts of time and weighing criteria. So to me, that's a visual example of what's happening there. But I know that's neither here nor there, but that kind of shows the importance of thinking about how criteria can change based on different parts of the panel.

yeah thanks for the maps yeah yeah of course one thing i'll say for the best school school road um there is sidewalk on school school road from high school road up to homestead um so that part of the town is it could be better for sure um there is some good uh connectivity here those schools collect from a part of town where they're not collected connected at all yeah so like there's a ton of students yeah

There are a ton of students coming from this part of town, Northside and down, who are going to Sewell School Road, who have no connectivity, even though it's like a mile away. So theoretically there could be really highly used greenways that could be available, but like that's just not on the radar right now for a lot of people.

There are also students going to Northside who live like halfway to Greensboro, so they're not connected either, but that's...

But they're not in town, so we don't have any way to address that.

There is a contemplated, it's not just us, but there's a very hopeful thing eventually, and it's not one that we could...

included in our plans is like, let's prioritize this because there's a train on it right now, you know?

But there's like a good price. I think that lends itself to the point of like, this is definitely an area to think about. I mean, I'd love to have more neighbors up there. I'm like, come on, y'all. That's a pilot place.

And looking at us throughout, you know, these are just four-mile buffers that have been drawn on the map. They don't have to be four-mile buffers. They could be larger if there's interest.

And these are all options for you guys to consider and give us feedback on, based off of the feedback we got.

If there are still ones in the green, I'm on map three, so that's fine. Like, if I look at map three and look at some of the collector streets with sidewalks, some of those still don't take that extension. Yes, like pining mountains. And like there's just, and some of them are like totally makes sense but I just feel like it still is not totally sensible to me and then of course there's just ones that I'm like eyeballing and I'm like oh that's just not even allowed there so it will never happen which is different like I don't think we should create our rules around people who have a way to go around but I guess like some of these still don't totally make sense to me as like I mean that's one where I'm like it doesn't make sense and it won't happen like so I guess I just don't feel like we've near like this designation has gotten us to something that totally makes sense so um and I guess my question is partially the down zoning issue like if we used some sort of criteria system and things got in there that we were like oh that kind of doesn't make sense and there's a reason that it shouldn't do that can we get rid of it uh oh jim is like the town attorney um i think these types of rules um

would be kind of baked into the underlying standard for the property. So it's not necessarily something that we would pare back. I think it would be interesting and would welcome and very much benefit from you all if there are specific streets that you take issue with. It's good to hear that. I will say, again, one of the things a really informative tool. It's called Close.City. It creates travel time estimates for different destinations around town. And so this is Chapel Hill travel time estimates by bike to supermarkets around town. Red is not ideal. And then greens and blues are great. You see a lot of greens and blues. Piney Mountain kind of goes through here. There's a mix of, yeah, you can get to some good destinations. within that key 15 minute or less period by bike. Same with Lake Forest. One thing I'll say, these estimates are still based on analog bikes, not electric bikes. We're seeing shrinking travel times really significantly. So when we factor in the prevalence and the growing use of these micro-mobility options, e-bikes, e-scooters, travel times around town are actually really good. Talk about the 15-minute community, 15-minute city as this ideal. There are massive areas of town that meet that I think it's about how we make better use of those areas. But even roads like Lake Mountain, Lake Shore, the economics of redevelopment there are rough. There's also the lake. RCD would apply to the eastern side of Lake Shore. But Piney Mountain, right, from a travel time perspective, you're really easily getting over to BRT once there's really great multimodal infrastructure up and down in LK. Piney Mountain, again, gets the benefit from those improvements as well. So I think even some of those streets are challenges to think, even streets that seem like they'd be pushing it, they really do represent an opportunity to take advantage of the fact that We are ultimately a pretty compact little town, and folks can get around, especially as these new modes of transportation become more prevalent, can get around pretty easily as long as we give them those easy routes.

I think one of the things I might run by your question, Sarah, people, is that things like finding out places where we have curvy roads, we have a lot of topography on them, even if they have sidewalks, if you increase the density a lot, so one of the things that's gonna happen is you're gonna increase the density on this lot, you're gonna have more cars, some of them will park on the lot, some of them will have to park on the street. So I assume, Heidi Madden can't park on the street, so that's gonna be, there's just some confounding things that are going on in some of these places that are gonna make it tough. So I, There just may be places, again, check the division zero. People will say, look, we're putting a lot of density here. Be a safety issue for that.

And again, other factors mentioned earlier in the evening, this notion of what are the rate limiting factors, right? This notion that even though we're allowing a certain amount of density, the rate at which that density actually materializes on the ground is going to be mitigated by some other elements.

So could you maybe talk about, and I guess maybe this is de facto the same thing, but like being able to have like a overlay or a zone that is complete community that could just be put in places. Like the way you have done the blue for the schools, like something like that as opposed to the collector streets being even the starting place. Yeah. is that, why is that not kind of a more precise solution or something that gives us more ability to do more of what we really want? Because I think the other piece is when people, even if we kind of know, or you know, because you're good at this, like that something's not gonna happen somewhere, like I feel like when we put it somewhere, And we're like, oh, but it won't happen there. The public doesn't feel that way. And then it just becomes this automatic resistance to something that then is not going to happen.

I think it's all about when you want to take a bite of the apple. But we are creating the tools for you to take a bite of the apple today with the Bluemo adoption or later. So it's really just a matter of do you want to do it with Bluemo adoption or later. But any of these notions of Here's some areas in town where additional density would be meaningful. You could do it as criteria, baked into the LUMO, and that's a wider diapole you're taking. today right with adoption of blue but we're also creating tools like the rd zoning district or just our existing higher density zoning districts like r3 and r4 when when it comes to adopting a new zoning map if you all choose not to kind of take this by the apple you can do it later right you can use this maybe as a basis for other factors and say let's let's update on some r1 to r3 let's put in rd in proximity to schools you can do it as part of the zoning map this just gives you an opportunity to do it sooner and in a different way in the spirit of giving you all the feedback that you're looking for i find what you presented today very helpful as to the why you chose

direction you did in terms of the arterial streets and collector streets, it makes a lot more sense to me. And to see it visualized in this way, it really connects to the whole complete community vision for me while it may not be perfect there may be some outliers the story that you're telling is much clearer for me and in terms of land use management and the ordinance it's good for me i would echo that i would say thank you to the person

You may have done this in response to it. There was someone who wrote to us and said color coding would be helpful. I'm all about the colors that you know. And it really is helpful to be able to see these as you walked us through what you're talking about. So please continue that. And as much imagery as possible to accompany what you were describing to us is helpful.

council is there any guidance that we can give as a board on this one or do you feel like you need to think about it and we will have another work session anyway because we're not doing half of this one i appreciate what the staff came back to us with on either map two or map three i think that taking out some of those other roads that were sort of outliers

without sidewalks make sense, and that after that, because of the transit-oriented priority, I think that either Map 2 or Map 3 makes sense to me. I think I'm... There's enough gray area in those blue globs that makes me a little anxious. I like the idea of it being near schools but maybe it would just stick to the arterial and collector roads near schools i don't know those food blocks contain a lot of who knows what and so i think i have a preference for map two yeah okay i'm not really hearing a majority guidance on that one um

so we can save that. Are there any other, I have my kind of list of things, is there anything else we talked about today?

I have a list of questions.

Oh! Can you do an email? We're gonna have another work session, so you're not going to be limited on that. I was just wondering if, it sounds like there's, inclusionary zoning component that's been put forward and there's the kind of scale of the affordable housing incentives that was also mentioned is there any feedback oh I was also going to send you all everybody here at this point In this circle that Wes sent some thoughts today, so I was going to send it out. He obviously wasn't here for the conversation or the presentation, but he had some interests that he wanted to convey, so I can just share those out because I don't know what else to do with them right now. do you all have anything that you want to do a straw poll on in terms of inclusionary zoning or the scale of the housing incentives let's discuss it at the next one where we can all people aren't ready so we can just do it in the next one Melissa were you are you guys ready you're not ready just have a preference on them i'm trying to make sure that people are ready so we can um Can you give us a sense of what we're doing next and when?

Well, we'll need to take a look at the calendar and see how we can work with you all to come up with another work session date.

I thought there was one that was already kind of set aside just in case.

There are some spots, but we need to confirm.

Okay. Well, in that case, we will... continue on next time in our next installment our next episode and thanks y'all for hanging in there and meeting adjourned