Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to the October 6th, 2026 meeting of the Planning Commission. Planning Commission is a volunteer citizen advisory body. We don't make decisions that bind the town. We advise the council on matters of orderly growth and development. Per our normal procedure, I'm going to do roll call, see who's here. Liz losses Jeff Jeff Green here Chuck Mills here Libby Thomas And Mike is a bae couldn't be with us tonight out of town. I'm John Mitchell the chair Our agenda for tonight is fairly streamlined we have a few sets of minutes that we are going to approve or modify as a formali

You don't need to. There's no rule of procedure that you have to abstain. I know it's been a practice, but I disagree strenuously with that practice. I move to adopt the August 18, September 1, and September 15 meeting minutes.

Jeff? Yes. Chuck? Yes. Libby? Abstain is a yes, and I'm a yes. So now I'll turn it over to Tess.

Thank you. The updated LUMO references not only native plants, but adapted tree species. That's right. And that's not a defined term in the LUMO. What are adapted tree species?

It makes, it'll take me a second to find it, but it makes reference to allowing the bonuses for native tree species and adapted tree species. And since that wasn't defined anywhere in the ordinance, I didn't know what it meant.

That, when we get to 100%, it's 100% of native and adapted? That's right.

I don't have it. I'm looking for it, but Does that apply to all the plants not just canopy species are we starting with a 100% on canopy trees and

Thanks, Taz. Do you all want to go to public comment first before we enter more questions and discussion? OK. Do any of the members of the public who are here wish to make any comments? If you do, you can step right up to the microphone, but you're not required to.

On this subject, yes. OK. If you change your mind in the next minute or so, feel free to step up if you're thinking about it.

All right. With that, let me bring it back to Planning Commission questions or comments. And just as a reminder, the plan that we discussed at our last meeting was to use this meeting to... discuss amongst ourselves what sorts of feedback we might have a majority on board with, and then use the time between this meeting and October 20 for assigned people to write up certain sections. And then we can come back on the 20th and do any final fine tuning of the language and vote on it. So floor is open.

Well, just for more clarity, how detailed, for example, some of the requirements about trees, three-inch calipers, maybe smaller is better. And maybe you can remove the exception for greater credit for larger trees. Smaller trees actually tend to get established and survive better and are easier to plant. Especially if they're being interplanted with existing, like if you're enhancing an area. So, I mean, I have detailed comments on many things. I don't know how much detail we have time for tonight. Or do we come back to these things?

I wonder if... Maybe we just have a little conversation about what are the main topics that we think we might want to focus on. I think trees and canopy coverage and things related to that. I personally brought some stuff on stormwater and flood risk. John, maybe the arterial roads. I also just want to say thank you, Taz. Those were all definite improvements, so appreciate that they're already being incorporated. I'm glad to see that you didn't forget about that parking.

Yeah, so why don't we try to establish some categories that are of interest that the PC as a whole might want to comment on. I mean, if they're... very technical comments, it could be appropriate for us to vote on. So I'm open to that.

So I just put out, what, three? Trees, stormwater, and zoning with using road What do we call that? The four units.

Classifications. I actually have a comment on that as well, but just my comments have to do with, I have a bunch of comments, but my relevant ones have to do with housing generally. That issue, the issue you mentioned with the road classifications. And those are my big ones.

Okay, so we greenways has come up a lot. Do we want to talk about greenways in particular?

I think in the context of the housing in the class.

Yeah, so So so far we have I think three categories in the subcategory under housing so trees stormwater housing and then the four unit Density stuff is I think under housing There any interest in revisiting by right I saw that a lot of comments I

I mean, I think that just being submitted from the public the expansion We can of course add more And maybe enforcement I'm curious how I

how treaty rules and all the other rules, the Jordan Lake buffers and these things, there isn't much detail on inspection and enforcement.

OK. So I'm going to arbitrarily propose an order that we start with housing, and then we go to trees, stormwater, by right thresholds, and then enforcement. Is that OK? All right. So let's start with housing, including the four-unit stuff. Do you want to start, Jeff?

All right. Well, I'll start. And I don't know if folks agree or disagree. OK, so two comments about housing. First, the general, and then getting to the point about the road classifications and the greenways as well. First, one thing I really appreciate in the update of LUMO is that there have been some changes, I think. I don't remember exactly what's allowed in the current regulations. to try to put one-unit dwellings on the same playing field as two, three, and four-unit dwellings so that it's not, you know, the default is not, you know, the easiest thing that you can build is one-unit dwel

Hey Jeff, can I just clarify something? Just the facts that we're all following you. Floor area ratio is what you're talking?

I'm talking about the 5,000 and 6,000 square foot.

Okay, I just want to wrap my head around that. So could you just give us a quick background on what the proposed rules would do?

Single family homes can be as large as people want them to be, given all the other limitations that apply. Obviously, your lot size, your setbacks, your maximum height, your lot coverage, your building coverage. There's a whole bunch of regulations. But besides that, you can build your single family home as big as you want to be. There are plenty of single family homes in Chapel Hill that are ginormous. Duplexes are limited generally to 5,000 square feet of gross floor area. So that's an average of 2,500 per dwelling unit. Three unit and four unit buildings are limited to 6,000 square feet. So

Second, one of the main reasons we've permitted so much new residential multi-unit housing in Blue Hill and elsewhere downtown is to provide more options for students. And I think those have been very successful. Despite what you hear, people actually do live in these buildings, including many students. And finally, it's a rule that's wildly over inclusive because it applies everywhere. I certainly can be sympathetic to the idea that neighborhoods near UNC are at risk of having larger student stuffers built near there, communities such as Northside, where we came up with regulations that apply

Taz, I'm wondering if you can shed some light on how those 5,000 to 6,000 square foot limitations were arrived at. I mean, it was obviously some sort of balancing or trade-off analysis that was done. Could you shed some light on that?

So we were trying to level playing field out a little bit more So as I understand it there's two rationales one is neighborhood compatibility with some concern about students, but I think that Concern probably goes a bit beyond students Right right, I'm just trying to get on the table what the rationale was originally and and then the second is is affordability on the theory that a smaller unit, all else equal, would be more cheaper to file.

Jeff, I wonder what you think about the affordability argument.

Do we know how many duplexes have been built in Chapel Hill since both the original Housing Choices Amendment and then the omnibus?

So not a lot. I'll also suggest that, I mean, I can't say that I've looked very closely at the evidence, but Sacramento, California enacted what they thought was a very progressive missing middle housing ordinance. And they tried to address affordability by having, they used a slightly different approach using floor area ratio, but which had sort of a sliding scale based on the number of units to try to make those smaller units. And they're getting rid of it because they're just not getting housing production. I think whether it's 12 units, whether it's 20 units over, I mean, it's been several

allow scaling up of floor area areas as lots grow larger and that would kind of seem to contextualize it to neighborhoods that have larger lots bigger houses yeah that's that's definitely a possibility now that we've created this

I think that's a very good idea, Libby. And again, I don't want this to, I mean, I'm inclined to have it be a recommendation that staff look, that council direct staff to look at this after it's adopted, because I don't want to kill any of it. So.

I think it makes sense, and I suggest that Jeff write it up with a couple different options, maybe Libby's option, the overlay. Because if we're going to ask counsel to direct staff, or to change it directly, the more details, the better.

Can I ask another question related to how we constrain sizes? I'm trying to think through what is the intent of achieving the town's goals by having buffers, in some cases floor area ratios, and maximum sizes, maximum building heights, and total impervious. It says the total building coverage requirements are designed to help preserve open area and reduce the bulk of buildings. But can't we do that with fewer tools, with just maximum impervious building heights and And buffers, perhaps.

I guess what I'm thinking is it also reduces flexibility of people to build more housing and reduce other impervious. If they are allowed that flexibility, that trade-off, we might get more creative building on sites and keep the overall oppressiveness of large buildings for neighbors and such, as well as keeping the impervious constrained. I don't know. It's just, like I said, I'm sorry if you've all been around about this, but I'm still trying to...

Jeff, I'll say that I'm open to your suggestions and what you draft up on this.

Yeah, it's the idea that we'll draft up and then come back the next meeting with language. So what I've heard is consider having council, recommending the council direct staff to look into additional ways to address two and three, four unit housing size and potential impacts by considering an overlay district that could address particular concerns around student housing types, and then also Libby's suggestion around scaling based on lot size.

But direct staff after this LUMO process?

Yeah, I just, again, I think this is a big improvement, and it's not more limiting than what there is now. So I'm in, you know. Okay, all right. That's just, whatever, I mean, I'm happy to do whatever the group thinks, but I think having staff to do.

If you think it's fairly straightforward, then it could just be.

Well, it could get bogged down, you know, where should the boundaries of this district be? And they're not doing map amendments until after the LUMO is updated, so. We can, I'll try to wordsmith it.

We can do that next time. Okay. Sir, did you wanna make a public comment? Yes, that's what I'm here for today. Okay, I'm gonna open it up one more time for public comment, and this is gonna be the last time, so anybody who wants to speak, we would love to hear from you. Go ahead, sir.

Yeah, we'll send it. Yeah, we would. We'll send it around. We can scan it. Is it okay if we keep it? Yes.

Thank you. Thank you for coming. Any other comments from the public? OK. So let's bring it back to the BC. If anybody wants to respond, you're free to. If we want to move on to the next thing, we can.

I will respond just to say, sir, that part of what we just said was to create an overlay so that those areas close to the university would not have the extra. That was what the discussion was, how to protect that area where it's very close to the university. So I think we are very sensitive to this issue.

Do we want, since we were talking about housing, do we want to, would this be a good segue to the Collector Street Greenway arterial?

Do you want to kick that off? No. Okay. I'm happy to. Okay, so first of all, I want to echo Liz's thanks to TAS for being responsive to, maybe it wasn't just our prior feedback, probably others, but I looked at the map, and in fact, would it be possible to put it up, the map of the What's the sidewalk collectors plus the arterials plus quarter mile from a greenway?

Okay, so the blue circles are school zones as quarter mile from school, correct? The red lines are streets that are quarter mile from, insofar as the streets are a quarter mile from a greenway entrance. Then the, I can't tell the color, the blue lines are arterials.

Right. Okay, so... My concern, my prior concern about collectors is largely resolved. I mean, it's resolved enough that I wouldn't pursue it further. I think the sidewalk collectors make sense as having higher density. And I just don't have any objection to what remains there in green. The arterials, in my personal view, are always fine. Those strike me as actual fairly high traffic roads around town. I don't know how many people are going to want to live on them in these units, but if they do, that's no objection here. I do have some concerns about the Greenway entrance criterion and the scho

If I can build on your comments, I mean, My concern, honestly, is with the sort of mechanistic identification of places that are appropriate for three and four family housing based on essentially an NCDOT-created street classification system. Arterials are intended to be sort of high-capacity roads that carry the bulk of traffic. Are those great places to put three and four family homes? I mean, I think the segment of Estes, just looking at the map, you certainly wouldn't put anything on Fordham. The segment of Estes in between the library and Caswell, I think, is sort of awful. It's now got b

So Jeff, you're going beyond what I was suggesting, right? You're saying even the arterioles and collectors seem a bit arbitrary to you.

Yeah, I just don't think these are, you know, when you think about, I mean, I generally find it problematic that we stick all of our multifamily apartment buildings on the largest roads that we have, which are the noisiest place and the least pleasant place to live. And again, single family homes get the quietest locations furthest from any road traffic. And I think this is sort of perpetuating that. And so I would recommend, again, similar to the recommendations around around the sizes of three- and four-unit dwellings to sort of figure out another way of coming back after this is adopted and

Yeah, building on that, I think it's a worthwhile notion, but very difficult to retrofit density onto an existing community where the schools weren't built in locations always that are appropriate for more density and the greenways are most of the time in the floodway and rcd which deserve consideration for protection so i have some You know, again, there's another idea that you could put another circle around these Greenway nodes in RCD or RCDs. I mean, yes, RCD has protection Already but adding density close to Where wildlife need to travel? Floodways and all of that You know that's another

The school aspect of this is new, and I don't understand what the policy rationale was for that. Could you explain that, Tess?

Yeah, I'll just say that idea makes sense to me, but I think they have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis almost if you're going to. You might not be able to do that in a blanket way, so again.

Just to react to the school's sort of logic, and I haven't thought about this very much, but with the rest of them, the blue lines, the green lines, the red lines, We're trying to figure out what the surrogates are or the proxies are for general transportation connectedness in town. Whereas the schools, it's just connectedness to one destination, which is the primary sort of daily destination for exactly nobody in this town. I mean, you go there maximum twice a day. You go, you come back. The vast majority of families in the zone don't have kids to go to the school at any given time. So from a

So just to put my cards on the table real quick, I'm on record in 2023 saying I'd be fine with quadplexes townwide, and I still feel that way. My concern is if we're going to do something, have it be a defensible policy and not just sort of like arbitrary with weird results. I am perfectly happy to acquiesce to the Collector Street and arterial Street thing. I think it's defensible looking at them with sidewalks with sidewalks Yeah, looking at the map. I think it's it's defensible even if you have to squint a little bit the Quarter mile of a greenway thing to me just doesn't pass a laugh test

I'm sort of convinced by Taz's argument that this is a first shot. And I agree that the school nodes are maybe not the most effective on the other hand it does allow more tries and quads in more places so it doesn't hurt so so this is the first shot like john i'm also fine with the collectors with sidewalks and arterial and

Let's come up with, if we want to expand that, let's do that in the next phase. I particularly like you think the greenways have the chance of being more negative than positive. There are more possible negative outcomes of doing this than that we've mentioned. I don't have to repeat them all. And the schools are, where you look where they are, don't really seem like the types of places that if we're trying to direct density, that's where you would want to direct it. But I feel most strongly of taking the Greenways quarter mile out.

I agree with that. I would rather omit the Greenways at this point. The schools don't have the connectivity now that they need to support that density, I think, because it will lead to more drive trips.

I'm I'm saying adding the density will add to more drive trips Apart from schools. Yes, and that will create more issues for schools perhaps until we kind of sort How these things are going to look?

So why don't we have John write up some ideas and and

And I think what I can do is separate out the Greenway stuff, because I think we have a majority, I haven't heard from Chuck yet, that's skeptical of the Greenway thing. And then the schools could be a separate thing that we can just look at, see what it looks like, and maybe we reject it next time. Okay.

housing unless we're done with housing was there anything else housing wise Jeff on your list I don't think so I did have a housing related question for Taz and this may have been answered in the prior two meetings that I did not attend so I apologize about that I'll simply put it. Are the RA, the R1, and the R1A districts identical?

OK. I'll just say I find it incredibly confusing because you end up, it took me, I do this for a living, it took me three, several read throughs to understand that was the case. I actually did a search for RA to see if there was any point that RA was mentioned as a condition for some standard where R1 or R1A was not mentioned. So it's fine. I assume you did it that way so that people don't think there's been a change in the district where there hasn't been one. But we have a pretty educated community that could probably be OK with the idea that they were in R1 and they're now in RA. Just a tho

Exactly, yeah. Okay, so let's go to the trees category. And Libby, I'm going to look to you on this. Unless you want to come back to it.

Well, I can do stormwater, but if you're ready, Libby. Okay, I'm going to go to stormwater and come back to it. All right. Josh, I sent a, so do you want to read Mike? Mike sent some notes that he wanted us to consider. I think it's a nice way to set the stage. Mike is the other planning commission member who is not here. This one. You want me to pull it up?

One second. I've got it. So I'm just going to read it out loud, a note from Mike. First of all, he took his hat off to Taz and the team. Second of all, He said his primary concern is stormwater management and downstream drainage impacts. I'm just reading a quote here. Residents who invested in Chapel Hill many years ago and who made significant investments in building and maintaining their homes in our beautiful community should have reasonable protection as the town naturally grows and development increases. My, Mike's current residence was built in 1958, and over the years I've spent signifi

OK, all right. Anyway, I'll summarize to say that Mike said that was the most important issue to him. And I would say in the two hearings that we had, that was the issue that has come up the most. That seems to be what people feel most strongly about right now. I also have noticed that stormwater is an incredibly complicated and confusing. And listening to the last council meeting, they were just sort of perplexed in talking to some council members. And so I have done a deep dive into this topic and made a presentation which ends in, I think, a few principles that I think we should focus on to

All right. So I want to start by saying, what are the attributes that stormwater management decisions are made on? They're made on the use and number of units within a residential. There's certain regulations for one unit, two to four, subdivisions two to three, four plus. And then in another category, commercial, and then sometimes other commercial, which is non-resident, things like maybe, I think, churches or things like that. So some of the regulations are focused on the land use disturbance, and there was a change in this regulation. Everything I've talked about is the July version now, n

I'm just curious. It's probably a question for staff. Are there any examples of where a project in a certain location, how far that, what's the word, the scope of analysis would extend?

Do you have any examples of, I don't know, sites that have recently been developed, what the downstream scope of analysis would have been?

I only say that because we're adding a new standard that seems pretty rigorous and requires a lot of effort, but we don't seem to know how much it's going to cost or how much it's going to impact. So we can continue with it. But I had wondered about the downstream analysis.

Next slide. So this is to give you an idea of what these different storms look like. Again, this is heuristic. This is not actual. And again, this was AI-help generated. And if you look closely, you can see that it's actually Eastgate.

I knew it. I knew that was Eastgate. I thought you hired an artist.

I did. His name is Chad GPT. Yeah, but it's good to sort of visualize. And this is why, obviously, so many people are concerned. The two-year storm that you saw, the volume, that's routine. And we should have culverts and drainage and green infrastructure to be able to handle that. I mean, that's going to come very frequently. And we need to address that. When you get to 25-year storms, then you start to have bigger problems. But the 100-year storms are very problematic. And when 500 or even larger are when systems are exceeded. And next slide. So I just pulled up some data from NOAA today to

Well, I have a couple others in case people were just so interested. Oh, you've got an appendix. Got it. OK. Yeah. So anyway, those are my suggestions and open for comment.

Do you have a specific requirement? The table was neat with the different types of development and what they need to comply with. Do you have a recommendation for how that should be? Do you have a specific recommendation for how that should be strengthened?

Well, I started to put it down, and that's what I would do. There are certain things that we can point to right now, and I would try and do that in the next two weeks is kind of come up with some places where there are, say, inconsistencies.

I have to say, from my perspective, the details would be important. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. That's the slide. The yellows, those don't mean anything different, do they? There's like a darker yellow and a lighter yellow.

Those three were the places where that's the only control. So I just wanted to highlight those. And the things next to them are gray, meaning there's no...

I mean, just myself, I don't know the thinking behind the subdivision two to three lots, but there are plenty of people who just split their lot. And so requiring the same sort of engineering work for a lot split as for somebody who's doing four or more lots, that's a big ask, I think. We've had some lot splits come before us where people split their lot in two for two single family homes. And if you're going to require them to do 100-year stormwater for building two homes on what was previously a two-acre lot, that's a lot. My other point would be with regard to the housing, I'm not sure wher

So just to be clear, my strong recommendation is that this is more risk-based than unit-based. That's, I don't, These are just the reasons why I don't like picking, oh, well, we want to help these guys, but we don't want to help these guys. Oh, commercial, they can do more than that. I don't think for stormwater we should be picking these things. I think we should identify where there's heightened... Storm risk and have those folks and you know what even if it's someone splitting a lot And they happen to be in a particularly high risk area, then they should have to deal with their stormwater i

how random it appears. It's hard to see patterns. Obviously, it gets more dense as you go further down. But between commercial and residential, between subdivisions and non-subdivisions,

So I'm looking honestly I'm looking at the actual table in the ordinance and there's residential units There's subdivisions and then there's other development and there's one category which is 20 less than 20,000 there's one that's 20,000 to 40,000 and then one that's greater than 40,000 there seems to be a different commercial development one.

I went back and I tried to read the text to understand that because it's a little confusing to figure out exactly what that was. Taz, is this accurate the way I describe this?

Looking at the ordinance, under 20,000 does not need to do a downstream analysis, but does need to account for the 25-year, 24-hour storm. Between 20 and 40, still does the 25-year, 24-hour storm, but does have to do a downstream analysis. Yeah, that's consistent. And anything above 40,000 needs to do 100-year and downstream analysis. That's consistent. But there's that other development less than 40,000 square feet. I don't know what that's referencing, the second from the bottom.

Yeah, I can't remember where I got that, but I did.

That's the 20 to 40, isn't it? Yeah, but that requires a downstream analysis. Oh, I see. That says it doesn't.

No, not, no, the second to bottom one doesn't.

Yeah, but I'm just. You're saying it says it in there? You know, this is section 7.4.2D applicability, which has the. And it's possible that there's a difference between what this table says and what specific standards elsewhere say. So I don't want to attest that it's entirely consistent.

So other development, I think, is not commercial on the second to last one, whereas the one below it includes commercial. That's why I put including commercial.

Okay, so putting aside maybe some discrepancies between the proposed LUMO and this diagram, I do think it's concerning if we just ignoring the second to last row if we have so much variability because we're slicing and dicing different uses and whether it's subdivision or not a subdivision it's it seems desirable just as a policy objective to be

But here, I think you need to think through. So somebody could subdivide 20 lots and then build single family houses on each. If you don't have those rules for subdivisions, then none of those houses need to provide stormwater management. But of course, these days, whenever you have a larger subdivision, you have development-wide stormwater management. That's why that's there separately. So I find it perfectly consistent.

What about the commercial versus residential differential?

I mean, the commercial is a, I'm not sure, a commercial under $20,000. I mean, again, we're trying to make residential development that's missing middle housing to be as close as possible to the development of single unit housing.

If you treat it like commercial development, which is- So you're saying it's all defensible if you preserve blanket exemption for single family. The rest of this is just anti-circumvention. Is that what you're saying?

I'm thinking, so what I'm saying is that on a single lot, you can basically, under the current limo, under most communities development codes, you can build a single family house, you don't need to get any approval. And that continues to be the same. If we are serious about missing metal housing, we need to have similar rules for two to four family homes as well, or else because of the increased cost, especially if you layer on top stormwater management rules that don't apply to single family homes, then you're not going to get those. And so I think that's possibly the reason why it's treated

I follow you. Liz, you're saying you don't support a blanket exemption for single family. And furthermore, you don't even think the number of families should be relevant.

As I said, I prefer a risk-based system, and if you had a risk-based system and you wanted to include this, this, and then the risk overlay, that's fine. I still think there's some very odd choices here. But I don't think anything should be exempted if it is creating significant stormwater risk. I think that is... I don't think the town wants that. We keep hearing that. I think it is very bad for people living here. It is not encouraging affordable housing if people are constantly having to address stormwater problems. And often the people who are most hurt by storms are those in low-income ho

I have a couple of thoughts. Yeah. So I think your presentation was very helpful. Thank you for laying it out that way. Certainly understood it better than I did reading it here. That's not, sorry. I didn't mean to. I agree. It was a great presentation, so thank you. So I think no one would doubt that Chapel Hill has a stormwater issue. Anybody who was around two years ago, one year ago, July, whenever Chantal was, can attest to that. At the same token, the genesis of the increased stormwater issues are manifold. Obviously, development plays a role. Obviously, climate change and the increased

All right. Have to respond. That was a lot. Yeah. First of all, I agree completely that this is just the LUMO, and the town definitely does need to look at systems-wide. I don't think this is the place to have a long discussion. I don't think that proposal was going to have solve the problems for a variety of reasons. We can talk about that sort of afterwards if you want to have a discussion. But I don't disagree that the town needs to invest or we're going to lose all our commercial activity in Eastgate. I mean, it's not a good long-term strategy to hope this just gets better on its own becau

Just to chime in with some random thoughts. agree fully with Jeff that exempting single family from things that you're not exempting two to four from is not really consistent with our objectives here in the strategy of promoting missing middle housing. So I'd be interested in exploring why not. Obviously, you can't retroactively impose stormwater and existing properties that aren't redeveloping in fact there's a north carolina law barring that so um we're only talking about redevelopment of existing properties and if we're talking about that i don't see why you would exempt redeveloping single

I agree with that and I think the cost to the town and as Liz pointed out, people living in low income areas, I mean the town's own public housing was flooded, it's flooded often and I haven't seen the investment so far in addressing these issues at a town level, and I think we owe it to current and future residents not to make it worse with what we do here.

I'd be interested, actually, to learn what types of housing floods. Camelot Village obviously floods all the time. Camelot Village would flood all the time, even if there'd been no other development in Chapel Hill, because it was built in a god-awful area next to a mall that was built by chopping down a hill. So I mean, that's... I hear a lot of, I think anything new that the town is building affordable housing-wise, certainly anything they've built in the last 20 years, has modern stormwater controls and is not flooding.

My house is 20 feet above flood level, and it came remarkably close to flooding this year.

1969, but I don't see why that's relevant.

The only point I'm trying to make is that a lot of these older homes that have flooding issues were built before there were stormwater controls.

I think the flood risk is increasing. I mean, you can look at the rain gauge data.

Oh, absolutely. But there are stormwater controls, even developments that are at no risk of flooding, have stormwater controls to address flooding on their side.

That doesn't address the issue here. Floodwater, the controls just aren't that strong. I remember a couple years ago we had I think it was someone from the YMCA on Estes, were you here for that one? When he talked about, I think it was after our- Amity Methodist Church. Amity Methodist, after they started with, I think it was Ora, he had such flooding, he had to spend $50,000 addressing the flooding created by Ora. All right, so I'm sure they had stormwater controls, and I'm sure they were as strong as they could have been for that size development.

Well, I mean, I'll say construction has challenges.

There's just so much discharge into streams. When you look at rainfalls now, the streams flash. There's more impervious everywhere, and we've got to get a handle on this.

So let me just ask, to what extent is it plausible that some recommendations set of recommendations that comes out of this discussion could be addressed you know promptly like this year and to what extent should we be thinking about similar to jeff's original housing point are recommending that the town ask staff to do some analysis and make some proposals after the limo. That's just a question about timing.

Are you asking me or Taz? I'm asking you.

Well, I mean, I see three types of recommendation. One is recommendations to this, and there's a handful of things that I would suggest, and we could discuss those next week. The second is to sketch out what a stormwater overlay would look like and entail. I have been told that that's not reasonable to include in the LUMO. But the third is to add to that language, strengthen this idea that in the interim, there could be some clear Requirements for what the town manager with his staff have to do in the interim to make sure we don't have Projects that are high risk slipping through the system an

Okay, so on number one It sounds to me that it would be useful for the commission to know exactly which things you'd want to tighten up on this chart. So maybe you could come back on the 20th with some.

And I could, we can go back and forth, you know, by email? Or is that? I don't think we can. Individual. Okay. All right, I can come back on the 20th with a list.

But it may help us, you know, figure out if we can get on board with it or not as a group. if there's some discrete like two or three things what they are and it sounds like there may be some resistance to whatever that is, if it involves privileging above single family, right? So we heard that. I'm just trying to summarize.

I mean, speaking only for myself, I think your two and three seem to be getting at a little more of looking into a more risk-based approach, which you talked about. And then also, you talked about the stormwater. In some way, getting at at areas of town or pieces of land which are at higher risk of having impacts from stormwater runoff, either through some sort of an overlay that identifies property or additional standards that establish criteria for the manager to apply. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, I think I would probably get behind that. at that level of detail. I mean, obviously it depend

Right, just one other thing on the, I think it was your third point. So the second point is the overlay thing, which it sounds like we've already gotten feedback or you have that that would have to happen after. But the third point, let me make sure I'm understanding this correctly. The current LUMO proposal, I shouldn't use those words together. The LUMO proposal, what's that current? has a provision in it which gives discretion to the town manager to require additional downstream analysis or i should say some downstream analysis for additional properties to the extent that the manager determ

Right, do it by a certain date, a typical sort of like enabling legislation. Yeah. There's an expert that works on it and the legislature doesn't get into the weeds, so they say, we want you to create a system for this by a certain date, you know, go forth.

That makes sense to me because I don't understand how the town manager is otherwise going to exercise or could exercise the discretion.

Well, I mean, they rely on it. I mean, the town manager... Well, it doesn't mean they're going to do it without that. I mean, they rely on stormwater experts. Right. Yeah. Understood. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would prefer that it come back to council for them to adopt criteria rather than... giving sort of an open-ended delegation to the town manager. That's the role of town council is to set the role.

We could do that, but the idea is that they would be doing that with the stormwater overlay. This can't be so burdensome that the idea is this is the interim until the stormwater overlay is developed.

But I still think you need clear criteria that are in the statute that establish what the town manager or whoever on staff is making the evaluation needs to consider and not just potential impacts. Yeah. If the manager determines that there might be more impacts. That's just delegating a whole lot of authority. Right.

But whatever it is, it's reigning back the authority that's currently being delegated, which is totally open-ended with no criteria.

Yeah, possibly. I haven't read. I'll admit I haven't read that part.

I can. But it sounds like it would be useful for you to work on this.

So if nothing else happens without language, how do you envision this going forward, the use of that provision?

Case by case? Yeah. You get a new stormwater engineer next year, you know, they're just starting over.

But also, if all of that is formalized at some level, it just makes it much easier to enforce, because otherwise, oh, come on, we don't need this, and we've got so-and-so. If it's done case by case, it's just harder to enforce. It won't be enforced in the same way.

Liz, I can, oh, go ahead, Jay. Just a clarifying question. I was curious, were you interested in the manager's discretion with respect to the downstream analysis, or more generally, this is, you know, given the circumstances of this development, it should comply with the 100-year rule and not the 25-year rule?

I think that could be a result of the downstream analysis.

But directly, you're focusing on the downstream analysis discretion. Right.

Oh, it was just one part. So we've talked about the manager having discretion with respect to requiring a downstream analysis, but the question I had was whether the manager should have discretion to say, well, because of the special circumstance of this commercial development that's less than 20,000 square foot, it should comply with the 100-year runoff rules and not just the 25.

So if everything... worked well if there was a property that was that appeared to be at risk and so that provision was enacted, and they did the downstream, what came out of it could easily say you need to be, that could be one of the findings from the downstream analysis.

Well, there could be a way to address it, but it could be addressed in other ways.

Right. So it could be cheaper to just go straight to the use the 100-year standard. The problem is then it's getting a little arbitrary, and I think TAS is going to be more Anxious if we start but yes, it could be a broader power that allowed several of these different stormwater control management features to be at the discretion Which is more or less what an overlay does I mean that is what an overlay is So, hopefully this is an interim issue I Just wanted to clarify

Taz, you're talking about criteria, and it's hard to get more specific with the criteria, and I think that's true. I mean, what you have, the heightened risk location interface with adjacent properties, proximity of flood point areas, it's sort of like stormwater risk. What else is there? What I was talking about in terms of the discretion being hard to exercise case by case is that there needs to be a layer of mapping, like application of the criteria, that needs to happen before there's two weeks until this hearing on a certain rezoning. Because otherwise, this sort of analysis should be hol

Uncertain that there is a very clear signal townwide of what the requirements need to be We're aligned I think I don't think it has to be quite case by case I think it's better if they're the principles are really clearly laid out for the public ahead of time So one isn't arguing on a case-by-case basis Basis and the stronger you make them the more there'll be an incentive to get that overlay done and Yeah, so I don't think we're wildly different. I think we would like to see a bit more language. And by the way, one other thing I would add to that, in a lot of similar sort of regulations, ther

But not the larger lots, right? I mean, the more units, the subdivisions.

There's some residential that goes up to 70%. I can't remember what.

But why not just, instead of dividing, just make it by the amount of imperviousness?

broader considerations and interests around housing affordability and attainability And so that's why I don't think I'm just saying like instead of making commercial Distinguishing between residential and commercial you just distinguish between You don't make that distinction and it's impervious for that little piece and if it's affordable housing It's probably not going to have a huge amount of imperviousness. So it probably will be at the lower end.

All right. Well, at least for the high risk area, I think it should be use agnostic, which is the overlay.

Thank you for the presentation. It took a lot of work, obviously, and not as much as it would have pre-chat GPT, but still a lot of work.

True. I don't think I could have done those nifty figures.

I might want to add a shipwreck in the fourth Eastgate scenario. You know, that would really lighten it up. Add to it, yeah. Thank you, and look forward to seeing what you put together between meetings. Three other issues, which I trust will be quicker. One is trees, the other is the by-right thresholds, and the other is enforcement. So Libby, do you want to kick off the trees? I know you don't want to kick off the trees, but you want to start. I'll try.

I don't have a fancy slide presentation, and I'm not really as well prepared. But unfortunately, I've been bogged down in the details for now. But there are a few principle-based things that concern me and it's you know relating to lot sizes and more dense development smaller the more affordable units are going to end up with less trees and so i'm trying to think of a way We can improve on that.

Libby, are you thinking mainly about the three and four unit?

Yes, the three, four, and then the density.

Right, which I think intentionally have a lower tree canopy requirement, right, TAS than single family? Exactly. Because it goes the opposite direction of the stormwater stuff.

yes and that contributes to the stormwater issues too but um and we know that there are some heat zones in chapel hill that relate to that where there isn't a canopy now and so just in thinking of these principles if we can come up with any better solutions to adding back trees. Thank you. Somebody did this. Good. Thanks for bringing that up. I do have a few specific notes. There are some places where the language talks about 85% protection of root zone, and then elsewhere it talks about 75%. I think it has to do with that section about the safe zone to protect neighbors. So I think given that

Libby, why don't we start with this chart? Okay. So.

Well, I can't really see the chart. Let me just go through a few quick notes about. Okay, I'll look for it. The section 7.1.2A3C, just add among the hazards in that section to also protect route compaction by heavy equipment driving over, not just being parked on, but driving over. the root zone. This may be addressed if there's currently less than the canopy required. Anyway, I would like to see more incentives for protecting existing canopy and topography. Then I know the trade-offs for canopy, you do have a little bit of incentive. It counts more, but maybe we could think about bumping that

Okay, so we have this. It's behind you as well, Olivia, if it's not in your line of sight. So the idea here, as I recall from a couple meetings ago, is that for two to four, let's just start comparing one to two to four. Well, also 5 to 12. So you have decreased tree canopy requirements in, it looks like, all districts, except light use, compared to single family. And I think that's because we're trying to incentivize that kind of development. I don't know, and I can't recall whether it's also because of some sort of physical impossibility consideration of actually building that stuff with the

Can I add, we really need to take a look at the buffer requirements and all of these things at once to kind of get a handle on the tree issues.

Can I just ask a clarifying question? Okay, so there's a 30% tree canopy requirement for our one unit residential. build a new house comply with that move into the house and I decide I don't want the trees can I just chop them down is there any permit required is there any limitation on how a private property owner can with a use can deal with their trees.

But that's not to say that cutting them down is allowed. You're just talking about the enforcement mechanism. The requirement continues.

Do they often request a waiver that they can't reach that 30%?

It just seems a shame that in these missing middle, they won't have as many trees.

Well, again, this is a percentage of the lot. So this is all lot-based. So yes, if they're the same size lot, but if a quadplex is typically on a slightly larger lot than a single unit, then you'll have just as much-ish.

Maybe. And then the 1,500 square feet is the size of the property. I mean, the size of the home. It doesn't have anything to do with the size of the property. It doesn't have anything to do with the size. It could be a huge property with a 1,500 square foot house, and they could cut down, make a golf course out of it or something.

And that was just because you felt, I mean, it's kind of funny to go from 30% to zero for 1,500 square feet or smaller. That's because you think that equates to affordable housing. That seems a little... Yeah, again...

So we're finished? So building on what Liz said, perhaps the exception should be based on lot size rather than home size or...

I'd rather see it just a lower percentage, like 10%, because when you have zero trees, that's because the developer finds it easiest to just mow them down. And if these are people who, I don't know, it just seems a shame to denude that people who have small houses also get bleak houses. I could see making it fewer, but 10% maybe?

We're talking about light industrial now?

No, no, no, the all top right corner where 30% is required, and then if you have a small house, it's 0%.

I don't think a lot of developers are building homes that are smaller than 1,500 square feet. And if someone did build one, there's no required tree canopy, but they are certainly permitted to plant one. So I don't see that this is going to end up in a spate of small homes that have no trees on them.

Why leave that exception in there? It could lead to unintended consequences.

Can I bring up two more things, quick things? One is related to invasive plants. in all the places that this is comes up in plantings or replacing or clearing in the lumo when you are developing a property just refer to the latest north carolina invasive pest plant council list it's very thorough for plants to remove and to avoid planting back. Again, I would like to see the number of native trees, canopy trees, maybe start at a higher level. I don't know why that can't be 100%, but maybe start at 70% or something like that. And then I don't know if this has come up before, but have you looked

I would definitely prefer that later approach, but I'm looking for ways to plug the DEM at the moment. Finally, there's a question.

Can I just ask a question on that? Yeah. That sounds great. What would it take to make that happen?

Libby, did you have another tree thing you wanted to raise?

Just in the canopy and what have you standards. I mean, there's some lots like part of that Weaver Dairy lot close to the Harris Teeter that we heard this past year. it's a lot of it is an open space or very beat up right now I mean it really doesn't matter what's exactly what's there but say there isn't existing tree canopy to preserve and the developer decides they want to put in a native plant meadow instead which also store a lot of carbon, and they're great. And so is that allowed in the current LUMO?

Pardon? You had to hit the tree canopy. There's no meadow exception.

You have to have the tree canopy, so yeah.

Oh, I know about, you can plant, but I'm just talking about alternative types of trees. high quality natural spaces instead of, in lieu of tree canopy where the, maybe it's not immediately around the housing where the shade is critically important.

It'd be hard to administer. I mean, a tree is a tree, right? Just throwing it out there.

There are places that have prairies. Yeah.

OK. Sounds good. Finally, I encourage in the tree canopy areas, don't plant turf between the trees. Can we restrict turf plantings that then require mowing and blowing and all of that obnoxious stuff and instead require just existing mulch and Allowing the leaves to fall because those are things are critical also. They help absorb water cool provide habitat for insects So basically natural mulch and leaf fall is much preferable to mown turf So I will look for places where that might be plugged in and bring that back to the commission and see if y'all support that next time.

You're talking about a lawn ban? I don't think that's going to work.

Not an outright lawn ban from play areas or what have you, but I'll take a look and see if we can figure something out.

She's saying in the area that it has trees in it. Place under the canopy, not in the open lawn.

You think about that. I have another question. Going back to the beginning when we were talking about native species and the issue of adapted species came up, could you remind us what, besides the stepping up, is there an incentive for native species, but if you can show that you can't get a native species, you can get an adapted species, or they're equivalent?

And that's just during the interim period until you get to 100%?

So two questions on that. Well, one is a suggestion. The other is a question. The suggestion is... There is usually still an advantage of a native over an adapted species. Adaptive species are non-invasive. They're able to survive without needing extra water and extra pesticides. But they usually don't serve the same ecosystem function like for pollination and... biodiversity, and they're often not as well adapted, although they might be. So it would be nice if somehow it encouraged native, but where not feasible, allowed adaptive rather than treated them on equal footing. That would be my vie

That's a good thanks, Liz. That's a good way of presenting it. I would prefer that too.

articulated and enforced reasonably uh consistently let me ask i believe county has required my question is about chatham which already is a hundred percent and their developers are doing a lot more development than our developers so is that for native and adaptive or just native

They can, but I can't believe that those are the only developers in Chatham that there aren't also people building single family duplexes. Do we know that they're hearing that they can't? They would, in theory, be even at a worse position than ours because they're competing with other developers right there. Do we know that they're... I mean, if they're already doing 100%, it just seems a little suspicious to me that our developers are... more lame than their developers that we can't do it and we need five years to be able to get ready and they're able to do it already.

I think developers can find sources. And I'll give a case example of a non-native tree. It's not on the invasive list yet. It seems well adapted to harsh, dry conditions. I've already seen it become, it's just seeding in to other places, and that's the risk of, besides the fact that they don't provide the habitat for insects and such, they also... and the nursery industry isn't required to vet new species that they've introduced and they can take a while to know so it's just best to avoid yeah i think we've established that like the the native ones are superior it sounds like there's a concern

I mean, I can't sort it out here. It's an empirical question. Maybe we want to recommend another approach or recommend more investigation of this. But I guess at this point, are we moving towards some sort of recommendation? Or is somebody going to write something up? Or should we take a straw poll as to what we want to do on trees?

I just want to make one comment that auto ratchets are always tough. Because if you get approved in 2029 and 15 years later, you're trying to figure out what your native requirement is. How do you know? You have to sort of do some juditsu and figure out when the new Luma was adopted and figure out when you got your permit. And then that can be difficult for somebody who's a single family homeowner trying to decide whether or not they can replace their crepe myrtle. I have no idea if they're native or not. Don't hit me. OK. Whether or not I can replace my crepe. Tree with a crepe myrtle or not

et cetera. So the first thing we started with was this table in front of us and behind us. Do folks think that the percentages should be adjusted, or the pattern should be adjusted, or are folks sort of comfortable with it? Let me just go down and take a straw poll. I'm going to start with Libby, actually.

to vote on that yet. I'm sorry. Can we take more of a look at it? Okay. Circle back until next time. But, I mean, I would like to take a look at It depends on the context and whether these minimums are high enough.

Do you want to come back on the 20th? You have more chance to digest it and make some very specific recommendations if you want to or not. If I can, yeah. Yeah, does that sound okay to everybody? So...

I think we can agree that... Accepting, based on the number of units or size of those two to four units, for having any canopy maybe isn't a good course of action. And Jeff points out it may not affect a large number of properties, but it might affect the people. It can have a quality of life for the people who will end up living there.

Okay, so Libby, that would be something you could include in your write-ups that we could look at. So there were some issues in the middle I want to circle back to, but the last issue, because it's fresh in my mind, is this native tree. Do we allow the adapted or adaptive species or not? And if so, how does the ratcheting work? Are we going to put in the LUMO the effective dates of certain proportions, or are we just going to have some sort of automatic ratcheting thing? How do we want to, does somebody want to write something up? Is there enough interest in having something written up on the

Is there kind of any consensus here? What do you think, Chuck?

I'm happy with whatever. I would just like adapted tree species to be defined. OK, got it.

I'd prefer native, but I'm OK with adaptive. But like Jeff, I think we need actually a list of what is permissible. And if there's something you want to plant that isn't on the list, then you need to get permission.

Yeah, that would just make it more user-friendly.

A list of specific trees. What do you mean by a list? Species. Species.

Species that are considered, I guess, both native and adapted.

Liz, do you want to take that one on? Sure, unless Libby wants to just do it all under the...

Okay, and there were other things in the middle that I didn't quite get down, some tree issues sort of in the middle of those two things that bookended our discussion. Are there other categories, Libby, where you're not just giving Taz feedback here, but you'd like us to sort of vote on something? Or maybe there aren't. i don't remember at this point okay so why don't we leave it this way right and i think it's totally appropriate for you to come back with whatever sort of specific recommendations that you think we ought to consider and we'll just consider them at the next meeting okay good uh

It's a tiered thing, depending on affordability for a residential, starting at 30%.

baseline right so there's that gradation and then there's the tiered incentives that you mentioned right that's just for residential and i should also mention these thresholds do not override the zoning district not at all so if it's ra meaning like one maximum four family depending um you're not building a 30 unit thing without permission you would need a rezoning exactly yeah

Are we going to put a conditional rezoning requirement on it? Exactly, yeah. And then just to be complete on the background here, on commercial, it's a square footage standard, not number of units, obviously standard.

So light industrial is by right up to 120,000.

Well, that was simple and straightforward. And there is a chart. Take back what I said about LUMO being easier. No, my, and I realize that this is council that directed this, but I mean, the idea of a curated town center, I think, is a little precious. And I'm just saying this for the record, because I know that the decision's not going to change. I've lived here 18 years, and I think there have been, aside from the town, I'm thinking on Franklin Street, there have been two projects, one on a town parking lot, and then the Carolina Square, which was pushed forward by an arm of the University o

I mean, it was approved, but again, it hasn't been built. How much of that was due to the cost of going through that process? It was tragic when Mediterranean Deli caught on fire. I'm glad they're back. my god that's a one-story building in the middle of downtown that's like the perfect opportunity for by right development that is more dense and that fits in with the existing fabric of downtown and i don't know if that was because of the regulations but i think the the idea that you know the town council wants to be the one crafting crafting this curated downtown experience i think is a little

Libby, do you want to clarify what you wanted to talk about when you raised this originally?

Yeah, I know one of the goals was just to maybe streamline the process for more developments. I wanted to clarify whether it was also a goal to achieve more affordable housing through this process, and is it likely to do that? I haven't seen evidence about that.

Okay, but you're losing the ability to negotiate at those levels. Do you think it will be more effective than the current process?

What are the project names at the bottom? We can't.

guess just from the public comments i'm seeing i'm seeing people are just concerned that there'll be a larger scale of development that they won't be able to provide any input about i'll say that's why we they do have the chance to provide input through this process and the standards the updated standards around design and all of that tree canopy that has and friends have incorporated i just you know the

This council needs to get away where possible from case-by-case deciding to decide exactly how far back ORA needs to be from the street. That's not their role.

I hear you, but I didn't get to finish my comment. They're concerned about site-specific issues that may not be addressed in this process.

Any other comments on this topic? Okay. Last topic is enforcement. So is the question, actually, I want to let you ask the question, Libby.

Well, as I was looking through tree canopy and tree protection requirements, I'm concerned that there are a lot of maize and such as far as inspection and follow-up rather than wills. So I would like to see more shells go go in there and also some Specification about I know I saw in general that I guess it's in unit 9 where you talk about Enforcement of all kinds of rules that it's just that the town manager or the designee but in this case because trees are such a sensitive issue and they also occur the the damage can happen and early in the process, and maybe it's important to specify who an

Can I just ask an initial question, which is are the enforcement mechanisms or standards changing from the current LUMO to the proposed ones? Are they essentially the same?

So your main leverage is withholding permits, including ultimately the occupancy permit at the end. So that means that you really have to... be sure about whether everything's in order before that last permit is given. Because after that, $500, who cares?

If I can build on that question, is it a question of what's in the LUMO or how much resources staff puts towards having code inspectors and having people go out and actually do the enforcement work?

And under the LUMA, I assume there are certain intervals where permits need to be issued, and those are the intervals where staff could do, you know, presumably do an examination to make sure everything's in order. But beyond that, exactly how many resources are devoted to the

But to that point, there are definite periods where there are inspections, right? So I think that oversight is a key part of this, not necessarily punishing offenders, but just...

OK. That was informative. I'm glad you brought that up. So what I have written down is on housing, Jeff is going to come back with something written up about The general housing point, what was that?

Oh, that was the $5,000, $6,000, sorry, 1,000 square foot. Yeah. Not $1,000, hopefully.

And then Libby's point about scaling it to allow additional gross floor area.

Right. I'm going to come back with something on that. four-unit zoning tied to greenway nodes in schools okay libby's gonna work on the tree stuff in consultation with liz liz is going to work on the stormwater stuff that's it so that's fairly discreet so at the next meeting we'll have some stuff to look at we can tweak it and feel free to shop it to people in groups of less than Less than three. Well, we only have six.

Three or less. Your quorum is four. Do we want to ship everything to someone to assemble for the meeting?

That may not be possible beforehand. I'm going to be...

Oh, OK. OK. No, I mean just get the whatever we draft to someone. Yeah.

That's a great idea. So we'll send to Josh before the meeting whatever it is. And what I'm envisioning here is something that, even if everybody agreed to it, could be votable. It would be not written up as a resolution. I'm just saying it would be a recommendation or a piece of advice to the council. We recommend blah, blah, blah, something like that.

Can I also suggest, we've talked about this over the years of bringing our recommendations to council meetings. I think this is significant enough that one or more of us should show up at the meeting the next day and actually present it and walk through our points and why rather than just send them. Yeah, I agree.

I had a few more just grab bag things to get out there, which probably don't raise to the level. But this is mostly for them. Quick question. Can you do a nail salon as a home occupation?

I had a comment with the original LUMO on these three different types of home occupations. I'm glad that's gone. It's much simpler now. I do think the floor area limitation on home occupations should be eliminated when we talk about enforcement. I hate having... regulations and codes that are practically unenforceable and i don't know how you're ever going to determine whether or not a home occupation is using 35 or more of the space in a dwelling unit and how do you calculate that in re and rb i think the lumo should also permit along with the small retail uses which are awesome that they sho

And Liz had something she wanted to add.

I don't think I saw this. And I can bring this up independently with you. Was there any language in the lieu of this is around sustainability and energy issues about battery storage units and best practices for if the town decides to start investing in batteries which is what a lot of towns are doing now particularly as they start bringing online industrial scale solar and other backup units rather than

Somebody sent me, and I can't find where it is, but I will look for it, and if it looks like it's useful, I will share it with you.

OK. This was a great discussion, I thought. Thanks, everyone, for especially staff members hanging out for four hours with us. We appreciate it. And with that, I think if I could ask just in person, right, on the 20th?

Is it a big project, like something that's going to take a lot of time? Could?

Are you going to be out of town in two weeks, or that was another time?

Are you not going to be at the meeting online? Should we send the information to someone else then?

I Mean, I think this was a great discussion. I think it was aided by the fact that we were physically here discussing it As someone who you know in my day job has lots of meetings some virtual some in person the in person are always better and I'm happy to do whatever the majority of the board commission wants to obviously but I would urge in person just because of the I think it has significant advantages as far as having like a discussion we can look at each other we can turn we can sort of yeah I mean there's yeah there's no like issues with video or audio or you know so

It seems like our approach thus far to the LUMO meetings has been to have them in person because they're important. It sends a signal about that and facilitates at least some public involvement among people who want to come. So I just assume continue that unless others don't want to do it. Okay. Sorry, Josh, but I guess we'd like to notify whoever the applicant is that you'll be in person.