Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting for Tuesday, August 18th. I will call this to order. Can we get a roll call?

Present. Thank you, everybody. Good to see a full panel this evening. First item on the agenda is approval of minutes from July 21st. Hope everybody got a chance to review. As a reminder, even if you weren't here, you had an opportunity to review those minutes and vote in the affirmative. Or if you have any corrections, additions, now would be the time.

Thank you, everyone. Next item on the agenda is public forum. I don't see anybody in the room. Is there anybody online? All right. Moving on to public hearing. Case number 2026-06, residential nonconforming uses. Is this you, Will? Thank you.

So this amendment is not applicable to non-residential, in residential?

Can you give us an idea of what has changed or nuance added or taken away from the last conversation that we had around these?

Well, a deed restriction or a covenant would run with the land.

Just for clarity, I think, and to Brenda's point, which I agree with, if there's any opportunity to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing, that's fantastic. It seems to me that allowing to rebuild a higher number of units on a parcel that wouldn't normally or wouldn't currently allow that number of units would be preserving any chance of affordability. If we've got four units on a lot that only allows one in an ADU or something, we're allowing them to build back the number of units that were there, right?

Now, of course, we can have no control over the price point, the quality, whatever. But it seems to me like if they can build more units, the chances are they could be more affordable to fit on that one piece of land. Not to do this would require them to take down four units and potentially just put up one.

They can already do that. As it stands right now, a developer could buy this property and tear that down.

I appreciate your sentiment. I appreciate where you're coming from on this, Brenda. If you could help us understand the logic of that, because somebody could go do that right now. This doesn't incentivize, doesn't add any incentive.

Well, can you help us understand the scale? Like, how many properties are we talking about here?

I want to clarify, are you saying affordable meaning missing middle?

Well, so let's look at the other side of that, though. If one of these four, six, eight plexes gets flooded beyond 60% of its damage currently. Current owner, if we didn't do this, they could not rebuild those units.

Are these saleable duplexes, like these multi-units in R1s?

But some of these may have a party wall agreement and have two owners and something like that.

I see that from the highest level view. This is not... development rights to these properties doesn't give developers additional yes they may tear down rebuild but also they could gut these houses and put in high-end finishes high-quality landscaping and rent them for much much more that can happen today in fact that might be the most cost-effective way to get a good return on these homes

But it's also, this amendment preserves the ability of those homes that are destroyed to come back with the same number of units. I see this as protecting the number of units.

I am so sorry. That's okay. Amy and then Eric.

So I have one of the things that has stuck with me after reading it is that they are non-conforming and there's five units on a property that is only allowable for four why wouldn't we allow the five because if we allowed the five that would create for a smaller unit which would then keep that what brenda is worried about part of the size smaller and then there would be the chance that there would be units at a lower price than the higher price, the density. So why don't we want to allow what's existing to be rebuilt?

Noah, then Eric. We'll come back to Brenda.

I think we've kind of gone back and forth on this a bit. Brenda, do you feel like you've got your point across on your concerns about this?

I just have one more question, and going back and forth in my mind after reading this and thinking and talking. So if you have a fourplex on the piece of property right now, and you want to build a duplex with two ADUs in this non-conforming, would that still be allowed?

I thought I knew the answer. I just wanted to re-clarify because we've gone round and round and I just got, thank you.

So it could be a condo with four, if it allowed four levels.

It just has, right. But it could be four units on top of each other. It doesn't have to look exactly the same. OK.

All right, let's have a motion to close.

All right. Hearing is closed. Any further discussion that will not include Will? Collin?

I just want to add, Brenda, I really do appreciate your sentiment, and I am absolutely in agreement with anything that we can do to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing. I think that this cuts both ways. I think that Yeah, some of these may be taken down and expensive things put up but it also preserves the opportunity for an equal number of units to be preserved as well. I also think that there are probably more effective tools and measures to prefer to preserve affordable housing that we should be talking about and that council should be considering other than than just, you know,

Great. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I would love for that to include some input from the commission of questions the commission may have about our roles, our duties, our limitations, and be collaborative in coming up with an agenda for that.

All right. We'll move on to attorney's choice. Jackson.

Yeah, maybe, Nancy, if you could just send out a questionnaire on who can make the ninth, that would be great.