City Council - Regular Meeting

are invited to attend in-person council meetings in council chambers on the first level of City Hall. Public access to tonight's meeting is also available on the local government access channel 8 for Comcast subscribers, on the city's YouTube channel online, and by telephone using the call-in numbers posted on the meeting agenda. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Mayor Lighty? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Lukeman-Hiromasa? Here. Council Member Burns? Here. Council Member Sievers?

Here.

Council Member Kondo?

Here.

Council Member Roper? Here. Council Member Goff? Here. Council Member Nowicki?

Here.

Council Member Lighty? Here. Thank you.

Thank you. We have four items tonight for our study session meeting. The first one is an accessory item. dwelling unit ADU regulations, potential amendments, and small-scale density options. Director of Planning and Development Becky Smith is here to present. Good evening.

Good evening, Mayor, Lady, Council. So tonight I'm here to facilitate a discussion about possibly amending our accessory dwelling regulations as well as some other potential small-scale density options that the city could entertain. A little background. In 2025, City Council did request that staff come back to City Council to discuss the opportunity for potentially allowing conics boxes as accessory dwelling units. And then upon further conversation learned that maybe even expanding beyond just conics box options, but potentially looking at prefabricated structures or just ways to make adding some density within our community a little bit easier. We do have accessory dwelling units that are allowed in our 2019 adoption of the Unified Development Ordinance. We did specifically put in allowances for accessory dwelling units in RS1 and RS2 zone districts. They do have some limitations. The maximum size is 750 square feet. It can only have one bedroom. The owner must live in one of the units on site. There are some location and design standards, including following the setbacks of their zone district. They're not allowed to separate their water or sewer utilities from the main structure. And we do allow for manufactured or prefab homes, we just haven't pre-vetted any of those options. And so this conversation really started with can we allow ConnexBoxes Right now, the UDO expressly prohibits Connex boxes in residential neighborhoods. So we did, as staff, dig into this a little bit. If we wanted to allow Connex boxes for ADUs, we would have to amend the UDO to allow that as an accessory dwelling unit. They would still be subject to building and fire codes and occupancy limits. They would be required to have a permanent foundation. And one thing I learned from working with the building department is that conics boxes and shipping containers are not covered by the Housing and Urban Design, Urban Development HUD or the Colorado Division of Housing for prefab structures. So they do require a little additional inspection as well as some engineering work. Other municipalities do allow them, and a lot of them have some additional aesthetic standards to make them fit within the community character. If council directs staff to look at allowing ConnexBoxes for ADUs, we would also like some direction on what type of design standards should be included with those regulations. And then there's also the cost and feasibility. The International Residential Code does not have a prescriptive path for a container conversion. So if you are purchasing a container to convert into an ADU, everything has to be engineered and designed to every change that you make. And then every change has to be inspected. This slide just goes over some of the considerations for custom-billed ADU and what that process is with the International Residential Code versus the shipping container or Connex box. Typically a ConnexBox actually ends up having a higher cost, I learned from the building department, and that is just because with every window cut or every modification that you make to it, it does need that engineering stamp and then special inspection. However, some people do like the aesthetic of a ConnexBox, so that is a consideration. So one of the questions tonight for council is do you wish to have staff make amendments for you to consider to the UDO to allow connex boxes for ADUs. And we can stop for discussion throughout the presentation or come back to the questions at the end, however you want to do it.

I think we can wait till the end.

OK. So as we were digging into how to make ADUs more accessible to our community, we did find that DOLA has a lot of really great resources on their website based on legislation that the state passed. While we don't or we wouldn't be prioritized for some of the funding to help incentivize some of these options, some of these could be good for our community. So I pulled out two that I thought were a good fit for North Glen. And the first is encouraging factory built ADUs. There's a lot of manufactured ADUs that you purchase off-site, and then they get delivered to your home, and it's a pretty quick build. Most of these are approved either by HUD or the Department of Housing in Colorado, and if they've gone through the pre-certification process with either of these, it's a pretty easy building process. They still have to get a building permit but it makes for an easier inspection process, and it can be a pretty streamlined, simple way to encourage accessory dwelling units. Factory-built ADUs can lower the cost, expedite installation, and can be brought into our current design standards. So one of the considerations or questions for council tonight is do you wish to direct staff to analyze the city's ADU regulations and design regulations to how they could better fit with some of these existing pre-manufactured structures and come back with recommendations on how to amend the code so that we can create sort of a sheet that already has these pre-approved certified ones that would fit in our community. And then this is pre-approved ADU plans. So this would be function more like a custom build plan, but that would be available to all of our residents. And so this is another strategy from DOLA. It allows homeowners to use the ADU plans that have already been reviewed for zoning and building compliance. It would have to be reviewed again in a permit process to make sure that it's meeting setbacks and that there's enough room on the site. But it does create that just ready to go plan set for residents to use. And this can be done in two ways. The jurisdiction can hire an architect or designer to create that pre approved plan set. Or we can put out a call to architects and designers to do that and have that available for our community to probably purchase for a fee. Some of the benefits of this option is that it saves homeowners months of working through a design process with a designer because this the plan sets already ready to go It lowers the cost It's ready already ready to use plans can be customizable and it accelerates the permitting process because the building department has already had a set of eyes on it and It also allows the city to guide some of the aesthetics to make sure that whatever that pre-approved plan set is fits into the character of our community. So the third question is if council wishes us to develop a set of pre-approved ADU plans. And if so, what type of structure? We could do the jurisdiction owned. We could do architect designer owned if we can find an architect to collaborate with. Or we could do a combination of both. This option would likely come as part of a budget proposal in the future because we would have to, especially if we do the jurisdiction-owned, put out a proposal for designers to respond to. Another option that was brought up for consideration is duplexes. and allowing them as a use by right in RS1 and RS2 zone districts. This can modestly increase density within residential neighborhoods, and it broadens access to first-time homebuyers. You'd also want to consider some of the impacts such as parking, building, lot coverage, et cetera. And one of the things I would recommend if we do want to explore this option is to do more community engagement. prior to any sort of code amendments. But the question here is, does council wish to direct staff to explore UDO amendments that would allow duplexes as a use by right in single family home district, specifically the RS1 and RS2 districts? So with that, we're just here to collect your feedback tonight and get some direction. on some of these potential options, answer any questions about these options, or if you have things that weren't brought up here, we're happy to look into it or explore those options as well.

Thank you. Council Member Kondo.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. I have a few questions. So it sounds like the whole Connex box When you start customizing and cutting into it, you're kind of having to start all over from scratch, so to speak. So based on that, it sounds like it could be pretty onerous, even though perhaps a Connex box in terms of cost of goods is fairly inexpensive, relatively speaking. As far as the DOLA, I guess, vendor approved list of design ready to build or prefabricated ADUs. Do we have any idea of the pricing or anything like that? Or would that be something that if we said yes, you're going to go and peel the layers of the onion back further on that?

Yeah, so just a clarification. The DOLA strategy doesn't include a list. So we would, as staff, have to go through and find those options that have been certified by HUD or the Department of Housing that would then get through that building process fairly quickly. So we haven't taken that step yet to look at what type of manufactured homes have already gone through that pre-vetting through those two agencies and then lining it up with... the ones that meet our standards within our community.

Gotcha. And when you say HUD, are we talking Colorado HUD or federal HUD?

So both. So from talking with Safe Built, it requires either or to certify. So it can be the Department of Housing in Colorado or it can be the federal HUD.

Okay. Gotcha. All right, well, my gut is telling me, in terms of answering your first question, how do I feel about Connex boxes as an option? Probably not so excited anymore. Although the strange irony is, I think I remember at NLC in Salt Lake City, there was a vendor that had actually Connex boxes that were already modified, if you will, prefab. So I don't know if that would qualify for, you know, your plan number two about having preset or, you know, pre-developed designs that are ready to go, even if they're a Connex box based.

Yeah, that could. So I don't I didn't dig into research to see if there is a manufacturer that's using connex boxes that have made modifications that have already been engineered and certified. So potentially, gotcha.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Goff.

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. A couple of things. I'm kind of with Councilmember Kondo on the hate to rule out the connex boxes. So if there was some way we could you know, like get some kind of pre-approved plan for that to make it, you know, a little bit easier for people if they wanted to do that. I think that would be great. I know we've had some concerns expressed about what those might look like, but, I mean, I'm assuming that, well, maybe it isn't fair, but I would guess that a lot of these are going to be in people's backyards. And so, you know, what they look like is not as much of a concern for me. You know, I just have to admit that We want to get people housing. And then, so I would say I like the idea of either, I probably like best of all the city approved plans, jurisdiction approved plans, excuse me, because that would give, I'm assuming that's going to be cheaper than, you know, getting some architect, you know, to do it that they would have to pay for. But I realize that that is also going to cost the city some money. So I don't want to see what we can do to get funding for that. And I also would approve of duplexes in more zones than they are currently available. And I know we're talking about neighborhood impacts with parking, et cetera. In my neighborhood, there is a house that is the same size as mine that my husband and I live in that four adults, five children, and pets live in because they can't afford to live somewhere else. So it's just as crowded in just a single family home. So a duplex does not bother me at all. So I think that's probably my comment so far. I'll wait and see, hear what other people have to say.

Council Member Nowicki.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Director Smith, for putting this together. I know we discussed and kind of talked about this and kind of what it looks like. I appreciate you diving in and bringing these questions forward, and I appreciate council being willing to kind of listen here. My thinking on this, obviously, housing affordability is a huge issue, probably the main issue, right? And, you know, we sit up here and we rail against the state when they try and kind of jam housing mandates down our throats or, you know, kind of these unfunded mandates around housing. So, you know, it kind of got me thinking, like, what are some North Glen specific things we could do to increase the housing supply, right? Because no one seems to like when we have Carl's Farm apartments go up or Alexa departments go up. So I'm thinking, what are some other things we could do, which I think kind of led to this discussion, exploring. I think one of the huge benefits of Northland is that we have small houses and large lots. How can we take advantage of that? And obviously, I'm biased because I built an ADU in my backyard, right? I say that because that ADU allows my mother to live there. And because of that, we were able to have another kid. We do not pay for childcare expenses. She helps out. Now, we are incredibly blessed and privileged to have that, right? Even building our ADU on the low end was about $125,000. which is a lot of money. I mean, even that's a low end too, right? So it got me thinking like, what are some North Glen specific home rule oriented things we could do to allow our community? And I'm not asking, you know, that we, build it for residents. Let's let the market decide, is kind of my thinking. Make it easily accessible. The Connex boxes, I went to the Salt Lake City. It looked cool, looked like a great idea. Sounds like it's not going to work. Yeah, it just sounds like it's only good for sliders or smalls, but not for housing. So that's OK. do like the anything we can do to help bring the cost down for residents whether that's factory built pre-approved plans um giving them options right um i do think people should have the option too if they want to put up a duplex um and i and and to me The duplex is kind of the North Glen solution to this, right? We're not asking for kind of quadplexes. We're not asking for megaplexes on people's lot. But what is kind of the North Glen, something that will kind of still flow within our community? And I could see duplexes doing that. I could see ADUs doing that. Is parking going to be an issue? Sure. You know, we're a car-dependent society. The good news is we also have large streets. I've got plenty of free, you know, free street parking right outside my house. I know, you know, people don't like to look at cars, but, you know, we've got to think about creative ways. There's got to be some give and take on some of these things. So with regard to kind of your questions, Number one, whether to amend the UDO to allow shipping container connex boxes. That one sounds like it's not affordable for residents, so let's not even waste our time there. Number two, whether direct staff to identify barriers to factory-built ADUs. I would like to know more about that. I would like to see if that's an option. Whether develop a pre-approved ADU plans. That would have been so helpful. That would have saved us about $5,000 and a month of work. So I would like to see something like that. I know, again, it comes with a budget proposal, and now is not the time for spending money. The least we can do is see what it is, see what's involved, and if we have to punt that to a future council, then that's what we do. We've done the work. I do think we're following up on some of the things in our housing needs assessment from 2023. You know, duplexes, ADUs, this is not new stuff. We're just now acting on it. So again, I appreciate the discussion on it. Oh, with regard to number four, whether to allow duplexes in rezoning, I would be interested in knowing more about that. I know some of these things are not going to be popular. You know, I welcome residents to reach out to me, you know, so that we can discuss these things because I'd love to hear. you know, how we can make this North Glen specific. Housing is an issue in North Glen affordability. What can we do as a community to solve it? Last question. I'm curious because one of the things I saw that it was kind of brushed over and I think we had discussed it was infrastructure, right? Can you talk a little bit about kind of some of the constraints there and how that might impact kind of development, kind of what we're looking at?

Yeah. Um, so, uh, working with public works, we do have an integrated water resource plan and a wastewater treatment plan. And in both categories, we are sort of pushing up against some of our limits, uh, within the city. Um, we do have estimations, uh, that were put into the 2020, Integrated water resources plans for future developments some of them haven't happened so of the density that was predicted for us We still have five hundred and fifty five units that weren't actually realized That said we're in the process of kicking off an update to that plan so we are going to be looking at some of the assumptions that we have and trying working with Public Works to on land uses and how to better categorize some of our land uses and their water intensity so that we can get a better model to predict what sort of density we can reasonably hold in the community because we don't have a model right now. It's more just units and comparing that to acres, acre feet of water. And Sarah would be much more eloquent at probably talking about this specifically. But we are working together. we kick that plan off and so we will be coming to city council with some of the information from that plan getting some direction from you cool um okay well thank you again for all the work on this

Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you for this information. You know, and I appreciate Council Member Nowicki's perspective. It's definitely given me some things to think about. I will just say that my concerns were around infrastructure. That was the one thing that I really wanted to bring up because I really do think that it would be great in theory to have duplexes. But I know back in 2021, when I did a tour of our wastewater treatment facility, we were pushing limits. And we have infrastructure needs that we need to cover and take care of in the upcoming years. And so I don't know if it's a conversation. And you know, maybe you said it, Councilmember Nowicki, if it's being pushed forward, I think we need to deal with the infrastructure issues first and make sure that we're ready and capable to handle potential extra, you know, density. I agree. I mean, I would absolutely love to see, you know, more people to be able to have their in-laws live with them. You know, I'm daycare, but I live 25 minutes away, right, so I can have my own house. That's important. You know, I appreciate that perspective. But from the city perspective, agree and want all these things. I'm just concerned because I know we've seen the needs coming up for infrastructure and all the things that we have to handle. So I don't know if it feels right right now or if it's You know, if the studies can be done without costing us money to have it in place for the future when we handle and are sure and secure that we can handle that kind of added density and then have that conversation then. So that's kind of where I'm at. But, you know, as it stands right now, we do allow ADUs. And that is really expensive. That's like what my first home cost, you know, way back when, like 20 years ago, right? And nobody can buy a home for that money. So we're back to the problem. So I get it. It's a terrible problem that we have that we're trying to solve. And then so that's my thoughts on that. I'm still thinking things through but And then you know bringing things forward as a budget request also makes me nervous I don't want to add things to staff's plate right now or to the budget But that's a conversation I guess that we can all have Has anyone put in a request for like conics type boxes or different? style ADUs outside of what we already currently allow?

So we do currently allow factory or prefab ADUs. They would just have to meet our design standards and be approved by the director. And we don't have that pre-vetted list of things. So someone could go that route. They would just have to do their own research as far as is it HUD certified? Is it Department of Housing certified? And if not, they would require special certifications to get it through the building inspection process. Sorry. Remind me of your question.

That does answer my question. That answers my question in, I think, enough.

And then I would say for Connex boxes, because I just remembered the first part. We haven't gotten any specific requests for ConnexBox conversions for residential. Obviously we did have like the small sliders and a long time ago we had the Starbucks shipping container store. Those did get held up a little bit because of state certifications that were required. And so there it is possible and I don't want to make it seem like connex boxes are not a possibility It may cost more but it is something that is possible and residents could pursue if they like that aesthetic It's just knowing that they would need to get that extra design or engineering or find someone that's already done it That's gone through the certification process.

Yeah, okay Okay, it sounds like if it's going to cost more like that doesn't make sense in my head. I mean, might as well build something awesome like Councilmember Nowicki has. But, you know, to his point too, like maybe having some type of ideas or plans to help, maybe that's a step we can take. And I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

Councilmember Sievers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Director. So the ConnexBox thing, I mean, I just see construction zones when I see ConnexBoxes. What are the primary issues with ConnexBox homes currently under the code is basically that the code requires it match or look kind of similar to the primary structure. So would one of the amendments be like to eliminate that rule for all ADUs or?

That would really be up to you all and the planning commission as far as what you think is the appropriate characteristics for ADUs in our community.

And then another one I thought that stood out was funny was that ADU code requires 30% masonry in the front. Is that just like the front or the picture shows it go all around?

Yeah, so the picture was pulled out of an older guide where it did require a wrap that went, I believe it was three feet, and we removed that when we updated the code in 2019, so we should probably update that picture. since it's no longer applicable. It is just the portion of an accessory structure over 200 square feet. So if it was a garage or any accessory structure, does require that brick facade. It doesn't have to be real brick. It can be thin brick or faux brick. But it's just to keep that characteristics with the principal structures. And so it applies if your principal structure is primarily brick.

Gotcha. I guess I could see a connex box doing well, but I could also see it being an eyesore for the whole community. But I guess the average square feet per connex box is 160 to 320. So you could, in theory, have two different connex boxes, 40 foot, next to each other, and create one structure. If you do all that work, I think that's an interesting look. But I do also obviously agree with sentiment that we do need to buy into some items that will help expand housing. I mean, we do deny a lot, so it's nice to say maybe we could allow some items. Duplexes, I'm more or less on board with. Again, I'm on the Planning Commission. I get to hear all the conversations about what we don't do and don't like as a city, so we There's a lot of things that we just need to embrace some items. We don't need to embrace everything. We don't want someone to knock down a single family home and build like eight units on it, I would say. But duplexes seem reasonable-ish. But every community, every neighborhood is going to have their own opinion on it. So I think it's worth exploring it all. Also, I would say it seems like jurisdiction-owned plans would make more sense, only because with the architect-designer-owned plans, it seems like on here they'd be submitting plans to the city and we'd have to keep track of whether they're still active or in business or I don't know. It seems like more work to offer those plans. Yeah, and I just think We do need to be a little more flexible, but I don't know if I necessarily think a ConnexBox looks great. That's it.

Thank you. Council Member Roper. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you for being here and for this presentation. I think I don't want to repeat everything that my councilmates have said, but they've brought up some really good points. I definitely think having the jurisdiction ownership of that Having the pre-approved guidelines will really help keep the process and the benefits of it streamlined. I do wonder about community engagement. We are here to support our community, so what would their voices be? What do they want and need? What would they be in favor of seeing around their community? Because you know if they don't like it, we will hear about that as well. I would be in favor of looking into how this would provide support for our community around housing, and I would be in favor of looking into the duplex research. As my councilmate said, I am worried about the infrastructure piece, though. That's been a concern of mine with whether we do high-density housing or even this. Just would our system be able to bear the load of that? And additionally, just because we sit on historic press together, my question would be around, and not that you have to answer it today, but how would this change any of the potential historic designations that we are looking at around our city and just the, when you look at the Pearl Mack homes, just the quintessential replication of them all, that's what makes it in fact unique. So I'd be interested in seeing how that would change historical designations. Thank you.

And I can kind of touch on the historic designations. Right now, we only have one district that's designated. So they are required to come to the city with modifications to their site. And that's DESA Estates. We haven't locally designated any other districts. Federal and state designation doesn't equate to any local control. So even if a structure were to get that federal or state designation, We can't say what a property owner does at that point. It just unlocks grant opportunities for them. So really, it's that local designation. And if there's areas that we think could be at risk or really want to look at because they're special, we should definitely talk to the Historic Preservation Commission about it. Thank you.

Council Member Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. City Attorney Hoffman, did you want to say something before I do?

Council Member Roper brought up a really fascinating issue, I think, in North Glen as it relates to what makes North Glen North Glen with the Pearl Mack Homes. Because no one has sought any sort of historic designation for sort of the core being one of the first planned subdivisions in the country that could have significant repercussions on this conversation. But that's the first time I've heard that discussion about the Pearl Mac kind of model. And the first box you have to check to even start looking at historic designation is at 50 years. We're there now. And so it's just, it was a fascinating point because it's not been brought up before. And we are on the precipice of if that's something the city wanted to do, but it could have significant other repercussions on density type issues.

Thanks. Okay, thank you so much for the presentation, Director Smith. Welcome back, everybody. Question about the prefabricated homes. We're not talking about, like, houses you can buy off Amazon, are we?

Well, I don't know. We're not talking about modular homes or ones that can be moved around. So prefabricated just means that it's built in a factory and that it gets shipped to your home and you can put it up. So I assume if an Amazon home, what you would want to make sure though is that it's certified because the certification is also a lot of additional inspections and that is outside of our local building department's control. So you have to really work with the state and I've heard that can be a really challenging process.

Yeah. And I would add the line between factory built and stick built is becoming much less clear because you can have a quote unquote factory built home brought in on several pieces that you can't tell the difference, largely. So it's really going to be a question of the type of certifications you can get.

OK. Interesting. Also something to note. You can buy a house off Amazon. What can't you buy off Amazon, really? I do have a lot of thoughts around infrastructure for us. But with the duplex and an ADU, especially with the ADU, everything stays on the same sewer line, everything like that. So how much of an extra burden is that really?

Yeah, so an ADU is not substantial because it is limited to that one bathroom, one kitchen unit. And so we don't even require, unless the building code identifies there could be a pressure issue, we don't require them to do any sort of special submittal for public works unless flagged by the building department. So ADUs are pretty insignificant as far as their water line pressure. Now, if everybody in the city decided to construct an ADU, which is unlikely, then it would have an impact on our existing plant infrastructure and water infrastructure. So it is just something to be aware of what that impact would be and how it relates to other areas that we're looking at for additional density. I'm not sure what the answer is at this point. But that's one of the things that we're working with Public Works on as we update the plan.

Well, I just think, you know, speaking of the Pearl Max, you know, I mean, like, they're pretty designed to be turned into two units. You know what I mean? You just block off that kitchen area in the back and wham, bam, you have two entries. And that also wouldn't add that much burden to this infrastructure because all of that is already there, specifically turning the Pearl Max into two.

And it would just depend on how people did it and how we designed the regulations. Because if they're converting and existing and not adding additional bathrooms et cetera, then it might not have a significant impact. But if they're scraping and rebuilding and putting five bathrooms in each duplex, it could have more of an impact. But I don't know if all those bathrooms are getting used all the time. So yeah.

That makes sense. Sorry, I'm just going through all of my questions here. So the list of designs, the jurisdiction-owned plans, I think it's a nice idea. It's also giving little boxes on the hillside to me. Most of North Glen is not in HOA. It's not a vibe that we like. And I don't know controlling that at the city level feels good to me. It's people's property. And if they can build something within code, they should get to build their dream. If they're dropping $125,000, they should get to do what they want.

That's a great question, and I think it warrants a bit of a clarification. If we did pre-approved plans that homeowners could use, they could just come in and choose to use them, but they would still have the option if they wanted to do a custom-built ADU or go a different direction as long as it's meeting the regulations as far as the 750 square feet height regulations and setbacks.

So that makes a lot of sense. And then so doing the jurisdiction owned plans is just like a value add slash incentive for folks to maybe give them some more savings to reduce the cost and make the entry a little easier. I like the idea of that. I don't like the idea of the budget implications presently, but like that could be something cool to do in the future. Um, From the ConnexBox perspective, just from someone who is so engulfed in tiny home culture, you don't really ever see those in a suburban, urban setting. They're always in a field. That is kind of where, because you have to build everything into them, like with sewer and everything. So you don't really see that in spaces like ours. Yeah. So I feel like it's kind of like, I don't really know who's doing that. Specifically, those Connex boxes are so specific in that culture. I don't really know if it would match our needs as a city, to be honest, unless someone's doing some sort of Airbnb sitch. Something else I think about and maybe we would want to look into is somebody who does this really well is actually Los Angeles. There are so many properties that have been split or have their garages that were from old homes built in the 1920s. I have so many friends who lived. They had an address in a garage. So it's an interesting city to look into for this as well. They do some things well. They do some things well. But yeah, I do, especially with the infrastructure, I hear the need. But when you actually think about it, it sounds alarming at first. But when you think about it, both of the ADU and the duplex options probably won't add that much of a burden. And I feel like the housing need is just so great that I would rather give people the options and let's see what happens kind of thing.

answer all the questions and ask all did i answer all your questions i think so i think so all right great thanks councilmember leidy thank you thank you so much for being here and for this presentation um i'm really glad that you went before me because you asked a lot of the questions that i had councilmember burns so thank you um one thing my biggest question and i want to get this out before I start going through all the answering the questions. For the duplexes, I lived in Denver and my brother recently visited and it was like the house that he was brought to as a baby. He grew up there. So my grandparents brought him there. And we realized that that whole area has been bought and then scraped and turned into duplexes and it changes the vibe of the street because you have that really cool old school house from the 1900s and then you've got this weird duplex that was built two years ago and then you've got another one that was built five years ago and then you've got another one that's from the 1800s. How do we make sure that that doesn't happen?

our city is this is the reason it's if we were to change this rezoning situation is that something that could happen to us yes and you can add design guidelines within the different zone districts to try to prevent if you're looking at the ones I think can imagine some of the ones that you're talking about extravagant so you can add brick standards roofline requirements height limitations we already have those things in our code so a duplex would have to comply right now if we just said duplexes are allowed with those standards the other tool in the toolbox is the historic preservation commission and so We just did a citywide survey and identified neighborhoods and commercial areas that might have potential for designation. And so looking into that and seeing if it's something that warrants a deeper survey to determine if that has designation, is preserved enough for designation, I guess. So that's another option that you could use to then preserve certain areas of the city. But with rezoning, or not rezoning, but adding that option, there is always the risk that someone wants to take advantage of that property, right, and they want to just completely reconstruct, so.

Okay, and then is there, Don't know I was kind of looking is there a way that then that would affect the affordability of The area because some of these duplexes are in the millions, so that's I'm seeing attorney Hoffman nod so that so then while we're talking about The need for housing it's not the need for just housing. It's a need for affordable housing because we have housing and can you afford to live there is the question. So is that something that then we would also need to look into is how do we support our residents that way? Like, are they gonna be priced out of their homes basically?

Well, so if we wanted to add an affordability restriction, we would do that separate from the UDO. And Corey might have more thoughts on this. But basically, right now, if we're just amending the UDO, we would be adding to the property right. There is a lot of theories that just adding additional housing and getting more saturation reduces the cost. But then if people are coming in and scraping and reconstructing something that's much larger, then it may not be achieving that goal. And there's no way to know right now what this community might see and what the market would bring to it.

Okay, cool. And then I worked at Starbucks. I worked at that specific Starbucks. So I don't really love the idea of the Connex boxes because the air conditioning, that's struggle even when it is a corporation that has put a lot of money into the construction of that storage container. So I'm not necessarily a fan of that. And then I was on the same page of that jurisdiction owned situation, but then listening to what Councilmember Nowicki said about saving money and then you answered the question beautifully. So I would be in favor of a jurisdiction owned situation for the ADU plan, and then I think I answered the questions. Did I? Yes? I think. Okay. Okay.

All right. I know we still have hands, but I need to go before we make another pass at it. Sue, I had a question about data. Do you have any idea how many ADUs we have in the city currently?

I should have pulled that before we got started. I think it's maybe more than a dozen. Okay. There are likely some non-conforming ADUs that were constructed prior to adopting our ADU regulations that are in existing structures. And then as far as detached accessory dwelling units, I feel like it might be around nine or 12.

Okay. Do you know how many have been built in the last three years?

I can definitely pull that information. I think I actually asked for it at one point, and I just forgot to bring it with me tonight. So we can email that.

I think what I was trying to assess is the urgency of this conversation, right? Do we have like a backlog of these applications? Are people lined up outside the permit office?

We get inquiries pretty regularly. We haven't received a lot of permit applications, which would come directly to the building department and then be reviewed by planning. A lot of our inquiries are around the ownership requirement, though. And so I think that if you were looking at really just wanting to expand the housing options, that might be something for council to look at. However, it does also increase the opportunity of just having more rental properties in our community.

Yeah, I remember that discussion quite clearly, and I don't think we want to make that change. So listening to some of the questions and the presentation, I think I have... I'm still wondering. I know that we brought this forward after... council members had seen the Connex. And then of course, council member Nowicki has firsthand experience with having an ADU, which is great. And then I started wondering, is there an opportunity? Because if we're talking about increasing affordability and providing those options to our city, reaching out to the people who do have them and saying, hey, we're going to host a home tour of ADUs on a certain day. We're going to make it really fun. And maybe they're not interested, but maybe they would be. so that they could see what it actually looks like in their community because the ADU at Councilmember Nowicki's office is unique, office, his home. It is your office and your home. At his home is unique and done to a very high level. Like it's a beautiful thing. And I think there are probably a lot of non-conforming. I also was wondering how many might be just converting a basement or a garage because those are way less expensive than building a freestanding option. And so just trying to understand, first of all, is there a need in our community? We know there's a statewide need for housing. But is there a need in our community to answer this question? Right? So that's the first thing I want to know. And then the different options because a freestanding option is very expensive. I don't encourage the Connex for a variety of reasons. And I know Council Member Gough said, I don't care what it looks like. I do just because there are backyard neighbors. Like if my neighbor, dropped a connex in the back yeah right and so i think then that made me think of what are the neighbors wondering right and then what is the process of notification so hypothetically we say yes to all of these things and then you know i'm just using my house as an example they're not going at my neighborhood but if they put a connex right on the other side of the fence And I don't get any notification or any conversation about it or any heads up. What is that process like?

Yeah, that's a great question. So right now, AUs are allowed as a use by right in zone districts RS1 and RS2. So if someone were to apply and meet all of our design standards and building code requirements, they can build an ADU. without any notification. So if we were looking at amending the UDO and we were just looking at the performance standards and not amending notification requirements, there would be no notification to the neighbors besides as we work through the UDO amendments, which does get noticed in the paper and for our meetings. So that would be the opportunity to do public comment. The other way you can get more engagement is just directing us to go out and start asking questions at events or doing surveys or whatnot.

Yeah. I'm just so curious about it. I mean, when, you know, in the presentation, I was thinking, okay, the pre-plan, I didn't see it as a cookie-cutter Stepford Wives community what I saw it as an option right and so if they want to pay for their own they can pay for their own if they want to use one that we have that that decreases the cost I think that's fine but I do have a concern about doing it now and having it as a budget request in this packet so I would say my recommendation is that we wait on that um until we meet again on July 20th um I do still want to know, is there a ton of interest in it? Because I think it would be great if aging parents could move back with their children, or we know we have young adults that are having a hard time finding properties that are affordable, that would be great. And I've seen a garage done well. I've seen a basement done well. I've seen a freestanding done well. I don't love the Connex. Factory built seems to be okay. Just because it's easier and likely cheaper, maybe? I don't know. So I had a ton of questions about duplexes. Is that, and I could just be misunderstanding, is that only if it's a complete rebuild? Or is that similar to an attached ADU?

It could be someone using their existing structure and turning it into a duplex. If right now if they convert their basement into an accessory dwelling unit, they are limited still to the one bathroom kitchen And so we did amend the UDO originally it also limited those basement units to 750 square feet which became problematic because a lot of the basements are already the size of The footprint of the home so we said it can be the same size of the footprint of the home But it's still limited to one bedroom one bathroom and that is to prevent a whole family from moving in, and it doesn't necessarily do that, but that was the idea. So if we were to allow duplexes and someone converted the existing home into a duplex, they could potentially add more bathrooms and bedrooms, making it more of a two-family unit versus just like a smaller unit.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, I think we're in a place of, I don't know. Okay, I think those are where I'm sitting right now, but we're going to go back to Council Member Seavers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just to add to the duplex conversation, my concern is that It will raise the cost of the property because you will have invested money into making it better or different anyways. You would have spent money regardless. My question about, we already have a mandate that the owner, primary owner has to be there for the ADU regardless and they can't split it up. I know other places, if they have three deckers or duplexes, they require the primary resident or the owner still to live there as a primary resident's. some places sunset after like six months or is it allowed to be where it's like mandated for an extended period or is it just like is there any I don't this is a question I didn't think about for that's a great question a lot of it will depend on if you give us direction to move forward with this option what sort of parameters we're putting in place and then some of it will depend on legally what we can do so

Yeah, and I mean, to me, the umbrella is when you're talking about an ADU, it is intended to be something that is accessory to a principal use, principal use being a single-family residential house. When you're talking about a duplex, you are talking about two principal permitted uses. So theoretically, you could have two duplexes, both of which have ADUs. So they are an entirely different animal, because a duplex is allowing two single-family principal residential units, each of which, at least today, would be subject to each being allowed an ADU. So it's really a different, you're talking about two different types of uses of property, both of which add density and housing options but are dramatically different. And so when you talk about limiting on time, for example, if you're building an ADU, it's subject to a given set of rules. You wouldn't typically say, for example, it's limited for a time frame. Same with once you build a duplex, once you allow duplexes as a use by right, it essentially goes into your zoning code as more density in that particular area. zone district and and to uh... director smith's point it doesn't have to be citywide i mean you could create certain zone districts in the city in certain parts of the city that maybe more, whether it's less ProMac traditional dominated or has more opportunity based on lot size, where it could be those are the areas where duplexes are allowed. Right now you have RS1 and RS2. You could come up with an RS3 and have a totally different zoning designation for a totally different area. part of the city. So it really, all of the options are on the table for council. It really is a matter of vision from a land use perspective.

And sounds like, I mean, it's our world. We can create our own, our rules, you know? Well, it's like I said, I have a friend that bought a duplex or a three-story in Ohio. He has to live there. The owner of the building has to live there. I've had another friend in Massachusetts that bought a three-decker. He had to live there for six months. for the first six months, then you could run it out. So there's different areas with different rules, but you can set in rules. I think it's worth at least investigating and maybe even making it a smaller swath of areas that we think could work. Again, it's public input's gonna be important, but I do see a lot of no, no, no to investment in North Glen, and I feel like we need to at least say maybe, maybe, maybe, a little bit more, because a lot of the older homes are older and they're not. I see them when they're sold. I mean, the ones that are in our neighborhood, the ones that are sold and bought, I see significant investment of time and blood, sweat, and tears afterwards. So I think, you know, those things naturally happen as they're sold. But I think it's worth investigating. The prefab, pre-built that already have gone through a bunch of certification processes makes sense to forward with Cox box Stuff I mean again if you have hundreds of thousands of dollars, and you want to do it.

You can still do it correct Right now they're prohibited in residential zone districts, so that's the limiting factor If we wanted to change that we would just have to remove the prohibition and then decide if we wanted specific design guidelines the way you the way you get to

single family residences on one existing property today would be you would have to subdivide and meet the minimum lot size so whereas with the duplex you're essentially taking your existing lot and you would create a new lot size that's probably one half of that because typically with the duplex it's going to be a townhome your lot line is going to be the party wall

So a couple of questions. Do we need to update our UDO based on the new law around HOAs? Because our previous conversation allowed HOAs to prohibit them, but it doesn't sound like the new state law does. So do we need to change anything?

We do not.

OK. was my question that dictates what hoas can do but it doesn't impact what we do okay i just wasn't sure when we were talking about different the r1 r2 if that had anything to do with that i don't know uh council member goth

Thank you. So in this discussion, I just kind of wanted to go back to the current ADU standards with the chart. I think it's page 15. But under the general heading, it says one ADU per property, which sounds like if it's a duplex, that's two properties. I don't know. Short-term rental only if owner resides on site. So this kind of comes back to Council Member Seaver's question about, you know, how long you have to live there. And then it says it's not allowed with multifamily or live-work units. So I'm just a little confused about, you know, the clarification there. And I also do have some concerns about developers coming in, scraping houses, building duplexes, renting them, and moving back out of state or something. So I just get a little bit of clarity about what we could do around these issues.

Well, I'm not sure you can prevent. If you create duplexes as a use by right, it would be difficult to prevent them from being rented out. because it is a single family residence, just like a house on a single lot. So typically that would be difficult. As it relates to short-term rentals, frankly, that's an entirely different issue as it relates to limiting the impact or putting constraints on short-term rentals to meet the community sentiment, which was what was intended at the time. But all of these rules are subject to change by you. I mean, you can really dictate what this means. I mean, you could even, again, reduce, and I'm just creating a bunch of hypotheticals, but you could reduce the lot size in zone districts and have zero side setbacks. That would have the effect of allowing duplexes. So there's a lot of ways to get to the result you want, and it really depends on what you want as a matter of visioning, and then we can come back with regulations that meet that vision.

Okay, thank you. So I have a wondering. So this presentation and this work was done based on council request. However, we have allowed ADUs for a while. We don't have a ton if we think about the number of properties. Percentage-wise, it's not an overwhelming need. I guess what I'm wondering about is one option to say thank you for this information. We'd like to discuss it again in the future. Because some of these things, I think we still have a lot of questions around it and not necessarily, I'm not hearing questions that were like, yes, staff, please go do a ton of research on this. I think it's a, eh, we're not quite sure about the Connex. We're not quite sure. And it looks like the factory built ADU, that was one of the questions, but we already have that. Can you tell, because I heard the most support for that. Can you tell me what we would need to direct staff to do around that issue?

So that would just require staff to do research to determine which factory-built structures are certified by either HUD or the Department of Housing and also meet our detached accessory dwelling unit requirements. So looking at the height and the bathroom, bedroom requirements, the 750 square feet.

Okay. And we probably would have headed in that direction anyway. I'm guessing based on your presentation. And then I didn't hear a ton of support for anything that's going to impact the budget as far as the plans. I think I heard like, oh, it'd be great to have those plans. but maybe not right now. And then we had a lot of conversation around duplexes, and I think we would probably have to run through the group to see if we had true support for creating duplexes in the RS1 and RS2 zones. So I think that's where I'm sitting. Council Member Nowicki.

Yeah, I mean... My worry with, I mean, kind of kicking the can is that, I mean, we've done the housing study from 2022-23 that said there's this missing middle. And I don't want, again, I don't want the state to come in and say, North Glen, here's what you need to do. And now we've got to build, you know, high density apartments next to the light rail or, you know, wherever. Right.

That's already happened.

Right. So, you know, we know there's a need. There is a need for this. It's, I would like us to move on this now. You know, I appreciate that we're having this discussion because I, you know, in my time on council, I don't know if we've kind of gone this in depth about this. You know, with regard to your question, the four core items, you know, I think I kind of went through. Do we need to take a vote? I mean...

I mean, we certainly can. I was listening while people were talking. So can you elaborate? Because we already allow ADUs. So what is the change that you're hoping to make that will meet... the need that it doesn't sound like we have. Because they're so expensive.

Right. Again, I think exploring, I like the idea Exploring the barriers to factory-built ADUs. I think that, number one, what does it cost to build an ADU, factory-built ADU, right? So now here we know. Okay, so we have some numbers to it. Again, the Connex thing was an idea. I'm glad we entertained it. It doesn't sound like it's going to work because it'll be too affordable. There's too much red tape around it. So that doesn't sound like that's going to work. Okay. Okay. So, exploring the factory-built ADUs. Thumbs up for me for that.

I think we said that.

Okay. Cool. Whether to develop pre-approved ADU plans program. I like that idea. Again, giving folks the option, right? If we had come to the city and said, hey, we're thinking about building the ADU, and someone had said, you know what? That's a great idea. We got some plans for you. You could build something like this. That would have been, again, that would have saved us lots of heartache.

So I'm happy to do a roll call to get support for each piece. I just want to make sure that you understand we already allow ADUs. One thing I had mentioned in my comments is should we do some sort of showcase or even town hall related to housing or something where we're addressing it with Residents because the biggest concern I have is we're gonna make a decision say we make a decision on duplexes and we say yes we're going for it and the first one goes in and then we have a room filled with people that are mad because they didn't know we were doing it and they didn't understand the impact or they did understand the impact and they tried like I don't like having to reverse our decisions if we can be thoughtful on the front end and there's some moments where we do have to take a look at things but to me it's a little similar to speed bumps right we have a bunch of people that want the speed bump and then we have a bunch of people that want to take it out and we can't be doing that to staff the whole time right so I can definitely do a roll call for the four items, but I'm getting the sense that you want more. So tell me what you're looking for.

Well, again, if it's a lack of vision, let's have some vision. If Corey's saying it's a lack of vision, or sorry, Attorney Hoffman's saying it's a lack of vision on our part, let's discuss this and come up with some vision. If it's me, I can draw you a diagram and show you ideally what I'd like, and I'm sure we could all do the same thing and come up with some vision. kind of core ideas. You know, so that's kind of one thing. I feel like us having this discussion, this is how it happens, right? This is the sausage getting made. If it's folks, you know, if we make move or we start moving a little bit faster, I guess my frustration is that we're going to kind of say, well, there's not a need for ADUs. Therefore, we're going to kind of push pause on it. But I do think there is a need.

But we still allow them. So even this conversation is small. Okay.

You're right. I'm not answering the question. Right. Yes, if we still allow ADUs, you know, what can we do to make them affordable? Or at least maybe some things, ways we can assist residents to, you know, use them. Do we have to do comm stuff around here? We have the ADU program. If we've done 12 in three years, that's not a very successful program. program to me. What can we do around boosting some of that visibility? What does that look like? And I know that's Councilmember Burns' wheelhouse. I just want to believe there's more we can do. If it's rezoning and exploring what rezoning looks like, let's do that. Again, I appreciate you all being willing to have this discussion, because I think this is the start of it. And we're not going to make all the residents happy, I don't think. There's going to be, you know, it sure beats having an empty room, though.

Well, I think one thing we have to remember is that the decisions we make are not about the preferences that the nine of us have. It's about the people we represent. And so we have to think through the conversations that we've had with residents, what they're asking us for, what their top complaints are usually is parking, right? Speeding, density. I mean, I can tell you, A lot of the friends that come to my mayor's coffee are like, please stop letting people move here. And so it's a different philosophy than the density that you ran on and that you would like to see in the city. Not all residents share that view and share that passion. A lot of them are on the opposite side of that. And so... I think if anything, so I'm going to go back to City Attorney Hoffman. I think I missed that. So you were quoted as saying that council needs vision. Is that correct?

I said it is council's vision. If council's vision is currently contained within the existing UDO, then we don't have anything to do. So I was not suggesting council does not have vision. I'm suggesting it is this council's vision that we implement. You tell us what you would like to see. We will bring back those regulations.

Okay.

And that could include no change.

Well, yeah, I think I'm just wondering if everyone is clear and understands our current ADU language, like in the plan that we currently have in place, if everyone is on board with that, if you understand that we do allow them, and then we also allow the factory-built ADUs are already allowed or permitted So just I guess I'm just trying to figure out what needs to change. And so what I have is how do we make it more affordable? How do we help residents? How do we make it more visible? And I think we can certainly address those issues, but it may not be through these four questions. So but per request, we can go right through. one at a time um if people want to talk through i think the connex well let me put it this way does anyone want to advocate for us moving forward with a connex box because i think pretty much we're on board with that one but it's just a unnecessary piece okay so we got that answer for sure yeah And then the I believe we've come to terms with the factory. Sorry, I'm looking for a factory built ADU. And so the consideration is, do we want staff to take a look at it, but it sounds like you probably would anyway, based on recommendations from

And so what the outcome of a staff-led effort would be would be some sort of list or something specific that someone's like, oh, this is already certified by HUD. This is already certified by DOH and meets the city's standards. So I just have to show the city that it fits my site. Great.

Does everyone feel good about that?

So is that the encouraging factory-built ADUs? Is that what you're talking about? Well, yeah, but if you look at that side, it says... That's different than what we've currently been doing.

Well, but if you look at it, so the top of that slide, they're already permitted.

Yeah.

Permitted. me change my inflection changes the meaning. They're already permitted under the current UDO. But staff is willing to create this list and do this work.

So so that so the things that are listed here are currently not being done.

So right, we don't have a list in house of ones that we already know. fit our community needs and have been certified so it can get through that building permit process quickly. Right now, a resident could do their own research and find a prefabricated structure that they want to use, but then they would need to make sure that it's got the certifications and they would have to submit a building permit through our process.

If this is part of that, then yes.

Yeah, so that saves that to meet Council Member Nowicki's request. That makes it more affordable and helps residents. So we're good with that. yes okay then the next one is the pre-approved adu plan i didn't hear anyone not think it was a good idea i think the comments i heard and i think we need to to probably sort out is the program comes forward as a budget request and i my recommendation is that we wait and talk about it later because we're not in a place financially to take that on, either to hire an architect or designer or to... I mean, maybe it's free if we let the architect designer, they submit the plans and then we just... Yeah, who's gonna pay for it?

So the second option, how I picture that working, and the DOLA website I don't think goes into much detail, but how I imagine it working is we put out a call to architects and designers who want to have their pre-approved building reviewed plans as options for residents, but then residents would have to purchase them from the architect. So maybe there's some sort of reduction in price that the architect offers members because they're selling multiple copies of a plan.

Okay. Do people want to discuss that one?

I mean, I would be in favor. I understand the budget constraints, certainly. If it's like, oh, yeah, the city will do it. I think at least kind of exploring what the option is. up into like, we have to decide to commit money to it.

Okay, I don't usually like to spend staff's time because that is also money. But what does everyone else think? Mayor Pro Tem?

I am with you, Mayor, on this one. It's not that I'm against the idea. I just really am not in favor of bringing forward a separate budget request at this time. It doesn't feel right when we have some serious discussions ahead of us.

Anyone else want to weigh in? Yeah, I would not want to bring forward a budget item But the architect-sponsored ones or whatever, I think I'd be willing to explore that. I mean, maybe no architect would even want to do it. Or maybe they wouldn't want to give a discount or whatever. But I think it's worth looking into that part.

So the architect-designer, as long as it doesn't cost us money. I don't know. Yes. Yes.

I think what Councilmember Nowicki says is fair, like up and to the point where it doesn't become a budget item, just anything to make it slightly more cheap for residents to explore the option. But yeah, I don't want to waste too much time. I think we're on the right track with the other ideas.

Is that clear, Director Smith, or would you like more? Okay. And then the duplex conversation, I think that was kind of all over the place. So I can do a just to go down the line, Councilmember Burns.

I hear concerns about, you know, people buying up properties and knocking everything down and sort of putting things up. I think that's like a separate issue of like, do we allow corporations to come in and how many properties do we let them to buy and whatever. I also believe that if it's someone's property and they're paying their taxes on it, that's their vibe. They get to do what they want. So I think we move forward with the duplex discussion or research.

So the question is, you're a yes on directing staff to explore the amendments that would allow them with appropriate design development standards and compatibility and that whole thing on page 22. Yes. You're a yes. OK.

Similar to Council Member Burns, I would like people to have options to invest in the community. And although there's plenty of controversy to be had about allowing duplexes, I think it's something to look into. I don't like the idea that duplexes have to be split lots. I guess I didn't put that in my brain. And if we did that, I would also just say anything we can do to... Keep the people that bought the place on the property would be nice. I'm not sure that that's an option, but I would like to explore it just again because it's a concern for everyone.

Okay. Council Member Kondo?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I think I'm in your camp, Council Member Seavers, similar sort of thinking.

I'm similar to my councilmates that I don't want us to necessarily have a budget item, but I do like the idea of looking forward with the duplexes, but I think there are some difficulties we're going to have to, or some complications we'll have to iron out.

Okay. So I'm still in the same place I was on the duplexes. I'm not against them, but I didn't hear with certainty that we can manage this infrastructure-wise, and there is my concern. I don't know if it's a now thing. It might be a future thing. We can say we want duplexes, and that's great, but I know we have wastewater and water treatment repairs that we need, and those are big items. I'm not talking parking. I'm not talking about controversy of adding density. I'm seriously concerned about that, and for that, I'd rather put it off. And I hear we did talk about the missing middle, but we also have, like, key pieces, like, the Civic Center, Civic Campus that we were considering possibly as an option, Marketplace, so there are a couple of areas where those could go, and those we've even had conversations on. We still need to look at the infrastructure. And I heard that there's still some discussions that need to happen around that. And so I'm just trying to be I guess I'm just trying to be reasonable and have all the data and all the information on what that would look like and then also to the mayor's point like if we did something like this absolutely town halls like crazy and get input but first you know they're going to ask like well can the city support this infrastructure and do we have that firm answer and that's all i'm saying it's not about the controversy it's not about adding the housing it's about what we can actually do versus what we want to do because sometimes those things don't jive for us And I would love to see it happen, but I just don't know if it's an Al thing. And I probably just repeated myself over and over, so I'll stop. No, it's okay.

Thank you. I am in favor of exploring the duplexes. I think when I look around in my neighborhood, there's a duplex worth of people living in single-family homes. squeezed in right now. And so if, you know, I just think that this would relieve some of that. And if I am right, then it's like, it's not really that much more of a strain on our infrastructure because it's the same number of people. It's just that they have their own house or their own like duplex, half of the house, whatever it is. And so yeah some if there's we could get back some information about projections on the use of water and wastewater That would I'm sure that would alleviate some of the concerns, but I'm very much in favor of Encouraging duplexes or allowing them in some way Yeah, I'm a yes

And I would say, if we need a test case, as a representative of Ward 2, if we need to pilot it in somewhere, I think we're a great place to do it.

You're your?

Yeah. I want to believe that the residents of Ward 2 would be excited to do that.

Well, I think Mayor Pro Tem and I are going to stand out tonight. I agree with everything that you said. I think I'm struggling with the... I don't know who said it or how many times we phrased it differently, but this can be a future council's problem. And we've been impacted by our previous councils in both positive and negative ways. And so... I'm not comfortable adding infrastructure challenges or, I mean, like I stated, random buildings popping up in the middle of a neighborhood. to future councils or to future communities, which is our own community. I mean, I would hope that we all want to stay here and grow old here. And so that's where I struggle. I do not like the idea of looking into this. Obviously, we're... the too few. So it's going to happen anyways. So I would like to see more information about how it's going to impact our infrastructure and honestly, public safety and roads and I mean, traffic, all those things. So yeah, thank you.

so while we do there are enough people that are saying yes to the question of staff exploring it i'm a hard no and i'm going to be a no if it goes to final and the reason for that is i've talked to so so so many residents especially when we went through the bill downtown a couple years ago the governor's push to override local control and during that time i heard from so many residents do not let that happen here and we push back we push back on the local control aspect of it knowing that yes housing is still a concern we already have adus and so we never push back on that we had that before the governor's bill Everything that we're discussing tonight, we actually have in place. These are small tweaks, but this duplex thing, I'm a hard no on, only because even though Council Member Burns, you're talking about, oh, it's not that big of a deal to scrape and they can do what they want. There are unintended consequences for that, and it doesn't necessarily lead to lower rent. They scrape those, they build fancy duplexes, and they up the price considerably. It does not answer the missing middle. It does not create affordable housing. I just think it's a problem we're creating for our residents and for council and for staff. I'm more worried about how this is gonna blow back on them. So I'm a no, but you got enough to move forward to explore that.

Can I make a recommendation for your approval? With the duplex conversation, that's one that I would take to the community as a first step versus doing the deep dive into infrastructure and streets and whatnot and just get a vibe from the community and if there's specific areas of the community where a new zone district is appropriate or those types of questions, maybe a survey and attending some of our events to bring that information back.

Okay. Well, we're absolutely going to have to talk to the community about that. We just have to. And apparently you can start in Ward 2. Because he thinks he's got a bunch of people excited about it. Yeah, we have to talk to them about that. That changes the whole dynamic when we go back to Pearl Mack community. There's just a lot going on to that duplex piece. Fully support ADUs. And I think it's great. And if we can help people get there cheaper, that's great. I also don't think it's our responsibility. I think if that's something they want to do, then they do it. Council Member Burns, you have another thought?

Yes, thank you so much. I think, to your point, like, yes, it's, you know, people could, you know, scrape it and put very expensive duplexes. They could also scrape it, put a very expensive house. Like, it's the same problem. And so I think, like, though, when I think about duplexes, like, I use my example as splitting the Pearl Max into two floors. It's very different because the building's already there. It's just two apartments.

which i think is depending on how they build it it's just an adu so the the lot splitting for a duplex is very different so then that is can the basement consider the adu when it's two separate apartments it is if it has one bathroom is what i heard and one bedroom do they have two bedrooms unless unless you like edit it okay fine it doesn't matter whatever i don't know it's fine i don't know we're looking into it we're moving forward I just think there's a lot of caution as we move forward. Council Member Seavers?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I just want to say a lot of these infrastructure things are going to happen if we have any more growth at all. So unless Northland never is going to grow, these are things that are going to happen regardless. especially if we develop the Civic Center area, if we add some housing around the marketplace, and Washington, our 120th. Regardless, that's already going to trigger all the water treatment plant changes. I'm sure the wastewater treatment is no different, and I'm sure there's plenty of challenges with growth, but unless we're never going to grow, these changes are coming regardless. So I think we need to be a little proactive. I'm not saying let's, if it takes a year to get to the point where we feel comfortable. It takes a year. I wouldn't rush it. There's no rush. I would like the whole tours of ADUs would be cool. I think that'd be pretty, I've never done that. I would love to go see Nowicki's place, but that's it. Thanks.

Now, I completely agree with you. The infrastructure piece is coming. And I, as I mentioned, I don't think ADUs are going to shock us into a whole new world. I just know Because I've had many, many men, this is not even a joke, hundreds of conversations with people about this, and they don't want duplexes. So I'm just whether I want them or not, that's not my vote. It's based on resident feedback. But you have direction. So thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right. Up next, Deputy City Manager Jason Loveland is presenting on the elimination of the 1% vendor fee.

all right good evening mayor and council as the mayor just mentioned that i want to talk about the one percent vendor fee that is um within our municipal code i'm gonna just read this to explain what it is a little bit because it's not the most clear concept so the vendor fee is an administrative rebate of sales tax provided to vendors that submit their sales tax returns and taxes due before the due date so An example of this would be a business collects the 4% sales tax of the city. And we'll pretend that is $100,000 that they're going to remit in a given month. And they keep 1% of that $100,000 remittance as really the rebate or the processing fee. remitting so over time this has been in municipal code for for a long time so over time as technology has evolved to kind of ease that burden of the calculations and sending paper checks and point filling out paper forms and whatnot we feel that that processing has been simplified to the point that We're providing that incentive to file timely. Again, this is tax that they're collecting on the city's behalf, which they're required to remit anyway. Eliminating the fee is an option for the city to consider. One of the options, as we've talked about the budget for the last few minutes, this would generate an additional roughly $300,000 in revenue to the city by eliminating the fee. One thing in some research of what's going on locally within the state, recently the state had eliminated their vendor fee, which was like 3% or 4%, as an opportunity to help close the budget gap. that they were struggling with were in a similar situation. Some municipalities cap it at like $25 cap. We feel like that section 537, section D, the information in the memo is really where we're pointing out what would be removed or requesting to be removed. If council desired, we would bring this forward next week for consideration on first reading or sometime in the near future if it's not not not next week but this is something that we want to bring forward this is brought forward to the Finance Committee at their May 28th meeting and as we were discussing budget and then just kind of total revenue trends throughout the city we had really come to the conclusion that like no No idea should be limited or off the table as far as how we work to balance our budget. And this is something that is, I don't want to say low-hanging fruit, but potentially is a minor change that would have an impact in a positive way to the city revenues. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions or hear your feedback on the possibilities or what you would like to see.

Okay. Council Member Goff. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you for the explanation. It's kind of technical but very clearly presented. My question is, you had mentioned that some municipalities have like a $25 cap. would we have any business that would reach that amount? Or is that, I mean, like what would be the highest amount that some business would suddenly have to pay us? Approximately.

So the impact would be greatest on some of the bigger operations. So Best Buy, Lowe's, Amazon.

Would it be more? Oh, well.

So there's some big remitters and we don't have a cap on ours.

Yeah.

And so a limiting factor is the fact that we don't limit it. We don't provide a cap. And so those large organizations are I don't want to share what any one business in particular is doing, but it can get into the thousands of dollars within a year.

Okay. I guess my concern is I just wouldn't want a business to leave North Glen because, you know, this is an onerous, you know, burden on their operations or something. So you're saying like most of our, maybe the average size in North Glen would be under $25? Throughout a year period, likely.

something similar to that.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Then it sounds reasonable to me then. Thank you.

Okay.

Councilmember Nowicki.

Yeah, thank you for putting this together. Is there any and thank you, Madam Mayor? Is there any? Is there any reason believe that kind of eliminating this will do away with like an incentive for kind of timely accurate kind of remittance or reporting? Is that a real concern?

That is not a significant enough concern, given the 1 percent and the dollar value. I think where we run into it is one with larger organizations, probably as an incentive in general. But I think just the volume of, you know, we have 5,000 businesses remitting. And so, just from a volume standpoint, it adds up pretty fast. Okay. And whether we, Whether there's incentive or not, that's a requirement of the law to remit timely. Okay. Yes, for me.

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just a quick question. Sorry if I missed it. Do any of our neighboring cities offer this incentive? This rebate?

Yeah. I know Thornton caps theirs at $25. Okay. I'm not, it's kind of hit or miss. I don't have a list of specifically.

I have businesses in five different cities and municipalities and they don't offer this. I was just curious as to who does. Bless you.

We are, I think, probably unique in that we still offer it. I think a lot of jurisdictions did in the past. But I do think that we're fairly unique and

Okay, well, I think we need to give our need to give some input. So we got thumbs up over there. Councilmember Sievers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll just say if Steph recommends it, I'm good for it.

And I also think it's fine. Yes. Anyone not? Nope. Okay, we're good.

All right, well, thank you. We'll bring this forward for first and second reading in the next couple months. Awesome, thank you.

All right, coming up next, consideration of increasing the accommodations tax rate. Tell us what you know.

All right, here I am again. So this item, this is a consideration of increasing the accommodations tax rate. So really the question is, Well, one is to consider increasing it, but then more importantly is to consider adding a ballot question to the November 3rd election to ask voters for approval to increase the accommodations tax rate. Staff is suggesting raising that from 5% to 8%. This is an accommodations tax is levied on services, including short-term rentals and hotels, for stays of less than 30 consecutive days. This tax was first imposed in 1980 and has been the same since 1982. Again, this isn't a significant tax that the city is collecting. Overall sales and use tax, it's maybe around 2% of the total revenue. But there is an opportunity here to be a little bit more competitive with other municipalities. And I was kind of framing it from when you're staying in a hotel, you're looking at the rate as $100, and our 5% accommodations rate makes it $105. Raising it to 8% would make it $108. So I know that there's a significant impact as far as the consumer side of things, as far as driving business to other jurisdictions. There's some throughout the state when you think about mountain towns and some other places that have quite large tax rates for accommodations. I put a table down below just to see, to show what some of our surrounding jurisdictions have, so somewhere between 2 and 10 percent. And throughout the state, some jurisdictions don't have an accommodations tax rate at all. And so, One other thing to point out is that 5% tax rate is not on top of our sales tax rate is just 5%. So it's not some jurisdictions do their base sales tax rate plus something on top. And ours is simply 5%. So wanted to get council's feedback and direction on possibly adding a ballot question to this November. We do have an estimated cost to put a question on the ballot, which would be about $20,000. We don't necessarily get a solid quote of this is exactly how much something's going to cost, but historically we feel that $20,000 to put that on the ballot is an expected price. So, anyway, happy to hear Council's feedback and direction.

Okay. Council Member Seavers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Do you know if Thornton and Westminster does that in addition, or do you think?

Thornton and Westminster are just 7%. So, yeah, there's no extra there. But they're not.

I don't frankly think we should really go much above our neighbors, Westminster and Thornton. So I would say 7% seems fair. But also, democracy. Put it on the ballot. People vote for it. They vote for it. If they don't, they don't.

Council Member Goff? Thank you. Thank you, Director, for this presentation. My question is, I mean, maybe it's for someone else, but are we anticipating any other items we might put on the ballot that would SORT OF SPREAD THE COST OUT SO THAT WE'RE NOT JUST DOING THIS ONE. DO WE HAVE ANY IDEAS? OR POTENTIAL?

I'M NOT AWARE OF ANY OTHER ITEMS. CITY CLERK SMALL, ARE YOU?

OKAY. WELL, I GUESS, YOU KNOW, COMPARED TO WHAT THE POTENTIAL, YOU KNOW, REVENUE THE CITY WILL RECEIVE, THE 20,000 ISN'T THAT BIG OF A DEAL. And I think 8% is probably okay. My guess is, I mean, because we haven't done this since for whatever, a long time, decades, for an increase. And my guess is some of these other cities may be looking at increasing sometime soon because we're all in the same kind of budget crunch situation. So I'm okay with going forward with this. Thank you.

Council Member Lighty.

Thank you. Thank you so much for this. I did, just to, I don't, not call it out, pay attention, I don't know. I was looking at Wheat Ridge. We're very similar to Wheat Ridge, and so it's interesting to me that they have 10% while Thornton and Westminster have lower ones. I'm assuming it's because they're bigger cities, and so they have other taxes that filter in where our accommodations tax is kind of just like... Is that right? Or am I just guessing?

I have no idea what other city's decisions have been made on their accommodation sacks, so...

Okay, perfect. I think I also just wanted to put this out there that I feel way more comfortable raising this tax than all the other ones that we've been talking about just because we're putting this one on the ballot rather than going, and now the trash tax is going to go up and you don't get to vote on it. Boom. So I really like this idea. So I'm on board, and I would love to see it come forward in the future. Thank you.

I had the same initial thought as Councilmember Sievers, and then I realized people don't look. They have no clue. Like when I go to Chicago or wherever I travel, I'm like, ooh, if I go to that suburb, I'm going to save a dollar. And nobody looks into that, and so I totally support going to eight and putting it on the ballot. Anybody disagree? No? Okay. Great. Thank you. Thanks. And City Manager Heather Geyer will provide an update on the communications assessment. Welcome back.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Wonderful to see you all this evening. So I'm going to provide a verbal update on the communications and marketing assessment given that the work and conversation that the mayor and I had last week, um, led up to the holiday weekend. And I was focused on getting staff ready, supporting 4th of July, event as well as taking care of some other things. So a bit unusual tonight to have a verbal update without a written memorandum. So that is why you have no memorandum in your packet. I want to first acknowledge thank you for all the work that you all have engaged in with Joy Riot for the communications and marketing assessment. I had an opportunity to watch the June 1st meeting and it's entirety in terms of that discussion. On my flight home on June 19, as well as have conversation with Deputy City Manager Loveland, multiple conversations with Mayor Lighty. And in light of all the feedback that I heard each of you contribute at that June 1 meeting, as well as the additional conversations Deputy City Manager and I had a conversation with Jessica McCarthy on June 22nd. And as part of that conversation, there were a couple pieces. Number one, I expressed concern on the overall presentation to council. There were a couple elements that in my mind missed the mark significantly. The first is that they had a junior associate make the presentation. The tone, just overall presentation was not on target in my mind for the work that's being done. The second piece that the empowerment sentiment slide that was shared with City Council as part of the presentation did not have the proper background and context tied to the overall purpose of the assessment and in my mind not being here our consulting team did not do a good job in in really anchoring back to the purpose of the assessment and providing reassurance to council in terms of how that information's going to be used. So in terms of moving forward, there's a couple pieces. Deputy City Manager Loveland and I asked Jessica McCarthy if they could do a simpler, shorter survey. She did provide me with a five-question simpler survey. However, I don't think that is going to be of value to the city. So having looked at their initial survey, which was too long, as well as the additional feedback that we did receive from council, looking at a five-question survey, which is not going to get us information and meaningful feedback From the community, what I asked her was what type of cost savings would result if we were not to do a survey. Additionally, fully acknowledging that perhaps not doing a survey would be out of the norm from maybe their approach that they typically use with communities like ours. So to not do a survey, it would create a cost savings of $5,000. I also asked her to reevaluate the timeline. So the original timeline was set to bring forward recommendations to council in mid-October. I asked her to reevaluate that and speed up the timeline, and as she did that work, that has resulted in i'm meeting with them next tuesday to see an initial first glance at what their findings and recommendations are going to look like that would take us into late august to have those findings and recommendations brought forward to city council with then having the work wrapped up by mid september so my recommendation and path forward is to not move forward with the survey, to continue forward with the recommendations and findings. Unfortunately, because that context was missing in the presentation with the sentiment, the empowerment sentiment slide, I think it left a lot of open gaps. And I heard that through the feedback that many of you provided, which was very concerning to me. So, from my perspective as city manager, I don't believe there's a need to fast track the recruitment process for a comms director. I think we're on target with the plan as I laid out tonight, and I'll be able to post that position maybe as early as mid-August, depending on what the findings and recommendations look like. I'll have a good sense of what that is next week. I'm assuming that the job posting that I did early on in the spring is probably not too far off from where we need to be, if off at all. So I think that part of why I wanted to come here tonight and provide this update in consultation with the mayor, I want to assure council that there is no us against them dynamic with staff. I think when I looked at that empowerment sentiment slide, it's a snapshot in time. of where staff's at. It's also staff's opportunity to provide feedback in a very authentic way. I think that there is a tremendous amount of work that's been done during this interim process of me serving as acting comms director. And if you'd like me to, I can certainly go into a lot of the changes that we've made along the way. In no way, shape, or form would I say that we're perfect because we're not. However, I think we've been using this interim transition as an opportunity to really take a step back, look at what we do well, where we need to improve, and then working in partnership with Joy Riot to build a plan or, as you've heard me say, a roadmap in terms of how we move forward. So I wanted to provide reassurance to all of you because I know some of the comments that you share is like, oh, we've got to do this and we've got to do that. And from my perspective, we need to stay the course and we'll get to hiring a comms director. We're going to be having some really tough budget conversations beginning on July 20th. So I don't want to react to something that, in my mind, we don't or I'm not asking you to react to currently, if that makes sense. So I'll stop there and happy to answer any questions.

Councilmember Burns. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'm surprised it's me first. OK, just to ground ourselves as I'm listening to this and the pivot we're making, is we are moving away from a sort of brand and marketing assessment and just focusing on internal structure updates. Is that what we're doing? Okay, so then.

No, the piece that we're pivoting away from is that in the scope of services that Joy Riot advanced, they included a community survey. So if you recall, taking two steps back, when I developed the scope of services for the RFP, I kept it pretty general in terms of some type of community engagement. Could have been focus groups, a survey, something between those two with some additional language. They advanced the idea of a community survey. So the pivot is the community survey. Everything else in terms of brand messaging is part of the scope. Does that make sense?

It makes sense of what we're doing. So, moving forward, the recommendations that will come from them will just be based on our input and staff's input? Correct. Okay.

As well as their work in benchmarking what the city's doing to the benchmark communities that they advanced previously. And their overall expertise and insight that they were hired to provide to us.

OK. Thank you. I'm going to sit with that for a second.

That is my hope, which I had shared with the city manager, is that we will get best practices based on research and expertise, because that's what they're being paid for.

Councilmember Gough. Thank you, Mayor. So I would, we had, you had posted the position for the communications director before any of this started. That wasn't, like, didn't produce successful results. I just would like to hear your reasoning about why it's, you want to do this whole thing and make decisions and then hire a communications director.

Instead of hiring a person that might be able to help make some of these decisions Happy to provide further context councilmember goth so the the background behind the communications assessment a tool that I initiated with council is to level set and really hold the mirror up to ourselves and It's a snapshot in time. Given the concerns and frustrations that I heard from council, from members of the community, I felt it important to have an outside, independent perspective beyond what I control in my role as city manager to say, this is what you're doing well. You're on track here. This is what you can improve upon. This is more that you can do, and this is really the future, the roadmap of where you can go. Here is what is possible. And to have council involved in that creation of a vision for what you want communications to look like moving forward. From my perspective, we have done a lot of things well. We've implemented new tools. We don't have a comprehensive communication strategy. So when I refer to a roadmap, it's that strategy piece that I would like to have, and that piece is foundational to setting up the next comms director and really any staff we hire that touches communications, regardless of the department, for success. Through this transition, we've had an opportunity to stand up two new committees at my request. One is called an internal marketing committee, and that's a cross-functional committee made up of staff members from different departments that touch communications. We also have special event committee we have multiple staff members in different apartments that touch special events unfortunately we have to a certain degree operated in a siloed environment fortunately though we're using this opportunity to take a step back and say how can we do better how can we greater collaborate with one another how can we information share So those two committees are very dynamic. I sit in those committees. Deputy City Manager Loveland sits in those committees. Director Peterson sits in those committees, along with key staff from throughout the city. So by way of example, a big topic that we've been discussing continually is You know, we've gone from banners to the 250-150 celebration. I'm not even going to try in this moment because I won't get it like Director Peterson gets it. We have talked about website redesign. We've talked about content calendars. Parks and Rec now has a content calendar. We now have a content calendar for social media. We did not previously have content calendars. So while that may not seem like a big deal to some, it's a significant step forward for our organization, even in the absence of having a full-time director and the other public communications specialist position.

So am I, I kind of have to extract a lot, something out of all of that. Is it, I mean, basically are you saying that we need You're going to use the information from this assessment to do the job description for the communications director? I'm still not sure.

No, not that. Let me elaborate a bit further. So council says, yes, this is the vision we want. This is the roadmap of where we want to go. And I need to find the right fit. I need to find the person who can help take us there. Because at that point, when I hire a comms and marketing director, I'm stepping back. from my acting role, and this individual is stepping forward and taking us into the stage of implementation and making those things a reality.

I'm not sure we were disagreeing, but okay, I got it.

I don't envision changes to educational requirements or things like that. I think I went through one round of hiring and I did not find our person. Well qualified people, significant pool of applicants. When it came down to advancing two individuals, I heard feedback with concerns. I saw concerns myself. So that's why I chose not to hire one of those individuals. I had hoped that one of those individuals could have been part of this process and had those discussions, but it didn't work out that way. And that's okay in my mind. You know, granted, it's work, and it means sometimes we have to take things slower than moving more quickly. But I'm confident that we'll get there. It's really important to me that all of you have an opportunity to weigh in to what is it in terms of the communication vision that we want. What is the messaging that we want to be saying about North Glen? Council has not had that conversation. So in my mind, part of why we advanced this is that's a new conversation. And so the exercise isn't, to go through every element and process of the operational work of staff. It's to provide that overarching big picture vision of here's where we want to go, and then it's my job as manager to work with staff and operationalize it.

Well, when we had the one-on-one interviews, I thought the point of that was to help figure out what our... We haven't had, like, a group discussion. I guess I was kind of hoping that's what the presentation would give us, some, like, common themes that we could talk about. Is that on the table in the future, or how do we actually create this vision that you're hoping Council will come up with?

That's the role of Joy Riot. Based on the interviews that they had with council members, as well as staff, they are to be advancing a vision for all of you to react to. So when we bring forward their initial findings and recommendations in August, that document should include, here's where we think you should go based on your feedback.

Okay, maybe some of the confusion was just they did a presentation too soon. But okay, I think I got it. I'm done with asking questions. Thank you.

I appreciate your questions.

Council Member Seavers.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I will just say, I feel like I noticed a little bit improvement on our social medias about things going out pretty regularly. Maybe it's because there's a fire ban and all the fireworks stuff. But it seems like there's been more content going out, at least, whether it's perfect or not. The only thing I really cared about the survey was... was like what do people want to hear about that's the only part of the survey that i felt any strong feelings about and i'm sure you could probably do that at a neighborhood night with a board with a list of things and then put a sticker next to it like we do when we do all the planning commission stuff that's all thank you council member nowiki thank you madam mayor um i am curious

Why didn't we get any written materials about this?

So on the front end of my presentation. Right.

I understand that.

Because of timing councilmember nowiki, so the mayor and I had an opportunity to talk on Thursday I had other priorities going into Friday, and I did not have Friday off I worked Friday, and then I worked the 4th of July event Pretty much from 7 45 a.m. To about 10 15 on Saturday and yesterday was a rest day, and I had a day full of meetings today, so I made the call and and council can correct me if I'm wrong, that this would be an appropriate yet unusual verbal update. So, that's why you don't have a written memorandum.

Yeah, I think I would have appreciated maybe punting on this. That way we would have, I would have context on the background information, kind of the things you're referring to. I mean, in your opinion, do you feel like Joy Wright has enough information to kind of make a determination

I asked Jessica that question when Deputy City Manager Loveland and I were on the call with her on June 22nd. She said that they could move forward without the community survey. It's different than their normal process, as I shared earlier, but she assured me that they could.

Okay, because... And this isn't my wheelhouse, so I got to kind of think out loud here, because theirs was... We established kind of a committee or commission, right, to kind of hire Joy Riot?

It was a council subcommittee.

Okay, council subcommittee. So to hire Joy Riot, did the subcommittee get disbanded on this? They don't get input on this decision?

So the subcommittee that was organized with council input and feedback consists of Mayor Pro Temp, council member Kondo, and then council member Burns. And they were delegated authority from council as a whole. That was part of the conversation to help with reviewing the RFPs to advance a recommendation to city council. And then it was city council as a whole that approved the contract with Joy Riot.

Okay. So the football was handed off to us and then we get to, which brings us here.

Yes. So that's why council's been involved in the process throughout.

Okay. They're, because they were hired to kind of look at branding pieces. Is that, is that kind of, is it branding and comms or is it like one under the other? I don't know.

It's multiple pieces. You can, look at branding as one bucket if that helps the other piece is overall comms best practices it's looking at pretty much how we're functioning as centralized comms and decentralized comms so there's operational elements And then there's the community-facing elements, and certainly they tie together. The brand messaging piece that Councilmember Burns referred to Is a piece that was missing from the work when the council previous councils that is undertook The development of a new logo, so we have a beautiful logo. We've used it for many years now I believe it was adopted in 2017 if I recall the history correctly and We don't have a tagline. We don't have any messaging. So if you were to ask me, I mean, we use messages, but if you were to ask me, what's our guide? What are our talking points in terms of what we say about ourselves and why? We haven't done that work. And so that's the brand messaging piece in a simplified way to explain it.

Okay, which is why we hired Joy Riot to kind of come in with that piece. So now we have kind of our information. The last piece is kind of that community piece. What does the community want to say or want to see, right? And that would be assessed through a survey, through kind of data collection, correct?

That was what Joy Riot advanced in their response, in their proposal, in their response to our RFP. So this is what I specifically said in the RFP. Gather community feedback via surveys, listening sessions, or engagement platforms. And Joy Riot, in their proposal that they submitted, advanced their idea of a survey. And then their survey that they put together is what you all saw on June 1st.

Okay, so do they have any sort of engagement data? If they don't have a survey, do they have like, hey, you guys were posted more and more people gave thumbs up and now we have that data? Or is that kind of just going to be a black box? And it's going to save us $5,000. They have done...

to my knowledge, research on all of our social media platforms. They are supposed to be putting metrics to what does success look like on those platforms, anchored and backed up by best practices. So by way of example, we're currently not on X or TikTok. there's been some interest expressed by council members to engage our community on those platforms. And the reason to do that would be because platforms target different audiences, often based on generations. So those who like Facebook may not like Instagram or be on TikTok. So that's an example of one of the things I expect for them to say. You have these Facebook pages and we've also heard we have too many. And so part of their work is to break down what Facebook pages should you keep? What Facebook pages can you remove? Who's on LinkedIn? economic development, who's on Instagram, and then how do we measure success with outreach via social media? There's also connection.

Okay.

There's also each department that has multiple communication tools that they use. They're looking at everything holistically.

Okay, and so they have now enough information that they can make a determination of that. Do we know, and you're saying it's kind of, we're saving about $5,000, right? Correct. And that would be a good investment of kind of that money? I mean, what it feels like a little bit here is that we had the discussion about the survey, and I understand council wasn't happy, and I know you were gone, so you kind of saw it. And now we're kind of pulling the plug on it. So are you just kind of looking for us to say, okay, that's okay, like with the $5,000?

I'm not recommending we pull the plug. I'm recommending we pivot, and I think it's in our best interest to move forward without the survey. I don't think the survey is going to, after further discussion with Jessica McCarthy, that the survey is going to tell us any additional information. It's not to exclude resident input. I think there's multiple ways, and we receive resident input on an ongoing basis. I mean, if you look at our city Facebook page today, there's engagement. So I just don't think, and that's why I asked her the question directly, can you do this work without the survey feedback? And she said yes. If she had said no, absolutely not, we have to have the survey, the exercise would have been then how do you respond to council feedback and make it a better survey that they want to see? And I pushed on that and said, what if you had five questions and I don't like the survey? So I don't think it's worth our time and money to do the survey.

Okay. Understand that. I suppose I would agree with you on that. I guess my one concern with that is then... I mean, if we do have 30% of our residents of North Glen are Hispanic, Latino, and that survey was designed, too, to kind of outreach to those folks, are we missing those voices? Are they able to engage on these platforms, Facebook, Instagram? Just something to consider. Again, you may not have an answer right now, and that's okay.

My response, Councilmember Nowicki, would be Joy Riot still has an obligation with their existing scope of services to guide us in what more do we need to do to engage all our populations. So survey aside, they're still researching Drawing the roadmap that I'm calling it the recommendations and the findings to say city of Northland You need to do this this and this That perhaps we're not doing today You need to seek out this tool or whatever this new thing is. I don't know what that is yet because I haven't seen their Recommendations and findings that's their job. That's why we hired them as independent outside experts to advise me and to advise all of you to say this is where you need to go to advance your communications in North Glen. So come next Tuesday, if I don't see that, I'll report back to council and we'll pivot again if we need to pivot again. But that will be the quality control piece or role that I'm playing when I get a feel for what they're going to advance next week.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

And ultimately, just one more piece, Councilmember Nowicki, you all don't approve what they advance until you're satisfied with it, right? So it's continued discussion, which I expect there's going to be quite a bit of conversation about what you like, maybe what you want. a bit different and that's gonna be an iterative process between the time you see the recommendations and findings, which is also why I wanna keep that ball rolling and get those in front of you.

So I'm gonna jump in here really quickly to answer a little bit of Council Member Nowicki's concern. So the lack of a I don't have a problem with because you did a very nice job of explaining why we don't have one. And it was a way to be responsive and urgent because looking at the tentative future agendas, it would have been kicked down the road too far for council to be notified of the fact that our city manager watched the meeting and has been doing the work behind the scenes with a committee and her work with the consultant. So it was a necessary update. And I think she's giving a thorough update. I don't know that we needed it written down, what she just said. So I'm OK with not having the memo. I appreciate that you're bringing it forward right away because you're still on top of it. We can't lose any more time. council decided pretty unanimously to press pause on it until you came back because we know that you were the one at the helm of this and knowing that you were disappointed in the presentation, I think at least acknowledges our response to it as well, right? We were like, what is this? And you saw that too and that's really helpful. As far as survey or not, I don't know my bigger concern. And I go back to years ago where we had the police department 360 assessment. And that was a different process. Like council didn't engage and go, no, we don't like that. We don't like that because I think we have to remember what our role is. And it's sometimes really hard to, we've talked about this phrase, lead at the right elevation. And council gives recommendations and staff is doing the work. So I've been answering this question online a little bit lately because the type of government we have is a council manager form of government. Our city manager is doing the day-to-day work. after we, you know, set policy. So I just want to remind us what our role is in this process because it is really frustrating. And the other thing that the city manager and I discussed is that concerns with communications started way before she was even here. So way before I was even here, the questions around communications and branding and everything and all of that. And we're just kind of spinning around it, right? Economic development is tied to it. Our tax base is tied to it. Residential, if we're thriving as a city, if people are moving here is tied to it. If they're engaged and knowledgeable, it's all one big mess. And so I think I had high hopes that a consultant could come in and do the work. And I still do. And I just my recommendation is that we push really hard and say you were hired as experts in your field. You should have current research on what is best practice. And that's what I cannot wait to hear. It's one thing to talk to us about what we want. It's another to talk to staff about what they want. We have to hear that they may or may not have the capacity to do what the recommendations are. But I know that our police department didn't feel like they had the capacity either. And they had to come to council and say, hey, if you want us to do this, we have to hire more people. And that was just part of the conversation. And that could also be something that we end up talking about now, right? Is if best practice is you need to be doing X, Y, and Z, but we don't have the staff to do that, we're going to have to make decisions in that way. And that is where it comes back to council. So I just, we have to be careful, but I also am looking forward to the work that you're going to be doing. Council Member Burns.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. Yeah, I just want to actually build off of everything you just said because I'm fine with not doing the survey. I think, like, understanding what our community wants to hear from us and how they want to hear it, they can very easily tell us by what they're interacting with and data points that we might have just been missing with our internal processes, which I do believe we discussed briefly at the June 1st meeting. But to Mayor Lighty's point around this best practices and benchmarks, it does exist. Spoiler alert. And so I am interested in that as well. But I'm also interested to hear how they want to frame the city. Because I do think the thing that we are missing and I'm going to put on my professional hat for a moment, if you guys will indulge me, is if we don't know who we are, we cannot share that message with people, right? And so that's why we keep spinning and, like, keep missing the mark because we don't have any of these brand guidelines to guide the messaging across all of our various departments, right? Like, you can't, if you don't know who you are, you can't talk to people if you don't, like, know what you don't know. And so that piece is so important to me, coming out of this process, as well, because, you know, I'm not going to lie, and we didn't have time to discuss, and, you know, bringing up the content calendar, like, I was shocked at basic things that we were missing internally. And so I'm also fine getting rid of the survey because it's very clear we need to get back to basics and build infrastructure internally and build bridges across teams. That's a conversation for another time. But I feel confident this will be good if we get both these pieces of recommendations of best practices from a communications department, from a municipality, or beyond, and then who we are as a city, and then we can share that with our residents.

Council Member Lighty.

Thank you. Sorry, I hate to be this last person, but thank you so much for putting all of the work into this, just because I know that this is not something that's an easy fix in the middle of a work week, especially when you just get thrown back into your fun job, which is a million different things. So thank you so much for always doing that. And I also kind of just wanted to point out, I'm very excited for July 20th is what I'm hearing. I think this was more of... which I don't think normally happens, but you telling us what to look forward to rather than us being like, well, actually, we don't really want that to happen. And so I'm excited and looking forward to July 20th and to hear more about what the recommendation is from you guys. So thank you.

And Council Member Light, I just want to be clear. July 20th is a budget conversation. Just kidding. Yeah, you won't hear.

Ignore. I'm like, yay, we're going to hear it someday. I don't know. It's fine.

Our conversation because revenues are not keeping up with expenditures, and so that's that hard conversation. But we'll have everything teed up for Council. That's great.

Any other questions for our city manager?

No?

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any other items for council? All right. Hearing none, we are adjourned. Have a great evening.