Remarks by Danté Anderson
36 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 2
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
Mr. Mayor, just a point of information. When these items were being pulled, I heard sort of a litany of for comment and then for a separate vote. So just to be clear, I think Council Member Masueta-Arias was clear. He wanted to make a comment, not for separate vote. But I did hear for my other colleagues that pulled some, they said and separate vote. So we just got to make sure that... we're covering all the bases.
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Okay, thank you, Mayor, and thank you. Attorney Battle for the presentation and summarizing a lot of difficult work that's been going on over the months. It sounds like, just from what I'm hearing, that really many of the questions are around number 14 and the other recommendations are pretty straightforward. Just when we talk about a technology platform and this concept of allowing individual drivers to build their own technology platform, that comes with maintenance costs, it comes with tech issues, and it also creates another opportunity for our consumers to not have the level of…
Congratulations. Congratulations. Here comes the CFO. Congratulations. Congratulations.
I think this is a great example of as we are moving into a population of a million people and we're experiencing this growth spurt as a city that we have to have a balance here of protecting some of our historic buildings that give our city texture and charm and making sure that we are not effectively sanitizing some of our history by allowing some of these buildings to stay on the market and then get purchased and demolished and history is wiped away. These types of buildings add character and texture to our city as they have for decades. And I think we have to balance that with responsible…
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I will allow Attorney Battle to speak to it, but as you can see on slide 12, scooters falls under the personal conveyance vehicle definition. Scooters, skateboard, hoverboards, et cetera. Attorney Battle?
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And just as a member of the Economic Development and Workforce Committee, we deliberated quite a bit on this work and voted it unanimously out of committee. I do agree that, you know, right now with having our language out of alignment with state law, that can create some opportunities for confusion and misdirection. And so I believe we need to, unfortunately, it's not something I'm willingly raising my hand for with excitement, but I do believe that that our legal department as well as our CBI team has done really great work in this area, and they're putting this forth…
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I will be supporting this moratorium as well. However, I'm very happy to see that the language in here speaks to this expiring no later than a specific date. because as we spoke about previously, I believe our General Assembly is going to move faster on this particular issue because once we talk about the guardrails for our residents, which we 1,000% have to do, however, we're a little bit pigeon-held here because, again, it doesn't fall under the vast majority of these areas don't fall under our jurisdiction. It falls under the state level. So we have to collaborate and…
And finally, Council Member Anderson. Thank you, Mayor. I love it, CEO Mayo. Thank you. I have two topics I wanted to share with you all. One is our tree canopy. And I know that we have a goal of in 2050 to be 50% covered. but we're being outperformed by some other cities who are leaning into their canopy in a very different way. One is Chicago and Chicago has made made a commitment to, to plant over 75,000 trees by 2026 last year. And that meant that in a two year clip, they were, get this, they planted 37,500 trees in one year. So the level of, and it's a myriad of styles of trees, but the…
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This is quite a unique rezoning I'm not sure that we've seen very minute very many like it on one hand Our tree canopy is so important to us and we have our 2050 action that we're trying to get 50% coverage of canopy by 2050. This would certainly protect a great number of trees and preserve them. It sounds like in perpetuity. And on the other hand, you have residents saying that this would impact their quality of life. So this billboard, is it just a visible billboard or does it have other functions like sound or music or anything that can come emit from it?
Yeah. So just the question for staff, is this something that and I see that staff does not recommend it of course, but can you just say more about that balance of, we have a tree safe, it's really a tree preserve. There's an addition of a billboard facing the highway. Can you say more about staff's position against this?
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I just have questions about—I appreciate the height and reducing the height. I just have questions about the density in that area. I know it has— the infrastructure in place in terms of light signals, et cetera. But it seems like that's quite a few cars coming in and out of there, and especially in a space where the movie theater has been dormant for some time. So it can get very congested over in that area. And I have some questions about traffic and congestion.
Okay. Last question. The height relative to the other commercial buildings that surround that area, is that height in alignment or is it taller than the existing?
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Is there a motion to close the public hearing? So moved. Second.
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Motion to close public hearing and adopt 11B. Is there a second for that motion? Second.
Motion to close public hearing and adopt 12B.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor, and thank you, Chair Mayfield, and your committee for the work here. Greatly appreciate you all leading in on this particular topic. Just a couple quick points. Very happy to see the home ownership, and I'm looking at slide 16 here that has the investment targets and then the delta targets. in certain categories. So I'm very happy to see the home ownership bucket increased by $6 million. And I remember as we go through the housing trust fund cycles, the proposed, The proposed projects for home ownership are highly sought after. It's just a matter of trying to get more…
OK. I look forward to seeing that criteria. Because I do believe there's a need out there, especially for some of the NOAAs that exist in the marketplace that need that investment. But I can also foresee this dollar amount being burned through relatively quickly, especially when you talk about larger multifamily that is affordable. So I'd like to see some criteria in how we would go, as a council, go through that process. The last point I'd like to highlight is on slide 15 here, it talks about the updates to the location scoring to reflect the changing community. I just want to make sure as…