Remarks by Jonathan Mitchell
189 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 3 of 8
- Play at 2:20:56
“Taz, you're talking about criteria, and it's hard to get more specific with the criteria, and I think that's true. I mean, what you have, the heightened risk location interface with adjacent properties, proximity of flood point areas, it's sort of like stormwater risk. What else is there? What I was talking about in terms of the discretion being hard to exercise case by case is that there needs to be a layer of mapping, like application of the criteria, that needs to happen before there's two weeks until this hearing on a certain rezoning. Because otherwise, this sort of analysis should be…”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:30:27
“Thank you for the presentation. It took a lot of work, obviously, and not as much as it would have pre-chat GPT, but still a lot of work.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:30:38
“I might want to add a shipwreck in the fourth Eastgate scenario. You know, that would really lighten it up. Add to it, yeah. Thank you, and look forward to seeing what you put together between meetings. Three other issues, which I trust will be quicker. One is trees, the other is the by-right thresholds, and the other is enforcement. So Libby, do you want to kick off the trees? I know you don't want to kick off the trees, but you want to start. I'll try.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:31:44
“Libby, are you thinking mainly about the three and four unit?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:31:51
“Right, which I think intentionally have a lower tree canopy requirement, right, TAS than single family? Exactly. Because it goes the opposite direction of the stormwater stuff.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:33:19
“Libby, why don't we start with this chart? Okay. So.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:35:18
“Okay, so we have this. It's behind you as well, Olivia, if it's not in your line of sight. So the idea here, as I recall from a couple meetings ago, is that for two to four, let's just start comparing one to two to four. Well, also 5 to 12. So you have decreased tree canopy requirements in, it looks like, all districts, except light use, compared to single family. And I think that's because we're trying to incentivize that kind of development. I don't know, and I can't recall whether it's also because of some sort of physical impossibility consideration of actually building that stuff with…”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:39:58
“But that's not to say that cutting them down is allowed. You're just talking about the enforcement mechanism. The requirement continues.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:47:41
“We're talking about light industrial now?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:56:15
“Libby, did you have another tree thing you wanted to raise?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:57:10
“Pardon? You had to hit the tree canopy. There's no meadow exception.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:57:46
“It'd be hard to administer. I mean, a tree is a tree, right? Just throwing it out there.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 2:59:02
“You're talking about a lawn ban? I don't think that's going to work.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:06:49
“I mean, I can't sort it out here. It's an empirical question. Maybe we want to recommend another approach or recommend more investigation of this. But I guess at this point, are we moving towards some sort of recommendation? Or is somebody going to write something up? Or should we take a straw poll as to what we want to do on trees?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:08:37
“et cetera. So the first thing we started with was this table in front of us and behind us. Do folks think that the percentages should be adjusted, or the pattern should be adjusted, or are folks sort of comfortable with it? Let me just go down and take a straw poll. I'm going to start with Libby, actually.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:09:26
“Do you want to come back on the 20th? You have more chance to digest it and make some very specific recommendations if you want to or not. If I can, yeah.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:09:37
“Yeah, does that sound okay to everybody? So...”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:10:13
“Okay, so Libby, that would be something you could include in your write-ups that we could look at. So there were some issues in the middle I want to circle back to, but the last issue, because it's fresh in my mind, is this native tree. Do we allow the adapted or adaptive species or not? And if so, how does the ratcheting work? Are we going to put in the LUMO the effective dates of certain proportions, or are we just going to have some sort of automatic ratcheting thing? How do we want to, does somebody want to write something up? Is there enough interest in having something written up on the…”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:12:23
“Yeah, that would just make it more user-friendly.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:12:39
“Liz, do you want to take that one on? Sure, unless Libby wants to just do it all under the...”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:12:52
“Okay, and there were other things in the middle that I didn't quite get down, some tree issues sort of in the middle of those two things that bookended our discussion. Are there other categories, Libby, where you're not just giving Taz feedback here, but you'd like us to sort of vote on something? Or maybe there aren't. i don't remember at this point okay so why don't we leave it this way right and i think it's totally appropriate for you to come back with whatever sort of specific recommendations that you think we ought to consider and we'll just consider them at the next meeting okay good…”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:14:30
“It's a tiered thing, depending on affordability for a residential, starting at 30%.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:15:48
“baseline right so there's that gradation and then there's the tiered incentives that you mentioned right that's just for residential and i should also mention these thresholds do not override the zoning district not at all so if it's ra meaning like one maximum four family depending um you're not building a 30 unit thing without permission you would need a rezoning exactly yeah”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:17:07
“Are we going to put a conditional rezoning requirement on it? Exactly, yeah. And then just to be complete on the background here, on commercial, it's a square footage standard, not number of units, obviously standard.”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026
- Play at 3:20:04
“Libby, do you want to clarify what you wanted to talk about when you raised this originally?”
Planning Commission · Oct 6, 2026