Community Relations Commission - Regular Meeting

Try to cut down on the background noise.

I just turned on the mics for the folks that are in the room, so hopefully it'll cut down on the noise. So we have a quorum the next thing on our agenda is the acceptance of the journal So the Journal of Proceedings for the Community Relations Commission meeting held on June 11th 2026 We have a motion We have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion second? Motion second and no discussion all in favor Any opposed The journal has been approved. The next thing on our agenda is a communication just reminding us of the mayor's open door meetings with the commission that's set for September 25, 2026 from 10 to noon. We have no public speakers this evening. So we'll move to our information only session and invite City of Rockford Community and Economic Development Department planning and zoning division update from Scott Capovella, the planning and zoning manager.

Thank you, Commissioner. I just want to make sure this mic's working. It's been a while since we've had live microphones in this body here. So I just want to thank everybody for being here. I'm happy to give you a little update about what's going on and things like that. And I know that there's always discussions as to why do we have zoning. And of course, the purpose of our zoning ordinance is to protect and promote the public health, safety, and general welfare, protect the character of established residential neighborhoods, and maintain orderly and compatible development patterns that promote an appropriate mix of land use and protect and conserve property values. Now, those are basically three of the 15 points that are stated in the beginning of the ordinance under our legal framework in Article 10. There are others that also talk about how zoning's purpose is to provide job bases and economic development, provide walkability and mixed-use developments. It discusses providing a variety of housing types, et cetera. So if you look at that, you'll notice there's a lot more than just the ones that I ran through here, but these are like the general ones that you will see with every community. So moving along, in Rockford we have six types of residential zoning districts, but only five are used to designate land. And you'll see I have down the different types there and the square footages that are required for a lot that would be created for a new lot in today's standards. And it also includes the lot the required lot with I put a little asterisk next to the r1u single-family residential urban That was a designation in 2008 that for some reason After they approved the zoning ordinance did not approve the zoning map to change some areas of Rockford to r1u so they just remained everything remained r1 and r1u basically would have been older areas of Rockford and would say Based on them the previous discussions with our city administrator Todd Cagnone who was in my position a few years back The near east side just east of the river kind of south of rural over to say Maybe just over to Calvin Park and areas in Midtown Midtown North kind of in the old Churchill Park area and then immediate areas just north of City Hall As well as on the west side basically on the south side of West State most of those lots were all developed they were like 50 feet wide maybe 125 150 feet deep and The idea being that we would require a smaller base slot But for some reason it just it just they just decided not to go with it But it's still considered one of our zoning districts. So if somebody ever came in and wanted to do a new development and They said hey, I want to change my zoning to our one you and they'll follow the guidelines of a 6,000 square foot lot That's only 50 feet wide We would definitely entertain a zoning map amendment for that and we would look at that development just like we would any other development so Any questions about any of those zoning districts at all right now? I All right. And then I'll keep moving along, and we'll talk about zoning and housing and how those two kind of mesh together and what types of housing can be built in each one of the districts. And so the rural estate district is, most of the time, if you look at one of our maps, that's basically our parks. Occasionally you might find a couple of larger Pockets that might be zoned re that are along I think Mulford Road near there's some large five acre estates that are off of there and a little dip where a Keith Creek runs through just to the west of Aldine Park But but really most of the stuff you're gonna find It's gonna be zoned our one that's single-family residential And obviously, that district is just a single-family district. Anybody who would establish a lot today, the average would have to be 7,700 square feet with 70 feet of frontage. So that would mean your minimum lot depth would be 110. R1U would be the same thing, only it would be smaller lot size. R2, we would allow both single family and two families, the idea being that you have a little larger lot to accommodate duplexes, and most of today, people want to have a garage with those duplexes, and many of them are two-car garages. We found that you know the the average in order to fit those on the on that type of lot that size 80 feet was kind of the required width in order to meet that and and still meet setbacks and have space between adjacent property as well so our minimum setbacks for zoning are six feet on side yards and In the case we have up to a hundred feet. We we have what we call the 20% rule and So that would mean if you were on an 80 foot wide lot and one side was six feet Then you'd have to make sure that the other side in this case would be ten feet because you'd have to have at least sixteen feet of side yard total and And that's to kind of vary the lots. And in some cases, you might have a larger gap between developments, side yards, because of that. But at the same time, it just provides a little bit of width. There's fire code issues as well. That's the reason why we have that setback like that. And the our three multifamily district, which is the most popular I would say if you look at our zoning maps for multifamily It basically what you know if most of those developments you're gonna look at you're gonna find a lot of four family developments and then six and eights There might be a few twelves as well, but usually it's it's rare they kind of stay within that area and So, and in that same thing, we have the same lot size for the R3 and R4 as we do R2. But the density is allowed up to 15 units per acre. The average, I think from our, I did a study on this a few years back when we were looking at densities. And it's about 10.6 in terms of like how many units are actually in an R3 development on average, even though you're allowed up to 15. We did have one development that's located near State Mulford to the north side where there is almost, it's like 12.9. So they really maxed out the units on that site. And the funny thing is when you go by it, you really don't notice it because they have a nice green space. They meet setbacks, et cetera. They did it right, right? And then also the R4 areas, we don't have a lot of R4. We do have some near the downtown north along Court, Church, kind of just up in that area around the health department. There's other sections over by. Flintridge and state in the back there. There's some pretty dense apartment areas in there They do allow up to 30 units per acre, but rarely do we see people maximize that much We do see some of those developments that are probably pushing 18 to 20 units at the most. So people, even though they're allowed these densities, they really don't seem to maximize that in the past when people were zoning property for those type of uses, etc. So then what are some of our current challenges and opportunities? So I think our current challenges are we need some developers with some cash who can develop some property. It's very expensive to build infrastructure these days. I want to say that the average, I believe it's around 500 So if you have a 100 foot wide lot, it's going to average out around $50,000 to build a new street and create lots on both sides of that. So if you just built a 100 foot wide street, your lot costs a loaner, just for infrastructure, are going to be close to $50,000. It's a big change from the last time I think we had a development come through that was brand new in Rockford back in 2008, where the costs were probably half of that. So we've seen huge increases in pipe costs because of the price of oil, PVC, iron has gone up, so our ductile iron has gone up, aggregates. Everything that goes into the ground costs a lot more these days. So we had a big jump from 2008 to now where actually people are looking at building new. But they're seeing some of these costs. And some people are saying they're still going to move forward. We'll see how this goes. We haven't seen quite that. Someone who's come forward said, I'm definitely going to go forward with this development. Those are the things that basically we need. We need a developer with cash who can deliver on some of these. But we also need builders who are willing to build. And we've seen a lot of interest with the program that we created. I think this is our third year now. Since we've extended it and that is waiving the building fees waiving our water hookup fees Also providing the three-year tax abatement from the both the city of Rockford and the Rockford School District so that's 60 to 65 percent of most tax bills are going to be those two entities and So people are able to know that if they're going to build, they're going to save probably $20,000, $25,000 on the fees that are paid to building costs and water fees. And in addition to that, they're able to get back some of the money that they're paying in taxes. And that would be over a three-year period. So if someone was to come in and build a house today and someone was to buy that house by the end of this year, then next year they could turn around and they can file with, I believe, through our finance department to get that portion of their taxes back when the taxes are paid. So it's a good incentive for people. It results in, on the average house, probably $2,000, $3,000 back at least. If not, new construction is probably going to be more like $4,000 to $5,000, honestly. But if you can get that back over three years, that's a huge incentive for building new construction. And we have seen a huge increase in our building permits since we started that program. So we're hoping to continue that, and that would help fill a lot of the existing lots that are all throughout the city. We approved, all the way up until 2008, over 1,800 residential lots. They weren't all built. We still have about 400. I want to say maybe it's a little less than 400 now that are still left that builders can build on. We were seeing some of those builders come in and take out permits. It's a great thing. We've got new construction on old subdivisions off of 35th Street. There's one called Chanham. There is not one house that was built in there. And finally, we've got permits issued to build new construction there. Linden point which is just to the north of it which actually the the old part backs up to bypass 20 We're seeing a lot of construction there they one of the streets was all finished off last year three hammer construction still owns 20 lots they pulled 20 permits and Before they even completed the last unit they had every single one of them sold and So they were able to do that because they were able to keep the cost a little bit lower based on the fact that we had discounted those permit costs for them, in addition to providing an incentive for the buyer coming in to get a tax rebate from the city for a three-year period. So it worked out well. We're finally seeing some new construction on Owen Center Road in a subdivision called Reddington Chase, which had a total of five houses built in it. There was like 70 lots that were planted. We're excited about that. The front part of that subdivision was zoned R2. So I think it's four duplexes that have been permitted to move forward there. It's great news. So this is actually doing exactly what we wanted it to do. In addition to that, we've seen scattered sites throughout the city on vacant lots where people have come to us. They may have picked up a lot through the trustee program for $500, and they're building a new house on it. We've seen this on the southwest side of Rockford. We've seen it on the southeast side of Rockford. So it's exciting to see that people are actually filling in some of these areas where maybe a home burned down, that people walked away from it. Like I said, the taxes weren't paid. It went to the county trustee. And somebody comes in and says, hey, I'm going to take advantage of the city program. Let's go ahead and do this. So those are the things that are happening now with a lot of the programs that we have. In addition to that, we've been trying to figure out some things. How do we promote more infill development? And one of those things I've been working on, and a lot of assist from many people throughout this building in terms of input and community members talking to developers and builders, what can we do to change some zoning laws that would help with providing some new infield development. So we proposed some tax amendments. And I have those provided to you. And I'll go through some of these quickly. Apologize if you look at this used chart. You'll see a parking standard thing. I keep saying error, reference source not found. Well, we have a hyperlink. And when you copy that hyperlink and go to print it out, It doesn't show up on the paper, but it shows up on your computer screen. It's very odd, but we don't need to worry about that.

So Scott, if we could just pause for a minute. Sure. I have a question before we move out of zoning. Where would supportive housing fall in the zoning district classification?

My question would be, what do you consider supportive housing? Tiny homes. That's not supportive housing. That's just a single family home then. That wouldn't be supportive. Tiny home would be a home that could be put up on a single-family lot anywhere in the city of Rockford and are there Are there zoning restrictions for tiny homes? No, there are not we do not have a minimum house size for any tiny home Okay, so okay yeah because people there's so many people that say to me um supportive housing and when i say supportive what do they mean and then they'll delve into well people with disabilities of you know four or five different types of disabilities and i'll say well those are classified as community-based housing and we do allow those and i work closely with milestone and stepping stones especially I'm I'm helping to find areas where we can have have them by right allowed in our zoning ordinance And we do have that so so this this is a possibility. Oh, yes. It's definitely a possibility.

Yeah We're gonna watch a video in a little bit where in Minnesota an organization took an empty warehouse and divided it up into little tiny home apartments inside. Is that something that

You have a zoning district for or so or could have well, let's take Barbara Coleman for example with the Coleman yards They're creating a lot of housing down there and a lot of those are going to be very they're gonna be studio style apartments there's some of those that are very small they're only like 480 or 500 square feet and For most people, they would say, that's way too small. Who would want to live there? Well, there's a lot of people who are single. They don't have a lot of things. If you can have a bed and a bathroom and a kitchen area, most people are pretty happy having some affordable housing. That, to me, or I should say, housing within someone's financial means, right? Because affordable for one person is not affordable for another. I think we've got to watch the term affordable housing a lot when we use that term. Because it's way overused today, and it's really not one of those terms that can define everybody. And especially, I hate it when say, is this affordable housing? Oh, what projects are you going to be putting here? Why do people always just assume that affordable housing is some type of a project, a housing project? It's not. Yeah.

So are the units at Coleman Yards, will they be affordable housing? Well, no. They're going to be market rate housing. OK. So maybe that's the difference is affordable housing would not be market rate housing.

So, but there are, you know, we have many programs through our housing division here at the city in which we can make things more affordable for people. Okay. So, and whether that's, you know, subsidies on loan payments, down payment for houses, rent subsidies, things like that. There's a lot of different mechanisms that we're looking at. Okay. And there's also the tax credit housing, which I think has just been awarded to, I just heard that somebody in Michesne Park just won some award. I don't know about the two that have been proposed in Rockford, if they won theirs or not. I haven't had the opportunity to talk to Director Lise yet to see if that's happened. She was out on some business dealings with our economic development manager today. But there wasn't one in McChesney where tax credit housing is basically when they develop like, I'm not exactly sure how many units it was in McChesney, but let's just say they had 90 units. 30 would have to be to lower income people, 30 would have to be to mid-range people, and then 30 would have to be at market rate. And so the state would award that to that developer, and then you would have to provide those credits and incentives to those residents who would live there. The very first tax credit housing project in Rockford was actually Mulford Park Apartments. And I want to say that was in the early 70s. And then more recently, we had a development called Forest Glen on McFarland Road, just south of Riverside. That was actually a tax credit housing project as well. Most people in Rockford did not know that. Why? Because everyone was very integrated. And you have three different income levels of people. Nobody really cared, well, you only make this much. You only make, they didn't know. Who knew who their neighbor was? They just became neighbors and friends. And everyone's meshed together. That's actually a very good program that the state has when they run that. And we do have a proposal for that right now at South Main and Harrison. So we're hoping that developer does win that tax credit, because we'd love to see that project happen.

So what I'm hearing for tiny homes is that there's no zoning restriction for tiny homes.

No. As long as you meet all the zoning codes and the building codes, it doesn't matter if you build a 400-square-foot home or a 4,000-square-foot home. Everyone has to meet the same regulations. How about the number of tiny homes on one property? Well, that would be regulated. And I was going to get to that a little bit later to talk about something like that, because we do have someone who's looking at that right now with us. Thank you. But really appreciate the question. That's a great question. So let me dive into some of these proposed tax amendments that we're looking at. We are going to try and make anything in our R2 district that currently would be vacant to allow someone to build a new construction of a three-unit or four-unit building. So there are some vacant properties. We have a large section of R2 on the southeast side of Rockford. There's a lot of duplexes around there, but there's also a lot of four families mixed in there, and occasionally you might even find an eight family. But the area is all zoned R2. There are some vacant lots over there. And if they meet the minimum lot size, then we'd like to see someone have the capabilities of building something more than just a two family. So that maybe it would make more sense financially. Hey, I could do a three plex here. And the bank won't need to jump in. And the bank would say, oh, look at the way. This is going to cash flow fine in this area. We get people all the time who say they can't build the same thing that exists next door because it's going to cost too much money, and the market's not there, or the bank won't loan me the money. This would help with some of these things. It would give people that option to say, hey, I've got a lot. And look, it meets the lot size requirements. And instead of building a two-family, I can build a four-family. So I can prove to the bank that I got great cash flow coming out of this to provide good housing for people. And at the same time, we get new construction in the older neighborhoods, which anytime you can get new construction, it helps boost the tax base. It helps boost our property values. It helps provide housing for people. And it fills in these vacant lots, which we don't have to go after for, say, mowing and things like that. There's a lot of benefits to that. The other thing on there is part of that, and we do have the minimum lot area exception for the three and four units houses in R2. And we just want to point out that as long as they do meet those minimum standards, and they're the same minimum standards as an R2 property, But it's for new construction and it does not include the conversion of existing structures We don't want to see people just using this as an opportunity to go in and hey I'm gonna throw in a basement unit in the bottom of this to family since I have the right to do it now No, that's not the intent the intent is to encourage new construction So we get new dollars and an influx of cash into these neighborhoods to help with the property values Small change on our rear setback, reducing that from 30 feet to 20 feet. We just tried to make that universal throughout the city. It's especially troubling with some of the older lots, especially when we come to these lots that have been split on corners. They might meet the front yard setback and the side yards, but they can't meet the rear yard. And we just had somebody come through the zoning board a couple of months ago, and he had exactly the same problem. So he had to scooch the, because of the setback of the existing structures, he was able to go within 15 feet on the front setback, but he still could not make this house work, and he needed a reduction down to 18 feet. Now, he would still need that, but if he had just two more feet, and it was 20 feet, he was able to do this. And so we've looked at a lot of lots in the same situation. We said, hey, this same house could fit on these lots, and they wouldn't need to come to us for a variance so we could allow it by right. And those are some of the reasons why we would make that change. Another change we'd like to see is actually in a commercial district. It's in our c1 limited office district and in that case What we'd like to do is go kind of go back to the way things used to be back in 1993 Our ordinance allowed multifamily developments in the C1 district. So we'd like to see that happen again, because C1 is our office district. Nobody's really building new office buildings these days. I don't know how many people I know that used to share office space. They all work from home. We all use Zoom. We can connect. So there's different ways and yet we're sitting here. We got large tracts of land and this is probably more prevalent on the east side of town But at the same time this would help potentially open that up for someone to actually develop some multifamily housing and We need housing in all sectors of our community. So this would be a positive step in the right direction and We have changes to our mandatory plan unit developments. This only came into play once. And that was with the new town town homes that were built South State Street. I'm sure everybody heard about that one. But they developed it under the old ordinance. Well, then the council came through and changed all those things right after it was built. And they made it so restrictive that we had developers who wouldn't even look at the city of Rockford because it would be virtually impossible to build anything. If you wanted to build a 12 unit building on a lot you would have had to come to the City Council to get approval now if It just seems so silly to me that that's a rule that existed, but it did We switched it back just like three years ago. And now we're thinking that that's not even good enough. Let's increase the amount of units that are allowed to be built without going through the special use permit process. We haven't had any single family homes proposed. But still, we had a cap on 100 homes. So now we would move that to 150. And we think that's a reasonable number. Most of the subdivisions that we see from back in the day would always come in. They were always around the 80 to 100 range. We did see ones like Linden Point off of Bypass 20 and Alpine there. That was over 400 lots. That would have had to go through this process then. But for what we call single family attached, which is basically a townhome, we wanted to increase that from 50 units to 60 units. So if somebody was to come through and want to do a townhome development, and say they had plenty of acreage, maybe a couple of private roads coming in, and everyone has their driveways off of it, Well this way they're allowed to do up to 60 units without going through the special use permit process Once again providing some incentives to the developers to encourage them to build in Rockford and then from the multifamily units We were going from 60 units to 80 units Ironically we have somebody Who is just going to be above the 80 units, but he's actually grandfathered in on a development that started in 2007 and they completed it in early 2008 and put the first lift down on the road And it's been sitting vacant since then we've had numerous dumping problems parking of semi trucks Just all kinds of problems over there with getting things mode a developer who actually has a large Presence in Rockford his name is Joe Marino ironically not related to our famous Joe Marino, but and Joe probably owns 200 units in Rockford. He he's got a pretty good reputation with our building staff So he bought these lots and then found out that there was a little bit more available to the south of him Where he could put in like four more buildings and he's looking at doing some nice eight family buildings using hardy board siding and And he's hoping to get under construction. The engineers are working on the replat right now. He did have to go through zoning initially about three years ago because the annexation agreement had to be amended to allow him to build this. And it's kind of bizarre that you would have to go back through and do something like that. But under the old annexation agreement, that's what he had to do. So we're changing that once again because he would have 11 buildings and make it 88 units then. It would be over the 80, but because this was a already established lot of record and he's just redoing the lot lines to make this work, it would be permitted. Now, the biggest change we're looking at is an infill overlay district. Now, this would hopefully help facilitate some new construction, but it would allow the construction of two family residents within an R1 district. This one I've spoken to numerous people on, some younger developers who are looking at the west side of Rockford and really have some great ideas. And kind of give you an example, it would cost like $200,000 to build a single-family home. But he can build the same, kind of on the same footprint, but go with a two-story and spend maybe a little over $200,000, just over $200,000. But the bank would look at it more favorably. And they would be willing to increase the loan amount, which would fill that gap that is so desperately needed. Because in the past, in this area, we'd see that banks would only be looking at new housing like this. And they would say, well, we're only going to give you $120,000 because that's all the lands and property is worth right now. And we say, it's brand new construction. It's going to cost $200,000. There's an $80,000 gap. This would be a way to close that gap and really get it down to Where we could help fill those gaps with these people when we work with them on developing and also It provides an additional unit of housing housing for people in the neighborhood now This has been accepted. I mean, I got some guys who are really excited about this and want to move forward. One in particular who every day says, when's that coming up? When's that coming up? Well, it's going to be on the agenda. All these tax amendments are going to be on the agenda July 21st. And hopefully by the first Monday in August, it'll get approved. But this overlay district is exciting, and it's exciting for a lot of different reasons. I think it's really going to help promote some new construction, and I think people will see that. And it doesn't mean that you have to build a two-family. You could build single-family as well. But once again, it would provide them some flexibility in our use standards. It would really boost our housing stock. But once again, it would not allow someone to convert a current single family into a two family. It would have to be new construction only. As a part of that, we're kind of adopting our grandfathered lot sizes on setbacks, 25 feet on the front yard, or if it's something that's of a less setback, we would allow that as well. 4.5 on the side yards and 20 on the rear once again, which would be fine. And one of the big changes would be parking. Currently, we require every unit to have one enclosed parking space. So you have to have a fully enclosed garage for a single family house. And then there would be two garages, basically a two-car garage for two families. So we're looking to change that for two spaces for new construction detached houses and 1.5 spaces per unit for new construction two flats. So this way... You wouldn't have to build a garage. You could come off of an alley. You could put in two parking spaces for the single family, and that would be acceptable. Or you could just build three spaces for the two family right off of the alley as well, and that would be acceptable as well. We would not require you to build a garage, which if you haven't seen the costs of what people, we're talking $35,000 to $40,000 just to build like a small two-car garage standard. It's outrageous. And I'd rather see somebody spend that money on their house So that would be a big change within the ordinance Hopefully that CBA and the City Council will go along with that. I Don't know if we really need to talk about some of these other changes that I proposed I did change make a proposal to go from two spaces to 1.5 and all our districts and all the c1 districts That would reduce the amount of payment for some of the larger multifamily projects if they were to move forward There are some other issues in here that are also regarding fast food restaurant parking and driveways and driveway access. I will point out one thing on the nonconforming uses section. North Main has a couple of different areas, basically from the downtown area up to just short of the roundabout. We have an area, Zone C1. We used to have a lot of office spaces along there in some of the houses, and Church Street as well, both on what's considered Illinois Route 2. And further up on North Main also, when you got past the railroad tracks going north, there was a lot of single family homes on the west side of the road. Those were all Zone C1. What we found out is a lot of these offices, as they closed, they moved out, they went away, people would call up and say, well, can I move into this? It's actually a single-family house. I got a great price on it. I bought it. I was like, well, I had to look at it and go, well, let me send an inspector out to make sure that this still is a single-family home. And then they would go in there and go, yeah, it's a single-family home, Scott. And I'd say, well, OK, you can move in there. But then I started having lenders going, well, wait a second. This is on commercial. How can you allow this? It says that you don't allow single family homes in C1. So this actually would allow people to convert back to the R1 and have these single family homes. At one time on Church Street, there was at least 10 places that were not-for-profit groups and offices. And I think there's only one that's remaining over there. And every other place now is going back to being single-family homes. This would help people with some of the financing issues because if when the banks start to go This is not the right zoning district when I can back my decision-making up with actual text It puts a little puts people at ease that we're able to provide this when they ask for that zoning confirmation letter. So That's it. That's a positive thing. So There any questions about any of those proposed amendments I've been seeing a lot of people shaking their heads and saying, yeah, that sounds like a good idea, I think. Right? So moving along, we were talking about the development and zoning approval process. There's basically three things we deal with. Rezoning, special use permits, variances. But it's all going to depend on what type of variances, special uses we're looking at. There are certain use types that are only allowed by special use in presidential districts. And there's variances needed on setbacks and heights and things like that. But we also have something that we call a plan unit development. And it's under the special use permit process. But if we have at least an acre of land, you can do what's called an elective plan unit development. And in that one acre of land, then, you can basically make a proposal to do something that's very unique, that's outside of the realm of the standard R1 district or the R2 district or whatever. And you could propose, say, 12 cottage homes, which small, whatever you want to call them, tiny homes or small homes or whatever. And we've seen people who are starting to look at this like, well, if I had an acre of land, 12 small single-family homes on this lot and I've said it before and I said yeah, we can go through the process now Remember that you got to meet all the building codes. You got to meet all the setback requirements When you go through the PV process, there's probably gonna be some landscaping issues. We'd have to deal with but The biggest the biggest problem with doing something like this though is it would require separate sewer and water connections for every single unit and That is costly It does cost some money Don't know if there's any way around that because if you sell those individually there has to be a way to if they're not paying their water bill or not paying their sewer bill to kind of shut people off and And it's an unfortunate problem that we do have to do with some folks. But we went to some other condo areas. And unfortunately, back in the day, they ran a split system. We have these four-unit condos up by Rockford Lutheran. And it comes in one spot, and it's in one unit. And that person controls the other four people. So if one person doesn't pay, you can't shut off everybody. And so it's a problem we've had. So that's why we had to change our ordinance back in the late 80s. And we've kind of followed that all the way through, and even Four Rivers is very strict about that as well. So that's probably one of the biggest expenses that we would have if we went to something like that. So hopefully that kind of answers your question on how can we do this, because there are ways to do it, but there would be some costs involved in it. So always open to the plan your development. I really Sometimes we don't have to change the underlying zoning we can keep it we can do a lot of unique things I know that we had a development that was proposed with like 20 some plus units per acre There was going to be a assisted living facility. I think everyone was very excited They got approved and then the developer a year later said I don't think I'm gonna build this I'm gonna put it up for sale Well, I was heartbroken the day that it was sold to a church because churches don't pay taxes. And we just took a 15-acre site basically out of our tax base where we could have provided good housing for people and had an assisted living facility that I'm not sure if we still need more assisted living facilities or not, but I think most of the staff was pretty positive that it was a good thing for the city. The other thing is there was a question about, how does residents participate in the public process? Now, I wasn't sure if everyone was like, what happens if a zoning item comes forward? What happens? Well, we publish our agendas, right? And you can look on those agendas every month, and you can see what's happening with zoning. We also publish notices in the newspaper. We send out adjacent letters to all the adjacent neighbors and adjacent just doesn't mean like right next to the property We draw a line and if there's a street in the way or a comment line or a railroad You're notified if you're adjacent to that and if somebody else if the same developer owns property next to it we have to jump that property and notify the people on the other side of it because there are some developers who were famous for buying the land next to them so the what he proposed just to the north. Maybe there was a little land between them. And he was like, oh, you just have to notify me. He was like, no, no, we're going to notify the neighbors south of you as well. So we do that. And then we also post those bright yellow signs to let people know there's a public hearing coming up. I'm surprised at how many phone calls we still get off of those signs from people who are like, I didn't know this was happening. What's going on? When's the meeting? Can I come? And this room was packed last month with people who saw those signs up down around Edson and Illinois 251 last month for a proposed industrial development. So lastly, one of the things is, what does planning and zoning consider when we're reviewing requests for zoning items, whether it's zoning maps, special use variances, et cetera? Well, we're going to look at land use compatibility. What's the zoning next to the property? What are the actual land uses next to it? We're going to look at the setbacks, the heights. We're going to look at the architecture, traffic, access points, and landscaping. With our plan unit developments, that's one of the things that we cover all the bases on that. We're going to look at every single one of those. It doesn't always come into play on maybe a residential project. Maybe someone wants to just rezone to put up an apartment building on this one site. That might not come into play. We might just say, OK, fine, you're going to get one access point to the parking lot in the back. We might look at the architecture, but we're not going to, like, put them through the ringer for landscaping and things of that nature. So when it's just more like a one-building site. We will put commercial developments through more of a ringer because there are a lot of requirements with commercial developments and parking and buffering from the parking area to sidewalks and the public right-of-way and things like that. With that, I'll open up for any questions. Anybody? Okay.

Can I ask, when you mentioned earlier the different programs that the city provides for residents to have assistance with housing, how are those programs made known to the residents?

Yeah, I believe a lot of those are published on the city's website under the housing program There might be some that are available that aren't posted yet. There might be a couple of newer programs But I think they're hoping to get that updated But there's a lot of people who just know about some of these programs through the state and stuff that the people who develop and provide You know housing and they know these programs but But yeah, anytime you could reach out to our housing Housing manager Andrea So Heinrichs, so I have to make sure I'd say your last name because we have two Andrea's now working in the same on the same floor up here So and then I don't know if this is actually a question for you This is sort of the inverse of what you're talking about when it comes to blight How does that handled if there are homes that are just not safe to be used?

What goes on there?

So blight was a big issue for a long time. It still is. But it's not as big of a problem as it was before. The city aggressively, I want to say it was starting in like 2010, said we're just going to start going after these blighted homes and we're going to tear them down. And they told people, fix it up or tear it down. And there were some of them that were beyond repair. And we were averaging for a while, I want to say 60 to 80 teardowns per year easily. We were targeting 100, but we'd get a few people that would object. And some of the objections were turned down after they evaluated the condition of the property by the court. But some of them were told, OK, if you're not going to tear this down, then you've got six months. Get in there and get this place looking good. And then you have to go back in front of the judge and prove it. So what we do today is we still have a list of blighted properties. We have our vacant property registry as well as our rental registry, so we know a lot of the vacant properties. If you know that once we can get into a site, we will make sure that we have a detailed list of the things that need to be taken care of. If you ever see a red X on a site that's put up there by the fire department, that means... If there's a fire, you're not entering that building because the firemen would be at risk if they were to go in there to try to fight a fire. So even if they hear that there's somebody in the building, they will have to operate from the outside. They're not allowed to go in because it's a very dangerous structure then. And usually that's because of sagging floors, water damage and stuff, and you could walk into one of these places and just go right down.

Are those the sorts of structures that would be marked for a teardown?

Yes.

So that program, that's still happening?

Yes. I think last, I think it was the last meeting we were at here in front of the committees, I think we approved like another five demolitions, so.

Thank you. Scott, thank you for giving us all this information. I've got lots of questions, but I need to put them together in my head. So would I be able to send you an email with some additional questions? Yeah. OK, thank you.

Commissioners, any other questions?

I'm wondering if, I know the video was slated for later, but I'm wondering if it would be helpful in light of Scott's question to have the video shown now. Maybe you could offer some thoughts about it. It's only like five minutes long. Unless you are not comfortable with that.

I can watch the video. It's only five minutes long. Let's take a look at it. I may have seen it, but we'll see.

Just because I have a feeling that we're going to watch it later and we're going to say, oh, I should have asked you what your thoughts were. OK. OK, thanks.

Welcome to Avivo Village. My name is David Jeffries. I'm the program director here, and I also oversee our street outreach team. This isn't a traditional shelter. So we are open 24-7. We have 100 homes, individual homes here for people to live in. And you can bring your pets if you have them. We take couples who live individually in these homes. And so it looks a little different than your traditional shelter where you enter in the evening and exit in the morning.

You know, the winters are harsh here. Living on the streets here is harsh, and there hasn't been a safe space for people to be. And the traditional shelter model hasn't always worked for everybody.

So when they first come in, some of them are tired. They haven't had sleep for days. Some of the residents are, they're just exhausted. They feel helpless. They feel... Like, they're very emotional. They don't really know how to feel because they've been out on the streets for so long that when they finally come here, they just kind of take a breath. You know, like, I'm okay now.

They need access to everything. So that means access to health care, getting access to benefits like GA, maybe applying for Social Security, getting stable income. They need help with mental health care, getting connected to mental health, medical health. And we also help with things like getting IDs, birth certificates, all those documentation they might need. So helping them get all that stability while they're here. So when they leave here, they're not only to obtain the housing, but able to maintain it as well.

Our residents feel safe because they can trust us. We build rapport with them, and we really get to know them on an individual level. And when they need something, they know that they can come to staff, and they know that they can come to even managers and get their needs met, which hasn't happened out on the streets. The village is set up in a way that it really creates community, and a lot of people take on different roles. We have a resident who's a barber, and he cuts people's hair. We have a resident who is very personable, so if somebody's feeling down, they're always the one that comes in. And so we just, everyone takes a part, just like a regular community would do.

The average amount of stay that a resident lives here really depends. It really depends on the person, what their needs are, what's going on for them. We very much come from a person-centered approach. So someone might need to be here for a few days, a few weeks, and we can find them something quickly. There is no time restriction on how long someone can be here. They can be here as long as they need. till they get to a place where they feel like, okay, I'm ready to leave here. I'm ready for the next step. I have the tools in my tool belt to be able to do that.

They don't have to be out by 7 a.m. like traditional shelters do. And so we actually get the time to build relationships and build trust, which builds a sense of belonging for everyone.

When we meet them in a person-centered way and do things on their time, it's exciting to see where that can go for someone.

So that that looks like a great concept It would all come down to building code issues with that. I think I It depends on how. Now, zoning classification, if it's truly a homeless shelter, we would have to call it a homeless shelter. And it would have to probably go through the zoning process. But let's just say that it wasn't a homeless shelter. It was just affordable housing for people. This would all come down to building codes. And if you took an old warehouse and you were to do something like this, it would be like, depending on the zoning district, I guess, we'd have to look at that underlying zoning. Most of those old warehouses are industrially zoned. So would we have to rezone it? Or if it was over an acre, could we do the special use permit process for the PUD? But I think we'd be more than happy to endorse something like that if it was to meet all the building codes for that type of use. I think these are the things that I know people are looking at as alternatives, along with people have always said, why can't we put up a bunch of tiny homes all over the place? Well, you can if you have the right zoning. And there's a size of the property. So it's more or less going to be, where is it at? What's the underlying zoning? How can we make it work? Can it be done by right? Maybe there's an old building that's zoned residential, and it can be converted to something like this. Based on the number of units, we could maximize the density of the units for the site. There's a lot of different ways that you could make this happen.

If it were considered a homeless shelter, how does that get done?

How is that different? Well, because a homeless shelter is very specific in the ordinance where it says it requires a special use permit in commercial districts. I don't believe it's listed as a use in industrial or residential. And if it's not listed there, then basically, if something's not listed, it's considered prohibited.

Commissioners, any other questions?

No, I'll also be sending a follow-up email with some questions. Okay.

As always, thank you for joining us. You're very welcome. Thanks for the work that your team does. Thanks. Thank you, Scott. Commissioners, the next thing on our agenda is the bi-annual report you all will see in front of you. Thank you to those who responded back with the wonderful work that you all are doing. That is reflected in this report. Larry did remind me as we were coming in today that we did make the change in the ordinance that Commissioner Krupp and I worked on to go towards the biannual. So you'll notice in the report it says quarterly. I'm going to make that change. So that it reflects what our draft ordinance says Take some time to review if there's anything else that you all want changed reach out and and we can make those changes but again, this is Where we've come with all of the work, as you see, there's a lot of work that really got done this year. We've done some great things, so I appreciate all of you for sending the work that you're doing, and we acknowledge too that there's some work to do on the last few pages. I think we can probably, with some changes, get that approved next meeting. the next thing on the agenda is the Community Relations Commission ordinance revision and As you all remember, Krishna Kurup and I presented this a few months back. It's my understanding from talking to Larry that we did originally, you remember the first draft of it, had that quarterly report. This draft now cements the biannual report. So that's the only change, I believe, as looking through it a few minutes ago, that's the only change that was made. What are the next steps for that? Do we need to submit to legal?

Yes, so after we had met and decided to biannually support a meeting, was that the process?

Not enough, yeah.

So we wanted to make that change, bring it back to the group, so everybody is in agreement that biannually is the best way to report. The next step would be to take it to the legal director, and then we would take it to council to approve the amendment to the

And for those that don't remember, just the other things that were changed. I know we might have some new commissioners since then. At least one member of the commission shall be between the ages of 18 and 24 at the time of their appointment so that we can ensure we have a voice with the youth. And in addition to appointing a member, the commission may support youth advisory and mentorship opportunities to allow young residents to learn and contribute to the work of the commission. So during our strategic planning, we really decided we wanted to bring our youth to the table and give them an opportunity to make an impact. So again, those are the only changes. Do we need motion and all of that to move it forward, or can we just send it to the... Okay. Well, if everyone is comfortable with the language here, we'll just ask the legal department to do what they need to do, review it, and submit it to council so that we can get the ordinance changed for commissions moving forward. The next thing on our agenda is the modular homes pilot program housing development ordinance update from Commissioner Bravo and Commissioner McDowell.

So both Jim and I have reached out to some presenters. We were hoping that maybe one of them would have been available for today, but they were not. And I know Jim's reached out to, I think, a couple of departments with Cook County. I think he's what he was contacting, the department he's contacting, and they haven't gotten back to him yet. So he's waiting to hear back. And then the presenter that I've reached out to he had gotten back to me saying it would probably be The fall time before he has time to come and present and it would be via zoom Thank you.

Thank you commissioners any questions We can then move well well we already watched the videos so I We don't have that. We already watched that. We don't have any new business. Just as a reminder, the upcoming action plan. Chairman.

Could I? You absolutely can. So on a tip from Kat Valdez, I reached out to Dr. Martell, Dr. Sandra Martell at the Winnebago County Health Department. And they have 10 people working on a pilot program for tiny homes. So I had a great conversation with her. It lasted about an hour and we plan on meeting with her team in the 23rd of this month. They have done a lot of the legwork. They've checked into all the zoning requirements and HUD requirements. Financing and all that so rather than us trying to do something that they've already done We're gonna team up with them And we'll collaborate on that and see what see what comes out of that.

So Sounds great. Thank you.

Yeah So you and I are gonna meet with Dr. Martel awesome.

Thank you so much Again, just a reminder for the next meeting, August 14th is our discussion around food insecurity. The food insecurity panel, Commissioner Martin and Bravo have been working on, I'm sure. So is there anything that you need from the commission leading into that August conversation?

So commissioner Pastor Martin and I have been talking and so we're hoping to have an invitation sent out to Alderman Bell. I think this was one of our People that we were hoping to come and present and then a couple of other Individuals that we were thinking talking on and so hopefully we're gonna be reaching out to them very soon So have them come out and speak in August.

Thank you. Let us know if there's any support that you need from the us or city staff. Thank you. Now we have made it to the commissioner's report section of our agenda. So are there any commissioner's report?

No report.

No report.

I just wanted to just mention the handout from the first of the meetings with the select aldermen that happened last week. So Commissioner Johnson and myself had a really productive meeting with three of the older folk. And we had started with the kind of the framework questions, Drea, that you had suggested. And I just thought it was really the main takeaway, and I wanted just to kind of put this out there so that folks who are going to be going to the next two meetings, if you can kind of see if this is what you sense as well, is that one of them said, you know, when they come to this chamber and they're voting on things, those are not the things that they're hearing about necessarily daily from their constituents. So they said those are like the big ticket items and those are certainly very important, but on a day-to-day basis, they're hearing a lot more about their neighbor that didn't mow their grass or who has too much junk in their yard or who is arguing with their neighbor or, you know, they just need minor repairs on their home that they haven't had an opportunity to get done or don't have anyone to get done. Who can they use as a as a contractor and so on and so forth, just sort of activities of daily living kinds of things that they really could use assistance with. And so that was a lot of what we discussed, you know, capacity versus what needs to be done. What is the capacity of the resident and how much help do they need to get things done? Another big part of the discussion was around sense of community in different areas. different areas so while some districts have block parties and picnics and a lot of cohesiveness among their residents in other areas the sense is that people don't know their neighbors anymore that that does not do anything to contribute to the overall overall well-being of the community so those are just really interesting takeaways there were some thoughts about how we can be helpful that I put at the bottom of those those notes but yeah I'm just really gonna be eager to hear what the other commissioners here in your own in your meeting so oh and then also just as something to introduce when I went to the mayor's open office hours we were talking about continuing this discussion about how to how to help residents understand what housing assistance is available in the community whether it's through the city through different social service agencies lenders whatnot and so we were talking about the possibility of our doing maybe like a twice a year like housing fair for residents where we could have everybody under the same roof talking with people that could come in and find out which of these things are they eligible for or could they take advantage of so I sent out a few emails to different people in that housing space. I'm going to do a few more and I will report back what I hear to see if that's something we can actually make happen.

Thank you.

Any other comments? Brother Chair, just to piggyback, I don't think that the communication with the alderman and their ward constituents is kind of clear, because each alderman has forward for funding for their ward. So if it's a block part or anything like that, they can reach out. I don't know if that's public to their constituents. But if it's just a black party, then I'm sure that they can do something with that. And then I have a question in regards to, because I know we're talking about the trash, blight and all of that. Is there anything from the city to increase the number of cold enforcement officers? Because it looked like the last time we was here was about one for the city.

Do you know that there's been some charlatans?

Starting to get more fully staffed down there. I'm not Entirely sure but I know part of that in the summer with the weeds and the mowing and all of that We actually have folks who intern at the city during the summer and they are going out and citing through the entire summer and Inspecting and doing all of those types of things I can find out if there are any current vacancies as of right now I don't think that there are but I can find out if you'd like I

To that point, just to piggyback on what you're saying, that was part of the discussion, too, that the process of evaluating a lot to see if it's overgrown and how do you get somebody out there, that that takes, like, you know, the resident then has a certain amount of time, and then if they don't do it, then it has to be rechecked, and then they put a lien, and then somebody has to come out that the city hires, and that that process takes a long time, and that also it's difficult for the older person to know how it all got resolved, like, on the part of the city. So unless they're keeping, like, a running spreadsheet of, okay, well, this person complained about this a lot, to be able to, like, put it all together to go back and find out whether that was taken care of is just a lot of moving parts. So, yeah, I don't know how that can be typed up.

Here it is.

an attorney in our department that handles those code enforcement cases like once they get to us but there's a whole back end process for that and i know that one of our attorneys works directly with the code enforcement team maybe that could be a really great update for you guys that i could have them come in and talk a little bit more formally about what that process is what our internal controls are, if that's something that interests you and that is something that the aldermen are bringing up, is that something that would be helpful?

Yeah. That's good.

OK.

I'll do that.

Any other commissioners? Hearing none, we have reached the end of our agenda. So I will entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second. A motion and a second. No discussion. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Meeting adjourned.