Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

OK, we'll call the study session of the Planning Commission of May 21, 2026 into session. And Commissioner Vreeland, can you say the Pledge of Allegiance? We have roll call, please.

All right. Commissioner Chair? I mean, Chair Clough?

Present.

Vice Chair Smith?

Here.

Commissioner Morando?

Absent.

Commissioner McGee? We have absent. Commissioner Capon?

Here.

Commissioner Rehland?

Here.

Commissioner McReynolds? The rest are absent. Madam Chair, we have quorum.

Thank you. So do we have any amendments to the agenda from staff or other commissioners? If not, we have a motion to approve.

Motion to approve agenda.

Second. Roll call, please.

Sure. Vice Chair Smith?

Yes.

Commissioner Rieland?

Yes.

Commissioner McReynolds?

Yes.

Commissioner Capon?

Yes.

Madam Chair, the motion is passed.

Thank you. And now we'll move on to the study session presentation.

Yeah. Thank you, Chair Clow. I have the mic situated here. I just want to, first of all, introduce Matt Goebel, which some of you know from phase one of the code update. Sorry, I went off. Matt came down to meet with us tonight and we're meeting with the Historic Districts Review Board tomorrow as well. And we are just really excited to be at the point to restart this really important phase two of the LDC update after a pretty considerable pause in our relationship with global partners and, you know, with our engagement with the Planning Commission and with the public in general on these really important topics. As you know, some of you were so tonight we are going to kind of go over the overall scope of the LDC update. We do have new commissioners and we just want to kind of remind ourselves like what we were doing here, why we're updating the land development code and what we said we were going to do. We are also working on the general plan and the vision from the very beginning was that these two projects were going to kind of happen simultaneously, kind of in parallel processes that would intersect. as we came to implementation of these two projects. And so we want to highlight that work and what our timelines and what our implementation strategies look like with the general plan. Tonight, we also don't want to get too much in the weeds. We want this to be a high-level visioning touching base on what we said we were going to do and getting your feedback on, you know, is that still, you know, the priority? Is that still what we need to do? And so I think, you know, We need your help and your feedback identifying those priorities and the policy direction. We're also gonna go over some of the new policy direction that we've heard from the governing body and the priorities there from the city at large and just align with that vision. And we want to also establish some feedback on our vision for how we're going to be implementing phase two. and what priorities are going to come first, and why those might come first, and what are going to come second, and why those might come second. And a lot of it has to do with that integration with the general plan. So with that, I think we can, you know, get started. And Matt has a presentation. I also printed out copies so you guys can, you know, kind of follow along as we're going. And really just, you know, want to... have a dialogue with you all tonight. I know we're kind of in this formal setting. But I hope we can, you know, have that that feedback from you all. Thank you.

I can't hear him.

And the mic is on. Mr. Smith, can you hear me?

No, I can't.

There we go. My mic was off. Yeah.

That'll do it.

That'll do it. Good to see you all again. Thanks for your time tonight. We're excited to move forward on phase two. It's been a minute since I've been here. And this is an opportunity to do a little bit of just a refresh on what's been done so far and how we're going to move forward. Phase two is, you know, we have some options as to how we structure it. I think we learned some lessons.

is one that we can apply.

And that is how we move forward. And so tonight's presentation is really, like Maggie said, it's a high level. We don't want to get too much in the weeds on specific topics.

It's more about structuring the work plan for phase two. That's where we're going to go with the presentation.

Just a little bit of purpose restated here. The purpose of the overall LDC update for Santa Fe was always to modernize the code, to introduce best practices, to get rid of a lot of, redundancy to eliminate, look for more streamlined procedures where possible. A lot of different, you know, purposes have been articulated over time, but it's important to just remind you that that's why we're here.

Overall code has a lot of opportunities for refresh to implement the new plan that's being put together.

That's a big part of why we're here as well is the phase one work set the stage for integrating LDC with the general plan.

That's a big part of what we're talking about tonight.

is, how can we marry the feedback that we've heard in the general plan, themes that have emerged in the general plan, with how we draft? So what we're looking for from you all tonight is some priority setting and some policy direction on how we move forward, helping us think through what really needs to be tackled first, what are the most immediate community concerns. We're looking for organization of future drafting. We have a proposal for you that we'll get into at the end of the meeting as to how we think the drafting should go. But we're going to set the stage first by laying out some of the facts. The way this is going to go is I'm going to do that stage setting first. What was completed in phase one, mind you that. Janice is going to give you an update on the general plan process. It's timely to hear about where that process stands. It's very relevant. We're going to do a very quick recap of the governing body priorities that were set this year. That's important policy context. Then we want to spend the bulk of this meeting at the next chunk of the agenda. What should phase two focus on?

For organizational purposes, we have divided that conversation into four topics.

See there on the slide. Housing and neighborhood capability, process and administration, preservation and design, and infrastructure and sustainability. That's just a loose framework to help organize our thoughts. We think that'll be the bulk of the meeting. And then we've got a new drafting strategy that I mentioned to propose at the end.

Is there a way to bake your presentation part of this size of the screen that's a good yeah Michael can you put yeah just take.

yeah yeah, can you take Peter off there we go okay great.

bye Peter.

That's the agenda slide. Saw that. Good suggestion. So let's get some of the background stuff done first. Y'all have spent a lot of time looking at phase one, talking about it. A very quick recap. A lot of stuff was done there. A lot of substantive stuff was done. We did a substantial reorganization. We got rid of a lot of stuff. It was redundant. There is lots to talk about with phase two structure. The bottom line is on the right-hand side there. It created the framework and the organizational structure for future policies. We hopefully have gotten rid of a lot of the low-hanging fruit in terms of document, organization, and management. Now it's a matter of surgically going in, targeting specific. And we actually had a conversation with the law department today, CAO, about mechanically what that's going to look like.

A lot of times, these might just be surgical amendments talking about surgical aids going in and doing a red line and specific words here and there.

In other places, it might be a wholesale replacement of targeted sections. But it's not going to be a complete restructuring of entire chapters.

Everything that we talk about will build on the format of the organization.

There's also important work that's been being done with the general plan at .

Thank you, Matt.

I can't hear you. I can't hear you.

Can you hear now?

Yeah.

Great. Commissioner Smith, just pipe up whenever you're having difficulty hearing us and we will adjust.

Trust me, I am.

Excellent. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. I just wanted to give a brief update on the general plan update before we dive into the LDC update fully in this process. On this slide, you'll see two sections. The first is a timeline summary of high points. The other is a more detailed description of the steps through which we're going to accomplish our general plan update. I'll start with the descriptions actually. So we have five main steps through which this plan update will take place. The first is mobilization and understanding. This is where we gathered the information for the assessment report and launched the digital, sorry, launched the digital user platform and also began gathering public input. That has been accomplished. Steps two and three are nearly accomplished. Step two is basically at the finish line. That's where we continued public involvement, gathering input from many different sources, and we developed the vision and goals based on that input that we received from the public and from different organizations. committees and our community partners, technical working group, et cetera. Step three is I said it's very well along its way in that you have seen some presentations on the scenario planning frameworks. But they have not yet gone out to the public. I'll describe that more in my next slide. But the scenario plans are where we take it out to the community, these potential three futures for Santa Fe that are also, again, based on the public input that was received in steps one and two. And then ultimately, as we head into step four, that will be that will lead to the final plan, which we'll write the plan based on. So shifting over to that timeline summary, we kicked off the project in September of 24. In January of 25 was when we began public engagement, which will continue through the entirety of the project. So it's not like there's a window that will close. In October 2025, the final assessment report was adopted. And as you may remember, that's a very large document giving a snapshot in time of the city pertaining to each of the sections of the general plan. And then in early fall of 2026, we anticipate general plan adoption. You may remember the last time I spoke to this body, we had said summer, but our delay has been protracted. So we're pushing that out to early fall for general plan adoption. And then the implementation plan, which is in shorthand an instructional manual for how to implement the general plan, that we anticipate in late fall of 2026. So as I was mentioning about the steps and the progress through each of the steps that we have worked through so far, you can see that step one has gone through all of its hoops. It's been completely closed as a stage gate. Step two has gone to planning commission and the technical working group. This is the mission, vision, and goals. But it still needs to go out to our community partners, general public, and governing body. Step three is our scenario frameworks, which I was just talking about, the different lenses for potential futures for the city. That has only gone to planning commission and technical working group. As we finalize those draft scenarios, they will then be going out to the broader world, to community partners, general public and governing body. And then step four has not been commenced yet. So it has not received any of its check marks. As Mr. Goebel was mentioning before, the general plan informs the LDC update. And it does affect some of the timing with which we can tackle some of our priorities for the LDC update. So Mr. Goebel will explain specifically areas that are affected the most in the LDC update by the general plan and then go into more about the sequencing on that. Thank you.

Mr. Goble. Thanks, Janice. Yeah, we don't have a picture of the general plan.

Madam Chair, I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Goble, but I have contact with somebody who's watching on YouTube, and she says she can't hear you very well. She said she could hear Janice very well. Okay. You would speak right into that microphone.

That sounds good.

All right, thank you. How's that? It's my wife. Okay, so she watches. Okay. Thank you very much.

Just to wrap up the discussion about the general plan, it's very relevant to the code. General plan is gonna rethink potentially the future land use map for Santa Fe, and that might involve different land use classifications, maybe thinking more about mixed use, for example. We talked back in phase one about the need for perhaps new zoning districts for mixed use, maybe a suite of zoning districts that were encouraging and incentivizing mixed use at different scales. neighborhood scale, regional scale, et cetera. That's really important input that we will get from the general plan that then can inform later parts of the drafting of the code. That's a really good example of why we think this is relevant, why we had slides on the general plan, and why when we get into the drafting sequencing that we're proposing later on, we've got some of the general plan implementation work towards the end. Because that process needs to have time to finish to really fully bake those ideas so that then we can come back and make sure that we're designing a system that's fully consistent between the general plan and the LDC, which is why the city embarked on these two projects concurrently. So just wanted to emphasize the importance of that general plan. I was going back to that. I went back to that just for something about the general plan. But now I'll move forward. So that is one input. We had the phase one document. That was a big set of inputs for phase two. General plan is a big set of inputs for phase two. Now we have... governing body strategic goals that were adopted this year with the new administration. We've got a summary of those here. It's not exhaustive, but these are some of the main topics that were identified by the governing body as priorities for the next four years. They are important thematic elements that I think provide some good structure for us as we think about how to go about the code amendments. Housing and affordability, that came up a lot during our phase one discussions. It's being re-emphasized in both the general plan conversations and now in the governing body goals. That's an important thematic bucket for us. You can see some of those important elements, missing middle housing, adaptive reuse, et cetera. Process modernization is another important bucket. Governmental efficiency, I think is the term that's also used there. goals. And that's another area of code amendments that we can tackle as part of phase two. So again, we're starting to think about ways to organize all this work. Infrastructure and public safety. You know, how do we think about pedestrian and bicycle improvements and ensuring that more multimodal development is the goal in future Santa Fe development. And then sustainability and resilience. You know, thinking about environmental sustainability, thinking about water conservation, low-impact plants. We talked about that with the landscape. Thinking about sustainability from a broader perspective, not just environmental, but also economic, local economic resilience, those types of vision. So all those were articulated by the governing body this year as part of their goals. They overlap with a lot of themes that you're seeing as part of the general plan. And so they provide us with a lot of structure, helpful structure as we move forward. The phase two set of updates is going to include a lot, a lot of proposed edits to the code. First of all, if you remember in the, towards the end of the phase one process, there was a document that had a lot of footnotes and we had identified a lot of phase two, phase three issues. Some of those things, they just required more public input. No, they weren't below the threshold that we thought was appropriate for a phase one housekeeping doc. So all that stuff's getting carried forward. We're going to prepare an assessment report that carries all that stuff forward. But we can augment that list. We can add new things to that list now based on the new thinking that the city has done, based on the new strategic goals that I just listed, based on all the general plan work that's being done, based on y'all's current priorities and thinking about what's on the direction of Santa Fe. That's why we're here tonight. Phase two, we'll start off with a new assessment report, a brief document. That's going to pull all this stuff together and basically just give us a roadmap for phase two and organize it. We wanted to give you all a chance tonight to weigh in on topics that you might have additional feedback on. And to organize the discussion, we've got four topics here. um and they parallel the categories uh from the governing body goals housing and neighborhood compatibility process administration preservation and design sustainability structure so that's the whole that's the bulk of this meeting really and we would like this next segment of the meeting to be informal and and to have a discussion back and forth about what y'all would like to see For each of the four topics, I've got two slides. The first one is just sample questions. These are things that are just intended to get you thinking about maybe you just got your own priorities in terms of housing and neighborhood. Where should additional housing flexibility go? Maybe different types of missing middle housing, maybe more multifamily housing in more districts across the city. How should neighborhood compatibility be addressed? What are the biggest barriers to housing diversity in Santa Fe? What code changes could better support housing diversity? Now, real quick, I'm just going to jump ahead to my next slide to show you how this is structured. Then we're going to come back and we're going to show you topics that we've identified that we think probably are going to land in this category. But before I get there, I just want to give you all a chance to, for each of these four topics, we just wanted to hear what's top of mind for you in terms of your priorities that you'd like to see in phase two. Might just want to let us keep going. Chair, yes.

I have a question. Do you define what middle housing is?

Middle housing is, they call it missing middle housing. And the idea was that there's a spectrum of housing types from a single family detached house all the way up to an apartment building. And a lot of times the zoning code just kind of recognized those two ends of the housing spectrum. Missing middle idea was that communities need to go back and allow all the points on the middle in that continuum. So a duplex or a triplex, or maybe a four or six unit apartment building, not a four or eight story apartment building, but something much smaller. If you look in the historic compounds in Santa Fe, a lot of those are kind of examples of organic missing middle housing that have developed here. I live in Capitol Hill in Denver, and we have a lot of 1920s, 1930s development where the streets have a duplex here and a single family here and a four unit here. They're all just right next to each other. That missing middle is an idea that planners have over the past decade or so started to try to recapture that idea and say zoning codes should encourage that. for housing options not prohibited.

I had a question.

Thank you. Oh, yeah, go ahead.

Oh, okay. Is there any place in this or other parts of this section, I have two questions, where trying to really put a very strong handle on short-term rentals would be And I understand that's something that the governing body would have to do on its own with or without a referendum. But is there something in this section we could do to suggest that we want to have houses and apartments and condos in which people live who pay taxes in New Mexico, which means they live here more than six months they have to be here at least six months and one day.

Commissioner, that's a great question. It's very relevant to this topic. I mean, we're talking about the housing stock in Santa Fe, how that's used. However, so it definitely has a place in this conversation. I think the question for us as a drafting team with you all is, when do we address that as part of phase two? And that's a good example, just thinking ahead of a topic that... It might be appropriate for not the first installment, but the second, to give it more time to have public input. You've already embarked on this topic. There's already a lot of discussions going on. It may be ready for prime time in installment one, but that's something we'd like to hear from you all about. My thinking from the conversations I've heard is that it probably needs to wait a little bit until that installment too. The restrictions that are placed on the housing stock to restrict or encourage short-term rentals is definitely, in part, a Chapter 14 issue that we can look at as part of the update of the use table. We can look at it as part of the update of the zoning districts. Could affect a number of parts of the code. I think our question is going to be, when do we tackle it?

Okay. Well, as long as we know at some point, or in my case, I know, when you're gonna tackle it. That's because that's something I think has a lot to do with accessibility and affordability and frankly, a sense of local agency that is being taken away. My other question is the whole mixed use zoning. Where does mixed use zoning fall in these four?

I think it's gonna overlap quite a few of them. I mean, one of the ideas for mixed use zoning is that people don't have to drive everywhere for their daily needs. Maybe they can live next to where they work. Maybe they can walk to their corner store. So from that perspective, that's less vehicle miles traveled. That's gonna hit an important air pollution goal for the city, which is sustainability. It's also going to hit this housing issue. You're going to have more housing options in different districts. So I think that it's a cross-cutting issue. I think mixed-use districts will be an implementation tool that can help accomplish a lot of different policies.

So you think it'll be in the implementation, but it will be there someplace?

Yes, it definitely will be there. Here's how I think this might play out. I'm hoping that the general plan process will start to articulate more the different flavors of mixed use that could be appropriate in different areas. And then that can lay the groundwork in that implementation handbook that Dennis talked about for us drafting new mixed use zone districts. I would love to see that general plan document lay that foundation. That's a really good example of where I think that sequencing could be helpful.

And I have a question, and that is in terms of mixed use. Are you thinking about it in relationship to new development, or are you looking at it in relationship to... existing development?

It could be both, Commissioner. It's easy to think about a new subdivision and saying that they might have a mix of housing types. But you also, in a lot of places around the country, are seeing communities retrofit existing neighborhoods by allowing accessory dwelling units. or by allowing maybe a large old mansion to be converted into three units, something like that. And so that mixed use concept applies to both new and old. And I think that's something we'd like to get feedback on.

And I'm sorry, one more. Where does density, changing the density rules fit in? I know you, I think you were saying is it in the third, in the livability section?

Changing, yes. One of the things that was talked about in phase one and elsewhere is maybe changing the way that you think about density in Santa Fe and how that metric is used to control new development. I would put that as well in the category of a drafting, later drafting piece, because I think the general plan should inform that. I think the general plan hopefully should start to provide some color to those conversations. We can start to float those ideas early with the code update. Thank you. The dimensional standards for the zone districts is where that piece lives in the code. And I think that's part of that piece of the drafting puzzle that comes after the general plan.

Thank you. Okay, cool. So just reading like your prompting questions, then looking at the other topics, I think it'll be really interesting as somebody that's lived here a very long time. You know, we have the historic district and obviously everybody's very familiar with historic and South Capitol, but I've noticed over time in my 38 years living here is that we are starting to see more and more communities within Santa Fe get really engaged Hesitant to change the character of their own neighborhoods and they feel like, you know, you hear a lot like the development is on one portion of the city or and I could see that just answering some of these questions that could be some barriers to housing diversity is getting buy in from communities who feel that, you know. we've been the ones that are, you know, experiencing the brunt of development or new development, or we haven't had enough development. So I think really that'll be something that we will want to focus on in community engagement is kind of explaining that, you know, as a city, if we're going to keep growing, like we're going to grow one way or the other. So if we can work to make that a process where we're all, not everybody might be super happy all the time, but that it's moving towards an ultimate goal. And I think it'll be interesting to see how housing neighborhood compatibility intersects with like the historic preservation as well.

Yeah. Great comments. Anything else on this slide?

Mr. Chair Clout.

just wanted to kind of circle back to your thought on missing middle housing and bring it back to one of the things we did in phase one which was add duplex triplex you know add these types of housing options to our permitted use table um and so that kind of lays the groundwork to further look at okay we've added them but now you know where what other um you know levers can we pull whether it's in a review and approval of those or some other incentives for affordable housing that we can implement to kind of further spur those types of um housing options and uh whether it's through infill development or you know through um you know, ultimately maybe through some rezoning at the end of this. But, you know, that was one kind of step we took initially to just bring that kind of out of the shadows and put it up and say, you know, these are permitted. These are desirable types of housing because, as Matt said, what we have seen and what we have in Santa Fe is, which we know through the general plan assessment report, is that we have maybe 70% of our housing stock is single family detached. and then we're seeing more recently the apartments going up and we know that there's a need for other and a desire from the community for other housing options from the general plan we know that our population is aging we know that people are having either those family sizes are are decreasing as well so that lends itself to other housing options uh to to meet the community's needs so

While we did that, it's still controlled by zoning, current zoning, those housing types.

We allowed them in certain districts. Right.

But it still has to be controlled by zoning, right, those housing types.

Yes.

Yeah. So we're talking maybe in this phase redoing some zoning to encourage it even more.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay. To your point, Maggie, I guess I have a couple questions. But two things that pop in my head of what you're saying is, one, making sure that we understand why those things. I mean, have those things not happened, these missing middle, these duplexes, triplexes, which we do actually have quite a lot of? historically, are they financially viable for developers and small developers to bring in and do infill with? And are we making sure that we're looking at that equation as we're looking at this code stuff goal connected to the general plan? But it's like, can they do it with the costs that we have now? What's going on? That's one thought. The other thought is something that came up was around the form-based stuff that part of the way to make it more affordable potentially is to do some kind of form-based code with things and do a little bit more administrative permitting so that it makes it easier for smaller developers and then get the community buy-in or process in front of the work of that. So it's like if they're going to do this form, that has been approved. As long as they're not asking for some wild variants, that's going to be a much more streamlined process. So I don't know how it fits exactly in here, but it seems like part of this.

Well, I think like what you're talking about in California has recently passed that as long as it falls under, I think it was 10 or 12 units, it was just administrative approval. And then to kind of touch on that, I mean, when thinking of all this, of what you described, I mean, for myself personally, everybody needs a place to live and I get that, but we're not building wealth by putting them in apartments you know townhomes things of that nature kind of could work as that first step up and I think of what Chapman did in 1973 of Park Plus that's a mixture of townhomes single-family detached attached and all within of what I want to say 60 acres you know off of Rodeo Road there so just kind of keeping that in mind that it has been done in the past it's been very effective and those are and upon which you deem affordable, are still relatively priced. But to the effect of all affordability, Rob Gibbs just is getting started on a Royal Estate II, and that's 100% affordable, but that was only obtained by state funding. And that's the biggest factor is that those infrastructure costs, I mean, a small developer can eat those and then also sell them at a

to also allows for folks that are in more affordable units when they're ready to move into a more expensive room and not occupy some of the more affordable. It's all kind of part of it. It's giving them options that are attainable for them to move up and out of that when they're ready and open up some of the more affordable things. Because I think we have a lot of, not a lot, But we have more of that that probably could be available if there was a lot of focus on this missing middle housing and the infill part of it of where we can people want to you know a lot of people want to live closer to town like where can we put 234 units all over the place and increase that you know.

And on the flip side of that moving up within an area is the moving down.

Yeah.

With the aging population.

Yeah.

My mom would love something like that.

Without less upkeep.

We're also, we're kind of mixing the two concepts, missing middle and mixed use. But just to clarify, I mean, and they're both important. They're both goals. The missing middle is primarily residential. And the mixed use that we're talking about also is introducing a commercial component, you know, next to that missing middle. So I'm trying to remember the name of the neighborhood down by the South Library. It's a great neighborhood. But one of the things we talked about is they would really benefit from like some corner stores. because a lot of folks there that live there, so we'd love to walk to a small shop.

Are you teaming live work units as mixed use?

It could be live work. It could be a small 5,000 square foot or less retail store, something like that. So live work is another great example of where you're combining the residential and the non-residential. Y'all have some great examples of live work already. We were just talking about that down by the coffee shop in

Yeah, like the Lane of Street Lofts and, you know, over by the Baca Rail Yard, you know, and then Homewise. Yeah, Homewise.

There's good models of all this stuff in Santa Fe that we can learn from and try to replicate.

I think there's also several instances though, like Rancho Viejo, like what's right off of 599 here. And some of the developments we've been seeing recently where there's like a little commercial stuck in as a requirement or whatever, they're trying to do that and it's not working. You know, it's a Rancho Viejo commercial area. It's like in theory on paper, it's not, it should work and it's not. And I guess looking, digging into why that's not working for small businesses is to survive there would be a really important piece of this.

What is the development right here of 599? Aldea.

Aldea, yeah. And there's another one and it's like their commercial is just like, it's empty. And so I'd be curious why that hasn't worked when something like, yeah, Lena, Lower Baca, like Second Street Studios, all those, what are the pieces that make that, you know, you need to have a density of commercial for it to,

work so how do you retrofit that into areas that already exist and you need to have the density of residential you know both yeah that's right the feet the foot traffic you know it's interesting because el dorado which is out in the county it took them forever to have sort of a viable i mean we're talking 30 40 years yeah to have a viable commercial area and it just it seems recently it's much more viable so comes and goes but i think people are used to going to walmart and stuff

I have another question. Do you have any information? You look at the expense of building, and there's the permitting process, there's the expense of the materials, there's the time, and there's people raising money to help people build affordable houses. But I've heard reference, not with us, but elsewhere, but I don't have a specific example, to cities and states introducing tax incentives around the down payment of a house based on income. Do you have any information on something like that?

Not off the top of my head, Commissioner, but there's a lot of creative local programs around the country that communities have developed to incentivize home ownership, first-time home ownership, things like that. I suspect you have some in New Mexico. That's a good thing to research.

We have a large or a good variety of local organizations that are doing that one.

Yeah.

They could always get more money, though. But there are people looking for assistance.

There are people looking into tax incentives to give a complete rebate on a down payment if you make less than X as a family of four.

That's a good time to advertise our community working group that we're going to carry forward as part of this process. HomeWise was really helpful as part of the phase one. We're hoping that they'll continue in a strong advisory role. We are going to be shopping all this around with stakeholders, with a community working group like we did in the first round. However, we had two different groups. I can't remember the exact names, but we're going to combine those into one cog and a tog, yeah. We're going to combine those into one group for the moving forward. But also, importantly, we're going to have an interdepartmental working group that we're proposing that will have city attorney's office, folks from water, folks from parks, folks from engineering, so we can regularly vet some of these ideas that have cross-cutting implications across different programs so that they're not forced to come up to speed late.

This is more for staff. Are we seeing that we're correlating with the county? Because when the long range planner was here for the county, he was talking because we asked him specifically, where does the county see their biggest growth?

I mean, she expressed was going to be off of Richards Avenue.

So are we kind of correlating that with the city is seeing an expansion as well?

Yes, we will be coordinating with them about those specific nodes of development, areas where they're concentrating the expansion of infrastructure and density. They're also, as you may recall, working on their TDR program, transferable development rights, and looking at sending areas where they can concentrate development to preserve their rural landscape. So we'll definitely want to partner with them, especially regarding infrastructure. Okay.

You may be aware, too, I believe that there is a movement to kind of reestablish regular joint meetings between the city and the county, you know, at a high policy level. So I believe, you know, that effort is ongoing as well. Mm hmm.

I'm going to move to my next slide and just keep us on track. But this was our first cut before we had this conversation about potential drafting topics in this part of the code for this conversation. ADUs, you know, we've talked with the staff about needing to clarify some of the standards about where those are allowed and what the standards are that they're subject to. You know, maybe needing to refine some of the missing middle housing types that were introduced in phase one, maybe rethinking and broadening where those can be allowed or encouraged. Parking reform is part of this issue. How much parking is required, especially for residential. The affordable housing incentives. We got into that in phase one a little bit, and I'm sure there's going to be a lot more conversations like Commissioner Smith introduced about how can the code play a role in incentivizing affordable housing. A lot of those tools might be outside the code, and some of them could be in the code. The transition issues are important. People are scared of change. This came up in some of y'all's comments and the edge issues, you know, between a new mixed use districts, you know, and an existing residential neighborhood, those get a lot of attention in a code update and especially a map update. And what are the issues that people might be concerned about? Is it Hours of operation for that store that goes in? Is it extra traffic? You know, what are those issues? And how can we kind of think carefully about those transition issues? That's one of the topics.

And then short-term rentals, like Commissioner Smith said.

So yeah, these are all definitely, you know, parts of this puzzle. So we'll come back at the end and talk about when those get addressed. Because again, that's kind of the important part of this strategy conversation with you all.

I would just add, too, to that last slide that should be on there is neighborhood connectivity. So making sure that as we're talking about compatibility and transitions between uses, that we're also talking about how people can move between the neighborhoods. And if we're wanting people to be more Janet Callahan- pedestrian unless car. Janet Callahan- yeah that we're really prioritizing safe connected full ways and stopping sort of the sidewalks nowhere of our the way we've developed. Good comment and.

Anything else to add to this slide. Process, administration, governmental efficiency. Remember, that was one of the governing body goals. Got some prompt questions up here. Which parts of the process are too difficult or unpredictable? How's the appeals process working? Why processes should become administrative? We've already talked a lot about these questions back in phase one. We know some of these answers, we've heard from you all. But this is just to get you thinking. We flagged a lot of these things in that phase one draft. or more things should be administrative. Again, we just didn't think we had the buy-in to move those ideas forward at that time. Now we can, now we can put those things forward. The ENN process, a lot of people have said it's time to restate the priorities of that and figure out, are we really getting what we want out of that process? So that's on the table here. But I've got some graphics there just of the flow charts in the code. And I think we did a lot from a document formatting point of view for clarity, but now's the time to think about the policy and to think about, are there really some bigger ticket items that we can tackle in the process area. What are your thoughts?

Well, since I can't see anybody, I'll go. To me, the thing that is implicit in some of these but has been stopped at the city level, whether it's bureaucratic or financial, is computerizing the whole application process. I mean, the paper that gets used, not just the expense, but the time that goes into this. I just think we have to create an appropriate for the functions of the people who are collecting information and either approving or disproving a permit, given whatever the new code is, we have to have a system That is, that it's computerized. Except that's the wrong term these days. But.

I think that's a great comment, Commissioner. And I think the city is doing a lot in that regard to roll out its kind of e-review processes. And I'll toss to Maggie.

Yeah.

Thank you, Commissioner Smith, for that. And yes, we have been working on that for some months now with the transition to OpenGov. And I believe we are on target for like this fall to, to roll that out to the public. So we, we are very excited. We see many solutions within, in this transition to an e-review both from the just from all aspects of our work from business licensing to inspections to construction permitting and through our development review processes right now, which are somewhat electronic, but not really. And, you know, we're working with, you know, like our development review team members and And of course, all the different divisions within the land use department to implement this has been quite a lift and but we are really excited and I think we will be able to, I mean we've reclassified I think three positions already, because we anticipate, you know that their role has essentially been moving paper around. And so we're reclassifying those positions to have those people do more plan review type work and getting them trained up in those new roles. So that's an immediate efficiency there. I think as we roll it out, we will just continue to see faster review times because we're taking a linear process. where paper plans are moved around to different reviewers, to a simultaneous process where they can all be reviewed and viewed online. So I could go on. It's very exciting. And we think it will solve a lot of our problems, but not all of them. And so that's why we want to talk about what other processes are pain points, appeals, What can we do more administratively? We talked a little bit about missing middle. Right now, if you have three or more units, it's a development plan. It can be administrative. You go up 10 or more, that comes to the planning commission. Do we want to reconsider that? Do we want to make some more, allow those smaller projects to be reviewed administratively and really only bring you guys the big projects? Assuming they're code compliant, no variances, they meet the standards, let's approve them faster. We've also talked about changing the requirements of that. Right now, we require a full civil set of drawings for a development plan. A lot of communities have a lower lift to get that approval. And then when you want to get your building permit, you invest in all the civil drawings. So those are some things that are on the table that we need to consider and discuss. But, you know, that can streamline, you know, our processes and really alleviate some of the pressure that's on our staff, which, you know, I mean, we just we there's always going to be limited staff hours. So how do we do things more efficiently now? And eReview is going to be one of them, but we have to look at our review and approval processes as well.

You know, I think another issue too is rezoning. I mean, we're doing so many rezone cases because you sort of have the general plan and the map and it's showing, okay, you know, like Old Pecos Trail, this can, you know, is zoned for three to seven units per acre, yet it came into the city as the fallback at one, and then some people in the neighborhood think that that's sacrosanct, and that there's no way to change it, and that goes on for years. And I firmly believe in that development, that no developer will touch that area because of the history of those areas and that we could have really had a much nicer development on those nine acres if a developer would feel like this would be developed fairly easily. You know, right now what it's at is one house per, you know, it's... individual lots so it's not going to be the greatest looking neighborhood and it would have been I think much better as a PUD or something like that but so it seems to me that there needs to be some I mean I don't know why if we have a general plan that says this is the preferred number of residents per acre in this development why why do people have to go into rezone I mean, is it possible to rezone with the general plan?

Exactly. Not possible to rezone with the general plan, but with the code update. That's where we do it. So we take the information from the general plan, and that's why we have the new zoning districts kind of in our third bucket and our third implementation, because we want to have that information from the general plan And then we can apply it to the map and actually do the rezonings. And hopefully, you know, I think the age of the general plan is leading to a lot of the rezonings. And that that hasn't, you know, been looked at. And so, you know, our vision is that, you know, we truly... turn that spigot off, and we don't see rezonings coming in in the manner that they've become accustomed to. It is quite unusual and not good practice.

Yeah, and that's where the neighborhood bites occur is mainly on the rezonings. Not always, but a good part of them is rezonings. it's also tied to where the E and N process is in the process right now is like when the neighborhoods get to get involved with that.

Really far down the road for the developers. And that's a problem too, where it's like, that needs to, in my opinion, that stuff needs to happen. I like what you were saying, Maggie, about like, Lower lift for approvals, I think is a huge thing and something we've heard from developers and the community of just kind of like, they're putting a whole lot of money in before they even know if they're, and that's a huge barrier to some of these smaller developments happening. um what those requirements are um and to the i wrote down on here to the number one there what parts of the process are too difficult or unpredictable i think like making sure we create um yes What do we do when it becomes unpredictable? What is a mechanism that we can put in place almost as like a customer service point of this whole process for developers, for homeowners, for anyone who wants to do this, so that if it becomes unpredictable for whatever reason, there is... I don't know. We've talked a little bit like an ombudsman or a hearing officer. There's different models in cities that I think would be really important to help and make sure we get something like that in there to deal with the unpredictability if it happens. But I want to definitely vote for the lower lift for approvals thing and earmark that, make more administrative. And I think if The public hearings, it's like, where are the public hearings most important? How should neighborhood engagement function ahead of all these things so that they can be pointed at, like, you were a part of this. This was the plan. Here, you can go look at it. And it's important, but it's like, let's do it up front.

So for those lower left issues, you have to kind of consider why we had a development plan in the first place. In the past, there have been many building permits that were issued without development plans. The problem that that had in the past was that you had to go through every department every single time, and they were siloed. It took forever to get those building permits out there. They aggregated all that in order to make it easier so that you had a one-time shot. To look to create a lower threshold for that, you have to make sure that all of the safeguards that the city is obligated to look at, which are those health, safety, welfare requirements, are built into that lower level. So you're not really lowering the bar. You're just shifting it down the road and into a different process. And if we don't look at how that different process works, when you're dealing with other departments you have no control over, you could make it, pretty much the same way it was before if you don't put those safeguards in. So changing is good, but you have to make sure it's not going to break the system and go back to the way it was that forced everybody to come back for that lower threshold. So those are things to consider when you make those changes.

I think there needs to be a third, not what we were doing before and not we're doing now, but a third new learn from all that and then make it a little more efficient. For sure.

Herr Klaus, zoning aspect. The other thing with the zoning is, you know, I look at like St. Francis Drive. We have a mixture of residential, commercial, many overlays and so forth. And I know we're working on a lot of those things, but would it make more sense to, if we have a property that's zoned a specific way and the owner wants to change it, does it really need to come before us if every other property around it is already zoned that way? I mean, do they need to go through that whole process? I mean, the precedent's been set, I guess, is what I would say.

It ultimately is a rezoning that's got to comply with state law for rezonings and city law for rezonings. But you could have a tailored set of criteria for those circumstances that might provide some streamlining in those circumstances.

Thank you. Commissioner Vreeland, I understand that some jurisdictions on the West Coast are employing a similar tactic for environmental regulations. So if there is a house that has proposed something that would trigger environmental change, regulation requirements, if it's flanked on all sides by other houses or other developments that have already completed the environmental review and have relatively fresh documents from those assessments, they're exempted. And so that's exactly what Matt was talking about saying, you know, it would be a rezoning still, but you could set certain criteria where it's common sense pass and Like if it's completely surrounded, if it meets a certain size threshold, if it's developed to a certain degree of infrastructure, if all signs are pointing to, you know, it should be that, then perhaps, you know, we can look into that as an expedited thing. But what I also wanted to mention about rezonings, going back to Chair Clough's comment, was that the general plan future land use map informs the, the LDC update. So the rezoning that we'll be taking on in the third installment of this process will be following what's been contemplated in the refresh of the 1999 Future Land Use Map, which will include consideration of those annexation areas. Things that defaulted to R1 when they were brought in, and that's not appropriate. It's causing rezonings. Matt can speak to this specifically, but it is uncommon to have ad hoc rezonings constantly. The future land use map that informs a zoning code in a jurisdiction is supposed to be relatively permanent because it's gone through an expensive and extensive, well-vetted public process and been agreed on by all parties that, you know, this is how our city should grow. Here's where we direct this type of development. And then the zoning follows that roughly, not exactly, but gradually. he can speak to the commonality of ad hoc rezonings on a daily basis.

Yeah, just a lot of rezonings means that the map is old and it's broken. It means that the code is old and it's broken. Same thing for a lot of PUDs. People are trying to step outside the box with a PUD, and that's why you often see those in communities with really old codes. I'm sure you were trying to jump.

I was just going to kind of go off of Chair Clout and Commissioner Capon and talk about – I actually – so you were talking about having the laborhood buy-in earlier. I think there are some drawbacks to that from a development standpoint because you might get immediately low. We don't want you anywhere near us, and that can be really – that can also hinder development in ways that are not – conducive to to the future of our you know what i mean i worry about that aspect of it and then on the other side you know talking about the appeals process i mean this is before my time old pico's trail but seeing how caught up the city was able to get into this endless battle that is just basically The ultimate end goal is that no developer will go anywhere near those acres and, you know, they're not going to want to touch it for a really long time. That seems to be some of the goal of some community members sometimes when they don't want something so much. And I don't know the answer to this and I'm not an attorney, so I couldn't even speak to it. But I think how do we make that process more streamlined in a way that like, you know, I mean, again, not everybody's going to be happy. Like you can't get everything all at once. You can't always have everything the same forever. So I don't know what that looks like, but.

It's not necessarily a streamlined process, but maybe it's a clearer process and more predictable. Maybe it's a very high set of standards, but it's clear what the standards are.

I understand what you're saying, and I agree with the way things are right now and how folks have been able to interact. I think in some ways, not in a harsh way, but it's like no is not an option. Yeah, that's that's you know, to move more towards like housing is a right here. This is a whole community. We are going to be figuring this out across all of our neighborhoods.

Yes.

And everyone has to participate in that. Yeah. And. And no isn't an answer anymore. Yeah. Because that's just what I would say. I mean, I'm not saying, I think you're going to get hit exactly with what you're saying. And that's a good thing to call out. But I think we need to change the dialogue around that a little bit.

And sometimes it's been really successful when the neighborhood and the developer have gotten together and worked out a lot of stuff and it's worked. I think it's more the somewhat the exception when it just becomes... at a total now.

This is a great conversation. I'm going to be a timekeeper and move us forward.

Can I just? Yes, please. I think what I heard Piper saying was that if we did form based housing in 1012 ways, and we redefine density, and we rethought rezoning, and we They all feed in to this common thing. The notion that the neighborhood would participate in this planning process, and then the plan and the code, the neighborhoods, would be approved. Then those decisions, lower level of numbers, et cetera, that fit those criteria and the specifics within them, get approved without another ENN because we've already had an ENN on the form or the density or the rezoning. And that's now part of the code or the plan.

Okay, good comments. We will be looking at all the mechanics of the ENN, what it applies to, what stage of the process, like Commissioner Smith says, is it when the density is initially set as part of the code process, or is it more in a site-specific application? when an enn is more appropriate i think those are all good questions to look at generally speaking i would say there's just a big theme here too of distinguishing the big stuff from the small stuff and figuring out what really requires um the the more community participation more intensive scrutiny by elected officials and you all and and what is considered relatively small stuff that could go forward subject to standards with administrative approvals That's a theme that's going to go throughout. This slide just shows some of the things that we had anticipated you would talk about and you hit all the buttons. So I think we're right on track with your thinking. I'm going to move forward. We have two more topics and then we're going to get the drafting strategy out there. I'm going to make sure and get you out on time. Historic preservation and design. This is a big one for Santa Fe. You've already started to get at this with the prior two topics. How do you balance preservation and housing goals? You've already jumped into all these. What aspects of historic review work well? When can you tolerate more flexibility in a preservation and a preserved environment? What aspects of the current system are unclear, inconsistent, might need further clarification? And also start to think about some other policy goals for the city, like wildfire mitigation, and thinking about how do you balance the need for structural mitigation for wildfire prevention with a community that's trying to really focus on the aesthetics of buildings and protect old wooden windows. So how do you kind of think about the merging of those topics? What do you all think about these topics? What are your priorities for us?

This has come up for me recently. It'll be a really interesting, I think it's going to become a much larger topic, but wildfire mitigation. It is quickly, like there are parts, especially like up East Alameda and farther beyond that, anywhere up a canyon, many of those homes will no longer be able to be insured unless they remove all landscaping within five feet of their structure which means a lot of historic trees a lot of historic like kind of what we think of is that flora and fauna of old santa fe and i think that will be a that'll be something that we definitely want to keep in mind because it's not going away so how do you balance that because that'll be a hot topic and then i think about too um You know, like one of the recent developments that we approved the hotel, it has a more unique design or had a more unique design before they brought it back. And, you know, it sort of shoulders that area between the historic district and the more commercial districts of town. But is that like, I don't, is that a bad thing? I don't know, just personally. Which hotel is that? It's Marriott.

It's on appeal to the city council.

OK. Still impressed.

But it was a Marriott. There's a certain name to it. So it's a Marriott style. It's modern. And so staff, because I would assume because of all the flack that has come about in terms of things looking too modern or whatever, had them redesign it so it was more santa fe like so you know the issue is i think a lot of younger people probably like the more modern look when it's not in if it's not in the historic district is there flexibility for that or do we have to keep everything brown and adobe looking these conversations came up a lot in phase one and um

What's the tolerance for modern design in Santa Fe?

Well, I think as a city, we can't forget. I mean, our economics are drawn by tourism and people come here because of our historic culture. So we can't lose that aspect. But you touched on something that I really... When I have a client that has a house on the historic east side and they have windows from 1910, there's no reason why they should not be able to update their windows with a metal clad that's more fire-protectant and also more efficient. But then also on another standpoint, based upon the presentation that was brought to us a couple weeks ago, I think definitely one of the things in the code, and I know that any new roof system has to be torn down to the decking. Now maybe we make it a requirement that all new roof systems have to be a Class A system. And maybe that's something that needs to be written into the code because that's another fire protection. Because in all of Santa Fe, my understanding is we are gauged at an 8 out of 10 fire hazard, no matter where you are.

Yeah. It could be a building code issue as well as a Chapter 14 issue.

Do the first discussion question on here, preservation and housing goals, be balanced? I guess what comes to mind for me is wondering, what are we preserving? Is it the facade? Is it the exterior?

And then if that's the case, if that's what's most important to the tourism,

What can we do on the inside to allow for things to really modernize or become more dense or a bunch of smaller units in there to help with our housing things? So inside versus outside are really clearly defying what we're trying to preserve, I think would be helpful. And then that additional flexibility is where would it be appropriate, like anywhere it works, where we can adapt things towards the goals that our community now has in a way that holds on to that preservation and the look for the tourism. But we have a historic area. I don't know if every single house outside of that needs to also be browned. they can come into the area that we define that way and then allow for other things to happen potentially out in the neighborhoods if people want it.

You know, this is also something we've never addressed as a planning commission because it's been the historic review board. So I don't have a lot of familiarity with it, and I don't know how. Are we going to become more involved, less involved? Is the age board going to exist? Those are all questions I read about in the paper. So it's interesting in terms of how, because I know in approving phase one, we all looked at what was recommended in terms of the... changes to the historic portions of the code and we were fine with it but it didn't get passed so what's our role what's their role and yeah and again we're not getting down into the weeds in all these topics tonight but we're kind of setting the stage for our drafting structure but

It's all on the table. And we put the photo of Target up there. It's intended to focus on design issues outside of historic areas, as well as historic preservation. Are there some thematic overlaps in how the community regulates design in both places? Or do they deserve different approaches? They need different approaches. That's all on the table. Some of it's just mechanical. You've got this architectural review point system right now outside the historic districts that is unwieldy. And we heard from a lot of people that that system needs refinement or maybe replacement. And so that's part of this conversation as well. This is a good time to advertise. We are meeting with the H board tomorrow from 3.30 to 5.30. So if y'all are looking for a second meeting, it's going to follow a similar structure. We're going to introduce this drafting, these buckets to them, but the conversation is geared more towards these issues.

Do we find that it's just... Like, no matter what, we're going to be butting heads with historic?

I don't think so at all.

No?

No. No. Also, I'm sure you know this more than we would. I've just read a little bit about it and seen some presentations over the last year of areas that are modernizing their historic areas, but not losing, like, the look or the, you know, they're really defining it. And they've done Hartford, Connecticut, Louisiana, some places in... New Orleans. There's some places that are already doing a lot of this with same situation where they're tourists or really strong feelings about their historic areas. And so I don't think we have to reinvent the wheel there. I think there's a lot that has been moved forward and a lot of cool new products that also would... I was really happy to see that the wildfire mitigation is coming up so regularly.

I think it's extra important right now. And

City Council Chambers, figuring out how to fit that into historic like that could be a change to the fixtures or the windows or whatever that.

City Council Chambers, We understanding staff can correct here if i'm wrong is historic really cares about the exterior facade interior wise, as long as they're following code and getting their permits and everything an owner, whether it be commercial or residential can do what they like, on the inside, to modernize that facility. City Council Chambers, It might wrong on that assessment or.

Not at all, actually. The local ordinance only deals with exteriors. You can be listed at the state and federal level, and there would be some level of control over the interiors, but not at the local level. And just to sort of answer your question, the HDRB is actually a subcommittee of the Planning Commission. Okay.

You wouldn't know that. You wouldn't know that.

I know. I think where it could intersect, Commissioner Reeland, though, is if we were going to talk about trying to promote, you know, historical structures being used differently inside, you do run into things like exits, right? If we're going to increase density there, how are we going to have more doors? Yeah. yeah or windows or fire escape or different roofing things that it will like we need to make sure those line up so that if we do need to put a door on that building it does the whole thing doesn't get stopped because you can't put a door yeah you know like i i think there will be like i mean like i said with the fire wildfire mitigation and just you know modernization in those ways it's gonna be

If everything's going to the historic, you know, if you need an extra egress or if you need to update your windows, like these are things that are sometimes not, or they are time sensitive. For instance, you know, removing landscaping, maybe updating a roof. You don't have weeks and months to go through a long process. Yeah. So what can we do to... Maintain historic preservation, but also expedite some of that so that people, their house survives for the next year while they're waiting for permitting. Well, it doesn't fall down.

If I may, Frank, did you want to add anything? Madam Chair, yes, thank you. And Commissioner McReynolds and Commissioner Kaven, it's not all historic windows and doors are protected. A lot depends on whether the house has what you call a contributing or significant status. Some houses in the historic district have what you call non-contributing status. So if a house has a contributing status, there are certain facades or elevations that are designated as primary facades. And the code only protects a historic window on a primary facade that is... capable of being renovated if the window is deteriorated beyond repair if the window is not historic or if the window is not on a primary facade it's not protected okay so i know you know sometimes uh people approach the historic district review board i've been representing i've been advising the historic district review board for almost five years uh now and uh some people think oh it prohibits me from doing anything with this house there are really only certain things that are restricted. And even then, the applicant can apply for an exception, and they have to prove certain criteria. And, for example, they can argue things like fire safety and ingress and egress and that sort of thing.

Okay.

Thank you. Now, if a house is designated a significant house, all facades are deemed to be primary. But still, if the window isn't historic or the door isn't historic, it's not protected.

This has been a very juicy conversation. I just want to add a little different perspective outside the historic. So probably the biggest hurdle that we come into with architectural design is when commercial or non-ma and pa businesses like McDonald's, coffee shops come in and they're internationally known and they want to keep their brick and mortar design. And that's where we as staff really kind of, and then that's where the architectural style points comes in. And that's really what I think is, in addition to historic, but that's difficult for these large-scale companies to come in. and look at our architectural style points and meet the Santa Fe style. All they end up doing is just slapping Vegas on anything and call it a day. And you kind of see that with the U-Haul development. Yeah, even, yeah, target. So, and that's, I mean, it's great, right? If you're a tourist and you drive me through, you're like, oh, I've never seen that. But if you're a local, you're like, that's not right. That's not right. So, and that's where we kind of, that's where where the code kind of needs most help and kind of where I think this conversation would be mostly historic, but that's where We run the issues. Something else that I'm surprised hasn't come up is manufactured homes and how those don't have... I mean, we don't really have much architectural style points for residential single-family homes. And those are the most affordable types of homes right now. Homes USA. That's what I kind of call them. And that is not Santa Fe. We are not manufactured home USA. But are we going to have... people slap stuggle on a manufactured home? Probably not. Yeah, that's not a cost that anybody would want to incur. So just kind of thinking about that. And maybe as Albuquerque's been doing this, where they have pre-designed building plans where they have casitas that meet the architectural design. They have 30 different home designs that people can pick from. So maybe we kind of start exploring that. But I just wanted to add that kind of lens to this discussion.

And for ADUs, I'm currently working with the AIA on getting those design templates so that, you know, they can do several designs of ADUs. So it's sort of an off-the-shelf type of thing. But it's going to have to consider different numbers of bedrooms and, you know, sort of putting puzzle pieces together. So they're working on it.

The manufacturer, like the vibe and like what people imagine with like the Homes USA thing, there's so much new modular and manufactured homes that, you know, there is to think about and allow, like you're saying. It's not just the old standard anymore. So I think there's some opportunity there.

I agree.

You know, to add to Joel's commentary, you know, the interesting part about the points analysis is, is that it was specifically designed to sort of mimic the spirit of the historic district. And as people come in, they want their own marketing, right? The advertising of their sign is now the building, and that is where the problem starts. The problem is when we start designing that point system and that architectural style, we have to kind of think about what we want for Santa Fe. You want to continue to call it the city different? Or do you want to sort of mimic every other town USA and shy away from that? Those are hard choices, right? I hate brown. I can't tell you how much I come to everything is brown, brown, brown, brown. When I go someplace else and I see different colors, I'm like, this is so nice. But you also have to think of the economic viability of our town. and what that economic engine is driven by. And that's because when they come to Santa Fe, it is the city different. You have to kind of think of those elements when you start talking about the architectural style of Santa Fe and the fight that we have with many of those big organizations that don't care about our style. I mean, I've heard everything in the past from you can't do anything to that because that's my trademark. You know, we're sitting there, well, we're not trying to sell your trademark. This is our style. And, you know, it's just, Some people bend, some people call the land use director, and, well, they talk her ear off until her face turns purple.

But we do need to do something in terms of style like those apartments out on the highway that we just recently approved and met the style. Well, I know what you're talking about.

Everyone's complaining about those. I don't think that that was looked at appropriately I would consider that more of an error than I would the following of the style. I think it was just not looked at, and only because I was there when they were reviewed.

Yeah, I was there too, and we were told that they met the style.

Yeah, no.

That's what we were told by staff.

That's the task ahead of us is to make sure there's not enough. I mean, you want a certain amount of flexibility, but from one line just director, this is a big complaint, from one line just director to another, things change. And, you know, I think our task in this, this ordinance and as well as the general plan policy is that we need to make it so that we don't make mistakes like that because they're tragic. They truly are.

To touch on what Dan was saying. The one thing I will tell you is that when I get clients that are not from here and they're coming to Santa Fe, they do tell me I'm coming to Santa Fe for the Santa Fe style. I don't, I can get modern in Denver, Dallas, Houston. I can get modern anywhere else. I do want to see some Santa Fe style. So I think it's just going to be kind of trying to find that balance. We shouldn't lose what we have, but we do need to kind of catch up with the times, not live in the past so much.

There's a lot of space in between Santa Fe style and modern.

There's all sorts of design in there that we could look at to offer that gets us to sit in the vicinity, but gives us whatever, roof lines or something, but isn't just like a uber contemporary.

Our missing middle. Missing middle.

It's going to play out throughout this entire thing.

Could I throw something in? In terms of the apartment buildings down on 25 we were just talking about, what we really didn't know then as a planning commission, and this is important for us to take on board, is that even if the staff brings us something that they're recommending for approval, we have the responsibility and the latitude to use our discretion to vote no.

Peter, you've got to watch out with that discretion because it has to be reasonable and you have to follow the law. Otherwise, you're basically going to end up in a lawsuit.

Well, you know what?

No, that's why we need better standards in the code so that we're not like.

I hadn't finished. So we didn't we thought we'd made a mistake, but we did it. Then they brought back three new apartment buildings. And when we questioned them, they said because they wanted to be consistent with the first two. And in my mind, at that point, they had a much stronger case than they did the first time. But that discretionary you're talking about, Chair Clough, absolutely. That's a risk we run every time we exercise our discretion. But I do think one of the things that the commission and any new commission members as they come in need to understand is what it means to be quasi-judicial when it's a permit versus policy and when it's exercising discretion versus something that you've got to do. Because that was never clear to us. to me anyway, until recently.

Well, I think if you... One has to follow code. And if staff is saying, you know, this development follows code, it's very difficult to say, well, we don't like it and we're not going to do it because you're going to end up in a lawsuit. So what we need to do is clean up the code and make it be something that we're all happy with so that we don't have to worry about having to approve things that we don't necessarily like.

Amen.

And I think it's fair to say that in a lot of places now, it's hard to determine if something applies with the code. So I think that ambiguity is something we're going to zero in on.

I'm going to move us forward, get you all out on time.

But you've hit a lot of the things that we thought would be covered here. Regulation of franchise design. I didn't think that was going to come up. That's interesting. There's a lot of models out there. We worked on the Sedona code, Sedona, Arizona. There's a lot of communities that do regulate franchise design. You have to decide if that's a fight you want to have. But there's certainly a lot of good models of, you know, if they want to be here, if they want to participate in this economy, they're certainly willing to do certain things. Yeah. But you can also help that conversation by bringing to them examples of places where it's been done successfully and they have done it.

So you can have those conversations. That'll be interesting.

Our fourth topic, we'll get this out, and I think this will be a faster one, is sustainability and infrastructure. The ideas are broad. Sustainability, what does that mean? Every community that I've worked in has defined it differently. Sustainability might mean alternative energy generation. It might be reducing vehicle miles traveled. It might be more demographic-based, making sure that all different ages are sustainable to live in Santa Fe. It might be economic resilience. So all those things are on the table in this project. A lot of sustainability topics don't necessarily live in chapter 14. They could be in building code. They could be elsewhere. But this is an opportunity for you all to just articulate anything you would like to see. Infrastructure, we've put in this category as well just as an organizing tool. Any thoughts?

Can the code address lawns? Could you repeat the question? Can the code or plan address green space on lots? In other words, lawns. Oh, lawns. Yes, yes. As opposed to desertification, et cetera.

Yes, the code can address the amount of pervious cover and impervious cover on a site. It can address the landscaping that is required or prohibited on a site. It can prohibit turf grass. It can require turf grass. It can set a particular type of plant species that you have to draw from or that are prohibited. We heard a lot in phase one that you need to modernize the landscaping standard in Santa Fe to be more native focused and drought tolerant. I assume that's still the direction.

Thanks.

When we had our major drought in 19, I think it started in 1998 and early 2000s, the city automatically implemented certain things. Were those just temporary things? those things that can be reenacted watering on certain days no new sod could be allowed grass for a residence pools were put on a moratorium are those things that we can implement in the code on a as needed basis based upon what our climate conditions are or is that being a little too wishy-washy

I don't know the status of the temporary regulations that were drafted or adopted. I do know that a lot of those are in the water code and not in Chapter 14, the water budget regulations. I do know there's some interest in doing a substantial update to the water chapter. I'm not sure the status of that right now.

One of the topics that came up for me around sustainability priorities is as we look at like street designs and development that way and just making sure that we are doing as much as we can to do smart things like with the water conservation

instead of having plants up on a mound down.

Some of those practices, I know it's listed here as water conservation. I guess what came up to me here is just making sure that the code is rewarding those who are prioritizing these things.

I think they're pretty well defined.

And maybe reward's not the right word, but there's If people are wanting to do that, we're pushing them towards that. We're using it to be like, this is a better option for you to build this way or do this way. And then making sure that we help current homeowners do retrofitting and things around sustainability in all these old, old, old, old homes and educate them and give them ways financially and resources to start thinking about doing that. So it's not just new development.

That's a great comment. I went ahead and jumped ahead to the next slide, which shows some of the topics that we had raised. Street design, definitely. You mentioned connectivity earlier and thinking about what those sidewalks or trail connections look like or street connections.

That's a big part of this conversation.

Anything else? that we haven't raised? Again, we don't have to get into the topics.

I mean, when I think about sustainability and infrastructure, I just think about infill and that we need to, you know, where we have existing infrastructure and existing sidewalks and existing streets and existing utilities, you know, how do we densify there, you know, maximize the existing infrastructure and um, in already developed areas of town versus, you know, I have making it easier for developers to develop out kind of on the edges where, you know, they're providing all this infrastructure, but then we have to maintain it as a city. And that's still a burden, a long-term burden, even though, you know, they're, they're paying for it upfront, but we're maintaining it over the longterm. And that goes for like new parks, which, um, I think, you know, we don't need any more of, you know, and new roads and new trails and all that stuff. But so where do we have infill potential to build and further invest in our infrastructure that we have already?

Maggie, to your point, I mean, identifying, I live in the neighborhood, Franklin Miles Park is, that is an enormous swath of land that could be well utilized for much other things. I play little league baseball there.

No more Little League baseball is played there.

Let's call it what it is and repurpose that area.

I know we're going to have Fourth of July there this year. That's great. I've seen the city staff out there working, the guys getting the grounds ready, which is great to see in the community. But beyond that, I mean, that park is underutilized and needs to be repurposed.

yeah something in all of this around what you're just talking about around keeping current mapping possible infill areas and infrastructure capacity that could be set as like a regular goal current like. Does that make sense? Yeah.

I'm curious about the general plan. That's often done as part of the general plan.

I know we're, yeah. I don't know if they tie together though, and then point the code towards like the infill, um, you know, getting streamlined approval, like if you pick this area, you know, being able to do some more of the administrative stuff, or we already know a lot about the infrastructure that's there now, maybe you don't have to do all of the X, Y, and Z, like the thing we were talking about, if an area is flanked, they've already had a bunch of traffic studies, something like that. Just doing, yeah, kind of mapping that and then using the code to get people to build in there.

Yeah, that'll be part of the general plan project. So not only will we have the general plan setting in the policy direction, But to really make it actionable, we'll be doing an implementation plan. And there's going to be a map series. And one of the maps that we're going to be collaborating with our public works and public utilities partners on is a map that illustrates projects underway that are planned in the three to five year time horizon. And then longer term priorities on we know we need to do this. provides a lens for equity as well across the city because you know we hear complaints a lot about oh you're just paying attention to the east side you're not making investments in the south side so um it's our hope that the implementation plan will really help to um flesh that out and that's how it ties to the code stuff here is like to make that i don't know just so you were talking about tying those two things together yeah i know that map's already And out there, even right the they have the capital improvements map, I believe, looking at like future projects or something is yeah yeah but it's not like not that it's nothing yeah yeah.

I look at I know Santa Fe public school zones it but EJ Martinez. or obviously santa fe public schools has no interest in maintaining that property and or utilizing it so where can the city step in and say okay this is a very large swath of land that is infill like you're saying maggie and give us an opportunity to actually put something there that the public utilize benefit

Chaparral is another one that drives me nuts.

I drive by often.

And it could be put to good use. I really there is one application for some housing on next to Sweeney Elementary in the south side. But the importance of having affordable housing opportunities is they should be across the entire city, not just right.

There's also big coordinated efforts to look at underutilized schools and churches as potential housing source.

Commissioner Smith. Yeah, two things. Could you, would it be possible in the plan of the code to build on what you're calling a low impact development under the stormwater management, green infrastructure plan? When we are water short, the city tells us we can only use water to do certain things, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, washing the car, doing this or that. Would there be some way, since things are not going to get better, and since they do that already, could you build into the code that somehow that when you're building stuff, You need to build it so that the exterior, the yard, et cetera, does not require more than three days, six hours each day, whatever it is, of water. Whatever the rules are that the city uses, just build. Strikes me, if it's good enough for a year when we don't have enough water, why isn't it good enough all the time? And why shouldn't we ask people to build or create their outside spaces so that they don't require more than that as a criterion?

Certainly can do that. A lot of communities have done that. I think that's definitely some of the options that we'll put on the table for you all to consider moving forward.

Thank you.

And just to wrap up the infill conversation, there's a lot of communities that have adopted infill maps in their code within which you might have incentives for developing certain missing middle housing or something or focusing more just on there's a relaxed set of standards that apply within the infill to encourage those types.

I'm going to move us forward just for time. Yes. Very small. On the sustainability, this came up with a project we saw before who came before us asking for a reduction of parking, which I'm all fine, all good, but did not. And they're like, well, e-bikes and da, da, da, da, da. But there was no system going to be in place for the people who are going to be living there to charge their e-bikes. Or have a place where they can do that because you can't haul an e-bike up to a second flood. This one was going to be multi-level, right? So thinking about that as a tie-in to this, like I just wanted to put that in the sustainability piece. If we're looking for people to start doing that stuff for, you know, making sure that the development has the right infrastructure by code. To support that. Support it, yeah.

It's a great comment. A lot of these things are cross-cutting. A lot of these topics that y'all have raised back in housing resurface in sustainability, et cetera. So one of our challenges is thinking about how to move forward on this stuff is to think about those cross-cutting issues and how to design a drafting strategy that lets you avoid unintended ripple effects in other parts of the code. The last part of this presentation in our discussion is just to lay out our three-part drafting strategy that we think makes some sense. We kind of designed it for the rationale that you see on the slide. We don't want to drop a big draft on you of a lot of stuff. We don't want to do the phase one approach. That was well-intended, but it ultimately needed to be in more bite-sized chunks for the level of engagement that it got. We want more focused public engagement on different pieces. Not everybody wants to participate

heavily in all parts of this stuff.

We need to think about the general plan. And we've already talked about the importance of the timing. We need to prioritize the early implementation items. You've just got high priorities that y'all want to address. Maybe it's the wildfire stuff, but it needs to happen sooner than maybe two years when some of this later stuff might happen. And we want to build momentum. We don't want to just have this whole project sitting and waiting for one adoption and lose the momentum that we're hoping to recapture right now. And also, we technically have a scope that has phases two and three of a code update. And we think that we can get it done faster than that. We want to maintain some momentum. For all those reasons, we've come up with this proposed drafting strategy, which is the balance of this presentation. There's three installments. Each of these would be adopted individually. And so you don't have to wait for installment three to be drafted and vetted before you get installment one adopted. The goal is that these would be adopted individually. The first bucket, and I'm going to go through each one of these in a little bit of detail, but it's the high priority stuff that you've already identified. Maybe we called it out in phase one, but we thought it was just a little bit too much of a lift then. But it's also some of the process modernization stuff that's ready to go, like to coordinate with eReview, like Maggie was talking about. The second installment is gonna be stuff that's gonna take a little bit longer. We need to dig into it, like preservation, like some of these design standards. It's gonna take a little bit longer and more time with the public to get our ducks in a row and get something drafted in those areas. And then finally, the third installment that should say three that says two but that that third box is three and that's that's the district structure stuff that's the things that we talked about that are influenced by the plan so let me let me go through these and there's a lot of text on these slides but i'm gonna i think it's pretty interesting focus of these is what i just said the high priority stuff with relatively clear policy direction limited dependency on the plan update We think that all this stuff that we put in this category is going to be generally aligned with those governing body goals that we identified, that you've identified. Likely broad support for these, especially as we've been seeing through the general plan update at engagement. We think you can get some quick wins here in terms of customer experience in the permit review office, which is important for the success of the overall project. Create momentum, lower dependency on future land use decisions. What was our first cut at this stuff? And I know this is small text, but you'll get a copy of this and we'll have a chance to fine tune it. This is just our first cut, but we think a lot of the administrative and process reforms could be in this bucket, like the ENN revisions that we've talked about, maybe putting more procedures into the staff bucket, maybe continuing to refine some of the other common procedures. Housing and affordability. We think there are some community consensus items there that could probably move forward as part of an installment one, get you some quick wins. We already saw in phase one that you had some affordable housing incentives that needed to move forward. There's other stuff in that category that we think we could put there. And we're going to be counting on y'all for some help, identify what should be in that category. We think housing needs to be in this first bucket. It's everybody's priority. And then finally, just some enforcement and other code cleanup things that we think, you know, the city has already identified some stuff from phase one. They want to clean up. It doesn't rise to the level of really talk about it too much. But some of that just cleanup can be done in phase one. Installment one. That's our first cut. We can refine that. installment two is where we get a little bit more detailed, much more detailed. This is where, um, we, we talk to the public more and we get more input and more refinement of harder issues. Um, stuff that, um, you don't necessarily have good policy set yet, or you're not sure what the policy needs to be. It might be politically sensitive.

Um,

There's big stuff here. More housing issues that require more public input. Where do you maybe allow more missing middle housing? Do you allow multifamily in all districts, as some people have suggested? Design and site standards, all the parking requirements that need a complete rethink. Do you require minimum parking? in Santa Fe, and what are the standards for landscaping? How do we implement all those new native plant requirements? And then all the preservation and design stuff that we've talked about. This is where I think this really should come to a head in terms of proposed new standards, is that reforms to the process for HBOR, to provide more predictability in their appeals. Is it more changes to the standards to carry forward some of those things that we tried to get forward in phase one, but give it more time, more thought, more time for everybody to chew on that. That's where this needs to come forward. We think is an installment too. Installment three is the district stuff. I've already described these. These depend on the plan. So there'd be new zoning districts. There's an opportunity for broader consolidation and simplification of your zone districts than we've talked about so far. And that needs to support, it needs policy support from the general plan process, but this is where it would come forward. And this would be the mapping. This is where we would do a new map that would help support and actually implement the mapping changes we've talked about. Maybe it's changing some of the overlay districts to base districts. We might be able to do some of that early, but maybe some of that's going to have to happen later on. But this is where you rationalize the future land use plan from that process, and you put it in, you give the authority of zoning, so you don't have all these spot-specific rezonings that you're having now. Maybe some larger structural reforms. I don't anticipate a lot of those, but maybe we've talked about the corridor districts. Maybe those could potentially play out in some new structure in the new That's an idea. We think it's a good idea. We think it balances a lot of things. We think it's pragmatic. It balances the political need to move forward and to show some progress and to get some wins, to get the public on the side of this code update and to make sure that they're supportive of all this. But it also stretches things out in a realistic way to get input from this other process, which is gonna really provide some strong policy grounding. It's... Certainly up to discussion. And so I guess we'll throw it up to you guys. We can get detailed lineouts about what goes in installments. What we're really looking for is just, I guess, support for the overall concept or pushback as to are we on the right track?

I think it's great that you're dividing it up into segments. It's not overwhelming. The segments sound good to me and make sense because the last one is really focused and combined with the general And what I like is before there was there was going to be phase three of the code, which was going to be after the general plan was approved, but it sounds like you're doing both of them at the same time. Totally makes sense.

I agree. I agree with her.

Good. We had a good conversation with city attorney's office today. They had a good suggestion. Maybe we need to just be especially cognizant of the current code structure as we're drafting these buckets so that we don't have, so that the work of the mechanical work of the edits is as clean and simple as possible. That's a great comment.

This is a little bit, I'm sorry. I say this a little bit down in the weeds, but I think the idea of having mixed use and all of the districts is a great idea because the natural defensive or mitigator of that is that no business, no developer is going to develop a mixed use plan. And like I'm in District 2, that's up on the hill and it's beautiful. But it also goes all the way down to Yucca Street and all the way downtown. People aren't going to do something in a place where it won't work. So to me, that's really worth putting on the table. Because if we differentiate across the different districts in the city, some people will take offense. Just a thought. Oh, thank you.

I'm not trying to rush us, but I do just want to respect your time. So we did advertise this until eight o'clock. Just to summarize next steps, time flew fast. That was a great conversation. We are going to refine this slightly for a meeting tomorrow with Hboard, and we're going to do a virtual meeting with ARC soon to get their feedback. That's not going to focus so much on what should the buckets be. We're going to more just dig into their respective areas. We're going to get a detailed scope and timeline together for this. Now that we're going with phase two, we need to refine the current scope that we have to reflect this new reality. We're going to coordinate with the general plan schedule, which we're already doing. And we're going to do an assessment report, a brief document, that pulls all this together and memorializes this installment structure to serve as our roadmap moving forward. And we're going to start drafting. But we're going to come back and present that report. That's probably where we're going to check in with the governing body, just make sure that they're all comfortable with our structure. But train's moving. We don't want to put specific dates on this yet. I don't want to put dates out there that we can't meet. We need to make sure we talk to all the stakeholders about what's reasonable. But we are, rest assured, going to try to move this as fast as we can.

Final thoughts from anyone, staff or commissioners?

I have a question. I just want to clarify for the group, the assessment report will be brought to governing body, but it will also be brought to planning commission first, right?

That makes a lot of sense. We haven't actually had that conversation yet, but yeah.

Okay, thank you. Just want to make sure they don't get skipped.

Oh, no, no. No, we intend to... meet with you as much as you want to meet with us. So the goal is to meet with you. And I know you have a subcommittee process focused just on the land use land development code. And so the goal is, I think they're going to take on the heavy lifting of getting in the weeds with us. But I think regular updates to the overall commission are on the agenda as

So two comments, one is a question about the installments if something in say an installment one that you think solo hanging fruit are going to be really easy starts to get snagged is there a mechanism for it to get moved to a different installment. So that that part doesn't get held up or is it all going to be tied together once you once this gets put in place.

It's a great question. I will say that our hope is that we have a close working relationship with city manager's office, city attorney's office, governing body, you all, so that surprises and shifts are quickly identified and quickly dealt with so that they don't kind of become last minute things. If something needs to move later because it needs more input, sure. Something might need to move forward because it takes on pressing urgency. So it might move the other way.

Or it looks like it's not going to be, it doesn't need as much time as it needs.

At some point, it's got to be a baked document to move into the adoption.

That's what I was wondering is like, if this is being proposed as the strategy, how locked into these things for deliverables are you?

The big policy shifts are going to be Um, we're going to get concurrence on that. Legal is going to have a chance to weigh in on that early. Um, and then we're going to start drafting at some point, you know, that we're going to have a draft that is kind of relatively baked in for the adoption process.

And hopefully it'll be a red line draft, right?

Yes. But on that, you know, if it's surgical edits to a section red lines, but sometimes it might be easier to do a wholesale replacement if we're just rewriting something. So we talked with city attorney's office about that. And one of the things that we're going to do is identify early which sections require that detailed red line versus a wholesale cut and replace.

My other second comment was just I know that this is going to start moving really quickly and that we've lost some time and there's implementation goals. But I just want to state that making sure that all the public input and process and various community organizations and how we're doing the outreach really has its airtime, which I don't.

I didn't hear anything about that I just wanted to say it out loud, because I know things have sped up quite a bit, but it's a big part of the project and we didn't focus on it much at all in this presentation, but we hear you and making sure the public is on board with all this is a big goal for us.

Thank you.

We were actually thinking about doing something similar to the general plan where we had a Community partners Program. And organizations such as Chain Breakers, Indigenous Ways, there's a refugee organization and AARP did review some things and have discussions and provide feedback. So we could leverage that again. And I've got a budget proposal as part of our budget.

We're talking about the code, and that's a little different than the community outreach stuff for the general plan.

But yeah. But they can still provide.

If you already have the connection to them, it'll bodes well to get all the pieces in there. And then I guess also just the code part of it, making sure that we are touching all the different size developers from homeowners trying to do stuff all the way to the biggies and they're all getting there. I'm sure you're doing.

One of our big goals, though, is that this is an implementation project. So it's the policy setting is coming with, they'll definitely need to be from refinement and, you know, carrying forward a policy setting here, but a lot of the big lifting is going to be.

Thank you.

See you again. Thank you. See a lot of me over the next year. We're done, Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner Smith. Good night.

Good night.

Okay, we're adjourned. Anything else?

Madam Chair.

Yes.

I wanted to bring to your attention that, as you are aware, there has been an appeal filed for the decision the Planning Commission made February 5, 2026, which was in case number 2025-11380, approving the development plan by Titan Development to build the Marriott Hotel at 1101 and 1103 Sirius Road. Based on a conformity review, we have decided that the appeal needs to be heard. We had planned on placing it on the governing body agenda on June 10th. However, the attorney for The developer, Titan Development, is not available June 10th, so I'll have to bump it back to June 24th. Under the code, it's supposed to go on the next available governing body meeting, but there's also a requirement that the appellants send out a 15-day notice, so it can't technically go on the next governing body meeting. But nonetheless, the parties have agreed to bump that hearing back to June 24th.

Thank you for that update. I have another question. I know on the old Santa Fe Trail, there was discussion by the neighborhood that was objecting that they were looking at perhaps taking it to the US Supreme Court. Did that ever happen?

We have not heard anything about it going to the...

It was in the newspaper. He just said he was thinking about appealing it to the United States Supreme Court. So, or is that, I assume that that project is done?

Well, it's been so long since I've practiced in any federal court that I'm sorry, I can't tell you what. And when I did, I represented the Department of Corrections in Colorado. But I can't think of how, probably a constitutional due process issue, but...

But it's been a long time since the Court of Appeals, or I guess the New Mexico Supreme Court denied cert on it. And that's been a while.

I would imagine there is some kind of statute of limitations.

Right, right. Or there's a, yeah.

So I don't know. I haven't heard any more about it. I did hear there was.

It was just for the newspaper. Okay, thank you.

Are you going to bring the gavel down?