Planning Commission - Special Meeting

I told you I was going to. Ashley's texting me the whole time harassing me.

Okay.

I would like to call this Tuesday, July 27th, nope, 21st, 2026 Traverse City Planning Commission Special Meeting to order. Sorry, I just clamored my way through that. It's been too many weeks since we've been here. I'm going to give the land acknowledgment and then we'll do roll call. The land on which we gather is the territory of the Ottawa and Chippewa peoples who have stewarded this land throughout the generations. Thank you for your strength and resilience in protecting this land and inspiring us to uphold our responsibilities to do the same. Roll call please.

Commissioner McGillivary. Here. Commissioner O'Brien. Present. Commissioner Treadwell. Here. Sorry. Commissioner Swanson. Here. Commissioner Cameron.

Present.

Commissioner Riordan?

Here.

Commissioner Holtry? Here. Commissioner Anderson? Here. Commissioner Duteri? Here. And Commissioner Hershey is absent and is inexcused.

And I'm sorry, Mitch, I forgot your name tag. I think it's from the BZA .

Thank you. Okay. Moving on to announcements.

I do want to announce or just introduce everybody to our planning intern for the summer. This is Evan McGee. He is a graduate of Grand Valley State and he is going on to graduate school at Wayne State and he's been helping us slog through lots of zoning amendments and things this summer so we really appreciate his help.

Thank you, welcome. Moving on to topics for consideration if we don't have any other announcements. So item A is the introduction of a rezoning application for 314 East 8th Street from C2 to R3.

Yes, so this is, again, introduction of a rezoning request that we just very recently received, but we know that there's a time constraint here. So we put this on your agenda. We've already set the public hearing for August 5th and have sent out the notices, so hopefully that works for everybody.

This is property owned by the land bank, the Grand Traverse County Land Bank. They're assembling this along with other properties as part of a redevelopment project for a low mod housing development with 40 units in it, believe it or not, that will be on this location. This is the only property, and this is located on 8th Street where Copy Central is right now. And if you look at the maps, this is the only property in this part of 8th Street on the south side that is zoned anything other than R3. So it kind of is a little island by itself, currently zoned C2. I assume to accommodate that pre-existing use of Copy Central. We did look at the older. zoning maps to try to ferret out exactly what happened. It looked like it used to be zoned industrial. So again, I think this was just kind of a bridge of concessions that was made at some point to allow certain uses during transition.

So this is part of that and the O3 designation will give relief

to this project for certain restrictions in the C2 district that just doesn't make a lot of sense for this. And rather than seek a lot of variances, it made more sense to seek rezoning. And the remainder of that property will be zoned R3 as well. So if there's other questions, I think Maxwell Cameron is probably willing to speak to this.

He's representing the land bank and the county in this application. And other than that, I would just ask that you set that public hearing. And if there's other additional information you'd like in a follow-up report to the Planning Commission, just let me know and we'll add that in.

Thank you, Leslie. Any questions, comments, concerns from the group? I think it made a lot of sense to me. It clearly read as like we're trying to accommodate something so that it doesn't become nonconforming. It's like that one little spot. Yeah, makes a lot of sense to me.

Jackie? I was interested in examining some of the differences between the C2 and the R3 requirements and wondered if you could help me understand in terms of height and setbacks and use by right, particularly short-term rentals and drinking and marijuana establishments and provisioning centers, the differences between the two.

I'd have to go one by one through everything to confirm those specific uses. But I know that as a rule, these projects would be limited if there's any pilot or any other financial assistance associated with this, then generally there's a, no ability to have short-term rentals. And I'd have to go back and look again, but if memory serves, I don't think short-term rentals are allowed in the R3 district. So that would be eliminated under this proposal for rezoning. As far as building height, the maximum does go up from 30 feet to 45 feet. Although for non-residential uses in the current district, it can be also 45 feet. So I don't know if that was part of the consideration here was the height difference, which I would consider to be the biggest detriment to fully using this property in an R3 facility. under R3 zoning for their purposes. So again, I'm getting a nod from Maxwell, so I assume that that's part of their thinking. And again, I can, if there's particular uses you want us to highlight in an updated, report, we can update those. Otherwise, you'd have to wait while I look those up because I don't know them off the top of my head.

Any time before the public hearing would be lovely.

Thank you. They're not in this chart.

Yeah, they're not. I was doing a quick control find and vacation rentals aren't listed and marijuana dispensaries aren't listed under R3.

A tourist home is listed.

Yeah.

So, yes. Short-term rentals aren't allowed in anything zoned residential. Correct. So, R1, R2, R3, no short-term rentals. You could have tourist homes, which then can only be in homes. So, those wouldn't be allowed in, what was it, C? Two. Two. But short-term rentals maybe can be. I don't know. Yeah, they can be.

But with the pilot, that's something that the pilot would restrict, right? Right. Right, Max?

Yeah, potentially and how this is going to work for the county is we're holding and assembling this property and some adjacent property, doing some site preparation and then handing it over to the housing commission for the development of a housing project on this land. At some later date, they would pursue, potentially, a pilot application through the city. And that would be part of the restrictions associated with getting that approval.

They're also restricted by MSHDA, right? Through their- Mitch may know.

Yes. Well, first off, in the interest of disclosure and in keeping with our ethics policy, I am the Vice Chair of the Housing Commission, but I have no financial stake in this project. Yes, this is, as Maxwell said, the first step of assembling the properties and getting the development conditions right on the ground. But then there will be applications both for a pilot, the 4% to 9% and a low income tax credit application through MSHDA. We don't know what the exact form of that will be but generally those are for say a 30 year time frame and well, We can say that, yes, after that 30 years expires, it could get sold or changed to some other use or rental agreement. One, we haven't seen conversion of LIHTC or pilots in this area. Even after they originally expire, they tend to get renewed. We don't know what the real estate market, what the housing landscape will be, what the commercial landscape will be 30 years down the road, and it could be something very different than we have right now. So at least for the next 30 years, there will be no major commercial use, no pot shops, no short-term rentals, no properties that are out of character for the neighborhood.

But they wouldn't be allowed if we changed to R3. Correct.

Yeah, it's moot if we allow for them. Yeah. Jackie? And then another portion of my question had to do with setbacks and the differences in setbacks between those two zonings.

Yeah, those again are in the table. Yeah.

I'm having trouble reading some of the materials these days, so maybe you could summarize for me.

Yeah, so the side set, let's go down the list. Front setback in C2 is lesser of 8 feet, max of 25. Front setback for R3 is within 4 feet of the average setback, but not less than 19 feet. It's like really, there's a lot more words crammed in there, but because it like talks about the point. Highlights are fine.

Okay, great.

Sides are in situ 10 feet, are three 14 feet aggregate. So, can be six feet on a single side.

So just a correction. Yeah. It's only 10 feet if a buddy in a residential district. Otherwise, it's none.

Oh, you're right. I missed the none. You're right. For the C2, correct. Thank you, Brian.

And another point of clarification. Yes, setbacks exist, but they are based on the current property lines that, depending on what will happen in the future, the site plan may involve shifting of property lines themselves. For example, McGuff's is adjacent to land bank property. But they're building physically overhangs the property line by number of feet, on the other side, you have reverie and condominiums that has their parking lot and some green space. With section connecting of the bourbon lake loop trail. between that and the copy shop parcel but they have expressed a willingness especially if there is going to be shared driveway access to have some flexibility and where that property line is and if it needs to be moved over five feet to accommodate a setback or something that could also be done

But generally speaking, this is kind of considered a down zoning going from commercial to residential. And even though all the setbacks are hard to compartmentalize or generalize, in my mind, they're a little bit more restrictive under the R3 because the rear setback is 25. Correct. And it's 5 feet in the existing C2. Well, thank you.

Anything else from this group for right now? Yeah, Maxwell.

Just wanted to make one more comment and to share our appreciation for, The project in total, there are two parcels that are next to this parcel that we're talking about today that are owned by Traverse City. And as part of bringing housing to our community, we've been working with Traverse City to bring those parcels into this project combined. with this parcel and our property that we own behind McGough. So, it truly takes a team effort to make something like this come to fruition. So, just wanted to share our thanks. It's great to be working with the city on this.

Thank you.

Anything else before we go to the public comment portion on this item? Okay, seeing nothing, I'll go to public comment on this item. And seeing none, I will come back to the body. I think Leslie said it is already scheduled for the public hearing, so I think we're just acknowledging that, that we'll see it again in a couple weeks at our regularly scheduled meeting on the first Tuesday of August.

It's actually a Wednesday.

It's a Wednesday because of the primary. Good call. I looked at my calendar and I was like, there's no way this meeting's on Wednesday.

I know that because I looked and I have to send that to my wife.

Okay, so I guess we'll see it then and we will be excited. So moving on to item B, EV parking standards. Is this you Leslie or is this Evan?

Well, I offered this up to Evan but he's going to like observe this meeting but you'll be hearing from him later in the summer, I think. So, I think you've all heard me talk a little bit about energy navigators. We had a grant of some technical assistance from this organization and they helped us identify what we should be focusing on in regards to ordinance amendments to promote EV readiness in private parking lots. So this attempts to kind of speak to that and I'm going to apologize. in advance for all the acronyms, but the basic context is that there are three types of EV readiness.

One is, and I might ask Evan to make sure I get this terminology right, but one is the capacity, which means that you have enough electricity and enough Power present at the site for a certain capacity. Another level is the readiness, EV readiness and how many sites or parking spots you have that have all the conduit and everything set up and ready to go anticipation of having the hardware there.

In full capacity is having the hardware and having actual EV sites or EV charging stations available. And, you know, there are some states where notably California where the standards are very high and, you know, they can be as much as 50% of a parking lot that's required to be EV. operational or EV ready. The recommendations that we're giving you as a starting point are a little closer to what we see in Ann Arbor and other examples in Michigan and you know there's a lot of latitude here about whether we want to focus on EV readiness the capacity or the actual number of charging stations available now. There are a lot of things that are changing quickly so it's hard to kind of anticipate what the best course of action is and we certainly don't want to get ahead of the technology or the capacity especially if the charging stations and the hardware and the software that goes with it continues to evolve and get better over time which we are already seeing right now. So, you know, I think we certainly will have a discussion, further discussions with TC Light and Power. They have a lot of expertise in this area as well. They, along with our parking system, you know, our director, Nicole Van Ness, she's very up to date on all of that equipment as well because they all operate and purchase this equipment. They've all had their frustrations with certain equipment, but they, I think, have a good feel for what their demand is in where they're providing EV right now. So I guess I'd ask that you not necessarily focus on those ratios but we're just kind of looking for a little direction here to see if we're on the right track and if there's a flavor that makes most sense to all of you so that we can hone in a little bit. And then I'll say one more thing and then hear from all of you and that is that as part of this there are just some easy low-hanging fruit that we should include in the zoning ordinance including of course any related definitions of any terminology that we use to allow that for any parking lots where there's a minimum number of parking spaces already required that EV spaces count toward that minimum and that if somebody wants to do EV charging

and above that it's an allowed accessory use or and also that in anticipation that there may just be charging station areas that function almost like a gas station that we acknowledge that kind of use and allow that as well as a use by right in certain areas. So that's their general recommendation and then to kind of pick a lane with the EV readiness spectrum.

Any comments right off the bat from the group? Brian?

Okay. I like the first, number one, to permit EV charging as allowable accessory use to parking lots in all zoning districts by right. Seems to make sense. I don't know if it's necessary since we haven't allowed them, but they still go up now. But, I mean, if you want to put it in writing, technically we probably should allow them. I think an EV parking space should count towards minimum parking requirements. And I have no idea what EVSE accessibility standards. Are in line with US Access Boards or state level accessibility standards? Not sure what that means or requires in practice. So I want more information on it. Sounds good in theory, but I don't know. For all I know, they're always done that way. For all I know, there's issues where, you know, it could be a major regrading of land or something to put one in. I don't know. I don't think that's, but I just want more information on that. I have issues with amending the chart of minimum parking requirements to require a minimum percentage of EV capable, EV ready, and EV installed spaces. And I'll give you one example. I know you said don't focus on the ratios. I would want to hear from Light and Power about that. There's a lot changing in that field right now. The popularity of EV-only electric vehicles, electric-only vehicles is dropping like a rock. It's more into hybrids right now. I talked to somebody today who drives an all-electric vehicle. They said they pulled up while they're at a meeting there and they would charge their car at light and power and the cost is about six bucks an hour where he can charge it at home for 50 cents. So it's like no, backed out of that space and put it in a regular space. So there's a question I have about, now that being said, for locals they're mostly going to charge at home. But we get a lot of tourists and people can drive electric vehicles up here. So there is probably a need. But then again, I don't know how those numbers are going to change. And we are supposed to be planning for the future. This is a tough one. But here's a question I have. Residential, 100% EV capable. Okay, EV capable is a location or parking space that has the infrastructure necessary to support the future installation of EV charging equipment. An EV capable location components are designed or upgraded to accommodate EV charging stations in the future. Okay, I have no idea what that means. Okay, what does infrastructure mean? Running conduit? Does it mean if I build a house I have to, or if I remodel my, I'm going to remodel my house this year, do I have to upgrade my, is my remodeling by adding a bedroom and a new garage, do I have to have it EV ready? Do I have to upgrade my electric panel to 200 amp service? Is that going to be a requirement now? And if I have to do that, you know, so that's an extra. Okay, honestly, I'm going to do it anyways. But that's an extra cost that you're now adding in. And what does it mean for me to do that? And is it a housing cost? I don't know what it means. I don't know what that means and it's not defined. I think you really need to have how is someone going to interpret that because it's not very clear to me on what that actually means. My question would be you're going to put in affordable housing. Do you want, you know, what's that going to mean for your affordable housing project if you have to make all these, all the spaces, all the parking spaces EV capable? Does that have an impact from a design standard? Does that have an impact for you from how you lay it out? Because you now have to have space for each one of these charging stations to go in. And how do you address that? And what's your impact on that? I don't know. I doubt you have an answer for that today. But it might be something you might want to think about and weigh in on going forward. Because we're just saying all residential. So I don't know. I have a lot of questions about this. I think somewhere if you're ready for a public hearing in August, is that what you said? No, I'm not ready for a public hearing on this. I would like to see it come back. I mean, but I have, like I said, I have questions. I mean, I like the definitions except for that first one, EV capable is just not very, clear as, you know, EV ready is a step above. And I don't know how those two play off each other. So that's what I need and see in the definition. And then I'm just, you know, not sure I under, OK. Not sure why we're trying to require post offices or governmental offices since we have no regulation over post offices whatsoever. So, please strike post offices. The only governmental offices we have any control over for the most part are city governmental control offices which may or may not be exempt but. So, anyways. Yeah. That's it. That's all I got for you.

Jerry, I think you wanted to say something.

Yeah, I don't know if this could be, I just always find it sometimes like we as the government should show that we put ev charging at our locations brian's point like what nothing better than us telling people we have to do stuff but we don't have it ourselves i don't know if that's something would be in this ordinance um and maybe that's the city commission thing but my general public comment on it is we talk a lot about EVs, buying EVs for fleet, but I don't really see us having any at any of our locations. Now this building, we don't have one out here, but we don't necessarily own the building.

Actually, the city owns 50% of the building.

County owns the other 50.

What? I thought it was 25.

No, you own 50%, but you only use 25.

But either way, that would just, I don't know where that fits in. I know government was listed here. Just sometimes that's, I don't know how we fit that in, but it would just be nice to, you know, the city and working with Light and Power, can we get a couple at our locations to show that we're putting our, you know, best foot forward and not just requiring it for everyone else. But again, that might not be our role.

As an EV owner and driver, this is interesting to me. I hear you Brian. And I also hear that we are trying to plan for a future that up until last year was pretty certain we were moving in a particular direction. So I understand that politically things will always change. Presidents will change. Vibes will change. Policies will change. But if we want to try, in my opinion, to survive on this planet, I think it's going to be at the very minimum incrementally moving in that direction. And especially as a city body that has a goal to be sustainable, at least in parts, I think we have to commit to at least looking into it. I agree that Definitions again I think are kind of circuitous in that like you can come up with one but then they're going to be ever changing so how do you land on the proper definition of EV capable. I do hear that and I think it's probably pretty At least in terms of my experience, it's not fun. The range anxiety is real and if we could at least do our part to commit to being an area in the north that has a substantial amount of charging stations, I would love to see that. Southeast Michigan is Soaring, above and beyond. They have a lot. Southwest Michigan, no. It is very sparse. They have some. You have to find them. And they are often at gas stations now where they've like installed two chargers at a gas station, which makes the most sense to me. I don't know why more people aren't doing that. And sometimes governmental centers, Kalamazoo has one where they have like two or three chargers of varying output. So it's really hard as a driver to then try to predict where you can charge. So I think this, like a situation like this where you're requiring it in certain areas could be helpful for that. just in terms of like my experience of what it's like to be an EV owner and driver, $6 is absurd. So I would not pay that for that hour. However, I have had to pay substantial amounts again when you're in an area where there is only one or two chargers and you're just desperate because the next couple hundred you can't, You don't have anything on the radar. So I, but again that goes back to federal, there are no regulations on the pricing. So it can vary substantially and it's left entirely up to the property owners which feels like really scary. But I do think that building it into requirements makes sense. agree that I think I already said this but an EV capable definition could be a little bit more fleshed out definition would be a little bit more helpful but I don't see why those could not be especially on like new builds why that couldn't be required of that property. Do I have anything else to say while I'm still rambling about it? All of these places seem like areas that could be, that would be used and would be nice areas to then be able to rely upon for a charging station. A hospital, schools, what else did I think was really good? Governmental offices, just because I've known to look for those for that. think that's all I'm gonna say about that but it is like theaters make a lot of sense to me and again I think we can probably be strategic about what kinds of areas we're going to see new builds in like in the industrial it like there's probably not gonna be a ton of changeover so maybe we do require that if and when we in 20 years somebody builds something new in the industrial district yeah i think they should have a requirement there those are just a couple of my thoughts as an ev owner and driver mitch

Yes, I get that this is something that was in a number of plans that our city has developed. But as other people have been unhappy with this aspect of our strategic plan or that aspect of our master plan, this is something that I wasn't happy about. Yes, we should be working towards better electrification A more climate-friendly transportation network, which considering we do have a lot of people visiting this area and people that commute in and out every day at present does mean that we need to accommodate electric vehicles. But where and how that accommodation happens is one thing. Yes, we could have a charging station at every residential facility over 20 units, but that doesn't necessarily serve a purpose, and it's not like that if nobody in that residential complex owns an electric vehicle, and it's not like somebody that lives somewhere else is going to park at that apartment building just to use the charger. I can see us trying to encourage it, but that would be partnering with Light and Power and say the county or NMC to see do we have enough potential locations that already have some infrastructure that it's just a matter of putting the outlet right and where people can use it. There have been ebbs and flows of the EV market, what consumer demand is, what vehicles are capable of in terms of how fast they can charge, how long they can go on a single charge. I don't think that the market has fully stabilized in that regard and we don't know what is going to happen with overall trends of Uber or other ride share companies and their impact on say how tourists that are staying in this area are getting around the area. And yes, cars are more carbon friendly than if they're EVs, but you know what's even more carbon friendly? A bus or bikes or people walking. And if we can say find ways to put more bus stops around town and increase access to public transit, that could have a greater net positive good in terms of reducing the carbon impacts of our transportation system.

Jackie?

I would be very interested in seeing this come back for more in-depth conversation and discussion and there are a couple of things I'd like to hear more about when that happens. One is some background information on the energy navigators. I'd like to know about their organization and their funding sources and, you know, how they're structured and just understand, their engagement with municipalities. I'm also sensitive to the fact that I think of public parking as a public good that we provide for our community and that in this community, the scope and scale of public parking is something that's shrinking. And, you know, we have certain existing protected classes of parking like ADA or, you know, other sorts. And when I think about this proposal, it almost feels like we're creating another protected class of parking. And I just like to be sure that we are. thinking about this not only from our fiduciary responsibility but also from an equity standpoint that all of the stakeholders in the community are being represented and considered as we as we look at how to allocate this increasingly rare resource that's it brian

A question for when this comes back. How much of an upgrade or remodel or addition, whatever, would kick these requirements in? When does it kick in on a project? Just an observation, obviously this isn't going to do anything for the downtown because we have no parking requirements in the downtown.

So, two.

Three, Anna, where do you charge yours? Do you feel that there's a shortage of available charging stations in the city? Yes. And I say city, just the city. We don't have any control over the townships.

Yeah. As everybody knows, I live very nearby. Yes. And I have a parking pass for the structure because my building only has 10 parking spaces. Right. So I walk across the street and I park in the structure. So there are One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven electric vehicle charging stations in the parking structure. One is like temporarily slash permanently broken. It hasn't been usable. I have accidentally plugged into it for hours hoping I get a charge and I do not. So effectively we have six spaces. In these summer months, they are full. I can find if it's after 5 p.m. on a weekday, I can go grab one. If it is anytime during the weekend, If it is after like 8 or 9 PM, I can usually find one. But any time during the day and evening, early afternoon, those are pretty much taken. But again, because of where I live in proximity to my option, it's the public parking structure, so people often go there. I would imagine people are going there knowing that there might be charging stations there. I believe the other parking structure has them as well. They have now upped the price of parking if you want access to both structures. So I do not pay the added $10 so that I can have access to both structures. So then if I can't find a space it just means that we are then opting for we're biking, we're walking, we're just going to make it last until we can get a space in the structure to charge. Usually it's only like a day wait. I've not had to wait two days thankfully.

Do you go anyplace else to charge?

No. Only on trips. But that's because of the there are no superchargers in the area that could work for my vehicle. There are no fast charging stations in this area for my vehicle. There are at Tesla's.

It's different.

Correct. Those only take one hour to get you a percentage up. These units are specifically for longer term, slower charging. These chargers will take me 16 hours for a charge. 100%. For 80%. I have a limiter on. But for 80, from like, you know, 15% to 80%, it's 12 to 14 hours. 100% would probably be like 16 hours. So, again, those are.

Do they make fast chargers for your car?

They do. We just don't have any in this area. The closest is Kalkaska.

Somebody just told me that Lightning Power is ripping out the old ones and putting in new fast chargers.

Which makes sense, especially if this region doesn't have any. It could be, it would be a good market. I mean we have Rivian's over by the mall. I haven't checked those yet. Those are usually like somewhere in between. They're not claiming to be fast chargers usually.

But then the other ones are at the library.

Mm-hm. Those are probably comparable to what I charge on. There are some at the marina. Those are comparable to what I charge on. They're slow. Again, the slower ones. They're labeled by level 1s, level 2s, and DC fast charger is what it's called. I have a Chevy Bolt for anyone that's interested. Tesla works very differently. Yeah, it's odd. It's great that I don't have to wait more than a couple days. But for example, there was a day that I couldn't get in and I hoofed it to the airport because I had to go over to Costco anyway. And I just sat there for an extra hour just to get a little bit back down to where I live.

It's interesting. It is interesting. But clearly there's a need, at least in the summer.

There is a need at least in the summer. Again, like how much of that need do we want to try to prescribe versus just kind of let shake out? I get that with anything.

One of my, so and I understand what you said earlier about the politics question or issue. But what I'm seeing right now are more market driven fast. So basically low resale, but quick depreciation on electric vehicles, battery costs, and the high cost electric vehicles. It's really the last one. The high cost electric vehicles, or a lot of them, is what's driving, is what slowed the market down. Could be temporary. People could start moving back. It's only been a year, but And I don't have a hybrid. I don't have an electric vehicle. I know nothing about them. Other than what I've ridden on them, they're very quiet. And sometimes when they drive by you, they sound like sci-fi vehicles. Yeah.

The sound is artificial so that you can hear us coming. Because if it wasn't there, you would not hear us coming.

That's very interesting. I drove a Prius in 2010, and I had to make sure people saw me. intersections before I proceeded to go because they couldn't hear you.

Does a Prius require a charge? That's a hybrid. I know. Do hybrids require a charge? Not the Prius that I drove. Some may, some may not, but I didn't think they did.

Depending on how much you're kicking into that EV source, most of the time I think it's using the gas source, and I think you can turn it on and off.

I think it recharges when the motor is running. Correct.

But they do, there are hybrids often charging. There are people that work down here that I can see their cars charging in there all the time. So I know it's the same couple people with the exception of these summer months where I see new vehicles plugging in. But we're all fighting for the same six spaces because one is designated permanently for the parking services vehicle.

So I have a question. Yeah. Does it make more sense to And I don't know just spitballing here. Does it make more sense to require that they be fast chargers, so that there's more turnover.

They're a lot more expensive.

Yeah, I understand that, but I mean, listening to Anna's experience, it's like maybe it's not a matter of supply. It's just the turnover isn't happening as quickly as it needs to.

There's a lot of optimization involved in this so that you get the right mix. And that was, you know, part of what I was kind of hoping to find out more about through energy navigators and other research that we've been doing, what the right mix is. To me, I thought, yeah, why aren't they all fast chargers? But there's actually a lot of situations where, Both for the user and, you know, for the amount of electricity used and the much higher cost for the chargers itself, it makes a lot of sense to use the level ones and level twos. I think mostly it's level two is like the sweet spot from what I understand.

I mean it makes sense from a downtown perspective to have somebody hanging out downtown for 16 hours, right? Forced to hang out here.

So that was another example that I forgot I was going to bring up is like it is really helpful to have them in areas where people have entertainment because if I go to one more area where I am at an old abandoned outlet mall with a single thrift store, I don't know what I'll do with myself because you can only spend so much time and you know you have to charge for at least one hour most of the time. So some of those places that we were listing like a hospital, people are likely going to be in there a while.

Yeah. Can I add one more thing to institutions? Can we include, this is my dream, train depots? Just for, like, the possible future. Right, Brian? The possible future. Yeah.

It's always possible.

We can get rid of post offices. I'm okay with that. I get that. But, like, train depots?

Jackie. When this comes back, could we make a point of asking for not only Nicole Van Ness, but a representative of Light and Power to be here and present to us so we hear their perspectives on this firsthand? I'll do what I can.

I think I would be satisfied with a memo, but again, like if we can't get them here, I think a memo would be good. Interaction would be lovely.

I have another question. Yeah, Brian, sorry. So, no other commercial replaced, we're asking to put them. These are, so we have residential care and treatment facilities, we're requiring them. These are all, these are really all residential, specialized housing. OK. And then we're requiring them at high schools and colleges. All other schools, places of worship, hospitals, government offices and auditoriums. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't go down the next page. Office financial institutions and retail. I mean, you have to ask, I mean, I know this is an easy way to do it. But given that you have to charge for at least an hour, I would have to basically really only looking at putting these in places for employees, for a lot of these places. Like you said, if you go, you can only go if you're I don't know. I know I tried not to go into any store for an hour if it's possible. I do know other people that are close to me who have no problem spending an hour in a store. So, I don't know, maybe that works. But it's just that's kind of what I'm asking this is who are we really putting these in for? And can we address issues like a shopping center where you have a mix of restaurants and what do we do for that? You know, if you have taken any of our existing shopping centers, well, we don't have a lot of them. You know, so I'm pretty sure people can spend an hour in Costco. So that would make sense, but what is Costco? I don't know. And, but you go to some other places like Tom's East Bay. It's got all sorts of stores, none of which you're going to spend an hour in any single one, but there are multiple uses there. So how, but they're all different uses. You have everything from, you know, Medical offices there, physical therapy, gyms, how do you sort of make something there that works for addressing all these multiple different uses because we're not always individual pieces of property when we're looking at this. So shared parking areas, that sort of thing.

So just a couple of quick notes. One is that this table is the table that's in the zoning ordinance right now. So that's why these categories are what they are. And certainly we can add new categories or expand these, you know, categories a little bit more to address some of the uses that may not already be addressed. And so that might become a bigger, you know, can of worms than we originally anticipated. There's still a notion that we're going to update the entire zoning ordinance. So but I understand that for our purposes right now, maybe we just need a separate table and not incorporated into the parking standards table. So I think maybe we can separate them for that reason. And then with the intention of putting them back together again later because I don't want to start to get into new categories and new standards. And then secondly, like I said, I've been slowly learning a lot more about EV charging. Also, I don't have an EV. this is redundant, but EV vehicle. So I don't know a lot about it, but again, I always thought, yeah, you're gonna be there a long time or you want a fast charger,

Apparently there is a lot of value in topping off for just even 15 minutes. And so I think we can't think strictly about the one hour or multiple hours of charging. There is a usage pattern that is like small bits of time just to top off.

Oh, okay. So then everything I said doesn't matter.

It does, it's just that it's, you know, it's all in context and, you know, again, clearly we all need lots more information. I just wanted to start to introduce this to you. I have a lot more to share and we can hone in on this. We had a lot of things on this agenda, so didn't have a lot of time, but wanted to get this in front of you and get a little more direction, so.

Yeah, there's a lot of use cases. Terry?

Yeah, one thing I was saying, I don't, The more we talk about the less I understand it um so like who paid like if. Like if we put it at the high school does the high school pay for it, but then who gets the money.

The person that installs collects.

Okay, so like whoever's the manufacturer of the charger gets the $6 an hour.

The one that put that paid to put it in. they will collect so the high school would for example if they put it in the high school have to pay the energy cost that they took so it's like a reimbursement but they can set the price yes okay it is again it is kind of like the wild wild west they are incredibly expensive to put in especially the fast chargers we did some research on when we were most recently stranded at a mire. So we were wondering why there were not as many in the state. They pay the install and then they kind of gamble on How frequented the charter will be, like how many people are they going to be seeing? Then they gamble that with how much they're going to charge, because then if they do charge too much, they probably won't see as much people. And whether or not they have the funds that they need immediate recouping, or if they can just kind of wait it out. It's really wild out there.

So there is the ability to contract with other companies to do it. So you would like high school, do they want to manage the bookkeeping of that? I talked to a business owner today, and he said the same thing. He looked at, he was looking at the issue, and it's like he could put it in, which seemed to make the most financial sense, or he could pay someone to come put it in, and that person would charge. But if he puts it in, then he's got to manage it. And it's like, am I really, it's like, am I qualified to manage these things? What do I know about them? I'm going to have to hire someone to maintain it.

And there's multiple different systems and providers now, so they would decide which one they like, whether or not those ever have, like, fail, or are they really reliable.

Yeah. It's an interesting question.

Yeah. Since I'm kind of still new, our charge is just to put it in the zoning. It's not who's paying and how it's installed and is the city buying it. Yeah, but I just wanted to double check that. We're just making room in the zoning to reflect a future with EV.

Yeah, to decide where and when we would put that requirement in to our zoning code.

But if we have broader recommendations that say, we think that these zoning requirements make sense, but there's other things that are outside of planning and zoning that would fit in, then those could also be advanced to the city commission as part of the memos.

correct jerry so for example like for the eb um capable or let me see capable like so if someone's building a new development they would potentially like install conduit in the parking lot so in the future they don't have to rip up the concrete that's the eb ready

EV ready is the conduit. EV capable just has.

Just means there's electricity nearby?

Yeah, that they have the electrical capacity and, you know, to me it seems crazy if you're going to put pavement down and you've got the capacity and you have some notion that at some point the readiness part will kick in or you're going to want to provide that not to make it EV ready. So I guess, you know, the cost differential there is kind of interesting maybe to find out more about. But, yeah, the capable is just to have the electricity ready to go for a future when you would have the conduit there. So that's the lowest category.

Which to me kind of makes sense if we're going to.

Mitch?

Yes. Okay, I appreciate that this lists most of the zoning categories that we already have, but one thing that we've recently created that I think would make sense would be auto-centric uses. And yes, if you're putting in a gas station, it has historically been to dispense diesel regular, but... It seems reasonable that we can say, hey, you're going to have places that people can pull up. You're going to have electricity going to those places. Why not have at least one or two chargers as well?

I think a separate table.

If you're going to be pulling up and vacuuming out your car, that would be a perfect location for a fast charger.

A separate table makes sense.

yeah okay so do we know if just a data point do we know i know you can like plug in at your house but then you can also upgrade your power to have a better does that pull a building permit and would we have any idea of like how many residents are doing that i think light and power has to like you have to have electrician like yeah well for instance i just put in at my house just uh

you know, put in a new meter and put capacity in but that was for other reasons not for fast charger although or charging. Although we considered doing that but then we would have had to like double what we were doing and we don't have an EV right now but we thought that would be silly not to provide that either for us or a future owner but we didn't. But, you know. Yeah, so I think just from that, my guess is it would be hard to figure out why someone was upgrading.

Most of the time it is the ones that they install at home, they're never fast charging. They're always like a one or a two. Mostly ones because ones I think are the same amount of voltage as like, you know, to power a fridge. So they're not like out of control and I think that they are easily installable into like a garage. And when I bought my vehicle, they were, Chevy offers a discount, like a credit toward having a company come install it for you. Brian?

It'd be nice to know what how much these costs. I mean, to give us a rough number on an average price, because, you know, we say we're gonna start requiring 10%, you know, You know, if that's 10 spaces or one space, it's a cost. So we're adding a cost on development of, you know, or remodeling properties. So it's a cost to the owner, you know, and every cost gets spread around, every increase, you know. especially if it's not you know it's if they don't i don't know if they pay for themselves i assume they do but i haven't heard about anybody you know breaking in millions on these things so i'd be interested in like like what's light and powers experience on these they paid for themselves you know with some maintenance schedule on these. You start requiring people to pull one of these things in and then the cost is not a quick cost, it's going to be a long term cost. And I don't know if it ever pays itself back. And I think we always have to, it's not in and of itself a reason to say no to this, but you've got to be aware of it and know kind of what kind of additional cost you're putting on something. because that can kill all sorts of projects. We'll never see them because we didn't know. And I would also like to know sort of what's the process going to be? I'm assuming this would be addressed in site plan reviews. And then the question becomes, when you start talking about electrical panels, is our zoning administrator qualified to determine whether or not the electrical components You know, or is it just going to be charging port or charging station will go here? Or do they have to see the whole electrical plan? Something that normally goes to building department. Not saying it can't be done, but I don't know if staff is qualified to review those. I don't know the level of review. See, I just got lots of questions. So, it's not just what we do, it's how it's going to be administered is one of my big questions.

in terms of cost i think it makes sense to have it broken down by cost of ev capable cost of ev ready cost of ev installed just so that it's clear that like because that's really what we're thinking about putting in as our different levels because if it's if the ev capable cost is just like 100 bucks that would make sense to have that kind of clarity versus the fully EV installed. Does that make sense?

I'm waiting for the Housing Commission to tell us that, because they're going to go back and talk about this or thinking about doing this, how it would impact our project. And then they can go back and tell us.

Well, it's not just what it does on the cost side, but then design side too. Yes. And say, what does our parking lot configuration then have to be? How many parking spaces do we actually have? Especially if it's say Riverview Terrace where you have 43 parking spaces for 115 tenants and that is supposed to accommodate all the residents all the staff and delivery vehicles, so Yes, that can work. But if you then had specific Spots set aside for certain vehicles. It could complicate things.

I know that in past And a lot of times when people have come for, when they're seeking financial assistance for housing from the state or whatever, there's, often people tell us that they have to have at least one parking space per unit.

And yeah, that's the other factor. We can have our site plan, but it's also what MSHDA is willing to finance and what, Federal Homeowners Bank of Indianapolis or other partners are willing to. And hey, for some of them, if they are somehow eligible for more credits, they might actually be more willing to support a development that has electric vehicles. But that is not something that we can necessarily predict from the start.

I understand.

Anything else from this group? Maxwell.

I think that this is a really interesting discussion. I've had some experience in a previous job with EV chargers. And you're asking the right questions. I think that additional discussion EV capability and how that intersects with EV capacity from your utility providers is an important discussion. But also when looking at these categories, and we've talked a little bit about use case, right? So depending upon what sort of business, the use case might be different. And that's going to inform what, you know, what is EV capable, you know, level one versus a level three. And it's a completely different project. So just some more information on costs and utility capability capacity I think is important.

Any last comments from the group before we go to public comment on this item? Any public comment on this item? Okay, so no public comment other than appreciation on this item. Any last words? Yeah, Mitch.

This is pretty self-contained to talking about EVs, but on the subject of planning for the future, making our system more resilient, and not just mandating where stuff is now, but looking at where the infrastructure could be, something else we can look at, especially for parking areas, is potential for solar panel installation in the future. For example... the city wastewater treatment plant it was found that certain structures couldn't sustain the panels that we got grant funding to put on them but as we are redoing stuff we can build that to a higher standard also for the farmers market pavilion in parking lot b that is being built it doesn't have panels on the roof right now, but it is structurally engineered and wired in a way that it could support panels in the future. And yes, solar panels are also something that has evolved over time. And it's not like the panels on top of a parking lot would be able to supply a fast charger. And then you could just go right away. But it is something that can help the overall process of electrification.

Makes sense. Thank you. Okay.

Sounds like you've got a lot for that item. Do you need anything else from us? That's funny.

Okay. Should have stopped us a while ago, maybe. Okay. We're going to move on to C, but I do have to use the restroom, so I think we should take like a five-minute break because I think these next two items will be another big item, little item pair-up situation. So we'll be back shortly.

Maybe it'll be less than five. Story in the footnotes I love a good weird I know

I just don't, I can't believe that same guy wrote Life of Pi. Very different book, yeah. Amazing.

He basically wrote a fake epic poem.

Yeah.

Oh.

All right. Yeah.

Okay, looks like we are all back so we can return right into item C, ADU regulation updates discussion. Back to you, Leslie.

So if you recall, our goals based on the action plan in the master plan include to look at updating the ADU standards. in light of recent changes in the zoning ordinance that increased the viability of people putting in a second unit, not necessarily an ADU, but a second unit as allowed under zoning. The difference between an ADU and a second unit start to blur. And it's become more apparent to us that, you know, is there a reason for this distinction? Do we need to still have two different categories? And if we forgo one of them, you know, do we make a change to the remaining other option? So, the way I look at it is to, you know, I kind of broke it down into three different options. One is just to simply remove the ADU option in the R1 districts. People can, because I have to tell you that most people who come in and say, I want an ADU, that talk to the zoning administrator, he'll say, let's sit down for a minute. Do you really want an ADU? Here are the two options. And most of them, their situation, it does work better for them to do the second unit option. So we're seeing fewer ADUs and more second units. So, but, you know, if we simply just wholesale remove ADU, keep a second unit option, it still doesn't work for every single lot that's R1 because you need a minimum of either,

8,000 square feet or 14,000 square feet depending on which district you're in to have that second unit. So not every lot meets that.

And then also, this is the bigger thing, you're subject to deeper setbacks, primarily the rear setback in conjunction with that second unit. So for some people that still doesn't work for them and they still opt for the ADU. So the other option is to leave things as they are, but in the R1 district to lessen the restrictions for an ADU. So people still have one option versus the other, but there aren't so many restrictions on the ADU because it's not such, you know, some of the unknowns when it first was developed, have been found to be not as scary maybe as it initially seemed to be and they've become more accepted. So there are some restrictions like the location of the entrance for the ADU can be restrictive for some people. There's a restriction on where that can be. There's a requirement that the look or the character of the building match the primary building. And especially if we institute pattern book ADU options, it's going to be very unlikely that the architecture is going to match in all cases. There's a size restriction on 800 square feet. The zoning administrator recommends that we potentially look at just a percentage of the primary unit as opposed to the strict 800 square feet. And then lastly, there is an annual registration associated with an ADU that's required.

And, you know, part of that registration, it's my impression, is just to determine whether or not the owner of the unit or the owner of the property lives in one or the other unit.

And so, you know, it's just extra. paperwork on both ends and there have been cases where the owner had every intent of living in one unit and then renting out another and then situations changed for them and you know they couldn't do that and they either had to sell their unit or move somewhere else or whatever

And their only option then was to do something more drastic like take out a kitchen or something so that that ADU is just bonus space but not a separate unit, which is a little bit counterproductive. You know, I'm not going to say anyone does this, but it's been my experience in the past that when you do inspect someone who has taken out a kitchen, lo and behold, a couple years later, the kitchen migrates back again when you see the listing. So, that's not a fail-safe thing and it just seems like some unnecessary paperwork. So that's a whole area of another option.

And then the third option is to kind of combine these two things. that, you know, we take the best of both and combine them, maybe relax the setback standards for the second unit, have a size restriction on them but not necessarily require that, you know, there are height restrictions for the ADU right now in relation to the primary building. take away some of those things that could trip up somebody but have some minimum standards in there and just kind of again meld the two together and make it something new. So that's a lot of information and a lot to say we could change everything or nothing and so I guess I'm just looking for a little bit more from the planning commission before we go ahead and start drafting something. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. There are going to be so many thoughts on this, especially from Shay and myself who have real world experience actively happening. So, let's go Jerry, then Shay.

Yeah, mine's pretty simple. Or just my thought is. I've just heard from at least two different people that have any, so their situation was they got the ADU permit, they built the ADU. So they have to pay the annual registration, but now they don't use it for ADU anymore, but they still have to pay. Because it doesn't allow you to, it's like a forever thing.

Mm-hm, unless you remove the kitchen or something.

Yeah, right, so I just think that's something that,

What is the use case then if they don't use it as an ADO? They're using it as bonus space for that, that main property. Okay.

Yeah, it just seemed like it, that we didn't, I don't know how many this would impact, but it was interesting, like they were stuck in this, like so I have to pay this, yeah, $100 every year for paternity.

Mm-hm.

Their circumstance changed, but anyway, I just, I think it's $100, so I don't know what we really get out of that.

Mm-hm. Yes, as someone who has navigated this process recently, I went into it thinking that I was building an ADU. Turns out I was building a secondary primary dwelling, whatever they're called. And I tend to lean towards combining them. The setback from the alley is 25 feet. And it's not even the alley. It's from your rear property line. So you could probably add another three feet to that. So what is that, 28 feet? It's, you got to really like someone if you're going to be building that close to their parent into the primary dwelling unit. I like my parents. So, you know, like, it's going to work out. I think I tend to lean towards combining at you and second unit options. Especially, you know, I think one of the things that people really enjoy about single family housing is that they have backyards and like By requiring that 25 foot setback from the rear line, you're eliminating people's backyard, their private space. Some people don't want to mow the lawn, that giant lawn, and they would be willing to build something if they could still maintain a little bit of lawn. So that's kind of my perspective on things. Full disclosure, this will not benefit me in any way because I'm going with what we got.

My thoughts, and then we'll go to Brian, similar situation. My brother is building a second unit. It is practically done. He's just waiting for occupancy. He started last September and he is doing it himself and it is nuts. But he, I applaud him. Biggest complaint was the rear alley setbacks. Again, he has a primary unit that he purchased. He's on a reasonably sized lot near Oakwood Cemetery. Oakwood? Yeah. So in that cute little neighborhood right off to the west. His unit is amazing and because his primary unit was so tiny, it does look big. But he's able to have a garage and he's able to have a nice little space, again, even with accommodating the giant setback. He can also, this was interesting to me, have his mail on that side. So as long as the carrier delivers to the alley for another address, you can then ask for that. I did not think that would be possible. I thought you had to have it on the street. So that opens up a couple different things for me, because if you look at the front setback, I don't know what they are off the top of my head. But I think it varies based on neighborhood and district. you could have wildly different looking street views from either the front street or the alley just trying to visibly compare the setbacks on either side. What was my other complaint that he, he complained a little bit about side setbacks but I think he worked with Dave on that. So that they've worked that out enough. But the rear setbacks were a pain point. He already has a renter in. So this is like the perfect example of what we're looking for. We're looking for that gentle infill where somebody has a ton of space. They have the capabilities, the financial abilities, the want, the drive to put a second unit. And he already timed it so that his long term renter is in there and he's going to move in when he gets his occupancy and he's currently living with my parents. So it does work out and I really want this to become a thing and I think combining is the way to go and I do believe that The nature of some of our lots at this point probably accommodate second units more than they do accommodate the ADUs. Just for a little bit of background, I think the 800 square foot, I think I was around for that. And I believe it was because there are some monstrously sized ADUs in a couple of neighborhoods. If you drive through, you're like blown away at the size of those ADUs. So I kind of understand why that was there. I much more prefer a percentage. That makes more sense. But I wouldn't want it to be limiting at all of the second unit. Because you could get stuck in a situation like my brother where it's just a little modular that was plopped on a piece of property. And he now wants to build and design his own thing. I wouldn't want that limiting people at all in that way. So if the percentage would limit that, I would opt for not having it.

I also, through this process, found that my parents can't. We can't split the lot the short way. It would have to be split the long way. And nobody's ever really given me a good reason why we can't do that, other than it needs to have 35 feet of street frontage. But I think it would probably behoove us to maybe look at having the alley as frontage, offering that as an option. I don't know why that is. And nobody's ever been able to give me a good reason why.

So I think what most people end up doing when they want separate ownership or ability to separately finance them is to create a condominium. So we don't have any minimum requirements for land associated with each unit. So your unit can be one. of the buildings.

Yeah. I didn't want to go that route, though, because site condo is a little more complicated, I think. And I think just purchasing the back half of their lot. And I'm very niche, probably, but I think purchasing the back half of their lot think there's probably other people similar to my parents that are like retirement age and they're like why do we have all of this space i don't want to mow this i don't want to maintain it anymore we have good friends that we would like to live next door to we have family that are struggling like let's sell them the back half and they can do whatever they want with it so but we found out we couldn't do that and then with the 25 foot setback we couldn't do it anyway because we would be cutting into our house so yeah it's not a thing but Just something I think to think about going forward like.

Is that a local thing or is that like a state thing? A condominium?

No, the like splitting it.

Well, you know, I think from my own point of view, I think, you know, the zoning reform that allowed the second unit on a standard, you know, minimum size lot. meeting the minimum requirements is a generous option because it is so difficult to divide most lots and make them meet you know, the frontage requirements, you know, the ratio of the width to the length and it can make it kind of wonky. So, I think it's kind of the concession in exchange for, it's like the option for people who have the square footage but don't have the configuration to do a split. So it's a concession to them to just build that second unit and you still have the option in Michigan to create a condo so you can each own it separately but you don't and you can assign, you know, the, This is kind of getting in the weeds but you can assign any portion of that yard to be a limited common element associated with only one of those units or it can be a general common associated with both units. There's all kinds of ways to split it up to meet your, what you need it to be and then

you know, share parking areas as a general common and assign responsibility for maintenance to different parts of it. So there's a lot of flexibility and a lot of ways that you can personalize it to do exactly what you want to do and take away future, you know, confusion. Because again, I think for most people it's going to be hard to find separate parking know then you're going to have utility easements that run through the property doing those divisions for most people just as untenable so it's not surprising to me but i think it would be hard to roll that into here and also you know have an expectation that we're going to now be asking the city commission to consider having you know, one-halving the lot size in addition, because that's the only way we could achieve what you're asking for. Mitch?

Yes. Commissioner O'Brien, does AFLI say that this is a lot? His scenario was a niche case, but I feel that a whole lot of scenarios under this category are niche cases. Yes, we have street grids, but the street grid in Central Neighborhood doesn't have the same block sizes as Border Neighborhood, doesn't have the same block sizes as Triangle or Traverse Heights. We have rough approximations in each of those for what a quote standard lot is, but you can have on the same block a single lot go from less than 30 feet wide to more than 60 feet wide. And that's not because one got divided into two and at some point in the past. plus you've got neighborhoods like the base of old mission where none of your parcels are nice neat rectangles so we do end up with a lot of unique scenarios also there are Possibly down to a couple blocks of what could be properly termed tract housing where you do have a lot of houses in a row that are more or less the same. You don't have to say the front setback is the average of the rest of the houses on the block because they're all in a line. We have in both historic neighborhoods and more modern neighborhoods houses that... Might be might have been built 40 years or more apart from each other in different architectural styles with different setbacks and configurations, respectively. I think that there is some need for this flexibility and having two categories does help with that. What is the perfect scenario when you have so many special cases? It is very hard to say. I would love it if we could have more site condos, because it does provide a little more flexibility that you don't have with lot splits. But to my knowledge, there's only one case of a parcel that had a house, built a second house, and they were site condoed in Traverse City. And that is the house that Sam LaSouza lived in at 14th and Cass. Which, okay. it's a lovely job but it points to both the difficulties of that as an ownership scheme and then um how do you finance it when banks are much more willing to say hey you're a single family house on a single lot or you're essentially building a duplex so let's treat that as a duplex condos yes they can work but it can be more difficult to put the financing together for that I wish it was more possible, and I could buy an ADU in this town, but that is not what the current market is for.

And I should clarify, that's what I ran into. A traditional mortgage was not, you can't traditionally mortgage something unless you own it. So my wife and I can't get a separate mortgage unless we own the property, because what does the bank get if we don't own it? and we go bunk on the mortgage, so.

So, condoing it is one route to do that?

Yeah. I didn't want to do that, though.

Yeah, I get that.

There's a lot of cost involved.

Yeah.

Yes. Brian?

Okay. So, the, when it comes to financing, ownership, the type of ownership doesn't matter. Lot splits are, can be done. to finance the cost of anything like that, lots of it can be done with just hiring a surveyor. And you can usually get most of the other steps done through just the application process yourself and meeting any requirements the city may have. You want to do, create a site condo or, you know, that requires an attorney. And what they charge for that is going to depend on the attorney and how good it is is going to depend on the attorney. And your stuff, so it's more expensive. It can be done, but anything you do like that, when you already have existing utilities, trying to do those types of splits, all that stuff in the ground, that creates problems for any type of split. Because then you're going to have to have easements. Easements are going to have to be defined. Type of easement, can you get that done with a, get that done with just a surveyor? Or do you need a lawyer to write the easement agreements? But my bottom line for this is, This whole discussion about doing this is one step too far from what we're talking about today. I think that it's something we can always address later. Can you create alley space? Does that work? I don't know. Does any of this stuff work? But we could spend two months just on that question, you know, about splitting things. Can we consider alley access points? We turned alleys into streets to get around that question. So I don't know. And we've called alleys that are not streets. It's going back to the points here, which is why I started off, was the three. So I'm not in favor of any three of your options. But I like components of all three, OK? I question for everyone right now is as we enter into this and despite the small turnout in the audience at this point, wasn't what was done in 2023 that created a lot of animosity in the community and even among members of this board? Wasn't that kind of some people complained about literally just getting screamed at?

Yes, we were mostly screamed at and conceded owner occupancy for ADUs. That's why it stayed.

Oh, I remember the ADU stuff. That's a whole other battle. That was before us. But ADUs have been around for a long time, and nobody really talks about them anymore. It's not an issue.

We tried to get rid of owner occupancy.

But doing the second on pieces of property that were by size, met a qualification but they had to be bigger than the minimum lot size. I think that made sense. I just don't know if 2026 is the year you want to tackle changing and expanding the whole two dwelling units in the R1 districts. In other words, getting rid of setbacks and all of that. I understand, but at the same time, a four-foot setback for an ADU and the 25-foot setback for a second dwelling unit, we can easily change that. That's you just reduce that or change it. You know, four feet works for me, I don't care. I don't even know why we have a 25-foot setback, but it's pretty common in all zoning, 20, 25-foot rear setbacks. Is it so people can, you know, but you can put a garage back there, right, for the main unit? It's because we require people to have backyards, and you must mow them. Oh, no. We don't require you to mow it. Nope. We just require you to have a backyard.

You'll get a warning if you don't mow, but that's it.

No, you won't get that.

Sometimes you do.

Only if your neighbors complain. Correct. Only if your neighbors complain and only because they think you don't know that there's nothing the city can do about it. The ADU restrictions, I have a question. What is our requirement for location of entrances to ADUs?

Let me look it up.

I thought they just had to have a separate exterior entrance.

I think that it restricts which side it's on, but let me look. That feels weird.

Yeah, if we restrict which side or where it goes, then that's got to go. I don't know what the issue is with the structures exterior appearing to be single family. Do they make them look like office buildings, Quonset huts? I don't know what clearly incidental to the principal dwelling unit. I don't know what the definition for that is. So I don't know what clearly incidental means. But it's a second dwelling unit. I don't know if it's incidental or not. That does me think. I think we can eliminate the annual registration. I'm open on the other one about eliminating the owner occupancy requirement. You know, at this point, if a landlord can build two houses, why can't they build a house in an ADU and use them? The biggest concern, I remember one of the biggest concerns about that and probably remains to this day is use of ADUs as short-term rentals, okay? The city's efforts to combat short-term rentals when this came was basically, you can't do that. It's sort of, they're much more, it's still very difficult lift to enforce, but they're much more, you're much more effective. You're basically paying someone to enforce it. So, I don't hear that complaint as often as I used to. But, I don't know, I hear it all the time, but no one can point to an actual person. So, and I don't know what your, I mean it still occurs, I know, you guys still get a number of complaints. And I'm sure it still happens, but I don't think it's that big an issue. That's kind of where I would be at. I'm not sure I want to. you know, reduce some of the setbacks for a second unit. It made sense to me when you guys did it, I shouldn't say you guys, when we did it that the setbacks were the same for a house and that the size of lot had to be larger than the minimum lot requirement which just seemed like, well, Then why not was my response. I know not everyone felt that way. My response was why not? I don't know if you want to start playing with that now. And I'm not saying we can't play with it in the future, but I'm more of a once at a time, let's see how things go. But yeah, half the restrictions in ADUs. You didn't mention the cap on ADUs.

We got rid of that, didn't we? Right. There's no cap anymore.

Didn't we? Mm-hmm.

My only question about.

Didn't change behavior.

No, I know.

This, no, I think this was, this was in the round in 2023. Were you here for that? No.

I don't think you were here for that. No, I wasn't here for that.

Yeah, so it was during that period. I have a vague recollection of getting into a TIF in 2023, not TIF, getting into an argument about. Length of stays, is there a definition of a length of stay for an ADU or were we getting into the definition of a length of stay for a tourist home and I'm conflating those?

No, it was for ADUs.

There is one for ADU, okay.

90 days for that, but we didn't have any length of stay aside from it has to be longer than a month for other classifications.

Okay.

Because in the state legal definitions, less than a month is short term, more than a month is long term.

And that was again to try to combat what we suspected was happening was short-term renting those because we don't have that in a second unit.

I don't know if we ever had 90-day. Do we have 90-day requirements? We do. Do we still have it?

I think we do. I think they kept that in in 2023, and I didn't want that.

You should definitely get rid of that.

Yeah, okay. That was one that I thought was missing from this list and wanted to look up.

You shouldn't treat a rental unit because it's in a view different than any other rental unit.

Correct, especially if we have a second unit, and it's also going to try to be a long-term unit because we don't allow short-term rentals in residential. It becomes moot. Michelle.

I just had a question. So the, well, it's a question and then a comment. The question is, is what are we, what problem are we solving for if we have two options? Kind of what Brian was saying, like is it, do we need to collapse these into one, especially if we can change certain things that we've found to be, pain points, sorry, with existing regulations, setbacks, things like that. But secondly, the other thing that kind of looking at less on the restrictions of the ADU option, remove the 800 square foot size restriction on an ADU, instead limiting the size to a percentage of the primary dwelling. We have some pretty small houses. And a percentage of those, like, is the 800 square foot, if it's a garage and a dwelling unit, is it those combined?

No.

So it could be...

It's just...

Is the footprint or is it? It's a total floor area. So it's, so it would be 400 and 400? Right. As opposed to, so.

No, but the garage is not part of an ADU. But not garage. Oh, oh, okay. Okay, that's fine. It's got to be livable space.

But thinking about, just thinking about limiting the size to a percentage of the primary dwelling, like 800 square feet is pretty small. The house I live in is, I think they want to say it's 1,200 square feet. It's not. It's like maybe 1,100 and it's pretty small. So like a percentage of that, if you thought about like, I don't know, 60% of that, it's gonna be less than 800. So I guess I would, I don't know, 800 square feet. And I'm thinking about this. definitely from my own perspective we live in a pretty small lot pretty small house um and facing that generation of it's time to live with family you know generations of families in the past have lived together and what if we need to move a parent here you know i'm not thinking about it as an income property but like 800 square feet if it's my husband and i having to move in I like him, but 600 is a little too small. So that was the only concern I had. I kind of like Brian's suggestion, really, of there might be some things that we could tackle. That 25-foot setback is ridiculous. I mean, I don't think my front setback is that big. That's what I'm saying. Right, 10 feet on the sidewalk?

I did a Google search, and the standard is 10 to 20 feet.

For rear?

For rear setbacks.

For rear setbacks. And also like why would we do 25 foot setback on what is fed by an alley as well? You're just creating dead space. Correct. I don't know about you, I'm not going to hang out on the alley in my front yard.

No, you're then forced, if somebody wants to drive by my brother's, you're then forced to make fake front yard now he has like a little porch yeah and he has a little fake tiny front yard that he threw grass seed on because it looks silly if you don't have that right then you're just creating parking spaces quite frankly which i would rather have a unit right up against the alley and um anyway so that was just my thought like

I don't know, are we fixing something that's not broken, what is the problem we're solving for here are there just ways to go about it and reducing some of those restrictions, I think the problem, though, is like as a user it's it is confusing.

Like I went it like I said I went in thinking i'm building an ad you turns out i'm building a secondary dwelling.

So we're keeping the zoning administrator.

Yeah, but I think streamlining it is a good idea. Streamlining it for user purposes, simplifying it is a positive in the long run.

Unless it restricts. I mean, what we want is gentle infill. And right now, we have two options for it. If we did some of these things thinking about my property in specific and my neighbors, it might actually restrict.

My one thought would be as to the why, maybe Jackie and Mitch can give us a little more context because I think this came from the city commission. So having a little more context on why they asked us to look at this and review this would be helpful. So if this is the moment, let's do that and then go back because I know there are more comments. So Jackie, go ahead. Thank you.

Yes, on July the 6th, the city commission endorsed adoption of the attainable housing tool which is something that is fairly new to the state of Michigan and hasn't been used in a lot of communities. But essentially, it's taking the concept of a pilot, so tax breaks for a certain number of years and it's a peculiar form of tax break related not uncapping the value of your primary residence. But it essentially allows a second dwelling with a tax break for 12 years. And it is intended specifically for small-scale landlords, so a maximum of four units. And it was seen as a good complement to our adoption of various pilot agreements for multifamily developments and so the action of the city commission last night was to request that the planning commission see what our current ADU requirements are specifically and see if they are supportive and moving in the same direction along with pre-approved plans for ADUs or I suppose second dwellings could become the definition but asking for a recommendation from us by the end of the year as to what could we do as a body to support this new attainable housing tool that the city would like to make available. And it was interesting, one of the public commenters last night was actually the attorney for Frankfort, and they have implemented the attainable housing tool. And correct me if I'm wrong, Mitch, but I remember him saying something about, Having a pre-approved plan could represent a savings to the small landlord or homeowner of $30,000 to $40,000 in terms of plans and permitting.

It can. It depends a lot about your specific environment. Yes. how streamlined the permitting process already is.

Yes. So, this is a new tool to support gentle or quiet infill, you know, and I think that one of the most important things is ensuring that we can find a way build more, build faster, but also build affordable. And I hope in our conversations that we can be focused on units that, whether they are for rent or for sale, can fill some of that missing middle, not only from the perspective of the person who's living there, but also the perspective of We're looking to help the little guy and do it in a way that is supportive to the people who are in the neighborhoods now and preserves both quality of life and affordability. Thank you. Why don't I leave out Mitch?

Oh, you covered a lot of the main basis for where we're coming for this, but it is also something that's in the strategic plan. It's in the master plan as this is something that meets our goals of providing more housing while protecting neighborhood character. But it's also on the goals for this body as something that we can achieve and what that actually looks like in terms of deciding what our ADU second home regulations are and we don't know that we'll have to go through this process. We've asked a number of questions already.

Michelle. I just would, as we move forward on this, knowing that background, it would be interesting to me to see what barriers exist to utilizing that tool with what we currently have and see kind of a breakdown of that. Or if what we have is actually perfectly set up for the tool. I don't know anything about it, so more background on that would help me. think about you know how we can move forward also sounds like that's something it might be a tool where it's we could build units that could be for sale and not just for rent or you know so um just that would be my question yeah as we move forward yeah and this may be way off base but you know it made me think about our cottage court

option you know is our cottage courts something that you know sort of fit into this niche and and we should be finding ways to incentivize i don't know but it seems to me that um smaller more affordable units because those usually go hand in hand with pre-approved plans that can reduce the barriers to building and to increasing our housing stock are all good things. So in terms of what are we trying to accomplish, if I was trying to summarize it, I would point us in that direction. Thank you. Mitch?

Yes. As I said before, I do support keeping both things. The fact that in a lot of cases it could be an ADU or it could be a second home doesn't or ignores the fact that there are lots that aren't large enough for a second home but are large enough to have an ADU. Or cases where the lot theoretically might be large enough second have a second home, but the existing primary dwelling is positioned oddly or is of such a size that you couldn't really do that, but you can still put an ad you And for the size. I think that it makes a lot of sense, having 800 square feet as a maximum Because we do have a very wide range of housing sizes of the Existing primary dwelling and you could have If it was saying you have to build it no more than 60% the size of the primary residence, we have some very large primary residence that could have, in effect, a very large house that is legally an ADU. But in Traverse Heights, we've got houses that are under 800 square feet. Many of those lots are fortunately large enough that you can put a second house on. And I do appreciate that flexibility, though I can see a scenario where somebody has a 720 square foot house with an attached garage that then they try to say, hey, I'm going to call my existing house the ADU and then build a second house that's much larger. And does that meet our criteria? OSBT, Curt Brown, Hard to say, but I can't see that as being an actual problem if we're trying to just create more variety and the lot is large enough.

OSBT, Karen Hollweg, Brian. OSBT, Curt Brown, yeah I agree with Mitch it's I don't think that's an issue I don't think you can not I don't think if you build a second structure and one is you, you can declare. You have to live on one of the properties. I don't know which one. Maybe that is an issue. If that's an issue, then we have to change those regulations because I know people who want to build an ADU that they're going to live in and rent out their house.

For some people, it makes more sense to do it that way, too, actually, financially.

Yeah, if you're getting older and you have a multi-story house, you build a one-story ADU and then you rent out the rest of the house. So, if we can't do that, we need to address that. I think that, and I have a question. So, in the past, when the ADU was first adopted, I was here then. It did not have to be a separate unit. It could be part of the building. Do we still allow that? Yes.

Yeah.

Okay. So if we eliminate use, we eliminate that. But what happens if we have a house that's 3200 square feet and they want to break off half of it or that you find a logical space to make that break to build your one wall? And we say, no, that's too large. That's 1,200 square feet. So instead, you've got to go do this and that and the other thing to make it work. Well, then it's a duplex.

To turn it into a second unit?

So then is it a duplex? Does it matter? Does anybody even do that for ADUs anymore? I don't know. But I don't have a problem having other options for people. I think the 800 square feet could be... A minimum, not a minimum, you can build anything up to 800 square feet. If you want larger, then you could add a percentage to it. So it could be, so if your building is 800, if your building is 800 square feet and our percentage or is 700 square feet and you want to build a 1,200 square foot structure instead of playing around, that's the ADU. The reason I say this is because, Size of a structure, cost to build that structure, and the amount of money you can bring in renting that structure are all tied to each other. And the cost to build an 800-foot structure, to build a 1,000-foot structure compared to an 800-foot structure per square foot, there's not a big difference, okay? The smaller units, you pay all those up for mobilization costs, all those same contractors, they all charge you just to show up, okay? And it's like there's all sorts of those set costs that you're paying. And hence, you pay a ton of money for that 800 square feet. That means you got to rent it for more money. Whereas you could build 1,000 square feet and maybe, you know, so you add an extra bedroom there so you can house more people in it, it makes more sense. So I think the 800 foot, you could have it down there as a minimum maximum. So you could always build 800 square feet, no matter what, or a percentage of your building. And if you want to run into another problem, if that's a concern, but really I'm, You need to look at all the setbacks. If you eliminate the cap altogether, you got to look at all the setbacks and what that might mean and the lot coverage restrictions. Those are the things I'd want to look at going forward. That's it.

Yeah, then I'm going to go to Leslie just so everyone knows.

Just a few more comments in terms of size certainly from the construction perspective. I'm sure you're right. I'd also like to add in considerations like tree canopies and impervious surface coverage household sizes declining and you know let's let's be sure that we're baking in as much flexibility here and with with our our focus on um attainable affordable missing middle sorts of of housing which we just haven't been very successful at incentivizing yet that's it jerry

Then I'll go to Leslie.

Yeah, the only thing I'd like to know, so the pattern book and this is, maybe Brian remembers this, but I know in Morgan Farms, which was a PD, there was a pattern book for that development. I remember that causing later down the road issues because then when things were developed, there was this pattern book that kept being referenced and the design didn't meet it and there was all, So I just want to make sure, what are the limitations of a pattern book? Like, what if someone doesn't want to use the pattern book and they want to use their own design, is that allowed? Because I do think that would be allowed.

Most cities, that's how they do pattern book. It's an option. It reduces the costs up front. For some. For some that want to use it, but then other people can use their own design.

And that's where I just recall from, I think, Again, it was PUD, so maybe they made it different for Morgan Farms. But I remember the pattern book became this point of contention 15 years later because the pattern book was approved, and then they were veering from it.

There was also a change of hands, which adds to it.

Those are different pattern books, I think. Yeah. So a pattern book for Morgan Farms was about the whole— how the whole subdivision was supposed to look, how each section was supposed to look, and how it was supposed to be designed, the types of buildings, the size of the buildings. It was literally a site plan. Okay, and then it had images which showed the pattern, the type of buildings. So, and to change that was a major change. These I think we're talking simply about putting together, I'm assuming the city would do this, would pay for architects and builders and engineers to put together a number of different house patterns. In other words, builders drawings. that could be easily adapted to a standard city lot. If we actually have any of those, I don't know if we do. But if we did, you could easily adopt them. So you could go in, you could pick one of these. You would not have to hire a designer to do any of that work. You don't have to do any engineering. And the permitting architect, nobody hires architects anymore. I mean, they still do.

Some people do.

Certain people, they're not going to be, people who are architects are not going to be using pattern books, okay? Everyone else basically hires someone who can do drawings. You know, and then you, so you come in and then the city would reduce its permitting requirements because they don't, the review is already been done. So you could reduce some of the permits. And you would have the building code, construction codes for the county would also have to buy into this because they would be the same way. They would just basically look at, you submit that pattern and they have it and they approve it. It's a pre-approved pattern. As soon as you want to make a change, that all goes out the window.

Yeah. Mitch?

Yeah, and?

Oh, I'm sorry. After Mitch, we are going to Leslie.

Leslie can go next.

I just wanted to check in with you because this is a lot. I feel like somebody's going to have to re-listen to hear all the things that we have liked and disliked, and I'm sorry about that.

No, I think I did want to kind of summarize. I think what I'm hearing is that

It makes most sense to keep both options. and remove a lot of those restrictions for sure from ADUs, the ones we talked about plus the term of rental, you know, the 90-day thing. And by the way, that restriction on the location of the entrance, now I just lost it again. Where did that go? Okay. Only one entrance may be located on the facade of the primary building facing the street. So I think the idea there was that

They didn't want it to look like a duplex.

And they wanted this to be as innocuous and unnoticeable as possible. So I think a lot of the standards in here that were the concession to doing that don't make as much sense anymore. And I think that was one of them.

Because we allow duplexes by right now. Yeah. Yeah, get rid of that one.

Totally.

Makes sense.

But I, you know, I could be totally wrong, but I thought we only allow duplex. Oh, no, we do allow duplexes. Okay, I take that back.

Mitch?

Yeah, back on Pattern Book Homes, in the places where this has been done, Um, Muskegon area is, uh, some good examples in the city of Roosevelt Park, which is one of the suburbs immediately to south, has entire streets where it was, and you can look and each house looks different, but then you look at the architectural elements and realize There are only three or four houses and it was just cut and paste different elements so that does help and in some of their infill and Redevelopment of brownfield sites the city of Muskegon has made pattern books homes available But it works best If there is Not just one house here, one house there, whatever. If there's going to be a number of houses that are filling these same patterns and thus one or more contractors can say, hey, we've built literally this house or this ADU before. Here's our materials list. Here's our crew spreadsheets. We can just cut and paste down the line. What that could mean here is, say, if a developer like SOX, which has already proven with its front street development that they can do offsite modular construction and then build on a short timeline, something like that could end up being an option for ADUs or second homes. I don't know if it would be like Sox on Front Street where it does come in prefab sections, but hey, if there is enough interest in the community, that is something that would dramatically reduce the price per square foot to actually do the construction.

Yeah. Jackie? Just a thought that if we could sooner rather than later bring into the conversation our parking department as well as our mobility services just because, you know, quiet infill, one of the things that it puts pressure on is on street parking. and to understand if there are options that those folks see that might be enabling and again to make the increased density more palatable to the existing residents. I'd like to hear from them too about any ideas they could toss in. Brian?

i think pattern books for adus or second homes makes a lot of sense uh you know but that's really a city commission financing question if they want to pay for that i don't know what it costs and then they got to reach out to the county and see if they're into it but i don't know if it makes sense for primary homes in the city we don't build that many new primary homes yeah No, we don't have that much space.

And it also really helps if you have lot sizes and configurations that are consistent across the city, which we don't have to the same extent as other communities.

Yeah, my only fear with that would be, is there a way without making it super OSBT, Karen Hollweg, costly to the city to have a couple options that you can then configure because we have so many different like differing lot sizes or and I also don't want to see a bunch that pop up looking exactly the same so i'd want a couple some variety, but again, not. OSBT, Karen Hollweg, Like. chicken or the egg like it would be expensive but it helps and so that's just kind of my thought on that on pattern books it's it's you know it's expensive to you and i yeah to the city it's chump change yeah they spend millions on all sorts of things i have so much information to share with you okay but i i guess i'll just start with saying that actually for you know a couple of years in

in our office we've been talking about pre-approved plans and we've been talking to some companies one in particular just a couple days ago sent us we we got back in touch with them sent us a proposal for what a program might look like they offer lots of different options and the program that they throughout there for consideration would provide, you know, some upfront engagement with the community, you know, specific designs to fit our specific issues and, you know, a slew of several different options that become available and that are specifically designed for us.

And I guess I can tell you that option was somewhere around $50,000. There are other options and, you know, you can scale it up, you can scale it down, you can take out the public engagement part, you can have fewer home options. There are also options where you can take pre-approved, you know, they've already designed some things and you can get a subscription to those or you can have them design something and then buy a subscription for those. So every year you pay, it's something on the order of $1,000 per plan option that you have a subscription to. So maybe in the future we could. Add more if we need, yeah. Add some, take some out, design new ones to fit what we need. So, some of the information we got from them, some of their general recommendations are that it works best when you can stack incentives like the attainable housing option. Certainly, waiving permit fees, working with construction code to waive those fees, hookups for utilities, all of those things so that it can be as ready to go as possible. Another recommendation or another notion that they have is that there still are going to be

the realities of our market and it's not necessarily affordable housing. It's a quicker infill housing option that might save a little bit of money for people, but it's not gonna solve all of our housing problems. It's not necessarily going to be affordable. But it can become more affordable if we stack it with other incentives and so we should be, you know, keeping our eyes open and seeking out other ways that we can, again, stack it so that we can make this a package that people really want to take advantage of. And just a little aside, yeah, the pattern book thing versus kit homes versus pre-approved plans are all used interchangeably. For instance, the commons used to have a pattern book that was their zoning that was this thick. And according to restoring, they had to call in a particular architect to interpret it and to decide whether any new addition of a building or tiny change met the code or not because it was so dense and so detailed. And those are usually much more architecturally based and they're often part of like a form-based code. So I personally don't like using the word pattern book because it kind of brings that to mind and that was kind of a product of the 90s that has kind of gone by the wayside and not used as much anymore. But it is usually like one developer, one big development and then that's their pattern book. And that's their pick and choose modeling, you know. But then also, there's, I mean, if you look around the city, you see all kinds of twin houses. Yeah. So we do have a history of, you know, kind of a pattern book. And we have lots and lots of kit homes. And I happen to live in a kit home. And a lot of them are, you know, they're hard to recognize if you don't know what the kit homes are because they're not necessarily, most of them are not Sears kit homes in this area and most of them don't look like what you expect them to look like. So I love the idea of that and I, you know, they're starting to come back a little bit.

There are kit home options today.

And we certainly have been talking to organizations like Housing North about options for pre-approved modular, you know, homes and what, how those can be those second units, how we can make that more of a replicable model for people. But again, there's so many different situations lot to lot and lots of times access and like craning in a building can get difficult or impossible. So a lot of things that sound great don't necessarily pencil out for us. So it will be really interesting if we're able to work with somebody like, this is called Pattern Zones I think is the company. They've also done work in Michigan and for MML. which is how we kind of got on our radar. But it would be interesting to work with them and see what they see as the things that I think are insurmountable to try to create standardized systems you know, pre-approved plans that they may say don't worry about that, that's workable. You know, it will be nice to get someone to give us that kind of input and see what they can come up with for us. So I'm looking forward to that and I think we're kind of ready to roll on that as well and there are other companies that offer similar services so.

Cool. That's awesome. anything else from this group did i already jump to public comment i did not do public comment yet let's do public comment okay uh closing public comment coming back um any last comments we want to get in um so obviously we're this is we'll see this again it's going to come back with a lot of notes um are we allowed to make motions at special meetings

Yes. Yes. That's a meeting not a study session. Okay. Just for future reference.

For future reference. You can. When it's a special meeting, which we are having tonight.

Which I want to say to Brian, I made a special meeting thinking that we had something to take action on, but it actually is just a study session. So just, I want to be honest with you. I wasn't going to say anything. I was okay.

I mean, I could make a motion. Okay.

Okay, seeing nothing else, I think we've extensively talked about this. I think they have lots of notes. They'll come back with us with some, yeah, proposals. So we're going to move on to our last item, D, proposed childcare zoning amendments. I hope this one was also interesting to everybody. Again, I guess I'm throwing to Leslie.

Yeah, so this is another one of those things that's really, become more and more apparent that childcare options are a huge issue to not just Traverse City and our region and our state but it's, you know, it's a common, commonly heard issue not just cost but availability of childcare. And just as a side note, we did do a resiliency, I want to call it a resiliency plan but I'm going to call it a resiliency toolkit because that's what MEDC calls it. So it's something where they helped us to identify what our big, what the big issues were in our city that threaten our future resiliency whether it, is climate-based, economy-based, things from outside, or housing-based, or our workforce, things like that. So a lot of them were more broad and outside of zoning, outside of our boundaries. we honed it down to I think four different topics and one of them was childcare. So at that level that was recognized, it's certainly recognized in our strategic plan and we've been asked to take another look at childcare also in light of the fact that there's some indication that there is a childcare organization

And by that I mean like a commercial center, childcare center that wants to go in at property zoned OS, namely the civic center. And strictly speaking, it's not covered in the zoning ordinance. Similar to the farmer's market change that we made recently, this seems like an oversight in a district that we should add childcare centers into.

And while we're at it, we took a broader look and there are, I would say three different kinds of, there's three categories of childcare centers. Two are the residential childcare centers. They are defined under state law and there are certain things that we can't do be, you know, we're a little restricted under state law. So there's the family daycare, family residential care daycares and those are six kids and under and then there's the group child care homes and those are again a residential home caring for up to 12 kids 7 to 12. So generally in most municipalities the small ones and I think under the law we can't restrict them in any residence. So if you have a residence you can have the small one the family up to six and then if For a group one, it's often restricted to certain districts and or they require special land use permit or there's other restrictions like spacing requirements between one childcare center and the next. So that's what our ordinance looks like. It's a little sprinkling of the small ones are allowed everywhere, the larger ones are Only allowed in certain districts and or with all of those districts are a lot of restrictions. The law doesn't require that we have all of those restrictions. Don't forget they still get licensed by the state and that's quite a process. And the law also gives a lot of grace to incorporated cities and villages and lets you basically, that you know best unlike townships where they kind of say you can do this, you cannot do that. They give us a lot of latitude. So in a city, we can forego all of those rules. We can restrict further where we allow the larger ones. So the recommendation here is just to make it equal. Every district where there's a house, you can have the small ones. You know, no question there. The larger ones, we recommend that that equally be allowed in any residential home and that most of the rules go away other than requiring a permit for those. But the spacing standards, the requirement for having like a fenced in playground, things like that. We're not going to be the playground under these, you know, not be the playground police and not have all of those other restrictions. So that's my recommendation that we just make these as easy to get local approval for as possible. The group childcare homes, they don't come along very often. And lots of times when they do, it's because the licensee wants to have maybe seven or eight kids because they're caring for a couple of families and a lot of those kids are after school. So it's not as scary as it sounds. In most cases, it's not 12 infants or 12, it's not a mini school. It often is mostly after school care and families with two or three or four kids. And then secondly, we're recommending that we expand the commercial childcare centers to more districts and making them all used by right and also loosening up or eliminating the requirement that in some districts that they be associated only with a school or a church. So right now in all of our residential districts, if you want to have a child care center, it would have to be part of a school or a church. And in the end, I don't see a big difference between that because there's still going to be the same number of kids there potentially. There's still going to be the same amount of traffic and noise and the expected impact of having a childcare center. But to restrict it only to a church or school seems a little bit too restrictive to me. Again, these are all based a little bit on just my past experience and also just seeing where we have these strange little pockets when we actually do this matrix. It seems a little antiquated. And then very lastly is that we call them childcare organizations. And if you actually look at the state's definition, childcare organization is the umbrella term for everything including the residential. We're just using the wrong term. So we should call them childcare centers and use the standard definition for a childcare center. And those are the commercial ones that are not in-home. So that's it.

Jerry? Yes, so as someone that has kids in all sorts of things, I've been in a childcare center. I'm in a family childcare home right now in Slabtown. I'm all for this because. obviously need we were lucky that we got into all this and now I have a kid going to kindergarten so I'm almost done with one of them but anyway so yes I'm very in support of standardizing making this a little more wide spread and cleaning this up and that's also in the strategic plan okay in I know Mitch had his hand up and then we'll do Mitch Jackie yeah

I generally support a little more streamlining and loosening up certain things like distance requirements. It's aside from one competing with another, it's not like it harms the community to have more places where kids are. At least I should hope not. In terms of where they're allowed, I am a little puzzled why both residential child care homes and group child care homes are allowed in our industrial district, but not in our hospital district. And it seems like Those could be flipped. Not that employers in an industrial district don't have need for child care, but it seems a poor sighting to if you're having factories in our industrial park at Narrow Park to have kids right next to noisy factories. But at a hospital, it seems fairly reasonable. I understand why associating group facilities with a school or a church makes sense, but I'm afraid that that can set up scenarios where it ends up essentially being a tenant organization in building that then the building ceases to be the school or church that it had been operating as and okay the church on Ramsdell is continuing to operate as a church but somebody could move in and say hey this is an existing church building we don't mind if a child care group is there some of the time but we are going to be using the building for some other use And I think that we should have at least some flexibility or maybe a broadening of categories that can be Qualifying spaces.

Jackie? I was very puzzled to see that the church and school sponsorship requirement was there for childcare centers. So, I think taking a look at that and the need for it is very appropriate. If that is eliminated, It seems to me that it opens the opportunity for commercial franchises of childcare centers and that brings along with it issues of branding and signage and some of those things that within residential areas maybe are already perfectly well regulated but I'd like to be sure that that's being evaluated. And in terms of childcare as a use by right within OS, I wanted to mention that as an, add on to the parks and recreation master plan that there's the intention to create a full inventory of all of our park properties and specifically identifying zoning by the end of the year. So I think coming out of that inventory we're gonna see that We have a huge variety of sizes and shapes and flavors of OS zoned properties within the parks and rec and that we maybe want to take a look at that range before putting together a blanket use by right. So, it'll be another data point to come in by the end of the year.

Brian, I know you had your hand up. I'm going to speak real quick because I agree with getting rid of the recommended amendments two, three, and four. The only one I worried about was, and then adding it as a use by right everywhere except OS. I feel like that was a little weird. I think what Jackie just brought up is fine. I guess my question about that was, because they require a facility, Does the facility have to exist before the use by right or could, no, because somebody could just purchase a portion of OS land if it goes up for sale and then just put it in. But there are so many different OS spaces like that whole chunk of wetlands at the corner of 14th and Division.

And disposal of city park land is really complicated.

Yeah.

And highly litigious.

It just felt really weird and in an attempt to try to move this without getting hung up on that, I wanted, I just wanted to say two, three, four, go. And then in terms of allowing it use by right everywhere but OS because it just feels like that's more of a can of worms. Go ahead, Brian.

Okay. So I thought I read somewhere, but now I'm not seeing it or can't find it, that the family child care home by state law isn't subject to zoning, correct? Right. So we should just eliminate that from the ordinance except as a definition that says not subject to zoning.

Well, I think the way it's usually done is just clearly say it's permitted by right in all residential districts because that's what the law says.

Now, people need a site plan for that? Okay. You guys go do it your way. I think my way is easier, less confusion. We don't have a chart that shows something that says, what is a, of course, you should really have little things like how many people are, children can be in these, so, because the terms are so strange. Yeah, I don't have a problem with, You know, for the group family homes, I don't have a problem with, I mean, I remember when we did this and allowing it residential, and there was a lot of pushback from the community. And I don't know if any, I think, I don't know if any or how many got established, but it's like this was a compromise. So, and so I think it's, people are used to it now. No one's concerned. I agree with what Mitch said earlier. It's not a big deal. So, boom. I don't understand the whole parking requirements. But if you're going to require a site plan for it, you should have a, should designate a drop off area. So, and that's not necessarily on site, but you should, for safety, you should have a drop off area required. I know that issue has come up in the past. I like changing the name to match the state. And the only other question I have is the definition, the new definition you have in here for child care center. Is this the state's definition? Because I'm not a fan.

Yeah, there actually there's a shorter one. Yeah. That removes a lot of this. And I almost changed it in the last minute. But yeah, it doesn't need does not mean need to be this long. But also, I thought, If you did want to look and see what a childcare center under the law really is, it's this, if you want to read those. So, there's a lot of things that don't fall under that category.

I would just refer to the state and leave it at that. Yeah.

But there is a much shorter version we could use.

Because that's like tells us something it's not. Yeah. So, and I was really, I don't have a problem with all the districts including OS. Open space districts are all city or county owned or controlled properties. If they want to do it, that's up to them. And if they want to run something or build a facility in one of the parks, that's up to them. They're going to have to go through the public process, justify it, everything they want to do. And I know they're talking about it, but I just don't have a problem with it i think their numbers are kind of off but the last their proposal that i read about in the paper for the city it's more expensive than just about everybody else who offers it so just so you know hopefully that will get adjusted if you move that we move those processes forward but um and i was just i don't know how far back the $600 for babysitting. Exceeds $600. Where that number comes from? I mean, my sisters were exceeding $600 back when I was a kid and that was a long time ago. So, but anyways, we're getting rid of that number anyway, so.

Yeah, you know, I didn't even look at those definitions but you're right, those aren't the standard ones either. I'll double check those. I think we could stand to standardize that and shorten them. Yeah.

Well, that's the city's current one. I'm assuming we're going to rewrite those. So, you know, how much babysitting money you can make.

I want my kids to go to where it's $600 a year. Even for after school care. Yeah, like my kid gets paid way more than that in a week. So, yeah.

Maxwell?

So, I'm fortunate to participate in the Northwest Regional Child Care Coalition through Networks Northwest. Some of the work that we're doing focuses on changes to zoning. So this is really encouraging to see Traverse City taking this step. Certainly not without precedent. Manistee has done similar changes to their zoning to be more childcare friendly. Some of the other work that the coalition is doing is pilot for wages for those in childcare education, early education and seeing if there's an incentive structure that helps with recruitment and retention because that's another element to the figuring out the childcare issues that we're facing. I echo Brian's comments with respect to the definitions. I think it would probably be easier and cleaner to reference the state definitions and then also to point out that, The group childcare homes, those could be done by right without a permit too if that was something that you were interested in looking at. But generally speaking, I think this is a step in the right direction.

So Brian, you have me partially convinced on the OS. So you're saying you're okay with if the city or county decides to sell off a chunk of that to then, and then somebody, the buyer decides they want to put in a facility? Because that could happen.

If the city or the county decides to sell off a chunk of that property, they're going to apply to have it rezoned anyways. No one's going to buy a park and put in a childcare facility. It doesn't make financial sense. So unless the city gives a property away. And then sale of city parkland is subject to a referendum. So the county, who knows what the county's gonna do? The county's the county. Depends who's sitting in those chairs. They've given away parks before. But not for conversion to commercial use. Doesn't happen very often. It does happen around the country. But up here, even for Grand Traverse County commissions, and we've had some previous commissions that were way more conservative than our current ones, nobody was talking about selling parkland because they considered themselves conservatives, which meant conservation in all things.

So, yeah, I just don't see it happening. Okay. I'm convinced. I'm fine with it.

Do we need a motion for this? I'm reading in the recommendation.

There's text for that at the bottom, but it sounds like we have consensus on quite a few items.

It says, motion instructing staff to prepare complete ordinance amendment language and further to set up public hearing.

I mean, if you want to make a motion.

Where is it? I lost it.

Well, I think it's if we want to make a public, if we want to set it for a public hearing in August, right? I don't think I want that for public hearing in August. That's in two weeks.

Yeah, I don't think, yeah, I'm sorry, that August meeting probably won't work.

It's too late to notice that anyway.

Yeah. So the motion, it shouldn't have called out a motion.

Yeah.

Maybe not. We can prepare another version of this in light of what we've heard. And then, you know, it's probably, If all these, if the stars align on all of these, having one public notice to cover all three of these text amendments is most efficient. So just save a little bit in publication costs.

I don't know if we want to have three public hearings on all three of these at the same time.

Okay. But either way, I think we need more time.

Yeah. I'm thinking bring it back maybe in September for one of them and see where we're at. Are we going to have a second meeting in August?

I don't know. Sean will be back on Monday, so that's a question for him.

I think we have to go to public comment before we discuss anything else. Oh, good call.

Doug, would you like to make a comment on this item? Okay. Closing public comment. So now we're going to, anything else from this group? Okay. Now I have to go back to my agenda because we have reports. I know we have a couple at least. Any reports from the city commission?

I think I've reported on the relevant things as we went along.

Yeah. The biggest thing is that ADU discussion is happening at both levels and we had a robust discussion about it right here tonight.

Okay. Thank you very much. Planning department. I think you basically just gave an update. Anything else? Stay tuned. You'll find out by the first meeting whether or not we're having the second meeting for sure. I'll know more next week, I'm hoping.

Is that sufficient for the group? Okay.

update from joint commons planning commission you go mitch okay well uh we discussed a number of things uh including the master plan process for that which has been on whole paused a little but will be going forward um discussed infrastructure and storm water how those are going and then we did have uh Quite a discussion about what can happen or what may happen in the future with roads, since Red Drive, which had been a dirt road south of Greenspire, where part of the road is a parking lot, was recently closed by Garfield Township. You can still walk down it, but it's had a culvert fail, and... They've decided that the township didn't want to spend whatever it would cost to bring it up to road standards, so it's closed. But then what does that mean for long-term planning, especially as was brought to our attention by a letter from the community? The master plan, originally back 16 years ago that we are in the process of rewriting, uh recommends uh transferring all the private private roads into a single ownership scheme which would likely be the city as public roads so what that would look like It's hard to see, but there is a lot of problems caused by some roads being city roads, some roads being county road commission, some roads being township owned, but the Garfield Township doesn't build roads. And many roads, like Cottage View Drive, being private roads that are now split between multiple different condo associations and private property owners. So it is difficult then to maintain the roads and to have a coherent strategy for how do you not get 100 yards of the road replaced, but a whole stretch of road replaced if and when it needs it.

It was a long conversation.

Yeah.

Update from Board of Zoning Appeals.

We haven't had a meeting. But in another township, Leland Township has some vacancies on their Board of Zoning Appeals, the appointments to which are contentious enough that it might lead to the recall of the township supervisor. So planning and zoning does matter.

Oh, I skipped it. I'll do it now. I'm so sorry. Thank you, Katie. Update on the riparian buffer committee.

So of course the committee hasn't met again, but there have been a few things that have come up. This week I'm meeting on site with Willow Creek Condominiums. That's at like Oak and second-ish?

Third.

Third. And they are... You know, they're concerned about the NOMO area which is 10 feet and their entire backyard is 10 feet. So, you know, we just want to take another look at that and kind of do more ground truthing. Some other things have come up in regards to parking that I never would have thought about. within the buffer area relating to actually East Bay and some situations there. So I think we need to make some tweaks based on that. So, you know, just people are knowing that this is out here and as things come up or they have questions about it, I think there, We are kind of able to test it a little bit more but then we also, there are components of it if you recall where we really could use some very specialized consultant input and the city has, approved a contract with gei and others for the shoreline restoration project and so we do have some direction from the city manager that we can fold them into reviewing this and providing a little bit more information just to shore it up a little bit

Yeah, that's pretty good.

And to provide some of the, you know, appendix level information that isn't quite there. So, give us a little time, but that's plugging along. Thank you.

Grand Traverse County.

I don't have a whole lot to update tonight. We have our housing study that's currently in process. Be happy to share more on the coming months once we have a report. And we're getting close to finalizing our plan for a community development initiative. So more to come on that in the coming months as well.

Thank you. Looks like we have a receive and file item from Acme Township. And now we're on to general public comment. Seeing none, I'm going to close public comment and appreciate everybody for making it through a three-hour meeting. We're adjourned. We had a lot of items.