City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm going to call the June 1st meeting of the West Des Moines City Council to order. Wake up, everybody. I invite you to all join us. Stand and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

If you weren't awake, now you are. Welcome, everybody. Please sign in. Five members present. Ryan, have there been any changes to the agenda?

No changes, Your Honor.

Can I get a motion to approve the agenda as distributed?

So moved.

Kayser, second. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Please vote. Five yes. Okay. Item 1A is presentation of proclamations. We've got one proclamation tonight. We've got Pride Month for June 2026th. I'm going to read the proclamation, and we've got a number of people here for this proclamation. We'll have you join us after we're done doing the proclamation up front for a picture. Whereas the City of West Des Moines recognizes and proclaims the month of June 2026 as Pride Month, and whereas the City of West Des Moines is a diverse and vibrant community that is committed to raising awareness by supporting the visibility, equality, dignity, and inclusion of the LGBTQIA plus people, and whereas in support of the city's commitment to equality, we implemented a municipal equality index scorecard, a rating conducted by the Human Rights Campaign, to examine how inclusive our laws, policies, and services are of LGBTQIA plus people who live and work in West Des Moines. And whereas, despite our accomplishments, there is still plenty of work ahead, more education and awareness remain vital to ending discrimination and prejudice. By recognizing Pride Month, we increase awareness and provide support and advocacy for our LGBTQIA plus community. Several pride celebrations are happening this June, including the Valley Junction Pride Parade on Sunday, June 28th from 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. Let's stand together in advancing our nation's founding principles that all people are born equal in dignity and rights. Now, therefore, I, Russ Trimble, Mayor of the City of West Des Moines, Iowa, do hereby proclaim or declare June 26th. June 2026 as Pride Month, together let us commit to embracing the diverse experiences and expressions that enrich our city and ensure all residents are afforded equal opportunities to thrive regardless of their sexual orientation, signed this first day of June 2026. With that, the people that are here for that, a lot of our human rights commissioners are here and others as well. Why don't you meet us down front for a picture.

Let's do two rows. Smaller people up in front, vertical challenge. Okay, one, two, three.

Okay, I'm going to do another one, two.

Thank you.

Okay, those that were here for the proclamation, please don't feel like you have to stay for the rest of the meeting. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. You can't stay if you want to. Okay, moving on with item 2, citizens forum. This is a time for anybody that doesn't have an item, either on item 6, public hearings, or item 7, new business, to come and address the council. And we will start with M.J. Hogue. M.J., if you'd give us your name and address for the record. And again, five minutes, civil and respectful. Go ahead, you've got the floor, M.J., whenever you're ready.

I'm Jay Hoag, 413 2nd Street. So I'm here to talk about item 4E, the city detect contract. So as you guys probably know, but not all the people watching might not know, city detect basically straps a camera to one of the code compliance vehicles and they drive around town recording everything, looking for code violations. It's sort of a speed camera for how faster grass is growing. Not a terrible idea in theory, but I know you guys don't always have time to read through contracts with a fine-tooth comb, so I went through the contract, and I thought I'd bring up a few things that I found interesting. So one of the things it says is they'll protect the confidentiality of customer data. Well, that sounds good. It goes on further to say that processing of that data by the AI system will only happen within the United States, which is even better, right? Off to a great start. I would note, AI systems do tend to have multiple components. One is a computer component, which this would limit to the US. The other is a human component, right? Humans kind of look at pictures that classify things. So if you've ever filled out a CAPTCHA, you are acting as a human classifier. So this language doesn't necessarily restrict that to the U.S., but hopefully that's just linguistic oversight and not me foreshadowing the next slide. So one of the things the contract says is that we grant them a worldwide right to process the data. Well, if they're processing the data, limiting it to within the U.S., it wouldn't need a worldwide right, so that's a little odd. It also says, well, customer data is not analytical data or raw data. That makes me raise an eyebrow, right? Well, so what is customer data? So according to the contract, customer data is basically any data that a city staffer would enter into the system, stuff like case notes. Raw data, on the other hand, is audio, video, images, GPS coordinates, basically anything that their system records. Why a system meant to tell you whether your grass is too long needs a microphone to record audio, don't know. But if you're driving around a neighborhood filming everything, you're inevitably gonna capture some slice of life things, right? If you're out walking your dog and that vehicle drives by, smile, you're on camera. If your kids are out playing in the front yard, running through the sprinkler system on a warm summer day, that precious memory has been captured. So all of the bits of life that actually represent a privacy concern are in the raw data. The raw data is not customer data. According to the contract, the raw data belongs to the vendor. In fact, they want you to know they own it so much, they said it multiple times. So we've defined customer data, we've put this nice hard protective shell around customer data and then defined any data that actually represents a privacy concern as existing outside of that protective shell and belonging to the vendor. And the contract puts no real limits on what the vendor can actually do with that data. So if they want to sell a condition report for neighborhoods to real estate developers looking for distressed neighborhoods to buy up, they could do that. If they want to sell pictures of your kids frolicking in the front yard, contract doesn't say they can. Heck, it says they own the picture. Now, you might be thinking, MJ, well, don't be so alarmist. This is just a pilot program. We want to see if it's worth the privacy trade-offs, if it's worth the money we'd be spending. In short, we want to see if it works. Well, according to the contract, you can't tell us. So even though it's our tax dollars being spent, even though you are in theory beholden to us, the residents, according to the contract, you cannot tell us whether or how well the system even works. In fact, this vendor is so averse to the idea of transparency that they explicitly call out the Iowa Open Records Law in the contract and say if anybody asks for a little bit of sunshine on what they're doing, you have to notify them so they can fight it. Considering this city pretty recently got slapped by the courts for trying to hide part of its FOC implementation, considering signing a contract where you promised that vendor, who will be filming people, that you'll keep secrets from us, not a great book. In short, this is a terrible, grossly one-sided contract. It demands secrecy where there should be transparency and it provides no meaningful protections for the privacy of the people it will inevitably end up recording. It is a bad contract and you should reject it.

I have a question. MJ, thank you for the presentation. Who in legal reviewed the contract? Because I didn't review this one. I reviewed the one for flock, but.

Jessica.

Jessica, did we have outside counsel help?

We did not on this. Okay. I would note there is a provision that indicates that CityDetect will not sell the raw data to third persons.

It does say that. However, as soon as you process the data at all, if you resize it, color correct it, crop it, it's no longer raw data, and so it would not be bounded by that restriction.

Yeah, that's the concern, right?

Mm-hmm.

I'm looking through the privacy policy now.

Yep. The privacy policy, as written, appears to me to only apply to the staffers who would be using the system, not people captured by it.

Thank you, MJ.

And also, Greta, Wynne, and Paul, you were involved in this as well, Paul Talke. the license plates and faces are gonna be blurred out, correct? So would the raw data have that or just the data that we get? Because I guess I don't understand what the, really what the concern is is because I'm pretty sure that when Google Earth drives by and takes a picture of my house that, That information's out there as well, so I don't see the concern.

License plates and faces will be blurred out, and it's not a filming, it's picture taking, so to categorize it as a filming system isn't exactly correct. And the raw data is the data that they need to review to provide us with the information that the city would have on potential violations. So the raw data, specifically in this contract, Jessica insisted that we put in the contract that they could not sell the raw data. So if they do, they're in violation of the contract.

But the problem is they're going to take that raw data in the United States and then put it outside to somebody else, and they're going to do model training with it, and that's the issue. And MJ hit the nail on the head when he said, when he talked about the difference between the two. Now, I wouldn't expect you to know this, but that's somebody our attorney should have known. You're trying to run a department here, right? Not do contract work. Well, yeah. That's like.

But as it takes pictures, Paul, is that blurring out or is it after the fact and it gets manipulated and blurred out?

When they take the pictures, my understanding is it gets blurred out.

But the blur out is not the raw data. That's after fact processing.

Could be. I'm not 100% sure.

Yeah. The contract also doesn't specify anything in regards to that.

The fact that they've got a global or worldwide clause in there tells me they're going to do something with it.

Doug, this is Jessica. I don't know if you can hear me. I'm on the Teams meeting and can try to answer some of these questions if that would be helpful.

Yep, go ahead.

So I worked as I could with them on the raw data. I had the similar concerns that MJ brought up. Greta and I talked about this in our office. And as Paul is describing, the raw data, how it was described to us is they – When they go through, the device is going to take more than one photo. Not all of those photos are going to be clear. Some of them are going to be blurry. And so what we end up with is the singular photo. that is the clear photo. Now I understand the concern that they're going to take that those six five other photos or whatever they have to go use to I think Doug if I'm hearing you correct correct me if I'm wrong to train their system to do better. And what our concern what I what I understood the City Council's concern or at least some of the council members concern was that we did not want any of the data that was collected in West Des Moines to be sold or profited on by third parties. The addition of the they won't sell the the raw data was the the best compromise I could get to with them. And it is something that they do not put in other contracts with other cities. And so that's what we were able to get to. And as far as the open records law and the confidentiality provisions I what that is protecting for them is their proprietary information. But we as a city have a we have to provide information that is not called out as a confidential exception in the Iowa open records law. So that has to be in every contract. I will tell you that in almost every I.T. contract or anything technical with software it's going to have a statement about confidential information because of trade secrets proprietary information and to protect the city. We have it in there that while we have to give them notice, it's not a default to the contract if we don't. Also, we got a mutual provision for liability. We are also limited in the contract for any damages to the same extent that they are to the contract limit, which typically doesn't happen. As far as the privacy policy, that isn't something normally maintained on the website and can change without the city's knowledge. We incorporated it into ours. And the content that they talk about in there is shared with their service providers that they need to share with to be able to provide the product to the city without that sharing of information to some individual. of those providers they're unable to provide to us what what they're telling us they can get to us so if these are if there's concerns on that contract that council um feels strongly about that i was unable to negotiate i can try to go back to the table with them but this was paul was on a couple calls with me this was something that we went back and forth with them on a number of times and this is what the contract was that we were able to get to to present to council to get this product out on the streets of West Des Moines which my understanding was the goal to get some of this done during the summer so I don't have the contract in front of me, quite frankly. I'm at home, and I wasn't planning on having this many questions, but I'm happy to, if this is something that council doesn't feel comfortable answering or making a decision on tonight, I can get you some additional answers if the item isn't voted on.

Thank you, Jessica. Okay, any other discussion on this before we move on?

Well, Kevin had a question about how it's different from Google Street View. I'm happy to answer that if you'd like me to, Kevin.

Yeah, if you're an expert on Google Earth, go ahead.

Yeah, so one of the ways that it's different from Google Street View, well, the contract doesn't say they have to blur faces, but if they do that, that would be similar to Google Street View. Another difference is just in frequency. So you're a Waterworks guy, so I'll use Waterworks as an example. If Waterworks reads your meter once a month, they know how much to bill you. They have a rough idea of how many people live in your house, and they can figure out which months you go on vacation, because that's going to show up in changes in your water usage. If Waterworks reads your water bill every day, they're going to have a pretty good idea of what your schedule looks like, right? If you're working at the office five days a week or you're working from home three days a week, do you have ragers every Saturday night? They're going to see that on the water usage. If Waterworks is reading your meter continuously, they'll know every time you use the toilet. How frequently you run through, how frequently you collect the data has a big impact on how much of a privacy violation it is. So Google Street View, they run through every couple of years. Not gonna learn a ton. This system, presumably be running through every month, every week, sometimes maybe even every day. That changes dramatically how much you can learn about people in their neighborhoods.

Okay. Thank you for that explanation, MJ. Appreciate it. Appreciate you bringing this forward. I've just got one question for Jessica. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Councilman Elliott.

Excuse me. Thank you. My comment is just in terms of we have a legal staff. We trust that our legal staff is going to do their due diligence. MJ, I appreciate your slide presentation, but of course it was from your point of view. We trust our legal counsel to keep us out of trouble.

This is the exact point I was going to make in a different fashion and that is asking Jessica a question Jessica if you're if you can unmute yourself I guess you know you know what we're dealing with we're wanting to make sure that we're protecting the privacy of our residents yet at the same time using these new technological tools to be able to make sure that they're safe or in the case of flock cameras or in this case to be able to use AI to see if there's any nuisance violations since we're getting a number of newer complaints about nuisance violations. These things are increasing, especially in older parts of the city. So I guess, Jessica, my question to you is as our city attorney and knowing exactly what we're going after here, to protect the privacy of our citizens and protect their data. Do you feel that our citizens are protected adequately in this contract?

As I read it and with my conversations with City Detect, I do. Paul and I would not have presented it to the council if we did not equally feel that there were adequate protections. Okay. And again, you know, if there's things that we learned in this first year, we will absolutely make changes going forward.

Well, and that's, I guess, to the point that Councilman Elliott was making. You know, we hire you guys for your legal expertise. We rely on you to be able to protect the public, both their public safety as well as their privacy. And you negotiated this contract with that in mind, obviously, which is why we have the different definitions of data. And so, I guess... feel like we're adequately protecting our residents with this and MJ I would encourage you that if you don't feel that way to contact Greta have a meeting with Greta and Jessica and if we need to come back and reconsider the vote assuming this item passes then we'll do that and go back and negotiate the contract but I think right now based on how they've answered. I think that people are adequately protected, their privacy's protected, and this is a great tool that we're gonna be able to use to make sure that we're cleaning up the city and keeping it nice and neat for everybody.

Russ, I've got one question for MJ.

Yeah, go ahead, Kevin.

MJ, since you seem to be an expert on cameras, what is the policies of Walmart, Target, Jordan Creek Town Center, any place like that, with their raw data? Because they're taking pictures of you and me and everybody else that drives in and out of that parking lot all the time.

I can avoid those places. It's a heck of a lot harder to avoid my own neighborhood.

So you never go anywhere in the city because every place got cameras. You drive down your street, I got cameras that show out to the street. That's just, that's my comment.

Okay, with that we're going to move on. MJ, thank you for the presentation. I'd encourage you to get together with our legal staff should you still think that we have an issue with this. And legal staff, if MJ makes a good point, we'll bring it back. We'll reconsider the vote. We've got two meetings after this initial meeting to be able to do that. And we can do that, undo this, and go back to... negotiating table if that's if this is a problem, but I don't think that there is at this point so Okay, anybody else in the council chambers for citizens forum sure come on up and give us your name and address for the record Again five minutes civil and respectful My name is Martin Gustafson, I live at 3202 Woodland Avenue and today I'm here to discuss City Code 4-4-5 Why don't you tell us what City Code 4-1-5 is?

It is the Notice to Abate Service Part 3B, which is to cut the grass underneath 10 inches. So I've been searching for an alternative means to constantly mow, and... have a discussion on what would be proper to maybe from the property lines you know like from the curb the curb area and like on the sidewalk and last year I tried to file an appeal for a for an administrative hearing but I was given a judicial hearing so this was only basically seeing if I was if West Des Moines was following the law and my My concerns and objectives were not able to be heard and I've been trying to ask for means so I can explain myself so we can so I could talk and discuss like other means without me being a nuisance and

Why don't you tell us what the situation is? You've been getting nuisance violations for having grass greater than 10 inches? Yes, I have. Okay, because my understanding is that our code enforcement does the best they can to work with our residents. Yeah. If you need more time, if you're on vacation, or if your mower's broken, or...

There has been a little cooperation, but... It's gotten to the point where they recommended me to go through the legal system to take care of the matters.

I'm sorry, I missed that.

To go through what? To go through the court to take care of the issue. Like, I have no other means to... Can you explain to me what the issue...

I mean, you're here in front of us now. You've got all of us listening. How many violations have you been given?

So, it'd be 23 was, like, the first time that I got a notice. And I tried to object and explain my issues. And... kind of went through the courts and they came through and cut down all my biodiversity that I've been working on and trying to promote. So that was a loss from there. And then I'm trying to still maintain

So you're trying to maintain biodiversity in your lawn by keeping it longer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And unfortunately, it is inconsistent with how our city code reads.

Yeah, and that's why I'm trying to have a discussion with where I can address my concerns and objectives to the issue and work on a balance for a compromise where... You're happy and I'm happy as well.

Here's what we're going to do. We're going to refer this to one of our city council subcommittees. I believe this belongs in code compliance. So the next time the code compliance meets, we'll get this on the agenda. You can bring it up. Two council people sit on that subcommittee as well as city staff. You can bring up all of your concerns there, air them out to the council members and staff. You can have arguments and disagreements and you name it. And then after that, we go from there.

Yeah, and that's what I've been trying to do the whole time. And, you know, any decision that is made, I'm willing to follow, you know, just like, you know, all the decisions that have been made.

But you understand whatever the law is in place, you have to abide by it. And that's what I'm trying to do. That's what is, to me. It's not that you're not guilty of the code violation. You're guilty as the code reads now. But you'd like to have more biodiversity and not have to cut your grass when it's 10 inches. So that's the argument that you've got to make to the Code Compliance Committee that we need to look at our ordinance and change that so you have more biodiversity in your lawn. Now, the thing is, with all due respect, we've got to look at that and your... you're wanting to have, you know, biodiversity as well as other residents, 74,000 of them that live around you and what their wishes are for their properties and their neighbors' properties. All of that we have to take into account.

And I would like to take that into consideration too because I even thought about, you know, what if I just sat and walked, asked if there was what my neighbors were concerned as they walked by, you know, and take that into consideration so that...

The next community compliance meeting is going to be July 6th at 4.30 here at City Hall. You've got to understand that anything that Any changes to an ordinance is not just for your neighborhood, it's for the entire city. So that's what's going to be taken into consideration.

So I was trying to search, you know, what if there's an application that I could ask for to have a larger area in my yard to promote biodiversity, you know, like, and yeah, so...

So let's bring this to the code compliance city council subcommittee at that next meeting. Let's get it on the agenda. Will you have a chance to present to the council and all of your points? They could hear that and then we'll go from there.

So can I add one thing about what has happened recently with trying to work with the code compliance? Sure. So I was in here two weeks ago last Monday and I talked to the city attorney and he said that he was going to give me a week to abate my front yard. And then he would have a community compliance person come by and talk to me. And he said that he'd be over on Monday. Well, that Monday was Memorial Day. And so I waited until that Tuesday and nobody showed up until Thursday. And it was just Adam from the city compliance saying that we have that we're going to abate the the front yard and you know I was just kind of Sideswept and thought we were working together and then you know just the communication was was broke down from what I was Okay, well we're gonna straighten this out at the Community Compliance City Council subcommittee, and you said July 6 July 6 July 6th, okay, right um is Okay, yeah, so well come up with what I should, what I'd like to offer. Yep. Okay.

Yep. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Anybody else in the council chambers before I go online? All right. Come on up. Give us your name and address for the record.

Molly Carstens, I live at 49 Woodland Avenue. I just wanted to tell you guys thanks for allowing me to be a part of the community engagement program. I wanna say thanks for offering it in our city, because some of the Metro cities don't offer this. I enjoyed it, I met a lot of great people that I have now became friends with. I saw a lot of great things I would have never seen otherwise. From this I learned a lot and I've gotten more involved in our city because of this. I hope you guys continue it for years to come and I encourage all people of West Des Moines to get involved.

Excellent, thank you for taking part in it.

Molly, you are one of our stars, so thank you.

Yes, I was explaining at the last meeting, too. I mean, education of the public is one of the biggest challenges that we have because everybody's got busy lives every single day. They've got a family. They've got kids. They're trying to get to different practices and whatnot. And so, you know, they rely on our elected officials to, you know, run the city and run it efficiently and effectively. And oftentimes there's... Certain things that come up that people are unaware of and you know through this You get to learn some of the different things that go on in the city how the city operates And so it's it's great citizen engagement. We appreciate everybody that stepped up to serve on that committee So Molly, thanks for being here and thank you for your comments really appreciate it Okay, anybody else in the council chambers before I go online? Alright, I'm going to go online. Please hit star six, not pound six, not hashtag six, but star six to unmute yourself. Give us your name and address for the record if you'd like to address the Council for Citizens Forum. Is there anybody online that would like to address the Council on Citizens Forum? Okay, this is the time for Citizens Forum. Anybody online that would like to address the council on Citizens Forum, please hit star six to unmute yourself, give us your name and address for the record. I'm gonna give another 10 seconds and then we're gonna move on. I'm gonna assume that there's nobody online for Citizens Forum. Okay, Citizens Forum is closed. Now I'm gonna move on to item three, Mayor, Council, Manager Report, Other Entities Update, and we're gonna start with the Other Entities Update portion of the program. Yes, we're gonna do them first, yep. So with that, we have got our West Des Moines Chamber of Commerce here. If you guys want to come up and present, the podium is yours. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I always wonder that, I just don't know the answer.

The Chamber has an address.

The Chamber.

Okay, all right. Thanks, Ryan.

Go ahead, Katherine, the floor is yours.

Thank you all. Well, thank you all. It's an honor to be here today on this gorgeous West Des Moines day. And this is our annual update. We're very, very excited. Just want to thank you all for being here. Thank you for everybody else in the room today. So on behalf of the West Des Moines Chamber of Commerce and the foundation, thank you for your partnership, your leadership, and your continued investment in our incredible community. Tonight, we're not here to present every detail of what we do, but it's going to be a lot. of course, but instead we're here to give you a glimpse into the scope of our work and the impact we all created together. With just five full team team members at the West Des Moines Chamber, we have a small but mighty team, we've powered hundreds of volunteers, board members, sponsors, committee leaders, and community champions who help make all this work possible. So together we have built one of the most recognized chambers in America, we're so proud to say, For instance, in 2022, the West Des Moines Chamber was named a National Finalist for Chamber of the Year, one of the top three in the USA in our size category. We will continue to shout that from the rooftops, even though that was in 2022, it still carries through today. We would not be able to create the best chamber in America without the help of our city friends. Thank you so very much. So tonight we have executive board members, Maria Davis, our 2026 chair and Ann Cooper, our secretary. And I am going to share, we're all going to share how we're helping strengthening businesses in our region, develop talent, elevate the city of West Des Moines and invest in the future of our city. And with that, I'm gonna turn it to Anne. Here we go.

And I'll be the button pusher. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you, everyone. Good evening. I would love to just shout from the rooftops along with Catherine the fact that for more than 102 years, the Chamber has been proud to serve the businesses, residents, and community of West Des Moines. Our mission is simple. Important yet simple to position West Des Moines as the best city in America to live, work and play while championing business success and workforce growth. We're proud to be the largest chamber in our region now serving more than 1,000 member businesses. And this is a really big milestone and it's been recognized officially by the Des Moines Business Record Book of Lists. And our members represent tens of thousands of employees and every sector of the economy. Our membership continues to grow because businesses see the value in the connections, advocacy, and resources we provide. We have a record-breaking 30 members of our prestigious President's Council. And this picture here is Catherine with the Chase president, Jamie Dimon. I love Jamie. She's got a good picture there. The West Des Moines Chamber has received numerous awards over the past six years, and from startups to major employers, we work every day to help businesses thrive. Our pillars and areas of focus include leadership development, business advocacy, community empowerment, and economic development. Our marketing reach is extensive. We have 166 newsletters annually with more than 850,000 impressions, 40,000 monthly social media reach, and over 35,000 website visitors each month. And if you haven't watched it yet, the Drive podcast is one of my favorite things, and you get to see Catherine interviewing some really great leaders in our community. These communications help tell the story of West Des Moines and spotlight local businesses and community success. Tonight we're going to spotlight our email newsletters. Each week we produce a newsletter called Coming Up that highlights great events the Chamber is producing with over 150 events and gatherings each month. There are a variety of different options for everyone to engage and participate. 515 West weekly newsletter highlights the big happenings in our city, community, and region so people are informed of the top news stories. And then Destination WDM is a bi-monthly newsletter that highlights offerings of our members and places to go, shop, and engage in the community. So promoting all those local businesses and events. And finally, the monthly West YP newsletter helps our young professionals, YP equals young professionals, engage in our city. We have the largest YP organization in the state and they are very active and want to stay informed of the events in the area. These are just a few samples of our communications and they're all used to promote our city and keep our citizens engaged.

Thank you, Anne. Now I'm excited to introduce Maria Davis who's also on PMZ planning and zoning. Thank you, Anne.

One of our most important responsibilities is workforce development and a wide variety of programs help build strong pipelines of workforce in America that includes nationally recognized West Wing Leadership Academy, which I was part of, And we just awarded Mayor Russ Trimble with the first Alumni of the Year Award. The West Wing Leadership Academy Alumni Group also leads the Day of Kindness and the West YP professionals, which Anne mentioned, and the U-Turn program for college interns. New High School Leadership Academy just finished its third year, will finish its third year in 2027. The West Des Moines Leadership Academy continues to develop community leaders and now has produced hundreds of alumni through the city and the region and the Academy raised approximately 90,000 this year for Can Play.

It's amazing.

Our High School Leadership Academy helps to train our youth for the best careers in our city, and that's the class. We're also proud of our award-winning programs and events that bring people together and strengthen community connections, like the Athene Beyond Boundaries Business Summit, pictured here. And then our national, our annual Martin Luther King Day celebration that we continue to collaborate with the city of West Des Moines is inspiring, meaningful, developing conversations around service leadership and community.

I love this picture.

Our annual dinner celebrates the individuals and organizations helping West Des Moines move forward. We had over 600 attendees this year from around the region, complete with indoor fireworks.

Gotta have the indoor fireworks, you guys.

And then the Best of the West Awards highlights 100 people, places, and things that make our city special. The annual mentoring event, which Anne and I both have had the opportunity of presenting at, draws nearly 400, not only in the city, but the entire region. Many of these programs are volunteer-led and supported by community partners, such as First Responders Appreciation Breakfast, where the city is a critical partner. So thank you for that. Our monthly lunches are becoming a more popular draw with about 150 at Glen Oaks to learn from key stakeholders on a variety of vital topics. Ryan just emceed our very popular real estate and investment lunch and our annual State of the City is coming up in July. That's right. The monthly breakfast before business draws over 100 and this event rotates different businesses in the community. If you like coffee, if you prefer a wine or a beer, the monthly rush hours are also popular and rotate different businesses in our community to give them time to shine. Finally, we have a government affairs committee and a series of annual events that help our area become more civically engaged. Oh, Construct Iowa. Construct Iowa is an event where we draw leaders from around the community for real estate development. I'm totally winging this. No, that's perfect. You're right. You're exactly right. We are trying to help develop the real estate community. Yep. Development, infrastructure.

This is a new event we started this year and Ryan, the Ryan and Ryan, so Ryan Moffitt, Ryan Penning led our very first event at RecPlex talking about the grant experience and also the success of the RecPlex. So that's been a great, great event. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you. Amazing. So back to Catherine. So we started another nonprofit as well as the chamber. We started this during our 100 year celebration two years ago. So we have something called the West Des Moines Chamber Foundation. It's a 501c3 and we really started this to serve our community for the next 100 years and help us problem solve. There's gonna be a lot of exciting things going on in our city. We have another tool in the toolbox that'll help us with that growth and development of our beautiful So we have our foundation, we have our advisory board. These are the top leaders, not in just West Des Moines, but across the entire region, including Matt McKinney is on that foundation board. So thank you, Matt. and Doug is on our Chamber Board, so thank you both. What we're working on now is a West Des Moines Innovation Center, more news to come, but it's all about job creation. We looked at some of the reports we've had, the 2040 Plan, the Newmark Economic Development Plan, and kind of thought, how can we really help that? And Ryan and I are starting to have some meetings to talk about that, but how can we take that information and really, add power to it to create a great city for job creation. So this is just a little snapshot of the foundation. Thanks, Maria, for clicking from it. Appreciate that. So some of our big impacts this year, as Maria and Anne mentioned, we have over 1,000 members strong, which is huge for that milestone. We've always been number three chamber in the region. There's 23 chambers in our greater Des Moines region. if you can imagine that but we've always been number three we're now number one so that's very much pride and joy for the city of west des moines and we love saying that president's council members they had we had seven when i joined we're now up to 30 and then some these are the top leading companies in our city and they are very very engaged in our city they care deeply about what goes on in our city And they are prime to help us promote. I know that was something that Newmark had said at a city council meeting workshop that I watched. So West YP is the largest. Our Your Turn for Summer interns is a free program. Last year we had 480 youth participate around the entire metro, which is even more than the partnership, which is kind of nice. It's like, oh my gosh, we've got a lot of people here. So I love that. So we are now... having youth sign up for that now. Last year, the Leadership Academy raised $64,000 for West Des Moines Human Services. Love that. Since 2011, woo-hoo, we have raised over $500,000 for other nonprofits to help our city grow and thrive. And we talked about the newsletters, et cetera, et cetera. There's a lot here, but And we're 102 years old, not me, but the chamber. So, yeah. So that's exciting. And guess what? The West is yet to come. Okay, there we go. Do you like that ending? We didn't do it on the right note.

That was an amazing, amazing ending.

A quote from the mayor. A quote from the mayor. Oh, yeah, did you see it, Mayor?

Thank you guys so much for being here and presenting to us, and thank you for all that you do. You guys do so much, as you outlined here. A lot. I mean, you could have gone on forever. All the different events you've had that bring us all together. you know, economic development, workforce development, forming a foundation, a 501c3, to be able to partner with the city on different economic development projects and whatnot. I mean, it's extremely, extremely powerful. I just, I'm amazed at all of the different things that you have going on at one time. You guys do such a phenomenal job, and we've got such an incredible partnership between the city, the Chamber, the Historic Valley Junction Foundation, and all of our school districts to really move this city in the same direction, move it to be the best city in America in which to live, work, and play, and raise a family.

And retire.

And retire. I'm getting there soon. Trust me. I just can't thank you enough. Can't thank you enough for all that you do. Absolutely phenomenal. And we couldn't do what we do without you and without our business partners who really make our community what it is. So thank you so much. Councilman Elliott.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

First of all, thank you very much for the presentation. I must admit that I actually visited the chamber and Catherine gave me a tour. She gave me plenty of literature. And I think what is just so amazing, there's a limited number of staff to do the things that you're doing. Yeah, only five. And I'm a marketer. I've always been a marketer. So it was quite impressive to see a staff of five and what you're producing. I was very impressed. And I was so glad that you invited me to come and take the tour.

Thank you. That was nice.

But I do have one question. Can you just tell me a little bit more about the youth program? Because you did state that applications are being taken and that would be something I think would be real valuable for the greater community to know a little bit more about.

The summer your turn for college intern program. Yep. We've been doing that for about eight years and it's a free program It's for all those companies that bring in interns for the summer from one to I mean some of our bigger companies have 50 Interns so a lot of them enrolled them into our your turn for summer intern program. There are five separate events There's networking there's learning There's a session on budgeting. These are things that these youth sometimes are not getting in college, right? Some of the soft skill training too. So we have five different events that they all sign up for and show up for and meet each other. Our real goal is to help them fall in love with West Des Moines so that when they go back to their college, wherever that might be in the USA, we want them to go, I had the best experience in West Des Moines. I want to move there. I want to take a job there. And if they have a family, Eventually I want to move my family there. So it's it's helping them fall in love with our city.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you It would be great if we could kind of get our high schoolers involved in the early stages before they get to college Yeah, and we've got our new high school leadership Academy that we just started So we're intersect third year of that next year.

So that's that's more leadership development oriented, but mm-hmm Yeah, thank you for that.

Yeah And we have worked with the Westmoreland Community Schools on high school internships and whatnot as well, right? Yes. And I know they just had the work-based learning, CTE, you were there. You know, celebration, acknowledgement of all the students. It's just amazing. It took everything that I had just to get through high school. We have a bunch of kids. They're amazing. Probably close to 100 kids, I would guess, that are graduating from Valley and they already have their AA. Which is awesome. They've got certificates in this or that. It's absolutely unbelievable and mind-blowing. Yep.

All right. Mayor, just a couple of brief comments. Catherine, thank you for being here. And Ann and Maria, thank you also for joining. super proud of the work that you guys have done. Um, I was, uh, had the opportunity to serve on the chamber board and go through the leadership team there. And at that time, I think back in 2018, um, we had maybe 13, 14, uh, precedence council members. And I know we were thrilled at that point, like, Oh my goodness, I hope this isn't the best, you know, and here they've, they've doubled it. So that's really excellent work. Um, And then, obviously, the creation of the foundation. I'm excited to see where that goes. Appreciate the opportunity to serve on that foundation board. I think that has a great potential to further serve our community. And on that note, I also, Catherine, want to say thank you also for the work that you do on the West Des Moines Community Foundation Board, which is, of course, separate and distinct from the the Chamber and the Chamber's Foundation, just a lot of ways in which you personally show up and also your organization. One of the things that I would say is we are going through a process now. We've got a workshop tonight, I think more on the residential side, but we're going to be hopefully adopting some ordinances to implement our comprehensive plan. And as I looked at your presentation here, As it relates to economic development, I think one of the pillars that you referenced is that you're there for, and I know that is important to a lot of your members, is we really need some feedback on what those ordinances, how they are going to be applied, what it means for the business community, what it means for, probably less your concern, residential community, but certainly the business community. for economic development activity. And so I know that when we had a development planning a few weeks ago, they talked about how they're going to reach out to the home builders. We're going to reach out to the developer community. I hope and want them to reach out to the chamber to get your members' feedback. Because once that's in place, I know we do a comp plan every roughly 10 years or five years. We're going to be doing another one, I guess, in five years. But I can't, I joke, I joke, I joke. But we are just now getting to the ordinances. And those are the kind of the meat and potatoes things that I'd love to hear the feedback from your members and from your organization on. But thanks for all you do for our community.

That's what we're here for.

And just to piggyback on what he said, I mean, you know, it's our job to make the best city that we possibly can. And that includes being able to, you know, grow our economy, work with the private sector to create jobs and all those different things, create different opportunities for entrepreneurs. We want to make sure that, as Councilman McKinney said, that we're putting these ordinances in place, we're putting this zoning in place, that if there is a burdensome regulation or something that is going to cause a problem for business, you know, we need to know that because, again, we need to make the best city possible. The business community needs to be profitable, needs to make, you know, a profit every single day and pay their people and those kind of things. And hopefully we get to a place where our laws and the books meet up in the middle with what they're trying to do and we can have a great city and they can have a great business. And that's where we always try to get to. You know, but we got to have standards. We have high standards in West Des Moines, but we want to make sure that the standards aren't so high that it's driving businesses elsewhere. So that is going to be a critical part of this whole thing.

And Mayor, even along those points, I mean, you might, I'm going to say something you might initially say, what are you referring to? Bring up the topic of flock.

Yeah.

I know that there are many businesses that utilize those tools. Why? Because it helps stop theft. And I got to imagine your members care pretty significantly about theft, vandalism, and being able to get back property that's stolen from them or to deter, you know, that sort of activity.

Kidwell had that. Did you hear about Kidwell? As soon as they moved in right on Westtown Parkway, they were robbed, but it was the, Flock cameras that found the people. Ironically, Kidwell is a security company. They sell security devices and solutions. So isn't that interesting? But it was a flock camera that found the people.

Yeah, and so I bring that up as an example of, hey, I totally respect and appreciate folks raising questions and concerns around privacy and security, and that is paramount. We have to, you know... put that at the top. But privacy and security of individuals and their property is also at the top. And so as we, and I think Councilman Hudson, you've got a meeting this Friday on FLOC, and there are others. Okay, Councilman Lotz will be involved. You know, hearing perspective from the business community, hey, we don't like this, or hey, this is really important. Those little things is, when I say little, I mean, I don't mean to make it a small thing because it is important, but you wouldn't think maybe that the Chamber would care, but perhaps your members really care about what it means for doing business along Mill Civic Parkway, along Jordan Creek Parkway, and the risk or the reduce risk associated with it. So always welcome your feedback, even on things as interesting as technology.

Yeah, 100%, thank you.

Can I ask a quick question? Yes, go ahead. Is that residential planning and zoning and ordinance changes coming through planning and zoning?

Is the residential? I would assume that it would come through planning and zoning, yes.

Is it just brainstorming tonight?

It is brainstorming, going through the workshop, seeing what we're going to look at putting in place. And then, yes, it will come through planning and zoning.

Educating the less educated right here.

Okay.

Thank you.

So you will see it. You will take a look at it as well and give us your input on that. Okay. Any other questions, comments at all?

Thank you for the work you guys do.

Catherine and Maria. All right. Thanks so much for being here, guys. Thanks for everything.

Thank you all. Appreciate your support. All right. Thank you.

Okay. Absolutely. All right, moving on with mayor, council, manager report. I'll start down to my left with Councilman Lotz. Any council report?

Yeah, I just want to pick up on... One thing that we touched on earlier. So I went through the contract here quickly, and I'm not a lawyer, but I've done dozens, if not hundreds, of these types of contracts in my career. So MJ is right. He did a really thorough job looking at it and brought up some very poignant things that caught my attention. And one of the reasons that caught my attention is this type of camera is different than Flock. I can go into the reason why, but flock is not a proactive situation in the sense that the police need to get, they have to have a reason for going in and getting the data, whereas we're going out here and using it in a little bit different way. So then I went into the contract and I read, and I'll just call it section 2.2. The company has the right to process customer data solely for the purposes of providing the product to the customer, who is us, We've granted them a worldwide right to license, to create analytical data, which is defined in the contract as being derived from customer data. So what they're going to do is they're going to send that data over to an offshore place and they're going to train the models with doing it. That's a very common thing. So that's not an issue either. City Detect shall not disclose any analytical data that can specifically identify a customer or its end users, people on the street, right? And then city detection will not use customer data for any purposes outside the scope of the agreement or as otherwise permitted in the privacy policy So I went down zoomed through the privacy policy It's it's pretty straightforward. It's fairly benign So I'm kind of stepping back from this looking at and going okay I didn't get involved with this contract like I did flock but I feel like this is an acceptable thing for me personally and That's all I want to say. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you for that review, Doug. Appreciate it. All right. Councilman Trevelyan.

Nothing this time.

All right. Councilwoman Elliott.

Okay. I'm trying to keep this short. By the way, excuse me, I have full page. Actually, Russ and I had an opportunity to go to the groundbreaking for Dowling Catholic High School. Quite impressive, and I think it does need to be noted that we do have two high schools in West Des Moines. We have the Valley Tigers. We also have the Dowling Maroons. From going to the groundbreaking, I had a conversation with the principal. So some of the things that I would like to see is back in the day, When Dowling and Valley would play, it was called the Dowel Bowl, and items were brought and then given to or available to our human services department. So I would like to see, I publicly would like to see that again because we're not adversaries. We need to be, we're all one West Des Moines, and we just need to remember that. Let's see, Russ and I also was at Valley Southwoods for the apprenticeship signing. Over 100 students there. I got in on the tail end. What is so neat about our national apprenticeship program is the fact that the students, the ones who are accepted, they sit at the table just the same as if there was a football player with their family signing. baseball player, whatever sport. So I thought that is very neat because we do want to lift these students up. Vocational education is very important. As those boomers retire, we need those skilled trades. And then you posed for a lot of pictures. I think Russ was in pictures with all of the apprentices and their family. So it was great though to see your presence there for the parents to understand you back, our mayor backs the apprenticeship program, vocational education. So thank you for being there.

Absolutely. Thank you for being there.

Yes. Let's see. I also attended the Human Services Advisory Board. F&A. We'll let Greg, if he wants to go over F&A, I won't go into that. Last but not least, the Community Engagement Institute. We did have our last meeting on Wednesday with Molly here in attendance. I want to kind of read this real quick. I'll make it quick. Because I think that this is important. The Community Engagement Institute. The purpose of the CEI is to educate residents about local government's role and functions, foster trust between the community and city leaders, and provide city officials with insights into residents' needs. This is an opportunity for the community to get engaged to understand what goes on in our various departments. I attended every session because I thought it was important for me being new on the council to understand the job that our department leads are doing. So I think it's an excellent program. Audrey Kenneth runs it. I know we don't have enough room for a lot, but the advantage is that each and every last one of the individuals that attended expressed interest in going to our website. to see different boards or committees that they could sign up and participate. So that's the beauty of the program. We're being able to put more citizens involved in our commissions and boards. I also attended the Valley Junction Foundation. Attended a session on flock cameras as put by the ACLU. which was very informative, but the beauty of it is that our police chief, Craig Valentine, was there also. I think it was important to have him there because he provided an opportunity to explain, and I'm not going to say counteract what the ACLU presented, but what the ACLU presented wasn't the full story. So I think that it was important to have Craig there to actually explain the intent of why West Des Moines is using the flock cameras. So thank you very much for attending and explaining, Craig. I attended DART orientation. I also attended DART Reimagine campaign is rolling out shortly. A few of us signed up for the new Route 4. Interesting. Everyone should know this Thursday at the West Des Moines Library, it will be an open house. Anyone can come and ask questions in terms of this reconfiguration of our public transit program. This Thursday, 5 to 7 at the West Des Moines Library. Last but not least, I'm sorry, you guys. Last but not least, I attended my first cricket match. I didn't even know that we had a cricket team. All the things that I am learning. But on Saturday, it was the Iowa team against the Minnesota team. This program though has existed for nine years. We have students that started when they were five years old and now they are on part of the age 15 category. So I was quite impressed. I would encourage people to read up on cricket. You know, I think it is a sport that will take off and the beauty of it West Des Moines provides the field for them to have their matches. So thank you, City of West Des Moines, for supporting cricket.

Absolutely. I would just say I continue to be impressed. Since you've gotten elected, you've jumped in feet first and you've gone to everything. You went to all the Community Engagement Institute meetings. I was surprised when I came to two of them and you were there and I figured you went to every one of them. You've gone to all these different meetings that you've talked to us about. You're learning DART. I just really appreciate you With your engagement, going to all the different things that you can. I know that you're working hard and you're absorbing everything. And we did see each other at the continuing- With the graduation. Yep. I forgot. Yep. CTE, the apprenticeship program, and a number of different events, including the West Des Moines Leadership Academy graduation, which I think they're on their, this was their 18th class, and they have maybe 30 per class. So we've had hundreds of local community leaders go through the West Des Moines Leadership Academy program. graduate and that gets them involved more in in the city and in the community and it's just a phenomenal program but councilman thank you for getting so engaged in and going to all these different meetings and for reporting back on it really appreciate the job you're doing so. Councilman McKinney.

Very good, thank you Mayor. Just a couple quick updates. All right. Last week, I attended the MPO meeting. And just for the group here, as you look out there on I-35 north of Westtown or near Hickman, there's obviously a lot of activity going on there. And then they're going to start the reconfiguration of the West Mixmaster. And so they talked about how later this year they're going to start breaking ground on the first flyover. The first part of that is putting pilings in the ground, right? So you're not going to actually see the flyover happen, but they've got to put the pilings in the ground there as part of the West Mixmaster. And so you'll start seeing activity in 2026 on construction there. That will be timed such that all of the construction related to Hickman is coming to a conclusion, and then they will start – uh after that uh out there on the west mix master the next item was that they approved a six hundred thousand dollar match in um in in funding from mpo uh to city west des moines for ashworth road and the final item we talked about that's relevant to west des moines was highway five um you know a couple last year during the 2025 legislative session they passed a bill to one of the first hurdles to reclassify Highway 5 as a potential Interstate 435. As a result of the legislation the Iowa Legislature passed, they are in the process, they are working with the Department of Transportation on a, I don't know, I'll call it a pilot program, they have a probably more appropriate term for it, where slow-moving vehicles are identified via a camera, and then the camera will report to a sign on the road where if they see a combine or a tractor going at a slow moving speed and you're traveling at 65 miles an hour on the sign it'll say slow moving vehicle ahead. And that is a first step towards reclassifying 435. We need Congress to take an action relative to weight and speed but things are on the move there. The last item I'll say is we had a development planning meeting this morning. Councilman Lotz and I And we talked about whether or not we want to open up the city to a bunch of additional cell phone towers. And we chose at this point to kind of learn a little bit more. I think staff's going to look at some other communities, what they're doing. And so we kind of hit the pause button to just open it up to everything and anything we're not hearing. I'm not at least hearing complaints on that topic. So kind of learn more as we go sort of approach. That's all I've got, Mayor.

I appreciate that. That topic on cell phone monopole towers is an important one. Years ago, I asked staff to get together with some of the providers to identify up front where their locations need to be to put these towers because, you know, it's always the same thing. You put a tower, we try to co-locate them on the water towers. or some other structure that the city has in a park or something to that effect. But oftentimes they can't do that and it's got to go somewhere else. Of course, the legislature took a lot of that decision making out of our hands and we've got some boxes that we can check. Does it meet the fall requirements? Does it meet the zoning? And if it does, then really not a lot we can do on that front. But typically what happens is residents come in, they get this monopole going up behind their house and it's Always the same textbook complaints about that. Of course, nobody likes to have a big towering pole behind them. But unfortunately, we need these towers. My understanding is that they don't broadcast very far. And there's a neighborhood that we have in this city right now that a friend of mine lives in off of Reed Lane. Former Councilman John Michelson used to live in that neighborhood as well. There are a lot of dead zones over there. I mean, when I go over there, I know my cell phone's not going to work. Very well. So I would encourage you guys. I'm glad you hit the pause button to take a look at it and what's going to be involved. But, man, we need that infrastructure across the city so that people can communicate with one another and get good service at their in their homes rather than, you know, not moving when they're talking on the phone. So. I'll be interested to see what that looks like. And then if we can identify these places that are maybe less egregious to people up front, let people know right up front, here's where towers are going to go in the future. so that the homeowners know what to expect going forward. But it's the same thing with people coming forward talking about data centers as well. We need data centers to be able to use our computers, to be able to use our phones, and if we don't have those, we can't use the technology that we depend on and that we expect to have. But there's people that are coming out against data centers now as well. Unfortunately, these are important things that we need to operate in today's society. Councilman Hudson.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just one comment. We had our Finance Administration Subcommittee meeting, Councilwoman Elliott and I, about two weeks ago, I guess it would have been, and just want to report, there were a few things we talked about, but one thing I want to report on is that we had a rare sighting of Chief Liu at our Finance Subcommittee meeting, and it was exciting. Was he lost? No, he was there with a purpose, and it was great because... I always like to say that we have a really great city because we stand on the shoulders of people who were very prescient, who thought ahead of time about where we were going to be in the future. And sure enough, that kind of came up on Wednesday morning a couple weeks ago because 10 years ago, when we crafted whatever... agreement to build a bridge across Raccoon River out on Grand Prairie Parkway, part of that agreement was that we would have an option to purchase some land for a potential fire station down there and a potential water tower down there. And land can be a little more expensive, but it's going to be relatively cheap compared to what it would be because of that agreement 10 years ago. And that's the kind of pre-planning that I really, really love about the people who are on City Council 10 years ago, two of these guys who are right up here, but also city staff who thought ahead of time to make that agreement because we just opened up a new fire station off the bypass, off of Veterans Parkway, and certainly this fire station won't be built for some time. This water tower won't be built for some time, but the fact that we have an option to purchase that land way, way, way, way cheaper because of the agreement made a decade ago, I think is impressive. So since this is where our future expansion lies, southwest of the city, the fact that we can service those folks with fire and water, it's a huge game changer. And it won't be us probably who are benefiting from this. It's our future residents and certainly future staff and future city councils who will be able to make that decision a lot easier on when to build it because we have that option because of people 10 years ago, et cetera. So that concludes my report, Mr. Mayor.

I appreciate that. Those are not easy discussions, but we did have those discussions. Hey, let's pay millions of dollars right now. Let's buy the land or let's get this in place in the agreement so that we have an ability to do that down the road because land isn't getting cheaper. So anyway, well, thank you for the report. Going on to City Manager Tom Haddon.

I have a brief report tonight, Your Honor. The legislature passed the significant property tax legislation that's going to impact all the cities of the state, and we're working hard to make sure we're in compliance with that and do what we need to do to lean up be efficient but yet still provide the services and programs that our citizens expect and it's going to be quite a challenge but we're gonna we're up to it we're working on it and um i wanted to let you know that but i'll pick out one particular issue we're working on is two weeks ago we sent out notices to uh counties polk county dallas county Warren County, we don't have enough people, Madison County, Warren, but we offer a 9-11 service through what's called Westcom. Westcom has six cities in it. It's the seventh largest dispatch facility in the state of Iowa. So what we have found out It's been a couple years, right? So we have found out when we went through our budgeting in the past that our taxpayers are paying for 9-11 services in those respective counties, but we're also paying for our service. The thing is, like in Dallas County, for example, their citizens don't pay any additional fees in the communities in Dallas County, while he's part of our Westcom group. And in Polk County, the cities that are on Polk County's dispatch get a significant discount and don't have to pay the same rates. So what we're basically asking is some equity in this. We want to sit down with them and talk about, we'd like to be reimbursed for the same amount you're spending on the residents in the county, but that... But we are paying, our residents in your county are paying the same amount and with our tax base even more. So hopefully what comes of this is they will pay for, they'll basically pay for the service their county members of the county are receiving in their respective counties and or have conversations. We're open to doing other things in the future, which makes more sense. makes sense for our residents, and if it's joining and coordinating with other efforts, we will. But I do wanna make sure, through this process, this is a big deal, because it's significant dollars to provide us a very valuable service, a valuable service that we have to for our city. Thank you.

Yeah, no, Tom, I appreciate you finding that years ago, and we've been working on a solution ever since. Our residents should not be levied a tax for a service that they don't receive from the county, and that's as basic as we can put it. Right now, the counties are levying a tax on our citizens for a service that they don't provide. And so I appreciate you leading the way on this and bringing this to our attention. And I've had some conversations lately with some individuals that I'm encouraged that we're going to be able to figure something out, work something out. But it's about time that we put an end to this. And I think our counties will realize this is very... know basic than what we're bringing forward and you know it makes sense you know so okay thank you so much with that we're gonna move on to item for consent agenda are there any items at any council person would like to have pulled and voted on separately otherwise I would take a motion to approve the consent agenda as the soul I'd like to go for II okay for II Any other items that any council person would like to have pulled and voted on separately? Motion for the remainder. Second. Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Please vote. Five yes. Okay, item 4E is approval agreement city detect software. Councilman Hudson.

Sure. I'm grateful for the work of the city staff on preparing this. I can't speak to the future, but I just don't think it's the right choice at this time. So I'll just be voting no. And that's my comment.

Okay. Does somebody want to move approval of item four? Motion for approval. Okay. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Okay. So moved and second. Is there any further discussion?

Mayor, you mentioned earlier that if there's some reason that we need to reconsider this, that can be done in two weeks.

Yes, I believe. And Ryan, if you want to, is it? Next two meetings. Next two meetings following this one, we can have a motion to reconsider. I think. Change what we've done.

I think, I appreciate Doug, Councilman Lotz, you going through this. Obviously this is your kind of bailiwick, so to speak. Jessica, I appreciate her comments online tonight. and um and the information that was presented i think uh you know obviously you guys uh gentlemen have a meeting this friday on the flock uh conversation i'd love to uh understand if what comes from that influences anything that we've heard tonight uh on on item 4e but based upon jessica's legal interpretation of this doug your interpretation of this You know, I'm happy to move this forward, but I'd love to hear if there's any reason after Friday's meeting and any further analysis that's done that we should have any concern. We can come back and address it. Thank you.

Councilman, I wasn't going to say another comment, but I think on Friday's meeting, the flock, I don't think this particular part of the discussion, because these are two separate issues, and so I certainly don't want to conflate them. And while certainly there's some overlap and similarity, but overall, I don't believe we're going to talk about this on Friday. I mean, I guess it could come up, but I just don't want to conflate these two things.

As the chair of that committee, we won't be talking about this on Friday.

And... As Chair of the Community Compliance Subcommittee, if you feel that you want us to get back together in two weeks to meet, we will to discuss this. I mean, I don't have a problem talking about this again, but I...

think everything's been looked at and I think we're in a good position but again if some of the council members think we wanted that they want us to readdress this we'd be happy to meet in two weeks that's fair and by the way I'm not asking for this to be reviewed on Friday I just know the topic of citizen privacy about data practices about security I got to believe those things are going to be talked about on Friday And to the extent you all learn something on Friday that informs your perspective on what we've been discussing tonight, I'd like to know if we ought to reconsider something.

That's where I'm coming from. I think our staff understands where we're at on this issue. And I think our citizens understand where we're at on this issue. We want to make sure that... We maintain public safety to the greatest extent possible, using whatever available technology is out there, but making sure that people's privacy is protected, that their data is protected, and that they've got the privacy that they deserve. And I think that was what... staff took into consideration when they went through and negotiated this contract. And I think that's what the expectation of this council is going forward on every single contract that we negotiate with entities for technology or what have you. We need to take a look at this. This has obviously become an issue. And this isn't anything new. With new technology, a lot of times technology comes before the law is there to regulate it and legislators have to make changes to the law to be able to protect people, make sure that their data is safe and that their privacy is protected. So we care deeply about that, but we care deeply about public safety as well. And this other item, Councilman Hudson, you're voting no on, this isn't as, in my opinion, as important as the flock cameras are because the flock cameras are about public safety. This is an incredible tool that, you know, we had a discussion up here on the dais, right? People are hearing as we're knocking on doors. from people, especially in older parts of the city, more now in the way of compliance issues. And we all voice the concern that we want to make sure that we're staying on top of this, that we're not just being reactionary, but that we're being proactive. And kudos to staff for being proactive and taking a look at this, finding AI to use these tools to be able to give the residents what they want, which is more proactive community compliance. And that's what we have in front of us. So make sure that the data is protected, that the privacy is protected to the greatest extent that we can, and then let's use this tool and let's give the residents what they want in the way of community compliance. That's what this does.

And we talked about that in depth, and Doug was still on community compliance at that time. We talked about this in depth. That's part of the reason that staff was able to negotiate things with City Detect that they typically don't do is because we wanted to make sure that we were protecting all of that.

And I'll add one other thing. Section 3.1 on the ownership of the data spells out clearly we retain that data and that right. They maintain their rights to ownership of their platform. right, which includes the analytical day, which is after people's faces are blurred and whatnot. So I'm very comfortable with this at this point. I kind of, you know, and I'm sorry I jumped in on somebody else's report here, but I think I'm comfortable with it at this point. I did leave the Community Compliance Committee when Councilwoman Finette here got elected, and so I didn't get to see that contract part of it. I think. And so this is of interest to me because it's of the business that I'm in. So I'm good. Thank you.

And look, you're always going to have different sensitivity to privacy and whatnot. I mean, I've got a friend that I used to work with that if you could win a million dollars and all you had to put down was your zip code, he wouldn't do it. Wouldn't do it. Nope. He didn't want a zip code in there. He didn't know how it was going to be used, who was going to have it. I'm like, Josh, you could win a million dollars. Nope, not doing it. So you're never going to be able to please everybody. And that's with every single issue that we deal with, including privacy, right? 74,000 residents. We got 74,000 opinions and special interests. We do the best we can for the most number of people that we possibly can, and I think that's what we're doing here. So thank you to staff for being proactive, bringing this tool, and thank you to our legal staff for knowing what we're looking for and protecting people's privacy and getting us to this point. Councilman, I wish you were supporting this tonight, but I respect that you're not. Okay, any further comments before we vote? With that, please vote.

Four yes, one no.

Okay, moving on to item five, old business, item 5A. We've got approval of traffic code amendment, official traffic controls, South Grand Prairie Parkway and Wendover Road slash EP2 Parkway. We've got an ordinance amendment for approval of the second reading, waiver of the third reading, and adoption in final form. There are no outstanding issues and no changes from the previous reading, which was adopted unanimously by the council at our last meeting. Motion to consider second reading. Second. Okay, so moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Okay, hearing none, please vote.

Five yes in order to amend the City Code of the City of West Des Moines, Iowa 2024 by amending provisions pertaining to the traffic code relating to official traffic controls.

Motion to approve. Second reading. Second.

Please vote.

Five yes. Motion to waive the third reading and adopt in final form.

Second. Please vote.

Five yes. Okay. Item 6, public hearings. Item 6A, this is the time and place for a public hearing to consider 8802 Scarlet Drive, Vacation of the West 16 feet of a 30-foot buffer park easement initiated by Stephanie L. Jensen. Ryan, would you please read the date the notice is published?

May 22, 2026 in the Des Moines Register. And have you received any written comments to this hearing?

None, Your Honor. Okay. Okay, anybody in the audience who would like to address the council on item 6A, please come to the podium. Give us your name and address to the record. If you're online, hit star six to unmute yourself and do the same. Is there anybody either in the council chambers or online that would like to address the council on this item? Okay. Hearing and seeing no one, I'll declare the public hearing closed. We've got a resolution for approval of the vacation request and there are no outstanding issues. Motion to approve. Okay, so moved. Is there a second? Okay, so moved and seconded. Is there any discussion on the dais?

I guess this question for Lynn, what was the reason for having this 30 feet and now we can vacate over half of it? I mean, I'd be interested to know what was the thought behind it. And if something's going to get widened later on, then we're going to end up buying this property. So there had to have been a reason.

Clint Wheat, Director of Development Services. This is a double frontage lot. Therefore, it's required to have a buffer along the rear lot line. So that is on the private property. There's no intentions to widen the road. It's just a 30-foot. They put in a four-foot fence in the wrong spot, matching a neighbor who got the same kind of vacation a month or two ago.

Okay.

So it's just an existing condition. This is one way to remedy it so they can keep their fence.

All right. Thank you. All right. Any other discussion?

Lynn, I appreciate the flexibility that you all are providing to our residents. So thank you.

Okay. Hearing no further discussion, please vote. Five, yes. Okay, item 6B. This is a time and a place for a public hearing to consider 2026 PCC Trail renovations initiated by the City of West Des Moines. Ryan, would you please read the date the notice was published?

May 15th, 2026 in the Des Moines Register. And have you received any written communications to this hearing?

None, Your Honor. Okay, anybody from the audience like to address the Council on item 6B, please come to the podium. Give us your name and address for the record. Anybody online, hit star 6 to unmute yourself and do the same. Is there anybody that would like to address the Council on this item? Okay, hearing and seeing no one, I'll declare the public hearing closed, and we've got two resolutions and motions we can take at the same time, and there are no outstanding issues.

Motion approved. Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Okay, please vote. Five, yes. Okay, item seven, new business. Ridgeview at Moffett Lake, 3760 Southeast Moffett Lake Road. Approve a preliminary plat to create 132 lots for single-family residential development, nine outlots, and one street lot, Ridgeview at Moffett Lake, LLC. We've got a resolution for approval of the preliminary plat. There are no outstanding issues, but there are five conditions of approval. Thank you, staff. Related to the following. Public utility easements in the front on some lots, deferring the buffering requirement along the southwest property line until we know what development goes on there. Parkland dedication easement of 2.35 acres contingent upon three of the southern lots not selling. Development of single family driveways on off of local streets and not off of Southeast Moffett Lake Road and the location of secondary temporary access road and acknowledgement that it is to operate like a city street and to be removed once future street connections are made. Can I get a motion to approve the resolution? Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Is there anybody in the audience or online that would like to address the council on this item? Okay, is there any discussion on the dais? Hearing none, please vote. Five yes. Okay, item 7B, Dowling Catholic High School, 1400 Buffalo Road, approved major modification of the site plan to allow building addition, new arena, new access on 17th Street, and changes to the internal parking lot, Dowling College. We've got a resolution for approval of a major modification of the site plan and acceptance of associated legal documents for major building additions for Dowling Catholic High School, and there are no outstanding issues. Move approval.

Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Is there anybody in the audience or online that would like to address the council on this item? Any discussion on the dais?

say this is similar to the last time that came a couple weeks ago exciting to see this move forward in the city of West Des Moines to see this expansion to help you know we talked about workforce a little bit earlier with the chamber obviously this is right along those lines and appreciate the the work the staff has done related to the traffic and working with the school to help address traffic and As you read through the pinky here, you see that a lot of that, a lot of detail, a lot of work has gone into that. So I appreciate being able to find a balance between allowing folks to grow, to provide a great education, and at the same time, trying to limit and reduce impact on the neighborhood.

Yeah, absolutely. As Councilwoman Elliott said, you know, we do have two high schools in West Des Moines. They are both extremely important to the vibrancy of our city and to making sure that we provide our kids with a world-class 21st century education. Both of us were at the not only groundbreaking, but ground blessing. It was the first ground blessing I've ever been to. That was absolutely amazing. And I'll tell you what, they have done an incredible job. They're still working on their capital campaign to raise the money that they need for this. but there have been a lot of very generous donors who have contributed a lot of money to improve the experience of the students here. And as I've explained to somebody that asked the question once, why would I support this, public or private, especially if my property tax dollars are being used, there is no bigger economic development driver of this city than our schools. public and private. No bigger economic development driver. That is the number one decision of why people decide to move where they move. They want to make sure their kid has an incredible education. If our schools here stop providing that incredible education, if they don't have the ability to add the amenities and the different things that they need to provide that education, our city is in trouble. So this is going to be a phenomenal project. It is going to really help draw more kids into Dowling and provide that world-class education. And it was an honor to be a part of the groundbreaking and ground blessing and really wish them the best and appreciate the investment and everybody that's contributed to this.

It's pretty exciting. My older two went to Dowling, and my younger one is going to get to take advantage of this new stuff. And the older two were kind of bummed we were talking about it the other day. But the education thing is so huge. We have to invest in our schools, whether it's Valley schools or even this. And I think this is a great improvement for them.

No doubt about it. We're house divided. My oldest went to Dowling and my three younger kids all went to Valley and are proud Valley Tigers. So whatever works best for the kid. All right. Is there any other discussion before we vote? All right. Hearing none, please vote. 5, yes. Okay, item 7C, Plata Survey 2026-56, 3700 Hidden Creek Drive, approved Plata Survey creating a parcel for the transfer of ownership. Reed and Sarah Tamasea, we've got a resolution for approval and release of the Plata Survey. There are no outstanding issues, but there is a condition of approval regarding the requirement of a lot tie, execution of a lot tie agreement once the land is acquired. Can I get a motion? All right, it's been moved. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and second. Is there anybody in the audience or online that would like to address the council on this item? Okay, is there any discussion on the dais? All right, please vote. Five, yes. Item 7D, Platy Survey Parcel 26-49 and 26-50, 977, 985, and 993, South 95th Street. Approve Platy Survey to create two parcels to increase the size of adjacent lots for future single-family residential development David and Gail Elgin, we have got a resolution for approval and release of the PLATUS survey and there are no outstanding issues. Motion to approve. Second. Moved and seconded. Is there anybody either online or out in the chambers that would like to address the council on this item? Is there any discussion on the dais? Okay, please vote.

Five yes.

Item 7E. We've got the first reading of South 81st Street, Forest Place, TIF District. We've got an ordinance for approval of the first reading of tax increment financing ordinance, and there are no outstanding issues. Does somebody want to move consideration of the first reading? I move. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Is there anybody in the audience or online that would like to address the council on this item? Is there any discussion on the dais? Okay, hearing none, please vote.

Five, yes. An ordinance providing the general property taxes levied and collected each year on certain property located within the South 81st Street Urban Renewal Area in the City of West Des Moines be paid to a special fund for payment of principal and interest on loans, monies advanced to and indebtedness, including bonds issued or to be issued incurred by the City in connection with the South 81st Street Urban Renewal Area.

Motion to approve the proceeding. Second. Okay, please vote. Five, yes. Okay, item 7F. We've got Amendment to City Code, Title V, Police Regulations, Chapter 2, Criminal Code, to align it with the Iowa Code. It's as basic as that. So we've got an ordinance amendment for approval of the first reading. There are no outstanding issues. Motion to sign the first reading. Second. Okay, so moved and seconded. Is there anybody in the audience who are online that would like to address the council on this? Is there any discussion on the dice? Okay, once again, hearing no one, please vote.

Five yes or it's amending the City Code of the City of West Des Moines, Iowa 2024 by amending Title V, Police Regulations, Chapter 2, Criminal Code.

Motion to approve the first reading. Please vote.

Five, yes. Okay, item eight, receive, file, and or refer item 8A. We will receive and file the 2026 West Des Moines Economic Development Strategic Plan. Item nine, other matters. Are there any other matters any council person would like to bring up for the good of the order? I would just say, don't forget, tomorrow's an important day, June 2nd. A lot of people forget this. It's the primary elections and the anniversary of Kelsey and Greg Hudson. So we'll be celebrating them by voting tomorrow.

Absolutely. All right. Kelsey would love that.

I bet she would. I bet they both would. All right. With no other business, come before the council. We are adjourned into our workshop. We'll start the workshop here in about four minutes. All right, you've got the floor, go ahead.

Geez, some people.

We will hold all of our questions till the end.

I got a tractor for you if you're into old tractors. Yeah, we do. All right, so this is part one of two. We decided to split it so that we didn't keep you here until 11 o'clock tonight. So I have given you on the dais kind of an agenda of the topics that we're going to discuss, and you'll notice we have worked in some question slides. So ideally, as we kind of go through a topic, we'll ask some questions, get clarity, and move on to the next topic. So that would be the goal for tonight. So... I forgot which way I got to do this. This is an overhaul of the residential section of code. It's not just Chapter 5, which is the residential. It also touches on accessory structures. There's a lot of other pieces that will come with this in the long run. It's being driven though by the residential and how do we want to approach residential regulations moving forward. What we're going to do is what problems are we trying to solve and I'm not going to read every slide for you. You guys are more than capable of doing that. We're going to hit on a few things and we're going to try to move through this just as quickly as we can. Sorry Doug and Matt who already sat through this kind of once. So the problems we're trying to solve here, probably the biggest one is the restrictions that we have on homeowners. Coming out of COVID, land prices, we get more and more homeowners that are trying to figure out how to make their houses work for them. Our regulations make that really difficult between setbacks, lot coverage, accessory structures versus primary structures. So there's a lot of pieces of the puzzle. So this code is really being driven to kind of help with a lot of that. It's looking at, you know, we have a very confusing code. Things are spread out in different spots. It's really hard to find. We still find things, quite honestly. You'll be researching and go, huh, didn't know that was in code exactly. So there's a lot of complications to it. This is going to try to get to some of the new trends. One of the biggest ones we have lately is detached town homes, postage stamp lots. They want to act like they're single family, but they're really not. We get a lot of requests of, can I put this structure on the back of my house? And we're going, well, that's not your property. So no, and they don't understand that. So we're going to address that. Rear yard, side yard confusions. One of the biggest ones, and Matt can attest to this, we're dealing with now as a pool house, our accessory structures and our code in general has a lot of if-thens in it. If you're gonna be 30 inches but not higher than four feet, you can do this, but if you're gonna be this, then you gotta be that, and if you're gonna do that, then you gotta be this. And there's all sorts of rules, and if you don't ask all of the questions, you get part of the answer, and then that leads to more problems for us. Buffers we're gonna talk about, we just vacated a part of one tonight. Hopefully this code will increase the housing availability. It'll address those rising costs by trying to open up and give us more opportunities. And it's going to look at kind of the federal and state and what they're starting to do to us. We'll talk a little bit in a couple slides. The Housing Act just was passed last week. What does that mean for us? So, again, what this code is kind of going to do, we're going to try to expand the opportunities for residential, not only single family. The second half of this part two will be more on the multifamily end of things, but expanding opportunities for homeowners to implement improvements. Kind of bringing the code up to date. My code is about 30 years old. We've done numerous amendments over that time to try to hit on certain problems we're having. We're trying to take this one a little more cohesively. Let's look at everything in this residential section. Make it simpler to understand. Make it simpler for people to find the information they need. Just kind of hopefully make it much easier for residents to understand what they can do and how they can do it, and they don't run into a lot of problems. Again, the federal state legislation, using the comp plan, we did adopt it, as Matt's been pointing out, we adopted it, we adopted something that's more flexible, but yet our codes really didn't align with that. So we're trying to catch up to that. 2040 plan that you adopted, speaks to trying missing middle housing and trying to advance housing opportunities. And then even looking at some of the other agencies and what they're doing out there, on different proposals. So in a kind of the big picture, what we're going to do or how this code may attack some of that, we're going to take a look at setbacks and try to minimize down what the setbacks are. We obviously are a suburb and suburbs started taking off. Everybody wanted a lot of big green space, which worked out fine. Land was abundant, it was flat. It all worked out fine. Rising cost is really starting to take a hit on that. So we're going to look at those setbacks and see if we can do something different there. The primary and accessory structures, that's where a lot of our if-then regulations sit. Was there a real reason why we have to say there's a primary structure and there's an accessory structure in a lot? Is it just able to lump them together? So that's if-thens. Density caps. We're not gonna talk about them tonight. We're gonna talk about it the next time, but our code has density caps for no reason other than somebody thought these numbers were magical. We have no real basis for them. 90% of the time, we're not even hitting our density caps. So it's kind of a question of why do we have them. There's gonna be other zoning regulations that will control what can happen on a property and what that density will be. Streetscapes versus buffers. Again, you vacated a buffer tonight. Let's maybe stop looking at them as buffers and start looking at them as a streetscape to the city's benefit and take them off the single family as much as we can. We'll promote the missing middle and hopefully we can kind of deter the idea of putting in private streets. That's another one of those trends that's been coming at us more and more and they're just a long-term problem. So let's take a look at those and try to figure out how do we get past this. So I mentioned the Federal Housing Act was just passed last week. A lot of what they're asking cities gonna be requiring or asking cities to do is to modernize our regulations. A lot of what they're asking us to look at was already on our radar and parts of it is already incorporated into this. So it's not a huge thing for us, but it is gonna say we do have to proceed forward with some kind of code amendments to address a lot of these issues. There's a lot of cities that are saying we're going to prohibit single-family detached residential zoning districts. You have to allow duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes. A lot of them are up to a 12plex in your single-family neighborhoods by right with no control over it. We have a way to kind of come about that in a much more controlled fashion. Again, not tonight. We're not going to talk about it. Doug got a taste of it. That'll be the next meeting. Large minimum lot sizes. Again, somebody somewhere down the line said house and lot should be X size. For whatever reason, nobody really has any basis for them. Sounded good at the time kind of approach. Density caps parking minimums is another one that you're hearing a lot of communities are saying or a lot of the advocates are saying do away with parking minimums. Let the developer figure out what they want to do and what they need for parking. Which is great if that developer is going to hold that property forever. It's going to be the guy who's flipping it that says, oh, what? I don't have to use a lot of my ground for parking? OK, I'm going to put in more building, and then I'm going to sell it. And then the next guy is going to be going, I don't have anywhere to park these people. And then your marketing happens. So we're not a big fan of no parking. We do think that we can look at it and probably take a little better approach to it. Overall height and bulk limits, that's your setbacks. That's your height limits on property. That's your square footage allowances. missing middle, separation of uses. That's a big problem with our code today. It was set up to say, I take my single family, my single family should be next to my medium density, my medium density should be next to my high density, my high density should then next to the office, and my office should be next to my commercial. All we did is really create a city where you have to drive to get to anything. There's no walkability in there. You can't have this concept of on the weekend I can run down to the local grocery store if I don't live close. So there's been a big problem with that. That's led to a lot of things. And then we'll talk again, the excessive setbacks. And we're going to have some slides here that kind of really paints a picture of what that really is doing to the homeowners or to the affordability of homes. So again, legislative intent. They just really basically are trying to find ways to make things more affordable, make things more available. Capital Crossroads is another one. And maybe some of you sat in on the presentation that was done to the city managers group or have seen that presentation afterwards. So this is a local initiative where they're trying to say all cities should do these things. And that's going to really help the affordability. Okay. I already don't have minimum square foot sizes, but building codes has a little bit, but it's nothing to speak of. I already allow slab construction, so that's not our problem. Setbacks, again, we'll talk about them. I don't 100% agree with what they want to propose, but I don't think they're far out of line. Setbacks measured to foundation, that's one we're going to talk about a little bit. The fire resistive construction starts playing into that. DESIGN REQUIREMENTS, THEY ALWAYS WANT THEIR ABILITY TO DO WHATEVER THEY WANT TO DO AND MAKE THEM LOOK LIKE BOXES IF THEY WANT TO. THEY WANT NO GARAGES BEING REQUIRED. THAT'S ONE WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT NEXT TIME. NO LANDSCAPING REQUIREMENTS. NOT SO HUNG UP ON THAT. CHANGING THE STREET RIGHT-AWAYS OR THE STREET CROSS-SECTIONS. TAKING AWAY CURB AND GUTTER, MAKING IT EASIER. SHRINKING DOWN THE RIGHT-AWAY WIDTHS. THAT'S REALLY BRIAN'S. wall, not mine so much. What we're going to propose is really staying out of those right of ways. So if the right of ways want to change, that's fine. It can change in the long run. And then sidewalks. So again, there's a lot of things being tossed out on how do we make things more affordable, more available, more attainable for everybody. Some of it is kind of people not understanding what exactly they're talking about. Some of it certainly is legitimate. So before I dive into the details, I just want to touch on the amendment process because this is not a, the idea that it would be at PNZ next week is not anywhere near the ballgame. So we will take from this meeting and our next workshop, we'll take back what you're saying, we'll kind of formalize that into our code amendments, and then we'll start our outreach. Staff fully intends to get with the residential developers, the Home Builders Association, those that do the civil engineers and the architects, those that are doing some of that design, and as well as residents with some open house elements if they want to come in and learn about what we're doing. Then we'll finalize that code. We'll do our noticing and everything. And hopefully by fall, September, October, hopefully we are then in front of the PNC and the council and getting the residential code updated completely. Okay, all good there. So going back to the comp plan, we did adopt a comp plan that is much more flexible, just in the sense of how it ties to residential. I have five categories of my old comp plan that were 100% residential. I have five categories on my new comp plan that are, two of them are 100% residential, three of them allow that mixing of use, houses. I put my houses next to my office for my commercial and everything, so it's allowing for that flexibility. Won't get into what each one is, I think you kind of have a general idea of detached residential from mixed residential from our multi-use, so we won't dive into those too deeply. Our comp plan also includes place types, and the place types were done to make it, people understand what is intended in that land use district. So when I say it's a mixed residential land use, what type of residential then can fit in that mixed residential? land use. If I say it's multi-use low, what kind of uses do fit into that multi-use low? So we're using those place types to kind of just set that overarching expectation. The zoning then is really built off of those place types and off of that comp plan. So this is our next step into it. This slide is just taking a look at our current zoning districts. Our place types, residential place types that are in the comp plan and just saying, here's what I have for current zoning and how they align. Here's how we're going to propose to the new zoning district. The only two that I can't in my place types today that I can't really allow is the small lot and the intermediate residential. Intermediate residential is that missing middle aspect to it. It is intentionally mixing multifamily and single family. We have a way to do it that we think is a better way to do it. It keeps it more controlled. Everybody knows the expectations. Rather than I put in a single family home and, oh look, there's an eight-plex that wants to build next to me and I had no idea that was coming down the pipeline. So again, we think we have a better approach to it that we're going to propose to you on the next time. So have me slow down if you want me to slow down on anything because I'm going to fly through this pretty quick. So once we take a look at the place types, we take a look at the zoning districts, then we start saying, okay, what in my code is needed or prevents it today or is needed in the future to try to promote those place types. Current zoning districts, we have several that are residential and really we have these classifications, but if you think about like these RS districts, Those RS districts can go all the way up to a suffix of 40,000 square feet. So you can have, literally I could have from 5,000, 6,000, seven, eight, nine. That number at the end is just saying what the lot size is. But as part of those lot sizes commence, there's some other elements that start changing when we do that. So we'll get into that with the setbacks. That's really where you see it. RE is another one. A lot of times you'll see an RE1A, an RE3A. It's just the size of the lot that's coming into play.

Refresh my memory, please. What is RS?

It's another single family, residential single family. So we have RS and we have R1. And the RS5 and the R1 are pretty much the same, except for the minimum lot size and then the setbacks. So we have these weird districts again that were put into play, but they're really the same thing as just a small residential lot. So what we're gonna propose is really kind of only three residential zoning districts. I'll actually say four. A small lot, which will be anything up to be a 28 foot to a 42 foot wide lot. Our traditional lots, which is pretty much everything you see around West Des Moines, takes you from that 42 foot wide to 100 foot. Our estate is the 100 foot wide on up. And then a conservation district, which won't regulate by lot size, it'll regulate by the amount of open space put into development. So you can kind of modify your homes and your lots to fit that character of the land. And as I pointed out before, we are growing into areas that are hilly and have a lot of topography and having that flexibility to kind of really tailor my lots to the land would be the best way to go. So that brings us to the first question slide. I know I went through that really fast, but We are gonna propose that we drop a minimum lot size requirement with the exception of the RE district. An RE has to be a 40,000 square foot lot. All the other ones we want to regulate just by a lot width, and I kinda ran through those. The small lot, 28 to 42 foot wide. If you fit that lot width, you are a small lot. The 42 to 100 is our traditional lots. Anywhere in there, so today I have An RS that maybe is a 50-foot wide lot, and then 70-foot wide lot, and an 80-foot wide lot, and a 100-foot wide lot, and the standards change. I don't know why I have to regulate the lot size so drastically.

I know in previous times we've talked about postage stamp lot. What is the size of that?

Well, a postage stamp lot is really, for us today, is a multifamily product. And what it says is whatever the size of my dwelling unit is, I have to have a minimum of seven feet outside the edges, the foundation of that dwelling unit. I can have a maximum of 10 feet, but one side I can actually make 15 to give them a little more usable area. But that is, it is dictated by that dwelling unit. There is no real standards that says, and it was done that way to get people to not circumvent zoning and try to put in these really small lots when we really didn't have a tool to do that. We're gonna take those postage stamp lots and hopefully get rid of them by creating that small lot residential district. Let the developer say, okay, I know I need a 28 to 42 foot wide, but how deep it is, is really on the developer and what that home is going to be. If that developer wants to give people another 20 feet beyond that for outdoor space, so be it. That's the way they're going to do it. So the developer will dictate how deep these lots go and ultimately what sets square footage a lot. When developers come into this, a lot of them, just depending on who the builder is, they know what product they're gonna build. They know what size lot needs to go with that. They know what size their lot the customer's gonna be looking at. So instead of us guessing and trying to put them into this box, we're gonna say we wanna control that width of the lot, which controls the street context, So as you're driving down the street, you still kind of have that uniformity to it, but it's not so hard and fast. The depth, like I said, will change. So those detached town homes, those postage stamp lots, go away in favor of the small lot approach. Okay?

So if we regulate... Can you give me an example of where in West Des Moines there is a 28-foot wide lot?

We probably do not have them, honestly.

30, 35?

We have a couple 35s, but they're very few far in between. And this small lot will take a different type of developer to come into the city. So that is one way that we can help promote some different types of housing into the city. If you think of a small lot, you're thinking more of like the Brownstones, Chicago, New York. You're talking more about typically they're a narrower home, but they're longer and linear.

But this is still in the single-family detached zone, right?

It's still in the single-family detached zone. So they all stand alone. They all have a side yard to them. They're separated from their neighbors. How deep they go is really on them. They could do them very short and keep them down in an 800, 900,000 square foot house. They can do them 3,000 feet without any problem. They're going to stretch them long and linear. It's a different type of living. It happens in other communities. It just really has not happened here because we really didn't give them the tools to do it very much.

We have one in Iowa, a good example in Iowa at all.

I don't know of any offhand.

I know Dubuque is doing a couple of them in their new developments and they had some traditional formats in that narrower width. Usually it was the bigger cities that were urban in form that have those narrower lots and the smaller lot sizes.

All right, thank you. I mean, we do have some row houses that are in the city of West 1. I'm picturing kind of that, but maybe skinnier. I've got friends that live in Chicago in very expensive homes, but their row houses, like you said, maybe the lots are very narrow, but the house goes way back, and then they've got three stories, four stories.

Yeah and a lot of times those houses will be the full length of a lot. It is literally they'll create little courtyards by the way their house is designed but there's really not a lot of extra space to it. The small lot to us will also be an alley loaded product. So the only way you can fit kind of a driveway in there and we can we've talked recently about is there some kind of design factors we can do that says all right I'll let you come from the front but The entry to your house has to be three quarters of the width of that. I don't want to see the garage is really what we're trying to say. Oh, maybe I can do a tuck under garage, but I can still highlight my entry. That might be something we can look at. In general, we feel the small lot really requires you to be an alley access road.

I know you haven't reached out to builders yet, but is there a desire from developers and builders to have this alley style that you mentioned?

Some builders are okay with it. A lot of them don't because you're paying for a street in the front and you're paying for an alley in the back. So it really kind of starts becoming back to, as Russ mentioned, some of these homes can get to be very expensive homes. So it really is their target client and what that client wants to do, more so than it's city staff saying, okay, you have to do this or that. So this whole thing is built on, the developer's still gonna come in and tell us, which type place type they want to be. We're going to give them the standards and say, okay, this is what you got to work within. So the goal is to get them to start being more creative and start seeing some different things happen. We haven't by nature of we're a suburb and that's really much more of an urban kind of model to it.

So when I think of, and I pulled it up here, you know, Bluestone Circle and those red brick three story ish. is now they are not detached.

So this, and he's talking, this is Ponderosa basically. Yeah, that's Village of Ponderosa.

But that is still a multifamily product because it is attached.

If it was detached, that's what you're getting at?

That's what we're getting at, yep.

All right, so for your, are you asking, are we answering questions now or at the end?

Nope, I'd rather us do them now so that we're not at the end trying to recapture them.

So on your first item, the first dash there, if I were to put that into like, picture form, the question is, are you comfortable having this detached and allowing them to go far back as they want or not?

Yeah, the question is, we want to regulate just by the lot width.

Okay.

And let the depth of them and the square footage of them be determined by the developers. Are we comfortable with only having that one piece to regulate the lot size?

Can I say something before we get into this? And it's this. So I feel like you were there, Matt. We went to the Greater Des Moines Home Builders and we asked them to sit down with us and staff and provide ways that we could cut down on the cost of a home, provide more affordable housing for people in the city of West Des Moines, different ideas that they may have. And some people brought up some ideas at that point in time. Adam Grubb was very helpful, as a number of other people around the table were. But then after that, the conversation continued and we had a conversation specifically with Hubble, you know, Rick Tollex and he had put together a whole list of these things that we're talking about tonight essentially. And what I had asked at that time was, I mean, there were a big list of items. Let's have them run through staff. Let's say the items were 40 items, different items, like having ditches in front of your house instead of having storm sewers put out there. So like you see in rural Iowa, you'd kind of roll down to the ditch and there would be no infrastructure in the way of storm sewers there. what's acceptable to staff, maybe of the 40, maybe 20 would be acceptable to staff, and then from the 20, then what's acceptable to us as a council. It's trying to figure out how to make these homes more affordable, but we gotta balance how our community is and aesthetics and all these different things, our architectural standards, our design standards, what we want West Des Moines to be with, how do we make it affordable, what are we willing to sacrifice and make concessions on to reduce the price of building homes in West Des Moines. That's what we're going through right now, basically.

And maybe if I can just interject, we know that not all builders will want to do these smaller lots or, you know, we need to provide all those options. We need to not preclude something from happening, especially if it's creative, especially if it's innovative. So we don't have a good idea how popular these will be, but we know the forces that are acting on it. First of all, the cost of housing. The second of all is federal and state requirements. So we'll have to have a show our homework. How are we making housing more affordable?

I think it's a great idea. I mean, we're not telling them that they have to build a small house. We're not telling them that they have to build a huge house. So by letting them determine the lot size, I think makes total sense, especially with land prices and availability of land. Like you said, you know, when we start going south, I mean, you're getting, you know, the valleys and all that that you can't build on, but then you get this little piece here that you can, so I think it makes sense.

I don't disagree, but you guys just need to know it's like tax policy. All these different standards that we're agreeing to or not agreeing to is going to determine what our city's going to look like. I mean, as an example, if we're allowing for the smaller lot sizes, for example, I mean, that's gonna determine the price of that lot. And then of course, there's a multiple of five that's gonna determine the price of that house. So what do you want in this neighborhood, that neighborhood? And then we're not talking about different lot sizes within the same street, right? Or are we?

I think that gets to the second. Is that the second dashboard point?

Yeah.

Can you help us understand what you mean by that?

Well, Think of, there's two pieces of this. So I have an existing single family subdivision. They have 70 foot wide lots. I wanna come in and I want to be a small lot subdivision next to it. There's a transition factor that we believe we still need to keep. And that has always been a first 150 feet, you need to match what your neighbor is. So that person who bought at the edge of that subdivision doesn't all of a sudden get something that they just were totally opposed to and don't think is gonna happen. You can start doing those small lots once you move into your own subdivision and start doing this. So a lot of this is greenfield development. This is not really talking about coming in and trying to do infill development at this point. It's really that greenfield.

And that's the big difference. That's where you're getting a lot of the objection with the Widerstein product in Valley Junction is that it's not a blank slate. You've already got an existing neighborhood there. You've got existing lot sizes, existing homes, existing product, existing look and feel. This is buyer beware. This is what this lot now. Do people do that when they make their purchase? Probably not, but they should have known. That's what I like about this, and that's what I like about, and maybe I'm wrong when we determine on the comp plan that we could have a situation where you have a single-family home and then next to it a duplex.

Yeah, that's the next meeting.

But you know what I mean? I mean, as long as the buyer is aware of this...

Yes. Hey, I think the second bullet point makes a, I think it's imperative that we do that, because again, I'm thinking about, I can't think of the subdivision up there on 60th Street, Russ, where it was, they had the brick barn up there, remember that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the neighbors were complaining. Kimberly Hills. Huh?

Kimberly Hills, yeah, that's it.

All right, so the neighbors were complaining because I thought it was going to be green space. Okay, obviously it's never going to stay that way, but... I think it makes total sense to say that I've got a house right here that's been there for eons when it's always been X size lot, this thing. So to then come in and have half that size or a third of that size lot, On a small lot, it doesn't make sense. But if you transition it out, and like you said, as they then get deeper into their own, if you will, interior subdivision, knock yourself out. Because your buyers knew that that is going to be smaller houses behind them or whatever. But I think when you're building next to existing, yes, it needs to stay that same standard size and then transition out. The question is how big is it?

The question is how long is the transition? 150 feet. 150?

Yeah, so 150 comes from today what we have in code is if I'm a single family development and the Murphy family is going to next to me, we say that first 150 feet we're going to control how big your building is going to be, how many units can be, how long it's going to be as a way to transition. So we're going to keep applying that 150 rule.

I tried to get that bigger and that caused the problem.

And that makes sense because again, My new neighbor is going to have the same size lot and everything that I've got. Matt's, it's going to be a smaller lot, but he bought that house knowing it's going to be smaller on down. The problem that we're always going to have is going to be that.

Even with the 150 feet, the issue that we're going to have is that, you know, just picking on people, Matt lives in a $750,000 house, and now Kevin, or let's say Doug down there, that far down, Doug is building a... You know, he's got a smaller lot and he's only paying, you know, whatever, $60,000 for the lot. He's going to have $300,000 in the house, $360,000 versus his $750,000. And then he's saying, this is bringing down the value of my home and my neighborhood.

Yeah, which we've never found any supporting documentation for. Yes, everybody's going to say it. People are going to complain about what my neighbor can do, and I don't like it. But again, we have to look, again, across the city, what's in our best interest to open up the house.

I mean, the best example of this is when we moved that house, Kevin, if you remember, on 50th Street and Westwood? What was that? And then we were allowing a house to be put back, and the neighbors all up and down there were up in arms about it. And now there's a house there. It looks great. It looks great. It's not as big, but it looks great.

Kind of jumping back to Matt had asked, can I have different lot sizes along my frontage? Sure, because you know what happens today? Even if I plat them all as 70-footers, and we're seeing this, unfortunately, more in the estate lots anyway, but I may have all my lots at 70 feet. We've got people buying two lots and putting a bigger house. So to have that flexibility, but again, we're going to say the first 150... you really should be matching what your neighbor is and respecting what that neighbor is.

So when we say regulating by lot width, we're not going to regulate the lot width to the point where they couldn't be greater. I mean, you can still combine if you wanted to, or you could be incredibly, I guess, narrow if you wanted to. Fair?

Yep.

So this is, you know, I like to analogize it to, like, I want to see a menu. Some people like to shop at Costco because there's two or just one type of ketchup. Other people love to go to Hy-Vee because there's five types of ketchup. We're going to have five types of ketchup out there. You get to pick what works for you.

Yeah, so this is a lot like Sherman Hills and things where you have a variety of home sizes. You have a variety of lots. Some people, yes, it may be a little jarring at first, but pretty soon you're kind of like, okay, I like the variety. I like the fact that some of them are shifting and pulling and doing things. So it does put that, it's back to the developer understanding what their market is, what they're going to try to hit. And you can plat them as different widths. You're going to basically, they're going to tell us you're going to fit in this window.

Now, what we have to account for too because this is going to happen. Actually, I tried to do this once and I was told no by the neighbors. Somebody might come in and there is no minimum lot width and this developer decides to come in and do, I don't know, 50-foot lots, let's say 60-foot lots. Somebody comes in and they say, hey, I want to build a house here. I want to buy the one lot. I want to subdivide it into two city. So I wanna have two 30 foot wide lots. I'm gonna sell this lot and I'm gonna build my house on this lot. If we do this, we can't say no to that.

You're starting to get back a little bit into kind of more of an infill idea, where you kind of already got these lots being established, rather than it coming right out of the chute and doing that.

Well, I looked at buying a lot, it was five acres. I looked at doing this in Glen Oaks once, and outside of Glen Oaks, where I couldn't afford to buy that lot and build my house. But the lot was big. I mean, it was bigger than I needed. So I had a proposal that I'll subdivide it. The people just lost their minds. No, no, my God. No, we can't have that. These are five acre lots. You gotta have five acres. Lots across the street are one acre. I still have two and a half. No, no, God, no, no, no, no. But that's, I mean, this will open it up to, we can't say no to that. I mean, if somebody wants to buy a lot, some developer says, here's what I'm gonna do, here's the product I'm putting in, and I'm gonna do 60-foot lots. Somebody wants to come in, they wanna do a small home, they're like, look, I don't need more than 1,000 square feet. I wanna buy your 60-foot lot, I'm gonna subdivide it. We can't say no.

By this code, you would, because we're going to say the smallest they could go in that traditional lot is 42 feet.

Okay, we are going to have a minimum lot size.

Yeah, there's a minimum. The small lot is 28 to 42. The traditional is 42 to 100.

But how does this not meet? This is 30. You said small lot's 28. This is 30 and 30.

Because if you have a 60 foot wide lot to start with, you're in the traditional lot zoning district. That traditional lot zoning district dictates that minimum lot size, which is over 42 feet. So you've done your subdivision. So you're kind of like almost talking about, we got raw ground and then I already have a subdivision. And I want to take that one lot in my subdivision and make it smaller or larger.

Or what if you go down to 17th Street in West Des Moines, north of Ashworth, and one of the homes burns down? And I don't know, what, they got 100 foot there? I don't know. It's a good size.

Yeah, big lots.

And they say, you know what, I want to break this down into three 33-foot lots?

Yeah.

I mean, you could do that today?

By code, you can, whatever that zoning district is, so today's zoning district, it probably says it's a, I don't know, an RS-10. RS-10 has a 70-foot wide lot. We said, yeah, you can subdivide it, but you gotta give me at least 70-foot wide lots in that note. So it's locked down a little bit more today than what we're proposing.

So in the event that it's a 210-foot wide lot, you can do the three?

Yeah. So I got a question, though, backing up to the second question. Rather than saying that if they have to build, if they're building adjacent to, it has to be the same lot width, we don't know exactly what the existing lot widths are, right? Because where I live, I think it's an 80-foot width. Okay, but in other areas, it might be 75 foot, it might be 60 foot.

But they're platted. So they do know what they are, they're platted.

But not knowing, because this is a global decision, to come up with 150 feet of the existing subdivision, correct? It has to match the same lot width.

Yeah.

I'm not sure you're going to be able to divide those out and come up with 150 is what I'm getting at. So would we do better to say like the first three lots of that new subdivision have to match the same lot width as your neighbor and then they can transition out. That way you're not coming up with 150 and oh, it's two houses or...

But to us if it's two and a half, you're going to have to do three. So I mean you're going to split that because what you're saying now is if you're going to say I got to do the first three lots at that same width, I could be 300 feet, I could be 500 feet, I could be 600 feet into that new subdivision. So part of our goal is to open it up and let people have more variety and more opportunity to have houses, available lots and different size houses. If we keep locking it down that tight, we're not going to ever see that change. What we've got today is what we're going to continue to get.

But the biggest problem that we're going to have, politically and otherwise, are our existing people. I'm an existing taxpayer. Gosh darn it. I live here. I bought this lot. My wife and I built this house years ago, and now you're telling me... Now you've changed it. 150 feet? That's... Okay. I mean, that's what we've got to try to figure out how to, what's reasonable.

So again, we're looking at this a lot from Greenfield. So we can put right in code anything platted prior to X date has to match their neighbors for lot sizes. You know, there's some ways to take the existing, like I said, this is really much more geared at Greenfield. But it's Greenfield. The idea is to come back to infill and try to figure out how do we piece this into infill.

I mean, but if it's Greenfield, it's a cornfield out there, and there's no other homes around it, then nope, it's not a big deal, right? The issue becomes if there's... Pemberley. Right, right. Or even less than Pemberley, like a development that just got developed two years ago, and brand new homes two years ago, and now there's a cornfield next to it. Two years ago, we built this. Now you're telling me 150 feet? I mean, these are 100 foot wide lots in that corner. So starting right there, basically two houses down from me.

Yeah, if you want to park more than 150, we can certainly do that. 150, like I said, is a number we already have in code for transition from medium density to single density.

And 150 is not much. That's why I tried to get that to change.

That's why I'm thinking three lots. I just...

We can go whichever way you want to go. Our goal here is to be able to allow that transition and allow somebody to start doing something a little bit different if they so desire.

To what you said, based on Kevin's, could we do 150 feet or three lots, whichever is more?

We can.

We could, but then getting to your point, and it's if they're 350 foot lots that are right there, then...

But if it's across the street or, I mean, I picture if you're on the west side of 60th Street or the east side of 60th Street, there's sufficient... you know, basis there where it feels distinct. Now, if you're on South 83rd Street, or I used to live, I mean, you know, it's across the street. It ain't a difference. You know, it's literally your neighbor. So I don't know if there's a way to kind of naturally distinguish between developments.

Right, and I think you want to, if we're going to do the slot width, you would want to stay, it's on the same side of the street. It's not I'm jumping over here on that street, I'm jumping over that street. It's what is going to be absolutely sharing the lot line with me. 150 or three lots or whichever is greater. We're open to kind of whatever you want. That's why we're here before we ever go out to the development community because we understand.

I like 150 or three lots, whichever is greater. I really do. Because Kevin, in your example of your house, you've got 80 foot wide lots. So 80, 80...

Two lots and now you got the tiny houses.

Yeah, I just... Well, you actually have three because if what we're saying, if you're 80 and 80, you're 160. Yeah, good.

So in your case, in this case, it'd be two 40s. Right? I like that.

Okay, so we're going to say a transition of 150 feet or three lots of equal size.

And this is assuming they're on the same street. What's the situation?

It has to be the same street, same side.

Same side of the street.

So if my neighbor, if across the street from me, if it's green space, they can build whatever. It's what's going to be next to my house. three lot, 150 or three lots south of me on my same side of the street.

It does take a comfort level of the council to say even across the street. I was thinking backyard as well, on the other side of your backyard too.

And I'm trying to think of the person that's going to come in. It's easy talking about this. It's hard when someone's standing there going, We put everything we had. This is our biggest investment in our lives. And now you guys are going to come here and tell me that right there they're going to put it. We want people to be able to afford lots and homes, but we've got to protect people's greatest investment at the same time.

Yeah, and I guess I don't see the big deal if it's a backyard. And again, I'm thinking of my own place. I've got, and I don't even know what kind of bushes they are, that there's a fence back there, but I've got bushes that... I don't know, those things probably grow 10 feet tall or more. I can't even see my neighbor's backyard or my neighbor behind me, okay? So I guess I don't see that being a big deal because you could put up bushes or something else if you felt that you were being slighted because now there's a small, if you will, a small house behind you. To me, if you're driving down the street and I pull in to my driveway, I shouldn't

have that tiny house next to me. Keep in mind, though, Kevin, one of the things that I guess, if I'm understanding this, is you could do more of that row-style home. You could go maybe, I don't know how many stories, you go three stories up, and they could come much closer to your back lot line than the existing home that's behind your house today, assuming it's a traditional residential lot. Because the setbacks are going to be... Because it could come all the way up to, I think, maybe five feet, right? Don't know yet, right?

Yeah. Okay.

We haven't got to that page yet.

That is what we talked about at DNP.

So as I think about it, it's not your traditional single-family home. It's more of a, you know, you think of a three-story tall, maybe a rooftop patio, super deep, that could now your 10-foot bush or trays or whatever.

They're there, but they're right there.

They're right there.

Right up against your bush. and then the bush ties.

But again, if you- It's not any more commie comfort. We've had that 150 foot for that transition between single family and multifamily for 15 years, and it's worked well.

Within the 150 feet, you can't go more than two stories is what we have, right?

Right, it's the building length, it's the height.

Yes, and I think that needs to continue with this.

A three story, I think, is- We're not gonna be able to anticipate everything, but we do know when you're lot line to lot line, that's the biggest concern.

But let me ask you this, okay? This computer screen is one street, or one, yeah, I guess one block. This is a through street here. Here's another block. If I live right there on the corner and my neighbors all are on this street, this is cornfield. Is this, from here to here, gonna be considered a part of the 150?

That's the way it is today. It would be measured from that single family, 150, and if that crosses a street.

That street's 26 feet wide, and there's gonna be probably, here there's going to be, who knows what kind of right-of-way, and here there's gonna be a right-of-way, so we're gonna count this right-of-way, this right-of-way, and this right-of-way. and that could be, you know, 50 feet and then it's 100 from there.

Yeah, I mean we can write this such that whatever the first 150 feet of your subdivision that touches another subdivision has to match it. That could be lot depth, that could be lot width. So we can write in, and I'm sorry I don't have an illustration of it, we can bring it next time, of kind of showing where this 150 would apply in different situations. It's making sure you're comfortable with that whole idea that we can transition. If we're going to use streets as a, no, I don't care what happens on the other side of the street. Is that a local street? Is that street width? Then start playing in. It's a lot different to be what's on the other side of Mill Civic Parkway than what's to be on the other side of Waterford Drive. So there is also a way to say, okay, at these road classifications, because my right-of-way width is already giving me more of that 150, which is why that 150 is measured from the edge of the single-family lot, if you have a wider road, your full 150 may very well be in your right-of-way. In which case, I'm already far enough away, why do I have to give you another $150? So let me, for the next meeting, we'll pull up an illustration to kind of show how this $150 applies, and what are the rules we can put into that $150?

Well, in Kevin's backyard situation is one thing, but if it's like, you know, here's, I live on this side of the street, and this side of the street is blank, I don't know that I'd want a different product on the other side of the street from me. You know what I mean? Like up and down.

That happens all the time. I mean, right now that happens all the time. There's a different product, different lot size.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, just trying to anticipate. I think we've got a good handle on this now on what your concerns are. I think it will help in the next council meeting if we bring back illustrations because it's real easy to point and talk.

Okay. But again, the buyer beware situation is a lot different than somebody sitting there already. Right.

Part of that is an education, though, getting people to understand to ask for what the plot map looks like. Look at the full subdivision map. Don't just look at the lot that your realtor showed you. Ask the questions of what can be next to me. That's an education.

Those are all the issues that we come into. So my real estate agent said...

Oh, it's going to be a cornfield.

The real estate agent told me that that train track was abandoned.

There's no road going to go there. So, yes, we always deal with them.

Oh, it happens. It happens a lot.

Let's move on. We'll bring you back an illustration of how we can make this work. So coming back into this whole idea, so the next thing we're gonna start stepping into is of these lots, what is that setbacks that we feel we need? So today I range anywhere from a 40 foot, I'm sorry, 20 foot in commerce to up to a 50 foot in my estate lots. Most of my setbacks, front setbacks are either a 30 or a 35. That is the typical West of mine house.

So when you're talking commerce and VJ, you're talking the Old Town of Commerce and Valley Junction, or what are those commerce and VJ?

That's our zoning district. So single-family commerce, which covers all of commerce, and single-family VJ, which covers a lot of that, that's what the regulations would say you have to be. Now there's a lot of RS5, there's a lot of R1 that have crept into some of those, especially VJ area or the older part of town. So not everything is SFVJ.

VJ is a 50-foot front yard?

A 50-foot lot width.

A lot wet.

So front yard setbacks.

You're talking front and rear yard setbacks. That's where I'm like, what?

Okay, I'm not looking over here.

I'm looking at you. I'm like, this is not 50 feet in VJ.

Yeah, no.

Lots of 50 feet.

Point here is we have a variety of front setbacks already today, okay? The primary structure is one setback, accessory structures are another setback. We don't allow accessory structures in the front yard. So we're gonna set that aside for right now. With our proposed code though, we really have these three zoning districts, the small lot, traditional and estate. What we'd like to do is basically pull all those houses up closer to the street. So the small lot would be as close as an eight foot setback. Now again, remember these are alley loaded at this point. So all you have is that. The traditional lots could be as close as the 15 foot setback. And estate lots cutting the 50 in half, and we're seeing right now a 30 foot front yard setback. So, but let's go on to another slide because I wanted to show you what this kind of impacts does to us. Oops, got to transfer both of these here maybe. So this takes a look at a lot in De La Vida, flat one. We have this lot, it's 70 foot wide, 140 feet deep, it's 9,800 square feet, okay? 30 foot front yard, 35 foot rear yard, seven and seven for side yards. When we take a look at this lot, so what's in yellow is my front yard. It's a 30 foot by 70, I got a 2,100 square foot area. of my lot, right? That's 21% of your lot that you don't get to do anything in but landscape it and put your driveway across it. This lot sold to the builder for $92,000. If I take that 92 and take that 2,100 of it, I'm spending almost $20,000 on a front yard that I can't do anything with. My rear yard is 35. Foot setback. Do the same math. I'm spending almost 23,000. Now the rear yard gets a little bit easier because I got accessory structures I can put in there, but my dwelling cannot be past that 35 today. This lot, 4,500 square feet of your lot, you kind of are very limited in what you can do. 2,100 of it, you really can't do anything with, but landscape it and make it look pretty. The backyard, I can put some accessory structures in there so I get some value out of it. But almost half of that price of that lot is in setbacks that are really not very usable to somebody. So this is kind of why we're saying, one, let's not dictate how square footage of these lots are. Let's dictate what the house wants to do and what that linear foot or that depth of that lot needs to be. And then let's go ahead and give them back their front yard to work with. Pull that house closer to the street. There's a lot of benefits. We'll look at that in a minute. Of pulling those houses back up towards the street and letting the houses engage with the street, giving people back.

So they're all going to look like Village of Ponderosa?

A lot of them will be close like Village of Ponderosa. The garage door always has to be that 25 feet back.

So if I abutted Pemberley Estates... Three houses, if this moves forward, three houses south of me, for example, they're going to have eight foot back from the street is going to be their front of their house.

This would not be that 150 foot transition, though. This is just saying that your front setback is these numbers.

So even the new houses in that 150 foot can be eight foot. I don't like it.

So you want to keep a transition even on setbacks?

I just, I don't think... I think a short front yard is crazy.

Let me jump up a few slides and get into the average that came up at DNP.

Can I ask, so before you do that, is it a requirement or an optionality?

Well, see, that's where I'm going too.

I'm just trying, are we requiring them to be at, I don't know, eight feet or whatever it was there, or is it you can go up to as close as eight feet?

That was one of the questions on the slide. We can do it as an option. We can do it as, it's a build two line, everybody goes to eight foot. All right. We can do it as a range, meaning I got a minimum of eight and I got a maximum of 15 in the small lot. Or we just say, developer, do what you want. Some of them will push them back, some of them will pull them tight. It's on them to do.

So looking at your picture here, where you got building addition. So my house right now sits back probably at least 30 feet, 35 feet, I'm guessing. So you're saying that I could put an addition on the front of my house that then puts it eight feet off the right of way?

So this is the question that we have here. So today in code, I have an average front yard setback. So your house, I'd take a look, you come on to us and say, I wanna put in a front yard addition on the front of my house. We're gonna look at where you're at and we're gonna look at where your neighbor on each side of you is at. We're gonna average what those front yard setbacks are. That's how close you can come. So that's what this yellow line is showing.

And that's today's practice.

That is today's code. So somebody comes in to me today, this lot, this house here, they can build all the way up to this yellow line. This guy gets no benefit because he's already ahead of it. This guy has no benefit because he's already ahead of it.

I don't see your mouse on there. Yeah, we're not seeing your pointer.

I don't know how I can do that over here.

You might have to point to it.

I don't know that I can do it with a slideshow.

Oh. But I see what you're saying. You get your building addition and then the guy to the left. You're dictated by... Left says you can't add on, the other guy can.

Yeah, you're dictated by where your neighbor's setbacks are. If we do the 15-foot setback in this case, everybody could come up to the red line if they so desire. This is ignoring a plat restriction, which I don't want to get into because it's a legality that we just got to figure out.

Would the overall goal be... So let's say we have five streets that are like normal right now, but that the overhead that you had on like three slides ago... Do you want to go back to that really quick? This one right here. So the overall goal, here we have 100% of the lot, but in essence, we could shrink that by 20%. So what would be five streets would now allow for six streets, which would now allow for an entirely new street filled with homes, thus lessening the average amount of land side, therefore increasing the number of homes available in a plot by 20%. Is that the ultimate goal that we're talking about?

This is kind of some of those benefits for having smaller setbacks. You're absolutely right. My blocks are shorter. I can generally get more houses in it. My costs are spread out on infrastructure. It's spread out across more lots. It becomes more feasible to do. It becomes more available.

What's a snout house?

Snout house is when your garage sits way out in front and you barely can find the front door from it. So because with this setback, if we say the house can be at 15, the garage still needs to be at 25. I got to be able to park that car in the driveway and stay back from the sidewalk. So we always have said garages have to stay back at 25. So it naturally starts getting rid of snout houses.

Here's the weird thing for me. When I first got on the council, I mean, this game was always, you know, the developer wanted to make as small a lots as possible to get as many products, as many homes as possible in there and make as much money as possible. And I remember back in the day, Kevin, you might remember this, Omar and I were adamantly opposed to the, what was it, like 50-foot-wide lots that they were looking at doing out in Michael's Landing, Talon's Reach, Woodland Hills. whatever the hell it is. But now the game has changed a little bit in that, yes, the developer wants to do that to be able to make as much money as humanly possible, but we want to try to do that as well to be able to have smaller lots to have more affordable housing.

We hope it ends up being affordable housing. It's the option. We don't know that.

Interesting fact about Michael's Landing, we also had that range. You could go no farther away than 35 foot, no closer than 25 foot for your front yard. I can guarantee you every single house was built at the 35 foot setback because that was the traditional way you did homes and that's what the builders that were building in there did. They didn't want to change.

What was the rhyme or reason for that?

Well, again, it's the reasons that bring people closer to the street. You have better interconnection with your neighbors. It's traffic calming. If, you know, houses are far away, people have a tendency to speed. So there's a lot of benefits. They're kind of...

And this was literally in the description of Kings Valley. When we did Kings Valley on the other side of 60th Street, that was in the description. More neighborly interactions, bring people closer, more walkable.

But we don't know that that actually happens.

No.

Well, it's harder to quantify, but we can tell you from past experience with developments that have taken advantage of that, those are some of those tangible things that people report.

But I used to make fun of, if you're in that neighborhood, I used to tell people, you could almost open your front door, run down the foyer and jump off your front porch and clear the sidewalk. But you know what? Now that is, I mean, it's a beautiful neighborhood and it's a product that some people want. It may not be a product that everybody wants. Some people may make fun of that smaller front yard and whatever. I mean, hey, let's go throw the baseball. Let's see if the neighbor lets us stand in his yard. so we can throw the thing.

And again, we don't, I mean, our opportunity is to make those as options. Whether or not the developers take us up on it is really on the developer. They know their client, they know their product, they are still going to do what they feel is the best thing for them.

and we're pulling back on this.

Right.

Right. We're giving you more opportunity.

The smaller the lot size, the more opportunity for an affordable house for somebody.

And it's hard to say people don't want this when today we really don't allow it. We don't have an idea whether or not they really want this.

So that's what I was going to ask because I hear that and I generally agree and then I look at the picture on top and I'm like, that kind of looks like what we already have in West Des Moines and Ponderosa.

Mm-hmm.

So like we can have it, but we do have it. They're living out there. So that's what I'm wondering is we actually do have some of this.

We have very little of it, and it takes a lot of work to get them done because you really have to basically put a PUD in and make arguments for it, and it's a much longer process. This is kind of trying to allow things by right. You come in and just tell us what you want to do. Here's your standards. Plan it. Go. Move. So, you know, trying to speed up and streamline processes, you have to have some of these options in there. Otherwise, you're always backed into a corner trying to figure out, how do I make these things work? I don't disagree with what you want to do, but I don't have a way to get you there.

Again, I don't like the short front yards. I was just out in Ankeny. Sunday and even my 19 year old son went down there by the district. They've got those houses that sit two foot off the sidewalk. He's like, that looks stupid. And I'm like, yeah, I agree.

Yeah, it's definitely not for everybody, but we do have a lot of people also that are moving from urban areas. This is very common to them. This is not shocking to them.

Well, and one of my biggest concerns right now for us as a city is, you know, we've got a really cool city. We've got a lot of unbelievable amenities and fun things for people to do. People want to live here. But what happens and what I'm seeing happen is you get a young person that wants to live here. They move here as a single individual. They buy an apartment or they rent an apartment that is still somewhat difficult to pay the rent for. But they rent the apartment. They take advantage of all the amenities, all the parks and recreational opportunities we have and all the incredible entertainment opportunities we have with our businesses. And they just love it. and then they meet that person, they wanna settle down, they wanna buy a single family home and they can't afford it. And so they go to Grimes, they go to Waukee, they go to Van Meter, Adele, and so we're losing, we are going to lose in the future all these, our kids and our grandkids that were raised here that wanna live here and work here, we're gonna lose those people. You know, it's like when we were training snowplow drivers and sending them to Urbandale. We're gonna bring in these young kids that are future leaders and everything else, and they're gonna live here for a while in an apartment. Their story is gonna be, I used to live in West Des Moines, and before I moved out to Grimes, you know, I don't want that. I wanna keep these people here. So I like this from that standpoint, because this is what it's gonna allow that. We can't guarantee it though, Kevin, you're right.

Exactly, I mean, to me it just allows developers to put more houses on less land and make more money. I don't see them making these attainable housing.

I mean, this is the starter home opportunity to start shrinking down the lots and letting people have different size houses. Can't guarantee it that developers will do it. Yes, a lot of them will probably just pocket the profit versus spreading it out and lowering the cost. But not if we do a residential TIF.

Not if we do a residential pay-as-you-go TIF with some of these folks.

Well, and, you know, I briefly touched on it.

No, uh-uh. No, no, no. So we can control that.

We just don't get the new construction valuation off of it.

And the LMI. You don't have to put as much LMI, but it's totally gone. Okay. But we can take those proceeds and say that we'll do this with you, but we need to have this many $250,000 homes or whatever. We could do that. We don't have to do that because it's not in code, state code, but we could do that.

Just kind of going back to what I said before. We know that there's a couple forces acting. One is the cost of housing. Two is the federal and state government will not give us a choice. So we've got to demonstrate a good faith effort in doing this. Again, we're not forcing anybody to do it. We're just giving them options.

I don't understand why federal state government won't allow us to do this.

Affordable housing. The Federal Housing Act is asking local communities to start making these changes.

But they're not dictating this to us.

They're not dictating this, but we have to demonstrate that we're making that good faith effort. We as a community have to demonstrate we're making that good faith effort. Otherwise, it may come to no. By right, you have to allow multifamily and single family.

Somebody in DC is going to show up here and say, okay, now you've got to do it because you didn't demonstrate. I'm feeling like we're using generalities here.

The perfect example is ADUs. We were moving forward with something that was a little appropriate for West Des Moines. The federal government the AARP and then the state government pushed the requirement to allow every single family property to have an ADU.

So you could build another house in your backyard and have somebody live in it.

Yep.

Yes.

But that was done by the state. The legislature did that.

That was done by the state.

And again, understand you've got like the federal government saying, hey, we got to do all these things to make things affordable and attainable. Then the state latches on and they push things. So unfortunately, as soon as the thoughts are put out there, they may not be coming down and exactly saying, okay, by tomorrow you have to do it.

So that's where I'm getting hung up is like, We're using the words we have to do. Nobody's dictated anything to us at this point.

No, but we are trying to get ahead of that because part of this is if we can't show that we are trying to do anything, that's when the mandates will come down. If we can demonstrate.

If we do this and nobody else does it, that doesn't mean we're out of it. jail for this, right?

No, it doesn't mean we're out of jail for this.

Well, I'm in favor, but I'm just getting confused by it.

It's interesting that we can, that, hey, you have these opportunities. You do not need to dictate to us how we go about this. These opportunities that are there, we've thought them out and we're doing them how we feel is appropriate for West Des Moines, which is what we wanted to do with ADUs, but... Nope, you can't. You just got to allow it. You can't dictate the design. You can't dictate the materials. You got to allow them.

And the fact that we... I mean, it also works the other way, though, too. I mean, the fact... And I know, obviously, I think we met for an hour and a half, two hours before that legislative session. The fact that we were actually going down the path had no bearing upon whether or not the state... Just to... We were trying to show a good faith effort. They didn't care. And I think that can be true here. Even if we're trying to show a good faith effort, the reality is they may not care. And we may have a totally different state administration. We may have a totally different federal administration. Who knows what's going to happen, you know, November 2028.

We need to do what's best and smartest for our community regardless of what the state and the feds are going to do. But I seriously have that worry, you know, that... we are going to get the younger people that aren't going to be able to afford to live here. And that's going to be our kids and grandkids or other people's kids and grandkids. And, you know, I told you I work with some young people that I asked a number of them just in an open forum. I said, well, what's an affordable house to you? Is it $300? $350? What? Oh, God, no. No, like $250. So how do you get a $250,000 house in West Des Moines? Well, you got lot size, you got house size, and you got materials. As well as regulations. I mean, that's what we're getting at.

Let me just ask you, or maybe Len or Linda, I mean, if this were to move, and we see exactly what you got there on the top right, assuming that's consistent with what you're proposing, do you anticipate $250,000 homes being able to be built and sold to meet what Russ is, I mean, we're doing this in the name of affordability and then we're gonna have this product here on the top right being sold for 425. I mean, do we have any sense of the reality of what could be built for $250,000 new? I totally get what's being sold in Valley Junction at those prices, but can that happen in a new development we're putting in? You need a $50,000 lot Okay.

That you would build basically a $200,000 house on.

Well, what about, okay, so I go back to what. Not easy. Do you remember this document, Russ? I know not everybody can see it. It was a gentleman. Yes, yes. I can't think. What was his name? Ted Grobe. Ted Grobe. He gave us a document. It shows the sanitary capital fees, the water connection fees, water tap fees, parkland improvement, stormwater management, detention basin fees. I don't even know what a 2CBU is. A sidewalk, soil study, buffer landscaping, city inspection fees, rezoning fees, traffic study, erosion construction site fees, and street lights, all added up to West Des Moines fees, I don't know, totals out to cost breakers, $60,000 in fees. In addition to the price for the ground. So you buy the ground at, I don't know, would you say it was for that 9,500 square foot lot at 100 grand?

92,000 to the builder. 92 for him.

I mean so I just I wonder like we talked about and we should strive towards more affordable housing but let's be also honest like are we really gonna get a $250,000?

Well I will I will just step in everything we know about housing history everything we know it's trickle up it's trickle down it's trickle up what do we do we get out of college we buy a four-plex townhome then we do two-plex townhome then we get a small home and so it just comes down to supply Supply, supply, supply, supply, supply. The more supply we have, even if it's $350,000, that means somebody's going to sell their house for $300,000 and move up. And that house is going to open. And then that house is going to open. It's going to keep on trickling down. It's everything we know about housing history in the United States of America. It tells us that the biggest thing a city can do is supply, supply, supply, supply, supply. Lynn, how's that sound?

Sounds absolutely correct.

So let's just build more. Whatever it is. Let's build more fourplexes. Let's build our twoplexes. As long as people are owning it, you know how I feel. Great, because that's what people want to do. They want to buy a $230,000 townhome, then move up to $280,000 townhome. Great. And then they could buy one of these, which may be $375,000. I don't know. That is the American dream. for all of the reasons that I've said a billion times up here. Supply, supply, supply. Let's go.

Yeah, and the city has never dictated what that house can be, what that price point's going to be, and I don't think we want to get into that market.

No, we don't.

Again, we want to try to open it up so the guy who does want to do a starter home, come in and make them smaller and make them affordable and get people into them, has that opportunity to do it. Today, it doesn't work. Yes, there's infrastructure costs that we probably need to look at and try to figure out, is there anything we can do? A lot of those costs that Ted Grove pointed out are federal or state. They're things that we just have to do. But what are the things in our control that we can do to start opening up either more density per acre so the cost spreads across and starts dropping that cost? What we don't know, they always are gonna want their profit. The more profit they can make, they're a for-profit business.

That's their goal. Which is why I always say it's our job to make the best city we can. It's their job to make as much money as they can. Where those two meet is where we need to be.

And to point out, Ted Groh built the houses out in High Street and Commerce, correct? Yes. Which he did not have the infrastructure he had to put in because it was already there. And I guarantee you, not one of those houses probably sold for less than $300,000. So... They're not going to build something cheaper because they can. They're going to try to make more money. Off their lot. So, again, we can strive to get the more affordable or attainable houses, but I don't think it's – the reality is I don't think it's going to happen.

That's why we bring those Grimes people up here. Like, we need a campaign as a city. Do you hate 141 and all those stoplights at Grimes? Do you hate Hickman? Do you hate Minnesota? Like, then come move closer, and that opens up homes.

The bad part is we've had developers tell me, I can build that more expensive $750,000 home, sit on it, and I still make more money than if I go in and build two or three smaller houses. That's the problem. That's not a reality that we necessarily can control. Unless we want to come back and start saying, you know that TIF rebate? Uh-uh. Only if you're going to build houses that are going to be in this price range, then we will help you participate. We have to take a little more control out of what we're allowing people to do with the money that we're willing to help push back. That's a financial thing.

This whole conversation is very depressing. It is.

It is. Welcome to our- It is extremely depressing because it's like- Yeah.

It's not easy. No. I mean, it's not easy, but if we- In the world of reality, West Des Moines will never build affordable, attainable houses. That's the reality.

We have to incentivize them. is what we have to do. We've got to do this. We've got to move the size of the lots. We've got to allow for smaller lots, for smaller houses. We've got to look at every regulation that we can and try to eliminate those that are burdensome and something that we don't need that we can control. And then we also need to provide some sort of an incentive to get it down to $250, $300 to get to that affordable housing. And it's imperative that we do it because if we don't, I'm telling you, that stupid study that that illegitimate website business put out that... that West Des Moines was the number one city that people were fleeing from in the country, all they did was they looked at like realtor.com, people with an IP address in the city looking for things outside the city versus how many people were outside the city looking at things inside the city and said, we're the number one that people are moving out of. No, we're not. No one's going anywhere. They're looking for homes. They're looking for affordable homes. And people that are living in West Des Moines are looking outside of West Des Moines for affordable homes. That's what it is. This tells us what the problem is. We need to have more affordable homes.

He's already looking at homes. I know. He's part of the problem. I know.

He's done it a hundred times. But you know what I'm saying? That's what's happening. You're getting people in apartments. You're getting people in townhomes that are ready for the single-family home, and they're sitting there, realtor.com, and they're looking in Waukee, and they're looking in Grimes and Van Meter because they can't find that here, which is why we need to do this.

Yeah, we'll echo how many times have you talked to somebody who says, I'd love to live in West Des Moines, I just can't afford it. I don't wanna leave West Des Moines, it has everything, but I can't afford it. So we're trying to find ways, how do we start helping the affordability? So back to our price point and our reducing setbacks. This is what happens if we start reducing that front yard setback. We take it down to a 15 foot, now I'm spending $10,000 in my lot on area I can't use versus 21,000. If we take that rear yard back down to a seven, I'm at 46. I've taken from $42,000 that I have to spend on a lot that I really can't do anything with and I've dropped it down to $14,000. Makes it much more affordable because there's nothing that says I need a 35 foot rear yard That's going to be one of our questions. What's that magic number? I keep telling these guys, I have a 20 foot deep backyard. It's probably fine. It's all deck and patio, but it works just fine for me. I don't need a bunch of green space behind me. I got parks right down the street. So, you know, you pick and choose what you want and what you're willing to do with that. So the people that want the starter home, there's a good chance that if there's a smaller lot available, the house is a little bit smaller, it's in something they can afford and make work, they're going to do this. When the developers start understanding that, you're going to have developers that are going to do this. They do it in other communities, we just have got a group of developers that kind of have always done what they've always done. We're never going to get anybody else unless we give them some opportunities for the other guys to come in and start saying, no, you can do these things. This is how you do it and start demonstrating these things to work.

So the only thing that I would say that gives me some pause is you said we're going to be doing we're looking at doing 28 foot.

28 to 42s.

28, 42. Small lot. And then just like regular.

42 to 100 foot would be a traditional lot. Okay.

I think this would be a lot better if we, the council, could control how much acreage we were going to allow to be each one of these things. I mean, because let's say we decide to do this thing, 28, 42, 100. You could have people come in and develop thousands of acres that are the 28s. And that's great if we're going to get a lot of affordable housing. That's great.

A lot of supply.

A lot of supply. But to your point, Mr. Economics, when you're talking about the comp plan.

The pair mix.

Right. The payer mix, the comp plan and how much each different, you know, property type is paying in taxes and whether or not we're having enough revenue coming into the city to provide the services that we need to provide. That might become an issue if all of a sudden thousands of acres are 28 foot square. lots and they're $250,000 houses, that might become more of an issue. If we could control this and we could say, you know, hey, on this 40 acres, you can do the 28s and on this.

Are you really wanting to throw the dart at the board and say who gets the 28, who gets the 42s or the 70s or the 100s? Again, that's the developer's world.

But I think everybody would be more comfortable if we had more control over that.

Would that not be comp plan colors that we're talking about?

Because right now we're saying all of this that we're talking about goes in the yellow on the comp plan or the orange on the comp plan.

Yeah, because this could be an orange too. So couldn't there be a little wiggle room in there? And so the things that we're describing could be the orange. exclusively.

What do you want the yellow to be then?

Yellow, 50, orange, 28, like that kind of balance to happen.

Not with the way the comp plan is set up. I mean, you might as well just do what Russ is saying, pick out these zoning districts, you pick where they're going to go, and then every time somebody comes in and says, I don't want to do that, I want to do this, we're going to be back.

See, that's why we were looking at a pilot project with Hubble to do this, because to see how it worked.

The trouble is the one that when we asked, hey, why don't you put in some 50-foot wide lots? You know what their answer was? I can't fit a three-car garage on a 50-foot wide lot. So they do do smaller lots, but chances are they're not going to do them here because that's not the client that they get. That's what they will tell you. Our clients don't want 50-foot wide lots. Our clients want a three-car garage.

In West Des Moines or anywhere?

Well, this was the subdivision way at the south end there that we fought over the little bit of townhome they wanted in there. We point blank asked them, can we mix up these lots and get some smaller ones in here, get more of a variety of homes? That was the answer we were given.

Lynn, on the postage stamp lots that we talked about earlier, what is the width of those lots typically? Do you know?

They vary quite a bit because it's dictated by the building size. I would say the majority of them are over the 28-foot because they are typically at least a two-car garage and an entry. So they're very comparable to the RS-5 or the smaller of those single-family lots we currently have.

Because I'm just thinking a 28-foot lot is awful narrow.

I mean, I- Yeah, again, yes, it is. And 28 is just trying to say, okay, when you start thinking of some shotgun houses and things, what's that dimension? Okay, now if I add my side yards to it, what's that lot size I need? So again, it's coming down to who is the architect? What are they designing? You can make them work. Mm-hmm. It's just different for us.

I wish we had this as, you know, something in our pocket, an option that we could do and, you know, at the will of the council. We do. We could have it. It's Ponderosa.

We're doing here.

But that's what I'm saying. We have that option available. But I think that'd be more successful if we could... I mean, there was one community that thought they were getting too many apartments. So they put a moratorium on apartments. Nobody could build any more apartments in that community. That's how they took control of that. I mean, if we had this in a back pocket that, hey, we've got these other alternatives for you to do, we allow for a 28 and a 42-foot lot upon approval from the council.

How long is it going to take me to get that approval? Oh, well, nope, that's too long. Exactly. That's what you're going to run into. If we just say we're going to do them on a case-by-case and we'll zone you on that, that's where you...

But if there's 5,000 acres left in this city, which there's more than that, but let's just say 5,000 acres and everybody chooses the 28-foot lots, we have a lot of great affordable housing, but then again, back to the payer mix, do we have enough revenue to be able to provide the services that we need to provide?

The reality is our city is not gonna build out in five, 10, 15, 20 years, 25 years. We have the ability to see how many people taking advantage of this, what needs to be tweaked, but we will not get those unique developers come in if it's something they have to do through PUD or by the council approval.

But what if we said we would allow up to 100 acres a year of the 28s and 100 acres a year of the, and we put a limit on those things and we saw how it went. You know what I mean?

The key will be buy right. I have the ability to come in and build that lot right now rather than going through a zoning process.

So let me raise a similar issue we talked about very briefly in development and planning and I'm looking at Brian Hemeseth back there. when it relates to our infrastructure. You size your sewer system and your water, and I'm no expert on it, based upon the number of people that are going to be living in that neighborhood. And if we allow, you know, we're going to have, I don't know, 1,000 acres, call it, zoned residential. And you may have a bunch of 28-foot lots, or you may have a bunch of 100-foot lots. And Brian, go out there, put in the infrastructure. He's going to say, well, how much is that going to be, 28 foot? We're like... I don't know. 10%. Well, and that's what's happening now. And then we size it for 10% and we end up with a problem where we don't have sufficient, or maybe we have too much capacity or maybe we have little capacity. So, you know, I don't, maybe that is a way we could try to allocate Because we're going to have to spend a tremendous amount of infrastructure dollars to serve these new neighborhoods. And we will have, I don't know, the wind telling us kind of in our history.

That's why I like being able to hand them out. Hand out the car.

It's not double the cost of infrastructure just because you have eight houses that are bigger lots versus the next street, which is 18. It's not double the cost of infrastructure just because you have 18 houses. Brian?

Right size the sewer. You've got to right size the streets and all the different...

When you're talking in numbers that small, it's different. When you're talking 1,000 acres and you change something dramatically, it's going to make a big difference.

Well, you have to go in again, but I mean if you pre-build for the size, but anyway.

But the developer has to put in all that infrastructure, correct?

It's supposed to be. Correct.

So if they put you out, exactly, I mean it's supposed to, and we need to get back to that. So it's gonna be up to them to put in the, because they're gonna know at that point, I would think, how many 28s and how many 30s and how many 50s and how many whatever size lots they're gonna have, right? I mean, I guess I don't see that issue being a problem. To me, I just, I don't know, I guess I'd like to see Maybe even a map next time. Take an area and this is what a 28 foot lot looks like. This is what a 30 foot lot like. Just because to me, 28 feet is not very big and what kind of a house are you gonna get on that? And then they're gonna wanna really pull it to the front because they have no room. width-wise to build.

So you're asking to see examples of what fits on the very idea of a lot?

Not necessarily a house, just what the lot Because again, you could have 28s here, and then down here you got 30-foot lots, right? They could mix and match. To me, I think it'd be a weird-looking neighborhood. That's all I'm getting at.

Like we mentioned, our current density caps on single-family residential, multi-family residential, we're only building half of what those densities are. And the big reason is setbacks. And minimum lot size requirements.

I mean, I don't have a problem shortening up the setbacks and stuff, but I just, I don't know.

But the whole idea of infrastructure planning, I guess what we're saying is you've been planning for six dwelling units per acre in every single family area. We're not even building that. So are you being overbuilding that infrastructure?

Yeah, clearly. More than likely.

So, you know, you can go with an average and basically take a look at it. What you then monitor is as those subdivisions come in and you start saying, hey, we're going to get a tipping point. That's when you come in and say, okay, in this area, we can only afford, the infrastructure can only handle estate lots. We can only get five more houses in this area. This is what you're going to have to do.

Why not further break down the colors then? Why not break down the yellow on the map and say, you know, whatever. Yellow, you know what I mean?

Think about how we had to fight over whether it's light purple, medium purple, or dark purple. You really want me to fight over who gets the estate versus the traditional versus the small lot? No, I don't. I don't have that crystal ball.

Which then I go back to then the council hands out how much we're willing to do of each type each year. I mean, like...

I mean... But the council can change that at any time. Why do you want to do that now?

I just think for planning, for the planning purposes and for planning on revenue for the services that we've got to provide and everything else, I mean, you know... I think what Linda said earlier... We totally lose control at that point in time.

What Linda said earlier is we're talking about 10, 15, 20, 25 years. If we do a development or if a development happens and there's a bunch of weird stuff happening that's just unexpected and it becomes unacceptable... We can take a step back from this in six years and just say, well, we tried it. It didn't work. And maybe whatever you think of Ponderosa, some people say it's kind of a smorgasbord of here and there and everything. And if that is on a much grander scale and it becomes unacceptable to the council, we can go back and change it six years, right?

can come back in two years. Part of that is the outreach when we go out and start talking to the home builders and developers. Does this work? Is this something you would do? Does this even have a place? I agree, Russ.

We may find that they don't want to build a 20-hour foot. I guess I'm good moving forward to that point.

Can I just interject real quick? We got three hours and 21 minutes before it's midnight. Maybe, maybe not. I am just curious and interested in Brian's take regarding this conversation from an engineering perspective. Are we just all over the board or from your expertise? Can you please add some clarity here for me?

These streaming shows back there.

And Sergeant Wade, while he's coming up, aren't you glad you volunteered or signed up for this overtime?

This is something that development services and engineering have been working on since even before this and when we were talking about the comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan is very flexible and we're running into the same things with the comprehensive plan. That's actually what we use to determine what kind of infrastructure we build. Now, in a neighborhood like you're talking about, Kevin, it's pretty easy to get those pipes right. It's the trunk sewers that are farther downstream. Those are the ones that we have to worry about. Like if you don't have them full enough, then you have the H2S attack and then you have to reline them and redo them and that kind of thing. So those are all things we have to think about. But what we've been trying to do with development services is work through what they think like some of these percentages are going to be, their best guess. And those are the things that we're trying to use. We as engineering can't make those determinations. we can analyze whatever it is that's presented to us, but they've done their best to give us those numbers so that we can try to do our best guess as to what it is. It wasn't perfect before, and it's not perfect now, but we're doing the best we can with what we got. And time will tell. It'll be 20, 30 years before we really see what you know, where we're at with the new comprehensive plan and the new zoning and that sort of thing. So I don't know if that helps.

Yes, it does.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Well, and to Linda's point, I mean, until they go out and talk with the developers, they may look at this and say, no, we're not interested in building something like this in West Des Moines, right? Right.

Yeah, and again, though, we have our developers of the Metro, and you have developers that work in bigger cities, have done different things, and we kind of shut our door to them because... Are we going to talk with some of them?