August 28, 2018 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[2:34] okay we're gonna go ahead and get started tonight with a boulder city council study session of August 28 2018 and we have two issues tonight the first of which is our fire our master plan and we're great we're very pleased to have the whole crew here or at least part of it and looking forward to hearing your presentation and having a good conversation did you want to say okay

[3:01] good evening mayor members of council for the record my Colorado fire chief pleased to be here this evening and thanks for your attention to our update on the master plan I brought with me today to my right deputy chief of Support Services hull girder and to his right our medical director dr. Shannon Sylvan Dahl and to his right deputy chief of operations jeff long so we're all here to hopefully answer questions if you have any and I'll just go ahead and get right into the plan so one of the start by just kind of giving a brief overview of the department and just sort of ground our discussion this evening so if you look at the slide the services that we provide really run the gamut of prevention and response and starting on the left side of the table that you see there those are all of our response related services and I won't go through

[4:01] every single one of them but starting at the home safety assessments which is second up from the bottom on the left and going over to the right we have a whole plethora of prevention related services and we try you'll see in our presentation we've been doing more and more of that since that's where the best money really is spent to try to prevent emergencies from happening but we do all of those services with a staff of 124 authorized FTEs and we broke it down somewhat we have 97 firefighters that work across three shifts and we have eight full-time wildland responders and then the community risk team is the team that does most of the right-hand side of that services provided and then the balance of the 102 for our support staff that aren't actually listed up there by number quick facts about what we protect of course the twenty five point eight square miles of the built up portions of the city but we also while we're not the primary

[5:01] responders for the open space 270 almost 71 square miles we provide the overhead and the coordination and assistance to the responders in the county that take care of any fires should they start in open space land which is county land or under county control actually so we also put up here the number of training hours that team delivers because that's a big part of what they do not just respond to fires but actually train the local responders so we have all the help that we can need regionally and one other thing I wanted to point out before I moved off the slide is the fact that even though Fire Rescue is our namesake eighty-one percent of our calls are EMS and so emergency medical is a huge piece of our response and prevention pie really some annual statistics from our last master-planned and now you can see that our number of calls have gone up but

[6:00] what has stayed fairly consistent is the percentage of emergency medical incidents but we're also really really working hard on tracking now outcomes so what you see here are just life safety education participants so we try to reach as many people as possible with our safety messages but we're also with working on plans to get some outcomes won't we want to know that behaviors are changing actually it's what is what's important to us so here are some of the things we achieved since our 2012 master plan there was a whole bunch of items in the master plan I'll just highlight really just the one on the left the upper left there talks about our call triage system what that basically is we instituted a system in our dispatch center that basically called questions the caller to the point where we try to get the right information to send the right resource so instead of sending everything to every call this system just basically drills down the specifics so that we can get maybe

[7:00] one sometimes two or whatever resource we need before that we used to send everything because we didn't we didn't have a systematic process for triaging calls that started in 2013 and we've been using to refine we trying to refine that every single month as we look at the call data that we find so that's a little overview of what we've done have a quick question if it may what is the additional time added in asking those additional questions so it depends we're still working through trying to drill down to get to what the most important pieces of information our location and the nature of the call it really doesn't take a whole lot longer than that to figure out what type of resource needs to go so I it's it's not intended to add seconds but I think it probably does add a little bit of time to the call above those two questions because there are some additional questions that help to decide whether do you need an

[8:00] advanced life support unit we'll talk about that later in the in the presentation or do you need just a basic life support or is this just something as simple as we need somebody to come help lift someone up into their into their bed it's a it's a husband and wife and they're older and the wife can't help the husband so we will send someone at times to do that can I just do people know what advanced and basic are probably not but I'll explain it okay during this I mean when you're trying to if somebody's kind of freaked out and they're wanting something get your questions on and you're asking well what do you want basic or do you want a good question we don't even ask those that's not part of the question trees so the question tree is actually just trying to get to what is your we call it chief complaint but what is the main reason for the call and so there's and then there's some sub questions that are asked just to see is it trouble breathing so it's just those kinds of symptomatic questions and then based on

[9:01] that the system automatically dispatches so that's that's the neat thing about that system so I'm taking the call and I write in what's going on and then it it pushes the dist watch out and that's that's what we've implemented so it's a lot that's made it faster so some things that we are going to continue to look at as part of the 2012 master plan and now our update we learned as part of one of the goals was secrete to look at our fire stations assess them and figure out whether they were the right size and so on location wasn't part of that we had a consultant actually study the size of the stations for all the services we provide and and that recommendation came out I forget now I think was 2015 and basically show that we have some under sized infrastructure and and they're inefficient because they were designed for basically a different set of services 50 60 years ago we still have a diversity in the work force issue that

[10:00] is a nationwide issue but we have it as well we were actually better in the 80s as far as gender diversity but we're just not seeing the people in the females on the pool the candidate pools so this is something we want to work on and keep working on I mean our master plan and I'm not going to go through all five but one of the other big ones is that middle one there yeah this is a very stressful job it's hard on the mind hard on the body and the heart and you know we want healthy firefighters inside and out and we want to do everything we can to make sure they have a long and fruitful career and are able to serve for as many years as possible here in the city so so that's something we want to look carefully at we do if we're doing all the right things there based on best practices so those are some some of the items that we want to keep looking at I'm gonna shift now to some of the inputs that we're using for the master plan update and one of the big things in the 2012 master plan was to create what we call a community risk assessment and an associated standard of cover and I'll

[11:01] explain what those mean the risk assessment is essentially what you would think it is we look at what's what what threatens Boulder and it runs the gamut we all know that but this actually puts numbers and it puts boundaries and so on and so far it's pretty in-depth the two highlights that came out of the community risk assessment almost a no-brainer right while fire and EMS those are the big ones now EMS is not a localized disaster but more of that chronic stressor that's basically going to as the community ages stress the system more and more as we use the 911 system as we use you know the medical system in general so that's what we expect is going to happen that was our risk assessment what the standard of cover basically does is it takes yes sir just quick question is there a reason that flood isn't up there is one of the bullet points you can blame me so flood is a risk it actually is and

[12:00] there's a way more risks actually included in the standard of cover we highlighted what we thought were the two big ones most likely to effect in the next three to five years the flood is still something that could happen any point in the next three to five years so it's still a risk we have to address in the in the master plan so just for the sake of the slide we highlighted the two big ones but flood is still something we look at for sure so what basically the standard of cover does is it takes that risk and it looks at the way we're deployed it looks at our resources and says hey here's your gaps and increasingly what the standard of cover used to be in the fire service was a document that just analyzed your reactionary stuff so just your response related stuff so are you what are you doing on the back end of a 911 call nowadays we're also looking at what are you doing on the front end of a call to actually change the risk profile in the community and that's a big part of the

[13:00] standard of cover so prevention related activities what are you doing what can you do where the gaps what are you measuring what are you not measuring response to the EMS demand what we're doing today we we have a certain system that's in place today is it the right one and we'll talk a little bit about that and then of course a discussion around building community resilience that's a big deal but in this case we're talking about the acute stressors like disaster localized disasters kind of like the floods or a wildfire and then public health concerns the longer-term ones the chronic stress is what what role does the fire play in that with all the other players in the community so this is another piece of the technical puzzle that goes as far as the inputs into the master plan go on the left is a depiction of the four minute travel times from the stations this is you'll see a different picture later on this is if they could travel from the station at the speed of the posted speed

[14:01] limit with no impediments whatsoever and the moment they got to the station they travel to speed so it's a it's perfect world scenario the real deal is probably closer to the lighter second color is probably what they're more likely able to cover in a four minute travel time but it's good it's a good input it's good for us to see what that actually looks like and you can actually tell over the way Boulder built out is more based on the old insurance Services office standards and that's kind of playing out here in this picture where they space stations every mile and a half just based on rules of thumb rather than actually looking at travel times things and then on the right another example from the standard of cover is where your incidents today so the heat map shows as probably everybody intuitively already knows here's where all the calls the 9-1-1 center are generating from and where we're heading to so you can see in the city core we're pretty stressed from those three stations that are surrounding those are those dots the yellow dots and so those units are get a high volume of work

[15:01] especially during the school year part of the inputs to the master plan we're looking at the ems system and how we're deployed and this this slide takes a little explaining but fundamentally what we did was all right we deliver basic life support and we contract out advanced life support to the ambulance company AMR and right now at any one time there's probably two or three ambulances in the city they do that to try to keep expenses down I mean they're there they're in business for a profit and as long as we can provide first du response time with basic life support we can kind of stop a clock at four to five minutes most times chief connector up dude briefly if you could explain basic life support an advanced life support really quickly I sure so basic life support is a an emergency medical technician level that covers

[16:01] fundamental things like CPR the application of oxygen being able to splint injuries on the scene so broken arms and things like that that can applies to plants so basic basic first-aid type care a little little more supercharge than that advanced life support the fundamental difference and the medical director can correct me when I'm wrong here but the fundamental difference is really the ability to use more advanced cardiac care devices and to and to push medications so they can they start the IV's and they can start on the scene applying appropriate medications under medical control and and that's the fundamental difference between the two versions and so what fire provides is the basic piece and then when the ambulance gets there we got the advanced level responder and actually push the drugs so you know when it comes to serious medical issues and

[17:00] so on you're going to want the advanced life support there as quickly as possible so so when the whitepaper was prepared we were taking this idea of the three station so the red dots are where the fire stations are today and the three in the center the core Center actually over worked pretty hard and the idea was at some point in the next three to five years or so we're really gonna need another unit probably a small one to respond to the types of medical emergencies in their full time we need we need one to start covering some of that relieving some of those other units and if that's the premise we were gonna be operating from in our master plan then why not look at changing the advanced life support coverage altogether because right now you're looking at 8 9 10 minutes for the advanced life support responder to get there and we could with adding upping the level of our firefighters to paramedic or advanced life support status now we're changing it from 3 2 to

[18:04] 3 UHN is in the city - what you see there ten basically and the three crosses that you see on that map would be accomplished by posting those units during peak times and so what that map is trying to depict is by strategically locating them at key times you can cover the city with a four minute travel time with advanced life support within four minute travel times for just about every single resident what does it mean to post them so a posting means they won't be at a fire station they'll be at a location where our system anticipates the next call so those they would be that's what they do today they don't actually have stations the ambulances don't go back to a station they will post at certain locations and and where they think the next call is going to come from the part to try to minimize the response time so we would do something similar but do

[19:01] that during peak load hours is what we would do and then they would go back to the stations but this is a way to cover most of the city when most of the calls happen excuse me - do they get it right that they anticipated the location of the next call they do a pretty good job I would say the AMR does a decent job we are but our standards are you need to be there by 9 minutes so what we're saying here has changed the nine minutes - and that includes that includes notification time so change the nine minutes - closer to six minutes total is what we're what the white paper was recommending bring it down get the advanced level responder they are faster the only way to do that is to really up the game of the firefighters and then add some units to the system so so I'm going to switch now to from the technical piece of it to the input piece so that the community input

[20:01] piece of our master plan and we're one of the pilot projects for the new community engagement work that we've started and we've begun we've got a page on the be heard Boulder site and we have a survey up that we're asking folks to answer a series of questions we've been visiting with neighborhood and going to block parties one-on-ones lots of lots of those kinds of visits but this has been our single biggest way to get some immediate feedback from residents of Boulder and what we found so far and take this with a grain of salt because this has been out just I think a month or two and we've got about 140 or 150 responses so far but this is what folks are telling us are important to them stands to reason emergency medical services is on everyone's mind wildfire and structure fire are the three big ones that we noticed people are really drilling down to and then we asked why why are you know what what is it that in terms of EMS what would you be willing to support I'm sorry not that why that's next but the response that

[21:03] we're getting is there are many that that really would support this idea of us playing a more expanded role in delivery of EMS in terms of the level of care that we provide and most would even consider supporting additional funding of course that's the magic question well how much and and that's what we have a consultant working on right now to verify some numbers and update the ones that we put in the white paper but here's what this is the Y piece we asked why why would you support ALS and the number one reason is lower average response times I think people are agreeing that yeah it would be great to have the ER come to me in six minutes or less and okay and then a second the numbers to reason is actually did see that it's based on that I think that one slide shows a greater number of advanced life support units in the city can only be good if if they're closer to me it

[22:01] stands to reason they'd be able to get to me faster and the last piece is I know I didn't think people understood this but basically they would they want the same paramedic who meets them on the scene originally to go with them all the way to the hospital the handoff to the ER doc and nurses so so that was an important factor for people to don't hand me off two and three times to get before I get to the hospital so here's our focus areas that we believe are the areas we should be looking at for the 2018 update education and Prevention and anything and everything we can do to leverage community partnerships so the stuff that's already happening in our region the the the organizations that are doing good things how does fire play a role with them and work with them obviously optimizing our deployment based on our standards of cover and the risk is an important piece and that's really a discussion about people assets and even some community

[23:00] assets like the water supply or utilities how does that play a role and how do we look at that and in a disaster environment and that kind of thing and the last piece is then this this concept of a fire based advanced life support it's provided now in the city but is the level of advanced life support appropriate for for this community and so this takes us to where we are now we are gonna continue our community engagement the pilot continues through towards the end of the year pretty much we're gonna shift our focus to an internal stakeholder engagement around October so that's kind of the timeframe there and then our EMS consultant is like I said updating numbers looking at options and going to make a recommendation the next 30 to 60 days on some some possible routes that we could take and hopefully not break the bank in doing that and then winter after like

[24:01] December and Beyond we're looking at a draft plan for our master plan and then presentation through the process the planning board and then back in front of you all hopefully in spring of 2019 for implementation later in the year and into 2020 so that's kind of where we are in the process and then I'll take me to our final slide and that I'll just summarize these because I know you've read them and see them for yourself but we're really asking your feedback on our progress from the old of the 2012 master plan as we've described it and if you have any feedback for us on the community risk assessment or standards to cover those are big documents I know it's a big read we posted them even on the website but but it's a lot of technical stuff in there and then do you support continued exploration of this idea of improving the level event of advanced life support excuse me or are we where you need to be and then finally do you have any

[25:01] suggestions or do you agree with the three main focus areas of the master plan going forward so that's I'll stop talking now and I'll turn it over to y'all excellent well thank you for so much why don't we start off with questions yeah Thank You chieftain okay appreciate that could you go back to the slide please that had the red dots and blue crosses believe that is that one right there okay so if we're talking about moving to fire based advanced life support can you walk us through like what kind of personnel and vehicles are at each of those spots and and could I just ask that in addition to that when he's answering he could give us costs to the extent that you have them yes I don't know they have good costs at the moment but I'll try orders of magnitude okay let me start with the the the trucks so I would say that the three crosses for sure would be smaller

[26:00] vehicles so those would be is what we're hoping the consultant will confirm for us where they could be an SUV they could be but capable of transport and in a dire emergency we'd still have an ambulance I suspect they could be a Melissa's too I guess I should say that they could be ambulances they could be smaller they're going to be smaller ones and that's why we we've not given up on the idea of the light rescue vehicle in general spit sending the smaller trucks to to the scene of a numerical emergency because this gives us a faster avenue to doing that and three units actually would cover a good portion of all of our medical calls and so that's not happening now and when we when we're forced to send a fire truck to stop the time it's a fire truck we don't we don't actually have a smaller vehicle that the station's couldn't even accommodate one if we had if we bought one so that's I hope that helps so the red dots would probably the bigger units with the exception of maybe one of the

[27:00] red dots we could put a smaller unit in one of those and then the the blue crosses would be the small smaller trucks either an ambulance or an SUV what we call a chase car something like that so that's what we envision and the excuse me those smaller vehicles where would they be based out of because they're posted here right there in tracking station they're proposed so so we would we have room the station one can barely read it there but it's the second if you had North on the left there that's station one it's the farthest west station and then hopefully we can build our new station three and have enough room to accommodate that there as well and with some maneuvering we could accommodate it at Station two but I don't know that we're gonna quite recommend that partly because if you've been to our fire station too the only way to get another truck we'd have to respond backwards out of that station to

[28:00] make it work out onto Broadway and it's not the best arrangement but if we had to we could but we have an opportunity with the new station 3 do we definitely have one there that's true and then in terms of personnel what kind of training to the people in these various units having with regards to life support in your visual here what they have today no no in the vision of vision so in the vision what we would what the white paper basically suggested is and you can weigh in on this - doc you like but you don't stand up an ALS system overnight with green paramedics and so the the smarter way to do it is to start training in the core areas of the city so you'd have responders in the first three stations and then build out from there to a point where then every station has the paramedic level responders with the appropriate equipment so they carry more advanced equipment as well so we'd have to make room on the trucks for the equipment but it's not a big deal and we'd have to have the the space for the medications -

[29:02] but we'd start smaller build out from there Faye's it in and with that phasing plan how does that interact with our ambulance contracts so there's a few ways to work that as well if we move to an ALS model and I'm speaking before I even have the the consultants final words here so but my knowledge of the system is basically we'd be able to use them in a basic life so we'd turn it upside down so the advanced life support responders would be all over the city and the ambulance providers would be the ones that hold BLS license the basic life support and and the only time we would really need the the boss so the transport capability is when the paramedic on the scene says we've got to have that here or the nature of the call says go ahead and run the ambulance because we're pretty sure when the paramedic stabilizes the patient or gets going there they're going to need to get in the ambulance and go but we can still

[30:01] work with a private company to do that part of the system we don't actually have to take over the ambulances to up our advanced life support coverage if you can have the my clear doc juice I feel it's open to all them that medical director so thanks for having me excited to be at the City Council meeting the way that you that I think we should look at this is we're looking at the overall level of service so currently Boulder City Fire offers BLS which is basic life support those are those basic interactions that's what happens when a fire truck shows up you get basic life support the next level up from that is ALS advanced life support and that is advanced care advanced interventions advanced medications so think about this as a basic system an advanced life support system and then is a transport system so there's three different tiers to this there's hands-on initial care advanced life support and then transferring a patient from scene to the hospital and

[31:01] so that the way that we look at that and where we move with this has different options and that's why when you say one of those crosses or what are these represent what I say when I look at this is that what we're suggesting in that white paper is moving from a BLS service basic life support service to an ALS service so that there are more positions across the city an advanced life support provider puts their hands on you at a rapid time interval so we're cutting down that response to give you advanced life support the next question then is how do we get you from where we are to the hospital and whether that is a contracted private entity such as an EMR or if that's in-house meaning that you own Amy Lewis's as a city that is the kind of the next step on the conversation so I think when we're discussing this it is you know a little bit clearer to say what are we talking with the level of care and transport as three different things BLS ALS transport and so we're we're mixing those together here and the plan

[32:01] is to answer all three to get to that final question absolutely so the white paper makes that you know recommendation from us reviewing it we have the consultant that's going to give input as well what my push is my opinion is is that you know I want to have that ALS care provided to the community meaning I live in Boulder what is the level what's the standard of the communities around us what's kind of the national level of this for a response when you call 911 and to me that is that als responder that's arriving and so when you look at the cost you're talking about staffing a skilled physician even more so than an apparatus there's tools that they have with them but that can be placed on a fire engine that can be placed on an SUV that can be placed on an ambulance so how you're delivering that service you're really trying to get the level of care the paramedic to the scene and that's what we discuss and we do have different models of that well thank you for the answering this question I think

[33:01] it really helps to clarify for the council in the community of what the potential vision is and the directions we might go it's Cindy and I answer your councilmembers Carlisle is a funding question yes a range of them but are a number of questions but Sam that are kind of all built into that okay okay so I was just gonna it's right along your lines of Costin if we look on page 166 of the packet and that's attachment C that is the white paper that evaluated this I wanted to make or does this get it Cindy's question and so my question is you show in here your four differences between status quo which I assume is today and gradual implementation which I assume means we're moving towards advanced life support and transport system that and so the question is it shows a net annual difference of about a hundred seventy five thousand dollars a year is that a

[34:01] number that you feel I mean does that include amortize in the trucks I mean how do you does it have the trucks bothersome lump sum I mean can you tell us how you got to those numbers because they're very interesting and important numbers one of the one of the things I want to make sure we all understand built into that that spreadsheet is the white paper proceeded from the assumption that because the centralized companies are overworked you're going to need one anyway in the next three to five years so we're gonna need an additional unit we were I am certain that the master plan would say add a unit to relieve the burden in the central core area of the city and that would be the three firefighters per shift I would prefer that it not be an engine but an extra engine meaning the big huge big red truck but a smaller vehicle but it makes almost no sense to just put them as a basic life support if we're already going to go there the white paper basically said we should

[35:01] probably look at an advanced life support model instead of the reason and this part I did not mention is the advantage to doing this as opposed are what we do today is this is an all-hazards response so this is not just oh you get an advanced level responder 98% coverage of the city and four minutes travel time or less this is for all hazards the system that we have today basically says for EMS my AMR all I can use them for is EMS related calls granted that's eighty percent of our calls but the other 20% you got four minute travel time covers ninety-eight percent of the city that's a big difference than what we have to we drop down to just the seven stations for all hazards coverage and that's that's so I got I got all that I'm certainly appreciative of that and glad you're saying it if we can come back to costs for sure so that leads me to the cost piece so the reason that the the

[36:02] hundred and seventy thousand cent so it includes all of the expected replacement pieces of the puzzle and I and you guys ought to correct me if I'm wrong but I believe we made them basically a man this is what we we had decided they would be so we we we funded the replacement as an ambulance it's obviously going to be cheaper if it were if they were a different type of unit but that was the assumption made and the cost so the one hundred and seventy thousand dollar difference also does not assume that AMR is going to come back and keep upping the rates that the subsidy that we pay them for the living wage piece I don't expect that to stay where it's at today and so we did not factor that into that mix we simply just said okay here's here's what it looks like and and we believe this what we're asking the consultant to do as well update our numbers because these are two years old now at least and so we want them to update the numbers make sure that they verify invalidate what was put

[37:00] together here and evaluate options for going to this or some hybrid of this that does not break the bank but there are capital costs because the way our we're still gonna have to regardless of whether we change anything about our system all of our stations based on our needs assessment need to be upgraded updated some of them need to be relocated that's that's that's been an issue for us for a long time but if we're gonna start doing these having these discussions about our stations then we really should look about look at the types of services that are being provided and whether or not we have an opportunity to change that level and that's really the the idea here so the 177 that's grapes your operational pure operational changes to make this gradual change to go to AOS okay let me maybe just to to clarify that question because that sounds you know to make these numbers

[38:00] figure is is what you're taking into account is that we're paying a subsidy paying a subsidy for an ALS service right so we pay some money to have someone transport our patients and then in addition to that we made the assumption that we're going to need more units to respond to all hazards which is an additional engine so that's the second piece and then the third piece of this is that whenever you transport a patient in an ambulance to the hospital that is there's a reimbursement for that and so a mark Lex that private company collects that if you were making that a public service the public can decide whether they're gonna continue that fee structure or provide it so when you are looking at these numbers that's what we're trying to compare we're trying to keep all those things equal which means you know reimbursement cost of additional unit and subsidy and then this is the cost on top of that so yeah I was going to go there I'm so basically I was gonna say that costs are offset by patient revenue so

[39:01] that's what's embedded in the in the spreadsheet so it we use the mr-s number at the Tamar's numbers at the time they're now collecting probably around I think for the community total I know it's between 8 and 9 million dollars a year that's their gross receipts for 911 Sports is a little hazy they don't break it out for us like that I'm guessing between 6 and 7 million a year they're making off patient revenue then they collect our five hundred thirty five thousand that we paid them and now they're gonna collect another 350 plus thousand from the county to do the same thing for the county so so they're they're collecting all the revenue right now and we're helping them stop the clock so we're kind of already helping what we are definitely subsidizing them in a real way but we've always subsidized a private ambulances response system by providing this first unit stop the time kind of thing okay so

[40:02] Cindy's she has a bunch of questions but you density one I go into a different subject okay I just wondered if you would give so you say that you we the city is subsidizing the private ambulance service however if you take this over you don't charge for it right we don't we assume that we did so we assume that either as as the doctor was saying we'd charge it's just a flat fee structor multiple ways to fund the system through patient revenue some set up a separate fee that's actually one of the questions in our survey to the community how would how do you think it should be funded others do what AMR is doing today it's it's basically patient care revenue usually it's an insurance company or Medicare Medicaid part of the challenges Medicare and Medicaid only only reimbursed about 30 percent of the true

[41:00] cost of all the transports and so we're where most ambulance services make their money is not actually a 911 service it's an inter-facility transfers so they you know taking them from here and moving them down to Denver that kind of thing that's not the system we'd be wanting to do purely 9-1-1 transports and I think that the revenue is probably in Boulder around 67 million a year that's what they're collecting so you would be hoping to recoup that if you expanded your service into this kind of thing I didn't quite get correct and my I guess my longer range question is when if eighty two percent or eighty one percent of that your response responses our EMS when did this shifts so dramatically to fire becoming the first responder for this kind of did it begin with a 911 calls or I mean this is so just kind of different right is probably in the service in general in the country the

[42:01] shift actually started happening in the 60s and 70s and you saw the real stark contrast in the 80s but if you remember the old was the name of the show emergency the squad 51 that was well ahead of its time those guys were paramedics but that was those were firefighters doing that that's back in the 70s but the real shift was around the 60s when they started taking over EMS as a municipal response to the to the issue and and also with the I'm assuming as well with the differences in technology for fire suppression like sprinkler in buildings absolutely so that you're not doing those kinds of responses as much our prevention efforts have really paid off over the last 50 years and most of it is code enforcement you know better codes better enforcement sprinklers things like that that have really helped that a lot of course climate change me change all this my so if it's just the basic

[43:02] response at this time is does the fire department recoup anything from that's so that's just all subsidized by our taxes city taxes yes ma'am rec so we were talking about those levels service that BLS service the LS service those are reimbursed either one of the service in itself offered from a fire department it's the transport and that is a fixed rate by Medicaid Medicare so that's not something that a city essentially says we're gonna set our own rate for that that's just essentially set so whether you're you know an AMR or Company B you're getting reimbursed for a certain amount at a fixed rate that Medicare deems is the rate so that's why when we look at the calls we can say we know what percentage of a reimbursement happens for a call because that's said by the government essentially so again when a fire department takes over that transport it is customary that that fire department and there are exceptions but more often than not that fire department will recoup the Medicare Medicaid rate

[44:01] for transport that's different than when the fire department responds to fire right and there's no bill okay one more question I'm assuming that you have that there are comparisons where other cities have done this kind of thing and they've come out in the more in the black in terms of expanding for their basic services and so it's it's not it's as black and white as you might think particularly when you go to a fire based EMS because of the All Hazards piece of it since we convert firefighter slash rescue technicians to emergency medical technician paramedics they now do it all there so they're their full range of services and it's not just EMS so to split the cost off and say this is just the EMS piece is a lot harder to do and ask a community hey were you able to recoup the cost my best guess is most places if you were able to

[45:00] do that mental exercise I would guess you're looking at between 50 to 60% of the expenses to up the level of service to that you're recovering from patient revenue that's a guess and we're hoping the consulta can help a little bit with that information for us but I would never ever say we're gonna get one for $1 back based on patient care revenue this is more a discussion of where we are in terms of the actual level of response and the incremental cost of getting to that level yeah we've been talking about cost and whether or not this would end up in the black or possibly in the red I really want to caution us not to get tied to the numbers that are in the white paper the white paper was not done with the kind of rigor that I think we are seeing from our consultant and as Michael already

[46:02] pointed out it's 2 years old so we are waiting to get that consultants report before we bring more accurate numbers forward so in a general sense this seems like a great idea and that we will be able to recover some revenues from it but the experience of many fire departments that also provide emergency medical service is not as positive as what this white paper is showing so just be cautioned by that and I was going to comment that providing EMS at providing a subsidized EMS service whether you're paying a private company or the fire department when you choose the level of service you want that's a level of service that we're choosing it's not a model of income or revenue so we we make a model we say there is revenue to be obtained from transporting patients but that doesn't offset the

[47:00] costs so I wouldn't leave this meeting and ever think that essentially this is a good business decision to make money you're choosing a service level and so if you want to say I want to pay for ALS service I want to pay for someone that's a paramedic to show up and in this amount of time that's gonna cost you a certain amount of money and that's what we're talking about in this discussion so it's a community decision it's a community choice to say what level of service do we want and how much are we willing to pay for that service so again I want to be clear that we're not sitting here saying that this is I think we gotta evening or making money that is not what this service does it is a level of service the same as the fire department of responding to a fire you're having an insurance policy for a bad event okay process question we in theory we're spending 15 more minutes on this so we will let's move on to other questions and then we're gonna get to our input and right now I have Sam Mira by Mary Lisa and Bob oh you weren't there okay my questions actually gonna

[48:01] go back to Jane because my I'm looking on page 176 of the packet and it seems like many many peer departments do fire based EMS I mean if you look at the checklist and then you've got Denver which has it's interesting mix where you've got Denver health that runs the paramedic service and you've got the fire service run by Denver so Jane why did you say that many other cities don't have as positive and experienced because my my perspective is a little different I'm curious what you thank you well it depends what how you define positive experience so from from my point of view it's a great service and those cities that have selected that service it is a good service for the community the cost of it is high and it is subsidized in my opinion based on

[49:00] other cities that I've been in by tax dollars and that's a fine choice for the community and account to make but this is not a free service and it isn't you don't recoup its cost from charging patients so oh the only point that I was trying to make is that I felt like the white paper presented a rosy picture that all we need to do is come up with a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars and bingo we're gonna be able to afford this I don't think that's true and that's why I am anxious to receive the report of the consultant that we've hired to actually look at it in more detail you're good very so my question is kind of related to cost but not really yeah it is but the upping the service to ALS does that mean that all of current staff firefighters would need to become

[50:02] paramedics no not all of them would we we could train so all we need is one per truck to be the paramedic so one in each one of the three in each of the three shifts region yes okay and so that that training is that part of benefits that are already available through you know union contracts or whatever or is that an additional expenditure it's so I believe it will be an additional expenditure after we negotiate what it would do to up their level of training it is not a provision in the current contract even though when we just the firefighters just approved we would have to negotiate what that would mean for them and that I think that also is covered there's a discussion piece and the white paper you can't really get to that without some

[51:00] sort of contractual negotiation that says okay well if you're going to increase the level of responsibility for the firefighters what is the Associated pay for that so that's not that's not a provision we have today Lisa I have a few questions but I'll just ask one in the safe time so I guess my question and all these costs and stuff is what do you do when you have an uninsured person or somebody who just has no means in which to pay for such a service but their physical condition requires help so they'll be treated regardless that's that's never the issue on the treatment side of the house on the bills side of the house a lot of cities will set up intogen if they're running a if they're running the ambulance service is part of the fire the city services then they'll they'll

[52:00] set up some sort of indigent claim kind of process the other thing that a lot of private a melissa's do is they'll they they just like any other company they'll age the receivables and then they'll eventually write it off completely it depends on the company and it depends on the city so but there are ways to deal with folks who simply cannot pay the care doesn't the care you know from the ambulance to the ER obviously we don't we don't ask insurance before someone's treated they're just treated for the level of care inherent in the numbers that the companies utilize for reimbursement we know what that percentage is based on populations so meaning that person you can have a program to give them a bill or not that's that's one program but inherent in what you know you collect as he's quoted thirty five percent of a bill there's that's that's a low number right 35 percent of a collect collection for service so that's inheriting that thirty

[53:01] five percent that you're not collecting money from people who can't pay that bill that's pretty mature madison emergency medicine general a few questions relating to the university do we respond both fire and EMS on campus we do okay and give me stats on what percentage of our overall calls our campus base we work that out attendant 10% 10% and does the city receive any reimbursement from the University for that not for that okay maybe this is a question for you Jane do we do we have any status on one university towns that have big populations of students where the fire department responds to calls on campus about how cities or whether cities get reimbursed there are a number of cities that have large campuses that do get reimbursed I believe that we've had a conversation about this chief called

[54:00] Erazo in the past and an example might be Palo Alto which is reimbursed by Stanford University in a payment in lieu of taxes but there are a number of others and the fire department has that information do you have the answer on that one sure so I can give you some specifics about that keep in mind first of all stanford is a private university of course but they're currently at 23% of the fire department's funding comes from stanford university under contract so that's the model in Fort Collins which is our closest university town there is no subsidy from the campus for the fire protection services or for EMS and the EMS system is driven by patient transport fees the way the rest of the community is but I do know other communities do have systems like that set up there's word to the wise on that

[55:00] obviously when you're entering into that type of financial relationship with another institution it's not always as stable as a funding source as it might seem on the on the front end matter of fact Palo Alto found that out recently were because of the demand in Palo Alto proper versus the campus changed over time the university approached the city to renegotiate that contract and that resulted in a net reduction of almost two million dollars into the city revenue in Palo Alto and that caused a redeployment of that entire ILS system so it's a complicated issue but I would definitely think that it's something that we should explore to really holistically look at the issue and look at them the answer that I would give to that is that we have not asked to you recently to consider that payment I believe in the future will be having interesting negotiations with them and it could come

[56:00] up in that context thank you component of that students so if we have a call or All Hazards response that doesn't transport then that's what we're talking about here if they're transported every Cu student is required to have either so uses insurance or private insurance so the transport component for the EMS is a separate entity of it how are we good can you solve back up the questions that we were sure answer in this five minutes we have do we have questions we've we've asked a lot of questions I think the question number three I guess it seems like yes but does anybody disagree with the further exploration of fire-based advanced life support it seems like kind of I don't want to say a no-brainer but like an obvious thing to explore everybody disagreement yeah okay yes the

[57:00] preliminary master plan focus areas are there additional areas we should be considering they're the only thing that I just want to make sure we're staying ahead of is just watching what's happening with California in the fires and who knows how bad it's gonna get and hopefully oh yeah just that we're ahead of that piece of it and we are able to adapt to respond to that and I guess is just something I would underscore I just have one question with regards to I mean this isn't quite within this slide but within the eight wildland firefighters that we have are all of the city firefighters red-carded so they can all jump on if needed for

[58:00] almost all of them but the majority of most working so if there was kind of some kind of big blow up on the Front Range we'd have the ability to right transferred yes ma'am so red card meaning that if we needed any of the structural firefighters to function as wildland firefighters we could press them into action for that as well so we've pretty much got them all up to that level as well Sam in memory mm-hmm so I won't spend much time on it but I really really hope that we can move forward with some kind of fire based ALS and so hopefully the studies show that it's not high cost because we have to think about it as level of service just as we have heard and having multiple paramedics deployed around the city rather than a couple of paramedics who might be a long way away is something that I think people might expect right now and not really know what the reality on the ground is versus what they think

[59:00] they might get when they call 911 so I'll leave that there we don't need to be that right now wait till we get the numbers but another thought I had when I was talking with shin and about a holistic approach and this is what I think they mean when they're talking about all hazards in other words what happens if there is a terrorist attack in Boulder what happens if there's a chemical an accident in Boulder what happens if the floods come again you know how can we better prepare the community to be able to help each other right so we saw in the 2013 floods lots of people and hands to their neighbors whenever they could and our emergency services systems were pretty overwhelmed right because of everything that was going on and one of the stories to think about was related to me in these wildfires sometimes you call 9-1-1 and the response that you get is there's nobody coming we are fully deployed and can't send

[60:01] somebody to help you so you will need to fend for yourself so under the education prevention and community partnerships I would like to see if we could expand the I know we have Brazilians work going on in the city and I think that's really good and important and I think to the extent that resilience effort can tie in with what the fire departments are doing and perhaps with sub community planning because when you have the people convenient for thinking about life in their part of town and how they want that to grow and change having a few sessions where you think about risk and you say okay well where would be meeting points that we want to sign and talk about where people in these events who are capable of lending aid go how do we know who the doctors and the nurses are in the area is there a way to be in touch with them or to give them a place to go so that they can lend the hand in

[61:01] these situations so I just wanted to stress that I think there's a big opportunity if we are going forward with some community planning to tie in some kind of basic level resilience conversation with that and I thought that this for a lot of reasons it actually ties back into you know how broadly your advanced life support is deployed so if we did have people in different parts of the city and there were losses of connectivity in the city so it was harder to transport you would at least have some resources that are sitting where they might be needed so here playing off of what Sam just said as part of what we learned from the flood is the one of the sort of chronic issues that we have in our community and that every community really has is the issue of social resilience and do people know their neighbors and are they able to call on their neighbors in times of

[62:01] trouble when it's going to be 72 hours before the fire department or the police department is able to respond to this in crime emergency and as a result of that the resilience work that we've done over the past several years included the development of a training program for residents called better together that came out of some conversations that we actually had with Wellington New Zealand which is one of the hundred resilient cities and we talked with them we brought them in and then we developed our program that has been delivered to a number of groups of residents in the city we had asked United Way to work on it this year and there they're doing that we're bringing a back in house in 2019 and the fire department is very resilient and I'm hopeful that that are together can be a real standard of operation that what neighborhoods wouldn't be able to receive training around that so we're very proud of this

[63:02] program and we hope that we can expand it as you're talking about Sam and I am Erin so in response to the questions yes keep going where you going but I had kind of similar and along the lines of what Sam was saying where when in reading through what we're going to be talking about next which is the community benefit one of the things that was in some of the cities that had that were looked at were resiliency centers and so I'm wondering if as part of the master plan there is a kind of identification of where those might be or those of fire stations and and then to kind of foreshadow the conversation for the next part of the meeting you know is that something that could be a community benefit that could be offered so that's that's a question and perhaps to have a look at that and then the

[64:00] other thing I wanted to bring up is more of a tactic a specific program that I I think longmont put in place a couple of years ago where what they do is they work with Meals on Wheels and they place the lock boxes on older people's homes and that code is shared with the fire department and emergency services so that if they can't come to the door you guys you still have access so if we could put something like that in place in Boulder that'd be great and that's all I have thank you yeah just a couple additional thoughts well like all my colleagues I agree with the direction you're moving on ALS so just the obviously the cost will matter but I mean fundamentally Public Safety is the you know the core purpose of a city government and this to me is one of the highest things what you do for public safety is making sure that medical professionals are able to get to people who are in acute need so very excited

[65:00] about that and I just want to echo what my colleagues have said about resiliency which I would consider making a focus or encourage considering making a focus area or putting in one of the other focus areas because I mean you know prevention is in there that's very good and deployment as well of course we know that these stresses and disasters are going to happen and that's what all of what you all do is to figure out how to respond to those best but that concept of how do we bounce back when things go badly right like we do our best to prepare to take care of things quickly but when we can't you know what are the backup plans and one of the roles that I really appreciate that you all play in the community is that education and partnership and being at the like the National Night Out and the kids love you and you establish those community relationships and that helps with our social resilience you know so that building of the people who know that they can talk to each other they can talk to the fire department and encourage those community partnerships

[66:00] that make our community more resilient on all those different levels so I think you're doing great work there and I think that could continue could continue to be a focus area yeah Cindy I everybody loves the fire department right everybody loves the fire foot I was saying see yeah what's popular guys yeah I was someone pointed out to me that in this bowl city of Boulder report august/september you have you're in this at the very end you talk about housing distant density and the changes of that in the city and how those kinds of impacts may affect the fire department would you just say a few things about that as well since we're sure there are there are some considerations some of the things that we measure are you know we get to and there's density of all kinds so you build up our challenges then we get to the scene but then there's a time that we it takes to actually get to the patient itself or

[67:01] herself the the other issue is access if they're behind or if there's the Nally and how we get to get the larger trucks in some spots if they're needed if the truck is needed so so those are the access issues that we're referring to that we have to be mindful of is the ability to get at the patient or get at the nature of the emergency and the more that we build up that's a challenge the more that we make it difficult to get in certain areas with vehicles even small ones that's a challenge too for us but it's the stuff that we look at constantly through our fire prevention office anyway as planning goes through you know all the things that come through planning so we're part of that process but we just throw it out there because it is something that we look at all the time and you thanks just I do appreciate also that you're continuing to evaluate smaller vehicles where you can deploy those so thank you for that

[68:03] with with Aaron there's there's lots of times you can use the smaller vehicles I guess this is this discussion brings up a question about the fire department's oversight on planning documents and how much do you get involved in terms of looking at a proposed development site we have a very good partnership with planning there so we're involved from the get-go okay great so yes great okay the only thing I would add on what Aaron was about how popular you are no just that you guys help us build community and that that's really important to social resiliency and I was thinking back about the mobile home fire we had a few years ago on that tragedy and how your immediate response was to go out and do a lot more education and get out a lot more fire alarms in those communities and yeah totally appreciate that role

[69:03] that you play and the responsiveness and I assume that that's a big part of the education pieces so in addition to the resiliency stuff keeping those basic systems alive and well I guess and people educated I think is also really key so thank you this is very helpful you've given us an education on VRS and ALS and all of that and I look forward to the next I guess the draft plan yes thank you thank you

[71:01] yeah okay everybody went to get cheesecake I'm sure okay maybe right back one two three but we have a quorum so we're gonna just plow ahead and they will hear us in the kitchen and come back great good evening mayor members of council Carl Guiler and Phil Kleiser will be presenting the item tonight we look forward to your discussion and your input thanks Charles good evening City Council members tonight we'll be talking about the community benefit project giving council an update on the project as well as getting some feedback I should also point out that we had a discussion at Planning Board on community benefit in August 16th so our Planning Board Chair Liz Payton is here tonight should there be any questions about the Planning Board discussion so what we're gonna talk about tonight is briefly the project background moving

[72:02] into the process that's underway and then talking about the next steps talking about some legal issues related to this project before posing what will be four questions to the City Council so we realize that there's a lot of information in the packet we just want to point out obviously that we're gonna be checking in with Council on the future on this as well as we move forward so though we more touch points so first I'm gonna start with the the questions so the first talks about the types of projects that would be eligible to provide community benefits we want to get your input on that the second question relates to the preliminary list of community benefits that have been identified there was a request at CAC to combine the first two questions into into the first discussion so we've done that tonight the third question relates to appendix J so we talked about this in

[73:03] June so appendix J is the map that shows where height modifications can occur in the city of Boulder if they're not meeting obviously the affordable housing or other exemptions we want to raise the question about whether this appendix J should be modified as part of this process so the fourth question relates to the public outreach or the community engagement that we have proposed we just wanted to get some feedback from the council on that so first we're gonna start with just a list of the land use code changes that are now underway the latest list that we have which will be sharing with Council is based on the discussion that City Council had at the retreat in January of this year I should point out that we do have a new code amendment specialist that's assisting with these changes so currently we're working on the community benefit project you know updating the site review criteria which

[74:01] we'll talk about tonight the large lot large home discussion related to compatibility in the re and RR zones we're looking to update the use standards table related to outdated uses looking at home occupation live work uses and changes to the used table that might be able to create 15-minute neighborhoods we've been looking at the parking standards and how and how it would mesh with the transportation demand management standards that's underway we're also looking at updates to our open space standards within development projects as well as looking at some new commerce of design standards so Carl sorry to interrupt but with that open space standards is that about changing the I know one of the things we talked about is removing disincentives for smaller units is that looking at per square foot amounts or what is that but it could open that up but that's more of

[75:01] an intensity discussion I think we were looking at more of a just qualitative type changes or making the open space regulations a little bit easier to implement got you some more about the quality of open space rather than the intensity standard rush to okay thank you and did did not that come up when we had redevelopment over at like west of Broadway south of Lee Hill there were a bunch of single-family houses and at first they were it was the old fire training site and we couldn't do some things because of our open space standards yeah one thing we're looking at is is Warner standards you know shared spaces with cars and and pedestrians we're looking at rooftop decks we're looking at green roofs you know things like that are not really addressed in the code right now so we wanted to to take a look at the screen so we are gonna talk about this in more

[76:02] depth at the next study session so in September on the 25th there will be a focus on the large lot and large homes discussion at that and hit that meeting so one thing that came out of the B vcp update from last year was an intent to try to identify needed community benefits in different parts of the city and actually doing this through a sub area planning process where the benefits will be tailored to individual neighborhoods so this is something that were aware of and we understand will probably be talked about at the September 25th study session it's not without precedent that this has already been done before in the 2014 action plan for the the north polar community planet does include several policies that identify the intent of getting community benefits for that area so that's something that we're looking into so I'm gonna provide a brief background on the

[77:02] project this is something that we we already discussed in June of this year when the height provision was brought forward relative to appendix J so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about this but originally when Phil and I started the project we were focusing on height modifications and attaining permanent affordable housing through that process and at the the City Council retreat it was requested that we kind of shift gears and look at the broader array of community benefits and look at other types of triggers and it was requested that we stand or make the hi provisions permanent so in June of this year City Council did pass the hi provisions which will be in effect until May 31st 2020 so what you see up on the slide is it basically what is appendix J these are the areas that where you can ask for a height modification downtown the 29th

[78:02] Street Yuni Hill Boulder Junction the hospital Fraser Meadows and gun barrel and there's a portion of North Boulder so this is something that's in effect right now but we've shifted gears to do the community benefit project so I'm going to talk about just the general process moving forward so what we've been doing is identifying the community benefits identifying what the program triggers might be and then doing a deeper dive into what what each of the community benefits are like really getting the parameters about them which we're still we're still doing and then in quantifying them you know how do you equate that to whatever kind of bonus project might get that's something that we're gonna have to continue looking at so at the beginning of this process that you know obviously the comp plan was was adopted in 2017 though the latest version there is a new or a number of policies that relate to community benefit this is one more highlighting

[79:01] tonight 1.11 enhanced community benefit you can see the underlined portion identifies a number of community benefits and these still remain valid in our discussions that we've had with the community these are the things that were we're hearing from the community so I'm gonna talk about triggers and then kind of two of the approaches that other places are doing so triggers in most areas related to community benefit relate to going over the building height of a zone districts going over the density limit going over a specified floor area limit or Florio ratio or rezoning where you get a greater intensity so as far as the two options now that we've been looking at there's the menu of options peace and then there's what what is called community benefit agreements we're focusing on the menu of options which would basically be specific standards that would be more

[80:00] predictable this is something that would have to be consistent with state law state law requires that you know these have to be based on specific standards and there has to be decisions that are made that are consistent fairly applied and are our city attorney will be discussing this in more detail tonight the second piece is in the negotiated agreement so this is something that typically would not be compliant with state law but we wanted to highlight it tonight just as some other cities and other states and provinces do this so that raises the question for me how do we get away with state law with our current process because it's basically negotiated and unpredictable that's that's what we hear all the time processes is based on the state review criteria and it's it aligns with our our comp plan I you know they're asking for certain things and it's equivalent to it but I think this is asking this is where they're gonna be going beyond so we have

[81:01] to do that analysis Carll songs we interrupted you and maybe you get to this later on on the distinction between menu of options versus community benefits agreement presumably on a CBA that's a binding agreement between the property owner in the city and it's enforceable by the city under the menu of options are you going to talk about how once once the menu has developed how that is enforced because obviously we've had a lot of enforcement issues in the past about how about how we ensure that whatever boxes are ticked that we have a legal right to then enforce that yeah we don't have that as part of our presentation but certainly on our mind there are examples of when a use might change and then it got granted up a bonus and then other jurisdictions have had to do penalties like sometimes they have penalty fees so it depends on the community but there are some communities that require you know a prorated

[82:00] of penalty fee that goes into a fund this is something that I think is a little further down that we're gonna have to look at as we start digging deeper into the community benefits okay our attorneys dying to get in dying somewhat interested in speaking to someone interested this part of this discussion is to get it exactly what you're you're getting at Bob well we we will tell you when you say can we ask them to do X you can ask them but you can't condition approval on it because you have you can only condition approvals on things that are in the site review criteria so part of the purpose for this discussion is to expand the site criteria to make the kind of conditions that people make as promises actual conditions on the development agreement and make them enforceable if it's just a promise made orally a planning board at Council it's impossible for us to and we can't let you condition it unless it's in the sire review criteria so well that's part of the bigger picture that you're addressing today so when the community

[83:00] benefit regulations if and when they go into effect it's likely going to change the site review criteria so one area of the survey criteria that we already have is called land use intensity modifications so this is an area of the site review criteria that I expect will see a lot of change so I want to point that out and also just pointing out that the site review criteria right now are generally aspirational they do require higher quality development but the criticism has been that they can be somewhat unpredictable so the goal through this process is to make the site review criteria more like performance standards more predictable maybe more like the form based code is structured and we're gonna be focusing mostly on enhanced design energy efficiency and resiliency as we move forward with making those changes so before I turn it over to Phil I'm gonna talk a little bit about the case

[84:01] studies that we looked at so attachment D contains a list of 15 different cities that we looked at as part of this project so I just wanted to kind of go over the takeaways from those cities you can see most of them are in the state of California one thing we've noticed is that many benefits that other cities claim or in their communities are actually quite similar to what we already get through the site review process in terms of like building design streetscape design things of that nature but are there's enforceable I mean what the issue were just talking about yeah they're they're they're agreements so they are enforced I was just curious if that's the difference so hight floor area density are the most common triggers affordable housing sustainable design publicly accessible open space space for the arts are the most common benefits that we've seen in other communities one thing to point out

[85:02] is some of the community looked at are much larger cities and Boulder so the bonuses that we're seeing are much higher than what we would get here I mean we're talking you know two stories potentially you know in other communities were talking to 20 stories 100 feet bonuses let's just want to point that out as we were talking about quite a few the communities rely on negotiated agreements that would likely not be consistent with Colorado state law so what we see in other communities like California or in in communities in Canada there is provincial or state enabling legislation that allows for these types of negotiated agreements but they're very loose there's not a lot of specific standards and we're not recommending going in that direction if you read the case study on Palo Alto they're actually having quite a bit of a community push back against their process based on their unpredictability and and issues of fairness so we just

[86:02] caution you about that obviously our goal is to be more predictable as we've heard in the past so some of the standouts communities that we think might be most helpful for us here or Austin Texas just not in terms of scale but just in the types of community benefits that they have identified in their community they have specific measurable metrics that are tied to a use so a certain amount of use gives you a certain amount of a bonus so it seems like that would be kind of the best approach Santa Monica also has requirements that are like that I think would be helpful and the other reason we we bring up Santa Monica is just that some of their regulations have a similar scale to Boulder they have FA are limits in height limits that are similar to what we have here so with that I'm gonna turn it over to Phil Phil place our comprehensive planning division thanks for your time just before this discussion we handed out the Planning

[87:00] Board summary that went to council a few days ago as well as a summary of the case study cities along with some information population and cost housing cost etc that the Planning Board suggested that we provide the council during this discussion and so as Carl mentioned the comprehensive plan you know as part of policy 1.11 did identify a suite of community benefits some of those were pretty specific like affordable housing while others were a little more broad and topic based like social services and so what this project will do is to take that overarching policy direction and apply specific definitions and metrics and criteria to them and so the third kind of step in this process or milestone that we'll look at in this project is kind of defining the specific community benefits once we choose which one's we want to look at more thoroughly these are just a few samples that were included in the case studies attachment and your packets and this evening they include the definition as well as a sample metric

[88:01] what we've seen in the case studies to further elaborate on Carl's points is you know the cities would obviously define what it is the use is but then they also generally have some sort of metric that would be calculated dependent on the development request or at least a process by which to get to that final number and so Carl mentioned the downtown Austin density program and so they developed a community benefits program and I have a chart here kind of a flowchart that did that they developed throughout their process and we're sharing this with Council less for the content on here and more about just kind of a note on process and so what this chart generally does is the large box on the center left or what's called the gatekeeper requirements and so those would be a list of requirements that would be basic eligibility do you reside in is in the correct zone and then some general requirements like some basic street

[89:01] standards and nerve and design standards the next level over the column over the primary use since these types of projects are generally based on economic studies what they were finding was that the residential the non-residential uses were quite different and so they actually separated those out and with that depending on the project type of the primary use residential or non-residential use you would then go into looking at what are the available community benefits or public benefits that are in that middle column there and so in Austin one of the things that they went through was prioritizing what's most important to the community and in the case of Austin that was affordable housing and so they had they addressed that community ambition through this program by requiring that the additional requirement for community benefit at least half of that had to have to be a full affordable housing and then the remainder of it the applicant can kind of choose among those community benefits

[90:00] and so they have things that are pretty pretty general like you know char pretty consistent with other communities like different types of housing childcare historic preservation they have live music which i think is kind of cool but does that mean somebody's constantly playing the whole time yes yes and and then finally that final column is the bonus provision so that says a specific metric of however the square footage ratio to whatever is requested and it's hard to see on this I underst but we wanted to at least show the flowchart and then kind of prep you in that when we start coming back to you and start having a community conversation you know this is a very similar broad flowchart which we may start using in our public and community dialogue in this project and so the gatekeeper requirements for Boulder may be something along the lines of what type of applications are we looking at what are the zones that are eligible the primary use you know would probably be pretty similar you know the community

[91:01] benefit column would be our list of community benefits that we identify as a city and community and then lastly the specific quantified bonus amounts and so that last piece the quantified bonus amounts is that kind of last step in the process once we identify the community benefits we define them we as we decide where they're appropriate and not the the common method that we have seen in terms of coming up with a calculation is through an economic analysis and so what we've done is a very initial and preliminary economic analysis that was found in your packet that analysis had basically developed five development scenario performers in the BR one district and it made a common set of assumptions like two acre lots and and each of the projects the bonus projects were requesting a height modification and a density bonus the intent of this

[92:01] was to at least start the conversation and start understanding a little bit more around what we might expect in the future that would come out of projects using this type of program and I want to say that we will be doing a much larger study and we'll be looking at all of the assumptions included in this report you know prior to running these numbers again so this is again very preliminary the five scenarios that are included in this analysis was a base scenario to see what can we do under our current conditions one scenario where an applicant would request a height modification up to 55 feet and a density bonus with no community benefits and so this would be looking at sort the return what this is calling the residual land value if no community benefits were allowed but we provided that bonus two of the scenarios looked at housing and so both of those with the height and the density bonus one of them looked at on some additional on-site

[93:01] units using the fee and lieu program and the other looked at federal lytec financing and then finally the fifth scenario looked at what could we expect in terms of affordable commercial space and so the subsidized commercial space and so the takeaways that we've seen from this very initial analysis is that the economics may support this program but at least with these assumptions in hand it the margins are a bit slim it's and this is when we're only requiring one Community Benefit when in reality would likely be looking at more than one and so I think there's gonna be more work to do here I think there's also needs to be as we move forward in the engagement process some conversations around what's acceptable and what's not acceptable so in this case we asked the consultant you know tell us what would be needed in order to make it financially feasible in these scenarios the consultant in this case came back with you know a height modification of 55 feet and a density

[94:00] bonus of up to 70 to 80 acres per units per acre that's a pretty significant increase and it's something that I think we would need to talk through and run the numbers quite a few times in the future what does field that I'm sorry go nothing you are just I wanted to go back and just say at some point the residual land value granted I was reading it late at night but I could not figure out what that was but you're in the role but you I just wanted to throw that out there is I didn't quite get what we were testing there sure it to me it's an indicator of what makes the purchase of land feasible and what would make a project potentially feasible we've heard since doing this analysis that there's also some other indicators out there that we need to be looking at in the future to also give a more complete picture we do have some folks from housing that look at these types of issues and a little bit more depth and depth so they

[95:00] okay maybe I'll just wait for questions it's just it's it's partly because I not quite sure how you yeah the mechanics of what you're testing and how you're testing it I just didn't compute it but it sounds really like a useful concept so we can come back at the end can can I just ask the question though about that in the residual land value in Boulder were experiencing a vast increase and what our residual land value is from what people what it may have been five years ago or 30 years ago and so I guess when we talk about this and we talk about the changing landscape I guess I I want some kind of discussion or explanation about where are you basing that you know five years ago or today so for example in in the large lots where we have people coming in I'm not going to get into them but just as an example buying Lots houses for $600,000 and then scraping

[96:04] them and then selling the next house for three point four or five I would hope not basing residual land value on the three point four five million dollars and I get it take out the house value but that Bhat is becoming ridiculously expensive and so we need will need to have some kind of explanation and discussion about how that's changed over time and where our median might be so maybe we'll just put that on the list of things to circle back to did you have a clarifying question until you you mentioned that you know there's some it works out marginally with one community and if it required but we're likely to require multiple I haven't seen that in the analysis they've you done so far I see a menu of community but I didn't see and stayed in here that we will likely require more than one at for one project can did I miss something maybe that was

[97:00] just an offhand comment of that's what we've been hearing of an expectation of probably looking at housing and other things and and but that's not something that we're bound to do it by any means thank you when Jim you and I had talked about this before initially it seemed like the gatekeeper requirement is the affordable housing rights of a certain level the inclusionary zoning amount and the linkage fees owes are kind of things that occur one way or the other and so to me having one community benefit means one beyond the housing component although it could be an enhanced housing competitive right absolutely different baseline housing requirement in either case and then the benefit one okay you're good and then we're gonna let you

[98:03] get back I go ahead though well at least I brought a good point up about escalating land cost did you guys how did you factor in like escalating construction costs or our linkage fees are going up significantly you know City fees all of those things were they all in the in the analysis we asked him to look at what would happen with a project today if these regulations were in place and we did have him double-check that he was using them correct you know the new linkage fees but that's with today's climate is what he was going off of yeah okay you better keep going cuz we have lots to talk about okay well we'll continue moving on perhaps you know a little bit about next steps and we can circle back to any of this in more detail obviously the engagement plan that's included in your packet is really more of a framework at this point we kind of wanted to get some

[99:00] direction tonight around some of the project parameters and scope and then we be flushing that out a little bit more the engagement techniques we'll discuss later in the conversation that's question number four we would like to circle back around with council later later this year after we do a little bit more outreach just to have a project update with an with a nip followed by a check in later next year as the project continues to be flushed out a bit more we're anticipating depending on this on the scope and feedback we received tonight of possibly completing this project around this time next year the third quarter of 2019 again that's kind of dependent on a couple of factors we would like to Tom requested just a few minutes of the council's time this evening to to go over a few legal issues as well so I'd like to hand it over to Tom thanks as you embark on this discussion I wanted to sort of draw some parameters around it Karl's already already mentioned Colorado law which says that if you're you have to judge a

[100:00] project based on criteria that are in place at the time the application is filed and we repeat that to you a lot but it's important to remember in this context you can't change the rules of the game once they've started the process so whatever you define has to be written out fairly clearly you can't just make it adjustable based on the project based on some decision that it's gonna happen later which ones you can apply if they're in the criteria that's fine but the criteria have to be Express and to be to be defensible they have to be written before the application is submitted so that's Colorado law and there's also a bigger picture in the law of the United States that's kind of traveling down a kind of troubling direction that I wanted you to be aware of this Koontz case that I've cited up there was decided in 2013 and it's it's the third of three cases the other two were Nolan and Dolan that where the Supreme Court has articulated a standard for restrictive development restrictions and the basic standard is that the

[101:00] development restrictions have to be there has to be a nexus between the restrictions and the problem you're trying to solve and the the restrictions must be proportional to the development so the Coons case is an interesting case because it's a sort of thing which every city has in fact I think we do the the Koontz involves a it was a piece of land 14 acre piece of land in Florida the guy bought it in 1972 in 1994 he applied for a development permit to develop three out of a four three acres out of a 14 acre site and he agreed as a additional development to grant a conservation easement over the other 11 acres to the district it was a water district the water district turned down that deal and said you have two choices you can develop one acre and give us thirteen or thirteen point nine it was or you can spend a bunch of money doing what lands mitigation on our land and so

[102:00] he sued and the the defense was that it they that the the the district hadn't actually required him to do anything they had denied his permit so since there was no requirement there was no taking and the the the Florida Court went along with that and also that it was money they could pay money to get out so the minute the money alternative prevented a taking and the Supreme Court said no that the Noland Dolan proportionality requirements applied in both of those circumstances and they went back to the district court in the district court then found that it was unconstitutional since Koontz was decided there have been two challenges to inclusionary housing ordinances that I'm aware of one San Jose and the other one Seattle Seattle's was dismissed by the district court because there were nobody had actually paid the fee yet or done the inclusionary housing it was a new ordinance so there's nobody outstanding that'll come back at some point the the San Jose one went to the California Supreme Court and the Supreme Court held that it wasn't a taking because it was a citywide zoning

[103:00] ordinance not an administrative virgule regulation and so that it was applied to everybody and that's a distinction that the courts have made when it was appealed to the to the United States Supreme Court the court denied the petition what we call certiorari but Justice Thomas concurred and in his concurring decision what he said was that they're denying it because the petition wasn't timely filed but I don't like this distinction between zoning and administrative application I don't think it makes any sense and I'm looking for a case where the Supreme Court could decide whether or not that applies we you all know the Supreme Court is getting more conservative by the day and the Coons case was a five to five to four decision in 2013 probably would be 6-3 today and after judge Kavanaugh gets confirm maybe seven to two that's the direction the courts going so I wanted to just provide some caution that as you have these conversations about community

[104:00] benefit application it would be really helpful if we identified the problem that we're trying to address and that is the impact of development on a community and how the particular community benefit helps that or helps address that and all of the things in the list I think I could rationally justify but it would be really helpful if we had somebody who was a consultant who was saying that so much as you come down the line you know for it for example even the the perhaps the further stretch is arts or music space you could have someone do an analysis and say what kind of arts do you need in a community to make a viable community if you have X amount of development and and I think there's there is some nexus there but as you go along these have this conversation I'd like to keep that in the back of your mind that there that there are constitutional constructions that those constrictions are likely to get more strict over the coming years as our Supreme Court gets more conservative and that it would be best if we had something that was absolutely defensible now right now our inclusionary housing

[105:00] ordinance is absolutely defensible based on prior precedent throughout the country that it is a it is a citywide zoning regulation but as I said Justice Thomas doesn't think that's a good distinction and just as Thomas is in the majority of the Supreme Court in a lot of cases lately that's all I wanted to head so what I'm hearing from you then is that we can't impose arbitrary Community Benefit requirements so there for example if we thought gosh wouldn't it be nice if they gave out candy because candy is fun and people enjoy it and so they impose that right and so we imposed a requirement that you have to give out candy as a community benefit but there would be no way to make an access to it or the lack of candy from development and so what my caution is we should go carefully and identify the Nexus I'm not candy is purposely I know you're making an absurd example but the argument you could develop an argument

[106:00] that in in a city that's rapidly densifying having candy available for who have no other place to go might be I mean that's the kind of argument that you could develop I wouldn't like to have to make that argument in court and our job is to make what you do defensible so yes there are some boundaries we probably couldn't cross I just like you to understand that there are limits and that we'd really want to look and make sure that we could could articulate a clear nexus you're very good but so maybe the the point is just that whatever Community Benefit requirements were imposing they need to be because there's a need in the community and that need is perhaps exacerbated by new development yes my preference would be you've identified the need that you were trying to solve the problem that you were trying to solve is you did the Nexus all thank you okay so we're at the discussion portion of the meeting so like we said we combined questions one in two we wanted to tee up each question before council speaks to it so obviously we're back to

[107:01] what type of projects would have to include community benefit we talked about the triggers so over the height limit was 1 over F AR or at a lower threshold was another over the density limit was the third and then rezoning that had indents additional intensity was the fourth so its staffs recommendation was to basically focus on real can I interrupt you because I think actually sees these intention was for you to visit these questions in that order not to have the discussion simultaneous okay we can just start with one but I'm confused by what it is cuz I wasn't at CAC which is that we would deal with that first question and then so about do we agree with the pros prog proposed project features and then second we would deal with the preliminary list of community benefits okay rather than talking about them both okay just said we do it in that order okay we can do that but I guess I'm gonna pause and

[108:02] because this is our discussion so I guess we have we have a few questions but also Liz Peyton's here and I guess I for one I mean why don't you come down and join us and maybe as part of our deliberations hearing what the Planning Board other otherwise will have to read all these notes again had to say on each one but Jim you don't have to leave we have room I'll just squeeze somebody else in okay the folks want to hear planning which thoughts on that before we wax poetic and at some point I want to get back to the the question we had earlier but yeah do you want to wait forth what what the Planning Board had to say about question number one yeah sure we spent some time and introduce yourself okay I'm sorry I'm losin I'm the chair of the board and

[109:00] we did agree with this list that the staff offered height FA our density and rezoning and one of the issues that we talked about a fair amount that I don't see it up here and I don't know if you guys have spent any time thinking about it but we see projects in which the density of a site can be sort of modified depending on whether the developer is going to dedicate the streets and right away to the city or not if they are going to dedicate it to the city then they have less developable area and so they can their density is reduced if they are going to assume responsibility for the right away in the streets and the sidewalks then they count that additional area in their

[110:01] density calculations and so it can vary from project to project and for us having a baseline above which additional height FA our density rezoning would then result in some community benefit it was tricky for us to figure that out without having baseline so that was something that I don't know if you guys have spent any time on or staff wants to talk about that at all but it was something we gave staff some suggestion to get that resolved so wait that's a wrinkle I hadn't thought of okay in answer to question number one opposed project features are there others those the right ones okay can I suggest just from work can do we want Liz to speak to what plan board did on the second one and then started a

[111:01] discussion or oh we could I don't care either way it was just a question to Liz's last point I mean I think starting with a baseline would be very helpful so you know kind of you can compare what you're getting and so I don't know how we address that but no we haven't thought about it you guys well it did come on previously and I forget if it was during the complan updater when it was but it came up before yeah but we didn't really deal with it yeah I mean I can offer a little bit of background I think you all remember I mean it came before Planning Board when I was on and maybe three years ago as a potential code amendment to change the standards of whether the streets are still included and developable potential if they're deeded to the city the Planning Board voted yes it should change and then it came back and it was voted in

[112:00] contrary no it shouldn't and then I don't believe City Council took an action on it so as of right now you do reduce your developable potential when you hand right of way over to the city and I don't think there's any Lance on trying to change that right now do I have that right that's correct um give one sentence of explanation of the rationale so if somebody gives us the right of ways they can develop less is that an disincentive where this comes into play is that there's some flexibility depending on the the development and how many units are serving on what the with the right-of-way can be and this is allowed through the design and construction standards so there's some flexibility whether you have dedicated right-of-way that includes the tree lawns the sidewalks and the street width and the on street parking within it that's typically in city right-of-way and doesn't count towards the density of a project but there are some scenarios

[113:00] where a developer could reduce that down and put the sidewalks tree lawns in public access easement so it's actually if it's in an easement it's actually part of the property so it really only comes up with zones that determine their density by lot area so when they do that they have a higher amount of lot area so they get more units that way if it's a zone that does open space it's a different matter because open space doesn't count towards the project if it's in an easement right so what I think the board saw that as a form of a benefit and if that's the way that we're gonna continue to administer the regulations then we should talk about getting a community benefit for that okay are you planning board nerds I mean the essential difference between open space per dwelling unit and dwelling unit per acre is something that I was

[114:01] hoping that we would come back to and the site plan review criteria portion that was at the beginning and try and get that uniform so that we don't have these two different flavors of the way that we assess intensity on Lots so one comment from a Planning Board kind of nerd is that that's something that we would hope to get kind of worked through as part of the overall package of what we've asked staff to help with in this council the other piece as far as the dedication goes I have agree with Aaron and I think we kind of determined that we weren't going to try and change where we are on that right because we didn't get planning board advance at the council is that correct yeah on the second vote okay well at the very least simplifying something that is barely understandable I think it's a good thing okay so I'm just gonna throw

[115:01] that yes let's fix that so that we have a clearer baseline does anybody disagree with that okay but in terms of those being the proposed project features since nobody seems to have a lot of thoughts on they must be the right ones do you or do you help I do have any thought well so I think part of the I agree with you saying that we should clarify those different developments it would be great to combine those going forward and to me the fundamental purpose there other than reducing confusion is to not encourage fewer larger units right I think we get more affordability when we have smaller units and so I would very much like to see our regulations move in the direction of encouraging smaller units rather than larger ones and so to that same point one of your things eligible for Community Benefit triggers is an increase in density and density strictly defined here is an increase in the number of units correct so I would very

[116:02] much like for us to leave the triggers at height and floor area ratio so because if you want a bigger project you should provide additional community benefit if you want a taller project you should provide more community benefit if you want more units within the same footprint to me that should not be a requirement for community benefit because that's a better project for the city it means more smaller units so I would very much like to stick to the total square footage and the height for this yes wait and so that means take density else or take density oh okay so in that example that you just gave the last one where you put in more units do your thoughts about parking and how you address that because a lot of times now if you're adding more units then we require more parking so well I think you you would you'd have to deal with that absolutely but that would be a separate question for whether

[117:00] it's a trigger for community benefit requirement you would have to provide more parking if you had fewer units that's okay maybe you get more if you had more units good morning I'm sorry yeah I guess I would just like to clarify on that as well because to me more density as more people more impact on the community so yeah I get totally where you're going from with small units and so it could be more affordable technically but there's also more strain on infrastructure so I kind of feel like it maybe evens out I don't know it's just that's why I was asking this question so if you if you do get more string then maybe you can relieve that strain by requiring less parking and incentivizing people to have eco paths or bikes or have a bus stop in front of the building or something like that so

[118:01] that's where I was going it's a great point I mean enhanced travel demand management yeah if there's a higher density absolutely yeah absolutely but I think I think if you have this exact same size project that if there are more units that are smaller that we're better off as a city yeah and I was just thinking that if you require more parking then it gets pretty expensive and sometimes you have to do underground parking so that I if we were trying to get more affordable units okay I see a lot of hands were going Jill very Sam maybe Charles are one of you could collaborate that's but to Aaron's point of same size same volume and just the difference of units my understandings of building more units is more expensive also that the project costs usually goes up with that density within the same volume and so you know it's one more reason I think that your proposal makes a lot of sense if we're

[119:00] further adding cost here wait are you is that a question I thought it was a question sure I mean if he drives material costs up and again parking especially if it's going to be structured you know really contributes to the overall cost very so what I'm hearing in the in the previous exchange among aaron and mayor buy and Lisa was that the that density would require a different community benefit so that would be the enhanced TDM and that was something and that was in the matrix that was provided by Planning Board I don't know eons ago but that was one of the community benefits so I just I think it should be part of the triggers but what how you provide a benefit because

[120:03] of that is different from the others perhaps Sam having Mary's got this exactly right that density does have an upside which is more less expensive units but it also has some potential downsides and if they're mitigated then those downs mitigation is community benefit so we've ended up with more people housed presumably at a lower cost but we have taken measures that may have a cost to them to make certain that on balance it's a positive for the community and so I would like to keep density as a trigger but I'd like to when we move into the second part of this talk about whether there's a limited range of things that we might want to have as community benefits that we might require for density because I don't think to your point Aaron that

[121:01] public art would be necessarily have the same Nexus that TDM would and so getting a longer-lasting TDM program for a higher density might be appropriate where some of the others may not have been Nexus and if I could just kind of jump in on this one an additional this is part of the next question but perhaps a labor requirement that I saw in some of the studies that were done where it would be a community benefit to require the rental units to go to folks that work in the city okay did you want overtime yeah I think I think the salmon marries to have started I asked my quick answer my question which is is there going to be a correlation in other words we've got a list above which is either three things or four things but how this discussion turns out and then we've got a list of benefits and that list may may grow but there may be a correlation between some of the benefits and some of the what we

[122:03] call need sub program features the triggers in other words all everything on the bottom part of the page won't necessarily entitled someone to everything on the top part there may be some correlations well and that goes to tom's request that we keep in mind those Nexus Nexus members those are good points that I know I think of those more as mitigations rather than community benefits I mean I absolutely agree with an enhanced mitigation particularly TDM for higher density and so if we want to frame it that way that's fine I just but I would see it as very different from you know requiring them to provide the affordable commercial space because they had more units in the same footprint that doesn't really make sense to me but if we could maybe look at maybe there's a separate set that are of mitigation

[123:01] slash benefits that go with them potentially so I'm gonna agree with where we're headed with this conversation because I do think in a lot of places we're getting big units when we think smaller makes more sense and so I do think we want to set ourselves up for that but recognizing there are some downsides that we want to mitigate so I guess where we're headed let's explore and see if what's the best way to get there um and I'm thinking of the flowchart from Austin and I'm not quite sure how that works but anyhow we might have one more than one flow chart but I do think it's time to make sure we're not incentivizing larger units just a coda - that is that's another reason to get rid of the open space per dwelling unit standard is because that strongly incentivizes the larger units so I just

[124:00] to put a period of an exclamation point on what you just said absolutely if we can work that into this project that would be fantastic yep it's a trip to supper for ya okay I say let's move on to question number two do you want to weigh forth on this oh did you want to frame something then you go obviously we've we have a long list of community benefits as in the memo so we weren't able to go through each of those in the presentation so we have some slides of each with the different options if there's a focus on any of those but for the sake of time we've we've not gone into that but that's that's that's basic you're gonna show a sort of affordable commercial space looks well just the different options that we outlined putting a maximum rent on the space for commercial retail space and this is something that housing divisions working on currently that they are kind of putting forward through a process right now that's looking at subsidized commercial spaces that would be subsidized at 75 percent

[125:00] of market value and that would also have to take into account some of the the sales and some of the other items and again housing is here if you wanted to get into any of the weeds on that particular item wait how many okay so we have about an hour and we have three questions three questions to ask and I don't care if we people want to pause and go into the weeds we're in a process question here do you guys want more details under each of these or do you want to just weigh forth as is and then we can get you I think waiting for as is is fine if we want more details or we get into the weeds and we want to pop to a slide that has information maybe that's weighted anybody disagree okay what's your question so when when I was feeding the memo and we were talking about affordable commercial space and putting a rent cap on that it saddle is that legal in Colorado they're right on commercial

[126:02] yeah the rent control prohibition only applies to residence just to residential wait would we we could do rent control on a full-on commercial that's what I was asking well I just want you to say it again yes Wow prohibition says residential units hmm that's useful to know that's why you brought it up thank you is there a loophole where we can get people to live not if you refer to as a loophole there's no okay so we listed community benefits what did Planning Board have to say about this for the most part we agreed with staffs list there there was a little bit of doubt about the affordable commercial retail how that would work but I think people supported it they were just for example didn't know about the rent

[127:01] control option we talked about those four and then there was less enthusiasm for the other ones on the right side there but at the end of the meeting we talked a little bit about the possibility of providing childcare or daycare and that would be under Social Services because you know if affordable housing is the primary benefit that folks are looking at a really nice sort of synergy could happen with daycares affordable daycare or some quality family sort of oriented benefits but for the most part we did agree with what staff has on the left there but you did you talk about design standards we

[128:01] did talk about design standards but not for taller larger buildings necessarily just enhanced design and we didn't think that should be part of the this community benefit project but it should just be something that's expected of all the buildings only question again I'm thinking about Austin's flow chart where bonus you want to do a little peaked roof will let you go up a couple feet or whatever I made up that bonus but you know what I mean would any of the ones on the you said the left but am i right alright on the right I something like a you know a little extra feet for a gable or something like that that was the kind of thing we considered as enhanced design and that that would be dealt with outside of this community but not as a bonus right oh okay so sorry we have a lot of good there's a question from Liz on your own you're

[129:01] coming a big here one of things I guess I struggle with a little bit as a lot of these things are infrastructure improvements or changes in other words it happens when it gets built and has done the check the box either did it they didn't when we get into things like daycare or movie theaters there becomes an operational component right in other words if the requirement is you shall build a movie theater but maybe something will operate it or not this entirely hypothetical question by the way we're a daycare center then then it becomes more difficult right from an enforcement standpoint because they needed to all sorts of messes about how do you operate it and was it cost and what if you can't find an operator and what if it goes out of business and so forth so I guess this is a bit of a question for anybody wants to answer it don't don't we need to primarily focus on infrastructure benefits that happen at a point in time and exist forever as opposed to operational benefits well TDM would fall into the same category as the childcare sort of thing

[130:00] and one of the things looking at all of the case studies the Child Care Benefit was one that showed up in some lots of cities so I don't know how they implement that but it was doable it must have been because it shows up quite often so the Jim knows the answer well yeah I think putting standards to what would be most important because when I read the child care standards and a lot of the case studies you know for how long are you supposed to operate it in Austin for example if the benefit that you're providing is a live music venue you have to operate it continuously for ten years it can't be vacant for more than 180 days otherwise there's penalties that are assigned that go back into the city's affordable housing fund did it get that right yeah yeah and I just know this is an example of every community benefit you identify that you want to be part of this program you have to give a lot of scrutiny to what are the rules that are going to apply to that because a very valuable commodity

[131:02] that being the additional height intensity whatever is being granted to a project so you want to and of course the markets kind of gravitate towards the path of least resistance so you want to make sure you set the rules really well what we did in in Austin I say we because I was involved in creating this thing in addition to setting the rules in terms of like Charles summarized and we even Austin being live music capital of the world there were arguments like what if it's a cover band does that count doesn't it need to be a singer-songwriter so literally but in addition to setting all those rules you know what qualifies as this kind of a space we also had a thing like what happens if after ten years eight years whatever the project can no longer find viable tentative tenants that meet that criteria obviously you can't saw a story off a building at that point say you got that story because you provided a space

[132:00] that's no longer providing this benefit the way we handled that was there was a cash in lieu option that was almost always available cash in lieu of which would go to affordable housing and we basically said if this benefit ceases to exist at a period in time at that point the owner of the project would have to a the value the cash in lieu value that they avoided paying upfront by providing this community benefit that no longer exists so you would pay the cash in lieu value in today's value you know in other words it would be updated over time you would have to in essence reimburse the city for what you would have had to pay up front had you just provided cash in lieu instead of this benefit that no longer exists and then did you amortize that in other words if they did ADA ten years they'd only have to pay one one-fifth and it has that I said proved as an incentive to keep that light music

[133:01] going I mean actually I don't have there been any failures the program is relatively young in Austin and I'm not aware obviously I've been out of the picture there for two years but I'm not aware of any situations where we actually have had to invoke this this provision of of in essence to keep yeah it's certainly a lot simpler if the community benefit is something that is just permanent that's not going away you don't have to worry about this but where you have temporal or potentially temporal community benefits this is something you need to think about we have some questions over here yeah Jim well first was there statistics on how many of them were cover bands because that was so I wonder could we could we combine something like this with an affordable commercial requirement could you have something like well if if you rent to a list of social services like a childcare or homeless services provider then you can charge the rent that you can you know work out with that provider

[134:00] if it's not to one of those then you have to rent at 75% of market rate if it's not to one of those kind of Community Benefit uses which would then make it a little more flexible you know could could we what do you all think of something possibility I think you do that I mean obviously that that probably the administration component of that kind of a program gets a little more complex but is it more complicated than just the affordable commercial bites so I mean a little bit more complicated but is the main complication that affordable program yeah no I think you know it's doable the way you described it thought it also might matter how many different options I mean if all we have to do is implement on a portable commercial program then we can get really good at that as opposed to worrying about cover bands which is a whole nother art I'm sure but I guess in terms of setting cash and Lewis sort of

[135:00] the other option that was always a path do we need to do we have to set that up no matter what work because my question is really not making it too attractive to take cash and Lou from the get-go so I'm just wondering how do you make it so that's not the attractive choice but it's the backup unfortunate mechanism then does that make sense yeah it makes is I think it's just how you structure the regulations and you know the standards just make it high is that what you're saying well like for example in Austin it was kind of used as a penalty so I think that's the way to you right looking back at what we did we and there was a lot of debate around this issue as to whether we there should even be a cash in lieu component or whether we should just require residential projects to provide on-site units there was a whole debate around that and that fundamentally is in some ways a public policy question the way it landed at the

[136:00] end of the day on that was projects they had they had to provide an affordable housing benefit at least 50% of the additional value they derived whether it was FA are or stories or whatever had to be earned if you will with an affordable housing benefit they could they could fulfill that benefit either providing on-site or a cash in lieu now as it turned out what we learned was the way we calibrated it you know we had a certain dollar for a cash in lieu or a certain number of units of affordable housing we learned from experience that the way we had set it up cash in lieu was more attractive that was the sort of path of least resistance that the market took so the first projects that came through we were getting consistently cash in lieu instead of on-site affordable unit that is a that's a policy question as to whether you want to do that you can you can set up the economics so that you incentivize people to go into on-site units you know we should make it more expensive to pay the cash in lieu then

[137:01] it would toss the project to build on-site units that's just a matter of calibrating the economics a certain way okay we're gonna make sure we answer this yeah that's all a question for Tom if we have a cash in lieu out alternative whether it's affordable housing or some of these other benefits does that start to get into Colorado law problems in other words even if somebody wants something and they can just write us a check to get that thing is there what's the nexus that we can point to well there so the current nexus for affordable housing is we use their housing is easy so let's say somebody wants a taller building can they just right it's a million dollar check to satisfy the nexus you'd have to dedicate the money to addressing the problems that you're trying to solve which is what we did that money came in and was dedicated to into an affordable housing trust fund like sort of like we have here so was a taller building cause you know unaffordability I guess I'm trying to grapple you if somebody wants to build a five storey building instead of a three-story building they write as a million dollar check

[138:00] how will we solving an affordability I mean how is that that extra two storeys causing an affordability problem that we're then fixing with the money how was it tall building closet affordability problems so the argument is that the more you build the the higher the prices go which is counterintuitive but somewhat true here and so you you you're addressing that with dollars that go to provide affordable housing for those who can't afford to live in the units that you're building which is what the market's demanding so there's the money always will this progression future because the money always go to affordable housing regardless of whatever they're buying out of is that where the money goes it's those Austin I mean I just wonder wanders yes if you paid cash in lieu as an in order to fulfill your obligation view this program it went to affordable housing music okay sorry I think there's a reason that you separate commercial from residential because as we've some

[139:02] with the nexus study additional height that goes to commercial will have a impact on affordability and then you can come back into when we build housing we already have kind of a standard within zoning that there will be 20% of that will go to housing so you can make the argument that if they're going taller and they don't want to provide some other benefit or I think what Tim says is they use it as a penalty if they promise something and something doesn't come to reduce impact on the community of the taller building then you can put it towards affordable housing and still have it be useful is that some of these these other benefits like art this is still listed their community benefits supposed to be art and for some reason there's a failure there I'm how does it how does the money how does paying money towards affordable housing fix the program so I guess that was the question I was trying to try to Thomas does there

[140:01] have to be a nexus of the cash to the ties to the benefit that was supposed to be provided I don't know that that's true there I haven't seen any case law that requires it I think it's kind of an open question i I think you're on firmer ground the more closely you tie it to the problem you're trying to solve and or it's probably the one of the harder ones to tie it to so oh good well I'll just throw it to the extent that we have cash penalties I would propose that they go in funds that were dedicated to whatever the community benefit is that they're failing to provide so if we go that route that would be my recommendation just okay and so that's something I guess to be determined or to think about but terms of the that list is that the right list or their edits to that list Mary I had a question from the previous conversation that we were having you said that Jimmy said that it's just a matter of setting up the

[141:01] economics to provide the incentive that you will provide on-site affordable housing or not that's not the case in Colorado because of the of ability to have rent control so because a lot of it it does I guess my question is does austin have that limitation where you can't have rent control because we can't do it we can't set those economics here the way Texas law is written and I'm operating I'm no longer a practicing lawyer so and I'm operating from memory here but is that if it is part of in essence an incentive or bonus program you can place restrictions on rental residential but it cannot be a feature of your sort of basis owning requirements but if it's

[142:00] part of a an incentive program which this was you can do that which is what it allowed us to do this and I'd like to also make one comment if I may the analysis and the packet was really looking at what's what's likely to be feasible for a developer to look at which is a little bit different than the nexus study and so I think the two may complement each other but you know the first might say what to what extent might this program be successful the other would say they'll give the legal ground by which to set that standard is that yeah ok so I'm gonna answer the question there you we're moving on to this question I'm going to answer this question so in terms of arts and cultural uses like it's one thing I don't see is if you're gonna like build I rise then you got to have a pocket park next to it so all the people that live there have some open space is that encompassed in arts and culture or social services or but that seems to me

[143:01] public that's the other benefits is a publicly accessible open common space so what does it mean to be another benefit as opposed to initial program focus I think in the memo we were we were making a recommendation that we should be focusing and maybe on a more limited number of benefits to kind of focus on the ones that are the most important and and see how the program goes and then if there's a if it's successful then looking at other benefits so we were suggesting in the memo an emphasis on affordable housing affordable commercial rental space in arts and cultural uses and I think based on the Planning Board discussion on childcare we had moved to the social services over so we were placing a higher precedent on the four on the Left okay I guess I for one but to me it's a social this idea of contributing to and

[144:01] maybe it's covered enough in the open space I wish we didn't use open space in so many different ways in this town I think it does not do us okay but to me to me for instance density is a good thing but probably needs to be offset offset by increased amenities like you need to have access to open space if you're gonna build a dense development and so maybe that's already accommodated in our site review but if it's not I guess I would put that in the left column although to me cultural and social involve public spaces for people to enjoy together so that's one thought I have answer the question people even answer I have a question I have a question sorry but in there and it's come up before us and in the past has to do with landmarking and we had a great example up on the hill 747 14th street where we

[145:03] had a house that we the city wanted to landmark and it was on a relatively large lot what we ended up doing was landmarking it but then we also allowed subdivision of that lot so that somebody could build another house and so we were able to preserve that landmark structure and it wasn't and I don't know if that was permanently affordable but here's a case where you might be able to get to benefit time where you have a small house that is historical and that we're we can incent the landowner to preserve that house and land market while at the same time being able to subdivide their lot so that they could build build a you

[146:02] know a larger house or a more modern house but that way you you get two benefits you you preserve it and we've had over the last ten years a lot of really cool smaller houses that represent different parts of our history and things like that but said have been destroyed because we didn't have that incentive program and so I'm wondering if we does it fit on the list of things we want to try you know we had we had contemplated historic preservation but we do get a lot of land markings through the site review process you know by tying to the complan but i think your idea is is different than a typical site review and i think we should consider that yeah i just like to keep it on the list since this is just or put it on those since this is a study session and i totally agree with your if you're gonna increase density you've got to have density relief okay so how about this we're gonna go around the circle if anybody has anything dad it's your

[147:01] chance to add it and then we're gonna move on to the next question click on go on leases thing though that can also potentially fit in the large lots so you know in terms of one you can write yeah okay great here's your chance who's ready to go marries ready to go and then well you're not gonna like this but i have another question okay so with arts and culture that seems to me that it would have to be something that would be fleshed out in terms of you know I mean think yes and and how there was a whole bunch of backlash on that that particular piece of art and you know what constitutes art and I mean one person's art is another and is this one of those that you have another slide on that flushes it out did you flush this one out at all we did develop some options I know Planning

[148:01] Board talked maybe there were some planning board members that talked about this and I think they landed more along the lines less about public art and more about providing brick-and-mortar space for people to make a livelihood in in that field okay okay thank you for that and then okay so I will say that this is the right list although I would put the social services and critical needs of Arts and Culture sorry Matt but and I would add on to the the that list to telecare I would add things like the resiliency centers that we were talking about earlier where there's a place that people can go in case of whatever kind of disaster that might happen so that's that and then just kind of thinking ahead in terms of the enhanced design

[149:00] one of the things that we never ever ever get even though the Charter allows it is to get belfry's spires and cupola and I think that the reason that we don't get those is because they have no monetary payback so that could potentially in terms of enhanced building design could be something that would be a community benefit Marib I know I'm to the extent that I thought I heard you say that you're gonna focus on the left-hand column first and the phase two was me the right-hand column I guess I that's if I Ain't understood that right I disagree with that for the reasons that have started to be said which is I think you know Mary made a good point about design standards and made a good point about common space I would actually include mobility in that so I I think this is a good list of eight I actually agree with Lisa that to add a ninth into historical reservation but I wouldn't agree to the phasing let's do

[150:01] these first and see how it works then doing the rest of these I think the ones on the right many of them are just as important as the one who left sets might be back soon Dean I think I'd kind of go along with those as well and I'd like the environmentally enhanced design I think that's important so I'll just hey I'm curious what do you mean by that what does that mean to you environmentally enhanced design just what Mary was talking about okay so so I would it's aesthetic so we're talking about not the environment okay yep so a few things I feel like environmentally enhanced design means something else to me it means Net Zero buildings or higher efficiency buildings where new design standards could mean couplers and and things of that nature so whatever I don't care what buckets that captured in I have a thought that Net Zero buildings

[151:03] you know anything above and beyond what code requires would also be one that I'd like to have available on the list whatever we do a couple is you know the challenge with architectural flourishes is a lot of times they depend on the quality of the architect and it's awfully hard to put criteria into place that really define that and I know depending on where the building is it may get more or less review of that so I would also say that I really like the way that Austin has looked at affordable housing in other words there's a gateway requirement that you're going to do it and we already have two of those in place so we've got our inclusionary zoning and we have our linkage fee and so I feel like we've done a good job starting there so that's kind of like the baseline or the floor and when I look at affordable housing on this list I would think of it as going above and beyond that so in other words if we're going to talk about that as one or more

[152:00] choices that can be made it's if the project is going to go above and beyond it affordable commercial absolutely I think we're doing good there I view arts and cultural uses like you guys answered Mary I think it should be space for art to be practiced and not judgement about what kind of public art gets put there that's kind of a building owners choice is they design the project and and then I also agree about everything that's been said about social services and publicly accessible open common spaces we have design guidelines right that for projects require a certain amount of public space there's also if I'm not mistaken that contribution that gets made to parks is there is that part of one of the fees that gets paid so through the site review process we can't require that spaces be open to the public so I think putting some standards to that would

[153:01] probably be helpful if that were the goal so let's take a step back do projects contribute to parks land acquisition at the moment yeah there's an impact theme in site review mode so I agree about adding open common spaces to this list which are above and beyond what is already required so it's only an additional community benefit if it goes above and beyond what the development standards require at the moment so that's my answer to the questions and I have a quick comment which is there was a section of the packet that talked about what's available currently in site plan review as far as community benefits and I had one specific comment was the a section that got mentioned over and over and over again on that list is a section that says the first line of the site plan review criteria which is this

[154:00] project will meet the zoning standards and the comp plan standards and the reality is we almost never use that one right we're discouraged by staff in both planning in legal from tying back in to the comp plan for obvious reasons because it's non balanced decision so I would just say while I agree that some of those benefits actually arise site plan review often times they're extremely nebulous and our ability to condition on them is really found either deeper in the site plan review criteria or not at all so one of the whole points of this I just want to put a bow on this is that we want to be able to condition using this as part of it and if we can do that that that will really improve I think the quality we get from projects overall I really I really like this list and I agree with you know Bob and Cindy that all eight are good I the biggest

[155:01] things I think maybe this isn't the right time to get into it but how we're gonna find ways to make these all equal is of concern to me for example publicly-accessible open space and you know better design which I totally agree with Mary on the cupola and stuff those are two things that would enhance the project for the developer tremendously Wow we can get extra you know outdoor space and these beautiful things and potentially then they can charge more for you know their housing there they can charge more for the commercial there so so then like like to your point that it's gonna flow to the path of least resistance just I just want to be careful as we set this up that we're really making these you know comparable to one another and and and that we do our room for flexibility that if if everyone does just choose one way that we you know we were you're evaluating so

[156:01] I think and I have like lots of questions if we go through all eight on how we'd set up the details but but that's for a later conversation but my broad common is like let's just really try to think about how to make these general relatively equal so yeah I was I was gonna make that same point there there's the because you have to I think we're we're talking about quantifying like Austin does a good job of that right I mean it's not nebulous they quantify how what you have to provide in order to get what and that makes sense to me as an approach so you have to think with a longer list there's a lot to quantify and then how you make them equal to each other's little challenging so I think we want it I agree with keeping more of these things on the list but I think we want to focus in on them as we get to next stages because like mobility and parking is a is a big possible bucket and what are the actual things we would want to put in there that requires some discussion like for example in the packet you mentioned more connections

[157:02] could be a possible one well actually I think site review process does a great job already giving us the connections that we need were able there are site review criteria about it we're able to create permeability and paths I never saw a problem with that that one in particular so we'll have to think about that going forward one mobility thing I will call out is that I had promised was a satellite parking that that's something that we've talked about maybe encouraging so that would be one that I think could make a good addition that list the the flowchart you're starting to work on made sense to me in terms of wolf it's a residential here's one set maybe focus on affordable housing if it's commercial if it's non-residential there's a different set make sure that mixed-use gets included in there when you're thinking about that because it's a kind of project that we generally like to like to encourage I do like the idea of particularly for residential of a minimum requirement for affordable housing say okay you have to do at least this much affordable housing and then

[158:01] you can turn to the rest of the menu but since that is our kind of critical community need getting back getting back for the idea of focusing on certain things I think that's what we should have that kind of requirement I liked it from Austin and and maybe some of the other ones that we'd like to see more of maybe could be a maximum of you know 10% of the community benefits or you know I think we might not require multiple community benefits from project I've been there some menu of options and maybe we place we place maximums I in terms of the open and common spaces there have been some good comments on that one of the items on that list could be conservation easements of environmentally sensitive land could be a good one on that one I do I'm very glad to see social service is in here and I'll just reiterate my thought from before about the idea of maybe there's a combination of affordable commercial and social services maybe that's there there's one program that gets rolled into where you say well you enter into this program

[159:00] it could be social services or it could be lower lower than market rate for local businesses or something like that so those are things to consider something else I noticed I forget which city had it but there was an encouragement for family-friendly housing and I learned that had promise as well and that's not in this list but units designed such that families can live there and then amenities in the project like play spaces for kids or green spaces that are protected and have entrances at the level of the green space where you can have your kids run out and play while you watch them things like that and the last one was I'm very glad the arts and cultures in here I want to do a shout out to members of the arts community have been advocating for arts and culture as a community benefit for years and it's coming to fruition in this list which I'm really happy to see I'll echo my colleagues about focusing on studio live work and especially performance space make sure that we get

[160:01] that in there as it focus for arts and culture but I mean conceivably we could have a small allowed piece of it for a public art on the like in the right according to the right away or something something is very public under strict criteria could maybe let you meet just a little bit because we don't get a lot of public art in this town I think we could use some more I'll leave it at that that was very comprehensive so I won't repeat I'm liking what laksa I'm liking what all of you said but I guess I would just say that I think some things are more important than others so I like this idea of we got the gate nothing is it the gatekeeper and then we've got some big ones and then we got some bonus ones I think that makes sense and so I think this is the right list but I don't think I don't think they're all equal so I think this notion that you can get 10% here trying to figure out how you a little bit of something of some of these but you want a lot of affordability and I guess for the

[161:01] abilities I think his is kind of the biggest that said I was just in Grand Rapids which is a public art city and oh my god what a difference that makes and so yes trying to figure out how to accommodate that it shouldn't replace affordability but again there are some amenities that would really help build community even as we get bigger because I do think there's those are some of the nexuses we're talking about is people but getting more people we don't know each other as much okay well how do we create that sense of uniqueness and I don't know branding about who we are and stuff anyhow public art fits into that Lisa I just had a question in reading the memo and talking about art do we allow murals to just be painted when they want or do we have prohibitions on that there's no prohibitions but we have a signed code that defines what a

[162:02] commercial sign is so that's what we have to evaluate murals on so like in Philadelphia especially in South Philadelphia and then in Center City Philadelphia there's like the mural mile and it is phenomenal and their Arts Commission I think they give grants to allow these murals and they go the artist goes before the Commission but it makes such beautiful art space and when you go down to South Philadelphia it's like the people have kind of taken over which is very cool and they do mirror mirror murals and it's just art you're just washed in our timber we run a foul here as one for example if a business owner wants to paint a mural on the side of their tavern for example and it's beer mugs or somehow advertising what it is that they sell or what happens in the

[163:00] building that's a commercial signage issues that's where we want to follow usually with murals okay so I think we're moving you guys yeah you kill me so you don't like okay you're the less comment and then we're going to the third question yeah just just one more thing I like in reading through all the examples - there were a couple of things that jumped out at me already mentioned one of them one which was the labor requirement I don't know where you work this stuff in but I wanted to put it out there so they you hopefully will think about it as you run through this but the labor requirements that requiring the housing to be rented to people that live in town so that it doesn't go to like people that rent an apartment and come two weeks a year or something and the rest of time it's a it's a was it an STR yes thank you and

[164:00] then the other one that that caught my eye too was a some sort of a financial [Music] requirement for businesses people that are displaced through redevelopment or question number three okay so question number three relates to appendix J so we're just asking for feedback on whether to add or remove sites from appendix J whether to remove it entirely or do not change it oh boy so this isn't a discussion about what might be added or subtracted it's simply a process question what did Planning Board have to say we were really mixed on this I mean some folks wanted to get rid of the map altogether and just do a citywide

[165:00] project some folks wanted to keep the map maybe modify it if there are sub community plans or area plans done and some folks thought you know minor tweaks to the map might be okay so it was really just the whole gamut really so I'm sorry we weren't break helpful on that one okay Aaron clarifying question so there's there's two big distinctions here one is do do we change it in the next few months and the other is what do we do after we're finished with the community benefit discussion and those are two very different things so can you clarify what you're asking here so one note on the Planning Board input reflects what we've heard in our like focus group sessions and in discussions where there's and we haven't really seen a clear path forward and so before spending any time asking that question of the community we wanted to check in with Council to make sure that we were going in a direction that was at the

[166:00] will of the council a lot of these projects that would be requesting to participate in this program would likely be contingent on being included on appendix J and so the question has come up over the process of should we look at other sites outside of that map and perhaps add or remove sites based on a public process and so if the answer was yes do that then we would amend our public process to do that and have that discussion if not then we wouldn't I don't know if that's answering your actually didn't answer it at all my question was to say it again are you talking about changing the map in the next few months during the community benefit process or are you talking about changing it after we're finished with the community benefit process and we've like finalized the code changes I don't think we've identified that as an interim step I think it's just the outcome it would all be probably done as one package I think it's what I'm thinking yeah with new code changes for

[167:01] Community Benefit and revising appendix J so can I just ask a process question and that has to do we just had a vote on the height moratorium and when we look at it again I don't know why we would want to look at this now and why we wouldn't want to bring it back in May of 2020 or whenever it's going to come back so that's just just a comment well I'm very who else has their hand up I'm a little confused by this question because we I thought we looked at this when we passed the made 2020 and some of us wanted to release areas by when they got sub community plans and to keep it in place indefinitely and then release areas as community plans it became available so I'm kind of hearing

[168:02] some of that in this question so is is that kind of what you're asking yeah I mean that's certainly one of the options and I don't know that we've gotten definitive direction on that I think when when it was extended to May 20-22 look into this further as part of this process that's partly why was extended so one of those options might be to only revise it if if an area plan is done but we we're wanting to hear - if that's definitely the case with that's what I wanted that night that we voted on so I would say that would be my preference to release areas as sub community plans get done that's I guess I'm confused - we have a lot of fur over ours over here I mean realistically I mean you guys want to get this community - there's this benefit stuff done by the third quarter next year right and then we have got 2020 which is a few months later realistically or we can have any

[169:00] area plans done in that time frame so isn't this a move I mean I go back to Aaron's question if you're asking do we want to mess with this but now and win this projects - hunter 2020 I think the answer is no we just fought that battle so why don't we just leave things alone because what you're doing here is gonna answer these questions right I mean yes theoretically if there's an area plan that pops up and gets approved could we add it to appendix J at that might I'm sure that's probably not gonna happen and we always have the discretion to do that if that the unlikely event that happened so shouldn't we have this project which is only gonna take another 12 to 18 months go through its completion and just kind of maintain this task if we do a really good job here it will we will have a productive conversation about then where would we allow more of this might be that's what that's why I was doing this you look at the appendix

[170:01] J now it obviously has geographic areas where you can ask for a height mod but you also can have projects like permanently affordable housing that has more than 40% of its foyer is exempt from those areas you can be anywhere in the city so we might find through further discussion that these community benefits can be also be exempted you know so I think we're just trying to get a I think a general sense well I'm giving you my opinion I know you're next if we do a good job here and people feel like oh yes I would take more height for that that's what frees up the conversation so I wouldn't say exempt it it it allows us to reshape where we want this stuff to happen that we just decided would give us community benefit so to me you do this and then you have that conversation yeah I don't think this is the right venue for this to be honest with you I mean I felt that was also the case when 30 at night and it was not something we had had a broad community discussion about if we

[171:03] were going to do something like this I think it would need if we were gonna consider these kinds of changes and/or requiring some community plans in order to release areas or whatever it was I think that's got to be too subjective its own set of discussion and hearing I had thought if we would do that and I'm really ambivalent about whether I want to it would be in the sub community planning process because that's where you could make some kind of statement like I want you know only a sub community plan to be able to allow that kind of regulation so I guess I am not comfortable saying anything about this except certainly not here would be I don't think this is appropriate yeah basically just agree with his and I'll just emphasize that I think we get through this process hopefully it'll be a great process we'll come out with something we're all happy with and then sometimes between the

[172:00] conclusion of this process and May of 2020 we discussed this yeah that's the exact feedback we were looking for thank you there you go hey we were clear pontine were really really good okay question number four the next question it really just talks a little bit about our engagement moving forward so we are planning you know a lot of these projects start off with a lot kind of an open house and larger events in this case we sort of flip that on its head and we decided to have some focus groups and some community visit with community organizations and have had a lot of more one-on-one or small group conversations about this to at least start assessing what are the options because we didn't have a whole lot to go out to the community about now we feel like we're at a point where we can talk intelligently about a program that we would create at the city and so

[173:01] now in the next month about the next month month and a half we'd be looking to have an outward facing larger event we'd be looking at reassembling those participants that gave their time in focus groups doing some drop-in events pulling together some experts in the community and staff or in technical groups to help provide feedback on some of these topics we visited with a number of boards and commissions that we described in the report and we'd continue to be working with them hab has designated two members to kind of be our central point of contact for example and so we have a framework at least in play that identifies those things moving forward one of the big questions that remains was brought up initially by a planning board member and then I believe it was brought up at CAC again about a process committee concept similar to that of the Comprehensive Plan and so given that it was brought up at CAC we I believe told CAC afterwards that we'd bring it up during this meeting the

[174:00] question was would it be useful to have some sort of a couple of council delegates planning board etc to meet on sort of reoccurring basis to advise on unprocess and other things for this project we as staff talked a little bit more about it and we thought it was a great idea we also thought we'd like to perhaps offer that the scope you could consider broadening to include all of the code amendments and not just this one specific project since there's a number of them in the works and so that's probably one of the more important things relating to this question that we wanted to highlight for you but if you had any other kinds of questions around process that we've outlined in the report would love that feedback a clarifying question the process committee is what you would expand to all of them but the process we're weighing in on is just the one we've been talking about tonight we're not weighing in on how to do your use tables we're just talking about right I

[175:00] just wanted okay so let's just break this up what do people think about the process committee idea it's a good idea I think it's been helpful it was helpful in the housing group it was helpful in I think it's helpful in the open space master plan I think having two council members and I would extend it to Planning Board and I guess hab is having in there now or not I don't know but I definitely include planning board and council members in there and I think it just helps bring the process along others agree with the idea I guess I would just say I think it's important to get a diversity of our representatives mm-hmm but I think that that has served us well on the comp plan and on the open space master plan you just yeah yeah I think it can be value it is a bit of a heavy lift I mean it's it's definitely

[176:00] some extra time so to that point I like your idea of role we're working on a lot of planning related things I like that idea of including all of them in the process kinase purview so that it gives you're getting more bang for your buck and agree with having playing board participating as well yeah and I would just add that's how the opens I think also the the complan but the open space process committee has two council members and two open space board of trustees members okay did Planning Board care well Phil summarized our comments really well already but yeah we definitely supported the idea of the process committee we thought that worked really well with Conklin okay cool so that's a yes and it sounds like planning board we want planning board and us yep uh-huh anybody disagree oh okay anything else on process soup I

[177:02] will not be volunteering for this committee because I'm already on the open space process committee so but just one thought just to make sure that we reach out extensively to people who don't show up at meetings all the time and particular kind of underrepresented communities in town we're making a big effort on that in the open space master plan outreach so like I said like drop in events like at coffee shops and things and that's great just make sure you don't only hit things that are patronized by people over 90 percent ami it's like so that coming other processor I assume this is in your technical on focus groups but but I I'm presumably the that would include people that actually build buildings right okay so we're not just gonna making stuff up and then find out the development community says that's the stupidest thing I ever heard right so we want we want to make sure that we're actually living in the world of reality and and I will just say that to me duh I keep coming back to the Austin flow chart because to me that was

[178:01] like oh now this is interesting this is provocative how would you rate these things how would you and to me that's a good tool to use either filled in or not but with a few examples but then that's a really provocative tool that I think at least for me I think would be very useful a bunch of audiences so people can think about what's important to them what it's worth how would you prioritize what is got essential and what would be nice so I'll just offer that up so I agree was the anima at the floor chart I also think it would be helpful to have packets which are small but which are the case study summaries because I think it gives people a certain amount of reassurance to know hey look other communities have done this here's how it worked for them we can craft it for our community but the knowledge that it's not just you know this crazy one-off idea is useful Bob to your point I mean

[179:00] we definitely have to work with developers to understand how because this this is a bunch of nitty-gritty stuff right about parking use development standards and so unintended consequences are a lot of what we're trying to be cleaned up now so if we are trying to clean up unintended consequences we definitely have to run it past the people who will be implementing the rules that are gonna get made here so I think that's important as well I would be interested for what it's worth on this process subcommittee just because it's an area that I think is really important and I'd be happy to work with whoever else might be you go add that to the list of two other committees we're going to talk about on the fourth yeah and I encourage people that haven't had a chance to do that yet to consider volunteering one of the thought I just saw out there is we've done this on a few other issues is

[180:00] to me this is a really interesting interesting policy question and so maybe we say hey you oh I sponsored some salons hey I mean let's do some of those things I mean if need be let's have somebody from Santa Monica come and when we already have somebody from Austin here but I don't know but to me this is this is interesting stuff where we're going to learn from other folks that have done it let's invite them and let's engage different segments of the community that like to focus on aspects of this well anything else yep no I'm I have my comments have to do with something else so I'm done with anything else on this question people would add okay well I mean it would be good while we're going through that is to do Channel eight and do social media but definitely I think Channel eight and I think Patrick and

[181:01] the communications people could actually put some stuff really well together interviews some discussions with different people's just so that the people know what's going on and I think we do get a lot of hits on Channel eight and so it's a good way to communicate what we're doing can I add school fairs parents are so bored at those things kids sports events to that point well the whole we did really well on some of these other things growing up older and but also having the see you design folks think anyhow we're getting good at well I think we're getting better at engaging in a creative way so we've learned a few things in the last couple processes so let's use some of those successes okay hey how about almost on time so and

[182:03] maybe can you go back to question two sorry Susan you'll thank me tomorrow so so one of the things that I had a a couple things one and I guess it's on page two forty five and we're talking about industrial general industrial service and industrial manufacturing and I'm wondering and of course it depends where it would be and stuff but right now in industrial general my understanding is that if somebody owned two Lots that's zoned industrial general then they and they want to do some housing on it they cannot do housing on it unless there's one sixth continuity right of housing next adjacent to them there's some performance standards to do resident I just you know since we're trying to really push for or get affordable

[183:02] housing I guess I would like to throw into this mix incentives for for developers to come forward that have industrial general that are interested in doing housing but main affordable housing but may not be contiguous to some land that is already housing and I can think of several sites and I know we want to be very careful in terms of our industrial but I think there could be some benefit and I think we should at least consider it instead of just saying no it doesn't meet the standards and and I think that goes to I know Aaron's talked a lot about it you know where you could still have some industrial or retail on that first first floor but then you could get affordable housing on a per floors and I think at some point we will want to look at industrial general how much we really

[184:02] need and could we incent it's actually on our work program it grew out of the comp plan I don't have it in front of me I want to say it's something 19 or 20 now in this in this pile and see if we could do it because I think people will go forward you knows people wouldn't develop their properties okay and so for me what part of this whole discussion is is giving people a menu of options and say hey you know what instead of doing another industrial general development what we really need is affordable housing and if we can incent you to do that even though you don't meet the performance standards we'll we'll have a conversation with you and let's see where that goes so I would like to include that I mean we're trying to get affordable housing and so I see the this as some opportunity just if I get provided with just a brief response to

[185:02] that I think one of the upcoming projects where maybe we have the opportunity to do that and and Carl in in early on where he gave a real quick summary of the other code amendments we're working on you may recall at your January 2018 you retreat you identified the EU's table as an area where we ought to think about modifications and and I believe you you you asked the Planning Board to take a significant role in doing that and so the Planning Board now has actually created a subcommittee and is and is up and sort of beginning to be up and running on that I think the EU's table offers an opportunity as well Carl alluded to that because one of the things when he talked about the EU's table was perhaps modifications to the EU's table that will allow the creation of 15-minute communities so when we start looking at the EU's table and there's this different zoning districts including what you're talking about that's an opportunity to talk about what are what are we have the opportunities to create through modifications through the EU's table within any difference own district right I guess my concern is

[186:01] that properties might get developed that would if we wait too long they're gonna go forward and do industrial instead of housing and I would really like to encourage some kind of housing and that's why I'm bringing it up here so it's just what do we want and I think we want and we need housing so and then I had and then this has to do as a kite and just throw something in on that when it just that like it very simply could just be that housing could be a community benefit in an industrial zone yeah kind of story thank you and then just one last question and has to do with height and it's not like I want to go you know really high but I just was reviewing my notes here and you know I think the areas that you guys were considering include the BV RC Table

[187:00] Mesa be smart I agonal Plaza and I think especially I just think about diagonal Plaza and some of the emails we've been getting and that has been an albatross for at least 20 years in terms of severely underdeveloped and I guess you know I would like to see at least if somebody comes forward with some some ideas that maybe we would talk about it but it's again this whole thing of we're going to get something developed but it's it really what we want versus encouraging and incentivizing people to develop something that really serves our needs so I'll just leave it at that but I think it's really important and I would hate for any of those properties to come forward and not get to our goals so it's

[188:05] just to comment and so I don't know anyway parking lots really don't do a lot for us yeah okay we good you get what you need all right Thank You Liz for joining us it's just been fun yep good night everybody see you tomorrow night [Music] July 4 Paris I'll fold like that [Music]