September 25, 2018 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[2:04] [Music] Timber 25th 2018 all about some really cool stuff starting with large lots and large homes and other land use code changes so to tonight's focus is actually follow up on two important items that the council had identified at the retreat earlier this year and we indicated we would come back in a scoping conversation so the two items tonight are really a scoping conversation for us to get feedback from council and discuss next steps so the first item is addressing the construction of large homes on large lots and we have two presenters tonight Carl Guiler and also one of our new planners Andrew Collins correct okay will be leading us in that discussion so

[3:02] before we turn it over to staff and thanks very much Tanya and before I turn it over to Carl Carl I'm happy to introduce Andrew Collins he's our new code amendments specialists who comes to us via the city of Nashville Tennessee so he's filling one of the positions that was authorized by counsel at the retreat to address some of this work so we're happy to have him on board this evening I'd also point out that Kristen would Co our energy code coordinators with us tonight too so we have a resident energy code expert in the building with us this evening as well so I will turn it over to Carl Guyler to kick us off thanks Charles good evening council members tonight we're going to talk about the large lots and large homes discussion we're at the beginning stages of this project so we wanted to get council feedback on the scope and get a better understanding of some of the issues that have been raised about compatibility before we move forward on the project so we're looking forward to that feedback Before we jump into that

[4:02] large lot large home discussion I wanted to start with the broader land use code change list if you look at attachment A in the memo and I've also laid out the list in front of you on your tables there it's our current code change priorities so this list was shared with council in January of this year at the treat and it reflects the feedback that we received from counsel at that time but we're also open to additional feedback so just to talk about some of the priorities what there's the community benefit project that we discussed about a month ago at the study session tonight we're gonna be discussing the large lot large homes project we're also working on the youth standards project it's basically looking at updates to the youth table to address any outdated uses look at a closer look at some uses that have been a little bit problematic home occupations look at maybe other opportunities for live work locations and also trying to implement

[5:01] comprehensive planning policies such as trying to foster more fifteen-minute neighborhoods so this is a process that is started up recently as well and we'll be coming back to Council to get some feedback on that as well we're also working on the parking and TDM code changes this is something that's been ongoing since about 2014 we actually met with our parking consultant today to talk a little bit about the timeline so we will eventually be coming back to council to get some feedback on options on parking code changes as well we're also looking at doing some design changes to the land use code so that next two priorities are something that's that that's been ongoing but we hope to complete within the work plan for 2018 2019 some of these might go into 2020 like the commerce of design standards but these are two particular ones that we're focusing on now so I want to point out that if there is any feedback

[6:00] questions or comments on the code changes list we're gonna be covering that under question number six tonight so before we get started again Charles had introduced our new planner and code amendments specialist Andrew Collins so he's going to be taking a lead on the large lot large home discussions so I'm gonna turn it over to Andrew great thanks Carl good evening Council so tonight the presentation is going to cover at the background of the large lots and large homes project including an overview of their current regulations are in place also go over the draft why in purpose statements and then we'll have the questions for our City Council and follow up with next steps and feel free to stop me at any time if you have any questions as well so we're in the initial scoping stage and again the purpose for tonight is to receive feedback on the goals and directions that council has for the

[7:00] project we hope to be in the engagement phase starting in winter of next year through spring with adoption of any proposed changes occurring ideally by August of 2019 so the city adopted the compatible infill development regulations originally in 2009 and these were new intensity regulations that limited the floor area the bulkan scale new residential development and a variety of residential zone districts including re which is residential estate or our residential rural RL or central low and our max1 zoning districts since that time we've seen continued developments in these areas which includes the demolition of existing modest sized homes on large lots being replaced with larger homes on these same Lots and this has been perceived by some as being incompatible with the older housing stock and the character of the neighborhoods and as mentioned before

[8:01] this issue was identified by Council at the January 2018 retreat so then that pier in the screen and yellow shows the existing re and our our zoning districts and these are predominantly found in North Boulder as well as in areas in East Boulder near the Fraser Meadows area cherryvale and they believe the 55th Avenue as well as the Southwest University Hill area near Chautauqua these areas can be generally characterized by their larger Lots and older parcels have a more rural character with smaller homes and this is in particularly the North Boulder area and just as a reference points the RV do you require the largest minimum line there is of all the residential zones that's 15,000 square feet and 30,000 square foot minimum lot sizes and we have heard narrow way that there might be some interest in other zoning

[9:00] districts as well and I think more an opportunity could be to look at large Lots in those other districts well one for instance has a minimum lot size of only seven thousand square feet but where there are large Lots and those so many districts perhaps any regulations we came up with could apply to those as well in terms of the existing regulations that we have in place for these residential zones we had the max building height which is 35 feet there's also the side yard bulk plain that was put in place in 2009 this is a line starting at a point well feet above the side property lines and then angling inward at 45 degrees so development has to occur has to occur within this zone there are some exceptions for dormers and gabled roofs but the most part the bulk of the building has to be in that zone there's also side yard wall articulation standards and so basically if this requires that within 20 feet of

[10:00] a side you high property line building walls greater than 14 feet in height can exceed more than 40 feet in length unless it step setback 14 feet from the side property line and so this illustrates two different scenarios how that could meet that standard there's also the minimum lot area requirement which is simply the minimum size for new Lots and their zoning district setbacks which we're all familiar with there's also in some districts a combined side setback so you might have a 10 foot side setback requirement but combined it might have to be 25 feet there's also a max building coverage requirement that was put in place in 2009 and this is a sliding scale based based on the size of the lot which limits how much of the building how much of a lot can be covered by buildings so this deals with the footprint of the building itself on the ground plane and then we have FA are the

[11:00] floor area ratio requirement which limits the amount odel from added floor area that can be built across you know one or two or possibly three stories and it's getting based on a sliding scale relative to the size of the lot itself we also have energy efficiency standards and the energy code that we'll touch on a little bit more coming up so this table shows some of the key existing development regulations for the re in our our zoning districts one of the main things to know here is in the left is the right two columns floor area ratio max and building coverage are both sliding scales so you see some calculations based upon Lots ten thousand square feet and greater and how that works with the ratios that are derived from that also there's no hard cap for those two requirements so it's just a percentage requirement so if you have a larger lot you can build a larger house the city's energy code was adopted

[12:06] in 2017 this replaced the Greenpoint system and that requires more stringent standards for larger homes that by their nature consume more energy the dark-blue 2017 line represents the current regulations so on the vertical y-axis you have energy rating index requirements which is a score from zero to sixty currently in our regs zero being net energy so the north the lower score the more energy efficient the requirements are so for homes that are five thousand square feet or greater they're required to be Net Zero today coming up in 2019 that will be ratcheted down so that homes 4,000 square feet and larger had to be non zero and so the idea is over time we'll have all homes by 2020 a or 2030 be required to be Net Zero over time the Commission yes the square footage is that above ground

[13:01] square footage are all habitable square footage right right so includes basements total condition squirt for their job thank you and these are just four new homes is that kind of new construction can you introduce yourself sure I'm Kristin Witco I'm the energy code coordinator at the city and I joined the city about the same time that these regulations came in place and they mostly applied to new construction but also if you have a significant renovation where you exceed 50% of the assessed value of the property then these these requirements are triggered also and at least was asking if you could reenter my original question yes

[14:01] it's condition condition floor area so basements if it's conditioned if it's unconditioned then it would be outside of that village thank you for those who might not know in TV land what condition means he didn't cold okay so if somebody comes in and they want to do their basement to condition it then do they have to come in through you and make sure everything is energy code yeah if you convert a space from unconditioned to conditioned then you have to bring up you know if those walls weren't insulated then you have to bring him up to code basically it's good very I seem to recall that there was some sort of percentage that was counted at the basement based on grade I the amount of building above grade and then below

[15:01] grade there was am I thinking of another regulation I think you might be thinking of the floor area ratio restrictions in the residential zone so it talks about how much of a basement actually counts in the Farr calculation so if most of the basement is actually below grade doesn't count as Floria but if most of it is above that portion that's above counts okay so I have to do with floor area in that so we have the draft why statement here if you all to consider it should also be on page nine of your package if you want to read through that no question about that it it's kind of all based on neighborhood character and why not also on the more efficient land use on having

[16:02] a diversity of housing types and therefore afford abilities that you know is there a reason why I was deliberately just neighborhood character no things just the initial starting point for to get feedback from from you on what you think should be in there so this is will give you feedback when you're almost there the draft purpose statement again it's on page nine of your packets and so this will take us to the questions for council and so we have six questions for you tonight the first five do deal with the large lots large homes projects the six one deals with the list that Carl discussed earlier and we'll go through these one at a time and then pause for discussion if that's okay with you all and just kind of remind you that the goal for tonight is kind of the big picture getting the goals and the scoping for the project so with that the City Council agree with the draft why in

[17:00] purpose statements okay I think we'll have input for you can you put up the why in purpose statement that's the why that's which one are we starting with do the wife okay well does anybody have any questions before we delve into feedback okay let's tell them the feedback i I'll just start off by saying it I think we want to add some more elements to this but I can't tell are you ready okay so I I would like to add to your why and purpose is the radically changing demographics so you know there's a much larger percentage of

[18:01] people who can afford a 650 or 600 thousand dollar home then can afford a three point four five million dollar home and that's the change that we're seeing so that from my perspective is one of the key purposes why we're doing this is the changing demographics and who we are going to be in the future so if we were going to put that in the positive we would say to the encourage why we're doing this to encourage broader economic diversity in the neighborhood okay in preserving and preserve okay I have Jill who else has their hand up Jill Aaron okay I'll put myself in there okay I like those I think I changed corresponding to Ari in our zone districts to corresponding with lots and then whatever size we determinate the council could be over ten thousand

[19:00] square feet over 15 but so many of the big homes we've received complaints about our on in our l1 zones as well and should I just add to that yes sure sorry and I would like to start at Lots that are greater than 6999 square feet okay all right Aaron he's the plaintiff like although you might not put the exact square footage in the Y statement but I I would agree with the things that have been said I think Suzanne's list was was really good the affordable affordability income diversity I think energy use and and is an important one as well energy and you know I'm not sure exactly how you put it but so we deal with climate change really large houses for small family is but if I might jump on that I think smaller homes use less energy and take less

[20:00] resources I think there's a twofer there as to retaining existing houses really speaking that's what I meant yeah said and I would also tighten it up the wise statement is really quite long so it's a little bit more of a history and so while we're adding some more things I might also you might be less narrative there's something to be know if it's efficient land use but I think that notion of making the most of the land that we have yeah in a in a in a way that builds community and feels compatible but is smarter land-use well and and with that doing the best with what's left and that means not just development but parks libraries things like that our Civic uses we do not want

[21:01] to expand our city footprint so we don't want to have sprawl and I think we absolutely have to do something about the jobs housing I don't want to get the into that at this point but we need to be providing some housing for people who are commuting in so that their environmental footprint is smaller very aside a question on that first part of the white statement that's basically providing a industry and so I was curious to understand why staff felt compelled to include that and whether or not yeah I just want to understand that it was mostly for context to kind of explain where the compatible infill development regulations are why they are today and kind of where we're going and what has been

[22:00] successful not successful mostly for context in history that can definitely be shortened out if it's not no bright spot for it well that or just put a context history sentence or two then you don't have to but yeah you know we keep kicking around here tonight is compatible and I know that we refer to the 2009 ordinance but then down when we get to the rule or the wise statement we talking about we're making some judgments about too large and out of character and I think I'd like to use the word compatible there because there are probably some neighborhoods where a large house is compatible in other neighborhoods where it's certainly not and so I don't want us to I don't want the perception to be anything that's large is bad it's got to be compatible all the reasons as Ann said as far as energy efficiency land-use efficiency are all all right but I think we also need to have it in context to the neighborhood and compatibility I think is a good word to use rather than an assumption that something is out of character do you think anybody that's

[23:05] interesting but then you also have this problem with mission creep or change over time where you know a neighborhood might have had small houses originally and then that neighborhood has been the target for development and now all of a sudden there's larger homes and that's not necessarily compatible because they've changed the development has changed the character of the small houses that had been there previously so I think part of the conversation is you know if it hasn't been replaced already preserving it I think that's exactly right preserving what's there because of the embodied energy because of the you know you can do renovation on a place to make it more energy-efficient I just want to not lose track of the fact that there has been a lot of this large home building going on and so we have to look at maybe what was there before the you know what the large house I mean I see

[24:01] your hand I guess I also without getting us in trouble I think at least this is one person's opinion that we want to change what we are doing and we want to do it in a way that feels in character with who we are as a community and what we feel like you know in neighborhoods but I at least I would like us to start incentivizing smaller houses is I think that's the right thing to do given what we now know about the planet about growth about more people needing to fit in smaller places and so I do think that if you all agree that we're shifting some things here yeah let me just respond I I think that's exactly right and so I think I think we'd just like to turn the statement a little on his head rather than saying houses are too large I think we want to say we want more smaller houses which which ends up at the same place but I think it's a little bit more of a positive statement people agree with that sentiment yeah what we want as opposed to what we don't like okay we have a bunch of folks that

[25:02] wanted to chime in so I was just gonna say what has become compatible under the 2009 ordinance many of us would say that's not compatible in our neighborhood but it's totally legal what's been built and it's not in character with the neighborhood so from my whole mission creep thing you're seeing just wide scale change of these neighborhoods methodically developers are going down buying a lot scraping putting something totally out of character for the neighborhood so I I wouldn't want to get too much incompatible because many of us feel like they're not compatible but that we have this mission here which is that we need smaller houses we need things that are going to have less impact on the planet and we need a closer community so I saw Jill and then Mary is it

[26:04] I just wanted to piggyback say on your point about incentivizing smaller houses which I totally agree with it I don't know if that those words go in the wine Sara Lee if we if we are shifting to what we want but coupled with that has to be you know incentives for these large ones too because you know I I know I'm sure you all understand this but I mean there's every incentive in the world when someone buys one of these to develop it to its maximum footprint because if you're already gonna scrape and you're already gonna go through all the permitting and all of the brand-new walls and brand new plumbing and kitchen and bathroom you may as well maximize the square footage because the the higher the square footage is the lower the price per square foot to do this and so you know I just hope that you know no matter what even if we do either stop at 6,000 or 7,000 square foot Lots we're still gonna be able to end up with four thousand square foot homes on them

[27:00] unless we're not done yet really tackle yes let's let's do that okay so Mary and then maybe we will move to the next question so back to that first statement that I asked about I actually don't entirely agree even with that statement especially the second half that brought many infill single developments more in line with the residential neighborhoods character for one I don't think we ever went back and and just looked at what happened as a result of that ordinance we never went back and analyzed whether or not it yielded what we expected so that's one thing and then the other thing is just hearing the sentiments out in the community is it hasn't brought things more in line so so by all indications we really can't say that it has brought

[28:00] things back in line so I think just removing that statement and just providing some context somewhere else I think would be helpful and yeah that's that's pretty much what I have right now the facts that makes two questions one is maybe we should see what worked what didn't with that ordinance I don't know how big of an undertaking that is but I think the fact that okay so maybe we don't want to but that the fact that we don't know how well it worked other than anecdotally there's plenty of people that don't feel it did I guess to me to me what's useful about that sentence is that that was the intense and it didn't work so we're coming back around to take another crack and to me I put that in the history section just a shout-out to the daily camera you guys might remember about two years ago maybe was two and a half years ago Erika Meltzer actually did a really deep dive on this and she actually went through all the building permits going back to in the compatible development

[29:00] rulest remember that article and she looked at all the number of new houses and scrapes in by square footage and she did a pretty in-depth thing and so I think some of the work Mia's may have been done for us it was a couple years ago so you might need to update it but you might use that as a baseline yeah and maybe send it to us link I think we need to stay focused on what we want to accomplish here and I would rather us go forward with this high level discussion tonight telling you what we want rather than now going back and doing a review of what's on the ground because I think it's a race against time right now and so what a great segue to question number two okay no I totally agree let's get to question number two but just want to make sure that these will come back to us before the public engagement starts okay so the purpose statement was can

[30:03] you take our feedback on the why and second question is and this is has some more sub questions that where City Council's goal for this project a this council wants to encourage these are not either Awards just kind of sub questions this council wants to encourage and fillory' development of large lots into two or more houses or homes through allowed subdivisions rather than full of a single large home on a large lot this has added benefit of increasing housing supply duplexes could also be an option as well that's the - a can go onto B also which is asked this council wish to take specific measures to prevent or discourage the construction of the houses above a certain size regardless of the lot size or compatibility with a neighborhood so it's a hard cap something that the council isn't interested in okay so those are two different ones any other

[31:00] goals you may have as well of course mmm these are rich questions okay I think be easy the easier one isn't I know but she's always well I know but how much detail do you want you want to yes no or do you want us to start telling you sizes and whatnot grow put your suggestions tell me if yes no and if you have specific thoughts in mind arrange that's all helpful for us okay so let's try to figure out a way to I think we want to otherwise we're just gonna hear what you and I have to think is to go around and and have people weigh in so let's let's bite off a like ice we can do boats at the same time but one is a are we interested in getting more units ever a lot and the other is we interested on deliberately discouraging size of houses regardless of that yes

[32:01] yes to both of those but I would like to encourage as much creativity as possible so that I would like a range of options to occur and I would like and so I can go through all those range of options but just for right now yes and yes you know one of maybe range of options one of the things we could look at is right now under compatible development we know what the FAA are is allowed so could the owner instead of scraping or whatever could that property owner be incentive to keep the existing house but then be able to use the remaining FA are so then they can divide by X amount of units so that you're going to get more than two units I'd like to see somewhere between five and ten so I'd like to see things well per acre so I'd like to see things

[33:00] like the poplar project that we have up in North Boulder and I think in terms of a lot size I'm going to look to staff but I'd certainly I'll just throw out a number but I'd like to have some base for why this number is and this doesn't have a base so I would just like you know once it gets over 2400 square feet then we start doing some things in terms of energy regulations and I know we're coming forward with Net Zero but I'd also at some point like to talk about negative Net Zero regulations so that ups the energy requirement for the house as well as familles was that 2,400 floor area or okay shall we just go around sure I'm certainly yes to a he's kind of hard to answer right now I think it's worth a discussion on B but of course the details are really really going to matter here I'm not going to venture down a path of trying to pick

[34:01] numbers tonight we need to be cognizant there are a lot of people in our community who bought houses many many years ago and this is their primary asset and those people may be dependent upon the ability to monetize that asset at some point in time and we certainly want to encourage them to do or their heirs and to divide those and provide incentives so that we end up with multiple house houses on that lot so I think instead of us are great I think before we go down the path of a pig in arbitrary numbers though I think we do need a lot of work from staff to understand what that means and who it might impact and you know I think you guys have to do a lot of inventory work about how many big loss do we have for small houses and how long have been owned and what could we do in incentives and if we if the incentives didn't work what the resulting house that could be built and do we know that's too big and it may be too big in some neighborhoods not to be another neighborhood sorry I think it's gonna be I think it's worthy

[35:01] worthy of discussion I want you guys to do the work but but I can't answer the question yes or no tonight without a ton of data and all a ton of discussion okay and keep in mind this is goals so this is yeah okay yes to number one I would really love to find that sweet spot where with number one if we are allowing subdivision of a lot to become too two homes or three homes or farms that those subsequent homes are permanently affordable or maybe the original home gets made permanently affordable and then the the second half and I think that there's probably you know like if I think there's probably a way to do it and still make it economically viable or attractive to the

[36:00] owner you know and that's that sweet spot that I'm talking about so if we can look at that and and figure out a way to not just make it so that its ends up being two fourteen thousand square foot lot cut in half could still like be too big expensive homes you know so I want to avoid that so that's a and then B I do want to discourage but not necessarily for owner occupants but for second home owners so you know all of these scrapes and builds lot of them that we're getting complaints that are being built by developed by developers and they own a lot of property speculators right and they get the property from people who want to live in it because they have cash and they don't have do inspections and they close in ten days and there's just no way you can compete against these guys so you know they have this tremendous advantage over you know

[37:01] normal people looking for homes and it would be I would be fine with then creating some kind of disadvantage for them like a higher tax if we could do that I don't know Tom if that's legal or some sort of housing impact fee if it's your second property so this is only for a second property so primary residence you know homeowner I'm kind of with Bob you know for the most part maybe they have been living in a small house and expanding their family and hoping that one day they'll be in their home and that's fine but I think what we're all trying to get out are these these spec builds and yeah so I agree with Jill I would worry a yesterday and I would say yes to B as well I worry about dividing a lot and then having two big houses so there are two big houses on two Big Lots and and also

[38:02] I don't know what the implication is of this for zoning if what Lisa referred to of having a bunch of houses on one of these Lots what happens then does it does the zoning change at the time of the increased development on the lot so but I agree basically with what's been happening down the line I think these are all really good points that have been brought up and again my concern is with creating more of the same rather than constricting what has happened as Sam said about the the model so I'm a pretty hard no on a I'm not interested in filling any of our rural or lower residential areas I'm but I am interested in restricting housing sizes I like what Joe was saying about B as well as specially if it's like a second home and the spec homes I think that we

[39:03] have some really special areas of Boulder that are few and far between at this point with having our rural and our low residential areas where it's some breathing space for individuals who like that and so by dividing these Lots and starting this quote-unquote gentle infill I just see us becoming a homogenous group of density that um I just know that many people that I've spoken to are not interested in having so that's big concern for me but at the same point these massive houses is just something that I think is really changing the character the feel on the specialness of Boulder and said finding away with my colleagues to figure out how to stem that it's gonna be important mm-hmm so I support both a and B here but I agree with Jill's idea about how to get some affordability if we're going to allow subdivisions so what we really want if

[40:01] we're gonna do further subdivision particularly if it was an RL one in my opinion is we're gonna want to see if we can create affordability as a piece of that and we've said that explicitly in the wise statement so I think we should track that and so in a way this is similar to the ATU discussion that we just had where you're allowing a landowner to be able to create two buildable Lots maybe sell one off but if we make it such that that new one or if the old one and opened it either is affordable then we've gained something for the city so deed restricted permanently affordable would be something to talk about in doing that and then for B I think the answer for me is yes we definitely want to do that there's a lot of ways we could do it right we could do more strict compatible development in some parts of the city so we take the regs we have and tighten them up that's one indirect way another method that we

[41:03] had talked about was creating stricter energy codes even than we had now so if you exceed a certain floor area then all of a sudden we're going to take those curves that we've looked at in the packet as far as energy and tighten them up some more so anyway I'm in favor of both I look forward to what staff brings us as far as the kind of the best ideas for doing that and that's it so yes and yes and I agree with what's been said so far with respect to the affordability piece that Jill and Sam spoke about the cap in size and also the creativity piece that Lisa talked about

[42:01] to not make it so prescriptive that it eliminates any kind of creativity and then you end up with homogeneity as Mirabai mentioned I also am wondering do we have a size beyond which you can't go any smaller like a minimum that they are just so I know that like tiny homes out aren't allowed so is it just because they're on wheels or because their size I guess what I'm getting at is if there is something that prevents something from going too small that we consider allowing that smallness as well so in other words have a cap but remove any minimum that might exist only

[43:01] minimum I know of is the minimum lot size itself now a minimum structure size so but just to that in I mean isn't part of the problem like you're not even there standard size for minimum size for a bedroom and stuff like that and tiny homes kind of right yeah well the building code has minimum sizes for things like bedrooms and bathrooms so and that's where we get hung up on tiny homes I that's one of those I think you do effectively end up with the minimum house size because of those minimums on various things that happen within the house I think it's a mitering yep great well there been some great ideas I'm appreciate the conversation at least I got us started off really nicely I I guess I would say yes on both of them but tie them together and I think well what I'm looking for out of this project is to disincentivize what we would like

[44:00] to see less of which is really large extremely expensive homes on these large Lots and to incentivize smaller more affordable more energy efficient more efficient homes in the use of land and materials and energy etc so I think you tie them together so I think like what Sam was saying about we could ratchet up the energy efficiency requirement for larger homes that could be one of the ways that we discourage larger homes are but I think we can give powerful economic incentives like to Jill's point is that if you say well you you can't do quite as much as you could before with a single home but you could do multiple homes that together would add up to the square footage of what you could have built originally and but they're small they're only 1,500 square feet or whatever the number is you know and so well then the economic incentive is to do the more homes because you still get you get the same amount of square for more square footage than you would have

[45:00] been able to maybe maybe I'm just throwing out ideas and so that what we would then likely end up with if whether it's a developer or an individual is more smaller homes which i think is the direction that were generally interested in going I like the idea about creativity you know they're like Lisa was talking about like the poplar project you know which was cottage homes grouped together around a common green which is a housing typology that allows for a level of community and neighborliness that I think is really appealing but you know like Mary said that it could be very small homes could be an option or Cod home or 80 user I think if we could create think creatively about the options that we allow people then we could get some more housing variety that would work for people in different life situations and at different income levels in a way that would be also potentially economically appealable so

[46:00] that we would actually practically end up with these things that hopefully we would like to see and I'll agree with some my colleagues on the edition of affordability and maybe that's the you know if you maybe that's tied to how much you're able to do like you could do a simple subdivision by right but you could do a double subdivision on a really large lot if you provided affordability on half the units record of the units or something like that so that could be one of them one of the ways that we capture some community benefit out of allowing some more infill in our city and I think also a way that potentially it's a project that gets broad support from our community because I think there's very strong support for affordable housing in our town and so if we structure this in such a way that we get more affordability both from inherently from size but also from regulatory means that I think that would help bring people along Aaron I thought

[47:02] that was very well said so I will just say yes to that I would say I'm open to duplexes and triplexes as well and maybe I have a chip on my shoulder but if it was up to me we would cap housing size at some number and say you know what in this day and age you just don't need to build new houses larger than pick your number five thousand six thousand feet just we don't so but I don't know a not sure that that would the way that Aaron was talking about it and you know and others about disincentivizing the bad stuff and incentivizing good stuff is probably the smarter way to go about it but I do feel like Lisa started out talking about urgency and I do think there's some urgency here we're seeing a lot of change and it's once it's change you know once you've got a big mansion

[48:00] and you're kind of done with that a lot for I don't know 50 years so do you feel like we maybe we do need to set someone that's because you know you try to set the incentives right and you find out I guess nine years later that he didn't send them hard enough and so we and I do think we're kind of running out of time so I I think we should have a very robust this public discussion about this and be creative with the options and stuff but my appetite for setting some limits is I'll just say that I have the appetite you know especially if the community has the appetite I am I'll help lead that parade so okay a bunch of hands went back up um was Mary the Cindy then Lisa okay yeah I'll agree with the appetite part of what Suzanne said and also I wanted to go back to the why statement sorry but I did want to

[49:02] include something about the why a statement to include in their historic preservation because one of the things that we've always talked about is how can we create an incentive for people to [Music] in some cases where it makes sense subdivide the lot so we do have a precedent for that now so to kind of take a look at that and include that in the why statement yeah I got Cindy Lisa Jill so I just wanted to sort of tag on to what Mirabai was talking about and also the historic preservation part in that these are genuinely open areas in the community and are really in that sense break up the monotony of housing by the open land that they have and I would hate to see if this kind of change is going to happen that someone would come along and take advantage of the

[50:01] speculation that could happen by putting in a number of houses so that they actually would be really homogeneous rather than creative so just giving that as a warnings so that we do have these broken spaces in within the city boundaries where there are larger Lots that aren't filled in and I really agree with Suzanna I'd like to see a definite small size put on so so from my perspective we have a choice here we can either have one giant house that fills up the whole big lovely large lot or we can have multiple houses that give permeability to that large house and what we're getting at least where I live is we're getting large houses so what was once very rural and very lovely and open it's gone it's gone

[51:03] and so it's a choice who do you want to live here and where do we want to be 20 years from now and from my perspective we cannot continue to allow these large Lots I don't care what size of these large houses on the large Lots because they are maxing out so I'll just say that and I would argue that anybody who hasn't seen the popular project that right there I think it's ten units per acre it's a very permeable design and it's very lovely and beautiful and the community I know that some of the people who live there and have for 20 years it's a very stable community so what you get is a very very strong well-connected neighbourhood and I think that comes that brings intangibles that we can't

[52:01] buy we can't we can develop them but we can't buy them so I just want it to respond there Lisa just and the way that those large lots are being built - generally the vegetation is scraped to the ground I mean then those in there's lots of North North Boulder there I mean do it that you're ending up with bare dirt and then starting from I mean multiple 50-plus beautiful blue spruces just bulldozed and that those blue spruces our homes for birds for squirrels for all different kinds of animals so it's not just the people that are being displaced the the animals are being displaced and with these giant fences now you can't have the foxes you can't have the deer you can't have the mountain lions you can't have maybe you don't want all those guys but I do and and you you are really creating an impermeable type

[53:01] thing but the that's just I don't think this is an advocacy for large houses no no no I know but I'm just saying that what's happening is that we have lovely small houses that do need fixing up and maybe not all of them but you know there are eleven to twelve hundred square feet and is that sirree and and and that's being taken away so so if so I was just responding but I just had a couple idea so I totally agree with the permanent affordability some kind of a cap and I'm really looking to staff to come back and give us some options one of the things we can do without rezoning is we could have overlay zones so I would like you to look into overlay zones where they do that in the in the county I think they're called I don't know but there's

[54:03] some kind I can look it up I can give you the actual thing the actual name of it then I would like to also with Suzanne I want to support her in duplexes triplexes for places so we have these big houses and I grew up in Kansas City's a lot of these big houses were converted into duplexes and and it allowed a richness in the fabric of the community and so I would like to see people being able to come in with their 8000 square foot house and say I'd like to do four units please and I'd like to let the property owner decide the placement of their structures so that we don't end up with what I call postage stamp type development where the whole lot is being taken up and you have all everything you know and so I'd like to let the property

[55:01] owner decide do they want to have a big community garden or play area for children or whatever I'd like to see as much creativity as possible when we speak about permanent affordability I think and I'm not going to go into it but I think we need to do some work on inclusionary housing not revamp the whole thing but we need to have a discussion so for example right now and I don't know all the numbers and stuff but I do know that if if I want to just build one house I have an affordability inclusion area for inclusionary housing contribution I need to put in that and that is not dependent very much on the size of the house for I guess legal purposes so we can't say you know you if you build 2,000 your contribution it's going to be significantly less than if it's much better so I would like to have council staff look at inclusionary

[56:00] housing because I don't if we're trying to incent developers to build these smaller more affordable houses with an affordability cap we can't double dip into the affordability so you guys need to figure that out and I would like to look into tiny houses how that would be done I don't know but I don't want it to be a project in its own I just want you to come back and tell us some things are gonna we're gonna have a list and then we're gonna have to prioritize how we move forward and and it is true that large what Jill said large houses do cost less to build per square foot than smaller houses so we need to kind of talk with developers and not speculators but the developers that really would like to do this but we need to work out some of the inclusionary housing

[57:00] requirements so that they're not getting double-dipped and it's not an incentive not to dude the smaller house Jew that's a lot of ideas okay no it's good we have Jill I've waited for this for you yeah yeah little pent-up guild and meerabhai and then maybe the next question okay yeah I just wanted to lend support to Mary's idea about small homes tiny homes I think this could and hearing it from other people too but could be a great area to do sort of a pilot project in allowing tiny homes and you know Lisa is sort of picturing some of these North Pole there are lots you know that could be lets say divided and even if it's in three like the front house stays the same and the back Lots divided into one tiny home in one tiny home is far less offensive than you know two big built homes and so that could be

[58:03] exciting and just again it would encourage you staff to play around with creativity like thinking about that scenario or maybe 15 14,000 square feet is carved into the seven and then in the back its carpeted of 35 and 35 maybe you put a max land price on that like you can't sell it for more than 250 or 300 and combined that's like what they could sell it for anyway and then someone could really afford to buy that and have a tiny home on it and and and then I just I don't know how the rest of council feels about this but I if we do have like let's say one of the two or one of the four or whatever it is homes permanently affordable I'd be comfortable with it being a little high or ami than we do a lot of other places because you aren't getting to live in a single-family neighborhood with the yard and so I mean a lot of our permanent affordable homes will stop at 250 or 300 or something but even if even a $500

[59:01] thousand dollar house is just impossible to find and so like it's the although original ranch let's say was deed restricted to be permanently affordable and then the back is whatever you want to do with it that's someone would kill to have that for five hundred thousand you know and so so again finding that sweet spot of like what will actually incentivize the owner to do it and I'm comfortable with it being a little higher and also just wanted to add a nod to Suzanne and Lisa on duplexes triplexes especially if you know strict sort of building requirements would put on them where they they look like one home they're actually well one of our state representatives who I'm sure we've all been to her house I was on that street not long ago and one of the houses that you would think is totally a single-family is actually four units and you would never know just the way that it's built so I think that could be

[60:00] exciting as well just wanted to throw in with the historic preservation that Mary brought up I think that's a great idea and then to Lisa's point I think the last thing in the world Cindy or myself was trying to advocate with it for was harm to our wildlife part of why I'd like it to remain open it is for the wildlife so I don't know if there's something in there that I don't know was and whatnot but I think it's criminal to be bulldozing all the trees so I don't know if there's something that we can do to just allow this to happen again I'm looking for small homes on large lots for the openness not not to maximize square footage here so I don't know if we can throw anything like that in to protect some of these old beautiful trees that we have in our our towns as well as maybe even the issues with the fence because I know it does cause there's corridors for wildlife so I don't know if we can do split rail fences or change the codes of what type of fencing is allowed okay I have just

[61:05] two more things really quickly so two two nearby point I think in 2008 we did start down the path of a tree protection ordinance I can't remember what happened with that and where's where does that stand right now if memory serves me we have regulations that protect I I had heritage trees I'm not really brushed up on the rags I could probably run through them really quick and refresh my memory it'd just be nice to know where that is and then the other thing I would like and this goes under the title of creativity I would like and this is where I would separate the LRS from the ers and that are ours and I would like to allow the are ours and the ers to have multiple ad use on them so that it's not you know so

[62:01] if the landowner says hey I don't mind renting my property out to whatever I have an acre I'm making all this up and I'm gonna have for ad use or whatever on my property I think that should be okay okay so lots these are these leases throwing out some ideas that we don't have to weigh in on each ideas what I'm saying but I was just thinking of the sizing of these ad use I mean we haven't even settled on that quite yet have we I mean I think they're way large as they're going forward with council so that would be the affordability the if they're more affordable they can be larger but they're stuck at 550 if they're not going to be affordable and then they have off street parking requirement and I want to get the parking at some point

[63:00] okay but not today so third reading of ad use is coming up so you're right we haven't nailed that down can you give us the next question yes the next question kind of builds off some discussion about the preservation topic of existing housing stock so is this a priority in these districts it's also a follow-up the question 5 talks about incentives as well but this is the question we have here so is preservation of the existing housing stock a priority for these districts I'm gonna guess generally speaking yes yes yeah I think everybody agrees with that I just want to echo the about preservation of a landmark tour of historic homes and that one of the ideas that the landmarks board has been putting forward four years is this idea of being able to subdivide your lot if you linmark a home that might not otherwise be landmarked so this seems like a great place to slot that idea in that if we have certain thresholds for subdivisions or multiple units or something like that perhaps we could lower those thresholds

[64:01] if there's landmarking involved so we could include a hook for that and maybe there's or for preservation in general I mean maybe there's a home that's not land markable but it's a modest home and we'd love to see it preserved so you know maybe there's one standard for a landmark able home and another one that's a little different for preservation of a non landmark Oklahoma okay how about we thank you does that sum up people's thinking thank you your question all right so question 4 gets back to should she should city staff analyze Justin the sizable compatibility standards exist today such as FA are even side will articulate standards all the ones we've seen sounds like yes okay I was gonna say if that doing all that stuff we already said means doing that yes yes the easiest way to get from A to B I'm

[65:00] not certain you can tell us that yeah I think we'll come back with some options basically for today and present that back to the council for priorities what's most highest priority so question if I gets back to the question of incentives for the preservation of existing houses or disincentives for demolition of existing housing and these districts sound like as well this is something that the council was interested in doing looking at doing 69 6 9 9 9 I mean I'm even happy for 5,000 I mean hopefully you've gotten the message that this is tied less to his own districts and more to the size of the law overall okay do we need to pause and talk about sizes a lot or you guys are gonna come back with some great thinking about what would be appropriate if you have suggestions I've had an idea it'll be helpful for okay but we do

[66:01] Mary Mary who else has married so I'll bring up an example here the the house that landmarks board was trying to landmark earlier this year when the family was kind of in a financial situation where they need it to hurry up and sell it so they had initially gone to the planning department and asked if they could subdivide it subdivide the lots of how and of course planning said no because we didn't have anything in place earlier this week or last week we got an email from the new owners that did exactly the same thing and we're also told no but this time the house is already gone I believe I believe I saw a picture of the and that that lot I believe is like ten thousand square feet

[67:01] and it is in rmx it's over in Gus Grove so you know that's an example of one of the the homes that we could have preserved had we had something in place and you know maybe a place to start in terms of lot sizes so so okay you see you're gonna talk to the next but explained rationale for why certain sizes you said six hundred and six thousand nine hundred and ninety nine well just because LR starts at seven thousand but there's a lot of if you go down balsam but across the street just north of the hospital those RL are lots and they are completely maxing out their square and nobody can very few people can afford those houses and so we're gonna get more and more and more of that unless we take

[68:00] it down to like 5,000 square feet so it's something like that but again I want to defer to staff to come back decides to give us something to mundane I will say this if what's happening right there across from the old hospital is I think what we're trying to prevent so what lot size do we need to start with in order to get a handle on that that's what I would like to start with Sam what changes could be made to the compatible development regs to keep houses more modest on those Lots so I think they played together in certain ways and I just want to bring up something you know as we were talking about duplexes we're talking about you know some stuff pretty far afield from I think where we started we need to think about what we're doing right so I live in Whittier it's rmx and you get certain

[69:01] you know allowances in the IMX zones for being able to do higher density density development and pay I want to keep in mind if we're gonna do and have conversations about duplexes and or multiple ad use that we really keep in mind affordability because we just did this with a to use and it had a nice you know way for us to be able to do it I think we have the same hooks here and so if we're going to do something like duplexes in RL ones or whatever we're thinking I think we can justify it most effectively if affordability comes along with it and is anybody disagree with that I think this is kind of an important no and I think that that's where it becomes more acceptable to the community and I agree with that okay can I just add one more idea and so in order to kind of give an incentive for people not to go over X square footage

[70:01] and I would make it as small as possible but whatever along the lines that Suzanne was talking about I would if you go back to your slide where you show the energy regulations and when they're gonna be coming into effect so we know that all of these houses all new houses are going to become net zero net zero energy houses by 2028 regardless of their size let's speed that up and what I would like to do is four houses and again I'm deferring to you about a square footage maybe 2400 but you want to go over 2400 square feet then let's look at even higher energy standards and I think it's called negative net zero energy and I think that will be an incentive enough to to result in smaller houses because it's very expensive and then I also want

[71:02] to look at if you go around my neighborhood and again it's one thing most of these are speculators some are home builders or families but a lot of them are now we're having their own swimming pools and swimming pools are a huge energy drain and so I would also like anybody who wants to have a swimming pool they have to comply with net negative negative net zero energy requirements you're putting heat you're filtering the water and you're using a boatload of community water can we just call it a net positive net positive whatever okay you know definitely on the radar for the next energy code update you're gonna put any kind of spa or in-ground pool or that kind of facility will have to be supported by renewables yeah and so I want I want to go to that next camisa so

[72:00] I'm looking to you but you I just wanted to say two of the four Lots along that balsam strip that we're talking about one is six thousand three hundred forty five square foot lot and one is a six thousand five hundred square foot a lot and then they get a little bigger from there so I think you know we got to go down and it yeah and so whether it's well I agree with what Sam said is those things are tied together how big you can build in lot sizes okay do we you you have one more question is it about energy because I we haven't really talked about energy did you want the last question was about the broader or land use code change list so if there's any more comments on largely I think we're good with lots but what about energy you showed us that we're getting go back to your slide there you showed us that for a reason but we didn't ask us anything about it

[73:00] the previous CAC kind of from council want to have more information about how this would dovetail or interact with the future and its regulations and so it's more of just showing how we are playing as the city to get down to Net Zero by 2028 and so with the idea of having smaller homes is in line with the overall energy goals of the city so this wouldn't be in conflict it's just kind of showing illustrating kind what the circulations are so by 2028 everything is that do that's ten years from now that's pretty cool nearby can you explain how these numbers how you got to them cuz I mean I guess I'm just I feel like this is incredibly slow and that they each get three years in between to do this I mean if you know now that we're having issues why are we what are we giving people so much time with the forty Kristin so we're in the process of

[74:02] working with a consultant to look at these numbers and the feasibility of meeting them from an from an economic standpoint for a homeowner to achieve these levels you know certainly for the most part anything below a 50 on the the y-axis the energy rating index anything above a 50 requires solar and so there's also a solar access problem and for homes that don't have don't have the solar access there's not a great option for community solar either so we're kind trying to figure out how we solve the solar peace and the renewal piece that you have to pair with extremely energy-efficient home to get it under 50 so we feel like we need to ratchet these down in the methodical way so do you mean with solar accesses and their roof doesn't face south or doesn't allow enough light on it not have mature trees or it's more answers it's not that they

[75:00] couldn't go to solar whatever Solar City and go get it affordability it's it's strictly about okay Sam so just a reminder this is residential and our commercial if I had this right is slated to be all Net Zero by 2035 is that correct 2030 2031 okay so that that's the other thing here is these are somewhat similar to each other the commercial and the residential and moving that kind of the same pace and you know I think the solar Gardens thing is a real challenge I mean it because of where we are with our electricity provider and their current rules we're putting requirements on people that they may not be able to meet at all so we need to be a little careful right but if they can't meet them maybe they can't build the big house okay and they have they have lots of options here and we're giving them those options where they can build multiple small houses I'm thinking of the 2,000 square

[76:01] foot at homes that in 2025 will have to be pretty low as well anyway I just had to get my prejudice out there but one other thing I want to talk about and this would go to the LRS and are ours and not not the el ours ours and our East not the LRS and that has to do with the whenever you say el are you mean RL RL s I'm I don't know what you're talking about it used to be it used to be I never liked the new German auf the old but you understand what I'm saying so the are ours and the are ease I would like most of those places have very very wide streets you know 26 28 feet in in width and they're pretty slow streets

[77:00] and I think there's plenty of room for parking on the street so I guess I would I would like to look and you guys come back with some ideas of not having parking requirements off of the street so I'd rather see houses on the land then houses for cars on their land so Wow okay then question six then okay so we've come full circle so we I can go back to the slide that lists the the current land use change priorities if there's any questions or feedback well talk to us about these in order of priority yes well okay this would be like a whirlwind discussion right I mean I could talk for hours about all these priorities yeah this is this is what was shown to the council at the retreat and

[78:00] it reflects the feedback that we got at that retreat I think there were some comments at CAC several months back that they wanted their wanted to be a check-in on on the list again just to come back to it so that's what we're bringing it forward well and it may be that so we've gotten to we are now underway on them about five the first five right that's correct and maybe there's planning board starting to work on the use table I know yeah that has begun okay so that's the first six and I'm still gonna ask you to read title how you talk about open space but when people see that list as far as like urban open space first yeah we can do

[79:00] that yeah it just sounds like we're changing our open space Sanders which freaks everybody else and that product is under way as well the open space standards right and please don't capitalize it because people see it capitalized and they immediately go to OS MP yeah and it's just little Oh little less yeah Aaron I think Sam how does Hanover Sam I just want to give my feedback I'm very happy that you guys are working on all these I think you know you've got them prioritized right I believe that we discussed this as a council along pretty much exactly these lines so good job yeah yeah I'll agree with that but just one and just one additional note is that I mean when we were talking about community benefit that project we also mention gosh if we can start working on incentivizing more smaller units instead of larger more small chance of fewer

[80:01] larger ones is part of our multifamily regulations we mentioned that as a possibility and I'm not sure exactly whether the scope of the open space standards includes looking at that but just hopefully that's on your mind as you're looking community benefit in the open space dinners is saying based on the how the open space calculation for density or correct because I know that open space requirements is one of the places where we sometimes encourage fewer larger units because if you have a minimum open space per unit rather than a floor air requirement then you end up with fewer larger units correct and I remember that those comments being made at that the last study session so that I think is going to be part of the community benefit project I think the the open space standards project that's up on the on the list there's more in terms of design site design rather than density okay thank you okay let's say I'm impressed it will actually starting to get somewhere so that feels

[81:04] really good I think we should just all keep this and and one of our upcoming meetings we're gonna talk about how we actually do want to have a January retreat even if it's a short one and one of the things we'll probably want to do is pull this out and take a look at it so save this one but I think for now we're feeling pretty good about where we're at is that hopeful yes thank you yeah I want to echo some sentiments about all the stuff that you're working on and that we're making some progress I think it's it's really great we're addressing a lot of the stuff that came up a year ago when we were going through that painful process but yeah is that the election so when one last thing just like a tea use where where we look at unrelated people I would hope that for these large lots we don't expect still

[82:01] to keep it to three unrelated people when we're putting multiple units on these large lots or we're gonna try or that twit yeah I would really like to look at that because that's really important and people how they live is different and I just want to say I can't say enough thank you for all your work and everything on this and to have this and to be halfway done it gives me goose bumps so just thank you thank you thank you and you've out then just a great job and I'm just really excited okay Suzanne could I ask was that just an extension of the occupancy discussion you're not gonna that's not part of this right now it just means that for subdividing Lots and building more units

[83:01] that obviously well I just wanted these guys are gonna write that down and I want to make sure that we're not talking about that right now Wow so if I understood what Lisa meant was that I mean if you're subdividing Lots I don't think it's relevant but if you were to for example allow a second Adu on a property you would probably add an exception to the occupancy in that case similarly to the way that we were doing as part of the Adu project is that fair that's exactly right so in the Adu discussion we had an example of a family of four or five people that three children and a married or whatever a couple and then a single mom and her two children wouldn't live in the ATU the way we count unrelated is that we count that family in the main houses one and then we add each individual on to it so if you're a single mom with two children then all of a sudden you your choices your options of where you can live are that much more diminished so

[84:02] we're tweaking around the edges okay how about we end it here oh you're gonna end up with a lot more work well I think there thank you so kay I know this at the beginning of a longer public process for the public out there listening so but we couldn't do it without you guys so guys thank you I'm just gonna call you Lisa I'm just gonna call you just one more thing that's your new nickname just one more thing

[85:07] [Music] okay one two you sit down and you sit down we have a quorum okay let's let's get started since we're on time so far so now transitioning into sub Community Planning and I'll turn it over to Jim to give an intro and also welcome another new planner to the conversation I jim robertson director planning and

[86:01] sustainability as Tanya mentioned we're here to discuss sub Community Planning and in a moment I'll have my colleague Kathleen take over but let me brag on her for just a minute Kathleen just like you met Andrew Collins as a little while ago Kathleen is relatively no she joined us in June she is a senior planner and she occupies as well like Andrew one of the positions that counsel was kind enough to create early this year in response to sort of the council's work plan initiatives Kathleen is a registered Landscape Architect joins us from about six years in the private sector doing a wide variety of urban design landscape and urban planning work really around the country Detroit Kansas City and here in Colorado and elsewhere so welcome Kathleen and take it away yeah great thank you so much as Jim

[87:00] mentioned my name is Kathleen King I'm a Senior Planner I'm really excited to be here tonight I know there's a lot of interest from this group in sub community planning and so I will go ahead and get started so as we sort of relaunch sub Community Planning in Boulder it's going to be important that we have a really durable structure for the program that's what the focus is for the conversation tonight I'm going to start off with some context to answer the questions where are we going and really how did we get here then I'll talk a little about some best practices from national case studies and give you a brief assessment of some of the sub community planning resources that we have available today and after that we're gonna dive into really the knee of our discussion tonight I'll be asking for your input on three major topics and then we will follow up with some next steps so where are we going there are

[88:00] three entities that have expressed an interest in the potential of planning at a more localized level residents the B vcp and Council recent community survey responses describe an interest in localized planning to address some citywide issues such as housing neighborhood preservation and transportation the BBC talks about sub community and area planning specifically to also implement citywide goals prioritizing areas where change is anticipated and where residents have been experiencing recurring problems also comes through in the BBC P and then at the 2018 city council retreat sub community planning was identified as a priority project Council indicated that community members are going to play a really important role in the development of these plans so we'll be working towards creating an interactive and collaborative process and those are those are pretty big goals for for a

[89:00] program like this just to kind of do a gut check to answer the question whether localized planning sub Community Planning can achieve all of these goals and address these interests we looked at some case studies across the country and we looked at 11 programs in cities across the country and we learned how these programs were structured what the successes and failures they've experienced have been and how their staff managed the production and process of their programs you should have a copy of the full report in your packet so I'm gonna focus on specific elements that we thought demonstrated a best practice from the six cities highlighted here so the first one is Tulsa and their small area planning program was more recently formalized in this small area small area planning guide we thought what they did really well was clearly define all of the elements of their program as we

[90:01] relaunch sub Community Planning and folder clarity around these definitions of different elements of the plans will be important to help set realistic expectations for all stakeholders what Cambridge Massachusetts has done really well has been establishing and maintaining consistent boundaries geographic boundaries play a really important role in how sub communities will be evaluated prioritized and plan for so we have some important decisions about that to make in order to move forward next is our neighbor Denver who just now is working through the process on their first two neighborhood plans we thought that the way Denver prioritized neighborhood areas was really rigorous and transparent the city identified a series of measurable indicators of planning need to help prioritize areas for planning and made their method and the results available online so residents could understand when their neighborhood would receive planning services and why they might land at a

[91:02] certain time in the schedule san Francisco's better neighborhoods program did a great job of identifying scope and deliverables for both the program as a whole as well as the individual planning efforts this gave everyone involved a clear understanding of what to expect throughout the process DC's small area planning program has successfully completed many plans across the city I think that can partly be attributed to the fact that they identified a process upfront that most plans were able to stick to identifying this process early on helped set schedules ahead of time and provides a level of predictability for the community Detroit also has a newer program for localized planning and what has been really impressive about the ongoing efforts has been the intensity of community engagement and the intention behind engaging residents planning staff Department of neighborhoods and local community groups have used a lot of

[92:01] different methods to capture input from residents and make a real effort to demonstrate how about input is used in the plans and we found this really valuable and pretty successful so far so that was some of the local and national context now I'm going to talk a bit about some of the resources that the sub Community Planning program has here today so this is a current map of our sub communities there are 10 in the BBC pea service area chapter 5 of the BBC P is dedicated to sub community and area planning and describes some of the intentions for sub community plans as well as the process it might include we have access to some really useful resident insight the BBC P in community surveys have a version of the results that are categorized by sub communities so we have a pretty good idea about how

[93:00] different sub communities rate quality of life and city services so that that's really helpful as we sort of evaluate these different areas another nice resource are these sub community fact sheets these are all available online I think you saw these back in 2015 they have a really good capture of some of the existing conditions for each sub community and you know I think do a good job of communicating what the existing conditions are and then we have some precedents so the North Boulder sub community plan which I know some of you were involved in that was also included in in your packet that's a great resource to look at sort of the the process of how that plan was developed and then we also have an evaluation of that planning process that was conducted after the completion of the plan giving us some other insight into where the previous process might be improved upon so those are some of the

[94:04] resources we have today I'd like to dive into a discussion now about these program essentials what we're calling the six foundational elements we believe that to set this program up for success it's important to establish greater clarity surrounding the topics of definitions boundaries prioritization criteria scope and deliverables schedule and phasing as well as community engagement so tonight we're going to focus on the first three definitions boundaries and prioritization I anticipate that the input we received tonight will help us formulate recommendations surrounding the other three elements and we hope to come back in a couple of months to discuss those the way that I'm sort of hoping this session will work is I'm gonna walk through some of our recommendations first surrounding definitions and then open up the conversation hopefully we

[95:00] can spend about 20-25 minutes talking about each of these topics and I'll present a little bit and then we'll we'll have a discussion so first we want to get clarity around some definitions what is a sub community so the existing definition and this is from the comprehensive planning web page says that sub communities are distinct areas within the service area of the city as defined by physical boundaries such as roads and parks so we're proposing a revision to this that says a sub community is an area within the service area of the city that is defined by physical boundaries such as roads and topography and census tracts each sub community has distinct and commonly shared physical natural and social characteristics so what is a sub community plan the existing definition says that sub

[96:00] community and area planning bridges the gap between the broad policies of the Comprehensive Plan and site-specific project review so this says what both sub community and area plans do but not precisely what they are or how they can be distinguished we're proposing the revision a sub community plan as a tool for residents landowners business owners city officials and city staff that communicates expectations about the future of a sub community and guides decision-making about preservation and change over a 15 year horizon so this revision is really trying to capture both what it is and how it may be used in the future we also want to propose distinguishing between sub community and area plans we think these are actually distinct tools and they may have different outcomes so we wanted to be a little bit more clear about that so some of the proposed distinctions are

[97:00] surrounding scale a sub community plan really is intended to address one of ten sub community regions and those range in size from 500 to 10,000 acres whereas an area plan addresses a group of adjacent parcels or corridor ranging in size from around 10 to 200 acres the scope of the sub community plan is that it defines a long-term vision for change and preservation within a sub community whereas an area plan really envisioned envisions short and long term physical changes to the built and/or natural environment for specific site or small area the impetus for planning for a sub community plan is that the sub community meets criteria defined for sub community planning and has been identified by a predetermined schedule and we'll talk a little bit more about that later whereas an area plan the impetus for planning is that opportunity sites or key issues arise that require a city

[98:01] planning process the pursuit of an area plan for a particular site or corridor may be a recommendation included in a sub community plan and then the planning horizon for a sub Community Plan is 15 years which is the same for the BBC P and in an area plan is looking 2 to 10 years in future so the next thing we really want to focus on is what can a sub community planning process do so let's be really clear about what this type of plan and process can accomplish it can supplement the comprehensive plan to implement citywide goals it can establish a forum for residents to share ideas and play a role in the planning and implementation of future preservation and change it can define desired characteristics of a sub community it can identify gaps and opportunities in city services and resources as well as in the private market it can also prioritize projects

[99:02] identify implementation tools help shape critical capital budget decisions and certainly communicate expectations about the future I suppose as a tool it really has a lot of capabilities and and there's a lot of different ways that we foresee being able to work with the community to use these types of plans but we also want to establish some clarity around what a sub community planning process cannot do so it cannot replace the site review process it cannot provide site design for very specific parcels it cannot delay development projects and it also cannot solve all the city's problems and we disagree with that last one what we're trying to say is that you know this is not going to be a silver bullet for every citywide initiative but it's one of the tools that we can use to implement some of these citywide goals

[100:00] and so here's the first question does council agree that these definitions capture the intent and purpose of sub community planning in Boulder so again 22:25 minutes and I you know all the input I can get is really helpful okay I have a question a question about the question I have a question about the definitions okay so these definitions are basically making a change in the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan are they or how do they get incorporated to that because if we change them without changing the comp plan then they're out of sync I'll take a shot at that Kathleen may want to kick me under the table or or add to my answer I think what we are proposing now is that these would be operational definitions as we move forward with sub-community planning and and also

[101:00] inform of course our area planning efforts we're not proposing that we would try to do an out of sequence or out of term modification of the be vcp if counsel were to agree that that these definitions are are prudent then I think we would they would be queued up for for edit or modifying the BBC P in in the normal sequence of events of that but they would be operational definitions so that so that we staff we're working on the same page as council and the community as to what the expectations are okay great thank you for that clarification so can you put your the definition back up mm-hmm let's answer this question Sam so I really appreciate these definitions I think we draw a lot of clarity between sub Community Planning and area planning which has been an interest of mine for a long time and I think they do a very

[102:01] nice job of talking about the time horizon for the two so be a much in favor of these adjustments disagree nope you've done a great job my only question is why sub Community Planning is just 15 years and when Victor Dover and Joe Cole were here 20 years ago they and just recently Victor Dover has done a bench on sub Community Planning for the city but back 20 years ago Victor always talked about it being like a 50 year horizon or something like that and so that it's not changing and it just a question I have is why we would want to limit it to 15 years and and not more on the you know 30 50 year timeline I know

[103:00] things change sometimes unexpectedly but the other the other question is if it's just 15 years and we're going to get to this question later do we want to keep it at 10 sub communities but right now we're at 10 sub communities we can't ever get through its it'll be a difficult task in front of us to get through them in that kind of a timeline so that's just a question it's not a criticism I'm just wondering if we could extend that timeline yeah and you know what Jim and I actually just had that conversation yesterday about you know is that really the right time frame that's what's outlined in the comp plan today and in chapter 5 about sub community planning but I think we're certainly interested in looking further into the future and also identifying sort of a cycle of updates for each of the sub community plans thank you if I could just elaborate I totally agree with what Kathleen just said and I appreciate your

[104:01] your comment Lisa I think it perhaps goes without saying but I'll say it anyway that in the court in the context of a sub community plan I think everybody would would both want to be a need to be cognizant that we are talking about issues that may have a durability if you will much longer than than 30 years for example if you're talking about a connections plan in an area that where our street grid has been you know deeply interrupted and and suffers from a lack of connectivity recommendations about connectors and and and so forth those are decisions that last way beyond 15 years and I think we would want to be cognizant about those types of decisions even though us you know nominally if you will they have a sort of a renewal span of 15 years okay Mary and then Aaron so I actually had

[105:00] some suggestions that I wanted to make on some of these definitions and the first one by the way I think the definitions are great and I just saw some questions that I want to ask my colleagues see if they're open to this on page 25 of the packet where we're starting with the definition the proposed provision for the sub community plan to where it says preservation and change right there near the end to consider adding the word evolution so that it would be preservation evolution and change or maybe replace change with evolution I just think that evolution is more of that's that's what happens things evolve hopefully as opposed to you know just change for change sake what line are you are you looking at the definition of sub community preservation

[106:09] and change over 15 or are you looking at yeah it's in our packet it's also that oh oh sorry okay while I was looking at my packet so so page in your packet 25 evolution implies that we're going someplace I think evolution implies that it's yeah that you're going somewhere as opposed to just you know getting a 10,000 square foot house instead of getting smaller ones so that's one proposal I wanted to make and then the other one is that you know we just went through this whole community resilience project and it wasn't mentioned in any of the

[107:01] definitions anywhere so it may be adding a reference to that a sub community plan as a tool for Resident Center and that communicates expectations and maybe add somewhere that and and builds community resilience or something like that just to make sure that we incorporate because we're trying to incorporate resilience into everything that we do so I thought maybe in the definition would be a good place so those are a couple of suggestions and in the proposed explanation in table format that's on page 26 in the table I had a question about area plans and I'm I'm I'm remembering the the single area plan that happened at the Junior Academy that

[108:01] probably should have incorporated a larger area and so I'm I'm I'm kind of averse to single parcel area plans so I was just wondering if if we want to say that you know single parcel area plans either we don't do them or they have certain conditions I I don't know so I'm just throwing that out there can I pick you back on that yeah please because I had a very similar thought and I noticed that in your area plan scale you said a group of adjacent parcels or a corridor but then in the scope it talks about a specific site or small area in site to me maybe sounds like one parcel and I grew with Mary don't think that's a good thing for an airplane but then the the next one down reference is an area plan for a site work order I want could we say small area or corridor instead of site or small area yeah and I had in that in under scope I

[109:00] actually crossed out specific site because I just I don't think that's a good idea to have very plans yes so maybe remove the word site and get to the point that it's a small area or corridor that sound reasonable yeah and then under boundaries I just had more of a question where you say where your listing is it important with that areas within a sub community share any of the following characteristics I guess you're you're asking about boundaries and I'm trying to really think so those are the two things are the things that I had with respect to the definitions Mary Kay earlier thought that one of the ones I wanted to echo what Lisa was saying about time frame and because what you're saying about that this isn't operating set of documents and so it can go out of sync with the BBC P a little bit so I don't think we should necessarily be

[110:00] bound by the 15 years and I think aligning it with the schedule for the sub community plans makes sense I mean I think when we really get this going I sort of think about like painting the Golden Gate Bridge like as soon as you finish it you start back over again and so we might think about that if the if a sub communion plan takes two years maybe it's a 20 year time horizon and you get through a mall you know in in 20 years and that's the time resin I think this is the I'd agree if what's being said I think this looks good the one question I had about it as sub-community if you could go to that one commonly shared physical natural and social characteristics there's something about commonly shared social characteristics that gave me pause mm-hmm like I hope we have diversity in most of our neighborhoods so that was the one thing I'm like I'm not sure what we're

[111:00] getting at it has a you know you know where you live so when people say you live in North Boulder you know that so obviously there's some distinct sort of but rather that's geography anyhow I guess I struggled with that I would hope we don't have one sub community that is completely the same just what you said maybe so I would just take out the social characteristics something like that and maybe there's another way to say whatever it is you wanted to set has a sense of self fine but I hope there's not homogeneous I'll just jump in I agree with Mary's suggested edits evolution is a good concept and clean up on the area plan and yeah I think you should work on social characteristics so that it is maybe unique character of the

[112:03] area or something of that nature that speaking more about you know the of the sub community rather than something that's specifically social okay is there anything else on this part okay great okay we will move on to boundaries so the current boundaries have evolved over time there's a more detailed report included in the packet but the original boundaries four four five sub communities and were based on typography and some ideas about neighborhood access to services and resources in the late 80s and early 90s they were revised to include nine sub communities and align more with roads and census tracts and then today there are ten sub communities

[113:00] as part of the 2015 BBC P central Boulder was divided into two separate sub communities central and Central University Hill and with the existing boundaries there have been some issues raised so the first one is that with downtown boulders unique set of land uses and adjacencies established districts and design guidelines the area may merit its own sub community and the other thing that I've heard from folks is that there's little linemen between the boundaries and a variety of methods for mapping Boulder neighborhoods and we've gone through and kind of done that exercise and that's accurate the next one is that key community corridors currently act as the boundary lines between sub communities but actually may serve as the heart of some areas and that there are some areas within the B vcp service area that are not assigned to a sub community but there are some

[114:00] advantages to the existing boundaries they do clearly distinct distinguish ten distinctive regions they align with major roads which makes it easier to distinguish generally they align with the census tract boundaries and also we have a great historic log of residential input and community surveys that have been collected and are now organized by sub communities that we have that that historic insight so for the next 20 minutes I wanted to discuss whether council finds that revising the existing sub community boundaries is critical to the success of the sub Community Planning program and I think the thing to focus on here is not really what any particular boundary my modification should be but whether or not it's critical that they are revised as it would take some some time okay when you

[115:01] say I mean I know it's not well how much time does it take to change the boundaries in your mind well I think it's not the drawing of the lines that takes time it's gaining consensus over changing lines on the map that I anticipate would be challenging at this point okay well I just so you know right well we could start with that question but whether or not somebody thinks it's critical will have to do with a particular place vacation so you might as well stick up the map there so we can look at that because I thinking okay so we have a lot of what we have Lisa we have so I don't know it's critical or not but I do think in specific areas it is critical and one of the things I like to talk about is

[116:01] embracing our streets and making them part of our urban landscape and too often we turn our backs on on our major arteries and we don't embrace the streets so one one place that I think is important to look at is we've been talking a lot about the Arapahoe corridor and honestly both sides of that Street work together but it's the boundary for I think East Boulder and southeast Boulder and I think we need it would be helpful and if we could take the boundary of that particular one a little bit farther south of Arapaho and maybe a little bit well Sam should can I

[117:00] bring this up er so we Sam and I were talking today and we were talking about maybe we want to do one new sub community and that I don't know what you would call it but East Boulder I know we already have East Boulder but it's I would think that the boundaries of that could be a little bit west of 55th Street 55th Street is another Street where you have basically industrial commercial and office kind of looking at each other on either sides of the street those should be working together in that of being in a separate sub community and I think there's some potential there for a sub to me so but I think if you go to North Boulder we cut it off pretty much at iris and that worked in most places but if we had cut it off at Broadway that would have

[118:00] handicapped us in terms of embracing the street and looking at both sides of the street so okay we have Jill aaronandsam Jill yes this could be part of what you're saying actually so I think we're kind of together on this and so um the bottom line is for me I just I just think that the East Boulder in the southeast Boulder sub communities are way too big and broad and those are areas that are ripe for quite a lot of change in the future and that we should be a little bit more careful and I like what you said like what Lisa said but I think we should be more careful on how we define those especially by you know areas I know big office parks me what

[119:01] might be looking at rezoning for housing you know where are the neighborhoods within there that that's just my comment yeah people have raised important points I feel like the one place where our current boundaries really falls down is Arapaho you know that I think all the other major corridors are like together within one sub community or or they're not a quarter like highway 36 is a clear dividing line that's not a quarter that you you'd need to unite both sides of and Arapaho really is and so I feel like that's the place where we need to change things somehow and whether that's extending East Boulder boundaries down south some perhaps or maybe it's the creation of an additional sub community like you could imagine for example a new sub community that was the office and Indust areas of East Boulder and then another one that was the residential areas of use Boulder another one that was the residential areas of Southeast Boulder

[120:01] you know I don't know I'm just making this up on the fly but I feel like the the rapaho Avenue question is the one that really needs to get solved in terms of our boundaries so I'm in a hundred percent agreement with what you all have said before and I have thought about this for a while and I think Lisa's idea of having an East Boulder that literally is the East Boulder started just to the west of 55th Street so that you're really tying Flatiron Park together with the commercial activity that's there and going south I think we made a mistake during the envision east arapahoe process when we didn't bring the neighbors who use the the retail and commercial spaces in on the conversation so I I think that if we were to break that eastern section into three that maybe you'd want to look at going north

[121:00] of Arapaho with the southern piece you know just because you're now taking a neighborhood and the neighborhood centers and tying them together I don't know exactly where I mean I think staff can probably do some looking and figure it out but I think the key point is we want fifty-fifth as a corridor and you want both sides of it so that you get some unification around the corridor and we want Arapaho also tied you know both sides of a rap one way or the other so that it is an embraced corridor and I could see arguments for either going north or south of Arapaho but if you take that big Eastern Block and break it into three sub communities I think that might solve the corridor problem on the eastern side I'm gonna agree and not the were drawn lines the mouse but just looking at the map I mean Foothill Parkway strikes me is this is a logical breakpoint I mean there's not a whole lot of similarity on the other side of the park it's it is a big barrier

[122:01] and then you know as far as north-south lines I mean one would be Parkway on the north and you wanted to move the line north of Arapaho if you wanted to move it south you might need to go as far south as base time you guys will figure that out but I mean I think there are some natural breaks there that that keepeth deviating Arapaho north south east and west so that of those four corners in the same district and if I could just add I meant to say this before Paulo Park seems to be an awfully strange sub community I mean it's it's not tied in with either of its retail centers that it could possibly be involved with part of me would would think of that being part of North Boulder and that way we still have 10 sub communities but that Paulo Park is always stood out like a little bit of a sore thumb to me because it's just a residential neighborhood and it's not nearly as large we tried to make it to be clear we don't we don't think the residents of Pella Parker sore thumb we

[123:00] love them all but the shape of the neighborhood so weird though we're gonna change the shape because we decided Mackenzie Junction okay so in terms of I was kind of tracking there's been several thoughts about dividing up East Boulder into three I what's the third part so somebody just repeated this so the eastern part would extend just west of 55th so it would be both yellow and the purple go little west of 55th and then what a current way south east Boulder and East Boulder the parks to the west you would just extend the boundaries out across the rapaho or to

[124:02] the north across the rapaho the point being to include the Arapaho corridor within a sub community okay so we're taking East Boulder and southeast Boulder and making that into no you're just dipping into southeast the eastern side would be all along the east side of 55th so both yellow and purple yes see okay Mike we may I offer up a next step on this which would be Kathleen mentioned we've got these we've identified these six foundational elements that we feel like it's really key to get to to have the durability and successful program over the duration of a sub Community Planning program there's six sort of foundational elements we're focusing on the first three of those and our hope was that we could come back to you literally in a couple months it'd probably be early hopefully early in 2019 to discuss the other three we could

[125:01] take on this one issue which you've honed in on having to do with Arapaho and 55th we could take a little bit of time without getting deep into the planning itself but taking into account what you've talked about tonight and applying just sort of sort of planning expertise to come back to you with at least a if you will a strawman in terms of identifying what that what that might look like okay it was that the only boundary issues I just wanted to make a suggestion on where you're asking is it what I was going to bring up earlier is it important that areas within a sub community share any of the following characteristics and you have a whole list of things and in these lists whether it's under a or b or c nothing mentions community relationships and and

[126:02] I know that that can there can be community relationships across a boundary and yet you're divided in in different sub communities so I just want to make sure that were were addressing things like for example when when Washington village was getting built and there was talk about well there's no part close by and and people would say yes there is there's North Boulder Park but to get to North Boulder Park from that neighborhood you have to cross Broadway so you know that even though they're in the same sub community to say that North Boulder parka is accessible by folks that live on the east side of Broadway doesn't make sense and to me that's kind of a community relationship

[127:00] sort of thing but you know to just just be cognizant as things are looked at to look at how these relationships are or not built across boundaries and should they be or just to be cognizant of that so I have two thoughts one is did you ask us about downtown we supposed to be whether it should be distinct they did in the memo but you're not asking us now well I I guess that would be part of is it critical to to separate downtown out of central Boulder do people have thoughts on that okay go ahead I'm just gonna ask what's your definition of downtown or I guess that's maybe a little circular but I mean was your concept of downtown so I go by the boundaries that are drawn in different documents so we have design guidelines for downtown those are kind of the

[128:01] boundaries that I was looking at okay remind me more the what those boundaries are it's typically the cajon boundaries which they don't know off the top of my head but it's what we refer to as the downtown proper and I think that's what most of the downtown design guidelines are based off of so I guess I don't like feedback on that is I mean we're we've we've spent some time this year and I think we'll per spend some more time talking about East Pearl I mean as far east as probably Folsom in Cajun death against quite a bit before that yeah and so I mean I'd be happy to have a discussion around downtown as it is a sub community that I think you have to be really thoughtful with what that means because if we're talking 20 years I mean I think again 20 years from now we'll think of downtown including prolong that we in the 20s well into the 20s I mean that's what some of the things were talking about right now and so I think we'd want to be pretty expansive with our definition of downtown if we're gonna make that a sub community surviving I think it was 1997

[129:01] when we we had the downtown design guidelines in that whole community process and that was a very rich process and that that included all the I don't know all but a significant number of the business owners downtown but also as as well the contributing neighborhoods and I think those contributing one of the things I think is so valuable about sub community planning is it gets the businesses and the residents and these different groups all talking with each other and they're all part of this one sub community and everybody owns that right and and so I think I'm not too excited about cutting downtown out of the neighborhoods because I think those neighborhoods and downtown businesses have a very real special relationship

[130:00] that goes back and forth and I think it's really important that they keep that conversation going for both parties I have Sam and then Aaron I totally agree with Lisa on this one I mean I think we planned the downtown and kind of unique way right we have design guidelines we have a bid down there you know it's got a lot of structure to it the way it is and so for the sub community planning process I think one of the roles of downtown is like I live in Whittier right and so I routinely walk or bike to downtown and I feel like it's kind of part of the neighborhood in a way and I would bet people to the West probably feel the same way so I mean it seems to me like a good function of sub Community Planning would be making sure that the downtown is serving the neighborhoods and you know kind of the way the neighborhoods look ahead for the next 20 years better nearby so I would keep central Boulder together and not set downtown as

[131:00] a separate sub community and it was called the downtown Alliance I have Erin and then Mary and then Cindy yeah I agree and but if we were to look at some portion of downtown as some separate thing catered the kitchen area is way too small it would need to be a larger business district but I agree I would just leave it in central Boulder and I would just say that that's a perfect example of the Community Connections I was talking about and I would agree as well and I was on that design group and I've always wondered what the hell happened to the designs because we had a pyramidal design where it was supposed to be at Broadway and Pearl was supposed to be the high point then it feathered out into the neighborhoods getting lower and it one looks at that skyline it's not like that at all so whatever we end up doing it'd be nice if it would given the rich process that Lisa talked about it would be nice if we actually

[132:00] implemented the things that we put forward oh by the way okay so I think I think we're done with downtown where it's at but can you go back to the thing that listed what might be all alike in the sub and its sub community yeah I'm gonna come back - okay next one you had something that talked about ok maybe wasn't the memo it's the same question I raised over there a little bit but a different flavor which it said similar economic status as one of the defining characteristics I hope we don't do it that way hey I think it's really important that we have diversity within each our and I think our goal is to have diversity economically and otherwise within each of these I hope I'm trying

[133:02] to figure out where the reference was but you know what I'm talking about yeah it was um I think Mary referenced it earlier it was kind of the list of considerations yeah important that as I wouldn't he shares that okay cuz I think okay you were asking us about the service area the areas one and two I mean is that something that we should address here so there are a couple of my pointer doesn't show up on here but there's some great areas that are within the service area of the city within the boundary of the city that don't that are not assigned to a sub community and they're mostly open space areas well I mean open space there's I don't think it's a problem for that mean it does don't belong this open e plane but I mean if you had a little slice of area to that that is more developed than that probably should be in a sub community plan and like say McKenzie Junction I

[134:04] would agree but I just don't know what the jurisdiction is because that's county land area - right right I don't have a problem with it but I mean we have County and enclaves in North Boulder that are part of the North Boulder sub community you know funny sort of way it's really important that we actually do some planning around the area - is because someday we may want to make some decisions on them and having a plan already in place would be helpful mm-hmm well if they're if there's going to be residents or industry in them yeah I think that was that was Erin's - it was just open space obviously it doesn't matter okay looks like it's potentially developable we should we should plan for it okay is that people generally agree if it's developable or it has been developed it should be in one of these

[135:02] ten or eleven or twelve or whatever up - so everybody agree but if it's just open space no because that neighborhoods probably doing just fine okay all right what else you got for us okay are you ready to move to prioritisation okay so this is kind of the third big topic I know we've gotten some emails about this today but wanted to talk lastly about prioritization criteria so how do we decide which sub communities should be planned for a first second third and so on and why there is criteria for prioritization identified in the BBC P and the challenge that we found with these six items is that they are hard to measure they don't allow us to compare sub communities side-by-side and evaluate which ones provide the opportunity to solve the most issues or provide the greatest benefits for residents so we

[136:03] know what gets measured gets done this is kind of an ethic and management technique you use across industries and around the country but the BBC P also mentions pursuing a method to measure community wellness so we would like to explore developing some measurable criteria to prioritize sub communities I'm going to walk you through how we might do that using the first criterion from the BBC P which is the extent to which the plan implements the comprehensive plan goals so the complaint doesn't identify exactly goals but there are seven focus areas where the plan is pretty clear about what should be accomplished in the future so for this example I'm going to focus on how we would prioritize sub communities based on an arts and culture goal so the intention of the arts and culture focus area is to increase access to art and

[137:00] cultural experiences based on our current data there are 100 public art installations across the city we can look at an inventory of how many are within each sub community and this is great information but what we really want to know is how accessible are these art pieces to our residents how many people can access public art within a 15 minute walk from their home so using GIS we mapped and calculated access the public art across the city and found that citywide 75% of residents are within a 15 minute walk of public art and that's that's really a pretty good statistic but there are a couple of sub communities that are below average Gunbarrel south east and south boulder do not meet the citywide average for access to public art so you know Justin as an example if we were to use this measure as one of the criteria Gunbarrel south

[138:00] and southeast sub communities would move up the list for planning services so I want to kind of reiterate this is just an example but I'm really trying to demonstrate kind of the process that we would go through to evaluate the sub communities and help us rank them so we would like to take some of the other citywide goals and identify metrics and measurable criteria to help us prioritize sub communities for planning and build out a full schedule for the Pope for the program so the next question is does council agree with the approach to use measurable criteria for sub community prioritization for planning I have a question do you guys have questions okay you have an opinion hang I'm trying to remember what I've read and they can't find the right page but some of these you would weigh more than others yeah I think though you would be more important yeah it would be a weighted ranking so I'm trying to

[139:05] think of an example so if if we determined that access to art was the most important thing for prioritizing sub communities the way that that ranking would sort of apply would the gun barrel south and southeast Boulder would get a higher weight based on that criteria well I just meant what if it was our 5th most important goal and if you know so you're gonna wait art and then you'll wait the results or you'll okay I just want to make sure that that would be a part of it okay I saw Bob and then who else still Bob Jill Sam well I think measurements well I think measurements are admirable I think there's a risk of false precision here right because I think we're gonna be tempted that's sorta late to back into the answer I mean I think

[140:01] if you pulled us right now we would probably have a pretty unanimous view on what would be for a second and third and fourth and then we could take your criterion we could say uh and we could wait the things that would get that to the top list and D wait the ones in and so yeah I think that's it's gonna be a lengthy exercise this can result in the same answers so I mean I think a better question is what do you guys want to do for a second and third I mean these are two-year long projects right and so I think you should pull Council and say what's first what second or so they're six years worth of work right there and and in six years from now you gonna have completely different council which is gonna different priorities and the fourth and the fifth on the list may be different than what we've before than fifth in list so I guess I wouldn't advise spending a whole lot of time on and waiting and measuring and so and so forth because we're gonna be tempted to back into the answers that we want to get to I think Bob Justice a much more

[141:02] directly and clearly so I'll leave it at that I was gonna go through a couple of examples of where it'd be difficult to measure but I think Bob really got to the point Sam Lisa Mary Aaron so I think there's a lot of fascinating information that could come out of which was doing like just the example with the art is interesting so I think this is very useful on its own as more demographics within the sub communities in other words you've got you know some kind of characterizations of every sub community and having this data would be very useful but a hundred percent agree with Bob I have strong opinions about what needs to come next mostly because of where we will probably see redevelopment the soonest and that being probably the single biggest driver of if we don't get a sub community plan and play we go forward with massive redevelopment we haven't really done what we did in

[142:01] North Boulder so I I would say continue to do the data collection but lets you know also live in that with what we know about how the city's redeveloping at the moment when we pick ours so so from my perspective one of the really important things about a sub community plan beside bringing the community together and stuff is having a vision and creating that vision and I the second thing imminence of change anticipated in the area I think we do not want to be reacting to development but we want to have a vision for what it is we want the types the scale setbacks all of that and then implement it through the sub community plan and that's where all the people in the sub community as well as outside of the sub community come in so I agree with Bob

[143:02] but I think again I see this as a kind of an urgent thing because people have rights to develop and you know nobody's talking about taking that away from them but if we could get them and as part of a bigger vision I think we as a community will come out with a much better product Mary I was just gonna add that at some point I had heard the to prioritize things by areas of change and I think you just said it imminence of change and I think that that's probably we all have in our minds that's how we would prioritize things so yeah I'll agree with what's been said and then you know we as we move through this process over the years it might be that you know when you're halfway through a sub community plan that's the point at which the council at that time makes the decision for what the next one should be

[144:01] like with a year lead time and that there would be maybe you know staff brings forward some we're seeing evidence of change here there in the other place and then there's a you know discussion of study session or hearing or something and then the council picks the next one but I think we're it it's probably something that councils will always want the prerogative to make that next decision Cindy I just want to say that I agree with Lisa as well I also want to say that when I was on that design committee it was as a neighborhood representative from the West pearl so but I'm concerned I'm trying to remember whether or not the central area because of the hospital redevelopment wasn't somewhere to the top of the council's list whereas from my thinking I would I see other areas where it's more urgent in terms of change and what's happening in transitioning and I'm thinking East

[145:01] that really because that could happen very quickly as well and it involves so many people in so many moving parts at this that are coming up Jill I just wanna quickly say I really like what you said about what gets measured gets done though and your example of measurements it would be great to use this once we start some community planning so at that first neighborhood meeting I think Gunbarrel not that that'll be the first one but they would find it fascinating to know that they have zero public art and that's not something that might be on their list do it still just like in the context of that sub community when we get started just answered Cindy's question is the optimum Boston project an area plan under the definitions you just put up there yes it is and and if I could add on to my answer just a little bit it's it's a little bit of a hybrid beast in a way due to the

[146:01] fact that the city owns 8.8 acres there which it bought approaching three years ago and of course the hospital is going to be vacating less than a year from now so it's a little bit of a hybrid in the sense that we own a key parcel that we know is going to change and our objectives for our parcel I'm speaking of us as an entity the corporate entity the city our objectives are to really sort of in part figure out what are we going to do with it what's the program of uses how will we accomplish those and so forth so our interests with regard to that 8.8 acres are particularly heightened and focused it is though going back to your fundamental question it is an area plan and the area plan boundaries I think which reach out into some of the adjacent areas and what you might call areas of influence you know cross Broadway community Plaza the boulder Medical Center it very much I would say

[147:02] corresponds with the the way the Kathleen has described the function of an area plan it just has this hybrid aspect because we're conducting a more sort of focused and and detailed planning effort with regard to the piece of it that we own and then with respect to Cindy's question do we have the bandwidth the staff capacity to complete that area plan but in parallel launch our first self community plan because I agree with comments made by Sam & Lisa and some others that there's a pretty high degree of urgency to get going on this for sub community plan I think we all know the area we're talking about so that we stay out in front of what might be presented to us so as Lisa said were proactive as opposed to reactive yeah you can do both at once yeah yeah no no I you know sort of Great Wall of China between Kathleen and and the area planning because I really want Kathleen to be focused on sub community planning I feel like that's a high priority appears we actually have sort of two

[148:02] teams Kathleen's probably thinking like where's my team we actually have over there can't you see them we actually have a couple of positions we're in the process of filling right now either because of vacancies and that sort of thing and so we will we will bolster the resources available to Kathleen and and anybody working on sub community plans but that won't come my intention is that won't come to the detriment of our continuing work Alpine balsam area plan and I think you know going back to councilmember Carlisle's comment you know we're gonna be engaged in this area planning for alpine balsam for another nine ten months or so and we have a set of proposed boundaries that we share with you I think those boundaries do conform largely to the two what would be the area of influence of the change in that area now if there are other areas that the council feels or

[149:02] the community feels that are outside of our area plan we need to think about that as we move forward okay let me just clarify so we're doing alpine balsam area plan meanwhile Kathleen's getting on with the first sub-community plan as soon as we figure out the framework from which we will launch sub community planners correct and everybody keeps talking about it but not saying east arapahoe but is that you are thinking about the first I mean have we talking about it without talking about it we should probably take a some formal action there a little later rather than just assume it right now well no we are curious about what we are and aren't saying here well I mean what is staff assuming is their staff assuming anything we have refrained from assuming what the what what direction we will get from you on prioritization until we get that and

[150:01] get that direction from you ideally I would say I do have kind of a question about the idea of area of change and how you know is is everyone here on the same page about what an area of change is so I just you know sort of put together a couple of questions is it an area that the community would like to see change is it an area that has the potential to accommodate population growth job growth or is it an area that's currently underperforming and we would like to see it either be serve as a better what about an area that is changing sure so whether we wanted to or not is changing that's usually right we also have that corner plan that we looked at it a few weeks ago so that's a big piece of what's

[151:03] happening there so I know that when we were doing the other plan I forget what it was called envision east arapahoe right and people were very upset that some folks were very upset that we didn't include the Planning with it that it was just a transportation plan so it makes sense but earlier this evening we were also talking about changing boundaries there so that makes it a huge project so in terms of that in terms of where you're headed it sounds like first you guys want to finish assembling that is establishing the foundation force of Community Planning and you're coming back in a couple months with the other criteria and all the changes we've talked about so far like that's the next step right and I was going to offer up that perhaps we don't need feedback from you final feedback from you tonight on

[152:00] on prioritization which one's first but maybe that when we come back as I mentioned we can come back to talk about these three other foundational elements as well as as I said we could come back and combine what we've heard from you tonight with sort of just sound planning principles and bring back to you what this east arapahoe area might consist of then you might be teed up at that point I didn't weigh in on position I guess without disagreeing with what was said I guess I'll just underscore that I think areas of change it is by far gonna be the largest maybe should just be the main criteria in general I maybe disagree a little bit Erin you talked about we should just pick on the year before they start but I actually think that communities might want to maybe that we want to have a

[153:00] first second at-bat on deck etc just so that there's a little bit like people can gear up for it so I might go a little deeper than just having one mm-hmm okay that was my thought all right we have a cute Sam then Jill so yeah I think the process Jim has suggested is exactly right I don't think we need to pick which one yet who knows what's gonna evolve over the next little while I will just remind us that there was also some conversation not just about the Broadway corridor plan and the hospital site itself but also what's at the corner of iris and Broadway right and so there could be a significant amount of redevelopment in the pattern or central Boulder still well yes but you know again we got ourselves in trouble in my opinion just doing the

[154:00] corridor plan in east arapahoe and so if we're going to learn from that if you know that's the one thing I think we're gonna have a tough decision to make about which one's going to be first in which one second because of the imminence of change in both of those places and the discussions about the corridor in both of those places so I just wanted to flag that I'm prefer to make that decision a little further down the road okay I'm Jill and then Erin well I was just following up on your questions about what is changed you should go back to that site if it it's okay so and then Xin and others said well areas that are changing and if that is hard to even quantify I mean there's just there are certain places that are just screaming

[155:02] for redevelopment where big parcels are turning hands really quickly where development applications are coming in those are the types of things we don't want to miss you know that's part of why this word this processes is underway and so you know you you guys know better than anyone but but look for those places that are really ripe for redevelopment 1970s buildings that kind of thing and then to get to your question about accommodate population growth job growth I mean that to me is why we're doing the plan to begin with right so we wrap in and have that conversation at that time about whether we want it to hold more people or jobs or whatever yeah but I'll just echo we're seeing about the process I didn't mean to cut things out before but just that I think that I'll be very interested to see how the boundaries change and I think how we decide to move forward with that will really help inform us decide the prioritization of

[156:01] some of these couple big bigger areas have changed in our community certainly in the central Boulder areas where there's lots going on there but east arapahoe is a very vital area right now that could use some attention too so I look forward to that discussion in our next iterations and I would pretty much do what Erin said I think the corridor is important and I take what Sam said to try to include those surrounding neighborhoods but as Jill said there's big development or there's things that are happening right now on east arapahoe and they're already happening and we're reacting to those and these are significant developments that some could be by right so I would like to have a vision and so I guess it would be helpful for you to at least be working on both of these somehow or you know

[157:03] figure out how these two can move forward and I agree with saying it was Suzanne about having them stacked up and maybe doing them sub parallel or something okay what else and so those are the big three topics just the last thing is to let you know that next steps are going to be talking about scope and deliverables schedule and phasing and Community Engagement those are all really intertwined and so we'll come back with some ideas about that as well as some of the resolution of some of the topics that you mentioned okay we are on the verge of finishing early don't we have a rule about that we're not allowed not allowed to so somebody yeah okay and Kathleen welcome

[158:00] aboard thank you very so I I just wanted to remind everybody about Victor Dover memo that I don't know everybody got to see it this afternoon crystal sent it out but there was a point in time when we were kind of getting laughs out about how many times we said Victor Dover in a in a meeting but it hasn't happened for a while and yet and looking through that the memo it's amazing how many of those things have come to to pass or are starting so again kudos to staff for all that work [Music] for this so thank you yeah and that was a great memo [Music]

[159:01] - Parris on phone my god