August 23, 2023 — Housing Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

[MM:SS] timestamps correspond to the YouTube recording.

[0:04] Everyone in person online to the august meeting of the Boulder Passing Advisory Board. I'm not going to chasing the chair of the board. and we will start with, you know, some brok call so Julie Julian Randy. We have Karen Thurman here. Bill Pogrin here, Eric Thomos. There is, I believe in Greece. Current Hoskin and Vice Chair. Danny Turodoro. yes, not here yet. I believe it's coming. Yeah. we're gonna do some introductions. We have lots of presentations already, but a lot of amazing housing news lately. Start with the the the factory breaking ground portable manufactured homes and

[1:03] the Governor made an executive order on Monday to speed up the process for distributing funds from Proposition 1, 23, which is gonna millions of dollars into affordable housing in Colorado the which I'm still trying to make sense of. But it sounds like it's a good thing moving forward on that connected to the Academy development down the block. Not to chatter about the airport or or Bill October, and most quoted in the daily camera on that and the possible futures for the airport housing or not. No, they're really amazing. New York Times articles emailed. Everyone's on the Portability and mountain towns. That was 3 pages actually, for the people as well. So we're gonna think of it. Here we start with Carl. Hello, everyone. I'm Carl Geiler, senior policy advisor, with planning and development services.

[2:02] I'm Laura Kaplan, the liaison from the Planning Board. Nicole Mansour, and I'm from TRG. Jim like Jim Wyatt, I'm on. Do our genius have a winner? Yeah. So just for for everybody's benefit. So Trg is a technical review group, and it's a advisory group that is extremely helpful to housing and human services on housing issues. So we invited them to be part of this meeting so they could provide their valuable expertise alongside of hands. So thank you for coming of. I'm crystalander, and I'm kind of, I would say deep bench working on this inclusionary housing update. Yeah. So Nope, she's going to project Michelle Allen. I'm in Hhs, and I'm the inclusionary House of program manager. I'm Jasonette, the senior Housing manager housing human services. And I'm the board with yourself.

[3:04] I'm Tiffany Baller. I'm the Board Secretary and the Admin great thank you. I will review the agenda. We'll get into it so that that was, item, one of my intuitive reviewing the agenda, which now next, we'll have item, 3 approval of the meetings will have open comment. Publication as item 4. And then matters from the board. Item 5 is very needy. This month we have part 8 on inclusionary housing will be giving input to Michelle Allen and others from the staff. The exclusionary housing update a little bit of the opportunity to ask questions and have discussion on that. and then part B, which is an action item which we hope will lead to a recommendation zoning for affordable housing public hearing. We'll have a staff presentation from Carl parlor will be asking have for an advice on whether the proposed ordinance is in accordance with the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan, and whether we have any modifications direct them.

[4:11] questions will also have an additional public comment period around that, or discussion and decision. Item C will do an update on some other things that could involve housing and boulder coming right off, including the airport master plan. Update when Boulder Junction or phase 2 item, 6 matters from staff will be debriefing the meeting, and we will attempt to adjourn by 9 Pm. So I guess that brings us to item 3, and we'll ask the board for approval of the July 26 meetings meeting notes. Do I have a motion to do so for a motion? Second. all in favor.

[5:00] Okay. public participation. Before we go that I'll ask our staff. I think department to review the role of engagement here, and then we'll see if anybody is online that wants to comment. Good evening, everybody. Oh, and before I forget, we have some people joining us remotely. So we have Sloane Walber. Who is gonna be providing the presentation. But I wanted to give. Then Doyle and Pam Gibson a chance to unmute and just introduce themselves as well. Go ahead. And Hi! This is Pam Gibson. Nice to see you all. Great, thank you. And this is Ben Doyle. I'm hoping to be there in person as soon as this affordable housing closing is authorized. So I'm at my desk.

[6:02] hey? Do we have any members or public taking the comment. So let's go over the rules. Yep, I will do that right. Now. We have a couple rules that we need to go over. So the city is engaged, and with community members to crew co-create a vision for productive, meaningful, and inclusive civic conversations. And the idea this is to support the physical and emotional safety of everybody involved. There is. For more information about this vision. There's a lot of work that went behind this. I won't spend much time talking about it, and then we have some rules at decorum that we request that everybody follow and these will be enforced by our chair. In all the meetings. So all remarks and testimony. Please keep it limited to the matters related to city business. Do not make threats or use forms of intimidation. And mind your speech. Anything that anything that Mp. The ability to convert the meeting is prohibited. So that's it.

[7:10] Testify. Great anyone. And again, it's a 3 min limit. I see one single with a raise. And so and please. have you picked up blood? So first I was trying to find the agenda. Michael is, there's some problem, because I see. August 8. I'm sorry. What was your question about the agenda? One I'm trying to find it. Oh, okay, it should be posted online. Right? It should be August 8. The current that today's the 20 third. Is it bad? Am I not looking the right place.

[8:00] Tiffany, can you clarify? The folder? Is labeled 0 8 August. Then if you click into it, there should be all of that. I got confirmation from the city. Oh, okay, usually just Fyi. Usually folks from the boards put up the agenda right on the the first page where the calendar is. That would be easier that less clicks any less. Clicks are great, you know. Anyway. Okay. So I'll look there. Thanks. Who said that? Who's there? I don't know. Who is that? I say, Hi, Tiffany, it's Tiffany. I Tiffany. Okay, thanks so much. Okay, yeah. I wanted to talk about the Academy at Mapleton. It's kind of interesting, because, you know, with the occupancy limit of up to 5. Now. can the Academy get up to 5? Because II don't think they want to, because each body is like many thousands of dollars. They massage your feet and everything. I think, up there. Because it's for the 3,800 square foot one. It's thi it's 12,000 a month.

[9:15] and if you have a second person it's $800 more a month and $50,000 unrefundable, and for the 3,800 square foot place it's 3.8 million bucks. And then when you croak, they give you 15 percent back. So it's like a membership fee. So it's obviously very, it's destination resort, senior housing. But it's interesting, because this is effectively and I think I heard Bud sworn since moving into the penthouse, which is 4,500 square feet. Bud was with the business school, and he lives in my area on Spruce and Sixth, and I think he's moving in there, but they wouldn't even tell me what the penthouse costs per month. The the closest I can get, and you can look on their side, and they're 70 sold out

[10:06] before they are even opening. In a year or 2 years it might be so. This is what's driving up the housing cost in Boulder. So the Academy. Wh, when you go in there. It's like, you know, we've heard the expression downsizing, you know. You should see. My place is a fire hazard. You know I've got papers. I have to read everything, you know, but these people are like upsizing, because if you can only have 2 people in there, you can't have more. you know, for that all that extra money that just drives up the cost of housing in boulder, and then we've got the other thing which is water. View out a rap, a ho! And there's a garage for every house. It's like this is sprawl, and Jared is fast tracking money for affordable housing. Not this is not working done.

[11:04] You finish line. Thank you very much. I have to finish, you know. But yeah, thank you. Thank you for those comments. They're well taken here. We have other members of the public that would like to comment. Great! Great! Thank you. I can move right into matters from the board and the inclusionary housing update with a staff presentation to be followed by board questions and discussion. Go ahead, Michelle. Alright. Just give me a minute and I'll pull it up. Okay. no.

[12:04] not cooperating here in a second. Okay? Does that look. Okay for you all. Yes. Okay. Okay. Well, my name is Lone Walt. Sorry I couldn't be in person tonight, but I am a planner, and I work on the inclusionary housing program with Michelle. And the purpose of this item tonight is to present options for updates to the city's inclusionary Housing program and to receive some feedback on upcoming code changes. I'll cover some of the background and schedule, and then I'm gonna hand it off to Michelle and she'll cover the modifications being considered.

[13:03] So Council identified 2 priorities related to middle income housing for the 2223 work program. The first was to consider updates to the existing inclusionary Housing program focused on increasing middle income home ownership units. The second was to launch the Middle Income Down Payment Assistance Pilot, which was adopted by voters in 2,019 and the exciting news that was launched earlier this month. And so this project is part of a larger effort to address the current Housing crisis by expanding housing supply and diversity of available housing types. Other projects to address these housing challenges include zoning amendments. Which I believe Carl will be presenting to you tonight listening regulations on ad use which has been adopted, and occupancy reform. So staff requested direction on the Ih Update at a study session before Council on October twenty-seventh, and at that meeting Council directed staff to explore strengthening incentives for onsite for sale middle income housing

[14:14] they also asked us to explore applying cash and loot differently to larger homes and potentially applying cash and loo requirements to the demolition of homes that are replaced with larger, more expensive homes, or and or to large additions. Some of the other items identified for further investigation or modifying the Ih rents, adjusting the cash and loom methodology and adding more detail to the land dedication option based on some of the lessons learned in recent development projects. So the project is currently in the evaluation and feedback stage, sort of as a reminder. A joint study session was held in January of this year for the Planning Board, Hab and Trg, where we covered sort of the history of Ih and details of the program.

[15:07] and we hire Kaiser Marston and associates also known as Kma in February to help support the program, Update and Kma conducted a financial feasibility study and a best practices analysis to identify housing development trends and inform potential alternatives in the Ih program, and that was attached to the memo for your reference. I'd also note that Staff has initiated community engagement on the project, and additional engagement would continue to occur through this feedback stage and into the formal ordinance consideration sort of part of that formal public process. and an ordinance with updated code language is scheduled for consideration and adoption this fall and Michelle will talk about the next steps later in the presentation. But we are anticipating that the program changes would be effective 3 months after final adoption to sort of allow the updates to the administrative administrative regulations to occur. So it probably be some time in early 24.

[16:13] So like, I said, the purpose of this item is sort of present those update options and receive feedback which will help shape and the code changes. And this is really have into your Jews opportunity to ask questions and help sort of shape that code development phase. So as we went through at the Ih training earlier this year, the current program really produces very few affordable units through the on site or off site. Options in meeting inclusion housing. however, significant amount of units are produced through cash and low contributions. and based on the findings from Kma. This isn't expected to change anytime soon. So Kma explored some of nationwide Ih inclusionary housing best practices.

[17:01] The report included an assessment of financial feasibility for a range of development types tested the program alternatives and reviewed best practices and policy approaches used elsewhere in the country and based on the KMA. Analysis there will be continued difficulty in achieving that on site for sale outcome through IH. The larger market factors and the perceived risk of construction, defect, liability have really contributed to very limited for sale housing, development in recent years and changes to the Ih program are, you know, unlikely to change those larger dynamics. Km, I also found that contributing cash in lieu is currently feasible for for sale development. If the city would like to enable the provision of on-site units rather than receive that cash in Loo. A reduction in the inclusionary on-site requirement would be necessary, so that the onsite cost would be comparable to what a developer would pay in cash. And lo!

[18:08] And lastly, a modification of the cash and loose structure and methodology. It's necessary to sort of align the cities program with nationwide best practices the proposed square foot methodology that Michelle will cover would remove some unintended disincentives to smaller, more market rate, affordable units and would be very straightforward to interpret and administer. So at this point I'm gonna hand it over to Michelle to sort of talk through some of the specifics of the proposed update. So, Michelle, just let me know when when you want me to move. So there are 3 major items that we would like to get feedback on, and and will be proposed to plan board and council. As the the major program updates and then there's a whole table of smaller program updates, but mostly kind of clean up items and

[19:06] modifications to bring things up to up to our current practices. So the 3 items that are the large items are to modify the cash and blue methodology put in place. An amount that is recommended by the consultant, and then change how the cash in lieu is adjusted annually. The second one is strictly for for sale to look at the on-site requirement and to make it comparable in cost to the cash alert, so that a developer can actually make a choice between cash and limit on site. Right now the cost for putting units on site is is more than double what the Cache ALU and the one of the big takeaways from the consultant work was that cash and Lewis basically at the top level of feasibility for the the range of projects that they tested.

[20:05] the amount that we have in place right now. So so raising cash and Loo is not really feasible up, you know, significantly. In other words, we can't bring the cash and loo up to the cost of the on site. because casually right now is about at the what the consultants say is feasible for developers to pay That's, you know, probably the big item out of all 3 of these. This there was a desire for us to implement ih on rebuilt dwelling units so smaller units that are demoed and then replaced with a much larger unit in particular. And so the approach to doing that will be to explore a nexus or to explore doing a nexus study. To see if if the study supports the residential linkage fee. That would be the way to do that and I'll talk about a little bit more in in a minute.

[21:00] and then there'll be a bunch of the the the table in the memo shows a bunch of more minor updates. So the cash and loo methodology. So what we're recommending and this goes along with what Kma felt was best practices, and what they recommend for us to do is to modify the cash and loop to a per square foot methodology structure. We sort of use a modified square foot structure that's tied to the unit requirement. It's complex. It's varies based on project size based on type of unit it. It's like unnecessarily complex, and this would simplify quite a bit to just say square foot of residential. There would be a fee, and that's what you'll pay if if you don't want to put the units on site adopt the feasible cash and loo range that would be roughly equivalent to the 2023 cash in new amounts. Conduct a feasibility analysis at least every 5 years. So we would put in place an annual adjustment based on a couple of metrics recommended by the consultant, and then check that every 5 years, with the feasibility analysis to make sure the cash, and Lewis staying within the range that's feasible for developers to pay.

[22:22] So that's the the new methodology that we would like to put in place. The other option is, of course, not to change it and to retain our current casual structure. The current cash flow amounts and adjust up to 10% annually based on the affordability. Gap. Go ahead, son. So the rationale is that caching Louise Square Foot is the best practices. And and actually we've been requested to look at this quite a quite a lot over the last, especially the last few years. A lot of interest in this, because it is a widely used approach, and it's a good approach. It results in caching that scales with unit size automatically.

[23:06] It results in a fair burden across different size units, and it avoids a disincentive for smaller market rate units, which is what our cash and loop does right now. It is straightforward to administer and apply, so simplifies everything. And then, as part of this methodology, we, there's currently a 1,200 square foot cap on cash and Loo, any units are a we, we use average unit size. If the average unit size is larger. it doesn't matter anything over 1,200. It's gonna pay the same amount and cash a little. And that's a real problem that's been in place since the program was adopted. It was adopted as part of the ie. Program originally, but it's sort of outlived. It's usefulness. There was a rationale back in 2,000. But but it doesn't really apply anymore. So we would remove that 1,200 square foot cap and just say it's it's cash, and Lou would be assessed by the amount of square footage reset to square footage in the project.

[24:08] regardless of the unit size. Go ahead slow. So we want. We want to make sure that we drive this particular point home. When you do cash and loop by square foot. It doesn't matter what your unit requirement is doesn't matter if it's 5, 10, or 25, because it's not tied to the number of affordable units you're going to provide. That's the way we do it now. It's directly tied. But it it wouldn't change, based on how many units you're required to provide, so that will make more sense than a minute as we go through the next item. Go ahead, Sloane. So the for sale requirement as I just sort of pointed out. If we want to get for sale units on site, we need to reduce the cost to putting them on site to be somewhat competitive with the cash and loop, so that there is a real choice that a developer makes

[25:10] right now to put unison site is approximately $150 per square foot cash and lose at $50 per square foot. What choice will you make? Right? It's it's sort of a no-brainer, and we get nothing. We literally, it's a non-starter conversation to put for sale units on site. So the idea, so based on the the consultants work, they identified 15% as being bringing that cost to put units on site down to be roughly equivalent with the the caching loop or square foot. And then we would. we still wouldn't expect a ton of on-site for sale units, because they still have a choice. But so what we're proposing is that we do allow middle income pricing for any affordable units that they put on site

[26:05] that would be an incentive to pick the onsite option as opposed to option. and the few honestly, I would predict it. Estimated to be about it. Be a handful every year. It th. We're not talking big numbers, because there's there are few for sale projects. and some of them will not choose to put units on site. But whatever we get would be middle income, and it would be a great strategy for getting at least some middle income units on site restricted. Yes. there would be permanently deed restricted. that middle income pricing based on the new program they rolled out, or Mike well, are required. So the no change right now we have a requirement that says you have to put 25% of the units on site, or you can pay cash. They can't. The feasibility analysis shows that that just is essentially a nonstarter for them, it it for for sale product. It's not possible to put 25% on on site.

[27:09] The cost is just unfeasible, for across the range of the projects that they looked at and so we get the outcome with that we're getting, which is, they always choose cash. It's the feasible. It's the cheaper of the of the options, but it's also the most feasible option for them. and we also have fairly low pricing on those units. So that goes into the equation. So even if they did put something on on site, they're gonna get fairly low pricing because most of them are gonna be priced at this low MoD income level. And we only allow 5 of that 25%, 5% to be middle income. So what we're saying is, if we reduce the on-site requirement to 15 that would be competitive with cash and Lou. And again to repeat, you know. I don't want to repeat too many times, but the cash and Lou is as high as it can go.

[28:03] You know we're we're kind of hit. Our feasibility on cash flow and allowing them to all be middle income price. That was actually part of the equation that Kma, the consultant, did to to say what would be competitive. So 15%, all middle income is competitive cost per square foot due to the cash. I was just saying I was asking about the down payment assistance program that you just rolled out. That would be right, like a lot of people buying those units are using various programs. And if it was 120, am I right? So that so? Well, this is so, this is a little different than the dumping assistance they're buying it on the market right? This is this, would Dbd restrict restricted under the current program? But, as Michelle said, all the units would be middle income as opposed to in the mix of

[29:06] no other proposal, no combining like using. No, they're very different to 1. One is specific to development, and the other is an individual home buyer, going out buying a home on the market and getting assistance from the city. So they're so in it for the units that would come out of this proposal. they would be priced to be affordable. They don't need a huge down payment assistance to bring that price down, because they're going to be priced to be affordable to the income range, that middle income range, right? That that seems like that might also help the fact that they are all middle income, whereas currently some of the units that were, if they were built on site, would be middle income, and then a larger slice would be low to moderate income. and then those folks who then buy into those developments have to pay the same ho a fees as everybody else which can rise quite high. And so it seems like having them be. All middle income would somewhat help with that problem, because you're having a family that earns more.

[30:07] That then, is subject to that same ho! A fee, rather than having low income buyers subject to that. Ho, fe! So I think that that makes a whole lot of sense for a lot of angles correct. And and and so in in built into the Ih program is our our maximum unit sizes for the affordable units that you would think in this scenario that the market units in this project our hypothetical project. They're gonna put them on site, they'll be priced for middle income. They will be significantly smaller than the market units. And so then we review the Hoa declarations, and we require that the Hoa make assessments based on unit size. So we try to do keep the the payments lower for the formal buyers than for the market buyers. That's really the only tool you you can't.

[31:00] You can't manipulate. HO. Leaves too much. you know. Government. Okay, so what what means do you utilize to to kind of get that law back on the h away like so is it in the is it in the restriction? Is it in the allowance. Where's where's that memorialize? Okay? It's actually in the Ih regulations. Yes, in the regulations, I believe, is where it lives. It basically says that we get to review the Hoa declarations. Now, one of the things you have to keep in mind with that. When the project is done, support project they can sell all the units, they will turn the hoa over to their board. and then they they could make changes over time, so we can only control it at the at initial outset. And then we, you know, hope that so a a few things that we that we typically will do is require ho! A training for the people that buy these units, so they at least understand how to work with the Hoa.

[32:01] We require that they have some kind of capital fund which they typically always do when they kick off the Hoa, typically they they actually start with a capital improvement fund in the hoa! But what happens over time when you have a board of owners? And and I guess that's why I'm asking that cause. I think there are 2 things that that should be explored because regulations are regulations. But then you have to go through enforcement actually ports. But you can have standing under certain provisions of the Declaration. So in other words. even despite a 66% vote of the age away. There's essentially field power for the city. And that's one thing I really encourage, and the other one is a tangent agreement which also can implement that. And I think those are really important things, because I think that's some some concerns on this in the past, including from some residents. And and I just think, you know, it's a great approach, as far as all the skills. And we definitely don't want to that to be something that kind of falls by the wayside as things go on. And so that's all that really encourage. You know I could. You send those to me, Danny? Absolutely. Yeah. It's not for

[33:16] other jurisdictions that have done that. And you know, I've drafted a choice declarations where we put it right in there, and we don't care. It's fine, right, you know. And I think it's just a a great way to kind of resolve that problem right from the get go because comport right? Right? Right? So what interest? Well, we'll definitely take a look at that and see what interest rates are you assuming, I mean, when you say you know, that this is feasible with with this kind of a reduced requirement and 120 is that assuming that like 7% rates, we have now, because that would lower the the price, you could sell the Internet. it would. They did use current affordable pricing.

[34:03] and it's a variable. Yeah, it's definitely a variable as interest rate. Go up. It's a it's a. you know. upside down. Relationship interest rates go up. The price has to go down to be affordable to that same group of the income that we're trying to target the middle income group. If interest rates go down, the affordable price can go up because they have more buying power. I mean, we've had that issue for the history of the program. And with the new structure, the advantage is that it's only going to go up based on a certain index. So like the construction index and then it'll get reevaluated, reevaluated every 5 years. So the current system that goes up 10% maximum and last since 2,018 every year has been 10 because we that's not a sustainable increase.

[35:02] But yes, I totally see your point, and so they they. you know, they could have done low interest rates medium high. You don't know where these things are going, but I know that the feasibility study was based on sort of current, which probably, you know, they did it over the last 6 months. 8 months is when they did the analysis. So try a little bit lower than it is today, very quickly. But that's based on on the current affordable prices which are based on the current interest rate. That's another element of risk for the developer, which hence the discursion from. There's some crystal ball gazing, you know, involved in that. If you think interest rates are gonna go up. They could drop out of that feasibility range. But if you think that they're sort of maxing out and they're gonna go down, then it becomes more feasible, which is great. It's always fine to have it a little bit more doable than right, you know, right on the line. So

[36:10] if you target to middle income, they can sell it for a little bit more. Yes, between 5 and 3 annual as well makes it more saleable. Not just so, right? Okay, go ahead, Sloane. So the biggest rationale for this is that the current 25% requirements financially in feasible. They will always choose cash in there. They simply are gonna put units on site at that. At that level. it simplifies the program. By, yeah, we have a bunch, we we in 2,018, we did an update to the program. We added the middle income tier we and and to do, we added it on top. The program used to be 20% requirement. We added a 5% more bringing it up to 25%, and that 5% was a middle income price tier.

[37:11] And so we knew that would be tough. We knew that that was a high percentage for developers to meet. We put a bunch of incentives into the program. They have done absolutely nothing like, I said. The conversation's a non-starter and so what we want to do is we're gonna strip out those incentives. With the idea that lowering the percentage is really the way to go. And actually, the one of the biggest percentage was allowing the mobile defects at middle income. so that kind of language will come out of the code and be replaced with a simpler scheme. And actually have some disincentives, too. So the consultant has recommended. We take that stuff out and we go with the 15 all at middle income. These incentives haven't worked

[38:00] newer has to disincentive, you know. so we feel like going with 15% all on middle income will likely result in a mix of cash and Louis and some on site middle income units, probably not all developers which will choose that option to put them on site. They'll still be people that will choose cash and lou and it is straightforward to administer and apply. And it's not simpler than what we have in place right now, which is sort of burdensomely complicated. So we just want to point out, though, what I mentioned earlier, which is a few developments, are for sale. There's still going to be few on site for sale, affordable units, regardless of what we do here, but this makes it possible for them to do it. So if there's a condo development, is there like a threshold above which you'd have inclusionary housing, and below which you wouldn't. So if it was like a 4 unit condo project, you wouldn't need to do it, and if it's 5 and you know 5, then you would. And if that's the case, could that then be like 4 units that are, you know, 8,000 square feet. And so the the unit is unit number isn't as applicable as a square footage

[39:17] of the building. So it applies to everything. That's how it was developed and put in place, and we never changed that and applies for to a single family home for one unit all the way up to the biggest project. So right, what happened in in 2,018 we made a bunch of changes to the program, and one of them was to sort of break off the 4 or fewer unit group. and we kind of kept the requirement lower on that group. but we would probably would do away with all of that, because the cash over by square footage is essentially gonna take care of it. If you only have one unit, you're gonna pay for a reasonable amount of cash. And Lou, if it's not reasonably sized unit. But if it's a really, really big unit. You're gonna pay a lot of cash in there. So that's sort of the scheme we're going with now. Thank you.

[40:08] does that make sense? That answer, okay. So the demo rebuilds and additions. It turns out. And you can read in your memo. We put some of the legal language as to how the the program is structured. We really cannot approach. We really can't apply ih, to demo rebuilds and additions. It. It just the program wasn't made for that and legally wouldn't support that. Basically because IH is based on the fact that, as new development happens, it takes up space, and that's space is needed for affordable housing takes up the space for a unit. So it's really based on new units. When you have a Demo rebuild. You're not taking up a space in the house there. You're going to replace it with another house. So the legal under kind of just doesn't work that makes sense.

[41:04] So what the both our attorney's office and the consultant suggested that we explore a nexus study. You have to do a study before you can do a linkage fee, and the idea that is totally doable for if you if you demo a smaller house, we we build with a very large house, you can do a linkage fee similar to the commercial linkage fee and apply it. It'll probably be applied by on a square foot basis. The same way the commercial linkage fee is applied and and that's how you can get some affordable benefit out of a process that really does take away affordable unit and replace it with a much more expensive unit. Same for addition. So it's gonna take a a much more affordable house and make it a much more expensive house. So the nexus study basically identifies the the the the extent to which these activate to the need for affordable housing

[42:08] turns it into a square footage amount remains to be seen what that would look like. So we would like to go down that road. It's not part of this update. It's a separate process. It means, we have to hire a consultant to do that study. So we would propose doing that, probably next year and 2020. So I'm really intrigued by that, because I don't fully understand it. So under this scenario it is not even really a scenario. Yet I'm the homeowner doing a remodel. I'm gonna pay some kind of basically an impact fee. Okay, could it be structured like a gas guzzler tax. Let's say I replace my house the same size house, you know. Keep the footprint versus blowing out 8,000 feet, and then you really pay.

[43:02] you know a lot into an affordable housing fund. For you know, basically, that's exactly how we do it. Yeah, yeah, we would. We would either give you credit for the existing script footage, or just say, there's some baseline. II when I was first thinking about this and putting this into ih, I thought, well, if you, Demo, we'll give you credit for 2,000 square feet, no matter what you demo it, Demo. Most Demos are around 2,000 square feet, and most rebuilds are about 3,500 on average course, no matter what you demo anything over that you're gonna pay. That's why I'm saying I would only give them credit for 2,000 square feet, or something, you know, like. So so we'd have to work out those details, would it be for their existing square feet, because we don't want that to happen. Necessarily, if they start out with 5,000 square feet and Demo and do 8,000 square feet. I don't want to give them credit for 5,000 square feet. Right? That's what that would be my preference. So I'd give them credit for reasonable amounts worthy everything over. They've got to pay.

[44:13] so Ih wouldn't apply to a vacant lot that has a home built on it for you just wanted to clarify. Yeah. So if it's vacant, I age applies because it's a new house taking up space, which actually is pretty honestly, it's unfair right now, if you build a new house on a vacant lot, you're gonna be assessed $57,000 for your new home, if it's over 1,200 square feet, that's what the amount is right now. 57,000. What if it's under 1,200, which is never gonna happen? If the house is under 1,200. Then this scales down.

[45:07] Well, I mean a nexus study has to tell us what that would look like. so if we do cash and loop by square foot. It'll it would be a range depending on how big a house you built right now. It's pretty much a set amount, because everything's over 1,200 square feet. But right now the developer buys the small house, knocks it down and replaces it with something huge. They pay no cash a little and get a waiver, or ih, they don't. It doesn't. Again that was adopted when the program was adopted. and it's outlined. It's it's useful. I know the studies that do that. I'm gonna pay a certain amount in theory. I go from 2,000. 8,000. Would it pay a larger amount?

[46:08] Thank you. And of course, additions aren't assessed anything affordable housing. So it'd be the same idea. You get some amount, reasonable amount of an addition that you wouldn't be paying anything extra on. But if you're gonna add, if you're gonna double size, a house, or you're gonna add, that's why I keep using the term significant additions would would then be subject to some kind of a And if you expand your house to doing it, you that's a whole different category, right that that's different and probably wouldn't, wouldn't apply. We'll make sure it doesn't apply, Michael. No, no. definitely. So the rationale is the Ih program only applies to new residential development. Right now Demo rebuilds and significant additions can't be assessed through ih, legally, a nexus study is necessary to determine how these scenarios contribute to the need for affordable housing similar to a commercial linkage fee.

[47:16] So I ask a question, is nexus study like an official term? Or is it like market relike it it is. It identifies the nexus between the activity and the need for affordable house. But it might be done by different consultants. But it's a description like it's like, appraisal means something. So nexus means something, even if different vendors created. Okay? Oh, yes, okay, thank you are the one of the city attorneys explains that like, if the city is going to assess a fee for something, you have to establish the nexus to why, that thing that you're assessing a fee for contributed to the the reason for the fee. Right? Okay, does that make sense? Yup makes sense? Let's say that consult comes back and say there is no ex access.

[48:04] There's no. These activities do not contribute to the need for forward wireless. Then you can't, you can't So I wanted to. To. Have you all take a step back and look at the the package that we're putting on the table, because I know it's a little stressful to think about reducing the outsite requirement for for sale. We're not thinking of reducing it for rental, only for for sale. and and so on the face of it, people will say, Well, won't that reduce the amount of affordable housing we're gonna get? And I would argue, no, that won't, because the entire package works together so as a package, the proposed updates will result in no net reduction in cash and loop. Matter of fact, I think it will be significant significantly, more cash and loop because of the size assessing more cash in law and larger units.

[49:00] And it may result in some middle income offsite units. That's a choice developers make. But we're making that choice viable for them. The square foot by the the casually by square foot applied to larger units will definitely generate more cash blue. There's no doubt about that. The change in for sale percentage does not impact the cash and loo because it's assessed by square footage. So the change in the port for sale percentage could result in some middle income units great, and then the next study may support a residential linkage fee which would essential on calling it cash and Lou. But it's more money into our coffers for affordable housing. So you see, 3 pluses and no decrease table, and so overall the package ends up, as it says, and blue up there. No net reduction in cash in lieu, and may result in some middle income on site units. I stopped there just for a second. So questions just making sense go gradually. Yeah. The question I have about the the force. There'll middle income units is

[50:11] well, I'm kinda curious like. So we're like, right now we're at this spot where it's like there's been 0 right now you're saying, Hey, let's try to get a let's try to get on the scoreboard here. And I guess one question I have is If we were to sort of like retroactively, look at what's been built over the last 5 years, or what's in the pipeline now, or what's projected to being built like what's kind of a maximum possible number of middle income units we could conceivably see. And then also, like what's like a ballpark estimate of what highs and lows so maximum theoretical, and then like high and low estimates, you know, that's that's really looking into the crystal ball. Theoretical Max would be something you you could

[51:02] figure out. Well, we could certainly say, this is what happened in the last couple of years. This is how many for so you and that's how many 4. So projects came through. It's not many. And then you would have to sort of make a guess how many you know. If if they, if they, the onset requirement, were competitive, how many of those developers, would choose to put them on site. Remains to be seen hard, hard to know, because it's certainly, even if the 2 options are exact, are equal. Easier to write a check. you know, right? But I think that some will choose to put them on site. They, you know, honestly, the developers want to help with affordable housing. They want it. They want to put the units on site. We're just not making it work for them. And so I think that this will make them make it work for them, and I think some of them will make that choice. They're certainly getting pressured to put them on site and you mean, like public pressure. Everybody's asking them why they're not putting units on site. And honestly, the answer is because it's not financially feasible to do it right. Now you can't do. 25 seem to recall that

[52:15] passion. We might be favorable because of the way that the funding is structured where you might get matching dollars from Section 8 or from other Federal housing programs. And so it seems, I don't know. I'm just. It seems weird to like, put a bunch of effort into something that's gonna generate maybe a dozen units or something like that. And and I don't know like, why, why bother with with the middle income option for sale options. I guess that's 2 questions just now. I'm sorry. Well, no. Well, I think there's let me let me jump in there the way. So IH. Is based on this legal underpining

[53:00] that says that as land is developed there is less and less land for affordable housing. and so we have to assess every new development for affordable housing to make sure that we get some out of the remaining land left. right. It's not a fee cash, and Lou is an alternative to providing units and you can't. Just so if I'm understanding what you said you're like, why don't we just charge them the cash. And, Lewin, forget all this. We can roll because, you have to have a unit possible unit outcome based on the way the program structured. Whether they choose it or not, it's up to them because they could also choose to dedicate land. So even though Cash and Lou is the preferred that gets used 100% of the time. It's according to the law. It's the alternative. It is the alternative. They always have the other option which is to put units on site. So it's not really so. It's not a fee. We don't refer to it as a fee. I try.

[54:07] We call it a contribution. You can contribute cash and loop in loop of providing units. You can contribute cash and move in loop of providing units. Right? But III do. That's a really good point. And I can definitely go back and look at how many for sale projects we had and how many units came out of that? I it's not many. It's not many. So that's why we say, you know, we wanna make sure we manage expectations. This isn't gonna result in hundreds of units. It it will. It could result in a handful. which is great because the middle income goal is hard to reach. And every every tool that we have to try to reach our middle income goal is gonna help. And can I add something also, which is my understanding is that that those Federal matching dollars are not available for middle income, right? And so so we don't get that boost out of when we do middle income units, we don't get the matching. So this doesn't take anything away to have them.

[55:08] It's not like if they build them on site, we get one amount of value, and if we got the caching and we would get a different amount of value because of the matching funds, there are no matching funds, so it's much more equal with the middle income layer. So my assumption is that part of the reason why there aren't more fit for sale developments is because of the construction defect law. So is there anything that Boulder could do to compensate for the construction, defect log that would encourage people to be developing more condo units? Or is that like a State law? And we can't do anything, or we couldn't subsidize a wraparound policy or mitigate the risks of municipalities have been pulling their hair out for decades now significant progress several years back. But I mean it is. There's nothing more that you could do in mind. It's not just construction defects, because there are other states that don't have construction defects, and they have similar trends where everything is

[56:12] moving. It has been rental for the past decade. It's like underwriting, and it's interest rates. And you know I have a whole lot of thoughts on this, and I'll that'll hold till we're done. But the one thing that I wanna just bring up until to the point that you've brought up is for any regulate, any regulation or any regulatory scheme. The you know. The the reality is you want to make. If you have wherewithal to make improvements, I to see where you you know. Let some things by the wayside and make adjustments as you go on. It's not just a question of the scope of number. What you're doing is a question saying you want to make your regulations as effective as defensible as possible. And so anytime, you have that opportunity, even if it's even if it's for a dozen, you

[57:06] if you want to do it because you don't know what's gonna happen in the future. And it's just something, you know, like more about it. But it's just something we say. This makes a lot more sense is a lot more balanced, and it does a lot of things if we're throwing out the cash. Or that would be a different story. But we're doing here is trying to make this more effective things that we have, and I mean 50 years from now the Annex, you know, 900 acres. And that's not gonna happen. But you know, all the sudden. It's like, well, you know. So you always want to make regulations more effective if you can't. Right? Yeah, always, you know, there's only so much you can do. But from that perspective, you know, I think that's the driving notion more so than you know the the head count at the end of it. Right? So. But can I just jump in soon cause that, I think, does raise a really interesting policy? Question. So you know, when we adopted city adopted in middle income housing strategy. There was a desire to get middle income ownership units. And and now it's not so much middle income. That's really ownership is what we're talking about. So to get those ownership units but they were very clear. We don't, but we don't want to do it at the expense of low and moderate income households.

[58:19] which is really challenging. Yeah, yeah. So even with this small change of going from 25 to 15, if we get on-site outcomes. We're still, we're still getting fewer ownership units, whereas if we had gotten like cash theoretically, we could have leverage that money with Federal dollars and built more units that are more affordable for households and maybe rentals. So is it like, with all policy, that's something fun stuff you get to do so. The program has a lot of ways to generate cash. It will continue to generate a lot of cash that I can assure you of and that money will be leveraged with, say, Federal funds, and will

[59:06] put it out there, and we'll build more of of, you know, affordable rentals. and we will probably continue our efforts to to do for sale middle income. But you know we can't produce those in any big numbers. So you know, there are some additional one thing I did want to say, though. the the the consultant analysis. It's hard to get through, especially, you know. Certain sections of it are very technical. Push on through, because the stuff at the at the end I found really fascinating, which was that they actually reached out. We, you know, as part of our contract with them. They talked to some of the local developers, I think 10 or 12. II found that that feedback was fascinating.

[60:00] Part of that was, why aren't you guys doing for sale? Why are you? Why is that by doing rental? So you'll kind of see what people said about that. And then this section that compares our program with other similar programs that are either similar in size or similar in in requirements. There's a whole big table also. Very, very interesting. But yet, you know, it's kind of at the end of like they go through a summary. Then they go through their their feasibility analysis, and then they go through a lot of really technical stuff. But it's sort of at the bottom of all of that. So look for that cause. It's really interesting. I was thinking about this 15% number and imagining what kind of analysis might have been done to, you know, to draw a graph and come to that number. It is kind of surprisingly a nice round number which makes me technical detail it. It tells you how they got the 14.9.

[61:02] It was 14.9. There are some great tables in there. Where they kind of You'll you'll see them. The first one is for sale. The second one is rental. I'm just glad it was 14.9, cause that sounds like we're scientific. Everything's priced at middle income. If you want to bring those pricing down, the percentage actually went down. If if that was the. So, you know, we're we're trying to make the program work, but at that kind of the highest level that we can get right. If if you want to have some low MoD in there. It went down to like 13.5 or something. You want to have the mix we have right now. It's down to like 12.2. So it is a package deal. You need to have the 15% needs to have those middle income prices to make it kind of cross the line. So there's a table in the memo that has additional code updates.

[62:01] there's couple of big sections in there about the land dedication option that we did a diagonal plasa. We'd only done one prior to that and that one was honestly a bit squarely, because it for for a bunch of complicated reasons. So we learned a little bit from the first one. That was where Mount Kavanaugh needs being developed right now and then. Diagonal plaza was the second one. We have a bunch of lessons learned. and so you'll see 2 big sections on how we wanna modify the land dedication. It's not. There's not not nothing ground breaking or anything about it. It's just to make sure that you know, we get the outcome that we want. and one of the biggest modifications in there around the land. Dedication is to say, if you give us land use, you have to give us some money. because we have to have money to develop the land. So it used to say, kind of land, but if the land equaled the value of the cash in lieu you owed. Then you just give us the land, but then we have to come up with the money to develop the site. What I have in there now, is it said. It's if you give us land regardless on what it's valued at.

[63:10] You're gonna have to pay half of the cash individual so and then one other that I would just highlight from that table. We are changing what rents would be required. So the ami for rents for rentals. If they do do them on site. we still don't anticipate. Probably more people are gonna start doing on-site rentals with the removal removal of the State prohibition. Still, not our our favorite, but we wanted to provide not just get 60 units, but get more of a mix. So we're gonna require that not for Bhp left. Wh, why is it not listed? Rentals? Because Bhp doesn't want to manage them, and we don't want to have to sue them every time they violate their covenant.

[64:03] unless they have a lot of experience. Doing it, we're we're happy doing it. But, Our our fear is, yeah. Small conference like that. We could do that. Yeah, no scale, no professional management. no experience. So we're, you know, we're kind of looking how to how to manage that. Anything else, Sloane. So next steps, we have these 2 meetings. September fifth, we're gonna board, basically do the same presentation. Then we'll go right and that week to city council. We will. Actually tell them what planning boards thoughts were there. It's not yet a recommendation. I don't think

[65:01] but it's more like direction and and thoughts and then we will be doing a little bit more public outreach, but really gearing up to go to planning board late September. So it's actually coming up pretty quickly. A couple of weeks later, we're gonna go back to planning board with Council's direction on what the actual code updates should look like, and we will have draft ordinance language and planning board will then make a recommendation to city Council to either adopt or not should also be up there. But we'll be back next month. Yeah. Second reading public hearing is already scheduled for November second. So right before election, yeah, there's there's no wiggle room in this schedule. So that's the next steps. And yeah, well, any other thoughts. What do you guys think? What do you? What do you think of the whole

[66:03] approach? so several things, I mean, I think. personally, I know, just pragmatically speaking. So I represent a lot of developers. They come in and they say, Well, this is what I want to do, and I'm like, well, whatever you wanted to do doesn't really matter. It's like what you can do what's gonna effectively, you know, if you don't get an approval, you're not doing anything, and I think this is almost a corollary of that, and that you know. it. It may sound palatable to go from 25 to 15%. But I think it's really important, you know, casually right? And we have something where there is. you know, it's just the cash, because the you know it's not blue, because nobody's developing these units. We have to kind of think about that and think about how to effectuate that. I know. you know we've just started. Gaze really on Miss and middle for this board. And and the city, you know, probably in a lot of different perspectives. I think that the down payment assistance program a lot of ways trying to play catch up right? So this is something that you can do, or you know, for whatever it is in the future. Again, maybe it's 10 units. Maybe it's less, maybe it's more. But having something where you say, here's a viable means to start developing some of these units to start developing, you know.

[67:21] Use for purchase, too. I think it's a really big thing. I mean, you know. It's too bad. Terry's not here because he's been saying. And and I absolutely agree. Is that it's actually in in a lot of ways. Renting a lot more viable than purchasing in Boulder right now. And I think that you know that trend is that continues, it's something that you know can really put us in even more of a bind. So I think the whole notion of saying. you know, units that that are, you know, more viable that they're actually going to be developed, and they're gonna hit Miss Middle, where some of this audience would not. You know the other thing that I'd be concerned about with cash. And Lou, is that log in your turn? Right? Is that

[68:03] it's getting more and more expensive to develop? There's less and less land to develop on, etc. The variability of the cost of materials, the cost of everything else. With that, you know, we can find ourselves on a large. Okay. Now, we can't do this. You know. You know, there's a wide deck. And there's a lot of other programs that are available for lower percentage lower percentage range projects. There's not really a lot of funding available on Federal level on State level for the missing middle right now. And so I love the effort to try to make adjustments on a very effective program. Say, we wanna make it more effective the square footage aspect. I absolutely love it. Because, you know, it's just been this void. And a lot of jurisdictions have. This is void where it's like, okay, you know, it's just unified unit when you do that. And you have these big units that have a lot of impacts. You know, if you want to talk about what density is.

[69:01] A lot of the footprint can be energy utilization. It can be utilization of space, etc. Right demands that come from a larger unit, etc. And so I think, having that, we're, you know, we're looking at your square footage use where it put us is going to be the driving factor and not these arbitrary cut offs. I love that. I think a lot of jurisdictions need to start doing that, and they'll some have a a lot of the cities doing that because I think it's gonna be really effective going forward one way or another, right? And the whole notion that. Maybe that's an incentive. I know there's other density, density considerations, and maybe that's an incentive for developer to build use that are smaller and more practical and efficient, and we could get more units. And that can house people. even if it's market rate, it's still gonna be something that's more on this side of the market, where you can actually get people that are coming in here and buying that aren't super wealthy. So from all those perspectives, I'm very supportive of this. You know, I'm fine. Look through anything like this with cynical eye, to begin with, but I think it's it's a really good step in the right direction. And really to see it because of those things. The one thing that I will say, regarding the nexus study and fully understand what that is, and it's absolutely imperative to do that. But I like to see a huge impetus on that getting done as soon as possible, because I think we're really

[70:24] lack of a better term right now, leaving a lot of meet on the phone. So I believe in South Boulder, for you know, past decade. And it's essentially every single. So like you're saying so, a lot of those homes are have been historically been rentals and stuff, too. But what's happening? There is no different than you'll see in a mountain town which is a little home that's for a local person, or whatever, and a lot of times people get older, or you know, they get priced out for whatever their families grow. Every single one of those are sold, and these Mega homes are put there, and there's absolutely a nexus, I mean, I could tell ya with with jurisdictions where they've done. The study has to be done, I agree. But you know, in terms of employee generation terms of you know, impact part of footprint impact. The list goes on and on. You know, massive homes that are being built.

[71:14] you know, when the little homes bulldoze, and every time you see one of those you know, you're like, Oh, that's a gonner right? Because, like you said, nobody's building 1,100 squared but new homes, and nobody's buying little homes and say, well, this is just all I want right? I would love to see a a real, you know. Expeditious emphasis put on that nexus study because it's it's II think really important part of everything we're trying to do is something that can really hold some accountability for. You know, a lot of the things that are happening here that you know. So yeah, II agree. So so Sloane and I, what we do, we're we're essentially development reviewers. And we apply the program to.

[72:00] If it has a residential component, we look at it. Every residential unit built in the city. Sloan or I is looking at it and assessing it for Ih? And I tell you what I tell people all the time is we do demo replacements all the live long day. That is how we spend a huge amount of our time. It just it. It's it's out of hand, and we get no affordable housing benefit from any of that stuff. And yeah, there's a lot of them. It's really all we ever see, because there's no lots, you know. you know, very, very rare. It's like a unicorn that somebody will come in with an empty lot and build a house on that. So my first of all says that this will be a council priority. Well, I have some additional thoughts and comments. My head is spinning, and I don't know if it makes sense. I'll give it a try.

[73:05] So the scenario is they just described. A little house gets plastered, replaced with a Mega home, so like, what are the consequences of that? Something happens to my neighbors all the time somebody bills to 5,000 square foot house property which make it less affordable. Your property taxes go way up like. I almost see this as an opportunity to start reaching toward a different outcome on that. But you have to think beyond just well, maybe it's like the intended and consequences otherwise of having this kind of fee on redeveloping single family homes. Maybe it could be kind of a disincentive like I don't. I can't afford to build a 8,000 smaller fee that could be kind of a way kind of a good outcome. Maybe it crosses a boundary. It goes into the area that Carl's gonna talk about about zoning for affordable housing where you might decide you want to do duplex instead of if that were legal, instead of a a big single family. Or maybe there's some relation to Ih in there.

[74:09] You know, I talked to a developer today just about mountain housing, actually. And he said, considering developing market rate housing, but with a deep restriction. So you actually. that goes. then see, they get creative with it and see what else you might get for some positive outcomes for the housing. Well, you guys come up with the idea somehow. That's what we're trying to. II think what you're doing with this work. Footage thing is a great idea. I'm a little skeptical on on the whether you're really gonna get

[75:14] double income units integrated. But at least my experience when this program started out. the way we were able to get affordable units on site was because we were able to acquire sites based on a certain density. And then we could add those we got basically free land for the affordable. And that's why I think this ties in with. I guess what Carl was gonna talk about with the changes in in zoning. I mean, it's just like I think Michael just mentioned it. So these great big houses, and if you give people incentive to do a duplex or triplex that is much more intuitive where you want to go.

[76:01] So II think you have to look at how all these things are play with each other. From a development developer standpoint. You know, you have to balance all that and come up and figure out how to at least break even time in boulder, when entire neighborhoods were developed with the restriction, and thinking, like Wellman Creek, is going back 20 years. you know. So Creek was station. so annexations are different annexations. We can say you have to do affordable housing and cash. Louis is not an option. It's let's negotiate it. And then, basically, we don't negotiate cash for an annexation. So big chunks. So it used to be, we could get 50 or even more than 50% of the units in an amication to be permanently affordable. They had to figure out how to make it work.

[77:06] and they could back in the day. Now they cannot. And it's actually a a, an issue that we're also looking at along with updating the Ih program is kind of looking at the annexation requirements because nobody can do 50% anymore, especially not for sale. Use Federal money to do rentals, they might be able to do it in a rental project, but not a for sale project. So we've actually dropped down. We're at about 40 now, even. That's a really hard lift for for an annexation to do so. I think that's where you must be thinking. I don't think it's it's, it's, it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's well.

[78:00] and you think of something. I lost it. But yeah, I mean annexation policy. It's totally we don't really have a policy. Every annexation is negotiated individually, but we do have sort of guidelines, and that we that we look at to try to keep consistency. Your points will take it. I mean the the idea of if we ever do get to get to the point where we could allow a duplex or triplex on a single family lot. So what are what are the impacts of our changes today on that? And from my perspective, I think it's actually positive, because smaller units. You're still paying your cash and obligation. but it's gonna be a smaller amount for those smaller homes. Well, we think in the consultant thinks that this will be effective, and we will see some on-site units. But you have to just monitor it and see what happens. And if if we don't say anything out of this. We come back in a year or 2. We say, Yeah.

[79:01] you know, nothing's lost, because what it means is they're still gonna pay all cash, at least right? So we had before didn't work. We. We think that this will be or effective way to do it. But we just have to kind of watch and see what the developers do. The developers have to have choices in the program. I guess kind of I mean, too, is that since you're getting under the hood of the car, anyhow, you're fixing the script for just thing, which I think is great. Might as well put these in place and see if it works right. And if you get 10 units great, that's 10 more units, right? That are currently in that cycle. So yeah, I mean. I have my comments whenever I'll go now, some of the key things moving so fantastic topic and a really great presentation. Everyone, send some comment in here. Do any board members have additional comments, questions.

[80:09] so I I'll try to keep them real short. But one of the things that makes me a little cynical about inclusion or housing as a as a general program is, it has this squeezing effect on middle income housing almost as if. as you would expect it to have. And so the fact that we're sitting here saying, Huh! This isn't generating any middle income housing is isn't a surprise. You think about the I don't need to explain that. Or do I have to do? Okay? So well, the the P. You know, the the it ends up being like a a tax development. And so that pushes up prices. And so you have afford. You have some affordability. We have, increased prices on what's left. So that that's the squeeze I'm talking about. And so

[81:05] I just in the in the in the city dialogues in it almost never comes up that we always act like subservient to market forces, that we have no control over how the market works. This giant Frankenstein that we try to fix and work around in different ways. And II just. I just want to say out loud every now and then that it would be great if we could figure out ways to make the market work for us rather than always trying to like. Look at it. See that it's there and then, just like constantly working around it, or or distorting it in ways that actually work against our goals. And so I hope that somewhere, somebody's talking to economists who are thinking outside the box about how to fix these problems. I've read a few things that suggest that there are ways to make the market work for us. But but actually just getting that dialogue going is just incredibly difficult, that because everyone in Bowler is an economist and we all have these ideas about how it works and how it has to work. And you know so

[82:15] II have one more comment. So I just wanted to say that the other. The other thing is that I am. I am discouraged by the notion of of having City Council put focus on something that may generate may or may not generate some. Some, you know, just get on the scoreboard at all. I do appreciate Danny's point about like we have regulations that clearly aren't working. Let's go ahead and fix them. And but you know, when I think about some of the other proposals for middle income housing, like the planning reserve or the airport where you could build more than a dozen. You know, you could build thousands of units. I would. I would really rather have city council focus on something that's gonna make a real difference to people who who need middle income housing. So I'm not against the reforms, and they they sound totally reasonable to me. I'm I would rather have this system work.

[83:09] you know at all. And really, you know, in terms of generating the affordable housing. But in terms of like a priority for city council, I'd I'd man. I'd really love to see thousands of middle income homes rather than so that's a great point. yeah, I mean, I think we can make markets work better for our outcome. You know. There's characteristics, for example. probably another good thought. Who's already gone to that. I agree with you about the big sites, and that's maybe that where I age could be a fly to really create a lot of housing housing. What kind of housing? Besides, you need to think about so? Yeah, I think that's that's it. You know. It's it's great that counsel is taking every piece of this 1 one piece at a time and

[84:04] making changes. We're seeing some. We're gonna see more for the election. And you know, we've already been a recommendation about supplying, is there, for example, I hope that's something that I'll get out to the work plan and help start thinking about making some magic. We were successful middle income housing. Do you get any sense of whether these would be one bedrooms, 2 bedrooms, 3 bedrooms like M. Middle income, but not necessarily family house. Do you have a sense of like what the unit mix might end up being so. So, the 1 one of the most defining characteristic characteristics of this program of an Ih program is that it is a mini me. It is reflective of whatever the market's doing, you get some, you get a cut of the market.

[85:09] So if the market isn't producing family housing, IH the way it's structured right now. Quote. because the the way the whole program was designed, if you're doing all 2 bedroom units. Your Ih requirement is all 2 bedroom. Okay? If you do an all townhouse you have to do townhouse. doesn't have to be that way? And sometimes. So we do have the ability in the program to have some flexibility. And I've actually done it a couple of times. In the past where I somebody came in and said, actually, you know, 2, 9 North, you know the apartments at 2 9 North. They did 2 offsite projects, one for sale and one rental. And we had that discussion and said, Well, you know you're not required to do any 3 bedrooms. But but will you can, you know, can we?

[86:05] You know? So you basically do a bedroom for bedroom or something like that, right? I got instead of a one bedroom and a 2 bedroom would could you do a 3 bedroom? And I think we got 2 out of that. But but the program right now, just basically says, if they're doing all efficiency units, that's why it's that's the requirement for I age. It usually goes the other way around. If they're doing like 2 or 3 bedroom units. They typically will say, now, can I meet the requirement with studios? And I'll say, well, with twice as many studios. Maybe you know, there has to be an equivalency. It has to be additional community benefit, but at least equal. Okay? Right? But I typically will not even entertain that conversation. I'm like not, you know. 2 or 3 bedrooms. That's that's what you need to do. there would have to be some driving reason as to why we would say, Oh, sure, we're gonna take a bunch of efficiencies when you're not, when it's good enough for the market. It's good enough for influence. So

[87:09] thank you. Yeah. Any other questions or comments we specifically call it Pam, since she's on staying quiet, just wanted to make sure she has an opportunity. Ask questions. Sure, I appreciate that. I actually don't have questions. I enjoyed the presentation and the discussion, and just following along at this point. But, thanks, Jay. welcome. I'm on the trg, I would second a lot of the thoughts. I think it's good to improve a great program. This seems like thoughtful, so that it's I also share. I don't know. Concerns is too strong. But questions about where Council spending time, you know. Just bang for the buck.

[88:02] I'm curious about the zoning presentation. I suspect greatest thing, for the buck would be turning single family lots into 2 buck triple slots. You know you do the reserve. It's a one time thing same with the airport. Be great in the moment. But it doesn't really affect that sort of citywide perspective. So anyway, support what you guys are doing totally agree on the nexus for the demo petitions. Please hurry up there. That seems to be a lot of what's happening now, given the current say, to play with zoning and market forces. One thing I would throw out there about the reserve is that it's not in the city, it's that's the only it's not annex. It would not be subject to, ie. To be subject to a negotiation of affordable housing through annexation. So you could have a totally different yeah, we could have. Say, we.

[89:01] you can do all the elus you want. But we want family friendly housing on the formal side. Well, if you guys think of anything, you you know how to get get hold of me. So please pass it along. Yeah, or could just give us a call. Quick question. Did you just go back to that last slide that had a do you want to ask your question while she's doing that? Yeah, real quickly, Michelle, you said that you would Sloane work on Demos all day long to have, like a number of how many demolitions are happening in the city annually. Do you? Do you have a a thought about that, Sloan? I would say. We looked it up earlier this year, but I don't know off the top of my head. That's a love. a couple at least a couple of months. I would say. Yeah, or more. II don't know. I would say anywhere between 2 and 10 a month, I mean depends on the month. Right? Cause. Development has a season right? But yeah, so probably between 50 and 80 a year, it it just seems like a lot.

[90:04] considering that we might get one or 2 single family homes built on it. It's just. I think a lot of us are seeing it in our neighborhoods. Yeah, that that small homes are bought by developers. And then what goes in is is extreme luxury, housing, single family housing. Yeah. The way that the code reads right now doesn't matter who's doing it. It doesn't matter if it's a you know, some somebody who's gonna own or occupy, or if it's a spec builder doesn't matter, they get a waiver great any final questions or comments before I had a couple of questions about this slide. Okay? So my understanding is that this we're giving you, input, we're not gonna vote it on number one or number one recommendation. You've already provided all the input you need to. Okay, great. Just wanted to clarify that point. We can close the discussion on that item and move on to the next one.

[91:06] And that would start with the presentation. Carl. Very important. Thank you so much. Thank you. You know everybody just leaves any questions. But then, are you? Gonna stay. that's a great presentation. You're welcome, hoping you'd be my cheerleader longer than last night. I'll stay on, Carl, if you need me. Okay. okay, thanks.

[92:08] Yeah. Great. Just take a quick water break a little bit. I guess I'm going to get the right a little the last time you get to have what's up. Did you get?

[93:00] Second? I was. oh, my gosh! Gets the best food always. Are these like spinach ones, these ones here expansion kind of well, you're so good to ask to say that right? And so maybe plenty of time for so, Jim, are you? Are you the Jim Leach? I keep hearing your name. People say how long? Especially community Co. Co. Housing.

[94:03] I first heard your name from David Adamson he called me today. Have lunch with him on Friday. He's nice. I'll charge stuff. I saw bunch of his stuff. And I was reading the way I had to do that. Come to this idea. Exactly. Okay. We're settling in for Item B, it's only for affordable housing. This is a public hearing. We have some members of the public who are listening in there. You're gonna wanna comment. We'll get to that and good times complex subject. But we'll cover those efficiently as we can, and so we'll start with a staff presentation from Carl Tyler. Thank you chair. Good evening, board members again, Carl Geiler, with planning and development services

[95:04] tonight we're gonna talk about ordnance. 85, 99 the project is called Zoning for affordable housing. You'll recall that we talked about this twice before this year, the last time, I believe, was in March. I'm not gonna read all the the words on the slide. But this just kind of sets up the the problem statement relating to the housing crisis in Boulder, much like in other communities across the nation. And there we've seen some recent trends where, many cities have been making edits to their their land, use codes or zoning codes to remove barriers to housing in cities, to get more housing, to get more smaller and modest sized units. So that's something that we're really working towards. With this. I'm looking at different aspects of our our zoning code, related to density calculations form and bulk standards, intensity standards and parking standards to kind of peel away some of those barriers to to housing.

[96:10] So this is the title of the ordinance the purpose of tonight is to hold a public hearing on the Ordinance for the Housing Advisory Board to deliberate the ordinance and then make a recommendation to city council. These are the questions we we posed to the Board, so does the Housing Advisory Board find that the proposed ordinance implements, the adopted policies of the Boulder Valley Conference of plan, and then, secondarily, does the Housing Advisory Board recommend any modifications to the ordinance. But we'll come back to that. This is a slide. I showed the board. Not too long ago we talked about occupancy. So I'll go through this briefly. But this, basically, you're all aware of the Senate bill that went through the State that actually did not pass. But it did touch on a lot of these zooming topics that we've been talking about. 80 use occupancy middle housing. It's possible we might even see a future iteration of this that, you know will impact our work. It's something we've been monitoring

[97:17] but as part of this project and the Occupancy project and the Adu project. We've been looking at a number of different national studies articles, commentaries on housing cause. It's an issue throughout the country. So obviously, there's a lot of factors that that you know relate to housing costs and why the costs are going up. But in America. Obviously, we have a lot of single family homes, and a lot of land gets gobbled up, you know, with lower intensity, housing and things like that. So all that, you know combines with zoning restrictions that dictate that that make it more and more difficult to put housing in cities. So we're here. You see a lot of commentaries that really make recommendations

[98:02] to try to relax a lot of those zoning standards. To get more housing, so that you can try to impact the overall cost by adding more to the supply. Obviously, boulder is A is a, I would say, an extreme case, much like cities in the Bay Area, where you have constrained land, you have a highly desirable place where people want to live. And then you have, you know, zoning restrictions on top of that that drives up the cost. So there's kind of a multi pronged approach that has to be taken on this issue, you know, combined with the inclusionary housing project, there's gonna be more that we do after this. Obviously, this is an ongoing thing that we have to work on. But no one option can solve the problem. But we recognize that this is, we're moving, you know, down the field same issue exists, particularly in West Coast States, where they've passed State legislation to affect housing costs by being more lenient on different housing types. We've seen that in Washington, Oregon, and California as well as we've heard about the city of Minneapolis taking some big steps.

[99:17] One thing we wanted to make really clear is is, what do we mean by affordable housing? There's kind of a broad array of what we're talking about here. So there's the permanently affordable housing, the deed, restricted housing that relates to the I age program. That's certainly part of this discussion. But we're also including attainable housing. So that's households that pay no more than 28 or 30% of their income on on housing, and also just to focus on more market rate. Modest sized housing. So obviously get trying to get more small market rate units is important to bring down costs. If you have a market or you have zoning that just inherently encourages larger units. They're gonna be more expensive than the smaller units that you can get by virtue of smaller square footage. So we're trying to look at changes to the zoning code that can try to encourage more smaller units.

[100:13] And the point of this being is that if we can change the zoning to allow more housing, more units. That's more housing that that gets pulled into the Ih program. That's more. I inclusionary housing fees that get put into the importable affordable Housing fund. It's more money that the city can use to leverage with Federal and State dollars to get more housing built in the city. So there's a lot of reasons to relax these regulations. I'm not going to go into a lot of depth on this slide. We have talked about this slide before, but the point we wanted to make was just that this project kind of grew out of a number of things so like the diagonal Plaza project, was one example, that the zoning out there was was more allowed, more of a kind of a suburban type project with 1,200 square feet of open space per unit, and that basically

[101:14] when you look at it on that site drives larger sized units. This is something that we see in a lot of zoning districts. I think Br, one is like the easiest one to describe. So basically. And and Jim might understand this like from a development perspective. But like you take an far that applies to the site. So when you figure out how much floor area can I build, you get that number. But then, when you apply the the zoning restriction of 1,600 square feet of lot area per dwelling unit. you take that flurry and you divide by that number. The outcome is usually a pretty large average sized unit, so like when you look at a 5 acre site. It was like 3,500 square feet was the average housing unit size. And you know, we've heard from developers over the last few years that that's like you need to change your zoning because you're just encouraging these larger size units. So by getting rid of that 1,600 square feet of lottery per dwelling unit that goes away. Then they can use that square footage, break it down and get smaller sized unit. So in that the case that we're showing here is that, you know, with diagonal plaza. That's what they did. And they got a significantly higher number of units, but but generally within the same development volume

[102:30] that would be allowable before. And then with that you get more. Ih applicable units. In this case it was like, yes, I mean, around 40 extra units from it. So this is the reason why we're we're looking at a number of zones to make this change. So another part of this project is obviously trying to get more missing middle housing throughout the country, and especially in Boulder, you'll notice that a lot of times. We're just mostly getting at the the ends of this spectrum. That is transect, you know, where you get single family homes, or you get stacked flats, you know.

[103:06] 4 or 5 story buildings. So we're trying to look at ways in the zoning to try to encourage that middle housing like duplexes, fourplexes and townhomes, things that are more scaled like single family homes. And like when we look at our our housing types right now, I think middle housing only accounts for about 9 of the housing units and boulder. So this project kicked off in at the retreat with City Council in 2,022. Again they asked us, in response to the Diagno Plaza project and other factors, to look at loosening up the code and then we came back to Council in March of this year, with a study session kind of these 3 main themes, we we really firstly started looking at some of the zones that were problematic, and they tended to be in the areas where the the Boulder valley comes to plan encouraged more housing. But then but those were the areas where it encouraged more large units and zoning.

[104:07] So we started with that, we talked about duplexes and triplex is in like lower density areas. We didn't recommend at that time moving forward with that just cause. There weren't necessarily that many additional units you could get in the rural, residential, or residential estate areas. So we took another look at it and looked at the low density areas. And there's actually quite a few the potential so I'll talk a little bit more about that. So then we talked about parking modifications, just basically looking at where there's some barriers in the code, like, if you have a project that's predominantly one bedroom units, there's a 1.2 5 parking space per unit requirement before through the years, you know, that should just be one, you know. So just, or looking at parking reductions, making it easier for residential projects to do parking reductions. So we've looked at that as well. So Council basically told us to move forward with all of these options. They did make some suggestions, firstly, to take another look at all of the the high density residential zones.

[105:12] because this is a part where the zoning doesn't conflict with the Boulder Valley Conference of Plan. There's no cap on the density. So we have some more flexibility to allow more housing units. So this slide shows where all the the high density zones are in the city. So we did take a look at those we also started thinking about. We weren't necessarily looking to change all the Site Review thresholds. But how could we encourage more metal housing? So we also looked at trying to exempt out projects that did middle housing. So I'll talk a little bit more about that. So in our pass on duplexes and triplexes again, we looked at the the number of lots within the city. There are quite a few lots. That room don't that have the potential to add units. So what that means is in the low density zones. You have to have a minimum lot area per dwelling unit, and that is capped in the plan so in order to allow, you know even more

[106:11] than this, you'd have to really open up the Comp plan and go through that process of visioning and then implement it through zoning. But we did find that there's the potential for over 1,600 units over time. And these, this exists today. So basically someone could subdivide their property today based on their land area and add a single family house. The reason that they've not done that might be just their own personal preference, or it could be, you know, based on topography like they just can't meet the subdivision Regs. So we we do think that this change of allowing duplexes and triplexes on land that has the lot area could actually encourage people to do conversions of their house, so they might not have been able to do a subdivision before because of Topo. But they have the land area, they could actually convert their house to a duplex or a triplex if they have the land area. So that's what. Why, we thought this was a a good step to move forward on.

[107:12] And one thing I wanted to make clear to you, and I know there's some concerns in the in the community about this is that we already have what we call compatible development standards that apply to a lot of our single family zones. You know, there's a lot of regulations that apply to a single family house, you know, floor area ratio lot coverage bulk plane solar access sidewall articulation what we're proposing in the ordinance. I'll I'll touch on this later is all of those same things are proposed for duplexes or triplexes to keep it, you know. So it fits in. So Council asked us to do a lot of community engagement on these topics. So we've heard kind of a broad array of of of feedback on this. I think you know, when we talk to like university of Jc neighborhoods and plan Boulder, we've heard, you know, a lot of concerns about allowing duplexes and triplexes. In those neighborhoods there's concerns that families are gonna be driven out of single family areas that there'll be more parking impacts. As a result.

[108:20] There's also a concern that if you're adding these types of housing types that they're disproportionately impacted, and that there's not real affordability guaranteed by allowing these types of units. There's there's a feeling that addition, additional density, or allowing these housing units should be deed restricted. We've been hearing that throughout the community, and that the city can't build itself out of its out of this housing crisis. On the other end of the coin. You know. We've heard, you know, from the development community these factors that that just encourage the the larger units, or that we should be doing this. So we also are hearing a lot of folks that are championing, allowing more middle housing throughout the city.

[109:04] When we talked to the community connectors and residents, I would say that the feedback was a little bit mixed. I think they they acknowledge that zoning restrictions are limiting and could be targeted to specific types of people that younger generations can achieve. The American dream, particularly in Boulder there was support for more housing types, but there was also concern that came from concentrating housing, particularly, you know, in response to like cheaper housing that gets clustered in area, that that may not be what people want. There were concerns that if you know crunch too many people into an area that could affect, you know, mental health. So it was. It was an interesting array of of comments that came from from that group last time we talked about occupancy. I touched on the beer boulder questionnaire. I'm not going to go into too much detail on, you know, the background of that. But obviously it's it's one tool among many to get feedback from the community. It's not looked at the same way we do a scientific.

[110:10] valid survey but it is. It is interesting to see what themes can come from that. And when we asked questions specific to allowing duplexes or triplexes, or or the things that are proposed in this ordinance. There was, mostly, there was a a majority of of support for adding additional units in the growth areas. So in like high density areas and and the neighborhood centers, the Boulder Valley regional center. There wasn't as much support for duplexes and triplexes, but it was more than half and then, when we talked about asking questions about reducing parking requirements. It was more half and half like less less enthusiasm for that. So we came to to have. So it's March 20 s back back when we talked about these options before the the board was in support of the recommended options, there was some disappointment that was expressed

[111:12] that it couldn't be more wide scale as far as allowing duplexes and triplexes in more places. And like single family areas, we've talked about. What that would involve. It doesn't mean it isn't something that couldn't happen in the future. But we did hear that. But there was support for that type of process when we moved into updating the Comp plan in the future. There were some members that felt that we should be taking more aggressive parking reduction changes in the code. We talked to planning board in April. After that, I'd say most of the board seemed to support the options that we had proposed moving forward on there were 3 board members that supported the concept of allowing duplexes and triplexes one member found that. You know, we hadn't gone far enough

[112:02] off on that topic, and there were 2 board members that were more cautious of the changes, and felt that people like system triplexes should not be allowed in single family areas that you know, single family property owners bought into those areas and and didn't expect that those types of changes would occur there was concern about allowing far increases or open space decreases a as part of this there was concern about adding renters and that there should be more of a focus on getting home ownership in the community. So after all that we basically gathered up all that feedback that we got from the boards and from the community. We did a lot of the looking at the different articles and commentaries, and presented this all to city council on June fifteenth. At that meeting basically council supported all the options that we were proposing, moving forward on the on the high density, residential zones

[113:00] moving forward with duplexes and triplexes. In the single family areas. Again, no increase in density about that permitted in the Boulder Valley commerce's plan. And there was also support for exempting out middle housing from the site review process. So they instructed us to move forward with an ordinance which we've done. so I'll jump into the details. Of this again, if you have any questions, just interrupt me. So and ordinance 85 99. There is an exemption for any middle housing from Site Review. So basically, if anyone does a duplex triplex or townhomes, and it doesn't require any modifications. Even if you trigger the Site Review threshold, you would be exempt from site reviews. So this is again trying to encourage more by rate development of middle housing. There's a number. Would that have applied to the J road project? Or were they requesting other Site review triggers like height, exemption?

[114:05] I think there's modification. I'm not familiar with that project entirely, but I think there are some modifications to that one. Yeah, just curious. So there's a number of high density, residential zones that right now in the code require a a planning board public hearing to ask for additional housing units on the site. So we're proposing that that those be pulled out of the code and just allow the housing by right. We've also heard from a number of developers that and a lot of folks that want to see more townhouses in the city, that there's a lot of barriers to townhouses, I think, in particular, because of the form and bulk standards. You know, most of the zoning districts have a side yard set back into doing a town out where you have townhouses on each lot. You know, you have to get down to a 0, and the second you go down 0, you're in a site review. It's a modification. So what this ordinance includes is basically allowing a 0 setback by right without it. Trigger right site review.

[115:05] moving on to the use standards, we've changed the use standards to allow duplexes and triplexes by right in the Rl, r-r and Ree zones. They would have to meet the minimum lots size per unit. Rl, one would be 7,000. Our E is probably the biggest change. It's it's 15,000 square feet per per unit now in the Co. But because the Comp plan puts it in the same category as Rl. One, we're proposing 7,500 square feet per unit. So would encourage. You know, potential duplexes in the re area. Farr is currently still 30,000 square feet. Again, if we want to get more units, and this or cottage courts. You know, things like that. We're looking at a compound process again, in the theme of trying to get more smaller units. We have requirements in the code right now for efficiency, living units

[116:03] which are units that are 475 square feet, or less. If you propose more than 40% of the units in a development as El use it triggers a user view. We're proposing to remove that requirement. We already do have housing type diversity requirements and site reviews. We feel that covers kind of the goals of trying to get housing diversity, but not having to trigger a new process, just because you know, someone's proposing El Use. I'm not going to go into all the detail about each particular zone, but I'm happy to answer any questions. But again, the logic is looking. You know, some of these growth areas and trying to figure out moving away from the 1,600 square feet of lot area per per dwelling unit, or the 1,200 square feet of lot area per dwelling unit, just getting rid of that and just looking at more of a volume metric. you know far, and an open space per lot requirements. So a more simplified way of figuring out what could be built on the site and then trying to get again. Encourage smaller sized units. So that would be applied to all these particular zones. We looked at a number of different projects in each of these zones to try to match the intensity that we see in those areas.

[117:19] And we've done the same thing in the Rh Zones. Again, getting rid of the automatic planning board requirements, getting rid of the 27 deleting notes per acre limits and just switching to far and open space per lot. I talked about the parking standard. So again, like any units that are more than 61 bedrooms would just be one per unit. We'd we'd be allowing residential parking reductions. Now, at an administrative level up to 25 without site review today, it requires site review. If any residential project goes for a parking reduction. We've been asked to kind of make the parking reduction criteria stronger. So we've done that. We've reorganized the parking reduction criteria to be more clear and better organized than it is today. There's a lot of

[118:10] redundancy and conflict between the working standards and the Site Review standards. We've cleared that up. And then, lastly, the subdivision standards also are a barrier to town homes. Our townhouses. They right now it has a minimum 30 foot width for a lot. So obviously, if somebody's one wants to do a town home, they they want to do less than that. That requires a subdivision waiver. So in this case we're allowing down to 15 feet for a lot furniture for a town home project without triggering the waiver. So I've I've gone over most of these these issues. But these are the reasons why we think that the project meets the problem statement the purpose statement and the goals and objectives of the project it. These changes would encourage more by right development of middle housing. In boulder it keeps the relatively similar form and massing restrictions that we see in the zones, but encourage, if it removes

[119:12] the barriers that can allow more housing units to be fit into that volume. Allowing more housing gets us more attainable housing. It gets us more deep, restricted, permanently affordable housing it. It just like the Boulder Valley Conference of Plan asks for in a number of guidelines and policies it encourages more housing in the areas that we anticipate seeing housing along corridors in the Boulder Valley Regional Center in neighborhood centers trying to get more housing in those mixed use centers. and then it removes the onerous reviews for residential parking reductions and the barriers to to townhouses I as I spoke of. So we find that the organs would meet many relevant policies to this issue. Which I've listed on the slide.

[120:02] and with that this is the proposed motion for the board. If the board agreed with the analysis and happy to answer any questions. 5, 2. So when is the next older valley comp plan? Revisit. It starts in 2025. Okay. okay, so my next question is, there's a lot of discussion about adaptive reuse from office into apartments. And and so one of the questions that I have is if somebody wanted to do so. Smaller units, let's say. you know, efficiencies or Sros with common bathroom, or something like that, to sort of help with people who are currently almost to provide some of those permanent supportive housing. Will any of these permit smaller units and different kinds of

[121:06] housing with that might fall into the adaptive reuse of office. It depends on the zone. But I'd say, Yes, you know, obviously, cause like. for instance, if you, if somebody had an office building in in the Br. One zone and there's that 1,600 square feet per unit, they would have to abide by that when they break up the building, but by peeling that away, then that limitation is there anymore. You could just fit the housing in there. You'd still have to meet, you know the parking requirements, you know, for the housing. But yeah, that's a perfect example or board question. Thank you, Karen so just regarding the whole issue of to have a duplex or a triplex. And Whether or not we could find some way to have those de-restricted

[122:01] just if you could elaborate on. you know. what you guys looked at in terms of whether or not you can do that and stuff whether we could deed restrict. If somebody, one of the comments that you got, or people criticizing the notion that you know some could build a duplex instead of single family or triplex. Yeah, those aren't deed restricted. So yeah, I mean, I think there, there's some in the community, I think that you know, allowing any additional density should come with, you know, guaranteed affordability. We're not recommending that cause. That that wasn't part of the scope of the project. Number one number 2, just the the administrative process of of trying to case by case review every additional unit and then deep restricting it. Is something we'd have to do a lot more analysis on on even our our staffing levels to even, you know, administer that. So it's not something that's on the table as part of this project.

[123:01] I think there, there are some, you know. It could rise up to some on council that might want this to be something we look at in the future. But we're not recommending it right. And I just wanted that answer because you brought up that that question. Can I tag on to that. Some folks might say we want to incentivize a duplex or a triplex instead of one large single family home? Would those be like comparable footprints, like. If somebody built a duplex or triplex, would they obtain additional square footage over what they could rebuild as just a very large single family home. No, it it all be the same compatible development standard. So same floor area, same lock coverage, all the same. Require, you know, standards. Yeah, that's really good to know. So then, if you added an affordability requirement for duplex or triplex, you're basically disincentivizing in that housing type compared to a very large single family home to me. That's a compelling argument not to go there.

[124:09] Well, sorry. I'm getting a little tired, but can you? Can you help me understand cause cause, the last bullet said, we're gonna increase affordable. Ha! The restricted affordable housing. I assume that's through in ih. and and said that the age can you? Can you spell that out for me? One more time? I have. I have a single family home and turn it into duplex that generates. I and inclusionary housing cash and loose somehow. Right? Yeah, that can. I mean the logic that we're expressing in this presentation is, you know, based on the current constructive. Ih in the learning stages of what's being proposed here. So the logic was, you know, if you loosen up the the zoning code to allow allow a jump in the number of housing units within a project. There's more units that are subject to, Ih, so we'd be adding to the inventory of deed restricted. That's the logic.

[125:11] You're probably going to get cash. Yeah, yeah. because of the scale, right? You can't. So anything below or 2. Go ahead. Go ahead and think. yeah, I guess kind of along those same lines. Are we gonna run into the same kind of argument. We just had the last presentation of our developers actually gonna end up creating a formal zoom project Related to the Ih cash and Lu stuff depends on the size of the project. Okay, II would say, yes. So with like a dupe, duplex or a triplex, do it. Probably take the cash. So it would be depending how we how we structure the cash flow,

[126:08] depending how we structured cash and loop. But still, you know, rule of thumb. You can say, you're gonna get same amount of cash alert, same amount of cash for beat discussions. Last time with Carl there was a concern. It was like you take a single family house and split up 3 ways. You're paying cash, and later on 2 new units. So where's the incentive in that? Whereas now that it's based on square footage. I'm sorry. New development is a better example, not conversion. So that triplex you you're paying by square foot, so that cash in there spread out evenly among 3 different projects, and will be lower because each of those is smaller. So yeah, it's not a disincentive. So right now, if you took a big house. demoed it, replaced it with another big house. You pay nothing if you demo and replace it with a triplex 3 units in the same square feet.

[127:06] 2 of those are subject to IH. Because they're new. One is not. If you get credit for one, it's not credit for square feet. It's credit for one unit. It works. Now, it's kind of goofy. That's why this whole demo replacement thing is important. Okay, we had that. Then you would have right? We level on that landfill. Yeah. that also be true, Michelle. If the 3, 2,000 square feet or without each get a credit that bias get credit for one for one, just for one. Yeah, okay. in my, in my mind. II have some questions for clarification and a few comments. So so I don't know. You said. I think you said that today, in compliance with the cop plan, could potentially over time add 1,600 homes in the lower density areas. Yes, so, and that's just something that could happen today without any changes. Well, today, if if they were, gonna add those units, they would have to get approval of a subdivision and build a single family house.

[128:18] So we we looked at all the lot sizes and figured out what properties have potential? But again, there might be if if they came in like. For instance, if a property like had a stream or a ditch running through it, they wouldn't be able to find a building site for the other single family house. So while the lot sizes there to give them that potential, they wouldn't really be able to act on it, whereas with these changes they could actually go on. I have the land area. I could convert my house into a triplex or a duplex. So there's a big difference between rezoning all the low density, single family areas of folder and taking what sounds like a more targeted approach. I mean, this is a this is kind of a

[129:04] incremental step, I mean, who knows what you know? Future councils are going to ask us to do. But this is the way we can try to achieve those additional housing types in those areas. Now now for 2,025 or anything else. Yeah. okay, I think that's a positive step is that I feel like that goes a little bit beyond what we talk. I talked about it before. I think the reason we originally didn't emphasize it as much is because you'll remember I worked on the the large homes of Lots project from several years back, and there wasn't a lot of yields that came out of those changes because it was large homes and lots, and we were only focused on the Rr and Re areas, and there was only, like, you know, a hundred or so properties that were in that category. But when you look at Re and Rl. Which we then looked at with as part of this project that opened up the potential cause we're talking about like Rl. Is much more pervasive in the city, and there were a lot more properties that have not yet been subdivided. That's a change from the March presentation.

[130:19] Yes, I think we dug deeper. And yeah, yeah, cause I was a little surprised that the that the lot size was like 7,000 square feet, which I think there's like a sixth of an acre that's actually kind of smaller than most like a lot of quarter acre lots that you'd find in a lot of the city. So a lot of a lot of single family homes are eligible under this. Yeah, like, I said, there could be some constraints that stop them, or they just want to have a larger property, you know. Well, also, the subdivision process takes time and money and expertise and a lot of people, I mean, and it's an extra barrier, right? An extra step that a developer or a homeowner would have to go through before they could achieve that outcome.

[131:06] And if I'm understanding this proposal, it would make it streamlined and make it easier, more legal to do higher density development areas, or currently maybe more commercial or mixed commercial and character. They relate to that. I'm thinking that a lot of those areas probably have a lot of surface parking fairly low web or just commercial looks like that. Is there something specifically that can encourage, incentivize, conversion of under use? Parking lots to? It's a kind of a little beyond the scope of what you're looking at? Or do you think that could be equivalent? Well, I think the the lot area or open space per dwelling unit requirement is in somewhat is somewhat of a distant set of. you know, for them to do housing. We've heard that from some developers. I don't know that this ordinance goes to the extent of incentivizing to that extent. I think there might be more that, you know needs to be done, or there needs to be, maybe area planning in certain areas to figure out other changes to the zoning to encourage

[132:14] and so, you know, there's there's a lot of just kind of lucrative script Mall type developments. And if they're making a lot of money, they're not really thinking too much about making changes. If the money's coming in. We look at that diagonal plaza example. And so I think there's a lot of, you know, underperforming commercial areas on 20 Street. This is a huge area potential, because rather than saying incentives, could it just be specifically referenced? And in order to say, this is a desired outcome just to get enough people's radar. Well, I mean, it's it's pretty clear in the Comp plan that it's that it's desired. We have. We have guidelines for the Boulder Valley Regional center and and neighborhood centers to try to get more mixed. Use, you know, again trying to get retail on the ground floor and then residential above is the preferred

[133:08] mode of development in those areas. I mean, those probably will probably have to go even deeper on the next. You know, top plan update on that. But we did put a lot of renderings and stuff in the yeah. future zoom

[134:00] public hearing. Okay? Great. I told, we have some people. We need to go over the rules. Public engagement again. Okay? No, unless we have difficulty, then I might. Let's see who's in the waiting room to come, and I'll just provide everyone that we are looking for comments specific to the topic under discussion, and that they should be personal to members of the Board. That's a bad heart phrase for them right? Who we got in the waiting room? No, nobody's, and I mean Larry, and maybe offer it again in case nobody's listening. Lynn raised your hand. Yeah.

[135:00] I didn't want I just I just want to say, could you please, put on. II run a very tight schedule. I follow 9 city boards. I go on to all kinds of stuff. Yesterday I had to miss planning board, public comment and public Karen, because I was on a weed tour at Rabbit Mountain. you know. Tonight I have the farmers market. All I wanna get is one peach, and the hab can't even tell me a range of when public hearing will be so. Could you put on your agenda? The times, like everybody else does. They put the amount of time for each agenda item so I can run my life, and so I can have my one peach before I have to freeze all winter. because I live at 45 degrees all winter long. Okay, I really live in Colorado. I feel it in Colorado in the summer. I live at 85 degrees, you know now, because I haven't got the money to do things the the comfortable way. So what I am saying. The main emphasis of what you ought to be doing with regards to this affordable housing

[136:04] is that you should be doing planned mainstream multi generational communal housing on a big footprint, you should decide how many square feet you want per person. I don't think it can be less than 500. Honestly, I'm sorry I have a whole house full of shit. but I want that stuff. I need my stuff. I have to read about the municipalization again. I have to read about this. I have piles of papers everywhere. I know I've got a fire hazard, but that's the way I wanted, and I think a minimum of 500 square feet. Then you have to decide how much each person should have per square foot on the lot size, what's their deserving amount? Because we are not you. New York City. My dad left New York City to come to Boulder because he wanted this in 1952, he graduated. This is what we want in Boulder, in my opinion, is a small town. Feel so. The way to do that is not like Co. Housing, not not Co. Housing, Jim. This is better than Co. Housing. This is multi-generational communal homes designed this way, subsidized by the city.

[137:12] These are the subsidies you need to give is to architects to design this stuff 4,500 square foot house with 4 families. In what about people that are splitting up? But like families? And they have to cross track town to take their kids around and stuff. They could live in the same house with other families, or, you know, multi generational old people, young people all sized people in one place. The maximum check on it would be, how many washers and dryers do you need? And I think that's one washer and dryer for 10 people, which is 4,500 square feet, or something like that 9 people, which is what the what we should have is bigger houses. These efficiencies are not efficient. They are not cheaper, they are just more expensive, just like the occupancy level. Argue, it's true. smaller cause, more carbon footprint, more dry wall, more sinks, more infrastructure. Done.

[138:05] Okay, thank you, Lynn. Thank you for respecting the time. Appreciate your comments. Any one of their raised hands. That's perfect. Okay, great. We can go on to forward discussion about this and jump in everything to a vote. Okay, can make comments. Yes. sorry. so I've been on this board since 2,018, and I want to applaud the fact that one of the things that we've been talking about since then that we're finally seeing is the implementation of yeah, removing some regulatory obstacles and some process obstacles to achieve the desired results, particularly for the middle income type, you know, 100% middle income incentivizing through process and through.

[139:09] you know, the the amount of regulation and and obstacles in the way, I think is a great concept. I'd love to see that implemented here. Very, very supportive of that. in addition, you know, we were talking about this whole thing with tear down. You know, we're talking about everyone playing field. Hopefully. We'll have that next study. We'll have that all done in the interim. One of the things that you see is right now. So you're talking about a tear down of a older, smaller, single family, whole kind of old school boulder. The only option is maxing out building up, and we did a great job of explaining how that happens, and all the mechanisms in place for that to happen. and I think, at the very least. this gives a more level playing field for other competitive concepts which would be duplexes. Triplex is something where you're using better making better use of that density. It's still

[140:12] fiscally rewarding. It's a different concept. It's a different model, I would caution. You know I do have some clients that are all duplexes, and they're insanely expensive on the flip side. You know, in a lot of areas, Denver say, like the Highlands slums, like a lot of those areas are actually sold duplex to begin with. And so when the inevitable tear down unfortunately happened. you got 2 duplexes. And and instead of big trophy homes, I think that it not only does create more potential units on the on the market. And we're variation. But it also sends a kind of ethos right? That we're not just single family homes. We're not just this kind of residential school, and I think that you know we've all seen the errors of our ways over one course of time kind of orienting too much for a single family and expansive, accessible, open space.

[141:09] It says, what area? And so making these adjustments, I think, is terrific. This is good for a step. I do have some concerns about the affordability part of it, but I understand absolutely why it's not on here now and I am supportive of, because I think this is something that we talked about, and it's really nice to see it kind of come into play come into play in a way that I think has a lot of good, pragmatic and effective first steps to get this done, and within the master plan as well. Thank you, Danny. Karen. I'm sort of new to this whole zoning and the calculations, but I think I think I think the goals are admirable. And I think it is something that the community wants. And so I'm supportive, based on my understanding right now.

[142:00] Thank you. Feeling I do have anything to add to that. I kind of say similarly. still learning all the language, but I'm pretty supportive of everything. My. I guess the concern I still have is about whether or not developers will create affordable housing in these. I guess this is what Danny just said to like. He understands why affordability isn't really included in this right now. So I think that altering the zoning is a really great first step as supportive. Thank you. Don't. Yeah, I I liked how you. you know, kind of work within what the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan allows, and seems like you kind of just went right up to the edges of that. And I think this will be a great exercise, and showing the city that we can update zoning and reasonable ways, and the sky won't fall. I think this guy is not gonna fall after

[143:06] these changes are made. And yeah, I am. I'm in support one full of that kind of kind of excited about what we just talked about with the I would come not so much creating affordable housing, but maintaining, let's say you feel like you can't afford to stay in your home anymore, because taxes, or whatever. If you were able to subdivide the duplex, then maybe you can. So that could be a win a big 3 or interesting way things one of the time. I have question for the board. If if you were. is anyone interested in creating resolution that would offer some amendments to what's been presented tonight.

[144:03] I think I mean. fearful of be pretty ostentatious, I mean, so they're the real kind of you know, lattice here, and so wouldn't want to disrupt that. I think you know, we can have next steps coming down the line, but you know we have to start somewhere, and that's where any good legislation begins. I wouldn't want to mess with this right now. Another thought. alright. Michael, I I think that you know this is should encourage a small builder to developers and and home owners that to get creative and and and and come up with the result you're looking for. And what I would suggest is that the city also.

[145:05] yes, as creative as you can. I know it's gotten very difficult to do that. But I remember when we did the little. The co-hoping and not an island! But nomad, we're they had this site that was hadn't even been asked into the boulder, and it would all surround it by single family houses, and it was good for poor single family lots. And we went to the city and said, You know, we wanna do a community in there with 11 units, and we'll make 7 of them affordable. And and we did that, and I think it really complemented the the whole neighborhood. So what you're looking for is, you know, crazy people that are willing to try that kind of thing and then figure out how to score them through the finding process. So this is definitely the right direction.

[146:05] I think that's a great point. Thank you, Jim. I mean, brought up. I mean we've done some really cool things in this now. And now the economics are different. It's more challenging. But we start moving back in that direction. But anyone else have a comment on what you might propose other than what you talked about. But one of the things that I would say is that I like this nice, subtle message to the State that you know local entities can kinda shape and orient. These things come up with those solutions themselves, and the State should be looking at the jurisdictions that don't do anything rather than have some blanket regulation where they're saying. You know. we're gonna come in and think where everybody's calculus here. So this is a good example of you know what you can do to improve on on the circumstances. So

[147:01] so so I have a question. Let's say, I have a medium house or small house on a big lot. and we were talking about how you know right now it's easier to build a bigger house on that lot, and that these changes would help facilitate. the construction of duplexes, let's say, on the lot. So is there any sort of incentive for for at least one of the duplexes not to be outrageously expensive? Or is that gonna be sort of handled a different way. Or is it just going to be sort of market forces and and the duplexes are still gonna be 2 million bucks to goodbye. I mean, it's it's not guaranteed affordability. So it it does take into, you know, market forces. But again, it's like that logic that if you're taking up huge house, and you're breaking it up. It's going to be smaller, square footage. So that that's more

[148:11] more affordable than what that bigger house would be. So that's the hope, you know, of all of allowing this. So the IH program could that dovetail with if one was market rate and one was affordable. like, how might that work together? Making sense? Yeah, no, you're making perfect sense. well, if they're rentals, it's a 25% requirement. So no one of them would not be affordable. Be cash. So the code does say that if they can't, if they don't want to pay the cash or can't pay the cash. They could be one, you know, in that scenario they could make one affordable. But nobody's gonna do that

[149:02] because it's not, you know financially wouldn't make any sense to do that. They're gonna pay the cashier. So you have a percentage requirement. And it's not 50%, you know. that's too high, I mean, and and and she'll talk about the alternative method of combined. Well, I mean, if it wouldn't really apply in this case. Because why would somebody. If you give them that additional ability to make 2 units. and then you take away the value for one of the units, which is essentially what affordability? Right it it it it actually makes the value less than the cost to construct. What if? What if you? What if you and what if you created some sort of bonus of like. Okay, instead of like duplex. Well, that you do will bet. Let you build 3 if one of those 3 is affordable like I don't. I don't know enough about the mechanics to how to make it work, but I think it would be great if there was some sort of incentive.

[150:03] or to convert a large, an opportunity for one single family home into something that promoted like our middle income or affordable. But he's really a matter of scale, right? So does it do. Jim's example of you know, nomad, is, is that a larger scale that probably could happen when you're talking about just the duplexer triplex super challenging. I think it's worth I mean, not great conversation. I started thinking big single family live what you could do with it. perplex with I don't know, for each unit had an avu. I mean. you're kind of getting to a bigger scale of housing. Then I don't know how you would create a regulation that would encourage that. It seems like that. I think it could be discussed in the future. It's a duplex. Have to be half of the that's mean. Could you have a duplex that was essentially like if you had an adu and just say it happened at

[151:08] being a lot that was conforming to the update. You could just cleave that off. And then. okay. well, I guess I actually have a question about how inclusionary housing fees work, if like, if I do a duplex. And there's I do very little work. I put very little money into it. Am I still gonna end up paying an inclusionary housing cash and move, or maybe, if I may, could I sell it? I'm sorry. I realize that very. You know these are you getting into the details of where things work and they don't work, and how you know the scale is so important. So if you had a house, and you took it down, and you want, or even if you converted it to a duplex, you don't mean you have to demo it right could just remodel it into a duplex. Right now you get credit for one, and you pay cash in on the other. That's the way it works right now.

[152:07] smaller than you know. Maybe it's like an adu that you can burn into the duplex by doing the the the work with the city. I don't. So, for a lot of reasons, I don't think the restricting at that scale makes any sense. It just doesn't it? Financially, won't. It won't work. But I'm curious. I'm curious what the what the homeowner is gonna have is the responsibility, and they're gonna come up against inclusionary housing. When they cleave off a duplex they are. So if we get linkage fee in place, that wouldn't be the case anymore, and we'd be paying the fee on tolls. But II do. I think Michael brought this up earlier like one place you would see affordability in that scenario would be. I have a house. I make it into a duplex, because so that I can rent the other half. And it's gonna help me with my affordability. I'm gonna have then an income from my property. That's gonna help me pay my mortgage or my taxes, for that matter, if I'm older, like whatever I need to pay. So it creates affordability on the smaller scale for the person who doesn't. Not not in that world of like the restricted units, but it does

[153:25] create some affordability for the person who does it, because now they have an income producing. Second, the person in that scenario is unlikely to just backs up the the duplex footprint. You know. we're gonna create an avu instead. So I really love this conversation. And I'm gonna suggest that we could be ready for a motion. Sorry for the housing, but I don't want to rush to it. So the last call comments on that, and I certainly would entertain a resolution to the vote on proving this, but the exact wording of what's been.

[154:04] But before so. going back to what we're what we need now is just basic direction on those major policies. And I just want to say, I daydream about large multi-generational, communal living houses on a daily basis. And so I just wanted to thank her for her. Her comments on that

[155:05] great so like I said I would certainly. I recommend that the have recommended City Council to adopt ordinance. A 399 admin related to the site, review, process and intensity form, bulk, use, partner, and some of it stands concerning affordable of things. Locking me off. Housing and setting for related details. Have to stop talking right? Approved this language. It's on the screen. You're a second

[156:05] is anyone against approving this motion? Okay, thank you. Thank you. And thank you. Carl and staff. And really very thorough. Yeah, I appreciate. I would see under this agenda item as updates heavily on Philip Summary.

[157:01] Oh, gosh, I have to remember. We basically approved the staff recommendation for Tbap 2 with one modification. But I'll just say that the all the function or the transit village area plan base 2. They also have done some some very exciting work there. In terms of figuring out what the land use would be. Most of it would be mixed. Use transit oriented development, which is a a kind of zoning or kind of land use that was applied pretty heavily in east folders like music plan update and then there would be a strip of mixed use. Industrial centered around old pearl, and the big difference between the mixed use industrial and the mixed use transit oriented development is that the mixed use industrial would really encourage like industrial maker space. Some of the automotive uses some of the more industrial uses on the ground floors, but it would still allow to build higher and also have residential. And there could be

[158:07] They're envisioning that for that whole Boulder Junction phase, 2 area like a lot of mixed use and and residential, and they tried to correct for some of the perceived efficiencies of Boulder Junction phase, one more green space, more trees, more public gathering spaces. And instead of you know, probably folks are aware that in Boulder Junction phase one, there's a lot of retail space that was constructed, that it's not been occupied. And so they're trying to think of a different model where the the kind of activity nodes would be more like nodes, and that everywhere I'm trying to concentrate sort of places where people really are. It's lively. People want to go to. And then there's also a lot of opportunity for residential and and connectivity is a good connections plan. So you'll see it, I'm sure I'm sure. Recommendation we did. Yeah. So I think the next step is that it goes to city council. And so the one thing that that passed as an a modification to Staff's recommendation was that the majority of planning board didn't want to see office use

[159:15] in the neighborhood transit oriented development place type, very technical kind of like what's allowed on the ground floor what's allowed on the upper floors, and they thought, If it's going to be more neighborhood feeling, we don't want office use. And there was some back and forth on that. Not everybody agreed, but the majority passed that amendment. But we also said that if if Council doesn't agree with it, we're not going to fall on our sword. So we basically pass staff recommendation. And again, staff. Great work. I know it's not you folks, but in particular, but I just is that, or hidden it out of the park. In my opinion, like, we're coming down to the end of this council term, and so many very cool things are getting done. So it's the joy to watch so to ask a question. Some people have objected to the remark of

[160:03] trying to village one and is, is there the flexibility? You'd have a little more creativity or variety, or I think they are. Gonna re, look at the form based code standards that were applied to phase one for phase 2. So there's an opportunity to open that up. But that that's a level of detail beyond what we looked at. So far, we mostly just looked at the land use and then the place types which would then translate into zoning. So we're we're still kind of at the 30,000 foot level. But I think there's an opportunity to do that, and and Staff are aware of that may also want to look at some of the the visionary things that we're trying to accomplish in the transit village like energy efficiency and affordability and things like that. Thank you. Regarding your calendar about half I participated in. See that to folks group thought to bring a resolution before. It's like, you know, really filled. The maximum housing billing housing is pretty well addressed.

[161:03] You know what you just throw it on. And, you know, look hopefully, the market's actually gonna decide a lot of that. But I mean, we could be looking at what? 1,400 homes, even so you know, you're looking at an area where thousands of people the the plan to put it on. Alright, how are we gonna activate this area? Gonna make it in the kind of urban place we want it. So thank you. Work on that. Regarding the airport, for anyone hasn't read the daily camera. And Philips, eloquent city Council having a study session tomorrow. On the airport. community conversations and city staff is going to bring to them 4 scenarios that they put together.

[162:02] 3 of them include continuing the airport at at different levels. What scenario one is basically like, just keep doing what we're doing. Basically no changes. And 2 and 3 are basically improving the airport, and you know, two's a little less ambitious. 3 is a bit more ambitious. And then there's this fourth scenario, which is like decommission, the airport put in housing. And so one of the exercises that the the the group did so. It's city staff, plus consultants was to evaluate the 4 scenarios against scr, which is sustainability, equity, and resiliency. And the way it kind of fell out. At least the last time I looked at it they were kind of saying that scenarios 3 and 4. We're very much favorable

[163:00] against on all basically all, I think. I think, both of them showed favorable for all the different categories, except for one neutral, and I don't remember which one was the neutral for the 2 different things. But and so yeah, I think they've got a narrative that says, the scenario, 3 in the scenario. 4 are both kind of equivalent. as they relate to this scr framework. There was some pushback from at least one member of the planning board on on whether or not it. It makes sense that scenario 3 would really be so favorable with respect to that framework. Because, you know, just to give one example, there's really a lack of local control, you know. So when you think about responsibly governed and thinking about led pollution or the amount of noise. We we really like our hands are tied because the Faa regulates all that we and they don't listen to us, and they're they're not about to start as far as we can tell. So anyways.

[164:08] I you know. And III implicitly pointed at Laura just a bit ago. But yes, she she had several points about how that scr framework, that scenario 3 really fall short in a lot of ways. But and II agree with a lot of that. So but yeah, I mean, in terms of thinking about Hab's role in our push for missing little. Again. This airport represents a huge opportunity for building a lot of missing middle. There's a lot of city Council people who have come out saying that they're you know, candidates that are running that have come out saying they're for repurposing the airport and for me it's a really exciting possibility. So special lines of, okay, we're stuck with the Faa and their viewpoint. But there, that's a limited timeframe, is it? Another 18 years, or something like, wouldn't it be who was to start planning for a different future for the airport? That involves a lot of housing, even if it's 20 years out.

[165:12] I haven't heard anyone saying, Yeah, okay. the faa basically would like the airport to remain in airport indefinitely, and the city tries to change that there there will be pushback, and probably a lawsuit. Right? So. But if the city wants to try to decommission the airport, if that is what we, as a community, decide to do. There is no fixed timeline, for when that would happen we have accepted grants in the past that have 20 years of grant assurances, which is basically strings attached that says we will continue to operate the airport in a safe and solvable manner for those 20 years. but if we want to not do that. Then we have to negotiate with the Faa, and we can't just run out the clock on the last grant we accepted, which has 18 years left on it. We accepted the 2 years ago. So that's where the 18 years come from. There's this misperception that we could just stop accepting faa money and just run out the clock and then do whatever we want. The Faa won't let us do that. They they try to get you to take grants every few years to maintain the airport in a safe and operable condition, to repave your runways and make sure everything is is going well.

[166:26] If we stop taking faa money, then the city would have to fund it from our funds, which we can't do. It's too expensive, and we just wouldn't make that choice. So we either decide to decommission and then start to negotiate with the faa on that timeline which might take litigation. and who knows how long that decommission time might be. But we really cannot just stop taking money right out the clock that's in this procession. Does that make sense to eliminate a airport and negotiate with the Faa to decommission. Yes, and so one of the things that is likely to happen at the City Council meeting tomorrow night.

[167:04] some of the council members like Mark Wallace already put out and said, Hey, we need to be researching that we need to be talking to these communities and find out. What did it take in terms of timeline litigation? What consultants did they use? How did they do it? What was the agreement they reached? Just make some phone calls and start finding out because there are a handful of communities who have done it. Not very many, but a few. So that'll be a research question. Yeah, yeah. I also wanted to bring up. It'll it'll be really interesting. So city council is not being asked to make a decision tomorrow night, but they can give some direction. The rest of Staff's work to bring the project to completion. City Council probably is not going to be asked to make a decision until the new councils in place. So January or later. But right now there are no public hearings that are planned, not at. Have not a tab, not a planning board, nothing until it comes back to City Council in January. But at least one council member in the Hotline post said, Hey, shouldn't we be doing public hearings and have tab and planning board and tab? And I think Eab and Hrc. Weigh in on this, so that idea will probably come up tomorrow night. It might it might not. I just wanted to let you know that I, at least one council member, would like to see you. Folks have a hearing on this. I don't know if you have an opinion on that, but

[168:23] we have talked about doing providing the listening session, content. That airport came up. It might be better to go right to a hearing. I think, with the Council number proposed with like a joint hearing. So that's definitely have to be one presentation. So all the different boards, we get one presentation, one public comment period, and then you could go back to your words in a separate session, and discuss and deliberate. Make any recommendations. January

[169:17] laundry list as long as my arm of questions that people have suggested. Hey? Wouldn't it be great to have staff research this? And of course Staff's not going to be able to research everything. But if you want, I can forward to this to this board what that conversation has been in terms of the questions that have been suggested and the hotline posts about that I'd say, Please do. Okay, lot of great information. Appreciate it. I just rolled by the airport. It's incredible how little teased, that's all. Said, no, it's like.

[170:01] But then, like a premium time, I was riding by it. Yeah. So this is one of the things I mentioned in the the paper that was quoted saying that it's it's kind of astounding that. you know. We take the value of the land, and you think of that as a subsidy for a couple of 100 hobbyists. It's it's a it's a really amazing give away that. That's that's happening. So especially when you think how much more productive, it would be as as middle income housing. Yeah. it's definitely not transportation. How does that mean? Hey? Sounds like a fun item? Well, this is one of them. Yeah, beef party on the 20 fifth. Everybody got your invitation.

[171:05] Yeah, you should have gotten an email if you have an email, me, and I'll get it to you. The other email that you should have gotten is up to do a survey for all ports and commissions. Survey monkey survey anybody, do it. but if you didn't get it, let me know. Survey the deadline. I think you still got time, because I just got the notice. Send it out on the sixteenth. They want you to complete it. By September fifth. I might be giving you too much time, because it was doing 2 days. I think that's all I have anything you want to know for next time, or any questions for Scott.

[172:02] Be a friend of the party since I oh, yeah, I haven't done the the bike tour yet, but I will organize that. and we've done the agenda for next time to set a date. I think I'll but I'll do a doodle just I think it'll be easier that way. Everyone can respond and maybe focus on a different part of town. It'll also be great orientation. Will it be many projects other than Php's projects. Great tour. There's so many Bhp tour projects, though it's like. there's one. Yeah, I'm on the I was on board. So I'm aware of a lot of the dhp once. That's why I'm wondering where there are other ones that were included on the door.

[173:02] That's all. I have really debrief. We had. An action pack meeting with 5 members present we heard excellent presentation recommendation to be forwarded to Council. We had some public comments around that as well. Updates on the airport full rejection phase, too. I believe our next meeting is September twenty-seventh. So right I have not missed a heavy. In 2 and a half years I might miss this meeting. Oh, Danny, can you hear? Polyero? Okay. might change my mind.

[174:07] I think I covered everything we covered. And do I hear a motion to adjourn a move. Second. Oh, in favor. not believe this, maybe anything to do before.