November 24, 2024 — Housing Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

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

[0:03] Well, good evening. Welcome to the November 20th meeting of the Boulder Housing Advisory Board. the chair of the Housing Advisory Board. This is our combined end of year meeting. The November and December meeting are being combined into tonight. and we have a great agenda that I'll go over in a minute. And it's also our 1st meeting that's been fully open to the public instead of just the public zooming in. And we do have at least one member of the public present. We'll get to that shortly. So going to meet our order and we'll do some roll call. So Karen, clearman, vice chair. even Chip Hennessy here, Julianne Ramsey, here, Philip Ogren, here, Danny Teodoro. Danny is not here, but we have a forum with 6 members present. And, Danny, you're not on the screen by chance. He's on the zoom. Okay, Danny. We have a full 7 for 7 great

[1:04] so we have a full agenda tonight, and then a couple of really important issues to address. We have Carl Geyller from the city to go over some zoning updates related to housing. That would be really interesting. After we approve the minutes next time in the agenda will be public participation. There may be some people commenting on the zoom as well. We have at least one person here to comment in person. That's item 4, item 5 is matters from the board, and that's where Cargill will be presenting the update on family friendly, vibrant neighborhoods, expanding housing choices. With some questions for the Housing Advisory Board. This is a policy update that's been in progress for quite some time, had the opportunity to weigh in it as it evolves, and we'll have a chance to do that again. The planning board went over it last night.

[2:00] so we'll have board questions. We can have additional public comment after Carl's presentation. If you're here to talk about family friendly and vibrant neighborhoods. You should wait until that portion of the agenda. and then we'll have a board discussion and potential decision. If we actually want to make a recommendation on any element of the new policy. So then we'll discuss. This will be back to Carl Geylor update on occupancy and changes required by State law. That's an informational item we will not vote on. And then we've had a discussion about continuing and building upon our good relation with City Council by doing a quarterly update to city council at their meetings. We could basically tell them what we've been talking about. For example, recently we looked at solutions to homelessness and a lot of summer in the fall. Looking at that it'd be an opportunity for other members of the Board to appear before Council and build upon council relationship. So

[3:07] it's a, it's a proposal we can decide if we want to commence doing that or not. But I think it's a good idea. Item 6. Management staff. at the at the request of Chip Hennessy, Staff, did prepare a 1 page summary of sales and use tax. The purpose of that is to potentially look at ways of using tax incentives to encourage affordable housing. So that's information for us that we might be able to use. and then, when there is a special event, I hope you will all attend on December 4.th I believe it's at the Osmd Building on 55th Street. And it's called transforming endpoint input into impact. That's at 5 30 on December 4, th it's also an opportunity for us to get together during the holidays and celebrate each other, and the work we've been doing, and have last year and more item, 7 debrief, the meeting and calendar check. We hope that'll ask about 8 50, and then we'll join at 9 Pm.

[4:05] So how do we add a topic to the agenda? How can we add a topic to the agenda. or isn't there like a board like questions or contributions from the Board, from the Board Review of the agenda? So that would happen now. So now. So we got a request by Hannah Davis from the Environmental Advisory Board to adopt a plant based by default approach. If we do our meetings, do we wanna chat about it? I mean, it basically says, I think that plant-based meals are a default catering option while attendees can still choose meat and dairy. which sort of feels like what we do already. But I don't mind. I don't mind like saying that we agree.

[5:03] I don't have any problem with that as long as I can still have a piece of chicken. Oh, do we? Are we talking about whether we're going to talk about it, or we're just gonna start weighing in right now. It's just whether or not you want to talk about, you know. Probably like to talk about it. Okay? So you just added to the agenda for today or for next month next month. Well, we have to approve the minutes for make a motion, make a motion that we have a brief succinct discussion of whether we want to adopt a plant-based by default approach to food at our meetings. That will also that might also include meat and dairy to be supportive of the Environmental Advisory Board. I was confused. Are we talking about it now? I will second it to the extent that we address it at the end. I would. Adding to that. Yes, we

[6:11] added to the end of matters from the board. There we have something on the agenda for October to talk about. If we are gonna do some listening sessions for the New year, and we were going to brainstorm some potential topics. And because we didn't have the October meeting, I didn't see that bumped to this month's agenda. Okay, would you like to make a motion about that? To add it to the agenda? I make a motion to add that to the agenda. to the I don't remember the wording to just I think it was actually to come up with topics. Does anybody remember specifically to come up with topics for listening sessions in the upcoming year. Could you say potential topics, potential topics? Yes, we have a second for that. All in favor.

[7:10] Okay, okay, I will go right after we talk about plant based food? With that I think we go to the approval of the minutes from September 25.th I do want to apologize for the cancellation of the October meeting. We just we're not able to line up the speakers we wanted and felt like it was best use everyone's time to postpone that we'd have a gathering to learn about and celebrate and tour the new housing factory at Bbs field, which was attended by many, many people, and was really impressive. So we're looking forward to as seeing concrete progress on affordable housing as a result of our city's efforts to partner with and make that happen. Once I met some of the students which is really cool. So

[8:00] Can I hear a motion to approve our minutes from September 25, th 2024. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from September 25, th 2024 seconds second, all in favor. All right. Motion passes unanimously. okay, it brings us to item 4, do we need to go back through the gravel before we jump into this? Okay, yep, I'll go through the rules just very quickly. Yeah. little slow, alright. So the city has engaged with the community, with community members to Co. Create a vision for productive, meaningful and inclusive civic conversations.

[9:04] It's to support the emotional and physical safety of community members, staff and board and commission members. There are for more information. You can go to our website and view all the details. The following are examples of rules of decorum found in the Boulder revised Code. the guidelines that support these visions, these will be upheld during this meeting by our chair. so we request that all remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation behavior that disrupts the meeting. Are prohibited. and we do request that, or require that participants sign up to speak, using the name they're commonly known by, and to display their whole name before they're allowed to speak online.

[10:01] And although it says currently only audio is allowed that applies only to you how much? And then, just to reiterate what Michael said. open comment is for any topic other than the public hearing tonight, which is Carl's family, friendly, vibrant neighborhoods. Thank you, Jay, so do we have anyone wishes to comment for your 3 min segment. On any matter not related to family friendly private neighborhoods. Start online, please. No hands raised. Alright. Where? Well, okay, I guess I will. Hi! My name is Mark. Dearer. I know number of you. I am on the Tenant Advisory Committee for the City of Boulder. and also Resident Commissioner with Ulver housing partners.

[11:04] Although I'm not speaking on behalf of either one of those organizations tonight. But I do hope to encourage, have to work with those or groups, or at least the Tenant Advisory Committee, as I have appeared here before, trying to encourage the Housing Advisory Board to deal more with tenant issues as as a housing policy. And I was just looking over the the Have well functions, and one of them is to advise city council concerning appropriate advocacy. Rules. Sorry, that's not it. Consult with and coordinate with housing committees and other city boards and commissions.

[12:00] Development support the city's housing program. So I've been speaking also with city Council members who have also expressed interest in wanting to see a more robust set of protections for tenants. And especially addressing affordability issues for tenants. As we all know, the rent is too damn high. and although, the State unfortunately prohibits rent control. There are other issues around affordability and tenant conditions that could be, and I feel like should be addressed by the Housing Advisory Board. So I'm I'm hoping we could talk more Committees and Human Relations Commission. I'll just bring up a little historical context. When I was director of the Boulder Tenants Union. 40 years ago we brought a number of our issues to the Hrc. Because the City council at that time did not deal with standard issues, and they dumped it on Hrc. And so we ended up dealing with Hrc. Quite a bit back in those days, and I have the news articles to prove it, if anybody would be interested in that

[13:15] And so I would. I would just like to see. rather than these siloed attempts of dealing with housing issues more collaboration. and the Tenant Advisory Committee, which is part of epris. The eviction, protection and rental assistance services stands for, has expressed interest in being more collaborative with other organizations and city council members. So I'm just here to encourage have again to And should I stand up? Thank you, Mark, we always appreciate your comments, and it's nice to see her in person, as the Oscar music indicates. The time is up. Is the tenant Advisory committee, do they host public meetings?

[14:14] Yeah, we have month quarterly meetings, and we take public comment, like you all do here. I already forgot the name of the other organization, older housing partners for those in person meetings Bhp No. Tenant advisory committee. Unfortunately, I'm gonna be pushing for them because you all have set the example. Thank you, Chip, for having more in person meetings. So I'm gonna be encouraging them to do that, too. We do. Andre is online. Got Lynn ziggle. Okay, are we ready to move on to item 6 matters. Lynn is online now. Oh, I'm sorry.

[15:02] Yeah. Lynn Siegel. And then. Regarding The. You know you need liaisons ex officios from the other boards, because every board it's like a finger spread out. All the boards are doing are not in conjunction with each other, and need to know what's happening between the different entities. Case in point. The Landmarks board just agreed to demolition of what was going to be the phoneless shelter. Michael, remember this from like 20 years ago, when Mark Woosen switched his vote 2 weeks after it was approved to be across from Cu, and then got stuck up way in North Boulder. that same building is owned by George, I forget his last name, Husseini, or something. He's Lebanese. I opposed the demolition of the building. It's a Hobie Wagner, and it is going from 40 units to 222 rent by the bedroom, and I can, and those bedrooms are 2

[16:06] to 5, 2, 3, and 5 bedrooms. Now you can imagine what the proportion of those might be. A lot of 5 bedrooms, I bet, because they're going to make a lot more money, having less infrastructure per person, you know, in a 5 bedroom apartment than in a 2 bedroom apartment. They can charge a little bit less because people are having to share the space. It's kind of more communal right. But it's still an interesting concept that so much of our housing crisis is related to Cu, and the intensity of use of this place and the people and the growth but also the way the housing structured. Now that guy that Lebanese guy excuse me. made out big time he made many 1 million

[17:05] millions of dollars by having that thing demolished because it had 40 units before, you know, and and like. He complained that the sewer was underneath. Well, in New York City we have sewer, too, you know. They have routers that go underground, that you know, I went on the sewer tour. Did any of you go on the sewer tour? You should do it, check it out, check out what the infrastructure costs for the city, go to the reservoir. The water treatment plant, which there was. Rab had a tour there this week, and you know these are huge, expensive structures that we have to back ourselves with, and we don't have it. We've got 9 1,000 units that are coming online that are already approved. And we're looking at the planning reserve looking at the airport and see you South, and I can name you a list of 50 places, you know, diagonal plaza, you know Macy's papellio's like. It's 1 after the other. We can't afford this.

[18:12] Thank you, Lynn. Your time is up. We appreciate your comments. and I will note that we do have a liaison from the planning board here at hab Ml. Robus, I should mention that in our introduction. So some of that is happening, and I don't know how much capacity board members would have to do more liaising. But it's interesting idea. I think we're ready. Is are there anyone else waiting for public comment online for item 5 I do want to mention something I should have done up front, and that is, we will have an opening on this board in 2025 as Danny Teodoro rolls off. and then he's been our vice chair and has done a great job. We appreciate that but we would really love to get the whole board involved in thinking about recruitment of

[19:09] a certain skill set. We really feel like we would benefit from having someone with experience in developing affordable or attainable housing on the board as we did when Terry Pomos was on the board. So if you think of names, Karen and I are actively doing a little outreach, one on one to talk to people and fill them out. Tell them what have does, and get them interested, and we would like to cast a wider net. So any questions. Okay. I think we're ready, then to turn it over to Carl Nyler for his presentation on family-friendly private neighborhoods. This is a public hearing. There'll be additional opportunity for public comment after Carl presents, and as well as questions from Heb and Potential board decision. the recommendation. Thank you. Chair. Good evening, Board members.

[20:02] I'm Carl Geylor, senior policy advisor with planning and development services. I'm gonna present to you tonight. The family, friendly, vibrant neighborhoods project, so I can figure out to do with these tiles that keep getting in the way with Zoom these days. It's a little better. So before you tonight is ordinance 8,666. We're asking for a recommendation from Housing Advisory Board that we can pass along to city council on this ordinance. I presented to you all. I think it was back in June. The scope of this project. It grew out of the zoning for affordable housing project, where we brought the last ordinance to make changes to our zoning, to loosen up zoning rules to allow more housing in the city. The city Council had made a number of suggestions for additional things to look at, and that became this particular project. So that's more here before you tonight. After we talk to Housing Advisory Board in June. We want to

[21:05] planning board in September, and then again back to City Council in October to convey all the feedback that we've been getting from the boards as well as the community, and to get specific direction from council on the changes that would be in the ordinance, and they've given us that specific direction and that led to the what we have in the ordinance. So as far as tonight. Again, it's the purpose is to have the the have recommendation that we can convey to City council. What I'll cover tonight is just briefly, again, going over the pot problem statement, the project goals the original suggestions that came from City Council we didn't get to talk about it last time. But we'll talk about community engagement results that we've heard on this project. And then I'll go into basically the content of the of the ordinance. then we'll have the conclusion at the end.

[22:01] So the key issues that we've posed to the Board tonight, or does Housing Advisory Board recommend any modifications to the draft ordinance. And then, secondly, does Housing Advisory Board find that the proposed ordinance implements, the adopted policies of the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan. So basically with any ordinance that we're bringing through. It's it's generally meant to implement the comprehensive plan, and it has to be found consistent with the comprehensive plan. Think as Housing Advisory Board. You're well aware of the the housing challenges that we have here in Boulder that's pretty acutely felt in Boulder. So we're we're trying to address it in a number of different ways. Not just zoning, but we've done a lot with zoning the last a year or so where we've been changing the rules to just allow more flexibility in the housing types that we can see throughout the city, adding to the inventory to try to mitigate some of the rising costs. We understand that it's not gonna necessarily make everything cheap overnight or but if we can somehow address the the the growing cost.

[23:07] That's what we're really trying to work towards. So as far as our project goals with this particular project, it's to expand housing, choice and supporting transit use by allowing more missing middle housing. So we're not talking about middle income housing. We're talking about middle housing, which is a housing type. So in the United States. And I think you're all aware of this, like we see a lot of single family detached homes, and we see apartment buildings or condo buildings. This would be aiming at getting more duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, townhomes, things of that nature. So again, looking at different zoning districts, that city council has asked us to look at, and we'll go into the detail on those. And then, just looking at other ways that we can remove zoning barriers in our land use code.

[24:00] So these are the suggestions. And I'm trying to get these out of the way. I'll go over these briefly. So Council had suggested that we add the Rmx. One zone to the scope of the project to loosen up zoning in that area. I'll talk about where that is are proposing in the ordinance. They've asked that we look at the Rm. One zone, which is a medium density zone that exists in a number of places around the city. and then also looking at lower density areas of the city that are predominantly detached dwelling unit areas. Looking at loosening up the rules in those areas we originally were. Considering owner occupancy. And I know this was something that we talked about last time. We we've had some concerns about moving in that direction. Just because, while we understand the concerns about investors coming in and buying up a lot of properties, I think there's a lot of thought that that and we heard the same from planning board and council, that perhaps zoning isn't the best way to deal with that, and that there are other methods

[25:07] that that should be looked at to. Address that. So we were directed by Council to not include that in the ordinance. So we talked about last time. We're we're not proposing any owner occupancy element of this ordinance we also looked at creating an exemption to our site review process, which is our more detailed discretionary review process. For anything that's missing middle housing that basically has evolved into. Let's create an exemption for any project that's a hundred percent permanently affordable housing. So basically, what this means is that anything that doesn't require any modifications that ordinarily would still have to go through site review due to its sheer size, would be exempted from that process if it goes through a staff level design review process with with housing and human services. So this is a process that already exists.

[26:03] It's for projects where there might be a site review project that fulfills its housing. It's inclusionary housing requirements by doing offsite that off site has to go through a design review process. This would just be channeling any 100% permanently affordable projects into that process if it doesn't otherwise require modifications like a height modification, things like that. So we've included that in the ordinance. I'm not gonna talk about 6 and 7 since it's not as much housing related. Just re looking at the minimum thresholds for Site Review and some incentives for residential. There wasn't a lot of comments from the boards on that, so I'm not going to focus on those. But if you've looked through the ordinance or the memo, and you have questions. I'm certainly happy to to answer those. you know, with the the topic of adding housing. And in in a lot of areas of the city. We've heard viewpoints on both sides. We hear from folks that are very much advocates of housing, and that by adding housing to the city. You have more money going into the affordable housing fund with every unit that gets added. We've been asked or or told by many that we should be going further with the changes we should be like allowing more again.

[27:23] the confines of this project, or we have to suggest things that are consistent with the current comprehensive plan. There is a an update coming up, obviously, where we can look at the vision again, and we may be implementing some different changes down the road, but this is within what we find consistent with the current plan. We've seen a lot of support for allowing, allowing, housing along bus corridors, around downtown and around neighborhood centers to try to meet the city's 15 min Neighborhood goals, trying to get more walkability, more housing around uses that people can walk to instead of having to drive on the other side of the coin. We've also heard folks that are very concerned with all the changes that have been happening and the impact that that will have on Boulder, not to mention a lot of the State

[28:10] laws that have been passed that I'll talk about later that the concerns about what that'll do to certain neighborhoods. There's a lot of folks that have indicated that, you know if we're going to add housing, it should only be deed restricted, permanently affordable housing, and that if we're just adding housing, it's not always going to be affordable. There's concerns about parking a lot of a lot of folks just want to stop seeing all the large buildings going up. So we we hear those concerns. There are some neighborhoods that are are concerned about these changes affecting their neighborhoods that are already affected. So areas like Martin Acres and University Hill are concerned, and are have asked that they be exempted out of these changes based on the impacts that they've already been experiencing. So another element that we've done beyond our newsletters making people aware of the changes and meeting with with certain groups throughout the city. We also did a be heard boulder questionnaire. I'll say this at all the hearings that it's not a statistically valid survey. It's just one tool that we use.

[29:17] But you can see from the results up on the screen, and we we have it in in the memo that there was a fair amount of support for adding housing, I think, with the zoning for affordable housing project, I think the percentages of support were around 55% support. But those those changes that were proposed last time were really focused on high density, residential neighborhoods, commercial neighborhoods, and industrial neighborhoods. Now that we've kind of shifted the focus more to you know the Rmx. One zone areas near around downtown, and a lot of the the lower density residential zones. We're seeing less support, a lot more mixed comments on it. So our results this time showed, you know, 50 to 60% of folks that answered the questionnaire did not support the changes that Council has asked us to do

[30:10] so. This is just a graphic that we we often show. That just shows what missing middle housing is and what we're trying to aim towards getting in the city of Boulder. There's only 9% of our housing types as missing middle. So this would help towards moving towards that. So I'm gonna go into some of the the key components of the ordinance. So, starting with Rmx one, this is a mixed residential zone shown in the purple it surrounds downtown and tends to be where a lot of our, the highest concentration of historic housing stock is so Whittier, parts of Goss Grove, parts of University Hill West. Pearl parts of Mapleton, are all in the Rmx. One zone. So this is an interesting zone, because it was originally built with like single family homes. You know the turn of the last century, and then over time it evolved to do a high density zone. So they did see in the past a lot of historic buildings getting knocked down and replaced by, I would say, not

[31:14] not so nice looking apartment buildings, particularly in the 19 sixties and seventies. So there was a reaction that that kind of came to a head, I think, in the 19 nineties where they wanted to slow that down. And there were also parking and traffic impacts in this area that led the city to changing the high density, zoning back to a low density. Zoning. So Rmx. One zone is a mixed density zone. It has a mix of housing types already, but it's actually like a low density housing zone. Now it only allows one dwelling unit for every 6,000 square feet of lot area, which is almost identical to like the Rl. One zone, which is one unit for every 7,000 which is our our detached dwelling unit areas of the city. But because of the sensitivities of this zone it. It's called out pretty specifically in our comprehensive plan that there there are traffic impacts and that

[32:08] some housing can be added. But it is. It does call out the sensitive nature of of this area. It does have a density because of the mix of 6 to 20 dwelling units per acre. So some flexibility for allowing some more housing. But we've kind of approached this very delicately based on these concerns, and also the the amount of housing stock that that's there. That's over 50 years of age. So these are some graphics that we sent out. I think I showed these at the last presentation that the point of this whole project is not to get more big buildings. The point is to have bulk controls like floor area ratio lot coverage, sidewall articulation, height, limits, setbacks that are the same as what what is applied to detached dwelling units. So apply those bulk controls. But just be more flexible about what's within the building. So instead of it being a detached dwelling unit, there might be the ability to do a duplex triplex or quadplex. So that's what this graphic is showing, and this is what we included in the questionnaire that we sent out. So again, same, you know, general Bulk, slight differences in appearance, but you would have more units within that, and that would be another way of getting missing middle housing and trying to not

[33:25] change the character of neighborhoods too dramatically. What we had suggested last time was modifying the zoning requirement from 6,000 square feet of lot area per dwelling it down to 3,000 when we presented that to planning board and and council, there was interest in making that 2,500 square feet. So allow even more units. So we've returned with an ordinance that has after the conversation at planning board last night fairly complicated language that tries to really incentivize units within buildings that are historic, to to try to avoid a bunch of demolitions of historic housing stock in order to get the additional units. So this graphic basically shows, or this map shows

[34:13] that you can see a lot of the housing that's Pre World War 2 is shown in the green and blue, and that that highest concentration tends to be in this Rmx. One zone. So what Staff has proposed is some criteria that would have to be met in order to get those additional units. And it's all really aimed at, you know, encouraging people to build on vacant lots, build in areas where it doesn't impact existing buildings, or that it encourages alterations within the building to get the units. and really tries to discourage demolition. So this was discussed extensively last night by planning where there were a lot of concerns about the complexity of the language, so planning board did support the changes and understood the intent and the sensitivity of the area, but they felt that the language should be simplified. So we've taken that to heart. And we are working on some language that would really just kind of get at that. We don't want to encourage people to illegally demolish

[35:08] buildings in order to get the additional density. So what we're trying to do is say it more plainly in the ordinance that if you demolish something without permits, or you don't go through the proper. You know historic preservation process. You don't get the extra units. It just stays at the 6,000. Otherwise it would be 2,500 if you meet those process parameters. So we're still working on that language before we go to council jumping into the the low density areas, we're talking about 3 particular zones that are shown on this this map. So rl, one rr, one and rr, 2 you can see that in terms of land area, it's 1 of the most prevalent land areas of the city tends to be mostly detached dwelling units. When we look at the Comp plan, it does say it consists predominantly of single family detached units

[36:03] at at densities of 2 to 6 dueling units per acre. So we do have to abide by that with this code change. And what I talked about last time in June was that we did an analysis based on the gross land areas based on what Council had asked us to do rather than doing the parcel by parcel type zoning, and it did show that we could allow more units in these zones within this particular comprehensive plan. When we talked to council about it. There was interest in concentrating where those units could be along bus corridors that we're encouraging transit use. So again, we have a graphic that shows. In this case we're just talking about duplexes. But at the request of Council it was also, why not allow 2 detached dwelling units again with each lot they would have to meet the height bulk plane, solar access floor area ratio lot coverage is a lot of restrictions that apply to a detached dwelling unit, it would apply in the same way to a duplex. So we're not going to see like additional bulk. It just would be more units.

[37:08] So we did look at mapping to find out where bus corridors are, and our proposal last time was 350 feet from any corridor, we continue to recommend that. But we did note to planning board last night and to to have tonight that the map has since been updated where some bus routes have been removed because of the fact that some of them are seasonal. So it's not really of use most of the year, and some were Cu bus routes, and that actually dropped the number of eligible lots from 40% which we were arguing, would, you know, meet that predominantly single family down to about 30%. So we made a key issue for planning board that if you wanted to get back up to 40%, you could increase this distance to 550 feet from the corridor, and planning board did support that. So we're still looking at the ordinance to see what we're going to bring to council, but just wanted to make the board aware of that change.

[38:04] These are the eligible routes as of today. This is something we'd have to like continually. Look at and update. Obviously, as Rtd will change bus routes from time to time. So we will have to make sure that this is up to date. If this moves forward arm, one is a medium density zone that's found throughout the city. It's typically in the more I would say, suburban areas of the city and also in North Boulder, where Dakota ridges, it's typically around neighborhood centers. It allows 6 to 14 dwelling units per acre this is a zone that uses a density calculation of 3,000 square feet of open space per dwelling unit. We've been looking at 2,000 square feet of open space per dwelling unit. Again, with the same aims of of allowing some flexibility to get more units that are within walkable distance of Neighborhood Centers

[39:00] Council has indicated support of using that 2,000 square feet of open space for dwelling unit. There is has been some concern on council as well about reducing open space. So we've been in conversations with the Department of Climate initiatives on this issue related to, you know, environmental concerns. But we're we're moving forward with this recommendation at this time. But we are going to be meeting with them to talk about this further. The last thing I'm just gonna talk about is the the 100 percent permanently affordable housing restriction or exemption that would allow projects a staff level review in what's called the affordable Housing design review. So we're still recommending that it's a lot of qualitative criteria that are similar to site review anyway. Boulder housing partners has indicated support for this, not necessarily making it cheaper for their projects, but but it would be quicker, you know. It'd be a more, you know. Timely review. It would lower risk

[40:01] if there weren't call ups, you know, from planning board and members of the public. So we're we still have that component within the ordinance. So we find that the content of the ordinance is consistent with a number of Bvcp policies as we've outlined within the memo. I've listed the relevant policies up on the slide. We think that the changes that are in the ordinance would meet the goals of the project in concentrating more housing options throughout the city, to reach out to a lot more different types of people, to give them the ability to to live and stay in Boulder. With these changes it could add the potential of over 7,000 housing units. I know that there's, you know, maybe proposals for for more housing or other ways of getting housing. Those are things that are going to be looked at as part of the Bbcp Updates. So as a phase. 2 of this project is contemplating. You know, if there are changes to the Comp plan that talk about allowing more housing throughout the city in different ways that that would be implemented once the Comp plan is updated.

[41:12] We plan to answer questions from members of the public at office hours in coming days and as far as next steps, we're gonna be conveying the recommendation of planning board and and have to city council the tentative schedule at this point is 1st reading at council on December 19, th and then public hearing and second reading on January 9.th This is suggested motion language that we have for the board, we can come back to that. But other than that that concludes my presentation. Happy to answer any questions. I have a question. So the when you talk about the middle income. This, this isn't qualified by ami correct. It's more like the shape and size of the of the property of the of the structure. Right? Yeah, it's the housing type. So you know, I think what we're working towards is like.

[42:12] there's a lot of large single family houses in boulder that, you know, could be like 4,000 square feet. Not everyone needs a 4,000 square foot house. This would give them the ability to have 2 2,000 square foot units that would be comparatively cheaper. It's not deep restricted. I have a question about the bus route proposal for Rl. One rr. One and Rr. 2. So I understand the proposition. There is that current single family home lots within 350 feet of a map plus route, which is approximately 30% of boulder would be allowed to turn it into a duplex.

[43:00] It's 30% of lots in the zones. Yeah in those zones? Yeah, and is it just a duplex? Or could they put into to detach could also be allowable, based on what we have in the ordinance. And it says on a straw vote. 6, 2. That's 6, 2 of council. Yeah. Is that correct? The 2 dissenting dissenting votes noted as a bridge too far, and was counter to the results of the outreach, did not take into account fire, danger? Is there any like evidence that this would increase fire danger. I think the concerns along the those lines were that if we're there was hesitancy about adding units in fire prone areas where, if there were to be a fire and an evacuation, you're adding more people that would have to be on the evacuation routes. It's not the adding housing that adds the risk. It's just more people that

[44:03] would have to evacuate. Okay, and then protections against investors buying up property should be in place. But the overall concept of incorporating ownership requirements into owner occupancy into zoning was unpopular. Right? Yeah, I mean, we had presented the the challenges of that. I mean, we're it's monitoring owner occupancy among on a ton of housing units throughout these zones would add a whole new mechanism to the city. It would be a barrier to people adding housing, but just on the staffing side it would also mean we would probably have to hire staff to to monitor that through a licensing process or some other method, do you know, if any other city has done that sort of thing incorporated owner occupancy into zoning.

[45:01] it's fairly rare. From what I I've seen like, it's common with like accessory dwelling units. But there's a lot of studies that are now kind of pushing back against owner occupancy, just. you know, by the fact that it it would put up a barrier to adding more housing. But, there were a couple examples, I think, out in California, where you can subdivide your property into into a duplex per a State law if one were owner occupied. So I know some jurisdictions out there have been doing it. I haven't heard back from them as to how common it is, but it's pretty rare otherwise to have owner occupancy. It does seem like tax. There's some popularity. The idea of exploring using tax. Yeah, I think that's where the conversations really kind of pointed was, you know. Maybe zoning is not the best way to to get at that, and that there are other things that should be looked at, and then I guess my last question on that element is there's discussion of increasing it from 3 50 to 5, 50

[46:07] could you talk about that a little bit more. Yeah. So when we went to council in October, the 350 was suggested, because that equated to about 40 per making, 40% of the lots in those low lower density zones eligible for a duplex along the corridors when some of the bus routes were subtracted because they weren't year round that dropped the number of lots down to 30. So to get it back to 40% again, it would be 5 50. We we've we have 3 50 in the ordinance, just because that's what was represented to the public in the outreach. It's what we, you know, heard from Council. but we wanted to get feedback from the boards on that as well. Can I call it we on that, can I? The 40% is that based on what

[47:04] the intensity standards in the Boulder Valley Comp plan. Land use? Yeah, like anything that we're suggesting is still within the 2 to 6 dwelling units per acre. Right. So should we make those make changes to the Boulder Valley Comp plan in those intensity standards in those zones. Oh, would we need to come back and make changes to this if we wanted to still meet the the percentage that's allowable under the Boulder Valley Comp plan intensity. I mean, we're not suggesting any changes here that would necessitate a change to the comp plan. Right? There may be changes to the Comp plan that happened after this that may come back to like updating this. I don't know what those changes might be. So we're working under the current as opposed to anticipating that until then we're we're held to this. But there's a mechanism that will allow us to go up to any new intensity standard that's not built in. Yeah, what we're suggesting is the percentages that again, we're trying to make the argument. You know that

[48:10] it's not gonna be possible for a a neighborhood to develop to have more duplexes than detached dwelling units. So we're trying to honor that predominantly detached dwelling unit character. So that's why we thought 40% was a a reasonable percentage. They're not all gonna develop overnight. They're not probably all gonna develop at all. People have to choose to make those changes. So when you talked about 7,000 potential new. How? How did you come up with that number? And did you get a sense of where, geographically it might be distributed? It was kind of a complicated analysis I have, you know, all all these, you know. So we have the number of lots per the zone. So we looked at what

[49:01] percentages the the zones could allow more dwelling units based on using a gross dwelling unit. Figure and there was actually they were the the net and gross density that we found that actually exists was both very much below the 6 dwelling units per per acre maximum. So there was a lot of flexibility to add. But we just broke it down into like, what percentages? If what kind of zoning requirements that we have to have to have a 30% increase. So 40% increase or a 50%, we, we felt that 40 was a reasonable amount. So we just figured out how many lots. And then they use the mapping to distribute that along bus routes. That's how we get to the the variation and the and the buffer. I got one. You referenced the open space requirements, and it sounds like there's some political loggerheads going on between the planning proposals and the climate action concerns.

[50:03] Is that between. What is it? 2,000 3,000 feet? Yeah. The proposal is to go from 3,000 square feet of open space down to 2,000 square feet of open space per dwelling unit. And that seems like there's probably some cost benefit analysis of yeah, we're covering more of the earth with buildings. But we're reducing other environmental factors like commuting. Is that something that you're looking for a recommendation on have from have on that we might help. It wouldn't hurt. I mean, it's certainly like like anything else. It's a it's, you know, with the city. We're balancing policy interests. So so getting, you know, a recommendation on that would be helpful. And then regarding the transit oriented development. Kind of catchment area. It sounds like you're trying to address areas are roughly a block from a bus stop on either side. That's kind of the metric. Okay? And going to 5, 50 would be like 2 blocks, which doesn't seem like an unreasonable walk through.

[51:05] Catch your bus. So is that another thing, you'd be like a recommendation on okay? Great in this exemption for 100% permanently affordable. The idea behind that is, basically if someone goes to the design process through housing and human services, they don't have to do it again to build through planning department. Yeah, they can just do a staff level review, get their approval and just go right to permit. Okay, basically would serve public housing partners. This will reduce costs for housing, and if they're doing another permanent sort of housing, that kind of project. Yeah, I think it would be most likely to be a Bhp type project that would take advantage of that. Is there anyone else other than Bhp. Who builds 100 permanently affordable housing

[52:00] nonprofits out there and for profit developers, and those are all common, though I think, because they are permanently affordable. They have some sort of partnership with the city correct to begin, they get funding from the city. So that's yeah, yeah, and usually like low income housing tax tax credits. Vouchers. Yeah. so is that a a given in this current policy proposal? Or is that another area of potential recommendation? It's in the ordinance. I think planning board had concerns about it when we talked about it in October. Less concern about it when we talked about it yesterday. so I don't know that we necessarily need a I mean, it wouldn't again, wouldn't hurt to have a specific recommendation on that. The concern or consideration was there isn't a publicly accessible document that shows what the criteria are

[53:06] that the In-house Review would go through. So I think part of it is, how comparable is it to the concerns that a Planning Board Review would bring to the project, recognizing that, you know. as with the dab board, and what in the input that is given oftentimes results in positive outcomes. So that was the concern is are the criteria that are being considered, and we didn't have access to them. And I'm not sure this. So that was, that was the the latest concern last night. Was. What are what are we giving up as far as outcomes into the community? If I ask a question like, if right now, if Bhp wants to build a new building that has to go through planning board right? It. It depends on the zone, and it depends on the size of the project. It's just there. There tends to be

[54:07] projects that just by the the size of the site that they're developing on, or the amount of floor area that they're adding it puts them into site Review. They don't have to go to planning board unless they're called up or appealed to. Go to plan board. The only ones that do have to go to planning board, and this doesn't change is if they're proposing anything over 3 stories like that would still require an automatic planning board hearing. But appeal. I mean, I think we want to make sure that the public always has the opportunity to put in some form of input or objection, whether it's merited or not. When we build something. And I'm trying to think procedurally how this changes that process. But if it's a use by right, then I feel like you're opening the door for Nimbyism. So so do you feel like the public should always have a say, and I'm trying to understand what changes like in that process. Well, I think this might have factored into the planning board discussion last night, as we clarified that, you know, if somebody, or if a project includes modifications to setbacks, or to height

[55:15] or other things that would require site review, that it would kick them into that site review process where the public input. So what we're talking about is something that would meet all the parameters and zoning. We're talking like 3 story buildings. Okay? What are? What are your thoughts from like? What what does planning board feel will be excluded from that public review process. I I think that was one of our concerns at the earlier presentation was that the public wouldn't get any input. But again, you know, used by right projects don't get public input, anyway. I I think the biggest concern was what value

[56:00] you know, the value that is added by going into a both public and a pretty robust criteria. It's in the code review process. What value is will not be added, because that will will not be happening. And again, without having seen the criteria that the housing and human services, who would be doing it. There wasn't a way to say, oh, the value still remains, although we were told by Staff. And I think this is correct, that the criteria are similar. We just didn't have that information. So it was. It was a question. Just about at the end of the day. Are these projects getting the benefit of some of these public processes. Can you maybe explain to me a project that requests any modification or height bonus that would still have to be reviewed from the site review process. Can you explain what

[57:04] modification or height bonus means? So a modification is just like there's a zoning requirement for setback and height the modifications. If you're not meeting that setback, it's kind of like a variance, but it doesn't have to meet hardship criteria. So with a modification. We look at it in site review. And if it deviates from the underlying zoning, then we have to do an assessment about that. Basically that changes high quality and results building that fits into its context. So a height bonus is if you go over 3 stories. So if you go over 3 stories. You're subject to higher requirements in terms of community benefit. Oh, requirements of that nature! Good! Since I didn't watch your meeting and see a coverage of it today. You wanted planning board to conclude, did you ordinance in general? Yeah. Well, or any specific recommendations related to the ordinance? Well, we did pass it. There were. What was the vote?

[58:11] 61. So there was one in in opposition. We had 2 amendments. Do you have the amendments handy there I never saw. We had. We added 2 amendments to it. Well, one was recommendation to city council. One was to simplify the language in that section related to Rmx. One that was too complicated, like. Just say what the intent is, and make sure to avoid that. And the second was to to go with the 550 feet from the bus corridor. And there was informal discussion. It wasn't put into a formal recommendation to council around the the

[59:05] realization that we can change the zoning but that's not going to necessarily get us more affordability and housing. and I think I know for myself personally, that was my big concern, because when I saw what the Council I don't know if you have the direction the Council gave staff back in March after their their retreat last year was to offer more options, choices in housing type and price points, and I think, without having owner occupancy and or deed restrictions. we lose complete control over where this market is going to go. And historically, we've been seeing that what's happening to housing in Boulder is. It's it's investor driven.

[60:01] And it's we don't have the outcomes we haven't been getting the outcomes that we're looking for. So that was a piece. There isn't a solution in this process, because, as Carl mentioned, how to manage the potential lack of affordability was taken off the table for this particular ordinance. I I think it is the biggest issue that I mean, we're making these changes to try to get more housing for people who are going to live here and are going to contribute to the city. And yet there are no. you know, all the indications are that it's probably not gonna happen. So that's troublesome. That's troublesome. So did you discuss maybe it's not part of zoning, but making a recommendation on a deed restriction, you know if you were gonna be get 5 homes out of a certain size building. One could be deed restricted more than we're getting now.

[61:07] I think. Believe, as Carl said, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the City Council had asked for that to be taken off the table for this ordinance secretary. So that's why we were putting it out as an informal. We would like that to remain as part of the updates to this. They're looking at coming back, you know, seeing how this is working and coming back, and of doing it. But I I think that we need to not lose sight of what we're actually trying to do here, because oftentimes, you know, change the zoning. and you can hear the applause in the developer world because it opens up opportunities. But you know yet on the public side people are still saying, Hey, we're getting more housing, but we still can't afford to live in the city, and our kids can't afford to live in the city, etc. Etc. So

[62:00] my encouragement is, we got to start thinking out of the box. We've got to put new thinking on the table, because, using the same way, we have done things, has not gotten us the solutions we're looking for. Infrastructure is actually old thinking, but maybe it's timeless. Come again, you know it it 80. The adu process includes owner occupancy indeed, restrictions and those kinds of things. So it's not like. It's not in our code already to do these sorts of things. For whatever reason it was, you know, taken off the table with this particular report, and I don't mean whatever reason on Staff's Point, whatever reason, city Council. that was the direction. But I think one thing that gets lost, and I'll just make it clear is that obviously, if we're opening up more opportunities for more housing units, that's more money that's going to go into the Inclusionary Housing fund with every unit that gets added. I think that's a good point. And one concern I have about.

[63:08] I think owner occupancy is something we should focus on, and I am starting to think that leveraging tax is the way to do it. For one boulder has higher taxes than other places, which means that there's more power to tax incentives, you know, if you don't charge any tax, it's hard to create a tax incentive but something that I'm just thinking about in my head is that if the owner occupancy was tied into zoning, I think we can look at Boulder and say, there are certain demographics of people who own. And there's certain demographics of people who are more likely to rent and does saying this neighborhood has to be owner occupied. Could that have a disparate impact of essentially marginalizing certain groups from living in that neighborhood and making that entire neighborhood one race, or predominantly one race owner. Occupancy is only for the additional units.

[64:04] Only if if you're having more than one unit. if you have a single family house, you don't have to live in it. But if you're taking a benefit of this zoning. then you're getting more than one house on your property, and so that's it. It's the. It's the anchor to the additional units. So you're creating a duplex, a triplex, a quad pro a quadplex and it's those second, 3, rd or 4th housing units that could be rented or owned, or, however, that works as long as there's an owner on the property, and that's the way it works with 80 use currently. So I, I think that the tax option is kind of where the thinking is pointing at this point in time.

[65:01] You know it. I don't know how far out that would be. The zoning would go into effect. Oh, we're still thinking next year. Yeah, this is set for council in January, so if it gets passed, it would be like February, right? So how far behind would be the tax. You know just how many years of stuff would be happening. So it yeah, it's a tough one. So I like your idea of like thinking outside the box. And it seems to me that boulder has sort of figured out affordable housing at like 30% ami, or 60% or 80% with older housing partners and element and and thistle, and that while this addresses the middle housing in terms of what it looks like, what form it is. I don't know whether we've figured out the financial incentives to attract

[66:08] the. You know the families. Let's say that we want to to be able to live here so that we can fill up our schools. Am I making sense? So I wish there was a way that we could figure out how to target the missing middle in terms of the population and the income and the families that we want to live there, because it seems like we've you know, the the very high end housing is taken care of, and the deeply affordable is being addressed. But that missing middle, like at least having product that's a little bit smaller, a little more affordable is good, but I don't know whether the it's enough for for us to attract the families that we need to keep our enrollment up well, not to belabor it. But so cancel doesn't. Really.

[67:01] If we made a recommendation about need restrictions, it's kind of tilting windmills at this point, because they've said it's not on the table. Is that a fair statement? I mean, I think you can make that recommendation. We can convey that. What I'm getting at is, maybe it could be a separate recommendation like we like this package, we approve it with some amendments, or we recommend it with some amendments. Agreeing with playing board or not. But separately, you really should take a look at deed restrictions. Because if you're producing more housing and the same building envelopes potential to get 20% of that is probably affordable and be restricted for sale housing the stated goal of addressing the missing, missing middle. Yeah, the board can do that. Or maybe that's a topic that had looks at at future meetings is like, Do do an exploration of what have other markets done? Well, I mean, we've done it. And it seems like what we've heard in our meetings. Informational meetings is that the user satisfaction of the restricted housing is pretty high.

[68:10] It's like 90%, isn't it? Go ahead. 90% of the people who live in for sale. These restrictable, affordable housing are happy with it. And there's quite a few homes like that that were built mostly 20 years ago. Is that reasonable? Do we know that 90%? Yeah, how do we know that we do surveys about it every 7 years. How is deed restricted housing built in boulder? Isn't it? Like the government partnership with a a developer builds it, and then sells it with a deed restriction on it. Sorry, that's like a 40 min right? I guess my concern is like for zoning purposes like infusing deed restriction to zoning. If someone wants to turn their lot within 100 feet of the transit corridor into a duplex, how do you infuse deed restriction into that process.

[69:12] I would think very carefully about it. Because the reason the Council said they didn't want to look at the restriction as part of this is, it's a significant disincentive. So people are not going to take advantage of these new regulations. If it's not profitable right on the property. Yeah, the developer actually builds the housing piece, and then they have the one affordable unit for 5 or whatever like, I think, deed restriction makes sense. Let's say the airport in theory, was turned down. That's municipal property. The city owns it. They can encumber that land all they want because they own it, and then they can sell it to people as an encumbered piece of property. But if it's already pre-existing, privately owned property, I don't know how we get the government to say I'm

[70:14] you have to. You have to encumber your own property. That's almost like eminent domain. But let's time out. I think that we've been asked to opine on what you've presented, and it does raise an issue of yes, it's promoting a new size and shape and variety of buildings, but it's not necessarily addressing middle income. population. So maybe what we do is we opine on what you've presented, and add, as a topic for future discussion a deeper dive into deed restricted for middle income. Because you're right. I think it it. We're not going to do it in in this meeting, and I'd like to. There's a lot more to talk about and investigate, and I I want to be respective of your time and all the work that's gone into this presentation without like going off on a tangent. That may be a very important tangent, but maybe isn't the goal of this meeting.

[71:20] I also do think it may not be the most effective approach. But if we allow people who live within 550, or even 300 feet of transit corridors to sell their property to a developer, and then the developer tears down the house, puts in 2 houses on that piece of property. I do think that could have the result of making housing more affordable. Is that the most efficient way of creating affordable housing? No, but could it be a faster way of getting it done, perhaps because there's financial incentive involved. And I just think of, like the Highlands in Denver, for example, those were for large part single family lots. And then, you see, these slot homes go up. Are they super affordable to buy one of these slot homes?

[72:05] No, but it's cheaper than buying a single family lot in that neighborhood, and if you want to live there it for a lot of people, it opens the door to that, and I think we need to be mindful that there's a lot of people who receive affordable housing. and I think the hope should be that they maybe don't receive in the future because their income is continuing to grow, and maybe they grow out of affordable housing. And we want there to be free market options for people when they grow out of it, so they can stay in this community and not be forced to move to Louisville or superior. I would just say, healthy market options. I like how I like to say it. Healthy market options. Go ahead, Michael. Can we get back to the agenda? Sorry we're supposed to be? We're supposed to be focusing on questions. Sorry you guys haven't done this in a while and then do the public comment. And then you guys can have discussion and make a decision any more questions.

[73:05] Think this is a great example of a quick straw poll rather than a formal vote, which is a technique we talked about? Is everyone cool with putting other mechanisms, such as deed restrictions aside for future discussion and continuing with questions for Carl. See head nod. So we'll go in that direction. And I'd love to hear from some other members of the Board with questions for Carl on what's been presented. I ask a question that only a planer would ask. Okay, so what happens if the bus route changes? Are we creating nonconforming? That's a good question.

[74:04] That's a great question. I think we we intend on updating that map. I think we'd have to. Maybe when we do an update. make that clear that it wouldn't become not conforming. I think, when we were developing that map we were trying to like really focus on the corridors that are most likely to remain as bus corridors, you know, based on their their use, but not to say that that couldn't change. But it's a great point. but most likely the network will expand over time. It's supposed to contract hopefully. Yeah. I'm just trying to think in my head. Do you know of any corridors that have been stripped of a bus in boulder in the last 20 years. Yes, like all bus service not reduced, or something that completely stripped. 4 street bus service to Denver has been reduced, but 36 is still a transit. 2 0, 5 used to go. I don't think 2 0, 5 even exists anymore, but used to go past my house, and now it doesn't.

[75:04] But for this purpose, as long as there's a bus that runs once a day on the street, then it's a transit court. Are there other buses, or is that streets? To answer your question? We also reference that sorry we reference that section in the code. That says that they're not non conforming. Just remember, we put it in the definition. but it's a good point. So it's like it's grandfathered in, because there was a bus route. Maybe the bus will come back. Well, is there any language about like 15 min ways, or like the level of service or no. it's super complicated. But here's here's just a thought to that, though. if there's a bus that runs once an hour and we allow more density, maybe that

[76:00] creates incentive for there to be more frequency, because more people now want to take the bus, and there's less. So, you know, it goes both ways like, we're just saying it's a it's an art, not a science. And so we can't plan for every contingency. We've never been planning for the changes that have happened in the transit world in the last 4 or 5 years. We're still grappling with those, but it's still a lot of the transit. rich future, and we want housing to support that, so it seems like keeping it in there without playing with it. Too much is probably a good way to go with a recommendation. Which is something we can certainly vote on when we get to it. But does anyone disagree with that statement? Other questions for Carl?

[77:04] How does everyone feel about crafting and voting on a recommendation? So I'm sorry. I think we have to have our public comment. Danny has a might have a question. Thank you. Hi! All Hi Danny. Technical difficulties. I guess I'd just say without getting into the into the weeds on some of the things like deed restrictions, and that, you know a deed restriction is not going to be a taking, but you know it is. It is a restraint, and it's a a bigger step, and I think there's some concerns that would have to be addressed before we kind of go that direction. So in terms of what's been put before us. I think this looks great and again, really great 1st step, like we talked about last time. And so I'm supportive of it, you know, in answer to those 2 questions, so I'll just I'll leave it at that, for now. You don't think if the government comes and says I'm encumbering title on your own.

[78:02] Salad. And for a fact. For a fact. It's not. There are deep restrictions all over the place for a fact. It's not. You don't just come and say I'm encumbering it. If if there's an incentive, if you're using it as a density as an incentive to be able to put a deedriction in place, you absolutely can do it. It's been done all over the country. Sure if you, if you elect to do it, you know, if the owner of the. Incentive. Then you can absolutely say, here's what comes with it, a deed restriction. It's done everywhere. It's done in large cities. It's done in mountain communities. It's done everywhere, so it can absolutely be done. But I think in terms of this and what we're trying to do over here, I think, kind of the the the baseline or foundational approach that Carl's put forward makes a lot of sense. And so I'm supportive of that. And this is something we really like to have a robust discussion about a future. Maybe our next meeting and it's not really on the table now. So we'll stick with

[79:02] has presented everyone's on board with that. Yeah, I think the Carl's point to address your concerns. If someone wants to build dense housing, they still have to comply with affordable housing requirements for the city of Boulder, meaning pay in right? Typically. I hate to bring us back to the agenda. But can we finish with questions so we can get to public conduct? Well, I think that that is a question. To what extent does the proposals here fall within the scope of that existing requirement that developers build permanently affordable housing? Like, for if you're building a duplex, you don't need to set aside 15%, or was it? 25% is perfectly affordable per square foot fee. But you still have to pay, even if you're doing that so and that goes to permanently affordable rentals, or

[80:00] it goes to the affordable housing fund which is used in a wide variety of ways to create rental housing, homeownership opportunities. So again, that's another so I mean, I I think that I I don't think dense, just increasing density ignores the affordability program because we already have a hook in place. It may not be all the hooks, but I guess what we're saying is, if you're gonna build 2 lots, you know, or 2 homes on an existing lot within 550 feet of a transit corridor. The developer is going to be paying money into a permanently affordable housing program which who knows? Maybe the city will buy one of those lots and then make it permanently affordable with that money. Right. And that's already in the system. Yeah. right? Not a new policy. But I I think that mitigates. perhaps some concerns about we're just increasing density. It'll do nothing for affordability

[81:04] when we increase density, and we build that contributes money to affordability in boulder by operation of adjacent law. Good clarification, more questions. I think we're ready for public comment if we have any additional public comment related to this period in my record. Yeah, Lynn has her hand up. Start with Lynn. Sure, Lynn, take it away. The more you build, the more you increase the jobs housing imbalance, because there's nothing to stop the jobs and the jobs come with the housing. All of this housing has to have services. All of those services are cheap paying jobs and increase the commute to other places and the carbon footprint, you know. I don't have to say it again and again, and again, and again and again.

[82:11] You know, boulder housing partners put heat pumps, heat pump water heaters in this project I heard from a friend, and they raised the costs to the affordable people living in there because they stuck them in little tiny closets. You know, the smaller. Yeah. And it costs something like, I just had one put on my place, and it's through the care program. But they actually did vent it out. But that's expensive to do. And you have these little places, and you're trying to do. you know, cheaper utilities like a heat pump hot water heater. They're complicated things to install. They need to be done right instead. Boulder housing partners stuck them in and raised the cost of running them because they didn't do them right. They need 700 cubic centimeters, or 7 by 10 feet of warm, you know, reasonable, reasonably warm

[83:19] space to operate in. They pull in the heat and extract the cold. And so they've got to have, you know, event getting them out of the space, and if boulder housing partners is is, you know, got it scrapers on the flat irons. I'm sure they aren't going to have walls that they can just vent things out to. They're in the center of buildings. That's why I got my wash dryer in Europe. There's constraints on the space. So you have, you know, a washer dryer. That's half the size. That's a good deal takes 3 times as long to do the wash. But you know you have to adjust to that. Everything's not instant.

[84:08] I think workforce housing is a lot more important than permanently affordable ownership. Housing. people move jobs move, and there's a lot more flexibility in rental and private equity investors and rental backed securities just need to be controlled so that the prices aren't rising all the time. And the more you build roads for buses. The more you build up more people, they're always going to drive cars. It doesn't matter. You're going to have more cars and more cars and more congestion and more pedestrian. Sounds like the hunger. Be nice timer would be very appropriate. You know, Timer, it's an old fashioned timer.

[85:04] Okay. Well, thank you, Lynn. Does anyone have any questions? Additional questions? It's really nice to be here in person. I just wanna quickly say, I really doubt Bhp is putting in heat pumps in their new units, and if they are, they're certainly not raising the rent because of them. But I will check into that. But my comments are that and this is really focused on what you all been talking about, but it concerns whether or not development goes up for to planning board. I'd like to see more encouragement on the city part for co-ops and co-housing. Co-ops obviously, would address the 100% affordable cool unit.

[86:03] criteria cohousing isn't necessarily 100%. I really wish it were but it doesn't include used to live on one, but I'd like to see the city get more. perhaps, within the scope of this private neighborhood ordinance to encourage cohousing. That's it great. We have a Co. Housing resident on our board. Well, it's not what's on the table now, but Carl is the city, considering looking at any recommendations related to those 2 topics, co-OP housing and co-housing co-ops. I'm going to talk about a little bit later. Believe it or not, we're taking the entire co-OP ordinance out of the code to meet State law so I can elaborate on that. But co-housing. we don't really have any regulations against

[87:01] Co housing. It's just it's it. The number of dual units is based on what is permitted in the zone. It's it's it would be up to a developer to want to do that type of project as long as it meets the the zoning. So I don't know that we necessarily have to have specific, you know, requirements for that. But the co-OP thing to, you know, basically is that because the city can't restrict occupancy based on familial relationship, a lot of what's allowed in a co-OP can happen in a lot of housing anywhere in the city now based on that change. So the Co-OP Regs were were meant to allow an occupancy above what the city had before. But now it doesn't. It's not non applicable. Does that make the existing co-ops like safe from whatever's gonna change, they can still operate. If anything, they would meet the current. Like way we regulate occupancy ordinance anymore.

[88:05] Well, the the state law doesn't allow enforcement of the occupancy rules that are in effect. that are in our land use code right now. So right now the default, it will goes back to the the the International Property Maintenance Code, the Ipmc. Which is a life safety code. So a lot of the co-ops have to meet that, anyway. So cool. That was a little preview, this one to pay the annual fee anywhere. They won't great anyone else from the public online that needs to comment. No, I think we're good. I'm ready to make a motion on this just if I'm comfortable with that.

[89:00] Think I moved it ahead of support the the goals of family friendly, my God! Vibrant neighborhood for adoption. With several amendments, one would regard the open space requirement in favor of reducing that from 3,000 square feet to 2,000 square feet second would be transit corridors. We favor increasing the catchment zone, not the technical term. You can correct me later, from 350 feet from a transit corridor to 550 feet. and the 3rd would be to support the proposal to exempt 100% affordable projects from site Review. furthermore, have plans to have a more robust future conversation on other measures.

[90:04] to recommend that could ensure greater affordability along with increased density. Under these proposals. did you prepare that ahead of time? Should we discuss here? We should discuss before we vote? Maybe not. It's not a requirement. But yeah, it's a good idea. It's important. What were the 3 amendments? Again. the main points were we support what Carlos presented? The 3 amendments. one would be actually supporting something that's on the table. which is to reduce the open safe requirement by 33% from 3,000 square feet to 2,000 square feet second would be to expand the transit corridors from 350 foot catchment area on either side of the corridor to 550 feet to

[91:05] bring it to 40% coverage of all the housing areas in the city, and the 3rd would be to support the idea that 100% affordable projects should be exempt from Site Review. I have one thought. I'm I'm a big supporter of expanding the transit catchment. I think if you're looking for dense transit, accessible housing, the difference between being 300 feet away and 600 feet, it's negligible. It's such a short walk. Why would we say, oh, people at 400? I think it actually could and should be greater than 550. And it sounds like there are 2 people on city council who are opposed to the idea. I mean, is there any harm to us recommending more than 5 50 to stress the fact that we think that transit accessible should be greater than 5, 15 if they choose to do 5, 50. So be it. Definition of transit oriented development. Maybe it's been updated. It used to be a quarter mile walk from a major transit stop.

[92:12] and that's a train station. But maybe Carl needs to explain the the rationale behind that distance. It's not related to walkability. It has more to do with how many units are within that distance, and making sure that we're with the comprehensive plan. Yeah. So we were going at the 40% of the lots would be eligible. We were trying to keep it below 50%, so that we meet the Comp plan to stay predominantly detached. Dwelling units. you know, it could be increased arguably to, you know, as long as it doesn't go over the 50%. Here I have a question on the

[93:00] the, the follow up question there. the maintaining. It's the idea. Behind this. We want to preserve the character of a neighborhood. We don't want it to be all attached housing but you said this also allows for the development of like 2 homes into a single family lot. Would that comply with the a comprehensive plan if we allow people to subdivide their lots within a certain distance of the housing, but they weren't necessarily wouldn't be able to subdivide the lot it would be on the same lot, but it would also be subject to the same bulk, restrictions, and everything. So that that's the point is that it? They don't get to build an additional house that's of the same scale would have to fit within the floor area ratio and lot coverage on that lot. Yeah, but they don't. They could be. or do they have to be? It depends on the lot. you know. But there's setbacks. There's distance requirements between buildings.

[94:03] Okay, maybe we stick with 5 15. I understand the concern about the comprehensive plan. But it might also, if our Board wants to send a message that we really support this idea. And again, it's just me talking. I support this idea a lot. Maybe sending a message more than 5 50 could would be effective in saying, we really support this planning board says they support 5, 50, and maybe we support more. There was an informal recommendation to remove to have it be available to all of worse, this higher density available to all. Oh, what all of the r the Rl. One. That was an informal. It wasn't part of our motion. It wasn't part of the approved motions. but we just sent some suggestions to think about, and one of them

[95:03] was, you know, let's get some affordability concerns on the table. And the other one was. Let's not have any restrictions to the minimum lot size which would allow plexus on single what are currently single family. So I think, expanding it in. Your thinking, was very much on the table. It just did get formalized. Yeah, I think we could cover that by changing the motion language, to say at least 550, That works. Right? Or if you want to do a quarter mile, does that conflict with the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan? If we were to say that our analysis is that going over like 700 is gets you pushes it over the 50%. I mean, there's any way, there's different ways of looking at this. Obviously, it can be interpreted differently. You know, the argument that came up last night is that

[96:10] you could put it at 50%. And it's not like all the lots become duplexes and put it out of compliance. It would stay predominantly, you know, detached dwelling units for a long time, but I think our vantage point is that you know we we're trying to safely be within the confines of what is, you know, specified in the plan. I'll let other people talk. I'm in favor of something more expansive than 5 50. I'm in favor of 5 50, even the 3 50. But I I really do think promoting density near transit corridors is a wise idea. And how can we send that message, you know, so like to hear from others? Well, I'd be good with the at least. But if you wanna so, you have to make a motion to an amend. The motion specific language. Well, I don't know if I've seen amended, I'm inviting. Does anyone else have comments on this point?

[97:07] I'm all for increasing the number 2, and 700 is the kind of like reasonable politically, a possible maximum maybe 700 is a better number. But yeah, I think 1313, 20 would be great if the that's 52, 80, divided by 4. But how does everyone feel about at least 500 to 700 feet? We should do a number. It seems like there might be some debate right now on council between 3 50, going up to 5, 50 from 3, 60. If we want to send a message. We really support this. Maybe we do higher than 7 50, and maybe that persuades some people fine multi-five. So I'm I'm in favor of trying to maximize the amount. But I recognize you've done a lot of analysis that shows, if it's

[98:10] you know, this many feet, it'll be 40%. If it's this many feet. We're bumping up against 50. So rather than us throwing out a number that potentially could change make us not be in compliance with the Boulder Valley Comp Plan. Maybe we put something that says, you know, a maximum amount of, you know, 5, 5,500, or more. provided that it doesn't bounce up against the 50%. But I don't know that I want to throw out a different number like, given that you've done all this analysis. The quarter mile is really for a robust urban transit station, not for the once an hour. but so that might not even be a your prescription. I I think I think saying at least 550 feet like Michael proposed. Certainly makes it clear that we're, you know, very open and supportive of going beyond that.

[99:07] you know, if if that works, but you know it, it lays out that baseline, and then it leaves it open to go beyond it, and I don't know that it makes sense to go much further than that now. In terms of specifics when we haven't really had chance to vet with those specifics would implicate right? So if we said 5, 50, or beyond, I think it it really helps address a robust corridor. If that's supported, and if not, you know, we're starting off at 5 50 from our perspective. I propose an amendment with the language of no less than 550 feet. I I support that. So I guess I can second that for a second. Do we need to hear the language of the motion again before you vote? Please know. Can you click, make sure? Are you clear on what the

[100:03] you are? I'm clear. Okay, I can see it because I wasn't sure. If they were talking about the Rmx. One or the Rm. One in terms of the 2,500 versus a 3,000. If you're clear on that. I mean, yeah, I don't know that we touched on that so it wouldn't hurt to. It sounds like there's support of the intent within Rmx ones, but if there's preference for the language that's in the ordinance versus the simplified language. Oh. what's the Rx. It's the RL. 1 Rr. One and Rrmx. One is that included in that proposal? Right? When you're in your motion. Think that was the 1st thing you addressed was the open space. So open space.

[101:11] Okay, so you're talking about the arm one. Okay. Alright. That helps me because it's whatever category where they're gonna reduce the open space. Well, I think they're looking at Rmx. One as well. Right? Yeah. I wasn't sure if you were talking about the density calculation or the open space requirement. Carl Carl's got it. Okay. That is an Rx. One that's RM. 1 RM. 1 think I can say that again, so we can vote on it. I motion that Heb, support. The it's up on the screen for you. Michael recommends that Council adopt proposed ordinance 8, 6, 6, amending chapters, 9. 2 review processes.

[102:08] 9, 6 use standards and 9, 8 intensity standards and title. 9, plan use Code, Drc. 1981, to amend density, intensity standards to allow development of additional dwelling units in the residential rural Rr. One residential rural, 2 or 2 residential low, one Rl. One residential medium, one Rm. One and residential mixed, one Rmx one zoning districts to amend review procedures and use standards to reduce regulatory requirements for certain residentials. developments, and saying forth related details. adding to that we support a reduced open space requirement to from 3,000 to 2,000 square feet. For let me get this right arm. One we support, expanding the transit cars allowance

[103:03] to not less than 550 feet from a transit corridor as opposed to 350 feet, not less than 550 feet. and we strongly support the elimination of Site Review for permanently a hundred percent affordable housing proposed projects, and finally have will look into other measures in the very near future that would support guaranteed affordable housing allotments within new development. When I have a second. Second. All in favor. All right. Hi, this is 7 nothing. Which brings us back to Carl Geyller. Updated occupancy and adu changes required by State law. This is an informational item that we will not vote on.

[104:08] Alright. So. I don't have a Powerpoint for this unless you want one. But I could pull that up if necessary, but I think I can go over it pretty informally the State passed a number of bills this year that relate to housing. So this update is about 80 use and occupancy. So in the spring there was a bill on 80 use that was passed, and also a a separate bill on occupancy. So with respect to the adu Bill. habs, probably aware that we've recently made updates to the adus through the last several years. But last year there was a a fairly extensive change where it's allowed more broadly. So that brought us to probably about 80% of what the State Bill says. The State Bill has some language. There's a lot of nuance

[105:02] in the adu bill that we've been trying to work out with the State. But basically what it says is that you have to allow. If you're a community within Dr. Cog, that's over certain size which includes boulder. You have to allow adus in any area where detached only units are allowed. You also have to not have design restrictions that go beyond a a detached dwelling unit. and you also have to have some levels of flexibility in terms of setbacks that can't go beyond 5 feet. So this ended up being the kind of the biggest thing that in detached dwelling unit areas of the city, we have a a setback that's typically, you know 20 or 25 feet for the principal building, but we allow accessory buildings to be in that rear yard. Usually at 0, or 3 accessory buildings tend to be smaller in size or smaller. Have a lower height

[106:07] we found out from reading the language from the State that it actually says that you can build an attached adu on your detached dwelling unit at a 5 foot setback, even from the rear. So once we realized that that was kind of like. That's a pretty big change for a detached dwelling unit to allow the principal structure to go all the way to 5 we had a number of clarifying conversations with the State, and they clarified to us that that is what they intended. So that will. We're in the process of working on an ordinance that would make these changes. So basically, we have to update the land use code to allow adus in all the zones that allow detached dwelling units. We're removing a number of the design requirements. So like there, there's a couple of design requirements like you have to have personal open space for the adu you have to. The side entry has to be screened.

[107:04] That's all being removed. But we do have a special section that says that you can build an attached adu and have a setback of 5 feet, as stated in the State Bill. But we we talked to the State, and they agreed that you could put the same bulk parameters that apply to an accessory building on that attached portion, so that the the visual effect would be minimal compared to what can happen now. So basically, it would still have to meet the 20 foot height limit in that setback area, and it would have a 12, a 500 square foot maximum building coverage, same as an accessory building. So there's also a requirement that you can't require. Owner occupancy after the permit is issued, or it can only be required at time of permit issuance. And then it's not to be checked after that. So we're moving forward with an ordinance that just does not have the owner occupancy requirement. It also has a very complicated

[108:07] parking requirement. In general, it. It's like you can only require parking. If there's not like on street parking availability, it's very nuanced language. We're proposing to just eliminate the parking requirement for an adu. So we'll be moving forward with that adu ordinance next month it'll go to planning board. and then it'll go to council on January and February same night, and same time we're gonna be talking about the occupancy change. So this was a very brief State Bill. But you, you know, from presentations I've made in the last year that we recently changed the occupancy rules. It used to be 3 or 4 per unit unrelated persons per unit. We change that to 5 citywide

[109:02] but since then the the State Bill passed which basically said, You can't regulate occupancy based on the number of unrelated persons you can't use familial relationship in your determination for occupancy. It goes further to say that if you're going to regulate occupancy, it can only be done based on established life. Safety rules among some other codes. So the city already does have the international property maintenance code, the Ipmc that sets the occupancy limit based on life safety parameter. So that typically is less restrictive than a zoning occupancy limit. But the State law basically says you can't have a zoning related occupancy limit. So while the state bill was very brief. the city code is gonna be the ordinance is gonna be pretty big. It's like 89 pages right now, and it's just by the fact that there's a lot of references to occupancy throughout the whole

[110:04] bolder revised code. And we are. We have to take it all out. Does Boulder have to take it out and just leave it, and it's not valid, or it it could be left in it. It's a policy decision by by council. You know, there, there could be some risks associated with that. But typically we've been bringing ordinances forward to to implement State law. But again, it's a policy decision by council. So if there's no like 5 unrelated people and you're talking about, let's say a 3,000 square foot house or a 800 square foot apartment. Ha, ha! How do you know what the number is? Yeah. So it's it's the Ipmc is a little. It's not as easy it's based on bedroom number of bedrooms and the size of bedrooms as well as the provision of other types of of rooms. So it's not an easy answer. So basically, it says, and I'm not an expert on the Ipmc that kind of puts it into the building code. But basically, if you have

[111:07] a bedroom, it has to be at least 70 square feet for one person. But if you have 2 people, it's 50 square feet per person. so that would put make a bedroom like a hundred square feet of 2 people are gonna stay in it. So that's it's that square footage, plus how many bedrooms. And then it's like, how many people do you have based on those number of bedrooms? In addition, you then have to have a dining room and living room of certain sizes. So if you don't meet those requirements, it ratchets down the occupancy. So it's it's not an easy answer. But in theory. Could people sleep in the living room in the dining room? If they're big enough square footage it? It still goes back to the the bedrooms like. That's the starting point. And then, based on how many people you can have in the bedrooms, then, that those additional requirements kick in for the living rooms and dining rooms. So basically, references to the Ipmc will be added to the land use code in the ordinance. And when does that matter? When someone's applying for a rental license, and they want to be able to lease the house out to 30 people. And

[112:12] since we're not gonna do that. I mean in general, I mean this, the State Bill says that the city can't, even even though we haven't updated our land use code. It says that the city can't enforce an occupancy limit that conflicts with the State Bill after July 1st of this year. So you know, the city could leave it as it is, but if it started enforcing it, you know I know the State could intervene. I don't know. But again, that's something that we we would have to take to council and see how they address the ordinance. interpreting the intent of the law versus just trying to, you know, literally copy it and make it part of bolder policy.

[113:00] I mean, there's a certain level of interpretation. But anytime there, there's a lot of references in the land use code about unrelated. So we or we are looking to cross all those off. and you get rid of the occupancy section that that does the zoning limit based on unrelated. The Co-OP section is based on that as well. So that's like I said, would be removed in its entirety. In the ordinance. Was it? Talk about bathroom size of kitchen. Other amenities you need. If there's more people well, I mean, that's in title 10 of the Brc. Again. That's where it references. The Ipmc. We don't have to change that because it's already there. It's just that the references to the zoning occupancy in the Land use code, which is Title 9, all has to be changed to reference. Title 10. There's also like, we've noticed that the State has been using the terms

[114:00] multi unit instead of multifamily, because they're moving away from family being. So. We've noticed some other jurisdictions doing that. So that's another reason why the ordinance is so long is that there's so many references, family and multifamily, that all get changed to detached dwelling unit and multi unit throughout the yeah, it just it just kind of opens it up that there's a lot of different definitions of family, and that it shouldn't be. Just assume that one family is in each unit. So yeah, we'll we'll be bringing that forward also in December to planning board, and then January and February to council. Sorry, big thing. The day to use is the elimination of the parking requirement and the owner occupancy. Yeah. So for the occupancy, is someone who wants to rent a unit, are they still gonna have to post the maximum occupancy as part of getting a rental license. No.

[115:07] that's being removed. So is it. So? We're not enforcing any sort of occupancy, or there's enforcement of of the Ipmc occupancy limit. And that's based on that's a complaint basis. Yeah, it's gonna be the arbiter of that sounds really complicated. Well, it's it's our current code enforcement staff. It's the same people that were enforcing the zoning. They they were well versed in both. But it does, you know, introduce some ambiguity, because it's not a like, you know, before it was like 5 is the limit. It's still, you know, difficult to enforce in the sense of how do you walk into a unit and know how many people are are there, and whether they're related or not, many units in Boulder, right? It could. Yeah, I'm thinking, when I leased my one bedroom

[116:01] years ago, I think there was like a notice I got that said no more than 2 related persons or one unrelated person. So one bedroom, I assume, for safety. Whatever it's it's a small unit. It's probably 2 people. Now, I would just say no more than 2 people, or does it just not say anything? As far as I know, it's it's not gonna say anything on the the license. Sounds like some of the regulation, will be more, very good because you have to determine occupancy before the place is rented out. Right? Yeah, in order to write up your lease and everything you'd have to understand. Do you know, does this State law? I understand it regulates cities. Does it also regulate private landlords? Can landlord say no more than. or you have to be related. I think it it it does. It says specifically that even like hoas can't limit occupancy, for instance. So it related this

[117:13] interesting. Do you think this will be wrapped up when I think the public hearing is set for February with Council? I think it's at planning board in December. Is the State law mandate a deadline to make it happen well with with 80 use, I think it says, by middle of 2025. I I'm I'm guessing that it could be a little bit later. The occupancy one just says that jurisdictions have to stop enforcing it after last summer. So we've we've had to talk to our Enforcement staff about just enforcing the Ipmc. Would this have an effect on

[118:00] Excuse the term single family homeowner with 5 bedrooms and 2 people they want to start taking in borders is yeah, they could. I mean, the 2 rumors goes away. Yeah. it's open season for them, and they still have to get a rental license right? Interesting. Other questions about occupancy and adu changes. Nothing makes me want to give one of my little speeches more than improving our ability to share housing. But I'll resist. I'm I'm super supportive. Same. Okay? The item. We've all been waiting for plant based food, any discussion. Do you want me to reread what the proposal was? Do they want us to pass a resolution or need a recommendation? Yeah, that makes sense.

[119:11] want us to adopt? Yeah. Adopt plant based the meals as a default, catering option while attendees can still choose meat and dairy options. If they prefer. they're adopting an approach which seems to me to be what we're already doing like Tiffany does a great job of providing plant-based solutions with you. Disagree? Yes, I think that the purpose of the proposal from Hannah Davis is I, you, just you just reread it. So I'm just reading your email. I think the I think the goal of that is to

[120:07] have a plant based meal as the default. and that if you didn't want to have a plant based meal you'd have to opt in to say, Oh, can you please make sure there's a a meat or dairy option, so that I could have that. So that's not what we do now. What we had. What we do now is like full of meat and dairy and you could go and selectively just take plant based options out of that. But that's a very different thing than than saying, You know, having the meals by default. Just be plant based. And plant based doesn't even include cheese or anything. Does it right? Dairy. So that's dairy is not plant based. Right. I'm opposed to the extent it increases the burden on the city of Boulder to feed us. I don't think that's even necessary. To begin with, we're all volunteers here, and if the city now has to go through venues, and Tiffany has to spend her time figuring out

[121:05] whether something's plan based or not. That's probably not a great use of her time. I don't know if if it is practical, then fine. I absolutely agree. And and I just, you know, from from the sounds of it today, it sounds like we have some more weighty issues to deal with here. So I I just you know, I I don't support it because I just don't think it makes sense. I don't think it's been a an issue in any in any meeting. And certainly Tiffany has done a great job as far as that goes, so I don't see the need for it. I'd like to make a counter argument that I think it's a fantastic proposal, and that we should adopt it. I think that she makes a great point about the environmental impact of the factory farm foods that that we can, you know, like that we eat and that we consume. And I think it's just a really. It might be symbolic, in a way, but I think it's a nice way to communicate support with another advisory board. It's a nice way to communicate that we actually care about the environment. We're putting our

[122:09] our mouth where our mouth is. Maybe I don't know. Oh, so I I and you know, people wanna opt in for meat options. That's that's I don't feel like that's too hard. But I I mean. I don't. I don't mean to talk glidly about something that might add extra burden to to admit, you know, Tiffany or other Admins. No, it wouldn't be a problem. I can always start sending out a week ahead of time where I plan to order from and gonna put that out there as far as options, and people can let me know if they are wanting me to order any of the meat options from whatever location I'm gonna order from it would just require any of those people that want to opt in to make sure you get back to me by whatever deadline I include in the email.

[123:06] So if we were to take today for an example, right people would have to opt in for the chicken or the beef or the cheese right? But most, but a lot of it is plant based already, like like for the people who are vegan or vegetarian, I thought, there's always been options like you've done a great job of accommodating people's always, if if going more plant based, I can up the plant based and decrease protein. You know the meat options. It's always something that's a possibility. So I don't mind looping everybody into where we're ordering from. If you want to do that. I would just add that it's not necessarily for vegans or for vegetarians. It's it's for so it's not. It's not. The idea is not to turn us all into vegans and vegetarians. It's it's to have environmentally more sustainable foods at these events.

[124:11] And so like I, you see that I eat the chicken and the euro meat. And I think it's delicious and wonderful. But I also recognize that it's not healthy for the environment. So to me, it's it's just about like, let's let's try to lift up or sustainable options. I think it's a symbolic measure that's not gonna affect the way we actually eat. I I agree with the viewpoint that it'd be nice to support another board that and the effort and the outreach. And but I didn't pay your version of this. My only concern about having a motion. I could see a cynical person saying, Boulder Housing Advisory Board votes to feed itself. Plant based diet. They're not actually focused on housing issues the crazy Liberals in Boulder, you know. That's I mean, that's this is I. When people criticize what we're concerned with in Boulder. Maybe this is one of them.

[125:07] or maybe it'll be maybe the headline will be the other direction, like all the boards really care about where they live, and they've decided to not only take the bus to the meetings, but eat plant based. I propose we take the money we spend on food and send it to the affordable Housing fund. Well, maybe we don't need a motion. We support the goals and move on. I'm sorry. What's the motion is no motion. It's more of a consensus that we support the goals. And we don't need a policy statement on this, because it's not housing. So we're moving up. But we can authorize typically to do more plant-based orders. But then, do we need to do a motion? Do we need to express to the other board that we support?

[126:14] Maybe we do a motion to vest the authority in food and Tiffany, and we won't give her criticism. Let me say this. We could well, something that would be very easy to do is just everyone send an email, Tiffany, saying what your preferences for these meals. And I think if I I would personally like to be able to like. Say, I support this thing that Hannah Davis emailed us in that. I've shown that support by emailing Tiffany, that I'm gonna I'm gonna opt in for plant based puts a lot of burden on each one of us to like respond to like. Then it's much more individual votes. I think there's something symbolic about saying hab is supportive of of

[127:12] the environmental advisory boards. Plant-based default approach for food in our meetings. I would second a motion. If you want to make a motion out of that. I'm gonna make a motion that the Housing Advisory Board express our support to the Environmental Advisory Board by adopting a plant-based default approach for food at our meetings. parentheses that might include some there on a limited basis. That second option, any further discussion, all in favor, good abstain. Then.

[128:00] 5, 4 through abstention. Is that right? The motion passes which brings us to item. See on the board. This is something that thank chip for taking the initiative to suggest. and I mentioned earlier it would be to do a have quarterly update the Council. We think it would be great to have more presence before council. I think we have a good relationship with council, but to actually have a member have once a quarter or 4 times a year. Rather go to council. Take our 3 min public council comment period and say. this is what we've been doing. We're working on a recommendation on, you know, to increase the supply of permanent supportive housing. That's just an example. This is what you can be expecting to hear from us in the next few months. This is what we think we've accomplished in the last few months. Be, I think, great to have more of a public presence before council. It might get more people attending our

[129:04] meeting. So I'm supportive. I'd like to clarify 2 things. One is, I think, that it shouldn't be the same person presenting. I think it should rotate. And if, yeah, if somebody doesn't want to, then obviously they don't have to. But it shouldn't be like I'm always presenting. And then I think the second thing is that I think that Tab should draft and approve what the person says, so that it isn't just one of us ad-libbing what we think we've done. that it should be somewhat scripted. I agree. I think it'd be like the 3rd month of each. We need to set like a meeting. And then one of the agenda items is, let's agree on what the statement should be. Vote on it, or whatever, and then

[130:01] pick the person, and they go to the next council meeting, or something like that that should be an agenda item. I agree. I think it's more likely to happen. I like. or maybe a person volunteers and says, Hey, I want to be the next presenter, and this is what I propose, and then we talk about it, because otherwise, who does that drafting fall to? Is it Jay or Michael, or so I think if somebody wants to volunteer and say, I'll be the 1st one. This is what I'd like to say. and then maybe it gets included in the packet and we all kinda edit it around. If it's a quarterly update, maybe that person volunteers like 3 months ahead of time. So they're on notice during all of our meetings to like take notes, and then they're on the hot seat at that 3rd meeting to say, all right. This is what I've collected, or something like that.

[131:01] Oh, the City Council, accepting public comment in person. Right now. There you get 2 min, though 2, and we got 2. If we could lobby for an extra minute, you can pull time. That requires 2 people show up. I'm hearing consensus that this is worthy idea. Can we perhaps translate that into a motion? Alright, I'll make a motion that about once a quarter, 4 times a year. A member of have a rotating member of have will present to city council what what we've been focused on, and the speech that they give will be discussed and approved prior to the presentation to city Council.

[132:06] Second, any discussion, I would just add, let's make it quarterly and no. Do we want to set it like in the month of March, in the month of June, in the month of September, the month of December, someone will present to council, and then we kind of have to have that discussion probably the month before we usually meet on the 3.rd I don't know. Is there a council meeting like to have maximum flexibility. If if you find yourself having a meeting in middle of March, and then the the second City Council meeting gets postponed, might as well do it the 1st week of April rather than yeah. Yeah. I don't think we need to overstipulate. It's a good intent, and I'm sure we can get it done so should we start with? I guess our 1st quarterly. Maybe we add, like our 1st quarterly update

[133:01] agenda item, like we block off time in our March meeting of next year to discuss what our Quarterly Update to Council will be. Let's say we have a great meeting discussion in January. We may want to. We may want to put together a summary at the February meeting and present it. And how often does that council meet twice twice a month and present it in February. So if if we if like, what Philip says is, we're too regimented and prescripted, then we may miss opportunities. So maybe it's a minimum of 4 times a year as opposed to like a maximum of 4 times a year. Because if we have 6 or 8 great meetings, and we're like city council. You really need to know what we talked about. I don't think there's a downside. Can I make a Meta comment like a like a more general comment, and that is to say, I I'm I'm totally for this, and I like what you just said as well. But also just just as a kind of a more general statement. I have found members of city council, but members of city council, but to be extremely receptive to individual meetings and to phone calls and to

[134:21] walks in the park. And you know, so like, they're really accessible. So like, if you have specific members that you want to get an air with, you know, have time to reach out to them. They're they're very they're very in, in fact, you know, like thinking of Brian Shuhehard, whose newsletter always includes his office hours. He has office hours every week. So that's it. So I just wanted to encourage people along those lines, and then also that city council meetings are are interesting and fun, and and to just encourage people to go whenever they want. can I clarify something, though like it it?

[135:02] If if one of us has a really hot topic that we want to discuss with an individual city council member. I think it needs to be clear that that's an individual who just happens to sit on half well and to piggyback on what Karen said. All of us are citizens, and we can talk to our elected officials all we want. But when we get together and we debate and we disagree, and we vote, and we agree on something, and then we speak collectively the board, even if it's not unanimous, that is, that is a stronger message to our policy makers. It carries the weight of the board, the weight of deliberation, the weight of public comment. And that's something we can really leverage as a collective body to get things done. So idea I have is what if we've just made a regular agenda item in every meeting? Do we want to send a update

[136:00] update to city council doesn't necessarily mean we're gonna send it that week. But is there anything from today's meeting that we want to put in our next update. And, for example, at the end of today's meeting, it could be, we like this 550 foot rule, or whatever something. Just one thing. And that doesn't necessarily mean we're sending Corinne there next week. But in 3 months from now that's on the list of things that we want to include, and maybe to that flexible approach, just having a segment at every meeting where we talk about that could be a good idea. I don't know. Okay. Think we might need to extrude that motion a little bit. To get some of these ideas. Try again. Alright the goal is to for have to present to city Council at least 4 times a year. The presenter will rotate so that it's not the same. Have board member and the have member will prepare will say a a Pre-approved

[137:12] verbiage prepared statement, the at each board meeting. We will add to the agenda. You know. a section that says that that might add something from the meeting that would that we would want to share with council. So it wasn't very succinct. But second, I second your motion. Second every word. It's all in the transcript. So any any further discussion, all in favor they need you. I. Okay, that motion passes unanimously, exactly as you said it, or if someone wants to reword it, that's fine, too. Okay, let's keep on listening session ideas. Karen is correct. We supposed to discuss that in October, but we'll discuss it now.

[138:13] I guess this is a pretty open item on the agenda, and we've talked about a few ideas in the past, but maybe we can start firming them up. I I think it's also worth discussing before we jump in the effectiveness of listening sessions. This is something we really want to do, but if we do, how can we do it? Well. so I'll start with kind of my idea of it. I just think that it's kind of multi layered. So as we an Advisory board get together to talk about housing type of things and advise city council. There's got to be another layer below that, right? It's below. But another layer of

[139:06] people in the town that we are representing about housing. But so what? We all have ideas, what we think housing has to what we should be paying attention to, what City Council should be paying attention to. But what about others that don't have the opportunity to be currently serving on some sort of advisory board or city Council, and so what? What our other residents at Boulder think that we, and therefore City council, should be paying attention to in regards to housing, so I think it would be good to be able to have a listening center session and just invite that conversation. And I don't know to be honest, if it's just as general as like. So what do you think about housing? And what should we be addressing? Or if it's if or if we should be specific about.

[140:02] I don't know if we should be specific, but open it up. And I think when we talked about this idea while ago, one of the thoughts was was to plan something out like 3 or 4 months out. Because then the community link, I think, Jay, you were mentioning the community liaison could help us kind of get the word out to people to just kind of expand. It's like people can come and speak at our meetings. But wouldn't it be great if it was more conversational. Agree with you 100. I think we need to have a topic in order to get the word out. If it's just like housing, listening session. I don't know if that's like every one of our public comments, but if it was a listening session on homelessness, and that was advertised or is listening session on landlord, tenant, or middle income housing. But I think we need a topic in order to attract people. Yeah, to actually come in?

[141:01] Can I ask a clarifying question? So we've discussed at previous meetings the goal of getting more participation from the public. And so, like today, we got a a live body as opposed to a zoom a, and one of the goals was to sort of figure out, will there be enough people who show up to have their voice be heard. So I guess how is what we're trying to do by opening up our meetings different than a listening session. And so some of it may be just the quantity of people that we think is going to show up. Or are you anticipating that, like there would be some more back and forth, so like. If Lynn made a comment, we would respond and have a dial, and if Mark made a comment, then we would question and answer, whereas right now it's basically we're listening. But we don't respond. We don't engage. So tell me a little bit about those 2 different like, how how is what you're proposing different than what we're doing? I guess I envision it more as a conversation.

[142:05] Right? So Mark gives input? On. Some says something about. I think we should be paying more attention to. I don't know tenant protections or something like that. and then we can say, Well, what do you mean by that? Is that affordability? Is that evictions, is it? What do you mean? What do you? What are you hearing out there in your connections or the rental tenant committee thing, and so more of a conversation, not necessarily to solve anything at that point, but to be able to just understand a little bit more what others think are issues with housing or things that we should be paying attention to, and therefore city council. And you don't think they feel comfortable to present now?

[143:00] Well, I think the public the open, for they have 3 min, and they speak, and we don't respond. Every once in a while somebody might respond by asking something. But it's not a conversation. It's they. Typically people are prepared with their points and what they want to say, because they know they have 3 min. Sorry. The last thing I was gonna say, I have no idea if anybody would show up. But I think it's important to be able to offer it and try and promote it. You know, the the thing that comes to mind to piggyback on is the Boulder Valley Comp plan is launching right? It's it's renewal, and part of that are is a pretty robust civic engagement, and I am wondering if there might be opportunity to

[144:00] sort of go to some of these Boulder Valley Comp plan events, and have had presence there to say this topic here that is being discussed. Do we want to have a conversation about it? Let's have a meeting, you know, invite from A, from a bigger conversation that's happening in the whole community that's already structured and organized, and and launching to find the subjects that would make sense to bring to have. But you would have an opportunity to go to an event, and, you know, present the opportunity to kind of a captive audience. It's already that they're interested. They want to participate in some way. And I think it would. Also, it's a it's a win-win, because this would provide a different kind of input than what the structure of the Bdcp public engagement is already doing. This would, I think, provide of a unique and

[145:01] potentially more robust as you're talking about that. It's actually a dialogue, not just a PIN. Your comment up on the wall type of thing. So I I think it's a brilliant idea, and it could enhance something that the city is is already launching. Well, that that's a great point. I'd like piggyback on. I I would hate to have an event that was a distraction from what they're trying to do. And it maybe makes sense to have us coordinate or us, and think about how you know, and that's just distraction. But there's also an aspect of it where, like if a hundred people came and they were passionate, and it was hours of community feedback and engagement. Yeah, at the at the end of the day we're sort of like, well, all we do is make recommendations to city Council. We don't, really, you know, like, maybe you should have gone to the Bbcp event where they're actually, you know.

[146:04] I don't think it should be. You're right. It shouldn't be in competition. But all I'm saying is that could be a source for finding the population and and the conversation attend that, and then say, anybody wants to continue this conversation, and we are, you know, a board in the city that deals with housing, and just just give an opportunity, a little pathway for a more robust conversation. About specific things that you know. This board might want to be engaged in so brainstorming this a little bit. I think the goal of the listening session is our goal. What do we want to get out of it? And every meeting we raise a lot of questions that are hard to answer. Current one from this meeting is. how do we ensure affordability as part of selling prescriptions in a way that is practical. Council will listen.

[147:05] So we could do something on that. Another possibility. and I have to make things concrete for them to work in my mind. It's you know. Maybe we'd have. I think we invite people to attend these sessions, so we don't just wait for people to show up. We figure out like, who is the audience that we need to hear and actually say, you've got to come and tell us what you're thinking it's really important to us, and you know, it doesn't have to be 100. It could be the focus group. But 10 is a lot more than we've ever gotten in person than a meeting. Maybe it's a round table with housing developers. We're gonna have probably have some end to our January meeting to talk about office conversions of the housing. Maybe it's the missing middle conversation, and we I'm always fascinated when I talk to people more than Chips age group

[148:01] who are buying homes in boulder. And they're not like Google billionaires. How are they doing it? One of the challenges they're trying to overcome the young couple that's buying like, Wow. they can actually swing that by leveraging every technique you can imagine. So I would we could possibly benefit from more of that questions that came up tonight about what's the effectiveness of deed restricted for sale? Affordable housing? There's certainly plenty of people live in that type of housing that we could have in and have a conversation with in addition to the folks that administer those kinds of programs. So there's just some examples. I would. I would think that would need to be a pretty concrete subject with a kinda invite only. But we would want to invite the people we want to come.

[149:00] Can I jump in or who spoke last? I don't know. I'll go after you. Okay, I think for it to be successful. We need to plan it a few months out so that we can get the word out. There's publicity so that people actually show up. And it needs to be a topic that's somewhat hot and controversial. Otherwise, if it's too technical, I don't. I don't know if we're gonna get robust information. And I know I keep going back to this subject, and it's a subject that mankind will probably never solve. But I I would like to do a listening session on homelessness. I'm sure you've all seen the tents along Canyon. I walk my dog along the creek every other night, and right now there are tents parked right behind the boulder Justice Center. and I don't know if you know the Boulder Justice Center, but the backside along the creek is where all the judges have their chambers, so all the judges sit down at their desks, and they look at it. Tents of homeless people sitting along the creek, and I'd say, on average, about 30 people are summoned to court each week in boulder to be evicted.

[150:11] Almost all of them, the vast majority, live in permanently affordable housing that signals to me that these people are leaving subsidized housing because they cannot afford that. They're not able to pay their subsidized rent for whatever reason and for a lot of them, if they can't come up with the money, or they're not eligible for emergency rental assistance. The next step is some form of homelessness, whether that's moving in with family or friends, or being on the streets or in a shelter. It's an issue. It's an issue that is always gonna be an issue we're not able to solve. But I think there's good reason to listen to people about it. I think there's a lot of opinions, or maybe controversial ones. You might hear from people who want them all rounded up and thrown in jail, which I don't support, but, like I think it is important that we engage with the community on this issue and see how are people feeling about it?

[151:10] And that's a lot to take on. But you know we do live in one of the wealthiest communities in America, and we do have a sizable, homeless population. And I think it's just something worth listening to, and I think it's something that could potentially attract public participation. So those are my thoughts there. I think if we publicized a listening session on homelessness. The Boulder Housing Advisory Board will be conducting a listening session on homelessness on X day, and maybe we do that at Council Chamber all of our meetings there, but do it in a more central location that people are familiar with. Maybe we'll learn something new, and we can factor that into our decision making down the road. So interesting thoughts. Next, okay, yeah, go ahead. So I have a question for Jay. Like

[152:06] every board I've ever been on has public participation that's like limited to 3 min, and there is no back and forth interaction discussion. So is that, like Robert's rules, is that like a board rule or like, is there anything we need to do to switch from 3 min? No interaction to like a listening session that would be more interactive. like the 1st 15 min of the meeting, or something. I don't think it's an issue yet, because we don't have from, you know, when we have too many people like. Then today, we had 2 like, what I'm trying to ask is, is there some rule? Is there some rule with you can ask questions. You can have a conversation. Okay, I would recommend keeping a 3 min limit. Otherwise. the person's gonna keep talking. Okay. But then we're allowed to respond or ask questions. There's no prohibition to that. Okay? So that's point number one. Okay, so then point number 2 is

[153:13] you had mentioned, like, maybe we do this topic. Maybe we do that topic. Maybe we target the people that we want to come and speak, which in my mind is much more like creating a panel discussion to educate the board on various topics. So what I'm trying to figure out is, if we're going to do this listening session. Are we inviting people to talk, or we just publicizing it and saying, Hey, this is the topic that we're going to talk about. Anybody, whether you're an expert or not can come, participate, and I don't necessarily need an answer. But I think we should think about it because I love our panel discussions where we are learning from experts, and then forming opinions about what we might want to suggest to city council as opposed to.

[154:01] I think, what you're saying, which is, we just want the general public to feel like they have a voice. And so I think those are 2 different things. And then, with regards to what you're saying, I respectfully, completely disagree. I do not want to talk about homelessness like the Chambers talked about homelessness. the all roads talked about homelessness. There's like a lot of people that are talking about homelessness, and that gets into so many issues that have nothing to do with housing. So if we want to have another panel on housing solutions for homelessness. I'm very supportive, but I don't think this is the forum for mental health addiction, judicial, like all the other topics that relate to housing. So is it important? Absolutely. But I don't think that's the Forum for this for this board, I agree, and I would also vote no on a proposal to that. yeah, I'm in agreement with you on that now.

[155:03] We're gonna run out of time. So I'm gonna ask for kind of a straw consensus poll on whether we should pursue listing sessions in 2025, a listing session and following that up with, we need a dedicated agenda item. and probably a lot of time to discuss it like 45 min on format topic. And is it by invite or or open to the general public, or some combination of thereof, where we make sure we get the people we want room and other people also welcome. I just, I think the 1st step is to come to some agreement that we wanna pursue it. Can I ask a question of Jay? So has have ever done a listening session. Yes. I was there so long ago. I don't really remember what was discussed. Yeah, we had several listens. That one we had one on the notion of. What steps could be taken to make housing

[156:09] affordable housing more affordable. We had another listen session, which is excellent on tiny homes. I really the whole notion of a listen session. So 1st of all, Roberts rules are going to be modified because it's not quasi-judicial. It's really just a kind of opening open session. That's why you call it. A listen session, the way that we've always done it, and the way that I think is the most effective, and some of these are pretty good. One turned into a little bit of a free for all. But the the way we've always done it is. you have a couple of people, maybe from different perspectives talk on an issue. It could be homelessness, it could be, whatever else. It is right. So you have people who are, you know, involved in it, experts in it, whatever. Talk about it. But then you want the public there to have a robust conversation with them and the most effective listen session that we've had, and I've brought this up before is when we all got off of the Ds. Over by, you know City Council room back then, and just did. A kind of round table, sat in chairs right with everybody right in the middle, and had a great conversation about

[157:13] tiny homes, and you know exactly how they were utilized, etc, etc, and it can be very effective. But it's absolutely got to be open to the public, because that's the whole notion of it is that you know you're you have an open public forum where you're providing some information, and then you're trying to get information from the public, you know. Usually people who are have an issue near and dear to their heart. So if it's, you know, rentals, then you know, you want to have a, you know, robust conversation for people who are renting, etc. Maybe landlords, whatever it is. But the whole notion of a listen session is that public aspect of it? And it's in Karen. It's in entirely different. So the Roberts rules. It's absolute. We should not, during the public comment. get involved. In conversations with people during those 3 min. The that's just a a simple part of Robert's rules. It's for every body that that has, you know, local hearings like that. But in terms of a listen session, that's our opportunity. Where we can have that conversation, we can have that dialogue. We can go delve deeper into something, etc. And and you know, we're inviting people to be there for that specific topic, and that topic only. And that's another big part of it, right?

[158:24] You know. One of the reasons why we have that limit on the public comment is because we have an agenda that we have to get to right, and it's just an opportunity to, you know. State your piece, whatever it may be. So I think. opening it up to the public, having a speaker or 2 who can kind of, you know, at least lay the groundwork for for a hearty conversation, and then open it up to dialogue with the public is absolutely the best way to go about it. and that's the way we've done it in the past. Pretty cool. So I feel like a broken record coming. You guys have been going around in circles on this topic for a long time, meeting after meeting. It seems like so my suggestion again

[159:06] come up with a topic 1st and then figure out. Then you can work through the logistics of how a listening session would work. Who you want there, how it, how to organize it? It's just you trying to organize a study session without a specific topic. It's really difficult. I agree. I moved the Board to schedule a listening session on homelessness. In the 1st 6 months of 2025, I vote no, I'd prefer a different time. Oh, I won't. I'll so I'll second it just to have a conversation at least. And in support of it there's no board. I understand. It's a tricky issue, and I don't think we're gonna solve it. I don't think any governments always try to solve it, and they don't. I'm not aware of an advisory board that advises the City Council on homelessness, and to the extent that you know in Boulder people like to say unhoused. Now, that is, we are the Housing Advisory Board, and from my observations it's a housing issue. There's mental health aspects to it. Of course, there's policing aspects. Of course.

[160:16] I don't think we're going to be making recommendations to city council on how to police people. But I think listening to the public on this issue is important. And if we're going to have a successful listening session where people show up. I think it's homelessness. I think that's that's something that would attract people. I don't know of a a more pressing issue that catches people's attention, that we'd be able to publicize and, in my opinion, a successful listening session would be one that people attend. I would suggest as an alternative topic that we focus on solutions for affordable middle income, so that we can attract and retain families.

[161:05] And how can we do it? What are some tools? What are some other cities done again. I don't think we're the Forum for homelessness. I think the shelters already had study sessions about it. I think if you're really interested in it. You should. You should volunteer at all roads, because that's what they do. But they don't advise City Council. Yes, they do. They haven't. They're working with city council all the time, but what I mean by that, and they may be in communication. But we are an Advisory Board, you know our our Legislative Mission. which is the directive of City Council through the Ordinance, is to advise on housing issues, and I think it's 1 of the pressing housing issues. I agree with you that we should also do a listening session on everything you mentioned. We need to start with one topic. So we did a panel on housing solutions for homelessness right? And we had Bhp present, and we had element present in a listening session

[162:13] like the panel. The panel thing. What Danny was just. I think Danny was just differentiating. The panel is great because we invite from a few different whatever expertise areas, and they present information which informs us about what we potentially advise to city council right? But what the listening session is is people who are like people of the public. So people that are potentially experiencing homelessness, or have, or whatever just have some opinions or ideas coming in to to talk about the experiences. And maybe somebody has some brilliant idea on how we can solve it. That opens our eyes to something I don't know. I'm just. I'm I'm okay. Sitting there listening with no agenda. You know. Okay, we have a motion on the table. We have 15 min left.

[163:15] and I'm gonna suggest we vote on this. If it does not pass. I would certainly hope to entertain a different motion next month with some specifics that will make it compelling. Yeah. So to restate my motion, which Danny seconded. I propose that we host a listening session that we publicize, and we host at City Council chambers on the issue of homelessness. In the 1st 6 months of 2025, Danny, you check into that if that stands. Yes, okay, all in favor. We got 4 in favor, all against motion passes 4 to 3.

[164:02] Actually, no, I'm I'm I'm I'm gonna abstain. So we have a couple of months left on this. And so I think you guys have a have a deadlock. I'm sorry. Okay? Which is means we can't move forward with it. Correct. It's not right, Danny. What does that mean? Yes. What does that mean? If there's a tie. Well, I think I think have a revote We can modify it, I think. Maybe here's what I here's what what I would support is, if is, if we and and you know. when you guys could take leave the charge on this. But come up with a a specific proposal for a listening session on homelessness. To be decided at the the next meeting, which I guess is January, and and I I guess that would be something that I would vote. Yes, for that way. Everybody has a chance to talk about what it is rather than have a a

[165:10] a very broad kind of mandate that we're imposing ourselves before we really know what it is, because there seems to be, you know, a lot of misgivings on that. You know, we we obviously have a split board. So I think maybe if we talk about specifically what we're going to talk about and and how it ties to some of the issues that some of the other people have some concerns about. Then we could get a resolution. So that would be. My suggestion is that you know we under proposal. I think the motion failed. It's 3 3. Well, it's either tabled or failed. Well, no. An affirmative vote of a majority of the quorum present is required to pass a motion approving any action. accept a motion approving a recommendation to city council, which this is not a motion approving, a recommendation to city council, requiring an affirmative vote of the majority of regular board members.

[166:00] an affirmative vote of the majority of quorum present is required to pass emotion. So majority of people present is required to pass a motion. That's not a recommendation. If it's recommendation to council, then we need a majority of members. So you need 4 people to pass a motion to recommend something to council, and then we just need a majority of the quorum, which I believe is but everyone's here. So yeah, so I that the motion definitely didn't pass. But my suggestion is, if if you want to modify it, skip just to say, you know. We'll come up with a specific proposal at the next meeting for the listening session on homelessness. Then I would I would vote in favor of that. You have a new motion, saying just that. I don't want to burn time on it as people are opposed. What if we make a motion that says we are at the next Board meeting. We're going to have a discussion about a listening session, and we're going to figure out what topic we're going to do, and it may be homelessness. It may be middle income, but we'll hash it out at the next meeting, so everybody should come to the meeting with

[167:14] with the topic. Like, if you're I won't bring up homelessness. Well, let's put it this way unless we get a new member on the board, and then maybe I will. If you said homeless solution housing solutions, I might be more open. But I don't want to have a discussion about mental health issues and encampments and judicial issues like it needs to be housing for them. That's why. And that's why I abstain. Because it is very broad right now, and it doesn't really specify what we're doing. And I think. Thank you. Terms of the comedy between board members to to come up with something specific and say, this is what it is before they make a decision makes a lot of sense. That's why I'll move. I'll second Karen's motion. To to say we're Gonna we are going to decide at January what we will have a listen session on, including homelessness and any other topic proposed, and we'll come out of the January meeting with the decision.

[168:13] What that listen. Session will be, and a date that everybody feels comfortable with. We're going to Jay. Yes, shall. Thing for us to do, and I'm glad this is how we communicate and have conversations. So I would advocate that everybody come to January meeting with a topic or 2 for a listening session that might include like, is it gonna be a panel with the public or just the public? I just want to clarify that. I think that is an important distinction. So there won't be any experts. It's just us listening. If someone talks about something off topic. We give them their 3 min politely, and maybe we don't engage as much, you know.

[169:04] I don't think we have a full hour to spend talking about this again at the January meeting. Yeah. So we skipped over an agenda item which was going over the work plan. Ha! It'd be great to have a little bit of time to share that with the board, because there's a lot coming out next year. Great we settled on. I don't even think we need to vote out. We just wanna have an agenda item in January to decide what that we're doing. That's sort of part of this work plan. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, let's talk about that. And you guys trips decide what's the word plan and the work plans. We didn't get a new package every time. Well, no, we don't. I don't. I used to include it in the packet every month. It's what I share with the chairs. Every month, and I keep it updated.

[170:06] there might be benefit. Is there a reason that we can't include it in the factor. No, there isn't. I just I did, and I did it for like 2 years, and nobody ever said anything about it or seemed to care. So I stopped doing. This is an extra step. And I think part of it. You know. Part of the frustration, I think with the group is. we had a a slow summer and fall. There really wasn't a lot that was going on. We had a super busy 2023. All those council priorities there were there were. Was it 9 sorry? 9 out of the 10 Council priorities were related to House, so there was a lot of things coming to have for recommendation, and we had, like an 8 month period where? Where? There's nothing. So I think that's part of the group's frustration, I think, but things are picking up again. So again, November, you could see, was a pretty busy.

[171:03] our full meeting January again. It's gonna be pretty media as well. So this whole office conversion discussion, remember, that's been a high priority for folks. Michael. And right, Karen, you guys have figured out the panel almost you want me to quickly review that. So we want to have 3 presenters who are actively engaged, or planning to convert commercial properties and dialing talk about the challenges, the costs. What is helpful in the city regulations and codes what's not helpful? And one of them will be a Php. Project near 28, th and Iris. Another one would be a proposed conversion in the Whittier neighborhood. The 3rd one, we hope, would be and because they buy commercial properties and convert them into more of a dorm style. Housing for their audience and by example.

[172:10] in Boulder is right near the table, Mason Park, and ride so and we'll probably have someone from Bhp on that as well. So it'll be a really good panel. Same quality, I think, is our how to house homeless people that we did a couple of months ago. And we've been reaching out to speakers, and they seem to be available and ready to go, and it'll be really good. Educational opportunity and conversation. Just a question about that. Is it going to be limited to converting, existing like commercial buildings into residential, or we also exploring the idea of just like tearing down and commercial building and building residential. That that's 1 of the questions we put to the panelists is what's cost effectiveness of adapting versus start from scratch. And one of the projects we're looking at is actually half and half the building and renovating the consort. So it's all worked off.

[173:08] So I think we'll get answers to that. And then the other piece, Holly Hendrickson from my group is also gonna she's she wrote a really nice white paper on what other cities across the country are doing, what the current challenges are so just to give you a little bit of background before that meeting. So I think that would be helpful as well. Can we also include that Pugh Gensler article. Yep, I sent that to her. I think she has sort of a list of resources as well. Is that the one that was cited in the boulder. whatever that newspaper article was. Yeah, oh, we're reporting loud. Yeah. so with other things. So January still has we have the doctor cog. Regional housing needs assessment. An update. We have someone who's ready to come and present on that. It's kind of meaty as well. That will definitely take some time.

[174:01] There's I think the one b funding will be pretty much resolved by then. I can give you an update on that. And then I've added the quarterly update. So that's all for January. Then if you want to also talk about study sessions. could the doctor call get moved to February, so that we could have like, maybe we mentioned, maybe we have a brief discussion about a study session that might end up being in April, and that gives us like if we talked about it in January, and we sort of blocked out April. So then we're kind of like planning ahead. But that might mean moving Dr. Cod to February and moving February stuff to March. Yeah, I agree, I think next week or next January's topics, probably even in all the other stuff we talk about, I think, doing both in the same as a lot. So I agree with that approach. Are you asking us to bump the office conversion. No, I think we make that the primary discussion point for January, and then, you know, we have all our other things, and then maybe I agree with you.

[175:12] And then there are a number of projects that are going to council on the spring. So the the impact fee, the nexus study for scrapes and additions that we've talked about. That report will be available definitely. Want you guys to be aware of that and provide feedback and then the manufactured housing strategy. That is one of the council priorities related to housing. Molly Taylor will come and and talk about that before we go to City Council And then we'd also talked about having see you. Come, Laurie, call is available, or someone from our staff would come and talk about all of the things that see you is doing related to acting. And and there's some new developments on that front as well. And then there's always upcoming items. So these are just things that have come up over the past, and I try to keep track of them. So everything from listening session topics to there's an affordable homeownership resident survey which I just was talking about earlier. We're updating that actually got pushed a little bit. So go out in January. So it doesn't conflict some other stuff.

[176:16] But I think you'll find that interesting as well the housing pipeline we talked about. You know, portable market who get what is the target, what is being left out? So these just ideas to get thrown out there by the generals and other people. And I do keep track of it. What else? There's We talked about a parking meeting with lining board and tab. so lots of things there's no shortage of things to talk about. And then down below city housing projects, initiatives. Of course, the Comp plan is really big regional housing partnership. Carl's project you just heard about already, up through planning reasons.

[177:03] And then there will be a homelessness update to council in January, so as well as behavioral health from city staff. So it's the annual update to council. is it? February 13? th Thank you. And I always encourage you to definitely listen to those, because I always learn a lot as well. So that's the work plan. There's a lot coming up, all of it. Great, thank you. Jay. So we have still have matters from staff, which I hope we can cover as quickly the one page summary and the December 4th event. Well, the recruitment is another one.

[178:00] So Michael mentioned this, so the applications will be open, I believe, early December, and they close January 31, st we'll keep that in mind that deadline. We just need one more vote to do list. and then everybody got the invite for December 4, th I think about half of you have Rsvp. The other half have not. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Philip. It's December 4th that know have multiple. So that certain ones I check. You'll get a personal email from us if you don't register. That's like, that's Wednesday, December 4, th at session. Think you like it? Yep, thanks. So it's kind of a celebration. But it's also a way to interact with all the different housing and human services, boards and commissions and understanding what their role is to your role.

[179:02] I think will be very interesting, and also talking about housing and human services. What our mission is, what our work plan is. Moving forward and then getting some feedback from you as well like we're we're contemplating this concept of a an annual report that's more like a story map, something a little more interesting, interactive visual. We'll talk about that as well. Is that different than the party for board members. So there's something on the 3rd and on the 4th a party for board members, also about a party for board members. Are you talking about the same thing? Let me look at that. It was like this. All the board members related to housing. And so that's on the 4.th Okay, I think I had it on the 3.rd Okay, thank you.

[180:01] Okay. It's 9 o'clock. I'm moving on to debriefing the meeting. A very productive meeting. There's a poll attendance. We had our 1st public meeting, and we did have one public attendee and one online commenter. We had a really good session with Carl Gyler on family, friendly, vibrant neighborhoods, and we made specific recommendations. the general endorsement with some tweaks for the material that was presented, we were able to have a robust discussion about that. We heard an update on accuracy and adu. Changes required by State law. which will be going into effect. Looks like mid 2025 we discussed doing a head member quarterly update to Council. They'll be rotating among. Have members and came up with a framework for that. We accepted the Environmental Advisory Board's recommendation to

[181:00] try harder to eat plant based food and we put listening session ideas on the agenda for January with a general agreement, and we should do some in 2025. I think that was everything we covered any questions, or do I hear a motion to adjourn? I'll make a motion to adjourn. Second. Call in favor. I thank you all for your time. Good meeting. Cheers, but. Hi, Danny! Hi, Danny! Happy Thanksgiving! Oh, yeah, happy Thanksgiving! Everyone.