Ready to get started with our city council work session.

I think everyone is here except Councilor Francis is excused today.

So we'll just go ahead and dive right into our presentation.

Okay.

Good evening, Mayor.

I'm Sarah Hudson, Senior Policy Analyst and City Manager's Office, acting in capacity for Ress Grayson, Chief Operations Officer, and please back on Monday.

And I'm joined by my colleagues in the community development department.

So we have Ben Barry, private development city engineer, policy community development department director, and Renee Brook planning manager.

So I'm here to talk to you about development infrastructure requirements.

So we we shared very lengthy memo.

So we will kind of do a light touch at the front end of this presentation with the idea that we'll leave a lot of time for questions and answers and discussion.

But we do want to provide some grounding and context just to make sure we're all on the same page.

So in terms of the purpose of this discussion, we really want to dive into how infrastructure requirements affect in fill housing development specifically.

And we'll talk a little bit more about what that is, and then I'll went into in-depth as well.

There's just some unique policy considerations because in field is offered very differently than green field development.

We do want to provide context on recent changes, including at the state level that really influence the conversation that's happening on the ground, including highlighting some key challenges and trade-offs that we're encountering on a daily basis, so where council guidance will be really really helpful.

And we do have approaches that are currently underway that we're doing this year, some kind of administrative actions.

So we'll kind of outline that in more detail today, so council gets a sense of the things that we're already moving forward to address some of these challenges.

But then there's some more, you know, media policy and funding considerations, some concepts that we put forward where we'd really like to get council guidance on, you know, do we want to advance these things and what priority, just so we know how to develop board plans accordingly.

So what we're really looking for tonight is some of that guidance on some of the trade-offs that we're encountering and direction on kind of those uh longer term policy approaches.

So here are some key value questions really at the heart of this discussion, and the memo had a lot more at length, but a lot of them really kind of boil down to what's on this slide, and a little later we'll have some more specific questions that drill down a little bit deeper that are a little bit easier to provide guidance on.

But just for council to be chewing on as we kind of go through the presentation.

So some things that we're really thinking about at the heart of this discussion should infrastructure requirements be tied to project type or project impact.

So for example, um three units all on their own separate lots through a middle housing land division or a triplex.

You're talking about three units, but they have different kind of requirements associated with them.

But is the impact mostly the same?

You know, what are the considerations there?

Um, in general, should every new dwelling be required to contribute to the multimodal network?

That's more or less how we operate today.

So that's kind of like a broader question about how we think about this.

Um, when is existing infrastructure and right way considered sufficient even if it does not meet current standards?

Um, and kind of just balancing the need for getting housing on the ground right now, but also protecting the opportunity for future development later.

So that's a kind of a key trade-off that we think about.

And um, when should infrastructure costs be shared more broadly.

So we'll have we'll get to kind of dive into that more in a little bit, but kind of that roles and responsibilities, what's the responsibility of private development versus the city?

So just quickly the agenda that we'll go through today.

Again, we're gonna try to, you know, we endeavor to move through this pretty quickly just because of the the read-ahead materials, but we will kind of talk about infill development, how infrastructure requirements work today, some of that context.

Um we won't dive into the case study highlights, but we do have a few options here in case it would be helpful to ground some of the discussion to kind of look at a particular example, and then we'll get into that discussion in just a bit.

Sure, whose idea was the picture?

Who's in the picture?

It's a good one.

Um in terms of why we're having this conversation now.

So uh, first and foremost, alignment with council goals.

So really, we've done a lot of work.

There's been a lot of success in terms of infill housing, housing in general.

We've really tackled a lot of that lower hanging fruit.

Now, a lot of the things that we're dealing with are kind of more structural in nature.

So really kind of taking that one that next step of looking at how do we continue to move forward council goals?

Changes in state policy and development patterns.

So with changes from the state, we're just seeing that more density is allowed in existing neighborhoods that previously only considered lower density development.

So a lot of times that infrastructure is not adequate to support that density.

So there's just, you know, again, that that tension exists there.

Sometimes we're just seeing limited outcomes.

So I think it's helpful not to think of it as an either or do we want the housing or the infrastructure?

We want all of the above.

But in some cases, we're not getting either because requirements just serve to be an obstacle to move that forward.

And again, kind of clarifying those roles and responsibilities, that ongoing question of what should be funded by development versus the city and maybe some previous to be thinking about.

So here are the council goals that are really kind of at the heart of what we're talking about.

We want to accelerate complete neighborhoods, remove barriers to infill and build housing.

At the same time, we want to enhance safety accessibility and travel options and align our systems with a growing city.