For so let's get the meeting started.

Um, because we have a big agenda item tonight.

And since the beginning of the meeting is uh mostly formalities anyway, I'm sure Liz will join a minute.

So welcome everybody to the June 16 2026 CHEPOL Planning Commission meeting.

We are a, and there's Liz.

We're a volunteer citizen advisory board charged with advising the town council, not making decisions, but advising the town council on matters of orderly uh growth and development.

And we'll start out with a roll call before doing some other administrative matters, and we'll quickly get to our main agenda item for tonight.

So uh we'll start out with a roll call.

Um Jeff.

Present.

Liz?

Yes.

Chuck?

Here.

Mike?

I'm here.

And I'm John Mitchell, the chair.

Are there any um announcements?

Actually, I'm doing the order wrong, apparently.

We're gonna do approval of the agenda first.

Um so we have one um item of new business beyond just approving the minutes from the last meeting, and that's uh presentation from the planning department from Taz regarding um the LUMO, the land use management ordinance.

That's a discussion item, and that's that's all we have for tonight, but uh might take a little bit.

Um is everybody okay with the agenda if you're okay.

If you could um just thumbs up if I can see you or uh yeah, I think I can see everybody.

Yeah.

So looks like we're fine with the agenda.

Um announcements and petitions.

And I think Jeff, this was a chance where you could maybe give us an update on um TPO meeting.

No, no, it was the uh Carolina North uh meeting.

Yeah.

So uh thanks, John.

Uh I'm uh I was appointed to the Carolina North Stakeholder Advisory Committee, not in my capacity as a planning commission member, but just as a community member.

Um so I thought uh I would just report out every time there's a meeting and share anything uh interesting that happened.

So it was about a two-hour meeting.

There are about 36 members uh or so on the stakeholder advisory committee.

There's a website at Carolina North UNC dot EDU that provides the name of all the members as well as meeting agendas.

Um there supposedly will be minutes, which I assume we'll approve at the next meeting, and the video of the meeting itself should be on there as well.

Um it was very much an introductory meeting.

Everybody introduced themselves.

Um we got a brief overview, uh introduction from the chancellor, um, a brief overview of the project and the timeline.

They have consultants um doing a study of place to sort of you know get some basic elements of how the site might be developed.

Um and then they have a uh team led by the consulting firm Air St.

Gross and helped the university develop its master plan a couple years ago.

I believe they did the master, the previous master plan from about 12 years ago or so, and they do a lot of work with um institutions around the country doing campus type thing.

So they'll be getting on board, and the goal is to have that study, I think, completed within about a year or so.

And their timetable has at least some uh horizontal construction taking place sometime in 2027.

So um not a lot of details.

Questions there was a news and observer article about the meeting.

Um one of them um some of the questions that were raised.

Someone asked about the status of a basketball arena on Carolina North, and that still not been decided, although it's important.

Um and there were comments about making sure that Carolina North is welcoming to the community.

Um also making sure that the trail system is maintained and you know really improved because a lot of them uh are pretty fragile.

Um and there was concern about how they will hold up if there's a an entire campus there that's using the trails.

So that's about it.

No decisions made.

This is not a committee that will make decisions.

Um, but it's a it's an interesting and diverse group, and see what happens.

Thanks, Jeff.

Um Taz, I wonder if you could help us get an invite to this meeting to um council member McCollowa, who is um can't find an invite and is having trouble receiving it or council email invites forwarded from us.

Uh yeah.

Um so for this wait for her to join.

Yeah, she wants to join the meeting we're having right now, but we're we're just having trouble getting her a link that gets to six the spam filter.

Got it.

Yeah, give me uh give me just a second, let me see what I can do.

Okay, thank you.

Liz, did you have a a question for I had a question for Jeff and and then I also had uh a announcement.

Uh the question for Jeff is sorry, Jeff, I might have missed you said this.

Who does the committee um answer to?

I just missed that.

You probably said it right at the beginning.

I didn't.

Um, but uh um who called who called it?

It reports to the chancellor.

Got it.

Okay, interesting.

Great, great.

And um so on a different topic, although I will um stop if anybody had any other questions or comments about what Jeff just brought up.

Okay.

Um John, maybe you were gonna say this already, but just wanted to mention that in the last uh council meeting.

Um John and my terms were extended by one year.

So just wanted to note for the record that uh we will this is not the last date of our terms.

John, did you want to add anything to that?

Or no, no, that I forgot that it escaped my mind.

So thank you for bringing that up.

Um are there other announcements or petitions from doesn't look like we have any members of the public.

Um or from Planning Commission members.

If not, we can go forward to uh approval of the minutes from the last meeting.

Um, by the way, thank you, Jeff, for the update.

And uh yeah, please do.

I'd love to get more of these going forward.

Um May 19th minutes attached to the agenda.

I took a look.

They looked accurate um to me.

If uh you guys agree, maybe somebody could motion to approve.

Motion Wow.

Let Josh figure that out.

Yeah, yeah, that would be a puzzle.

Um procedural crisis, like simultaneous motion and second.

Okay.

Uh thumbs up if you're okay with the minutes.

Yes, minutes are approved.

And now we are going to proceed to new business.

I just want to note that there are two of me on the call, and I think that's because Melissa dialed in with um uh a dial-in that I forwarded her, which is the one that I had.

But um Taz, if you um if it's possible to get Melissa like a more generic invite, um maybe she could dial in with that.

But I'm fine having two of me, and um maybe she'd be a better represent representation of me than I am myself anyway.

Melissa could also change the name.

Uh Melissa, the little dots on the top right allow you to rename yourself.

There you go.

But I'll don't worry about me.

Magic.

I did it.

So perfect.

Okay.

Uh so with that, let me turn it over to Taz um to present to us on the LUMO.

And um Taz, before you speak, let me just see if there's any, I don't see any members of the public, but in case for the record, uh members of the public want to join us or join us midstream.

The plan is to have um Taz give his whole presentation and then have public comment and then go back to the planning commission for a combined question and comment session by um by segment, and there are five segments corresponding to the objectives in the alignment memo.

Um but I'm kind of thinking, Taz, that given that we don't have any members of the public dialed in, maybe we just pause, you know, at the end of each of the five segments and and have planning commission um comment and and questions um just to break it up and give you a little uh rest from your presentation.

Yeah, I think that would be great.

Um and if you um need to jump in more often than that, I think that would be perfect as well.

Um full disclosure, the the presentation is topped out at like well over 50 slides.

Sure.

Sounds good.

All right well I can go ahead and jump in.

I appreciate you guys uh preemptively I appreciate your patience this evening and and your time I I think it's gonna be um a meaningful discussion albeit uh a long one um give me just a second here I'll get my my screen share going um okay are you all seeing my shared screen yes okay um so I want to just talk through a handful of things this evening before jumping into kind of the substance of the the conversation um want to briefly talk about what public participation over the summer and into the fall is going to look like um and then also what um start to kind of give you guys a sense of what your schedule and the council schedule in the fall uh could potentially look like and then we'll jump into the the meat of the conversation um around the substance of the draft ordinance so first off with public participation um just want to kind of you know set out that I think from the outset we've really talked about public participation with this project being primarily about education right making sure that the public understands what's in uh the draft ordinance and understands their opportunities to kind of speak to uh the the kind of final decision makers in this process which is going to be planning commission and council um and so with those goals in mind um we're gonna you know work with our engagement and um communications and engagement department to really come up with a good mix of in-person events and and online outreach to kind of get the word out right to make sure that people once we have a draft ordinance uh kind of available to the public uh make sure that they are able to access it easily uh comment on it uh learn more about what's in it and then also just be set up well to to participate in uh the public process in the fall um and then we're also going to be doing some kind of more detailed user testing um with kind of key stakeholders just have more technical uh technical understanding of how land use ordinances work um we really want to make sure that the people that are going to be using lumo day in and day out um get a chance to kind of roll up their sleeves with it and so that's kind of generally what public participation is going to look like over the summer and going into the fall um and we'll start to share more information as uh as the draft lumo gets published um hopefully within the next couple of weeks um and then you know really kind of moving on from there.

One other thing that I'll I'll just mention that's not on the slide is that even after this meeting um I'm not going anywhere for the summer um I want to be a resource other staff want to be a resource to you guys um as you all are kind of you know digging into the draft lumo for the first time so um we've talked about this notion of basically doing office hours throughout the summer um and that's very much an open offer um if any planning commission members um if you have question about what's in the draft lumo if you just want to sit down for 30 minutes or an hour at any time uh just reach out and and we can make that happen so again it's an opportunity for for you to to better understand what's in the LUMO not necessarily you know workshopping what's in the LUMO but making sure that you're well equipped to um engage with with the ordinance throughout the rest of the year um and it really is going to be kind of the the rest of the year that we're gonna be working with the the draft ordinance um we have um you know put together a schedule that potentially gives you all in council the opportunity to adopt the the new lumo by the end of the year um and in doing that right we we have to balance kind of a sense of urgency but also what we know is an interest of of you all and council which is to have kind of a deliberate uh deliberative discussion about uh the new lumo and so with that I mean yeah particularly council can can always add additional meetings to the the schedule that we've proposed um but additional meetings are likely going to come with additional time um there's not a lot of kind of room in the schedule as is to to infill right it's gonna kind of extend the timeline out into the probably into 2027 if we add additional meetings um and so again just kind of give you a sense of of what the schedule's gonna look like we're really hoping to break it up into two phases right um we know that there's been a lot of good opportunities to have kind of informal but still public discussions about the new lumo um and so we're gonna have kind of a phase of work sessions and then

It's gonna kind of extend the timeline out into the probably into 2027 if we add additional meetings.

Um again, just kind of give you a sense of of what the schedule's gonna look like.

We're really hoping to break it up into two phases, right?

Um, we know that there's been a lot of good opportunities to have kind of informal but still public discussions about the new LUMO.

Um, and so we're gonna have kind of a phase of work sessions and then lead into uh the official legislative process.

So what you'll see in the yellow at the top of the screen are basically an opportunity for two council or two planning commission work sessions and then two council work sessions with kind of contingency plans to add a third council meeting and a third uh planning commission meeting if needed.

And what we're roughly proposing is that we would continue to use the the five kind of key topic areas from the alignment memo and really dig in a little bit deeper um in each of those work sessions.

Those work sessions, yeah.

Are you share are you going to share this uh presentation with us?

Not uh just so we have access to the um to your um timeline, et cetera, and kind of for review purposes later.

Is that okay?

Oh, 100%, yeah.

Yeah, I'll send the full deck over.

Um, perfect.

Thank you.

First thing in the morning, yeah.

Um but yeah, so there's gonna be these these opportunities for kind of again informal, albeit still uh public meetings.

Um how y'all choose to format those meetings is is really up to you all.

Um we kind of colloquially refer to them, refer to them as work sessions, but um if planning commission wants to take public comment at those meetings, um that's that's certainly your your prerogative.

Um so we we roll from those those work sessions.

Um you'll notice there's ideally, right?

If you if you don't include these um these kind of contingency options, um there's there's a good amount of time between the last planning commission work session and the start of the official kind of legislative process.

Um there's also just a little bit of time between the last council work session and the start of the official legislative process.

So we really want to create a little bit of space, a little bit of an opportunity for again the work sessions to set up a really good, efficient legislative process.

Um, and then what we have mapped out for the legislative process, um, it is kind of the the bare minimum, right?

Um one planning commission meeting and two council hearings.

Um this can always expand.

Um, we've built in some contingency options just based on availability of dates in um at the end of the year.

Um, but again, if if planning commission needs more time, if council needs more time and always extend into um into the new year.

Um before I jump into kind of the the substance of the conversation around the alignment memo, any questions on public participation or the the schedule?

Liz.

Um about when do you think we're gonna get the draft just to give us time to prepare for August 18?

Yeah, the draft is coming um within the next couple of weeks.

Um we are kind of putting final kind of touches of quality assurance, quality control, that kind of thing on it before we sent send it out to the public.

Um, but we're we're looking for the next couple of weeks.

So ideally, you guys are gonna have um at least a month and a half with it to get to know it really well before um you start talking about it in public.

And and I'll be there for I think I've got one vacation plan, but other than that, I'll I'll be around um and available to chat whenever y'all need.

Great.

Taz, is there any um process to allow the draft to be a cloud-based draft so everyone can see everyone's comments feedbacks to reduce the workload on you from the amount of feedbacks that you may get that may be duplicate.

Yeah, that's a really good um good question, Mike.

And and you've kind of uh forecast what we're what we're intending to do.

Um our goal and and you know, the the contract with the vendor isn't like the I's haven't been dotted and the T's haven't been crossed yet.

So I don't want to guarantee that we'll put it out on this platform, but our intent is to put it out on a platform um that allows um everybody to view the document um and comment you know wherever they want on the document.

Um I think we still have to decide whether or not everybody will be able to see each other's comments or not.

Um, but that that's a feature that could be toggled on and off.

So we definitely want that to be as open of a process as possible.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah, I just wanted to make a comment and just to harp on my um one of my causes for the last few months is that um the August 16th and September 1st will um meetings will be sort of the first meetings at which the final lumo or the proposed final lumo will be presented to um a body, um, and then obviously the October 6th Planning Commission hearing.

I strongly suggest those need to be in the council chambers.

Yeah, thank you, Jeff.

And and we'll definitely um work to make that possible if if at all possible.

Jeff, the only problem with that is that at least the August 8.

I'm not planning to be on vacation, but a lot of people are out of town that on that day and would probably be willing to take an evening out, but won't actually be in Chapel Hill.

I will be here, so I would, but just you know, at least for the planning commission, we might want to and for staff, we might want to just make sure everyone's gonna be there before we make that one in person.

Well, let's do a straw poll.

So I I will be in town.

Mike, Chuck, and Jeff will be.

Okay.

Well, then it's not a good Mike and Chuck will you will you guys be in town?

I I have um you know, ground club duty, so meaning that I don't know if I'm in Birmington or local, but it could be, I think it joined in person and online, right?

It could be I don't think we have the capability to do that.

One or the other.

Yeah.

Oh yeah, okay.

Yeah, I can I I don't know if I'm in Birmingham, or I mean local.

Okay.

On August 18th.

But uh September 1st.

September 1st.

I'm definitely in town.

Okay.

Chuck, what about you?

I assume I'll be around.

Okay.

And I can check with Libby afterwards.

Well uh we'll talk about it behind the scenes, Jeff and uh Taz.

Thank you.

Make sure we can get a quorum.

Um all right.

Well, thank you guys for um for talking through the participation and and the um the schedule for the fall.

Um so next is and you know, I guess settle in, or we'll potentially be here for a while talking through the the next part of this um presentation.

Um want to really dig into um the document that was shared with you all last week, um, the the council alignment memo.

Um the goal of that memo, right, is to really outline um how the policy guidance that the council has provided over the last several years of of discussions on LUMO, um, how that policy guidance can be translated into a regulatory framework.

Um it's it's the sort of work that um I think is is a lot of y'all have seen kind of deliberations about various uh you know land use mechanisms and standards and provisions.

Um the sort of work that that relies on a lot of different sources.

Um staff obviously have kind of a level of baked-in expertise, um not only on you know the local kind of on the ground conditions, but just best practices and planning more generally.

Um we rely on and and work with um consultants that um have experience in um in a much broader field, right?

Geographically working with with communities across the country, um including other communities uh in North Carolina.

Um so we're we're pulling on the expertise of a lot of different people and not just planners, right?

We're we're kind of drawing on the expertise of other disciplines within the town.

Um we're looking at how other communities in in North Carolina um are dealing with kind of similar problems.

And all of that coupled with council's policy guidance allows us to kind of collectively distill things down into this regulatory framework.

Everything that we're you know that's on the table today is kind of a it's a set of options, right?

Um there is there is an opportunity to kind of dial things up or down or to you know ask that we rethink certain elements of the ordinance.

Um ultimately, right?

This is this is uh an effort in translating policy guidance into a regulatory framework.

And so what I want to do is uh just kind of provide a little bit of context, right?

So um the alignment memo um that we shared builds on um a discussion that we had with council back in April, um, in which they identified uh three kind of overarching interests, which were complete community, sustainability, and equity.

Um and then within those overarching interests or kind of under the umbrella of those overarching interests, they identified five key interests.

Um the council memo, as y'all have seen, builds on that framework and talks about how the new LUMO is going to potentially meet those different key interests.

And of course, as um as Liz asked about earlier, um Lineman memo is an opportunity to talk about things at a high level now, um, but in just a couple of weeks, y'all are going to be seeing kind of the full thing, right?

And can really dig into the the nitty-gritty and the details in the in the draft.

Um, and so here are those five key interests that council identified user friendliness, housing diversity, attainability, and supply, economic development and land use, the built environment and public realm and environment and resilience.

Um where the alignment memo starts to get into much more detail is that under each of these five key interests, council identified um even more specific interests.

And so what we'll spend um the next probably couple hours talking through is how the new LUMO is going to meet each of those specific interests uh that are housed within each of these five more general interests.

Um so we'll just kind of get moving along and um like I said, you know, please feel free to jump in with questions at any point.

Um the goal is really to get y'all's feedback and and understand the extent to which um basically you believe the the draft based on these kind of high-level descriptions is kind of answering the call, right?

Is the draft responsive to uh the the policy guidance that the council and and you all have provided over the last several years.

Um so looking first at this this question of user friendliness, um, council defined it as the notion that um that we improve the organization of LUMO and look at the town's administrative processes.

So it's both um kind of a scrivener's exercise, right?

Making sure that LUMO is just a well-functioning document, but also that our actual land use decision processes um make sense and work for the town.

Um so the first, or you know, so within um this kind of user-friendliness category, um, council identified several kind of more specific interests.

Um, and I'll just kind of let them let them roll on the screen here for y'all to take a look at.

Um there are a lot here, and and there's a little bit of I think overlap between between these six.

And so what I would actually recommend is that we focus on um on a few of them, right?

Items three and item five.

Um, but happy to talk through really any of them that y'all would like to recommend would be to focus on on three and five.

Um are there any others just kind of skimming the list that you'll want to make sure that we definitely touch on.

Yeah, there's just this may fit under number one, but I wanted to ask a sort of um very high-level question, sort of a level setting question about how many zoning districts we currently have, how many and how many new ones we're proposing to add.

I saw in the alignment memo there's one we're proposing to add around missing middle housing.

But I was just trying to get my brain around uh whether we're sunsetting any existing zoning districts in the sense of not propagating them in the zoning map in the future, sort of sort of just letting them roll off, or whether we're largely sort of sticking with the ones we have, trying to adjust them through this process and like adding one.

Yeah.

Um that's a really interesting question.

Um I've I don't know the final numbers, but I am fairly certain that when the dust settles, there will be fewer zoning districts than there are today.

Um there's gonna be a spike in the number of zoning districts that are technically available for folks to use um for the next little while, kind of this interim period between whenever the new LUMO is adopted and a new town wide zoning map is adopted.

Um, in that interim period, you'll have all of the existing zoning districts still on the map.

Um, but then you'll also have all of the new zoning districts just in the text of the ordinance.

Um so then when the town goes through and adopts a new zoning map, um, there'll be a lot of translation, right?

Kind of one-to-one, you know, here was your old zoning district, here's the corresponding new zoning district.

A lot of the changes in the zoning map are gonna are gonna look like that.

Um, and then in kind of key areas, um, essentially like the focus areas identified by the the future land use map, that's where we're likely to see more than just kind of a one-to-one translation between old zoning district and the corresponding new zoning district.

Um, for example, you have areas in some of our focus areas um that are zoned for really like low density residential uses.

Um, and that's clearly out of step with what the focus area would call for.

So this is an opportunity to make sure that there's stronger alignment between the future land use map and the zoning map.

So again, just to reiterate, we're gonna see a spike in the number of available zoning districts during an interim period, and then things will kind of settle down once we get um the new zoning map adopted.

Okay, I'm gonna go to Jeff and Liz in a second, but just I'm just gonna try to repeat back to you what I think you were saying, and it's probably gonna be wrong, so maybe you could just fix it.

So I think you're saying that the new LUMO will have some um modernized versions or sort of shadow versions of existing pre-existing zoning districts that that we're looking to eventually sort of supplant the old ones.

They're sort of like the equivalent new version.

Um it's just gonna require the zoning map process to kind of sub it in where we want it.

And a lot of those legacy ones, especially especially in lower density areas would be expected to um essentially sunset after the new um zoning map.

Is that right?

Yeah, that's that's exactly right.

So, and to just use an example, um, R1 residential one zoning district, um, we'll see some updated standards when the new LUMO is adopted.

Um, but the new LUMO is also going to create an RA zoning district.

And and eventually, uh, once we adopt a new zoning map, that R1 would kind of get translated to an RA zoning district.

Oh okay, got it.

Uh Jeff and then Liz.

Yeah, two things.

One, uh it was a good question, John.

I think I know the LUMO's not done, but it feels a little hiding the ball to not just say what the new districts are at this stage.

Uh, you know, a table showing old districts and new districts.

And I mean, I don't know that you want to if you want to throw that into the presentation to council tomorrow, because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be surprised if they ask that.

Um, at the very least, you know, uh if the LUMO itself doesn't have it some sort of uh comparison table showing old districts to new districts would be helpful.

Um, but I did have a uh comment um that preceded John's, which was I just want to make sure I understand um, you know, from a user-friendliness and organizational perspective.

Um it was almost exactly three years ago um the council was presented with a memo with the table of contents of the new LOMO.

Um you know, based on what I read and and the discussions, is that no longer operative, that um proposed structure of LUMO and we shouldn't pay attention to it.

Yeah, that's right.

And and we should make sure that that's um clearly noted wherever that older document is available online.

Um I think as many of y'all know the um we hit a pretty significant snag with the project um a little over a year ago and had to switch consultant teams.

Um the work, the kind of fundamental building blocks of the work product changed a lot.

So with a new consultant team came kind of their own organization for the new LUMO.

So we will be working with uh a different table of contents than what was previously published.

I don't have a question, I have a request that seems most appropriate for this topic, but throughout you mentioned in the beginning that uh the process of getting to where you are right now included a lot of looking at what other towns, communities, peer locations are doing, trying to get the best of.

It would be helpful when you come to some of these, if there's some exemplar communities that you're really drawing from, if you mention them that just help us if we want to go back and look and you know, get a sense of how they're doing it.

So if you just as you're going along, if you can think of places to mention, hey, you know, Chatham or Ann Arbor, whatever, uh a place that you've drawn from.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think we can um we can try to work that in.

Um we can try to work that in.

I I can't make any uh you know, but yeah, I may have that to present.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

So Taz, I think fine to focus on your number three and number five on the screen for purposes of of your presentation.

Um the commissioners all have the uh alignment memo, and you know, I think we've read it, and so it when it's convenient uh to stop for a comment at the end of this um goal section.

Um I think the commissioners can should feel free to um raise any questions they had on these pages of the of the presentation.

Yeah, absolutely.

And and happy to take questions on on any of the slides, even if um or you know, any of the slides or material, even if we don't cover it per se.

Um I should probably just mention that all the material all the language that you're gonna see on this presentation is pulled directly from the the alignment memo.

So if there's anything in the memo that you're you're interested in just kind of pointing to, we can we can go there.

Um so I think one of the kind of most interesting um specific interests under this user friendliness uh key interest is this notion of streamlining development applications uh and review processes while ensuring that that the administrative pathways still support complete community outcomes.

Um and when we talk about administrative pathways, um we're looking at um staff approval, right?

An administrative uh approval of a of a development project.

And I think one of the key elements of complete community um was this notion of kind of getting away from project by project decision making by council.

Um the idea um kind of underlying complete community is that council is most well suited to to laying out kind of higher level policy goals.

Um when it comes to land use, the LUMO is the best way to implement those goals and then allow the system to kind of go forth and do what it's supposed to do, right?

Rather than council uh hearing more and more projects.

Um so a lot of what we're gonna be talking about is is an opportunity to kind of clean up some of our development review processes.

I'll just note that um a lot of major improvements were made earlier in the year with the omnibus text amendments.

Um this is just a set of options to kind of go even further than that.

Um so the first proposal that we could see in the new LUMO is really taking the the Blue Hill district and working to further streamline what that approval process looks like.

Um currently projects in the Blue Hill district um require kind of a two-step approval.

They get a um a review and approval from the community design commission through a process called a certificate of appropriateness.

Um and then they also get a review and approval um the town manager through a process called a form district permit.

And by and large, those two processes look at very similar things.

They they consider similar interests, they reflect similar and protect similar interests of the town.

They are both technically administrative decisions.

Even though the community design commission is a public body, just like you all, the decision that they're making is administrative.

And so you may see some parallels between the CDC's certificate certificate of appropriateness process and planning commission's old site plan review process, where again a public body was making an administrative decision that was kind of repetitive of review by staff.

And so what we're proposing is that projects in the Blue Hill district would be able to move forward with just staff approval, that the town manager would be responsible for both the form district permit and the certificate of appropriateness process.

If we kind of you know further streamline the Blue Hill permitting process, does the CDC still kind of is there a value add um to keeping that body active?

Um we move into significantly smaller scale topics after this one.

Um of the things we're we're looking to do to again kind of streamline permitting processes is to think about what sorts of activity doesn't even need a permit.

Um we currently have a pretty significant exemption for residential projects.

Um, as long as um work in a single family or two family home doesn't exceed a certain amount of land disturbance, a certain amount of floor area, and is well outside of any sort of environmentally constrained areas.

Um those projects are able to move forward without having to get a zoning compliance permit.

Um and so what we're proposing is to apply basically those same metrics to commercial properties, um, and it fixes what's kind of a pretty burdensome set of regulations for for any any commercial developer in the area or any business owner in the area that by the letter of the law um if you own commercial property and you are sticking a shovel in the ground, um, you technically require a zoning compliance permit.

Um essentially any land disturbance on commercial property triggers the need for a zoning compliance permit.

Um and we've just found that there's an opportunity to again relieve some administrative burden on those kind of smaller, uh, smaller end of the scale.

Um then uh last thing in this item um is uh again kind of rethinking um who is making what decisions.

Um what the the new LUMO would propose is that the responsibility for new special use permits be shifted entirely to the board of adjustment.

Um special use permits are kind of a unique type of development approval.

Um they are what's called a quasi-judicial approval, which means that they come with really really stringent procedural rules, um, really stringent rules around who can provide evidence, um, how decisions have to be made, um and it's it's difficult, right?

Or it can be difficult for a legislative body like town council to switch between making quasi judicial decisions in the form of a special use permit and legislative decisions, which is kind of their bread and butter.

So the idea of moving special use permits to the board of adjustment, which the board of adjustments only business is in making quasi-judicial decisions.

Um really make sure that that bodies that are well versed in a certain type of procedure are the ones most heavily responsible for those.

Um so happy to pause here on a kind of inject a lot of uh potential opportunity for conversation.

So happy to take a quick pause here to see if there's any um feedback or or concerns about these proposals.

Yeah, so I'll let you you call on people instead of me, I can say others.

John, did you say you wanted me to do that?

Yeah, sure.

I mean, it if if you can't see whose hand went up first, uh just you can send it over to me, but I think it's probably more efficient for you to just see people pop up and you can call on them without me intervening.

Sure.

Thanks, Liz.

What can I do for you?

Um so the three points you make here.

I see how they definitely address the first part, the streamline.

And I'm just curious, the second part of this ensure administrative pathways support complete community outcomes.

Have you all thought about what is there?

Have you put thought into that as well?

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's that's what I was kind of getting at um earlier.

That the one of the best ways for town council to really safeguard and implement complete community is to make sure that um that complete community principles are kind of imbued throughout LUMO, right?

That LUMO becomes the the major implementing tool for complete community.

Um so that's that's one part.

Um there's also just this element that procedural efficiency in and of itself is a complete community goal.

Um so making sure that we're making decisions in the most efficient and transparent way possible in and of itself is a complete community goal.

Um so with any of these, right?

Um there's that efficiency and procedural benefit.

And then there's also the opportunity to just let LUMO do its work more directly with some of these projects.

And in some cases, that means kind of doing less work, right?

If it's a small scale project, um, not putting uh a commercial business owner or commercial property owner through um unnecessary procedural requirements, um that meets a complete community interest of supporting our business communities, um, making sure that special use permits are heard uh and adjudicated by body, uh a body that is really well versed in quasi-judicial decision making that meets a complete community interest in and of itself.

Um then on the back end council's decision on what types of projects go through a special use permit um is is an act of kind of implementing complete community.

Okay.

Thanks.

Yeah, Mike.

Oh, Mike, you're muted.

Thank you.

On the second bullet, is there a way to quantify what a small scale commercial project means?

Yeah, so it's all um it is all quantified um in the ordinance.

Um I am admittedly not remembering the numbers off the top of my head, but I think it's 500 square feet of step.

Yeah, I think it's I think it's like 500 square feet of floor area and 1500 square feet of land disturbance, um, or or somewhere around those numbers.

Yeah, the alignment memo says no more than 500 square feet of impervious surface.

Okay, yeah.

That makes sense.

Um and so it's it's those metrics, but then also things like it's outside the floodplain, um, it's not particularly close to property lines, um, no RCD impacts, things of that sort.

Thank you.

Yeah, John.

I just had a very brief um comment about the special use permit procedural change.

Um I don't have any issue with it, uh, you know, shifting some of that to uh the body that normally operates in a quasi-dujudicial manner.

Um I did have a small question, you don't have to answer it comprehensively.

Maybe it's a question comment.

So my understanding is that conditional uh rezoning in large part replaced uh SUPs in the state of North Carolina over the last whatever decade, two decades, I don't know how long.

Um but and there's still some legacy things and a lot of codes, towns ordinances that um still involve SUPs and some of those are legacy projects.

Um this gets way beyond my knowledge.

There could be um you know uses where planners prefer to use SUPs, you know, going forward, even if the predominant mechanism is um conditional rezoning.

Um I think there's a lot of legacy stuff in our current LUMO, like SUPs are mentioned way more than they should be.

Um, and I assume that like some of those things are being phased out.

And I I just wanted to make a request that if um the planning department and the consultants feel that like SUPs aren't as good as or aren't preferred in relation to conditional rezoning for some of this stuff, just get rid of the mechanism, right?

Uh except insofar as it's really needed and useful.

It's just confusing to have all these different things.

Yeah, definitely.

And one effect of these legacy um special use permits is that it'll be quite some time, if at all, before council is fully out of the SUP business because modifications to special use permits have to be heard by the body that originally approved them.

So there will be some special use permits that that are still kind of making their way up to council unless the property owner decides that they actually want to, you know, go the conditional zoning route and just kind of start fresh.

Um special use permits tend to be really helpful when you know the the underlying zoning conditions support a particular use, but there's something again it sounds like um you know, lawyers that try to explain like what does beyond a reasonable doubt means.

It means beyond a reasonable doubt.

So with special use permits, there's something special about their use.

There's something unique about the impacts that it has.

And so it warrants heightened scrutiny.

Um that's where we want to kind of kind of allow special use permits to to evolve in how we use them.

That they've we've established that the zoning is appropriate through council's legislative decision making, but specific uses might need some some additional scrutiny.

Yeah, I follow you.

Thanks.

Um, so moving on, um, I'll jump over to um item five.

Um this is this notion of um balancing um efficiency with community benefits um that can't be achieved solely through administrative processes.

Um where this really comes into play is updating the um the thresholds at which a project kind of shifts from by right, so an administrative approval to a legislative approval or conditional zoning.

Um as many of you know may know, Chapel Hill has very low thresholds under the current ordinance for what can be approved by right.

Um so one of the kind of hallmark changes in the new LUMO is gonna be an increase of a lot of these buy-right thresholds.

And so what you'll see kind of based on on which particular zoning district or districts you're talking about, um these thresholds are going to increase pretty significantly.

And before I kind of talk through these specific numbers, I'll mention the the baseline that we're starting with is that um in a lot of or in our primary multifamily zoning district, R6, um, you need a conditional zoning if you're doing 10 or more units of multifamily.

Um and then more generally, if you're doing more than 20,000 square feet of floor area or 40,000 square feet of land disturbance, um, you're kicked into technically a special use permit, but most property owners see that as um as kind of a an invitation to a conditional zoning.

Um so we're proposing to really significantly ramp up those numbers, um, but not so high, right?

We don't want to ramp up those numbers so high that we lose that ability to secure certain types of community benefits um from projects where it would be really meaningful for them to go through a conditional zoning.

Um so what you'll see here um, you know, for residential development, um, start at kind of a new baseline of 30 units and work our way up from there, um, really just allowing a little bit more baked in by right development in in our town center zoning districts, um, knowing that it's more expensive to build downtown.

Um, really just allowing a little bit more baked in by right development in our town center zoning districts, um, knowing that it's more expensive to build downtown.

Um we want to kind of make that an easier process to a certain extent.

Um we're also increasing the uh the non-residential floor area limits pretty significantly, um, at least doubling them in kind of our our lower intensity districts and then going further from that um in, for example, the town center districts.

Um that middle column of well, what if we express residential limits in terms of floor area instead of units?

That actually comes from an idea from from planning commission of how can we incentivize or um create more opportunities for developments that want to promote smaller units.

Um that's where you know a project could do more than 30 units by right, as long as their total residential floor area doesn't exceed 30,000 square feet, um, or you know, sub-1,000 square foot units.

Um so these are all again, significant increases from our current baselines, um, but they're not so large that we would lose the ability to uh negotiate for meaningful community benefits from from larger, more impactful development.

Um questions on this before I uh move on to the the next point.

Yeah, John.

Yeah, I have one questionslash comment on this.

Um first of all, thank you for incorporating that change to uh make sure there aren't perverse disincentives for smaller units.

That's a great great um change you made.

Um I have a uh somewhat different incentives puzzle that I'm working on, which is wherever you set the line, um there is, I don't know how strong it is, but there is an incentive for um developers to stay below the line.

Um so they don't have to go through conditional rezoning and all the expense and time involved.

And in a way, that's unfortunate.

You have to draw the line somewhere, but it's unfortunate because I don't know how much merit this has, but there's a school of thought and planning where that says um it's the bigger projects, the more massive projects that tend to bring more community benefits.

And if anything, it's best for municipalities to um go out of their way to incentivize land combinations, agglomerations of land, so you can have bigger, more coherent projects that are just uh uh better in those respects, more coherent.

Um I I have a slight concern.

I I don't think it's enough that I would um feel um that we need to stay with the current limits.

I think it's okay and appropriate to take them up, but I'm just in the back of my mind to have a concern about at what point are we kind of doing something self-defeating here?

Like we're trying to uh streamline a process, but at the same time, we're making it, we're discouraging like big projects that break big benefits.

And I would I would cite Aura as an example.

I would cite South Creek as an example.

They have extraordinary public spaces compared to any project that's half the size that we're ever gonna see.

And I I want that to be you know something that is encouraged by the LUMO and not discouraged that people are staying below the limit.

That's the concern, and I just putting that out there to see what your reaction is.

Yeah, and I think that's where um I don't want to say the beauty of of these numbers comes into play, but I think it the numbers you'll see here, right?

30 units of residential, 45 units of residential, um, those are still a long ways away from the 200, 300 unit projects, um, 800 units in case of like South Creek, um that we know are still gonna be coming through the pipe, right?

There are there's there's just essentially just like too much institutional investment, um, too much like big money in real estate development um for those big projects to not continue to come through the pipeline.

Um we've made you know, with improvements that that you all deliberated and council passed earlier in the year, we've made improvements to what that process looks like.

So it's not it's not so tedious for a larger project that is gonna provide a lot of meaningful benefit um to move through the the review process.

I think what this does is it these higher numbers, we see them as rather than kind of stealing from the high end of or the upper end of projects, they're kind of fertilizing some ground for the opportunity for smaller, more like retail investors to break into the market.

So it's it's kind of widening the pool of folks that might be willing to do business in town.

Yeah, that all makes sense to me.

Thank you.

Yep.

Liz.

I think Jeff had his hand up.

Jeff, did you change your mind?

Um so this is just a point going back to you, my last question about the balance, or this had the term balance.

It feels like uh by giving up some of the buy right that the town had, they were clearly using the buy right not to try to make people's lives different, but to achieve public goods that are not going to happen uh in a vacuum because private interests aren't going to go invest in public goods.

And you have said multiple times there are other ways to get these.

And uh, which I totally understand, and I'm not saying that this is a bad idea, but it would be great to see because in these two topic sentences, you both you talk about the balance and still achieving these what other things the staff or the town will be doing at the same time as you give up as you make it buy right and and the council and the town gives up some of this leverage that they did have, which made it cumbersome.

What are the other things that happen at the same time?

Where are you focusing to make sure you still are going for these goals that the town is?

So it's it's just a comment of it, it can't be just the streamlining.

It it still has to be the other things, and what are they and how we can make sure those happen if we give up some of the if we do go for streamlining and more buy right, etc.

Yeah, 100%.

And a couple of important points to mention there.

Um, one is um uh the last time we checked, other than a couple of um purpose-built affordable projects, um, the smallest kind of mixed rate or mixed income development that went through the conditional zoning process um basically since conditional zoning became a thing, um, was a 48-unit townhome project.

Um, and so that 48 units is really helpful.

That was one of the instructive um numbers that helped us kind of identify the numbers that you see here, right?

That we just weren't seeing smaller scale projects coming through.

Um, we also looked really heavily at one of the biggest community benefits um that we know we we seek out of residential development, which is affordable housing.

Um we did a lot of economic analysis um and found that that there's a lower bound, right?

That beyond a certain size limit, it's not economically feasible for a project to provide affordable housing, um, which gives us some comfort that we're not giving up something by kind of turning over some of these smaller scale projects to a buy-right process.

Um, but just in case, um, we've also put in place a set of really robust incentives to try to get some affordable housing out of projects that go through the buy-right process.

Um, and that's something that I definitely should have touched on more.

That there are built into the buy right process.

Um, there's a lot of mechanisms that still attempt to get some version of the public benefits that we would typically see through a conditional zoning.

Um greenways, for example, um, are something where we can have rules that require people to build you know connectivity through their site.

Um there's no rule that we could impose that allows us to force somebody to make a greenway publicly accessible, right?

Um that's the sort of thing that we would have to negotiate for through a conditional zoning.

Um, but um one of the things we're looking to do, or we will be doing in the draft is heavily incentivizing greenway dedication on a buy-right project.

So using our like recreation space requirements, for example, as a hook to say that regardless of what your recreation space or your amenity space requirements might be, if your project sits along a route that's been identified in one of the town's adopted plans for greenways, and you build that greenway and you make it publicly accessible.

Your amenity space, your recreation space requirements are fully satisfied by that dedication.

And so there are these other mechanisms that we're kind of peppering in throughout that aim to replicate some of those broader interests through the buy-right process.

And I am really confident that we are we're building that in throughout the buy-right process.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, so I think that covers the kind of user-friendliness items.

Next, want to touch on a topic that again you'll you'll see some overlap in what we've discussed already, but the second major interest identified by council was this notion of housing diversity, attainability, and supply.

And within that, five kind of more specific interests.

I think they're all kind of ripe for discussion.

Um generally speaking, we're looking at this notion of increasing dentist density interspersed with different amenities, expanding permissions for missing middle and middle income households, maintaining or increasing affordable housing around town, encouraging smaller units, and ensuring kind of context sensitive infill.

So moving into the that first item of increasing density, I'll just briefly touch on both of these here, but I'll talk about both of them in more detail in the next item.

The new LUMO, as we've kind of touched on already, is going to increase buy-right residential density in most zoning districts.

Really, the only zoning districts where you're not going to see some change in density are the very low density districts that are really reserved for the extraterritorial jurisdiction.

So basically outside of town limits.

And when you look at where complete community directs the town to grow, you know, complete community identifies four kind of priority priorities for growth, large infill sites, smaller infill sites, areas along transit routes and areas with greenway access.

Um and being mindful about incremental increases in density near greenways and near higher capacity roads.

The next topic is this notion of expanding permissions for middle income and missing middle housing.

Um density near greenways and along higher density roads.

Um we're also going to propose your what you'll see in the new LUMO is at least one new zoning district that's really intended to be kind of tailor-made for new missing middle housing as opposed to kind of infill missing middle housing.

Um so here's what that kind of looks like to increase density um in in kind of some strategic ways.

Um you've got your your R1 and R2 districts where under the current rules, two lots or two units per lot is kind of the maximum density that you're allowed.

What we would propose is is keeping that the same at baseline, but for properties that are within um a quarter mile of a greenway entrance or along a higher capacity road, so an arterial or collector road, um, you get that next increment up of density.

So instead of two units per lot, you get four units per lot.

Um I'll mention there, I think one point that we would would really be eager to get some feedback on is um, whether you you want to stick to this notion of kind of density bonuses based on proximity to different types of transportation infrastructure.

And if so, um is that quarter mile from a greenway entrance?

Is that something you would actually like to see grow?

Um, that radius to a greenway entrance um reflects kind of a more conservative approach, because I think that's what we were kind of picking up, was the interest that if we were going to expand some of these missing middle housing opportunities that we took somewhat more measured approach, um, but quarter mile radius can very easily become a half mile radius or some other measure um if if there's an interest in doing that.

Um, so again, you'll see that that kind of pattern repeating throughout.

So in a lot of districts where the the current baseline might only be two, um two or four, you see that baseline continue forward, but then the next increment becomes available based on proximity to to transportation infrastructure.

Um the really kind of exciting new zoning district that we're proposing, still in the bucket of kind of smaller scale residential, is this new RD district?

Um it would allow eight to twelve units um with no minimum lot size, pretty small setbacks.

It's really kind of like a townhome cottage court district, and that's kind of the prototypical development that we would hope to see in a district like that.

Um, and it could be used, I think, to really great effect around the perimeter of existing large multifamily developments to kind of create transitions into lower density districts.

Um it can be used in a lot of really interesting ways.

Um yeah, Jeff.

Yeah, I see it's mentioned as units per lot from a density perspective, but if there's no lot size standards in the new RD district, what's controlling the density?

Um ultimately the density would be controlled by impervious surface, so um there would still be like uh a 70% impervious surface maximum.

Um you would have um setbacks and some other dimensional standards.

So, really, as long as you can fit those eight to twelve units on a lot, still meet your impervious surface, still meet your setbacks.

I think that's where we would um kind of ultimately control density that way.

Okay, I just because density is usually thought of as dwelling units per area of land.

And since the lot is not a defined, I mean, you could have a 8,000 square foot lot with 12 pretty small units that would fit.

So I just that's what I'm not quite understanding.

So we don't need to dig into it now.

Like when I when I see the draft, I'm sure it'll be a lot more clear.

Yeah, it is it is definitely different.

I'll just note quickly that was a shift that we made a couple of years ago with the housing choices text amendments.

Um we shifted from the typical umits per acre to a new kind of units per lot measure.

Um so again, cost of oh, yeah, go ahead, John.

So while we're on this, I wanted to raise uh incentives concern on the incentives guy.

Uh I'm worried that so let me provide just some quick context.

Uh I think a lot about greenways and bike pad infrastructure.

And one of the things that happens oftentimes when the town proposes even the idea of a greenway that isn't imminently going to be built.

Neighbors who have land adjacent to the greenways oppose it on safety and privacy grounds and that sort of thing.

That's a challenge that we're going to have to face going forward.

If we link zoning to greenways, then in the future, it's not just that people are going to be upset that there's a greenway coming to their backyard and they don't like that.

They're also, and their neighbors are going to say, hey, you know, we're within a quarter mile radius of this greenway, this greenway entrance.

Now, if this actually goes in, all of us are going to have to deal with you know quadplexes or apexes in our neighborhood, we need to oppose this.

And I don't think that we need to bring on ourselves that level of opposition to greenways.

They're hard enough to build with opposition by local landowners without adding without supercharging that opposition.

So I would prefer that if if we're going to make um zoning linked to location of greenways, we do it only for legacy or existing greenways.

And for new ones, we don't do that.

We say if we put in new greenway, there's no automatic upzoning of everything around it.

We'll deal with that on a one-off basis through the uh land use map or otherwise.

Got it.

Yeah, no, that's a really helpful perspective.

Um, I think we've we've I we we know the risk is is lurking out there, and I think, like you said, there's there's not okay like a not a clear answer, but I think that that perspective is really helpful and definitely something that we should continue to explore.

Um so moving on to um the next item.

Um there's this question of affordable housing, right?

Um, how do we maintain or increase the amount of affordable housing that's that's produced around town um, including within market rate projects.

And so um there's a couple of things we we plan to uh you know include in the the new ordinance.

Um the first, and I alluded to this earlier in response to Liz's question about community benefits, um, are incentives for affordable housing for kind of smaller scale projects.

Um we plan on a really robust set of incentives for projects that aren't going through a conditional zoning.

Um, and those are kind of your typical bread and butter density bonuses, things like additional height, additional floor area ratio, um, reduced setbacks or reduced landscape buffers.

Um, but what we we've added to the mix that I think you don't see in a lot of other communities or other communities I'm familiar with at all, um, is this notion that we're not just increasing those dimensional standards or not just providing relief on the dimensional standards, we're also providing relief on those thresholds of when a project would get kicked into a conditional zoning.

Um so you could, for example, in a district that otherwise might top you out at 30 units of residential development.

Um, if you're providing um the target level of affordable units, um you could do 48 units of develop, you know, 48 units um without going through a conditional zoning.

Um, if you're hitting an even higher target, um, your numbers more than double, right?

You could do uh more than 75 units without a conditional zoning.

Um that second target level, that higher target, that's really aimed at helping light tech projects move through the pipeline much quicker.

Um what we are typically hearing is that that 75 to 85 unit range is kind of the sweet spot for light tech projects right now.

Um, and so we're trying to create a pathway that a light tech project could actually move forward um with a purely administrative review.

Um the other thing that we're we're looking to do is build on or kind of continue the momentum that that you all and council started a couple of years ago um when you adopted the we've typically referred to as kind of the the expedited review for affordable housing projects.

Um it's all tied up in a special conditional zoning district, the residential community priority conditional zoning district.

Um and so we are we're basically continuing to make sure that that district stays ahead of the rest.

That when a project goes through and seeks a rezoning to this RCP conditional zoning district, it has an even more streamlined process than other projects that are going through the conditional zoning process.

Really kind of stripping down the site plan requirements to really the bare minimum, right?

That they identify the general area on which they're going to build, identify any environmental constraints, and identify where there's going to be major connections to public streets, but they're not locked into kind of a site specific plan in the same way some other conditional zonings are.

So again, the goal here is to make sure that as we've made improvements across the board with the omnibus earlier this year to conditional zoning.

Any questions on either of those topics before I move on?

Yeah, John.

Just a quick question on the smaller scale incentives.

You had mentioned to us a year or so ago in a presentation on the LUMO when we when the planning department is working through with the consultants like how to calibrate incentives for affordable housing, the difficulty of calibrating it correctly, and that you said to us at the time, like the incentives have to be really big to move the dial, you know, economically.

And then as I recall when you came back to us or to the council with a proposal like the one you're describing here, you couch it in terms of like, you know, it might not work, but the least we can do is you know put it out there in case somebody wants to take advantage of it.

Um so my question is um are we as a town uh is the planning department aware of um peers, peer municipalities that have um recently used incentives like this for smaller development with success and you know, got a bunch of units out of it.

Because I would say it's not zero cost to put in an incentive framework in the LUMO that isn't used or we expect to very rarely be used, it's not zero cost because the effect's goal number one.

It makes the thing longer and more complex.

Um, and I think that's only worth it if if we're actually expecting to get mileage out of it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um we we do not know of communities that have had really robust success with with incentives.

Um I also haven't seen communities that have incentives as as kind of generous as the ones that we're proposing.

Um so for example at baseline, we're proposing kind of 60% increase in floor area ratio, 60% increase in height, um, 50% reduction in landscape buffers and setbacks, um, some pretty generous stuff.

Um then you you layer on top of that this opportunity to build um without having to go through a conditional zoning, even if you're kind of a slightly larger project.

So what we really took from the advice of the the consultants and the the analysis was that if we want any shot at this, we've got to really kind of go big.

Um I see.

So for the smaller stuff, you're pushing the envelope on purpose, and it's a bit experimental, we'll see if it works.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Okay, got it.

Um I'll also note um I've talked about this a lot in the context of uh multifamily.

We're also gonna have incentives for subdivisions.

Um the incentive there is um a 50% reduction in the minimum lot size.

So basically doubling the uh potential density uh of a subdivision.

So again, like really trying to shake some stuff loose at that smaller end of the scale.

Thanks.

Yeah.

The subdivision, if it has 25% affordable housing.

What do you you're saying?

This I'm I miss the context of the subdivision.

Yeah, so I was just mentioning um the that reduction in minimum lot size would be the incentive tied to meeting the affordable housing goal.

So um it would be 20% of lots affordable or a um uh a commensurate like payment in lieu to the town.

Got it.

Yeah.

Um moving on to the next item.

Um one of the kind of key interests in in the housing bucket, the idea of encouraging smaller and more attainable units.

Um this first bullet um I also already mentioned um when we're talking about the buy-right thresholds, we're gonna express them independently, right?

Both as number of units, but then if you surpass that number of units, there's then a floor area limit that kicks in.

Um so somebody could do a lot of small units and move through by right approval.

Um another area where we're looking to kind of encourage or outright require smaller units, is in how we're kind of ramping up or or not the maximum floor area for certain types of missing middle housing.

So you'll see in the little table here.

We have the the new LUMO will include um the existing maximum floor size for or maximum floor area for duplexes, which was just recently increased to 5,000 square feet.

But then when we get to triplexes and fourplexes, um that maximum floor area only increases by a thousand square feet total.

Um so as you'll see on the far right, as you get into these kind of more dense housing types, um, the average unit size would decrease um because we're not ramping up the the total floor area at kind of the same rate.

Um so that's again an opportunity to both encourage and outright require smaller units.

Um the other thing, and just in terms of more attainable units is manufactured homes.

Um we have traditionally um kind of segregated manufactured homes from other types of home construction, right?

Site-built, stick-built homes or or modular homes.

Um and what we've seen over the years is that the regulations that govern manufactured homes continue to improve.

The quality of manufactured homes continues to improve.

Um, and they are just more and more being seen as a as a viable pathway um to providing attainable units.

Um there's obviously um some risk, or not not risk, but we have seen manufactured homes be used in a um kind of exploitative way.

Um but that's because of you know a particular business model of a manufactured home park.

Um that's not inherent in how manufactured homes are are used or occupied.

Um and so we're proposing is to basically take kind of like a homes or homes approach, right?

It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter whether it's a manufactured home, a modular home, or a stick-built home, Lumo is gonna treat them all the same.

Um any questions on any of these points before or feedback on any of these before we move on?

Yeah, Jeff.

Yes.

Oh, go ahead.

Yeah, uh, just a couple things.

Um uh not to belabor the point I've made before, but I assume there's still no limit on the size of a single family house.

So we're continuing to where we may be um requiring and encouraging smaller units, but we're also disincentivizing the construction of them because Chapel Hill has plenty of 6,000 square foot single family homes.

Um a couple other things, big supporter of loosening restrictions on manufactured housing or treating them as site-built homes.

Um Virginia just a couple months ago passed a law uh making that mandatory statewide.

So I I don't know how much of an impact it'll have, but again, um pulling out you know any unnecessary limitations is important for housing development.

Um this is actually going back to the last one.

I saw sorry for not bringing this up earlier, but you know, I looked at a map of arterial and collector streets, and a lot of them are uh you know, think of SDs.

And I know Estees has that nice um um uh new bike facility, other parts of SDs don't have a bike facility, and I just don't think that like uh between library drive and Caswell would be a great place to put a four-plex.

It is not you know uh a safe or pleasant environment.

Um many of the local streets that connect off of SDs and that go behind SDs on the other hand, I think would be much better for higher intensity development.

So I have a I mean I think John's point is well taken about greenways.

I have a concern about um you know limiting uh try and four plexus to these streets, which are generally speaking less pleasant to live on.

Taz, had you gotten to that point yet about the linkage to uh street designations?

I was holding my comment on that.

Wasn't that a slide before?

Yeah, I I had mentioned it.

I think I focused more heavily on the greenway element of it.

Um I'm glad that Jeff is doing me a favor.

Jeff, why don't you finish what you're doing, then I'll come after you.

Oh, um that was mostly it.

Um and that was yeah, I was but I'm done with this slide.

Okay, so I'm gonna go back because Jeff caught something that I didn't um John, I did want to just check.

I think Mike had had his hand up.

Oh, I'm sorry, I totally forgot about Mike.

Yeah, Mike, sorry, go ahead.

That's okay.

Um Taz, did we do a research that what's the average um unit size on duplexes across US?

This seems to be high.

Are we just looking at 2500?

It seems to be big for what we call average unit size that we are now requiring caught in small units.

So the you know um I was just wondering where they where we got these numbers that we think these are the right numbers.

Yeah, so the um the 5,000 square foot max for duplexes um was just approved by council earlier this year.

It had been 3,000 square feet, um, increased it to 5,000.

Um where we base that um proposal on was actually looking at just median unit size in in Chapelville.

So looking at single family home, median size hovers around 2500 square feet.

Um and so we wanted to kind of replicate that opportunity.

Um, because one of the things that we were hearing from the development community was that outside of kind of particularly lucrative parts of town, um building a 3,000 square foot duplex just wasn't worth their while.

Um, that in order to attract families or just kind of a wider range of households um that that's significantly larger footprint um is actually much more conducive to floor plans that support families.

Um I think as so many of us have dealt with working from home as a result of the pandemic, um, just kind of understanding that that folks nowadays I think modern families need more space at home than than they typically have.

Um and so we wanted to at least give that that option for folks to build to meet the market.

Um, but knowing that if you add more units on a lot, all else being equal, you you are driving the the price down, um, or at least creating an opportunity to drive the price down.

So let me see if I can read uh and thank you for the answer.

If I read this correctly or interpreting this correctly, this is effective average unit size, not effective maximum unit size.

You know, in other words, if I have 5,000 total flo floor space for a duplex, uh I can put in two 1,500 square foot.

I don't have to go to 2500 square foot unit.

Yeah, that's absolutely right.

So you you don't have to, you don't have to hit that maximum or that average unit size at all.

Um that's just there to illustrate the idea that um with these more dense options, um you're going to be connect kind of putting pressure on the units to be smaller.

Um it also means that you know, within let's say a duplex, right?

You've got that 5,000 square feet to work with.

Just like you said, Mike, you could do two 1500 square foot units.

You could do one 3,000 square foot unit and one 2,000 square foot unit.

So you could you've got flexibility within that maximum to kind of play around with.

Thank you.

Okay.

I think Mike's point is that's a little that's a little misleading, but I think it's effective average.

Yeah and that's I mean I I was thinking the same thing I'm sorry I think for Taz but Taz you just pointed out that that's not even max because you could put a 4,000 and 1000.

You could put a 3000 and 2000 okay but it is misleading okay you could basically put in two units of whatever the size you want up to 5000.

Right.

Jeff you can go ahead again if you want and then I'll come in with mine.

Oh sorry my my hand shouldn't have been up.

Okay.

So Taz I want to go back uh to the point Jeff was making about the street designations.

We have our arterial I guess we have a three tier system of of streets in the in the town we have arterials collectors and uh what do you call local local neighborhood streets and as I understand it um the proposal here is to link um you know higher levels of miss it missing middle housing permissibility to partially to um street designations so if a street is designated as an arterial or a circulator um that would mean you're permitted to have higher level of uh density like quadplexes or what have you yeah um I think that makes a lot of sense at an abstract level um but to Jeff's point the more I have looked at the map um of what are the collector streets and think about it at the ground level the the less it makes sense and so Jeff gave an example of uh asterisk between Caswell and the library or let's say Franklin um the example that comes to mind for me is uh Dixie Drive between uh Piney Mountain and and MLK um now here's a road that's designated as a collector road it has no sidewalks it has no prospect for sidewalks the the traffic on that road currently is so light that I run it every week and I run it in the middle of the street I don't even look for cars.

There's very light traffic less than in my row which is a call de sec.

And the housing on that street currently it's all single family and it's um indistinguishable in character type um from all the streets that intersect it besides the major ones like MLK.

And so I'm just envisioning you know automatically stroke of a pen this street which is basically for all intents and purposes a local neighborhood street is just not a cul de sac um gets upzoned while the streets that intersect it houses properties just around the corner are treated differently and that just seems um very strange to me and and I would say like as you know I have no issue with quadplexes I voted to do it town wide in 2022 on the planning commission.

Where I have an issue is is drawing the lines arbitrarily based on distinctions like street um designations that were never designed for that purpose and then haven't been updated in contemplation of that purpose.

If we want to just apply quadplexes across the board without coming on commenting at all on the political wisdom of that which I'm staying out of from a planning perspective I don't see a problem with it.

If we want to uh use the land use map revision process to look at the town and say where do we want this to where do we think it makes sense for this to exist and not do it you know based on this legacy street designation thing I think that would be perfectly fine you mentioned that we're contemplating a new zone for missing middle housing if we wanted to create a new zone to sort of apply it where we want that makes sense but I I'm really not on board with using the collector street designation as a proxy for zoning yeah no thank you for that that perspective John that's really um valuable to hear um I think that that will be one of the topics in which we're probably gonna need the the most robust discussion and guidance from from you all and council um because I think we we we've teed it up as as a question in the the alignment memo right like is that treatment the right one or do we want to go broader um there's also the option of just doing less and waiting for for a zoning map change um yeah Liz I just want to second Jen's point I think I think it would be a mistake to to uh use that so gotcha well thank you guys for for the input and we'll um I think um got a couple of uh representatives from council and we can make sure to highlight um that point as we we continue the discussion on

Um yeah, Liz.

I just want to second Jen's point.

I think I think it would be a mistake to uh use that.

So thank you guys for the input, and we'll um I think um got a couple of uh representatives from council, and we can make sure to highlight um that point as we we continue the discussion on on this item.

Um let me get back to where we were.

So um, okay.

So the next bit um, or actually, before I jump into the next, but were there any other kind of questions or comments around this item?

Okay.

Um so the next item under or under housing was this notion of context sensitive infill.

Um and context sensitive infill is it you see standards like that kind of take a lot of different forms.

Um of the things that we're we're not proposing to include in the draft is anything that um kind of bases building form or building size on the size of adjacent existing buildings.

Um you'll see some infill standards that'll say um you know your building can be no more than 12 feet taller than the shortest building on the adjacent lot.

I think that's that's how Durham's um infill kind of sensitivity standards are are drafted.

Um we're not suggesting taking that route because it really kind of locks in private decisions that were made essentially decades ago and kind of locks in that pattern.

Um I think what we're proposing is more generally applicable standards that are still gonna help ensure that that new development is consistent with with older development, but still able to kind of push the ball forward in terms of what infill can look like.

Um and so um a couple of things that you'll you'll see in the draft.

Um we want to be very sensitive to boundaries between higher intensity development and lower intensity development.

Um so that is one area in which based on the zoning district designation, um, you might see a multifamily project or a commercial project that's near a lower intensity residential district.

Um, you might see that that larger, more intense use have some additional standards, you know, some setbacks, some height controls that allow it to more easily kind of transition into adjacent lower density development.

I'm sorry.

Um the other thing that we're gonna be looking at is actually allowing more infill, right?

So um we are proposing Nulumo will will have standards for kind of smaller scale commercial development as infill in residential um zoning districts.

So the Nulumo establishes um kind of micro retail and micro restaurants, basically something under the under 3,000 square feet, um, and those would be allowed um in an R1 and R2 zoning districts.

Um that's also premised on um street type.

Um, but that standard of certain businesses being allowed on certain street types is something we have seen.

It already exists in LUMO.

Um, and it it speaks more to you know, our services more available.

Would um would there be an expectation of um higher traffic volume on those streets already?

Um, knowing that there are obviously gonna be exceptions to the norm, but we're looking at kind of generally applicable standards.

Um the other idea that we're we're looking at um again, this is thinking about how can we how can we leverage generally applicable standards to make sure that new development is kind of sensitive to its context.

Um I think one thing that we we hear and see all the time is that parking is one of the most kind of readily visible and most impactful um it's one of the most significant impacts that new development can have.

And so we currently have a tool to help mitigate that impact, which is restrictions on front yard parking.

But that restriction currently only applies to single family and duplexes.

And so the new LUMO would propose to expand that restriction to triplexes and fourplexes.

Again, to try to make sure that we're using those generally applicable standards to maximum benefit.

Now these would kick in for any residential development with five or more units, and then basically any commercial development.

Moving towards kind of that long term longer term vision for the town.

Yeah, Liz.

On the last one with the trees, um, is there gonna be a size minimum?

So they don't just put in a tiny sapling, and will they be required to make sure that it they're responsible that it reaches maturity?

And how are you going to deal with the fire issue that's constantly in and duke power constantly minimizing the the trees that we can put on the streets with these new developments?

Yeah, so um I'll take those in turn.

One is like what can people plant to meet the requirement.

And we do have standards for um kind of the minimum size that's allowed for a new tree.

Um a little counterintuitively, it's not actually particularly beneficial to ramp up that minimum size requirement too high.

Um there's kind of a sweet spot of kind of three to four inches and the diameter of the the tree trunk.

Um if you get much bigger than that, the tree problems yeah, the tree is already kind of more established and has a harder time adapting to a new environment.

Um we're also gonna be looking at not just how you plant or not just what you plant, but how you plant it.

Um so the updated tree protection ordinance basically incorporates all of the planting standards in the design manual that has essentially best practices for how you plant new trees.

Um they've for a long time just been suggestions, but what we're doing is saying if if by function of some rule in the ordinance you have to plant a new tree, um you're gonna do it right.

Um so that's that's a key element there.

Um the other thing, and you mentioned two of the the biggest concerns when it comes to street trees is fire access and uh duke utility easements.

Um as far as fire access goes, um we are we're gonna be looking at allowing kind of modifications of the spacing of trees so that if there is a concern with fire access, the spacing of trees can change to still allow for the fire access requirements.

So we don't want to put people in a position where they are given two sets of competing mandates.

Um and then similarly with utility easements, it's about giving adequate kind of flexibility.

So we're not tightly prescribing how close to the street the trees need to be.

Um we're basically saying that they can be within the public right-of-way or as far as 10 feet into the property line.

And so that creates, I think, kind of a pre-sizable bit of wiggle room for folks to kind of adjust and get around easements if needed.

But ultimately both fire access and utility easements are going to have to win if it comes to kind of a contest between those standards and the street tree standards.

So we're trying to do is create enough flexibility that it's not kind of a zero sum game there.

And if the tree dies within the first seven or eight years, which is about which is the time period that they're most vulnerable, is the owner, the builder responsible for maintaining the tree and replacing it, or is that just sort of once they've planted it, they're done.

Yeah, so for street trees, for buffers, um it's an ongoing responsibility.

Okay.

Mike.

Yes.

Um just uh maybe um a point on limits on front yard parking.

Would that be a little bit more stronger to say restrictions on front yard parking?

So the the current rules don't prohibit front yard parking altogether, um, but they limit how much of the front yard can be used for parking.

Um so the current rules say that no more than 40% of the front yard um can be used for parking and and driveways.

Um, and the the only recent change that we've made to that is um as part of the omnibus text amendments earlier this year, we created a kind of a uh a de minimis exemption.

So if your front yard is so small that um if you have two cars out front that would exceed 40%.

Um we've said that you can you can at least have two cars, even if you have a very tight front yard.

Um, but other than that, we haven't changed the front yard parking rule.

This would just apply it to more types of housing.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, thanks, Mike.

John.

Just two quick comments of agreement on this.

Um, in terms of street trees, Taz, you mentioned that they can hide a lot.

One of the things they hide is the sun when you don't want it beating down on you.

And I think um as the town tries to encourage and moves toward more multimodal transportation, um, it's really important to have those street trees to induce people to not go straight from their living room to their garage to their car to work to actually go outside.

It's just really hard when there's no street trees.

You're just kind of exposed and hot and the heat is radiating off the pavement, so pavement.

So I'm pleased to see I think it's consistent with the direction the town is going with transportation to have a street tree requirement, number one, number two, on um transition zone.

So thinking about the um uh what is that map called?

The uh it has an acronym, it has heights of buildings across town with crosshatches where there's a transition zone.

What's the name of that document?

That's the Flume, the future line.

Thank you.

The Flume.

So the Flume has these transition zones.

And I feel like what we need, and it sounds like what we're getting is like uh V 2.0 of whatever the Flume was very unsuccessfully trying to do with those crosshatches.

Whenever we have a conditional rezoning that's that bots a residential neighborhood, we have an inordinate amount of discussion from neighbors and among ourselves about what the transit what that actually means, the transition zone, like how high can you go in relation to that buildings next door and what distance and what kind of buffer.

And we've talked about it in the planning commission with you in the past has uh and with your colleagues in the planning department, how how great it would be to standardize this uh so that these discussions can be sort of had at a global level level once and come up with a good thoughtful set of standards.

And then after that, the the answer is we have standards for this.

We're not gonna we're not gonna amend them for each and everyone.

Um so I applaud the effort, um it sounds like the effort to uh to standardize transition zones.

Uh thank you, John.

And I your your comment on uh street trees actually remind me of something that I think is is helpful to mention here.

Um one of the things that we're gonna try with street trees is is a provision that it's couched in you know to the maximum extent practical, but um so becomes a kind of a really strong suggestion.

But a provision that says that to the maximum extent practical, when street trees are adjacent to some sort of pedestrian infrastructure, so sidewalks, multi-use paths, what what have you, that the location of the street trees relative to that pedestrian infrastructure is gonna maximize shade for the pedestrian infrastructure.

Um, you know, it's it feels like such a shame to have a uh a road that's you know perfectly oriented in the way that if you put the street trees in in one location, you're creating an amazing experience for uh for folks using the sidewalk.

Um but if you put it on the other side of the sidewalk, then the benefit all disappears.

So we're gonna try that.

Um, like I said, it's it's couched in this to the maximum extent practical, um, but it's it's a really good, I think, push in the right direction.

Sounds great.

Thanks.

Um, any other questions on this topic before we move on?

Um, so that brings us to um I've kind of lost count, but I think we're on the third uh of the major kind of topic areas, um, economic development and land use.

Um, and this one really um there's there's two kind of specific interests housed under this one.

Um I'll speak to the first interest.

The the second interest of this idea of um aligning overall land use patterns.

I think we found that it's actually really heavily tied to some of the other things that we've talked about.

So there isn't anything specific to highlight for point two here, other than that there's kind of linkages to other goals.

Um I'll focus on on this kind of question of neighborhood scale commercial uses and how we can really support those.

Um I think there's um a couple of things to to think about with with neighborhood scale commercial and what what it actually means to support neighborhood scale commercial.

Um the one hand, you can support neighborhood scale commercial by making sure that existing commercial development has a meaningful amount of residential density nearby, right?

That there are a meaningful amount of people that are able to walk or bike um to existing commercial nodes.

Um that's one side of the coin.

Um and the other side of the coin is creating more opportunities to build more neighborhood commercial nodes.

Um so we're trying to address both of those, right?

So uh we've already talked about increasing residential density in a lot of zoning districts.

Um, so that's intended to hit one side of the coin.

Um and then the other side of the coin is this notion of just allowing more small-scale commercial development um around town.

And that really runs the gamut from, like I mentioned, kind of these micro retail, micro-restaur opportunities.

Um, but then also tying that to the discussion about um kind of more lenient standards or not more lenient standards, but just higher thresholds for buy right development.

Um, that actually come with more stringent development standards, but more that you can do by right.

Um, allowing those to kind of be built around town, right?

Um I think a lot of what we maybe don't intuitively think of as neighborhood commercial um is kind of in that 10, 20, maybe 30,000 square foot scale.

Um, we're not proposing that those be allowed kind of anywhere in a residential district, but um in commercial districts, we want to make those easier to build.

Um, and as we've talked about, kind of the the promise or the opportunity that a new zoning map creates, um, we have an opportunity, right, to put new commercial-oriented districts on the map um in areas where there might be kind of a dearth of that type of activity.

Um I think really big benefit that we've got going for us is that we're actually already doing pretty well in terms of the amount of Chapel Hill, at least within town limits, um, that's within kind of that 10 to 15 minute bike ride of uh of an existing commercial hub.

Um there are some areas really kind of deep within neighborhoods that that fall outside of those travel times.

Um, but we're doing really well.

Um, and so our baseline, I think, is not as bad as it may seem.

Um it's something that we will continue to improve on and create more opportunities for neighborhood commercial.

Um, but we are starting at a pretty good place, and that's where things like the the E to E Greenway network, um, continued investments in bike lanes and sidewalks, um, it's just gonna it's just gonna make it easier and easier for people to get around and access um existing commercial development.

Um another thing um here, and this is again kind of moving up the scale in terms of the the size of development that we're talking about.

Um we've we perennially run into this problem that a lot of our multifamily projects around town, even though kind of the R6, the residential six zoning district, um would would be a really great district for them to get rezoned into it essentially precludes opportunity for them to provide any sort of meaningful commercial development um because R6 when it was originally conceived um really looked at kind of a singular focus on residential development.

Um so we really want to make sure that we're shifting that paradigm that mixed use is kind of the default.

Um that once you get into multifamily districts, um mixed use is just not even a question, right?

It is a default part of how those districts are built out and what can be built in those districts.

Um this is just uh a seemingly small thing, but I I wanted to highlight it.

Um I know it's uh it's gotten it's been talked about a bit.

It was something that um I think we we heard we've heard a lot of community interest in the approach that the town takes towards daycares.

Um I think so many of us have either direct or you know just ever so slightly tangential experience with just understanding how difficult daycare and child care can be in in this area and what it means for somebody to have access to good child care.

Um we have traditionally made it really difficult to build daycare centers around town in our R1 and R2 zoning districts, which represent you know again a very sizable chunk of town.

Um you can only build those daycare centers on higher capacity roads, um, which puts a lot of land off limits for daycares.

Um and so we are we're proposing to or you know the the new LUMO will um will lift that limit.

Um daycares would be allowed essentially anywhere in an R1 or R2 zoning district.

Um the only kind of vestige of the old rule is that if a daycare is located on a on a local street on a cul de sac, um, it's gonna be limited in size to 4,000 square feet, um, which is still again a sizable facility that could serve a good number of kids.

Um, but we just want to make sure that it's it's not gonna again kind of be um outsized in its impacts on on the neighbors.

Um questions or comments or kind of feedback on on any of these items.

Yeah, Liz.

So I think this category is super important, and certainly if successful, this is really a core piece of um the complete community and what I think we're looking for, but the this is mostly allowing more commercial development.

It isn't just because we allow it doesn't mean it's gonna be built.

And I've just been impressed by project after project, our disappointment at the developers not taking advantage of already plenty of opportunities where we're pushing them, requiring, and they still are under utilizing the mixed use.

And so I think just going back to some of the sessions we held where we talked about well, why does Southern Village work?

Why, you know, what worked what didn't work with Blue Hill.

It it requires more than zoning changes.

The LUMO is not going to solve this.

And so I guess this is a bit of a statement as much as a question, but other things such as the small area planning needs to happen at the same time.

And the staff, the council, the town really needs if they want to take this seriously, this is not going to be enough to do what I think you envision here.

Although certainly necessary but not sufficient, is what I would say.

And the LUMO isn't going to solve it, but I think to not be thinking at the same time of what else is going to happen would be just end up with a lot of density and not have commercial.

And that isn't really going to solve what we're looking for.

Yeah, I think necessary but not sufficient should probably be like the tagline for all zoning ordinances, right?

That's like that's kind of the curse for a lot of planners.

And we have these grand visions for what the community could look like, but the regulatory tools that we have to enact that are really limited.

So I think that that's definitely the approach we're taking, and we we approach it with that humility, really, right?

That like we can open the door, um, but there's a lot more work that needs to be done, both on the town side and from the private um development side to actually make that happen.

Um yeah, Jeff.

Yeah, question, and it's which is not on the slide, um, and it might be a little in the weeds, and it's okay if you don't have the the answer off the top of your head.

But um, speaking of commercial uses in residential districts, um the town's home occupation standards are reasonably strict um with floor area limitations.

Um supposedly if you're operating a business out of your house, you need a uh zoning permit.

Theoretically, I'm breaking violating LUMO by, you know, I work from home three days a week, so I'm engaged in an occupation um at home.

Um are there going to be is there going to be some liberalization of the town's home occupation um standards?

Yes.

Um we are basically going to create right now there are there are two official tiers of home occupations.

There's just kind of home occupation and then major home occupation.

Um the major home occupations are only allowed in uh in a couple of zoning districts.

Um so it's that home occupation tier um that trips up a lot of folks.

Um of the the really onerous or some of the limitations of the home occupation tier um are things like you can only have one non-resident employee as part of your business.

You can't have any external um evidence of your business.

Um signage, nothing of that sort.

Um, and there's there's folks like you, Jeff, that just work from home, but you're not necessarily running a business from your home.

Um, and so what we are proposing is to split that out a little bit, so create three tiers, um, essentially like uh an incidental home occupation, which is really just you're working from home.

Um that's doesn't really come with any restrictions, there's no permitting requirements, it's just acknowledging that that is just part and parcel of living in this kind of digital age.

Um I think it's helpful to memorialize that um because we do have folks sometimes um for insurance purposes or tax purposes, other kind of legal purposes, they need some sort of um they need to be able to point to something that says that yeah, I'm I'm authorized to be conducting my business out of my home.

Um so that's where it's helpful to kind of formally recognize that like incidental home occupation as a as a tier.

Um then we're taking that middle tier of just kind of normal home occupation and just making it a little bit more permissive.

So um saying that you can have, I think, up to three non-resident employees, um, that you can have a little bit of modest signage.

I think we're saying like you can have one sign, can't be illuminated, but but you can have a sign in your front yard.

Um so just trying to again make it make it a little bit easier um to do that sort of work out of your home, um, but still you know, keeping kind of the the core tenants of um don't want really intense commercial development that could uh be a nuisance to neighbors, trying to keep that intact, but at the same time make it all more more usable.

Um yeah, John.

I wanted to quickly um agree with the point that Liz made about necessary and that you agreed with already Taz necessary but not sufficient.

Um, and I think um to get projects that have more um mixed use component.

I mean, our recent history with that in the in the town, let's say the last five years or so has been basically need to require it, or we don't get it.

And and the mechanism that we've been using to require it is conditional rezoning.

Um thinking of Aura, I'm thinking of South Creek.

I think you know, they probably anticipated that were they to come in with 700 units of residential with zero commercial, it would have been turned down.

And so you know, there's that expectation out there.

Um, and it sort of works in conditional rezoning.

Um I think we'll probably need to continue doing that.

Um I think that there's a lot of untapped potential through whatever you want to call small area planning to identify areas where um from a real estate economics perspective, you could make money, and that's not most areas, but some areas you could make money with commercial use, and essentially finding a way without running a foul of the downzoning law to require some kind of commercial, you know, in those areas.

Otherwise, I I fear what we're just gonna get you know almost 100% residential on a lot of our projects going forward.

Yeah.

Yeah, and one thing I'll I'll say that you know, we've also seen the flip side, right?

Um 1600 North MLK um project that that came in um had mandatory uh commercial space that just went unleashed for years and years, and they have to um seek a modification to their entitlement to to allow them to convert that to residential.

Um we know that it's kind of a mixed bag.

Um the other kind of important thing here is making sure that we don't lose existing neighborhood commercial.

Um we we don't want to create a displacement pressure on existing commercial.

Um so one of the things that we're we're proposing is that for um two of our kind of strongest commercial zoning districts today, um, the community commercial, so CC and neighborhood commercial NC zoning districts.

Um we would actually, as they kind of move forward into the new LUMO, um their um their baseline floor area ratio would actually stay the same as it currently is.

It's it's not particularly high.

Um you would get a significant jump in floor area ratio if any subsequent redevelopment of the site maintains or expands the amount of commercial um floor area on the site.

So it's a measure to to really make sure that we're not backsliding with any of our existing development.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I know that was a concern with Blue Hill.

You know, we've lost some commercial percentage-wise over time.

So okay, thanks.

Um, so like I mentioned, um, in the economic development and land use bucket, I think this was the kind of key um interests we wanted to touch on.

Um the the other interests of making sure to align land use patterns with complete community principles, um, we just point to many other goals that I think collectively kind of speak to that that interest.

Um so moving on, um the next I think four out of five now goal is this notion of built environment and the public realm.

And so council again identified several kind of more specific topic areas within this specific interest.

Again, speaks to that notion of balancing uses for complete community, supporting accessible civic spaces, good mobility and infrastructure or mobility infrastructure and connections, reduced dependence on parking, and then really meaningful building form and site design standards.

So that first point I think again, this is an interest that I think mirrors some other interests that we've talked about.

So that goal of supporting neighborhood scale commercial uses speaks really strongly to the idea that we need a balance of uses.

Is that mixed use development will just kind of become the new default in basically all of our zoning districts?

Obviously, as we get away from more heavily residential districts, the opportunities for for commercial development become higher and higher.

The notion that any district is really hemmed in to a specific subset of uses I think is something that we're seeing is kind of antithetical to this complete community balance of uses.

So the next specific interest is really talking about access and distribution of civic spaces.

And this has a similar dynamic to the one I mentioned around neighborhood scale commercial.

On the one hand, we want to support existing civic spaces, and on the other hand, or other side of the coin, we want to promote the creation of new civic spaces.

And so we're trying to hit both interests.

A really significant shift in the new LUMO is a move away from recreation space requirements and towards amenity space requirements for multifamily development.

And pretty critically here for just general non-residential commercial development.

So these amenity space requirements would apply to commercial development in the same way they would to multifamily residential.

Basically, what the amenity space requirement calls for is some sort of mandatory improved open space on a site.

That space can be private.

We obviously cannot mandate that the space is public.

But we do heavily incentivize amenity space that is kind of adjacent to the public realm.

So a courtyard near the street, potentially a plaza near the street.

Again, we can't require that it's publicly accessible.

But we've seen kind of one-off developers that have an interest in adding to the public realm.

They they oftentimes see a benefit to their own business to make the space at least pseudo-public, right?

Weaver Street Market is a perfect example.

Essentially, like Carborough's front yard is not actually a public space.

And so this sets the groundwork for for things like that to again necessary but not sufficient to create those spaces.

And then to that kind of flip side of the coin, making sure that we are we're increasing density near existing civic spaces, that we're we're creating more opportunities for more people to live near the things that we've already invested in.

Any questions on on either of those before moving to the next interest?

Just make the point like John made last time that these are the sorts of things that we traditionally the council will negotiate over during the conditional zoning process.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so this is an interesting um kind of layering effect with conditional zoning because uh so on the one hand, um, as we talked about earlier, like how do we try to move buy right development in the direction of providing community benefits?

This is one of those tools that again we can't force them to make it public, but just having it is a step in the right direction.

Um so that's that's on the buyright end of the spectrum.

But then these rules would still apply for projects that are going through a conditional zoning.

Um, so that now becomes the new baseline, right?

Whereas before we might have to, you know, push and pull with a developer to even just think about incorporating some sort of plaza or or open space into their site design.

Now the presumption is that you're gonna provide that, and if you're not, you have to make a case for not providing it.

Um so it it puts us on even stronger footing um when we go into a conditional zoning.

Um and you'll see that I think that dynamic play out with a lot of um a lot of the new standards that they create kind of a new elevated baseline for projects that do go through conditional zoning.

Um next bit wanted to talk about um mobility and just connectivity around town.

So um, you know, this is something I I touched on earlier of how do we get buy right development to provide community benefits.

Um a key part of that, we know that greenways are going to be uh a really significant um priority for the town in the future.

Um so we're we're throwing some really significant incentives at buy right development uh in order to get them to provide greenways, and it's all tied to recreation space and amenity space.

Um you'll notice I mentioned it's tied to amenity space, that's a direct trade-off with the the previous point about creating civic spaces.

So we we if we're going to incentivize, we've got to kind of have a baseline requirement and then find ways to offer relief from that requirement in order to get something that we couldn't otherwise get.

So if a developer provides um, as I mentioned earlier, kind of a greenway that's in accordance with the town's adopted plans for greenways, and they make it publicly accessible, um, they get some really significant relief from either rec space or or amenity space requirements.

Um yeah, John.

So Taz, I'm wondering uh how to compare this or how to think about this in relation to um say a sidewalk requirement.

So right now, if a developer you know redevelops or a homeowner or whoever redevelops a piece of land it that's um zoned in such a way that requires sidewalk building, like that they have to build a sidewalk, and there's no there's no incentive to do it, it's a requirement.

Yeah, right.

Um is there an obstacle to using it?

Seems like recently when we've had developers build greenways, it's always been in the context of conditional rezoning, and it's just a condition.

But uh is there like a constitutional impediment to you know, would it be an exaction to require greenway because it's just wider than a sidewalk if it under similar circumstances?

Yeah, so it what it all comes down to is whether the infrastructure is in the right of way or not.

Um so that's where it's so much of it is it's not about the requirement to build the thing, it's about how publicly accessible is it.

Um it's not particularly problematic for us to say you need to build a 10-foot wide concrete path through your property regardless of what you call it or who uses it.

I see, yeah.

So if it's if it's uh on the the border of your property where your property meets the road.

Yep.

Uh and it's a greenway as part of the greenway network, you could treat it like a sidewalk.

Uh, but if it's bifurcating your property in the middle, yeah, that'd be a taking.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Okay, got it.

Um and I think I've got a bullet point that that speaks to that in uh a certain way.

Yeah, so this this third point about roadway improvements, um, that's where we we kind of take the like the sidewalk improvements, but it kind of falls into this roadway improvements element that improvements within the right-of-way um are fair game to require.

So we we would say that let's say the the E to E network map, when that's completed, if there's a stretch where they've identified that the best alignment is actually along the road, um, which can happen in some cases, right?

SDs is a great example.

Um, if if a development were to come in along one of those stretches, um, we would have kind of a strong foundation to say, no, you actually need to put in a 10-foot path or 14-foot, whatever the standard might be at the time in the right of way.

Got it.

Thanks.

Yeah.

Um and then, you know, uh again, kind of the the flip sides of um new infrastructure and new connections are the the notion of giving more people opportunities to use existing infrastructure or new infrastructure.

Um, and so I think this is that point that we've we've talked about.

Um I recognize there's um we've received some really good feedback on on the viability of that option, um, especially as it relates to new greenways.

Um so I think that's that's something that we'll continue to kind of noodle on, whether it would harm other priorities if we tied additional density to new greenways.

Um so we'll we'll certainly keep thinking on that one.

Um other questions on on these or feedback on these.

Um okay, so um the next one, and I know that given my audience, I I need to kind of thicken my skin a little bit for what I'm about to share.

Um, so there's this interest in uh reduced dependence on parking.

Um we have I think generally taken the approach that the best thing that the town can do to reduce car dependence and reduce dependence on parking um is to promote development patterns that that reduce the need for a car, right?

Um to have development patterns that make it easier to use greenways to make it easier to use transit, um, to make it easier to to walk or bike to your destination of choice.

Um we are uh not proposing to reduce parking maximums um with the new Luma.

Um it's something we have we've kind of beat around a lot with the development community, and the the overwhelming response that we're hearing is that if we reduce parking maximums, um we're squeezing folks between parking regulation and investor or lender requirements.

Um it's not a place that we want to put folks that we know are gonna have to be kind of necessary partners in a lot of what we're we're hoping to get with with new development in town.

Um so again, heavy emphasis on reducing the need for cars.

Um, but at this point we're not proposing to reduce those parking maximums.

I get it.

I'm not gonna bite your head off on this at ease, but I wonder.

Um is there any precedent for using incentives here instead of requirements?

Is there a way to incentivize lower parking ratios for developers who might need the incentive to do it and and might be able to respond to it?

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, we could, you know, we have kind of a bag to pull from when it comes to what incentives could look like.

And some of those could certainly be tied to, you know, a commitment written into some sort of restriction on the property.

Um that their parking will be capped out or capped at a certain level.

Um in a way, it's like the reverse of what you're proposing with small scale projects, uh, incentives for in terms of dimensional and setback requirements for affordable housing.

Um it's actually the same issue because uh parking adds cost for the end user, whether they're a renter or they're they're buying a unit.

And one way, a pretty effective way to promote more market rate affordable housing is to get the parking ratios down.

And if there's a way to incentivize it, I would look at it conceptually as part of the package of affordable housing incentives.

Yeah, yeah.

I think we can um we can explore what it would look like to um, you know, we've we've already identified some incentives for um you know energy efficient building design and and things of that sort.

Um we could look into what it would what it could mean to add parking to the mix.

Just to add to that the unbundling, which is not something you could put put into the regulation, but the degree of thinking of how to include that really does uh help the help the renter or buyer as well as reduce cost, reduce parking, etc.

Yeah, I was thinking about that.

I couldn't figure out a way to get into the LUMO, like you're saying, Liz.

I just couldn't think of a feasible way to put that in the code.

Yeah, we'd have to figure out some incentive.

But I yeah, I just keep thinking of the Wegmans building like a parking lot that seemed to be 50% large and demanding the council extend their maximum parking so that they could waste build that massive lot uh anyway, yeah.

Yeah, and I mean one thing we we are proposing to do is um at least somewhat try to improve the like the landscaping standard.

So if you if you are going to build a parking lot, um we're increasing the number of trees that you need to provide, um, making it somewhat more inconvenient um to the then the benefit of the folks that would use the parking lot.

Um same with with parking structures, right?

That there would be um screening requirements and and some additional um cost um placed on those types of uh construction.

Um yeah, Jeff.

Yeah, not to not to belabor the point.

Um the you know, you often see incentives for reducing um the minimum amount of parking that's required because developers don't want to produce as much as the ordinance requires, but then that requires you to have some minimum, which we obviously don't want to have.

I don't know of any, I can't think of any you know incentives to provide reduced park.

I mean, they'd have to be some sort of benefit that they would get, you know, extra development entitlement.

Um, you know, it but you know, just thinking about it, I I thought the Wegmans, you know, demanding additional parking that they um surprise realized they didn't actually need was kind of dumb.

You know, on the other hand, there's now uh you know, I know they're actively marketing half of that parking lot, which could be you know sold off and be some sort of business.

So, you know, I I get I get annoyed when um if somebody has to build a parking deck that's larger than is needed because those are very expensive, very carbon intensive and aren't going away within 40 years.

If it's some additional asphalt parking spaces that they want, that's easy enough to repurpose in the future.

Yeah.

Yeah, and that's where um a lot of these other ideas of you know making it easier to build by right.

Um it would be great if the like Wegman satellite parking lot um could redevelop totally by right.

Um it has some weird, uh I think they've already kind of severed it from their existing special use permit.

Um so it is at this point, I think, standing essentially on its own as land that could develop by right if we put in place some good good rules for that.

Um yeah, Liz.

Here's an incentive that you could add uh not an incentive, it's something that you could if you could come up with a lower maximum and anything say the top 20% between of the maximum has to be done with impervious uh with pervious parking, which is obviously more expensive.

So they either you know build something that is not going to be as negative to the watershed, etc., or they just don't do it because that extra 20% is expensive.

And that would that would be a win-win.

Yeah.

Um I'm gonna try to stop my wheels turning because that's a very interesting idea.

Um, and I don't want to get sidetracked, but um, yeah, we can we can definitely look into basically making without changing the parking maximums, change the incremental cost for whatever that's right.

The top quarter, the top 20%.

Yeah.

Yep.

Cool.

Thank you.

Um, I'm gonna move on to the next bit.

Um, and I uh I'm sorry I've gotten through like 40 slides with with no pictures.

I've got a couple of graphics for y'all on on this one.

Um so one of the really major changes that the new Lumo is gonna help implement is bringing additional elements of building and site design regulation into the mix.

Um, you know, we've heard a lot of interests in just good urban form.

I think that's that's something that we we can regulate to a certain extent, um, as long as we take an eye towards let's regulate in a way that protects us against worst case scenarios rather than let's attempt to regulate our way into kind of a perfectly designed site.

Um and so with that in mind, we're we're looking to implement um kind of a variety of different kind of urban form and building mass related rules in the new LUMO.

Um first being maximum building width, um, then the the CDC has is long kind of advocated for um maximum building width rules.

Um I think the new Lumo is actually gonna come in more conservative than what the CDC had had advocated for for a long time.

Um at a 250 foot maximum building width with some opportunities to articulate a building in a way that allows you to go beyond that maximum building width.

So what this example shows is that if you if you have a segment of the building that that maxes out that maximum building width, um you can then add an open space, and there are minimum dimensional requirements for how big that that open space would need to be in order for you then to continue the building, but still technically fall within the maximum building width.

Um we see this as a not just an aesthetic um concern.

I think that's that's something we're we're trying to really be mindful here of that purely aesthetic concerns are not something that the LUMO should be regulating.

Um when you limit building width, um one of the opportunities that you create is better connectivity through a site, better permeability, right?

The opportunity for people to walk through a site in a more meaningful way, um, fewer blocks, um locks upon blocks of development that don't give people an opportunity to kind of get off the street.

Um so there's there's a lot of kind of lived experience, uh like experiential benefit um to uh a building with maximum.

Um another requirement that we're proposing to add to the new UMO are gonna be for these larger scale projects, um, limitations on how much parking can be placed between the building and the street.

Um this is really kind of an evolution of or just kind of like a build to zone in its simplest form.

I think as we were iterating through what a build-to zone could look like.

Um we really came down to is the the biggest thing that we're trying to avoid is having kind of a sea of parking between a building and the street.

And so there's gonna be these limitations on on parking between the building and the street.

Um what it would basically boil down to is that in these um these zones in these zones that are kind of clearly between the building and the street, there'd be a maximum width of pavement and parking that you would be able to put in that zone.

Um, because we still want to allow folks to have um you know vehicular circulation around the site if they need it, um, but they wouldn't be able to have more than one or two lanes of drive driveways, um, and certainly no more than like one bay of parking um along a portion of that street-facing facade.

So um it gets it gets really in the weeds with with how that will work, but core idea, we really want to limit how much parking is between people on the street and the buildings that they're trying to get to.

Um another similar idea is this this notion of blank walls.

Um I think there are you know pretty noticeable examples around town of you might be walking along sidewalk, and for kind of an uncomfortably long distance, you are just staring at a blank brick wall or blank concrete wall.

Um creates a less hospitable environment, um, adds to just kind of that like thermal mass of a building that can impact urban heat impact urban heat effects.

Um, and so we're we're proposing some some limits on how far you can go with a blank wall before you have windows or doors or trees that kind of shield the blank wall.

Again, all with kind of an eye towards let's improve the pedestrian experience.

Um already mentioned uh amenity space requirements.

Um again, the idea here is just to require that whether it's multifamily residential or commercial development, that they are creating some spaces that are outdoors that have the opportunity, um, albeit not the requirement to be public spaces.

Um another kind of key element um this notion of active depth requirements.

Um just like the the parking between the building and the street requirement, what this is really boiled down to is a way of guarding against a lot of ground floor parking uh in a building that's right up against the street.

Um we recognize that that's kind of necessary with a lot of one over five, you know, one over something construction where you've got podium parking and then construction on top of that.

Um we can mitigate that, right?

We can have a requirement that says that um some portion of that podium parking needs to be wrapped with with an active use, again, with an eye towards promoting that that pedestrian experience.

Um there's also some kind of tweaked um standards around building mass um stepbacks and building height are um or a new rule that'll be implemented in a lot of zoning districts.

Um basically saying that a building can go no more than usually four stories before there has to be some sort of change in the articulation of the building, um, all towards an eye with um kind of promoting best practices in urban form.

Um that's one of those rules where um I think it does veer more towards the aesthetic, um, but we're creating enough options, enough like opportunities in how people meet that rule that's not gonna be overly prescriptive.

Um any questions on or feedback on these building and site design standards.

Um I will say um, and John, I'll I'll get to your question in just a second.

And John, I'll get to your question in just a second.

I um I think the timing was a little off.

Um, but the town urban designer Brian Peterson has uh provided a write-up on uh kind of looking at building and site design standards in the new ordinance.

Um that's been shared, I believe, as kind of supplemental materials to tomorrow's town council meeting.

Um so it should already be on the you know out as part of the um the agenda for tomorrow's council meeting.

Um I can make sure to share it with y'all as well so you have that to reference.

Um yeah, John.

So I don't have the uh technical expertise to evaluate these design standards, but I understand what you're trying to do, uh, which is protect the pedestrian realm, and it seems logical, and I'm supportive of that effort, even though I can't really add value to it.

One thing I did want to ask about is um procedurally, whether the town urban designer, currently Brian, um should be mentioned, you know, by position in the LUMO somewhere, maybe with um in the context of conditional rezonings.

And the reason I ask it is because um, you know, since Brian came on board, he seems to do really good work and add value, and oftentimes we don't need to require anything, he just delivers some wisdom to a developer who doesn't maybe have the scale uh to bring somebody like him in-house or consult with somebody like him, and we're basically giving them free business advice like how to make your uh building more attractive to potential tenants or buyers.

And and so they love it.

In in other cases, a developer will come in and they seem to want to do something a little more cookie-cutter, and he has great comments, and they basically ignore it while saying that he is on board with everything they're doing.

You know, they're kind of playing it both ways.

And um, and there's not really like a procedural mechanism for Brian to dispute that or to follow up on whether in fact the changes that they made to the plan have anything to do with what he told them.

And so I just wonder if there's a way.

I've always thought that if we're gonna use them, it ought to be a little more buttoned up in terms of how the process works.

And there ought to be like either not do it or do it with more teeth.

And I wonder if um you've given any thought to formalizing his role um in some way, I don't know how, in the LUMO.

Yeah, what it really boils down to is delegation of authority.

Um when a governing body in North Carolina delegates authority to administrative staff, they have to do that within the bounds of kind of clear guiding principles or guiding standards.

Um and and I think you just hit on kind of why that ends up being a really difficult dynamic, then with some with a position like the urban designer, um, that where there are things that we can clearly create standards around, we're moving in that direction.

The value add of somebody like an urban designer um is that they speak to the things that we can't put clear standards around.

Um so I think unfortunately, that that role is always gonna have to live kind of outside of um any sort of official process in the ordinance.

Um, but I think we have it is unequivocal how much value um the town has received um from having that sort of collaboration.

Um and so I don't I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon.

Okay, thanks.

Yep.

Liz.

Uh so I had a question, but I will first build on what John said, um, which I agree about Brian Peterson's comments when we see them, they're always very helpful.

I will also say that we did have a process that um did require the developers to um address comments, and that was with the CDC as a uh the liaison to the CDC for many years.

I watched developers interact with them, and I I know that there were many people frustrated that the CDC slowed the process down, but I can tell you just having watched from the outside, invariably the CDC had a huge amount of professional expertise that they gave free of charge.

And these projects when they would come back were much better projects because of getting this uh input from the CDC.

So it is something that we have opted for, streamlining for because we want to go faster, but we did have that process before, which had whatever.

But my question was I know you all spent a lot of time developing like a standards book on design, and I'm just not am I I can't remember what the type poly, I can't remember the name of it, but how does that interact with this?

Because I know there's like a whole book of options, but I don't know the interaction with the LUMO.

Yeah, so it was the uh I'm forgetting the the typology resource guide or something of that sort.

Um with that document, I think what we had always positioned it as it was first and foremost like a research document.

Um that it was a a way of understanding what are best practices um in urban design, what are things that can be regulated.

Um it it will continue to live on as kind of a resource that we'll point folks to.

Um I think we have we have found that you know Brian and Brian is is just as good, if not better, than pointing somebody to a document.

I would I would actually amend my statement to say that Brian is always going to be better than pointing somebody to any to any sort of static document.

Um it it exists out there.

Um I think we're just finding it to be less less useful in the long run than it maybe could have been.

Um and I think Liz, you're you're mentioning the CDC um, I think is really good.

I'm glad you brought that up because the CDC's involvement in conditional zoning project wasn't involved, wasn't formalized in Luma.

Um that was actually kind of a it was a norm, right?

That council expected projects to go to the CDC uh before coming to um to council.

Um I think over time what that's kind of evolved into is essentially an expectation that you have really meaningful conversations with the urban designer.

Um so we've I think because it's been kind of more norms-based, um, it gives us that first when it was the CDC, and now when it's a staff position, it gives us that ability to kind of build up these expectations, even if we don't necessarily have a strong footing for it to be in the ordinance.

Okay.

Okay, so um I will move on to the next bit here, and that brings us to uh our our fifth of the five topics.

So thank you guys for for bearing with me.

Um not that we're keeping score, but I think this topic actually has the most uh independent kind of bullet points within it.

So unsurprisingly, there's there's a lot to talk about when it comes to environment and resilience, because that is one of kind of the the if we were ranking among some of these priorities.

We know that environment and resilience is top of mind for a lot of folks and for the community writ large.

Um there's a lot here um you know, tied to R C D, tree protection, stormwater, uh sustainability and resilience, and then other kind of conservation strategies.

So I'll walk through each of these um in turn.

Um I think there's we're front-loaded on the the detail items one through four, one through three really have the most detail, four through six kind of taper off a little bit.

So um looking first at the RCD.

Um the kind of main interest here is that we we continue to respect the RCD and the kind of the ecosystem services that that it helps to support through town.

Um so right off the bat, um there is no reduction in R C D buffer widths um or really any of the substantive standards that are housed within within the R C D rules.

We are proposing, as I'll get into some tweaks around the margins.

But at baseline, RCD rules are kind of staying as is.

Again, to try to promote RCD is as what it is, which is meaningful habitat in a lot of instances.

Next topic, and this is something that has has come up from time to time with individual conditional zonings, is the notion of stormwater control measures in the RCD.

Our RCD rules as they exist today allow stormwater control measures in the upper zones of the RCD.

But we we often hear kind of consternation about placing you know a stormwater pond or something like that in the RCD.

And so what we're hoping to kind of the way we're hoping that the new LUMO will address that interest is to actually say that if a development is going to have stormwater infrastructure in the RCD has to be green stormwater infrastructure.

It has to be something like a constructed wetland, a bioswale, other more kind of biomimicry type infrastructure.

It can't just be a sterile stormwater pond.

That's the baseline requirement.

And if you've tried to garden anywhere in Chapel Hill, you know we hit clay pretty quickly in town.

And so infiltration isn't always going to be easy to do.

And so we are creating a little bit of an escape hatch that if you want to put stormwater control measures in the RCD, but because of the water table or soil types or anything like that, there's actually land outside of the RCD that's better suited to green and green stormwater infrastructure.

We basically allow you to trade that as long as you're doing some green stormwater infrastructure on your site, you're then allowed to put more typical stormwater infrastructure in the RCD.

So again, that's that's a very convoluted way to say we are we are trying to push folks in the direction of if you're doing stormwater control measures in the RCD, we're gonna push really hard for that to be green stormwater infrastructure.

Um these next two bits are I mentioned we're we're making some kind of surgical tweaks to R C D rules.

Um the one thing that we are we are changing or proposing a change in terms of the scope of RCD is culverts.

Um may know culverts are just underground pipes, underground conveyances of water.

Um despite the fact that the RCD regulations explicitly exempt man-made conveyances, um, they don't specifically list culverts as one of the man-made conveyances uh that they're exempting.

Um and this has just led to a lot of confusion, um, a lot of uncertainty about the scope of RCD regulations.

Um, and so we're just clarifying that you've got a piped underground conveyance, uh, we're not going to treat that in the same way as we would a natural stream.

Um, and then the last kind of tweak that we're making um is trying to balance the goals of the RCD with kind of procedural hurdles.

Um, and that's specifically for uh kind of small residential project.

So this is property on which there's uh single family home up to a fourplex.

Um we're proposing is uh again kind of a de minimis exemption um for certain permitting requirements.

Um and what what this would apply to is if you're doing uh 30 square feet of impervious surface or 60 square feet of land disturbance, um we're not gonna require that you get a survey, we're not gonna kind of impose some of the the same application requirements, some of the same standards that we would for a larger project.

Um this is uh a request that really came out of our staff that work closely with with homeowners.

What they were finding was that you would have a family that needed to replace a an HVAC unit on their site or on their home.

Um they're having to go through really extensive permitting, really kind of onerous permitting, um, just to be able to again put in a new HVAC, put in a small garden shed, really small stuff.

Um so we're proposing kind of uh an opportunity for them to move forward without quite as much paperwork, essentially.

Um, but again, limiting it to uh just the the outer um zones of the RCD.

So we're really treating that streamside zone, the 50 feet closest to a stream as inviolable as far as this exemption would go.

Um any questions on any of the RCD or any feedback on any of the RCD um provisions here.

Liz.

Um generally I appreciate I know there were some uh other routes you could have taken, and I appreciate it looks like you've really thought hard about this.

I would say for the green stormwater infrastructure, which I like that idea.

Um possibility for those that appeal this and say they want to do what you said of swapping the green and the regular, you could I think one thing that is not uncommon is to require some that the work that they do outside the R C D be biodiversity positive or habitat positive, so they actually have to do some compensation for going into the RCD, so it's not a direct swap, so that there's a cost to them of doing that, and they think twice before applying for that sort of thing.

And then the small projects that seems reasonable, but I'm guessing the devil is in the detail what really is allowed, etc.

But I'll wait and see the regulations when they come out.

But I mean, I I get that there's some small things, but we'll see what it looks like when it comes out.

Yep.

Yeah.

And one thing I'll just mention on that last point.

We the proposal isn't to change what's allowed in the RCD, like the activities that are allowed in the RCD.

Um, it's it would be to say of the things that are already allowed in the RCD, if it's small enough, um, the permitting requirements would be different.

Yeah.

Yeah, I get that.

Yeah.

Okay.

Cool.

Thanks.

Well, thank you, Liz.

Any other um feedback or questions or comments on the RCD?

Okay.

All right, moving right along.

Um next bit really covers tree canopy.

Um, and we have uh we've heard very strong policy guidance from council and from you all around tree protection, tree canopy.

Um I think that the new LUMOs is going to find some really key ways to meet those interests.

Um of the first things um is kind of a lesson learned from uh projects around town where uh development along the the periphery of the project has kind of endangered neighbors.

Um and so the um the new LUMO is gonna have provisions.

Um essentially this whole new set of standards um tied to what we're calling a life safety buffer.

Um that if there are uh trees along the property line that are tall enough to endanger neighboring buildings, um that the developer needs to take steps to either protect those trees um or and this is I think the the unfortunate kind of trade-off, either protect the trees or proactively remove them.

Um but they are they are not allowed to allow those trees to be impacted to the point that they then become a risk to neighboring properties.

Um additional step that we're taking or proposing to take for for larger developments, so developments over an acre, is that it's not just about protecting trees that are fully on the developing site, but also protecting trees that are on the adjacent property, but that have root zones that extend into the developing site.

Um that's a major kind of um blind spot for our current rule.

So we we don't have any provisions that offer protection to trees not on the developing site, but that underground, right, extend into the developing site.

And so um similar kind of process would apply if there are adjacent buildings um that are close enough to the property line, and if there are trees that are big enough that they could risk damaging those adjacent buildings, the developer would have to take steps to protect the critical root zone of those trees.

And it ends up being, I think a fairly uh in practice, it ends up being a pretty modest impact to the developing site.

Um you're looking at maybe 10 or 15 feet off of the property line at most, um, that they they would need to kind of maintain a no disturbance zone in order to meaningfully protect off-site trees, and that's probably in like a worst-case scenario.

Um, but again, with a really meaningful benefit to neighbors.

Um another thing we're we're looking to do with the new LUMO is actually inject a level of mandatory tree conservation.

Um, I think it's a it's a popular misconception about our current tree protection ordinance that it requires conservation of any existing trees.

Um the current tree protection ordinance um just does not require that.

You can be fully compliant with today's tree protection ordinance and fully clear cut your site as long as you then plant replacement trees.

Um so what we're proposing is that for larger development sites, again, over an acre, um, that they would be required to protect and conserve um at least 10% of any existing canopy.

Um it's a relatively modest number.

I mean, we know it's a modest number, um, because that can have a significant impact on site design, and we don't want to um unduly impact site design through this standard.

Um, but that that 10% has good precedent to what's used in Raleigh.

Um, I think Raleigh actually triggers the requirement at a higher threshold.

They don't kick in there until you're doing a two-acre site or larger.

Um so we're using a similar standard, but having it kick in earlier than our neighbors.

Um we're also again, we've heard this interest.

Oh, sorry, Mike, I didn't notice your hand was up.

Happy to jump to you for a second.

Sorry.

Is it is it a process that you know we provide to developers that you know determines what is a tree that uh can endanger nearby buildings?

Is it tree that is providing canopy?

Is it or they making that decision?

We're giving them guidelines, or do we have actually someone that goes on site to say, hey, this has gotta go, this this one will stay.

How's that going to be enforced?

Yeah, so one of the things we currently require for a lot of different development is a tree survey.

Um, that before they come in and start working on a site, they they currently have to identify all the the rare and specimen trees, basically the larger trees on their site.

Um they're free to then cut down all those trees, but they at least have to tell us on the front end where those trees are.

Um, and so these additional requirements would basically build off of that existing mechanism that you would have to identify the trees on your property.

We would say that a tree um poses a risk to a neighboring property.

Um the the kind of clear metric that that translates into is if the tree is taller, if the height is the tree exceeds the distance between the tree and uh a neighboring building, right?

So if in the instance the tree fell, it's tall enough that it could hit a neighboring building.

Um so that's kind of like the clear metric that we would establish in the ordinance.

Um, and property owners would be responsible for identifying all of those trees on that tree survey.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So to just to follow up on this, um, so then they had the option of either protecting the tree or taking it down.

I mean, most of these developers will just take it down and they'll say, Ah, it's way easier to just take the tree down, and now I don't have to deal with it.

Shouldn't there be some sort of disincentive, some cost to them taking it down so that there's a preference to them actually protecting the tree and keeping away from that?

That's one.

And two, what I didn't understand is if the tree is on the neighbor's property, can they just go in and take out out the neighbor's tree?

No, no, no, no, not at all.

So the um the protect or take down only applies to trees on the developing site.

For trees on the neighbor's property, it is purely a protect.

Um protect it.

I'm sorry?

What if it's on both properties?

Uh yeah, I mean, I unless it was entirely on the uh developing site, yeah, the neighbor would have a property interest in it.

Um tree law is a surprisingly fraught uh topic of practice.

Um, but we would say uh if it's fully on one property or the other, um, or excuse me, the only instance in which you could remove it is if it's fully on the developing property.

Is there anything else?

I mean, if they go take it down, is there any disincentive towards doing that versus just trying to protect it?

Yeah, there is.

Um, and so the disincentive would apply to it wouldn't apply to all trees, um, because again, we we recognize that um not all trees offer the same kind of ecosystem services, and we want to kind of strike that balance between flexibility and and protecting environmental assets.

So the the disincentive would apply specifically to rare and specimen trees.

Um what we're proposing is that the um the calculation for whether you're meeting your overall tree canopy requirement.

Um basically proposing to kind of play with those numbers a bit, that rather than saying that every square foot of rare or canopy rare or specimen tree canopy.

If you remove some of that canopy, it counts double against you.

So you're basically creating a deficit faster if you are cutting down rare and specimen trees.

Same with significant tree stands, which are defined as contiguous areas of trees that are at least a certain size.

We would basically count those more than just a tree kind of a field.

And then on the flip side, if you are uh protecting rare and specimen trees or protecting a um significant tree stand, uh that counts more towards some of these other standards.

So the mandatory conservation or the um just like your general canopy requirement, preservation is always going to we've we've kind of tweaked the numbers in a way that preservation is always gonna kind of give you a head start, and cutting down trees is always gonna kind of uh handicap you.

Thanks.

Um so another important interest that we've heard from from council is this notion that we really need to kind of stop putting single family homes on on quite as much of a pedestal um as we currently do.

Um we heard a little bit from that of that um this evening.

And one of the ways in which we're proposing to do that is to have new construction single family homes subject to tree canopy requirements.

Um they're currently not subject to any tree canopy requirements.

Um and so this would be an opportunity to put that in place.

Um another interest that we've an important interest we've heard around tree canopy is to have kind of a tiered system where single family homes have a more um not more owners, but just a more stringent canopy requirement than duplexes or triplexes, you know, other missing middle housing.

Um and so that's that factors into here as well.

So um I think the numbers are a 30% tree canopy requirement for a new single family home, um, but just a 20% canopy requirement for a new duplex or triplex.

Um, and then within that tiered requirement um or tiered system, there would be exemptions for kind of small versions of either of those things.

So a single family home of less than 2,000 square feet or a duplex, triplex, or fourplex of less than 4,000 square feet would be exempt from those tree canopy requirements.

So it's all kind of tiered towards the notion of exempt the smaller stuff, put kind of more significant standards on larger single family homes, and then taper things down to help support missing middle housing.

Um then I think already kind of jumped the gun on this this last bit about rare and specimen trees and significant tree stands.

Um again, if you conserve or protect either of these, you get a pretty significant um kind of head start towards some of these other standards, and if you cut down a rare specimen tree or a significant tree stand that puts you in the hole uh faster, and you just have to do more then to get out of that hole.

Um, and then last thing it's already been mentioned, but bears a repeating uh street tree requirements would be coming into play for a lot of new development.

Yeah, John.

So what one of the uh issues that came up in the complete community uh project when Jennifer Gizman was in town uh was this notion of respect for topography, and it it came up again um the CDC a couple years ago, maybe it was three years ago now, put together some design guidelines that they just sort of published, they were non-binding sort of guidelines to provide more transparency into what developers should expect by way of comments from from that group.

And one of their core notions was you know, this is a a town that is not flat, and um sometimes there's uh almost like thoughtless default practice among developers of quote tabletoping a site where they go in and they just flatten the thing, even if it's on a slope and they put retaining walls around it because it's um it may be easier for um to construct something on that, just easier.

And um, you know, we had this interesting case of uh what's now Coker Place, uh corner of Somerset and North Estes, where it was a big point of discussion.

The CDC and at the planning commission were are you gonna tabletop this site?

Are you gonna try to work with the grade?

Because there's not a flat site, and developer gave some assurances, actually, they gave very explicit assurances in a council meeting where they were approved that they were going to step down the buildings, and then they violated that.

I mean, just totally violated it, and they can because it was never reduced to the uh to the code.

It wasn't it's just not put in as a condition.

Um, and I wonder you know what can be done about that.

Have you given thought to it's very interrelated with these tree protection requirements?

Like one of the reasons trees come down is because it's just easier to tabletop a site.

Um so while we're protecting trees, I wonder if there's a way, and maybe there is or isn't.

I don't know technically how you do it, but um it would be nice to have some incentive where it's not really necessary to flatten a site um to not actually do that.

Yeah, it's that's a really difficult trade-off because it and it it highlights even within the realm of environmental protection, there can be competing interests, right?

That um one of the what we've found is that one of the big reasons, or you know, a reason that a lot of sites require so much grading is our stormwater requirements that um a lot of times you've got to grade a site in order to get the water to flow the right way to be the most economical with the number of SCMs that you're providing.

Um yeah, it is it is just again, even within the realm of environmental protection, we see these these trade-offs.

Um but again, something we could we could look at.

Um it's it is admittedly not uh um I think an interest that's surfaced in conversations so far about limiting grading.

Um but we can maybe it's just me, that it's probably not a feasible way to do it, if I had to guess.

I just thought I'd ask to see if there's anything.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Yeah, Liz.

Well, I think that's interesting, John.

It's not just you.

Um but uh this is a slightly related point, and it also goes back to the RCD previous slide.

Um really appreciate that Chapel Hill has really invested a lot in protecting the RCD, and that's really uh beyond many of the peer communities.

But um going beyond not all of the natural areas that are of highest value are in RCDs, and we put a huge amount of effort into the natural areas map and also being involved in some of these larger initiatives.

A lot of these um regulations that you've got are just across the board, or even what John just brought up, some sites it really doesn't matter if you grade them or not.

It they're they're pretty low quality sites.

I think we looked at one of the last ones we looked at up.

Um, sort of up at the top of the hill where MLK and uh Weaver Daycare Center, yeah, Weaver Dairy.

I mean, so has there been any discussion of say conservation overlays so that the requirements could be less in places, you know, you could not impose certain requirements in places that really are of less significance, but those areas that are part of a connected corridor, which do have important uh connected canopies, et cetera, are held to a higher requirements than those that really are more urban, etc.

etc.

Has there been any discussion of that?

Essentially, a some sort of conservation overlay, which could also be related to a stormwater overlay.

I mean, one could work at trying to combine the two.

Or have supplementary ones.

Yeah.

There's been a lot of discussion about whether we have the data that we would need to think about the the boundaries of some sort of conservation overlay.

And that's before we even get to the legal ramifications of a conservation overlay.

The first question is do we have meaningful data that would help us identify the the boundaries of a of a conservation overlay.

And I think what has what's really come to light is that the data that we have is not specific enough to be translated into regulatory lines on a map.

The data from Triangle Connectivity Collaborative, formerly you know new hook group um we we love that data.

It is a integral part of the the natural features model much better than like data from Esri or or some of these other national firms.

But even that data comes with the caveat that it's got to be ground truth right that you've got to verify the actual conditions on the ground and so the from a logistical perspective right we would be looking at essentially having to conduct habitat surveys or other ecological assessments of of any land that's kind of highlighted in the the triangle connectivity collaborative data which then trickles into its own kind of set of challenges.

So it is really helpful data but just not for that particular purpose.

The way in which it is helpful though is I think you know something like Coker Place is a great example right and we are we're doing this actively right when a project comes in for a conditional zoning we have now incorporated the natural features model into our analysis we're looking at the underlying data trying to understand is there a likelihood of there being some of these critical environmental features on the site and working with developers if if we think that there is right I think a clear example of that coming to fruition was the um the caraway expansion that was actually an instance where original plan for the site showed an SCM in the RCD.

There was really strong council interest in getting that SCM out of the RCD um and it was backed up by the the natural features model right that the underlying data showed even within the the kind of fuzziness of the data it said hey there's there's a very high probability that a portion of the site is is ecologically sensitive whereas another portion of the site is is not so much.

And so we were able to work with the developer to really like heavily rearrange their site um but it was within that negotiated context um which I think is the that's the level at which like fuzzy data can be responsible.

I mean I I get your point and I understand that the individual homeowner but Chapel Hill actually has a lot better data than much of the world that that uses this sort of data for a lot of different land use planning.

And it's this is only getting better with our essentially with AI and our ability to be able to um essentially be able to um what's the word I'm looking for essentially well anyway the it's getting better and better and I actually think we have pretty impressive data right now and there's a lot of it is has to do with tree cover.

Just at that basic level is pretty much 90% of what we're talking about.

And then when you start to look at uh certain rare and endangered species, that's that's maybe the 1% very important.

That's what, yeah, you're gonna have a hard time getting to that level.

But 90% of what you need is is really already easily available.

So but you know, I can put more comments in.

I disappointed not to see anything from the natural areas being incorporated in any way so far, but maybe it's in there and it just didn't make the slides.

Yeah.

It's not.

I mean, I I will be very candid with with you about that.

Um again, with what our confidence in the data is doesn't rise to the level where we we think at this point um the data lends itself to being translated into some sort of kind of clear regulatory tool.

Um which is not to say, and I I appreciate you highlighting that the data only keeps getting better.

Um, and so it's not a matter of if, I think it's a matter of when the data gets to the point that that it gives us the necessary level of confidence.

Um the conversation can definitely continue.

And maybe an office hours discussion for this summer.

Right.

And I'll I'll just double down so I don't go over this again when we get to the slide on flood resilience.

I think our data is even stronger.

Uh when because we're talking about tree cover hydrology, et cetera.

I think we could easily have begin to think about stormwater overlays that help us from essentially overdeveloping places upstream that are really critical for downstream.

Yep.

Um cool.

Well, thank you guys very much for the feedback on that.

Um the next point, uh perfect segue, Liz, is uh stormwater uh requirements.

And um this is something that again, we're we're really kind of continuing to push on and build on some really great momentum that the town's already had over the last few years.

Um first continuing this theme of kind of addressing single family homes.

Um we are looking to kind of increase the scope of single family homes that are subject to stormwater requirements.

Um the threshold today is that a single family home, uh, an individual single family home, not part of a subdivision, um, is only subject to stormwater requirements if it involves 20,000 square feet of land disturbance or more.

Um that's a that's a very large lot uh single family home.

Um so the new LUMO is gonna drop that threshold down to 12,000 square feet.

Um it will bring more single-family homes into the fold.

Um, potentially be a little bit of a pressure um that helps to control land disturbance even on larger sites for those marginal projects that you know some clever site design could mean the difference between having to do stormwater or not.

It's some pressure on on the not side.

Um we do have to be really careful with with not going too far with um single family, or not even single family homes, but imposing stormwater regulations in too decentralized of a way.

Um it raises a lot of issues if we're we're getting to the point where we've got a lot of decentralized stormwater management, ponds, um, stormwater infrastructure that has to be inspected and maintained um all at significant cost sometimes to both the property owner and then um administrative kind of difficulty to the town.

So it's a balancing act, but what we're proposing with um single-family homes moves in the direction of getting more single family homes kind of under the the umbrella of stormwater management.

Um the other thing we're we're proposing is um pretty significant expansion of the the 100-year stormwater standard.

Um what is essentially the the current state of that requirement is that it only applies to development that goes through a conditional zoning or special use permit.

Um that was a major change that was made a couple of years ago, but it was it was limited in scope.

Um and so what the what the new LUMO will include is or what the draft lumba will include is the notion that subdivisions with four or more lots um or essentially any other development with more than 40,000 square feet of land disturbance will need to treat the hundred year storm, and um below that we would still be keeping the the 25 year storm standard in place.

Um so again, uh an opportunity to have more development, do more on the stormwater front.

Um this is a really hard conversation on on this point in particular because this is of all the things we're talking about in the new LUMO, this is one of the the few that is just a very clear additional cost that we are imposing on on new development.

Um, one of the things we're still trying to kind of calibrate is with subdivisions, for example, um, is four lots the correct threshold at which to kick a subdivision into the hundred year storm requirement, um, or should it be somewhere higher than that?

Um, that it's not until you're you're talking about a pretty significant subdivision that they're required to meet the hundred year storm, with the understanding that they would still be required to meet the 25 year storm.

It's not the 100 year or nothing, um, but it's just about when do we start to ratchet up that 100-year requirement?

Um so I think we we have done a lot of um outreach and kind of kicking the tires on this with the development community.

Um we know that this is going to be something that there's going to be um continued significant uh discussion on because of those those really significant trade-offs that are associated with it.

Um have you considered not making it a size limit, but where the site is, whether it's a hundred year or not.

I mean, there are places that might be 40,000 square feet or larger, which if they flood, it's a very little consequence to them or the those that are potentially downstream, whereas the others are in um very vulnerable and key locations.

And it seems like that should be the distinction, not how big the lot is or how many homes there are.

Yeah.

It absolutely should be the distinction.

Um, and that's the the direction we hope to go in.

Um to your point, Liz, about the the availability of data.

Um, that's definitely something that is knowable to a high degree of certainty.

Um we just don't have that in our hand, right?

We haven't done the studies that would be needed to know that.

Um, but we know it's we know it's knowable.

Um, you know, the prospects of like a town-wide digital twin of um flow rate analyses around town, there's a lot of good options.

Um we just have to get the funding to do it.

But um, I might be able to help you with that, but that's during office hours.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

And we would we'd love to talk about that.

Um the other uh final thing I'll just mention on stormwater is is this notion of downstream impacts.

Um it is a um a relatively simple add-on to the stormwater impact studies that developers are already required to do um for them to consider what the what the impact to downstream properties will be.

Um and so we are incorporating that into the standards for larger development, um, that they've got to identify kind of downstream properties that could be impacted, again, an understanding of what those impacts might be.

Um this is largely a belt and suspenders provision because the just kind of underlying logic of how our stormwater standards are are designed really mitigates against the possibility of downstream impacts.

Um requiring this sort of analysis um is a really good way of making very sure that that that logic is kind of holding true in specific cases.

Um so all told, it's it's a set of opportunities to beef up our stormwater requirements.

Uming that there are smarter ways to do it, we just need to get there.

Yeah, John.

So I was interested in Liz's comment about maybe distinguishing between areas where the flow of water from a property is innocuous versus has huge consequences.

And I understand your response to that.

Maybe another topic for uh office hours this summer.

Um get some free advice from Liz.

I just wanted to say, like as conversations go forward on you know where to where to draw the threshold from you know how small is too small to have you know stormwater requirements.

Um sort of bothered me hearing this conversation over the years is that people um tend not to talk about um existing development and all future development is at some point in the future going to be existing development um as um suffering consequences from water that flows off a property.

So it's easy to say, well, this is going to be a cost and maybe prohibitive cost of certain affordable housing projects if we um add this expense of doing stormwater infrastructure.

But what's what's unsaid is that at some point when such projects are built, they will become existing projects.

And then other projects will get created upstream.

And if those projects are allowed to cumulatively keep adding extra stormwater externalities to the town, then the affordable housing we built today is going to get flooded.

And whatever other housing exists today, affordable or not, is going to get flooded if it's in a sensitive area.

So it's it's not as simple as saying, oh, you're putting a cost on future development.

What you're doing is shifting costs, shifting costs from future development to existing development, and which category you're in is constantly changing as time passes.

So I just want to make a plea for what when this is considered.

Um we need to be rigorous about who is bearing the cost because the cost never ever disappears.

Yeah, thanks, John.

Here, here.

Next couple of items, I think I mentioned uh there's less uh kind of meat on the bones here, um, in part because there's these interests are being met through other things we've talked about.

Um so there's this interest in um incentives for uh sustainability, resiliency, and and energy efficient building design.

Um and that's kind of a uh an easy thing to kind of check off the list.

Um the the proposed LUMO um is going to include these sorts of incentives.

Um we're focusing uh one thing I'll just mention on that is that we're focusing the incentives on non-residential development.

Um because for residential development, we already have such a clear thing that we're trying to incent them to do, uh, which is affordable housing.

Um so we're we're really trying to put a lot of the eggs in in the affordable housing basket when it comes to residential development.

But for commercial development, um there is I think more opportunity to incent certain things.

Um that's that's where we're really kind of focusing our attention.

So it'll be um a standard uh density bonus increases in in floor area ratio, um, kind of commensurate increases and how much development is allowed by right, um, kind of the standard playbook um to push those things forward.

Um we're also proposing to uh really make sure that we're we're limiting barriers to things like um district solar or district heating and cooling.

Um very energy efficient measures um that might not fit within kind of our typical rules around how you can build across property lines or things of that sort.

So um really looking to to make some headway here, knowing that the building code will um slowly uh move in in a direction of requiring um more efficient design.

Uh Liz.

Building on John's last comment, I just want to point out there's a lot of literature on affordable housing that if you ignore resilience standards, if you make them very inefficient, you're actually hurting the residents down, particularly as time goes on.

It's more expensive if they don't get you know the energy efficient appliances, etc.

And you know, it might look cheaper to the developer, but it's not to the residents.

And it's also if you're ignoring um resilience standards, flood resilience, it's potentially obviously very costly.

No, absolutely.

And I I I followed those debates closely.

I know it comes up essentially any time there's uh proposed update to the energy efficiency codes, um, or you know, they're housed within the building code.

Um, there's this continuous debate about what that what impact that's having on housing affordability.

Um so yeah, it's definitely something we're we're a dynamic we're aware of.

So um thank you for highlighting it.

Um any other questions on energy efficiency.

Okay.

We're almost there.

I think we can wrap up before 10.

So thank you guys very much for sticking with me.

Um this was uh issue I highlighted earlier that we are we're in a place where uh we know we have a an interest in resilience strategies um for areas with higher climate vulnerability, and we're looking for opportunities for our generally applicable standards to have both meaningful impacts across the board and in areas with higher climate vulnerability.

Um so things like our canopy standards, our street tree requirements.

Um these are all again generally applicable, but we know we'll have meaningful impacts um in areas with higher climate vulnerability.

Um as we have the resources to get more meaningful data kind of on our uh uh on our radar.

I think we can we can look to uh make this more strategic.

Um things like uh better stormwater mapping or like flood flood mapping um is is very much I think on our wish list to get underworks or underway in the next few years.

Um and I'll just briefly touch on the the last bit um and we can kind of consolidate comments on on five and six.

Um the the final question was around this notion of protecting land that's important for conservation, stormwater infiltration, uh and things like greenways.

And what it what it really boils down to is that we have an incredibly strong tool in place already, which is our RCD.

Um if you look at the natural features model, look at that underlying data, the the matchup between our streams and our habitat corridors is so clear.

Um there are there are some streams that are not habitat corridors, but there are very few habitat corridors that are not associated with streams.

Um, and where we tend to find other more meaningful land in town.

Um this is not at all uh an all-encompassing statement, but it it tends to already be owned by the university or the town or awasa, some other kind of public entity.

Um or it tends to be in the ETJ, right?

Land that's already very that that is not very conducive to new development.

So I think uh an important point here is that we have some really strong tools in place already, um, and we always have kind of our our zoning authority uh to not upzone the ETJ, right?

If we know that that is a uh a meaningful environmental part of town, um, that we either not upzone it or um if there are opportunities or for demands to upzone, that that's done in a very um cautious and environmentally considerate way.

Um and so with that, I am I am done with this deck.

Um thank you guys so much for um for the really solid conversation throughout.

Um happy to take any final comments or questions um on any of the previous uh 40 or 45 slides.

Um if there's anything left to discuss, happy to happy to do that.

Any last uh comments?

Okay, Liz.

It's like so I will try to keep this short.

First of all, thank you, Taz.

Um much of what you said is not a surprise because you've been, I know, working on all this and sharing it with us all along.

Um I look forward to seeing this.

I'm sure I'll have lots of small comments when I see the details, but I think a lot of what you're you're trying to do on a regulatory basis, I get, and I think it's pretty clear the main focus is housing supply, first and foremost.

I think what's missing and from the planning commission and us focus on policy is what you the discussion we had about necessary but not sufficient.

And I worry that if all we do for the next year is focus on this without those other tools, many of which are not regulatory, can't actually be put in.

But if they don't happen uh at the same time, we could actually I don't think I don't think that um besides generating more housing, most of the other goals that have been laid out, the LUMO is sufficient to achieve them.

And because of that, if we don't at the same time understand and point out what else needs to do the small area plans we've we've talked about, um focusing on are there places where we actually have to buy land or set aside land that's already public, do the mapping, do the conservation overlay.

There's a whole series of things that need to happen at the same time, and I just hope it that will be part of the discussion as well, not just the lumo in a um in a vacuum.

If we truly want those five goals.

Uh I would echo that.

I think um there's a a real risk um going forward in the next few years that we um devote a lot of energy as we already have to um what's mainly a deregulatory effort.

I I I see the LUMO is mainly deregulatory, and I think the land use map amendments are going to be the same.

And I think the revamp of the comprehensive plan is mostly going to do that because the the complete community objectives that that are not simply like increase housing supply are are they harder to do and the regulatory tools are really suited to it.

And so you need to do more sort of proactive stuff that would be in the traditionally put in the bucket of like economic development as opposed to um planning, um, depending on how you organize the departments and some of it requires you know money to be spent, and it's um basically impossible to do a lot of this stuff at a town-wide level.

It it's just so dependent on idiosyncrasies or what exists currently and what possibilities exist, what land is available in individual neighborhoods.

That's why I think small area planning's come up a couple of times.

And um just wanted to flag, I it doesn't really influence my view of of these changes to the LUMO.

I think by and large, this stuff is um necessary and appropriate in in my view, and it's appropriate that we deregulate a lot of this stuff.

Um but that doesn't mean we should take our eye off the ball of like the the larger kind of community we're building here and whether I mean the crux of it for me is whether we're doing um car-oriented density or not.

And I just I don't believe, I deeply do not believe that um code writing at the town wide level is the right tool to prevent that.

Yeah.

Um I also wanted to say great job, Taz.

The presentation was really excellent and and I think you you answered our uh questions really quite well.

And um kudos to you.

Um I wanted to say one other thing that's uh, but I wanted to give an opportunity for others to come and make any last comments uh to Taz first.

Wes.

Well, you were giving kudos.

I just want to give kudos to all of you for um for doing this.

I think it's really essential to have the planning commission look at these things, be strong.

Um I value each of you as individuals and a group for putting in this effort.

And um I've appreciated sitting in for the whole time.

And um uh thank you.

Jeff.

Yeah, no, thanks, Taz.

This was great.

Um it's been four hours.

I would suggest that you may want to I I think your explanations were very good.

Um I think a lot a lot of this is ground that um the council has tread multiple times.

Um and so you just uh my advice, you know, just speaking for myself might be to sort of try to get through it a little more quickly, just because I think it's it's a lot of material.

Um and it's also you know, it it's we're also looking at this a little bit in a vacuum because there's no document that people aside from the memo, which which was very good.

You know, it we're talking about a 300, 400 page document that you've seen, but that we haven't seen.

And so it's with I think without that context.

Um it's it's just a lot.

So that's my only advice.

But I think this is I'm really excited for this.

Um, I had a few questions about um some of the things that were mentioned, some of the things that weren't mentioned.

Um, but you know, uh a lot of that is because the rest of it I agree with.

Um I think this is uh, you know, obviously there's more that needs to be done outside of the code.

Um, I think the the Alan and the taxpayers need to get used to spending public, you know, the entire public's money to help address some of the issues like we are doing it with Greenways to address stormwater and not trying to get individual developments to chip in, which helps raise the cost of new development.

Um so I'm really in favor of the approach that you're taking, and I look forward to um diving in a Mike.

Thanks, uh John.

Uh Taz, I I can tell you that you it's pretty obvious you put you up put a ton of effort into this.

But I wanted to thank you for this onboarding session.

It was you know great help to me.

Thanks, Mike.

So I want to bring this back to um the one other thing we need to decide, which is uh how we how is this uh discussion, if at all, being conveyed to council members who weren't listening to it?

Um do we want to put something together?

I think that's it would be quite difficult in one day given that it's just too big of a discussion for for me to and I don't have the time to draft a huge memo about this, uh wash the tape or anything like that.

Um I wonder Taz and and Sneha, if if you have um any ideas about uh how to leverage this discussion for the benefit of the of the council tomorrow night.

Yeah, I mean, I think that there are some uh key points that were made.

Um that again, I'm hesitant to try to to suggest to you all what the the most key points were out of uh your discussion.

Um I think that's really gonna come from from you all.

Um I will say I think one of the goals of um of of the discussion tonight and with with council tomorrow is to set the stage, right?

Um there is a lot of opportunity to um to continue the the discourse between planning commission and council um as bodies and as individual members, right?

Um so uh I think if there are some key points, and I know it would be uh a very quick turnaround on on y'all's front, but if there are key points that that y'all want to kind of agree to share with council, um we can definitely make sure that that gets gets in front of them um before tomorrow's meeting.

Um but again, I I I would hesitate to suggest like what those points should be.

Yeah, I I get it.

Um Jeff, let me know what you think and others, but uh I think it's it's too late in the night for us to try to do that now.

I personally don't have the bandwidth to do it tomorrow.

So my default approach is I'm really happy that we had uh three council meet actually at one point we had at least four council members listening into our meeting, and um that's a pretty direct channel to get uh ideas that we've discussed tonight into the council discussion tomorrow night, and I don't really have a better mechanism, you know, realistically to than that for tomorrow night.

Um I I sorry um uh yeah, I mean I have I tried to take notes of of the points people were making.

I can't claim that it's comprehensive.

Um and I can't claim that it is you know reflective of the entire conversation, but there is that.

Um I mean, what's the downside in our sharing uh what you have?

I I don't think we want to do a review process.

Um but um is there a downside to just circulating it?

I think Snee has a lot of things.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Yeah, yes, I forgot about that.

Yeah.

Yeah, um I took a few notes around here and there as well.

Um if I can write something up by tomorrow before the meeting, I'm happy to share that.

But I would appreciate what everyone else thinks.

Yeah, we try not to impose that that duty on you.

We try to take it on ourselves.

Um but Jeff, what do you think?

What do you think we should do with what you have?

Um I mean I could share it around to commission members and you all can look at it and and see if I misrepresented you.

Um then if if folks are okay, we can just send it to the council and say these were our thoughts.

We don't have an you know, we didn't take a vote, we didn't have an opportunity to prioritize our comments.

Um but these are some of the things the issues that we raised uh that we think council should be aware of as you consider preparing to review the Luma.

And I'll just add that's that's consistent with what I know you all have done in in prior instances where um as long as you're you're kind of transparent about the the nature of the the comments.

Um I think that that definitely is consistent with with prior practice.

It's a collection of comments from members of the commission.

Some commissioners said this, one commissioner said that.

We don't even need to be that specific.

We're just saying that these aren't uh voted on views of the body.

These are ideas that came up in the discussion, right?

Yeah.

Um so do others think that's uh a good idea?

Liz, Mike, talk.

Sure.

Okay.

So uh Jeff, what if you send us um something tonight or first thing tomorrow, and then we set a deadline of like I don't know, noon or one for people to respond whether they have any sort of issues with wording of stuff and or or something missing.

And exactly because we can't send it to the council, you know, half an hour before they need it.

Can we do it on um in like a Google Doc so that Jeff doesn't answer?

Yeah, that's you don't want to ask you.

Yeah, you read my mind.

I'm I'm putting it in a Google.

I wrote it in Word that I'm putting in the Google Docs right now.

Um can we do that consistent with public meeting laws that we're just sharing sharing it between between all of us on an email?

Well, that that would be problematic if it were emailed to everybody.

I think i if if we just set uh a ground rule that within the Google Doc, we're not gonna have a discussion and respond to other people's comments.

Um if you have it, just treat it as you stay in your lane.

You know, if you have issues, put them in there.

But the purpose of the Google Doc isn't to have a planning commission discussion, it's to in a streamlined way convey your individual comments simply to Jeff.

Okay, so you could just say another committee member thought and just put in whatever you've thought.

Or Jeff, do you have people's names in it?

I have people's names.

Okay.

So we can just put our name Liz thought, blah, blah, blah.

I'll just add it in.

If Jeff didn't convey exactly what I thought, I'll just fix my comments.

Right.

Yeah, I'm just saying try not to comment on other people's comments because that turns into I think something a little too close to like a discussion with everybody in the room, which we're not allowed to do in that way.

Sure.

Okay.

Okay, I'll uh email this around later.

And I'll, you know, I think it meets open record laws if I'll send it around and I'll copy staff.

You know, we are supposed to have a planning commission at Chapel NC.gov email, which you know, in my I remember when I joined that it was not working and still isn't working.

So we do what we can do.

Well, I mean, we had one, but the Roster, we just couldn't keep the Rosser updated.

We didn't even know who the person was who did that, and they wouldn't do it.

So it exists, but you you're gonna email uh colleagues from five years ago.

Okay.

So that sounds like a great plan.

And I think uh that's it.

So thanks again to Taz and Sneha, thanks for being with us.

Thanks Jeff for doing the note taking.

Yeah it's impressive that you could uh you had that attention spin I think well it's you know it's given it's a four hour meeting and it's a page and a half of notes um don't be too impressed.

Not a transcript uh thanks everyone and I guess we'll see you on um August 18th that's our next meeting I mean I don't think we're gonna meet in uh July so uh August 18th we'll all get together at Taz's um office hours let's put a form of you please yeah welcome big room uh we'll notice it uh um we'll just I I just uh shared the um the calendar for the fall again um just to note that um tonight's meeting was an anomaly in having you all meet just the night before the council meeting um we're really trying to build in much more space um between you guys meeting and council meeting going forward so um thank you for for working through the the difficulties of of this schedule for today and tomorrow but uh hope to not repeat it in the future understood no problem yeah and please please use office hours i am i'm happy to chat um over the next uh six or so weeks whatever whatever is helpful thanks everyone good night thank you everyone have a good summer everyone you too