Excellent.

Thank you.

Van meter, all good.

All right.

So we are going ahead and getting started with our committee of the whole.

Our first item up is from Planning Commission.

And I believe Director Black.

Yeah, are you right?

Coming on up.

Thank you.

Good evening, Council.

Michael Blackford, Director of Planning.

Pleased to be before you tonight to present some code changes.

We are not asking for any waiver or emergency.

So if we want to come back in in May and explore these a little bit more, give you time to digest, more than happy to do that.

We'll plan on covering just a few things here.

One as a reminder, our new zoning code.

It's uh just had its two-year birthday uh last week, April 1st, 2024.

Uh so it's not as new as it once was.

This is the second set of changes that uh you see me uh present before you.

The first was in the fourth quarter of 2024.

And generally speaking, I would say that there's not a significant uh amount of changes, which is a great indication that our zoning code is in touch with uh the community and the development uh community because we're not seeing the same level of severity and the types of changes.

A lot of these changes are more clean up and clarification in nature.

The changes generally fall within three different categories.

Uh old code, our old code was approximately uh 450 page behemoth.

Our new code is substantially less than that.

There is some language that we uh inadvertently omitted from the old code that we'd like to carry forward.

One example of that is uh under prohibited signs.

There's a few words that were omitted.

Uh tension getting devices, and tonight we've talked a lot about uh distracted driving, those attention getting devices.

Uh a specific example of those would be those inflatable, wavy armed tube men that they put out there near the road for grand openings and sidewalk sales and things of that nature, besides being unsightly, they also do contribute to distracted driving and things of that nature.

So that particular code change that um that particular code section that was in place for 10 to 20 years when we redid the zoning code, three words were omitted, attention getting devices, so we'd be carrying that forward.

So changes that fall under the old code, again, that would just be uh going back to uh what the previous status quo was before we amended our zoning code.

The second change there is revised code.

These would be changes in that 2024 code revisions.

Uh a lot of these are clerical in nature, just trying to clarify, make things a little bit easier for folks to understand and digest.

An example of that is under our definition section, uh portable structures, portable modular structures was in the T is in temporary uh section of the code.

So we're just moving that from T to P.

Uh another example of some revised code is that uh EV charging stations was added to the uh use table.

Uh that is not new.

Uh those uses was uh EV charging spaces was allowed use in all of our zone districts as an accessory use.

It just wasn't in our our use table.

So we're proposing to amend the use table just to make it a little bit more uh clear to our uh external customers there.

And then uh one code section that I will get into a little bit of details, and that would be new code.

Uh so we are proposing some new code, and this is specific to one area of the city, and this would be to our creekside mixed use area.

And this shows that area in a little bit more detail.

So Creekside mixed use area on the west, that's bounded by the Creekside project that we're very familiar with.

Uh Mill Street, Granville Street, as we head east, it ends at the Three Creeks Restaurant or Lincoln Circle.

So the library is just a couple properties outside of our creekside mixed use area.

Now, staff, we aren't proposing to change the boundaries of this area.

This is where the big the where the uh district exists today.

But what we're proposing to do is change um how we evaluate projects within this area.

And we're doing that because as the mayor mentioned, the Argonna strategic plan and economic development strategy was recently adopted, and one of the uh provisions within there is aligning our zoning code with our with that plan.

And I'll say that uh you don't see a lot of zoning code changes related to this district because for 15 20 years, long before I started with the city, uh the city did have a creekside specific zoning district, and it had a couple of area plans, and that foundation was strong.

There was a lot of um uh synergies between the code and and the land and the area plans at that time.

In 2019, when we adopted a new land use plan, similar kind of language about aligning code with plan.

Again, our code was very in line with a lot of the plan recommendations, same thing with the newly adopted strategic plan.

But there is a difference between code and plan.

Code has very specific standards about specific towards you know, a wide variety of uses or setbacks, specific building heights.

Plans have different criteria, different aspirations in them, and the land use plan, strategic plan really has a goal and vision, and there's no area in the city that uh the city has placed greater importance on than the creekside area, and the importance of having quality projects that advance those goals and and visions and the vision for that area.