Good to check.

You can probably move yours.

And welcome to the August study session.

Let's see what August 5th.

For the Planning Commission?

Do you do rule for the uh no?

Okay.

We have a quorum, so we can go ahead and have conversation.

Carl will do a presentation following the staff memo.

Before we do that, though, I just since there, as you noticed, a number of particular questions that he and planning staff are asking about thoughts that the planning commission has.

And my suggestion is that we do a straw poll so that he there's you know, there's good information for him to take back in terms of how they progress and work with the things that they're asking and the information that they get.

Is that a uh workable, reasonable approach as far as everybody's concerned?

Sure.

We'll try it out.

Yeah.

So we'll we'll proceed that way and turn it over to you to get started.

Absolutely.

So thank you.

I don't have a formal presentation uh for tonight.

I'll be um kind of just starting off.

I think it is helpful when we get into the zoning code and code amendments.

Um, you know, maybe taking a step back, just given that we do have new planning commissioners, um, and just giving a brief um overview um of the code and how we got here and kind of some the reason for some of the questions that we're asking and um future and how that fits into the broader um effort as far as the code.

So Golden Um, you know, originally adopted its zoning code um in the you know 50s, 60s.

Um the last big update um that you know really structured the code was in the 1970s.

Um, and a lot of those chapters um existed in that format um for a long time, including our kind of use chapter and you know the different zonings out there.

There's you know, a use zoning, so if you're R1, you're single household, if you're R2, you get into duplexes, R3, triplexes, and um apartments, things of that nature, commercial, um C1, your light commercials, so maybe some restaurants, some um services, C2, um, you know, can come with a bit more maybe light manufacturing, but still something that you'd want maybe not adjacent to your neighborhoods but on your corridors, but not approaching that industrial side of things, and then you get into your M1, M2.

The numbers generally denote uh a progression in of intensity, um so R1, lower residential intensity, R3, higher residential, same usually with those.

Um, and I think in you know, when Golden opted to do its um form-based code, it was in response to the that the code was not delivering kind of the expectations or you know, the things, the values, the goals of the community.

Um, for instance, with form or with use-based code um and use-based zoning, you know, usually if you you have setbacks and height, and if you know, and that establishes your building envelope in that box, and if you build within that box, well, generally it resulted in uh building up a lot of things that look like boxes.

Community said that didn't look like golden, and I'm paraphrasing, you know, we'll get into more of that when we get into like the form types and all that sort of stuff.

But um that's where you know we shifted into what is now the form-based code, and that drives a lot of our um development patterns in trying to match the context and characteristics in golden.

Um it also gives us tools to develop in context.

So if you have an alley, that generally denotes a different development pattern, a different urban fabric that we're trying to achieve versus more suburban areas that have the curve a linear street patterns, cul-de-sacks, and there's different things that would fit better in one place versus the other, right?

And that's some of the benefits of form-based code is we can try and you know match development to that context a bit more often or hopefully more often.

So it started with the residential types in phase two that went into the mixed use and commercial form types.

And then phase three was the overhaul of the process and procedures chapter.

So before it, the chapter was simply told you if you need to do a mailed notice, here's how you do that.

But all the different processes were in each individual application type chapter.

So for instance, the process for a site development plan was in the site development plan chapter.

The process for special use permits were in that chapter, so on and so forth.

And so sometimes you had notice periods, you had things that weren't consistent across all of those chapters.

So what we did was we took all of those disparate processes and put them into one chapter 1810.

Likewise with uh chapter 1828, that was our use chapter.

We still, even though we have forms that we want to develop towards, we still have uses, right?

Saying, yes, this type of use is appropriate in this area of town versus a you know a use that is different, um, that still has some utility in Golden.

And so we we overhauled our use chapter.

It was originally in a list format, and we moved it into a uh tables modern zoning code practice.

Uh so we overhauled that chapter, added a whole bunch of definitions and really tried to update that.

So, with any you know, good um overhaul, there's also nonconformities, that's where chapter 1844 comes in.

Um, these are different sometimes than compliance, but so a compliance issue might be like stormwater or engineering standards, right?

Those can relate to zoning code and development regulations, but they're not always tied specifically to a zoning regulation.

So there's a difference between when is something non-conforming, and that's usually like setbacks.

Oh, when this was originally built, we either didn't have setbacks, right?

Or maybe that setback standard was 10 feet from the property line, and we you know have since changed it to uh 15 feet.

So originally the house was built, it met that thing.

Today it no longer meets that.

That would be considered a non-conforming situation, right?

And then you know, once we got done with phase three, we said, okay, we're kind of done with the planned phases of the code, and now we're more into maintenance and administration of the code.

So you know, you write regulations with the best intent, and sometimes that intent doesn't you know play out, or you realize, oh, I thought that was going to function this way, or people would read it this one way, and in fact, when we started to see outcomes from that, um that we weren't expecting that.

We didn't want that, and so it warrants a discussion to say, okay, this is what we thought we wanted to have happen.