The meeting will come to order.

Welcome to business session for August 4th, 2022.

Our first item of business is discussion of ordinances, resolutions, and other items for today's docket.

No, it's not.

That's actually the last item.

Sorry.

I thought you were keeping us on our toes.

Is approval of minutes for business session of August 4th, 2022.

Is there a motion?

So moved.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

All in favor indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed?

The motion passes.

Our next item is Housing Kansas City and incentive discussion, and I'll just handle that myself, knowing that you'll have an extensive committee discussion coming up in the weeks ahead for when Councilman Barnes, who's not here, is there to schedule it.

There are several ordinances that we've introduced today, one of which sits in the finance committee.

The three others sit in the neighborhood planning and development committee, and they look to leverage much of the work that we have done thus far at City Council, looking at housing in several different ways.

One, certainly, how do we produce housing and how do we build a framework for it?

The second, how do we preserve housing?

And then the third, how do we address housing issues, particularly for our unhoused populations?

The four pieces of legislation would legislation rather do the following.

One would authorize a $50 million bond expenditure to help uh further fill our affordable housing trust fund.

As we remember, we place funding from the American Rescue Plan in that initial tranche of funds.

The question, and I've appreciated it from Councilwoman Robinson before and others, is what do we do to make sure that we have a sustained amount of funding along the way?

This is one effort by which we would look to do so.

So that will be in the finance committee, and I imagine that will be subject to a fairly robust discussion.

I remind you, in our last allocation from the housing trust fund, we allocated roughly $7.3 million, and that uh produced roughly 500 units of affordable housing, just below that number, averaging a roughly $23,000 per unit for government investment.

The second ordinance would look to affordable housing set aside, which has been a subject for this council previously in connection with an ordinance that we passed roughly one year and one half ago.

In the previous version of how we did things, we had an ordinance that set incentives and abatements at roughly 75% of a cap and required a 10% set aside.

It used to be at 100% of AMI, it went down to 80% of AMI.

With the ordinance we had previously passed, it went to 20 percent, 10 percent at 60 percent AMI, 10 percent at 30 percent AMI.

Since that time, the City of Kansas City has received no uh new housing units per seant to that ordinance and requests relating there too.

So the updated set aside ordinance is an effort to right size that setting an affordability threshold at 10 percent of units, as was the prior rule, but at 60 percent area median income.

And so that is one of the ordinances that will be in neighborhood planning and development committee.

An additional ordinance looks to accessory dwelling units.

Um, sometimes grandma's quarters is what they're called, mother-in-law quarters, any number of names.

Right now in Kansas City, we do not allow the construction of accessory dwelling units on your property, and for those of us in neighborhoods that have them, they are grandfathered in, primarily in the third and the fourth city council districts.

This would allow folks to build on to those, still following the rules of planning and zoning setbacks as well as others, but it would allow the construction of those new types of items.

You may ask why is that with an affordable housing ordinance?

Many people and families have expressed a desire to make sure that they can have situations in which a relative can stay on the same property or perhaps even other opportunities to have people there so that you're not looking to support different units externally and elsewhere.

Uh if I hit set aside and housing bond, what else?

What's next?

Standard uh targeted incentives.

Uh in terms of the targeted incentives policy, that would look to council setting a framework, and this is actually outside of just housing, but in all areas.

Council setting a framework in which we look to adopt certain policies that we would like to support.

For example, development in certain geographic areas of the city, in addition, development of certain types, for example, industrial, which is something we've supported, data centers have been an investment, housing as well as others.

Looking to, if proposals meet certain standards in connection with those thresholds, making sure that we have an opportunity to accelerate the review process, ensuring that development can get done faster and more efficient effectively and efficiently in Kansas City, which has been a substantial concern that we face, not just through the economic development agencies, but also from city planning and development.

Those four ordinances will be in committee, and so uh I thought better for us to at least have some introduction here so we know about it.

You have further materials.

I know I think my staff has spoken to a number of folks or tried to reach out.

I'll also note that we have uh we have present with us and they are agnostic on these policy proposals because they're the EDC and they just work for us.

But uh Mr.

Lewis, if you could stand up.

We have our new executive director of the Economic Development Corporation, Tracy Lewis, who is here with us today.

We appreciate that and look forward to working with you, as well as I know him as Dan Moye.

I don't know what his job is, but uh his job is to keep me out of trouble.

And Dan, if you could stand up for us in terms of particularly on a lot of the incentive work we've done, Dan has been somebody working in those areas as well.