So I didn't make sure this was going to be just a lot of people.

So I'm going to go ahead and get us started.

Mayor Proton Barnes is on his way.

Hi everyone.

Welcome to tonight's workshop.

This is a city council workshop for July 28th, 2026.

And we will get right into it because I know we have a few agenda items, including the first, which is a transportation update.

So I'll hand it over to Seth and to our public works director.

Thank you.

Uh good evening, Mayor and members of council.

Jeff Arthur on the public works director.

With me tonight is Leslie Uwe.

She's our engineering capital projects manager.

So she oversees our engineering staff across water or wastewater, stormwater, and transportation.

Michelle Melanakis is our principal transportation engineer.

Some of you may recall that we actually added our first dedicated transportation position in 2019.

And so she's, I think, actually the only city employee who only does transportation.

Everybody else does a little of everything.

Also with me tonight is Casey Carlson.

He's a senior civil engineer.

Casey manages most of our transportation capital projects as well as managing projects across the three utilities and as well as managing some capital projects for other city departments.

So tonight's agenda is an update on the city's progress on implementing the multimodal transportation plan.

It was adopted in late 2023 and is broken into five year phases.

We're about two years into the first phase or the near-term phase.

So tonight we're just going to provide a brief overview, kind of a refresher on the existing system and some of the key guiding documents.

At the end.

So jumping into an overview of our transportation system.

So we while we spend most of our dollars maintaining our assets, a lot of our staff time ends up being dedicated to protecting the community's regional interests.

We have about a hundred and twenty thousand vehicles passed through Lafayette every day, which is significantly more than our population.

We have multiple state highways.

I think you all saw this map at your retreat, but we are really a hub for a lot of regional transportation, and that requires a lot of coordination with CDOT as well as coordination with neighboring communities to make sure we're advocating for the city's interests.

And finally, our transit service is primarily provided by RTD, so we do a lot of work to coordinate with RTD to make sure that we have accessible transit for the community.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Leslie, who is going to talk about the MMTP and the Vision Zero Plan.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, and good evening, Council.

The multimodal transportation plan is the foundation of the city's transportation system.

Do you have a mic?

I do.

It's IT might be able to turn it off.

I will talk loud.

Thank you.

Can you hear me better now?

Still not.

Yeah, Jess was working quite well.

How about that?

That is better news.

Okay, I think that one isn't working well.

All right.

The multimodal transportation plan is the foundation of the city's transportation program.

The plan was adopted, as Jeff said, by council in late 2023 with implementation starting in 2024.

The MMTP establishes a guiding vision for goals and for goals for preserving and improving the city's transportation network.

The MMTP can be found on the city's website.

A link is provided in the council memo as well as with this presentation.

The community participated in the MMTP development.

Through public engagement, the city received just under 900 survey responses.

The community's top three transportation priorities are adding or enhancing off-street multi-use paths or trails, fixing broken or missing sidewalks, including widening existing narrow sidewalks, and then lastly, adding or enhancing on-street bike lanes.

The community also ranked their top roadway corridors needing improvement.

Colorado 7, including both the Arapaho Road segment and baseline road segment was ranked as a community's top priority, followed by public road.

The graphics shown on this slide can be found on page 11 of the MMTP.

As Jeff mentioned, the MMTP provided a guide for near-term projects.

The plan, the near-term project plan covers years 2024 to 2028 and identified the funding need of 10 million dollars in additional investment.

The bulk of the funding needs identified were the expansion or creation of maintenance and asset management programs for traffic signals, roadway striping, and traffic signage.

The MMTP identified 38 near-term projects for the first five years of implementation.

Location-specific projects are shown on the map graphic while citywide efforts are listed on the slide.

These near-term projects can be found on pages 90 through 92 of the MMP MMTP.

Since implementation began in 2024, the city has completed or is in progress with over 30 of these 38 projects.

The MMPP provides project prioritization for midterm and long-term planning horizons as well.

The MMTP also includes a backlog of projects for implementation beyond the beyond year 2048.

The Vision Zero Action Plan, or VSAP, was a near-term priority project of the MMTP.

These app was developed to reduce severe crashes and improve multimodal safety by creating a framework for prioritizing funding for safety improvements.

Visa prioritizes roadway segments based on four key considerations.

The crash history, crash risk, community input, and equity considerations.

VSAP can be found on the city's website, and a link is provided in the memo and as well as in this presentation.

VSAP established a Lafayette comprehensive safety network with top priority roadway segments and intersections identified.

This graphic can be found on page 26 of VSAP.

The city's VSAP website includes an interactive map for the public to view the roadways that are included in VSAP and be able to see what priority rankings those roadway segments are.

VSAP also includes an implementation plan to guide the city on how best to spend our limited resources on efforts and projects that provide meaningful safety improvements for the community.

I will now hand off to Casey Carlson to present our asset management program.

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you.

So I'll take over with our annual asset management programs.

These programs include our street and sidewalk rehabilitation projects, traffic signal maintenance and capital upgrade projects, and sign replacements, striping and pavement markings.

Most of our annual programs center around maintaining our existing assets.

The table on the right displays the VZAP top four priorities as determined by the community.

These priorities include evaluating and improving left turn movements at signals, installing back plates with retro reflective borders on signal heads, signal timing, and crosswalk visibility enhancements.

So taking a look at just the annual street rehabilitation program, approximately every five years, we conduct a pavement condition analysis.

That analysis rates all of the roadways within the city and gives them a pavement condition index rating or PCI rating.

That rating is used to develop a five-year pavement management plan where the street condition is what is determining the need for rehabilitation projects.

Show the city's roadway network and the applicable categories that each roadway is in.

The average roadway network within the city was in a satisfactory range.

We have about 20% of our roadways rated as fair or 55 to 70 on the PCI.

This fair category is also considered a critical PCI range.

It is critical due to the fact that approximately 40% of our asphalt quality deteriorates within the first approximate 12 years, with another 40% drop in quality occurring just from years two to 14.

So it's important that we catch as many roadways as we can in this critical range prior to what you can see is that pretty substantial drop-off shortly thereafter.

We have less than 1% of our roadways in very poor or less condition, which is also considered a deficient state in the pavement condition analysis.

This deficient state is the roadways in that state are more subject to needing a full reconstruction as opposed to just a mill and overlay or a chip seal.

Generally, a full reconstruction is about five times more expensive than a millin overlay.

So it's important again that we try to catch as many roads as we can in that critical range to prevent the drop-off and the potential for needing to do five times more expensive repair to the same roadway, had it been caught earlier.

So with the talk of PCI scores, this slide just shows an example of what those rankings look like.

So last year with our 2025 program, we mill and overlaid north 111th Street.

The photo on the left is a before photo.

The score was a 41% or in the poor category.

And the red circles just highlight you can see the alligator cracking and substantial asphalt deficiencies.

And the after is what it looked like after paving when it gets reset to 10.

So with our annual street rehab programs, like I said, uh the PCI values are primarily what's used to determine the need for roads being rehabilitated.

Once they are selected based off that need, we evaluate them for ProAG compliance, MMTP improvements, VZAP improvements, and utility and other city project coordination.

The approach mentioned in the MMT MMTP regarding this is a one-build approach.

So the intent is to address as many MMTP VZAP ProAG concerns as we're able to, while we are already rehabbing the road with our annual asset maintenance programs.

So examples of ProAG improvements include ADA ramps, pedestrian push buttons, and widening the sidewalks.

MMTP improvements include share rows, bike lanes, VZAP improvements include private access reconstructions, crosswalk visibility enhancements, and coordinating that work with our annual signal upgrade and capital projects.

So an example of our annual traffic signal maintenance and upgrades.

This is a signal that was completed at the intersection of Minotaur Circle and South Boulder Road last year.

These improvements included upgrading to flashing yellow left turn signals, crosswalk enhancements, ProAG upgrades to the ADA ramps, the left turn operations and movements were evaluated, a streetlight was installed, retro reflective back plates were installed, and the signal timing for both pedestrians and vehicles was evaluated.

So with that, we have a quick question period for the above section, and we'll have another QA at the end of the presentation as well.

Great.

One more section.

I think implementation is the next slide.

So any questions from council here?

Just a quick that 250 miles of streets that you mentioned in the first slide.

Is that only streets that we maintain or is that everything?

Yeah, that's laying miles of city streets and then the C dot streets are not done.

Okay.

So do we have any responsibilities whatsoever for like 287 or any of that?

Do we get like clear debris, you know, when it's on the road?

What's our role?

So we do law enforcement in those corridors.

We also, in many cases, CDOT will not maintain facilities outside of the curb line.

So there's areas where it's a C dot right away, but we're responsible for the sidewalks or the ramps, or in some cases, drainage facilities.

And one thing that continues to evolve is that as we push for more multimodal facilities, CDOT tends to ask us to take those things over as part of that.

So relatively limited, but it's it's something that's continued to expand in that work.

So just to clarify, if something fell off somebody's truck on 287, they shouldn't call us, they should call CDOT.

You know, if it would sort of depend on the situation.

If we had somebody nearby and was creating a hazard, we might very well just take care of it, but technically we can see that.

Okay, thank you.

Could you just also at some point I don't have to have it now?

Like what is the we have 250 miles of city streets, and then what is the mileage for the ones where we are not responsible?

How many how much is that?

Any other questions for counseling?

Counselor Gayos?

So I had a question regarding the five-year cycle and the PCI rating.

So if a street was rated fair and was scheduled for rehabilitation, but in the year or two before the work actually begins, its condition degrades even further.

Does it move higher up the cycle?

It can, yeah.

Um, prior to each year's paving program, we go through what the recommendations are and look at um like the utility projects that are scheduled, VSAP, MMTP, things like that.

Um so if the condition of a street that is further down the list, if we get calls about it or something, we will go out and take a look.

And if it does deteriorate to that point where we think it takes priority over one that's planned, we will kind of just swap those out between years.

You actually had an email today from Resident who was asking about a situation where something had deteriorated, and what we ended up doing was going out and just cutting out specific areas that had deteriorated rather than doing the whole thing.

So we got in, cut those out, repave that, and then we go back and do the mill and overlay over that patch so that it's basically we don't end up with the bad areas reflecting through, but we also don't have to reconstruct the entire screen.

Great, thank you.

Counselor Polier.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you for this presentation.

I love this.

First, kudos.

Um, I live near where several of the pictures have been, and so I fight it over these and drive-through constantly, the work is outstanding.

I did have a question on the PCI graphic.

Um, and and Counselor Gangagos articulated my question smarter than I could have, so I'll ask it slightly differently.

We do get questions occasionally from residents in terms of road conditions writ large.

Is there a graph?

Because looking at the slide in question, is there a graph version that is shared regularly with the public or could be shared regularly with the public?

Because I think that specific data point that only 5.2% of our roads are currently rated as poor is a useful one to tell.

And so that's then that leads to my question in terms of how do we tell that story.

I have heard from residents that occasionally when there is work done on roads, they're like all of a sudden there's all this happening, and I didn't hear about it, it wasn't messaged.

And so how do we communicate with the public in terms of we're gonna do X uh work on given intersection or road?

Can you just help me understand that a little bit better?

Thank you.

Sort of depends.

Um when it's a big like regional project that's gonna impact um a broader area.

Oftentimes there's uh variable message boards, we put things out through social media, they're well publicized.

Generally, when it's something that's limited to a neighborhood, um part of the contract is the contractors responsible for putting up parking signs and door hangers, I believe.

So it's really more to let people know that you're gonna be impacted for a couple of days.

Um then when we have bigger projects where there's you know a broader scope, there's additional outreach.

And we've got a few projects we'll talk about tonight where there's then outreach that's that's beyond that.

But typically, if it's just we're gonna be there for a few hours and you won't be able to get out of your driveway for a certain range, that's usually we just we're providing it's 72 hours usually.

Uh yes.

Uh our current contract for our street and concrete is uh they need a week minimum notice just of the work even occurring.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Thank you.

And just in terms of the PCI graphic, and apologies if it's something like it is already out there, and I just am not just had it updated.

We have not, I don't think, as of yet converted it into a format that we can easily put on the web just yet, but I think we did get um GIS layers.

Yes.

Yeah.

Cool.

I just I'll love for that to I don't know, Lafayette Connection or Facebook or something just to tell the story like 95% of our roads are not poor.

It's a good story.

Yeah.

Thank you both.

Counselor Giannolo.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, my question kind of relates to that same point.

You know, that uh that graphic with the with the bar chart and the curve.

Is it how old is that data that was on that?

Uh that study was just concluded in June of this year.

So that was the updated data?

Correct.

Oh shoot.

It's just kidnapped.

Sorry about that.

So that was the updated data?

Yes, it was.

Um how does that compare to the previous data for that?

That was kind of that's really what my question is.

Um it was relatively comparable.

Um, of course, we've done improvements since the last study.

I think it was in 2020.

Um we used a different company to do this evaluation, so it's half our TAF science.

Um their overall ranking was relatively around 10% higher kind of overall.

Uh, but when you compare to the actual uh bell curve between the two, they were relatively comparable.

So this particular round, they actually primarily used AI and just photographs, whereas the previous analysis five, six years ago, was considerably more expensive and had a variety of different tools, but um for what we're using it for, this seemed like uh a reasonable approach to narrow our focus.

Great.

I think we're ready for the next slides.

So we can move on to implementation.

Uh so for our 2026 annual street and sidewalk rehab programs, we have the following streets with their associated PCI rankings and VZAP rankings.

Um Crossing Drive, Dagney Way, and Casper Drive are good examples of that opportunistic kind of one-build approach that I had mentioned earlier.

Uh their VZAP rankings aren't necessarily high, but we have to go into those neighborhoods to upgrade the existing asphalt anyway.

So while there we are making MMTP and VZAP improvements to those roadways.

Um again, it's the most efficient use of public disruption and dollar to address as much as we're able to while we're there anyway.

Most of our PCI rankings range from poor or to that critical/slash fare range that I had mentioned.

Again, you know, we try to catch as many as we can in that critical range to prevent them from falling to pour or further.

One outlier you may notice is Compass Avenue.

It's rated as satisfactory.

That is just a 200 foot long block that connects Zenith Avenue and Lambert Circle that we're already improving, and the ADA ramps are already being upgraded on either side.

So again, the additional cost to upgrade it with the rest of that neighborhood is substantially lower than it would be to come back and do it in another five to ten years as its own project.

So trying to address as much as we're able to in an area to keep efficiencies up.

To highlight one of them for this year, we have baseline road with a PCI val or ranking of uh critical and VZAP rankings of eight and eighteen on the respective sections.

Once we knew it was selected for asphalt improvements for this year, we conducted a road safety audit uh as a part of the MMTP.

This audit helped us determine the road's capacity and safety improvements that we could make with our rehab project for the year.

Some of these improvements uh included reducing the driving lane widths, which help to promote slower travel speeds, and it also gives us more room for updating the bike lanes and adding buffers where possible.

Uh ADA ramp upgrades, pedestrian push button upgrades, left turn offset corrections, signage and striping updates.

Um the road safety audit also recommended a lane drop at the intersection of baseline and 95th Street.

So part of that uh effort for restriping baseline this year is to conduct that lane drop prior to the intersection.

Could you just tell me on this picture?

This is Indian Peaks going west or east.

I don't know which way this is going.

Uh the photo is an aerial of baseline road.

The Indian Peaks is on the west side of the photo.

Okay, thank you.

Yep.

Uh exemplar circle is another one this year with a critical ranking and VZAP uh rankings.

Features included uh in the exemplar circle upgrades, include reducing drive drive lane widths again to promote slower speeds and allow for bike lanes and buffers where possible.

Uh share rows, ADA ramp up upgrades, private access reconstructions, and signage and striping updates.

And Casper Drive similarly is ranked as critical with a VZAP score of 69.

Some of these improvements include share rows, uh, ADA ramp upgrades, signage and striping updates, and we are actually doing a roundabout reconstruction with splitter islands and adding pedestrian refuges to those splitter islands.

Again, to follow that one-build approach since it's in the VZAP, and we actually heard a lot of community outreach regarding safety around these roundabouts.

We're trying to address as many of those as possible while we're there anyway, conducting repaving and concrete work.

This table just shows a few of our transportation projects and the various stages that they're in.

This is located just east of the intersection of baseline road and gold hill.

Uh has a VZAP ranking of 24 and features bus stop relocations, pedestrian refuges, a hock signal, and ProAG compliant ADA ramps.

We're just wrapping up the 100% plans for this project right now and are hoping to get it out to bid with construction starting this fall.

Another project I'll highlight is a missing links project with the VZAP ranking of 32.

This includes a sidewalk extension along Car Ave from Baseline Road to the alleyway, a trail connection from Emma Street to Canterbury, and a paint and post pedestrian and bicycle improvement on 112th Street from the roundabout south to Prana Park.

This is a HSIP or highway safety improvement program grant project funded through the FHWA.

It has a 10% match of city funds for this, and the grant is for $500,000.

Approximately 200,000 went towards the design.

Approximately 50,000 is going towards construction management and inspection services, and the remaining 250,000 will go towards the actual construction phase for the project.

This project will help address.

We have just over 40 miles of missing sidewalk pieces within the city in the MMTP.

And this will address about 0.4 miles of that.

These grant projects, more informational, generally run a little slower than a typical project because they involve federal funding.

So there's a lot of outside agencies that we coordinate with.

It takes a lot of staff time just to ensure we're following the proper steps so that funding doesn't get compromised, so we ensure that we get all that for these types of projects.

So with that, thank you.

And I'm going to provide an update on Wannacolic Trail.

So last fall, City Council asked staff to develop an engineering design to address resident concerns on Wanaka Lake Trail just west of Wanaka Lake near the Pickleball courts.

Following installation of the pickleball courts, the city received increased reports of neighborhood concerns about speeding, traffic, on-street parking, and pedestrian activity.

The area was not identified as a priority in the 2023 MMTP plan or multimodal transportation plan.

Wanna collect trail is a collector street with adequate capacity and a posted 25 mile an hour speed limit.

An existing mark foster is provided in the vicinity of the park.

Additional community input was received through the VZAP process.

An additional analysis was done, and the greater and the area was included in the VSAP priorities adopted last July.

VZAP identified many areas in the community with greater safety risk than Wanaka Lake Trail, which resulted in a priority ranking of 84 PRZ VSAP.

And improvements were not included in the 2026 budget process.

Based on subsequent community input last fall, council directed staff to perform additional analysis and design.

The city contracted with Kimley Horn, who did further engineering analysis and developed a preliminary design and cost estimate.

Kimley Horn has developed a preliminary design that would remove parking and install concrete bump outs to reduce vehicle speeds and shorten pedestrian crossing distance and would realign existing trails to consolidate pedestrian crossings at a safer location away from the curve on the road.

The design includes grading, drainage, fencing, and lighting improvement.

The preliminary estimate for this project is approximately 410,000.

The project would most likely be advanced as time at such time as Wannacolic Trail needs to be resurfaced.

This using our one-build philosophy that we've discussed previously in this presentation.

It could be advanced sooner, but would require delaying projects in other areas previously identified as having greater safety or multimodal benefit for the community.

And now Michelle Melanakis will present on transportation planning and our regional partner collaboration.

And I'm going to bring this one back down to you.

Okay.

Can everyone hear me okay?

Okay.

So the first thing that we'll cover is the regional projects, construction projects that we're working on.

Similar to the in-house projects, these are in all phases of construction from recently completed to preliminary design.

To focus on a few towards the bottom of the list.

So that should be advancing to construction.

They'll have the contract initiated in the next couple months.

Construction probably starting next year.

So we'll be seeing the impacts of that construction next year.

Those being the 287 safety barrier project that is primarily run through CDOT, and that came from the 287 safety study that council approved last year.

CDOT received federal funding for that, so uh Lafayette is not contributing to that, but we are partnering the design.

And then similarly, uh CO42, 30% design from Pascal to Baseline Road.

Um, that is uh CDOT's strategic transportation improvement program funding that we were able to advocate for that money to go to Colorado 42.

Um because it was one of the projects identified in the MMTP as ones that we would like to advance if additional funding became available, our top 10 next projects.

Um, and we are also able to use um council support and public feedback from the recent collisions on baseline to progress that CDOT as well.

Um then we are also able to advocate for CDOT to fix um baseline road from 287 to 119th.

And then we were also able to advocate for CDOT to fix baseline road from 287 to 119s.

So they are adding that to their STIP funding, and that should be starting soon.

And then planning projects, similar to everything else that we're doing, all of this is near term multimodal transportation plan except for the baseline road safety audit.

We advanced that because of the paving program and also the CO42 design.

We were able to coordinate them.

And it was a low dollar cost effort that comes out of our annual safety funding that was able to identify immediate implementation projects that we could do quickly.

And then these are non-infrastructure projects.

So that is taking a little longer to get implemented.

So regional collaboration, um, Jeff talked about this in the beginning, but because we have those large roadway corridors, regional collaboration is largely important to make sure that our priorities are met in the regional plans.

We can advocate for funding to be prioritized along with our plans.

And then we advocate for policy and funding through the Northwest Mayors and Commissioners Coalition.

And then we have we partner with agencies in the CDOT region for communities groups, um, and then we have typically separate meetings with each individual agency around us with BBSD and RTD.

And then uh both staff and elected officials are part of two roadway coalitions for Colorado 7 and for US 287.

And then RTD coordination has been a hot topic recently.

Uh so uh we do appreciate council's action on the 228 service.

Uh RTD is going to remove the suspension from the September 2026 service changes.

Um we probably will still have to talk about changes to that route to keep it feasible long term, but the letter was successful.

Um our advocacy was successful on that.

Um we do know that they need to make a 20% budget cut in the next few years.

Uh and so it's gonna be important for us to stay a part of these conversations.

Uh they tend to shift towards ridership as their main metric.

It keeps them financially feasible, um, that also tends to lead more towards serving the Denver region.

Um if we use coverage as a metric, that's gonna lead more to rural areas, Lafayette, our major corridors, things like that.

So um we probably will be looking to council to support um staff and potentially advocate for um service in Lafayette.

Uh the two primary projects where that will probably come up are their upcoming comprehensive operational analysis or their COA, and then their needs evaluation project called Connect.

So those two are on our radar as well as front-range passenger rail.

Um there are three primary ways to engage through the Northwest Mayors and Commissioners Coalition, like we talked about, um, letters from council to the board, and then also direct uh feedback at RTD board meetings.

Um so we will probably be looking at a combination of one or all three in the future.

Uh and then just a note uh folks often think that RTD runs Red Free Lafayette, but that is actually run by Boulder County.

The expansion will be also an RTD has been reducing the amount of on-demand transit that they're providing pretty much regionwide.

And then we have a break for questions.

Thank you.

Questions from council.

Mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um I'm really happy to hear that these projects are being funded.

Um I wasn't positive that the that we got funding for the Car 07 and the 287 safety project.

So that's great.

Um just let us know being the council liaison to the Northwest MCC.

And just let us know being the council liaison to the Northwest MCC.

Just let me know how we can support outside of through the MCC letter to the board and did I hear actually going to the board meetings?

Is that what I heard?

Or submitting public comment.

Submitting public comment.

Okay.

Can do.

So if I understand correctly, it's the uh providing service to rural communities is kind of where we are.

That's that's okay.

Great.

Thank you.

I really appreciate this update.

Councillor Jensen.

So I don't want to take up all the time, but I have a bunch of questions, so maybe I'll ask two of them and then pause and let somebody else go.

Is that sound okay?

That sounds okay, Kelsey.

Okay.

Um the construction projects, regional partner led page, it says kick off August 2026, and then it says estimated start March 2028.

So I'm confused about what are they kicking off if they're not starting construction for two years.

That is the very ground floor of uh the initial design.

So that's what they're gonna kick off in August.

And CDOT is including the City of Lafayette as a stakeholder, of course, and we will be collaborating on what that design is going to look like.

And what I put in the estimated construction is is generally when D DOT feels that they're gonna go ahead and advance this through design and be ready to go to construction.

So it's still a fair ways out.

So I'm the highway seven person, and I I felt when I got on there that I didn't really have a history and I didn't really have direction.

So I think at some point it would be really beneficial to sit down with staff uh to know what I should be vocalizing when I'm on that committee.

And if somebody starts going in a direction that is not where you guys want it to go, I should know what that is, and I don't feel I do right now.

So I would really appreciate some additional work to catch me up to speed.

I've been to two meetings thus far and raised a few issues, but those were just me, and I don't really know what y'all want.

And so I would love to get some better understanding of what I should be looking for at those meetings if if I could.

Um yeah, happy to do that.

I just want to note um any time if you want a briefing on anything at all, if you just let the city manager know and then she will program with us to arrange that whatever form work.

Well, we get new council people and we do that divvying up of responsibilities.

And if you're on one of these regional groups for the first time, it seems to me it should be standard practice that we do something that gives whoever is representing us some guidance as to what they should be looking for.

And so I just recommend that every time we rearrange those deck chairs, that's somebody get informed of what to be looking for.

Okay, that that's one question.

One more.

Um sorry, my sorry, I'm I have to go through the slides.

So with regard to RTD, you mentioned um coverage and ridership.

And I think I appreciate the difference at the way you just described it and how important that uh is for whoever is communicating with RTD.

But in this recent 228 conversation, one of the things I realized is there were things like the YMCA and Sister Carmen that have no other bus service.

And so not only was it it it was like disempowering two elements of our community who may be seniors or people with disabilities who are accessing the Y or you know, low-income people don't have a car who are accessing Sister Carmen, which is an evaluative sort of equity concern.

Is there a way to put things like that into the conversation?

Is this a place where low-income people go who have no other way to get there and that has a higher value than maybe something you know where people can mostly drive?

Is there a way to add those kind of things in the conversation?

Actually, the the better that Mayor Pro Tem signed off to Marcus MCC, I think actually specifically called out.

We did we did say that, but in their evaluation of which routes to cut or where to make changes, do they consider or could we ask them to consider things like that in their consideration of you know they've got to make a 20% cut, you know, and like as I understand it, all of Superior was losing its service when and you know, so if you're a person who can't drive in superior, you you basically are SOL.

So I how do we get that to be part of the conversation at RTD?

I think we have to advocate for it because we know our community and our needs and what these locations are, and they're looking at the entire region, so they're not necessarily gonna know that a specific route has destinations that are important to make a sweet let them know.

Um it's definitely that's kind of hard because we just need to really open on things and speak up.

Okay.

And would it be beneficial?

Oops, that's a third question, but it's kind of a follow-up to this one.

Would it be beneficial in any way to identify places like that that have only one bus coming?

And if that bus were to go away, we would be you know, really making it different for people in advance knowing that they're gonna be doing a 20% cut.

Is there something we can do to be proactive?

Like with our RTD director that says, you know, here's some places that are really vulnerable, and we'd like to make sure nothing happens to those places.

Is there something like that we could do?

So we we have done that somewhat.

That was more in a staff-to-staff level.

We haven't taken that stance with the director um per se.

Um but we can look into it.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know that we actually I mean one thing we should what we can consider is you know do we have a GIS layer of some of these key transit destinations so that we as things come up, we're not relying on whoever helps for benefit day to know that we've got some input order places that are most critical.

I would just add I think that would be very helpful, especially when uh we got notice about the 228 cut, like a week before they know, before they met, and that's when the letter came popping out.

Um the 20% cut, yeah, they're gonna have to do it because they can't sustain what's going on.

Um and I did hear that they are less supportive of the what are we calling the ARE B and the ride-free Lafayette.

Uh I I think if we know how those smaller local systems could support cuts that RTD wants to make if there is some kind of fallback on a cut of 228, it'd be good to know that as well.

Um we don't want to have to all of a sudden create a local uh try to create a local transit system or route through Ride Free Lafayette or invent an ERE B.

But knowing the relationship between those, is there on that layer we would have maybe very vulnerable population routes and then uh how that relates to Ride Relof, yeah, which you can't necessarily it's not necessarily gonna fill the gaps that something like the 228 would fill.

But just giving us a clue like uh there's no way that and with the 228, I think that was the issue is that there's no way you could sufficiently replace uh that type of service with ride-free lafayette.

So just uh maybe asterisk by, hey, this is gonna be really a problem for residents and not a whole bunch of work because we don't know everything that RT is gonna do, but maybe give us a clue of which routes to look for.

Is that helpful?

Yeah.

Thank you, Mayor, and thank y'all for this part of the presentation.

Um similar to Councillor Jensen, I have a few questions, so I'll try to bucket them first on the RTD.

Uh just wood foot stop that has been shared with agreement with the Mayor Pro Tem that they have to cut 20%.

That's a massive haircut.

And so I I appreciate the intellectual honesty that we have to meet them at some point and can't just say no to everything since the cuts are underway, but I really take your point about Sister Carmen and strongly support.

Um my first question is uh on the the baseline project.

You know, you noted Casey that buffers were possible.

I just want to understand how do you decide where to put buffers?

Uh there are just sections on baseline, I'll think uh that we're repaving this year where the existing curb and gutter narrows for whatever reason when it was built.

Um so there's a section where we have 11 two 11-foot driving lanes, and we have buffers where we have an ad more than an additional five feet um between the edge of the concrete gutter pen and the drive lane where we add a buffer.

There's a couple spots where it narrows up and we can't get a buffer in.

We still have a five-foot bike lane, but there's just not enough asphalt width to get both.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

That's that's helpful because I I know that it's an ongoing question and concern in the community in terms of having more protected bike lanes wherever possible.

So thank you for that.

Um on the hock signal, I'm familiar with how to use Hawk signals, but I don't know that everyone is.

Is there signage associated with Hawk signals for folks who may not know and just kind of because I've seen folks kind of standing for significant periods of time waiting for it to change automatically.

Yeah, I know drivers have you can even see uh they have like a kind of informational board.

I'm not sure that there is one for pedestrians.

I don't know, Michelle.

Do you know?

I don't think there's it's just the standard push button sign on there.

Um we are planning on putting out some educational videos on how Hawks work.

Cool.

Super cool.

Thank you.

Um on the Wanaka Road issue.

I I did want to ask the question, and I understand it's not an immediate priority, but the 410K project, but in terms of removing the parking, where do you all expect those folks who uh play basketball, play pickleball, where will they park?

Um we would anticipate with the pickleball that they're probably gonna park farther into the neighborhood because it's still there's areas outside of where people are parking now that are still closer to the pickleball than the the main parking lot.

Um, so that's a concern.

Um but you know the one of the challenges now is people are parked you know close to the crosswalk and that's difficult to manage.

So basically by having the bump outs, it at least reserves a section to make sure that people can't park too close to the crosswalk, and it also shortens the amount of time you're in the road because you're you know you're six or so feet.

Absolutely.

No, I I really appreciate that.

I feel like I'm having a vision of the future where we hear a lot of concern from the public in terms of why are all these people parking in the my neighborhood?

My you know, mom's coming over and can't park in front of my house.

So I I wonder is there a way for us to do most of what you're proposing in terms of that protected crosswalk, but also preserve some parking along that road.

Yeah, so it's in addition to what was.

So it's probably losing four to six spaces.

Yeah, so just right here with this conference.

Oh, it's only four, six bases.

I can't read scale on maps.

So thank you.

That's helpful.

Okay.

So one thing to make it ignore my question.

So the west side of the road will have restricted parking also striped out, largely because of how tight that curve is.

We need to have the driving public move over and not drift over to that other area.

So it's the concrete buff out.

But we still preserve a fair amount of parking on that street.

We did have some neighbors that were asking for it to be removed at a larger scale.

And some of the challenge with that is if you don't have parking, it lets people drive faster.

So the on-street parking does have a traffic calming effect, and it's also having at least some there does keep people hopefully from parking.

Thank you.

I love this.

I apologize for misreading.

Um then my last question for the moment, you know, you noticed noted the the speeding, and I've heard a fair amount of concern recently from members of the public in terms of speeding in our town.

And how does speed cameras work in Lafayette?

Is that y'all's department?

Is that the police department?

What's the intersection there?

We actually don't have speed like photo enforcement.

Is that something that we've explored before?

Um we have it's probably a separate topic.

So yeah, so what we have currently are we have a couple of the speed radar signs that provide visual feedback of how fast you're going.

Yeah.

They're great for ignoring as you accelerate down Emma.

Um I mean that's an interesting thing because that's something we have discussed, and one of the things we've looked at, and it came up as we were discussing concerns on on West Baseline Road is you kind of have to move them around once in a while because once they're there for a period of time, like after a couple months, they sort of lose their effectiveness.

We also have uh speed radar trailer that we work with PD to strategically move around.

Um there were some changes in the law related to photo radar enforcement.

Um we're anticipating that potentially we'll start to see that move forward on 287, I believe.

And when we last discussed it, um, where the council at that time land was to wait and see how that goes, wait and kind of see how programs are working, how community feels about it, and revisit it at a later date.

I don't know if we think it was specific.

There were kind of mixed feelings about it, so we decided to do a little bit of a wait and see if you get more information.

Thank you.

I would love to explore those at some point.

If I may.

Mayor Person, sure.

We did, Counselor Villier, we did uh hash this over for a long time.

And the cost of the speed radar without having explored other measures was one of the things we were waiting to see how effective they were.

And I I try not to talk a lot, but the what do you call them?

The wide barriers that are going to be added in on that corner.

Um narrowing people's perspective works every time.

Um so that's on that turn in particular.

It's one of the things that does help.

So yes, we could do, we were talking about yes, we could do the speed radar, but we wanted to uh try try methods that we know can also work uh before moving into that place.

And we could definitely explore it some more.

Um I this is brilliant.

I was wondering how you were gonna work this out, but putting those barriers there, I think uh will also give the cue to people in cars.

Like I can't make it through here going at the speed I'm going.

So I just wanted to say like yes, we have to do that.

And we can go back to it if it's if this doesn't work, but issues.

Counselor Ginola.

Thank you.

Just on the speed radar topic, you know, at the CML conference a month or so ago, there was a session on that updated law, so uh it was really informative.

One of the things that uh came out of the discussion and the conversations that I had.

Shoot, I'm frozen again, aren't I?

Um we can hear you okay.

Maybe it'll come back in the next moment.

Uh sorry about that.

The the conversations that I had uh the feedback from the cities who have that in place was that it's more desirable to use the kind of mobile traffic cameras rather than the fixed position cameras for this ability to move things around.

So kind of raising that, I think you know what that I would be supportive of of the kind of mobile traffic speed cameras rather than a fixed position.

Counselor Jensen.

Back to your question.

Did you want to do that?

No, no, go for it.

Okay.

Well, first I I want to just comment that I worked on the legislation that established photo radar at the Capitol.

And it was very controversial, and at a time when we are struggling with people not liking our flop cameras, adding another layer of lack of privacy right now, when people are very sensitive about that issue, is not something I would want to do, especially if we have other choices to create safety.

Um people think our current license plate readers do that, you know, that they film cars and they don't like it.

And um at a time when law enforcement at least some kinds of law enforcement are not well trusted, it's a little scary.

We will have lots of people, and you know, we may decide we want to do it, but there'll be a lot of people in here telling us please don't destroy my privacy.

Just the heads up on that.

Um I want to ask about the page, well, it says 31.

Um the safe routes to school action plan, which says in progress.

During the uh campaign, I don't know if everyone else experienced this, but I had a lot of people who felt they didn't have a safe path to school for their kid who would talk to me and say when are they gonna add this crosswork or that or light or whatever it would be.

So I I got the feeling that in our community that was really important.

And so it says in progress, and I guess I haven't seen anything on it.

Is it on our website right now that we're working on that?

What what I think communication with the public about this particular one seems really important because a lot of people I talked to had concerns about this.

So it's not on our website right now.

It's Boulder County's project.

And I the idea originally was that they would create a walk audit form that would we could use on all of the schools in the area.

And originally they were going to focus on some Lafayette schools.

Since then they've expanded their scope from just Boulder County BDSD to BBSD and St.

Rain.

And so I think the project has scope has changed significantly.

We are not like a primary stakeholder in that.

We are a secondary stakeholder, so I I don't have as much information or firsthand.

Well, even if we just had a a notice that links them to that website on our page, I think that would be really valuable because it seemed a great concern to people.

As soon as that is up, we will have a link in reference to it, yes.

And um one more question, and then the at the Colorado 7 committee, they said the BRT starter sub service was going to start earlier than originally planned and be this fall at one point.

Has that been pushed back to 2027 now or is it starting this fall?

It is not starting this fall.

Okay.

Um the last that I heard it might be in the December-January changes, but because they're switching it to RTD, it's really subject to RTD's timelines, and so I that's why I've I left it vague and just put 2027 as the starter because I think January will be the earliest that that starts.

Okay.

So when the Highway 7 construction happens, I happen to live right off Highway 7.

And as it is right now at peak times, people are cutting through our neighborhood to avoid that intersection of Highway 7 and 95th.

So they turn into our neighborhood and then I don't know how to draw you a picture, and then um go around the park and then come back out and avoid the intersection at Arapawn 95th, come back out north of that onto uh 95th going north.

We suspect our neighbor, my neighbors and our HOA board that that is gonna get worse when the construction happens in that intersection.

Uh so what can we do about I they're not going fast, you know, there it's not like they're racing through there in any sort of dangerous way, but there is a park there and lot a bus stop and lots of children.

So there is some concern that that additional traffic on a neighborhood level street that's really uh an arterial uh now is gonna be a problem.

So I'm wondering if there is anything we can do about that in advance to keep that from happening.

That's it's signaling to photons, right?

No, not that it's avoiding the signal, that's why they're going through.

There's a signal at Arapaho in 95th, but then what is on the south side, Dagney Way, but on the north side is Crossridge, I think.

They go through Crossridge and then turn right in the middle of the neighborhood and get off on 95th.

And the 95th one is signaled, but the one into the neighborhood from Arapo has no signal and it already happens now because at peak times that is really congested, but I think if we it's under construction, it's gonna be worse.

And so I don't know if it's additional signage saying take a look at it, and we can also bring it up once CDOC gets a contractor on board, they'll be getting a traffic control plan in place, and there may be things we can do to do supplemental signage during construction to make it a less obvious route or a less convenient route.

And I know that the HOA president brought that up when we met with CDOT during the design phase, and so that having that connection already, I would say start talking to CDOT about it as well.

Okay.

That the other thing I want to say is how impressed I am with this body of work that a very small staff are doing.

This is a ton of amazing things, and I'm very impressed with what you have down here, and I just I it's clear everybody works really hard, and thank you for bringing this to us and helping us to see all the many things you are doing.

Mayor Purton.

I just need to pile on and say yes.

It's amazing body of work.

It's always really impressed me, and uh so thank you for moving to the next stage.

Uh I don't know how you did it.

I'm just glad you did, and it's amazing work.

So thanks.

Okay, not seeing any more questions.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Oh, Amen.

Sorry.

Um brought this one over.

So it's on the smaller one.

Thank you.

I might have to find this panel while you're on that just in case.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yes.

I didn't know it's almost like I think Council Burger is on its way, so we can go ahead and get started for the land use code update.

All right, good evening, uh Steven Williams.

Uh Planning and Building staff, both weiser and I are here tonight to provide an update on where things stand with the land use code.

Um the agenda includes a staff presentation.

We'll go through background planning commission's recommendation and next steps, as well as council discussion.

The objective is to update council on the land use code adoption process and seek feedback on the proposed schedule as well as planning commission's recommended updates.

Council feedback is requested on the proposed schedule, including uh the deferred effective date uh and a joint planning commission city council work session.

Planning commission unanimously recommended the code be adopted.

Copies of their resolution have been distributed tonight.

Planning Commission had 17 recommended conditions, and after an extensive review that spanned two public meetings and something like 12 or 13 hours of discussion.

Roughly 11 of the 17 code changes can be made immediately should council support them.

These are the updates that staff would like to focus on tonight.

Planning commission also specifically noted a desire to discuss OTX zoning further and want to explore whether there is a need for OTX 3 zoning in particular, and that's part of their request for that joint workshop.

Staff also recommend or welcomes any additional questions and feedback from council.

So as a brief reminder, the goals of the land use code update include implementing the legacy Lafayette, making the code both more user-friendly and predictable, and right sizing the development review process.

Lafayette's land use code update, kind of as a reminder, was restarted with Clarion in the fall of 2024.

This effort has included a code assessment, three draft modules, several community engagement meetings, as well as time for public review and the of the consolidated draft and zoning map.

The working group, which included planning commission, met several times and played a critical role in this update.

Oops.

They were held on June 24th and July 8th.

The next steps include two readings by City Council.

The proposed schedule is summarized here.

After tonight's workshop, City Council will consider the land use code on first reading on August 18th.

Staff will incorporate code changes that City Council indicates support for tonight into the draft code for that first reading.

Should council support the joint meeting with planning commission, staff would look to schedule that workshop for early September and then bring back to council for second reading the code adoption on September 15th.

The deferred effective date that we're requesting item six there would allow for additional public outreach regarding areas in the city that'll be more impacted by the proposed zoning and land use updates.

Staff has also identified that 90-day period as an opportunity for additional code refinements that might arise through council's review or result from the recommended joint PC meeting with City Council.

If, for example, uh changes to the OTX zoning are identified, they could be accommodated through a second ordinance that is sequenced to coincide with that 90-day period and be effective at the same time.

Before we get to PC's discussion and recommendations, I thought it'd be helpful to quickly share some of the questions that planning commission raised during their first code hearing, really about the process.

So Claring explained that code refinements are expected with any new code and that updates should be expected within the first few years.

The large lift of the code update, however, is happening now.

Staff also clarified that minor code amendments can be processed as quickly as three to four months and shared three examples, which many of you may remember.

Those are the SPAR amendment allowance, the elimination of special use review for self-storage in our commercial zoning and the expiration of applications.

Council is also oops, sorry.

Council has also already expressed a desire to study building height allowances more thoroughly.

That could be done a later time as well.

More significant code studies than that three or four month period that would require consultant support or community engagement, uh, could take several months to complete.

The code amendments uh would follow the same process, approval steps that uh this full code update has taken, uh, would require PC review and council approvals along with those public hearings.

Uh and then I also wanted to clarify that flexibility is also built into the new code.

So we've had some comments over whether or not uh certain uh certain of our new standards, uh lot sizes, building uh parameters, uh those type of things are correct.

Um, but those we've built in both a 10 and uh 25 percent modification allowance, so the 10 percent is an administrative level review, uh and 25% would go to planning commission and city council.

So we have some allowance to adjust those, and then over time, if we're getting a bunch of 25% adjustment requests, we're gonna go back and update the code so that we don't have to have those.

And then lastly, um staff recognizes that this is the first kind of echoing what I said already, but um, just to kind of uh thrive at home.

We don't intend to wait 40 years for another land use code update, so we'll be doing uh more frequent ones uh as we need them in the in the immediate future, but um we won't be doing one 40 years from now either, hopefully.

Um 2026.

Phil Kleisler, City's uh planning and building, thank you very much.

We're gonna just kind of briefly walk through the planning commission recommendations.

Those were outlined as an attachment to your memo, but just providing just a little little more context as Director Williams mentioned.

Most of these can happen with that first ordinance.

And so if we didn't hear any concerns with those particular items from the planning commission for from council this evening, um, we can go ahead and get those ready for your first reading.

The others are kind of a mix of first or second ordinance versus council discussion at a future date.

Um so just walking through the various recommendations.

Uh the first one relates to public land dedication.

Uh so public land dedication or PLD refers to uh an existing requirement that new subdivisions must dedicate a portion of land to the city uh for public use.

And so it varies by use, and so residential required to dedicate 15%, whereas it's lower for commercial and industrial at 12%.

Um the current code limits these per for the purposes of those that uh currently to parks and recreation, uh, with 80% of that land dedicated being used for things like playgrounds and picnic areas.

And so that first recommendation relating to PLD is really about the expanding that allowed use.

Uh and so the community input as well as the Lafayette Open Space Advisory Board or LOSAB supports allowing uh both parks and recreation and open space to count as PLD.

Um and so what this would do, this recommendation would formally add open space in addition to parks and recreation as a public land dedication.

The second uh relates to the credit for private uh recreational facilities.

Uh and so while those facilities may potentially reduce demand on public parks, they are also not publicly accessible.

Uh and that's raised some concerns, especially uh particularly for some development projects that have had taken place over the previous years.

Uh and so the planning commission recommends uh reducing those credits with the final amount of that reduction determined by council.

Um the third relates to what the city will accept for PLD.

Um so we want to avoid receiving any land that has little public value, so things like detention ponds, uh, medians and unusable strips of land.

Uh and so this recommendation would just make that clear and add specific code language stating that those areas are not acceptable for dedication.

Uh and then lastly, that fourth um row relates to LOSAB's role in the review.

And so currently applications for larger projects, typically those are annexations that have some larger open space impacts and dedication is referred to low sab for review and comment.

Um, but this recommended condition would um clarify that that is a mandatory review for annexations, and those are the applications that are typically larger, typically require uh include that land dedication uh and potentially more impacts to existing or future open space.

Uh the second recommendation relates to the parks and open space zoning district.

Um so today uh the uh most city owned land is zoned public.

Um in the draft code, we've pulled out parks and recreational recreation uh lands uh that the city owns uh into its own single district in order to then apply appropriate uses and standards through the adoption process.

We've heard that from community members and others that it's more beneficial to actually further separate those out into a separate parks and a separate open space district.

Um this would allow us to tail better tailor the uses and the standards to those particular um uses.

Um and the zoning map then could show, and this is just an example that we um would show you, um, uh in this case parks as one color teal uh and open space in in green.

This could help visually distinguish those and also help provide the appropriate uh regulations for each.

Uh the third is data center require uh requirements.

Uh and so this is uh as councils were pretty well aware, this is a major emerging land use issue, uh really requiring clear definitions and um regul and uh restrictions.

Um so without a clear definition and restriction, an applicant could come to the city and argue that uh their data center application is most similar to this other use, like a warehouse that's allowed more broadly.

And so putting it in the code, defining where it can be and establishing some specific standards is helpful in avoiding that situation.

Um the code right now, as it's written, excuse me, the draft code does include a definition shown here.

Um they would be allowed in the M3 heavy industrial zone district through a special use review, and there's a number of specific use standards, including it needs to be within a building, uh, maximum size, residential buffering, and so on.

Um, the planning commission um supported um having that definition so it's in the code and it's clear, but there's also a recommendation to for council to consider a temporary moratorium on data centers that we'll get to in just a moment.

Uh the next is air uh advanced air mobility.

Um so this is one an emerging technology, kind of the full circle of like the flying car from like a hundred years ago in the 70s.

Um it's it's a highly automated high-tech aircraft, essentially a large, some of them look kind of like large drones that can move passengers and cargo.

Um the applications of this appear to be um to range from small package delivery to potentially um uh uh shorter range taxi service and regional trips as well.

Um the FAA um it looks like has given some exemptions for a handful of companies to just start doing some RD in the US.

Um but in terms of the regulatory framework, it appears pretty similar to like an airport where the FAA government the airspace, the licensing, certification operations where we retain the land use control, so where they're sited, um the zoning, the building uh code, and so on.

So planning commission's recommendation was to get it in the code.

There's also a recommendation for a moratorium that we'll touch on in just a minute.

Um, but based on that planning commission recommendation, we could explore something like allowing it as a special reuse review similar to the data centers in that heavy industrial zone district.

We could put some additional standards on in the interim if we wanted to, things like um hours of operation, hover duration and so on.

Um then as part of that moratorium, we could do further research on this topic and consider what specific regulations are most appropriate for our the city's goals.

Um additionally, it's probably something that we can consider as part of our long range planning as well, whether that be our multimodal transportation network as well as just comprehensive planning overall, since this is something that'll probably be evolving in the in the now and into the future.

So with ultimate town old town lot consolidations, the the intent with this recommendation was to really look at the preservation of old town, the existing in the historic scale.

And so currently, in our in our current code citywide, um an applicant may request a what's called a lot merger, so basically just removing a lot line, so two lots become one and so on.

That's done administratively through a minor subdivision.

Um what's proposed here though is a limit to that in old town.

So the draft code as it's written right now would limit that to 30,000 square feet or the average size of all existing lots on the same block, whichever's smaller.

Um anything larger than that that would be merged would require city council review.

Um and then the planning commission in their discussions ultimately recommended that that number be reduced down to 21,000 square feet.

Uh this is a fairly straightforward uh recommendation.

Um in one of our tables in the code, we have a reference to a collectiflex.

Um this is a very Lafayette term, and um I don't think anyone else uses it.

And so the uh there was a note that we should probably define it.

And so we have a very robust list of definitions in the draft code.

Uh, and so this would essentially um refer back to the comp plan and then put the um uh description from the comprehensive plan of a collective flex into that those definitions.

And so this is word for word from the comprehensive plan.

Uh with neighborhood meetings, um, this would allow the um director um to require a neighborhood meeting when one is not otherwise required.

And so there's a number of application types, um, a number of administrative application types as well that don't require a neighborhood meeting.

However, there might be an instance where uh one is beneficial to the public process, and so this would at least allow the director to make that call and require the applicant to do a meeting.

As a follow-up to that, another recommendation number eight would require the applicants to then submit a record of that meeting and for us to put in the planning commission and council packets just to enhance the transparency and to have a typical process like that.

Number nine is a number of different points to look at for more analysis.

One is building height.

And so the current practice of measuring height in the city is by measuring it from the finish grade to the roof.

This is basically the ground elevation after everything is built.

The draft code changes that to the existing grade, so before any of the construction happens.

And the planning commission is recommending a more nuanced approach to that, whereas the uh we would measure from existing grade for single lot or infill projects, but we would use the final engineered grade for the larger projects that need a different type different grading to address things like drainage and site design.

And so the existing grade for a large-scale site won't necessarily work for utilities and everything else.

And so that's a more nuanced approach to that.

We're also hearing that we should really look at the lot sizes, setbacks dimensional standards, especially for our residential building types.

So that's something that we as staff have started doing since that planning commission meeting, and we'll continue doing that work just to make sure that the standards get the intended outcome that we're hoping to achieve.

The next is relates to cottage court and courtyard developments.

So that's recommending expanding that use with some consideration to size limits to the manufactured housing community as well as the old town and the FN that form neighborhood, which is our new neighborhood zone district.

We also they also recommended that we explore how greenhouse gases and the greenhouse greenhouses and nurseries could be allowed as a limited use in the old town or OTX district.

And then lastly, to explore how short-term rentals can be allowed or controlled in the manufactured housing community district.

Um computer.

So on the topic of manufactured homes, there was a comment made and a conversation at Planning Commission about what happens when someone has to replace a mobile home and are the standards set up so that they can replace it.

So the issue being that over the years, mobile homes have generally grown in size.

And so if there's a smaller, older mobile home that needs a manufactured house that needs to be replaced, if there's only a larger size, do they run into any space issues?

We looked historically that the size of has increased around the 70s, and we took a sample in Lafayette and it kind of shows that that trend.

There is a 15-foot requirement of separation between these homes, and that accounts for a 10-foot separation plus an additional three to five feet for the deck leading into the mobile homes.

This is a fire safety consideration, and it was important as we're talking with our staff, particularly after this planning commission meeting, because the city, it's governed state regulations govern the construction of these, so we can't require uh fire-rated uh walls, uh sprinkler systems, and so on.

So the spacing actually became fairly important.

Um, in this case, um, we would recommend retaining that that 15-foot separation, but certainly open to looking at any creative case-specific exemptions that we can ensure they're able to replace that mobile home, but we can do so in a way that's safe fire-wise.

Uh, the two moratoriums that we mentioned were really to give the city some breathing room, six six plus months probably, um, where we would not accept an application for these two types of uses to allow the city to do some additional research on what are the regulations we need to meet our goals and bring that forward to council before any application could be brought brought in.

Um, there was also a discussion and a request.

This is one of the key kind of questions that we have for council this evening on a joint meeting with the planning commission.

Um, this would be to discuss there's a number of topics in the recommendations that we could discuss.

I think the biggest one that we've heard from in both in public comment and um probably at the meeting itself is relates to the old town standards, um, specifically the different districts that we have, the regulations apply to those different districts.

Um, it's potentially combining two of those, the old central old town OTX one with the southern portion of the transition zone OTX 3.

Um, and the planning commission has recommended this study session to really dig into that and potentially other topics.

Um, but before then, staff would do some additional analysis around just some existing conditions.

So, like what are the lot sizes in this area, um, the alleys, the curb cuts, the heights, the building uses, the parking areas.

Try to have a more complete picture so that council can have an informed conversation with the planning commission and ideally come to a resolution where you're looking at these regulations and you can let staff know what are the goals you're trying to achieve.

And based on that, we can get a revised set of those standards in before that effective date comes.

So we won't be getting applications on the code that the council and planning commission is not comfortable with.

Those would include 30,000 square foot of commercial space, and they can include a market analysis that would either reduce or eliminate that requirement.

There was some discussion around clarifying that language as a neighborhood center and questions around some additional flexibility for dispersing those around the site as well.

Public comments from this have been kind of a um push and pull.

So we have members of the community that view uh having a neighborhood center in these new neighborhoods as a central key, important part of having a complete neighborhood.

Um we also hear from the development community that it's really hard feasible to do this just with the feasibility of that size of a development and that it's hard to fill commercial space sometimes.

And so we're seeing some real push and pull.

And so the regulations um we've tried to kind of have a good meet in the middle kind of um approach.

Uh then there was additional conversations around um the city taking a look at the development review process, really process mapping it and ensuring that um it's not going to it's it's going to run smoothly.

Um and that would be something that would be another topic that we could discuss at the potential joint um study session with council and planning commission.

And then we'll land on the next step slide.

And so right now we are anticipating a first reading on August 18.

Um if council um is is uh um is willing to, we could schedule a uh workshop with planning commission first week of September if that works, um, and then move on to second reading and then that 90-day period to allow for those final changes.

And then we'll land on those questions that Director Williams brought up at the beginning of the presentation.

Thanks so much for your time.

Great, thank you.

Okay, so we have a few questions to run through.

And if I could have Council General back on the screen, that would be fantastic.

Um before we do, are there any questions for staff on any of the presentation?

Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, about the uh the aerial craft um that would be moving things around.

So I I I heard very clearly from the FAA that they control the national airspace.

So where does that go if we allow these craft and the FAA is controlling the airspace?

Who's got jurisdiction over what they get to do?

What they have to do.

I know you probably don't know the answer, but did the FAA like what do they say about this?

This is one that we have to research more.

So we read we're not the experts on this right now, and I I think we would probably look at um this similar to like an airport or a um helicopter or landing pad, things like that, where we do have something that touches the ground that we're able to then like regulate that as a land use.

Right?

So we're able to regulate that pad.

But as soon as they take off, we don't regulate them once they're in the air.

So that's our understanding.

Yeah.

Mayor Pro Tim, my understanding was that the FA's jurisdiction starts several, several hundred feet up.

And I don't know if these little TIE fighters and jets and things are going a thousand feet there, probably not, because then they've been interfering with small craft.

So an interesting thing.

Well, we can assume I'm I it's not clear to me how high they are.

They fly or want to fly, especially if they need to go.

You know, how far they're going.

Because at some point, like we if we're not controlling, if we don't have a control over where they're actually flying, and the FAA is like, well, as long as you're below 5,000 feet, it's fine.

I have a lot of questions about that.

We we do too, and there's a lot of what ifs and um it seems to just be very evolving and um and there's even you know businesses now that are looking at expanding, you know, into package delivery and things like that.

And so there's a lot of questions that we have as well.

And so that's why it probably would be helpful to have that time to be able to do further research.

And just to be clear, we get to decide if we're going to permit it.

We could we could put in our land use code that we we we want to zone these areas for these craft.

That's that's our understanding right now.

I think it would be similar to permitting an airport or a or a landing pad for a helicopter.

Right.

Yes.

And I'm just gonna say the rest of the council.

My understanding from the FAA was that they don't control what flies as long as it flies safely.

I'm just gonna throw that out there.

So uh this is very interesting.

I'd love to hear more that you find out.

Uh the second thing is do we is there any did we talk about water use for the data centers?

Is there anything in the code?

Um so I think in general, we're we're taking the approach that if maybe we get feedback on whether or not there's support for a moratorium.

Typically when you set a moratorium, you have to set a reason for it, and that would be additional research.

So it's very clear that we would need additional research for their mobility hubs.

For data centers, we were starting on a definition and starting on some restrictions, and we probably need to leave it at like at that level and then research what you know.

But to answer your question, from what I I've had a couple of conversations uh about this, um, and we've had some that planning commission, but I this this one from what I understand is advancing pretty quickly where they have like closed um water systems where they're recirculating their water to try to get around the impacts that we can control.

Uh they're actually using even I think it's oh I hate to be wrong about this, but the gentleman I talked to at uh uh one of my daughter's events that permits these um said that they are using like nuclear like energy, like in small like capacities, like so that they're not actually using like electrical either.

So us getting our heads around how we actually because I our first reaction was like, oh, we we can make sure that they're not using too much water, or we can build them for that.

But if they're so advanced now that they have the means to not be impactful from a typical land use perspective, then we have other things to consider before we know how to regulate them properly.

So and we we could say you've got to be self-contained, you can't you either bring the water or don't ask for any.

Right.

Yeah, and power usage, they've got to prove that they're not gonna impact the group community.

Yeah, like or yeah.

So what we I mean and uh anecdotally from what we understand, the ones that do exist in um Colorado now, like do pull.

And so there's like surges in areas.

So they're you know, currently as we know them, they they have some impacts, but I think that they're advancing pretty quickly to limit those impacts from from whatever.

So thank you.

No expert though.

We're just like scratching the surface on this one too.

I appreciate it.

I just needed to keep those questions out.

Thank you.

Counselor Buller.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you all very much for the presentation and all the tremendous work on on this effort.

Um my first question is if we were to request that the joint meeting with planning commission occur before first reading, how would that unfold?

So um I think that we would be looking um I've been uh a thorn in uh everyone's side in terms of like scheduling the meetings because it has shifted.

Um but we would be looking we could look to do that.

I think the advantage as we saw it, and that there's pros and cons on both sides is that if we get we're we're trying to kind of hone in on like if we get these 11 conditions kind of agreed to, then you guys can have a meeting and talk about the code holistically here from our consultant here, the presentation we gave to planning commission in June.

And then if you identify anything else, you can add that to that list of topics to talk to planning commission about.

So that's why we scheduled it that way.

But I don't think you're beholden to that schedule by any means.

So yeah.

I think the the other option too.

So right now what we're proposing is that delayed implementation date so that the planning commission, anything that stems from that can be uh additional ordinance that then all interplays for December 15th implementation.

Another option that you could have if you just wanted the full code to just be all wrapped up in a bow with anything that your joint meeting may come out of it with is just don't adopt anything until later this year, right?

So there's an option where you get 90% and it still goes into effective December 15th or whatever we end up you know landing on, and that 10% comes a month before but still gets implemented December 15th, or you say I want to get this as close to perfect as we want, and therefore I want anything incorporated from that planning commission and give staff and the consultants time to incorporate that harder piece so that you have that.

So just wanted to give kind of two different options.

Sure.

Thank you.

I'll I'll hold my perspective on that until we get the discussion portion.

But thank you very much for the answer on that.

Um you noted in terms of the the mobile home regulations, the 15 foot.

Is there any reason that we wouldn't do the 15-foot or any bad impact on the community in question from 15 feet?

I'm just trying to see why we want just yes.

Well, so the concern was that the mobile homes are like any other housing is growing in size, and that there was a concern as to whether or not you could still get the same size replacement, and that we would have like a situation where we lost the mobile home and you couldn't replace it because 15 feet was too restrictive.

And so we said, well, we'll look into it because but we didn't want to commit to anything because we knew fire and building regulations applied, and it is pretty precise.

So you need more like a four-foot landing to walk up to the side of a mobile home, that's combustible.

The mobile home itself is combustible.

You need 15 feet of separation, so that's that's where that comes from.

So thank you.

That's what I was afraid of.

I'm struggling with this one because I would hate for and then it can't be replaced.

The preliminary research I did on this, and again, never had to do that before, but like they do seem to range in size.

Like I just think that they're growing in size because families grow and um and we as Americans want larger uh things, and that's the same for housing types generally, too.

So um, but what from what I found you can get pretty small mobile homes too.

So I don't know that that's going to be the restriction.

It's going to be more of a I would like to replace it with a larger home, and they may not be able to.

But the other thing I guess I'd clarify on that is um we haven't had this issue.

This has not been an issue to date.

So I don't want it to be an issue in the future, but I don't necessarily know that we have a problem that we need to fix here either.

So thank you.

And I'll hold fire up on the remainder.

Thank you.

Good.

Any other questions before we get into discuss counselor Jensen?

On the lot size for combining lots.

Um you have this 30,000 square feet or the average size on the block, whichever smaller.

And then planning commission recommending to reduce that to 21,000 page 16 of your document.

Uh at least that's what it says on my screen.

Um what was the rationale or reasoning behind planning commission's wanting to lower that, especially if you're doing the whichever smaller option?

What's that all about?

I can't speak to how much consideration was given to the whichever was smaller.

I think the 30,000 square foot uh limit was reacted to um in terms of being too too big.

Uh the context we gave is most of the lots in uh old town are around 7,000 square feet in size.

So they're 50 feet wide and 140 feet deep.

Um, and that would allow for three lots to be combined.

So that seemed contextually reasonable to them.

Um so that's where that recommendation is coming from.

So they'd still be able to merge conceivably if it was over 21,000 feet, it would just have to come before what it would come before planning commission and councils that are.

Yeah, and so yeah, to be completely clear, the only regulations we have and the only regulations I think I've ever worked with are subdivision regulations where if you're gonna subdivide over a certain amount of lots and take one lot and create three, basically like have one uh allowance for development.

You can build one house on one lot and uh you want to subdivide and create five, and all of a sudden you get five houses, that is an impact, right?

So at a certain threshold, subdividing has always gone to planning commission and city council.

There's never been a uh a regulation that tells you how many lots that you can go from five to one and build something bigger.

But for old town, we recognize that that could be impactful.

And so this is a net new regulation.

Right now, there's it's all you want to combine you know, uh a hundred lots into one.

That's that's administrative under our current code because there's no there's no cap to it.

So this is a very specific old town regulation that we've put in in order to make sure that when we get something like this, or if we got something like this, again, it's kind of like mobile homes.

We haven't had this as an issue yet, but it could be, and we'd rather have it be a discretionary review than administrative.

Okay, thank you.

So on page 18, with regard to neighborhood meetings.

Um you say neighborhood meetings are optional or not required currently for some application types.

Would you give me the examples of those types?

The the main conversation that we had about this one was annexations.

Um our code isn't great right now in terms of clarity as to whether or not that triggers because it it pairs it with a rezoning application.

And the rezoning application in a separate area of the code explicitly says you don't have to have a neighborhood meeting for this.

And so it says follow rezoning.

And so we've had this conversation because generally an annexation is coupled with some, it's at least coupled with the rezoning, and then um it may be coupled with a development application.

So neighborhood meetings have occurred along with an annexation, but we also have like the state regulation kind of balance to strike.

This is a very long answer, I apologize.

But we we really can't start taking in application materials or like requiring a review until they hit those first two steps of an annexation because they're not in our jurisdiction.

So we for a neighborhood meeting for an annexation.

The conversation with planning commission was that it doesn't necessarily make sense unless we get it with like the Kensington application, for example, is coming in with a bunch of development associated with it, redevelopment or uh rezoning as well as um a PUD right now.

And so there's context, and there's also a practicalities.

Somebody just comes in and says they want to be in Lafayette.

The questions that we're getting at those meetings aren't about being in Lafayette.

That's like what do you want to develop in Lafayette?

And so until we have that context, those neighborhood meetings have not been um may not be terribly fruitful.

But we also have an opportunity or as a requirement, they have to get through is it three?

Yeah, the two uh three meetings hearings.

Three public hearings, two in front of city council and one in front of planning commission.

So the public does have an opportunity to come and talk to them and comment on the proposal, regardless of whether or not they have a neighborhood meeting to discuss it.

So you see how long it took you to explain that to me.

That's just me though.

That where appropriate is really vague.

And I think if the public is reading this and just sees the where appropriate, they don't really understand what you just described.

I get it, but I uh but I think that needs a little um well and this is like an additional guardrail.

So it's like right now we don't have anything that says it says I can wave neighborhood meetings, but it doesn't say that I can require them.

And so we've we've added this as a balance to that.

And if we ever had an application that we felt that you know we should get this out in front of the public because there's gonna be a lot of interest in it, that's where that trigger can be.

I think it needs some extra explanation of what the kinds of conditions under which you would require that.

Not that we don't trust you, but you know, this has to last another 40 years, right?

Um wait a minute, hold on.

I think I had a couple of other questions.

Okay, on the mobile home replacement.

Um, so when you're saying that um mobile homes are regulated by the state in terms of fire and safety issues, do you know enough about those regulations to know that that 15 feet actually is what the code requires because they are, or are you just guessing?

No, that's what our we talked to our chief building official.

That's a building code requirement.

All right.

Um and I mentioned this to you in a separate meeting, but um I really appreciate the mobile home zoning, but I um I think we need some clarifying language um that you could replace a mobile home with a permanently affordable unit.

And so I just want to be on the record as saying that as Boulder is doing with the Ponderosa mobile home community where they're replacing older mobile homes with affordable homes that um are modular and are uh helping people to buy their own home, stick built home.

I I think I would, and maybe this is supposed to should be in the conversation, the discussion part, so I won't I won't um I won't keep talking about that until we get to discussion.

Um let's see if I have any other questions.

My cursor is not very accurate, sorry, it jumps around.

Nope, that's all the questions I have.

Great.

Any other questions?

Mayor Proton?

Thank you, Mayor.

Just a point of clarification.

If we uh when we do I I'm gonna say that we should meet with planning commission.

Uh the sub-area plan.

Um how does I know it's not done.

Um and we're still, I don't know if we have we've got the consultants on on hand.

But at that meeting, is or is it fairly clear what impacts the outcomes of that plan would mean when we're looking at OTX three?

Because I know there's a there's a lot of space between where uh old town ends and the sub-area start, kinda.

Um so do we know what not not yet.

So we we just there's a that project has a few phases.

The first phase was looking at like where are we at, where are we now?

So the existing conditions, we do we wrap that up.

And we just kicked off really last week publicly uh the visioning phase.

And so we're just now starting starting that process.

And so we probably won't know till later in the year and when we have a more narrow down potential and we'll be visiting with council on that as well.

Once the that plan is adopted though, one of the implementation projects typically is looking at the zoning code as the implementation.

And so there'll probably be some then some tweaks to the code as it to implement that plan.

Okay.

The PC's aware of this.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Councilor Janello.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh first I want to thank the staff and the planning commission for all the many, many hours that they've um put in on this project.

It's been a lot of work.

I've been involved um along the way as a member of the land use code working group um before I was elected to council, but it continued to attend the meetings, and there's just been a tremendous amount of work uh put in to get us here, and I'm excited that we're close to the finish line.

Um a few questions.

First, um I want to ask about the outreach during the 90-day deferred effective date period.

What's planned there?

What what does outreach mean?

What does it go to?

What's the outcome of the outreach?

Um, great question.

Um so the 90-day period um for outreach is really to like reach out to areas where significant rezonings are going to occur.

Um, Black Diamond might be the easiest example, and we're getting uh comments on that.

So um, you know, that area is going from industrial to AMX two.

Um we would reach out to them and uh I part of that exercise is really understanding what use is in those buildings, um, because that's the first piece.

So we we need to get an understanding of what they're uh what they're using their building for, and then staff would need to make an assessment as to whether or not that's still an allowed use or becomes a non-conforming use, and then a lot and then explain to these business owners, property owners what uh a nonconformity means.

So the initial reaction uh we had from some was that their use would be prohibited.

Um and that while that's not you know uh I mean I think a straight reading of the code means it is, it but it becomes a non-conformity.

So it's a legal non-conforming property.

Uh when it could be the building that's non-conforming, it could be the use that's not conforming.

But explaining what that means, and that doesn't mean that they have to go away, but it does mean that like as you transition one you know uh type of area, a residential area to what's supposed to be more adaptable commercial, um those uses are are supposed to transition over time and to transition for us it's like if they lapse in use for 12 months, um then they would be like they would need to come into conformance when they came back in with a new use.

Um and then there's also restrictions on building expansions and use expansions, um as long as you know those use expansions are more in that industrial kind of lane.

So how does that um come back to you know when you do the outreach?

How does that um I think I'm frozen again?

So you come on, fingers crossed, I come back.

We would contact them now and the timing Hello, I hope this works.

Okay.

We can still hear we are sorry.

Um can you hear us all right?

I do now, yeah.

Uh so how does that come back?

When you do the outreach, what happens after that?

We would yeah, we would send them a um and we've been starting these discussions about what that letter looks like.

Um, you know, but it is kind of a conversation that we'd be starting um and then let them know um what the change is and actually let them know what the use allowances and AMX zoning are um and then invite them to have a conversation.

So some of those conversations we've had so far like are they just concerned that they would be um you know, certain businesses are concerned that they'd be limited to expanding in the future.

They don't have anything necessarily like that they're about to do.

Um but that's a concern to them that they couldn't expand, you know, five or ten years from now.

Um do you envision coming back to council with recommended changes potentially based on some of that?

I mean, we we're we want to look at them all.

I mean, we don't necessarily know the whole lay of the land out there.

Uh some of those uses may be more in uh um adaptable commercial lane and maybe a use that is like it's kind of like what Phil was explaining earlier.

Like if we don't have a data center definition, right?

If we don't have a definition for one of those uses, we'd have to look and see if it's most like something else and whether or not the impacts of that use.

So just even understanding what some of those businesses are, how many vehicular trips they generate on a given basis, whether or not they're actually doing deliveries if they have a uh negative impact on their surrounding area, uh, because that area has become more residential over time.

That's what we'd be evaluating.

I see.

I see.

Okay.

Um on that topic of data centers and air mobility.

Uh, help me understand a little bit better about why there's a recommendation to add this to the code, but then a moratorium potentially.

I just feel like that's a conflict in my mind that you'd add it and then sort of take it away.

We could certainly just go with the moratorium.

Um we I think at like there's basically layers of uh zoning that we're getting at, like having a definition puts us in a better protected place, and that's what we are recommending doing.

Um I don't know that you know uh moratoriums usually come from somebody besides the planning department, you know, uh request for them.

So it's not that we don't support it, it's it's probably a good idea.

These are very new uses.

Um, but that's where we were landing.

So uh we don't have to make any change though to the code or add any definition to it.

If if the moratorium is recommended, we could come back to that at a later date.

I see, but you said that adding the definition actually puts us in a stronger position.

I just want to kind of for the record elucidate that a little bit more.

Not the definition so much, is just putting like creating a land use for it and then putting it like as a only in um three, which is our highest and like heavy industrial use, and requiring a special use review.

So that's where we landed because we had done some analysis on data centers, and in order to put us in a good position and a safe position, that's what our recommendation was.

Um we could I mean, who knows what we come out of this with?

Like if they end up being less impactful and there's some benefit to them, then maybe that use expands.

Who knows?

I see.

Okay.

Um I just have a couple more questions.

Um I want to talk about the OTX zone discussion.

I mean, you mentioned it early, and then I didn't see it on the list of questions.

So first I'm confused where OTX3 came from.

I was involved in the working group.

We never saw that in the working group's presentation of the code.

Where where did that come from?

So it it came from um it came from staff, and it came from our analysis of what um we're trying to achieve based off of like looking at um the cop plan.

And so OTX, you know, is is mentioned broadly in the comp plan as old town mixed use, just like uh industrials mentioned, and it's mentioned as a collectiflex.

But we we only have one zone district for um industrial now, and our you know, our analysis of what we need for the city to be more nuanced was three different industrial zone districts.

So we looked at Old Town and we came up with a minimum of like two and possibly three different areas of uh, you know, and I think you know, right now OTX covers baseline, which I think everyone would agree is different than public road.

Um we also looked at whether or not East Simpson actually needed its own OTX standard because it feels different than public and feels different than baseline.

But ultimately what we felt was that you know, somewhere around Emma Street, um there is a north and south kind of break where lots get bigger.

Um, some of those form-based uh standards that we're trying to implement implement, change.

Like there's not as much alley access, there's a lot of like similar to baseline, there's a lot of access that has to come from the street.

Um but if you look at those lot sizes, I mean that was where these things just start getting bigger.

Um lots in general.

So everything north, like as I mentioned earlier when we talked about um the lot combination discussion, most of the lots in the northern portion of Old Town are 7,000 square feet or some version of it, like they're been developed as two lots and they're 14,000 square feet, or they'd have been developed as three lots and they're 21.

Once you get further south, these lots get bigger.

Um I have the numbers here, let's see.

Um all the way up to 104,000 square feet.

Um but south of EMA, we got lots that are 60,000, 26,000, 15,000, 20,000, 40,000, just under 30 for two.

And then once you get um onto that 700 block of public, there's only two two lots that have been developed as 7,000 square foot lots.

The rest of them are either combined as two lots together at 14, and there's one that's uh 21,000 square feet.

So that's where we drew that break, but it is a lot to like it's a fairly nuanced discussion, which we'll uh we'll prepare for and try to give you guys a better overview for um if you want to have it.

And I think one of your questions too was you didn't see this in the presentation.

This was one of the things that planning commission talked about a lot, but didn't have like a specific code change recommendation.

They made the recommendation that they have a joint work session with you to uh discuss it further.

Um, you know, full disclosure, they had like the straw poll poll vote at that meeting.

I don't know if you were still there or not, I was facing the other direction.

Um, but it was like a four-three vote as to whether or not they felt OTX three was uh needed, but they they s they gave us specific direction as to what like spatial analysis they want to see in terms of lot sizes, building sizes, alley access, all of those things um in order to have that discussion with council uh at a joint session.

And that kind of brings me to my last question about the joint session.

I think Council Burlier all uh earlier kind of asked about the scheduling.

Um I guess I'll ask the question in a slightly different way, just why why are you recommending scheduling it in the order uh that you are and not in the have the joint meeting first before the first reading?

What are the advantages that you see coming from that order?

Yeah, so I mean the the answer I had, and I I don't know that there's a different answer from my perspective.

It's just that we wanted council to have an opportunity to hear the whole code update and identify anything that they wanted to add to that discussion.

So, like what we'd like to get out of that joint meeting is basically anything that both council and planning commission wants staff to work on as part of that um second ordinance.

Like if we're gonna need another code update and we follow this path, and and you guys act on this version of the code in September, then we're gonna have direction to do another code amendment, and we want to make sure that that's comprehensive.

And I felt like that would put you in the best position to give us all of that feedback by having the one presentation from council um before you do that.

But it it doesn't have to be that way.

If you guys are more comfortable with meeting with planning commission first, we can certainly do that.

I think I have to check with scheduling.

I haven't seen that.

I don't think so.

Yeah, and I I'm happy to wait on anything else until there's discussion, so thank you so much.

Since that's what we're talking about, um the public is gonna be notified of potential changes to the zoning of their property after we've already made decisions.

And I wonder if at between the first reading and the second reading, so that if somebody has real concern about a change to their property, they could come in and talk to us.

Um I I feel like there if I got a notice that my zoning of my property had changed, and I had no opportunity.

I busy run in my business, and I didn't know this was even happening, and I had no opportunity because it was a done deal already to talk to people.

Um there may be things.

I know some of us have spoken to some small business owners who um you know the issue of expansion, as you mentioned, director.

Um maybe there are others who have things we hadn't thought of, you know, just that it might be good to get into the mix before we finalize things.

So would it be, and I don't know what other council members think about that, but would it be possible in the schedule that you have drawn up to add a time to communicate with the public before we make our final decision and give them notice of potential change?

It depends on how long you want that notice to be.

So we're suggesting 90 days, and I don't know, you know, that that might be too tall of a task to accomplish in 90 days, it may just be just fine.

Like I don't know how many people are gonna respond and have concerns.

Uh, we've heard from I think three of them so far.

Um, and that's you know, just very exclusive to those letters that went out to Black Diamond Subdivision.

So once we you know clarify other um changes, um we we may get more responses.

But um I think if you were to do that, then I think the question becomes if you wanted to notice between your first and your second meeting, we have 30 days.

That may mean that you want to push out that second meeting in order to have more time for that notification to occur.

But I'd also say that like this whole land use code update, it's not been done in isolation, right?

We have it it's just become more concrete as to what those changes are going to be.

So we've actually have AMX zoning and a use allowance table to share with them, and the map didn't come until June or May.

So you know, like they've had we've done our best to make sure that they were daylighted about what changes were coming.

It's just more concrete now.

We're planning on doing that once we actually know that.

I mean, I guess on the other side of it, we didn't want to send them out something and then have a use table that actually changed based off of conversations that we have with planning commission and city council, and like, hey, now we gotta pull that back, you don't need to worry about the letter I just sent you.

Um so we're trying to find, and that that's part of the difficulty in having these conversations now and why it's unfortunate that they got this notice from somebody else, but the timing was like intentional.

I don't know if there's a perfect way to do it, but so is it your um thought that the way you currently have it with the 90 days, so you're you're gonna let them know the decisions that have been made, and then there's the 90 days before it goes into effect.

And if somebody has some unanticipated concern that we hadn't thought about in making this decision that we could amend it before that 90 days was up, is that sort of how you were thinking about it?

Potentially, yeah.

I mean, if if it if it doesn't, I mean I think we've had some so far a lot of the comments have been don't change in one zoning, and that's not what the comp plan says.

So that's not something that you know, unless you guys give me different direction that we need a comp plan update, that's not where our efforts headed.

But if it is something that's like, oh, that use definitely has like fits Lafayette, you know, is something that council supports and even the comp plan supports in one way or another, or doesn't seem to have any impacts like to the to the neighborhood, um, then I think we could do it.

But but there are so many layers now to our code that it's a matter of where we do it.

Like, and I think like that's the thing that I want to be able to daylight a little bit more to both you and planning commission in terms of like we have you know a use of a use table and also we have use specific standards, and then we have like, well, is this gonna be a special use review?

We have we just have different opportunities, like, and if it's something doesn't have a special use review now in M1 and would require it in um AMX too, then that also gives us a tool, like if they come in through an expansion that we can actually evaluate whether or not that use is like it just gives it a higher bar to do a review.

So we want to fit that use once we know what that is, to the right um regulation, so that um we either give it flexibility or we don't, right?

And we as long as there's an opportunity for the people you notice to come to us and say this really messes up my whole life, and here's why, you know, whatever that might be, um, and we have an opportunity to make an amendment before it gets implemented, I'm okay with that.

I just wanted to make sure that the public will get that notice, and then if they bring something to our attention that we missed, then we're yeah, so I guess I'd answer that the same way, like with that code amendment process.

It may we'd have to evaluate what that's the extent of that code change is like we're gonna be moving towards a this a first amendment to the code through that first ordinance or second ordinance, I should say.

But if this is something that just needs further evaluation and we come back, I mean the code's not gonna be static.

If we find that there's a flaw in it or something that you guys want to change, we can do a code amendment, like a targeted one would be a fairly quick, you know, two or three month process in order to get it fixed.

And that's that's one of the concerns planning commission definitely have is like what if we don't get this right, you know, like and it's not in concrete.

So Councillor Gianola?

Just on that um kind of public notice issue.

What is the legal required you know, time frame for public notice ahead of our kind of public hearings and where does that public notice go?

Can I take the first stab at that?

So, first of all, with the discussion that was just happening, I was thinking about jumping in and and counselor Janula's question provided the perfect opportunity.

Um because you all are considering a land use code update and not a property specific application.

Um you're updating an entire section of our code or entire chapter of our code as well as adopting a legislative uh rezoning map or rezoning the whole um the entire city in conjunction with that new land use code.

And so I just wanted to make a comment before I answer your question, uh Counselor Gianola, that in terms of legally required notice, that legally required notice is what is required for an ordinance.

Um it's not property owner specific notices.

What staff is referring to is that they are going to take an extra step that is beyond what is legally required here in terms of noticing that we have an ordinance coming before council and in the case of a change to Chapter 26, um we also have a required public hearing that we don't normally have uh you don't normally have public hearings with most ordinances that you consider that amend the code.

If it's a change to our development and zoning code, you do have to have public hearings both in front of planning commission, which have now happened, um, as well as council, and you can have we have you scheduled for one public hearing, you can always um add an additional public hearing.

Um so that's the legally required notice and and to counselor Gianola's question, our code uh for this type of um code amendment and zoning map change would require a newspaper published notice, so it'll be published in a locally circulating newspaper at least 10 days prior to each public hearing.

Um so in the case of planning commission, for example, they have they had their first public hearing, so that was noticed in the newspaper.

Um days ahead of that hearing as well as on the city um website.

I think we're the city is pretty good about advertising um those hearings.

And planning commission actually ordered a second public hearing when it had to continue its uh discussion on this item.

And so we did publish a second um a second newspaper notice of public hearing and made sure that that second meeting gave us the full ten days to publish that notice.

So that's the legally required notice is the newspaper public notice, which you know it is um incumbent upon the public to check those notices.

Um there's also while that legally required, obviously there's been a great deal of community outreach and involvement and uh communication directly with developers who are are paying attention and property owners as well as your community members who are who are watching this and and looking at Lafayette listens, et cetera.

So um yeah, so there's there's legally required notice, and then there's all the other things that the city is doing through this process to make sure that the community is aware of these changes.

Councilor Burley.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I appreciate that um from our city attorney.

I I guess I have questions that maybe we can dig into at a later date on how reaching all the people who aren't reading newspapers.

Um I wish our comms director Aaron Frazier was here to answer some of those questions since as we know newspaper read readership is is virtually non-existent among uh younger people in Lafayette.

Um my question is in terms of the process for querying kind of specifics outside of the the recommendations.

I'm broadly in favor of everything PC put forward, great job planning commission.

Um but the slide 27 in your deck, uh the final bullet was are there other questions and topics council would like to discuss?

And to Councillor Jensen's point earlier in the past couple weeks, I I have uh had a wide variety of meetings with members of the public and residents concerning the land use code since a lot of folks are beginning to track it.

I think there's some word of mouth, there's some local journalism, so so people are beginning to ask very specific questions that I've had to get smart on.

Um what process would be helpful to y'all, to you, Mayor, in terms of uh because I have a list of things, but I don't want to just throw that at you and I'm happy to hold until the discussion.

But for that final bullet point, how how would you prefer they be raised in terms of conveying what we've heard from the public?

You can do that tonight if you want to do that tonight verbally to us, and if uh you want to communicate through Katie or you wanna Yeah.

I mean, however you want to do it, but we were this bullet was just uh give you an opportunity to give us that feedback tonight.

Absolutely.

Would it be helpful to do that now or just doing that?

No, no.

Let's get through the other questions and then we will come back to that.

Sure.

Okay.

Since it seems like we're we're there.

Um I'm gonna start as quickly as possible with the first one, which is does anyone disagree with the I believe it's December 15th uh deferred effective date?

I want to get to the other questions, but is anyone just completely opposed to this?

I didn't hear anything, but it seems like we can move forward with that one.

Okay.

The joint session is the one I want to uh hit.

I've heard from a mayor pro tem that is something he would be in favor of.

Uh so I'm gonna go to our mayor pro temp because there's two questions on this.

First, you're in favor.

I have that.

What is the timeline that you're most looking forward to?

Is it recommended timeline to us, which would happen after first reading, the one you would go with?

Yes.

And that's so we can see the entire get an understanding of the entire package and ask questions before we meet with PC so that we go in to that informed.

Okay.

Great.

Thank you.

Any other counselor want to jump in on this one?

So the questions are, are you in favor of a joint work session?

I'll just go ahead and say yes.

And uh also with the mayor for Tem think I I think the recommended uh one is the way I would go, which is after first reading.

But I'm happy to listen to other counselors.

Counselor Gianova.

Yeah, I'm in favor of the uh joint session.

I guess before I can answer the second part of that, my question is you know, if we have a meeting with the planning commission between the first reading and the second reading, is there still an opportunity for us to make amendments to the land use code at that second hearing.

So the other thing I was trying to articulate through the recent memo was like and I think you can pick it up like through the 11 conditions that we're able to act on tonight, those are the kind of discrete changes that you can condition as you know, we approve this uh land use code ordinance with these specific changes.

If you have something that requires more study or more evaluation, that's gonna need to be in the let's look at that, you know, or explore this kind of change through your uh uh a code amendment uh through the another ordinance.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, so if we came and said, I think you need to change something very specific, some setback or whatever that seems like it's an easy, easy lift that could be done by kind of line item in a in a an amendment to a code.

That could occur at the second reading, even if it didn't occur at the first reading.

Yes, it could.

If it's discrete like that, and we could redline it, say at that second meeting, you could adopt an amendment um to your ordinance on second reading of that nature.

Okay, perfect.

Um in that case, I would be open to having the meeting in with the planning commission in between the first reading and the second reading.

That can work for me.

Great.

Thank you, Councillor.

Councilor Bullier.

I'm happy to defer.

Either way works for me.

It's quick, just uh on the the PC meeting.

Um I'm open to being convinced my druthers are probably to have the meeting before the first reading.

Um have we had a joint PC council meeting in the past year on the land use code?

So it would kind of be the first, so I I reckon there'd be some sorting out that that might occur.

So that's kind of why my my bias leans towards beforehand, but I'm open to being persuaded.

Okay.

Counselor Gayos?

And I'm in favor of that additional meeting with Planning Commission, and I am okay with the timeline of doing it in between the first and second meeting.

Great, thank you.

Counselor Jensen, any thoughts here?

Anything.

I I do not having been through that process and knowing the personalities of some people on the planning commission who are very strong-willed.

Um I would like to know how that works.

You're gonna be running the meeting.

If some if planning commission and council disagree, where do we go?

How do we do it?

Excuse me.

I just need a little uh primer on that process and how how it works.

Because I I I love the people on the planning commission, and I love that they're strong-willed, but they are strong-willed.

We we can we can note that in the materials and probably open with that discussion too.

Well, I I'm not saying I don't want them to be strong-willed.

I I do.

Uh but at some point somebody makes a decision, right?

And is it if we are divided up and some on council and planning commission?

I mean, how does it work?

You know what I mean?

Yeah, uh counsel, I would I would uh uh first start with the fact that it's a workshop, so you won't be making formal decisions.

You'll definitely be working together on the issues that you're gonna tackle at that workshop and discussing them and studying them, but ultimately the decision would be up to council to make at second reading if you do um decide to move forward with uh something that you've discussed in that workshop.

So um there it's not really about council versus planning commission making the decision, it's about council having that discussion uh with planning commission to get a better understanding of what their concerns or issues or recommendations were to help inform a decision that you'll make at um and to discuss that with them and then inform a decision that you'll that you as counsel will make on second reading to implement uh their recommendations or um modifications that they've suggested.

I hope that helps.

Thank you counselor Gianola.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just kind of on to maybe help address Council Bollier's question about why it would be favorable.

You know, because the sort of order of the situation right now to me is the planning commission has has seen the code they've approved recommendations to the code and they've provided these conditions.

At this point we as a whole body have not really studied the code.

Maybe some of us have I've studied the code in depth but having that show up in our packet and you know we kind of go through the motion in the presentation with the staff to really understand and you know consider the issues kind of gives us that opportunity forces us to have the opportunity to really dig into the code maybe for the first time for some of us and then we can go into the discussion with planning commission being informed right I think that's to me that's the a big advantage of doing it after that first reading.

I am with Counselor Giannola completely except I draw a different conclusion from the same logic.

Would you care to elaborate I just for the very reasons that you laid out given PC's expertise and in depth and the fact that we've we've just heard an exceptional briefing from staff then for me and the the logic in my head is okay next we would meet with PC to get their sense obviously we know that they're having meetings that are going until midnight and later so clearly there's been a great deal of digging into this and so my logic is sort of is we'll sit with them, meet with them, hear from them that'll affect our thinking and then we'll come back provide feedback then first reading adaptation et cetera second reading.

That's just kind of where I'm approaching this.

But yeah I I understand for me personally it just is such a complex amount of information that going into that meeting fold would be difficult.

And I think having been required to study it ahead of time would be really beneficial for uh for council great thank you I'm hearing the majority of council is in favor of the joint session and it sounds like the current recommended timeline between the first and second readings and one would go with okay moving on to the next question which is council supporting the planning commission recommended code changes.

Is there anyone who wants to jump on this one councilor Jensen can we do them in order just one at a time okay with regard to public land dedication I do not let us we have a whole inclusion inclusion diversity equity and access plan and we now we have something in our current code which allows private entities to create recreation facilities that would not be open to everyone.

And that feels like it's inconsistent with the rest of who we are and I don't want to support that even at a reduced level I don't understand why we would ever give a public land dedication to an entity who is creating facilities recreational or open space or parkland that is not open to the whole community swimming pool or whatever it might be.

So I I don't want to have a private public land dedication piece.

I'd like to eliminate that piece altogether and just if you you meet this in the the ways and get rid of the private part of that.

And I would love to hear what others have to say about that.

Agree strongly mayor this is part of I think what I'd like to hear this is what we're looking at P PC has seen this.

And I think once this is in context for the presentation I would like to understand what their thinking was on I mean it's a reduction.

So I want to know why they wouldn't fully recommend eliminating it.

Well they're leaving it up to us to decide.

And I I actually had a meeting with staff yesterday and I asked about the history of this.

And remember, our code is 40 years old, and at the time we didn't have the budget to build facilities everywhere.

And you know, a neighborhood park might, you know, that might be exclusive to the neighborhood was at least a park, you know, that we uh and I don't think we're in that same kind of position that we're in, you know, 40 years ago where we need to have exclusive kinds of activities um or uh assets in our community.

So I that's I don't I think the circumstances 40 years ago were very different.

And so I I don't think right now we're worrying about um not having parts at all, you know, which 40 years ago I think we were.

So at least they would get built.

Something would get built.

Now we're not there.

We have parks, and we shouldn't be building any sort of exclusive facilities that are not open to and I mean if we're gonna have an IDA plan and we're not gonna follow it, we should get rid of it.

Okay, if I may um I might have to s ask our city attorney uh the Medtronic when we talked about their public land dedication their use was it looked like it was going to only serve their staff.

Yes, and that's a private facility.

And we asked for if I understand correctly, we asked for them to I think we actually denied denied that use of public uh public land dedication.

So what we're talking about here, is that the reason why that came forward to us is that they would their public land dedication would be to build a like a recreational area at their facility that wasn't available to the public?

That that's correct.

So they did request under our current code uh credit towards private recreation facilities that they were providing on the Medtronic campus.

Um that did go.

Um I know at the time that the planning director and the city manager forwarded that to LOSAB for a recommendation, and uh that recommendation was forwarded to council.

And I I actually don't recall if council didn't give them any credit for the private recreation facilities towards their public land dedication, but they did um staff recall they did not.

It was largely indoors, they were justifying a small yoga outdoor yoga pad that would have been the um available to the public, but it was behind the building.

Right, and it wouldn't have been available very accessible.

That's right.

Okay, so it sounds like um staff can confirm that that council ultimately decided not to provide a credit.

Um they did still meet their full public land dedication, I think maybe through a combination of land and cash and loo uh instead of having private credit for the private facilities.

Right.

I just want a clarification because I looking at that, I do think that we can I I'm not sure why we would continue to support this in our code.

So uh unless anyone else on council sees a good reason to continue to support it.

I'm just for my own benefit and forgive me.

Um we heard from the chair of LowSAB that LOSAP supports this.

Why is LOSAB wrong?

I don't know.

I don't know why LOSAP is wrong, but that's something we could ask for feedback on.

I I'm not sure I agree with that interpretation of LOSAB's recommendation.

I believe the recommendation from LOSAB was make this reduction for private facilities zero.

Don't allow it.

I thought the LOSAB wrote we fully support all four parts of the planning commission recommendations having to do with public land dedications.

Uh yeah, and and I think maybe that it was give the city council the you know ability to make the determination what the amount is.

In hearing from the chair of LOSAB at the planning commission meetings, my recollection was that LOSAB thought this should be eliminated.

Okay.

Okay.

I'm here in support for being an eliminated because I I want to know what's best for you in this context.

I also don't want to get into legislating everything tonight because that's not the point of tonight.

Yeah, I was gonna say this could also be something that you guys discuss at your first reading, and that way it has an opportunity for members of LOSAP to come forward if we want to reach out to them to clarify any sort of comments, so maybe not necessarily walk one by one and see what particular edits you want to have, because you will be able, we are saying one through eleven we can make pretty quick edits between first and second or beforehand.

Um so I think it was generally one through eleven.

Are we generally supportive with having those conversations?

And then the big question tonight really was that joint meeting.

So however you want to proceed, we're happy to go line by line, but um also recognize that could repeat on uh August 18th, or wouldn't we?

I thought line by line may be helpful, but I'm starting to notice that we're gonna get into the weeds in this, and maybe that is for a council meeting where we can actually look at everything and we have the code in front of us.

Um in terms of direction, what is beneficial for you at this moment on this particular issue?

So looking at the recommendations.

Maybe instead of line by line, um if you go through it and just like highlight anything that you have concerns about, like if if or if you can things that we can actually check off our list, like so the moratorium, you know, if there is support for that, that changes how we dig into data centers and advanced air mobility hubs.

We and the thing that I guess I want to be clear about too is we haven't made any code changes since June 24th.

So we've treated this as we treat most applications where once it is ready for planning commission and city council, we need comment and direction from both of you before we go back and make any changes.

And that's been I think confusing for everybody because this has been such a fluid document.

So we get comments from people and we automatically make changes even to like a typo, right?

And now it's the typos are still there.

It's it hasn't got any changes.

So we were hoping to bring you a cleaner version.

Um so if there's a possibility for any of these things to you know, the easy ones if you can identify, but if there's not, then we can have all of this discussion on that first meeting too.

And like Katie said, we've planning commission did a great job getting these conditions to a point where they're pretty discrete, they're very specific in terms of what the changes.

There are these little nuances where it's like is there a percentage reduction or an elimination that council wants that you can certainly have um at that first meeting in August.

So what I'll come back to council with is I'm gonna ask you all in a second if there's any of these that you want removed entirely, or something that you know, big picture we just don't want to move forward with.

However, there was one that was already on the table, so I'm gonna turn to Councillor Gianola here because it's where I heard it, which was the moratoriums uh for data centers and advanced air mobility, but then also the definitions being added.

Did you still feel there was a conflict there?

Are you okay with having both recommendations?

I understand it.

I I appreciate the staff's response.

Um they clarified it very nicely for me.

I'm in support of both of those recommendations.

Right, thank you.

I had one that I had raised um I'm in general very supportive of all of these, but um I would like to have the um the mobile home language say that mobile home zoning or affordable housing, so that we could convert really old mobile homes into affordable housing if we wanted to.

Because in some way they already are affordable housing, but they would be sort of deed restricted permanent affordable housing.

That could be a not not it's required, just an optional use under mobile home zoning.

I'm very supportive of that, but I'm curious how it would work given the ownership structures of different mobile home communities.

Well, it won't be easy and it'd be very hard.

The way the city of Boulder did it is they bought the park.

Uh well, they bought the land that the park is on, then people still own the homes, they're doing it very slowly, one unit at a time.

And some of them don't want to transfer.

They don't want to build a home.

They're gonna stay in the mobile home until they die.

And it starts to get really complicated, and I don't think we should address any of that.

It just make it an option.

And then if it should happen, the there's a myriad of ways it could happen, Kyle.

So and I don't think we should address any of that in here.

Just make it an an optional use.

And and so that um Councillor Jensen, um, that might unlock uh a building type, like a duplex or something like that, or a single unit detached home, but only if it was deed restricted permanently affordable.

Right.

That's what I'm hearing.

I like that.

Mayor Purto.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just to put it in context, this did actually come up long ago when we were looking at bringing this zoning into existence to somehow make uh an exception.

And like you said, it's not perfectly clear what that looks like in every case, but that was and it was uh former mayor for Tim Walton who said how can't can we possibly allow for that possibility.

So uh thank you for bringing that up.

I had forgotten that that was one of the concerns then, uh, and obviously it's still a concern down is we don't want to tie people to if they have the capacity to move forward with that, and it's uh in the zoning if we can make an exception then let's provide for that.

Okay, great.

Uh broadly, is there support for the Plan Commission recommendations?

I want to turn back to counselor uh Bullier in a second because I know there's a couple other topics, but just from council, do we need to is there anything that we feel needs to be discussed?

Okay, not saying anything good on that.

All right, for the final question, counselor folder, take it away.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just uh a few quick items, and I'm sure I'll have more uh as as we go forward in coming weeks.

Um but the first and foremost is I've heard from a number of pastors in our community concerning the Northwest parcel at 287 and South Boulder Road, which is currently zoned R2, and I believe in the revised code would be rezoned as Amex-2.

Uh and the concern is essentially that would push out uh the community's churches over time.

So I'm wondering and I understand the the alignment with the the broader efforts underway in South Boulder.

I I'm on board with that.

But I am concerned by that rezoning considering it's really four churches on that parcel.

And so I'm wondering if y'all can can share some of the logic with the rezoning and then help me understand how we would want to keep these faith communities uh in our community if they're so radically rezoned.

I'm gonna let Phil look at the land use code table and tell us whether or not churches are still allowed there.

Uh I would assume that they are, but um the I'll start with the like where we're headed with that is that that was a comp plan designation.

So it says uh adaptable commercial use, I believe there.

Um we've looked at it and we're wondering whether or not Appla's heavy-handed in the sense that neighborhood uh commercial may be more um appropriate because all of that access comes from residential uh neighborhoods to the West.

So that's something we could look at more, but it would it would it's not following the comp plan.

So um we s we we were trying to keep our parameters pretty limited, so let's do those things as cleanup items afterwards and we can have more specific discussions of them.

Yeah, and the draft code, those uh a church use is allowed through a special use review.

So I think in that case, if they were to expand, they would just go through a special use review.

I would say with the area plan that is within the area plan boundaries, so that's one of the property owners that would be connecting with as well.

Because that those that site is pretty unique in that it a special review may be warranted because of the access through the neighborhood and uh the limited access to the highway and so forth.

So um yeah, that's where it stands right now.

Thank you.

And can you help me understand why a church would need a special use review?

So parking and traffic uh are the two major impacts.

And if you've been on South Public on a Sunday morning, you understand what I'm talking about.

So and and especially that, that has South Public, right?

That's actually a pretty major street.

But if these uses are actually accessed by local roads and residential neighborhoods that had impact that use category and the special use reviews, I I think appropriate for what um we're doing.

But if we wanted to tone down if we were to change it from uh AMX two to neighborhood commercial, it would be an analysis of like how much pressure are you putting on that to redevelop into something else based off of the allowance for I'm sorry, Jeff, and by the logic, since they're currently churches and people are currently parking there.

I'm struggling on this.

It would be an expansion, right?

Like whether or not they went from whatever size they are right now to twice or three times the size and became more of a mega church that had that kind of thing.

Absolutely.

Uh I'm a non-believer, but I I believe in this.

I have First Amendment concerns with this, but we'll uh grapple with that another time.

Um specifically on the on the the expansion.

I've heard from a few small businesses in the community who uh currently have parcels um baseline and car that have owned their parcel for a significant period of time, decades, and they would be interested in expanding in the not distant future under the current operational footprint and have expressed concerns with the perception of being rezoned out from underneath their feet.

And so again, the question that kind of has been raised to me and maybe some other counselors is Lafayette trying to zone me out of being part of this community.

I know we don't believe that, we don't want to do that, but if I operate a business and I've been operating that business and paying taxes and employing people for a number of decades, and then I'm told I need a review to expand my business on property I already own within reason, right?

We're not talking about putting a glue factory in the middle of town.

Um I feel empathy for that concern, and I and I know that a special use review is significant burden on staff, on council and the team.

So I'm wondering, are there possibilities for us to uh grandfather?

I know that term means different things to different people in different contexts, but are there opportunities for us to grandfather businesses that are already part of our community to allow them to expand their footprint where they already are without causing undue burden.

I I think it depends.

We need more a little bit more context.

If it's a non-conforming use, um but it's currently conforming.

If it's currently conforming and becomes a non-conforming use in our new code, then I don't know what our legal tolerance for.

Like, you know, if we're trying to do something, we need to commit to doing it.

And if we're not trying to do something, we need to figure out what we're I mean, and and that's where I was saying earlier that like this is the part of that conversation where we need to understand what those uses are, what those potential expansions may be, and whether or not they're something we need to regulate, you know, to control or to regulate to allow.

And so that's that's part of that.

I'd be curious to understand, especially off of um use of baseline.

Yeah.

So I mean, I don't know that that isn't changing significantly.

Like we have a B zone district now, and uh the comp plan tells us that and I think everybody agrees that uh downtown and OTX is is covers baseline.

So complan didn't suggest that B1 should be kept on baseline.

I don't know that I wasn't here for that conversation, right?

So OTX and the OTX actually exists on the other side of baseline in terms of or not OTX, but old town exists on the other side of baseline, but it's residential in nature.

So I think it makes sense.

Um this is a long way of saying that like I don't know what the changes are that would make this use necessarily non-conforming.

Um the one I guess I could pick up offhand is maybe an automobile automotive repair type of business.

Um not being allowed in old town zoning, but maybe being more commercial by nature for a B1 zone district, but um, but I'd be curious to learn more and be able to do that.

I'm happy to take this offline.

I don't need you to solve it in this given moment.

I just I guess I want to put on the table for everyone's consideration.

I strongly support the comp plan, and we're trying to take the city in the community and agree with the strategic vision.

And I I find it anathema to pull the rug out from under established members of the community, whether business, residential, or or church.

And so I I want to find a way to legally square that circle.

Um I don't know how to do that, and I'm not trying to make you solve that in this moment, but that's something that has been kind of consistent feedback that I've heard in the past couple weeks.

So I have an idea.

May I finish my book real quick?

Thank you.

Um and then the final thing, and then I'll turn to Councillor Jensen to say it smarter than I can, is just it's come up a bit the need to have uh neighborhood meetings and dialogue and so forth.

And I strongly support that in everything we do through the code and the process.

I'm also empathetic to the argument that public engagement and input can be weaponized to slow down development, engagement, innovation, creativity, and so I want to to note that both the need to fully engage the public at all steps of the process to include land use code working group um as soon as possible, and not letting um those processes kind of throw sand in the gears, I think is really important.

There's a journalist, uh, a woman named Jerusalem Demsis who's done extraordinary work on this, kind of like the weaponization of public engagement.

Um obviously Ezra Klein, problematic though he is, has written a lot about that.

So I I think both those ideas are very important to keep front and center.

Uh and I'll stop there and turn to Council Jensen.

So I've been thinking about this question of businesses that get zoned out, and I know one of the consultants who was hired by Tebow made a recommendation to change the zoning to allow more industrial well, some of the places where we're trying to get more retail to try to keep the industrial component.

But to our planning director's point, if we're wanting to shift away from industrial near neighborhoods and make it more retail and friendly for walking and so on, we gotta do that.

But so I don't think they're suggested change.

It also flies in the face of this whole working group that's been looking at this and they didn't recommend it, so I don't want to override them.

But perhaps there's a time period that we could say somebody who gets zoned out of uh into being non-conforming use has six months or a year if they're gonna expand that they could expand under their current zoning.

That doesn't help them forever, you know, and if their plan was to expand in five or ten years, it's not gonna help them.

But it does create an exception to somebody who for whom this was like really catching them off guard, and they had you know imminent plans to do something, and we have stopped that.

Um so anyway, that was my idea, which was that we think about what is a good time frame, and we allow an extension without special use review for up to a year, is my thinking.

Thank you, Council Jensen.

I just want to respond briefly to that.

I I buy your logic.

I do have a lot of concerns with that because requiring a small business to expand in six months to a year is a non-starter for most of the small businesses in our community, particularly with the cost of labor and materials right now.

Plus, as we all know, it is not we're not the fastest community in the world to get permits and approvals.

So that would, I think, be setting our small businesses and ourselves up to fail.

And again, I just want to hammer home the point.

These businesses that we're talking about, uh, churches, residences, et cetera, that we're talking about rezoning are currently fundamental parts of the fabric of our community.

And I just I just have sort of like constitutional objections to saying, hey, F you, we have a strategic vision and you're not part of it.

I just think that's not that's not who we are, and I think that the the long-term vision of the comp plan can be satisfied while also safeguarding who's currently here contributing to our community.

Well, the two businesses I talked to wanted to expand.

I they didn't tell me exactly when, but I got the feeling it was more current than it was long term, but maybe I'm wrong.

Um and I hear what you're saying though about, I mean, especially this council, you know, as part of our retreat said small business and protecting small business was an important part of who we wanted to be.

It was one of our values.

And I I also don't know that there is a way to reconcile that we're changing the way we want to use our available land with the fact that some people currently using that land are not what the comp plan says is the kind of uses that we want in that location.

And I I don't think they're reconcilable, um, but for by a case-by-case basis, which is what the special use review allows, right?

So if they are a church and they want to expand, they can expand if we approve it by special use review, right?

Or a business that wants to expand.

So the the one year we're giving them is just a little bit of a grace period because we're changing the land use designation, and if they want to expand beyond that one year, then they would have to have special use review.

And I would think in a lot of those cases, especially I mean, if we're talking about a imposing industrial uh kind of factory or something right next to a neighborhood, we're probably gonna say no.

But if it's something more modest and it doesn't impact the neighborhood in any sort of negative way, and especially if it's a church, you know, uh I I would think we'd be likely to approve it, but you know, those circumstances are all unique.

Yeah, I think.

Yeah, we hear the intent, so why don't we get our heads together and we can propose some uh discussion at first reading?

I think also a reminder of what we said early on is if we continue to see a certain area that continues to have special use review come to you over and over again, right?

This isn't a static document.

You know, we do want to be able to make those changes.

So I think there's a lot of different opportunities, but instead of hashing out tonight, maybe we can come with a few different proposals if that's okay with you at first reading.

I think that's perfect.

Anything else, Councillor Bullier?

No, thank you, Mayor.

Right.

Uh any other topics or questions from council at this time.

Counselor Gallegos.

So I've heard a lot of community opposition to OTX three, so I just wanted to make sure a discussion of OTX3 will be included in our co-meeting with planning commission.

I believe that's one that will come back in the joint session.

Yeah.

Great, saying nothing else.

Thank you so much for the update.

Thank you guys.

And moving into our last update tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And if you're all set, I'll turn it over to you.

So Alex Elson.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

I'm here with a brief presentation regarding two potential board and commission updates for council's consideration.

So the objective of tonight's agenda item is to really seek feedback on those two items.

The first is updating the human rights board name and scope.

And then the second is adjusting the planning commission recruitment cadence.

So these are two kind of distinct or separate items.

So I'll walk through each one individually, pause for questions, and then wrap up with next steps and discussion and direction from City Council.

So we'll begin with the human rights board scope.

So by way of background, as many counselors are likely aware, the human rights board was established in 2016.

And the scope is outlined in the code.

The scope that currently stands is outlined in the code, and it's really focused around four key areas.

First is studying and creating a list of priorities related to legislation for city council to consider.

The second is assessing impacts of proposals specifically related to diversity, equity, and inclusion as requested by City Council.

Third is facilitating conversations with community members about various issues and actually issuing recommendations to departments within the city for resolution.

And the final is making recommendations regarding federal, state, and local legislation.

These are kind of summaries of more robust language within the code, but uh intended to highlight the four key areas currently in the code language.

Um we have heard from a number of board members that this scope is challenging to implement for an advisory board within our uh city's advisory board structure.

It's fairly ambiguous, includes a number of non-advisory board functions.

Um as you all know, our advisory boards are bound by a number of um constraints, including the open meetings law, our advisory board structure, wherein these boards are responsible to and appointed by the city council, so they advise city council who directs the city manager to then direct staff and implement matters.

And then finally, um our advisory boards are really uh limited in terms of resources.

They don't have many um much budget dedicated to them or dedicated staff resources outside of the limited role of a staff liaison, which is really responsible for um ensuring compliance, posting agendas, drafting minutes, things like that.

So we've heard from a number of members kind of an expanded desire to conduct a number of non-advisory board activities as well, such as hosting events, um, conducting advocacy efforts, fundraising for our items, et cetera, that don't again really fit in the advisory board structure.

So because of this, the challenges with the scope, we've had um for a number of years high turnover on the HRB and heard some discussions feedback from members about some frustration with the board and um its ability to feel effective and productive as a board.

So this is not a new uh challenge.

We identified this, actually the initial of the um human rights board identified this challenge when they came to City Council to request funding to draft the IDEA or inclusion, diversity, equity, and access strategic plan.

Um and as part of that scope that was that received support from City Council was to assess the scope of the human rights board.

So last year through that plan drafting process, we met with the human rights board a number of times.

The first was in March of last year and held a dedicated focus group with the HRB to talk about the plan as well as their scope.

Uh we then had two follow-up sessions in May and July of last year to conduct and discuss uh SWAC or strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and constraints analysis based on the board itself and their their uh scope as it stood.

We used that feedback as well as some additional research to uh draft an initial scope that we took to the HRB at the time in 2025, got feedback, continued to refine it, um, and most recently went back uh for a full discussion on April 2026 to get additional feedback on that scope as well as discuss the name of the board because we heard some feedback that the name didn't really align with the the intent of that advisory board.

And then finally discussed with HRB the most recently uh the meeting last week and kind of got final thumbs up.

They made a motion to uh approve the recommendation to advance the the change in scope and name that we'll touch on in a moment for you all tonight.

Um I do want to note that at that meeting last week we also had a separate discussion or separate but related discussion about the the actual structure of the board, kind of took a step back and um asked a question instead of how do we take an existing scope and make it fit what we need.

Um really asked the question of is this advisory board the best structure to advance the IDEA principles within Lafayette.

Um had a really rich discussion and ultimately the outcome from in terms of the recommendation was for the advisory board to remain uh to maintain their advisory board structure.

But we did talk about some other alternative options, such as creating kind of a separate 501c3 or community group that would allow the HRB to conduct some of those activities that they expressed interest in without being bound by the advisory board kind of limitations that I just mentioned.

So the product of those discussions was this draft scope that was outlined in your packet, and I'll just kind of walk through here on the screen with you all.

You'll see here the first change would be updating the name of the HRB to the inclusion, diversity, equity and access board that would align with our IDEA strategic plan.

And then that that board would advise city council on three key areas.

The first would be city policies that promote IDEA for Lafayette residents.

The second would be city initiatives and activities intended to improve IDEA across our municipal services and programs.

And the third would be community outreach practices and specifically providing feedback on efforts to remove participation barriers and improve engagement with our city decision making.

That's kind of the summary of that piece.

I'll pause here for questions and then we'll do next steps towards the end.

Great, thank you.

Questions about these proposed changes for what is currently HRB.

Mayor Proto.

Thank you, Mayor.

I got as uh I think this is gonna go straight to the city attorney.

So the question is if we and I couldn't agree more that there are amazing challenges with the the history of this board as it's been reformed, and I and I know they lift heavier loads than sometimes we do on our count on council because of the depth they they dig into.

And I I really appreciate this effort.

But so let's say that they get information from the 501c3 not for profit activities that they carry out.

How does that get to us without um taking into account open meetings laws, like the specifics that are discovered?

How do we get that robust information here if they were done outside of the city board scope?

Yeah, are you uh asking if if they were to use a different structure outside of our advisory board?

Um that would be likely through a number of avenues, um, any sort of communication with city council.

Um, they could certainly come to the public input and provide input in writing.

But the um to clarify, the the discussion uh with the HRB last week kind of landed on not changing the structure and so maintaining that advisory board piece.

Uh so then we go back to the some of the issues that they face when they want to discuss things, then they are bound by open meetings.

Yeah, and they're hot topics.

So how does that how does this how does that improve that situation?

How does changing the scope improve the situation?

Um changing the scope really helps give them a bit more direction, and because we were because we we've heard from a number of members the feeling like there was a lack of um really a lack of direction or a lack of um understanding of what the board is being tasked to do by the city council.

So include so at least the intent was to make the scope language, if we're gonna maintain this advisory board and this advisory board structure, um, update the scope language so that it is a little bit more implementable.

That's a word within within our advisory board um limitations, if that makes sense.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Great.

I think we can move on to planning commission.

Okay.

Moving on to the planning commission recruitment.

So, as you are aware, in 2024, the city transitioned to a semi-annual recruitment process.

Previous to this, we were doing kind of ad hoc recruitment as needed to fill vacancies on all of our city boards and commissions.

The intent of this transition was to coordinate our recruitment activities.

Um, really the the engagement, the communications, open house that we hold now, um, aligning our work plan process with city council cycle.

So that would be the election retreat, work plan setting, all of that, and then syncing all of the terms for our board and commission members.

We were in a position where almost every board member had a different term, and that made the administration of the boards really challenging, so this offered a great opportunity to sync all of those up.

Um summarize that cadence, we really do the primary recruitment activities between August and November with that includes soliciting applications, the boards conducting interviews, reviewing the applications, making recommendations to city council, all for terms to begin December 1st.

Um, then as it currently stands, January, those those boards hold work planning discussions, and then that's fed into our city council retreat on a year that we hold one, or provide it in an update to city council.

However, we have heard a couple times this year request to explore adjusting at least the planning commission recruitment cadence to fall after the city council election, because for really two reasons.

One, if someone ran for city council, was not elected, but is interested in serving on the planning commission.

Um currently they would have to either run for council and apply and then kind of weigh things out and see how the chips may fall.

Um the alternative would be someone currently sitting on city council who wants to then uh apply to serve on the planning commission.

This would again separating them out would just create some some clarity between those two processes and cadences.

So the potential adjustment based on that council request and feedback is what I'll walk through, but for some context, just to summarize um the city council process, just putting it all in one slide, as you you all are well aware, um the candidacy and campaign process really begins occurs between August and October, the election in November, results are certified late November, and then our counselors are sworn in that first meeting in December.

So if we were to switch the planning commission recruitment process to to um occur outside of the city council election window, what we would suggest is um beginning that opening that recruitment process the first week of November or December, excuse me, and having it open most of the month of December, and then at that time also determining the city council review committee, which is required by our charter, and then conducting the review of the applications early to mid-January and then making those recommended appointments for terms effective February 1st.

So it's really pushing out our current process two months to begin and um to begin after the city council election and the new councillors are sworn in.

Questions on this one.

Mayor Breton.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh so I'm wondering why this is how does why is this needed?

Um how is this different from the other?

Because there could be people who are looking at one of the other boards and commissions versus council.

So are we gonna have are we gonna end up doing this for the other boards and commissions?

I'm just under just to be clear what was the rationale for this only PC doing this.

Yeah, it's a great question.

Uh the rationale was we had um this this was kind of the direct request from city council was to look at the planning commission specifically, but we we do know that there have been sort in in the past um members who who ran for city council and then were ultimately appointed to other advisory boards.

So this this would be a city council decision, but just trying to be responsive to that request.

So this could happen for the other boards and commissions as well.

Okay.

Could I follow up on that?

Um if you're wanting to be consistent with time frames, uh which is why we changed to this process.

Could you just move everything two months and so that if somebody who ran for council must wanted to be on the SREV or the LOSEB or whatever it might be, but also be able to do that, and then when you'd have just like we have now, but it would be two months later, so that everything is coordinated.

Yeah, we can certainly do whatever you guys are open to.

What I would suggest maybe if we do in that process, uh just given the holidays with December, and if we're looking to the broader scope of trying to do recruitment, right now we have a spring recruitment process that is technically the off-cycle, and then this fall one, I would flip them and just make the spring one, which remind me Alex the days be your primary.

Yeah, opens in March.

And the fall be your kind of right, so that we're not then moving that up a month and getting into the holiday season.

So you start recruitment in January after all the holidays have settled, interviews for the entire because all of the boards will now have to do the interviews ahead of time to recommend to council.

So really open.

Again, this was kind of coming from council after I think one of the new ideas.

So we just want to be responsive given we are now getting close to that major council.

And I might just add, if if we were to change this for everybody, um the initial rationale for our current process was to have the board seated in the work plan discussions occur before any city council retreat, which typically takes place in February.

So this might just flip that.

And if council's okay, kind of having the priority setting discussion and then using that to determine the board and commission work plans, um, that's certainly up to you all, but it that that would kind of effectively change how we currently manage that process.

Councilor Bowler.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um and thank you, Mr.

Nelson.

Uh I'm certainly open to moving all the boards and commissions, so it's all at once, but strongly agree with our city manager's point on not crushing the holidays under a lot of paperwork.

Also, people make new years resolutions to volunteer more, so catch them early in the new year.

Uh so that's that's certainly something I'm interested in.

Um as a hypothetical, if a planning commissioner were to uh resign next week, and I were to resign from council tomorrow, could I apply to that planning commissioner opening?

Yes.

Okay, please, okay.

A planning commissioner resigns today.

I resign.

Can I apply apply for that planning commissioner vacancy?

Just getting the microphone.

Can I switch hats?

Assuming that I was selected.

As a hypothetical under our current code, there is no restriction on applying.

You cannot hold both offices at once, however.

Okay, thank you.

I don't like that.

I think there should be a cooling off period after serving on council.

I'm agnostic as what it is, six months, a year.

But given the unique hat of a counselor and the unique hat of a planning commissioner, I think going from council to planning commission is not ideal for the community.

We have a lot of 31,000 billion people.

So I I particularly I I would love to explore if we can add a cooling off period specific to PC, not to the others, because PC is special.

And I'm curious what other folks have to say about that.

I think this has become a bigger discussion on just boards and commissions as a whole.

I would ask staff what would be most beneficial at this moment.

Should we try to try to reel it in and talk about planning commission, or do we think this is best brought back for a larger discussion on boards and commissions?

Because we just changed our boards and commissions, which is the other part, and I I understand that.

Mayor for that.

Thank you, Miranda.

I was trying to minimize how many times we make changes, so that's why I initiated this conversation.

And it has become a bigger discussion.

I'm okay with not having a bigger discussion right now.

I just wanted to get some understanding of that we this may this may add more work than we would.

I don't want to add more work, but it may lead to it, but that might be important.

And maybe that and I don't think tonight is the night to add a can of worms or open the avenue for more uh discussion or more work down the line.

Uh so I don't think tonight is the time to have a discussion.

And I'm okay with this uh potential adjustment for now.

City manager.

What I will say is this year's not an election year.

So if we are facing kind of that rationale of the council candidates running and you know not knowing and changing the date because of that, that wouldn't that would be a good change for next year.

Well, Councillor Follier is um potentially citing his resignations that are kind of more of the unknown.

So I don't I don't know that that helps you, but if we want a cooling off period, that is more kind of more for the media discussion versus changing the timing necessarily based upon elections wouldn't impact you much this year.

We've always implemented that piece next year not to further even more into it.

But Councillor Jensen.

Thank you.

I I would like to understand why you you think a cooling off period is warranted, and I want to also just note that council doesn't have to accept somebody on the planning commission.

You know, we approve those positions.

So if we did thought a person needed a cooling off period for some reason, we could sort of enforce that by not choosing them at that moment, but I'd like to hear why you think it would be helpful.

I think given the unique role of planning commission and its relationship with council, because your fellow counselor is a colleague, uh switching the hats in what could be a very quick time frame could be perceived by the public as problematic.

It could be perceived that way.

Sure.

Okay.

I I hear that.

Uh Councilor Gianolo.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just wanted to say that I am in favor of the proposal that has been presented to us tonight.

And with respect to the cooling off period, a question I will raise is would this require a charter amendment?

I would like to look into that.

Our charter does uh does address planning commissioner qualifications and composition, unlike our other boards and commissions.

Uh so I'd like an opportunity to look into that and I can let council know.

Yeah, I think I think it might.

The answer is it might.

And so I think having the city attorney doing that evaluation if we are considering something like that is a good idea.

Great.

I'm hearing counselors at least want to look into this.

So can we have staff look at that both the charter and just everything in general for planning commission come back to us at some point with how we can move forward on a potential cooling off period?

But now that we're here and we're talking about this, I would love to hear thoughts on the questions at hand, which are the human rights board and the current proposals for the planning commission.

We can start with the human rights board.

Currently at the human rights board, possibly not soon.

But what's in front of us?

And I'd love to start with Councillor Jensen, being that she is the current liaison to that board.

It was a robust discussion, and they are good and smart folks, and this is what they have decided they want for themselves, and I respect that.

They've looked at all kinds of other ways to do business other than the format they're currently in.

They also had some ideas about things under that new scope that they could be doing right now.

And so I I feel like there was not a oh my gosh, with this new scope, what are we going to do with ourselves?

Which I think is sort of what has happened to other versions of this board, is they haven't really known what they could be working on.

But I think they had thoughts and ideas about ways to take that IDEA plan and weave it better into the work of the city.

Um kind of like when we talked tonight about you know public land dedication, you know, that those that process was established way before we had an IDEA kind of uh plan, and we hadn't talked about that.

And so they want to look at all the city functions and sort of figure out how we better incorporate those kind of principles into the work of the city, which I think could be a good lot of work for them for a while.

And so they are not going to be worried about what should they do, and I think they're gonna focus on that.

And um, you know, they do have an event coming up uh in October called uh it's not a screening, but excerpting of a film called the librarians, which is all about um you know free speech and um access to materials and and how that works in our society, which I think is gonna be really exciting.

So I don't think they are I I I'm all for this.

It feels like the right thing to do based on the people who've been dedicated to this wanting it to happen.

Okay.

Thank you.

Other thoughts from counsel on this?

And I'm happy to go next.

Counselor Bullet.

I'm thrilled that we have uh two HRB members in the room.

Uh so thank you all for being here.

I know the the folks who comprise this board are extremely dedicated, uh, have chosen excellent spouses.

Um I I guess I'm I'm thrilled to support this.

I don't see any reason why not to.

Um I'm excited to uh to roll out the artist that's not DEIA, I D E A board.

So yeah, absolutely.

I'll go next actually, because I I I shortly, for a short amount of time served on HRB and then became liaison to HRB.

And I love this board and I understand just how just how much they can do, but I understand that for a very long time that scope was very, very broad, which created a problem.

So I I love this and I I I'd love that we're moving forward.

Mayor Proton.

Thank you, Mayor.

I would just like to say this is part of an evolution.

Not supposed to say evolution.

Uh this is part of the progression of the lifting or the lifting all voices uh in the city.

And we have to do some work with the waste reduction advisory committee.

We had to do work with LESAC.

I'm not gonna try to remember that whole acronym.

Uh the older older adults advisory board.

And uh, you know, it hurt my heart to see HRB struggling.

And the the amazing amount of work that they did and what they had to deal with when we were discussing Mary Miller's history here.

It's something I think they deserve the respect uh uh to be able to determine w how they should be organized.

So I'm well in favor of this, and if there are any uh things that they struggle with moving forward that we should continue to be there for them uh to make it possible for them to act with the assurity that council is uh in support of the work that they're doing.

So I'm I'm proud to see that they have done the work to make this change to figure out what will empower them forward.

And I I just want to make sure that council undersues understands that this is one of the spectacular boards that has a future.

They just had to uh let us know what they need to do.

Great.

Thank you, Mayor.

Pro Tim.

Um any other counselor want to jump in on this one?

Right?

It seems like we have most counsel uh for this one.

Planning commission recruitment.

Any thoughts?

I counselor Jensen.

I don't think we should make a decision tonight since we don't need to.

And since this question, I think I'd like to give staff a little time to think about if we did change the dates for all of them to two months later, how might that impact the workload and whether there's you know any conflicts or anything?

Um and then we would come back and uh look at this once we have that information from staff.

Um I mean it would to me it seems logical that it would be easier if we didn't have planning commission have a separate process from everybody else.

But if that's not true, and you would rather just have planning commission do this.

Uh but I do think the reason this was brought to our attention is what we saw last election cycle with the the a council member wanting to be on the planning commission and just the awkwardness that created.

And any board or commission could have that happen.

You know, and so it's uh I think it would be prudent to plan for that happening in the future with another board or commission, and that if we can and it doesn't disrupt things too much, we should probably keep everything together.

That's but I want to make sure staff feels like it is not too much of an intrusion on their workload the way it's being suggested.

Thank you, Counselor.

Mayor Proto?

Uh I'm just gonna echo what Councilor Jensen said uh to finally get this put this ones asleep.

Like we've got a structure that works and and everybody's happy with it.

So uh I'm I'll interested in hearing what city staff say to finally settle us.

Counselor Giannola.

I'll be the odd man out and say I I disagree.

I think planning commission is different.

It's already different.

You know, we've already had a separate recruitment for planning commission uh during the year 2026 due to vacancy, but we don't fill vacancies on other boards and commissions like we fill on planning commission.

So I am personally comfortable with the proposal to shift the recruitment cycle for planning commission separate from all the other boards and commissions.

I think it's a uh a good idea.

I think the timing is is better aligned with just some of the options and abilities and certainly my desire to see the incoming city councillors have the the input on who their planning commission is going to be for while they're um while they're on the city council.

I think there's a lot of good reasons to do this, and um I think to do it separate from the rest of the boards and commission is okay.

Thank you, counselor.

Counselor Bullier.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh I'll agree with Councillor Gianola in terms of feeling comfortable uh making the recommended or potential decision uh or recommendation to shift the time frame.

Uh I'm happy to to revisit the cooling off period once the city attorney and um uh has had time to look at it.

Uh I did want to just flag, so I'm lucky to to serve as the council liaison for the older adult advisory board, public art committee, and and LCAV.

And I have heard from representatives from each of those groups that filling vacancies in the middle of the year is a challenge.

Uh we've grappled with vacancy, they've grappled with vacancies uh on each of those boards in the past seven months that I've been liaison.

Uh so there I do want to just know that that is a challenge for the boards because of the new process, as has been explained to me.

So we don't need to assort that tonight, but I did want to convey that uh that concern and challenge.

Um one potential suggestion I heard was like, hey, we had all these applicants, we selected this person three months later, someone moved out of state.

Can we just grab someone from that hat we already interviewed them and like we like them, we would be happy to go with them.

That's not how our process currently works.

So I just want to flag that that's a concern that they have shared.

But yeah, I agree with Councillor Gianola in terms of the PC recommendation.

Thank you, Mayor.

Okay, thank you.

Counselor Gallegos, thoughts on this?

So I'm thinking that staff worked hard to simplify the recruiting process.

And why are we going to change it to add another separate process?

So I don't see the need to move forward with this.

I like the current process.

Um but if a change to the calendar is what's needed, that's fine with me.

Could you explain what you meant by that?

Are you meaning everybody changes or just the planning commission changes when you say it changed?

So I don't see the need to change just planning commission.

I think it should be on the same timeline as all of the other boards and commissions.

Okay.

Sorry, Mayor.

I had a point of clarification.

And because Council Boyer is on three different boards.

Changing in the in the middle of the year, if that doesn't work.

Would it was there one part of the year that's better for those boards?

Or is it that they'd like to have a pool that they can pull from at any point or is it both.

The concern and challenge that's been shared with me is our current process is onerous on them when a vacancy inevitably occurs.

Okay.

I don't have the answer.

I don't know that we need to solve that tonight.

Um because it's not necessarily the question uh of the day.

Um but I just want to clarify that.

Okay.

Yeah, because that's always that's part of the reason why we move to this.

And it's not perfect.

They've been very clear that like they're cognizant that there was a lot of good effort and work to get it right, and they're like, uh, this doesn't actually quite work either, just because there is a fair amount of normal attrition.

I do like the idea of a pool.

Yeah.

To poll for which is a whole big can of worms.

I didn't know.

Okay.

Well, I'm not seeing a majority on either side of this, which is a strange one.

I would just know I'm comfortable with Counselor Gayagos' recommendation too, in addition to uh moving PC, moving all of them.

I I don't see a reason we wouldn't, but I'm also I don't feel strongly that we need to.

I'm open to that.

Okay.

And that's what I had asked if we do that, that we make sure make sure that works for staff.

If we move all of them two months, you know, in terms of staff's workload, are there things that that causes a problem for maybe it's three months they need it to be or whatever it might be.

Um but I would like to hear to make a decision that it works for staff.

And I would prefer to keep it all together as it currently is.

Um I'm not wedded to this really strongly.

Sure.

I've a couple of thoughts if you guys don't mind me sharing them.

So again, because this isn't an election year, if there isn't as much urgency, just in my humble opinion, for the PC to be moved this year because we won't have candidates.

So if there is an exploration for moving all of it, because this now impacts all of the boards, I might want to suggest doing a little bit more robust, just asking that, hearing some of these that's first I've heard of those things, right?

We did have two counselors meet with the chairs and maybe regrouping with that, and then because time is sort of of the essence for this fall recruitment when we open it up in August.

I don't know that I'd be able to come back to you in the next couple of weeks to say let's move all of them at this point.

So what I would recommend to fast forward, either start with planning commission now as sort of a pilot, and then next cycle next year, planning commission will already be on there for your council election, and then I recommend all the boards if we do feel like it's a value.

Or hold on everything right now.

Get input holistically and do it if that makes any sense uh for next year's recruitment.

So I I don't want to put staff and limbo on our boards in the bow opening up this recruitment and doing all the messaging.

So yeah, before when it is limited to planning commission, fully easy.

We're going to look at, which I also agree could be a benefit.

We just haven't really laid the pros and cons.

I think there's a lot to discuss there.

I I would love the input of the of the chairs.

Um possibly bring that forward.

So my recommendation would be to hold on everything and then try to create something maybe for all of them and put them all in the same timeline.

But I'm happy to hear out counsel.

That's also where the majority, at least for now of council has been, which is just let's give staff time to kind of figure something out along with the boards.

May I just say since it is on the table, it seems like an easy button to just say do the PC thing and then everything else we we look into?

I'd be happy with that.

I still don't have a majority there.

Again, you're not voting for the three.

If we can bring it forward and possibly uh vote on it at some point.

Uh to staff feel like they have enough on this.

Good.

Yep.

Yeah, so we'll move forward with the HRBU scope change through an ordinance and proceed with that recruitment in about a month from now.

Okay.

Cool.

Thank you so much.

So our final agenda item tonight, uh, new ideas.

Through the process that we have laid out.

I did not hear anything this week.

I spoke to staff earlier.

I believe uh staff did not hear anything either.

I can't hear you all.

I'm sending your microphone.

Can you hear me?

Sorry.

Okay.

No new ideas were flagged for me this week, and no new ideas were flagged for staff this week from either.

Can I expand on that briefly?

Just not on the cooling off of the PC.

Um I I just thought I'd say I had a great check-in with our city manager the other day and then texted something to the effect.

We've gotten a lot of really robust feedback from the public in the past couple weeks.

Uh and the vast majority of it I I really have enjoyed reading.

But I gotta say there's something a little bit striking to me about some of how some folks are writing to staff and council.

And I have a thick skin.

People can call me whatever they want.

But I I'm really struggling with the degree of uh vitriol that I I've seen in some of the comments structured at staff, and I just do not appreciate it, and I don't understand where it's coming from.

And I just it it's it's stuck in my craw, and I don't know if it's because of the heat wave, but uh I'm just very appreciative of the ongoing work from staff.

We'll have disagreements or critiques where they arise, but wow, some of the things covered in are interesting.

Please just to say I feel that it's very um comforting, it's reassuring, it's eas not easy, but it's an avenue that's easy for people to say things that they might not say in person.

Um but they're real.

Um it's a platform that we have to understand is is an avenue for people to express how they really feel, and they might have to be able to do it in person.

Um we not city student necessarily, but we're you know, that's part of what we do is we are the sounding board for people to open up.

And I I think it's a one of those environments where um it empowers people to say to to write things that they might not say in person.

Great.

Well, thank you all so much.

Have a great night getting adjourned.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

There was one thing I wanted to bring to the table, which is the so Kyle and I have both been contacted by the young woman and the gentleman who spoke to us about plug and abandoning uh plugging abandoned wells.

They would like to come to us and give us uh a better picture of what's going on in Lafayette with wells, how many are close to schools, what is the nature of them?

And I have attended one meeting of a working group that's working on this regionally, and uh I think it would be beneficial to have a little included in that conversation um this regional working group where they're going so that I could share that with you guys and get feedback so that as I try and you know represent the city in this working group, I have a sense of what we care about.

So I we haven't talked about this before, and I know our agenda is full and we've gotten delayed on a lot of things, so I don't really know where this fits.

Um do you want to add anything about uh that there are some community members with expertise and knowledge that I think could be very helpful to us in understanding this?

Um, it's like adding another thing to our agenda when we have a lot on our plate.

So I I am saying that in full knowledge uh that it's an issue, but it is an issue not just for us, but for Erie and Frederick and Decono and some parts of unincorporated boulder.

And so I would like some guidance, and I think Kyle would too, of how you want to proceed with regard to this topic.

You want guidance tonight on how to proceed on this topic?

Just general thoughts of and whether you think it makes sense to have a work working session to talk about this further.

I uh are you not interested at all?

You know, just sort of where are people on this topic.

I think it's a really difficult question to answer.

Like quite broad.

It's quite a big topic.

Um I know there's a couple working groups going.

I know there's a lot of interest.

Um I would love to know the exact specific way in which we could work around to get a presentation going and understand that the majority of council would have to sign off on that before anything comes before us.

Um but then also this could definitely be a workshop session toward the future.

But yes, you're absolutely right.

It's a very full agenda at the moment, so it would be a difficult one.

Mayor Proton.

Uh I would I would uh think that a workshop agenda item would be prudent so that we can understand the landscape, and it's not just Boulder County, it's not just the front range.