Good morning, everyone.

Today is August 6, 2025, and I call the Lake County Planning, Building, Zoning, and Environment Committee to order at 1032 a.m.

In addition to being able to attend in person, remote attendance has been made available to the public via Zoom at the link on the agenda.

This meeting is being recorded through Zoom.

Per county board rules and open meetings act, attendance via remote means is permitted for qualifying reasons as long as the majority of the committee members are physically present.

But we have nobody online today for a qualifying reasons.

Okay, so we're going to move to um member campos.

Can you join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

Under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Can we get a roll call, please?

Yes.

Here.

Member Complos?

Yeah.

Member Frank?

Here.

Member can you think?

Member Schlick is absent and member Wassick is absent.

Here.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you, Member Wasick.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any addenda to the agenda?

No addenda to the agenda.

Any public comment?

No public comments.

Okay.

I have no chairs remarks today.

Um, any unfinished business?

No one finished business.

Okay, we're gonna move on to new business, and we're gonna welcome PBD director Eric Wagner, deputy director and zoning administrator, Krista Barclay Braun, and senior planner PBD Taylor Gendel.

So this is a resolution directing the Lake County Zoning Board of Appeals to conduct a public hearing on proposed tax amendments to chapter 151 of the Lake County, Illinois Code of Ordinances relating to a sustainable development incentives ordinance for unincorporated Lake County.

Can I get a motion, please?

Motion by Member Frank, second by member campos.

Proceed.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Um so the committee has previously directed staff to research potential sustainable development incentive ordinance for unincorporated Lake County.

Um amendments are being drafted to provide applicants with the option to incorporate various sustainable practices into a project in exchange for certain density and dimensional standard-based incentives to be approved administratively through a weighted system.

Um these proposed incentives available for including additional sustainable practices would allow for increased density or floor area and reduced building setbacks.

Um and then some of the sustainable practices that the applicants would be able to choose from include, but aren't limited to building electrification, EV readiness, geothermal heating, green roofs, or solar energy.

So at this time, staff is just seeking confirmation from committee on the general direction of the proposed amendments and to initiate a formal hearing process.

So the next step would be county board's approval of a resolution to initiate the ZBA hearing.

Um, and then staff would complete the drafting process and proceed to ZBA for the hearing of the proposed text amendments.

That's all okay.

So is this the first time we're doing something like this?

Yes, it's very exciting.

Okay.

So yeah, just to sort of um expand on Taylor's comments.

This is a new direction for the department.

Traditionally, we have um through our regulations required certain sustainability features.

This is a way that we can sort of add the the carrot to the stick um in the equation in trying to drive innovation and development in the county.

And so by offering um developments, ways in which they can uh they can improve their bottom line for penciling out projects in exchange for additional sustainability benefits to the property, the environment, the community.

We think that that's a great way that we could encourage more of this happening without requiring it.

stick um in the equation in trying to drive innovation and and development in the county and so by offering um developments ways in which they can uh they can improve their bottom line for penciling out projects in exchange for additional sustainability benefits to the property the environment to the community we think that that's a a great way that we could encourage more of this happening without requiring it okay and can you give a couple examples like what what could they incorporate that that would be you know uh appealing to us they could put solar on the roof uh they could put a green roof on the building um they could have EV readiness so just have it ready to uh have an electric vehicle not necessarily install it but have it electric charging station and the interesting thing about this approach that we're taking is that it starts with sort of a baseline series of sustainability um approaches or ideas but when we have the framework in the ordinance we can add to it as time goes by and so when we see more sustainability practices that are become better becoming feasible within the marketplace um we can start to amend the ordinance to add those incentives in as well so that we can over time you know develop out a whole series of of feasible strategies to incorporate voluntarily incorporate sustainability into new developments and so um this is I believe a start of something that's gonna be ongoing as time goes by and we can continue to build on the on the positive work in starting this this uh this new approach okay member frank thank you chair so uh just so I understand what the framework would look like do you envision that this is like a set of options that are essentially trade-offs like hey you want to you know not you want to build up beyond our traditional setback limitations uh we're open to that conversation if you incorporate three other points yeah eco friendly you know elements right so so they're they're trade-off items that are on the menu that previously were not is that right exactly and it's important to note that we're not the first community in the country that's doing this this is actually the point system has been in place in a number of jurisdictions across the country over the years you'll see that um that's actually been successful in driving sustainability and development and so that's um an opportunity for us to sort of join the the growing list of communities across the country that taking this sort of characteristic approach so and we have a lot of good you know background sort of best practices to draw from in that regard that's great thank you for pointing that out I think it's unusual when we do something where we're not the first because we're used to being the first it's okay to it's okay to do something and we're not the first I just have one other question if that's okay.

And that is um I just completely lost my train of thought so I'll be raising my hand again in about two minutes.

Okay.