Alright, everyone, we're gonna go ahead and get started.

Welcome to the Thursday, May 7th meeting of the City Council Business and Community Affairs meeting.

Today we have one item on our agenda, and that is a update and discussion regarding the scope of the plans funded by the Pro Housing Grant Award, including impacts on pre-approved plans, parking, and minimum lot size regulations.

And I believe we have a brief presentation from staff.

Yeah.

Okay, awesome.

Well slides.

No problem.

I'm here.

So I think we would just wanted kind of an update on where we are on these items.

Right.

Okay.

So as you guys know, we got the ProHusing uh grant.

So we have until September 2030 to use all of those funds, and we have four projects.

So we're starting on the first two, which is uh the zoning and subdivision regulation code update and the parking study.

So uh for the first item, the pre-approved plans, that is uh well for anyone who might not know.

Those are uh essentially like architectural plans for building permits where someone can come in and pretty much have a set ready to go.

That's kind of a design we want to see in an area.

Um so it's it's quicker, it's supposed to be like a more streamlined process and save them a little bit of design cost.

Um we will be putting for that out in the first part of 2028 according to our action plan that was approved by HUD.

So we pretty much finished the first two projects and then move into the pre-approved plans and the affordable housing action plan.

And so it's a four-year grant, if I understand that right.

Essentially, we lost a lot of time with the federal shutdowns.

Right, like that.

So three and a half year.

Okay.

Um yeah, so we did have to kind of push everything back essentially a year.

Um, and then we're giving ourselves a little bit of wiggle room at the end just to make sure we get all of our reporting finished and are totally closed out by September of 2030.

Um for parking, there's I know the uh parking maximums have been of interest, and we've discussed that before.

So our parking study, uh, they actually started collecting data last week, last Wednesday, I think, over at downtown campus corner, kind of the center city area.

We wanted to get started on data collection before school let out.

So they started that area.

Um they're gonna come visit in June, probably end of June, and then we'll do more data collection in the fall when school's back in session.

Um so we we have heard a lot about how um parking for residential can impact affordability.

So they'll be looking at um the effects of that and um just kind of looking at how parking is utilized throughout the city where there's too much pressure, maybe where it's not as much of an issue.

Um I want to say there's four study areas, like data collection areas that they'll do.

Taylors.

He's my my bud on this project.

Um so we wanted to take like a more holistic view of parking instead of just trying to pick some I just say like arbitrary or random numbers for maximums.

Maybe there's maximums we can put in place plus XYZ to really hit all the goals that we have, not just parking.

Um, and then minimum lot size.

We've talked about that a couple of times.

Um, and we did hear about it when the consultant was here this week.

Um it is radical is probably not the right word, but it is uh kind of an out there concept, a new concept.

There's not really cities around the country that have done that yet.

There's a lot that do are looking at it right now, even just with Clarion, the consultant we're working with, they said another city um that they're working with is doing no minimum lot size but a minimum lot width.

So we'll be exploring it and we'll see.

We might not end up with that.

Um, because we kind of have to balance the people who want that with people who don't.

So we might end up with the compromise somewhere, but that's the the quick rundown of where we are.

On the uh minimum lot size piece, uh my my preference uh that that be zero.

We have no minimum lot size because we have other controlling factors like frontage, lot width, there's other things that come into play that are requirements, and so I think if you're able to satisfy those set of requirements, that the overall lot size number should be there, should be no requirement there.

So that's that's kind of my approach on that one.

Um on the parking piece, and anybody chime in at any time or just giving my thoughts here.

Uh the parking piece, you know, we we abolished parking minimums a few years back, and so they're now recommendations, but those recommendations are still very bloated.

Like those numbers are still the old numbers from the 1954 zoning code, and so even though we don't have any parking minimums, I'd love to take those numbers and actually make them more based in reality.

Um, and then when we apply a maximum, I've looked at that as almost a soft cap.

So to say that yes, here is our here's our threshold for how much parking we want you to put in.

If you want to go over that, you're allowed to, but there's some fee or extra requirement that you've got to you've got to compromise, or we've got to um reconcile to base go over that soft gap.

So um customer grant.