Counselor Silver has an excused absence.

He is out of town.

And I believe that Councilor Branch should be here any minute.

So with that, we will turn it over to Sarah Sonasi from Planning and Development.

Well, no, we won't.

We will turn it over to Patrick Young.

Good afternoon, Pat Young, Planning and Development.

Mayor, Counsel, thank you for the opportunity.

With me today is Sher Sarah Shaughnessy, who is our project manager for the Reflecting Raleigh Comprehensive Plan Development Process and our assistant director Bynum Walter of our comprehensive and long-range planning division.

We wanted to just take a few minutes to follow up from our re retreat engagement with you in late September to reflect back what we heard in terms of key themes and make sure that we captured those themes fully and correctly and that we have uh reflected them in a way that feel meets your intention.

And if there's any other items or areas of interest you want to add before we proceed into the next phase of the process.

So that's we'll do that here quickly.

Um as we told you at the retreat, um, there's a five-phase phase process.

We are at the very end of phase one, which was our initial engagement, which included our community conversations and over uh a hundred other touch points with our community members.

We are about to enter into phase two plan development, as you heard at the retreat.

Um most importantly, there's going to be lots of opportunities, uh checkpoints with you all to make sure that we're on the right track, right?

That we get your feedback, that we summarize the engagements that we've done previously, and that we forecast what's coming before you.

Um the uh what's crucial here is that um any time you want us to come here, just let the manager's office know, we will we'll come before you, even outside of the schedule.

We do provide monthly updates that are quite detailed in your uh weekly weekly manager report.

So again, lots of opportunities for you to provide your input, insight, and direction, which we critically need to make sure we're on the right track as we bring the look to bring this to you in 2027 for adoption.

Right.

So one of the key issues, so the first key issue we heard was to make sure that we identify and assess emerging issues.

And I think that was a really good piece of uh recommendation or advisement.

We um have a wealth of technical expertise um and guidance from um the American Planning Association and uh other groups like the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, which helps uh the American Planning Institute do an emerging planning issues on an annual basis.

The Urban Land Institute reports on the uh changes in the real estate market, and many of you have attended their events.

Uh and there's a whole host of other kind of pure peer-reviewed and popular literature, Smart Growth America is another group.

So we uh our team um as part of the community inventory, which is underway now and should be wrapped up in about January, um, we'll have that emerging issues um assessment complete.

And we will ensure that those inform our technical teams, our citizen assembly, and um you all as we uh move into drafting the plan later in 2026.

So um but again, so we'll we'll publish that report and bring it to you um in January.

If you want us to come before you in a forum like this, please let me or the manager know and we'll we'll certainly arrange that.

But we were just gonna forward that to you along with part of our monthly communication.

Um another issue we heard from you all uh loud and clear was communicating trade-offs, right?

You all as decision makers are constantly uh grappling with challenging trade-offs, right?

One example that comes up frequently is density, taxes, and stable services, right?

There's tension between those three things, and that um is constantly having to be negotiated and resolved.

So we want to make sure that um as we bring forward policy, getting feedback from you all, getting feedback from our technical teams from the Citizen Assembly, that we um um are ensuring that trade-offs uh with various alternatives are part of the engagement process and are framed out uh fully.

We um uh have as part of our you see Joe Minakazi here, who's an urbanist and was one of the speakers at our Reflecting Raleigh events.

Um he really uses that framing of of trade-offs frequently.

We want to make sure we keep that front and center as we continue to talk with the community.

Um reducing friction, I think what that means is we we did hear that there was occasionally some tension between existing comprehensive plan policies, the interpretation of those policies, and the unified development ordinance provisions, right?

So we we see the need based on your feedback to set clear expectations for you and the public about how these policies uh may or may not shape land use and development, that the next plan will be narrow or in focus.

You see Bynum's famous uh goodnight moon analogy, where we really want to make this something that's uh lean, easy to read, and really clearly advises you and importantly the public on what to expect from land use uh change and and community growth.

Um we will work internally with a series of technical teams, as we told you at the retreat to validate or refine those existing policies, develop new policies, um, and uh and eliminate a re revised policies that are redundant, uh conflicting or no longer relevant, or that you all feel you know don't meet the their intended uh purpose.

So that the goal is to create clear actionable policy to communicate and communicate that policy, um, including that balancing values and trade-offs when we bring policies forward uh late in 26, early 27.

And then reporting on the plan.

That was another key area we heard from you all where there was a lot of interest to ensure that both you all and the community see are we making progress towards fulfilling our goals.

So since the uh 2030 plan was adopted in 2009, there have been annual reports on that.

We feel like that does lay out uh how we've made progress on that plan, and there's been a lot of progress made on that plan.

For example, as I think you heard at the retreat, the 2020 n plan anticipated 60 percent of our growth in activity centers.

We've got closer to 70 percent.

So we we want to keep that up, but even go a step further, really in two key ways.

One have an online dashboard approach so that anybody at any time can go in and look at how we're progressing towards our goals with key metrics.

And um, secondly, that there's um uh uh a clear and and frequent um update um uh on uh uh how how we are progressing towards the plan um with uh community engagement updates to you all and essentially opportunities to revise uh improve or adapt.

So both at the retreat and previously, so this list includes both of those.

We heard about another of uh a series of um other issues that there were interest for.

Uh and we want to make sure that we incorporate we are going to incorporate these in the plan and make sure that they are assessed and evaluated for policy uh recommendations and land use changes where appropriate and where necessary.

Want to use the opportunity today.

If there's anything that's on this list that you don't think you think is no longer appropriate, or that you anything you want to add, this is a great opportunity to to do that.

And so as we talked about at the retreat, we're we're finishing up the community inventory.

This is essentially kind of an existing conditions analysis, along with as we mentioned, that emerging trends report, the civic assembly will be underway in the coming months.