So she's on here right now.

She's wondering what they want.

Well, it's very good.

Okay.

Yes.

I think that's how they're on.

And you are not going to be able to do that.

I'm hopeful.

Are we good to go, Jamie?

Josh?

Do we have anybody joining us?

No, not yet.

Not yet.

Okay.

Well, council, we'd like to go ahead and call our work session meeting to order.

Um elected officials present with the exception of Councilmember McKay, who's excused, maybe joining us.

And Josh will signal if she uh does come on online.

So there's only one item on the agenda for tonight.

That was to review the architectural standards discussion.

I think this is something that Councilmember McKay and also Perucci uh wanted to uh to discuss.

Time permitting, which I think we will have.

I wanted Kevin and Jamie to kind of go through the other work session topics that council members have brought up uh that they'd like to discuss at future work session meetings and make sure we've captured everything.

But that's the only thing I have for today.

So Jason, why don't you go ahead and walk us through it?

And and as you said, I know Councilmember McKay have some additional things.

So uh just generally speaking, and this this is very much a kind of a brief summary, but the way our architectural standards work uh currently in the city with our ordinances, the city council sets those standards.

You you adopt the uh the commercial site plan is what we call it, the standards that uh that dictate uh architectural appearance and layout and things for commercial projects.

The those are amended and updated as necessary, which is what we're going through now, and the approval authority at the project level is delegated to the planning commission.

So the planning commission is going to when we're adopting new standards, they will make a recommendation that will come to you that way.

And then they are the ones that administer those standards.

They are the land use authority for commercial projects.

So same process as always, they'll hold a public hearing uh and then review and and take action on projects.

Um the way that architectural standards working, and and there's lots of different ways to describe this, but you kind of have two different approaches within those ordinances.

Soft standards, which are like currently in our ordinance we have a checklist of five uh features that have to be included out of a list of of several.

Um soft standards are ones where there's a little more discretion on uh things like an earth tone color palette is considered a soft standard because that that can mean different things in different contexts.

Um sometimes those soft standards get a little too soft.

That last sentence there is from the uh the Mountain View Village.

I'm sorry, not Mountain View Village, the suburban land reserve design guidelines.

It's one of those sentences that when you boil it down, it doesn't really say anything.

Buildings should be scaled to respond to their context by sensitively and positively addressing the scale.

So sometimes the standards get too soft, and it's very difficult to figure out exactly what that means or what that means in the context of a particular development.

Hard standards are ones that are just you know the height of the building can't exceed 50 feet.

You know, the roof line variation has to come every 50 linear feet.

Those are much easier from a review standpoint to say the developer did this or he did not do that.

So in trying to get architectural standards that function well, accomplish what the city is is trying to do, we we want to be you know somewhere in between, meaning we have some fixed standards that make sure that things that we don't want to happen or that you know have to happen a certain way are addressed, but we also want to try to avoid situations like that last sentence where no one is really clear on what's being said.

So we we have started the process of updating our architectural standards, just looking at again a couple of examples from different cities.

Um, this one, and you don't need to read it all, but is very, very broad.

It basically kind of says in that A1 come tell us what you're doing, and we'll evaluate it.

Give us give us a design book, show us the building that you're proposing.

We'll take a look at it and see and decide whether it fits in the city.

Some very general standards that that in this situation for this city that uses this ordinance, um, kind of maximum discretion.

They're basically said, come tell us what you want, and we'll see if it fits in our city.

Um, maybe the other end of that spectrum, there are cities like Sandy that has a design manual, and it I think there's 80 plus pages.

And it's a lot of images like you see over on the right, uh, where it gives examples, this, not this, you know, this is a good look, this is a bad look.

Uh equally valid approach, but becomes uh very, very detailed.

It's a little easier for everyone to look and say, okay, I know what not to do and I know what to do, but it also makes it more difficult sometimes when you when those standards start to change, when the market changes, when you have a building that doesn't quite fit anywhere in that spectrum, uh it's almost sometimes too rigid.

So the direction that uh that we're going as far as preparing some things to move forward is is right in the middle.

This is an example ordinance from a city that kind of has a good balance of uh soft standards, uh giving some general guidelines, uh the types of materials and colors that they they want to see and in what proportions without saying every building has to look uh like this.

Prohibited materials, uh, that is an area I like to say it's much easier to say what we don't want than what every building has to look like.

So setting some prohibited materials, and and in this instance, this city has said uh things like uh wood is a primary finish, CMU block, putting that list together, those fixed standards of saying don't don't do this.