Recording in progress.

And is a founder of revival development.

We have Paul Alred, who, after 30 years, instead of retiring and sitting on a beach and drinking umbrella drinks, decided to get into the private sector and is a uh the owner of uh private sector business as well and doing consulting.

We've got uh Chris Hupp, who most of you know he's with Solmus, but he's also the programs director for APA.

Uh Chris and I have known each other for 17.

All right.

So this just a little bit of a backstory here on how this came together.

We were working on um a housing summit, and um we had recruited these gentlemen and asked them to help us kind of work on this UMB playbook.

We knew we had some issues across the board.

Part of what we wanted to do was um be a voice for planners, staff you know, level people, um, and we realized really quickly that there's stuff happening at the city level that they can't really talk about.

Um they've got families, they've got mortgages, they've got you know careers to maintain.

So part of what we wanted to do was um sort of voice things that we've heard from friends from colleagues, um, and just talk about solutions, talk about the challenges that we're all dealing with.

And um, the conversation on a call one day with the committee putting this together was so good that we all said, shoot, we wish we would have recorded this and we could have just played it back to you guys.

So, unfortunately, um you're gonna have to listen to us yammer up here and stumble through it again and try to recreate that conversation.

Um, but we recruited Paul to come in as a retired, semi-retired public person.

Um Paul is not afraid to tell us the truth.

Um, he's not afraid to represent his people.

Um, and so I think between the three of these guys, uh, we're gonna have a super interesting discussion.

So we've got some slides um just to kind of talk through um some of the challenges, the objections we hear.

This is not formal at all, it is just a discussion.

Um so I think probably just to start off with you know, one of the big ones we all hear, we don't want density, we don't want intensity.

Anybody heard that objection at council planning commission, staff meetings, staffers have you know, have to represent stakeholders and say, look, our people don't want density.

So we've all heard this one.

Um Chris, why don't we take it off with you?

You're holding the mic.

I was pass it over.

All right, Christopher's okay.

Well, um so uh probably the most common thing that we heard, and and this is this is why we wanted to start with this is we don't want density, and uh we don't want those people.

Uh you'll see a few of these things.

We it's going to be crime.

It's it's too crowded as it is.

And and as we were going through this, as we were going through this discussion, we were going through specific examples of how we addressed it, and and to Auggy's points that he had already mentioned, we talked through some of these and started to develop out what we like to call the Yimbi playbook that has specific solutions that could be utilized in different circumstances.

And as we go through this, I I had an opportunity, and I don't I don't know if I see anyone from Leighton City.

If you're from Layton City, raise your hand.

Hey, there you go.

Got a few from Layton.

Hey, there we go.

Yeah.

So we were working with Leighton City, and the Latin City planners wanted to uh or did the presentation.

I sat in the audience and I looked for specific NIMBY's that would have potential issue or who had been brought to our attention as being NIMBY's, and I sat right next to them.

So that as the latent city planners talked about the topic, talked about the project, and the NIMBY would say, Well, what about the traffic is gonna be blah blah blah blah?

I was able to sit right next to them and give them the facts behind all that and resolve that NIMBY issue before it became an actual issue.

That's uh again one of the many solutions that we can do.

Plant people in the audience, sit next to the NIMBY's, get to know them, understand what their exact concerns are, and address those exact concerns.

Along that same line, uh there are a lot of great strategies to uh counteract NIMBYism.

And along what he was saying, one strategy I developed was I would try to meet with the NIMBY's as much as I could one-on-one or in small groups.

I invite them to City Hall prior to the public meeting, public hearing, and I'd say, okay, let me hear your concerns.

And then I would take that opportunity to get to know uh the chinks in their armor, so to speak.

And so that we could counteract some of that.

And as staff in particular, after meeting with uh those folks, those residents, uh the most important thing about meeting with residents, by the way, wasn't to find the weaknesses, it was to it was to try to make uh create understanding and try to educate them about the zoning process.

So much of what we see in the public realm is are people that come to meetings that are uninformed.

They don't understand land use planning at all.

They're terrified.

They think the sky is falling, and we've all heard threats.

We've all heard, you know, some of us have been involved.

Anybody ever been involved in a lawsuit, law land use lawsuit with your city?

Okay, quite a few, actually.

Yeah.

I mean, I I had 30 something years in planning and was involved only in a couple because job one was to keep my city out of court.

But getting to know the NIMBY's and and able to answer their questions in advance, especially the most vocal ones.

I used to go out in the hallway during the public hearing and invite some of the most angry people out.

I'd mentioned I'd get up from where I was sitting with staff and say, come on, and they'd be like, what?

And I say, guys, keep going.

And I'd let my other staff members, and I would take them out in the hallway, and I'd say, let's talk.

And then after the meeting, I would chase down the people who were the most angry and I'd say, let's talk.

And it's amazing the amount of good you can do, the goodwill you can build, and the misinformation that they have about a variety of issues.

But it takes that care and that that concern.

So one of the strategies we talked about as a group was getting to know your NIMBYs and kind of meeting trouble in the parking lot before it gets in there.

We call it meeting trouble in the parking lot.

Just adding to what uh Paul said is uh is have your data, be prepared.

Um, when we talk about density, um, not everybody can visualize what's written on a staff report or on the paper.

So good visuals are a good way to help NIMBY's visualize what's really being um planned or proposed.

Otherwise, their mind wanders into you know the dark side of how bad it could be.

So I've learned that uh you should know the facts, have the information, and have as many good visuals as possible.

Um, don't just assume that if they read the staff report and you show the density of so many units per acre that they know what that looks like.

So learn that that's a really good way to help as well, especially with density.

Nick, go a step further with the visualization.

You tell us about some some exercises and trips you've been on.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, so um you know, technology's come a long way, and there's there's ways obviously for architects to provide uh kind of a virtual tour.

We've all I work in Sandy for nearly 30 years, and uh oftentimes um the issue would be things such as our view corridor.

So there were visuals done to show um from this point, the home built up up to the east, how much of the view of the of the canyon would be blocked, we would show those kinds of visuals.

Um that those are a lot of the a lot of what it is.

You're helping them understand what they're going to see.

When I worked on the Real Salt Lake Stadium, for example, um, they heard a stadium.

So the the assumption was is that everything from the freeway to 94 south to state street to 90 south would all have to be ripped down for a stadium to be built.

It really needed about 20 acres is all.

But but not knowing the land capacity that a stadium would take, we had to show visually how it would fit on that site, and that actually we're just gonna take this old hay field, we're not actually taking any buildings down at all.

So, again, good visuals helped with that.

So, quick question in the crowd can anybody in the private sector raise their hand?

And then public sector?

Okay, that'll help us kind of shape this.

So we've heard, and just to kind of clarify here, Paul did that on the public side, right?

As a staffer, he went out and he sat with NIMBY's, he you know, talked to them, he kind of coached them through what was happening.

Chris has done it on the private side.

I've done it as a private developer where I've created you know infographics or photos or whatever I need to do.

Nick on the public side has also done that.

So as we go through these strategies, um, just keep in mind, we're not if you're a staffer and you've never taken photos of a view corridor or anything like that.

Um, we are talking to you.

I mean, that's super helpful as a developer.

I do it because I think it's my job, but um, not all developers are willing to do that kind of stuff.

Uh, but if you're a public person and you're you're struggling with things, this applies to you.

So just to kind of clarify, this is across the board, public private.

And and touching on that again, uh, with Leighton City with American Fork City, we actually had graphics from a resident's home so that you could see exactly what their view would be and what would actually be addressed.

Uh for the public engagement on the American Fork Project.

We said, here's what a X-story building would look like, here's what a uh Y-story building and a Z-story building would look like.

Which one do you prefer?

Which one do you think is gonna bother you?

And and frankly, no one actually had a problem when they saw what it would do to their view.

You know, there's some other really effective ways of handling NIMBYism, but from my perspective, what was most troubling for me were number one uninformed planning commissioners and council members.

Is there anybody on the city council here?

Anybody from Kesville?

Okay, I live in Kesville, and since I retired, I am now on the Caseville Planning Commission.

It is an ultimate power trip.

You know why?

Because man, I can confront the NIMBY's, and I do, man.

I go after the NIMBY's.

Uh, if there's anybody here from my planning commission, they'll oh hey, there they are.

We had a good meeting last night, and we didn't have any NIMBY's there, but we had a great discussion about uh modern income housing.

We had some really, really good stuff come out last night.

But uh a few meetings ago, I had uh, you know, I had a real blunt conversation with somebody in the audience, and I can do that now as staff.

And some of you may say, Well, a plan a planning commissioner should never do that.

And I say, Well, you shouldn't be on a planning commission.

I honestly believe that.

One of the most important things staff and planning commissioners can do is you must speak the truth.

You can't chicken out.

Do not cave to misinformation.

This is the best advice you might get from a former planner is take the risk, stick your neck out, and confront BS when you hear it in a meeting.

Decisions are often made by public clamor.

That's people just pounding and pounding and pounding, you gotta do this.

And planning commissions wimp out, ours hasn't, ours has been really good.

But city councils, I work for four cities and one county.

And I'm telling you, there's nothing worse than council members that don't know what they're doing, and they make decisions based on getting re-elected instead of the right decision.

And so, as a planning commissioner, I can say that now.

If they fire me from the planning commission, I don't give a damn.

Okay, I'm not running for office.

I am there to try to get planning in my community done right.

So here's a couple of suggestions, and I'll give it back.

One is as a planning staff, all the staff members out there, here is something you must, especially planning directors, any planning directors out there, senior planners, guys that have the voice, any of you that have and women, I meant everybody.

Okay, go to your city manager if you don't already, you must have a seat at the table in selecting planning commissioners.

You don't have a role except to vote in elections, but you must be the person that helps the city manager and or the mayor or council select future planning commissioners.

You are going to be saddled with a terrible planning commission if the planner who has to deal with them or prepare reports for them, if they're unreasonable.

Luckily for me, I went and said, I need to be able to do this.

And from the rest of my career, I had the city manager saying, We're not gonna select a new planning commissioner without our planning director telling us, giving us a thumbs up.

And we almost always were in agreement on who we wanted to have.

Make sure you get in there, you have a voice, and make sure you pick moderate people.

Okay.

Now, having said that, some of the very best planning commissioners I ever worked with were NIMBY's.

Okay, when you see a NIMBY out there that you can tell is really bright and has the ability to think, recruit them.

A NIMBY can be your very best planning commissioner in the future.

And some of those have become the best council members later, because a lot of land commissioners graduate.

So please remember that.

Recruit, recruit, recruit good people for your planning commission, and then you've got to talk to your council members.

And I'm gonna get into that later, but you gotta, when they're running for office, interview them.

A lot of them run on anti-growth.

A lot of council people run on anti growth.

You gotta get to them so they don't get in and fire you.

Something I went through.

Paul Alred suggesting moderation like this.

Yes.

So on the data, I don't know how many of you have ever heard that you don't want your constituents, your stakeholders don't want low-income housing because it's gonna drive down property values.

None of you in this room have probably ever heard that.

Uh, there's a great white paper put out by the Kem C.

Gardner Policy Institute, Day on Essex wrote it, and it um actually provides the data on home values in relation to uh Litech.

So um deeply affordable housing, and they actually appreciate I think it's like 10% more than homes in similar communities without Litech.

So that's a huge like misunderstanding there, right?

Back to the data using information to educate people, your home values, your property values actually rise when you build low-income um housing in your community.

Pull that white paper, have it ready to go, and um and use it.

It's a it's a great tool.

Yeah, to that end, you'll you'll see one of these bullet points.

Uh know the trends, know that information, have it second nature.

Because if you, as was mentioned earlier, BS your way through something, and that that NIMBY or that resident actually knows the factual piece, the entire rest of your argument is gone.

Have the data, and if you don't know something, say, you know what, I will look into that, I'll get you that information.

But lead with that data because if you have a solid argument and you can take them piece by piece, it's gonna change their mind.

Now, I say that with a caveat that not every NIMBY is logical.

I know that's gonna be a shocker to all of you.

Not every NIMBY is logical.

Know your NIMBY.

If they're not logical, you can't use logic.

You have to shift to emotion because that's how they're making their decisions, that's how they're viewing it.

And so in your head, you need to formulate that approach as well.

So know your NIMBY, know their their concerns, have the data, and have that emotional approach as well.

Next, please go.

Uh change.

We talked about this a little bit.

Views doesn't fit the neighborhood.

Um, my all-time favorite, my realtor told me nothing was going to ever be built here.

Putting a lot of faith in our realtors, aren't we?

Um, but let's let's wrap on that for a little bit.

Uh, one of the things that uh when you're doing with this is uh, as mentioned before, a lot of times the public doesn't know of the planning process, and they think that everything is up for grabs, which means that anything can be any decision can be made and they forget there's a code, and that the planning commission sometimes is only the recommending body doesn't actually approve things like zoning, the council does.

So as mentioned, there's some education that's really good, but what you what you really have to help the NIMBY's or the public in general is what the city can and can't do.

Um, we've you probably all have dealt with a circumstance with um uh group homes, and is you know there's limited things that a city can and can't do with the with a group homes, but the general public thinks that a city can kill those, right?

And just keep them from coming in, or that uh no matter what the code says, they can they can just um vote no and and it's over and it won't happen.

So uh one of the things that you can do with with a NIMBY is help them understand what the city can and can't do.

Some of that's helping them with the code or the what the rules are, but again, the planning process, they're they're upset about something, they think that unilateral decisions are allowed, you've all been through that, and so that education is really important.

This a little bit goes back to what Paul was talking about, finding people who are objective.

Um, if you have a clan of NIMBEs who have all gotten together, if you can find the one who at least is somewhat objective and is trying to understand that process, they can, in a really weird way be your ally in helping with that circumstance.

Before we forget, um, just so everyone in the room knows, we're actually gonna workshop some ideas, some challenges.

So if you guys, as you're sitting here listening to this, if there's somebody that has a challenge getting a project through the process, facing a bunch of NIMBY pushback, and you want to throw it out to us, we promise to leave it anonymous.

You don't have to tell us who you are, where you're from, or any of that.

Um, but I want to throw that out.

The other thing on that same topic, um, Paul, talk to us about hot button items and issues and moving those around.

Gladly.

Okay, anybody hear this in a public meeting?

Kids are gonna die, you're gonna kill kids.

Okay, schools are going to be overrun, right?

Okay, how many of these have we heard?

You know, traffic, kill children, traffic, traffic, we won't be able to, we won't be able to go anywhere.

Okay, these are common phrases, property values will drop.

You know, sky is following.

I mean, they'll come up with anything and everything.

I've heard I someday I swear I'm gonna write a book and I'm gonna write down the most insane, egregious public comments I've heard.

I should share one, but it'll take too long, but you will all be on the floor if I told you.

Um, but in terms of hot button issues, one thing that is super helpful is you like I said before, you must be the expert.

If you're a young planner, you better run your butt off learning about streets, learning about traffic, learning about public works, turnarounds for fire engines.

You gotta learn that stuff.

You have to learn about civil engineering.

You go, you may have to be the quasi-civil engineer, city engineer if there's no one else around.

You gotta be conversant on all of these issues.

You gotta learn fast.

Because in a public hearing, there is nothing more embarrassing or demoralizing than to be a planner and to go home from a public meeting and you got your butt kicked.

You look like an idiot because you couldn't answer even simple questions.

Here's something I really learned.

Okay, I worked at holiday for 16 years.

Best place.

That is the best community.

Uh I love that town, and I love the people there.

Now, the caveat to what I just said is they have the very best NIMBY's.

They're more well-to-do, they're really, really smart.

Okay.

So when they come to public meetings, sometimes they've read up on your codes.

You better go to every public meeting, and this is how I prepared for public meetings till the very last day on my job before I retired.

I prepared hard for an hour, hour or two.

And I would ask myself questions, what I might be asked.

I played scenarios in my mind.

What super smart holiday resident who knows a lot about land use, may have been a planner in college and has read the code, is gonna try to hamstring me on.

And I can't tell you how many times it was very rewarding to be able to just instantly answer that question, instantly go, oh, here's the answer.

Or to know about traffic or turnarounds or road widths.

Man, when you can answer questions quickly, you take the thorn out of the paw of those people who are angry, and you also let them know that you know what you're doing, and you're gonna go to whatever length you need to.

So how about moving them to the hot button items, move them to a special side?

I think that was uh in holiday.

We had oh we had this apartment project, condo project going up in our holiday village.

Anybody here been to the holiday village?

Okay, man, I worked my rear end off on that.

It's a thank you, holiday.

I love you guys.

I don't I love you guys.

Holidays awesome.

I worked so hard on that village, but the very first multiple family project that went up was a condo project.

Well, not multiple families, it was a condo project, three levels, a terrace on top.

And we had the most bizarre public comments come out.

And the hot button issue uh, you know, with that one was was safety and it was traffic, and people were get trying to get it denied.

They were trying to use every little curveball in the code, every weird interpretation they could come up with to tell us we couldn't build it.

So, what's really weird is the developer proposed building underground parking, which is great, right?

He was willing to spend the money, but people were so intent on killing the project that they insisted that people coming up out of the parking garage were gonna kill kids walking to school down to the junior high.

They were gonna come up and out so fast, and they were gonna hit kids.

And we were befuddled.

And so, what the developer did was, okay, I will park it and I'll just go one story higher.

And he got the project approved.

And he keep the the Nibbies played right into this guy and saved him a ton of money.

But what we did to get to your point, Augie, this is really useful, is that first public hearing was so hot there were 30 or 40 people really angry, and so I invited them on a non-city meeting night, a Wednesday night, Monday night, I can't remember.

And I said, I said to the audience, as staff, I said, Any of you who want to understand this project and want to learn a little bit about planning, I will be here for you.

I said, right here, this time, and I announced it.

And the city attorney came.

He came.

And so we spent and we spent about two hours talking to these neighbors, and we talked to them through every concern, everything.

And I'm telling you, when those folks left, I got more pats on the back, handshakes, a couple of people hugged me and said, Thank you for taking the time.

Thank you for building understanding, thank you for caring enough.

And so that's important.

Uh just just adding that moving it to a special session also takes that same heated emotion out of your other session.

So you've now split it out, and now all the agitated people will not influence people on other topics that you have in your special session.

So you've now split it out and eliminated some of that feeling that wouldn't exist on other projects just because they're amped up on this other item that was on the agenda.

Another thing along that same line is is there anything wrong with slowing down in a couple of weeks?

How many of you have ever said, okay, let's continue this?

We're gonna hold another public hearing.

Let's renotice this.

Okay, good.

Let's renotice this.

Okay, same thing.

We've I've done this, yes, three and four times.

Four is really good.

That's dedication.

But telling people, hey, we're not gonna make a decision in a hurry.

That's one of the most important things for NIMDES.

They think you're gonna cram this down your throat so fast there's nothing they can do.

Slow it down if you need to, and tell them that you'll allow additional comment.

It's one of the best things because people want to be heard.

Hear them, explain things to them, you'll get a lot less opposition.

Go ahead.

One other item.

Um, and we Nick mentioned this a little bit, but I want to reiterate it.

If it is not in question, whatever the topic is, if it's not on the table, as a planning commissioner or a city counselor, start the meeting saying that.

This is what the topic is, this is what we're voting on today.

This topic, this topic, and this topic is not on the table.

We won't even hear it because it uh we'll do a special session to talk about it, but it has no place in this vote today.

So, speaking of opposition, um, Nick, I've had this objection before, I'm sure you have too.

I want it to be uh city park, an open space, a Costco, a top golf, any of those things besides housing.

What do you what give me some thoughts here?

Uh been through that.

Had a in Sandy had a gravel pit that um for many for many years was there, and uh a council member 30 years earlier had just made a comment that you know maybe that could be a park someday, and everyone thought that because he made that comment, that was the plan.

Um 107-acre park would be hard to build, right?

So um that that was uh that was an initially winter referendum, uh, was the zoning of that.

But the the way we dealt with that was many of what you're hearing here.

One was a lot of time spent on the facts, a lot of time spent getting the past history in minutes of what was really said, what was really approved.

Um, a lot of work on the visuals.

Um, if you know where this gravel pit is in Sandy, it's uh on about um uh it's about eighth east and between 90 south and 94th, and there's a bluff above with some housing, and then the gravel pit was below.

Um it's where the amphitheater is now in Sandy and uh the senior center, and then down below is the uh Corey Bent development.

And a lot of that was what was a lot of things you're here today is what we did in that project because it was a heavy NIMY to the point where they got enough signatures for referendum, and so um visuals were important.

Um, a lot of a lot of um special meetings, a lot of um uh materials put out by our our communication staff, fact sheets, um, explaining what the city can and can't do.

If you want it to be a hundred and seven-acre park, the parks department provided information on what it would cost to build it, and the number that shocked most people was what it was gonna cost to maintain every year.

It was astounding.

It almost doubled the park's budget.

Um again, that's where facts, information, visuals, and so forth.

In the end, the developer uh helped with uh over eight acres of open space and actually paid to build the park.

Some really good housing was brought in that the city really needed, and it was also a landing spot for Walmart and Lowe's who were looking to leave Sandy.

I did economic development in Sandy for all those years.

I hated to see us lose them, as you know, they're good tax generators, and we were able to load, you know, keep them in Sandy.

So um, and one of my favorite stories about that project is this one gentleman whose wife actually worked for the city, and he really was against it.

And he said, Well, you know, it was gonna cause all this, and he was an anti-Walmart guy and all this kind of thing.

And after it opened one day, I happened to be going through there and in the Walmart, and I saw him in there.

And uh I walked up to him and I said, So I thought you said you'd never set foot in here.

Oh, well, you know, it was the wife.

Yeah, right.

So anyway, so sometimes even with NIDs, you can have you might it might come later, but you can get them back up, you know.

That's always a fun one we still when I see him, we still joke about that.

But uh, but again, this is when you have a really controversial one.

This is where, as mentioned, you gotta be the expert, know your material, have the facts, use visuals, all those things are getting important, special meetings, especially something that's a large project like that, I'm sure in holiday, that's what it took.

So those are those are really important.

I'm gonna say something, and this may ruffle some feathers in the room.

But sometimes you're the NIMBY.

That's right.

If you are, and you're coming at something sort of blindly, or in a in a way that's not open, stop.

Figure out what your four or five points that you are going to be set on are, understand why you want those four or five points, come to a logical reason as to why you want that, and then put your foot down on that.

But let the other ten things go.

I uh there's been times where I've found myself as a NIMBY, and I'm like, why am I doing this?

It's because of this.

Let me walk through my own head how I can help solve that problem.

I can be part of the solution.

Bring them in, bring the NIMBY in to the solution.

Uh, there's been several times where we've come in with a development, and uh, a NIMBY will come up and say, Well, it's it's gonna kill my kid, or it's gonna do X, Y, and Z.

So what I do is I say, these are the three things that we're willing to change to try and uh or do to try and make that issue a non-issue.

We will improve the safety here, or we'll do X in this spot.

We'll improve this.

Or this is exactly what we've done to make it safe for kids, and this is why it would be safe, and we won't be killing your child.

Uh I I have to tell a quick story.

I uh I won't say I used to work for a city at one point, and some of you probably know what city that was, but I won't say.

Um there was an individual that came, and I lived near them.

I lived in the city that I worked, don't always recommend that.

Um this individual lived about three miles away from a bus line that was coming in.

I may have given it away somehow.

Uh, and she's like, It's gonna kill my kids.

I was like, if you think it's gonna kill your kid, your kid should be taken away because they've gotten three miles away from your house.

Oh my god, that's a great point.

Yeah.

Uh, we had an elderly care center that came in, and uh, you know, people were terrified.

And uh, one of the good things you can do is staff, um, got two points gonna make.

The first one is we had to work through, we had a we had a really dumpy multiple acre site on uh Highland Drive, and this beautiful care center wanted to come in.

And we had some NIMBEs on the planning commission.

And uh, as staff, one way to, since we're talking about NIMBY's, one way to reduce NIMBYism is as much as possible as staff is to educate your planning commission.

Because if your planning commission plays into the NIMBY's, then the applicant is not gonna get a fair shake.

And remember, one of the worst things that you want to see happen in your community as staff is that you've caused a land use lawsuit.

Does anybody here besides me know that the number one cause for financial liabilities for cities is land use, zoning more than anything else, more than traffic, more than engineering, more than whatever it's zoning.

When you screw up on zoning, those costs are enormous.

So a little story, this gorgeous elderly care center wanted to come in in holiday.

And there were a lot of people opposed to it.

And we had a couple of planning commissioners that decided they were gonna go rogue.

In the staff report, we said uh this thing's uh ready, we had to go through a bunch of hoops to get it approved.

And but the plan two planning commissioners, one was an architect and one was an urban designer, and those two guys kept telling the other planning commissioners that they and they kept telling the applicant that they wanted better architecture and that he had to do this and he had to do that.

And as staff, I'm sitting over there going, you know, trying to get them to stop, because there was nothing in the code that required that applicant to dress the building up the way the architect wanted him to.

The architect and the other guy, they were both really good planning commissioners, but hey, damn, they were like arrogant, saying, No, we gotta do this, you give you gotta add gentiles, and you know, all these terms and stuff.

And the developer was like, I'm sorry, I've read your code, there's nothing in there on that.

I mean, and so it went back and forth, and the developer applicant finally said, Okay, look, I'm welcome.

You know, we had a graphic up, and he went up and said, I'll I'll do this and I'll do that.

And most of the planning commission was fine with it.

Well, these two planning commissioners pushed it and said, No, no, no.

Finally, it came to a vote.

And I had said as staff, folks, we don't have the right to require that.

That's not okay.

Well, we had a five-member planning commission that night, and the vote was three-two to approve.

And after the planning commission, I was livid.

I had been there long enough and had enough credibility with that planning commission that I grabbed those two guys.

I almost grabbed him by the lapels, and I said, Do you realize you almost got us into a lawsuit?

And they said, Well, that thing should look better than it does.

And I said, That's not your right under this process.

So, all of us, the three of us here are gonna tell you before we're done, follow your process, follow your rules, follow your procedures, follow your noticing provisions, follow the law.

Well, what's weird is that guy left, and he was furious.

The applicant left, and he was furious, and I was livid because I was kind of embarrassed.

So I told those guys off, they went home, we made up, we were fine.

But 10 minutes after the meeting, that developer, that applicant called me up and he said, Paul, you're damn lucky that I got a 3-2 vote tonight, and you're damn lucky that I said I would do any of those things, which I'm still committed to, because he said, I'm ready to sue you guys right now.

Because I know that's not a requirement.

And that, you know, because I had told him, guys, bringing it, we could get sued.

If we had gotten a no vote tonight, we've been sued, and he confirmed it a few minutes later.

So as staff, if you're a NIMD, as staff or your planning commission is NIMBY, make sure that you remember your job is to be objective, number one.

How many staff people out here, city people out here have not enjoyed meeting with more than one developer ever?

Has staff, oh, you've all loved all your applicants?

Really?

No staff member here has ever not enjoyed meeting with an applicant?

Oh, there's one honest guy.

So going along with this, he's saying follow the process or get sued.

Pretty simple.

But if you don't like the process, change it or fix it.

So when a developer comes in, they know exactly what that process is, and they can follow it.

But if you're throwing out these other random things, that's where the lawsuit comes in.

Follow the process or fix the process.

All right, we got a light in the mood in here.

Geez, everybody uh I'm like ready to curl up under this podium.

Oh, Paul's got more for the colours.

Okay, what I was gonna say is, as staff, sometimes applicants are difficult to deal with, right?

They are.

Sometimes applicants can come in and they are pushy, they're irritable because they think they're not gonna get treated right by the staff.

And so there's uh there is a there is a conflict right there from the get-go.

And so if you want to eliminate NIMBY at your public hearing, one of the best things planners can do is talk to the applicant and coach them on how to not irritate the hell out of everybody.

Has anybody here ever done that besides me?

Tell the applicant, hey, if you want to get an approval, please don't say this.

Please don't go in with this attitude.

Please, please, please, because that applicant is gonna create a hell for themselves, and it's gonna whip up the NIMBY's.

And so I don't know how many applicants I said, if you'll just follow my lead, you're gonna get through this process.

It may take longer than you want.

But if you go in and say this and you go with an attitude, dude, you might get eventually an approval, but you're gonna hate how much time and effort it cost.

So yeah, as a developer, I can just tell you right now how much value I place with planning with staff, with folks like that at the city that are willing to hold my hand because I'm not super smart, that's why I'm a developer.

They walk me through the process, they kind of coach me out of stepping on rakes, right?

And you know, lo and behold, they're right.

They know those cities, they know the planning commission, they know council.

Um, and it just is I know there's not a lot of developers in the room today, but as a developer, when I bump into a planner like that, it's um it makes my job a lot of fun.

So yeah, I I guess um at this point we've got, I don't know, probably 15, 20 minutes left.

Does anybody want to throw something out?

An objection they're dealing with, a challenge.

Uh we're gonna get anybody to be honest in this room.

I don't know.

Oh, here we go.

There's a hand way in the back.

What I said, or you it needs to take longer so you can be on your side.

Oh, well, that caused the people that you're like in order to accidents so this could happen.

And it's taking too long.

Yeah, so I'll repeat the question basically and make sure, you know, give me a nod if I got this right.

So one of the things we said is kind of slow the process down, don't rush through this, take your time, get everybody comfortable with it.

And our man's concern here is um taxpayers getting frustrated with that, and everybody's been frustrated at the speed of the city at some point or another.

So uh, did I get that right?

You're worried about okay, all right.

So, what do you guys think?

So I I I've used this a number of times uh in this circumstance, where um you get accused of going too fast sometimes, and then you get accused of going too slow.

But um, the process is slow and you can slow it down even more, and there's a major reason for that.

Um, it's the public, it's a public process, it's public engagement, it's making sure everybody participates.

And there's not necessarily a fast way to do that.

Um, it's it's just the nature of getting things done and allowing for public comment.

Um, the other thing you can do in these circumstances is um uh you can slow it down and bring in additional experts to help.

Um, particularly if there's a specific issue that that's being wrestled with, and there's even um disagreement from us from a science standpoint on it.

Um I've done that a couple of different times where uh third party, they don't they're not, they don't work for the city, they don't work for the developer, have them come in and say, you know, in the case of like an environmental concern we were talking about earlier.

So what do you think?

Um but sometimes when things are slowed down, there's a reason, and that's when I tell people if they think it's it's going too slow, I always remind them it's a public process, and it by nature will be slower because we have to involve the public and have public engagement, and that just is automatically gonna slow it down.

Yeah, I think most of the time the pushback you'd get would be from the developer, the applicant saying, hey, this costs money every day that I'm sitting on this thing.

Um, but it's in their best interest to slow it down.

It is gonna, you know, that interest expense is taken away on us, but um if we don't slow it down, we may not get approval, right?

So I it benefits both sides.

And jumping into that, if if you as staff or planning commissioner or city council or whatever your position is, go to the developer and say, hey, look, we know in advance that this is going to be a hot button item.

So what we can do is we'll slow it down specifically to do this.

The first session will open it up and we'll we'll allow public comment.

We'll close public comment, we'll do our other session where we just do the vote.

So we've now split those two sessions out.

Because when you go to that vote, as a planning commissioner city council, you're not gonna be shot because all the discussion happened in the previous session.

And now the emotions pulled out of it, and you can make a logical decision based on that process.

So that's one thing.

A second thing, as the staff, you come to the developer and you say, This is why we're doing it to try and make it easier for your project to come through.

Because if we just push through and vote, you know what's gonna happen, it's gonna go under referendum, or something of that nature is gonna happen.

So you're gonna get delayed anyway.

So let's let's be smart about our process, but explain that to the developer so they're not like, well, you're just trying to make me lose money, or whatever it may be.

Give them the facts as to why you're doing it or the logic behind it.

Yep, most developers are pretty good at math and they understand that you know whatever their margin is, let's just say five percent, five percent of nothing is nothing.

They can do that math in their head, right?

So if it's the difference between getting the project done or the project taking a little more time, and your developer under applicant, excuse me, understands that, um, you know, that's gonna go a long way with them.

When it's second the second what uh Nick said, uh sometimes bringing in an outside expert is the very best thing you can do.

As staff, you automatically don't have credibility with NIMBY's.

Okay, I don't know how many times I've heard I've been accused as staff as well.

You're you're getting paid off by the developer, you're under the table, you're in bed with the developer.

You know, anybody here ever heard that?

Is anybody here?

Okay, no, yeah, okay, not just me.

And you know, it's real insult.

I remember one time somebody in a public meeting accused me of that, and I said, Are you and I I just spoke right up hell with planning commission.

They were attacking me as staff, and I'm not really good at taking crap.

So I responded to this person when somebody yelled out, you guys are all on the take.

And I said, Really?

Do you think for one?

I just said this to the planning commission.

I said, uh uh I got the floor.

I said, Do you think for one minute I would risk my retirement and my reputation to help this guy get a rezone for a two-lot subdivision?

You know, and and that just kind of you know, okay.

So um sometimes you have to speak up and you have to speak up forcefully.

Another thing is in holiday, we had we had a really good group of outside consultants that we would bring in.

And on the city's dime, we would say to the public, hey, you know what?

We're gonna have this the best traffic engineer in the state, we're gonna have him come in, we'll pay for the cost of the study, and we're going to study the concerns that you've raised about traffic.

And he'll come back and he'll present those in open form so that you can see what happened.

And I mean, I'll tell you that was magic because the guy was so good at what he did, and he was so low-key and matter-of-fact, like he just disarmed everybody.

But when he came in with numbers to say, hey, this really is wow, it's actually below the threshold of that subdivision over there, or you know, he would contrast it with something.

And man, the NIMBYism really dropped off because you had an outside person, you know, that that came in and just diffused a lot of that.

So I would encourage cities, if you don't have great experts out there, either on contract or that you can get to come in, you need those ringers, if you will.

They're ringers, they'll come in and they'll really diffuse a lot of stuff and they can bring credibility to the staff because if you've been saying, no, actually the traffic's pretty low on that, and they're saying BS, you go, well, okay, let's study it.

And when they come in and go, uh yeah, this is much less than that, and they're like, oh, really?

Okay.

So one other point, because I know we're time zermic short, but this is really important.

How you run your meeting is critical.

As staff, as planning commissioners, as city council members, if you are in charge of the meeting, you must set the proper tone.

There is nothing worse than a planning commission chair who's overwhelmed because there's 50 people out there and it's overflowing.

Anybody having an overflow audience and they're mad and there's pounding on the windows.

I'm telling you, we had a hearing for the Cottonwood Mall where I spent two hours in the hallway pouring sweat because people were poking me in the chest, and this is a blankety blink blank, and you're a blanky blink link.

You know, I mean, it was it was hot, it was threatening.

The meeting, the public hearing is gone over there.

I went into the overflow room and I was setting out chairs, like an overflow church meeting.

I'm come on, sit down, sit down.

And I went around and I just tried to calm people down.

But the chair did a great job of saying, we've excused staff to kind of go hold forth with NIMBEs and the other staff is here.

So I went out and I spent two hours telling people, trying to calm them down, reassuring them that there was more than one chance to have a bite of this apple.

But the chair of the meeting did a great job because at the very beginning, the chair set the tone by saying, We will not allow this, we will not allow that.

If you do this, you will be out of the meeting.

If you insist, we will shut the meeting down.

If you you must have a chair who can do that.

If you don't, replace your chair and get somebody who will.

You can kill a project, you can create so much NIMBYism.

If your meetings are run poorly, one of the very worst things that can happen at a planning commission meeting is when you allow the same person to come up again and again and again.

Especially when at the beginning of the meeting, you've said our rules are every person gets no more than two minutes, three minutes, whatever your standard is in your city.

Have a timer there for the hot button meetings, have a timer.

Have somebody saying time's up.

Okay.

If you don't run your meeting, all of this discussion about NIMBY could be just useless.

Time's up.

Thank you.

Uh oh.

Now we're in for a fun one.

Uh maybe, I'm your mom from Solving City Council, and I've taken a look around the room and it might comment and question against me.

I appreciate this, Alan, if you've done a really good job.

I also believe that there's an undeniable connection between housing and zone policy and racism and that music is just the modern version of that.

So I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind uh addressing this.

Absolutely.

Um I'm gonna print my resume off after this since I'm likely gonna get canceled.

Thanks for setting us up for this.

Um, but it's a great point, right?

Like we hear it come out as those people.

We don't want those people.

We've all heard it, we all know what you're saying, we all know exactly what you're talking about.

Um Chris?

Yeah, I'm fine to take it.

Um again, like I'm gonna go back to that data-driven responses.

What's the data behind it?

If the data's showing something, then fix your process, fix whatever it is that you're doing, because maybe there is something that's an unbiased item that's happening.

But if it's not happening and you can show that it's not happening, it defuses that.

So I just just to be like very high level with this.

What's the data?

Is there any substantiation to this or not?

Figure that out first.

The the worst thing that you can do is perpetuate a myth.

If it doesn't exist, show why it doesn't exist.

If it does exist, address it and fix it.

I I don't know if does that answer it enough?

This is the model.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think we get it, and I think to kind of put some color around it, um, I think we all understand who NIMBIs are, who shows up to these meetings.

They're people that look like all of us, right?

They're usually white American, you know, native-born, English speaking, affluent people, because that's who has the time to get there, that's who has the resources to get there, they're not at home, you know, single mom with two kids in an apartment that rides the bus every day.

I mean, right?

So I think that's kind of more where you're going with this.

So it's a big socioeconomic issue, not always tied to race, but also tied to classism.

Um, and that's where I think you know, so much of the data comes back on housing affordability.

So much of the data comes back to a moderate income housing report.

Anybody in this room ever done one or looked at one?

So I've used those before in planning commission and city council to explain, hey, you know, 98% of your housing in this city is single family owner-occupied housing.

Where do your baristas live?

Where are the people working at Olive Garden live?

Where are the people that wash your laundry, cars, all that stuff, where are they gonna go?

Right?

And so you started to have these real conversations with people that's backed by data.

Um, and while we don't identify, you know, race in those moderate income housing studies, there's probably some breakdown of like citywide um ethnicity.

Uh, I think just getting to the classism part of it is pretty important.

Yeah, I want to jump back in if that's okay.

Uh so we're working with the city right now.

Um, and there is a perception that half of the city is taking the the majority of the moderate income housing and the and then those people.

So, what we specifically did in this circumstance is we took all of the units in the entire city.

We said, here's that dividing line, this is that north side of the city, here's the south side of the city, this is what you said the problem is, and we did the numbers, and we're saying there's this much of this unit type, there's this much of this unit type.

Here's where affordable housing lies.

You said that this exists, but in reality, it doesn't.

That's one example.

But I know there's locations where it does exist.

And in that case, then it's like, I know that's what you guys are saying.

This is what we're gonna do to combat that.

I want to answer your question directly, because this is near and dear to my heart.

I'm a white Mormon guy, I live on a big lot, I live in a big house, I'm of the predominant faith.

I am the prototypical NIMD in this state.

But as a planner, and I'm not patting myself on the back here, but I in multiple meetings, I have said, are we looking out for our minority groups?

Can Hispanics, Polynesians, blacks can they move into holiday?

And the answer obviously was not really.

And in Caseville, I've raised this issue.

I went on a five-minute rant.

I apologize to my fellow planning commissioners here, but we had a rezone, and I jumped all over that and I said, This is ridiculous.

We're 92% single family.

What in the crap are we doing to help those who aren't like us?

Those of us on the planning commissioner, pretty much.

And so it is about race.

It is about those who are working in our restaurants and our service people.

I had a comment 30 years ago in a meeting in Centerville.

I was the planning director in Centerville for about 10 years, and I had a comment that really was deeply offensive.

And I I don't know if I should say this, not I don't want to offend people here.

Okay, I won't I won't touch it.

But it has something to do with uh well.

Paul, we've got about two minutes.

Okay, so anyway, anyway, good uh we'll I raised the issue and it got me into a lot of trouble.

Time is up.

Uh all right, so we're gonna close this out.

Um thank you guys so much.

I think we just give, yeah, I think if we give um just a couple more minutes here, and I'll let you guys just wrap it up when you're done.

Yeah, right.

So I don't know, I want to start with a lot of things.

Yeah, they're they're listening here, but uh, there's when working with NIMBIS, there's there's three things that I always feel like are really important.

One is know your material, know your facts, do your homework.

Uh the second is uh stay in the process.

Uh city attorney I worked with for many years, and Sandy used to say, read the code, stay in the process, read the code, stay in the process.

I think she said that to me hundreds of times over the 30 years I was there.

Um and the last one is I mentioned earlier is um use technology, uh good video good visuals, um, third party, you know, just use the technology can help you a ton with NIMBY's because um if you leave a void in in the under in their understanding, they will fill that with downs the downside of everything and not the positive side.

So don't leave things for them to interpret.

Give them information that they can visualize and see, or they will interpret it differently.

They don't always know what the terms mean.

So those are three things that I think works with NIMBEs you really have to do.

In addition to like Paul and Chris said, you know, getting to, you know, talk to them and so forth.

But those three things are really important to build that relationship.

Uh and we won't go over all these because we're mostly out of time.

But one of the things, um my previous life, I did marketing.

Positive approaches go over so much better than negative.

If you focus on these positive things or the things that you can do versus the these are the one percent things that you don't want to have happen in this, that leaves 99% unknown.

Focus on the 99 and let the 1% say, okay, we get that, we know you don't want that.

Let's see what you actually want.

Otherwise, we still have a completely unperfect picture.

All right, Paul, bring us home and don't get any of us fired.

Okay.

Um here's one last thought.

Um, as public servants, most of us are public servants.

I would just recommend one thing, uh, just to end, and that is after uh dealing with a raucous public hearing, something that was ugly and everybody goes home stressed out.

Are you guys focusing as planners, planning commissioners, council members on what went wrong, and then analyzing that?

This is something I used to do after meetings with any of the planners that were on my team.

One planner particular.

We'd go back into our darkened office, and we would talk and say, okay, what did we where where did we mess up?

What could we have done better?

You can save yourself a lot of trouble in the future by analyzing what you've done wrong, what you did right, reinforcing the good, and fixing what could have gone better.

Great.

Thank you all for hanging with us.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Appreciate it.

Okay, thank you.

Um, so we'll begin with some introductions, and uh, my name is Dave Bromley, and I'll be chairing the meeting this evening, and we'll begin with our planning commissioners uh to our to my left.

Uh Jennifer.

I'm Jennifer George.

And Lynnie Stappenport.

Danny Schoenfeld.

Ron Mortimer, Steve Wrigley, Cameron Duncan, and then James, if you could introduce staff.

Thank you.

Zoning Administrator, Sarah Stringham is a planner, the city, Brittany Ward, Assistant Director in Public Works.

Okay.

Thanks.

Thanks, James.

Okay.

So uh to kind of go over the procedures for the evening.

Um for each of the items.

Uh, we will start off by having a staff introduction afterwards.

Uh, we'll have the opportunity to hear from the applicant uh and then possibly uh hear from staff again afterwards.

At that after that, um, we will open up uh the item for public comment and listen to anybody who would like to uh speak to that item, whether they'd be online or whether it be you'd be here.

Uh, for each individual during public comment, and if you do have some comments, we definitely uh would like to hear that.

And if you could focus on the things that uh had not been if if there's multiple, you know, speakers that have gone before you please just if you could focus on the things that uh are new uh rather than repeat.

That would be appreciated.

And uh so after we've had the chance to hear from everybody who would like to speak, we will then close public comment and then open up the for public for uh plan commission deliberation and a motion.

So we'll begin with our first item, which is the Hill Center Theater uh sign theme amendment.

So Sarah Thank you.

Um yes, this is for a sign theme amendment for the Hill Center Theater and Mountain America Credit Union site.

So applicants are Casey Brin and also Austin Cope is here tonight on behalf of Hill Center Theater.

Um there's four different signs that they're requesting at the site, which is 9886 South Monroe Street, um, and it's for the Mountain America Arts and Education Beehive Building, which is the newest addition to the Hill Center Theater.

Um our applicants are here to talk about the signs.

Hello, I'm Austin Cope.

I'm with Allied Electric Sign and On A.

And we are proposing four signs on this building.

The first being on the East Elevation, it's a eyebrow sign that includes um a jester logo and Mountain America Arts and Education's beehive lettering.

Um it'll be consistent with the same type of signage basically that you see on the south side of the building of Hale Theater.

So same style logo and lettering at the top of the building, but on the east side for the Beehive Theater Children's Center.

So the second sign is on the north elevation.

Um it is a marquee style sign, it's got some bulb lighting, and it's kind of fun.

Um but yet it's classy as well for the for the kids' theater entrance.

It's located in between where the Hill Center lobby is and the parking lot through a corridor.

So it does have a small EMC element to it that will advertise the the name of the production or or something here or whatnot that is being shown on that specific day, but um it's not visible from the road, it's um it's just kind of in that little corridor right above the entrance of the theater.

Um in addition, there is another sign on the north side as well, is this little blade sign, it's a one by five blade sign, and it's located as you're coming out of the parking lot, and it basically directs you to the right if you're going to the beehive theater instead of entering into the Hale Center Theater lobby.

So, same way the other direction if you're coming out of the Hale Center Theater, it also directs you down that corridor.

So it's it's meant to be a direction.

Um the last sign is a small sign that goes above the entry doors to the rehearsal hall, and so that just directs them in there.

Um I noticed that on the staff report there there was a note that said that this was 18 square foot sign uh with vinyl lettering wall sign.

I wanted to clarify that it is a routed and backed um with acrylic, and so the lettering does light up.

The lettering is vinyl, gold vinyl that is backing, but I wanted to make sure that that was included that it was actually um an eliminated sign and not just vinyl lettering on a black panel.

So other than that, I think it's it's fairly just consistent with the with the Hale Center Theatre's theme, and and that they're just asking for some additional signs for the new building.

So any questions?

Okay, thank you.

Sarah, do you have anything else?

Okay, uh right.

So thank you.

And and uh we'll open this uh item up for any uh public comments.

So if you have any comment, if you could come up and state your name and address, and then again uh you'll be given two minutes.

Okay, seeing none here, is there any on lines, Mike?

We have no online attendees tonight.

Okay, all right.

So we'll close uh public comment and open uh for planning commission delivery deliberation and a motion.

I'm ready to make a motion.

Great.

I'd like to recommend that we approve a sign theme amendment for Hill Center Theater, Mac Hugh Center as to Commissioner George.

Could you speak right up into that microphone, please?

Can you hear me better now?

I'd like to recommend that the that we approve a sign theme amendment for Hale Center Theater MacU Center as described in the staff report for the property located at 9886 South Monroe Street, based on the one finding, and I believe it's five conditions.

Yeah, conditions.

Okay.

I'll second.

Jennifer George?

Yes.

Cameron Duncan?

Yes.

Ron Mortimer.

Yes.

Danny Schoenfeld?

Yes.

Steve Wrigley.

Yes.

Lenny Stavenport.

Yes.

Dave Bromley.

Yes.

This motion carries.

Okay.

Can you tell Monica we all said hello?

Yes, I will.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And then by the way, this I think the signage looks very appropriate for that center.

So that's great.

It'll look it'll be nice.

Great.

Thank you, Adam.

Thanks.

Okay, we'll move to the uh next item, which is a Russian's accessory structure.

And Sarah, it looks like your back up.

Yes.

Um John Russian is the applicant at 135 East 110 south.

Uh and he's requesting to build an accessory structure in his rear yard.

The size is 2,618 square feet and uh 24 feet in height, and our applicant is here tonight to present.

Okay.

Thank you.

My name is John Rushgen.

Um hopefully my project's relatively simple.

Um requesting a 40 foot by 60 foot garage in the northeast corner of my property on the 110th south to 135 east.

Um it's gonna be a metal building engineered structure.

Um not sure what else to contribute to that.

Okay, did you have a chance to review the staff report and are comfortable with the findings and conditions on the staff reports?

Yes, yes, I have it.

Okay, great.

Well, I think that's very good.

Then is there any questions that the commission has?

Okay, good then.

And Sarah, is there anything else you'd like to bring up?

Um I don't if you guys have any questions.

I just was gonna point out usually with the height, we do have the setback requirement of moving it back.

Um, and in this case, um it is set back on that east side 10 feet, which is the setback for the main dwelling, which is one of um the requirements, and then the same thing the back.

Um it would require an 11-foot setback, but he is proposing to put it 15 feet back.

So that's all.

Okay, perfect.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, let's open this up to for public uh comment.

Is there anyone here that uh would like to speak to this item?

Okay, seeing none, Mike, uh still nobody online.

We have no attendees uh online at this time.

Okay, all right.

So we'll close the public comment and then open this up for any uh um deliberation and motions for from the planning commission.

I'm ready for a motion.

Okay, so make the motion to the planning commission approve a conditional use permit for additional size and increased height of an accessory structure as described in the staff report for the property located 135 east, 110 south, based on the two findings and five conditions as outlined in the staff report.

I'll second Cameron Duncan, yes, Steve Wrigley, yes, Ron Mortimer, yes, Danny Schoenfeld, yes.

Lenny Stavenport, yes, Jennifer George, yes, Dave Romley, yes.

This motion carries.

Okay, good luck.

Okay, third item on the uh agenda is a special exception uh for restoration in a sensitive area overlay zone with 30 percent or over slopes and uh Melissa Yes.

Uh good evening, Chair and Planning Commission.

Uh this application is for a special exception.

Uh special exceptions are required when you do any activity in the sensitive area overlay in areas with the 30 percent or greater slope.

Uh the address at 400 East Tonya Drive, as you can see on on the map illustrates the location.

And uh this is to uh respond to uh request to do some um uh grading and restoration um in the rear yard, and the applicant Tully Fitzgerald is here, and he can uh give uh description of his uh request and then I'll finish up with further details and and slides.

Um Tully, if you would like to my name's Tully Fitzgerald.

Um I moved to Sandy about five years ago.

This all started with just uh trying to repair a failed retaining wall that was on the property already.

Um it turns out there's a lot that um is incorrect with the way stuff was built before.

So this is all I'm trying to restore it back to how it was before any of it was there.

So uh have two phases.

Uh first one starts with uh removing the wall that we started building at the bottom to replace uh the row tie wall that was there.

Shouldn't have been there to start with that uh from what I understand.

So that'll just be phase one to restore how it was before we started, removing the the walls at the bottom, and then phase two will unfortunately be tearing down the garage to get that uh to comply since it won't ever meet setbacks or that kind of thing.

So uh that's kind of where where it sits now.

And I saw you guys there looking at it, so hopefully it's all right.

Okay, so totally uh yeah, yeah.

So you've fully read through the staff report and uh in particular the findings and conditions, and okay I mean I don't like them, but I'm you recognize that they are yeah, yeah.

Okay, all right, thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you.

I don't know where I'm at.

So okay.

Um we were scrolling through, uh, but just uh this illustration was just showing behind the home, um in the rear yard, um close to uh the Dimpledale Park is where the there's a steeper slope, and you can see that in the pink area.

And uh this just shows uh current conditions from the park looking up at different angles, and uh this shows some comparison of um the activity that was done recently prior to that, and then back in 2003 before um the garage was built by previous owner and the carport.

So the proposal is to initially in phase one to restore it behind the garage and uh restore it back to no more than two to one grade and to reseed it with native grass, and yeah, this is just illustrating the uh proposing a native grass seed mix, and then in the future uh phase two would be removing the illegal non-conforming structures, and so uh staff has uh findings and recommendations for uh conditions of approval, and so with that we support and recommend approval uh of the application.

Okay, uh most I've just got one question from what I just heard.

Uh um, so you said no more than two to one grade.

It looked to me like that would be a greater than two to one grade if you but you've seen is that what that the revised grading plan does show is it is a two to one grade.

Well, I think it was that it no greater than that's our our standard.

Right.

So my question is is that what that revised grading plan shows as no greater than two to one?

Yeah.

So it's hate to have that being consistent with what it actually can get to because it looked like it was steeper than steeper, yeah.

It is steeper than that.

So if you look at no even when like right here, if the if that's where the slope goes, it's that probably gets a little bit steeper than two to one.

But on phase two, it brings the slope is back way further.

You guys, we have to have both of you speaking close into the mic when you're talking.

Just so it's because it is sensitive.

We have some.

Sure, that's no problem.

So on phase one, it has it here with sort of it being how it how it currently is.

That's how it was before we started anything.

So phase one is to kind of put it back to how everything was before we started anything.

Um, and then phase two is gonna be taking out the illegal structures and stuff that is non-conforming.

Right, but phase one is the two to one grade issue, correct?

It's getting it as close as it can for the the two to one, yes.

Um the existing slope in the neighboring properties is already greater than two to one.

So we're gonna get it as best we can, but it's gonna try to match the contours of the existing homes as well.

Right, and that's kind of my point is I wonder if it maybe engine engineering's looked at it to see the two to one.

We're good now, and so um uh I was thinking it'd be good to have uh Brittany Ward or uh city engineer uh assistant public works director to address it in the staff report was included her analysis and recommendation, and so if you wanted to add anything.

So again, Brittany, my concern would be just so that we don't have a cons inconsistency between what's being required of a two to one versus what's actually feasibly possible.

It looked like given the steepness of what that future slope would be, would be greater than two to one, is what it looked like to me.

Have you guys looked at that?

Um I would have to look at that closer to see what the existing grade is on the neighbors.

Um either situation, the slope is going to be unstable because it is steeper and because it hasn't been re-vegetated quite yet.

And so whatever grade that they do end up putting it back at, it will need to be monitored and stabilized until the redo till the vegetation has a chance to grow back in.

So current restoration for phase one, we do only our code is only a two to one uh max right now, and so that's what we would allow up to, and then with phase two, they'd have to um propose a plan to show what that grading is when they have that fully finished and mattering the neighbor's lots.

Um but you can make that as a condition of approval that um we as staff review the grading and the slope of the of the land to ensure that it meets the two to one slope standard.

Okay, I guess to my point to my point is is it maybe it's not even possible.

That's my even if ordinance says that that's max you can two, I'm not sure it's possible.

Right.

Yeah, that's my concern.

So I don't know what to do.

Well, it needs to be addressed somehow verbally to say look, you got to get the best you can even if it doesn't meet the two to one.

Yes, you know, you can't do that.

And matching the basic it has got to match both the east and west the neighbor slopes that are coming up, and that's to me looks like more than two to one.

Yeah, I mean that's the that's the underlying rule of hillside restoration is you restore it back to native or what was existing.

So maybe we back off the two to one and just say we go back to natural and existing as per review and approval from staff.

Would that get us there or not?

Yeah.

You're just trying to cover in case it can't get to that.

Yes.

Where do we get it as close as to that as we can in case it can't get to that?

That's correct.

Yes.

Yeah, is revising or adding a uh condition, either modifying an existing condition language, modifying existing condition language or adding a new condition of approval clarifying that's two to one and our code is.

Okay, is are the conditions?

Would you be chair?

I would probably on that one put something like as per the city engineers review or as for her approval when you're looking at that, because just in case it can't meet that, you want something in there to cover that it's being reviewed and getting as close as you can to it.

I I guess it does state that in the conditions already.

Yeah, I mean that's that's but my concern is is that caveat of that two to one, it if that's if to make sure that that well, I'm thinking condition number one, because that's proposing a revision uh to address the staff comments on phase one and two grading plan, is that in the engineer on there had stated no greater than a two to one slope on that particular plan?

And so basically on that plan, modify that so that it doesn't conflict.

That makes sense to me, it makes sense that that these conditions are probably okay, and it's really subject to getting that documented on the grading plan.

That makes sense.

That makes more sense, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's and that's wise of you to have identified that because we don't want to have unrealistic um condition language.

All right, thanks.

Is there any other questions or I do have oh you can't do that?

No, go ahead, Lenise.

Go ahead, Lenisa.

Thank you.

Quick quick question.

So I see that there's a date on phase one to have that completed by May 1 of 2026.

What about phase two?

Is there a date when that's expected to be completed?

That would be tied with uh a certificate of non-compliance that's uh on the property now that we may need to revise the language, but certificate of noncompliance is that it needs to be resolved prior to transfer of owner ownership.

And so we don't know whenever that might be, they may they be there for another 20 years, and but um there is not a uh like short time frame on that.

We the intent is to allow for some time to address that, but that uh prior to basically selling the property that would be resolved, and that's record on the property with uh a vehicle that we call a certificate of non-compliance, and that that's pretty common that we use in instances when uh it needs to be resolved, but it uh we can allow for time and it alleviates some of the uh pressure on the applicant in terms of cost and timing.

Yeah, that makes sense.

It's an a hard situation.

I can imagine he's in.

So I appreciate that.

Thank you.

And then chair, I I had a question about phase two in the garage.

So the garage is non-compliant because of the proximity to the property line.

Um because it was built, uh the pad initially built, and then uh and then a garage is put on top of that.

No permits were done, and so uh setback is an issue, but probably even more important is that it's not on a stable uh foundation, or we can't verify that it's a stable foundation, so we can't do like a retrofit building permit approval after the fact due to the found lack of a proper foundation.

And it was built into the 30% slope.

Yes, yeah, that that's probably a more salient point.

Yeah, because I was gonna say yeah, I'm sorry, it is part of it, yeah, is extending into that.

That's correct.

Okay, just yeah, I mean there's other solutions that structurally that you could do to get around a proper foundation.

Oh, okay.

Um that wouldn't involve tearing the whole thing down if if setbacks in that 30% slope were the issue.

I know, yeah.

There's been times that people have had where they've encroached on that slope, and going through the process, they've been okay to alleviate that.

But I didn't know if that would be an option here.

I just I'm sure they paid for that garage, and it I just hate to have to see them tear it down if there are other options.

The previous owner did, yes.

But when this gentleman purchased the phone, correct, indeed.

Yeah, it had that value.

So I just didn't know if there were any other options besides the lean and tearing it down.

Yeah, call peers are what I'm thinking of.

And that would be an option if we didn't have the issue of the encroachment into the 30% slope.

Um that that's the most difficult element of that in trying to retroactively approve it.

There could be some structure at the top, just not in its current form or location.

Thank you.

I just pulled up our contour map on GIS.

And the existing slope is at a two of two to one at the steepest point of the contours.

That's taken from the foot of the of that retaining to the top, or is it taken from the from the foot of the retaining to the top?

It's gonna be a little bit less than a two to one.

I just measured it right where the contours were the closest together, the steepest point in any area within his lot.

Perfect.

Okay.

Okay.

Uh any other questions?

Okay.

Let's see.

We did public comment on this one.

Okay.

I didn't remember whatever we got to public yet.

All right.

Okay, so we will uh uh thank you for your presentations and we'll open this up to public comment at this point.

Is there anybody here that would like to speak?

Okay, seeing none, nobody online still.

Negative.

Okay.

All right, so we'll close public comment and open up to uh planning commission deliberation and uh motion.

Anybody have thoughts they want to address prior to a motion being made?

Yes, a question.

It sounds like we originally had thought we might need to change that first condition, but it sounds like we don't need to anymore, right?

Yeah, I actually think that we were fine even before.

Okay, because it didn't sell the two.

It would have been fine before, I think.

So Mr.

Chair, I'll go ahead and make that motion.

Um staff recommend that the planning commission grant a special exception to allow restoration of 30% or greater slopes in the sensitive area overlay as described in the staff report for the property located at 400 east Tanya Drive based on the four findings and the seven conditions of approval.

Okay, do we have a second?

I'll second.

Lenny Stavenport.

I Cameron Duncan?

Yes, Ron Mortimer?

Yes, Danny Schoenfeld, yes, Steve Wrigley, yes, Jennifer George, yes, Dave Bromley, yes.

This motion carries okay, probably both good and bad, I would suppose so the good luck is you move forward too.

Well, the good luck is you move forward too.

Um, so we will now move to uh the minutes of October 16th.

Do we have a motion to approve motion to approve the October 16th meeting minutes?

All in favor?

I alright, James.

Anything on that you'd like to uh just uh a couple things, just a quick uh report on um as you recall once we finished the you got the approvals for the general plan that uh we had worked on for a couple years.

The next step to that was to um work on revising our uh development code.

Um so we've gone through a process so far with RFPs and so forth and have narrowed that down considerably to a couple groups that we're gonna um shoot through and work with, and we expect to be starting on that in the next uh month or so in kicking that off to redo our entire um development code and rewrite.

So we expect that to be about an 18 month process to go through that.

That'll be the first time we've done that in a long a long while as well.

Should be so much fun.

Oh yeah, it's gonna be riveting.

It'll be a it'll be a breeze, don't worry.

So you do so you uh a consultant has not been selected yet.

Uh not yet, but we're we're in the process and considerably narrowed down on the right now.

When do you think the selection would be?

Probably uh next yeah, maybe yeah, a couple weeks.

And that's gonna be made finalized by city council.

No, just by staff in this one, it's just a it's an administrative type.

Okay, yeah, that we'll be working on.

Okay.

Then we'll start on that, and then secondly, just a reminder on our um social.

And uh, you should have got a just a reminder for now or a uh place, yeah, save the date from Ayesha.

Um, and then we'll be coming with some additional information.

And once again, that is at the Mortimer's house, and we thank them for that.

Uh and we'll be working towards some exciting fun things for that night.

Yeah, it always is.

It's always fun.

Um if you see my wife, don't ask her about it yet.

I haven't talked to her.

No, no, she's she's excited to host again.

We love doing it.

Well, I thought this time you're gonna actually do the full roasted pig.

Are you sure she had you haven't asked?

I have.

She's uh she is very excited to host.

We're we're she's 100% on board.

She probably knew it was coming.

Yeah, you had these that mind.

Uh just by way of calendaring.

Um we will have a meeting on November 20th.

Uh, likely also one on December 4th that week.

Um I don't know about your availability uh yet.

I haven't looked at our um our uh available uh chart for the 18th of December, but hopefully um we can have that one because the the following that would be falling on New Year's Day, which we will not have a planning commission that night.

So we'll only have one meeting in January, which would be the January 15th.

So likely not skipping any coming up.

Okay.

Uh and then quick question.

Um, any of the other ordinance rewrites that are going on, uh, did you know like a timing on when you think those would be the accessory dwelling stuff?

Um yeah, maybe we'll give a quickie um you want to give an update on the housing workshops.

We're working through the there's a housing um, I think they're calling it a housing workshop.

Some or whatever with the city council going right now.

Yeah.

So on the 18th, they're gonna consider it'll probably be the final meeting, and we're hoping.

Well, I don't know what we're hoping, but we're we're reviewing the last of um mini workshops and the city council will be considering uh possible options for different areas in the city for different types of um land use housing wise, and they'll be uh looking at some concepts on how that would work in each area of the city.

What you're talking about with that is one of them.

What I don't know for sure is if that'll come as an immediate after that if they want that, if that comes as an immediate rewrite, or if we tie that in with the overall overall.

But there is a chance that this council will want us to move quicker on some of these things than waiting for the entire rewrite of the the plan.

So we'll have to see how the 18th goes and what comes out of that meeting to see uh what will be maybe possibly drafted sooner than you know within that scope of the the entire development code rewrite.

So in that housing aspect of it, I mean is it how how different or what's the difference of what you that's uh what's being addressed there versus what had previously been addressed in the general plan?

It's getting a little bit deeper into that detail to specifics get to a point of uh more detailed policy uh positions of the council that would be sufficient for us to then craft a code that we could then bring back through the process to actually implement the general plan.

Tends to stay fairly high level.

This is diving into some of those policy decisions that that uh that we need to have the council give us in order to get that code drafted.

Whether that will be our staff or our consultant that will have do that, that will depend also on timing and speed and expectations there.

So all right, makes sense.

Okay.

Uh anything else?

I don't think so.

Okay.

I think that's a motion to adjourn then.

Motion.

This one is adjourned.

Motion to all in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Thank you all.

I have an interview.