The uh uh economic development committee, and I'm joined here by uh Counselor Nave, Council Jones Rouser, President Hudson, uh my good friend Councilor Majuk, Councilman Paniagua, Councilman Mattel, and Councillor Williams, a good turnout for this committee meeting, right?

President, what do you think?

Absolutely.

I know.

And uh here, of course, with uh uh Mr.

Dishau, who's uh in charge of our zoning office and a myriad of other things.

So Jake, why don't you just go over uh I know it's like you gave us and uh gave us a lot of information here.

Uh I did go through the uh re-zone and uh highlighted sections, but maybe this a general overview that you strike to us would help out.

Sure.

That sounds good.

Jake Dishhaw, deputy commissioner of code enforcement and zoning administration.

So as a zoning administrator, um, we will go through a summary of the changes up on the screen is the full version.

So if there's anything that we want to look at more closely for the full version, we can pull it up on the screen.

Um, but I'll hit the highlights and we can go through anything from there.

Um starting with just overall changes to the entire uh document, uh corrected some scriptner errors or grammatical errors and omissions uh from the original document.

Uh we're changing references uh about zone districts from uh zoning district to zone district itself.

Um changing references from use to use type as appropriate, corrected internal and external cross references um in the text and and the tables within, and uh uh removed all references to the administrative manual, um, which we don't have.

Um it was never completed, so we've stopped making reference to that for the time being.

Um that jumps to article one, uh officially changing the name from rezone uh to the City of Syracuse zoning ordinance, an official map to uh the City of Syracuse zoning ordinance.

So rezone was the process in getting to a new code, so we're officially gonna stop calling it that, officially make the document known as the Syracuse zoning ordinance.

Um clarified that compliance with all applicable codes and laws is required for any development.

I'll give you a brief reason why.

So somebody wants to come in for a special use permit in a mixed use building, but they don't have a certificate of use for the bar on the first floor of the store, or the building doesn't have their three-year state mandated certificate of compliance.

The code clarifies now that like you need to follow all state, federal, local laws to them be in compliance or to establish something within the code.

It just helps us get overall compliance and and not give somebody something when they owe us something, if that makes sense.

Um article two, um clarifying some language within zone districts, base zone districts.

Again, some of this is really technical stuff.

Um but the process to get through this is actual use case scenarios.

Like we've put the code to use in an actual situation that we've dealt with over the last you know year and said this needs to be updated or changed or clarified or slightly edited.

So a lot of this is some of its technical, like legal changes to actual text um rather than a large-scale subsubstance.

So not to bore you to death, but uh some of that stuff is definitely needed as well along the way.

Uh we've revised our dimensional standards and setbacks for principal and accessory structures, clarified and revised the lot size minimums uh and roof heights in certain zone districts, clarified and revised minimum stories required and maximum lot coverage.

So again, I'll just give you a real life example.

Um Lafayette Hills wants to develop housing.

That's not news to anybody, but they want to do clusters of townhouses, and they want it so cluster of four in the center units, they wanted smaller units so they could have different price ranges.

So people that want a smaller unit can pay less.

People that want an end cap unit with three or four bedrooms can pay more.

The problem is is some of our dimensional standards didn't allow for that.

It had to be a uh minimum of 25 feet wide.

So we we're proposing to change that down to 20 to meet you know that need.

Um, so that's just one example or one actual use case.

Yeah, you got a situation like that.

I mean, there I can see there would be a variety of situations that might pop up like that, but we have to change the code, or couldn't you do administrative adjustment for something like that?

There are some things that do allow administrative adjustment from from myself.

Um, other things actually need the the text amendments, and that that's one of them because it's in the table that says, you know, or you could go for variance, but we we don't want to send people to variances for something that we think is a standard kind of nationally.

We'll we looked at and said other places are allowing townhouses, which you know they share a common wall, which is the property line, to be smaller than 25 feet, some even less than 20.

Yeah, I I why don't you get through what we again there are many sort of like where we do issue a lot of administrative approvals and we do have administrative adjustments, which is if you look at our board of zoning appeal schedule, it's a very small uh number of meetings and items on those meetings.

Many times we've canceled the BZA meeting because we don't have any items for them to hear.

So that itself, if you look at that over the last two years, I mean, I don't know how many we've had total, but in let's say 26 months of rezone.

Um, I don't know that we've had 15 items on BZA.

Um total.

So, but again, that just kind of gets to overall what you're saying is it's always a good thing.

Yeah, it is a good thing.

We don't we don't want people that want to do projects here to have to get a variance.

What the we want the code to apply the way we want the city to look.

So um, I think that's what you're seeing.

Uh, but I'll continue to go through this.

Uh we've made some adjustments to the planned institutional districts, so PID, um, I think large institutions, Syracuse University, uh, St.

Joe's.

Um, we did work closely with some of those institutions on some of those changes, and uh we're in agreement.

Um, so that's a good thing.

Um updated and revised uh again the standards within PID zone districts and clarified that with some exceptions that the rest of the code applies in PIDs unless strictly noted.

Um again, just to kind of clean up some areas of what's applicable in a PID and what isn't.

Um moving on to article three, uh clarified prohibited uses, revised the use table.

Um so we added some new use types and included adding uh special use permit requirements for various use types.

So to just explain that uh uses are permitted by right or by special use permit.

If you need a special use permit, it doesn't mean it's not allowed, it just means you got to go through the process which this body hears uh the as the final decision maker on special use permits.

So the chart the table itself has a P for permitted or an S for special use permit, and if it's doesn't have either one of those, then it's not allowed.

Um so we just clean that up a little bit.

Uh added use specific regulations for the new use types.

So again, something may be permitted by right or by special use permit, but it has some use specific language that you have to follow and meet, for example.

Um live entertainment within 300 feet of a um residential zone district.

That that'd be a use specific um standard or language that's added for that type of use, just as an example.

So certain uses to have some specific regulations that follow them.

Um we revised the multi-unit dwelling uh use specific regulation and uh to rename mixed income development and clarified its applicability, um, clarified regulations governing uh residential commercial use types.

So we're treating rental property as a commercial business when it comes to doing land use approvals.

So expansion, and this is in relation to us eliminating and deleting the definition of family out of our land use code.

We're no longer, if you if you recall, we're no longer trying to determine who's related to who, how many people, 18 and older, unrelated, live.

We're not doing that.

We were never doing that to be clear.

Um what we are doing is regulating the property for its intensity of use and density of use.

So how many bedrooms?

So if you're gonna add bedrooms to a rental, and this is citywide, you have to meet certain standards like off-street parking, lot size, common area, things that things that tie into and match the the property maintenance code.

So that's how we're handling how a uh a unit can be used.

And by our way of doing that is treating it as a business instead of regulating blood relation, if that makes sense.

Um, and some of this I've I've talked about before, and again, it's really kind of deep in the weeds, but um just to clarify that we we did make some changes there.

Um again, some changes for accessory structures, um use specific regulations for certain uses, added new definitions for convenience store, grocery store, restaurant.

Um I'm not gonna read all this, but one big one is we we had smaller uh food and beverage corner stores try to tell us that they were a grocery store to uh get out of coming before you for a special use permit.

So we've kind of clarified those definitions and make it clear on what is a grocery store and what isn't.

Not that we're trying to limit people that want to sell fresh foods, that's not what these were straight corner stores that were trying to get around the process to be clear.

Um we felt like we needed to make this change so that those types of businesses have to get a special use permit.

Does smoking establishment uh take in like cannabis retailers?

Yes, right?

Okay.

What's that?

Hookah as well, good one.

Um where does it state something about neighborhood markets?

What is that the corner stores?

Yeah, so we're changing food and beverage retail, which was the use of corner store to neighborhood market, and then grocery store is now officially like more like what you would all think is a supermarket, a grocery store, which we need more of, right?

Um, but yeah, so we're calling it um, we're now going to call that upon your approval, hopefully, a neighborhood market instead of food and beverage retail.

But that's that's a corner store.

Okay, uh just to get back to the cannabis situation.

So would they a cannabis would they do they need a special permit to open?

Yes, right?

Or are they just governed by state law or well?

We can check.

Let's can we pull that up.

Hold on one second.

I just want to make sure just like prevailing fear that we're gonna end up having a market that so right now, just what we're doing right now, currently, is any smoking establishment for cannabis.

If it's if it's a dispensary, one they need to prove that they meet all the state requirements because we didn't exempt out as an as a municipality.

Um, and we would treat it as retail general, but they would also need a business certificate of use.

Um but now we're creating hold on, we got the use table pulled up.

And they also have all the state regulations as to put it in the case.

They do school, it's yeah, but we check all that as well to make sure because we get similar to notices of intent for liquor license, we get the same thing for uh OCM uh cannabis license where the municipality can comment.

Actually, all of you can comment.

I think you get those, but police can comment, fire can comment, code enforcement can comment, and sometimes we do.

We send these boards, you know, we're having issues with this place, or we don't think this is a good location, for example, but um so it is it's a use type under retail sales.

You can see at the bottom where it says smoking establishment.

It does need a special use permit in MX two, three, and four uh permitted by right and uh is that MX5 and then permitted by right in commercial and industrial.

So does that answer your question?

Well, it's not permitted in any R district or an MX1.

If it's in MX2, three or four, it needs a special use permit.

If it's in uh MX5, which is dense, you know, think downtown, uh it's permitted by right.

Uh, if it's in commercial, permitted by right, industrial permitted by right.

There's there's nothing in our co uh codes that would prevent I mean, obviously the convenience stores or anything like that, but I mean, is there any kind of uh credibility or credence given to the amount of activity in one area?

I'm thinking like the convenience stores that are on every black.

I mean, we don't there's I mean, how do we do is there any for killing mechanism for cannabis, or you mean are you strictly corner stores?

Just well, let's go corner stores, but I was also thinking of cannabis, too.

Well, cannabis has to follow the state OCM regulations, which I think does consider proximity to other uses, which is which which we do verify, but we make sure we get an okay from OCM before we move anything forward.

Um, related to uh food and beverage retail currently, what we want to change and call neighborhood market, otherwise known as a corner store.

Um, right now there is not any sort of mechanism for the uh density of those or how many that there are.

It's something we've talked about.

Yeah, but if they sell tobacco to uh corp counsel's point, tobacco we are um, but they could simply say we're not gonna sell tobacco and move forward, and we we inspect for that and make sure places that do come forward.

You see some special use permits, people that are proposing new uh corner stores where we tell them flat out you are not eligible to get a tobacco license, you can operate everything else retail related to a corner store, but you can't sell tobacco.

Um because that does have a distancing requirement and a cap on it under our newer tobacco uh ordinance, but um overall there is nothing else currently.

We've we've talked about it.

It's because as uh you know, many of you have seen, we've had problems with our some of our stores around around the city.

Um, and they suck up a lot of resources from a lot of different departments, whether it's emergency response, code enforcement, or just general issues in neighborhoods, right?

Noise, litter, um, sometimes violence.

Uh corporate council's reminding me uh liquor authority has distancing requirements too.

So I would say taking those out of it, if they're not selling tobacco cannabis, well, it can't be a it can't be a corner store selling cannabis.

We're working we're shutting those ones down.

A dispensary has distancing requirements, anybody selling alcohol, distancing requirements, tobacco, but if they're not selling that stuff, we currently don't have any prohibition other than the use table.

But we've talked about it, and it's something that I think in the future we can have discussion on, you know, do we want to put a cap?

Do we want uh you know a moratorium?

I think it's worth talking about.

So Jake, a neighborhood market is prohibited from selling liquor and tobacco.

Am I right?

No, they just need to leave.

They need additional approvals for those, and those specific sales need have to meet certain criteria in order to get approval.

Okay.

So does that make sense?

Yeah.

All right.

This question is probably gonna go into the um events um portion of the packet, but based on the smoking though, um there's like traveling um bars, not bars like liquor, but like cigar establishments, traveling hookah lounge establishments.

Um, so how does any of that fit into what um when you say traveling, do you mean like pop-up?

Pop-up or like say you have a wedding and you want a cigar lounge at your wedding.

Oh, okay.

Or certain nationalities, they have hookah traveling people to come there and set up hookahs.

Um got it.

Um that would probably fall under what we're proposing to create uh for um event space usage.

Currently, we have indoor and outdoor uh recreation, and that sort of flex event space doesn't really fit that use.

It's for like actual physical like activity, like think rock climbing, for example, inside that's indoor recreation.

Um so what we're doing is proposing um event space use and where that can be allowed and where it can't, and then it can have that sort of flexible use for for an event, if that's what you mean.

If it's strictly gonna be like I'm gonna just host private parties and be more like a bar or restaurant, then like we would based on what uh an applicant or developer wants to do, we try to fit them into the most applicable use category.

But what was missing is we didn't really have an uh a flat out event space um to put them in.

Um they were falling under, like I said, recreation, indoor and outdoor recreation.

It didn't really doesn't really fit that use type.

So what we're doing is is creating that, and we could talk about you know where we don't want to allow those, but um those types of uses, many of them would need special use permits within certain districts, I think, especially within close proximity to residential use.

But other than that, we're trying to make them permissible.

Um we're not trying to not allow somebody to have a successful business doing that.

It's just we didn't have a specific use.

So we are proposing that.

Yeah, I've seen the event space um added.

I just wanted to know about the smoking portion of that.

Well, because smoking stuff establishment was in here with the redactions, and so I just wanted to know about that part, but that's probably something we can discuss further.

Okay.

All right.

Um, we're up to four.

So uh well, hold on a second.

Let me go stick in three.

Um so we discussed it's also in four, I believe, as well, but we have previously discussed some um some uh the so uh 10, the vehicles and equipment um spaces, so uh automobile places, and we had discussed repair shops versus junk uh storage spaces.

So I know junk storage is separate, and then vehicles is one.

Did we address any of the concerns that a lot of these and I don't know the level of of how an automobile place falls in place, but the some of the light auto repair places storing junk vehicles for over 30 days or more.

Yeah, what so one thing in particular that we're proposing within these changes that I think will specifically address that is all these light duty auto repair places uh need or have special use permits.

Some of them got special use permits from a long time ago, right?

Like 50 years ago, maybe more.

Um those haven't been renewed because currently the way it's written is special use permits run with the land, meaning if they got a special use permit in 1972, they still have that approval.

And nothing triggering changing it unless you choose to revoke it completely.

What we're asking to do in in the code with these changes is uh that special use permits would be renewable every 30 months, meaning every 30 months we'd be taking a look, making sure that they're continuing to meet their conditions of approval and their site plan and that they're maintaining a clean good business and they get an automatic renewal.

If not, we bring them back to planning commission for consideration and then ultimately back to you all on a decision if they remain open.

So that's one part of it.

But the second part of it is it triggers a specific review from zoning and from code enforcement.

Right now, I'll be honest, like a special use permit issued in 1972, unless I get a complaint about a place, like there's no trigger for me to explicitly review that for anything or any problems, right?

But now with if we put this change in every 30 months, we're reviewing them.

But don't they have to go to the D DMV?

Well, yeah, like get a every five years or something like that.

Yeah, and sometimes we hear from the DMV, but other times I mean we don't know.

Well, the DMV does it say, hey, these guys got a special use permit or to actually operate or sometimes the DMV will reach out and ask if we've approved a place uh to be something, but that you know, and sometimes we reach out to them as well to ask, hey, is this place have any record of you know doing any auto repair or not?

Um, but we don't hear from them a lot.

So they are yeah, the PMP uh registration number that approved that we don't allow it.

Okay, right.

One thing we did, and this is going back a couple of years now, um, Councilor Jones Rouser, but um Syracuse United neighbors had a few locations within their district that were light duty that were kind of exactly what you're saying, like getting out of control, storing more junk, like you know, having issues.

So what we did with with those is we went around and we sent them their special use permit and said, Here are your conditions of approval, and it issued violations based on that or any property maintenance code enforcement violations, and we got those cleaned up.

But what this would do is bring them back before a reviewing body potentially if there are problems and potentially uh you know saying no, like something's no longer gonna have lifelong automatic approval, is what I'm saying.

These would be administrative reviews that could come back before this body every 30 months if the if a property that has one of those special use permits um is is a problem.

And I think that's a good thing.

Yeah, um, and I would say that those those same uh entities that Sun probably had an issue with changed hands over the years and they're back to the same stuff.

Um again, before we jump into um four, um and general use for all accessory.

Uh did we go are we past ADUs to assess in four?

So I just want to talk about the ADUs.

Um accessory dwelling units are allowed.

We just haven't we we've issued one one, and it was from uh uh Sedwick area home with a huge garage in the back.

I think I think people would like to do them, but the cost of actually uh building an ADU is like putting a large addition on your home.

Like it's gonna cost you an extensive amount of money, and I think that's why we're not seeing them.

Um talk to Albany and Rochester folks um as well.

They're same thing, they're just not they're not seeing them.

Well, one of the one of the things that I was looking at in this is uh uh in from C B.

Uh it says that if the principal use structure is destroyed, abandoned, or removed, the accessory use structure shall no longer be allowed.

Now I'm just thinking like if it's a ADU residential ADU, and say my daughter lives in my ADU, my house catches fire.

I can't use, I can't live inside of my ADU until my home is repaired.

No, I I think well, it just means long term it can't just stay like a shed, a garage, an ADU that if it requires a home on there, that at some point we we need to get a home back on there.

We would never force somebody to not live somewhere during a time of planning to rebuild a property.

That's not what that means.

It just means let's say I have a big detached four-car garage in my backyard and the house burns down.

I can't just leave it and now use that garage as like a commercial garage to store my you know um lawn mowing company equipment in that I have to put a house back on it.

Also the um language of the language of um 50% or 1,000 square foot, 8,000 800 square foot, like all of those seem to be contradictory or confusing.

So what I don't even know the the threshold for when you can rebuild and can't when you know the size of the ADU.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, what well what we want a proportion.

We did a lot of data research on this.

Basically, we don't want an ADU to be you know disproportionate to the size of the home or or just this massive accessory dwelling unit that's almost bigger than the home.

Most homes, uh, what was the average?

1300 or less, 1200 or so.

Yeah.

Um but yeah, we we want the accessory dwelling units to be proportionate and to fit the the main structure, if that means makes sense.

So you can have a bigger one up to a certain up to 800 if you have a a big home.

If you don't, it has to be slightly less, just so we don't have you know, think about like an 1100 square feet.

Yes.

So that's where the that's where it's confusing at because one part says 1,000 square feet.

I don't know if there's a minimum and a maximum.

Um I don't know if it's residential or non-residential.

Oh, okay.

I I think there's two different aspects of that.

There's accessory dwelling units, and then there's accessory structures, two different things.

One, somebody's living in the other one, they're not.

Which one is which, please?

So the 800 is the ADU, the other one is everything else that's not being lived in.

Okay, so the 800 is the residential ADU.

Right.

But we're not 800.

We've got one of them so far.

We we've approved one uh in Sedwick.

Okay, so it's good.

So and just one more question on that.

And the ADU, counselor?

On the size, yes.

But some lots are extremely deep.

And it's not say I wanted to put I have a really deep lot, say three to four hundred feet back, and I want to put an ADU further back is not next to or really close to the property.

You can do that.

I know that.

That's where I'm not.

You have a huge lot that's so deep.

You can put your ADU way in the back as long as you're not saying where is there an exception where it could be slightly larger if it's not so close to the property and it's deeper in the lot of the case.

I know I know height-wise, you don't want to be able to do it.

I hear that.

Well, where we landed on it is no more than 800.

And to put that in perspective, think about an air a hotel room is usually around like just over like maybe 300 square feet.

Not that like we want people to live in hotel rooms.

I'm not, I'm just trying to give some perspective on like what 800 square feet can get you.

Um nationally and what we what we adopted, we felt like 800 is a good maximum.

But you know, if we if we have a scenario where somebody has a huge lot and they want to put something larger, what we want to avoid is kind of what happened here after the war.

A lot of and I mean World War II, a lot of housing got built like full-size houses, right?

And we've got a full-size house in the front, and then 30 feet behind it, there's another full-size house.

That is something that we want to promote density, but not like that.

Um we can talk about it.

I mean, if there's something we want to change or add.

I think I share some of Counselor Jones Rousseau's concerns.

Um, I I met with Owen probably a month, two months back to talk about ADUs in particular.

And you know, you mentioned the cost, and there surely is a lot of costs involved with you know, either converting a property, building a property to to be an ADU, but I think that we might be hindering our our own efforts here by some of the um some of the code that we have here.

Um just kind of a maybe larger conversation for another day.

After 27 months, we've had one application.

So what's your concerns, Counselor Williams?

Uh something like that.

Counselor Monto and I were just saying I feel like what what we have in front of us feels like more than one committee meeting.

You know, where I well, I think I think we all agree on that.

But you know, let's I mean, we went through a whole year and a half process or whatever process on this thing.

And then, you know, no offense to Jake or anything like that.

I know we had a review it, but as I was looking through uh all this that was presented to us, uh, you know, I I think we have to like adhere to a policy, housing policy.

I'm sure the commissioner would agree with me uh where we want to go.

Right.

Uh and the policy in the text has been changed to redefine that maybe.

Uh I think we have to be all in agreement where we want to go on the ADA ADU is a even though there's only one, you know, do we there's one one?

You know, an application was put in in our neighborhood that they haven't been able to quite get there.

And you know, I think about where do we want to go, you know.

We talk about the housing crisis that we're in, and you know, I commend y'all for for taking the Lafayette Hills example and saying here's the situation that we can make a modification and promote the development of more housing.

I like that.

And I think that you know, we need to have a more not a more, but we have to have a comprehensive approach and strategy to how can we maybe with this document be able to promote more development of housing in our in our in our city.

Um, you know, I think I'm a I'm a fan of upzoning.

You know, I think that we need density.

I think that we can think about you know potential areas within the city that we can up zone to try to you know entice more more development, denser development.

Um, you know, one of the things that Owen shared with me is the ADUs aren't gonna solve our housing crisis, and I agree with him on that one, but you know, it's a little bit here and a little bit there, and what can we do to keep pushing in the right direction?

Yeah, so Michael Callins Commissioner for Neighborhood and Business Development, uh really appreciate in fact absolutely love the fact that you guys are as a body saying, hey, we gotta make sure this matches what our our housing uh housing goals are.

And so to that end, what I can tell you is that as this team is doing this work, uh working directly with um our our planning division, uh and and working directly with our our neighborhood division and understanding how this does affect positive or negative what what those goals are.

So that that's exactly the lens that we that we take through this.

ADUs are a perfect example of where there may be a concern about the size.

We with the fact that we've only had two applications.

That means that we haven't had anybody come forward and and say, geez, I would do this if I could get another 200 square feet.

What the news has told us uh and reported accurately is that we've had tremendous growth in our uh our our property values.

What they have not reported that is also accurate is we still are kind of in the bottom third of the nation for property values when it comes to to rent uh and and and sale price.

And so what that means is we need to find ways to recognize the fact that the financial markets and um what it costs to build, that those those things still are struggling to line up.

They're getting closer than they used to be, but we're not there yet.

And so Jake had pointed out earlier the fact that for um uh when we're dealing with townhouses, you know, we we had a request come forward to saying, hey, would you look at at um uh 20 feet for the frontage?

We went and did the research that included going back and talking to Owen uh Deputy Commissioner Kearney, it was like, yeah, like 20 feet it really is where we should have landed in the first place.

You know, we we couldn't get everything perfect, so we ended up at 25.

But that's what the national nationally were seeing those numbers work.

A long way for me to say this is all through the lens.

Everything we're seeing here is through the lens of how do we incentivize good development.

Friday was a wonderful example of just the way that everybody wants a piece of Syracuse right now.

We had the we had the black blitz over the south side.

Uh I ended up over at uh Northeast Community Center.

We just had for uh for uh uh job fare that was happening there.

We've got stuff going on Thursday night with the ribbon cutting for uh the new the new uh tech guard.

And it's happening.

This document is allowing us to be much more efficient with how we can make sure that that happens because time is also money for the developers.

Commissioner, I agree with you totally on that.

And I think we all got to write.

I thought you would.

You're a smart guy.

Well, God bless you, you are Irish.

Um like, but we're you know, I think we gotta be cognizant that we got this frame of time.

We have a time and we should take advantage of this.

And like I was looking earlier, I mean, when we get to the other articles, we have 30 business days where an application can be approved.

I think we gotta like shorten that amount.

I know it's difficult, might put a lot of stress on Jake's staff, but there's certain things that we you know, we got to get out the door in order to create housing and commercial opportunities.

I and and I've also said, I mean, well, new entrepreneurs, especially folks in the minority population, you know, concierge part idea has always been my idea to walk people through the process as far as businesses go.

So to that end, we've done a lot of uh cross-training within NBD so that the business development's got a good idea of of where and when to hand people off to the zoning department and just make sure we've got lots of points of entry for exactly that concierge uh service uh because that's absolutely a goal of ours.

Speeding up time, honestly, just with what our uh current constraints are when it comes to staffing levels.

That that's that's that's gonna be a real challenge.

And so we are, you know, we we've all had lots of discussions around what uh where the right places are to generate expenses.

This is a place that generates a lot of revenue.

Uh but you know, right now we've we've got constraints on just how much staffing we can actually put towards it.

So counselor, are you okay now, Council Jones Rowser?

Okay.

I'll go to an article four.

I might have to come back to two.

Okay.

Okay.

Um we made an edit or a revision that allowed um modification to the development standards during the site plan review process.

We never utilize that.

It was never used like things that we want to uh be a rule like are in the code and things that aren't a rule, we're not putting in the code, and variances are always an option.

So um that that was removed.

Like I said, it was never utilized in two plus years.

Um anyway.

Um we clarified off-street parking regulations, uh applicability of off-street parking, uh, modified table 4.1, which is um adding minimum parking for new use types, um, and maximum off-street parking, um, as well as discretionary parking and parking for unlisted uses.

So basically trying to determine, hey, I want to do this, I want to develop this land use and I want to do X.

How much parking do I need?

The the table really didn't cover every scenario.

Um, not that we want massive parking lots, but some things need some minimum parking requirements.

off-street parking uh modified table 4.1 which is um adding minimum parking for new use types um and maximum off street parking um as well as discretionary parking and parking for unlisted uses so basically trying to determine hey i want to do this i want to develop this land use and i want to do x how much parking do I need that the table really didn't cover every scenario um not that we want massive parking lots but some things need some minimum parking requirements so um that that was added um again a lot of this is based on real use case scenarios too not just uh making this went all through the planning commission all the planning commission and there was I imagine there was some vigorous conversation regarding parking or was it wasn't there um it was a a process uh if you know some of the members on the commission they're they're very thorough yeah and it was a it was a process but in the end ultimately everything before you uh was recommended from a planning commission but um if you could just elaborate on I believe it's four as far as um the minimum parking um for newly added types um so if we add a use type that wasn't in the code before it wasn't enumerated that use type also needed to we needed to think about how much parking does that use type that was never in the code before need so does that make sense okay for use type all right and then what about I know there was some conversation about housing um and adding additional rooms or additional structure to a house which will trigger additional parking um yep that's only if it's uh non-owner occupied rental to if you want to increase density and intensity again not regulating blood and family and how many people can live there we're using the property maintenance code uh for common area and also you have to have an additional off street parking spot and this isn't just a direct response to university neighborhoods either um but think about it like if you're adding a bunch of a couple of bedrooms like that's gonna add more cars typically and um can can the neighborhood support that especially our residential zone districts well how does this affect uh so we we do regulate owner occupant boarding homes now right like that's something that we allow uh or did like a rooming house or yes but it's it it is a use type yeah it's allowable in certain so how does the parking fit into that is does it apply to that at all yeah that it's but so that so I guess because of are you are you asking what would be the parking requirements for if somebody proposed the rooming house today is that is that the question um I'd have to pull it up to be honest with you um and we can do it if you want but uh I the those have been the same since the code was adopted so whatever the requirement has been is is what it is up off the top of my head honestly I don't know we'd have to pull it up um but so this is the this is the required off street parking spaces and you can see it's got all the uses down the left side and the specific use in the middle and then it tells you how many spaces you need per square footage so again if we added some use types we added it to the parking requirement table that that's all that that's all number four means is that's what we did it I would say it's not necessarily a substantial change um let's see so lodging it wouldn't really fall under that so group living you can see boarding and rooming house uh none required but if you're a chapter house a dorm or residential care facility it's one space either per bedroom or for for a care facility it's one space per 400 square foot but I that hasn't changed that that would that would need to change because if if I have a four bedroom house I'm the owner I live there so there's three bedrooms available you may be able to fit two cars in my driveway that depends on how close the house is um I don't know if that's well I would also say I don't know that we've really have we even had any development or establishment of a rooming house no so it's a okay that's what I'm talking about someone renting out bedrooms that's that room Martha Hertzberg Mayor Hertzberg from Corporation Council's office roaming house is a specific type of group living um it's defined in the code and it um it is a facility where multiple people live but they each have like a private room that they can lock but they have group meals and a common kitchen with a common area so if you're renting your house out that's not a boarding house that's a residential commercial uh living the category above that where um you see dwelling single unit and two unit commercial conversions so where the owner lives there but rents out four bedrooms that would be a commercial use but is it wouldn't be a conversion it wouldn't they wouldn't

So if you're renting your house out, that's not a boarding house.

That's a residential commercial living, the category above that, where um you see dwelling single unit and two-unit commercial conversions.

So where the owner lives there but rents out four bedrooms, that would be a commercial use.

But is it wouldn't be a conversion?

It wouldn't, they wouldn't convert anything.

They're just renting rooms.

We use the word conversion to refer to taking a single unit dwelling and making it um uh uh No, not necessarily.

We only if they add bedrooms.

But to your point, the parking minimum, there's none required.

Um I mean I suppose we could make it a requirement.

Most residential uses have driveways, so a legal driveway is gonna have I mean, depending on the lot, I guess it varies where the where the but there's there is off-street parking to some extent.

And the and there's on-street too, right?

Like some of it's designated odd even depending on where it is in the city, some doesn't have odd even at all, meaning you can park anywhere.

I mean, I think about single our R1 district where I live, there's some most people put their cars in a driveway, but there's some on the street.

Um I don't know.

Um we I mean I guess I just look at it where you may have some.

I don't know what we're calling them at this point, but you may have some houses that rent out rooms and they're at capacity.

Some people have vehicles and and they do have to park on the street, and if you have three extra vehicles on the street in front of one or two properties, along with other houses that had like that can be create type congestion.

So it's only when you're converting additional space to bedrooms.

So what we see a lot is that a dining room gets converted to a bedroom or a sunroom gets converted to a bedroom, or even the living room, and it's in those circumstances primarily that we're trying to capture an extra parking space because you're parking beyond what the capacity of the original house would have.

Okay, now would um would be in bed and breakfast.

We had a situation on my street where the homeowner is using the upstairs for bed and breakfast.

They come in, they're out of state, they know nothing about odd and even parking.

So where does that fall that fall in the responsibility?

Because they'll be parked on both sides.

They don't know they're gonna get a ticket.

Does that fall on the property owner to notify the person who's gonna go in there?

Maybe you don't know, you know, who is going to be responsible.

I mean, I'll say this.

A lot of us, we all travel different places in the city, outside the city.

Like you gotta look at where you're parking, right?

Like I mean, that goes for fire hydrants, that goes for handicap loading zones, loading zones, like I mean, traffic law, right?

So Jake, you identify the A and B.

I I have you been able to identify the A and B because they all like obviously they go on social media and advertise all those places.

I mean, you don't know where the neighborhoods.

Yeah, what so what we're doing is the reason I asked we passed that hotel rescue hotel tax, and I was wondering if that's applied.

Deputy mayors that is it's applied to those Airbnbs.

I think counselor Williams they're supposed to it's supposed to be applied.

And the county legislature just passed the registry, right?

Um short-term rentals.

So uh short-term rentals is something we've been looking at for uh I don't know for a number of years.

It's it's got a rise to the to the top and it's rising towards the top.

Uh the way that the county just did it, I think helps us a lot because that works directly with the company rather than the the individual uh so that we know we can collect those taxes, but we yeah, we do have an interest in being able to find a way to.

The county's been very aggressive, and I think with with the city should be aggressive too.

I mean, to uh Council Dunave's point, counselor Jones Rousser.

I mean, they're popping up all the way.

I got one on my street.

Uh there's one right around the corner.

There's uh one a couple on um Tennyson Avenue too.

And uh, you know, I I think it's something that I don't particularly care whether I mean parking in my neighborhood's very difficult anyways, but um I think we have to work with people as far as that that goes, and if it derives more revenue, I'm probably in favor of a lot of this.

I yeah, the the the but I also have an Airbnb that's a directly across the street from me.

Um you know, we're over in the university neighborhood, so parking, you know, parking is a premium.

Um and there's still always space.

You know, you you're never walking more than a handful of houses to be able to do it.

But the odd even is something that um you know, I I will explain to people.

Um because that that is something that not every property owner that does an Airbnb uh is is really good at being able to get that information out.

I think the one across the street from me, the uh the guests have told me that it says pay attention.

Is that considered Jake?

Was that considered good commercial then?

An Airbnb?

Obviously would if they're if they advertise, right?

Yeah, we would consider an Airbnb residential commercial living.

So it's residential house, but it's commercially being used as a commercial enterprise or business.

So yes.

We're that's a brave new world, and we're just getting into that, right?

More or less.

Um yeah, pretty much.

Um, I'll bring it up because I'm it's something I think we could look at.

But on top of the occupancy taxes, like do you do anything above and beyond that?

Um, you know, so but most of those Airbnbs even coming to us, though.

So if if there's people that own two unit houses in, I don't know, pick a street.

Are they even coming anywhere near us when they just go and do it?

Right, right.

So, you know, do we have a license for it?

Do we do something else?

Is the first question, right?

Because if we we could just take the county registry and just adapt it to fit our needs, and then from there do whatever we want.

It's so like I said, we we've been we've been looking at this a handful of different ways for a long time.

The did uh honestly, with the exception of those of us that are like, hey, we know that one is an Airbnb.

The companies do not disclose where uh the address is for the people that buy into the franchise.

Uh so it is uh we need to do a few different types of research.

One is really what have we found to be uh effective best policy around the country, because there's always great ideas.

But fortunately, a lot of people have tried those ideas beforehand uh already and you know, learned learned which ones actually work and which ones don't.

The next then is that mechanism of of identification.

And you from what we've heard from other cities, and and we've talked to a number of other cities about this.

That's not I you know, I've talked to cities where they simply employ three, you know, two, three people to stay on top of the research where they look at every listing and then they go look at street view for every possible house within that area.

But that's you know, you're you're adding a lot of labor to be able to do it.

And so what is a cost effective way for us to provide good oversight?

It's not a quick process to get to what's going to be best for Syracuse.

But the council hopes I think that maybe the window of opportunity there is to cut the deal with the VRBOs and Airbnb companies that say, like, listen, here's we're gonna allow this and set guardrails, but you're gonna have to tell us where they are.

And uh the that's where when we take a look at the rules that are made by other cities, you we we're able to see what's effective uh in exactly with that.

I mean, they do do this all through social media, so I mean I I think you can identify them.

Well, not everybody's advertising with their with their uh address.

What they do is they advertise in neighborhood.

And there's certain obviously there's certain neighborhoods that wouldn't want Airbnbs in their neighborhood.

I uh Yes, there's there's always gonna be that.

And so we need to balance uh, you know, what do we see as best for Syracuse uh along with the fact that you're always gonna have some people that are gonna say I I only stay in Airbnbs, I I welcome my neighborhood, I own them, I shouldn't be restricted.

I don't want to live next to one, right?

Where people are gonna fall into roughly one of those three categories.

Can I ask a question?

I'm just thinking about this because I went to New Jersey, and when I went to New Jersey, they had somebody Airbnbs on the strip.

Well, what they did is they sold parking permits to people coming into the Airbnbs.

And we maybe give that a thought.

I so I I think that that's a great conversation to include the uh transportation division of DPW with, because I mean we're as we're talking about parking, we know what we need from a building standpoint, but we do always try to make sure that we're talking with our friends at the end.

You can just park anywhere you wanted to permit parking, you had to have that parking permit to be able to park in that particular location.

Yeah, and I think that there are some places within the city that we may want to consider that.

I would uh if you're you know, downtown, we want to have as much parking available during the day for our businesses.

So what does that look like compared to if you're in my neighborhood?

Yeah, but the parking can be kind of crowded, but I've never not found a spot, and I've been in my house for 30 years.

So places where we can think, well, there's a there's a lot of cars on the street that that still might mean that it's 60% of the capacity is being used, and and that we wouldn't necessarily have to create new rules for every day.

But parking in my neighborhood will be very busy on uh next weekend for uh the Westcott Cultural Festival.

That's that's that's when the the one day a year when it gets goofy.

And so 364 days a year doesn't, that means that we're probably doing okay.

So I I just have um one one ask or comment, I guess, before the common council.

Um there's been a lot of discussion about things that I I think we need to have discussion on, but aren't part of these specific asks.

Um I'd like to just see if we could separate those two things, because we can have an amendment whenever, but um Airbnbs, additional ADU stuff, parking, housing flexibility, like some of that's not really part of this um directly, and we can certainly have those discussions and you know, we we want to, but um just to you know, a lot of the stuff really more clarification of things and edits of things like the last three things I really have to mention are the special use permit, which I talked about, we want to do renewals, that's kind of substantial.

We added a substantial rewrite to the rules of measurement, but that's like nerdy stuff like how do we measure setbacks, how do we measure heights of buildings, like just clarifying how we do those measurements, like actually spelling it out.

Well, I had a question on the height on the rules of measurement.

How does the um how does the the new um rules of measurement affect, and maybe it doesn't, um the like article for historic uh neighborhoods, um, how does that affect articles of in-kind development?

Um wanna make sure I understand.

So basically, it just tells us how we measure something.

It I don't think it's really changing a whole lot exactly impacting real use or uh or changing what you can and can't do.

It just wasn't clear on how we actually calculated certain things within the code, and that's what the sections changing.

A historic building being replaced in kind, is that the question?

Yes, in kind or in kind to the neighborhood.

Whereas you have, I'll just say on the south side, you have some houses that are have new developments that are much lower in height than the previous existing homes, and they're you know so I'm just thinking about the historic neighborhoods that not happening.

Well, zone districts have regulations for heights of buildings, stories, and it's by zone districts, so that should all hopefully already be something that's being regulated that's been in the code.

Um sorry, I'm trying to answer the question.

I'm just kind of like Does anybody have anything else to add?

Um so counselor, I think one of the things so what I hear you talking about is within historic districts, there's a there's a vacant parcel.

It could be a historic neighborhood because it's not all of them are huge districts.

It could just be a neighborhood that might that might be one block that is considered you know historic in some fashion.

And so we we can get clarification from Kate Alwater, our our uh preservation planner.

The uh standard uh generally speaking, what it with if you're within a designated historic area, what it means is uh either there's tax benefits for making improvements that keep that up, or it you know, uh there may even be restrictions on on what you can do.

It depends on the designation.

Um to uh deputy commissioner Dish's point.

The so we we had when we adopted this code uh as you know, we we created it, you adopted it uh about two and a half, a little over two years ago.

We promised you at the time that where the old one, everyone we kept referring to the older one as is ancient and elderly, and I took offense because it's five months older than I was at the time.

Um but the point being we told you we were gonna make it or iterative changes to it to make sure that this was a living document and we're continuing to improve it.

We were definitely in favor of being flexible and nimble.

The council talked about that quite a bit.

As we meet the future, we want to don't want to be morbid in this old you know, zoning uh regulations.

So that's why it passed.

And and to that point, we've been we've been before you previously for updates.

Here we are again.

I think you you all are bringing up really important stuff, uh some of which is on our list, some of which uh isn't for you know the the next sets of reviews.

So we will continue to do that.

I think our request to you is to is to take a hard look at what's in front of you right now, and if we're good with this to proceed with this, and we work with you to make sure that future amendments are addressing, you know, continue to do address the concerns that that you all have.

Um so I that's that's really what we're we're hoping for out of out of this right now, that we can take a hard look at what we've got, make sure it meets what it should meet, go forward and continue with with uh with future revisions because we've been poor before you already we'll continue to do it.

Well, within that question to Kate, um just I know that some districts have been rezoned for more density, um, and and those districts may also overlap with historic district or neighborhoods.

So that's where my concern is that it may be allowed, but should we do it if the previous properties in this neighborhood are of a certain type?

Um I think I understand you more.

So that none of that's changing.

The preservation section is still applicable, it's not changing at at all.

I don't think we have anything in in that chapter.

Um so again, the rules of measurement is really more about how you calculate something, not changing what you can have as a height, for example.

Like it wasn't clear if you were on a slope how to measure the height, for example.

That's what we did in Article 7 on rules of measurement.

It didn't change what the height can be in a historic neighborhood, for example.

That that's been what it has been this whole time and is not changing.

Um, you know what I'll do, uh Jake is I'm gonna t I'll talk to my fellow counselors and we'll decide as far as uh if we want to go forward like this, or do you want it we want to have another union?

So yeah, one last thing I just want all of you to know is um we have a really small uh but mighty zoning team.

Most of them are here in attendance.

Um they work tirelessly day in, day out.

A lot of some many of these changes are from actual use case scenarios where we we're trying to get a project through and the code is either unclear or it's not addressed at all.

Uh and we've taken notes like, hey, we need to add this.

Like that's where a lot of this comes from.

So I just want to.

That's where we're coming from.

That's where I'm coming from.

Yeah.

Some things are unclear still.

Okay.

So just and I apologize if I didn't do a good job answering it.

Part of it is think I didn't understand all but and we can talk offline after this, but anything that's not happy to talk about.

Why don't the council Jones Rouser or any of the counselors that have any specific questions?

Why don't you get them to Jake?

And then we'll we you know, and copy all of us so we know what's uh going on, and then you can get back to us.

Yep, we can do that.

Especially you know, about historic issues that council Jones Rouser has and all that.

Sounds good.

Okay.

So if there's no more questions, I will uh ask for motion to adjourn.

So move.

All favor.