 I don't know if that's appropriate. I guess it's the same. Good afternoon. Welcome to the Durham Planning Commission. The members of the Durham Planning Commission have been appointed by the City Council and the County Board of Commissioners as an advisory board to the elected officials. You should know that the elected officials have the final say on any issue before us tonight. If you wish to speak on an agenda item tonight, please go to the table to my left and sign up to speak. For those of you who wish to speak, please state your name, your address when you come to the podium. Please speak clearly and into the microphone. Each side, those speaking in favor of an item and those speaking in opposition to an item will have 10 minutes to present for each side. The time will be divided among all persons wishing to speak. Finally, all motions are stated in the affirmative, so if a motion fails or ties, the recommendation is for denial. Also, and for your information, this is being broadcast on Spectrum, AT&T Uverse, Frontier, Google Fiber. It is also streamed on the City's YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. Needless to say, we are coming to you live. Thank you. Can I have the roll call, please? Mr. Williams? President. Mr. Morgan? Here. Mr. Johnson? Present. Mr. Brine? Present. Commissioner Durkin is excused, or has asked to be excused. Commissioner Alturk? Here. Vice Chair Busby? Here. Chair Hyman? Present. Commissioner Miller? Here. Commissioner Ketchin? Here. Commissioner Santiago? Here. Commissioner Baker? Here. Here. Thank you. May I please have a motion to excuse Commissioner Durkin? So moved. Second. Moved by Commissioner Alturk and second by Commissioner Brine, that Commissioner Durkin receive an excused absence. All in favor of this motion, let it be known by the usual sign of aye. Aye. All opposed. Thank you. The next item that we have is the approval of the minutes and consistency statements for the January 14, 2020 meeting. Chair recognizes Commissioner Brine. Madam Chair, on the minutes, on page two, item number five, the NCCU Student Center, the Betabug Commission discussion is incomplete. Oh, it is. We will take note and fill that in. Thank you. With what? Thank you. Are there any other comments about the minutes? If not, I'd like to entertain a motion. So moved. All right. So moved. Second. Motion by Commissioner Alturk and second by Commissioner Busby that we approve the minutes and consistency statement for January 14, 2020 with the adjustment that was recognized all in favor of this motion, let it be known by the usual sign of aye. Aye. All opposed. Thank you. Are there any adjustments to the agenda? Good evening. Grace Smith with the Planning Department. Yes, Chair Hyman and Planning Commissioners. The staff would recommend an adjustment. Well, it's not a recommendation. We actually have to remove item A-19, 0-0-0-1-5-Z-19, 0-0-0-4-2 under comprehensive plan and future land use map amendments with concurrent zoning changes. There was an, I'm sorry, it's the item above that. I apologize. It's actually item A-18, 0-0-0-11 and Z-18, 0-0-0-3-5, 1432 Ellis Road. Thank you. That is item A under public hearings for zoning map changes with comprehensive future land use map amendment. And there was an error in notice. We sent out an email to you to explain that. And that item has been removed from this agenda or shouldn't it be removed from this agenda and will be placed on the agenda for March the 10th? Thank you. Are there any other adjustments to the agenda? We are not aware of any. Staff is none. May I have a motion to approve the agenda as amended? So moved. Motion by Commissioner Brine, second by Commissioner Morgan, that we approve the minutes, the agenda as presented with adjustments. All in favor of this motion? Let it be known by the usual sign of aye. Aye. All opposed? Thank you. We are ready for our first item. Staff would also like to note for the record though. However, all other notice requirements for other cases to be heard tonight were executed in accordance with state and local law. And we have the affidavits on file for those. Thank you. Thank you. I think we are ready for our first public hearing. Page road flex development. Staff please and any side ups. Thank you. Thank you. I'm prepared to support you on that. Good evening. I'm Jamie Sonjak with the planning department presenting case number Z1900042. Page road flex development. The applicant is Warren Mitchell. The location of the site is 2211 page road. Property is located within the county's jurisdiction. The site is just over 10 acres. It is a zoning request and a future land use map amendment. The zoning request is a change. The zoning from rural residential to an industrial light with a text only development plan. In addition, there is a future land use map amendment from office to industrial. This slide just summarizes what a text only development plan is and provides a list of the applicants proposed permitted uses within the zoning district. There is one slight modification to this, to the list that you had in your application. And in your packet, the applicant has made a request to remove the warehouse and freight movement uses from the IL zoning district. This area shows the property highlighted in red. The site is located within the suburban tier. As shown in the photos, this site is very heavily wooded. The context map shows that the area has multiple zoning districts in the area and the land use pattern is somewhat varied to the west. There's a mix of flex light industrial, which was part of a 1997 development plan approval. With offices, warehouses and self storage facilities. Directly to the north is a city owned parcel with a overhead water tank along Page Road extension and towards Route 70. There's office buildings, a telecommunication company and industrial manufacturing plant on the east side. And then on the west side, there are motor vehicle facilities, a car wash, additional light industrial facilities. The staff report goes into much more detail in terms of the other surrounding uses. I did want to make one additional correction to the east of the property. I mentioned that there was an approved residential development and that is not the case. It's not approved. However, that property was actually to the south of Lumney Road, but it is still residentially zoned in the RR residential zoning district and therefore could also support residential development. The context map provides the zoning of the property. It's shown in the rural residential yellow shade and the applicant again is proposing to change this to the industrial light with a development plan highlighted in purple on the right. As shown on this map, this is the future land use map existing designation is office and the applicant proposes to change it to industrial to coincide with the zoning request. This slide just summarizes the industrial light district dimensional standards. And the following provides a list of the comprehensive plan and policies. The property is currently designated office on the future land use map and that does not coincide with the zoning request. While the request would be consistent with the rezoning request to industrial light. Staff does not support the request to change the future land use designation as staff does not feel that this use would be compatible with the adjacent residentially zoned parcel. Staff recognizes that the applicant has eliminated the warehouse and the freight movement permitted use. However, staff feels that the current office designation and a more or a more restrictive limited scope of uses with a development plan would offer a better transition between the adjacent residential use and the industrial uses along page road. The applicant proposes a designation which is permitted within the suburb and tier but staff reviewed the industrial land use study and has determined that this site is not suitable for an industrial designation given its size and its proximity to the residentially zoned land. And as shown on the context map and described in the staff report the proposed industrial future land use designation does not serve as an appropriate transition between the residentially zoned land and the industrial uses. While staff has while the applicant again just to reiterate while the applicant has limited the proposed uses through a text only development plan. No detailed development plan has been provided to illustrate how the potential impacts for the proposed change would be mitigated as a result staff does not support the request to the future land use designation and determines that the office designation is more consistent and that the applicant and that the request is not consistent with the comprehensive plan and other policies and ordinances. I'll be happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you. I do have two individuals who have signed up to speak. Kim Griffin. Thank you. My name is Kim Griffin. I'm with Griffin Associates. I'm from Durham. I have been dealing with Harris family on this property for about 12 years. Started out as 92 acres. 20 acres in Wake County. 72 acres in Durham County. And as Mr. Steve Medlin said, basically whatever type of zoning you think is most appropriate, I think the city would consider. The city acres in Wake County is in the right of way of the future aviation parkway to go from highway 70 over to where it currently connects around the airport. Lumley Road is going to be terminated. The 12 acres on the south side of Lumley Road when the family decided the only way to sell the property is to divide it up. That's sold. And they're building townhouses. The 20 acres, we're kind of in limbo until NCDOT has the money to deal with that property. So on Lumley Road about two years ago, with the staff's recommendation, we took two parcels and we had those designated as light industrial to build family warehouses. I believe the planning commission denied the county commissioners approved. At that time, I reached out to the other property owners on Page Road. The one on the corner never heard from one that lives in South Carolina has a small lot next door. It wasn't interested in it. And the vet hospital out of Charlotte said that when they were ready to do something, then they would come forward with a proposal. So the 10 acres we're dealing with today has been quite frankly a detriment to the larger track because the residential developers that looked at it were told to build a road coming out of their development on to Page Road and you had to cross a little wet area. And the cost of doing that was five to 600,000 according to five to eight national builders. So when we took the 10 acres and separated, we wanted to do the same zoning that we have across the street, which is light industrial. To me, that is the most appropriate zone. I don't see anybody putting an office there. The residential people are not interested because the tower is intimidating. I don't know how many feet high it is, 200, 300, but it's on up there. And I don't think that we'd be able to sell a house under that. And if you walk out there and on the property, you will see that there's about a 60, 70 foot level area on Page Road, which is ideal to put a building on. And then it drops levels for a little bit and drops down to a wet area. And so that we felt would be the good buffer because you've got automatically 50 feet, but the wet area is a little bit bigger than that. And then on the south side, you have two industrial zone sites already backing up to this. On the north side, you have the water tower, and you have a building that they store cars in. Across the streets, the car wash, and a lot of small businesses in the light industrial. So the Harris family agreed to go ahead and do the future land use map from office to light industrial. And Warren Mitchell will speak to what he proposes to do there, which I think is in keeping with the property. I'll take questions now, or if you won't let Warren tell you what he proposes to build there, I think it would be appropriate. Well, the next person I have signed up to speak is Emile. Is that... Oh, that's... Okay, well, I only have one individual to come up and sign the sheet, so we'll hear from you. Well, I'm the applicant. I didn't know I needed to sign also, but I came in late. Yes, I'm the applicant. Okay. Thank you. You can do it. I don't see the mouse. Thank you. Commissioners, good evening. My name is Warren Mitchell. I'm the applicant. Just enlarged. What about the view? Probably go to view. On the keyboard, control L when I get large. Thank you. Is that right? Yes. So it should be, yeah, control L? Well, first I wanted to just tell you what we're planning to build on the property, and then I thought we could just review and let you know why we think appropriate project for this land. The site is on Page Road where it meets Page Road extension. And there is a mix of development in that area, multifamily, light industrial. There is no office. There's a church here, catch the fire. Just some of you probably have driven by but never really noticed the businesses too closely. And I'm gonna cover this across the street because it is what we're patterning this project to be. And it'll explain to you why we have light industrial, even though there's many different uses that are likely to go on the project. This is TW Alexander. It just shows you the large warehouses, the real industrial, which is larger projects. The closest office is I could find, we're at down here in Briar Creek area. And then a few over here on TW Alexander, on Miami Boulevard, really nothing in the area that's office. This is looking across the street from our property. And this is, the whole project is light industrial. This is office use, and then the buildings in back you see are different. Those are more light industrial with loading docks. But they're small. These are not large industrial buildings. This is also another look on Page Road at this office uses, the light industrial in back, and then the water tower. This here is a chart of the uses across the street and the colors are important. The blue is retail, the salmon is office, the green is light industrial. And down here, the lavender is civic, which there's a church and Islamic center in the front buildings. And just wanted to show you, because really context is everything, but these are office buildings and they're built in the light industrial development. They also have some retail uses like hair salons in the front along Page Road. And then the light industrial are these buildings in back. And the uses really match up exactly to those buildings. As you see right here, the ones on top, you have an interior designer, wholesale floor covering, oxygen, medical supply, ignition control for vehicles. You've got a HEPA testing and certification, plastic and metal, prototype machining, furniture store, printing business, sign contractor, homeopathic pharmacy, pest control, hospital and custom bed supplier and mosquito control. I think these are important because none of these uses we really, when we started looking at this project and thinking of what could go here, none of them really came to mind, but it just shows you that these are really important businesses in Durham. They probably feel lucky to be here because there's not a lot of this thing done in a nice project. And then the ones below are in the buildings up on Page Road. Or office, they don't have loading docks there, but they can also function, you see in a retail, which you could not have if we were to develop this as an office building or office use. That's why these uses are all very important to have the mix. We don't know the tenants yet, but we do know the type of buildings and there'll be flex space. And that's what this is. Flex can be really large like warehouses. You use 10,000 and up size tenants. Or flex can be small like we have across the street. And then down here, these are light industrial. These are the properties close by. Neighbors to the north, which are the car repair. It's two of those. There's printing and business, the LL Donnelly business there. There's a telecom tower and maintenance company touching ours. There's a vacant building that Jamie and I both talked about and she originally thought it was office, but it was actually a vacant automotive repair business. So it's now, I think vacant. And then there's a daycare. Here's the automotive, here's the antenna repair maintenance company, LL Donnelly, they used to do phone books. This site right here is important because it's 15 acres. It's a very large warehouse, but it doesn't qualify under the industrial land use report for the city. They look at 25 acres and up as suitable for industrial. I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to, the clock has stopped working and we have fallen and allowed a few extra minutes, but are you wrapping it up? I've usually had more than three minutes as applicant, but I'll try to wrap it up. These are all very important. Well, the first, right, I gave each one five. So he was using up the last five. Okay, this is extremely important. I mean, it's whether or not you believe office or light industrial is the right use here. I'll just, I'll continue. When I'm doing a rezoning, I think one of the most important questions is, is there a need for it? And this was startling to me. This came out of the Triangle Business Journal last week. Fourth quarter of 2018, 8% vacancy, down to under 4% for the Triangle. There is nothing warehouse or flexibility space. It's all leased up. And it's no surprise how incredibly desirable the Triangle is. Same with the flex space, fourth quarter, 8%, down to the, to five and a half. I did wanna cover the issues that Amy went over. Thank you. We will probably get to give you an opportunity as commissioners ask questions, but the time is at this time. Okay, and that's the stream buffer calls that we had, the determination from the stream buffer. Anyways, if you call me up, we can go over these things. Thank you. Please go and sign the signup sheet to make sure that you are listed as a speaker. Thank you. Are there any other individuals who would like to speak to this issue? If not, we're going to close the public hearing and give commissioners an opportunity to ask questions. Okay, commissioner Busby. Thank you, Madam Chair. This, to start, I may have additional questions, but just, I wanted to start with a question or two for the staff. One was just based on the staff overview. I just didn't follow the item where you were talking about an area on the map that was being developed. Okay. So there's a vacant, roughly 42. You pointed out on the parcel map. Is someone hearing buzzing? Yes. No, it's just you. I keep hoping it's just going to pass. Okay. If they can pull up the map, that would be helpful on the screen. However, can you see the map? We can see it. Okay. So the property that I'm referring to or that I refer to is the property that's highlighted. Well, the site is highlighted in red and it's the property to the east of that in yellow, the light yellow, which is the residentially rural residential zoning district. Can you move the cursor on it? Sure. Right here? Yeah, right there. Okay. That's it. So is that or is that not currently under site plan review? It is not. The mapping tool incorrectly highlighted that parcel and it is referring to the site plan on the south side of Lumney, which is under construction. Okay, thank you. But as I noted in my presentation to you, the area is still residentially zoned. So it can be developed for residential uses under the existing zoning. The first property, the bigger property to the east, that's what you're saying? Correct. So that could be developed as residential? Correct. Okay. Yep, it's rural residential currently. And it, I guess my second and my second final question was I personally appreciate, we don't see this often where the staff is recommending denial of an application. I've been on the commission a number of years. I can only recall a handful of time. So I think that's commendable. I think there probably should be more of them in my opinion as someone who votes no more often and staff recommends me voting no. But I'm having a hard time figuring out, if I understand, I hear you saying that the staff would like to see more limited uses even after we've had the proffer to remove warehouse and freight movements and to see a development plan. And so those are the reasons you're recommending denial. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Miller. I would like the applicant to come back. He was just about to show us a map showing stream classifications and buffers on the subject site. You kind of got that up and then it went away. I'd like to talk about that a little bit. Can you tell us what we're seeing on this? Could staff interrupt just very quickly that I just want to clarify one thing on follow up on Ms. Sonja's presentation. We rec, we make recommendations on the land use map amendment, not the zoning. So our recommendation is for denial on the land use map amendment for the reasons that kills the zoning. And because it's required to have that concurrent with the zoning, so I just wanted to clarify that. That's good to know. I just wanted to make sure. So tell us what we're looking at with this map. Okay. Yes, this is the entrance, about a hundred. Just with regard to the stream. Yes. And this is where we would have the first phase of development. This is the perennial stream. The intermittent stream. And then this stops. And that's why you see the shaded buffer. So that's the riparian buffer, that shaded area. And that buffer is, what kind of buffer is required? It's 50 feet. For both, including the perennial stream? Yeah. I guess it's 50, yeah, potential 50 foot. It's right over here, a new buffer. So 50 feet each side for both streams because it's noose and nod. I'm with you. Okay. And then what are the other, so you've got this W3, that's a wetland area? This is a W3, this is a linear wetland and this is a actual wetland area. And would this be, yeah, good, good. This right here is a, I've never seen this before. Is this a short stream without a buffer? I guess because it's non-contiguous. So it's a short stream segment. So this area would be suitable and then you'd have to cross this linear wetland and this area is suitable. So it's not a large area. May I follow up with a question, Madam Chair? Yes, please. So this seems like, when I look at this map, although I was opposed to the rezoning of the properties on Alameda Road, that's happened now. And so I'm confronted with the map. The idea that this triangle should be something else, doesn't really worry me that much. I think it should be something else. And I'm not sure that office is necessarily the best use. I wish, and I kind of get where the staff is coming from because this is an argument I make all the time, is a full blown development plan that could show me how we're gonna deal with streams and where the development's going to go and how we would potentially buffer against the larger residential parcel to the rear. Let's speak into the mic. The larger residential parcel to the rear and the one that's there on the kind of the southern corner or the southeastern corner, I would be a pretty easy sell for me. So I get where they're coming from. And can I ask you certainly to get to this point, you've talked with the staff and I'm assuming they urged a full blown development plan on you, but you decided against it. Can you tell me why? Of course, there's two reasons. The applicant did not wanna give us enough contract time. And as you can see the date on this stream determination, the core got out there on the 21st of January and we submitted this in August. So we were not waiting obviously for the final stream determination to submit, which is needed for development plans. The other reason is because one year ago, approximately the city came up with a text only development plan. And we have limited, in fact, I limited again last night because when I initially thought warehouse, it's just not, it really, the uses that I described across the street would fall under light industrial services. So I agree we could take warehouse and freight movement to even just narrow the uses down even more, but the uses are retail sales, which I've demonstrated, there's some of those across the road. Well, I get where you are, but what we can't accomplish with a text only, because that has to relate to uses, but we can't deal with things relating to buffers and how the geography of the land is going to be employed. We can only do that with a full development plan. Like I said, if we had that plan and I was satisfied with regard to how it was going to interact with the, this fairly large potentially residential area behind it, I could easily be persuaded to resume this property in a way in a direction that you want it to go. It's, but without those things, then I share some of the staff's hesitancy. Okay, that's fair enough. Thank you. Commissioner Alturk. Thank you, Chair. I want to follow up on Commissioner Busby's questions to staff. So the, you know, in the staff report, it seems like you're suggesting and you're basing your recommendation on the fact that there's either, or that there's not a development plan and there's also the limited use or the uses, you want to see more limited uses, I think, right? For the applicant to say, we're only going to limit it to these uses. Is that, so can you tell me what uses you would be, would you would accept for in this case? Or are there none? I think Jamie Sanjong with the Planning Department, I think eliminating the freight and the warehouse use is a good direction. I think the issue in terms of not having a development plan is oftentimes when you have industrial uses up against a residential zoning district, you have noise, you have light, you have light pollution, you have additional traffic, you have trucks coming in and out and you have a lot of unknowns when you don't have a development plan. The development plan option, as it, you know, it's an option to an applicant whether or not they want to go that route, but that does provide some level of trying to streamline what those uses may be and also provide ways for the staff to review mitigating efforts in order to combat the policies against the comprehensive plan. So limiting the hours of operation, potentially identifying specifically on a plan where the building and parking envelopes are, providing enhanced project boundary buffers. All of those are different tools that an applicant or developer can use to help combat where there's conflicting land uses. So it is that you want a development plan more so than you want the uses to be more limited in scope. Is that, I mean, what I'm hearing from you that you'd really prefer to develop a combination of the two? Okay, cause I mean, I guess I'll echo what Commissioner Busby said, which is that it's usually us up here that want more, you know, want more or want a development plan. So when you are suggesting it, it gives me more pause as well, but I'm, I guess I'm just, you know, when I look at the map, I do agree with the applicant that a lot of the surrounding area is industrial light. And so if it is going to be retail, potentially retail and office and services, I guess I'm having a hard time seeing why or what it is that might be, that might have really negative impacts on the residential. And I guess what you're saying is the UDO's requirements are not strict enough right now as they are. Is that correct that the, you know, buffer between industrial and residential in particular would kind of give you some, or would worry you a little bit. So the applicant has made reference a number of times to stipulate the same type of uses that are across the street on his site. And I don't necessarily disagree with what is out there. It's extremely attractive, it's well designed. So I pulled up the development plan for that site just to see what type of development plan that was. And that development plan granted it was from 1997. So you may not have seen it, but granted that development plan was very specific in terms of limiting the square footage of the use on the site, providing a descriptive nature in terms of the maximum number of square feet per building. There was additional landscaping on the site. So without, again, without that level of detail, it is difficult for staff to consider and staff would not be able to say to Planning Commission or Board of County Commissioners, this is what you would get on the property. We have to assume worst case scenario. Thank you, that's very helpful. So I guess I'm with Commissioner Miller on this. Oh, yes. I'm sorry, Commissioner Alturk. I just wanted to add one thing, Grace Smith Planning Department. So in the past couple of years, we've seen cases where the commission was less comfortable with a change maybe to residential or near industrial. So let's just flip it. Okay, so I know Mr. Miller and specifically his request in that. And a lot of times when we recommend approval of the future land use change for that, usually there's a flum involved, but usually we do it because we have the development plan to mitigate some of those transitional policies that we have to look at. In this case, we didn't have that. So that's kind of a flip side view of where we are, but this is what happened in this case. We didn't have that. And it was very hard to imagine what could and couldn't happen on the property. Thank you, that's helpful as well. So yeah, I agree with Commissioner Miller that in a lot of ways I think this makes sense, but I think it would be more convincing if you could show that you will have less negative impacts on, especially on the eastern side, abutting the residential designation. And I think I'll just be consistent with my past views, which is that more in a development plan or more is better in this case. So that's as well. Thank you. Are the other commissioners to my right who would like to speak? Okay. Commissioner Baker. Thank you. So I think that this is an easy no, but for different reasons from I think the staff reasoning, I actually don't think that the development across the street is particularly good or the kind of development that we want to be encouraging. In Durham, when I look at it, I see a lot of impervious service area, a lot of pavement, a lot of cars. I think that it's probably very difficult to get around. I don't think that it provides transportation options. And I think that if we did that on the other side of the street, we would just continue to have that same type of issue. I also think that, well, so I don't really have an issue. I don't have an issue with the uses. I think I agree with a lot of my colleagues up here that the uses themselves are not necessarily a concern of mine. My concern is that this is a large property. It's also a gateway to a very large swath of land to the east and that this is a huge opportunity. The fact that it's rural residential right now means that we have it in a holding zone essentially. So it's really an opportunity to envision something that's much better that serves Durham in a better way. And I don't think that this proposal would do that. And that's why I oppose it. I think that a proposal that would serve Durham better wouldn't allow perhaps payday lenders, but otherwise the uses are fine. But I do think that a proposal that would serve Durham better would include design standards that enhanced pedestrian accessibility, the walkability. I think that it would be greener and have green design standards. I think that it would be more transit oriented and transit friendly. When we look in the staff report and we look at the required setbacks in the proposed zoning, we're looking at huge street yard setbacks. That's not designed for people. As we know, if we design for cars and traffic, we get cars and traffic. If we design for people in places, we get people in places. I think that the proposal would be environmentally detrimental and I don't think that it would advance equity, which is a major goal in our community right now. So those are the reasons that I oppose this case and I will be voting against it. And I encourage my colleagues to vote against it. Thank you, Commissioner Miller. So I'd like to follow up with a procedural question to staff. This is kind of interesting. I see this case and I'm taking it from the staff responses that this is a case where we're kind of exploring the limits of what can be accomplished with a text only commitment plan. And we can't quite get to where we wanna go. We need a development plan that would allow for design standards and other things like that. And we can't do that with a text commitment. So if I'm the applicant and I'm to this point, procedurally, if they decided they wanted to switch from a text only development plan to a full blown development plan with a map and drawings and things like that would that be something that would require them to go back to square one and start over? Or would that, it would be a start over situation. We couldn't like say delay this for two months and let them get one together. And it had continuous the same case, but with a more elaborate development plan, they would be back to square one. That's correct. It would be a new zoning application granted if it came in. And I've had multiple conversations with the applicant regarding this case, but if it came in with a development plan, certainly the folks that have reviewed the text only would be familiar with the site. So I would assume that it would be very familiar in terms of certain characteristics, but it would be reviewed under a new case with a new case. So it's a start over situation. I was just wondering if there was in these situations where we take one format development plan right up to the edge and we wanna spill over into the next one, whether that could continue as the same case with modifications or whether we have to go back and begin again. All right. And you've answered that. That's helpful and it helps me understand kind of where we are with regard to these folks. Thank you and I'm all done. Thank you. Thank you. And while I'm up here, I just wanted to state one thing. I didn't wanna conflict what Commissioner Baker was saying in terms of my analysis of the site across the street. I didn't review it from an impervious coverage perspective or a walkability perspective or any of the factors that you mentioned. I was clearly stating that in my opinion that aesthetic is being fully brick and the landscaping, that was the perspective that I was looking at, so. Thank you. Commissioner Busby. I was just gonna thank the staff for answering all our questions. I was trying to get at the staff's intent and I think Commissioner Miller and Al Terks follow up questions helped me understand where the staff was coming from and I agree. And so I'm without a development plan, I'm gonna plan to vote no at the appropriate time. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Commissioner Williams. I don't have a question as much as I definitely wanna say that I agree with Commissioner Baker in terms of the development of this site. And as we're looking at facing several issues with clear cutting and green spaces and walkability, I think that given the number of impervious surfaces that are already present in this area and the heavily traveled roads that have to be maintained, I believe one of the largest employers is also not too far from the site, which is IBM. We're gonna cause a little bit more of a bottleneck, if you will, in terms of what we do with this land, its purpose as well as trying to consider the possibility that without a development plan, the sky's the limit. And I think that that's harmful in this particular area once it is potentially rezoned. So I'm definitely inclined to support staff in how they view it. Thank you. Are there any other questions? If not, I'd like to entertain a motion. Madam Chair, I move that with regard to case A18000... Oh, I'm on the wrong case. I'm sorry. It's A19000. I'm using my old agenda. A1900015 that we send this case forward to the Board of County Commissioners with a favorable recommendation. Second. Motion by Commissioner Miller and second by Commissioner Brine that we move item number A1900015, page row flex development forward to the County Commissioners. Is this... Did you say County Commissioners? This County Commissioners, ma'am. Okay, wanted to be sure. County Commissioners with a favorable recommendation. May we have a roll call vote, please? Commissioner Williams? No. Commissioner Morgan? No. Commissioner Johnson? No. Commissioner Brine? No. Commissioner Alturk? No. Vice Chair Busby? No. Chair Hyman? No. Commissioner Miller? No. Commissioner Ketchin? No. Commissioner Santiago? No. Commissioner Baker? No. Commissioner Lowe? No. And Commissioner MacGyver? No. Motion fails, 13-0. Thank you. Madam Chair, then with regard to case Z1900042, I move that we send this forward to the Board of County Commissioners with a favorable report. Second. Motion by Commissioner Miller, second by Commissioner Brine, that we move item number Z1900042, page row flex development forward to the County Commissioners with a favorable recommendation. May I have a roll call vote, please? Commissioner Williams? No. Commissioner Morgan? No. Commissioner Johnson? No. Commissioner Brine? No. Commissioner Alturk? No. Vice Chair Busby? No. Chair Hyman? No. Commissioner Miller? No. Commissioner Ketchin? No. Commissioner Santiago? No. Commissioner Baker? No. Commissioner Lowe? No. Commissioner MacGyver? No. Motion fails, 13-0. Thank you. Our next item, text amendment for the UDO. Staff report, please. There you are. Good evening. I'm Scott Whiteman, filling in for an ailing Michael Stock. Case PC1904 is a privately initiated text amendment that proposes to amend multiple sections of the UDO related to affordable housing. This includes multiple changes. One, it would change the definition of family regarding the number of unrelated people from three to six. It removes restrictions on some non-residential uses in the Falls Jordan A critical watershed area. It revises development standards for projects using the affordable housing density bonus and removes minimum parking requirements. It includes revisions to the plan development residential district standards, including the minimum site area, yard requirements, and minimum open space. The new open space requirements would be in line with the open space requirements in all of the other residential districts. In addition to that, open space could be reduced by an additional 30% if the affordable housing density bonus is utilized and it is shown on an improved development plan. An important note is that the PDR district is a planned district, so it always requires a development plan will always require approval by the city council or county commissioners. Additionally, tree coverage could be reduced by 30% in any zoning district if the affordable housing density bonus is used and it is shown on an improved development plan. With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. I'm going to open the public hearing and I'm going to take a second to decipher the signup list because I have some individuals who have signed for with conditions. I have had, I have some individuals to sign up, some of both, okay? And so I have 16 individuals, so our 10 minutes is not going to- Madam Chair, may I make a motion concerning hearing the people tonight? Yes, please. I move that we allow every speaker four or against three minutes to speak without regard to whether they're four or against. Seconded. Thank you. Motion by Commissioner Miller, second by Commissioner Johnson that we allow individuals to speak for three minutes on this issue, regardless of four or against. All in favor of this motion, please let it be known by the usual sign of aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, and we will start with the staff report has already been presented. So we're going to, I'm going to call the first three names, Phillip Azar, Luis Carson, and Donald Adda. Okay, thank you. Hello, good evening. Phillip Azar, 917 Monmouth Avenue here in Durham. I'm a homeowner. I'm a owner of a few duplexes and I hope to do some small development. My comments are really restricted to the definition of family. My concern is, well, I don't think it's written, it's quite ready for prime time or I don't fully understand it. Six exceeds what's allowed in the North Carolina housing code and much of our housing stock was written, was developed under earlier versions of the housing code and I don't know what the ethical number is there. I also think, and I could be wrong about this, historically, at least in the less intensive zones, the number of people or number of families allowed to live in a location was on a per-parcel basis. So I own some very small duplexes that some of them may only have 500-odd or 600 or 700-odd square feet on a given size with such sort of explosion or increase in the number per dwelling unit, it creates the possibility of some really anomalous situations where by relaxing this, we've put a big burden on whether it's the fire marshal and his department to enforce overcrowding fire concerns or the police department around noise issues or we've simply disregarded the possibility that these numbers should take into account the size of a dwelling unit and it's not clear what, if any, is the appropriate way of doing that and it may be that it would be easier to deal with that while we're writing the definition than trying to figure out how to do it. We've also, and our planning acknowledges, had a terrible time showing either, maybe not this part, the will or the ability to enforce any definition. So it would seem to me that before we increase the definition, we should revisit our ability and willingness to enforce a definition. And then lastly, just as maybe it shouldn't apply to certain size dwelling units, if there is a concern that, yes, we should do this in order to increase affordability, but that this may be a masked opportunity to do high density, high wealth development near universities that maybe we should exclude it from a certain distance from colleges and university districts. Thank you. Thank you very much. Hello, my name is Lewis Carson, 2510 linear place here in Durham. I'm in general against a blanket exemption that I read this to be granting. I'm fine with the allowances for and case by case basis, but don't think that the blanket exemption would work the best for our city. This seems to give all the advantages to developers and none of the advantages to the citizens. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Donald Adieu and I'm here representing the Durham Environmental Affairs Board. I would like to say that the Environmental Affairs Board last week voted to oppose these changes to the UDO specifically because of the open space and tree reduction requirements. Open space and tree canopy are central for all Durham residents, and especially for affordable housing folks. These folks have historically lacked ecological services and that's just a fancy way of saying that our communities of color live in a hotter, grayer Durham than our white, more affluent residents. It's 70 degrees today, y'all. We got the air conditioner on this February. Climate change is here. It's happening now and we know it's only getting worse. We know that open space and trees are the best defense we have from the heat island effect and I know y'all are thoughtful about our development and the AB encouraged y'all to reject these UDO changes as they remove heart fought environmental protections put in place by the City Council this past October. Increased temperatures lead to higher rates of heat stroke with a 15% increase in emergency department visits for every one degree Fahrenheit increase we see in the city. Ozone, which also is created by higher temperatures, is expected to increase by at least 70% by 2050. This increases respiratory and pulmonary damaged individuals. Trees are our best technology that we can deploy locally to protect Durham from these impacts. Durham currently has the least protection for trees in open space of any city in the triangle. So to roll back these protections now takes us a step in the wrong direction and I know that we all want Durham to be the coolest place in North Carolina. Thanks y'all. Thank you. Very nicely done. Thank you. So the next three individuals, Katie Rose Levin, Mimi Kessler and Maggie Sargent. Can you hear me? Yes. All right. My name is Katie Rose Levin. Thank you very much. Don is a hard act to follow, but I'll do my best. I'm with the tree storm. So as Don said, in October, Durham passed legislation to establish tree conservation during residential development. Up until this point, we were the only municipality that required zero tree conservation during development. And actually at that time, the mayor and city council requested that the planning department return to bring legislation to require preservation not only during residential development, but also during commercial development as well as require street tree planting. This request was actually also echoed by three different advisory boards. The JCCPCs, the Joint City Council Planning Commission, the Environmental Affairs Board and actually the Planning Commission. So you had also requested conservation during commercial development to bring us up to at least the floor of our neighbors. So we were thus surprised and dismayed that instead of bringing this request for increased requirements for conservation, as asked by, instead this proposal does the opposite. It rolls back the brand new preservation requirements, not for everyone, but just for poor people in particular. All people deserve trees and open space, not just the rich ones, but these are just environmental regulations for rollback for the poor. The notes in the packet outlining the changes state that permitting a reduction instead of the elimination of environmental protections is a compromise. Rolling back in environmental protections for the poor a little instead of a lot is not a compromise, it's still bad policy. A real compromise is for the Planning Department to study how to best increase the use of the affordable housing density bonus. A commission on how to do this could perhaps be part of the implementation of the affordable housing bond and this solution was actually proposed by Javier during the Environmental Affairs Board meeting. The Affordable Housing Commission could recommend changes that would create a solution that benefits all of Durham, not just one development in particular. If there is a request to help one development in particular, that's why we have the variance process. So this is just one part of the suite of changes being proposed and this part in particular is proposed not only without public or expert input is in fact directly opposite of explicit public input and requests. So as trees Durham and as well as a private citizens, not only do we request that you turn down these rollback of environmental protections for the poor, but we also ask that you renew your request for the Planning Department to bring proposals to require tree conservation during commercial development would at least bring us to the floor of what everyone else requires. Everyone else for the most part requires much more than that. So do please send this back to the Planning Department to remove the rollbacks and more rigorously engage all stakeholders in what would help increase the use of the affordable density bonus by creating a healthy housing for all Durham. Thank you. Thank you. So Mimi Kessler, Mimi Kessler and Mary Sargent, word that too, okay. Maggie Sargent, I live at 914 Inglewood Avenue and I see you by the time to Mimi Kessler. Do you guys sleep? Yes, it matters. Good evening. I have a number of issues with this proposal and I doubt that I can fully articulate it in the time allotted, but I'll do my best. The two overarching concerns that I have are one, this is like a deja vu about the process. Citizens have no opportunity for involvement in drafting of these text amendments nor any formative steps in developing these changes. This is not a dialogue. We talk and then you talk and we're not having a conversation. I understand that the Open Space and Trails Commission is going to review this in the future, but I don't understand why that's happening after it gets to you. So I really think that the process is again part of the problem and I encourage you over time to address those types of issues. My second overarching issue is I don't think that social policy for the county and the city should be driven by development and the building industry. Changing the number of people in a family is an enormous and sweeping social policy change buried in building codes. It should be its own item and a diverse task force should start with it. I appreciate that the staff have made adjustments in the proposal based on their opinions and JCCPC concerns, but there are still so many questions. Isn't reducing any quality of life aspect to rules slash laws governing building and development such as trees and Open Space only perpetuating the environmental discrimination we have been doing for decades? Have trees, Durham and Affordable Housing Coalition been involved in the formative discussions of these text changes? Why is there not some measurable quantity of affordable units that's required to trip this change in the rules? If they build one affordable unit, does that make this provision kick in? If it's not one, then how many is it? And it probably needs to be some percentage of the total. With regard to the family definition, is there any evidence that changing the static number will solve the problems that have been associated with the lower number? What are the unintended consequences of raising the number? Was there any effort to look at what other municipalities outside of North Carolina due to address the problem being solved? Or looking at specific types of group living as distinct from others? And finally, the phrase at the beginning of the document that says, quote, primarily intended to increase the viability of private market created affordable housing dwelling units. Not easy to say. End quote, is a nice way of saying that the profit margin is too low for the private market to be motivated to be involved. Haven't they made enough money and other developments that maybe it's time for them to give back here and there? If they think the profit margin is too low, let other developers who are willing to accept that lower margin create housing for people who need help with their housing costs. These are only a few of my questions. I ask that you defer this so that there can be actual dialogue about the issues. And if you don't want to defer it, I ask that you vote against it. Thank you. Thank you. The next three individuals, James Anthony, Ed and I'm gonna butcher your last name. Is it Hall City and Christine Westfall? I don't think that's it, but we'll see. So we'll start with James Anthony. Thank you, commissioners. My name's James Anthony and I do live in Raleigh, but the majority of my development work in my career has actually occurred in Durham over the last 30 years. And today, we're working on about eight projects in Durham. You're gonna get sick of seeing me in front of your August gathering here. We have been exploring ways to implement the accessibility of the development of attainable housing. And we've discovered a number of landmines in the code that largely explain why so few people have even attempted to try to develop attainable housing in the community. There's no question about the demand. There's no question that the supply would warrant the development of more product. But what we found where there were some things like the number of unrelated parties that were preventing the production of facilities that really can help with affordable housing. And I'm gonna speak specifically to something that we hope to bring to you in this community very soon. And that is called co-living units, where common areas of very high quality are built to be shared, they're furnished, the rent is full service, and they're exploding in popularity all across the country in communities where this affordable housing problem is so prevalent. Durham is ready for this product, we believe, and to accomplish its implementation, we've got to make some changes. Three unrelated parties, which is the current rule, is not functional, nor is it market. It's the smallest number in the state. I wanna address the tree canopy issue that has been brought forward. And I think there's a terrible misunderstanding that this is a by-right request. We are not making a request to make this by-right. We're asking for the ability to come before the Planning Commission and the city council with a plan that if you and the city council in the planning department agree that it would be a good thing for the city of Durham, then there would be the ability to request a reduction in tree coverage. There is no automatic right to it. So let me be very clear about that. It should be apparent to everyone that land occupied by trees is not occupied by housing. And so only in those situations where you all deem it advisable to eliminate a tree, then a unit could appear. So that's all I'll say. Thank you. Yield my time to Jim and the folks that will continue. If you will pronounce your last name for me. I'm okay. Thank you very much. Okay. So he's... Okay. Good evening. My name is Ed Holberg. I live at 7300 Ebenezer Church Road. I'm one of those Dam Yankees that showed up at your doorstep about 25 years ago. And as a student of urban development, I've been watching with fascination the progress that the Durham has made. And just in the last couple of decades, it's been startling and a model for a lot of the communities around the country. So I can't speak as a lifelong resident, but I can think that I can offer a perspective that maybe you haven't seen and an alternative perspective to the growth and the pressures that it brings with it. It's what happens when the fear of change and the desire to preserve the status quo becomes so great that the results are paralysis. I come from a small town in upstate New York, Ithaca, New York, which is a college community very much like Durham is a poem of Cornell University. And about 25 years ago in an effort to make everything sort of the way it had always been, the path to the growth became so circuitous that it choked off all development. And the first consequence of it was, of course, that everyone just fled to further out of field. And we became, it created commuters, not create community, it created commuters. And then people started to leave. People that don't feel wanted will leave and they take their jobs, their businesses, their families and their creative input with them. If you look at the demographics of Ithaca, New York, the average age has grown over the last 25 years by several years. And it isn't because the retirees are moving there, it's because the young people are all moving out. So the city is a living organism and it has to respond to all kinds of changes to its ecology over time. And the temptation is to hunker down and hibernate. And all that does is you're gonna wake up one day and be very hungry. But so growth is tough, there's no question about it. Believe me, shrinking is tougher. So I implore you to keep your community together by allowing the density that would allow both the existing residents and the new residents to come together and be able to enjoy the magic that is Durham. Thank you. Christine. Good evening, I'm Christine Westphal. I live at 414 West Markham Avenue in Durham. And I'd like to open by saying that I really appreciate Mr. Anthony's work at looking at creative ways to incentivize more affordable housing in Durham. We need to be looking at those incentives. I particularly am interested in the co-living model. I know that's successful in some other bigger cities. But I'm here tonight to speak on behalf of the Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transit. We are a group of community activists who advocate for the development of affordable housing near public transit lines. And we actually created a position paper about these recommended text amendments. And I emailed that to the commissioners this morning. I wanna highlight a couple of our comments about these text amendments. And I'll begin by saying that the coalition supports almost all of the proposed text amendments that would directly incentivize affordable housing. Now there are amendments in here that have nothing to do with affordable housing and we have no comment on those. So that's our general stance. There is one proposed amendment that we actually oppose. And that is the reduction to tree coverage standards in paragraph 8.3.1. We are affordable housing advocates and professionals and we know that study after study has shown that trees are important to the mental health and physical health of residents of communities. So we just think that Durham should not set lower standards for tree coverage in affordable housing communities. And actually, could I ask anybody here who opposes tree coverage rollbacks to stand up? I'm just curious who in the audience is here tonight. Yeah, so I think that tree, beyond our affordable housing network that tree coverage is important to this community for many reasons. But, and we also have wanna highlight our comments on section 6.6 talks about reductions to minimum lot areas. We generally support this section with the exception that we make an exception for street yard requirements and support staff's minimum requirement of five feet for any street yard setback. So these are the positions of the coalition. We've put a good deal of thought into it. I want to take a step back now and stop speaking for the coalition and just speak for Christine Westfall and say that I also, I oppose the proposed amendments for section 6.11.3F on open space. I oppose having lower open space requirements for affordable housing communities because as with trees, it has been shown that green space and open space is important for community health. So I don't think we should set a double standard in that arena. I also wanna suggest that I think these, there's a lot of great ideas in here and I believe the path should be for planning to look at these strategically and take a step back and see why we need these nodes of density with this type of incentive. Thank you. Thank you. The next three, Bob Appleby, John Swansea, and Steve Talwar, Tolar. I'm Bob Appleby. I live on 207 Watt Street in Trinity Park and I have no objection to raising the definition of a family from three to six. However, if those six people are all males between 18 and 22 and happen to be college students and may happen to belong to the same fraternity, then it is just trouble. And I don't know, Phil Azar raised the issue of how do you define, how you control the family? And I think that's a very important point he raises because the issue that we have in Trinity Park is just the one I described. Thank you. Thank you. John. Good evening. John Swansea, 110 North Buchanan. You should have all gotten an email from me today. This afternoon, I'm just gonna summarize what's in it. I'm encouraging disapproval of this. In the big picture, it's a bad idea, I think, to approve something so complex and sweeping without thoughtful study and public awareness. You've heard of how many different issues are wrapped up in this and even there's confusion about them. I think as planning said, we're getting the earlier case, how can we visualize the worst case scenario when it's not clear, we haven't had a chance to really study this. I am in favor of what was the intent of the original request, sweeten the incentives for affordable housing by relaxing some of the requirements to increase the utilization of land and reduce costs. But the actual text amendment goes much farther beyond that, relax as many of the protections across all areas even without the affordable housing. My particular focus today is on this number of unrelated persons change. Some cities have verbiage that explicitly exempts non-traditional families from the limits. I can read one, it's in your notes from Mansfield, Connecticut that does that. Those of us who've lived in Trinity Park for a long time remember the many nuisance properties that housed large number of students, chronically producing loud late night noise, litter, trespassing, public urination, drunkenness, property damage, et cetera. And generally disturbing the sleep and quality of life for nearby residents, neither landlords, Durham police, Duke police, nor Duke administration took responsibility to do anything to curtail this. Despite frequent complaints, the only successful lever came from the three persons rule, which was used successfully multiple times, drastically improving the quality of life in Trinity Park. The risk of bad outcomes of doubling this number to six comes not from non-traditional families who we want to welcome, but from irresponsible landlords offering student housing or the proliferation of illegal mini hotels renting to transients. Combined with the provisions of the EHC, this proposal text chains makes legal up to 18 unrelated persons living in a single house if a building is divided with three kitchenettes per the EHC. That's effectively no limit at all. The examples shown by the planning department are a little bit misleading. Charlotte, which has a limit of six is 60% single family housing zoned. And so not at risk of the multiplier effect of the EHC. Wilmington, a college town, has a maximum of three, which rises to four in areas zoned for multi-family housing, and Raleigh has four. So that concludes my comments. I encourage not approving this for the reason stated. Thank you. I'm Steve Toler. Yes, ma'am. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Steve Toler. I live at 8709 Millhouse Lane in Durham County. And I have a question to the room, and it can just be a show of hands. Y'all don't have to stand up. How many of you all either live in affordable housing or are seeking affordable housing? Just a show of hands. Okay. Okay, I ask that reason, I ask that question to bring out a point. And that is, we have this issue that we have in McDougal Terrace, and I have some history with affordable housing. I helped bring the first internet, public internet access point in Durham, and it was in McDougal Terrace Public Library Branch. And I'll tell you what, that was not a popular decision in Durham at the time, but it was a real blessing. I want us to think about, and I want you all to have the sense of urgency that our people have that are either in affordable housing or seeking affordable housing. There is a tremendous backlog, as been mentioned. I think we need to ask ourselves how serious we are about affordable housing. And the other thing just from a peanut gallery standpoint is to expect the government to be able to do all of this without any kind of private interface, I think is not reasonable. I think we need to find ways to make it attractive to engage the private development community. And I'll be honest with you, I really take offense at people's trying to make a blanket statement about developers being bad guys that are seeking profits, just profits. The developers I know don't do that. I'm sure they're out there, but not the ones that are working on this stuff. So I think we can leave that at the door. Talk is cheap. We need to make sure that we look at increasing affordable housing. We're looking at, we need to look at it from the private developer's point of view. We need to make sure, and safeguards, to make sure everything's okay, but we need to make sure this is attractive. Because if we develop standards and we're happy with them, but the private development community doesn't participate, then we haven't moved the needle. We need to find, aggressively find, we need to have a sense of urgency to find affordable housing. And we need to lead by example. Durham is being watched by the Triangle. We need to lead by example, and let's show how the Triangle can do affordable housing. I support these texts amendments, and I support your efforts to find ways to bring a sense of urgency to affordable housing in Durham because we need it, and the folks that are looking for it need it. Thank you. Thank you. And then the next three, Malos, Rod Dukovic, Bob Chapman, and Idael Orr. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Malos Dukovic. I live at 1204 Birchbark Road, and I support texts amendments to this UDO. Thank you very much. Okay. My name is Bob Chapman. I'm a real estate developer. I hope I'm in the category that Steve just described. There have been two trends that have been converging. One is trying to over-regulate. I love Trinity Park. I went and looked at the zoning code that was in effect when it was built and developed. It was 16 pages long. The base density for Trinity Park, for the core of it, was 70 houses per acre, 70 families per acre, excuse me, 70 families per acre. That allowed some great multifamily buildings that allowed a great walkable neighborhood. The other trend has been the disappearance of the developer who is motivated by development being an avocation as a contribution to the common good, and the rise of the national builder, to a large extent. Most people, 95, 98% of the development community, sadly, is only in it for the money. They went to business school. It looks like a great way to make money quickly, and typically when they go to the planning department, the first question they ask is, what can I get approved immediately? What can I do without having to appear before any boards? And that's what we're getting here. In the industry, it's called Gun and Run, or it's called Blow and Go. I live next to one of my neighbors on Lanier Place, and we had a neighborhood that appeared in less than seven months, right down the street, but it had been turned down twice by all the planning commissions and everything. So they went back to what they could do without any permissions. And that's what we got, and that's where we're getting all over Durham. When people like Jim and I and others try to do things, Jim calls them landmines. I call them pop-ups. We've got the EHC, that's a great start, but then when you actually go to try to implement it, you find out you can't do it. Some years ago, I did a project called Trinity Heights, and when we went to get it approved, we were told we couldn't do it for 12 different reasons, so we had 12 text amendments. Putting street trees in the street tree planter strip, that required a text amendment. Saving the alleys, moving the houses as close to the street as the houses were already there. We had to finally have sort of a strange determination that we were actually a suburban cluster subdivision and that the streets were our buffers in order to build a neighborhood like the one that was already there. We need to think about that and get rid of the pop-ups. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Bill. Good evening, my name's Idyl Ortiz and I live at 1808 Vale Street. I do wanna echo some of the comments about supporting the protection of open space and trees for all the reasons that have already been mentioned. I also don't believe that we should limit who lives in a home based on familial status. I would prefer that we determine a safe total number of people who can live in a home based on size and leave family definition completely out of it. If we're worried about white fraternity or sorority members, members of my community, I live in Old East Durham, predominantly black neighborhood. I've lived there for six or 17 years. We're sort of baffled that the police in your community don't treat those students in the same way that they police our community when they're louder gatherings. And so maybe if residents in that community got tough on Duke police's cushy situation with the Durham police department and how they handle people affiliated with Duke, which tends to be with velvet gloves, maybe there would be different outcomes in a sense of how they should respect their neighbors. No one can argue, seriously, no one can argue in this room that I don't hold the most water for engaging those often most left out of these conversations, especially for this particular issue. I know Mimi convened some folks and all the folks that she couldn't reach are the folks that I did reach. And the one thing, the one thing during the EHC conversation that all of them repeatedly said is the one thing that doesn't require a developer, the one thing that doesn't change how much water runoff situations is going on, the one thing that doesn't cost a damn thing is changing the number of people who can live in a home. And so I'm someone who has multiple people living in my house. I'm a landlord who offers affordable housing. I've been doing that for 15 years. And I'm looking at a house right now, I'm trying to buy one, right? So let's do some math. If the mortgage is gonna run me about $1,200 and I'm trying to rent by the room, it's gonna be all the utilities included. If I'm only allowed to rent to three unrelated people, that's gonna run me about $600 a month per person. That leaves me still with $0 in my pocket. Let's remember that if the H back breaks, there needs to be a way for me to replace it if the plumbing breaks. Now, I'm currently, just so y'all know, I'm not asking for background checks. I'm not doing credit checks. I'm renting to people with disabilities, mothers, single moms, low income people. And the truth of the matter is, I'm the person who can't do this based on the current rules. If I were to try to get other investors to try to work with me, they'd look at this one rule and kill it because they're like, at any point, your model, which would need more people to make it work so that you can be responsible. This isn't about taking home a huge jackpot. It's about the fact that when things break, I wanna be able to fix them and I should be compensated for the effort that I take of running this business. Thank you. Thank you. I have one other individual email, Malizia. We kind of figured that out, move to a row. So my name is Amel Malizia. I live at 105 Dartmouth Court, which is in Chapel Hill, although during my 50 year tenure in this area, I have lived in Durham for about five of those years. And I'm here representing the planning profession because I am a member of AICP. And I want to recognize Patrick Young and the Durham planning staff who have worked very hard to try to make Durham a place where you can do affordable housing with something other than the low income housing tax credit program. And I think by and large, the proposed amendments will go a long way in doing that and I hope you support them. Thank you. Thank you. I do not have any other names, but I will check once again to see if there are any other individuals who would like to speak to this issue before I close the public hearing. I see someone in the back. You make. Oh, here. Yes. There's two of them. Billy Dee and... Yes. Deborah Hawkins, 311 Greenwood Drive in Durham. I heard about tonight's proceedings through the community network. I had just returned from outside of state for my father's funeral. He was a person with a ninth grade education, but spent most of his precious time with us on advocacy and conservation for green spaces and trees and I thought it would be a good tribute to come to speak and say that I am a living legacy of his and have invested my time similarly here in the Durham City and County community. And from that perspective, I am an advocate for opposing the parts of the application that address reductions in our tree canopy, tree requirements and our open space requirements. Thank you. Thank you. And there was Billy. Billy Dee. Billy? Oh, yes. You could state your name and address, please. My name is Billy Dee and I live at 1110 Hamlin Road. And I actually have a really brief comment. I actually only heard about these text amendments this morning and I'm here today because or read them this morning because several of my community members in Braggtown were really concerned that there was so little community input and larger community engagement about these issues that are really gonna impact Durham. I also, I found it notable that only one person in this group raised their hand to say they're living in affordable housing. And just in terms of equity, I wonder if the most impacted people by these text amendments are at the table tonight. It feels like it's not a very full room. And if a lot of people emailed me this morning freaking out about it, thinking, wow, what should we do? That really shows to me that maybe it's time to take a little more time to make sure the impacted people are at the table and this is an equitable process. That's my main concern. I don't have any specific comments except that I do believe that the earlier comments about making sure open space and trees, tree coverage remains are great, but I can't speak to the next amendment because I literally just got emails at two o'clock and left school early to come here and just share those concerns from my community in Bradtown. So yeah, that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. If there are no other individuals who would like to speak, I'm going to close the public hearing at this time and give our commissioners an opportunity to ask questions. Our vice chair, Busby, has asked to be recognized first. So I'm going to recognize commissioner Busby at this time. Great, thank you very much. And I know I'm sure there are other questions from other commissioners as well. And I want to thank everyone who came this evening. It's really useful to hear the feedback and the input. First, I just wanted to, I think a few people mentioned it, but I think it's worth noting that this is a privately initiated request. And so I first heard of this as well when my packet arrived 10 days ago. So I've been working to get myself up to speed on the issue as well. I did want to, before we go any further, I did want to just check with the staff, a couple of just quick questions to make sure I understand, you know, how we got from here to there. So as I sort of piece this together, doing my poor detective work and Mr. Whiteman, I'm sure you can help fill in the gaps. So this, it looks like this was filed or initiated in August. It went to the joint city, county planning committee for feedback in December. And I'll say, I think the packet did a nice job of summarizing what that feedback was. There's no, they don't record those meetings. So that was the only place that sort of captured what the feedback was. And then it came to us, but there had to be other things in between. Do you just mind walking through the steps that I missed between beginning and here? The most of the steps between the beginning and the joint city, county planning committee were the application was submitted. The staff had some concerns with the initial application and we made those words the applicant because it's a privately initiated application. The applicant can do what he chooses with our concerns. I didn't incorporate, I believe all of our concerns. So mostly that's what the back and forth was between August and December. Great, okay. And that actually answered, I have a couple other questions, but that's helpful. So basically what we see in front of us is a combination of the initial submission plus planning staff's feedback, which did include some feedback from the joint city, county planning committee, which is three council members, three county commissioners and our esteemed chair of the planning commission. So, but all of those items were incorporated into the version we see in front of us. That's correct. If I can just highlight the primary concern was any by right reduction in open space or particularly tree coverage. So that's why they compromise where it has to be approved through a development plan, which means a zoning change that has to go through the planning commission and the city council or county commission. The application was amended to state that rather than any by right reduction. Okay, thank you. And then, so that was the December joint city, county planning committee meeting. The joint city, county planning committee met just in the last week or two. Did they see this come back to them to be able to say, so here's where we landed and did this meet your interest? Cause some of the feedback that I, at least as I read it was I would use the term Vegas. And so I am not convinced necessarily that the members of the joint city, county planning committee would see this and say, this address my concern, but did it go back to them? Did they see this? Did not go back to them. They did not raise any major concerns and did not request that it come back to them. Okay. The aforementioned esteemed chair was there and she can disagree with me if she'd like. Steamy chair. Thank you. She's just enjoying the compliments. So then the final thing that I noticed when I was piecing it all back together, interestingly enough at the same joint city, county planning committee meeting was a presentation from the staff on the next proposed round of UDO text amendments, omnibus changes 14, which we get periodically and it includes a whole set of changes based on the new state law that was just passed in 2019 by our legislature, the North Carolina General Assembly, which really did reorganize our statewide land use law. So that makes sense to me. I haven't reviewed it carefully, but I was glad to see that we're keeping up with new state law and we're gonna make changes. When is that coming to us? Because this part of reason I'm asking is these are huge changes that are coming to us. And I don't disagree with a lot of them. I certainly, I don't know the individuals personally who have proposed this, but they've come before us many times and I agree they come with the best of intentions. They're working really carefully with the community and with the planning commission and our elected bodies to try to figure out how to build the kind of developments that Durham would want to see. So I don't question their motives. I do think personally, the process from a public perspective is unfortunate that we've got people just hearing about it this afternoon, but I will take a step off my soapbox for the moment. Back to the question, when does the omnibus changes come to us? Do we have a sense of the timing? So it's, if all goes well, which sometimes happens, it should come to you in March, which is next month. And just one slight correction. So there was a massive rewrite of all of the land use codes as part of last, this past session. Most of those do not take effect until January 1st. So this one, there were a few things in there that took, took effect immediately. So this omnibus will address the ones that took effect immediately and we'll have a second one. A second one, probably called omnibus 15, that we'll deal with the ones that, it is a pretty massive rewrite. So we, so in March or maybe April, we'll see the omnibus 14 changes and that includes the pieces of state law that went into effect immediately. The big rewrite, we will see it, that goes into effect later. So we'll see those changes at a later point. Okay. We fully intend to have it ready to be effective when the new law is effective so that we're not out of compliance with anything. And part of the reason I'm asking those questions is that if my very strong preference is for us to not vote on this tonight and I've been struggling with how to parse out some of the things that I think are good ideas, just straight on their face. There's some good things in here that I would say absolutely. I think there's some things in here that I would say I understand what we're trying to get at. I'd like to have more input to figure out how to make it better. And then there's certain things I just don't approve or I think need a longer community process that we can't get at in a public hearing. It tells me the process hasn't worked when 30 people show up to testify. The process works when very few people show up to testify and they all say I've been part of a process. The communities talked about it. We've worked together and we figured it out. So I know there's a lot of other questions and comments at the appropriate time. I will be ready to make a motion to continue this for at least two cycles, potentially three cycles, which I believe is the longest that we can continue something. But I don't wanna do that yet because I also do wanna figure out how do we have a process that can actually begin to address some of these issues and not just have a up or down vote this evening. That's my personal preference. I look forward to hearing from my other commissioners. Okay, I'll start to my right. Commissioner Johnson. Thank you, Chair Wallman. And I echo thanks to everyone who came out this evening and shared their feedback regarding what is before us here regarding these UDO changes. So I agree and I share the sentiment of Commissioner Busby in that I will be more comfortable and prepared to vote for a continuation tonight in part because I too feel like that there's a lot in here that I haven't fully gotten my mind around enough to feel comfortable and deliberate on how I would vote for it in favor of supporting what we're trying to do with affordable housing, but at the same time. So I just make a general statement in the sense here that this is a private citizen led request for these changes. And so if the issue, one of the issues that we have been trying to address in Durham is affordable housing. And so what we've heard from multiple people in favor of this is that in order to get the private sector to be a partner in addressing the affordable housing issue, we'll call it what it is, not attainable housing. It's affordable housing because we are building attainable housing in Durham, but the question is for who? And the people that we're trying to build housing for it in regards to what was told this is for is for people who are on the lower end of the economic scale. And so basically what I sense is that what we're being asked to vote on is a solution to a market failure because the market failure is that private developers are not proactively and voluntarily coming in to address the issue of housing that is affordable and attainable for people at certain income levels, the lower income level. And so the question is, is this trade-off, which from what I've read is we give up green space, trees in order to increase the buildable space on lots. Is these trade-offs worth what we're trying to do? And so what I will say, only one person raised their hand and said when asked, are you seeking affordable housing or do you live in affordable housing? So that means that we're outside of that that people who are directly impacted. But what I will say is that if you, is a high likelihood that if there was a acceptable or adequate number of people who are actually living in affordable housing can germ or who are seeking it, if you ask them what's more important to you right now is getting me some shelter. All of the things that we're expressing as concerns tonight would probably not be number one, maybe number three on their list. Our task is to take that into consideration in the context of West Best for Durham. So how do we address getting more affordable housing units at the same time meeting some of the things that we've said about how do you build communities where people can thrive, quality of life, et cetera, et cetera. And so in closing, I think that this warrants more deliberation, more input in the process regarding the people who will actually be impacted for us to figure out is the market solution that we're trying to, well the solution to the market failure, something that we can, that will live beyond us because these changes will actually be the roadmap of the guideline that future DPC commissioners will be working from. And so I think it's important for us to ensure that the infrastructure that we're leaving behind is something that not just is reactive to a problem or issue that we're trying to address today that has sustainability and helping Durham get to where we can and should be moving forward in regards to inclusiveness, diversity, et cetera, et cetera. And so with that, I'll conclude my remarks. Thank you. Commissioner Elter. Thank you, Chair. Thanks to everyone for coming out and for emailing. And I wanna echo what Commissioner Busby and Commissioner Johnson have already said. I think there's a lot in here that makes a lot of sense. You know, some of it doesn't make sense or at least I think it needs more time or more study. I'm not convinced that changing the family definition from three to six will actually provide more affordable housing. I appreciate the creativity and the new things that you're willing to try on this. But I think there are some potential unintended consequences of something like this that we need to study. But I do think at the end of the day it seems like the process is the big question here. And was it a good process? Is it a good process for us to make a lot of these changes through a tax amendment? And so I agree with my commissioners that it's probably not and it probably needs more time. I'm gonna keep my comments short. And so the question is to the planning staff is at this point, how will the process look different? Or if we say, you know, we would like a two month or three month continuance, how can the process in that period of time be more inclusive of those people who are gonna be impacted of the people in the room here of others? I mean, does that depend on the applicant or does that, I mean? In this case would have to depend on the applicant. They've followed the process that's in place. We're certainly not staffed to do a special engagement for this particular tax amendment. But that's what I thought you were gonna say. So at this point, I think it is up to us if we're really interested in a continuance to ask the applicant, you know, what are you willing to do in the next two to three months to bring people together to the table? Cause I, you know, I don't know what your intentions are. I don't wanna assume they're bad intentions. I think again, some of these things are worth looking at. And so, but I do think that it would strengthen your case if you bring people to the table. And there are lots of people here. So I would, yes, please, I would like you, that'd be great if you could respond. Thank you. So I would be happy to host somewhere here in Durham, an event where we could dig into this more deeply, the issues that are controversial. And I think they're relatively small in number. Okay, so I heard concerns about tree conservation and open space protection. I'm right with you. I have zero interest in creating unlivable communities. I simply am trying to create an option for creating more density. Again, at the approval and behest, we might ask for it, you might turn it down. Anybody could do that. So just to be clear, I don't know that there's a lot more to say. If you just strike it out, then it means that nobody can ever put more density on property than would be allowed under the current zoning of whatever that site was. So maybe they got to go through rezoning if they want to put more density. But so I think personally, I think that issue is kind of resolved because you still control it. I have zero control. That no one has any by right ability to reduce trees or open space. Number two element that I heard a real concern about is the number of unrelated parties. And I think it makes sense for a bigger dialogue about how that might be regulated. So how can we manage if we've got more people living in a house or a unit? How is that addressed? What qualifications might apply to allow that to happen? I'm wide open to having that conversation, absolutely. Now, was there something else that you felt was controversial in this request because one of the things that I'm sitting here thinking is, well, it's a diverse package of requests, right? And so they're not all the same. Is it possible for you to say, we're gonna break this into pieces and we're okay with this? We can put this one through, but this one we're not. And we wanna hold this out for further conversation. Is that realistic? I'm not sure, but I think one way to do this is to have a first meeting that establishes what people are comfortable with, what people are not comfortable with and what might require more time. And then maybe at that point say, well, we can, and I don't know if this is possible, but then say, we're willing to take 75% of this and vote on it or take it to the planning commission in a month, right? And then the rest would require more meetings or something like that. And again, I don't know if that's possible, but at this point it seems like it is kind of, in some ways up to you, is that correct from the staff's perspective? Yeah, typically with the application, you can recommend either approval, denial, or approval of in part, I'd have to work, had to see if there's a way that we could approve, move part of it forward and keep part of it behind since it's all part of one case. But if that's the path or we could probably find a way to make that work. It seems to me like it's, it might be unlikely for us to approve bits and pieces of it today, because a lot of what we're talking about today is process. And so maybe, again, we can come back in a month or two and approve a decent chunk of it and then work out, work through the more controversial parts. But I don't know. Again, that's in part up to you and up to other commissioners, yeah. Mr. Monserka, if I may ask your question. Oh yeah. And this is, what I'm thinking is along the same lines as what you're thinking, but I think one of the challenges that we have as a commission is that we often are looking at something where we may have one concern, but we then are asked to vote up or down, but then to put our comments forward to the governing bodies in the hopes that they might see both things together. The commissioner of Turk voted no, but would have voted yes if we had this additional thing, which might get added in in the two months before it shows up at the governing body. Commissioner Alterga, if I hear you correctly, and this is my question to you, is that the way that it could be much clearer would be if there were a process, a discussion that led to some amount of agreement, and then the privately initiated requester, which would be you, Mr. Anthony, would come back and say, I will be amending my privately initiated proposal to be these two pieces instead of these five, and that way we could have public comment, public hearing, and a very clear up or down vote without a lot of the confusion that often comes from the middle ground part, which I think often leaves the governing bodies confused, leaves I think the public feeling a little frustrated about what just happened here. Is that what you're thinking? That is what I'm thinking. I made that a question. No, that was great. The floor is yours again. Thank you. Commissioner Williams first. Yes, I piggyback a lot of what Commissioner Johnson said in terms of what it is that we're supposed to be trying to achieve with the buildings and with the creation or the elimination of green space and what that's gonna turn into, how we define a family and its members and how many people can move in and what renters are gonna be where, and I definitely understand that there are a lot of challenges when it comes to building and being a developer. I understand what that looks like. I also understand that there's more than one way to skin a cat. So with that being the case, there's definitely a compromise that can be achieved between what a lot of people are trying to preserve which are trees and for those of you who have been in Durham 25, 35 years, you know that when autumn comes, it doesn't last much, it doesn't last long. So the ability to appreciate it otherwise here becomes eliminated if we reduce that tree canopy area. I don't hear many people talking about green fields and gray fields and brown fields and black fields and any responsible developer has to consider that because when you start talking about green fields and gray fields, your building cost goes up. So with that being the case, taking this in pieces and not in chunks makes absolute sense because based on what I've heard from both sides and what I know as a builder, as a designer, as a planner, as all types of considerations, a lot of what's being proposed is why there's so much uproar with such little notice to the public. I commend everything that you're trying to do but I don't think we can keep writing the blank check and saying that things are affordable housing because affordable does not necessarily define everybody that resides in Durham and the increased density has increased property taxes more so than it has increased affordability. So I think that we still have to find a sensible way to go about providing what Durham is calling for but also in doing so be more considerate of who it affects and that's on both sides of the coin. That's the developer and that's also the residents and those that want to preserve what all the different characteristics of Durham that make it great. There's no one set formula that satisfies everybody. So we can't keep writing that blank check. We have to figure out a way that pleases both the community and the developer and then somehow, some way, what spits out of that is affordable housing because everything has a cycle. So we have to be prepared for when that cycle hits and sustainability is what we're trying to strive for. We can't fix what's already been done. We can't reverse it at all. We can slow it down but we still have to be responsible in doing so because like Commissioner Johnson says, true preservation might not be important to someone who doesn't have anywhere to live or can't afford to live where they want to live. So, but it doesn't mean that it's not important because circumstances change. You know, you can go from not being able to afford a house to hitting a scratch off and now you can buy a neighborhood. So I'm just saying it's, we have to think about the things that nobody else is willing to think about and put it on the table and figure out a really creative way to encompass everything that everybody wants to have. And I think that that can be done. I don't think that you're a developer that's willing to ignore the people. I think you're willing to serve the people. And I think that a collaborative conversation will help you seek that same goal line that you're trying to reach. But I also think that it would be extremely egregious to put this vote before the council today and expect anything resembling a compromise or even with residents to come from that. I don't think that as a committee from what I've seen from all of my commissioners, I don't think that that would be fair to you or to the residents or to both sides of the coin at this point. Thank you. Commissioner Morgan. Thank you, Chair. It sounds like the applicant's willing to make to have a meeting with and have a dialogue with people that are interested in this. And it would seem like based on what Vice Chair Puzzbee and Commissioner Alturk was saying, we may want to revise the initial text amendment to different pieces that we can agree upon and then maybe continue to have, and during this way of deferring this for a few months to kind of revise it, submit something that is passable and then submit other things that might have a little more definition or may have a little more sharpening of language here that might define this better and prevent some of the implications that people are fearing. Is that sort of what I'm hearing from you? Yes. Okay, is that something that is doable to do? Well. I'm just asking staff. Okay. Yeah, we think we can find a way to make that work. Okay. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Baker. So I agree with just about everything that's been set up here. I think that about 75% of this is pretty much benign. I would be in favor of approving a number of these items sort of stuck in here are also a number of actual policy decisions that aren't actually presented as connected to any sort of community-wide, community-driven goals that we have, and that's how things should probably be working. So I wanna make a small commentary here that I really feel like, and I think a couple of you already mentioned this, that if we kind of step back from this that the process is broken, that this isn't the way that our agenda should be set, that our agenda shouldn't be set by someone who just has enough money to pay for the fee that it takes to submit a text amendment. So there's no advisory group that was part of this. There wasn't a series of stakeholder meetings in other things. And so, again, when it comes to these smaller issues, I think that it's less of a problem. But when it comes to these big policy issues, they shouldn't be coming to us right now, as I think that Commissioner Busby mentioned. I just wanna clarify a few things that I heard too. I heard a number of people talk about cooperative housing, being able to have cooperative housing in Durham. I definitely think that we need to explore opportunities for cooperative housing in Durham. You can do that without changing the definition for family. And so, there are a number of other tools that can be explored, that can be talked about, but when someone just comes and says, this is the little change that I wanna make in the ordinance, kind of miss out on all these other opportunities. What's the angle here? We want affordable housing. Of course, we all want affordable housing. So let's attack it from every single angle, not just have someone come in and kind of say, hey, I wanna do it this way. Let's actually bring everyone to the table and have a community-wide conversation about it. And then also the over-regulation issue that was brought up earlier, I think that we have a lot of misaligned regulations in Durham and that we really need to take a microscope and have a community-wide discussion and really fully comprehensively rewrite our regulations. We have a lot of challenges in Durham right now and limited resources. And I think that we should question why some of these things are being brought up and why other things that we think are so important, like developing certain types of design standards or green building standards or things that address some of the major challenges in Durham are not being prioritized over some of the items like this or like the top golf item or like privatizing streets in the county jurisdiction, other things like that. So I would agree that we should extend this. I think that we should look at maybe two cycles, one or two cycles, so that we have a chance to potentially extend beyond that. But I would like to hear what the other commissioners have to say about that. Okay, Commissioner Miller. I just have a question for Scott. So we've talked about by right and not by right and things that are tied to affordable housing and things that are not afforded, tied to affordable housing. And as I read the actual text that's being proposed the last couple of pages of the report in this packet. With regard to the change to section 6113F, which are the PDR developments. And for those of you in the audience, PDR development is the residential zoning category that we actually use. We have a whole bunch of them. Most of them are in place because they maintain a regulatory environment for the already built environment. But when for what's being built in the future, we're using the PDR much more flexible tool. So changes to the PDR are big changes. As I read section F, open space, currently in the code in the urban tier, open space and PDRs range from 15% to 20% depending upon proposed density, right? That's correct. And under this though, that would just drop to six. That's correct. Across the board. Whether it's related to affordable housing or density bonus or not. That's correct. So that's just a basic drop. We'd have to be approved by city council. Right, because as I read the report, no, it doesn't have to be approved by us. I mean, the city council changes the ordinance. That's it. The PDR district needs to be, is a plan district it must be approved by city council. Right. But through a zoning map change process in the public hearing. Right, but you right now you have to bring in a certain minimum, which would be somewhere between 15 and 18 and 20% depending upon. And after this, you will bring in 6% and you may or may not, the council may ask for more but they may not. That's correct. So the starting point moves with this. And then in the suburban tier, it's gonna be 18% but you can reduce that by 30% if you're utilizing the affordable housing density bonus. And so that would have to be shown on the development plan. Right, right. So the applicant would have to commit to using the affordable housing density bonus. In order to get the 30% reduction. That's an additional bonus. That's correct. It's a dimensional bonus as opposed to a density bonus. Correct. Because as I read the report and I had to read this report several times to make sure I understood where it was tied to the affordable housing density bonus. And where it wasn't. And so it sounds like I eventually arrived at the right place. Yes, thank you. Those were my questions. Are there any other commissioners who would like to make a comment on commission or Brian? Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm gonna be brief. I thought about several things that I might want to say but since I do agree that it would be good to continue this and I agree with the two-cycle continuation. I'm only gonna focus on one thing that's of concern to me and that's the change in the Falls, Jordan area A. I don't particularly like that. I don't really see the need for it. And one of my concerns, well, among my concerns our General Assembly has never allowed our local governments to fully implement the Falls Lake rules or the Jordan Lake rules which took many months to develop. I know because I participated in developing the Falls Lake rules. We also seem to be living in an era where rolling back environmental protections is the norm. Just as an example, the Environmental Protection Agency is rolling back some aspects of the Clean Water Act which some of even their scientists believe are going to harm the general public. I personally believe that if we need to do everything we can to protect our water supply and if we don't, I think down the road, we're gonna pay a very heavy price for not protecting it. And that's all I'm gonna say tonight. Thank you. Are the other commissioners, or Buzzfeed also had some comments. Thank you. Actually, I just had a question for Mr. Whiteman. So you mentioned that the staff would be willing to host some sort of gathering. Can you just walk through what you're thinking? The applicant said he'd be willing to host some sort of gathering. That is true. But I did hear you say that you thought that that could be accommodated. I'm just trying to understand the next step. Maybe I misunderstood the question I was asked. Maybe I misunderstood. Okay, so you're not, this would be, the staff is now slowly backing away from this. Sorry, I think, was that Commissioner Morgan's question? I was talking to my colleague at the time, so I would come in. I don't, I didn't hear what he's, I think what he was saying is, is that if we delayed two cycles so that Mr. Anthony could work with other stakeholders, that would be okay. Okay, thank you. I don't think he was saying so that everybody could come over to his house. No, no, well. That was my question. Right. Everyone's welcome after this is over. So the question then, thank you for the clarification and apologies for misunderstanding. But I hope you will invite us all over at some point. Maybe after this is all over. But for the commission ourselves, I think we have actually two options and both would be tied to what I think Commissioner Baker had a good suggestion of a two cycle delay. That that's what we did expanding housing choices. It allowed us to bring something back and allowed to have additional public input. So the two options that I can foresee, one is that we continue this for two cycles and Mr. Anthony graciously hosts some sort of community event. And we all find out about it in some way, shape, or form. The other option is far more intensive for us as a commission is to create another committee as we did on expanding housing choices where we initiate the meeting and we would invite Mr. Anthony and the general public like we did with the expanding housing choices committee. Those were publicly noticed meetings that were here at the city council and the staff was generous enough to help line up the meeting space. But that's gonna create, we need to create that and we do need to then have a few of us dig in to do that work. We had five members of this body that served on the expanding housing choices committee. And we are allowed to do that in our bylaws. So that is just something for us to consider. I say that and I'll be perfectly blunt. It took up and I served on that committee. It was an enormous amount of time. I was glad I did it. I can't do that at the moment, but I do just wanna have us take a moment to talk about that and decide if that's something we would like to do or not. Well, the first question that I would ask is, are there five members of this body that would like to serve on such a committee? If so, raise your hand. Okay, it looks like we have five individuals who are willing to, so it looks like we'll be developing a subcommittee. What, can I make a? Twice, which you usually do. I'm sorry, was there a question? I was gonna. Yes, Commissioner Al-Turk. Thank you, Chair. Just a quick follow-up on Commissioner Busby's question. I think, I do like the second option, so I'm glad that we have five people who can serve. And I think that it will be less work than the EHC subcommittee. I mean, just based on the content. So hopefully it will not be too much, but I like that option. Commissioner Johnson. Thank you, clarifying question. So with the formation of the subcommittee, is the goal, is the objective to have these, this outreach process and bring back what we learned to the applicant? Or is, who's taking the ownership of what in regards to doing the work until the next time we get back to consider this? Yes, let me let Commissioner Miller respond since he has agreed to serve on and chair that subcommittee. No, no, no, no, I'm ill-suited to be chairman of anything. The, so the way I see a subcommittee work, what we do as a planning commission, we're an advisory body, we advise. And I see, especially on text amendments, instead of us presenting 14 different sets of comments, which may or may converge or diverge. I see a subcommittee on the questions where it's desirable us to work together to come up with a unified set of comments on proposed changes. And whether those changes are city initiated or whether they're privately initiated doesn't matter. We're talking about changing the text as an own code. And so the advice we give is always to the elected bodies of board of county commissioners and the city council. So I would, the way I see a subcommittee working perhaps in a 60 day period is that we could have a session or two where the general public could come and we could talk without necessarily having a three minute rule or something like that and really dig into the issues. And then we could finish up with a session where it was just the committee people digesting with AAV and coming up with a suggested unified set of comments like we did with the EHC, you know, eventually in that instance, we took the whole 90 days. In this instance, we'd be, we won't necessarily do this. This is, while this has things in it that I consider to be complex in their implications, they are not so they're not as many of them as they were in the EHC. But that's the way I see it working. But that doesn't, just because I see it working that way doesn't necessarily mean it works this way. I actually had Mr. Baker in mind for chair. He didn't raise his hand. He raised his hand to participate, so. Did you? Yes, he did. Oh, excellent. Thank you. I'll follow up. I'm sorry, commissioner Johnson. So thank you for the clarity. So in response to that, would the applicant be have the opportunity to do something in parallel? Because if what, when he comes, when the applicant comes back with whatever happens in the 60 days, what we're doing is saying, however we vote will attach the, what comes out of this subcommittee to the decision of this body. Exactly. Or we would vote to, you know, whether to look at it, whether to include it to send forward. But the information would definitely come back to this body. Commissioner Morgan and then commissioner Alterg. It seems like that the applicant could also take some of the recommendations from the subcommittee and actually revise his amendments. And by doing that, then we may not have so much comment to make. It may be coming from the subcommittee itself. And then it could be presented. And if we do have other comments on top of it where the applicant isn't revising it, we could certainly then come up with a joint statement. Right. And as one of the individuals who participated in the subcommittee for the expanded housing choices, one of the things that we did was to include, it was a public hearing. So individuals were allowed to come in, including the applicant and questions were raised and were basically dealt with during that meeting. So we know what issues we want to address. And this would be an opportunity for everyone then to refine those comments, put together a document and then bring it back to the commission. And that would also allow the applicant to make some changes as well. So the first thing that I would need would be a motion to extend this particular item for, I think we were talking about two cycles. So. Madam Chair, if I may. Yes. I would move that we continue case TC-19 quadruple-04 for two cycles. Which is to our, to our April meeting. Regular April meeting. Yes, our regular April meeting. Seconds. Motion by commissioner Busby. Second by commissioner, was that out there? Thank you. That we extend item number TC-1900004 amendments for two cycles until our April meeting. All in favor of this motion, I'm going to ask for a roll call though, please. Mr. Williams. Yes. Mr. Morgan. Yes. Commissioner Johnson. Yes. Commissioner Brian. Yes. Commissioner Alturk. Yes. Vice Chair Busby. Yes. Chair Hyman. Yes. Commissioner Miller. Yes. Commissioner Ketchin. Yes. Commissioner Santiago. Yes. Commissioner Baker. Yes. Commissioner Lowe. Yes. Commissioner McIver. Yes. Motion passes, 13 to zero. Thank you. And now this would allow the subcommittee an opportunity to arrange a time. I think we need to create this. Well, I think I was hoping that the staff was recording the names of those hands that were raised. But I still think we have to vote on it. I didn't record any names, I'm staff. Okay, you did not. I saw more than five hands. So I think that maybe the chair has the ability to vote. Does the chair have the ability to create a subcommittee without a vote? Yes, Ms. Hyman, you can do that. Okay. But you need to figure out who was interested because I saw the hands go up and I started counting and I think there were seven. Okay, the first thing I would like to see and have a commitment for those hands that were raised before, please raise them high. Yeah, that's all five. Okay, that's two. Your hand wasn't raised before. That's five. Mr. Baker, did I not see your hand? Yeah, I didn't see it last time either. I never raised my hand. How is it that you were going to chair it? Thank you. Well, you have five. Thank you. Now, do we need a vote to form the subcommittee or is it? I looked at the rules. The chairman can just do it under the rules. Okay, well, it sounds like we have a subcommittee. The chair has a 32-point subcommittee. All right, very good. All right. My memory's not right, but yeah. Don't let that get to your head. Two of us are saying you can do that. All right. That's good enough for me. Sounds like a winner to me. So it looks like we have an official subcommittee that will be coordinating dates, times, and places. And this wonderful group of individuals here will be notified and offered an opportunity to participate, everyone. Thank you. If I may. The chair recognizes commissioner Buzzby. Thank you. I'm trying to remember how we did this with expanding housing choices. And so I do want to make sure, so we can work with the staff to reserve space here and make sure that these are publicly noticed meetings. Yes, if you all can figure out who your contact is and work with, let's say work with Grace and we'll, as your official liaison, and we'll find a space and a time. And one of the things we also did was to ensure that we included all of the individuals who had an obvious interest was to get email addresses and a listing of the individuals who were here. So if we could get a sign-up sheet from all of the individuals here, that would be helpful. Staff highly recommends that the sign-up sheet that you've used have everyone that wants to be contacted sign that sheet and provide their email address if they didn't provide it the first time they signed up. And then if you would work through me to reserve the room, I'll make sure, and I need to know how many people you think just work directly through me and we can work that out. Sounds like a winner. Thank you so much. Okay. Are there any additional questions concerning this issue? If not, is there any? I see no new business. I have one request after you adjourn. We would like to take a picture of the group down front. If you don't mind, we try to do that once a year. Okay, thank you. And we're full huts. Without any further issues, we are officially adjourned. Thank you.