 I think we got a quorum, though. Maybe. I mean, we need eight. We got eight. Yeah. We got eight. Yeah. That's a weird one. They're laughing at me because they're saying it's big. It could be something huge about the fact that when I came down to Langham Street, you go into the space to keep your eyes open. Yeah. You got to get all your cameras up. Yeah. I had two cones sitting in front of me on a sign saying, sorry, this garage is full. Oh, yeah. You know, I could see vacant spots. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So I went to the, I just went around the block, came in from the other side. Yeah, I came in in front of them. I'm sitting over there. I haven't talked to them. I'm sure they'll probably have dropped it because they hadn't come in from that side for a long time. I kept bumping into the curb while I was looking to, where do I get the tickage? I've been building that thing. I can buy one. Good evening. Hello. You're shuffling. Good evening. Welcome to the Durham Planning Commission. The members of the Durham Planning Commission have been appointed by the city council and the county commissioners. We're an advisory body to the elected officials. So you should know that the elected officials have the final say on any of the issues before us this evening. We have three agenda items this evening. If you wish to speak on any of the agenda items, you can come up to the table on our left and you can sign up for those items. The first two items are new zoning cases. And then the third item is a continued expanding housing choices case. For each of the items, we have rules that allow 10 minutes per side. So 10 minutes to speak for those in favor of a project. 10 minutes for those speaking against a project. And the time is divided by all the people who sign up to speak on each of the items. Finally, all motions are stated in the affirmative. So if a motion fails or ties, the recommendation is for denial. May I have the roll call please? Commissioner Williams. Here. Commissioner Morgan. Here. Commissioner Johnson is currently absent, Commissioner Brine. Here. Commissioner Durkan. Here. Commissioner Altirk. Yeah. Vice-chair Heiman. Here. Chair Busby. Here. Commissioner Miller. Here. Commissioner Ketchum is currently absent, Commissioner Santiago. Here. Commissioner Baker. Here. Commissioner Gibbs. Here. Commissioner Ketchum is just arrived. Thank you. Thank you. And before we get to the approval of the minutes and the consistency statement, I did want to welcome Commissioner Santiago. Welcome to the Durham Planning Commissioners. Appreciate it. Have you joined us? Thank you. You're welcome to, the mic is yours if you want to make a statement. Reach statement. I'm just grateful to be here. I'm grateful to City Council and I look forward to serving the City of Durham. Great, thanks. We will move to the approval of the minutes and the consistency statement from our May 14th, 2019 meeting. I move approval of the minutes as presented. I don't think we had any consistency statement. Yes, you're right. Second. Moved by Commissioner Bryan, seconded by Commissioner Alturk. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Unanimous vote. Adjustments to the agenda. I'm good evening. Chair Busby and Planning Commissioners, the staff does not have any adjustments to the agenda to propose this evening. We would just like to add for the record that all public hearing notice has been carried out in a course of state and local law and the affidavits for those are on file in the planning department. Thank you. Thank you. And we expect Commissioner Johnson will be here tonight so we don't need to move for any unexcused absences this evening. Right, we have not heard from him so he might just be running a few minutes late. I believe so. Thank you. So we will move to our first public hearing. This is a comprehensive plan, future land use map amendment with concurrent zoning map changes. It's case A19 quadruple zero two. Oh, Commissioner Bryan. I apologize for the interruption but I would like to move that we accept the agenda as presented. That is fair. Thank you, Commissioner. Seconded. Seconded by Commissioner Morgan. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Unanimous vote. You can tell I'm excited to get into the agenda tonight. Oh, yes. So it's case A19 quadruple zero two and concurrent case is Z19 quadruple zero two New Haven townhouses and we'll start with the staff report. Good evening. I'm Jamie Sonjak with the planning department. I will be presenting case number A1900020190002. This is New Haven townhouses. The applicant is Jared Edens. The site is located at 26 Ellis Road. It is located within the city's jurisdiction approximately nine acres total. The request is planned development residential 6.239 which is PDR 6.239. The FLAM request is a low medium density residential from industrial and recreation and open space. There's no change to the recreation open space designation. The proposal as noted in the development plan is a maximum of 55 townhouse units. This is the aerial map. The property is shown in red. The site is located within the suburban tier and the Cape Fear River basin. These pictures show the site conditions. There's an existing building and driveway which are shown to be removed on the development plan. The site has various streams and associated riparian buffers, mature pines and hardwoods. There's also sewer main and sewer easements running through the property. This area has been experiencing a lot of residential growth and the slide here shows some of the pictures of the residential development that's located adjacent to the property as well as some of the sites that are under construction. Just to name a few, there's the Haven townhouse development immediately adjacent. The Taylor estates townhouse development immediately adjacent to that on the south side of Ellis Road. There is also Ellis Road phase one which is currently under construction for 165 townhouse units immediately adjacent to that. There's Ellis phase two or 110 residential units as well as the reserve at Ellis Crossing and Ellis Road phase three. So there's a lot happening in that area in terms of residential growth. This is the site context map. The site is currently zoned residential suburban 20 that's shown in the yellow color and the applicant proposes to change the designation to the planned residential development 6.239 that's shown in the blue to the right. In terms of the future land use map, the area is currently designated industrial and the applicant proposes to change that to low medium density which would coincide with the rezoning request and there's a portion of the site that is within the recreation open space that's in green and that is not proposing to change. This slide shows the development plan and in terms of the graphic shown on this plan there's the site access points. There are project boundary buffers, riparian crossings, building and parking envelopes as well as the tree coverage areas and the maximum impervious coverage. In terms of key committed elements on the development plan, the permitted housing type is limited to townhouse development with a maximum of 55 units. The impervious coverage will not exceed 70% and there are a number of commitments related to the traffic improvements that are on the plan including additional asphalt for a bicycle lane and additional asphalt for along the frontage and a turn line. In terms of being consistent with the comprehensive plan and its policies, the proposed PDR zoning designation does not comply with the current industrial and recreation open space designation on the future land use map. However, the low medium density residential designation is consistent with the neighboring Ellis Road, phase one, two, three plant developments to the north and it is an acceptable designation in the suburban tier in accordance with 2.13D. While industrial uses are also allowed within the suburban tier, the staff has reviewed the industrial land use study and determined that this property is not a prime industrial site, especially given its proximity to the existing and proposed residential developments, as well as the site constraints, the environmental constraints on the property. The proposal supports orderly development patterns per policy two, three, one A, since this site serves as an expansion to the character of the residential development existing and proposed occurring within the area, there is existing infrastructure, such as the roads, waters and sewers to accommodate the site. The proposed development is consistent with eight, one, two, H and while the proposed traffic will increase, the applicant will install an exclusive westbound turn lane onto Ellis Road at the site entrance. The proposed development plan is consistent with eight, one, four D, the development plan commits to additional asphalt for the bicycle lane, for a bicycle lane along Ellis Road and the proposed development is consistent with 11, one, one B. There is sufficient capacity within the school system to accommodate the anticipated growth. Staff determines that these requests are consistent with the comprehensive plan and applicable policies and ordinances and I will be happy to answer any questions that you have. Thank you. Right in time. We will open the public hearing and we have one individual, Jared Eden, signed up to speak, Mr. Eden. Good evening, Planning Commission. Jared Eden's with Eden's land. I appreciate your time this evening. Thanks to Jamie for her detailed summary of our project. I'm just gonna add a couple of notes. It is a small project, 55 units, but it's in a very good location. You're very close to RTP, very close to Briar Creek. This is a good area where you want to see a little density. As Jamie mentioned, Ellis Road is changing almost daily it seems as if, but I think they're positive changes. I think it looks a lot better along Ellis Road now than it did prior to development. The zoning will allow for a more affordable product in this location than the current zoning for single family. The town from product is just by nature gonna be more affordable than single family. We had a neighborhood meeting in February, and I have no opposition that I'm aware of, and I'd be glad to answer any questions you have. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak on this item during the public hearing? I don't see anyone, so we will close the public hearing. Commissioners, questions, comments? Commissioner Bryan. I have some questions for transportation. Based on previous discussions of development along Ellis Road, it's my understanding that the at-grade crossing of the railroad tracks will eventually be replaced by a bridge over the railroad track. Is this memory correct? So yes, that is the future plan for the crossing. Okay, and at such point as that bridge is built, does it interfere in any way with the entrance to this property that we're rezoning? The design for that grade separation hasn't, hasn't been designed currently, so we don't know what the impacts will be in the future yet. Okay. Thank you. I do have one question for the applicant. Do you have a couple of streams crossing shown on your development plan? Do you know yet how those crossings will be made? Most likely small culverts. I mean, you're at the very top of the stream in its location, so the drainage area coming through the property is fairly low, so I wouldn't think it'd be more than a 36-inch culvert. I mean, something you see every day, nothing large though. I can, we did obtain preliminary designs for the railroad crossing from DOT and compared that to our plan, the grade ties in before it reaches our property, at least per the current design, so we feel there won't be any conflicts in the future. Thank you for that. That's all I have, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioner Bryan. Commissioner Miller. Oh, and I'm sorry, and I should state that Commissioner Johnson did arrive at the start of this hearing just for the record. Commissioner Miller? So I have just a, I'm gonna vote in favor of this rezoning, but I have two observations. One, we're not long ago in a property not far distant from this one, we looked, the application to change the future land use map extended beyond the developer's property and just made more even lines, made a more, a more, in my opinion, stable, correct and permanent boundary buffer between uses on the future land use map. Realizing that to just change the future land use map for the developer's property would leave some scraggly little loose ends that did not make good policy sense. I wish we would do more of that, and I note in this one, the developer has applied only to change the future land use map for the property that the developer owns. It's a reasonable thing to do, but it does leave, if you look at your map there, that portion of the property that's zoned RS 20 that's not part of this project is still going to be zoned, still show as industrial in the future land use map when in fact it shouldn't be. And I wish there was some mechanisms that when a private petitioner asks to change the future land use map, at least in some cases, we can look at the boundaries of the future land use map that would result from the requested change and just go ahead and move them for the area. I realize that isn't the way we've been doing business, but I wish there was some way to, even if the developer doesn't want to be the applicant for that, I wish maybe the city could look at future land use map changes and say if we're going to do this, then we ought to go ahead and run the boundary all the way up to here. And we wouldn't happen in every case, but it would result in a less patchwork future land use map. We changed the future land use map at long intervals comprehensively, and then we begin to nibble it apart like mobs in an old world code. I wish there was a way to not do that. So that's just an observation for future proceedings and maybe it's something we can put in the comprehensive plan when we look at that in the next couple of years. The next observation I have is the applicant in his presentation made a general representation about the relative affordability of single family and townhouses that, in my opinion, really doesn't have any part of our consideration here. A townhouse can cost more than a single family home. There are no commitments to affordability in this application and it shouldn't be part of our consideration. If we're going to talk about affordability in connection with a rezoning, then we really need to talk about affordability based upon either the use of bonuses or commitments made by the developer and not just kind of broad statements that sound good. So that's something that gets me a little bit. I know affordability is something we're all sensitive about, but when we talk about it, I want to talk about it seriously and not have just these kind of general unprovable assertions thrown out there. And then finally, although I am going to vote in favor of this, I believe that this kind of rezoning would benefit from better design commitments than are being proffered here. So I do think though that what's being proposed here is consistent with the general trend, the densities and everything are consistent with the land use pattern I've driven out to this property a couple of times since we learned about this rezoning, all kinds of things are happening out there, much of it in response to rezonings that we have considered and sent forward. And it makes me, it's really kind of interesting to see what's happening as a result of some of the discussions and the decisions that we're having. This rezoning and this change of the future land use map, in my opinion, is consistent with what we've been doing. And so I'm going to vote for it for that reason, even though I have some reservations. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Miller, Commissioner Johnson. Thank you. Just a couple of questions for the project sponsor, Jared. So I'm just curious as when I'm looking at the development plan, so will the 55 units be in that middle section of the basically set unit parcel given the stream? There's basically three development pods on the development plan. So it'd be the one, two, three separated by the streams. We identified the building envelope in each one of those sections. So you'll see townhomes. Both sides of the streams, all three sections. And in reference to, well, not in reference, I was going to ask the same way, but in regards when you said four of our houses, I'm just curious as to what is your anticipated price points for these townhomes? So as of today, my client's thinking 250, 275 as a starting point. Again, like Tom said, that's not, I'm not committing to that or anything, but also generally try to stand up here and tell you what I think's gonna happen and 250, 275 is what we're thinking. Yes. And finally, am I correct in assuming that there'll likely be like surface parking or to satisfy the parking needs for this development? This will most likely be garage units. Garage units. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Baker. I wanted to bring up something that happened last week. I think it's really important for all of us to consider and something that I would like the development community to consider. And that is that when the city council reviewed the Olive Branch Road annexation rezoning, an application that we voted nine to two in favor of, they actually rejected it. And I think that they set a new precedent for us to be following when we've reviewed these applications. And I think that's really important for us to be able to do that. And I think that's really important for us to be able to do that. For us to be following when we've reviewed these applications that the floor is a comprehensive plan, but if we actually want to recommend approval or if they actually want to approve developments, we need to set a higher bar. We need to set a bar for better, more sustainable types of development. And that's a general comment. It's not specific to this application, but it is something that I wanted to bring up for all of us. And if you haven't seen the discussion that city council had during that meeting, you should take a look at it. It's from June 3rd. It's on YouTube. You should watch it. There's a lot of really interesting discussion. I think that we need to be considering that when we look at applications for large subdivisions, rezoning applications and annexations. Specific to this application, there were a couple of things that I wanted to note. A couple of positive things. One things that in the dialogue from Eden's land, they do mention each housing unit will be within a quarter mile of open space. And so I think that's something worthy of bringing up and sort of applauding. So I really appreciated staff's report. They described actually what's on the property today, not just saying that the property is vacant, but actually saying these are the types of forest land that we're going to be losing. It's a reminder that every time we make development decisions, it's not just replacing, it's not just going on a vacant piece of property, it's replacing valuable land, which is forest land. So that's something that we should always be cognizant of. And specific to this application, and I'm not basing my decision off of it, but I am looking at the design commitments. And I do agree with Commissioner Miller who would have liked to have seen some more design commitments. Front-facing gables, for example, isn't necessarily a commitment as much as a description of what the building's all will look like. What I would consider to be good, sustainable design would be commitments for front porches, garages in the back, rear alley access, sidewalks on both sides of the street, street trees, green building elements, a variety of housing types, a variety of lot sizes, and a variety of uses. These are all things that are in our current comprehensive plan, as much as we want to update it, there's really good stuff in there. So I would actually find some inconsistency with this application in policy 421G, for example, sustainability, 422A, varied housing, new development, 425D, health and environment, and a couple others. So I'm not gonna vehemently oppose this application. I'm not gonna ask that my fellow commissioners vote against it, but I do have reservations about it, so thanks. Commissioner, thank you. Commissioner Gibbs. I'm gonna deviate from that just a tad and from what Commissioner Miller said, this, I kinda like this kind of a site design, just from a design perspective, to have it separated, it looks like there's gonna be three built areas separated by what will have to remain a riparian buffer, it can give some character to the design. I'm not somebody that really thinks that there should be a hard and fast rule where the gables face the front, garages face the front or the back or whatever, it depends on how the design and circulation of the development occurs to add more restrictions to, especially on a site this small. In theory, there is something to what was said about that, but I just don't like to add restrictions to the overall design development, but I guess since this is my last meeting, I'm just gonna argue, sort of. But at any rate, I am going to support it. There are some concerns as there is with everything, but I think this has the makings of a nice little neighborhood. Thank you, Commissioner. I don't see any other questions or okay, Commissioner. Yeah, I just have one comment that I kind of echo Commissioner Miller's comments about the area itself, it's rapidly changing. It would be great to get some more of an overall plan for what that area is all about and what changes are gonna go in place. I mean, I could see certainly the land that is adjacent to this property being developed, and it seems like we should have some kind of overlay plan or sort of have the ability to be able to make the changes or offer to make some of the zoning changes there, not just leave it for kind of a patchwork thing. So I'm actually echoing Commissioner Miller's current concerns about that and we'll put that in my comments as well. Great, thank you, Commissioner Morgan. Commissioner Alturk. Thank you, Chair. I wanted to follow up on Commissioner Baker's comments. I mean, I echo his recommending to us to look at that conversation that was had at City Council last week. I think it was a good indication, possibly of the kinds of discussions that they're going to have in the near future. And I like that he continues kind of advocating for better design, for thoughtful development in the suburban tier. And I hope that we will continue to push for these things at the policy level and at the comprehensive plan level. Specific to this particular application, it's a modest amount of land. I think it's gonna increase density and I also appreciate Commissioner Miller's comments about us not getting into, or saying that if we increase density, all of a sudden we're gonna have more affordability. I think we've tried to make that clear in our subcommittee on EHC. That's not necessarily the case, but I do think we need, obviously we need housing, the suburban tier. So it's not a lot of extra units, but I think it's a reasonable request and I'll be voting in favor of it. Thank you. Thank you. So seeing no other comments, this is an appropriate time for a motion. Commissioner Bryan. I move that we send case A1900002 forward to city council with a favorable recommendation. Second. Properly moved and seconded. We'll have a roll call vote please. Commissioner Williams. Yes. Commissioner Morgan. Yes. Commissioner Johnson. Yes. Commissioner Bryan. Yes. Commissioner Durkin. Yes. Commissioner Alturk. Yes. Vice-Chair Hyman. Yes. Chair Busby. Yes. Commissioner Miller. Yes. Commissioner Ketchin. Yes. Commissioner Santiago. Yes. Commissioner Baker. Nope. Commissioner Gibbs. Yes. Motion passes 12 to one. And the motion for the zoning case. I move that we send case Z1900002 forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation. Seconded. Moved by commissioner Bryan. And seconded by commissioner Morgan. Roll call vote please. Williams. Yes. Commissioner Morgan. Yes. Commissioner Johnson. Yes. Commissioner Bryan. Yes. Commissioner Durkin. Yes. Commissioner Alturk. Yes. Vice-Chair Hyman. Yes. Chair Busby. Yes. Commissioner Miller. Yes. Commissioner Ketchin. Yes. Yes. Commissioner Santiago. Yes. Commissioner Baker. Nope. And commissioner Gibbs. Yes. Motion passes 12 to one. Thank you. So we will move to our next case. This is a zoning map change only. It's case Z19006. It's the Magnolia Creek Phase 4 project. And we'll start with the staff report. Good evening. I'm Emily Struthers with the Planning Department. I will now be presenting case Z19006, Magnolia Creek Phase 4. The applicant is Jared Edens with Edens Land on behalf of David Goraki. The 6.71 acre site is located at 4700 Danube Lane and 1018 Old Evergreen Drive and comprises two parcels. This site is located within the city limits. The applicant proposes to change the zoning from Plan Development Residential 4.990, PDR 4.990, to Plan Development Residential 7.899, PDR 7.899. The property is designated low-medium density residential on the future land use map, which is consistent with the zoning request. The proposal consists of a maximum of 53 townhouse units and allowed accessor uses. The site is shown in red, located off of Danube Lane in the suburban development tier. This aerial image is slightly outdated. The briar green apartments to the north have been constructed and single family houses within the Magnolia Creek development east or under construction. The property has sidewalks installed along Danube, a curb cut and utilities, but is otherwise undeveloped as these site photos show. You can see by these context photos, the site is adjacent to multiple single family and apartment developments. The site is presently zoned PDR 4.990, her previously approved development plan, PO 255, which was approved in 2003 for 13 single family lots. The applicant proposes to change the zoning designation for Magnolia Creek phase four to PDR 7.899, to allow for 53 townhouse units. The property is designated low-medium density residential on the future land use map, which is consistent with the rezoning request. Development plan provides site access points, building and parking envelopes, and a pedestrian connection. Additionally, key commitments include that the proposed development will be limited townhouses and accessor uses for the maximum of 53 townhouse units and design commitments specify proposed building materials and roof lines. Proposed plan development residential 7.899, zoning designation complies with the current low-medium designation on the future land use map and applicable policies. It is consistent with policy 2.12C, 2.31A, 2.32A and 11.11A. Staff determines that this request is consistent with the comprehensive plan and other policies and ordinances and staff is available for any questions. Thank you. We will open the public hearing for this case. And again, we have one individual, it's Jared Edens. Good evening, Jared Edens again with Edens Land. I appreciate Emily's summary. As she mentioned, this property sort of went through the entire process once before. It was zoned years ago. We actually designed and permitted the property for a single family neighborhood, 13 lots. But as we went through the design, we quickly realized that construction costs were really gonna get out of hand. There's a lot of topo on the property and it needs a lot of dirt to be brought in to make it developable. So what we try to do is just increase the density to try to lower the costs. So instead of spreading construction over 13 lots, we're now spreading construction over 53 lots. And the end result is a lower cost home. I'm not gonna use word affordable, but a lower cost home. And that's the purpose of our zoning here tonight. So I've answered a question you have. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else who would like to speak on this item? Those seeing none, we'll close the public hearing. I'll start to my left this time, commissioners. Questions or comments? Commissioner Baker. Yeah, this is obviously a very similar application to the last one. So one thing I'll add to the comments that I had before. And first of all, I appreciate the pedestrian connections being provided. One thing that I'll add is that when we look at the stuff that we're approving, we notice that it's not in any way comparable to the types of developments in our urban tier that are highly connected, small blocks, sidewalks, all the things that we talk about that make places livable. Make places walkable. Have a low footprint, a small footprint on the planet. What we tend to be doing nowadays is creating a development of townhomes here. You drive out of your development of townhomes onto the arterial road and you drive down the road and you drive into the development of single family homes. You drive out of that. You drive onto the arterial road. You drive to your pod of multifamily buildings. And that's kind of how we're doing things. And I'm not sure that that's the way that we could best describe a variety of housing types. I think when we talk about a variety of housing types, we're talking about walking down the street and coming across a single family home next to a duplex, next to a triplex, next to a multifamily building. And that's what a variety of homes is. And that's creating a more sustainable environment. That's all I'm gonna say. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So rather than talk about the actual merits of this application, which as Commissioner Baker pointed out or not unlike the case we just considered, I have a significant question concerned about the procedure in the way this rezoning is being presented to us. This is pulling 6.71 acres out of a previously approved PDR rezoning. That PDR rezoning has a density attached to it 4.99 units per acre and that's the law of this property. That PDR is the zoning for this land and that PDR runs with the land. When we allow a piece of property to be pulled out of a previously approved PDR and rezoned separately, I believe we have to consider what's left of the PDR and what the impact is. And the impact on this is, is that the density in the rest of the PDR, which is not the subject of this rezoning case is changing from 4.99 units to acre to 5.106 units per acre. That's a rezoning. And under the law when there's a rezoning, there's a right to due process. People in the area have a right to notice and the notice goes out depending upon your proximity to the property being rezoned because we are now rezoning a piece of property that's only 6.71 acres. Only the people who lived in close proximity to that got the written notice. We should, but we are actually in fact changing the rules for the rest of the property. And that property is not built out or anything like that. I was at it today, they're out there building, but there's a lot of vacant land out there. We are changing the density. And when we change rezoning, I believe people of Durham have a right under the statutes and under our own rules to notice and an opportunity to be present and to be heard. And that's not happening here. I realize there are all kinds of practical considerations that obtain when we look at what's necessary to petition for rezoning of developed pieces of property. And it didn't used to be that way into the statutes, but we've created new rules and the new rules are hard to comply with. But without regard to how hard they are, comply with them, I think we must. And so I am not willing to vote in favor of this rezoning because I think it is legally flawed. I believe we are changing affirmatively the zoning on the 6.71 acres and that's something we could talk about. But I think we are also in a backhanded way changing the zoning on this larger piece of property without actually considering it, without actually giving it the full consideration I think it deserves. And without having the public involvement, which the law of North Carolina demands, I would like for us to at the very least delay this for 30 days so that we can get an opinion from the city attorney about what the correct procedure is here. I don't know whether I'll get any support on that. And if I may, before we would make such a motion, could we hear from the staff on your concern and to just get feedback on that issue? If you want to ask that question. Please, okay, yes. Sure, so staff has taken a look and analysis of that existing previously approved development plan. And the lots have been platted or developed consistent with that development plan. So what's on the ground or being put on the ground is consistent with the development plan. Things such as open space, tree coverage, and actual units that are permitted with that area would not change. It's just the number of that, that the PDR number would be varied, but what could actually be built is consistent. So, Commissioner Miller, I know you have additional comments. I just wanna make sure we take the time on this point and you should, the mic is still yours. So you're welcome to continue to ask specific questions. I'm interested to find out if, based on Commissioner Miller's concerns, who did not get notice of this change that might have gotten notice had we moved forward with looking at all of the property? Do we know the answer to that question? Yeah, so I would first like to add on to Grace pointed out as well that with PDR calculation since the way density has been calculated has changed that the rules have changed that there are a number of PDR districts that are inconsistent with their PDR density number. So this may be one of those as well. To answer the question as far as who would not have noticed the development plan, the 2000, I wanna say three case it was, was for the apartments. If we have the aerial map, the apartments to the north, the single family homes to the east as well as the apartments across Danube to the northwest. So that entire area that was previously the PDR 4.990, that whole area is the portion that I believe Mr. Miller is referring to as rezoning. Okay. Do we know how many households that may include? This is Grace Smith planning. I don't know how many households that would be, but it would be any that would be beyond the 600 foot notice area. So we don't have a calculation for that, but I can tell you some of those were noticed because they were in our 600 foot area, but not all of them obviously are not in the 600 foot area. Okay. Great, thank you. So Commissioner Miller, the floor is yours. What I would ask since we haven't heard from additional commissioners would be if you can hold your motion. Great, thank you, but the floor is yours. If you can continue. Thank you. So if we approve this rezoning, we are winding up with a situation with what's on the ground, but the rest of it will be. I know they don't like for us to touch it, but it's way over here. Is, I mean, we're going to wind up with a PDR that's 4.99, but we're gonna have a development pattern that's 5.106. And I don't think that's correct. I believe that's a zone change. And I believe that the people have a right to participate in the zone change. There are minimum due process requirements and we're not following. It may all wind up the same way. And I realize that over time we've had the PDR ability in Durham for decades and that we have changed the way we calculate density and what have you. And sometimes the law is hard and sometimes it's confusing and sometimes it's difficult to comply with and you have to know the rules then in order to interpret that PDR as opposed to the rules now to interpret this PDR. That's not an excuse for not allowing for the required due process. Some, it may be difficult but it's not a reason for jumping over, in my opinion, the most important required steps because they flow from a concept of due process and that's what our constitution provides all of us. Go back to fundamentals of zoning. Zoning is the police power. It's the power of the government to regulate land for the public welfare. And when we get in the weeds we have a tendency to forget that the public is who we're supposed to be looking out for. It's not just a bunch of people in the room who have some vested interest in the outcome of the zoning case. It's the larger public. And I think that if we are going to be true to our mission we've got to make sure that the first safeguard that we have in place is the right of due process to participate in these proceedings. Thank you. Ms. Struthers? Thank you. I would just like to add that the planning director did review this element and has identified that this can move forward to planning commission, which is why we are here now with it as it is proposed. Could you repeat that, please? Commissioner Brown. I realized that, you know, quite possibly nothing will change but I'm in agreement with Commissioner Miller that it would be good to actually get legal opinion on this. I very much appreciate the fact that the planning director's a person of integrity and experience, but as far as I know he's not a lawyer. So if we, I would agree with Commissioner Miller if when the time comes, if he wants to move that we defer for a bit, I'll be glad to second. Commissioner Johnson. So thank you Commissioner Miller for highlighting this. It was, you know, the nuances that actually has many. So question for you based on your comments is what you're suggesting is that the communities that were not a part of the notification area should be informed of what's happening and have a period for to see if there's any feedback regarding what won't probably change on paper when they see the 499, but what effectively is happening with this request here. Is that basically what you're saying is at the minimum should be a part of this process? So that's a good question. Frequently we are invited to look at rezoning which really are changes of development plans. In other words, the developer got the property rezoned in a development plan case and they want to change a density figure, they want to change some commitment that they made and we rezoned the whole property that's the subject of the PDR or whatever that development plan is. And then we send out a notice to everybody who is in the notice radius around that entire property. That's the correct way to proceed. I believe that this case which is changing, making changes to a development plan which are concentrated in this 6.71 acres is still a change of the development plan for the whole project. And we should treat it like a change of development plan for the whole project and that the notice radius should be for the entire original project and do it that way. I believe that's what's required. I have to say I'm a little concerned also just as a matter of policy beyond the legal question. When we rezoned a piece of property and we put a development plan on it and the development plan has commitments for the development of the whole property that when we then start pulling it apart patchwork wise and rezoning it, I'm worried that the public who has been relying on the development plan for the project as a whole is actually going to wind up with something different than what they thought they could rely on. At least they should be, if that's going to happen, because it is allowed to make changes, at least we ought to pull the same stakeholders to the table for the development plan and its new configuration that we had at the table when we created the development plan in the first place. And that's where I'm coming from on this. That's helpful, follow up. And so for staff in the event that that seems logical and that what essentially is taking place is a rezoning of basically the 2003 approval. So what happens if someone who has not been notified learns of this, they come to you or the council or whoever it is to petition, what's the implications in regards to if this request was approved and due processes requested from someone in this community, can it make this, if this was approved void or what would happen if someone wanted to exercise their due process in that they feel that this was a rezoning of the 2003 approved project? So this case would be treated like any other case, all cases that come before this body and go forward to an elected body when they're approved or denied, they are open for challenge or legal challenge or basically a court challenge. And that would be incumbent on the, anyone that wanted to challenge it, that would not go through a city department or a board or commission of the city it would go to the superior court. As the first stop and has that possibility, probability or whatever been taken into account when a staff is saying that this is consistent. We discussed this, that's why we brought it. We've brought the application to you because we believe that it's in compliance with the ordinance and state law. I think Mr. Miller would like for us to get a second opinion on that. I think that's what he's asking but the only recourse someone would have would be to file a suit, a lawsuit. That's right, thank you. And Commissioner Johnson, I appreciate your line of questioning because in Commissioner Miller I'm gonna ask just to make sure I have it clear in my head. What you are likely, what you're recommending and will likely put forward as a motion is a continuance of one cycle I assume to get additional legal opinion to find out is this appropriate? Is this legal? Is this the right way to move forward? And I assume we're then looking at one of two options next month. If the option is that the second legal opinion from the staff is that yes, this is indeed legal that we will proceed with the case if it turns out that that's not the case then we have to then back up and re-notice and start over. Is that accurate? I just wanna make sure I understand what your intention is. Well, I don't wanna anticipate what the city attorney might say. And I do appreciate that the staff is aware of this and the reason why I have the concern is because they wrote the report the way they wrote the report. So they put me on notice of the problem because they wanted us to know the effect. And I might have missed it had they not done it. And I'm grateful for that. It might have never occurred to me to reconsider what the density impact was for the rest of the property might have been. So if the city attorney comes back with an opinion based on how the law works on this and raises considerations that I hadn't thought of, then I'll be the first to say I'm sorry but I'll feel better moving forward. If the city attorney says no, we have a problem here. I'm not sure what next steps will be but moving forward with the case like it is is the one thing I know we should not do. Thank you. And yeah, the second part of my question I was speculating and you're correct to say we'll deal with that when we get to that point. Additional commissioners or comments, questions or comments? Commissioner Johnson, then I do want to have a question. Yeah, I was wondering if it was okay to hear any feedback. The floor is yours, Commissioner Johnson. If you have specific questions, you can. So I was curious as to had this issue been that you come across this and if so, what was your logic for moving forward? Yeah, I mean, I understand the concern because we've added the concern with our pre-submitted meetings with staff and we actually had this conversation in depth before we made a submittal. The key word that I've heard during this conversation is change. The PDR number, the theoretical PDR number on the adjacent property might theoretically be changing but when everything's built, platted or under construction, what am I notifying the neighbors of? Nothing's changing. I mean, what's gonna change? A theoretical number might change on the PDR but for me, the most simplistic approach was to work with just my client's property. If we're talking about adding all these other people, all these other properties are already owned by other people, by the way. There's people living in the neighborhood to add all these to the request just for the sake of notifying additional people that nothing's changing. I just can't, I can't see the logic in that because no matter what I do tonight, I'm not changing the adjacent property because it's not in my application. There's no change. There's no physical change that anyone will ever see from this application. So I get that logic and I actually agree with just the cumbersome nature of what would be required if you were to go that route. But then on the flip side is ensuring that what we're seeing yay or nay to is within the realm of the legal bounds or whatever it is that we're supposed to be functioning within, so that was just my reasoning for questioning what we're trying to accomplish with what you brought forward. Great, thank you, Commissioner Johnson. Commissioner Miller. So in response, but there is a change. If you look at the entire property that's subject to the PDR with a 4.99 density figure attached to it, right now if we consider this not as a separate rezoning of this one piece of the whole property, but a rezoning, a change to the density figure for the whole thing, we're actually increasing the density for the whole. We are, I don't know how many units were, I think it's the staff actually told us, but I forget the number. We're changing the figure 13 for the figure 53. And so the overall density for the entire old PDR is going up. And that's what the people who live in the area will find out about that they didn't, because we're talking about people who didn't get a letter about this. The people who are to the north and the east of the west because this little piece of property, which looks a little bit like the transjordan, is stuck at the bottom end of the original PDR. There are all the people who live around it. Who were the stakeholders when the PDR was created? And I don't know whether they care or not, but that's not the test. The test is, is do they have a chance to care by being informed? And right now, by dealing with changes to a PDR in a piecemeal way, we isolate who gets noticed. I don't think it's the correct way to proceed. I acknowledge that there are other ways to look at this. Any additional questions or comments? And then I do think it'll be time for a motion. So we've got Commissioner Gibbs and Commissioner Williams. Well, since the Pandora's box has been opened, it is something to think about, but I still, I think this, I'm gonna vote for this to move forward. If in the meantime, before it gets to city council or the commissioners or whoever it goes to, if somebody raises the issue, then I guess it can be dealt with at the next step. I really don't see how the people that have that have been contacted versus those who have not been contacted, I think it's almost like splitting hairs and sort of, it may be sort of speculative and I don't mean to be arguing with time. There is something to think about, but I think it's time to move this one forward and let the next step handle it and that will give, if people in the neighborhood get rumors of and they get all upset enough, they can come forward and bring their complaints. Otherwise, I think it should move forward. So I'm gonna support this development as presented. Thank you. Commissioner Williams. I have to agree with Commissioner Miller. I tend to err on the side of caution with this because it is not the things that are obvious, it's often times the things that are unseen and a blanket statement of the fact that in theory, certain things may happen is inexcusable to step over due diligence of what should be done of Black weather law as it reads and I know for a fact that because certain things could be done or because it may seem logical to not proceed through every single step because it may not necessarily affect the outcome. We've seen time and time again may not necessarily be enduring but in different cases of zoning, when zoning has been approved or it's been changed later on down the road, it's been very costly to the people who own the property at that time. So I feel more comfortable having the due diligence revisited by the powers that be that can make these types of decisions from a legal standpoint and back to residents and trust me, we can see cases three times and it doesn't hurt anything. If no one shows up, then that's an early night for us but if they do, then they've had a chance to be heard and a lot of times that's a huge concern that we have because people don't feel like they've had the opportunity to be heard because they weren't notified. So again, it's about doing the due diligence, if you will, to make sure that we're moving forward as an informed body on the proper way that things should be done. Thank you. Commissioner Miller, I think the floor is yours for a motion. Mr. Chairman, if I may, I move that in case Z19 quadruple 06 Magnolia Creek phase four that we continue the public hearing in this case for a period of 30 days, during which time we hope to obtain an opinion from the city attorney's office to about whether or not a correct process has been followed in bringing this case to us at this point. Second. So moved by commissioner Miller, seconded by commissioner Brian and we'll have a roll call vote. So again, this is the motion for a one cycle continuance to get the city legal staff to review this and to come back to us with their guidance and recommendation just so everyone's clear on what we're voting on. Yes, Mr. Chairman, and I should have been clear. I said 30 days, but what I really mean is to have this come back to us at our regularly scheduled meeting in July. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Miller. Okay, that was it. Yeah, discussion? One quick question, chair, if I may. Is it worth asking the applicant, is this something that he would prefer or us to just take our vote on the way it is? And I'm just curious as from the applicant standpoint, would he rather wait another cycle or? You are welcome. If the floor is yours, you may ask him a direct question. Could you provide a quick brief insight on your, I mean, obviously my preference is to have a vote and try to move forward and right where we're on a schedule that we're trying to keep. I do want to point out the neighborhood meeting for this project is optional. We do not have a traffic study. We're not proposing a land use amendment. So we did have a neighborhood meeting, but it was voluntarily on our own at four attendees. We have no opposition here tonight. Again, our preference would be to move forward because I believe that ultimately it will be able to be voted on as it currently stands, but obviously it's the will of the commission. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Johnson. Seeing no other discussion, we'll have a roll call vote on the motion. Mr. Miller. I'm sorry. Commissioner Williams. Yes. Commissioner Morgan. Yes. Commissioner Johnson. Yes. Commissioner Brian. Yes. Commissioner Durkin. Yes. Commissioner Alturk. Yes. Vice Chair Hyman. Yes. Chair Busby. Yes. Commissioner Miller. Yes. Commissioner Ketchum. Yes. Commissioner Santiago. Yes. Commissioner Baker. No. And Commissioner Gibbs. No. Motion passes 10 to two. I'm sorry. 10, nine, 11 to two. 11 to two, thank you. We will move to our final hearing this evening. This is a continued case and this is a TC-18 quadruple zero seven. This is expanding housing choices. And before we get started, I thank you. It is just worth noting of the history and a few items on this case. So this was a case that was brought to the Planning Commission at our April meeting and we had a lengthy public hearing at the April meeting. At the end of the April meeting, we voted to continue the case for two cycles and we asked that there be additional public input and that included a community session that took place on a Saturday between the April meeting and am I getting on my dates, right? March, I'm sorry, March. It's came in March between March and the May meeting. There was a community input meeting. There was additional outreach from staff to community groups, neighborhood groups. We were back here last month and we had an additional lengthy public hearing and we determined that we would continue for one additional cycle, which is this evening. And we also decided that we would set up a committee of the Planning Commission of five members that were charged, Vice Chair Hyman and I were charged with selecting members and working to see if we could find common ground with the members of that subcommittee to bring forward a set of shared recommendations on expanding housing choices. This is my words, but essentially I think all of us on the Planning Commission wanted to be able to speak with one voice, if possible, on this issue. This is a big, complicated item. And on normal cases, we vote and the chips fall where they may and we each write our comments and they go forward to the governing body, whether it's the city council or the county commission. In this case, it's both. And in this case, we thought we wanted to instead be able to spend time on this and to bring forward a shared set of comments. And so that's what we have before you this evening. So I say all that to say this is just gonna be a little different than your traditional case, like the two you just saw right before we got to this item. I do wanna say a couple other quick things before then we get started. One is that I do wanna thank the commissioners who served on the committee. So Commissioner Alturk, Commissioner Durkin, Commissioner Miller along with Vice Chair Hyman and I, I wanna thank the members of the public who came to our meetings. We had in the past month, we had three meetings of our subcommittee and they were all scheduled for two hours. They all went over two hours because we had a lot to talk about, but many members of the public attended along with staff who I thank for coming at eight in the morning to let us into city council, first of all, so open the building and let us in and to work with us. But we do have comments that we've set forward. I think we have copies to hand around this evening, hard copies at least for the commissioners of those combined comments. Again, those are draft comments that we will need to vote on or consider and I hope vote on this evening to send forward. Before we get to those comments, I do wanna give staff the opportunity to give any additional updates, but then before we continue the public hearing, I do wanna actually spend a little bit of time talking about what those combined comments say. They are up on the Expanding Housing Choices website, so I do hope that members of the public have had a chance to review those comments. I know we've gotten emails from some members of the public which we appreciate specifically on that draft combined comments, but I'm hoping that when we get to the continued public hearing that we'll be able to hear new information from the public during the public hearing and then we'll have a discussion of the commissioners. But let me stop there and offer staff the opportunity to add any additional input. Good evening, Mr. Chair. I'm Scott Whiteman with the Planning Department. I have nothing to add to your excellent summary of what's happened. The Texas Amendment TC 1807, the draft has not changed from what was presented to you in March. I'm probably staying the obvious here, but just so it's clear, because this has been deferred three cycles, the commission must take action tonight or the item moves forward without a recommendation. That we'd be happy to answer any questions now or after the hearing. Thank you, and thank you for making that point. I think that's an important point to note. And we said this at the beginning, the Planning Commission, we're an advisory body only, so we advise the governing bodies, in this case, the city council and the county commission. This item was presented to us in March and we have 90 days to review this and then to dispose of this item. And so we are at the end of our 90 days. We have determined as a body that we wanted to take all 90 days to allow for public input for this committee to do its work and to be deliberative. And again, I thank many of you for your thoughts. As I said at the last meeting, it has been, I think, interesting and important to note the evolution of thought on this issue. I think as all of us have been able to understand what this proposal means and what it may or may not do, I think we've had new and updated thoughts, which I think have helped all of us think through what we're putting forward. Let me just stop there. And then I do wanna spend a few minutes having us walk through our proposal, but it may be worth just seeing commissioners. Any questions or comments that you have? All right, Commissioner Bryan and then Commissioner Johnson. Rather than walk through this first, I would be more interested to hear from the public if there are people signed up to speak because what they say might influence what I think about what we have. Thank you, Commissioner Johnson. And my question is just a process. So tonight, are we voting, in our voting, based on what the committee has presented, are we, if we're in favor of this, are we saying we vote not in favor of the original proposal, however we would be willing, we would provide our support given if these recommendations or suggestions were a part of what came before us originally. It's a great question. We have not done this since I think any of us, maybe, except for Commissioner Bryan, I've served on the Planning Commission, so I do want the staff's input on this. My thought is that we would be voting to send forward our combined comments that we have in front of us, but do we need to have additional motions? The only task required of the commission tonight is to recommend either approval or denial of case TC 1807. So it is up to the commission whether you recommend approval, but if you all accept the committee's report, I don't know what you called it. Combined comments. Combined comments. You say that you recommend approval only if the combined comments are followed. You can say you recommend denial in less. The combined comments are followed or anything in between, but you need to make a recommendation on the text amendment itself. You're not voting on the combined comments. Thank you. We'll wait for the appropriate time and figure that out. Great, great. Yes, we'll start. Commissioner Bryan, we'll let you speak again. I would just add that I think commissioners can also add their own personal written comments. No matter how we vote, you know. Absolutely. Commissioner Morgan. Just to be clear, we could actually recommend approval with the comments as an addendum to the case itself. So if we're voting, we're voting, we could vote for the actual case itself or we could vote with the comments that have been fleshed out by the committee, by the subcommittee. Okay, thank you. And commissioner Morgan, I think you hit on the point at least as I see it, which is this will not be a simple motion of where are we gonna vote for or against? I believe we're gonna be putting forward a motion that says in addition to this, we are gonna send forward these combined comments, which do include clear recommendations on what we believe should happen, which is different than what was put in front of us or what is currently in front of us, the March proposal. Yeah, and I think that the comments themselves provide a process in which we can implement it. Yes. Great, thank you. Well, if commissioner Brian, I'm fine with your suggestion. We, if we open up and continue the public hearing. So what we have and what I'm suggesting for tonight, we have six individuals who have signed up our regular rules of 10 minutes for and 10 minutes against, I believe will work in this situation. The challenge is up the six, only two have said they are four. The other four have not said if they are four or against. So as we've done in the other hearings, I'm gonna recommend that we allow, I mean, if we allow 10 minutes per side, that would be 20 minutes total. If we have six people who are signing up to speak, I'm gonna recommend we allow two minutes per individual, because I'm guessing we may have a few others that may also speak, but I would like to keep us within our regularly allotted time if possible, given that we've had hours of public hearings on this issue. Are commissioners okay with that? So wait, I guess I do need a motion. I've talked myself into a motion. So I think we do need a motion to allow two minutes per speaker. So moved. Second. Great. So all those in favor of the motion to allow two minutes per speaker, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. And thank you for your patience. We got here. We made it to the continued public hearing. We will start with Randy Chambers. Chair. Sorry. You mentioned hard copies. Do we have those? I believe weren't hard copies of our combined comments. Okay. Yes, thank you. Thank you. And sir, thank you. So we, you can see the clock. It gives you two minutes. It'll be when you're done. If you can just finish your thought, that'd be great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So my wife and I have owned a 2000 square foot house in Trinity Park for about 20 years. And we've been working with Habitat for Humanity for the last few months exploring possibility of building an affordable ADU in our backyard. And so I can't speak on behalf of my neighborhood and I certainly can't speak on behalf of Habitat. But as I think about it, I've talked with a lot of families about this who are clearly concerned about affordability in our community. And I want to ask you to support expanding housing choice. Because what it does is it allows people not just like me, but people who aren't like me to have this opportunity. With a 2000 square foot house in a nice neighborhood that I've owned for 20 years, I have enough equity to build an ADU. And I have a big enough home that I can build a 600 square foot ADU under the current rules. So nothing that this proposal does changes anything for me. But imagine if you own a 1400 square foot house in a less affluent part of town and you can only build 30% of that and you don't have the kind of equity that folks who've had the fortune I've had to build an ADU or you own a small piece of property that you want to build a smaller home on. I think it's really important that if we think about equity, the zoning rules, as Commissioner Miller pointed out earlier, in some ways have been built to benefit folks like me, folks who own a nice home in a nice neighborhood who already have access to resources. I think what's powerful about this proposal is it allows us to do things like build ADUs in the backyard of Habitat family homeowners, of folks in East Durham, which is where a lot of folks want to live. It creates potential second source of income for those homeowners. Today, as some of the people in my neighborhood have done, I could build an ADU. I could rent it out on Airbnb and maximize income. I could rent it to Duke students and do really well. So again, you're not doing anything if you support expanding housing choices that changes my privilege. But I think by supporting expanding housing choices, you bring a lot more equity to affordability in our community. And then the second thing I want to talk about a little bit is the loss of supply and demand. I read briefly the memo that got circulated. The laws of supply and demand apply to Durham in housing just as they do to soybeans or cars or televisions or radios. If we expand the supply of housing in the city and county of Durham, we don't reverse the growth of prices, but we slow it. It's just a simple fact of economics. And so there's a lot of demand for housing in Durham so that's gonna drive the cost up. But I think if we do things to expand the supply, we can at least slow the affordability challenges that we're facing in our community. And so I would really ask that you all seriously think about the equity issues that this opportunity provides for many of us who are concerned about affordability and really the livability of our community. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, appreciate your comments. Mr. Jarvis-Martin and then Ideal Ortiz. He's not here? Okay. We will hold his spot for later if he arrives. And then Stacey Murphy. Wait, I don't want to talk. Daniel Purcell and Dick Hales, just so folks can get in line. Good evening, my name's Ideal Ortiz. I live at 1808 Vale Street. I think the commission's hard work and the planning department's efforts to address the concerns of the general public as they relate to EHC. Thank you for your summary of the discussion. I only want to offer two main responses and the rest I'll send via email since there were some quotes and feedback from communities that I've reached out to that wanted to share their thoughts. And I'll share those with council as well. All the residents I've talked to, so as far as the memo, all the residents I've talked to you that we define as vulnerable when it comes to housing are not in favor of delaying the change of three unrelated people living in a house to five. The very people you said had not been involved were the ones who I personally engaged during this 90-day period, and they were the ones that suggest this to delay the implementation of that text amendment after inviting those precise kinds of opinions from those who would be most impacted by your work in this conversation would be a deep disappointment to them. I don't see the point, the second point. I don't see the point of removing any historic districts from EHC. The majority of people surveyed throughout Durham so they were comfortable with duplexes and even triplexes, even though that's not part of this conversation. And since the prohibition of these housing types as a contemporary invention, this recommendation is actually not in alignment with the historical context of these communities, which did, once upon a time, allow more multifamily units before racist policies were implemented to prevent black people from moving to the urban core. I wanna reiterate that the communities I have continued to engage are still very much standing strong on a desire to see the following four points be the core substance of the changes. One, make duplexes by right available in all urban tier neighborhoods, changing the number of unrelated people to live in a house from three to five, make ADUs up to 800 square feet possible by right, and driveways for flaglots that are 12 feet instead of 20 feet wide. We don't see these changes as things that happen in isolation. They are part of an affordable housing package that many, many people are still fighting for and getting done. Thank you. Stacy Murphy. Hello again. I'm gonna defer my time because I feel like you've all heard what I had to say and I'm deferring it to my friend, Daniel Purcell. Sorry, Daniel. Daniel, that's his daughter, he's my friend. Mr. Purcell, you've got four minutes. As my friend Stacy said, my name is Daniel Purcell. I'm really happy to have this opportunity to speak before you today because I'm one of those people who would benefit from the very rule that we're talking about today. I'm a substitute teacher at Central Park School for Children, but unfortunately also I'm a cancer patient. So as a cancer patient, I have to take chemo pills that make me very weak and I can't walk long, I can't stand long, and unfortunately I'm getting a lot of weight, but that's neither here nor there. The point is there are a lot of people who could benefit from affordable housing, like the type that we're trying to talk about today, but Commissioner Miller made a really great point earlier. You guys are here for us. You're here to make great decisions for us that's gonna benefit Durham. Durham's a great place. We got a bad reputation for things that happen, true, but those things happen everywhere. We got to keep in mind what's important, the people. We got to benefit the people. I mean, when you got the opportunity to pass a law that's gonna uplift people, to need uplifting, that's what we're here for. I don't see how anyone can say no to that. So I encourage you, I mean, I trust you. You're here, you've been elected to do this very thing. Make the right decision. Thank you, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. And Dick Hales. Good evening, commissioners. I'm Dick Hales, 100 Briar Cliff Road, Durham. Speaking on behalf tonight of the Coalition for Affordable Housing and Transit, we have over 100 organizations of people that participated in our meetings and events in the past year. At your main meeting, we spoke in favor of adoption of the EHC with the March language. We've reviewed the EHC subcommittee recommendations, are generally supportive of the suggested changes. We continue to add to have two additional concerns, as noted by Ms. Ortiz, that the proposed amendment to revise a single family definition in the ordinance from three to either four or five persons be considered as a priority amendment matter to support infill development of all Durham citizens. And secondly, that is essential that the city move forward as soon as possible and providing new technical and financial assistance to citizens to try and take advantage of the EHC provisions as soon as possible and to produce affordable units at the same time. Spoke to this Monday night, city council budget hearing as well. So we're trying to push this forward with the city and county in anticipation of these amendments taking effect in the not too distant future and we're really serious about not seeing these add to displacement but to be done in a responsible way that adds to our affordable housing stock. Members of our group have participated in each part of the extensive EHC process. We appreciate your thoughtful review and public input provided on this matter. We believe there's an essential part of trying to address rising housing prices and displacement in Durham. We urge your favorable recommendation on this important matter to have it move forward for consideration by the city council and the county officials. Thank you for your time. Thank you. So that is everyone who is signed up to speak. If there's anyone else who'd like to speak, sir, you may come up. Good evening. Thanks for letting me come up. My name is Scott Harmon. I live at 600 West Main Street. The previous speakers who spoke on the issues of equity did so with a little more grace and calmness than I could. So I'm not gonna repeat what they said but I'm gonna add another point of perspective. In the subcommittee's proposal right now there are strong language talking about preserving existing neighborhood character. And I wanna demonstrate for the commission tonight how preserving neighborhood character is in through an equity lens often looked at as a way of preserving white privilege. When you have a system of zoning that has prioritized white affluent communities to be able to build bigger, more valuable and more expensive houses to then turn around now and say that the height we're gonna allow or the area we're gonna allow for an ADU is gonna be based on the existing context. It ignores the fact that perhaps the existing context is not the right context. It's certainly not the right context if our zoning laws for the past 100 years had been fair and equitable to all the citizens of this community. So to use those as the basis results in the bigger neighborhoods and the wealthier neighborhoods getting the bigger ADUs and getting the taller ADUs and they get more money and more rent for them. So I want you to think about how this perpetuates inequity. The word equity is not mentioned once in the subcommittee's report. I think that's a failure. There's no recognition in the subcommittee's report of the history of zoning and how it excluded certain populations in our city and how it resulted in the form, not only the form of housing as we see it today, but the problems that we have today now. Not the ones we're debating about what might happen out of fear in the future, but the ones that we're trying to solve today. I think that through an equity lens, I think that adopting this sub-proposal as it's written is not possible and I recommend that you not do it. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else who'd like to speak in the public hearing? Yes, sir. And this is it. I'm asking now if anyone else wants to speak, you can raise your hand and just so we can save time. So I don't see anyone else. So this will be our final speaker. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. My name's Ajax Woolley. I live at 408 Bonn Air Avenue and I just wanna briefly offer an appreciation and admiration for the planning staff. I was a participant in a couple of the outreach events. They were present whenever I asked any question. They were good humor, good natured. The recommended reading list that's part of the package and all the appendices have been imminently helpful and educational and I've just found their conduct and their approach to this matter to be, I hold it in very high regard and just think that needs to be the intent behind the proposal and the manner in which they've carried their side of the equation has been remarkable. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Thank you. So with that, we are going to close our 90 day public hearing on expanding housing choices and commissioners, bring it back to you. I wanna open it up for individuals to be able to ask questions or comments that also can include those of you that were not on the subcommittee to ask questions of those of us that were if you have any questions that you want to ask of us. So I will start to my right. We'll start with Commissioner Johnson. So one, I wanna just thank the subcommittee again for the work that you did and bringing forth what we're delivering tonight. I won't be verbosement. My question is maybe to staff in regards to the comments and the recommendation regarding the single family definition. Is that even within the purview of the planning commission? Like who changes that definition and what role do we play other than saying it should be done? Is there anything else we can do on that front? So that is what the definition of family is in the unified development ordinance. And so when anywhere in the UDO where it refers to a family such as a single family home and it refers back to that definition, that definition is in Article 17 of the UDO which has been advertised to be changed as part of this text amendment. So it could be part of the commission's decisions tonight if you wanted it to. And quick follow up. Do you know when that definition as is in the UDO was established? I don't know for sure. I've heard and there may be some people here who were around at the time. It was in the 90s sometime in response to group living situations with students near Duke in particular. Thank you. I'll follow up. Thank you. That's helpful. Thank you. I might add just Commissioner Johnson before we get to Commissioner Bryan that our committee did consider this issue and you'll note that we did actually put language in that says this is an issue that we think needs to be looked at but we did decide that we thought from a process standpoint, it wasn't appropriate to add this item in because it hadn't been put forward at this point. It could be put forward but the proposal we received in March and then when we reviewed this again in May we only heard this from the public. I think it's a fair issue to consider but we thought from a process standpoint for us to put it in at this late time without it having been part of the discussion we thought it merited its own standalone conversation which is what we do recommend in our combined comments. We are saying to the governing bodies this is something you can look at, you can and should look at if that's helpful. That's helpful and I get the logic on the approach that the subcommittee has taken. And I'm sorry, I got subcommittee, it's committee. It's a committee, but because this is not a committee that's right. I guess my only personal, I don't know if it's concerns but my thoughts about that is just that when would we actually see some final decision made on this front if a definitive this should, if we're saying or you should look at this like then when do we see the fruits of you looking at this or does it get buried into the other work that planning staff has to do. And so we've heard even though it was the latter part of this process that this is something that actually has implications in regards to people's living conditions, quality of life, et cetera. And so if we're hearing that it's something that warrants attention and some kind of clarity of whether it's gonna be changed or not. I just would hope that that could be done sooner rather than later. Thank you. Commissioner Bryan and then Commissioner Durkin. Thank you. Also wanna thank the committee and everybody who participated in their discussions for their work. I know from personal experience that putting a document like this together is not easy. While we're on the subject of the single family definition, I agree fully with the recommendation that we talk about it some more that you know and one of the reasons I agree with it is because I've gotten messages today while there are some people in the audience who support changing it, there are also people that I've heard from who are very much against changing it. So we need to have a discussion in my opinion on the matter. I intend to support these combined comments in whatever form that we work them into tonight. I have only two minor suggestions on the page. I think it's page four, content recommendations. Item number one, the next to the last sentence. I think the business about a small lot will probably have two. And I think you need the word be in there. And then under other recommendations, looking at the single family definition, the final sentence, you said to add it to the planning work plan. I think a better term might be the planning work program. I think that's what you were talking about. The planning department's work program. And where is that again? This is other recommendations, single family definitions. Oh, okay. And those are my two edits to the, to the document. And I'll share with the commission that I will probably write a few separate things. One about a little bit more about Airbnb because I want to get the message across to council that if we're not careful, we can with ADUs actually expand a business in Durham which is doing very well and which is presently unregulated. And I'm not sure council is fully aware of the extent of Airbnb business in Durham. And secondly, I want to comment a little bit about stormwater because it seems to me, especially with some of the rain we've had recently, we have neighborhoods in the urban area which are having runoff and stormwater problems. And I think those problems need to be addressed for any additional density is added. And a neighborhood comes in and says, we have flooding already. And I think the stormwater people need to go out and do something about it. And those would be my additional comments. And then the one question I have which has been raised by people and I understand that committee did consider this the question about the national historic districts. Did committee members give me a little feedback on why they were not included in the preservation of historic districts? And other members of the committee can chime in. We did spend time talking about each of these different items. So the local historic districts and the national registry districts and specifically I think there was, there were a couple of issues that others may chime in on, but I think a key item on the national registry was the fact that there's not yet an existing process in place and the staff can add to this. But I know in our meeting there is a process in place for the local historic districts. And while we have, we have been given state approval we have not actually set up a process here in Durham. And when we asked how long might that take the staff had said to us that would take a few years to put a process in place. I know for me that was the key determining factor. I also did have concerns personally at just about the overall size that we'd be pulling out of the urban tier to be available for the expanding housing choices. It was a much bigger percentage compared to the local historic districts. Other commissioners on the committee used to feel free to weigh in if I missed anything. Commissioner Durkin. I also feel like it was a compromise among the committee because some of us didn't wanna include the local historic districts either. And so by agreeing to exclude the local historic districts by leaving the national registry districts in that got some of us like myself comfortable with making that recommendation in our list. And if I may, Mr. Chairman, Commissioner Durkin is exactly right. That was a compromise and sometimes in some of our discussions drove down to that. But I will point out that state law allows us municipalities to do design regulations in national register districts. It's one of the exceptions to the relatively new law that says cities can't regulate designs of single family and two family residences. One of the exceptions is national register districts. And so I had pushed for holding the EHC, the application of the EHC out of national register districts so we could talk about this business about coming up with design regulations, not treating national register districts like local districts, which have a quasi judicial process involved. We couldn't do that. And ultimately the committee decided not to include national register districts. One of the reasons I believe that gave heartburn to some of the committee members was the fact that in the urban tier, 20% of the lots are covered by national register districts. But in my opinion, whether we include special treatment for those districts in our comments for the national register districts, the fact remains, and we'll continue no matter what we do, is the city of Durham has the authority to consider and propose design districts that design regulations for those districts without regard to the EHC, whether it applies or doesn't apply. And so it's still on the table if there's a constituency out there that can make enough noise to move the city machinery in that direction. I personally am interested in that, but it doesn't have to be part of the EHC for me. And so I participated in the compromise that Commissioner Member Durkin has described. Thank you very much. Commissioner Durkin, additional comments? Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on Commissioner Member Johnson's question on how the definition of family would be changed. And I believe in one of our committee meetings, staff had said that they were, it would be part of the UDO overhaul when they do kind of a lot of amendments at one time to clean up stuff and that it would be coming in the next few, maybe six months. I might be misremembering because we talked about a lot of things you guys were doing, but. So I know there were several staff there who were not all of us were there all the time. So I don't know what was said all the time, but I'll say now on the TV for everybody. This, the omnibus text changes, we intend to them for them to not have major or even larger minor changes in policy in them. We like to keep those as standalone. And this would be, although it's a very simple change to the UDO by crossing out one number and changing it to another, it would be a pretty significant change of policy. So if we were to pursue this, we would do it as a standalone text amendment. Thanks. Additional comments, commissioners? Commissioner Baker. Yeah, I wanted to also comment, say thanks to the committee you put in a lot of hours on this and thank you to staff. I think it's a huge challenge to try and get everyone here to agree what day it is and even harder to write up a multi-page recommendation and so, since we're not voting on the actual, our actual statement here that the subcommittee put together, I suppose what we'll be doing is somehow endorsing them in our own comments. I will actually to clarify, I believe that we will, I hope we will vote on it. We're voting on our, on the subcommittee's comments. I think my intention and based on staff's recommendation is that we do have to make a motion that will either approve or deny the expanding housing choices initiative but our, our motion I would hope would include recommending our combined comments as part of that vote. Okay, thanks for the clarification. I also just wanted to say, whether you're sort of for this or against it, it's not, this is an affordable housing plan. This isn't a plan to alleviate or ameliorate the impacts of displacement in the community and, you know, we could potentially even have impacts that are counter to those, to at least the displacement. I wanted to speak briefly to this issue of single family, the single family definition. Again, I support the comments that were put together. Obviously, we can all agree with all of the comments. I would actually not urge the council and board of commissioners to add the single exploration single family definition to the work plan. I would like to know why we should explore that and then perhaps explore other avenues. I know changing something like that could have huge impacts on the city. And I've worked in a lot of communities that have seen the effects of that. That can have huge impacts in terms of making housing unaffordable to working families who would have difficulty competing with five unrelated individuals who are each income earners for a house as an example. So it would have very widespread impacts. However, I think that the intent of the statement and the intent of why this has been brought up is because we, you know, there is a benefit for a group of people who are unrelated to one another living together. And so I think there are opportunities to explore boarding houses and cooperative housing. Does that apply to me? No. Okay. I don't know. It depends. So my, so a few things. About every five minutes they just beep and if they're right. Yeah, right. Then I've signed these things before, I'll just reiterate some of them. Some of them are in the statements are in the statement that was put together by the subcommittee. I think that the exploration of the suburban tier and the fact that the suburban tier was not included in this is, I would have liked to have seen that. Mr. Harmon mentioned the history of racism in zoning which is absolutely true. Commissioner Miller talked about the police power. It was the police power was, the zoning was born out of the desire to exclude not out of the desire to include. And so we need to understand that every time we make zoning decisions that it is a powerful tool and it can be used for good but it was designed as a tool of exclusion. And it's not the history. It's the present because we very much continue to perpetuate that type of, is that type of zoning and a lot of the recommendations for approval that we make as a commission even. It's not, it's certainly not the past. We make a lot of recommendations for highly exclusive homogenous neighborhoods in the suburban tier. Again, I've mentioned this before. I would have liked to have seen explicit goals. I think that it would have made it easier for us to understand exactly what was the purpose behind each individual proposed change. And I think that there's been some confusion within the community about what exactly this is. For example, people thinking that it's an affordable housing plan and it's not. I also would like to see, and you know, this isn't, none of these are reasons to support or oppose. These are just in general comments. I do think that a tailored approach would work quite well. And I think that the desire to increase density in our neighborhoods is absolutely a good desire for sustainability and for a number of other reasons, walkability and transit. I think that a tailored approach could have, although perhaps more laborious, could have much, much, much greater impacts because we're not simply allowing a duplex here and a duplex there, but actually finding locations where multifamily buildings might be more appropriate in our existing neighborhoods. And we could apply design standards that would fit with the context of the area. I also think that there were maybe opportunities to explore some creative options in terms of perhaps developing duplex prototypes that would have design standards attached to them and each neighborhood would be able to select what kinds would be allowed by right in their neighborhood and that would help strike a balance between the by right desire and maintaining the character of neighborhoods. I would have liked to have seen a diverse and representative steering committee throughout this process. Staffly in the process put a lot of work onto them and they had a lot of people coming at them from all different angles. And I think that a steering committee would have helped that. I think that there was a lot of public engagement and the reports are out there. You can go on the website, staff has put them all online and you can read each individual comment which is very helpful in addition to all the work that staff did in synthesizing that. We had a lot of public engagement at the very beginning, very high level, are you open to this? And then we had, what do you think of our proposal? And there was kind of a piece missing in the middle in terms of public engagement. How should we actually address these major issues? And that is actually something that's included in the recommendation. I also would have, ideally, and this is incremental planning that each see as incremental planning. Ideally, it would be part of something a little bit larger that would explore how permanent subsidized housing, something that really, really helps truly low income people would be a part of this. And perhaps if densities are automatically increased and land values automatically go up, then maybe public dollars won't go as far when we spend those public dollars on untrue affordable housing. And then finally, coupling this with loan programs is gonna be important so that people, and I think someone spoke to this earlier, but loan programs so that people can build ADUs in their backyard, I think that that'll be an important thing to consider. So those are my comments and I did have, well, I don't know if I wanna ask this because there are a lot of specific content recommendations and I guess I'll just ask the committee in general just so that we don't spend too much time on this, kind of how we got to these very specific content recommendations and how they kind of rose to the level of importance of including them in this letter. That's my general comment. Great, thank you. So any commission, any of the members of the committee that would like to chime in, I can take the first crack at the answer, but others may wanna join in. I thought one of the most interesting things was that as we were continuing to get feedback from those of you on the planning commission who were not on the committee, so that was the first thing we started with. Those of you that offered input, we started our first meeting and each meeting of making sure we worked through each of those items. So in most cases, these were items that were either being raised by planning commissioners or from interested stakeholders. And then we spent time talking them through, I will say, one of the things that I thought was interesting was that in some of these items, as we were raising some of these things that in the meeting we had a staff saying that's something we were thinking about as well. And so that to me, I thought was useful and kind of reinforcing of our thinking on some of those items that we specifically wanted to point out and where there were different concerns. Other commissioners on the committee? So Commissioner Miller and then Commissioner Gibbs for comments. So what I've served on the committee. And so, as you know, I have a long history of actually providing a lot of individual comments at the end of our meetings too that gets sent to council. In this occasion, I am not. I participated in a committee process. And it's because I'm interested in the, not only the EHC, but I'm also interested in this committee process. And I think that it represents something that I think could be a very useful tool in terms of what role this agency, the Planning Commission plays in bridging the interests of ordinary people because that's who we are for the most part. We're not professionals or what have you. We represent them. And there's a lot of us to make sure that the entire, there's a seat up here for every interest in the community. This notion of getting together and speaking together to, in my opinion, kind of multiply the effect of our ability to affect policy, reflect and effect policy going forward is important. And so in this instance, if this body, the larger body adopts this committee recommendation, then my comments to the city council and the Board of County commissioners connected to this case are going to be only to urge them to read, digest, understand and adopt the position that this body has taken. Because in large measure, we have worked hard to speak together rather than as a group of 14 individuals. And so that's my approach. And so I am going to at the appropriate time and with someone else has a strong feeling about it, make a motion that we move forward and that I would like to urge all of you to adopt this committee report with the typographical changes. We've actually had several suggested, George brought up two of them and then a citizen brought up a couple of other grammar problems to fix those and then move forward. I am enthusiastic about not only our recommendation as a committee, but I'm really enthusiastic about the idea that the body can function as a group rather than a collection of individuals. So two good things come out of the work that we've done. Thank you. Commissioner Gibbs. Thank you, Tom, for those remarks. And I wanted to first say thank you to the committee. And I guess you could consider that verbal thank you as a standing ovation from the rest of us because I just in looking at it, I could see where comments came from who and I can see where a compromise had taken place. And it won't easy. Like the commissioner said, sometimes we can hardly agree on what day it is. But through that comes progress. And I think that's what you folks have done along with the staff's input and help. But I just want to make a general comment too about this, the EHC in general. It has a tendency when you get into it for people to attach other expanding meaning to what all this is. And it is what it's described to be. It's an opportunity for people to, it's not a requirement. It's an opportunity for people to add to put an ADU, there are restrictions on how you can add, well infill projects on vacant land. And some guidelines on buildings that you cannot tear down. You've got to go, for instance, in historic districts. You've got to, in every district, you still have the underlying zoning to comply with. And this is not a panacea to solve all of those problems, but it does give you the freedom to do it and also some guidelines to regulate how it's done. And I go back to that and then I'll shut up. I go back to that preamble in the first copy that I saw in which the staff said this is not to, in my own words, this is not a land grab, but this is to protect the neighborhoods and the neighborhood character. And I think by saying that at the beginning, that describes what it's all about. But there are, and I still have some questions too, but I think I'm going to, well, I will wait for the motions. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Great, thank you, Commissioner. Vice Chair Hyman and Commissioner Alturk, and then we'll circle around again. Thank you. I would like to echo Commissioner Miller's comments because I served on the committee as well. And earlier, I have been ready to vote no on this particular project. But as I listened to all of the different comments and an opportunity for us to speak with one voice, because I feel this way about sending comments forward, paper is forever. We will be able to, I intend to support this, but I'm supporting it because there is a voice that's going along with this. We have an opportunity to offer our content, recommendations on process, and some of the things that should be looked at later on and at a different time. It's the committee took the courage to do something different to make this happen. It was quite consuming, and at times I'm sure overwhelming, but we were able to get it done. And this document and produced one of what I consider to be one of the best documents that I've been a part of producing since I retired. And I know what kind of effort goes into it by engaging the community as well. We did this in a fishbowl. We had members of the community with us each and every day. So we listened to them. It's such a rare, it was such a rare opportunity that I wanted to at least everyone be aware that so much went into this for all of us. That it's important that regardless of how it's handled going forward, paper is forever. Our comments will live. Thank you. Commissioner Athert. Thank you, Chair. I wanted to thank you, Chair Busby, for having the idea to do this, to have this committee. I think it was your idea last month. I'm glad that we've had 90 days. I want to thank the staff for being there throughout the process and being very diligent from the beginning, but also hearing our feedback and answering our questions. But again, Chair Busby, I really want to appreciate you, not just the idea, but you wrangled a maybe difficult group of individuals. We had very different ideas about what we should do. This is a compromised document. It is, I know that people are not completely happy with it. And we've already heard from residents that this is not a perfect document, that they don't like bits and pieces of this. It may be all of it. But I think it's a good compromise. I think it moves us a step in the right direction. And again, I appreciate that. I think, again, to speak to some of the comments that have already been made, I'm hardened by the process that this kind of allowed us to go through. And it allowed us to actually hear from residents who differed considerably on what we should do. And again, so no matter what you think about the content, I like the fact that we sat in a room, we, you know, hash it out for a number of hours with people who have different ideas about how to go through with this. So again, I know it's not gonna please everyone. And I'm not sure what the city council and kind of commissioners will go, what they will accept from this or approve of this, but I'm kind of happy with the process. So, and I hope that we will continue to do, maybe not to the same degree, but similar kinds of processes, because the last thing I'll say, sometimes we're asked to vote on policy changes in particular, and it almost seems like we're doing it in a vacuum, because we only have a couple of weeks to read it. We don't necessarily always know the implications of it. And so I think it would be good, and I think it would be in our interest as commissioners, but in the public interest for us to have more deliberative processes. And so I think this is the step in the right direction. Thanks. Thank you. Commissioner Morgan. Yeah, I'd like to echo the same comments themselves. I think it is an opportunity to install sort of a new process to address some of the issues. And given the couple items that we've kind of covered earlier, if we raised it up a level and be able to look at it from more of an overview perspective, not just a transactional change to a zoning or approval of a particular thing, I think if we have those opportunities to actually chew on it like we did, I definitely applaud the process, applaud the folks that have actually put the work into putting this document together. And I do think there's something we should consider moving forward if we do find a difficult situation or a difficult thing that where we want to wrestle through this. So definitely, you know, good job. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And I believe this is Commissioner Brine's idea from well in the past. So I thank him for pointing us in the direction of the committee. Were you looking to be recognized as well, Commissioner Brine? Were you stretching? We'd like to offer a motion. If I may just wait one moment. I think Commissioner Baker, did you have an additional comment? I do want to say one thing before we have the motion, which I appreciate that you're always ready with the motion. Yeah, I also just want to talk very briefly about the actual content of the HC. I actually think that most of it is pretty modest and pretty reasonable, the vast majority of it. And I think that you all have done a pretty good job in describing what kind of changes there could be and kind of procedural issues that there may have been. And I just want to piggyback off of Mr. Miller's comments that I also plan to say, look at what has been produced in my individual comments. And at most, I think people can disagree and I would just encourage people to include if there are comments, keep them in bullet point form. So the comment I just wanted to make was first of all, for all of you, I appreciate all of your comments and means a lot, I appreciate the feedback. I think we will be doing more of this. I can't make the motion as the chair. What I would recommend, because this is what we are doing is we should proactively put forward a recommendation to approve the expanding housing choices, noting our combined comments that put forward a path that we believe is the appropriate path forward. It builds off of the March recommendation, which has substantial comments that I think are important, but we do make some very clear recommendations and those recommendations are primarily based on the feedback of the community. And so that includes the coalition for affordable housing and transportation, Ms. Ortiz and her organization, neighborhood groups that have offered feedback and if you look at the actual recommendations that we put forward, we really had to push ourselves to think through what is actually going to allow us to truly expand housing choices and allow the benefits to our community. So if you look at the timing, we are putting forward a recommendation that says we want to allow the expanding housing choices if this recommendation is put forward as we put it forward and the governing bodies approve it, some expanding housing choices can begin immediately if they are truly for affordable housing in our community. But we did hear a great deal from representatives from community groups and affordable housing organizations saying we also want to build in guardrails. We want to build in guardrails and have the time to make sure that when we begin this process that everyone in our community has the ability to take advantage and to benefit from it. And so I say that because if you read this too quickly you might miss that, you might think this is a recommendation that is saying don't do expanding housing choices. That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is let's build in the time and let's build in the safeguards and the opportunities including the affordable housing bond which will have money hopefully earmarked toward low interest or no interest loans for individuals to be able to actually construct ADUs in their backyard. I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind. The final thing I'll note which may be a little surprising and if this recommendation is taken on we're gonna have additional work. We're saying that we should consider looking at the suburban tier next. And so I think that's another important note. Again, that's under two recommendations for consideration in the future. The other is the single family definition. But we as a planning commission if we approve this we'll also be saying here are additional pieces of work that we believe need to be explored but we think we need to give them the right time and the right process and the right input to make sure that we think about them thoughtfully because these are tough issues. And so I hope we will make a motion to say yes to expanding housing choices but noting our very clear comments on the things we hope will get changed. So thank you. Commissioner Morgan. Just a quick question. Does it make sense that if we do take this forward to present this to city council and county commissioners? I mean, have somebody speak on that? I know you do it very well. I'm not trying to add more work for you but I'm just thinking should we have somebody represent our recommendations as well. That's a good point and I'm sure we can work with the staff to know when does it come up in August and in which venue. Okay. I'm happy to be there among others. Commissioner Gibbs, I'm sorry. Well, and I think that's a very good idea and we'll be there to back you up but I felt led to say this for a lot of reasons but mainly because of what we have learned again from this process and then I'm not gonna lead in prayer or anything but I wanna, if we had something other nice water to toast, I would like to say propose a toast to the Durham Planning Department, the Durham Planning Commission and to you the public sitting there and watching on TV if you haven't found anything else to watch. This to me is a pattern for going forward and I'm really encouraged for the way things are developing. Thank you again, committee and thanks to the department, that's all. Thank you. And then before we get to the motion, I will note that I have captured the very small minor comments that commissioner Brian and others have pointed out. I will give those to the staff. They do not change the content of our combined comments but I'll make sure that we capture those and those get updated but that can be as part of the motion that will be made. So I believe commissioner Miller, are you prepared to make a motion? You said that earlier. I will make a motion. Yes, commissioner Brian. Did you wanna make the motion? I have one, but. Does he have a motion? He's ready. All right, commissioner Brian. Well, I'm keeping in mind that when we move something forward we always make the motion a favorable motion and but it's difficult in this case to say with a favorable recommendation because I mean, I think our recommendations are generally favorable in here but there's more than one recommendation. So the motion that I will offer and if it gets amended so bad but I move that we send TC 180 0007 forward to the governing bodies along with the recommendations contained in the combined comments of the Durham Planning Commission as amended at the June 11th commission meeting. Mr. Miller. So my motion was actually going to be very similar. So, but instead of along with I was going to make it that we send it along with a favorable recommendation subject to the recommendations contained in our combined comments. That works. So that is a friendly amendment that has been accepted by the maker of the motion. Yeah. Well, then I'll second the motion under those. Could you repeat it for me? Just can you repeat it? So the way I would have cast the motion was that we send the text amendments presented in TC 180 0007 forward to the city council and the board of county commission with a favorable report subject to the recommendations contained in the planning commissions combined comments as correct. That's almost as long as mine. I can make it longer. I'm a professional. So Commissioner Bryan, you know, I'm comfortable. That's fine. Any discussion on the motion moved by Commissioner Bryan, seconded by Commissioner Miller. The only concern I guess it would have if the governing bodies might stop reading after the favorable recommendation part. I think it is upon us to ensure that and, you know, I was hoping the way I'd phrased it. The governing bodies might do anything. Just about anything. We're advisors. We're not their controllers. This is, we would say we're not the boss of them. Any additional discussion on the motion? So seeing none, we'll have a roll call of the motion, please. Commissioner Williams. No. Commissioner Morgan. Yes. Commissioner Johnson. Yes. Commissioner Bryan. Yes. Commissioner Durkin. Yes. Commissioner Alturk. Yes. Chair, Vice Chair Harmon. Yes. Chair Busby. Yes. Commissioner Miller. Yes. Commissioner Ketchin. Yes. Commissioner Santiago. Yes. Commissioner Baker. Yes. And Commissioner Gibbs. Yes. Motion passes 12-1. Great, thank you again and to the members of the public that are here or at home that have been working on this, I really appreciate your continued interest and feedback. And again, we are the advisory body. This will move forward to the governing bodies in August at the earliest. So please pay attention. I know you'll stay involved and I'll be as interested as you are in how this ends up. We are wrapped up for this evening. Before we adjourn, I do just want to take a moment to hear from staff on any items for next month. You gave us a handout. Anything in addition to the handout on what we expect next month? No, not at this time other than the case that we continued. Well, I will add that to our list. And we will have an informational educational type item at that meeting that we talked about last meeting. And I realize Chair Busby is going to be absent, but we will repeat that again at our next training session. We'll have a condensed version of it for you again. And given my absence next month, I did just want to take a moment to thank Commissioner Gibbs for his years and years and years of service. This is Commissioner Gibbs final meeting. He is term limited as a commissioner. And you were my seatmate when I first started. So there's a special little place in my heart for Commissioner Gibbs who taught me a lot and always have enjoyed serving with you. I know you'll be back and I hope you'll come back and accept our gratitude in the next month or two. So we can officially recognize you, but since I won't be here next month, I just want to say thank you for all you've done here and for Durham and others, or the floor is open if anyone else has additional comments. So thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was going to ask for a point of privilege too for the exact same purpose when Mr. Gibbs leaves. I guess that will make me the senior member of this particular body. However, recognizing that however long I might serve, I will never serve as long as Mr. Brine has served. But to echo back to what I said about having a planning commission with 14 seats, it means that there's a seat up here for every point of view. And Mr. Gibbs has been an excellent commission member at representing a valuable point of view, frequently a point of view that was based in practicality when other commission members might have been somewhat locked in the theoretical. I don't know names to name on that, but so we will miss him. I will miss him. I have gotten to know him and value his friendship. I know that the rest of you feel the same way. I would just like to say to Mr. Gibbs because I also occupied the seat beside him. I think most of us end up right beside you and then we've moved along. But anyway, it has been an honor and a privilege to work with you. I will continue to follow what you're doing because you've been active with the county, which is where my heart is. And I will continue to do that. And hopefully you will continue to be engaged with us. But thank you so much. And thank you so much for welcoming me on my first day what five years ago when I occupied the seat beside you. Yeah, it has been a long time. And I'm sure that when people turn in, gosh, he's finally gone. They may stop tuning in now. But I do appreciate all of you all. And I have seen, I don't know how many iterations of this panel come and go. And I really think this is probably the best panel that I have worked with in my seven years, gosh, on this commission. And I will be watching you and I will be talking to you some more. Sometimes it may be behind that table out there. So I'll have to sign up to talk. But I really am enthused about where you folks are taking us. And as long as you work with this fine group of planning department, I'm encouraged about the future of Durham. So thank you so much for your comments. Thank you. And we look forward to seeing you back here soon. This meeting is adjourned. Thanks everyone.