 Well, I just want to welcome everyone to the August 4th, 2021 meeting of the Joint City, County Planning Committee, and I'm going to call this meeting to order. Good to see everybody. Hope everybody had a great July and did take some time off or do something fun or relaxing. And I wanted to see if there are any adjustments to our agenda this morning. Okay, hearing none, we'll move on to the announcements. And I know, Sarah, you had something you wanted to share with us. Yes, good morning, everyone. Sarah Young with the Planning Department. I just wanted to let you know that Susan Cole, who has been the longtime clerk to this board, is out on leave taking care of her antling father and will be retiring. And so you will no longer be seeing her, but she has been a great supporter of this board over the years. And she said it was okay to give you all the news. So I just wanted to kind of publicly wish her well in this new phase of life, which is a little bit difficult right now, but thought you all would want to know. Well, thank you, Sarah. I'm first of all sorry to hear about the reason that Susan is not with us. So if you could please send her our best regards in that. And also just our gratitude to her. I personally have known Susan since I was a Planning Commission member. Back, I think it was 2005 or 2006. And she has served so many boards and commissions and done such a great job. So it's hard to think about somebody like her. She's like an institution, really. She's been with the, I know she's been with the Planning Department for over 20 years, and then she was with the county, I think for another dozen before that. So she's been in Durham local government for her entire career. Well, I hope we will be recognizing her contributions as well in some way. Thank you. And I didn't know if anyone else had any other comments about Susan that they wanted to share. Thank you. Any other announcements from anyone? Thank you. Thank you. Next item on our agenda is approval of the minutes from our June 2, 2021 meeting. Do I have a motion to approve? Move for approval. Second. Move by Brian Busby, seconded by non-machine burns. And could we do a voice vote on that? And I don't know, Grace, are you standing in for Susan? Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Grace Smith here. I'm going to take the vote on the minutes. Chair Jacobs. Aye. Vice Chair Middleton. I vote aye. Sorry, I'm having some technical problems, folks. I vote aye. I got it. Commissioner Howerton. I'm looking, is Commissioner Howerton on the call? I do not see Commissioner Howerton on the call right now. City Councilmember Reese. Aye. City Councilmember Caballero. Do not see Councilmember Coppier on the call either. Commissioner Burns. Aye. Plenty Commissioner Busby. Aye. Is Councilmember Freelon on the call? I don't see him either. He is our alternate. Yeah, I was more than able to attend today. Okay, great. I didn't know if he was going to sit in for someone else, but thank you so much. You bet. So Grace, just correct me, I believe that. Is that five of us? Yes, I was going to say that you have one, two. You have, yes, they are past five zero. Okay, so thank you. So the minutes are approved. Next, we have the city and county manager's priority items. The city has no priority items. No priority items with the county items. Okay, thank you, Don and Brian. Next, we have update on the comprehensive plan from Kaila Seibel. This is Lisa Miller. I'm going to kick us off and then Kaila's going to close us out. Okay, thank you, Lisa. Yes, good morning, everyone. I am part of the team working on the comprehensive plan and we are here with an update for you all this morning. We're super excited to have adopted community goals and objectives to work together towards now and wanted to start by just saying thank you all to working with us at a really busy time of year, both for the planning commission and for the city council and county commissioners to help make those public hearings happen and get these approved. Next slide. We wanted to start just a quick overview of things we want to talk about with you all today. We'll briefly share some updates on the work we've been doing to prepare for the portions of the plan work that we'll be trying to work towards the community goals and objectives and thinking through how we engage residents around that work and primarily that we'll be focused on sharing details for the southeastern focused area work and recommendations coming out of that. As usual, planning staff is continuing to seek general guidance from you all on our comprehensive plan work this morning. We're particularly interested in hearing questions or concerns you have on the draft southeastern focus area recommendations. We know that we haven't provided you a whole lot of time to preview those yet, but we'd love to hear your initial concerns, questions, and feedback around this work before we plan to present this work to the planning commission and then to the full elected boards in mid-September and early October respectively. So I'll start by sharing some updates on our work related to community engagement now that the goals and objectives are adopted. Our work is shifting to a new phase of work. We've got new opportunities and challenges around excessively engaging our residents on some of the more technical aspects of our planning work. We've began planning for upcoming October engagement phase, our work sharing ideas, drafts, and input opportunities with residents this fall and next spring. We'll have a greater focus on specific geographies, neighborhoods, and communities in Durham as we develop a new place type map. In addition, we're working to set up policy working groups to ensure that we bring residents into our work in a meaningful and impactful way and not just once we've drafted something to ask for feedback. And we continue to work with the Bragg Town Community Association to develop our work together that responds to their community priorities and informs the comprehensive plan work while we try to build a new kind of working relationship between this neighborhood group and staff. And I'm going to talk just a little more in detail about each of these on the next few slides. So first in planning for upcoming engagement, we've been creating educational materials to share with residents. So we want to ensure that residents understand how things like a place type map and policy recommendations can impact development decisions. We want to ensure that residents understand both what the comprehensive plan is good at influencing from the community goals and objectives and what will take other partnerships and tools to work towards those goals and objectives. In these educational materials, we're trying to provide clear examples of what the plan can do to be responsive to the concerns we've heard from you all, as well as from residents about not over promising what the plan can do. We want residents to understand that the comprehensive plan is an important part but not the only piece of how we move towards the outlined the goals in the Durham outlined in the objectives. So as we plan for engagement over the remainder of the plan scope, we continue to be committed to incentivizing engagement through the ambassador program through focus groups as needed to reach folks that were being unsuccessful at reaching a need to do a more specific effort to find folks to engage and through stipend and participation seats and the policy working groups. All of this is focused on reducing barriers to participation, specifically for residents who've not had access to the planning process in the past. With the engagement ambassador program, as we're beginning a new phase of work, we have an opportunity to reevaluate how we work with ambassadors and to iterate and improve the program. As many of you recall, this program was piloted with the listening and learning engagement in the fall of 2019 and while we're excited about the steps we've taken to engage residents differently through the program, it's not perfect. So we've heard some clear feedback about things that need to be improved in the program and will be proactively asking all ambassadors for their feedback and experience so far. Because this program isn't something that was imagined to be static, there are challenges and concerns when programs implemented by others without sufficient collaboration together towards improving each iteration of the program. In addition, the ambassador's program is at its heart very locally oriented. The type of engagement on decision making that is more regional and influenced by not just Durham resident priorities can work against building trust with residents in this work. And any work that's perceived to not or actually does not prioritize equity and the voices we're hearing through ambassadors has a potential to negatively impact our work to build relationships and build trust and to show our commitment to equitable outcomes. We're committed to improving the program and being responsive to the residents participating in those they engage in the work. We plan to bring ambassadors into the work of designing engagement rather than approach the approach used so far where staff designs the what and how we want to engage and then asks ambassadors to use a tool that they haven't had a chance to help sheet. We want to ensure that more equitable engagement through engagement ambassadors leads to more equitable outcomes on the topics and projects they help us engage on. Finally, our default as staff continues to be going to residents with the questions we want to ask that help us with a particular project at hand. At its core, equitable engagement should be about addressing resident concerns rather than being driven by staff's list of projects. We know that our colleagues in neighborhood improvement services community engagement division embody this approach. We recognize we need to shift our infrastructure and resources towards this approach as local government overall. Next slide. I'll keep talking. So our work towards setting up policy working groups is building on the need to bring residents into our work in a more meaningful and impactful way for establishing these groups to ensure that residents and not just staff are involved from the beginning and drafting policy recommendations. The structures also meant to improve collaboration between city and county staff from different departments. The recommendations that the working groups draft will be focused on furthering the adopted community goals and objectives. And while the groups will work on creating and revising these planned policy drafts, there will be community wide engagement for the draft policies in the fall of this year and spring of next year as well. We've invited participation from residents who've been part of the outreach team, the engagement ambassadors program, the boards committees and commissions group, the planning commission and our staff technical and staff engagement teams. We're scheduled to hold our first session with all of the policy working groups at the end of the month and with so much of our work on this plan, we're trying to do our work in a new way. We've never developed and managed groups like these, so we're going to be asking all of the folks involved along the way for continuous feedback on how we can improve our work together, better support residents in these spaces with staff, and ensure the recommendations reflect the needs of our residents. And finally, we've developed plans for how to continue our work with the outreach team, the planning commission and staff teams, that will continue and evolve during this portion of the plan work, particularly since these groups have been asked to participate in the policy working groups. While we'll be meeting less frequently with the overall outreach team, we've planned quarterly sessions with them, where we can ensure that we have their perspectives leading up to plan engagement and in development of the plan. And we've similarly proposed quarterly retreats with the planning commission for this purpose. And for all three groups, we plan to continue to communicate regularly, providing updates and opportunities for feedback often. So the last resident-engagement related update I want to provide is on our work with the Bragg Town Community Association. As we've continued to work with the Bragg Town Community Association, we understand that residents in Bragg Town are very focused on near-term, tangible change. For one example, Bragg Town has created a detailed list of needed sidewalk, crosswalk, bus stop and roadway improvements along a number of key streets in the community. These items were a main focus, but not the only things shared at the recent Bragg Town bus tour that some of you are able to attend. However, we all know that the comprehensive plan is a more medium to long-term policy document is not necessarily designed to produce immediate results. So given the differences in timeline between the comprehensive plan and some of Bragg Town's needs, our recent conversations have centered on ways planning staff can be partners to and resources for Bragg Town and navigating the processes and projects around the city and county outside of the comprehensive plan to assist Bragg Town in advocating for their priorities. While we are not directly in control of these processes as planning staff, we can share our knowledge of local government and help to navigate a complex system. Additionally, we've been working with our land use teammates in the department and sharing information about new applications with the Bragg Town Community Association, particularly applications that elected officials have broader discretion over that are being considered for the area. This work around proposed development can help bridge the more long-term nature of place types and policies with something more immediate and tangible and help us gain a more detailed understanding of how neighborhood priorities can be integrated into the plan and influence the development process. And with that, I'm going to hand it off to Kayla who's going to talk about our work around place types and the Southeastern Focus Area recommendations. Great. Thank you, Lisa. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kayla Seibel, and I'll be closing out the presentation. We wanted to share this simplified timeline again just so folks know where we are in the process related to the different plan sections. We finished up the community goals and objectives adoption process this summer and are continuing our focus area work both with the Southeastern Focus Area and the Bragg Town Focus Area. As we work on these two components, we're simultaneously working on technical materials and engagement planning for the place type map, place type guide, and policies. This entire process, particularly our work towards more equitable engagement and equitable outcomes has been a new undertaking and a learning process. Lessons learned from each phase of engagement will inform future engagement and this iterative process will continue throughout the development of the schedule. Next slide. So moving on, a major deliverable we need to begin the land use planning and policy work and build on the goals and objectives to make that vision a reality is developing a draft place type guide. As a reminder, the place types are descriptions or a key to understanding the place type map. The image on the right is a snapshot of one of the place types we've drafted called the neighborhood services area. This early iteration of the place type guide includes an overview description of the type of place and more specific characteristics around land use, housing mix, mobility, and green space. On the next slide, we have a list. This list is also in your memo showing the titles of 21 draft place types. We can go back to this slide later, but for the southeast turn focus area, we needed to develop place types for that area and also needed a clear picture of the other places found in Durham. In your packet for the southeast turn focus area, we have a draft place type guide showing 14 of the 21 listed here that are applicable to the focus area. We expect through community engagement that there will be revisions made to these place types and especially as land use staff begin using the draft place types for the southeast turn focus area, they may find more refinements or improvements needed in this new tool. Next slide. So with that background information about place types and where we're headed with the overall plan process, we wanted to share with you all for early feedback, the draft southeast turn focus area recommendations. We've shared before that there are two focus areas for the comprehensive plan. Southeast turn focus area was selected based on requests from planning commission and city council for near term recommendations on how development should occur in a fast growing area. And the bragg town focus area selected the response, the needs and requests coming from the bragg town community association due to high development interest in the neighborhood and staff's commitment to equitable engagement and outcomes. This update today is just on the southeast turn focus area and for reference, this area is bounded by US 70 Sharon road NC 98 and the county line. And the purpose is to apply the plan schools and objectives to the area understand what residents needs and priorities are, understand which land uses are desired that residents want to see and recommend the new future land uses or place types to inform zoning and annexation requests. So the place types and policies specifically drafted for this focus area will allow staff, planning commission and elected officials to begin using this guidance to inform zoning decisions and annexation requests in the southeastern focus area. So in early March, we began seeking input from residents in a broad online engagement opportunity. The online engagement site social pinpoint has more information for residents to learn about the focus area and a lot of residents that comments to an interactive map and take a survey. Our engaged during program assistant Ami Mejia led interviews to reach Spanish speaking residents to hear their needs and priorities for this area. We've included these perspectives in our engagement summary and in our draft recommendations. We have the full engagements summary and demographics in your packet on attachment one for more information on our engagement process for this focus area. We want to reiterate that this won't be the end of our engagement with residents in the southeastern focus area. We encourage residents to participate in the full plan as we take a comprehensive look at the whole county. Next slide. We now have draft recommendations that were shared with residents last week through our online engagement site social pinpoint here residents can view an interactive map of the place types reading place types descriptions and review the draft policies for this area. We also have these recommendations in your packet attachments two three and four and those are the URLs for the site in English and Spanish. We have a brief survey open until August 18th for residents to share initial feedback on things we can immediately include in the focus area work now or provide input or ideas we should consider for the full plan. Each of these documents works together to assist planning staff elected officials and residents to evaluate new zoning map change and annexation applications. The place types and policies developed will still remain in draft form but staff can begin using this guidance immediately in memos and presentations and may discover further refinements that are needed or that certain issues should be worked out or improved for the larger comprehensive plan. The next step is to present the draft recommendations for the southeastern focus area to planning commission city council and board accounting commissioners seek their input before staff use this guidance to review applications in the area and the upcoming phases of the plan will be working with residents to create a new feature of any plan and policies for the entirety of Durham that will act as a guide for how Durham grows and develops. Next slide. Just one last slide before we conclude we wanted to share some key highlights from the focus area recommendations given the pace of this section of the plan and the need for interim guidance to handle development pressures in this area. We focused our recommendations on key concerns. We also saw this as an opportunity to practice applying the community goals and objectives that's our guiding document for the rest of the plan and analyze this along with community input understand which objectives could be furthered the most in this area. So beginning with the community goals and objectives input received from residents over the spring and summer the policies and place type map accomplished the following. They encourage a variety of housing types on parcels that are not already entitled or recently constructed with a single housing type. Encourage commercial development to provide for daily needs either through locations locating the neighborhood business area place type or recommending a mix of uses within the residential place types. They encourage complete neighborhoods and multimodal connections and shown in the policies by echoing what is strongly called for in the community goals and objectives to prioritize residents who do not use cars. They strengthen environmental protections through recommending clustering or grouping of housing away from environmentally sensitive areas and we've indicated on the map the natural heritage areas flood plains and eastern Durham open space plan buffers on the place type map calling for minimal disturbance in these areas and finally we recommend phasing of new development with infrastructure through what we're calling a future growth area east of Kemp Road and Virgil Road and recommending a build out or infill of areas that can already be served by the southeast regional lift station and fire station. Final reminder that as we work with these interim recommendations and continue to engage with residents including residents in the southeast Durham focus area that we will identify refinements to these recommendations and fold them into the larger plan. That concludes our presentation our team is happy to take any questions you have again planning staff is continuing to seek general guidance on our company it's a plan work and we are particularly interested in hearing any questions or concerns you have about the southeast Durham focus area thank you thank you so much Lisa and Kayla and we really I mean I just continue to be really grateful and also just impressed at how much work and progress is taking place even in the environment that we're in and just the thoughtfulness of your work all the staff's work about the whole engagement process so thank you so much I just want to open it up to everyone for questions comments feedback from JCCPC members anybody I'm sure I'm going to start it you don't go go ahead Mark Anthony thank you absolutely good morning everyone I get to see Ellen pardon me for the technical difficulties I was having with the camera kudos much of this work has been highly anticipated just the other night we had this phone in case in southeast Durham and many of the issues that we're anticipating some treatment of by way of the focus planning we're brought up we're writ large in our debate I do want to to relieve the planning commission of some you know plans are only as good as how well they're executed and and how well the you know whatever the wind that are blowing the zeitgeist of the day whoever's in office that day if we want to honor those plans or you know grant you know go another way so I I don't want I want the public that's watching to know that the planning commission will do their work but once that plan is done it's up to folk like us who are elected to honor the spirit of it and to apply it and so I don't want to you know create the impression that it's all up to planning to solve the issues that we're facing and dealing with in our public square but with that said I just wanted to mend them on just incredible work the the outreach even with the the the challenges and vicissitudes of COVID the the ingenuity that's been brought to bear in terms of equitable engagement is is just it's really difficult to overstate how impressive and how effective the work has been so I just want to you know on behalf of a whole lot of folks say thank you for not only what you've done but what you're continuing to do and look forward to the the completed work product it is it is it is timely because we are literally doing this stuff now and dealing with the issues at these work products are going to deal with so um take your time but but hurry up um but so this thanks thanks much for just really remarkable work thank you madam chair thank you councilmember meddleton any other feedback um at this point I think that the Kayla and Lisa and the staff are really looking for um you know any any input we have also at this point in the process uh with what they have shared with us today so brian thank you I just want to echo the the comments first of all just saying thank you to the staff I think it's been really impressive and I think the commitment to the equitable engagement is paying dividends and I think both moving forward the long-term plan as well as the the smaller shorter term localized plans is really hard but I think we're getting really good feedback and so I really do acknowledge that uh we have seven committees that are about to get started that are going to be doing this work during this pandemic and it's going to include the public and the engagement ambassadors and everyone else that that's really important and I think that that commitment and the buy-in that it's going to engender is critical so big thanks to the staff I had two questions and there may not be great answers to them but the first question and this is more on the southeast plan I think there's there's very good language in my opinion in the plan around the commitment to affordable housing and affordability and and I think that's critical and we're seeing proffers that are being made including the the project that came to council the other nights which is also really positive there were concerns raised by community members in the southeast part of the community talking about the and you noted this at the end of your report but the for for folks that are needing affordable housing but do not have access to transportation what's the thinking of the the interplay of how do we address that at least in the report I understand that there are things that will then come to the planning commission and the council later but what's the staff's thinking of how do we make sure we get that proper mix so that if we are getting affordable housing proffers but we don't have bus service in this part of town how do we ensure that we can actually make sure that the residents that need affordable housing that want to live in this part of the community can actually make it happen if they don't have a car or access to regular transportation hi this is i'll jump in on that one um and you're right commissioner busby there's not a great answer for that question ideally we would have transit service to everywhere in our community but that's just not financially feasible um but I think it's also important to realize that just because someone lives in an affordable house doesn't mean they need that they won't have a car so there will be some opportunities for affordable housing maybe at the upper end of the the affordability spectrum in this area for um applicants that choose to proffer the provision of actual units or land um but I think it's also important to realize that the financial proffers are also an important way to provide flexibility for the city to provide affordable housing where it's needed the most great yeah I know there's not a good answer I'm just curious how we might address that in the report especially noting that community members were were raising that issue as part of the survey the the second question there's not a great answer here either but is I really like the the 15-minute neighborhood concept and the language and that really again I think reflects what the community has been saying especially as part of the equitable engagement and there's a lot of good language around how do you make that happen uh is there anything that that staff's thinking about that might be addressed in the reports themselves about how do you actually make sure that those things happen uh because again a lot of it is all about voluntary uh proffers or voluntary ways to make sure that we can actually create these 15-minute neighborhoods again I'm there may not be a great answer at this point I'm just curious to hear the staff's thinking at this point as you're designing this concept and recognizing that it's actually reflecting what the community is saying they would like to see I think that's an it's a really good question which this always means that there's not always a great answer but uh I think for this one what we envision for the 15-minute neighborhoods which are really one of the more innovative things that are in this um it's definitely something that was not reflected well in our previous comprehensive plan but that these developments they need to be the approvals need to be for larger projects and they need to include both residential and non-residential components and at the time of zoning the applicants need to show how folks from the residential part can easily access the non-residential parts within roughly 15 minutes you know that's a quarter mile which is a kind of a planning rule of thumb for what's easy to walk to so I think what we're finding is right now a lot of the applicants out here because the residential demand is so hard is so not hard is so high that they're all the sites are being titled purely for residential and so we need to try to even if the market is not there right now reserve land in these larger developments so that we have opportunities for folks to have services not just commercial services but things like child care within their neighborhoods in the future and even affordable housing proffers we do not have the clear authority to regulate affordable housing but we do have the clear authority to regulate use and so that's something we can do for the zoning process great thank you yeah again I just wanted to hit on what I thought were some of the tougher questions and hear staff's feedback but again I think it's this fantastic work and really appreciate everything that's happened so far and the heavy lift that's coming both on the short-term plans that are on a fast track and the longer-term plans which are going to be really important to get in place but you know that tension of doing it well but doing it as quickly as possible knowing that we have so many proposals that are already in the pipeline so big thanks to all of you on the staff thank you great questions Brian any other comments questions input from members yes go ahead thank you very much first I want to echo the sentiments of the other committee members that this is some extraordinary work under challenging circumstances and under really impossible timelines you all have delivered some work product that's pretty amazing I will confess fully confess that I have not made my way through all all the many pages of this attachment looks like I'm the only one who hasn't made it so apologies for my my lack of forbearance to get through it all also my computer had a real hard time rendering that incredibly complicated map of the southeast region area so I'm going to have to maybe try it on a different computer in any event I will continue to make my way through that document and we'll have some questions and comments that I may relay to y'all in the in the kind of the next week and a half or so I did want to ask a kind of a pointed question about who we're engaging in the process the some of the some of the demographics of the folks who have responded don't don't give me a lot of comfort that we're reaching a survey population that looks like Durham and wanted to get kind of some feedback from y'all about what if you have additional plans to try to improve those demographics especially the end of the online piece is one of the pieces that we constantly struggle with and in-person engagement especially in the last several weeks it can much more challenging as we're discovering even on the city council so if if you could talk a little bit about what where your thoughts are I just it's just that some of those some of those demographics of survey respondents give me pause about who we're talking to and what what what our resulting plans will look like. Sure yeah great question and we will give this presentation along with any updates we have towards the end of September and early October so you have some time to look at the complicated map. Yeah so to answer your question one thing that the southeastern focus area has really taught us is how few community connections we have out here especially in an area with a mix of city and county land and how challenging equitable engagement has been. We spent a few months making connections canvassing our engaged Durham program assistant going out there talking with folks about the southeastern focus area. We attempted to pin being focus groups and with scheduling and COVID and everything it was it was not possible in the timeframe we had so we drifted to focus interviews which we had a few for in-depth conversation with Spanish speaking residents so while the numbers aren't aren't there like they were with our bigger community wide engagement efforts we have folded those perspectives into the draft recommendations for this plan. Additionally with our so with the community goals and objectives we had more equitable engagement progress there so we drew from from those we heavily leaned on those as part of forming the recommendations for the plan since they're the foundation of the rest of this work but going forward with our engagement strategy this is an area there's a lot of areas like this where we have very few connections that we're going to be focusing trying to build relationships have engagement ambassadors help us reach this hard to reach folks especially in areas like this were you popping in here Scott to say something? I just want to reiterate what Kayla said with it's incredibly useful for us to have the goals and objectives already adopted by both of your bodies so that we did hear when we engage with some of the folks out here we heard some things that were direct conflict with goals and objectives and so that gives us the confidence to know that when those two when we hear that that the goals and objectives are what should guide the decision making because there will be particular neighborhoods that when it comes down to individual decisions about what happens around them may not fully agree with the goals and objectives but that's what we'll we'll use as our guide let's ultimately up to City Council and the County Commission to make those final decisions but when our recommendations were based on the goals and objectives when there's a conflict with what we're hearing from our engagement. Well thanks I just want to just say I appreciate that thoughtfulness and obviously that is a huge concern to all all of us is making sure that that what we're the folks we're talking to are reflective of the community that we serve obviously the demographics out in this part of the of Durham are a little bit different and so I know that that's another challenge but just appreciate y'all keeping your eye on that particular ball and I also just wanted to underline what my colleague Councilman Middleton said about having plans plans are great but it's up to those of us who actually cast votes on these bodies to make sure that we cast those votes in compliance with those plans or if we don't we have a really good reason and we explain that because that means that every decision we make that doesn't line up with these plans is is going to be a challenge and I think we ought to have to explain ourselves in that situation but I think the other piece is there are going to be times where where we where there are limitations on how on the on the factors that we can use to make those decisions that that the plan may not necessarily take into account so it's all very complicated obviously that's why they pay us the big bucks but just wanted to underline this Councilman Middleton said it's great it's it's really important that our planning staff is working on this and is coming up with these ideas it's really great to hear that the planning commission is going to have all this committee work that goes on that helps provide us with additional guidance but it's really us it's really up to us to make sure that the individual decisions we make on project as much as possible within the limits of the laws that we have to abide by comply with those plans which means it's great that you've brought them before us in this body and like I said I will continue to make my way through this document by the way thanks for sharing the social pinpoint link that is much easier to work with than a janky pdf so import so I appreciate that and I'll be making my way through that as well so thanks everybody and I think Councilmember Cabillera had some thoughts as well thank you thank you um Councilmember Cabillera yeah I just had a question you know I this is a long document so there will be more uh in depth reading I was just curious within the planned neighborhood section um you know saying that it's not necessarily a goal but that's likely to be pretty typical development for the next 30 years and discussing how some of these what you might anticipate ad use smaller tiny homes kind of filling in in these neighborhoods and mentioning hoas and so you know what I have seen of hoas is often they don't want that type of of density in in their neighborhoods um and so is there any kind of um conversation I will say I found it really intriguing what Portland just did um and the the flexibility that they're giving residents out there and I think that if we want affordability and access to transit that you do that through through density you do that you know 15-minute neighborhoods does not mean acreage lots and large houses um so just wondering how we're going to kind of marry these very kind of opposing development ideas that's that's another excellent and challenging question so I think that's why we had two two primary residential categories that we show on the map the planned neighborhood and the established residential so the established residential where the incremental change we believe can happen and so that would include some of the you know half acre lots out in the suburbs but also the traditional urban tier neighborhoods where expanding housing choice would apply right now the planned neighborhoods well a lot of them are going to have hoas or in restrictive covenants and some of those predate any of you all being on the board um and so we want to find ways as we work through the rest of comprehensive plan to try to encourage those sorts of things in those neighborhoods too just understanding that that's going to be more difficult because the government doesn't have control local government doesn't have control over things like restricted covenants and it's certainly something we can look at going forward that we want to uh if that's an important priority for the community then we want to try to avoid that in new developments is having restrictive covenants that prohibit those sorts of things thank you i appreciate that clarification and you know at some point i think we are going to have to have those conversations um so thank you another good point anybody else i'm sure if i might ask a follow-up question yes go ahead scott and sarah maybe you might want to tag team on this within the the parlance of the planning world is there is there is this thing as a slowdown versus a moratorium now that's a real question because i mean how do you operational is there is that a real thing in a planning world so i'll uh i'll i'll tackle this one thank you if scott a break i will say that and i think um even monday night uh during that particular case i may have used that phrase i know that a speaker did i think what we mean by slowdown is you know staff i don't know if you've noticed that staff has been getting um much more critical in staff reports about cases um we've also been more vocal when we think something is okay and the reasons why something should should be okay um but i think what you will see is staff being much more critical and giving um elected officials um more you know uh reasons and ammunition evidence whatever you you want to call it um for why a development may be a bad idea in a particular area and then of course it's up to the elected body to make that decision so i think that's what we as staff mean by slowdown is that we are going to be more critical um i will tell you that i've had lots of conversations lately with applicants um that are in the hopper right now and are really concerned um that all of a sudden we're changing the script on them and going to be hitting them with the goals and objectives um and some have been very receptive and amazingly shockingly they are willing to make some changes so i think that the more that we change the expectations the more we are likely to get better development um but i think we just need to be clear that um you know for my take if someone is going to propose something in an area where we're we're not ready to go there yet we think it's a bad idea then that thing better be fabulous and it better have every single thing that we want or else wishy y'all shouldn't approve it it's just opinion um but that's what we mean by slowdown um is that you all as elected officials have the ability um to to make decisions yes or no on on items and that doesn't mean it's a moratorium that means that you all are more critical based on adopted policies and guidance that you put into place that we then help give you ammunition for does that help no it helps greatly and then that certainly you know resonates with me i mean i i appreciate the more uh robust and and kind of um i was going to say untethered they're not untethered but the more robust uh comments uh i um is it let me ask you a question is that is that a trend that is universal in the planning world or is our particular planning department responding to the winds in context of Durham um are y'all reading the green and kind of or is that kind of the thing in the planning world that happen um i think it varies greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction i think there are some places um that because of the pressures of that community um they've taken a tougher stance if you will um i would not say that it's just generally kind of across the board a trend um but i definitely think it's something that you will see more and more from us here on the planning staff i'm looking forward to the planning staff unplugged more and more as i look at these cases all right thank you i'll yield i think uh i think i'll be here i'm sure yeah yeah this and we don't need to get too into this but i i do want to float this it's a conversation that i know you know we we talk about the case on monday night you know one of the things that was a big win was the the affordable housing component which we know we can't legally mandate uh much to many of our chagrin um so i guess my question is you know right now we hear a lot about the the the density bonus which i've heard is not the best tool now we have development agreements which seems to be more promising one of the things i'm curious about is is there going to be a process you know as we make things clear to development uh developers and expectations are are are made clearer as we go through a process is there going to be a conversation of um potentially things actually moving faster through a pipeline because you have met these real clear community goals um including affordability i think on the development side there would be and i and i've had this conversation with developers very much an appetite to say you know what i would do x even if it costs me a little bit if i'm not going to get stuck in the pipeline at planning and inspections which costs me a lot of money and as we know um you know everything we add does there is a cost to that we've had that conversation we want more open space we want tree save we want a little of those things but the the flip side of that is that that means it's a product that is more expensive that does not mean we shouldn't ask for those things but how do we how do we wrestle with this really hard you know we we don't guarantee housing in this country at the end of the day that is what this battle is about is the fact that it is completely a for-profit driven part of our economy um so we will always be challenged with this affordability question until that is is guaranteed um so has planning thought about how do we make our own processes quicker for certain folks who are willing to do affordability or more tree saver etc yeah absolutely um i have had several conversations um with some of our frequent um developers um that have shared with me the exact same thing um what they care about is um less money believe it or not and more time and predictability knowing that if they do you know if they do this this this this in this then okay that they are likely to get an approval um because a lot of the risk as I understand it from their perspective is in timing um less so financially because they they can make up the financials other ways so um we I have had conversations with several folks about different ideas um I have a meeting coming up with a handful of folks uh kind of a planning directors round table to um to share with them kind of our heightened expectations but also listen to them in terms of um you know we want these outcomes for our community what can we do to say you know so that you all can provide those outcomes for us um but do it do it in a way um that doesn't you know it's not super burdensome and tedious you know can we make this a win win I do think there is there is a way um to do that but it takes work on both sides um you know developers have to be willing to come to the table with those things um and then yes we can do things like you know they do fast track approvals or expedited reviews um things like that um so those conversations are happening um and and I think as part of as the COMP plan project continues to evolve and we move into um taking some some of the policies once they they really get formed and gelled and turning them into ordinance then we can start looking at you know are there also um kind of carrots with those sticks built into the processes that go with them in the code thank you I really appreciate that um and I'm glad you all are doing that because I hear it a lot as you as you do as well thank you sarah and um Javier uh john hey just to um fill out this conversation just wanted to remind everyone at least in the city we have the affordable housing charter provision and what that says is that the city can offer incentives of value which falls in line with what commissioner uh councilmember caballero was just talking about but a component of that is um we can offer incentives of value but it has to result in a voluntary profit back so it's it's sort of a fine line of offering incentives of value and not making it appear or be a requirement so incentives are offered and then developers can make profits in response but um the closer we get to the line of it looking like a requirement that's problematic thank you don well this has been a really great conversation and um I will just chime in with a few questions um first of all we don't you know we don't get to have um many of these issues coming before us at the county commission anymore so I know a lot of this really falls in the laps of our city council members a lot of these really challenging um rezoning decisions that you all are dealing with right now um but I will say from my perspective and I hope to be one of these people that's always pointing to the past but um you know I mean my experience was being on the planning commission right when our the last comp plan was adopted back in 2005 I was a new planning commissioner and we had this new comprehensive plan and I I hate to say it but when I look at the southeast area small plan draft that was just in our packet and I see how the land use has changed really um and and a lot of the rezonings that have come before you all as city council members one of the problems is that was all that was all in our comp plan we we approved the future land use for east Durham and we got what we approved it's I mean because I was on the planning commission 15 years ago when we said yeah we approve those um those plans they got adopted and so then they got built so I think that's what to me makes it so important the process that um staff and the community is leading us through right now is because it's really important like okay what do we do wrong and how can we really do things differently um because you know what we put in this new you know place type map um and um you know kind of what we try to do now we're gonna we're gonna live with that um so I just um you know so yeah I think these are great conversations too about well what can we really what do we really have the power to do it's great to have these ideas but what are we really going to be able to do at the end of the day so and I love Sarah hearing you talk about the planning department is going to be more assertive more engaged because that frankly has not always been the case um and so and also you know Mark Anthony when you were saying well like well what's different now if we think back it's 2021 15 years ago we were like Durham wasn't being picky we're like we'll take anything you want to come here you can do whatever you want but you know we're really fortunate that it's a different day it's a different day and you know when you're you know number two on us world news and world report I mean frankly we we we have to be picky now we have to be really and assertive now and we do have the the luxury of being that way um so so it is it is a new day for us which is good and bad so some of my questions are kind of basic well one is I love the idea of this concept of the complete neighborhood this vision that I feel like is kind of impacting a lot of the a lot of what we're seeing in these different place types that you all have put out in the 20 different 21 different place types really love this you know this whole these all these new concepts um and I guess that's going to be the challenge is how do we create as many of these complete neighborhoods as possible and um Brian kind of alluded to this but with the southeast area questioning and you linked education land use well you ed you linked together I guess it was I'm getting I think I'm getting mixed up here it was oh I'm sorry housing transportation and environment were the three categories that staff pulled out from the comments um and it seemed like when you the feedback you got from talking to people was much more nuanced it seemed to me from what we got from just the survey so it really showed to me how the interviews are that level engagement is so important because you really get like I said more specific kinds of input but I think this linkage between housing transportation environment is just so important as we we move forward with with these plans they really can't be separated and um I'm wondering how many people are involved right now in the different policy working groups that you laid out I can respond to that question so we are aiming for around 10 to 12 participants in each one of the groups so that we can we want to have a combination of staff and residents as we said but want to make sure that the composition is such that and the way that the groups are set up is really making that space comfortable and making space for residents to bring their perspectives fully into that space because we know there's a power imbalance in talking about this work between staff and residents um so whatever the math is there so around 70ish folks um yeah awesome and the 15 minute neighborhood I don't know if anyone I don't think you can see it because the my thing is off but oh here well it doesn't work but anyway the realtors the the national association of realtors publication um that came out for the spring it says the 15 minute city um and the whole issue is about this idea that everyone should be you know 15 minute walk from from you know whatever they need you know jobs recreation stores I'm wondering with the different um types that you've put out I mean my reaction is shouldn't we try to do shouldn't that be a goal for for every housing type 15 minutes I mean wouldn't that you know and I just want to hear from staff you know is it realistic to aim for that or could could that be something that is woven through all of them yeah that's uh it's definitely something that we want to try to weave through as much of the community as possible there are some places it'll be really hard where there there's a you know a large established neighborhood that's entirely single family residential where there's really no opportunities for um commercial or institutional development um but I think it it will depend a lot on what type of development it is out here in southeast Durham it's going to be mostly large-scale new developments and so that's why I'm trying to find new ways for large residential developments to include non-residential through the 15 minute neighborhood is the best way to do it in other ways it may be setting aside small vacant corners for a new neighborhood service area and then in kind of the other one of the other place types that we're proposing is the the what we're calling the transit opportunity area which is kind of like the next generation compact neighborhood and so that would be kind of taking that concept to existing commercial areas and and encouraging redevelopment so that we'd have more residential and commercial in those areas where most of them are predominantly non-residential now so I think it's a goal that we can try to apply as much as possible but there will definitely be it won't be really hard to do countywide or even citywide I thank you um the other thing I noticed with the southeast area plan is um um when infrastructure was mentioned it was very much focused on there should be the infrastructure that is provided by the city government or you know I could just generalize and say government in general um and I'm wondering though should we be promoting more also the role of the developer and the private sector in providing infrastructure because let's face it we can't you know when there's new development whether it's sidewalks or even new roads or recreation I mean the the public sector cannot just provide all that and subsidize development so should that be something that is more printed I'm just wanted to hear your input on that from staff yeah I'll definitely um we'll definitely need to check the wording to make sure that it says what we meant but I think there are key local government services that need to be and infrastructure that need to be provided will uh we encourage whoever is willing to pay for it to put it in and that is often going to have to be the developers particularly with sidewalks and roadway improvements something like staffing a fire station is something that would be unreasonable to ask for for um a developer but certainly setting aside land for a fire station is something that would be reasonable right okay um and then I just the um at the end when there were some of the draft um recommendations or policies um I just wanted I was it was great to see mention about the use of green infrastructure um but it was mostly focusing on stormwater BMPs and I would just say that I would hope that we will think about also integrating green infrastructure low impact development with things like parking lots and sidewalks as well um so I would just put a you know ask if staff could could look at that um and even I didn't see thinking about environmental um thinking you know thinking about where we're trying to get with our environment in terms of carbon reduction and and um being carbon neutral um a lot of the environmental goals and in the um values and goals I didn't see a lot about things like solar or um water reuse and retention and things like that I saw mostly things about trees so again I would just say if we could be if there are opportunities to include that um I would just encourage that um in some in some some of what's being proposed in the types and I don't I don't know if you have any thoughts on on how that could be done from the staff yeah those are um I mean those are certainly things that we hear a lot about um I think those are more kind of community-wide things that we want to do more than just specifically for southeast Durham but uh yeah we can we'll make sure that our the policies are inclusive of all sorts of green infrastructure right okay um I think that was about it for me but I'm I'm just very excited about the um this whole process and um really appreciate everybody's hard work on this and look forward to what the policy groups come up with and what we hear from people in our community and anybody else before we move on to the last item okay um thank you and our uh item number seven is expanding house choice metrics and this is our our quarterly update on the expanding housing tourist implementation and we hear from you on this Scott. Yes unfortunately I'm back so yes the chair Jacob said this is our now it's not quarterly it's whatever you would call three times a year update on the expanding housing choice metrics so to date we've had 150 permits applied for for expanding housing choice enabled units this is there was a calculation error in the memo so this is slightly less than what it shows in the memo um we still see the most popular ones are ad us which tend to be distributed countywide and the small lot option has started to become relatively popular in the last couple quarters the breakdown by tier they are still um predominantly found in the urban tier which is not surprising since that's where most of these changes were focused so here's a map of where all the different permits are I also have a I have a pdf version of this if anyone wants to see a more zoomed in or easier to read version later the pink dots are ad use the kind of teal dots are accessory dwellings or accessory units that are not dwellings those are the two that EHC made amendments for countywide the brown dots are duplexes and the yellow dots are the small lot option as you see most there's a pretty good distribution of all the different types it does look like the the small lot options more of them are clustered in kind of the east southeast part of the urban tier so as for demolition permits um as we talked about before they actually went down last year from 2019 and so far for the first half of 2021 we've had 37 so we're on pace for what was normal before the whatever caused the surge in 2018 and 2019 and so here's a map of where the residential development permits demolition permits have been approved since october 1st 2019 which is when EHC became effective in the city they also seem to be relatively well distributed there's definitely clusters of where we saw we've been seeing teardowns for a while and some of the neighborhoods closest to downtown where the houses tend to be smaller and then here's some data that we did not have when your agenda item was prepared but we do now so wanted to share that this is a way from our colleagues at the triangle j council government to provided this for us so we pulled the number of affordable units both naturally occurring and legally binding just prior to the effective date of expanding housing choice so we had 7444 legally binding ones and 29417 naturally occurring ones you know weird twist the legally binding ones have gone up by about a thousand and the naturally occurring ones have gone down by about a thousand in that amount of time and so an update on the the full list of metrics in the county resolution as I noted in the memo we had a management intern from the same manager's office looking into how we can potentially get the additional metrics that we hadn't provided so far it determined that our city county GIS can use existing data that we already have and existing staff that we already have to provide the land value per square feet and the price and value of new units by type we will have they'll have that ready for the next four month update the racial income data and the change in median home value based on Bayer's research those are only going to be available through census data or the countywide reassessment and the census data is always going to be lagging by several years and the current census data we have is from mid 2019 before EHC was approved so even if we were to find some sort of data science company to help us with this the the only we would still get 2019 data at this point for racial income data so there's a there doesn't seem to be a path forward to get the use any useful data that would show any impact from each or anything else on for that and then for infrastructure impacts that was a pretty broadly defined in the county resolution at this point with the distribution number of units we still playing staff believes that there's going to be very little infrastructure impacts but if there's specific infrastructure impacts that any members the JCCPC wants us to try to find if there have been impacts we can work on that if there's but we would need a little more specificity on that with that that concludes the presentation and I'd be happy to answer any questions thank you Scott and really appreciate the staff providing us this information and tracking it and and trying to look for for other sources of data any comments or questions from JCCPC members Brian thank you Scott or others on the department staff you may speculate but I'm just curious what your thinking is about the decrease in the natural occurring affordable housing numbers the the slide that you showed because it's great to see the the legally required affordable housing numbers going up that has clearly been the top issue for our community and the voters made that happen and our elected officials have been following through on that commitment but it's depressing to see that we're losing the natural occurring affordable housing numbers at basically the same rate so we're we're swimming against the tide but do you have any any thoughts on how why is that happening and then probably more importantly is there anything we as a community can be doing to make sure that we don't continue to lose ground there yeah this is educated speculation in no way is an expert on this but I think it's kind of a nationwide phenomenon that prices for housing are going up almost everywhere and you can see anecdotal evidence of that happening particularly in central Durham where what were formerly really affordable complexes near Lakewood and um Brogdon middle have been purchased by national real estate investors and they slapped some hipster paint on it and increased the rent I'm sure that phenomenon is happening all over Durham and so it doesn't take much for something to go from you know being a affordable at 78 or 79 percent AMI to being going to 82 or 83 percent AMI and then it will drop off the list thank you Brian great question and I I did add do the math and actually you know unfortunately we've lost if you add up then the uh legally binding and actually occurring we're down 230 units so I think it really does beg the question of what's the strategy long-term and is you know the public sector going to be able to keep up on our end are we are we going to lose the battle if it's just us being the ones providing the legally binding so um Commissioner Burns yeah I'll be quick I just wanted to add on I know um Scott said that you know he is my educated guest and I'm just gonna throw my two cents in if you don't mind I think the other thing that we if we're we want to throw out all the ideas um as somebody who gets a call every day for that house you know Ford double what's my neighbor is the same thing you know one of my neighbor's houses he gutted it out last week he put it on the market on Thursday he closed on Monday like that is how fast it's going he has a starter home and so when we look back at the data that the Realtors Association gave us maybe 2019 but I'll tell you about maybe 20 yeah spring 2020 so Durham was 17 percent below its inventory and starter homes so we were already behind the eight ball like right when the pandemic hit I think the inventory was 17 percent below what like they projected so then you get all the jobs come in and then of course when COVID hits now we have a supply chain issue so everybody wants to build houses but we need manufacturers and we need people with the chop wood and we need wood to be harvested and and you know so I sit down I pull the article before this meeting in the same amount of lumber that might have cost a contract of 25,000 it's now costing him just at cost because it needs to be produced is now 75,000 so I think all of those things together yeah I as much as I sit here and I say oh there are all these new people moving in and they're buying up these homes and we all look at Andrew we all saw that post that happened this week it was a house that was 670 and the one right beside it went it shot up so high it took one off the market and came back at 725 because it went for 750 right because why would we start at this baseline when we could probably get this much more but I also wanted to think about some of the supply chain constraints and that workforce our constraint when we look at and I'll stop here when we look at the recovery efforts that are still going on in southeast North Carolina for Hurricane Florence and Hurricane for Hurricane Matthew one of the things that hood added in to that package they said in North Carolina was actually funded for workforce because we did not it's not just about general carpenters I mean general contractors we didn't have carpenters so I think we need to think about the workforce component the supply chain component and then also just the jobs and people wanting to pay extra money for these so I think all of that adds into like why are we not seeing naturally occurring affordable housing so I just want to throw that tidbit out there thank you and I'll just add to your list Commissioner Burns also people's ability to get financing what the bank's what type of developments that banks will fund and so that's why we're grateful for the city council's comprehensive strategy with your housing bonds of all the different strategies that you are trying to incentivize related to all the challenges Commissioner Burns just laid out so well thank you um any other comments or questions related to the information staff has shared with us about the impact of expanding housing choice just remind everyone you know the reason why we're tracking it is because this is a new concept and we wanted to see is it going to help is it going to hurt you know what you know what there was a lot of concern from the community uh you know what is it going to really mean um so that's why we're doing this if I one quick clarification on the affordable housing numbers most of those are for larger complexes there are some smaller ones that we have data that we have data on so it's unlikely that expanding housing choice is affecting those numbers either making them go higher or lower because those types of the types of units that are covered under each c are not the type that are going to be tracked in those numbers but it's still important information right thank you well I guess I'll just oh Commissioner Caviar go ahead I mean city council member thank you you are a joint city county commissioner that um really you know when expanding housing choice passed there was you know the quads and the triplexes were kind of off the table because it was too and I agree in the moment you know was that like let's just test this out was it you know there was a lot of fear of like oh it's just going to really incentivize teardowns and things like that and that clearly hasn't happened and there was lots of discussion that this would be a kind of a filtered right like long term adding units in interesting ways now that we are two years in almost um is there and with the comp plan and I brought this up last time like just on the previous agenda item are we thinking we're going to add some more housing types um you know when you go into some of our older industrial cities my sister lives in Pittsburgh I'm up there often it is fascinating to see how many units they can get into these things that look like a single family the missing middle we've I think it was oh I forgot who did it downtown Durham inked it that whole missing middle presentation in a little while ago so it's you know again our processes do have an impact um with the with affordability with what's available banks will finance things even if it's a little bit odd if it's allowed right I mean you can push these things if you need to um so just curious if we're having these conversations or if there's interest on on staff side to investigate it more sure I'll chime in and say that um there is definitely interest in in looking at that um we had planned to follow through like we said at the end of BHC like will we visit that you know with the comp plan I will say that one one of the concerns that we all know we heard so much um whether we agree with it or not fundamentally um from community members was that um you know issues of of things not fitting in you know sticking out like a sore thumb in their neighborhood not feeling like it's part of the fabric and you know by state law we're precluded from um having design standards for single family duplex but once we move up to multifamily units we don't have that prohibition anymore and so we can we can put in design standards um you know we walk through our lovely older neighborhoods and we see you know houses and and small apartment buildings that are you know usually quads or sometimes sixes right next door and they fit in beautifully and everybody loves them um and so I think there's a lot we can do once we um are able to take that next step up um that could be a real win-win for everybody um and you all know probably that I'm a big advocate for better design um so I'm excited to move into a space where I can actually deal with design because we can't deal with it on single family duplex and it's clear people have taken advantage of that so just to follow up on um the question does that mean that you you all will be bringing forward something Sarah I think that we um that is one of the things that we are going to float out there um we'll see what kind of feedback we get um and we'll see how we can um address that feedback um like I said through design or whatever to try and make it more palatable if um if there's some negativity about it um I think that our new place types will afford us you know we're already with the goals and objectives pushing in that space right we want a more mix more diversity of housing types right now when you say diversity of housing types to our developers they think that if they put townhouses with single family like woohoo how diverse right but that's not what we're talking about so we're talking about more than that so yes I think we um we do plan I don't know exactly yet how we will roll that out to be honest um but that is our intent to to go there thank you so I think it's clear from the data that we share with us we're not seeing a whole lot of impact in terms of demolitions which was a concern or and we're not also not seeing a whole lot of um really increase in and and I guess the benefits I mean it's just it's very modest um but it seemed to me when I looked at the numbers that there there was the most usage of the lot splits and um smaller lot option is that an accurate um conclusion that is and picture Jacobs and so we're we're trying to this is one of the challenges of of counting these is a lot of the lot splits turn into small lot options once the house is built once the so we're we're trying to make sure we're not double counting those okay so what the increase in lot splits will likely mean the next time you look at this as you'll see quite a few more those small lot options because then the permit for the house will have been issued okay okay well we know every little every little bit helps so um so I think we can you know it looks like it certainly is is having some positive impact thank you so much all right any any further comments on this item well thank you so much again and we have nothing else on our agenda today and Sarah we find us when is our next meeting going to be let me pull the calendar over hang on one second of course it decides not to work right when I need it to but it will not will be until October yes it's the first Wednesday in October is wait for it wait for it the sixth okay October six all right well we'll gather again in October hope everybody stay safe and healthy and see you all soon thank you so much thank you have a good rest of your day