 Chris. Nate, while we have this pause, I wanted to oops, I'm sorry, Chris. Sorry, we just went live. Sorry. No, no problem. I just want to let you all know that I asked Bo Dabrinsky to join us because he heads the development review. So he's on the ground, knows what's going on, can give real world issues and feedback and such. Excellent. One that he came and listened and such. Yeah. Thank you for inviting him, Michael, and thanks for joining, Bo. No problem. Good. Virtually seen, everybody. So I'm going to go ahead and get things started. So this is our fourth meeting now of the Planning Commission Policy Committee. Since we started, we've lost two members and gained a member. And really, we, you know, this is all started because of issues that we were regularly seeing during Planning Commission meetings with many of the developments that were the development applications that were coming before us. And several of us felt that it was important that we try to address some of those issues. And so that's why we're, that's why we're here. I think that we've had some fruitful discussions in our first three committee meetings. And I think that we have, you know, a lot of work on our plate and a lot of things that we can be doing. So I'm excited and looking forward to all of that. I sent out an agenda a little earlier today. My apologies for not sending out something earlier. Volunteering is a lot of work. And so I hope that you all at least had a chance to review that. There was one link in there to a journal of the American Planning Association article. You may have had a chance to look at your scheme. If not, I'm going to, I'm going to run through some of the, some of the topics that are in that article. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen here. Are folks able to see that? No? Can you see that now? Okay, awesome. All right. So in our last meeting, we discussed some potential amendments to the UDO specifically regarding connectivity and maximum block length and block perimeters. And I think that we had some good conversation there. I think people were interested and want to pursue it. And I've had good conversations with staff and also with Tim Syvers about that. And we'll get into that, those amendments in the language, specific language a little bit later. I'll go ahead and share the screen at that point. But one thing that was brought up was a few folks wanted answers to the question, why does it matter other than the fact that developers have been recently bringing forward in their applications, commitments to maximum block links in their, in their, in the rezoning cases. Why, why, why do we care about block length? Why do we care about connectivity? And so I wanted to just briefly run through a quick presentation explaining why. And so far to this point, I haven't really wanted to be a explainer. I've wanted to just kind of be part of the conversation with all of us. But for a moment here, I'm going to put on a little bit of a different hat and be a little bit of a explainer for better or worse. And feel free to stop me if you have any questions. Here's that agenda. I went ahead and pasted it in. So we're going to give this presentation. We can have any questions or conversation after that. But then I want to dive back into the UDO amendments. One thing that Chair Busby, who is with us today, asked me to do was to put together a timeline. So I'd like for us to review and discuss a potential timeline for this committee since that's typically what we do for committees, although this committee is a little different. And then finally hit some final thoughts and whatever the next steps are. And also when we do talk about the UDO amendments, I would like for us to discuss some of the options for the actual next steps with the UDO amendments and how to move forward on those. So the story of connectivity really starts at the beginning. So here in Durham, we've all seen this famous image of Durham's early days. And we see that it's a connected city. That was how cities used to be built. It's not unique to Durham. This is when you look at older parts of any American city. They were short blocks, highly connected, many intersections. And that was just sort of the pattern that took place. It resulted in, you know, it was built for pedestrians, it was built for transit, and it functioned for those forms of transportation. And this is kind of how we tend to build our cities today. This is on the outskirts of Durham in the southeast. This is, you know, Miami Boulevard. Nate, why did you choose this picture? You can zoom in anywhere on Durham, in Wake County, you know, North Carolina, South Carolina, anywhere on the outskirts of cities. You will see images that look like this, a very leapfrog pattern, highly disconnected, lots of cul-de-sacs, very disconnected when it comes to land uses and the types of buildings that are being built. And so this is currently how we build and certainly how we have tended to build over the past several decades. And this is sort of a simple illustration showing that evolution over time of how our streets and blocks have changed. So obviously, in the pre-World War II days, we had this highly connected street pattern. It was either a grid or some other form of a connected street pattern. And then little by little, as we began to evolve our building and our built environment for automobiles and a much more, what we now know to be a very unsustainable form, very unwalkable and not transit-friendly form, we arrived at what is today now a very disconnected pattern. And this has been quantified. And this is an image from that journal of the American Plenty Association article that happened to come out in October of this year. And you can see when it comes to a variety of different metrics, and this used a lot of data from around the country, looking at four-way intersection proportion, intersection densities, average street length, you know, dead ends, all of these things, you can see trend together and becoming much more curvilinear, disconnected pattern after 1940. You know, peaking in 1990 and many communities have taken a more aggressive approach recently to create a more connected pattern. And here's a graphic from one of the comprehensive plans that I worked on several years ago in Greenville, North Carolina, just a simple illustration, kind of demonstrating that when you build in a highly connected pattern, it very simply creates many different ways of getting from point A to point B. And you can imagine that makes it easier for pedestrians that can choose what route they want to take. When you think about emergency vehicles and some sort of accident and the need to be able to pick another route, there are many reasons why you want to have multiple ways of getting from point A to point B. Here's another case from T.W. Alexander Drive. This is, you know, in Durham. And what I want to show here is, you know, this is, again, just sort of a disconnected street pattern. And what it tends to foster, especially with kind of the way that some of these large corporate developers build, is as a result of disconnected street pattern, disconnected land uses. And so what we see here is we've got commercial in one corner. We have townhomes in another. We have duplexes in another. We have multifamily in another. And we have single family in another. And they're all completely separate from one another, which is not how cities were traditionally built. And we know that this exclusive pattern of building has negative ramifications for a whole host of different things. You know, thinking about the separation of land uses here and not just housing types. You know, even though the food lion is located close to some of these homes, many of those people are probably going to get in their cars and drive there. It's completely cut off and difficult to get there. And this is kind of what you see on the ground. Of course, we know that this image shows something that is not currently regulated. We now require sidewalks on both sides of the street. And as a very recently, street trees, but you can get a sense of what it's like on the ground, how much it's built for the automobile rather than for the pedestrian. Very uncomfortable distances for the pedestrian. It looks like Tom is raising his hand. So I just wanted to throw out there, the current pattern, or what you're calling the current pattern, which you propose we recoil from, it's not accidental. So I think we do have to give some thought as to why we went from a grid pattern to isolated developments. And I think a lot of it has to do with the connection of the automobile to land usage, especially residential land use. It's tangled up. And the way we've developed is we've viewed the automobile as a necessity, but it's also at the same time a thing we hate. We love our cars. We hate everybody else's car. We don't mind if our car goes past our house. We do not want your car to go past our house. And to a certain point, some of this is, in my opinion, legitimate. How do we strike a balance? Yeah, I think that's a question that we should answer, I think, together as a committee and then also sending it to the Planning Commission and the Planning Commission having that discussion of how do we strike that balance? That is the question. Is that okay if I move on, Tom? Okay, I'm going to go ahead. We'll have plenty of time for conversation. I just want to get through this. And then this is an image from TW Alexander. There's actually a sidewalk here, but you can imagine how few people would actually be using this sidewalk. And then even on the very edge of the development, even when you're facing the grocery store, you can see the distances. You can see how far a pedestrian would have to walk. And adding up these distances across an entire city or an entire region, you can imagine the death by a thousand paper cuts impact that this can have. And then here's just an illustration on the northern side of the collector road here. We see a little bit more of the traditional neighborhood pattern, more connected, more walkable, more integration of uses. And on the south side of the collector street, the pattern that we have been building to, which is much more separated, much more disconnected. Pattern on the left is the Euclidean pattern of commercial, auto-oriented growth disconnected. Pattern on the right is a much more integrated, walkable, sustainable, urban fabric. Don't say Euclidean without explaining it. Okay. Well, yeah. Okay. So separation of uses, the sort of pattern that we've seen in the 1980s, 1990s would be Euclidean. Image on the left is oftentimes what we see in commercial areas that are recently built. Image on the right is sort of the history, the history that we've seen. And similar to the direction that a lot of communities are heading in now. And there are social and economic downsides to a disconnected pattern to an auto-oriented society. We see it in traffic deaths that the immediate ones that come from collisions, which are a major cause of death in the United States, as well as the slow ones from sedentary lifestyles and air pollution. And we see the difference in particular between the U.S. and other countries of similar incomes. Obviously, there's a lot more that's going on here, but in countries that are much more walkable, you see death rates that are as little as one third or one quarter of what they are in the United States. And then things like children walking to school and some of the obesity epidemics that we've watched play out as fewer children have walked to school since the 40s, 50s, and 60s. And it also has climate impacts. We can see in much more walkable areas. Here's an example showing carbon dioxide per household. And we see in these core areas that are much more walkable, historically built, much lower carbon dioxide per household. There are also fiscal impacts, fiscal ramifications to this that are very well documented, showing the cost of sprawl over time simply doesn't pay for itself and tends to have to be subsidized. And then why connectivity? Coming back to the journal for American Planning Association article, here's a quote from that article. Hundreds of studies in recent decades have identified the role that street network design plays in travel behavior, public health, and environmental sustainability. Traditional patterns such as a fine grain and interconnected grids are associated with higher rates of active transportation and less driving. But after a century of building cities around the spatial logic of the automobile, planners today face car-oriented crises in public safety, physical inactivity, traffic congestion, and rising environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. This is of enormous importance to planning practice, which sits at a critical leverage point to shape these outcomes. So we know connectivity, it can help in shortening walking and biking distances, enhancing pedestrian safety. It can lower EMS response times. There are many studies about that. And it allows other things to play out in tandem with shorter block lengths. So when we have shorter block lengths, we can actually reduce the width of the street and slow traffic. And all of these things play out together. There are best practices in planning manuals from across the country, the Institute of Transportation Engineers manual. Block lengths should be in low density areas, 600 feet, and dense urban areas, 400 feet. CNU best practices recommends 300 to 500 feet. Lead and D standards, University of Texas School of Engineering, a variety of different sources, providing very high quality guidance for how streets should be built and connected. Many, many best practices and case studies from around the country. And the cases are growing as more cities adopt these types of regulations. Here's one from Franklin, Tennessee. This is an image of an aerial of something that was built in the 1990s, built obviously over a short period of time. Very disconnected pattern, once again, curvil in your streets, very big degree of separation of uses. So you've got your single-family homes in one area, you've got your town homes in one area, you've got your non-residential in another area. And Franklin, Tennessee went ahead and passed regulations to better regulate maximum block lengths and block perimeters and enhanced connectivity. And they're seeing much more of development that looks more like this. So this is a development that was built after the adoption of those regulations, much more, you know, not perfect, not at all perfect, but a significant integration of housing types, you know, more town homes and certainly more walkability. Or you can imagine more walkability. And, you know, you still have cul-de-sacs. It's just that there are many fewer cul-de-sacs. And there are many resources. I'll make sure that this gets posted afterward. There are a lot of articles, a lot of books for understanding better this issue. And so what I want to do now is go ahead and open it up for any conversation that folks want to have, any reactions that people have before we jump into the next item. So when we design a walkable community, and I'm still not sure I personally understand all the elements of what makes something walkable, do people walk? I mean, I've just been reading about Poundbury, which is a new urban town built in Britain. And they followed all the rules and people are drive a lot of cars and do not walk. And the conclusion was is that that it's that making people walk is more complicated than urban design. It has a lot to do with how much money they've got. And that when people are well to do, they have a tendency to drive even when they can walk and the environment they live in is walkable. Yeah. Well, we know that there are many, many elements of urban forum that do foster walkability, that do result in people walking more. Is it a perfect linear graph? No, but there are strong correlations. We know that highly disconnected places cannot become walkable. And we know that highly connected places can become walkable. It doesn't guarantee walkability if it's connected. If there's an integration of uses that makes it even more likely that people will walk. I think that there are a lot of valid critiques against what we tend to see as new urbanists. We tend to see much more of new suburbanism when we see master plan, new urbanist communities like the one I just showed you, may or may not be a new urbanist community, but I think that there is a strong momentum for automobile dependency and that there's no one solution that will turn that around completely. It's going to take a lot of different solutions working together over time, but it can be done because it has been done. There have been communities that have seen a significant change in transportation modes being used by their people that were once auto dominated, maybe not as badly as we are in Durham, but certainly auto dominated. And over very, very intentional changes to their regulations and working with their development community, we're able to turn things around. And when I say that, I mean, on a 30 to 40 year time span, we're able to turn things around and actually achieve a much more diverse mode split so that more people are biking to work than are driving to work. More people are taking public transportation than driving to work. So is it hard? Yes. Is there one solution? No. I think it's going to take many different solutions, many different changes. And I see connectivity as a fundamental change that needs to happen. And that's also recognizing because I know staff is going to jump in and say, well, what about streams and stream protection? And that's why we best practice is sort of adopt the regulations that you want and that you need and then provide for the exceptions for the exceptions that you need to make. So when you have a school or when you have a large employment center or when you have a stream or a railroad or something, yes, you can break the rules. But overall, we know what the best practices are. So are you concerned about, my concern is, to some extent, is you can adopt a regulatory, create a regulatory environment that nobody wants. And consequently, it fails. And I point to our experiment with form-based zoning in our design districts, where we have a whole bunch of forms, five or six of them, but you drive by the buildings that are supposedly built to the forms and I defy you to identify which form they are. Because the development community does not want to build the buildings that the forms anticipate that will be built. And you look at the illustrations in the UDO for the various forms and none of the buildings that get built look like those illustrations. And I want to make sure that if we push programs that they are reasonably practical in the marketplace. In other words, they represent, at least to a certain extent, what the building community wants to build and what the using community wants to use. And so I worry about some of those things. But on the whole, while I express these concerns, you know, I'm a believer. I live in a reasonably walkable community, an older neighborhood that was designed and developed before anybody thought the automobile was going to be a burden other than a benefit. And we get along. And so I'm not afraid of these things. And we have relatively short blocks and we have places where we have longer blocks because we have streams or we have amenities like a golf course or something like that that is worked in. So I think we can do these things, but I think we need to be mindful that we do not load the code up with regulations that express a vision that none of the neither the regulated nor the protected classes actually are interested in. Yeah, I think that's important. I think that's a really good point. Austin or Carmen, do you guys have anything else to say? Either. I think that the presentation of walkability and blocks and things like I think it's fairly great or I think it's possible. But I have questions, serious questions about connectivity where we have this grand mass interaction of connectivity between neighborhoods or people to be able to walk, but where are they going besides walking for exercise unless we're going to be building neighborhoods or communities that are similar to Woodcroft and Durham where they have a gas station, a fire station. There's an elementary school that's in there or the one that's out there off of I want to say it's in Briar Creek. They have a whole little community where there's like an elementary school, there's a playground area. And I just think that when you start connecting neighborhoods, regardless of cul-de-sacs or walkability or not, you start having issues of where kids will play. And then we want to shrink the width of the streets in order to discourage traffic. But you're going to have people who drive cars because people are never going to not want to drive cars in order to get to a friend's house unless we turn into larger metropolitan areas like maybe New York or even Atlanta where there's a bus or subway system or some type of mass transit area. So what about kids? Like at some point in time kids may want to go outside and play. So driveways are getting shorter, almost non-existent with townhomes. So where do they set up their basketball court? A lot of times you drive through neighborhoods, the basketball court is on the side of the street. They can't play because the neighborhoods are connected and one street leads to another street to another street to somewhere else. So they constantly have to get out of the way or they can't really play their game because the streets aren't meant for that anymore. In neighborhoods that were built in the 70s and the 80s, neighborhoods were created for the people who lived there to be able to be affluent. There wasn't a connection to another neighborhood. There was a connection somewhere else. I grew up in such neighborhoods built in the 70s. And our neighborhood was cut off. There was land behind it. They built a subdivision and now you literally drive from Barbie Road straight down the street. It used to be only for our neighborhood connect to another neighborhood that is now on the back of Duke Medical Center, Walgreens, and now you're connected to Fayetteville Road and that's a cut through so much to a point where they actually had to install speed bumps. So I think that the graphs are great. I think that the studies are great, but I think there's a non-humanistic fact that is placed on these studies. I think that they're looking at if we increase this then people will want to drive less. That's not the case because who did they ask? It's like polling people for an election. And you ask, you say 75% of the people we polled and 75% of the poll say these people are going to vote this way, but nobody asked me. So that can't, that's not a fair representation. And I think that before we write this blank check that we want to have these walkable blocks, how much of an infrastructure are we going to put in? I walk a half mile to and from work every single day because there's a sidewalk provided, but the city doesn't maintain the sidewalk. So part of my walk is in the mud. I have a car. I could drive. I choose to walk weather permitting, but a lot of people don't make that choice to walk, even though they could. And there's a purpose in walking. Most people, if you were shopping for a family, you're not walking to the grocery store and then walk with massive bags back home with groceries for the family. And that's just not productive as far as the buses are concerned. Life-saving measures could be possible, but wouldn't be with connected neighborhoods, but wouldn't it be just as effective as we just had more emergency response locations so that they could respond from whatever avenue they may be coming from? And it seems to me the more that we've increased these walkable blocks and we've increased connectivity issues, we've had more pedestrian hit and runs or pedestrian accidents since we've increased the walkability because the cars just are, they're hitting people more. Like pedestrians aren't protected besides being on the sidewalk, but they've got to cross streets and they've got to do different things. So I would like to know more of the study of how many pedestrians or children have been hit in these connected neighborhoods. I would like to know what that impact is. How many people actually think that connected neighborhoods benefit them and their children? I would like to know the humanistic aspect and not just the numerical aspect or the data aspect of what it is we could possibly implement. And townhomes and things have a lot of increased traffic. People think townhomes are great and they kind of are, but shorter driveways and more houses on smaller lots, when people have people over, you've got a car parked halfway in the street and now, and that's on both sides. Now the street is so narrow, people can't freely travel in and out of their neighborhoods. Regardless of what the neighborhood side is, people are going to, they're going to go visit. And that's the thing that irritates me the most when I go visit my friends or other people because people don't use their garage, they use it for storage. So there's no car parked in there. So when people come over, they have nowhere to park besides on the street. But this is all meant to encourage walkability, but what about the rest of life that transpires? What about the data that is connected to whether or not these things are feasible and they're helpful because people aren't going to stop driving cars. Eventually they may fly. So I don't know what that type of parking space is going to look like according to the Jetsons, but there's always going to be a need for personal transportation. And that's going to always be a human consideration because it's a matter of convenience. So I just want to know outside of the data and the studies of traffic analysis and what this looks like and whatever's going on in Tennessee and different things, like what are the active studies of what it looks like in Durham, North Carolina? What is the polling of people in Durham, North Carolina look like for how people actually plan and consider before we start making these changes to give developers a blank text and considerations to come in and just develop and just do these massive connected neighborhoods that increase people's abilities to drive through these neighborhoods to get to various different places. They're not going to obey the speed limit. They're not going to have consideration of people traveling in that area on foot, crossing the street, otherwise it's just not going to happen. So those are my thoughts. Thank you, Carmen. You covered a lot of ground. And I think one thing that it highlights is our capacity. We're not, as a small group, we're not making comprehensive changes, which would make all of this, I think, we would have a vision of everything that's happening and all the pieces that fit together. And the fact that we're tackling one small piece at a time, I think, makes it much, much more difficult to see how they all fit together. So that's something I definitely want to be sensitive to. And I definitely want to be sensitive to, you mentioned a blank check for developers a couple of times. And I definitely want to be sensitive to that because I don't want us to do that. And I don't think that that's what we're here to do. And I don't think that that's what is part of this first small initiative that we're tackling, which is making some of these minor modifications to the connectivity and street length. But I want to think a little bit more about those issues that you brought up. And I want us to continue to discuss those. Austin, did you have thoughts? Another time I'm mostly just taking in all of the different thoughts. You know, we have this system that we built over the past several decades, and it's a behemoth to pivot away from that. And so I think, you know, there's a lot of good points about the amount of culture change that comes with a policy change like this. Yeah, I, you know, I come at this from a planar's perspective as well, Nate. So of course, I have that kind of like inherent like, yeah, walkability. But I think that is why having multiple perspectives on this committee is really valuable, because I appreciate comment and Tom bringing this back to like the groundedness of how people experience this. It's a valid consideration. It's a tricky one. I did also just want to note that one of our participants, Mimi Kessler, has her hand raised in the chat. I don't know how we're handling that, but wanted to bring everyone's attention to that. Yeah, sure. Yeah, let's, let's um, we're a little, let's go ahead and recognize Mimi and let her there. Yeah. Hello. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Can you hear me okay? Good. Yes. So I think that one of the issues is that if we don't make communities walkable, then for sure nobody's going to walk or if they do, it's dangerous. And so maybe we just want people to you know, just be more active, even if they don't, if, even if they don't leap to, oh, I could walk to work or I could bike to work or I could bike to the grocery store instead of driving my car. It's, it's a, it's a progressive process to change behavior. And so while we may want in the future for people to live near their work so that they can walk or bike there, you know, that's a good goal. But for sure, if we don't build walkability into the plans, then nobody's going to walk not even for recreation. And I lived in a neighborhood outside Atlanta that was exactly the way you described. There was one way in and one way out. And it was a very small development. And in order for me to actually walk other than kind of around in circles, I had to get in the car and go someplace to walk, which always annoyed me. And so I like the fact that now I live in a place where I can walk for miles. If I want to, I don't choose to walk to the grocery store, but it could, you know, and, and I just think that it's, it's important to not think that, you know, you build a walkable neighborhood and all of a sudden people aren't going to drive their cars. I also want to say that the Carmen, Carmen's point about, you know, making streets and neighborhoods safe for children to play around their houses is an important one. It was one of the things that I wanted when I had a small child was to live on a cul-de-sac because you wouldn't have through traffic. And then her example of someplace of a street that wasn't through traffic and became, so it completely changed the neighborhood. So I think that there has to be some balance between these types of configurations so that there might be a few cul-de-sacs, but not all cul-de-sacs. And, and I do think that it's sidewalks on both sides of the street are really important. And the part of Trinity Park that I live on, live in, there are no, there are no sidewalks at all. And, and the way that the, the streets have been paved is such that in order for me to walk without, without injuring myself, I have to walk down the middle of my street to get to any kind of flat ground. And when I walk on the, on the sides, it's just so, the grade is so steep that it's uncomfortable. So it's all about balance and nothing's going to happen overnight. And I, but I really want to say that I think that walkability needs to be planned for even if we can't get people to walk to the grocery store and to walk. Thank you very much. Thank you Mimi. I really appreciate that. Sorry if there was some, some sound there. Okay. So we're a little bit behind in the agenda, but I don't want to, I don't want to cut anyone off if anyone else feels like they have something to say on this topic. I just want to make sure that we have enough time, especially while Carmen is still on the phone, to bring back up the amendments that we looked at in our last meeting. So I'm going to go ahead and share the screen. Can folks see that? Yes. All right. Excellent. So the last time we met, I shared this with you all and it is the same draft. I made a one change since we last met. And that change is a result of a conversation that I had with Tim Sivers, who, as you all know, is someone who we very frequently see from the private sector, who, who is constantly working on new sub new reasonings and subdivisions in the suburban tier. He was, he was actually comfortable with the street block length and block perimeter piece, but he was uncomfortable. If you recall, if you can see where I'm highlighting, the 1.4, he was uncomfortable with the change of 1.4 to 1.6. And he suggested either not increasing it or increasing in it by to 1.5 or 1.55 and expanding the definition of connection. And so what I have proposed here, and I haven't heard back from him on this, but what I proposed here is adding a second paragraph, keeping this first paragraph the same and adding a second paragraph that is essentially the same, except that it adds alleys and 10 foot wide multi-use pads to achieve a connectivity ratio of 1.5. And so you can either meet the connectivity ratio of 1.5 by your street network, or you can meet it with alleys with additional alleys or multi-use paths. So it adds a lot of flexibility. It just moderately changes the 1.5, the 1.4 issue. I would consider it a favor if you could enlarge the text a little bit. There you go. Thank you. That's enough. That really helps. So this is the one change that was made since our last meeting. And I think you all had a hard copy of the draft from our last meeting still. Nothing else has changed. This is the only thing that's changed since that draft. And at the end of our last meeting, I asked folks if they would send me any edits that they were interested in. And I did not hear back, but we are also having this conversation so that we can think through anything else that would make us more comfortable with this draft. So I'm just going to leave this up for now, and we can think about it. Have you sent us this modified version of the draft? No. What we're looking at now is the only modification from the last year. But it's brand new. This is the first time we're seeing this. Yes. Could you send this to us? Because I'm so fashion. I prefer to print it and then write all over it. Absolutely. I will share this one. Thank you. Can you scroll through? Oh, I'm sorry. Michael wants to send this one clarification. So number two, what you wrote in red is meant to replace number one. Is that correct? You'd cross out number one and replace it with number two. No. So no. So it's actually in addition to the first paragraph. So the first paragraph says the street network including common access driveways permitted in paragraph rule driveways for any subdivision with internal roads or access to any public road shall achieve a minimum connectivity ratio of 1.4 and all tiers except the rural. So that remains the same. You still have to achieve the 1.4. The paragraph number two is the street network included common access driveways alleys and 10 foot wide multi-use paths for any subdivision with internal roads or access to any public road shall achieve a minimum connectivity ratio of 1.5. And the reason why it's added and not replacing is so that a developer couldn't come and have a connectivity ratio of 1.3, for example, and then achieve the 1.5 by having a whole bunch of multi-use paths. So it's actually not very different from what exists today. It just moderately increases the connectivity ratio and adds a little bit of flexibility for how to increase the connectivity ratio. And when I went back and forth with Tim Cybers on this one, he, at least in our emails, he was comfortable with that concept. He hasn't seen this exact language. So I don't want to say that he's comfortable with this exact language. Nate, is it your intention that one and two should work as alternatives? It's the intention that they would work together. So you would achieve the 1.4 for your streets in order to achieve the 1.5. You would either achieve it with streets or you would also have the option of multi-use paths or alleys. In other words, but it's if I don't have multi-use paths and alleys and those kinds of things, then I'm stuck with one and I've got to hit a 1.4. If you don't have those things, then you have to hit 1.5 with your streets. Okay. Michael and I are sharing a problem here. It's not clear to me how these work together. And so I think we need some language that explains how they work together. I'm sorry, Tom. I didn't mean to cut you off. I want to hear what you have to say. I was saying, is your ultimate goal, Nate, to get to 1.5 but offering these different ways to get to 1.5? That's right. So I think then number two would do it. I'm not characterizing one way or the other whether this is a good way to go, but just for sake of clarification, if the goal is to get to 1.5, then just say 1.5 is your minimum and then here are the ways to get to 1.5. I agree because having them together without explaining how they relate to each other has me scratching my head. Okay. Yeah. As long as there's not a concern, Michael, that you would be seeing potentially even when it comes to streets by themselves seeing lower connectivity and then developers using other means of achieving that connectivity. That was the only thing I wanted to avoid. Well, that's a different thing then. I think it needs to be fleshed out. I think this needs to be fleshed out. So I'm going to go ahead and file that in the we need to change this category. The other option is to leave it the same, which is a viable option. I think that you can achieve a good connectivity purely through block length and block perimeter standards. So I'm not wed to the idea. I think honestly, this encourages without requiring alleys and multiuse paths. So that's the benefit here. So I would actually be comfortable with deleting it if other folks wanted to do that. But I want to jump ahead to back to the street block length and block perimeter standards. This was something that Tim mentioned he was fine with. As he mentioned, the only thing he was concerned with was the connectivity ratio. So this is tested. So this isn't something that I just drafted up like the other one. This is tested and exists in other communities. And this one allows a little bit more flexibility than you would typically see just because it has a maximum average block length and a maximum block length. And then the maximum block perimeter. And it has it in table form so you can change the way that it's regulated based on what zoning district or tier or whatever you wanted to use to categorize these things, whatever you wanted to use there. And then of course, importantly, the exception. So when can we violate our own standards? In what cases is that okay? Obviously, I think streams is a pretty key one that comes up very frequently. These are all very frequent and important to include as exceptions. I don't think we want to get rid of any of these. One thing that we changed during our last meeting was this had been drafted as planning commission. We changed the planning department just to simplify it. Subdivisions are approved at the staff level. So I think that makes it a little bit easier for everyone. Well, except for go back. Yeah. So it really doesn't because this this envisions discretionary decision making without a procedure. And North Carolina is strict on this. And I think it needs to be written as by right. I think we need to think this through. And the other thing is too is I raised this last time with regard to a in the same section. We need to make clear that we're talking about new developments because I'm concerned that we are if we create block link standards and then superimpose them on previously developed subdivisions or neighborhoods that we creating nonconformities without explaining what the consequence of the nonconformity is. And I think you can just do that by making divisions of time saying, you know, after for new residential developments after a certain point. But the B thing worries me a little bit in that because it's it says the city may approve. Well, by what procedure do they approve and who who is the approving body? I mean, Tom, Tom, I agree. I think his intent is to make it the by right kind of list like right there. There's one in there already for the stub out provisions at this just pretty much mimics. And it would just be just a slight rewording to make it clear that way. All right, very good. I'm comfortable. I'm comfortable with that. I believe that that's his intent. All right, I'm comfortable with that too. And I think this is all a really good idea. Can you scroll down a little bit, Nate? So, well, I don't know. I don't want to jump ahead of people. I just become patient when I can't see it all. We're at the very end. So, that's that's it. I think we can fix all of this. And you know what I think would be useful. So, when do you see, Nate, when is this when are these who's going to see this? In other words, is I think of the places where we make decisions discretionary and otherwise in the development process. We do not see very many subdivisions come in with legacy single family zones anymore. We may see a little we do occasionally get a rezoning here or there. We've had a couple in my time on the planning commission where we've gone from RS 10 to RS 20. We do see a little of that, but mostly it's PDR and we're seeing development plan zoning. Where in the process do we evaluate a subdivision? If we set this up so that it is by right and of course another way of saying by right is that it's mandatory, then we don't need to see it because we know it's going to be there. And of course, because the developer is the one that has his as his compass in his protractor out, he can probably manipulate his design to avoid block links by taking advantage of the presence of A through F. But I don't see any way around that. So it may be that it'll never come up in when we evaluate a reason and a rezoning to a development plan residential development. I'll have to think that through a little bit. So if we set this up right, we can just assume that all projects are going to meet this standard and they're not going to have to show anything on the development plan that they're meeting the standard because it's there. Thank you for letting me think out loud. Yeah. And of course, that was one of the motivations here is that we're seeing a lot of commitments now by the developer for 650 or whatever, 700. And so that's just become increasingly frequent. And so I think we should just write it into the regulations and not not have to worry about it anymore. So that's that's one thing. So yeah, so I think that we're I think we're close. I think that we're close on this. And I want to hear Carmen, I know that you had to leave at 630. Are you still there? If you are, I would like to hear any last thoughts that you have. I need to see if I can see her. Yeah, I'm still here. Okay. Carmen, do you have thoughts before you leave? Yeah. I think that having a structured plan actually a go by a step by step. If you do this, then this is what makes it possible. I'm not actually looking at the diagram but hearing it and what Tom statements were as well as yours, looking at the entire situation and knowing that 1.5 is the goal, which you can achieve 1.5 by plus or minus of 1.2 or 1.3. Even I think that that is helpful, because it's not a blank set. It is. If you do this, then we can give you leeway on that. But if you don't do any of these things, then pretty much don't bring that to us or don't even think about developing. So I think that it is an excellent starting point and it seems like it has enough structure that it's hard for it to be refuted, but it also if worded flexibly enough, it can be applicable to both existing neighborhoods and residents for their understanding as well as new developers for implementation. And I think that that is a lot of what we lack in our current climate of development within Durham and how things work and how developers approach. And I can say that because I've actually looked at a couple of developers and they prefer to build in Durham because we have less regulations in opposed to Raleigh or Chapel Hill in terms of how they can go about building and it's just easier. And people not knowing that I'm a sitting member of the planning commission when they say that to me, it bothers me, but I think that this goes about the right way if for lack of a better definition or example of setting up a blueprint of how you should operate and think about developing before you go to the drawing table. And in short and sweet, I like it. Awesome. Thank you, Carmen. Thanks for those thoughts. And I understand, you know, you mentioned you have to leave soon. So hope you can stay as long as possible, but we understand that you have to leave a little bit early. Austin, did you have any thoughts? I think this is a good step in the right direction. And I don't know exactly how we do it, but I like the idea of increasing that ratio. I see that what it seems to be is that the intent there is that if you strip away any alleys and multiple use paths and just have the street network, then they have to reach this 1.4, but they can add the extra ones to reach 1.5. I think increasing that standard is a worthwhile venture. I could almost see just having number two instead of number one. But yeah, I think this is all good progress in the right direction. I appreciate all your work on it as well. Yeah, those are all the comments I have right now. Cool. Thank you, Austin. So I have a couple of questions. So one is just a technical question. When we create stubs to neighboring properties that are not there yet, in other words, they're just stubs, are do those count as links under our current way of counting? Yes, there are a connection to another property as a link. Right. And so I guess I want to be thoughtful because when we change this ratio, that I want to make sure that we don't create, work around some tricks. In other words, just by creating links that are unlikely to be there. In other words, if I don't want to create a better connected subdivision, I can just run a couple of links over to the property next door, which may or may not ever be developed. But it allows me then to develop on the inside of my own property in a way that's not very connected. So I think I want to anticipate get around some tricks. Not that those are necessarily tricks, but I can see that. And I'm reminded of the thing we did over on Docknickles Road where there was literally a 25-foot difference in topography to one of the, I mean, that just, that should have been anticipated and not allowed from the beginning. And maybe we need to be more specific about what our standards are for these required links, where you can have them and where we don't want people to create them. Because false links in order to manipulate the ratio is something that worries me a little bit, especially if you create a by-right standard. So that was my technical question. I guess the other thing is, if we push this forward, is it a good idea at the same time to create, to go into the comprehensive plan at the appropriate place and modify language there that backs up this change? I don't know whether that's necessary. I haven't thought about it, but it seems to me, especially when it comes to helping the Planning Commission and the City Council and the Board of County Commissioners from evaluating what's good and what's not so good, it would be nice if we had some policy that anticipated this. It may be there, quite frankly, already, because I could see a developer actually commit to a higher ratio in order to make his rezoning application more attractive. I don't know. I just throw those things out there. I think we ought to- Real quick, Tom. Just on that last part, Policy 2.4.2B connectivity through the unified development ordinance encouraged that new development and redevelopment provide internal and external pedestrian vehicular connectivity within and between individual development sites to provide alternative means of access. Yeah, but it's one of those through-the-udio things. It's just time to get rid of those. I mean, we built into our last iteration of the Comprehensive Plan some things which some people read as to-do lists rather than expressing policy choice related to the to-do list. I would like to get rid of the to-do list aspect of the Comprehensive Plan and just state the policies that we favor. Because when we say through the to-do, that could be as we need to fix the to-do, that so it does that, but it also has a policy choices is that we want connectivity. We want it according to a certain standard. I would like to separate out the to-do list quality of the policy statement so that our Comprehensive Plan doesn't have to be shaded in places. Yeah, so maybe we ought to go in there and massage that a little bit. If we're working on the UDO, then we probably ought to back up to the Comprehensive Plan and look at the wording there too. I don't see a policy shift. I see a shift in the way we state the policy. I just throw that out there. So I think this is good and actually kind of exciting. So thank you. Thank you for your work on this. Thank you, Tom. So I've got five more minutes on this agenda item because I don't want to keep people longer than we said we would. And so the next thing I want to talk about with regard to these particular amendments is what are our next steps? And we talked about this at the very beginning in our very first committee meeting. How do we actually do this? Because this is not really very common for there to be a planning commission committee that is proactively looking at UDO amendments. We're empowered through the UDO to do it, but it's not very common. And I certainly have never seen it before. So kind of like the experience of this is not there. So one thing that Sarah Young had brought up in that first meeting was, and I'll call it option A, is to essentially be a third party and fill in an application and send it into the plan department and go through that process in that way. I think this is the best way to do it. I think that it keeps the planning department working with us. We can continue to work through these small changes. Generally, what I'm hearing from this committee is, yes, we like where this is at. We think that we need to massage some of the language, but we like where it is. And so I think that that's a good route. Option B, I think, is slightly different and probably not the option that we want to use in this case, which would be to take the language to the full body of the planning commission and essentially have the planning commission endorse the process to move it forward in that way. So essentially like adopting a resolution saying we want to move forward with these amendments. So I would think that option A would be a better option. I disagree with you, Nate. I don't think the planning commission can create a committee that has the authority to proceed independently. I think that we need to get this in form and then we need to take it to the full body, defend it there or explain it and defend it there. And then if the full body agrees that it should go forward, then we fill out the form and jump through the procedures. I believe the statutes and even our own ordinances say that it is the planning commission that advises not some subdivision of the planning commission that the planning commission has created for its own convenience. I mean, I believe in the committee and I believe what the committee is doing is important and I believe it's got to be done in the committee form because the whole planning commission has its own workload and agenda that it needs to attend to and it cannot, a committee of 14 on something like this in my opinion can't spend the time, but a committee of four or five can, but it becomes valid only if the planning commission does it because it is the planning commission that has the advisory authority in the scheme that is contemplated by our statutes. And I think it's cumbersome and it's the hard way to go. I mean, and it has the it's the thing where the planning commission will send it forward and then it'll come back to the planning commission for public hearing and all of that and that may seem a little disingenuous, but I think that's the way it's got to happen. If all that accomplishes is more public scrutiny than I'm for that too. So I do I would like to make sure that as we work on these and I realize this is the first one and with this first one we are essentially macheting our way through the jungle that we make sure that we bring along at the earliest possible point the stakeholders who are going to have to live with it. In other words, I'm glad that you went to Tim Cyvers and I think there's a point where when we bring this to that degree of rightness that it needs to be looked at again because I think we're fooling ourselves if we think we can get a planning commission change to the UDO through that the development community is lined up against with arguments that may or may not make sense, but if one of them is that how did it get this far without us being involved? I really don't want to be involved in a process where I have to overcome that argument. It's an argument that I make all the time and I think it's a legitimate one. So B is harder, but I think B is the way and I don't know how the staff feels about that, but that's the way I feel about it. Tom, you know it always pains me to say this, but I totally agree with you. I think, yeah, only the planning commission can whisper and lie down later. I know. I think only the planning commission has, the full commission only has the authority to take an action like that. Sorry, Nate, I can't remember exactly what Sarah said at that meeting months ago. I don't even remember when that was. Months ago. Just hearing everything that's gone on today, I think it would have to go, B have to be option A plus option B basically. I do remember what Sarah said and I think what we were talking about is what's the procedure? And I think she was thinking, not so much about, I think she was thinking about what is the process, in other words, do we fill out the forms? And the answer she said was yes, because even the planning staff, when it proposes changes like in an omnibus, it fills out the forms. I don't think she was necessarily addressing the question of whether or not we would be working as an independent committee or the planning commission, the full planning commission. But maybe she was. Brian. Thanks. And this is probably more a question for staff. So I wasn't at that very first meeting. This was, I think, months and months ago, but is there a third option as well, which might be something like it comes to the full planning commission, they deliberate on it, and they could even then pass a resolution that would ask the staff to include it in the next round of updates and potentially send something on to the governing bodies indicating our support. I'm just trying to figure out what are the various options we have at our disposal and try to think from a staff perspective, what's going to be the easiest for you? Is option B, as we've just been talking about, the easiest or is there a different another way to think about this as well? Yeah, I'll say, and when Nate says it's not that common, I will fully agree with that too. If never it is not very common, then this is probably how you would describe this. So I think I mentioned this last time, we're kind of making this up as we go. I like the machete in the jungle analogy though, Tom. I think it's all various degrees of the same thing. I think what we would ask is that you all could act like a private applicant for a text amendment and just kind of advocate for it. And we can work out the exact details of what Forbes you have to fill out and how it works. I think this is significant enough of a policy change that I wouldn't want to include it in the omnibus updates. That's right. That was going to be my comment. We might at the future propose some things that could for convenience be bundled into an omnibus. But for something like what we're talking about here, and I believe that something that I mean, the committee is here to is to is to not reproduce the work of staff in the technical changes, the necessity for which must manifest themselves from time to time, but to get into the policy questions. And so I like said, I don't see us tacking on to the omnibus, because I think it spoils the ability of the staff to say that these are primarily technical. So let me just let me just briefly mention why I broke it into option A and option B. Option A, I think was more of a this is not a planning commission initiated amendment. This is a amendment that's proposed coming out of us. And really, it's essentially drafted drafted by, you know, the planning department. And then, you know, the committee and the planning department work together. And then and then the planning commission, the full body would would see, you know, what what came out of that discussion between the staff and this body and and this committee. Whereas option B is, you know, it's planning commission initiated. This is what we want to see. This is the direction that we want to go. And so those are, you know, I think that's that's what one thing that Sarah had mentioned to me earlier, you know, again, months ago, was, can we work together? And I think there are some amendments that we might work on that staff is like, we don't really want those, but the planning commission says we do want these. And then it, you know, then we as a committee could say, Hey, let's bring the planning commission, planning commission, you know, says, you know, staff, we want to work on these on something like this that's a little bit smaller, where I think that it probably falls in line with the with interests that that the planning department has, you know, it could just be something where the plan department says, okay, we're we're going to go ahead and work with you to draft this. It's not, it's not planning commission initiated. So I think that that's why I broke it into option A and option B. But if you, Tom and staff, if you think that it's and Brian, if you all think that it's better to bring our own drafted version to planning commission, then planning commission essentially adopt by resolution, you know, we want to work with we want to work on, you know, moving this forward. I think that, you know, I'm open to that. I think it's a little bit, you know, that's something to think about. I think that option A is contrary to good order. And I believe that B is, again, I don't believe that the planning commission can create a subgroup that had that operates independently. I just don't think that's the way we ought to be doing it. And I mean, if we do it with a planning commission resolution, it doesn't mean that we're working to get staff or anything like that. I know that we can't all work pulled together. As a matter of fact, if we got so far as devoting on a resolution and staff had serious objections, I would certainly want to make sure that we aired those. I know that if I was a planning commission member, and I was not on this committee, I would not want to be surprised by what a planning commission committee was doing. And so I do think that that we as a committee, we need to report out to the organization that created us. And I feel pretty strongly about that. And again, we'll figure out the rest of it as we go on. But the more we do deliberately, step by step, and in the light of day, I think we'll have a better product, and we will have a greater likelihood of success at the end of having our product adopted. That's just kind of the way I feel about it. And Tom, you're an important part of this committee. And so I think that we need to I'm a very short feather. The sands in my hourglass are running out for Dorothy. Okay, so yeah, Austin. Yeah, I just wanted to quickly just add on and say, yeah, I agree. I think option B is likely the best route. I think that doesn't mean we don't ever use option A. I could see there being times and we may just need to be flexible and use discretion with that. But I think the advantage of option B to me is especially around messaging. And by having that initial resolution, we go ahead and highlight to everyone, developers and the community that hates this coming. And I think by making it a planning commission led activity, it also does help increase our cloud, especially when it comes to our relationship with elected officials to say, hey, we as a planning commission are taking steps to direct the way Durham develops. The catch 22 of this that I can foresee is we just need to be really good at messaging like, hey, we're not voting on a UDO event tonight for voting on our resolution that we like this concept. Because I can imagine the first time we do this, people showing up saying, why is this, where did this come from? So I think we just need to make sure we're very clear about that since we are creating a canoe process. Thanks, Austin. Brian. Yeah, thanks, Nate. I would just piggyback on what Austin said. And, you know, I'm always, I know we all deal with this tension. I feel it a lot of this, you want to do it fast when you're talking about these kind of changes. And yet you also do want to do it right. And so my instinct and recommendation is especially this first time to Austin's point, is we might even think about having two meetings, like we've talked about staff has talked about the comprehensive plan where there's a first meeting where we bring this forward and we talk about it. And we, and some of this to help with the planning commissioners that haven't sat in on these meetings. But I think in particular, I think it's important, as Thomas said, for the broader development community to have the opportunity to hear about this. And again, we could work with staff to figure out, you know, do we have to have a public hearing and then continue it. But doing something that allows us to be able to give the community significant time to hear about it, absorb it, understand it, give us that input. And then we have a vote that would be the resolution to support it to send it forward. But, but I think it's better for us since this is apparently never happened in Durham before. I really want to make sure we get this right. And to show that kind of transparency that we often ask from other applicants that come forward. The challenge is it's just going to take a little while. Yeah. So my question to you all is, what, which planning commission meeting should we bring it to and what do you what do we need to do between now and then? You know, that may be a staff question to start that the December meeting may already be set. Yeah, I think the December meeting Horts is out of the barn. So it probably have to be January at the earliest. It's certainly you could definitely make an announcement about it. I mean, you don't need to have that on the agenda. But to have something that the commission actually discusses, I think we'd have to wait till January. We're not ready yet. We don't have the language. I mean, I see us having another meeting to to look at final language. I realized that some people are meeting a verse and perhaps I have a perverse liking of meetings, but I believe that we do better work. I see the next thing is is that at least a couple of us, maybe with bouncing it off staff, work on text. And then we meet again. So I guess we're are we still on three C in our agenda? Yes. Okay, that's the way I see it going forward. And unless somebody explains to me what the hurry is, I don't see any reason for hurry. I've got plenty of things to panic about in my life. And I really don't want to add this. Okay, Nate, I guess a question for staff and Michael and Scott, you may not know the answer now, but it would probably be good for us to know what what's the deadline you need something ready to make sure we get on the January meeting agenda, just so we don't miss that opportunity. Yeah, we'll check with Sarah and Grace. I know we have internal deadlines. We won't, which are kind of obnoxious. So we won't hold you to that. But there's definitely we definitely it's a it's a big effort to put that agenda together. So it'll need to be a couple weeks in advance that'll let you know. Right. And it also kind of like, like, what are are you planning to present to the planning commission as a whole? Are you going with more of, you know, here are the concepts we're looking at here. Here's the current conditions. Here's the current or is we see issues with x, y and z. So we're proposing text amendments to address x, y and z. We have some ideas, but we'll bring it back to you. But we want a blessing to go forth and then do this more work. Or are you planning on bringing them almost a complete document with still some minor tweaking that might be necessary and then hoping for adoption? I think these are good questions. In other words, is getting on the planning commission agenda? Does this mean that there has to be a report? And then if there is a report, what are its elements and who creates it? I would like to think with something like this, we would have reasonably finalized text that we had thought through and a memorandum of a couple of pages explaining it. And that we would create it, but that we would ask the staff to comment on it before we finalized it. We have to remember that staff are our partners in the playing process, but they're not our staff. And so when we ask them to do work, it's a request, not an assignment. And I would like to keep that to a minimum. But I also don't want to go over the cliff if a friendly hand from the staff can stop us. So I do think that we will have to divide up some chores here as we go forward. But again, it would be great to hit that January meeting. But if we didn't, like I said, I'm not going to cry. So I think the next step is to massage the text and get it a little bit better. And then we can assign out some tasks. If we are going to massage the text, who among us should be doing that? And what's a reasonable deadline for completing the work? I mean, I'm willing to work with, because it's Nate's idea. This one is. I'm willing to work with Nate on that a little bit and maybe to get it done. Our meeting in January is what day? Does anybody know? 12th. The 12th. Is it reasonable to think that we might have the text done by the 20th of December? I don't know. What do you think? The 20th is being a Sunday. That's three weeks from now. What about maybe the 15th? We could get a version of the text and then meet again or maybe just circulate it. I hate circulating stuff because then we're not where the public can see us. I mean, a certain amount of work has to be done behind the scenes. But we're not counting votes in Michigan. I have to say doing stuff in December is very difficult. It is very difficult. I was just thinking that as I was throwing the dates out. The mail out, if you just want to go by agenda mail out, I was looking at the calendar. That's on December 30th. I think it's really what role you want staff in also at this juncture, too. You guys are talking about generating a lot of the work, which is fine. But what role do you want staff or do you expect staff to be in? January might be pushing it a little bit based upon. I agree. Let's shoot for February. Give yourself some breathing room. I agree. And that, Nate, you may have wanted to get this done faster. But I believe let's shoot for the February agenda and then have one more committee meeting to talk about this at some point. Because I agree it's very hard to get stuff done in December, even in a COVID year when we're all stuck at home. At extended time, I might also enable us to go ahead and start drafting the memorandum ahead of time. So then we can also have everyone's eyes on that before that committee meeting, or at least like a drafty draft version of it. And there's nothing wrong with talking about it, having a discussion item, even just a brief discussion item with the planning commission on previous meetings, to just maybe just a very basic informational item to give them a heads up as to what's coming along too. So that might be valuable in and of itself. Yeah, actually had an observation about that when we reached our agenda item number four. Yeah, after our last meeting, Brian asked that I call together a timeline, which is obviously very difficult to do, given that we're figuring out what we're doing in general. So I threw something together, and it probably will not at all work out this way. But I'm happy to share it if you all think that it's worth, you know, our very last agenda item won't take us any time at all. So I think that we can maybe look at this. So I'm going to bring it up. All right, we'll can see that. So basically in our last meeting, we had talked very high level about some potential topics that we could work on, some potential things that we could work on, of course, based on the survey that was done and about the comprehensive plan and other things. So we're currently working on the street connectivity and block link. I shot in November through January. Might need to bump that back to February. And that's specifically for this committee. That's not thinking about, you know, the additional work that would happen through the planning commission. The pedestrian and transit oriented building design standards, I think we'll push that back from what I have here December through March. Green building standards, revised the suburban tier walkable zoning districts, putting together policy memorandum and a public park dedication standards. And then also Tom had brought up another topic that I think would fit well within the policy memorandum. So this is sort of all of the different issues that we spent time talking about in our last committee meeting. So one thing, you know, I don't want to spend, I don't want to spend too much time thinking about the actual months in here. You know, we've already talked about these topics. This is very, just very high level at this point. But one thing I do want to do is get on a planning commission agenda to provide an update on where we are on this committee. You know, we've had, we will have had four meetings. You know, I would like to bring our charge to the commission and show that to everyone. I would like to tell them what we have done so far, and I would like to show them the kind of work that we're doing. And we still have slots on this committee. You know, we could still take in more commissioners at this point. So I also want to make that known and allow any other commissioners that want to join this committee to join. And so if anyone has thoughts on that, to open it up to discussion. So I guess seeing your timeline. So I see the committee as a standing committee, or if it's not a standing committee, a committee that is, can create its own workload within a broad charge about initiating changes. But and it can receive, I say it like a legislative committee functioning that way is that it can originate business. And it can also receive business because I can, I can see us working on a case where it, where it occurs to people on the, on the planning commission is here's a problem. And we probably ought to send this to the policy committee. So and so if it's going to be a committee that's either standing or one that doesn't have a termination date because it can originate its own work. Then I think we should, if not every month, every other month have just a standard line item for a report by the chairman of this committee. It can be a brief report. And I suppose there will be times when there will be a significant report. Like the February report we're anticipating with this particular UDO change. But I think that everybody on the planning commission should, should be, have some familiarity with the committee and be comfortable with the idea that we're working in committees. And the only way to do that is to report from time to time. And also the same goes with the public. Because if the committee's successful, it becomes part of the institution of the planning commission. And once it is, it becomes part of that institution, then there will arise public expectations with regard to its performance. All of these things are good. But I think they have to be managed carefully because we want the public to have confidence in it and not to be disappointed because we have stumbled or we have been negligent. Thank you, Tom. One question I have about the timeline is I'm just imagining and thinking through this process of a student resolution at going to staff if it's assuming it passes or whatever. And then presumably during that time it's with staff. We're working with staff to put like finishing touches on it and make sure the language is good. And so my concern there is if we have these resolutions to back to back to back, we could end up with like lots of overlap where there are some of these previous amendments still waking their way through staff while we're also trying to create new ones. I know you said that the months aren't like very stringent. So maybe that's what you have in mind there is keeping those kind of just those guidelines. But I did just want to fight that because it seems like there's definitely a potential for the workload for the committee to increase and decrease depending on how everything lines up. Yeah. And I agree that I was just going to say before you brought it up, Nate, I think it's definitely time for a report back to the full commission. And I would say based on our current pace, I think quarterly updates make sense to me. We've done four meetings now and I think we've made enough progress in those four meetings to have enough to report back on so that it's not just a two-minute, hey, we met a few times. So yeah, that would be my recommendation there. Okay, Brian, do you think that we can get on the December? We're not an agenda. We don't have to put together a memorandum. I can just present on what we've done so far. Yeah, I'll reach out to the staff and try to get us on in advance. And then I can also circle back and give you a sense of how many cases do we have and how much time do we think we have and all of that. I would say, though, I have a different perspective and I'm sorry I got booted. So I missed some of what Tom was saying and I came back in the middle of what Austin was saying. The reason I was asking to think about having an end date for this committee, I actually, I may be just saying this as the chair, I am concerned about creating a standing committee that is already cycling through people and will cycle through people again. I mean, knowing Tom is term limited and each of us have different terms. My preference would be that I think committees work best, especially in the planning commission, when we've had a very discreet assignment. But I think it could be two things. I think it could be one, bringing back this first transfer of work. And the second could actually be to say, and here's a recommendation for additional pieces of work that we would like to tackle, but we would then be able to create and disband, if you will, actual distinct committees that could be the green infrastructure committee. And then that way commissioners can sign up when they know they can complete this assignment and take on a distinct piece of work. I think that would be a better way, especially with all the turnover on the planning commission, to go about it that way. I was initially just thinking it would be one piece of work, but Nate, seeing your timeline, I actually like the idea of this committee. This committee has looked at it. And maybe that's a future agenda item is this committee might say, here are five more things we'd like to see the planning commission tackle. But that would end this phase of work. And then we could create additional committees and people could join knowing, okay, I want to do the green infrastructure thing, but I don't want to do the other thing. And that way we're getting the right people at the right time to do this discreet piece of work. Let's just not have all those committees like happening at the same time. I think one at a time for the staff perspective. Just to update you with, you will be getting your agendas very soon. I think they go out tomorrow. There's four cases, right? Well, there's four cases plus an informational item. That's what Grace told us. So you probably have a pretty, yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's time for just a brief mention, but you do have a pretty full agenda. And some of the cases. Yeah, Brian, I think it's a great point. And I'm just brainstorming off of that. Some of the thoughts that came up when you were talking about that, I think a benefit of that is that it does get more people involved over time and ensures that it's not just May Austin, Tom and Carmen over and over again coming and bringing our vision of Durham or whatnot. The flip side of that is that I could imagine. The flip side of that is that since we are creating this new process, there is obviously we have the staff's institutional knowledge of how this process occurs. But there is some risk that there's confusion of what the process is. So I don't know. I am obviously a fan of committees and boards. And so I tend to overcomplicate things in my mind, but it almost makes me wonder, does there need to be some kind of committee that like a policy committee that is saying, here's the structure that is managing like that piece of the process for how to go through proposing new UDO amendments. Maybe they meet less frequently because of that, but they just have that kind of like variable structure. This is the process. And one of those members serves on one of the like specific committees on a new proposed amendment so that there's some kind of liaison there, making sure that everyone's in the know about the process. Even just saying that that's overly complicated in my mind, but I'm trying to think of walking this balance and making sure that, you know, folks are not confused every time a new committee gets started. Yeah. Yeah, I think my recommendation, Austin, is I've served on other boards in Durham where they they they never end a committee. And then suddenly there's as many committees as members. And I mean, I'm not even making that up. But I think in this case, I think your point would what I would hope is that some some of you on this committee would be ready and willing to serve on the next committee. I think Tom, we've been so fortunate having time on the planning commission because Tom, I believe the serve on every committee that we have set up over the last two years. And it's truly remarkable. The rest of us would serve on one and then say, I'm out, you know, I gave what I could for three months. But but I do hope that I think having that continuity would be really important. I know we're going to lose some continuity, huge continuity when when Tom cycles off in June. And we may have others who cycle off to I'm not even sure. But I'm responsible for incontinuity. And I don't think we have to decide that tonight. I think it's good just to start talking about it. Okay. All right. Okay, so we need to massage the language, um, get it to a place where we're comfortable. We're going to aim for the February 12 planning commission to have the planning commission essentially it and we'll have to put together resolution in a memo, but essentially have the planning commission less the the draft of the draft that then goes back to staff that will then go through the process of the text amendments go through coming back to the planning commission and all the other recommendation bodies and decision making bodies that are required. So our next step is to I will people please send me comments. I will be working with Tom, I think working with staff will try and get it to a place where we're comfortable. And then it sounds like where we landed was we want to have another policy committee meeting to look at that massage draft or are we comfortable just kind of sharing it out once we get there and hearing back and then, you know, moving forward from there. I just want to make sure that we're on the same page there. Tom, did you have feelings about that? Whether we need to meet again with this text? I think we should I think we should have a December meeting. Okay, then we'll we'll meet again. We'll meet again and I will go ahead and send send us something out to you all and to staff to find a date that works for everybody in this in this holiday season. And with that, we are finishing up our meeting 10 minutes early. And if anyone has any final thoughts, I'd like to hear them now. Otherwise, we can end this meeting with with some of the some of the next steps that we already know we need to take. Are we good? Okay. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, Mimi. Thanks, staff. Thank you, planning commissioners really appreciate everyone joining and being a part of this conversation and trading new trading new ground. So happy thanks. Keep working and yeah, happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Take care. Everyone get some rest.