Good evening. I'd like to call to order this meeting of the city of Bloomington Plan Commission for
November 10th 2025 Let me just give a quick overview of our agenda this evening We have House is that
better? All right. Thank you Quick overview of our agenda this evening We have
Several petitions that have been tabled that won't be heard tonight. Just quickly. Those are SP 24 22
Cutters Kirkwood 1 2 3 LLC zio 34-23 Those are text amendments related to sign standards zio 0 1-25
that's text amendment related to affordable housing incentives
And then SP 28-25 built LLC Those petitions remain tabled we do have three petitions that we Excuse
me. The first three of those are tabled. The fourth of that is continued We have three petitions that
we will hear this evening. The first is Zio 33-25, which are text amendments to the UDO related to resolution 25-12
to amend incentives zeo 35-25 text amendment in response to the common council resolution and then zeo
36-25 Petitioner William Wammoth I The property at 2005 West Cory Drive, so we'll hear those three petitions
this evening we do have a little bit of housekeeping to do before we get to those petitions and
But let's start with just calling the roll to make sure we've got a quorum. Ballard here. Burrell here.
Holmes here. Kinsey here. Stossberg here. Whistler here. Bishop.
Okay, sounds like we do have a quorum. We do have one commissioner participating Remotely this evening,
which just means for the record. We'll have to do a full roll call vote on every vote We take tonight.
No, no voice votes tonight We do have minutes to be approved. We've got the minutes from the October
6th 2025 meeting are there any questions or corrections to those minutes? I
None is there a motion to approve the minutes a motion to approve the October 6th minutes Second all
right, can we call the roll on the motion to approve the October 6 minutes Burrell Homes yes Kinsey
yes Stossberg yes Whistler
Yes, Bishop. Yes Ballard Yes All right, the minutes are approved Looks like we have Commissioner Seabor
joining us here as well if let the record reflect that We are on then to reports resolutions
and communications any reports from the
commissioners Mr. Stossberg I'll go ahead and report that if you guys didn't know it the City Council
addressed the urban agriculture Petition last week and it was voted down Can you you're saying that
the the one that we forwarded to the council and
To the council was defeated. It was the vote was 1-7 and there was one member absent And yeah, and then
similarly the SRO Petition had first reading last week. So it will be discussed on November 19th Thank
you any other reports from commissioners I Just want to make a just a quick report
just to To recognize Commissioner Chris Smith who recently resigned I don't think there's any been but
any public Announcement of that yet, but unfortunately he resigned from the Commission to focus on some
some health issues and just wanted to just say how much I appreciated his his input here he was only
on the Commission for a brief time this time, but he also had a previous stint on this Commission and
I also served on the Arts Commission and the MPO and various other boards. He's done a lot of public
service here and really appreciate him and wish him the best. Any reports from staff this evening?
Thank you Jackie Scanlon assistant director a similar report Thanks to mr. Smith for being so willing
to serve and doing a great job while he was here and we hope that we'll see him coming as a member of
the public to meetings and other Engagements we have and we want to say welcome to mr. Bishop who is
our newest member as well. This is his first hearing and So, thank you. Thank you all always for giving
your time. That's all Just want to note that
We'd like to get the the List of members updated in the packet and on the website for for next time
to make sure it reflects that that change All right any other reports set it from staff All right, well
I think we are ready for our first
petition then zio thirty three dash twenty five and looks like Jackie Scanlon is the case manager take
it away whenever you're ready.
So the first petition we're looking at tonight is zero thirty three twenty five. This is in response
to resolution twenty twenty five twelve from the council. Let's see if I can make this so much going
on on this screen. OK. So so you know resolution twenty twenty five twelve was signed by Mayor Thompson
on August 6th 2025. Plan Commission held its first hearing on October 6th 2025.
And at that hearing the department presented a proposal questions and concerns were raised and gathered
to be addressed tonight So the plan commission must make a recommendation to the common council on or
before December 5th So if we don't if you do not vote to send it to the council tonight We will need
to set a special session to finish the discussion This slide is blank because I just realized right
before okay, you all asked What has the housing development fund been used for we have reported on that?
briefly before but I did confirm some things today with director Killian Hansen. So I am going to tell
you what those are. So money has been given we've talked about or when she presented in February she
talked about you know that money went to support existing
low income housing as well as directly to members of the community. So some examples are money given
to a union at Crescent which is a low income housing development on the north side around eleven hundred
north Crescent. Money has been given to Bloomington Cooperative Living. There has been a number of down
payment in closing.
assistance loans given to people who are just buying homes. Money went toward the, went to Bloomington
Housing Association for what's called a RAD project to SIHO, which is another, that was a grant that
went to help establish some more affordable housing, Habitat for Humanity, a different Bloomington
Cooperative Living project.
and some has also been given to Middle Way House. More recently this year some was given to a group
called Caritas and they're developing affordable housing on the west end of Kirkwood that I believe
you all saw. So most of the money, so there is still quite a bit of money there and as Director Killian
Hanson shared when she was here previously, there are a number of
projects that she is hoping to get off the ground this year with some pilot projects that she had put
in the budget that the money from the housing development fund is intended to be used for. So those
are tenant based rental assistance projects.
Or program excuse me so that can be used for rent as well as rent supporting things such as like an
application fee or for utilities so that goes with the tenant and then interest rate by downs the way
she explained it was you know encouraging maybe encouraging people to move up.
if they are just trying to not get rid of their great interest rates to open up housing kind of along
the ladder and eviction prevention programming. So those are the types of projects that the money has
been used for thus far. And then as a reminder, what happens is that when Hand goes to propose their
budget, they basically have to let council know
how they intend to use that money and then council appropriates the money per year. Another question
we had from the October hearing related to increasing impervious surface coverage to 80 percent as one
of the potential development incentives
when using affordable housing incentives, it was what the impervious surface coverages are in the affected
zoning districts. So R1 through R4. So you can see here that it's a range from 30 to 50. So 80% would
be quite an adjustment if you were to include that. Okay.
This is these are the whereas clauses the main goals from resolution twenty twenty five twelve. So I'll
go ahead and read them because obviously that's very small. The council wishes to assess and amend the
relevant provisions of the U.D.O. in order to incentivize developers in creation of affordable housing units and
Any payment in lieu qualifying standard should exceed the requirements of actual creation of permanently
affordable units and the common council further wishes to ensure any payment in lieu options are meeting
the long-term interests of Bloomington housing needs so those are the items that broadly goals that
you are addressing with this response to the resolution and the particular directives were
that the common council directs the plan commission to prepare a proposal consistent with this resolution
to amend the text of, and then there's a certain section of the code listed that's called affordable
housing incentives to assess the incentive structure and consider creating additional incentives for
affordable housing, including but not limited to expected owner occupied unit development. And then
the second section says that they direct the plan commission to prepare a proposal to amend this text
of a different section called payment in lieu
to assess the payment in lieu option and consider an increase in the qualifying standard for developments
utilizing the payment in lieu procedure. So we're going to talk about the section one request first.
Okay, so the part of the code that it's referencing is 20 0 4 1 10 c 5 So that's here on the left and
again, that's the affordable housing incentive section. It's in your packet The proposed red line changes
are in the packet posted to the website for the hearing tonight but this is the actual test text as
it exists and Then we are proposing to make changes to both sections of that text so
The first section is section A. Let me see if I can zoom in on this. Hold on. Okay, so in order to meet
the goals of this particular directive,
which are to assess the incentive structure and consider creating additional incentives for affordable
housing, including but not limited to expected owner occupancy. We took some direction from the hearing
last month and moved the reference to owner occupancy into the preamble for this section. So basically,
if you are developing single family detached,
and duplex residential lots in the R1 through the R4 that are also intended for owner occupancy. And
if you meet the affordable housing criteria listed above, then you can have these incentives listed
here, which are now one through six. And so we also added number five, the maximum impervious surface
coverage may be increased to 80%, which is what I was referencing earlier. So that is how we are proposing
to address A,
of the first part of the directive from the resolution. So the idea being that you can use these reduced
bulk standards, bulk requirements if you are intending your project to be owner occupied. We have talked
about here a little bit and we can flesh it out to more tonight or it could be something you could leave
for the council. But what does that mean intended for owner occupancy? How do we guarantee that
that we cannot require them to do that, and what document would we accept that they are intending to
have those units be owner occupied. But if they are, then they can have reduced standards for lot size,
lot area, and lot width, as well as setbacks, as well as impervious surface coverage to fit more basically
lots and units on the same size parcel.
So that's changing section A there, and now we're looking at section B. So what we did for section B
was, again, toward the objective of assessing the incentive structure and considering creating additional
incentives for affordable housing, we are adding that if you do a tier two project,
projects that meet the tier two affordability standards may increase the maximum impervious surface
coverage allowance by 10% and decrease the landscape area by 10%. So that is slightly more coverage
in some of our mixed use districts. Obviously in the downtown, there is quite a bit of, in some areas,
100% impervious, so this would likely be more in the mixed use corridor district. Okay, so for the second part,
the resolution the council is asking Plan Commission to assess the payment in lieu option and consider
an increase in the qualifying standard for developments utilizing a payment in lieu procedure so this
is just the regular text for payment in lieu and what we proposed last month was
You could do payment in lieu if your petition contained more than 50 50 or more dwelling units We heard
some feedback from hand staff at that hearing Wondering if that number could be lower and it was also
discussed among the plan commissioners that Potentially 30 might be a better number because of some
of the previous projects we have done While we have done projects with less than that we are proposing
this as a direct response to the
to the directive to increase the qualifying standards. So we felt like putting kind of a floor on who
can use the payment in lieu was responding to that. So this kind of gets to planning commission will
have to decide if you think that putting something like this in is actually meeting the larger goals
of the resolution for affordable housing in general.
So one of the things that goes along with this is that the actual calculation for how to decide what
a payment in lieu contribution is lives in the administrative manual. It doesn't live in the UDO. When
it was written by a team of directors from HAND, ESD, BHA, and Planning a number of years ago, the idea
was that the contribution rate would be revisited every year.
and it's actually only been revisited once. This year it was changed to 30,000. So this is the current
language here. And though the planning commission doesn't have to approve changes to the administrative
manual, we want to look at it as a holistic picture and talk to you guys about these potential changes
that we think help address some of the concerns about the payment in lieu option.
So here is the red line for that and we discussed this a bit last week or last month.
Currently HAND is using bedrooms for their count as it's written in the administrative manual. And so
we would be recommending to change that to dwelling units, which is what the UDO calls for. And instead
of 15% of the total project dwelling units, if you wanted to do a payment in lieu, we're suggesting
to double that to 30%. So again, increasing the qualifying standard and then also relating to the whereas
clauses of requiring more,
if you were doing payment in lieu than if you were going to do units on site. So we are also proposing
to increase the contribution rate to $50,000 a unit for units that have one to three bedrooms. And if
you have units that have four or five bedrooms, it's an additional $5,000 for each additional bedroom.
So there's a sample project calculation here for a 132 dwelling unit project. You this calculation with
which has 12 extra bedrooms. So some fours and some fives would be two point zero six million dollar
contribution.
So there were some requests to have comparisons for some of the projects that we have already seen if
we're planning to or if we're proposing to change the calculation. So here we have four projects and
how much payment in lieu was pledged when those projects were approved. Some of them are at the 20,000
rate and some of them are at the 30,000 rate depending on when they were approved.
You can see that we've listed dwelling units and beds and then the payment in lieu pledged and then
on the right The payment in lieu with the new calculation and this is assuming no fours or fives. So
no additional Cost and you can see that for in each case they do net more for the housing development
fund than the previous calculation did and
Okay so plan commissioner homes also submitted an amendment for discussion tonight and so that is that
in the payment and loose section he proposes to replace that language.
with the language all petitions seeking to utilize the affordable housing incidents established in this
section shall satisfy the affordability obligation solely through an agreement with and monetary contribution
to the city of bloomington here it after referred to as a payment in lieu no provision of this title
shall require or authorize the construction sale or rental of income restricted dwelling units as a
condition of incentive eligibility so um We can have that ask him to present that and have discussion
of that here shortly
Oops sorry just a sec. So the department tried to put together a response to resolution twenty twenty
five dash twelve in order to
respond to the call of incentivizing developers and creation of affordable housing units the main two
ways we've done that is to increase the use of or hoping to do that is to Increase the use of bulk standards
reductions in the creation of platted subdivisions with the addition the additions that we added there
and To limit which projects can bypass affordable housing dwelling unit creation through the payment
in lieu option So that actual units would be created again planning commissioner
included an amendment and so we can discuss that shortly. Basically your charge tonight will be to decide
if the proposed changes that the department have put forward do incentivize developers and creation
of affordable housing units which was the overall goal of resolution 2025-12 or if you have amendments
that you would like to see. We are recommending that you forward the version that we have submitted
but we're happy to discuss and make any amendments that need to be done. Thanks. Thank you.
Are there any questions from commissioners? Good Payment in the amount was changed. Did you say it was
changed last year to $30,000 change this calendar year this calendar year It was just changed and it
was I think it was at 20,000 before correct. Okay, okay and
And then another so thank you for that. Another question I had you mentioned that the Plan Commission
doesn't have to approve changes to the administrative manual. Is that right or whatever. Sorry if I
get that wrong. How.
How does it get changed then? We're here sort of as an advisory role, I guess, on that. How does it
get changed then? Yes, so staff can change it. In theory, it's mostly processes and how, I mean, that's
the idea is that it's processes and more technical calculations so that they don't have to live in the
UDO in case they need to change over time just from the realities of development. And so the calculation
for this particular topic was put there so that staff could update it every year without having
To need the need to go all the way through council and we would still update them and update you and
if there were concerns Of course, we would take those into account And is it staff of your department
planning transportation for this particular one? We would rely on the housing and neighborhood development
department to confirm any Amendments that we thought were appropriate. Okay, okay Thank you Other questions
to know where did the $50,000 figure come from? If the goal is that any of these affordable payments
in lieu of should be to bring, you know, exceed the amount to bring on permanent affordable housing,
is 50,000 sufficient for that? Are we talking single-family homes? It'd be great to know a little bit
more behind the scenes on that. Sure, it's a good question. We came to 50,000 kind of based on
the fact that it was 20,000 initially, and so that was about three years ago, and that
it would be, should have probably been increased incrementally over that time. So 10,000 a year getting
you to 50,000. It could probably be more. We have heard from some in the development community that
it's quite low and we can tell you that when we meet with developers, they don't balk at the amounts
we give them and they pay them and move on with their lives. So there may be more work to be done to
find a better amount there. And again, you guys wouldn't necessarily, you're not approving that tonight.
So we can still do that and bring that forward to you, no matter what happens tonight. It would be helpful
to know what it would cost to bring on those units in a more conscientious way. So are we looking at
duplexes, fourplexes, something like that? So what does that affordable housing option look like that
we would put these into? But also, can we pay the amount that that increases to both inflation and just
the cost of
Building, you know, maybe on an annual basis because the cost of those building supplies will continue
to increase eats away at what that 50,000 or whatever the amount turns out to be is plus then you've
got builder costs and things like that, which also vary depending on time of year, labor shortages,
things like that. Sure. Yes, we can work on that with the hand staff and get you guys some more kind
of detailed information about that. Any other questions?
Commissioner Stusbrook. Thank you. So in terms of kind of following on that same line of questioning
about the administrative manual numbers, who actually created those numbers? Were they created with
the hand department? Is the hand department on board with what is presented to us here? And I don't
know. The proposed version? Yeah, the proposed. Yeah. So before last month, I worked with Director Killian Hansen
Suggestions from them and put it together for that. So for example the additional costs for having more
than three bedrooms Was something that came out of that collaboration and was added for that reason.
Yeah, we worked with that staff. Okay, great I Guess I have a similar question to you in terms of that
30% of the total project versus 15% of the total project so in our tier in our tier
eligibility we cite 15% and then in the administrative manual it doubles that, which I appreciate,
love that, but is that something that we should consider putting into the UDO in terms of, because that
is part of what I was intending with the resolution in terms of a higher threshold to if you want to
pay in lieu then you would have to pay for more than
what you would have to provide if you were actually providing affordable housing. Does that make sense?
So I guess I'm wondering if, like, because it makes sense for the actual payment itself to be in an
administrative manual allowing for the department to make those changes. But is it worth putting some
kind of more strict guideline, or is it possible to put some kind of more strict, like, percentage guideline
into the UDL? So potentially, yeah. So hold on. Let me share something quickly.
Maybe it makes sense to make a reference here in the 7A for payment in lieu to having that percentage
come from the, like you don't necessarily have to put the percentage in the code because then every
time you might want to change it, it might be laborious, but making a reference to that, because like
it references the administrative manual related to processes
But maybe it might be here where it says a payment in lieu of providing housing that meets tier one
or tier two. Yeah maybe we should make a reference to the administrative manual there. Yeah or even
I mean I just I don't know if it makes sense to do that in terms of what needs to be in the administrative
manual or how much guidance the UDO can give the administrative manual in terms of saying like OK if
we're going to require 15 percent of units
that are actually built to be affordable, can we require then twice that amount to be utilized as part
of the payment in lieu? Because then that percentage depends on the tiers which are in the UDO. Well,
both tiers add up to 15, right? So you're actually getting 15 with each. So that's where it's like,
where did the 30% come from even?
Like is that something that like planning or hand went hey like let's require more if they're wanting
to pay in the directive in your resolution you know was talking about. Oh not that one of the directives
but in the goals hold on let me go back.
Any payment in lieu qualifying standards should exceed the requirements of actual creation of permanent
affordable housing. So we were thinking, if you're doing affordable housing on site, OK, you can use
15% as your base. But if you're going to do payment in lieu, it's going to be twice that amount as an
increase for the, excuse me, exceeding the requirements as of what you would be doing on site.
Which I love. I guess I'm just wondering if that should go in the UDO versus in the administration.
I think it's possible we maybe should make mention of it
in that A of 7A. Any other questions. Thank you for adding the owner occupancy in the preamble there.
And I wonder though you still seem to suggest that there was some outstanding question about how it
would be enforced. And I remember last time in the
our conversation included some discussion about a zoning commitment. Was that, were you able to explore
that? I think that we could take a zoning commitment. I wasn't sure if the, if I went back and watched
the meeting and wasn't sure if that was the direction we, that you all wanted to go. If it is, I do
think we could make reference to it in this section. Hold on, let me see, sorry. That are also intended
for owner occupancy.
I think we could make reference to it, but I'm not sure. I guess I need to see where. And Adina, are
you online? I think she's here. That might be something I want to check with her. I'm pretty sure that
we can because it's. Sorry. No, you're fine. Sorry. So the question is, for these, using these incentives,
If one of the kind of stipulations is that it's intended for owner occupancy and so then you're getting
additional incentives because of that, could we require that they record a zoning commitment to that
effect since it's like an opt-in program? My instinct is that since it's an opt-in program that you
could have that as, have a zoning commitment as part of that.
But I would need to double-check this with the rest of legal. Okay. Thank you. I like the idea of that
because it strengthens the commitment. But if it doesn't need to be included in here, let's not mess
around with it. But I guess I just want to make sure that we are enacting what we believe were actually-
I think from a process standpoint, and Dr. Hittle can correct me if I'm wrong, I think we could say,
When working with someone on one of these petitions, okay, we need you to put that in writing and then
it could be a condition of approval like that. We're recording that as a zoning commitment as opposed
to them just saying we are intending to do that. Yes. Yeah, that makes sense. I think we have seen that
kind of thing in a condition of approval. So, okay. Okay. Any other questions from commissioners?
It might also be useful. I don't know because we don't usually do amendments in this way, but it might
be useful to have playing question or homes describe his intention for his amendment. If you guys want
to discuss that before you or do you want to go to whatever you want to do is don't you forget about
it. I think we're going to need to allow separate public comment on the amendment. So let's.
Let's let's let's do the amendment first that way when we go to public comment on the the full petition
people will know the form of what they're Yeah, so let's yeah, why don't you go ahead and introduce
your amendment? Okay. Thank you And this is I can tell going against kind of the the trending direction
here, but I'm gonna try it anyway so these
We have two ways of trying to support affordable housing. One of them is through the covenants and deed
restrictions that the builders manage. The homes can only be sold to people of certain income levels
or lower or rented to people of certain income levels or lower. And those are price controls essentially
that literally that's what they are.
The other way is to extract payment and lose from the builders give them the same incentives let them
build outside of normal standards collect money from them and the city then has the discretion to apply
those funds to support affordable housing in the way that they want. I think that second way is a much
better way to support affordable housing than the first way like there's there's actually a large economic
literature on price controls but just in these examples if you're trying to support homeowners they're
going to get their house.
But there's a deed restriction on it and they can never sell it to anyone above the 70 percent or 90
percent of AMI. And so they're never going to realize appreciation of the asset right there. It's simply
they're not going to go to sell the market value. They're going to have made a contract with the city
that they can never do that. And those things go into perpetuity. They don't end. So that's there forever.
It's similar problems with rent controls in Apartments, it disincentivizes the creation of them. So
if we want more housing, this typically goes the other way it de invests in housing And it also people
they're not going to want to invest in them. So quality will typically go down so Another point I'd
like to make I think maybe the
Affordability problem in Bloomington is less on the apartment side and more on the homeownership side
I've seen charts that track AMI versus rental cost and they roughly track so Rentals haven't become
a lot less affordable over the past several years homeownership has become drastically less affordable
over the past several years so if we're going to apply effort towards
affordable housing I think it should be on the homeowner side I think it's better for homeowners as
well if you can get people across the finish line into a house they get to start building generational
wealth it makes a difference so organizations like Habitat that do this type of thing are very important
because they don't just temporarily assist they're doing something that's like you're setting them off
and then they can go on and continue to benefit for the rest of their lives I think that's by far the
better way to go
And so the payment in lieu. Where's the demand for these affordable housing incentives. It's almost
on the apartment side right. They want to build bigger apartment complexes. Fine. And if we only let
them do the builder managed ones where there's going to be covenants we're going to get a whole lot
more affordable apartments in Bloomington. My understanding reading articles some of them stand empty.
Right. A lot of them that created blocks of affordable apartments are not being rented and I don't know
why that would be necessarily but that's the case. So if instead the incentives were all directed to
payment in lieu then instead of having empty affordable apartments and apartment complexes the city
gets the money and they can apply it to affordable housing in other ways. Right. Down payment assistance
is that type of thing. I mean we saw the list of those things. Most of those I think are better ways.
to support affordable housing than the covenants and the deed restrictions. So that's the logic that's
what I was trying to get at with this amendment and what the amendment is intended to do is say you
can't do it by setting off units and putting price controls on them that no longer qualifies you for
it. If you want these incentives for affordable housing make the payment in lieu and then the city will
do what best it can with that money to support affordable housing. So I think that's I think that about
something.
All right. Thank you. Any questions from commissioners on the proposed amendment. Commissioner Stossberg.
So just for clarification sake you think that only payment in lieu should be offered and that there
should not be any requirement on developers to actually build affordable housing for affordable housing
incentives. That's right. Yes. Yes. Because they'll instead of building affordable housing
They'll make a payment in lieu and it will be used to support affordable housing in another way. They're
contributing to affordable housing. They're not doing it by building apartment units with price controls.
That's what it's removing is apartment mainly and not even because I don't know that how many affordable
homes have been built under this program. Mainly it's apartments with price controls that we're building
and they're not even being rented. So yes I would stop that. Other questions from commissioners.
I guess I wanna think about, I appreciate all the information, thank you for sharing all that, how it
plays out then in anything else. I wanna appreciate and I understand the logic of what you're just describing
in the amendment, but now how does it play out? What does that then eliminate in the rest of this? In
the actual UDO, yeah. UDO, good question. I think there are gonna be lots of places that would
Become moot or things that could just be you know held in reserve From it. I I started looking at that
and honestly, I'm not the person to do that But I did I mean include along with modifications
cross-references things that necessarily have to change in order for consistency We'd basically probably
just rewrite the tier sections slightly to indicate that
Like maybe we would then have two tiers of contribution to get you to the different number of floors.
Like you know how right now tier one is 15% at a higher AMI and tier two includes lower AMI. Maybe tier
one is a certain, the payment in lieu and tier two is a slightly higher payment in lieu because you're
getting more floors. We could do that, we could scrap the tiers and just do a percentage per project.
I would say,
I follow plan commissioner Holmes's logic as well. And I do think what we heard from hand staff in February
was they would prefer to have money to be able to Program that money to where it needs to go as opposed
to monitoring units at various locations Especially for our larger projects one concern about completely
scrapping it that I would have would be those projects that are
like Habitat for Humanity or other places that can use like the reduced bulk standards and automatically
qualify because obviously they're 100% where we wouldn't want them to be giving us money to have reduced
bulk standards. We would want them to be able to have reduced bulk standards because they are affordable
housing developers. So then that would kind of be separate
Detached dwelling rules and multifamily which would kind of already have I mean mostly we see multifamily
right the tier is Really more the tiers are really more applicable to multifamily But that would be
my only concern if we entirely scrapped it and the other thing is we have been trying to walk this line
as well because the resolution really Wants to make payment in lieu less attractive. So that's why I
tried to say last month as well you all have to decide if you agree with that or not
That's what they've asked you basically to propose is to make it slightly harder to do to encourage
actual unit building But toward the goal of getting more units
Altogether is that do you agree that that's the way to do it or you know? Do you see another way like
planning commissioner homes of just should we just be giving money to hand to program and would that
get us actually get us more units I do also. Oh, sorry want to say director Killian Hansen is here.
I'm sure she would Love to speak on all this if you would like to hear I didn't realize she was there
during staff report Or if you'd like to have her speak during public comment either spine, but I just
wanted to indicate I think she does have some input
Thanks. Thank you. Can you comment Jackie just on sort of just the text of this. My understanding is
that this is essentially an alternate proposal. Right. I mean this is this is the proposal here is just
make this one change instead of
All of the other changes that are proposed in. Yes I yes I mean I think it would supersede most of the
other things we were talking about. Yes I think it has anything to do with the impermeability. I think
it has to do with the second to the amendment to see seven I think is the one that it will affect just
see seven seven the C5 amendment isn't that limited to changing impermeability standards.
Yes but it's for if you're doing tier one or tier two then you get for single family or duplex then
you use those standards the permeability and those things. Can you hold on. Do you mind putting the
text of the amendment back on the screen for us. Is that in the packet or is it just. It is in the packet.
I believe you know what page that's on page 10.
I see it now The other thing you know if a majority of you were on board with with the amendment I Mean
obviously this is all like a very process thing, you know, the the council sent you a resolution They
want you to respond to the resolution you could send the changes we've made which we do think respond
to the resolution and recommend that they don't do it and
And you know send and then you could bring forward your own amendment. You are the only other body that
can bring forward an amendment. You know you could send the amendment that they want recommend denial
and then we could work on another amendment in the vein of what Mr. Holmes love what Plank Mr. Holmes
is saying and then that could go forward as well. I'm not suggesting that we do that but that
is a possibility to your kind of to your question Mr. Whistler about like isn't this just a different proposal.
Yeah, I mean I suppose all of the The other changes about How its calculator still still would apply
in this case, right so It's really just changing The original proposal is just to make a
change one change to see seven a right that says the ads the language impetitions for projects that
contain more than 30 dwelling units. Correct. Yes. And so the amendment is instead of just adding that
line it's to replace that entire C7 a with the new language. Yeah yes but he indicated that he does
want it to replace everything else. So the items discussed in the previous sections like five or
earlier in the incentive section I think would also be moot because they'd be replaced. Like no one
would be doing 15% at 120 or 90 or whatever because everyone has to just pay. So all of that would have
to come out. So then figuring out what you are getting, what the incentive is for your contribution
also has to change because they're based on the tiers which are the percentage, which are the AMI percentage
breakdowns.
I'm I know this isn't a question but I'm a little bit nervous about adopting an amendment that doesn't
contain all those specific references and you know making changes to the code that we're not really
reviewing the specifics of has as legal taking a look at this amendment and do they have any concerns about
about allowing those other changes just to be made at the staff level if we were to adopt this amendment.
Sure. And Adina or Miss Casamanian are you online and able to answer that? Yes. And Adina here. Legal
is would probably need a little bit more time. We have been discussing from what I understand
We would just need a little more time to review this amendment. OK. Thank you. I suppose. Would you
like to go ahead. I don't know that you made a formal motion to introduce this man. You kind of explain
the amendment. Would you like to go ahead and make a motion.
And then we'll see if there's a second for it. Let's see. How about I move to amend to include the changes
outlined in Section F of the packet. Is that sufficient. Is that sufficient to identify it by which
section of the packet it came out. I can read it out. Yeah I don't think you need to read the entire
text of it. I think that's sufficient.
Okay so the motion is to interest introduce the amendment to section C7 and related areas as is outlined
on page 10 of the packet. Is there is there a second for that motion. I'll second. Okay. Any other.
We've got that on the floor. Are there any other any other questions for commissioners about
the amendment and what it's trying to achieve here. It's not a question but it's just a point worth
raising that deed restrictions are generally onerous to homeowners especially when they go to get financing.
So not having the restrictions on properties going forward makes it significantly easier for people
to transact those homes at a future point. Thank you. All right. We were going to go now to public comment
on the amendment itself. So I know many of you are maybe here to talk about the petition generally.
At this point we're just going to hear a comment on the proposed amendment to Section C7A. So if you'd
like to make comment on that amendment please step up to the podium, state your name for the record
and you'll have up to five minutes to speak. If you're joining us online and you'd like to make comment
on the amendment
Just click the React button and click the Raise Hand option or send a chat message to Jackie Scanlon
and we will recognize you when it's your turn to speak. Good evening Chairman Wheeler. This is Christopher M.J.
from the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce. First I want to say I want to echo the sentiments
on Commissioner Smith. I was a big fan of his on here and the fact that he's replaced by Stephen Bishop
the Bish I think is a great testament to the quality of
Volunteers we do have in the community. I wasn't familiar with this Amendment coming in today, but I
thought it was a very interesting one The chamber doesn't have an opinion on something like this, but
I do want to say just from the meetings I've been to and miss
Killian Hansen's presentations on the housing development fund, I've been impressed with the way it's
used and the lack of administrative costs in it that some of the compliance comes with when you have
the units that are affordable. And specifically, it didn't seem to work on larger multifamily units.
It's when there's a developer who then sells it, it becomes part of the package that they don't care
if those specific units are rented.
I'm not sure if this particular amendment is ready yet, but it's something that I think should be really
discussed and talked about, because we do have to look at some of the administrative costs that go into
getting some of the results we want. What is that going to take? And if maybe we can keep, if it's developer
who is doing the renting, we've seen some successes, but any of those larger ones, it just doesn't seem
like this has been what we've
wanted when we first put this together, so I appreciate your time tonight and I would love to hear some
of the comments from Miss Killian Hanson as well on this and Further debate from the Commission. Thank
you Any other public comment on the amendment Any online commenters
I ask call for public comment on the amendment. All right. Any final discussion from commissioners.
Commissioner Stossberg. Yeah. So I have lots of comments on this. So first of all I would argue with
the earlier statement that rentals have not become less affordable. Rentals have become significantly
less affordable in this community significantly. It is it is huge.
Okay, secondly, I do want to comment about some of the vacancies, specifically the vacancies in some
of the workforce housing or affordable units that Ms. Kellyanne Hudson highlighted in the spring, a
couple different presentations that I was at, and part of the challenge with those were the contracts,
and I agree that payment in lieu works really well, especially with certain types of builds, and student
housing is one of
those types of builds often because student housing it runs by the bedroom and they have these five
bedroom five bath kind of places and then it's it's Significantly less to rent a room in a five bedroom
five bath apartment within a student complex and it it is affordable enough in fact that it's actually
often less expensive per bedroom than the
what it is in terms of the rent that is dictated by the AMI because you're sharing some of those common
spaces. So it does become more affordable in some ways when you have those five bed, five bath units
and large student housing complexes. And so like entertaining the concept of
incentivizing student housing complexes specifically and you know when they come to us like they come
to us often like designed as a student housing complex right to Utilize the payment in lieu option Would
definitely be something that I think is on the table in terms of wanting to make sure that the payment
in lieu is used You know in effective ways but to completely require everything to do payment in lieu,
I think is
really does not go along with several pieces of our...
comprehensive plans and one of the things about that and one of the things that affordable housing incentives
are supposed to do is to Diversify where that affordable housing is So instead of affordable housing
all being in one location and put all of the people who need economic help over here It gets spread
out and dispersed throughout multiple areas of the city. And if you just require payment in lieu, then
that means that Nothing is really affordable anywhere
So what we're doing is depending on the city and the city housing development fund to create that greater
affordability And I love a lot of the programs that director Killian Hansen has talked about this year
and that she's starting with rental assistance and other types of voucher programs and things like that
I think that those are wonderful and great programs and I don't want to diminish that but the fact of
the matter is we cannot require Landlords to accept those which means you are still gonna have segregated
housing to some degree because the only place you're gonna be able to use those vouchers
or where the landlords allow them to be used. So you're still going to have pockets of places where
you can live if you're
If you need that economically and then you're going to have you know, it's just going to become greater
separation so that's I guess I I think that this idea is generally contrary to lots of pieces of what
Bloomington is about then lastly is the council representative in conversations with my council colleagues
around payment in lieu over the last two years really There is far more sentiment on council to completely
eliminate the payment in lieu option and require every developer
To actually build affordable units then there is to do this option I would be shocked if this ended
up approved through council and so I think that that is a consideration that's a playing commissioners
Should use especially since this is an amendment on a petition that is in response to a council resolution
and as miss Scanlon said part of that council resolution did indicate making it harder to
to do and to use payment in lieu, not easier, certainly not requiring that everybody use it. And then
there was one other thing that I wanted to say in here. I'm not sure where it is in my notes anymore,
so I will call that my comment. Thank you. Thank you. Other comments? Commissioner Kinsey? I guess I
have some more questions for Director Killian Hanson if you're willing to come forward and
respond and react to some of this conversation. I think we're trying to hold two things in balance here.
We're trying to express or demonstrate and have more affordable housing and figure out what's gonna
work here. Tell us what your impressions are. Well, I'm gonna be as honest as I can be,
always been my best policy. So I actually think that the directive to make it harder to use housing
development fund is actually the opposite of what should be happening right now. You guys have to think
about who is using housing development fund, who is triggering those incentives. Nine times out of 10,
and I'm yet to see a small affordable housing development that is triggering that incentive that is
not student housing.
It is not working. Let's also think about where this starts, boots on the ground. Developer starts talking
about a project. Oh, I can get more units if I trigger this incentive and they are just excited to get
their project off the ground.
They do not stay with the project long term to make sure that it's in compliance We have massive compliance
issues that are just creating a lot of headaches in my department to be honest with you So they make
these agreements they create these zoning commitments, which have been written terribly Basically to
use these incentives they can go up to 120% of the area median income that is not affordable and so
You saw me earlier this year come and talk about me the need to really reduce those A.M. eyes for if
we are going to have any actual units on site. Unfortunately the vast majority of the zoning commitments
that have been written have language like up to 120 percent. So it doesn't really get you anywhere below
where it needs to be to be
truly affordable. And the vast majority of them are in student-centric complexes. If I am making $75,000
a year and the majority of these units are one bedrooms or their studio apartments, I don't want to
live next door to a student that is keeping different hours than me. So I'm just saying that that has
a big impact.
$75,000 a year look at what the AMI chart is there should be one on our website that will calculate
out if you're making X This is what you're paying in rent. So those are not affordable units to start
with Let's also talk about compliance of the number of units within the buildings that are working so
workforce housing units are working very well in buildings and complexes that have less than 20 units and
I'm really concerned about the idea of trying to increase the number, the vast number of units that
are on site, particularly when generally the developer makes these agreements, they pass it on to their
property manager who some kid doesn't understand what AMI is and the income qualification is a complete
nightmare. So then they end up sitting vacant. We also have another zoning commitment that said that
they would only advertise it for up to six months and then turn to market rate.
So the process is broken if we really want affordable housing and you guys are trying to keep the workforce
housing units That's fine But you need to lower the AMI and you need to have a mechanism in which those
zoning commitments are Executed in a manner that they were intended to be not after the fact not two
years after the fact when they're being built But you are creating
staffing issue for me because the more Workforce housing units or affordable units on site that you
have the more monitoring that we have to do and let me tell you it's not just as simple as them turning
in a report a lot of times there's back and forth because they don't understand what they've inherited
and Sometimes after they're built ownership changes as well. So it is quite onerous to be honest with
you I'm happy to answer some other questions. I know I had some other comments, too and
Can I just ask one question about the clarifying the person from the chamber who indicated the administrative
costs are the things you just described are referencing. Those are examples of the administrative costs
of the US. Yeah of the units and you know how the development fund to be perfectly honest with you is
one of the very very few funds that are available in the city that can truly be nimble to help meet
the affordable housing needs of the community.
all of our HUD funding, you have to go through significant red tape and generally they make the projects
more expensive, not less expensive. So I do think that generally affordability in Bloomington, there's
a lot going on there, but I think you can't just lump it all together. It's supply and demand. It's
also the fact that we have 13,000 beds on campus and 48,000 undergrad students. What do you think that
is to an out of state developer?
That is a huge magnet. So we have to try and start thinking about what kind of development makes sense
to incentivize. What are you incentivizing? The other comment I want to go back to is that we're not
monitoring based on bedrooms. We have said that there's a discrepancy between bedrooms and units because
of some of the complexes that ramp by the bedroom. Do you count that as a unit?
Do you count that as a bedroom? It needs clarification So we've been doing it by units, but there's
definitely some areas for clarification Can I just ask you to quickly just clarify I know when your
answer you talked about AMI and I know this is a point That's very confusing for a lot of people when
you say a hundred per twenty hundred twenty percent of AMI You mean
That it is required that that unit is rented to someone making less than 120 percent of the area median income.
Development Fund guidelines say that it should be utilized for somebody up to 120% of the area median
income. However, the zoning commitments that have been executed have very vague language that say up
to 120% AMI, allowing the developer to only advertise at the 120% AMI, which by the way, last year you
would have had to make $75,000 and this summer they changed it to $90,000 for a one-person household.
120% AMI figure come from I have no idea because the Federal Home Loan Bank of Indianapolis says Affordable
housing is usually 80% AMI. Yes a capital a affordable housing projects are 80% of the area median income
and below which is why we brought an amendment earlier this year to say hey, can we please stop advertising
at 120% because this is not your demographic to fill these units and
Also with concerns to where the funds would go for payment in lieu with it not bringing on like new
units and things like that. Is there any reason it couldn't be tied together with like Hopewell or something
like that to where those funds are then used to build units within development already. Absolutely.
So let me tell you a little bit about how we're using it and what the boots on the ground
method for HDF in general. I have to go to council every year and say, and guesstimate, like hey, I
think I might need 500,000 this year. And then we talk to developers as they're having gaps, or if there's
a project that we wanna make sure that we're securing those affordable units, then it's a negotiation
game. We may or may not use it. You don't know until you have the project. The issue right now is the
things that we require builders to build,
Really add a ton of costs. So I've had numerous conversations with numerous builders this year and their
average gap is closer to like three million dollars not five hundred thousand that I've requested. So
every almost every project that we've been in talks with need a significant
Larger number than what I have to give at the moment and I don't care to go back to council and say
hey This is a great project. This is what's going on. We really need to support this but then you've
got the timeline of Does that make sense real estate time is of the essence. So it's challenging I Would
love to be able to invest a whole lot more in areas like Hopewell or places that actually have affordable
Units that can be created the vast majority. I don't really think that there's a lot of homeownership
That has been triggered. We haven't gotten any payment and lose from any ownership models at all No,
it's all rentals that are making those payment and lose The one that you guys recently approved for
clear path Kirkwood 123 is homeownership That's the only one that I know of the rest of them are all rentals
Are there any other questions? Go ahead. Thank you for being here, by the way, tonight. I know that
we've had several conversations about this. And what you just said very publicly was something that
you said privately, that one of the challenges is the contracts that have already been written. And
at this point, there's nothing to do about those rights. And so the question that I have is,
moving forward, and maybe this is also for the attorneys that are online, is it possible to make those
contracts better
such that you don't have these kinds of headaches moving forward? Well, I can tell you it's my personal
mission to make sure that I don't see another zoning commitment that was created before my time because
they are just not well written at all. They do not support our need or what the general idea was. I
don't know what happened. I can just tell you that the language is vague enough that it doesn't help
us on the enforcement side at all.
On the subject of the actual amount for the payment in lieu, when I inherited this, the amount was $20,000.
And I knew very well that it needed to be increased, except for I think the administrative manual indicated
that you can do it like at the beginning of each calendar year, the hand director. So last year we did
increase it. We increased it 50% from where it was. I'm a little bit scared to just throw a dart at
the wall and say, this is what the number is.
when we don't really have any measured response. That's why I went 50% more, okay? Another 50% more
each year to see, I was trying to be methodical about it. I didn't wanna just go out and double it overnight.
So but moving forward, we can expect that contracts are going to be written in ways that are easier
for you to enforce and that are more, I'll say, transparent and readable.
Hopefully yes, I think that we internally have some things to hammer out as far as the process by which
those actually get recorded because there are agreements that cannot be found in process right now and
we have completely turned it over to hand so they can write it however they would like because
It actually doesn't even say it needs to be a zoning commitment. So if they would prefer to do an agreement
between hand and the developer the zoning code allows that as well. So it's completely up to them how
they are written moving forward. And I guess I just really wanted wanted to emphasize that in terms
of the problems of the past and we're stuck with those problems of the past. And so it's from here moving
forward that something different is already happening.
and will continue to happen so that those headaches are not replicated in more places. Correct. Correct.
And I do think that if you guys did some research on the actual rental market that's out there, there's
really two different markets. There's your student complexes and then your everyday
other complexes, and so we're really challenged because this bucket has not been being built. It's not
what's lucrative. We make it extremely hard to navigate the process to be approved for a project, so
it would be great to incentivize a different kind of development. I don't have any answers for you on
how to do that, though, but. I have one more question for you.
Just wait till you're recognized if you would we have another question down here was just in front of
you in line So is there a process for accountability for these funds of payment in lieu You know, I
feel a little nervous when we are getting millions of dollars from different developers that you know,
of course they just want to get their project done so they just throw money at
at the city, but it would be wonderful if there were some sort of report that we can see every year
or something that we see where the funds are going, because it's a lot of money. It is a lot of money,
and I think I go back to the subject that it doesn't all come to me all at once. It's just sort of sitting
in a fund that the controller's office has until council appropriates the amount to me. So I am more
than happy to give a report
Quarterly if you would like.
bi-annually, it doesn't matter. I mean, it should be very transparent. And I do know from working with
the development community that there's a lot of frustration from them because they have felt like in
past years there hasn't been transparency. Where's the money? Where did it go? What projects did it
go for? So, and I do have to say that the record keeping has been challenging. So we had to do quite
a bit of forensic accounting to even figure out like, okay, do we have everything accounted for or not?
We have a process moving forward. It's just sort of the things that have it's water under the bridge
at this point for some things Do you have any data points as far as what affordable housing units would
cost in Bloomington? The things that were aspiring to build to build themselves like a rental unit
Well, if we're going to have them pay in lieu to cover the cost in excess of what it costs to bring
on an affordable unit Have we engaged with like the builders Association or anything like that to figure
out like what does a stock, you know unit cost it does it cost $80,000 a hundred thousand dollars and
is that this year's price is it last year's model? I can tell you what home funds or HUD Feels like
is a subsidy for a single unit
And it is close to 300,000 per unit to build So but to bring online an affordable unit there are other
ways to do it other than build from the ground up right if you give Down payment assistance to someone
of low AMI so they can get into a house and they can make payments then you've created an affordable
unit that way and
Right and that brought one online. Yeah, and that's sort of been my point is that it's the We're stuck
with golden handcuffs right now. People are locked in with their current interest rates Where are they
gonna go? There's not a lot of Places they can move to where they're paying something either equal or
less than their current mortgage payment So we're stuck. We've got a lot of our lower-end units that
are being occupied by someone that may be
shouldn't be there. So what we need overall is movement in our housing ladder, up and down. People move
typically, what, every eight years or so. We're not seeing that right now. So if we can unlock some
units, that was the idea with the interest rate buy down was that, hey, we can incentivize this homeowner
that's been in a five bedroom unit, their kids are out of the nest, they could really use a smaller
unit, unlock that for somebody else. So there just in general needs to be
more movement in the housing ladder. And that, I believe, is how you also create some affordable units.
Overall, though, whether it's rentals or homeownership, it's all laws of supply and demand. And we have
not kept up. Any more questions? Thank you.
Your input any final comments on the amendment here before we call the roll mr. Stossberg Is that like
over time if you do the math And I've and I haven't some other council members have done the math before
that ultimately a port a permanently affordable unit is going to end up giving more
to the community over time than a payment in lieu. The payment in lieu number would have to be super
duper high, even higher than what's proposed right now in the administrative manual in order to make
up that kind of investment. So that is the other reason why a number of my colleagues are really opposed
to payment in lieu at all. As I said, I think that it can make a lot of sense in some types of housing,
especially student housing, in terms of that as an option.
Yeah, that's all. I appreciate Commissioner Holmes' amendment and what you're trying to incentivize
here and the logic that's put into it. But I guess I fear the impression that somehow we're not supporting
affordable units being built if we were to move to that
very specific amendment. So I guess I don't want to express that or appear to express that. So to me
that it's not tenable in that way. I also am persuaded that I don't think the council is going to move
anything forward. So you know I I don't want to set up a really oppositional
approach right away. I'd like us to try and move forward a little bit, so I'm more inclined to try and
move forward with some of the action that I think we're suggesting today. The other thing is, I do think
that the payment in lieu really has worked, and I very much appreciate the creativity and the responsivity
that HAND has envisioned for ways to make these funds more usable.
I understand all of the problems of previous restrictions and legal zoning commitments that weren't
well crafted and the enforcement challenges that those create. But I think some of the creativity I've
seen in what you described, how the funds are being used, that's really impressive. So I don't want
to lose that. So I want to think about how that can continue.
But I would urge us to consider that AMI change. All right. That's it for me. Any other comments. I'll
just say quickly I appreciate the spirit of this. I do think that it's pretty clear that the trust fund
is making more direct impact on affordability than some of the other things we have here.
Appreciate that and would love to see us be able to do more of that. And I also appreciate your concerns
with Essentially price controls. I think that is a very valid concern But I have a problem with the
general principle of all of this in the sense that The reward that you get for meeting any of these
incentives is that you get to build units that are
inherently cheaper to build because they're essentially adding on to your project top floors Increasing
footprint right there. They are by definition the most affordable units that you can build In terms
of the cost of building them and so we're saying in order for you to be able to be allowed to build
the cheapest unit you can build you have to pay more money which inherently
Wipes out the affordability of building those units. I think I think there's a just a fundamental logical
problem with the approach to this and so to say That's the only way we're going to be able to do it
and that we're going to continue to jack up that price year after year Just says to me that this is
not going to solve the problem Like this is this is maybe going to be a band-aid and give us some some
short-term money to work with to make certain cases more affordable but at the end of the day we are
increasing the price of
building new supply, period. At the end of the day, that is the problem. It is too hard and too expensive
to build new supply. That's what we've got to solve here. What we're doing is making it more and more
expensive and harder and more complicated. You have to go through this whole workbook and do math homework
just to figure out if you even want to look at building a project. The answer here, I think, is let's
just make it straightforward.
Let's make it clear what you can build. Let's make it easy to build up. Let's make it easy to build
more dense so that you can build things that cost less so that we can offer them at a more affordable
rate to the market. So appreciate the spirit. I think it's based on some very sound logic. But ultimately
I think it just exacerbates some of the some of the problems that I have with the whole structure we
set up here. So I will be voting no.
All right last Let's call for comments before we call the roll on the amendment All right, let's call
the roll on the amendment, please No Yes, can't see no Stossburg no Whistler no Bishop Yes
Burrell no All right, so believe that family we all had three three yeses and five notes, okay, um,
I'm sorry Mr. Ballard did have his hand raised earlier I forgot to tell you because then you guys got
so I don't know I know it's too late for that but it just Maybe check in with him on the next one. I
will try to remind you as well. I
We'll make sure you have a chance to to make your comments The people voting online as well as hear
them because that is yes one of the council rules that is correct Playing mr. Ballard when you vote
you have to have your camera on sorry about that. Well, I'll tell you what since we have to Since we
have to redo this
As we have to redo this vote, Commissioner Ballard, if you'd like to make your comment before you state
your vote, feel free. That's fine. I'll make it quick. I really appreciate all the conversation. I'm
very much in agreement with Commissioner Holmes on this. I think what Director Gilliam-Hanson has presented
multiple times now and has shown for years is that the system's broken. Commissioner Whittle, I understand
your comment, but I think it has to start somewhere.
And I think the starting point of creating the payment in lieu that is working and building upon that,
to then offset that money into hand records, creating things that are working, I think is a great step
forward. And it's taking action. I'm really, really shocked that the Common Council are all about trying
to scrap that. I don't understand
I would want to see Commissioner Seltzer's friendly disagreement here. I don't see how you can quantify
that an affordable unit is more attractive than the payment and lease type. I would want to see hard
numbers on that, because that to me is just kind of an emotional argument, I think. And I think that's
actually very, I think we need to be careful with that kind of argument. I think we need facts to back it up.
So that's all I appreciate Mr. Holmes again the work he's done with this I very much agree with him
but obviously thank you. And so your vote just for the record on the amendment was yes. My vote was
yes. All right. Thank you. All right. So that.
That amendment fails. We are now back to the petition as it was originally presented. I think we are
ready then to go to public comment on the petition itself. So if you'd like to make public comment on
Case Zio 2 0 2 5 dash
Let's see, hold on a second. Zio-33-25. If you'd like to make a public comment, just step up to the
podium, state your name for the record, and you'll have five minutes to speak. If you're joining us
online, click that React button, click the Raise Hand option, or just send a chat message to the host,
and we'll recognize it when it is your turn to speak.
Is there any public comment on Zio dash 33 dash 25? All right, we are then back to the Commission for
any final comments or for a motion If I could so this is going to be all of the amendments that were
initially proposed by staff it's gonna be one vote for
all of them together correct thank you unless there's another so you welcome to offer another amendment
if you think you have that that option if you have a question can you can you speak into the microphone
the AMI is not included in this amendment can that be included in the amendment
The change on a am I Addresses that okay. Thank you All right, any other follow-up comments before or
when we need a motion Mr. Stossberg earlier I brought up the idea of putting in some kind of percentage
or reference to the administrative manual should we try to create a
an amendment on the fly related to or like should we try to do something on the fly related to that
because I know that we have to like forward this on tonight or should that wait for you. I'm happy to
work with you on an amendment for council but then obviously it has to come back.
If you guys think there's a quick change, we could do that. So the payment in lieu of providing housing,
that means the tier one or tier two affordability criteria and petitions or fraud projects that contain
more than 30 dwelling units may be authorized by an agreement with the city and all payments will be
paused in the housing development fund. I was thinking it's,
I'm just not sure exactly I think it should go in there but I'm not sure exactly because of the references
to the tears because those are where the 15% lives If that should be totally scrapped Mr. Stossberg,
could you like that would be too difficult right now to try to wordsmith Do you want to add a condition
that it be a
That it be amended to reference the The administrative manual requirements or Yes, is that might I make
it just a suggestion that you could move approval of the petition with
with the condition that staff add that reference before presenting to council. Should I do that now
or do other people have anything else to say. All right. I will move that we forward petition. I say zeo 2025.
Dash oh nine dash. Oh one three or zero thirty three dash twenty five to Common Council with a positive
recommendation on the condition that staff Wordsmith to include Reference to requirements within the
administrative manual So good
Okay. Yeah, I think that's good. All right. We've got a motion in a second. Is there Any final comment
before we call the roll on the motion All right, please call the roll No Kinsey, yes Stossberg. Yes
Whistler No Bishop
No. Ballard Ballard left. So he is off of the assume. Braille. No. Seymour. Yes. So the motion fails
motion fails. Yes. So I think we will need.
We'll need another motion. Another motion could be that we forward with negative recommendation or that
we forward with no recommendation or that we continue to another hearing move forward with a negative
recommendation. Is there a second for that motion.
for information was it for four on that last motion yeses and four nos three yes and four nos you need
five to only have seven voting members now we lost Commissioner Ballard so we need five out of seven
commissioners to take any action correct I might suggest that forwarding with a with no recommendation
might be the only way we get we get a majority vote here I'll change my motion
forward with no recommendation. Would you also like to include as Commissioner Stossberg included that
the condition that staff add the reference to the administrative manual. Yes. OK. All right. So the
motion is that we forward this to the council with no recommendation along with the condition that staff
add reference to the administrative manual. Is there a second for that motion.
All right. Any final discussion. I guess I just want to know kind of what happens after this now. I
mean I feel like we have not done what the council asked us which was to essentially address and assess
this resolution. So I think I mean it's definitely an option in the state statute that you've assessed
it. You haven't come to an agreement. You're sending them
Aversion and you're not all in agreement about whether or not they should do it And so it's very similar
to the others. They'll make a decision. The only thing I can't well It's not like this is our first
night. No recommendation But if they so I'm not sure if it comes back to you I can verify you that that
for you for next month But you can send it on this way and they'll see it we will certify it within
10 days and then they'll put it on their Calendar and they'll have to make a decision within 90
Come back to us if the council decides to make significant changes. I think so. Yes Okay, so Any other
final discussion got a motion in a second All right. Let's call the roll on the motion to forward with
no recommendation Kinsey Yes Stossburg
Yes Whistler, yes Bishop Yes Well, yes Seymour. Yes Holmes. Yes All right motion carries We are now
on to our next petition and
Which is 0 3 5 dash 2 5. This is related. We also have again Jackie Scanlon to present.
Go ahead. Yes. So this is response to resolution 2025 dash 17. You will recall probably some of you
that last winter we received a resolution from council and we heard it in February of this year. That's
when Miss Killian Hansen gave her presentation. Then we realized that was outside of the 60 days statutorily
required for that hearing. So council then broke up that resolution and sent it forward as the one you
just saw. And this one as a separate resolution. So
The latest resolution was signed by the mayor on October 2nd. You're hearing it tonight and you have
to make a recommendation to common council by January 9th. So again to kind of just a little bit go
over what that resolution is entails they pass a resolution to re initiate in part the intent
to pursue the objectives set forth in resolution 2024-23 from last year and to amend the minimum qualifying
standards for affordability and plan unit developments. So this one has three sections that we need
to address with specific mandates in the code. The first is related to the eligibility section.
And the directive was that the plan commission is to prepare a proposal consistent with this resolution
to amend the text of the eligibility section, which is here on the left, to include an AMI requirement
within tier one and tier two affordable housing projects as follows. Tier one, affordable housing projects
to include at least some units to be priced below 90% of AMI using whole percentages for each tier.
And tier two, affordable housing projects to include at least some units priced below 70% of AMI using
whole percentages for each tier.
So this was an image that Miss Killian Hansen presented to you in February. I don't know if I can zoom
in on it. Maybe I can. And as she has before talking about the percentages in the existing zoning commitments
and that the code was written for 120 percent just for those people who don't know or weren't involved
initially.
The code was not written for affordable housing. It was written for workforce housing. The idea under
the administration at that time was that there are a number of federal and other resources for what
is defined as affordable housing, and so the UDO is supposed to be a gap for workforce housing, so that's
why it was up to 120. The new administration, I would say, is getting away from that, and so this
bar, this chart here indicates you can see that 90 and 70 is the second circle there on the bottom,
is much more in line with our actual wage distribution here.
because that is local data used there. So what we have proposed to the plan commission is that for tier
one, you change 120 to 90. So requiring that all of the 15% in a tier one project have to earn less
than 90% of HUD AMI for the county. And that in tier two, that percentage is split between 90 and 70.
You've heard a number of times other city staff saying they don't like the 7.5 and can we change it
to 16 and eight.
You can, if you'd like. The UDO is very explicit that those numbers just get rounded up after you do
the math. So once that number of units is established, you don't have to keep going back to that.
So 7.5 times your number of units. If it's 12.1, you're doing 13 units. So we are not proposing to change
that because it's very clear. But we can if people want that to be different. So that's the first section.
The second, hold on.
see here. Just a sec.
Okay the second directive is to adjust the minimum qualifying standards for affordability applicable
to plan unit developments requiring that such developments meet or exceed the tier one affordability
standard. So the qualifying standards here you can see listed. There are seven with some having sub
standards there. Those are if you are requesting to rezone to plan unit development and number three
is related to the resident if you are doing residential dwelling units a minimum of 15 percent of those
dwelling units
must be permanently income limited through a deed restriction.
earning less than 120. So we have proposed to change that to say where residential dwelling units are
proposed the total dwelling units proposed must include at a minimum the percentage of permanently income
limited units required in and then we reference the tier one section at the AMI percentages listed in
that section so that if in the future the council wants to change the tier one then this will
just automatically change and this won't have to come back as a separate
amendment. So again meeting the tier one standard and then indicating that that is a minimum. So you
can kind of see it a little bigger there probably still can't read it. Okay so then under section four
propose any additional amendments necessary to line other sections of the UDO with the changes described
in the previous sections. One thing
So when I was thinking about that, I thought, oh, I bet the percentage is in the definition of workforce
housing, and it is. So 120% is there in the percentage. But then I realized when this was first written
with the consultants in 2019, it was intended to be workforce housing. But in all of the sections, they
started calling it affordable housing. So workforce housing doesn't actually appear in the code at all.
It only appears here in the definition. So we are proposing to just strike it.
That will probably be helpful as well for ongoing conversation about affordable versus workforce. And
the code is just going to be talking about affordable housing. So we don't need this definition. I don't think.
So the department is proposing to amend the percentages related to area median income and affordable
housing units that are provided through the incentive section of the UDO to better align with our local
workforce reality. Again, as you've seen tonight, while there are differing views on whether or not
on-site units are more or less beneficial than receipt of a payment in lieu, the proposed changes in
this response to resolution
make any onsite units potentially more impactful than the current regulations by lowering those percentages.
And additionally, we did, these are the same percentage numbers from the hearing in February, or I should
say hand staff mentioned these numbers at the hearing in February, 1970, so we aligned with those, and
you could see on the chart that I displayed from Ms. Killian Hansen's presentation that that aligns
well with our actual workforce.
So we are recommending that you approve the waiver of second hearing and forward this petition as well
to the common council with a positive recommendation and I can answer any questions. Thank you. Are
there questions from commissioners Commissioner Burrell. So if this is approved does it go back to the
existing or non occupied units that I mean would it apply to them.
It will only apply for petitions submitted after it would be signed by the mayor. Yeah, I'm just trying
to figure out if it would solve a problem that we already have that problem. But it might prevent other
problems. Okay. Thank you. I've got a question. These levels percentages of AMI are in the are in the UDO.
Saying if you want to qualify for these incentives you have to meet these tiers And then they are codified
for each individual deal in a contract Right and that's right is there a legal reason why Those contracts
could not just reference similar to the way that our UTO references an administrative handbook
Those the contract could just say you must offer X number of units according to the standards in the
city of Bloomington and administrative handbook that's question 1a question 1b is is there any reason
that handbook has to be tied to AMI or tied to these the way that I assume we have these definitions
because it's the way HUD
There's federal definitions. Is there a reason our local handbook couldn't just say a unit must be less
than $600 a month and must be rented to someone who makes less than $40,000 a year? And could we not
then just update that table every year so that everybody is playing by the same rules and
even if the rules, even if the specific numbers are changing with as income change, as inflation happens,
is there any reason we couldn't do it that way? Is there any reason that we have individual, every deal
has a separate contract and that contract is referencing AMI and these other standards? It just seems
that there's a more straightforward and more scalable way to do this.
So I think it ever yes, I think the contract could reference whatever we wanted Some of the ones that
have been unsuccessful were pre this being written sure So they were just go back and yeah, so that
so maybe there are ways we can incentivize those owners to agree to something new But I know we can't
just force forward I think what hand will choose to do with the help of legal is to just directly reference
the UDO and Yes, I do think we could make it whatever we want. This is not a mandatory
process, it's an incentive. So I think we could make it whatever we want. I was not in the room when
that was being written, but I know the parties that were involved, which was largely the hand director
and the SD director, were trying to make it logical and something that was in line with what made sense
with the numbers that HUD was putting out and tried to make it make sense in that way. But I do think
that it could be anything.
I'd like to hear director killing Hanson's thoughts on that if you don't mind. I'm sorry I believe that
we use AMI because it's tall tied to household size So obviously if it's a four-person household at
a certain area meeting income, it's a different rate than it is a one-bedroom So I think that that's why
I would prefer to keep it with AMIs, but maybe make it more clearly stated in the agreement. I really
just think that the language and the agreements in general has been the bulk of the issue. I think it's
great to reference back to the UDO and kind of keep it as an evergreen item that they have to keep changing
or checking. But I do think that there's a
I would love to see that the agreements come back to the Plain Commission for Verification before that
actually signed I would like to make sure that there are like some actual processes to cover our bases
That's just my two cents though, I guess just to continue on that Could we not make that a condition
of approval on future when we approve a Petition site plan for example, could we not?
Make a condition of approval if we know that there's they're taking advantage of the incentives condition
approval that the final Agreement will come back then be approved by the Commission Okay Thank you.
All right. Any other questions from commissioners? Mr. Stossberg I just want to point out that one of
the things in the resolution I said was to use full percentages and in the tier two We didn't do that.
So I guess I'd like to
proposed to amend it, or I don't know if we need to do a condition of approval if that's easier, to
make it a minimum of 7% for households earning below 90% and 8% for households earning below 70%. And
the reason why in the resolution I said use whole percentages is because Hand told me that whole percentages
were easier to deal with than half percentages.
Question for staff. Can we do that? And also a question for commissioners is that like good for y'all
in terms of a condition of Approval if that's the best procedure that staff I think that we would have
I think we would want to have that as a as an amendment that we I think that's a substantive change
here. So if you'd like to introduce an amendment Feel free Okay, I would like to move that we
Let me go back and that we amend petition Zio 3525 To state that tier 2 eligibility requires a minimum
of 7% of the total dwelling units Our income restricted unless otherwise adjusted or forfeited by the
city to households earning below 90% of the HUD AMI and that a minimum of 8% of the total dwelling units
are income restricted permanently and
Unless otherwise adjusted or forfeited by the city to households earning below 70 percent of the HUD
AMI So just to clarify you're referencing section In section 2 eligibility To be Roman numeral 2 you
want to change 7.5 percent to 7 percent and in Roman numeral 3
Changed seven point five percent to eight percent. Correct. All right. Is there a second for that amendment?
Okay, any discussion amongst commissioners on that amendment Any public comment on that amendment if
you'd like to make comment step up to the podium state your name for the record and state your comment
if you're joining us online click the react button click the raise hand and
Option or send a chat message to miss Scanlon and we will let you know when it's your turn to speak
Last call for public comment on the amendment All right back to the Commission I Think we're ready to
call the roll. We didn't have any discussion before I Can't imagine we do now. All right, let's call
the roll on the amendment, please Yes
Whistler? Yes. Bishop? Yes. Burrell? Yes. Seaborg? Yes. Holmes? Yes. Kinsey? Yes. All right, the amendment
is adopted. Any other questions from commissioners for staff on this petition?
All right. We'll now go back to public comment on the petition itself. Is there any public comment?
Let's call for public comment on the petition. All right. Back to the commission. And I think we are
ready for a motion motion to approve the
Let's see to approve the waiver of second hearing and forward zeo 35-25 to the common council with a
positive recommendation Is there a second Sorry, sorry as amended. Yep. Thank you We have a second Second
All right any final discussion on the motion
Whistler Yes Bishop Yes Burrell Yes seabor yes Holmes. Yes Kinsey. Yes Stossberg. Yes All right motion
carries and the petition is forwarded to the council and
We are on now to our final petition of the evening zio-36-25 petitioner is William Wama thigh the property
at 2005 West Corey Drive. I believe we have Eric we need Eric Grulick to present this one is Mr. Grulick with us.
Probably didn't expect us to get through that last one as quickly as we did. Most of the time he would
have been right. While we're waiting for Mr. Grulick I'm going to go ahead and just call a brief five
minute recess so we can all take a little break and we'll reconvene here at seven twenty seven.
We are ready now for Zio dash thirty six dash twenty five and we have a girl to present whenever you're
ready. Take it away. Next case is V.O. Sorry. Give me just a second. There we go. Next case is Zio dash
thirty six dash twenty five. And this is coming forward to the planning commission tonight.
For something a little bit unique that you guys have not heard in a long time And so this is a recommendation
for zoning for a property that is coming forward for a voluntary annexation So this is for a property
at 2005 West Corey Drive The petitioner is coming forward ultimately to the City Council to request
a voluntary annexation and so the Planning Commission's role in this is to make a recommendation to the
City Council on what the zoning for this property should be if the council ultimately decides to annex
this property. So the count or the Plank Commission's role tonight as I mentioned is simply to make
a recommendation for a property that is currently in the county on what that zoning should be.
So the property is on West Corey Drive and the properties to the south of this are zoned within the
city which is what makes this property eligible for annexation. The property to the south is a moose
lodge that's own residential medium lot are to the.
This particular property that is coming in for annexation or possible annexation was actually in the
county when this subdivision was approved. It was approved in 1992 as Corey Lane Estates. And so it
was in the AFA at that time. So this is lot two within the Corey Lane Estates. This is within property
that is, as I mentioned, zoned by the county, within the county's
Urbanized area plan, which is their equivalent of the comprehensive plan. It is designated as mixed
residential As I mentioned the properties to the south of this the moose lodge or zone residential medium
lot are too Just to the south of that again within the city of zone mixed-use medium scale the county's
urbanized plan has this designated as mixed residential, which is their one of their residential
designations that is very comparable to the city's kind of urban residential zoning or comprehensive
plan that deals with low density residential encourages a mix of housing types both single family and
attached. And so the.
petitioner is coming forward, as I mentioned, for an annexation petition that'll go to the common council.
So as we looked at this, we look at what the county's comprehensive plan is and both the city's comprehensive
plan for the adjacent properties. The adjacent property, the Moose Lodge, is zoned neighborhood residential,
is zoned R2. The county's zoning, which is RES, which is kind of a very low density zoning, has very similar
setbacks to the R2 zoning that is to the south of this and so in this particular instance it was a somewhat
easy exercise to kind of go through of what the zoning on this particular property should be which we
stated our staff would be R2.
similar lot size, somewhat similar setbacks, although the county doesn't have a zoning district that
completely matches what ours is. The R2 certainly is something that is very comparable to that. So as
I mentioned, this was certainly a very easy exercise for staff to go through in terms of matching up
with the zoning should be. So we are recommending that the plan commission
forward this to the Common Council with the recommendation that the are to the residential medium lot
zoning be approved for this with a waiver of the required second hearing and I'm happy to answer any
questions. Thank you. Are there questions from commissioners.
Is there a representative from the petitioner that like to add anything to the presentation? I don't
I don't know if the petitioner they're they're not required to be here for this particular element As
I mentioned, this is just simply a recommendation from the Planning Commission to the council And like
I said, it's it's really just kind of a mathematical exercise almost of sorts
From us because we're just making a recommendation of what the zoning should be based on the comprehensive
plan the county's comprehensive plan So I don't I don't know that the petitioner themselves Are here
tonight, I don't know if they're here in the crowd. No Doesn't look like it. Okay Mr. Stossberg Just
have a question so I mean I
I guess I think that that R2 designation kind of makes sense in terms of what Quarry Drive looks like.
And it makes sense because we have an adjacent R2 to the south of it. But I'm really curious as to why
that property to the south was zoned R2, if you happen to know. Because it is all owned by one entity.
And it is the Moose Lodge. And R2 is residential.
I mean it's not like we have a proposal on the table to change that but I'm just kind of confused as
to why that was ever R2 while we're talking about this area. Yeah. So that's that's a great question.
And so actually when.
When the Coraline Estates subdivision came in, they kind of looked, although the Moose Lodge property
did exist obviously and was occupying the property to the south of this, they installed or required
a road stub to the Moose Lodge property because they expected that to be developed. One of the things
when we go through our zoning map and we look for situations where maybe a property is, I don't wanna
say mis-zoned or mismatched, the commercial properties,
Always for the most part you know they have frontage on public roads and then depending on kind of where
that might be in a situation you know if it's back from an arterial road from a collector road then
we look and see you know is a commercial zoning really appropriate. So in this case here the Moose Lodge
you know it does not have frontage on Second Street or Bloomfield Road. And so you know the
in the comprehensive plan has it.
designated as neighborhood residential. So the art to zoning on that property really does kind of make
sense in that you don't have frontage on arterial collector road. You know you have residential to the
north residential to the west. And as you get back into Bloomfield road get you know
Even one property off of Bloomfield Road, you're pretty much predominantly all residential. So it really
made sense. Well, I don't have any recollections of the Moose Lodge property myself discussing it.
You know, it does make sense for that to be zoned R2 because, you know, it does lend itself to residential.
You know, it could be commercial, but kind of given the deep length of it, you know, it makes it a little
bit challenging sometimes for a commercial development to occupy that and and housing in that situation
certainly would it be appropriate as well. So that's
you know, why I can alter a hypothesis of why the Moose Lodge is owned R2. So I understand the equation
that you're operating from that there's R2 south of it. So that makes sense. But I wonder if there were
other zones that would get us more density or if there were any other interests
of what this property could be developed as. Yes, absolutely. So, you know, one of the factors and one
of the kind of the components of the equation were, you know, what are the properties within Coriolanus
States? What is their lot size? What is their lot width? You know, those are very comparable to the
R2. You know, also, you know, I'll point out on this particular lot. And then within Coriolanus States,
when this was coming forward for subdivision approval 92, there were several sinkholes.
that were located within or adjacent to this subdivision. This particular lot, lot two, did not at that
time have an identified CARS feature. There was a unique drainage feature that was located on this particular
parcel. So there was a large drainage easement that was platted for this parcel. So the R3, while it
could allow for more
parcel or more properties to be developed in a theoretical world, this particular parcel has
a few constraints on it, both for the drainage easement as well as tree preservation, so trying to get
another lot
in on this particular lot really was very challenging in terms of realistic standpoint of balancing
all the factors. There's a utility easement that runs through the northwest corner. You've got a drainage
easement for this feature on the property that could be a cars feature. You know we're not sure that'll
be that'll be something that will be evaluated with any kind of a development plan or building plan
for the property. So the R3 zoning certainly was something we did consider however it did
It seemed to be really kind of squeezing in more than what was probably appropriate on this on this
property. And so that's why we went with the R2 because it's certainly an easier conversation as it
matches and is analogous to what's immediately a south and surrounding it. Any other questions from
commissioners. All right. We'll go to public comment then.
On 0 36- 25 if you'd like to make comment just step up to the podium state your name for the record
And you'll have up to five minutes to make your comment if you're joining us online click the react
button Click on the raise hand option or send a message to the meeting host And we'll recognize you
when it is your turn to speak
Good evening commissioners. My name is Paul post. I'm a property owner on the Street in question on
Cory Drive along with several of my neighbors that were here tonight a couple things I wanted to point
out to you that I think kind of gotten glossed over here That entire area is part of what's called island
for in the annexation process with the city The majority of that area did not want to be annexed That's
a very important point all the neighbors around there You know the people that that's been a very ongoing
issue to us to have one odd lot of
Want to be in the city would cause a bit of a headache. This is as a city employee I can tell you for
police for fire for Sanitation to have to service one odd lot on a street that is considered County,
right? So that's something I think needs to be pointed out a lot of the things that were going through
the paperwork today in 92 when this was approved there were things mentioned that that have never come
to fruition and
It talks quite a bit about curbs and sidewalks and all those things that never happened We still have
the existing as far as I know pavement from back in the 90s There's a section there where it talks about
Adequacy of road systems the finding was listed as there are no known problems with the existing quarry
drive road or infrastructure Well, that's just false. There's several buckled areas. There's a big pothole.
There's a giant It's like four foot wide just gravel. No one cares for that road
We've asked the county to care for it and they say it's not county the city says it's not theirs We
talked to Cowden enterprises and they say well, yeah, it's kind of a private road, but you guys have
to pay for it There is no homeowners association There is no that that's another thing that was mentioned
in the paperwork originally when this was approved was a homeowners Association would be established.
It never was all the talk in the paperwork and stuff that talks about the homeowners Association will
care for the
Sinkholes that doesn't happen. There is no homeowners association. So I have no idea what you know,
they think someone's caring for those properties They're just trees. They're just grass, right? There's
no actual care that anyone that I'm aware of does anything with it So there's a few things that we wanted
to bring forth tonight I really don't have an issue with someone buying the property that that particular
Parcel is just wooded. We have several deer that live in there. I'll tell you that they're not gonna
be happy with it But you know, however, it's used I think the issue here why we're asking for
a no recommendation is really about the annexation question. It makes no real sense to Drop a one property
onto that street when the area around it is very much opposed to annexation And look at those things.
So again, thank you for your time and appreciate it
Thank you How you doing thank you counsel lieutenant Reyes retired naval officer and also a Resident
of Cory Drive um yeah that that that property is a sinkhole it floods regularly I mean
You could swim in it when it floods. Literally, it's up to your chest. And also, as my neighbor Paul
Post said, it would be inconvenient if just one piece of property was designated commercial. It just
makes no sense. It would probably be a disruption to the rest of the residents of our little block there.
Most all of us, you know that I've talked to pretty much every neighbor Up and down the block and they're
pretty much opposed to it. Is it just would be a disruption to all of us That's all I have to say.
Thank you. Thank you Hello, my name is Cammy felling I'm also a resident on
I had several of my neighbors who were unable to attend this evening talked to me about wanting to let
you know their concerns about the the actual property itself getting a visual I'm not quite sure how
especially if there is a sinkhole or a karst in on that property how they would accommodate building what
We have been told they want to do is put a duplex on that property and especially if there's a duplex
placed on that property. No there's guidelines as far as easements from roadways and that sort of thing.
I'm not sure to me in my mind I can visualize almost having to have a garage almost open right on the road.
and to have two Residents Vehicles have to be accounted for in that area would be Rather difficult,
especially where it's located because of the curvature of the road might become a Hazard to traffic
flow on that road Also, I'm not quite sure how
Having one resident be Designated in the city as opposed to the other neighbors being in the county
on that road How that would affect our the process that we were where we remonstrated against annexation
Kind of seems like a we jumped through a lot of hoops in order to remonstrate against the
Oppose the annexation into the city I'm not sure I wasn't even aware that you could one person could
voluntarily Decide to become part of the city so I was just not sure what the ramifications of that
Legally would mean for the rest of the residents on the street. I
Those are my concerns. Thank you. Is there any other public comment. We have any online commenters.
Anybody online that would like to speak to this petition. Please use the raise hand function or you
can send a message via chat and we can recognize you. Go ahead. Say your name for the record please.
My name is I'm also resident on on Cody Drive. Yeah. Can you hear me.
There was something that wasn't added, but it's kind of obvious also. And so if they decide to build
a property on 2005, so raise the field that's in coal, there will be more chances that the property
opposite, the 2005, which is now us, will get flooded even more, because every time we have a lot of rain,
those two properties or two lots to get flooded. So if they fill one side there are chances that the
opposite property will get even more flooded than usual. This is what I wanted to add. So it will be
even more inconvenient for one of the residents on top of what was said before. And thank you.
Thank you. So any additional public comment.
Call for public comment All right, we are back to the Commission then for any additional discussion
or a motion Commissioner Sossberg good. I Just want to Follow up on some of the things the public commenters
mentioned. First of all, one of them mentioned how disruptive it is
It would be if it was designated commercial and r2 is not a commercial designation So since it seems
like there's lots of county folks in the room right now. Can you explain what r2? designation actually
means for the city so r2 is a single-family residential zoning district that does allow for a somewhat
limited amount of uses and
Most single family dwelling detached single family dwelling attached duplexes. Those are the main permitted
uses not not any commercial uses. You know there are some conditional uses but those are not certainly
an extenuous list at all. You know churches and places of worship but it's a very low intensity residential
zoning district. Thank you. Can I ask another one.
So in terms of what we are actually supposed to do here tonight does our decision tonight have any effect
particularly on whether the council actually approves the Annexation of this property into the city.
That is a completely separate discussion So the council will weigh, you know a wide range of factors
so the planning Commission's role tonight is simply to make a recommendation of if they choose to annex it or
what the zoning should be for this property. So the commission is not making a recommendation on whether
or not it should be annexed. You're not granting any waivers not approving a development plan or a building
plan. Simply like I said a mathematical equation of what should this be zoned if the council chooses
to annex it. Thank you. I have one more.
I think, so there were several commoners that talked about the flooding and the karst features and those
kinds of conditions. So in terms of the process, let's do a lot of what ifs here, right? So what if
we designated R2? What if the common council approves it for annexation? What if somebody comes to the
planning department with building plans and says, I want to put this thing here?
What is your process to ensure that the property across the street doesn't have additional flooding
that there's you know accommodation on the property itself for Environmental considerations related
to that. Can you talk about that kind of stuff for a minute? Yeah, absolutely so development
of a single-family lot whether You know is for a single-family house or any of the other permitted uses
would just be a building permit if you know, so the petitioner in this case has
express an interest in developing this with a duplex. Duplexes are conditional use in the R2 districts
who would have to go to the Board of Zoning Appeals for a conditional use for a duplex. We do have setback
requirements. There are tree preservation requirements as well that I've outlined to the petitioner
as well as we've
brought up the issue of whether or not there is a cars feature on the property as well that will have
to be evaluated. So there are several things on this property that are coming into play that would restrict
the overall development as well as CBU could look at any drainage plans for this to make sure that nothing
is being negatively impacted downstream or adjacent wise. So there are several things that are still
going to be reviewed should somebody come forward or if they come forward with a plan for development
on the property.
So is there a potential world in which, once again, the what ifs, we say that it's our to what if common
council approves the annexation, what if somebody comes to you and wants to build something and basically
it just can't actually be built on because the environmental pieces are like that you can't build anything
on there safely between karst stuff and drainage stuff and all of that stuff, then what happens to it?
So I don't I don't know that it is completely unbuildable. I don't I don't know that that is necessarily
a factor. But you know that is what the variance process is for. You know if any of the requirements
of the UDO present a practical difficulty or a hardship in the development of a lot then somebody always
has the right to seek relief from that to the Board of Zoning Appeals. You know when this was planted
like said it was in the city and this was a lot that was
permitted as a lot of record with the subdivision. You know there were other cars features that were
set aside on this subdivision place in easements. This had a drainage easement that was placed on it.
So it was created as a lot of record. So you know with that being said you know as I mentioned you know
the board can grant variances from any of the design standards or development standards of the UDO if
they create a hardship.
In the use of the property, but you know, we obviously look at those very stringently So, you know,
the hope would be that somebody comes forward with something that meets all of the requirements of the
UDO Thank you. I think that that covers the concerns that I heard Any additional comments or questions
go ahead so I understand we're
Like not talking about actual annexation we're just talking about what zoning will we recommend if the
council votes to annex it. But the question so somebody owns the property right now and it's county
property. Is there building on it dependent on annexation in any way. Could they build on it right now.
Well, I mean I don't want to speak for the county's regulations and what their standards may or may
not allow but as I mentioned You know, it is a lot of record And so in theory somebody could go to the
county and apply for a building permit today and build a house on it You know per the county's regulations
and it's a like a mixed-use type of its own res which is a very low density kind of somewhat large lot
size to be honest and
I can pull up the standards here again. What I was trying to get at are we like up zoning or down zoning
it. Are we trying to realize you guys are trying to our two zoning district has a smaller lot size.
So in the R.A.S. County Zoning District the minimum
Maximum lot width is 75 feet Minimum lot size is actually an acre So, you know going to the r2 is 7200
square foot lot size So certainly this is a much more permissive lot size, you know The only comparable
lot size that we have in the city is owned an r1 and that's about a quarter acre But this was certainly
not fit the bill for the properties then within the city that are zone that So this isn't up zoning
in intensity
Anyway, like you said not from a land use perspective. The uses are very comparable You know the lot
size right now. Yeah, okay Okay But that this particular lot or this this property in question this
is already smaller than that Lot size, right? Correct. Yeah, it doesn't create any way for this to be
subdivided
Right. Right. Yeah the lot size and the lot for the zoning district would not allow for another lot.
Not as far as I can see not with the constraints that are on it and the easements. Thank you. Sorry.
We don't have more questions. I mean do we know this last question and this is kind of a little bit
maybe off topic. Do we know why this person wants to be annexed into the city. Like what's kind of.
As I mentioned you are they they have expressed a desire to build a duplex So duplex is a conditional
use within the city if this lot were within the city I Did not pursue that conversation with the county
of you know, could they build a duplex in the county? I just didn't get that deep. It wasn't really
germane to what I was looking for for a recommendation to you guys Yeah, so I don't I don't know
I have two questions. One is just a confirmation about the next step should the okay, so I don't want
to go into the if the well I suppose if the council accepts it as a rezoned lot and acts on it's allowability
for annexation if the council acts on that and it's positive then the person who would want to build
something would have to come back to the BZA to get
a conditional use for whatever you're imagining they want to do. So that would be the site to further
discuss what gets built. Correct. Yeah. So yeah. So they would have to go to the Board of Zoning Appeals
for conditional use approval for a duplex if they chose to pursue that to pursue. Right. OK. So that's
one that's one thing. So there is another option for further discussion of what actually gets
done there that might be different than what would be allowed now. The other thing I want to just confirm
is is there I mean this to me this is a it's a very unusual thing and how strange to imagine that we're
in this situation. But I wonder Eric if there is a table that translates the county easily translates
the county to the city zoning if such a thing exists and if we're going to
I mean I can't imagine we would see more of this but. Well so interestingly enough there are some other
properties scattered around that have entered some conversations with legal about voluntary annexing.
We do not have a table of
county zoning versus city zoning and what are our comparables. We might be going through some more exercises
similar to this over the next year or two. Some of these other properties look to come forward as well.
So that's certainly something we can try to put forward. Like I said, in this particular case, it was
a pretty easy match of what should be here based on the size of the lots and what's around here. Certainly
it might be a little bit more complex with different properties.
I don't you know, I certainly don't want to generate work for anyone But that might be an interesting
exercises to create that translatable table between County zoning and city zoning just to you know It
might be educational for other people who might be interested in that as well. So, okay. Thank you Mr.
Sussman How does the lot size of this compare to the general are two lot sizes? I
So this lot size is about 126 by 100, so it's about 10,000 square feet-ish. And so in the R2, the minimum
lot size is 7,200 square feet.
But like I said, keep in mind, you know, good or not good. But, you know, the East 40 feet of this lot
is encumbered with a drainage easement. So that's why this lot was bigger than some of the other loss
that are that are in this subdivision. You know, the other ones that are in here are about 70 by.
Hundreds of they're about eight thousand square foot range. So this lot was bigger. They made it bigger
to accommodate this drainage easement that was being planted on the side and still allowing for buildable
areas. So like I said it was it was planted with the intention that it would be buildable but it was
has not been. But in terms of the size it blends in pretty well with the R2. Yes. Yeah certainly not.
You know the quarter acre that was you know would be found in the R1 district.
I'm sorry Eric in the in the packet it says this is one hundred twenty eight feet by forty seven feet.
Is that correct. It's it's a little bit miss shaped. So the east is about forty six feet long. The West
is about 90 ish feet. So it's odd. I'm sorry I didn't realize that the screen is getting cut off here.
So it's a somewhat odd-shaped lot. OK. Because I did that quick math, and it's about 6,000 square feet
if you just take 120 by 47. But it is actually bigger than that, because it's not square. OK. Yeah.
Thanks. But it's still less than twice the minimum lot size, so it still would not be able to be subdivided.
All right, any of the additional questions or comments or a motion? We're down to comments but hold
on just let me go to Commissioner Bishop first So it feels a bit chicken or egg argument as to Determining
the zoning for a property that may or may not be annexed at a future point in time Is there a reason
that we're trying to determine this prior to the determination of whether or not it's going to be annexed? I
Because the council would hear both ordinances at the same time and so they would have to be an effective
date For when this gets annexed and then the zoning that would apply to it. So certainly it could happen
afterwards But going forward at the same time allows for both things to be heard and approved at the
same time and be sync to synchronize given the vociferous
outpouring of people on annexation, is it worth doing this exercise prior to the annexation discussion
itself? Well, so like I said, this particular exercise seemed pretty straightforward.
whether or not it should be annex is a completely different question for the common council to decide.
You know the zoning for it in this particular case was pretty straightforward. So you know it didn't
really necessarily matter if it came forward after it or before. But you know it needed to have this
particular element. So anyone like to make a motion before we just get to just comments I'd like us to have a
Motion on the table and we're prepared to do that it just as a reminder the staff Recommendation is
that we approve the waiver from the required second hearing and forward this petition to the common
council with a favorable recommendation A motion that we waive the required second hearing and forward
the petition of the common council with a favorable recommendation Is there a second for that motion?
And I guess it's probably clarify just a little bit, you know with the recommendation that the property
be zoned are too So not just a favorable recommendation really but that the property should be zoned
are too. Yeah, I Mean, that's what the petition is, right? So I think yeah understood All right, we've
got a motion to second any final comments mr. Stossberg
Yeah, I'll just say that I appreciate that folks came out and we're interested in this and in some ways
this is sort of like administrative burden of the Planning Commission right now to make this
this recommendation to the Common Council because it's the whole Voluntary annexation thing is kind
of supposed to come to us in a package that then we're supposed to be able to use the recommendations
to make that
declaration. And in terms of that area I just find it really interesting. That area is actually one
of the spaces that the county down zoned earlier this year. And so the current owner of that property
actually bought it in
2024 which you can find out through public record and at that time it was zoned HD in the county which
allowed for multifamily apartments and other uses and it got down zoned this year to the Res zone making
it much more limited. So there's you know, somebody was asking earlier about motivation of the current
owner and it could be that when they bought it it was
zoned for one thing and now it is owned for something different and That change was was very recently
made by the county at the county level. So I just found that interesting. Thank you Thank you any other
comments I'll just say thank you to everyone who came out and just encourage you to follow this because
when it gets to Common Council, that's when the
The the real decision is going to be made and and I'm sure they would welcome welcome your input there
as well. I think we're ready to call the roll. Bishop. Yes. Burrell. Yes. Seabourn. Yes. Holmes. Yes.
Kinsey. Yes. Stossberg. Yes. Whistler. Yes.
All right, motion carries and that is our final petition for the evening. Any announcements before we
adjourn? Thank you all for your patience tonight and your participation. We are adjourned.