Ann Arbor Planning Commission Meeting 4-19-22

001good evening and welcome to the april 19 2022 regular meeting of the ann arbor planning commission for detailed information on meeting procedures please review the full printed meeting agenda which is available online mr leonard will you please call call the rule i knew exactly what you meant commissioner mills here commissioner gibb randall here commissioner sovay here commissioner abrams here commissioner hammerschmidt here commissioner dish here commissioner lee here commissioner clark here commissioner wage here full house great next up is an agenda can i have a commissioner move the agenda moved by commission or lease upgraded by commissioner abrams any discussion of the agenda all in favor of the motion please raise a hand or say yes that's all of the hands um item number four are the minutes of the previous meeting we have the minutes

002from the april 5th 2022 meeting can i have a commissioner move those moved by commissioner sovay seconded by commissioner dish any discussion or corrections all in favor please raise a hand that is all of the hands next up are the reports from city administration city council planning manager planning commission officers and committees commissioner dish do you have any report for us yes last night council approved the annexation of the wilson berry property or not annexation excuse me the uh the rezoning of the wilson berry prop property which was a next you're looking puzzled shannon 614 riverview drive um and uh i really don't think that there was anything else we we talked about the budget but i don't think it's of interest in in any specific way oh there's seven hundred dollars seven hundred thousand

003dollars seven hundred dollars for the master plan uh yeah so there's seven hundred thousand for the comprehensive landis plan very good in the budget mr leonard anything to add um i do have a couple things um i had the pleasure of joining dr stultz and executive director jennifer hall at the last session of the housing and human services advisory board sear webinar series on affordable housing if you now that i've already given my presentation my nerves are quashed so if you have didn't get a chance to see that it is available on their website it is about the intersection of zoning and affordable housing and sustainability i also want to revisit an issue that's been coming up with of all of your meetings lately the the parking amendments i uh presented at the working session

004that i think that not i think i created some confusion and during the discussion where the parking amendments were adopted additionally i know a smaller piece of that is i mentioned that there might be some other udc references that also need to be adjusted as part of that upon analysis those are more extensive than i originally thought so i will be representing the parking amendments to this board on may 17th with all of those additional amendments i've if you any other questions arise about the interplay between our form-based standards and the maximum i'm happy to uh address that and provide additional information but the other sections that rely upon the parking section as i said we're a little bit i don't think they're significant but they're more extensive than i originally thought and thus a

005certainly worthwhile for the planning commission to review before they proceed so that'll be may 17th and that's all i have thank you very much are there any commissioner officers committee liaisons that have anything to report all right then we can move on to item six this is the first opportunity for public comment persons may speak for up to three minutes about an issue that's not listed as a public hearing on this agenda so we'll have dedicated public hearings on 212 miller 2600 pontiac trail and those are the only ones we'll have public hearings tonight that sound right okay for any other issue though uh please if you're joining us virtually you can use the raised hand feature on zoom you can press star 9 if you are listening in by phone or you can call

006in now at 877-853-5247 6634-1226 mr leonard will select callers who have raised their hand by again pressing star 9 or the raised hand button please move to a quiet area and mute any background sound so that we can hear you clearly but before turning it over to those who have joined us remotely if there's anyone in the chambers here that would like to provide public comment now you can go ahead and approach the podium mr leonard are there any online they're not all right then we will move on to item seven which is the public hearings that are scheduled for the next business meeting we have one new public hearing scheduled for the may 4th meeting this is comprehensive plan review the ann arbor city planning commission and planning and development services unit review the

007city's comprehensive plan on a regular basis the comprehensive plan consists of several plans or elements that work together to describe a vision for the city's future and guide decisions about its land use transportation infrastructure environment housing and public facilities the adopted plan elements can be found on the city's website at a2gov.org comp plan that's comp plan one word and as part of an annual review the planning commission is seeking comments about the city's comprehensive plan including elements that should be studied for possible change or new elements that should be added to the plan all right very good um next we'll move on to the regular business for tonight's meeting so we're on 8 a and first up is 212 miller avenue um we'll start with a project presentation and then the staff report before opening

008up the public hearing just give me a moment to get folks promoted here miss kenneth anybody else from your project team that you're expecting to see on zoom um not on zoom i think you have everyone one that was joining by zoom in carl can you unmute yourself if you're muted it doesn't look like she's muted and i can very vaguely hear her so okay give me a minute i'll see if we get the volume turned up there we might have to do an audio check with you in just a minute once mr leonard moves towards the controls yes help has arrived do we think it's just from those videos screens hey jeff can you see a little something for us um do you want to say that again no can you hear me now

009we hear you like at the end of a very long long tunnel oh okay uh can you hear me now yeah we'll work on it this is when we need commissioner lee's piano either the jeopardy theme i know mr khan can you try talking again yeah are you able to hear me now no um chatting sorry it's enough to like between ripley like lip reading and hearing it down the hall we can hear you but we're working on it bye we are okay ctn and mr leonard right kathy can you hear me i can hear you find you oh wow okay well that's well maybe we can have a conversation okay so it must be something related to the council chambers yep i wish i could mute my face but brett said no i have

010i have to show my face we are here yeah they can hear each other so i think it's just us sure that sounds great i don't know if you just heard that we're going to take a 10 minute ish break to try to figure this out and then we'll be back tom when is the um when do you anticipate the project we would lose um there we go all right so we are back to item 8a that we never really started uh so we'll start with a petitioner presentation and then the staff report in the public hearing so where we lost you miss kyneth we were saying is there anyone else that should be on the zoom i i think we're good there's myself and thompson simmons and i believe carl is in the um

011chambers with you in person yes all right so i'm camping i'm kathy keines with maycon engineering we prepare the site plan let tom talk about his vision for the project and explain it to you a little bit okay can you hear me okay we can go ahead okay um so i believe our architect is actually there carl um is that the case he is he's waving his hand in the corner okay so maybe i'll let him go first and um essentially give you an overview of the the project the i know he's got some sample boards a material wants to describe what we're doing there and then if there's any questions i i'm happy to to answer those or fill in any any blanks but please carl take it away all right he's coming up

012to the podium he was born in this town in the middle of the last century um 212 miller is a modest scale project it's it's not built out fully built up to the to the site limits um it's a it has hopefully looked at it um it has it's shorter night it has this 20 foot courtyard down the side here giving us 20 feet of room this west side is curved and it faces over a parking lot right now mr hueter speak as close you can to that microphone at the podium so folks watching on zoom can hear you as well thank you um we we've tried to develop the front of the building with more green space i hope you notice that we have a green fence that goes across the front of the

013building here there's a landscape area between the building and the sidewalk we have trees down through the courtyard area i don't know what else it's a seven or eight unit building depending on the final configuration the parking is down below you go down and under and each garage is is two cars deep uh each garage will have its own ev outlet in it for at least one electric vehicle and then the tenants drive into the garage and they access their units from an elevator that goes from the garage level up to the the first second and third floors and also by going in the unit entries on the east side you can also come in the front door and access the same elevator that'll take you up up to your unit and there's also a

014stairway that goes up to the units um i can't it's a it's a it's a standard platted lot in the city of ann arbor being that it's 66 feet wide and 132 feet deep the the project is doing a street improvement where they're improving the water main down the front of the street i still believe that's true correct tom yes yeah okay all right i'm here to answer any of the questions uh the the building is going to be lighter in tone uh the major surface of the building is rougher textured white stone and then the nietzsche raw panels the gray on the west side the garage is the graphite color i'm away from the microphone there's white on the east side this gray turn colored metal is going to be on the base and

015the upper roof mezzanine area thank you anything else from the petitioner i didn't there's some time yet left yep um not at this time but if i'm not sure if you want me to share my screen i have elevations the color out renderings that carl had prepared if you'd like to see those that would be great all right can you see that we can yeah so this is the south elevation which would be the front of the building facing miller you can see the green that carl was talking about this is the 309 building this is the east elevation so this would be what the elevation facing the 309 building would look like the courtyard and the entrances to the units oops i think i skipped one this is the north elevation so this would

016be the north side and then the west elevation of the building i think with that we'll turn it over to jeff for the the staff report if that's okay very good thank you thank you um this this project did go to the design review board which provided some some comments uh the the project um is consistent with the scale and character of other projects in the d2 um we also feel that the project is consistent with city goals for increasing density downtown this is a tight little site with an existing home from the latter part of the 19th century there and and they were able to get eight dwelling units so staff did did support the proposed site plan i'd like to read that recommendation staff recommends approval of the site plan because it complies

017with all applicable local state and federal ordinances standards and regulations and will not cause a public or private nuisance all right very good um then i think we are ready to open the public hearing this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the proposed uh the 212 miller avenue site plan for planning commission approval we'll first call on individuals who are present here in council chambers and then remote participants to speak during this public hearing remote if you've joined us remotely press the raised hand button on your zoom screen if you are have already dialed in you can press star 9 to raise your hand and if you would like to dial in now the number is 877-853-5247 our meeting id is 977-6630 12 26 mr leonard will select

018callers that have raised their hand calling on you by the last three digits of your telephone number or your zoom name when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any background sound so that we can hear you clearly and for either method of participation please state your name and address for the record is there anyone here in council chambers who'd like to speak at this time go ahead mr garber apparently i need no introduction um ken garber 28 hammer hill court nice to see everyone multi-family residential is a good use for this site it's too bad a functional building has to be demolished but overall a positive addition my comments as usual are about building hvac and greenhouse gas emissions this is a small building but everything matters the a20 climate action plan

019strategy two action one assumes no natural gas and new construction at all in our climate emergency the forced air gas furnace is a technology that no longer has any role in new residential buildings the best alternative is some version of a heat pump air source or ground source let's review the basics heat can be extracted from a cold outdoor air based on the second law of thermodynamics which states that among other things any temperature difference can be made to do work heat pumps use electricity to power a compressor and an expansion valve compressing a gas raises its temperature warming a cold building space the cost of installing a heat pump in new construction is about the same as for a traditional boiler or furnace ducted system possibly cheaper because of the dual heating cooling roll

020and the lack of duct work new refrigerants make heat pumps practical in cold climates like ours resident utility costs may be higher or lower depending on the relative cost of electricity and natural gas at any point in time for an eight unit building like this you can go either with a mini split where separately controlled indoor units connect to a single outdoor condenser slash evaporator or with vrf which sends refrigerant from the outdoor unit through individual compressors and a heat recovery box and is more adjustable and efficient but the main thing is that a heat pump produces no direct greenhouse gas emissions at all while burning natural gas is almost as destructive to our climate as coal when you take upstream methane methane emissions into account this building will produce roughly 104 metric tons co2

021equivalent emissions a year from gas combustion of course it may reduce commuter miles lowering gasoline emissions i've done those calculations too and the savings while important only offset about 1 6 the emission costs of using a gas hvac system i think many people in the community care about this a fully electrified building could provide a marketing advantage in ann arbor but that is incidental it's just the right thing to do thanks thank you mr leonard are there any uh folks who've indicated that they're interested in participating in the public hearing remotely no chair mills all right very good i'll close the public hearing then and read the motion and i need to go back to that the motion reads the ann arbor city planning commission hereby approves the 212 miller site plan for planning commission

022as it complies with all applicable local state and federal ordinances standards and regulations and it will not cause a public or private nuisance moved by commissioner sovay seconded by commissioner weich want to start kick off the questions or discussion no one wants to kick us off any questions at all go ahead commissioner survey um i have maybe one clarifying question about the architecture and the elevators and accessibility i see stairs going up to the front entry town homes to then access elevators and currently no doors to access the elevators so is there a zero stair threshold to access an elevator up to the units the units are accessible from the elevators so the residents knowing if someone is coming to visit them will allow that person access to their elevator at the garage entry point

023and then they go up and down into their units is there clearance for that with the double stacked cars i don't see significant clearance for they'll have to they'll have to prepare for someone coming to visit all right and then so relocate their car to the to the diagonally adjacent uh parking garage and so is there room for uh uh an ada unit that somebody could unload from their car in their garage and access their elevator i guess my main concern is in all of these we're making concessions for someone with no mobility issues to be able to utilize this to get out of their car and access the elevator or an exchange of moving the car to access the elevator and stairs so the residents have can park in their garage and use their

024elevator they're all type b type units and if a guest is coming then they can make preparation for that guest by moving their vehicle over to ann ashley parking structure and then their guests can come in and access their elevator but i guess if if a resident is wheelchair bound how do they access their elevator if say they took a stroll around the neighborhood and their cars are in their garage and they can't go through the stairs to the front door to access the elevator well that would be that's an interesting scenario i um i i don't have an answer for you okay that would be my main concern and significantly it's about you know the stacking and the access to those elevators without stairs like there's no excess direct accessible route without moving vehicles

025to have that wheelchair accessible route which increases carbon emissions and requires like full operation of garage doors instead of having a person door to be able to move through into the garage area to access the elevator so if i try to draw a line of a wheelchair bound person living in this unit i don't see a way without continuously moving cars around increasing carbon emissions to access their own unit i understand what you say so i guess my concern then too is how does this mute building requirements about accessible units if no units here are accessible the the units are accessible and there's some question right at the moment if they need to be type b or not and those are all issues that we're working through okay my biggest cons like i guess i'll

026say looking at the plans and in terms of access points like we're really asking anybody with mobility restrictions to use the driveway to access because they they have to meet whoever they're visiting at the garage door they have to negotiate with vehicles to access that elevator and so we're putting vulnerable people within vehicular traffic patterns to be able to access units um and physicians other projects in town that have very similar situations is this uh and this building sort of modeled that for them so i i like i said it's it's something that needs to be looked at well for me to respond go ahead hi hi this is tom simmons i'm the developer so we're currently designing this building as all type v units which is the building code requires us to do that

027so everything is accessible ready uh your code also requires a certain amount of parking we uh have that met with one parking space per garage their double depth tandem so someone could this is all user choice they could park two cars there they could park one car there they could park bikes they have storage the whole goal here is to give people a large private space storage space that they don't get in regular style condominiums we've done projects like this at four and four north main at 121 kingsley west um i know the mark was developed the same way on liberty and so this argument that there's no way to get a wheelchair in here i mean that's really up to the owner if they're if they're in a wheelchair it's up to their guests

028there's ways we're enabling with technology that the owner could be overseas and using their cell phone can open their garage door and open their elevator door and get up into the unit so the idea that it's completely blocked and cars have to be moved is simply not true i'll disagree and i have concerns about the only access to a zero threshold is through a garage door that we don't have a person door to access and we're putting people in vehicle transit risk and our evaluation of the site is about safety and we're really asking vulnerable movement uh in vehicular area so that's my main concern right now with the project and we understand that and we are designing this project to meet all buildings and zoning codes thank you thank you any other questions or

029comments from planning commissioners go ahead commissioner g randall um your model indicated that you said you were planting trees in the patio zone but i'm just not seeing them on the plan and so i'm wondering what what's the story with that the trees are gonna be in planters and they're not part of this of the required landscaping for the site they're in addition to that okay so you're just you're telling us about them but they're not part of your kind of base scope in terms of um they're not a part of the site plan or approval process process they're part of one of the amenities that's going to be in the courtyard yeah we typically use three by three or four by four planters to plant trees again we've done that at 414 north main

030where we designed a similar building with two buildings with a courtyard between them and also 121 kingsley west i mean that'll really get worked out when we do the structural design we have to take into account some extremely heavy loads um but again thankfully the way this building is designed with the individual garages blow and essentially a number of structural walls down below at 14 feet on center we're able to plant quite a few trees on there uh which would be a very nice amenity i mean we we the one of the over hiding goals when we when we first acquired this site was how it's going to interact with the building that we're building right next door right we didn't want to build them wool the wall um and so by building us a

031bit of a smaller structure we did a number of sun sun and shade studies here uh to the west uh and also leaving that 20 yard courtyard between which is very similar we've gone past uh we think it's going to be a really nice feature for residents of both buildings what that planting plan will be in that courtyard and then have you all considered doing any like any kind of electrification for the building in terms of you know um stoves or ovens or you know going also thinking about hvac and things like that is that something you all would consider uh yeah you bet so right now um what we're using is high efficiency heat pump condensing units so it's sort of a hybrid system where it's uh air-to-air heat exchanger so it's all electric

032and and most of the shoulder seasons in the summer uh it relies on a backup natural gas in the dead of winter so that's your essentially backup heat source versus all electric where you're relying on electric resistance heating so we've had very good luck with these we're installing them all throughout 309 north ashley next door uh we'll also be prepping for solar we'll be bringing a big fat pipe up from our electric meter room up to the roof so that it'll be easy if the residents this will be we're planning on being a condo project we'll sell out it'll be easy if the residents want to vote and put any solar up there in the future also because your standards recently changed and required like a certain number of electric car charging it doesn't really

033work for kind of building so we're essentially in our marketing offering electric actual electric car chargers for every single garage so we'll not only prep for them but well when people purchase the units we'll we'll supply them a charger they just need to let us know what type of electrical charger they want whether it's a tesla or something else so we think we have a pretty pretty good plan would you all consider doing stuff like induction stoves or things like that we'll be looking at everything as we get farther into the project um so we have looked at induction stove we've looked at everything from wolf which is a high-end brand that um is really the only high-end brand making that type of plants right now all the way down to like ge appliances which

034have uh that really that technology is catching up with everybody whether it be appliance manufacturers lighting's done a good job we do all led everywhere uh heating and cooling is is is pretty good it's a little difficult in this climate but we think we have a good plan there and again we'll prep for solar well i'm i'm heartened to hear that you're considering that i know that these are decisions that you may make later in the process as you figure things out but i'm glad that you all are considering that and we would just encourage you even though we don't have any teeth with us it's something that we care a lot about so i'm glad that you all are thinking about it and um and considering uh we're doing as much as possible we're

035we're actually um i'm involved in another project downtown which is going to be a lead gold project so we've had to do a lot of preliminary work on energy efficiency and we found that our current building standards our windows building envelope hvac systems that we're using um even for this project which we won't be going for a specific standard meet that lead goal so we feel pretty good about what we're able to offer our customers these days all right thank you thank you any other questions or comments i have just a a very small question since you mentioned lead gold which i know you're not going for at this building but as mr garber mentioned you are tearing down a functional building have you thought about what you're going to do with the the demolition

036debris and have you thought about salvaging any of the parts of that building that might be salvageable always um we've we've been building in ann arbor now for 31 years i know you have a demolition process that is different than many other areas demolition checklist we contact salvage companies we have people come through [Music] and salvage wherever we can realistically old buildings have a lot of bad materials in them too but we'll certainly uh be contacting our normal vendors we've worked with everyone in the past i can't even uh think now who we've worked with groups out of detroit in ann arbor that can uh salvage and recycle materials but it that kind of is codified unless things have changed that we've been doing that uh for every building that we've ever had to take

037down in the city of ann arbor thank you you're welcome other petitions or not petitioners commissioners have questions or comments go ahead commissioner sovay i'll ask the petitioner if they would be willing to work with staff to change the stair entry to the courtyard to a ramp engineered into a ramp to create accessible paths to the front doors then access the elevators through a safe person door instead of the car door at the garage sure i'm not quite sure how that works i mean we looked at the ramp and had a hard hard time making a ramp work up to that courtyard level i know i think one of the biggest issues is your engineering department and wouldn't allow us to essentially bring a ramp landing off of the sidewalk because of um the slope

038of miller uh they'd say that that's not edx accessible and you can't even start with that so that was one of our biggest issues uh when we started talking to them about it so it's really hard to figure out how to even get a ramp up to that level i'm certainly willing to engage with staff on both planning and engineering i mean once we're hopefully done uh and receive approval uh usually kathy starts working with engineering provider you know prepares all the plans as carl mentioned we do have to bring a new water main up from um 1st street to service this and so when she's working on engineering plans sure we we have no problem looking at the ramp there okay we did once but we just ran the problems with engineering staff kathy

039please jump in here found something that's not correct but that's my recollection of this process now um as you know miller is a fairly steep street and the grade of miller exceeds what's allowed by ada so there becomes a problem when you start modifying the sidewalk that you can't make the situation any worse than what it already is and to install a ramp we would have to put you know a level landing pad in that sidewalk which then results in all of the other sidewalk being at a steeper grade than it's already at so we did look extensively at putting a ramp in here we looked at different ways to put more than one ramp we just really could not find a way to make a ramp work we even looked at putting a ramp

040you know that went deeper into the courtyard but then that impacts you know the garages and what space is available in the garage and we just it just we couldn't get the ramp to work and maintain you know the ada compliance for the sidewalk on the street as well i think similar like off-site landings is a big thing you know like if you can't maintain it on the sidewalk once you get onto your site you can start to average out some of those slopes and things you can give more space to give a pedestrian path and designing person doors to the garage storage areas but i can't support it in its current design configuration it's just a high risk uh travel routes for vulnerable people accessing the site and so i either need to see

041[Music] working with staff to be able to access at the lower storage level with a person door um and a dedicated path uh delineated so that their the vehicle path and the person path are separated and identified or that additional engineering happens at the courtyard on site instead of on the city part of the parcel to average out and create a ramp and maybe that's sacrificing some of the amenity of a courtyard space but it's creating safer space for more accessible populations to be able to access housing and i think in this demographic we're going to see aging populations that it's really important that they have safe access other commissioners go ahead commissioner wedge uh i'd like to hear from staff either mr khan or mr leonard on commissioner sovay's concern that she's raised around

042the safety because this would be under our purview to deny this petitioner's request because it does pose a risk to safety but the staff report says it does not and so before sort of moving forward if if there could be some clarity presented either from mr connor or mr leonard and maybe even some guidance because if we could table the conversation or delay it to give staff and the petitioner an opportunity to make these changes so whatever i'm i'm looking at the site i'm listening to commissioner silvay i'm convinced and i'd like to figure out what the best path forward is we would be happy to put together a meeting with engineering and the petitioners agents to re revisit that issue i i can't speak to the engineering standards that that engineering um worked with

043the petitioner on but uh we can certainly facilitate that that conversation let's see if um planning manager or leonard has any comments yeah and typically we don't get into i would just add we don't as part of the site plan we um it does require compliance with all regulations um not to create any uh nuisances so i think the the conversation around those standards is appropriate as it relates to the type b units in those configuration neither mr connor i have the expertise to speak to the adequacy of that or not but that's something we could solicit that feedback from our building department um if that would be beneficial to the commission how would we approach this as opposed to just a straight vote here at the table is there an opportunity to amend the

044motion to include this review since you all can't answer these questions at the table so i'm just trying to figure out how we can get to a decision because right now absent the information that you say that you cannot provide i feel ill-equipped to vote if there is a way for us to achieve the concerns that commissioner sovay has articulated at the site not at the sidewalk level because as she um explains some of the concerns i i was like oh okay now now i see what you mean and and this is a problem and the petitioner has said well it's really sort of up to the owner to try to figure this solution out and we've created this space for them but it does negat neglect neglect the the the notion that someone coming

045into the space is now harmed which you know when we were looking at the driveways and that blocked the back bike paths we voted down that site because it was going to create a harm to the community and this feels like it's in that stream but i'm i'm uncertain uh to use a midwest western approach here and so some guidance would be helpful sure uh if you are if there's information first of all it's it's always appropriate to i would always advise you not if you don't have the information you need to make a decision you shouldn't be making that decision of course so in that starting with your preface of you'd like to have those issues explored before you're comfortable making that findings as related to that my recommendation would be either to table

046or postpone the item to provide and and then provide mr khan with the direction of that information that would be helpful and necessary for the commission to do so um and then that would be a conversation about the timing that it would take to do that um as i said probably the initial thoughts would be is as mr khan said some space to to revisit the notion of the ramp um with engineering requirements we would bring the city's engineers in that process and we could provide feedback from the building department about ada accessibility which would um i think speak to what requirements exist and whether this is meeting those minimum requirements or not with the chair's permission can i ask a question to commissioner sovay with commissioner silva's permission carl you might not commit so

047would you entertain a amendment here would you want to table it here like what do you feel like is helpful for our conversation because i want to defer to your expertise yeah i mean and that's where um i've stated my concerns i think the petitioner understands my strong concerns and staff has to hurt them as well and it is really a um an amendment to you know have this reviewed um when proceeding that i feel comfortable with but you know having a second look with staff and meeting with the building department to coordinate so i trust staff to kind of follow through instead of revisit and and bring this back to us but i do want to heighten the attention to that as it proceeds forward for staff i know it kind of it ends

048here like this isn't kind of a checkpoint right anymore in terms of moving forward but i do i do have concerns um i i think we have a well-equipped staff to answer many of those and kind of address them with the petitioner at this point but i also want to state it for the public record that this is something that we should be more responsibly looking at uh when projects come to the table um because this well it might meet the basic standards and several kind of tiers it's this convergence point between planning and building code and this kind of access point of when planning meets the property line and when building code meets the building edge and how people transition from one to the other that feels like a life safety condition that we

049should be having a bigger discussion around so um with that i guess i mean i can i just have one more question for it and this one's to the chair so chair mills is uh is there a mechanism available to us in your judgment that will either allow us to amend the approval pending the outcome of the engineering review or do you recommend that we put an amendment in place to postpone pending that information so hopefully that was clear okay yeah and and actually i appreciate that and i am going to respond with a question to staff um because i do see i heard two different things right i heard a motion to postpone which is infinitely doable and that's what we would typically do if we need more information what i also heard and

050correct me if i'm wrong is a an approval contingent upon staff reviewing which in my estimation again this is and the reason that i have the question is whether staff's comfortable with that under what if the answer is no like it doesn't seem feasible reasonable like because this is typically we had we've done that in the past when it would go on to city council so this is why i want to pose i'm i'm looking behind me to mr leonard but also would per ask mr khan would that second option [Music] how how do you as staff feel about that because i i can see i have mixed feelings about that yeah i'll start i typically when you add a condition like that it's to seek an outcome and so if if the desire was

051to amend the motion to say this is approved with the following modifications of the establishment of a clear ada accessible path to the garage doors and the establishment of a ramp to the patio to provide or one or the other that's a clear measurable i am also i want to be clear i'm happy if it is approved subject to working with staff to consider these options with that i want to be clear though that without a requirement that that just remains discretionary so if if it's educational that your desire is i i would suggest that that's been accomplished by this dialogue if your intention is that one of these solutions has to be integrated in order for it to meet those standards you could do it with that condition i'd be less excited about approving

052it subject to investigating whether or not these things are possible i would rather work with a petitioner to answer those questions definitively bring it back to the commission for consideration um and it just has a historical perspective and i see your hand commissioner clark so i'll come to you but uh that's following up on this this idea of having conditions if we approve it only with those conditions and and this is typically historically where we would turn to the petitioner and say do you want us to vote on that with these conditions or would you like us to postpone this just is that my is my recollection of that correct okay i'm hearing uh in case you can't see there are nods on this side so um commissioner weich before turning it over to commissioner

053clark does that answer your questions okay awesome so i think that those are our those are the two in my mind the two reasonable things approve with conditions or postpone and i think opening it if i were in your shoes opening it back up and asking kind of uh of the petitioner might be helpful commissioner clark um i agree with the question or somebody's uh concerns and i would prefer to i don't feel like we have enough information to maybe vote and prefer to postpone um i'm just a curiosity for my own knowledge um this is uh i think the existing structure is a 1900s like brick house is this required to go under any like um historic review commission or any other body or is it just us i don't know who that would

054be directed too i'm going to direct that to staff i'm i'm happy to answer that the um the the house on this site is not in a historic district thank you so so therefore it's not protected um by our historic preservation ordinance thank you and then just one other question am i understanding right that each one of the garages will back out onto miller or is it is there a single curb crab just looking at the pictures and trying to understand the design a little better or is it underground i think that could be either for staff or for the petitioner and this i would i had that same question the site plan shows it maybe if one of you are able to share the site plan well well kathy's um going to pull that

055image up i can attempt to answer that if you're in a vehicle and drive onto the site you're going to be be driving to the west of the building and pulling into one of the garages that are located on the ground level and uh it looks like kathy has has brought up the image so um kathy would you mind um continuing that discussion so this is there's one driveway off of miller that's located right here where my cursor is these are each individual garages so you would pull in and then pull into your garage if you're backing out you would back out into this area and then come out the driveway you would not be backing out into miller avenue you would be backing out into this space here and then going forward out onto

056miller okay kathy would you mind pulling up the garage level and the architectural since that obviously is a big part of this ongoing discussion thank you there thanks not sure if that helps anybody understand what the current uh issue are on planning commissioners or not showing the ability to park two cars in there or park one car in there these garages are wider than uh we typically do one car garage it's 14 feet um point point of order chair mills i i would i'm i don't understand what he's doing right now because we haven't asked him a question and the the uh kathy uh previously answered the other question so can we come back uh to the table do you go ahead more kind of a follow up on that too is when you mentioned

057the slope um wasn't possible because of the slope on miller making it worse um but then i think kind of a brief mention was made that there might be some concession on the way that the garage was configured if the slope was different could you just elaborate on what kind of concessions would have to be made um or if that was the case or if i misunderstanding about what would have to change about the design let me get back to the site plan here for you so what we were talking about is originally we had considered putting a ramp here this is the existing sidewalk on miller it already exceeds ada but it matches the street slope so it's allowed to be that way if we were to put a ramp here we'd have to

058create a level landing area out in here and when you do that that makes a flat spot so when you do that then it makes the slope of the sidewalk even worse than it already is so we had looked at that we had also looked at trying to get a ramp along here in fact we looked at a couple of different configurations to try to get a ramp along there but when you do that you cut into the garage space and you can no longer have the space that you have in the garage because it's the ramp would start here here as opposed and it would have to go through the garage and then come up and as you're coming up you'd get to patio level but it would impact the garage for sure anything

059else commissioner clark i think that helps to understand that the concession would be just the garage would have slightly less space for tenants was helpful thank you i uh really appreciate that question uh sorry if i'm jumping in if anybody else i really appreciate that question and that helped me understand kind of what the trade-offs too are from my perspective i hadn't thought about the safety so thank you for bringing that up um i this is a place where parking is not required um and uh and so that eight spaces actually 16 spaces because the garages are are designed to double up um are provided i agree that there's some flexibility um that that offers i would you know for storage or other things but actually the solution that cuts into the garage space and

060makes some of those not be full double depth is not concerning at all to me and that seems like a far preferable solution in my mind um and so i am certainly in support of either the postponement of this to allow for a design that would accommodate that approval of conditions that would force that or um kind of what uh you know another option is providing you know dedicated pedestrian access on the back side um this to me seems like a reasonable solution not redrawing it here but just hearing what kind of the trade-offs are that's that's a trade-off that i think is really um uh reasonable overall though i want to say like i think that this this issue needs ought to be solved but i'm excited with the idea that this uh property

061in our downtown area can now house eight families rather than the you know i don't know how many units are currently in the blue building or were in the blue building prior to construction but i it was office okay so i was gonna say i can't imagine that it's more than two um and so that's exciting to me this is the right place for this i appreciate the way that it is designed in conjunction with its neighbor and providing an amenity you know betw like i i think that this it's distinct architecturally it's distinct which i think is nice it's not just the same thing so i'm really i'm excited about this building um and so i while i recognize um the embodied energy in the existing structure a two-story structure built in the 19th

062century is definitely not ada compliant i've got to believe um and so i mean i see that this is this is a huge benefit but to the same point like we got a lot of that kind of structure in our city and we do want to make sure that what we're building allows people to age in place um i one of the points that i think got kind of tied up in here is this idea or that i that i hadn't heard and i'm still not sure about is if you have a vehicle if you are disabled and have a vehicle like do you have space to get out of that because i'm not i don't know all the dimensions i ultim this is a place where you could live without a car you should

063live without a car ultimately hopefully i don't like i mean you could totally live without a car and so making sure that you can safely get into your unit without a car is really important here so um i'm super i'm very supportive of this i hope that one way or the other we can get to the solution on the um on making it accessible through the front door effectively um i rather than pushing it off on another i think i will directly ask the uh the petitioner would you like us to postpone this would you prefer a condition that it that it would be designed to allow for um a ramp uh uh oh yeah i'll put it on you which which do you prefer may i ask a question ask a question of you

064okay well i would like to ask the question of the planning commission all right you can ask me yeah go ahead are you asking us to do something above and beyond what's required by building code i am [Music] what i'm looking at is the safety concerns associated with this from a planning perspective um so i i am not sure how to answer that mr leonard can you help help to answer that i mean i think this would be uh uh on the standard of not creating a nuisance so um it is conceivable that it would be above and beyond the minimum required by the building code for that purpose thank you can i ask your question uh yes kathy yes if we cut out part of 101 in 201's garages can we get a ramp

065on that site by putting a landing pad at the entrance so from what i'm understanding they're requesting that the landing pad would have to be on your property that's that's something that you know we'd have to go back and look at it may cut into 101 201 and 301st garages yeah all right so because the commissioner asked us a direct question how we'd like to proceed um you know again we looked at this issue um i guess we're certainly open [Music] and i'm going to respond here with it with a yes but a question you know we're certainly open to having you approve this project on the condition that we are able to put a ramp up to the first floor um landing if that you know if we get shot down in engineering says

066absolutely no way or whatever what does that mean does that mean we can come back with the same project does that mean that we're toast and have to start over because i i mean we want to been building and developing arbor for 31 years we want to do what's right here um and so i'm happy to to have you prove it with that condition i think we can get it to work again we looked at it but what happens if we can i guess is my question can we come back and and look at other options for the garage is it planning commission three months from now if it doesn't work out or what that's my question that's a great question that i am going to direct to staff what happens if we do it

067with a with a prescriptive so if the condition is added as a prescriptive uh requirement that would have to be satisfied in order for the project to proceed so if it was determined at some future point that that was not feasible they would have to submit a new site plan that amended made the proposed amendments that could be realized and then that would be considered under whatever requirements depending on that change to the plan or prescribed by the ordinance so in short if it couldn't be realized they would have to submit a new site plan that could be realized and they would go through the normal review process based on potentially a modification or amendment to the existing plan or if it were something drastically different might come fully back to planning commission but it

068would set the expectation that that had to be achieved to proceed okay if sorry go ahead and if i may respect if i may i respectfully request that you postpone this because it seems to make more sense that we try and work it out with staff and engineering now and just come back to you at the next meeting or the next scene after that then agree to some may not be achievable and have to resubmit and go through review by everybody which doesn't make any sense to me okay um also i want to say your architect has been politely holding uh raising in hand so if you want to contribute to this conversation go ahead so everyone realizes that someone in a wheelchair cannot approach this site because the grades are too steep along miller

069so to invite them to try and approach the site coming down miller you're putting them in danger so our discussion was with someone a guest coming to this building could drive in and have access to the elevator and get up and down versus trying to have them park at ann ashley come across the street and then endanger themselves on a steep grade on the public right-of-way what you're asking for is we have a site that you can't approach but you want the site when we develop it to be compliant even though no one can get to the site from the public right-of-way thank you i and i would suggest that this in my mind solidifies why further discussion and postponement so further discussion with staff to get at that i one of the in that

070discussion what i'm hoping would happen is that there's discussion of if you arrive in a van that has a lift if that's what it's called off to the side where actually you would park that if these garages are actually wide enough for that like i that's what i'm hoping that you guys can have i i can see i can i can i see all of the complexities here but i would really like staff's professional recommendation with lots of you know lots of consideration in that i'm not gonna make the motion to postpone i'm gonna wait for somebody else to make that because there's lots of hands up too oh goodness this has raised a lot of things um is it's directly on this commissioner clark no i just wanted to kind of kindly point out

071too that we're not necessarily only talking about people in wheelchairs there's other kinds of reasons that people may not be able to drive um they're made you know and you know it's ann arbor there's a whole number of people there one car no car households so the wheelchair point seems a little bit of a tan tangentially i mean like yes the grade is important for wheelchairs but there's also people that may have visually impaired or maybe elderly any number of reasons that they may not be in a wheelchair so but still need access without a vehicle um commissioner give randall okay and then commissioner hammerschmidt so to have a van accessible and aisle you need 13 feet so you could get something it depends on where you're parking within that system to be able to

072make that happen the thing is is that the elevators kind of come into that space too so the um it's the fact that the elevator is kind of in the middle of it that make it a little tricky um because you can slide the car by you know but i mean i i think it's i think this is going to be tricky i think there is a chance with this because of the existing grades out there at the sidewalk that the engineering may say you can't do this because the level landing should actually be at the turning spot not once you've already turned in terms of how you design it so this is the thing that it's just a really tricky site it's a really tricky site so this is the thing that's tough about

073this is that um we may have to have kind of the the lesser of two evils and and so i'm not saying that it's not worth exploring but this is a really tricky site this is this is not a straightforward solution here at all in terms of the letter of the law of how you're supposed to do this so i think we need to kind of think about like what happens it's a very real possibility that engineering will say no you can't make that sidewalk any steeper you can't put your level landing out there so what does that mean for us so i just want us to be really aware of that in terms of how we're shunting this through the system and whether um you know whether there's like one of the units at

074the end is has more space or something like that so that the the that can you know they can access it more easily or something maybe there's a way to kind of make i know that's true of many places in town where they have like a couple of accessible units i mean these are like mostly accessible really i mean there really are but maybe there's one that everybody sacrifices a little bit six inches or something you know who knows so that there's some way to be able to have one that is more clear because i don't know that we can make this all work given the site constraints that are there and so um if in terms of making it tricky for you know people pulling in because i agree with what the architect said

075it's like it's really steep on miller it's like way beyond what what you would have to have a rail going up both sides um to be able to make that code compliant in terms of it it being a ramp so could i imagine one thing um not right now thank you okay so anyway i just want to as somebody who designs these things that's some of the the complications that i just want us to be if we go that route it's it's not a slam dunk it's not so i mean i'm not saying we can design it all here right now but it further solidifies just before i pass it over in my mind like pushing pause letting having more discussion on this at the staff level to sort out what it is that engineering

076requires commissioner hammerschmidt thanks um this is an interesting discussion thank you for pointing that out about the grade of miller and that what is a what is a ramp going to achieve so i'm wondering to the petitioners you know i'm looking at this site plan you've got eight different garages eight different elevators for units that are not multi-story did you consider a floor plan option that was maybe not garages but just open parking underneath and like a central elevator or an elevator in the corner that goes up in internal doorways to access the units rather than having these external doorways was there ever any sort of plan like that [Music] that you thought about or is that something that could be thought about sure that would be a completely different project that would be a

077true condominium these are modified townhouses but what i was trying to get to earlier is i want to make the point that the entire driveway servicing these garages is covered the building sits over it so it's not like people the the thought process here this this you know concern that cars are going to block the elevator it's our thought process at the best spot for someone to get out is to pull into this flat driveway open their garage door and go up their elevator if they're in a wheelchair and it's completely covered i think that's very easily and doable based on the size of these garages or storage areas whatever you want them to call whether they have zero cars or one car and two cars to do that and and that essentially is what

078our engineer kathy keinath and at working with city engineering staff determined was the best way to get into this building thank you but if you're in a wheelchair i think commissioner randall just pointed out it's not wide enough to actually pull into the garage and get out with your right it's not wide enough for you to be in a wheelchair and be able to exit your vehicle and have that clearance it's correct it's what i was pointing out is it's very wide underneath the building the entire higher driveway 120 some odd foot driveway is completely covered by the building so when you pull in you don't necessarily have to pull in your garage you don't access your elevator if that's the variety of concern about safety or having room are there are there spaces though

079to park outside of there no right so if you were in a wheelchair you could never park in your garage is what i'm hearing no no yes you can put two cars in your garage you can park in the garage it's wide enough to get out it's if you're looking at the you're looking at the plan yeah there it is 13 feet there's 14 feet but the elevator kind of kicks into it for just a a a moment in the middle and so you could pull something all the way forward and get out and go around that thing that's tricky about it is the way the doors are accessed on the side that's what's kind of tricky about it if they were but i don't know how else to do it right exactly right so

080it depends on how big your car is essentially is what it comes down to yeah because you're supposed to be 18 feet long and so they you know whatever they have a little bit extra and this is again in this sort of due diligence of kind of figuring this out but i also see that it's not it's not a you you yeah it's not an easy one anything else commissioner hammerschmidt i don't think so i'm still confused but if we're postponing it anyway then commissioner lee thank you um i'm going to back up just a bit and talk about the development a little generally i think overall the intent of the d2 zoning is met the building massing to me seems appropriate relative to 309 i actually like the materiality i think it looks good

081i think it's going to create a lot of visual diversity as you walk up um and i guess i've walked this particular path every day for two years between 2014 and 2016. so i know this driveway very well um i think this would be a vast improvement it was i'd park at mckinley tech center at the very bottom of the hill i walked up this way pretty much every single day so um it would be straight up dangerous i think um for somebody in a wheelchair on this particular road um it's a good workout though as you walk up that hill um all that said i think there's a lot of good points obviously i appreciate the discussion i just wanted to zoom out a little bit and say hey i think this is an

082improvement of the site um i think that this is actually a unique design based on the challenges architecturally and i think what's interesting to me at least is i like the foliage that's kind of on that southern end it's got that kind of vehicular area i would love to see some kind of a mirror or something that gives you a little bit more visibility of that sidewalk just just because of the but the line of sight looks good the entryway that we've been kind of focusing on about the staircases and such um to a certain extent i actually love the concept of activating like the front kind of porch area and this concept of like having this activated area for the residents i think that's very important for community efficacy for a neighbor to get

083to know one of their other neighbors so having successful quasi-public spaces like this i think is important and so i think from a design standpoint i actually think this is a pretty neat project um i do understand the concerns about accessibility and safety those are obviously paramount the entire policing authority of law comes from the health safety and general welfare given the context of all of this i suppose i'm of the mindset that i actually do think that this scales well to the block you have appropriate massing that masses towards downtown so it's creates legibility for the pedestrian that is traversing up this way and i can tell you just again firsthand i made this walk every day so um and right now that building is like preset back and it's it's it's not that

084exciting so i think it's introducing uh more options um so overall i just wanted to those are my comments i wanted to step back and just say hi i know we're hyper focused on the the ada accessibility i think the building again i'm not a building code expert so i'm just going to actually leave it at that so but overall i think with the challenges of the site materiality massing intent of the zoning have been met here so i suppose i will leave it at that and just wanted to at least interject my comments as with respect to this development so thank you any other commissioners go ahead commissioner lee thank you uh just to be unequivocal um i i have utmost respect for obviously commissioner salvi i think that that was a it's a

085very um astute point that you raised um i however will respectfully have to dissent on that i i if this went to a vote i would be voting in favor of it in in the current design so i just wanted to make that unequivocal uh just as we proceed here but i'm also if if it needs to be postponed for the viability of the project i'd also be on board with that as well thanks others commissioner watch were you into i was just going it sounded no i wasn't gonna make a motion i was gonna actually defer to commissioner survey for the motion uh but it sounded like the petitioner is opening is open to the defer the postponement as opposed to us amending the motion at the table and then uh having to go

086off and meet that amendment and so how would we can we get staff support for that is it just a straight postponement we just vote to postpone we don't need any language great you this is why you're the chair chairmill so i'll defer to you for our next step there you go well i'm going to take that as a go ahead commissioner abrams thank you um i feel a little tied to knots so i just want to try to iron them out for a moment so the logic behind the postponement is one so that the petitioner and staff in engineering and planning can address potential safety concerns about access to the site for those with limited mobility but seems like it's important for us to parse the difference between somebody in a wheelchair and just

087somebody who has difficulty walking up steps so it seems like what we have heard is that if you are in a wheelchair you cannot approach this i i'm not saying this is fact i kind of want this i'm i'm asking for confirmation of this assumption or my understanding is it correct if you're in a wheelchair approaching this site not in a vehicle would be very difficult because coming up or down miller is already a slope that exceeds the ada slope so if you're in a wheelchair you are presumably entering this site in a vehicle and then the question is has there been enough done to address how one gets into the building from the driveway and then the other question is just is it okay to have a stair and not a ramp that connects

088the sidewalk to the courtyard for those with more limited mobility and maybe just with like nods is that is that others understanding of this because i think one thing i'm wondering is i do think that the petitioner thought about and looked at access to the courtyard with a ramp for those not in wheelchairs but because miller is too steep but just for those with more limited mobility um and decided for the stare so i i just yeah i maybe i'm feeling like we talked about a lot of things and it could do some clarify clarity for me and whether that changes anything in terms of just uh actually uh i guess making a motion for a postponement so that these issues can be addressed more thoroughly or we have made our points and we feel

089heard and the petitioner understands our concerns and we ask them in good faith to address them as to the best of their ability i guess those are the options on the table okay i didn't have a question in there so i don't know who i'm who i want to uh follow up with me maybe yeah maybe commissioner survey commissioner solvay i'll just clarify my concerns like perfect is the enemy of good and like we may not be achieving full ada and that's not the require like the requirement at the planning level but there are concerns about how we're putting a person's travel to this building in the site plan that we are reviewing we're not looking at the building code right but i am looking at this how the site is planned to access the

090building and we're asking people to either move in front of garage doors and access in that way or move upstairs some of the discussion about like sacrificing some garage space to create ramps on site might be possible and again to you know perfect to the enemy of good what is on miller versus what becomes more mobile friendly on-site seems possible and worthy of asking the petitioner to review and so you know i'm seeing different options of you know i'm tracing somebody maybe in a motorized wheelchair right like maybe being dropped off at the corner of the block and moving half a block like the empathy of understanding how people move and the types of people in our community can make better projects and we've reviewed projects where just certain mobilities around bikes moving through uh

091drive-throughs and things like that have actually improved projects that have already been by right and we've pushed a little further and i guess what i'm asking is to push this project a little further to become a little better for the rest in the community that we should have empathy for uh to include so that's really my question of the project and why you know i would move to postpone so we could see how we can improve this for those safety measures to access the building through the site plan not within the architecture because that's not within our purview and so to improve the safety of the site plan for those people so i just moved it in that discussion there was a motion and as part of that would anyone like to second it moved

092by or seconded by commissioner weich mr leonard so postponement would be to a date certain i would um i would suggest with the petitioner's acquiescence that we try to keep this on track and maybe postpone to our next regular meeting of may 4th to wednesday i don't my hesitancy of that date is that if there are modifications i don't know that all the drawings will be able to be modified but given that they've already spent some time investigating these aspects i'm optimistic that we could at least come with a viable concept by that point that could be then identified comfortable comfortable and considered like refined through civil work so um so i would just ask that if the motion is uh is considered that it be amended to reflect a specific date i would start

093with may 4th apart from that we do have a pretty busy agenda on the 17th so the next option after that would be june 7th the 4th seems friendly yes commissioner weich i am completely deferring to commissioner sovay so yes great discussion of the motion to postpone any other discussion and if you didn't agree with commissioner abrams very able like uh description of what parsing through this discussion um [Music] speak now yes could you just validate with the petitioners that they are in agreement with that time for frame as well very good yes petitioners is what a postponement to may 4th seem reasonable to expedite this so i'm going to make a comment and i don't mean it to sound disrespectful but then we need to have a commitment that staff is going to be

094responsive enough to give us comments back and work with us so that we can get it back to you by before that's it's only two weeks so yeah and i wanna i i think that's uh and that's sort of my comments the notion of having revised plans done by that time i think are ambitious i think that if it went back to that plan it would probably be with a shared vision that that a condition could be added because there is a plan by which those plans could be modified in the future to make that if the commission is more desirous to have detailed plans that reflect any changes i think more time would be appropriate my my instinct is let's keep it on track provide a little bit more investigation time we can bring

095a little bit more of the city's perspective on some of the things that the project engineer has already validated and um if at worst it could be postponed again but it keeps it on track to try and answer the question more quickly and so can i ask another question yep go i was going to go back to you to say okay so what do you think go ahead i thought i heard this but i i want to make sure that i'm clear that this is what i heard is that you're not interested in changing the architecture of the bill building or the elevators but what you want is somehow for us to get a ramp on the site so that you have access from miller is that what i heard i think that in commissioner

096abram's um kind of summary that that's one of the that's one of the potential ways yes that would that would be a uh exploring that would be important is that fair but it's not it doesn't have to be it's more like understanding what are the options for different mobility i appreciate the question because it'll be helpful for for us as well my understanding is that there's sort of two investigations a ramp to the front patio revisiting that conversation that the petitioners already discussed as it relates to the grade and second improving accessibility in the garage area by potentially reduction or reconfiguration of of some or all of those garages to improve accessibility for units in that space as well so both of those are to be investigated as is my understanding go ahead commissioner like

097the the kind of third piece is you or the assumption right like if the stairs maintain and the assumption is the accessible route is through the garage how amanda how can it be improved how that would be improved right so coming down through a driveway and somebody backing out of a garage while they're traversing to like unit four seeing that so that that's why like there's there's two entries like and there's like two entry points to elevators and two entry front doors and so it could be solved in a multitude of ways and so i just want to see that take does that help a little bit well it does and i wanted uh some his kind of question i i think it really was trying to find an improved solution we're not saying that

098accomplishing either is going to be a beneficial it's not both so i but i just wanted to be clear that it was a couple of potential reconfigurations to explore not just the one i is that does that answer your question it's kinda yes thank you and with that and the understanding that it is the planning commission we you could not see us all nodding our heads when staff was explaining that two weeks from now it is unlikely that we would have full site plans that have been fully vetted but understanding that we could look at based on your conversations that transpire between now and then and any which of the multiple things are explored could be potentially added as conditions to approving this site plan subject to whatever again those the solution is that transpires

099in the next two weeks does that um does the timing of the two weeks coming back to us seem reasonable to you all i think we can make it work as i said before as long as we can get staff to cooperate and to be responsive so that we can get some good answers for you um particularly about the sidewalk in miller and what would have to happen to that and then also with the building department i mean we can certainly try to make the two weeks happen i'm just not confident that we're going to be able to coordinate with staff including engineering and the building department to try to get that awful together but we will try our best and my understanding is if we can't get to the answers and get it resolved

100then it can be postponed again that is correct yep all right and i just wanted to commit to the petitioner we will do our best to achieve that time frame as well and if we have to vote on a second postponement we'll ask questions about why so um any other discussion of the postponement so just to the petitioner's comment i i wanted to be clear that we're not asking them to go back and put the ramp from the sidewalk to the side of the building it was looking at the accessibility inside the garage or the the patio space so because i got lost in that last part i think it's exploring both but it's not necessarily re-asking about putting a flat spot on the public sidewalk okay great is that that spot last part that

101you just said is the part i want it to be clear that's what i think you heard and that you were acted too because i was thinking the same thing okay thank you for naming it anything else any other discussion before voting on a postponement mr leonard do you want a roll call for this only if you do no i think we can vote with hands all in favor of a postponement please raise your hand i see all of the hands this is postponed we hope to see you in two weeks plus a day because of a wednesday meeting all right it is nine o'clock do we need a break before the next petition no i'm not seeing anybody all you have to do is shake your head yes okay let's move on to 8b

1022600 pontiac trail annexation and zoning for city council approval this is an annexation from ann arbor township into the city the petitioner is the village of ann arbor and we heard a petition from them previously this would add to that would add 5.7 acres to that site plan i'm presuming that they are joining us online yes that's correct i'm getting them promoted here one moment okay i think mr bush will be kicking off the presentation if i recall or sharing slides that would be correct oh my goodness all right just let me know i'm ready to uh ready to go do you have do you see everyone on zoom that you're expecting from your side mr bush we also have uh darian with robertson brothers with us i don't know if you see him there

103to promote him otherwise good on my own all right we'll start the clock when you start sounds good let me just share my screen here all right are people seeing my screen we are yeah all right perfect so i'll keep this brief uh and then certainly i'll open the floor to uh questions towards the end there but uh just wanted to um uh thank you uh good evening commissioners and uh we're here for uh annexation proposal and rezoning proposal for uh 2600 pontiac trail another parcel that's associated with the village of ann arbor i think you remember back in december um there was a proposal for annexation that was in front of you and a recommendation for approval granted for the village of ann arbor project uh five parcels annexed from the township ann arbor

104township into the city and we are have another parcel under control 5.71 acres that we are proposing similarly to nx into the city and uh rezoned to the same zoning and bring it into the project r4a so um just here for you tonight for your uh for this proposal for your approval of this additional parcel and got staff reviews and staff recommendations for approval so with that i'll just open the floor to staff presentation and we'll be here to answer any questions you may have very good that was well within your 10 minutes all right mr khan thank you this is a good image to have because it shows the whole holding the petitioner is proposing a a residential project that consists of town homes as well as stacked units some of the units will

105be owner occupied some will be rental and this was an opportunity that popped up during the process of proposing a site plan for the five parcels that are being shown on this image so this will add to their holdings the the project is an exciting one because it brings with it a lot of additional residential units it's also a very challenged site there there is a land there's a landfill on the site there's also quite a bit of gravel fill uh throughout portions of the site so i do think that this this addition will give the petitioner a little bit more uh design flexibility um staff is wrecking recommending approval of um this 5.7 acre uh parcel um um we are going to move forward with this site plan without this project without this parcel

106at this time um and so you may be seeing a site plan that excludes this 5.7 acre site within the next couple of months however once the state annexes this parcel the petitioner will add it to the site plan and come back again uh with a slightly revised plan so that's that's my understanding of how the petitioner would like to go go forward continue with the main site plan as as they have submitted and then um when this petition when this annexation petition uh is approved by the state to add it to the site plan and come back again with a slightly revised plan staff recommends approval thank you all right very good uh we will now open the public hearing for this petition this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to

107three minutes about the 2600 pontiac trail annexation and zoning we'll first call on those who are here in council chambers and then remote participants if you've joined via zoom you can press the raise hand button if you have to dialed in you can press star 9 on your phone and if you are watching us right now you can call in at 877-853-5247 when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any background sounds so that we can hear you clearly either way of participating please state your name and address for the record is there anyone here who would like to speak on this petition please thank you chair mills ken garber again uh this is only a small part of a much larger parcel i'm confused though and maybe commissioner dish could address a

108question of mine the previous city council annexation of the larger parcel did that also include the rezoning of the parcel i guess to our foray or is that is that rezoning still pending um so it's just a question i have and if that's the case then it's only a site plan that you'll be considering down the road as the as staff and the petitioner just mentioned rather than a rezoning petition so just a question i ask it because yes this is a very desirable project but with 564 units the direct climb and climate impact of 564 furnaces will be 70 times the impact of 212 miller i hope the petitioner is thinking hard about how to comply with the building electrification elements of our 820 plan if it proceeds with gas this will be a

109disaster for our city's climate goals but uh but yes for tonight if it's annexation you're looking at makes total sense um yeah definitely go forward with it but um there was a really really big question here pending thank you thank you mr leonard is there anyone online who'd like to participate there is not all right then i'll close the public hearing and read the motion it's pretty short the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the annexation of 2600 pontiac trail moved by commissioner weich seconded by commissioner dish anybody want to kick off other than i just realized that in reading what the title of it is it includes the zoning so to answer your question all we're really talking about is annexation yes that's i'll kick off

110with that question and and i'm looking back but mr khan you can address that too i i'd be happy to address that what's before you um today is um a petition for for annexation so the with us right now we have some suggested what we if it is approved by the state the annexation that'll be a second step uh what the zoning would be that the but the zoning is the second step correct i i i can i can summarize that process now if you'd like please um the city is not able to take action on a petition until uh the property has been annexed so the first wave is to request annexation that takes quite a few months because it does require um plan commission review council approval uh the count the township to

111release the parcel and then it gets sent off to the um the state of michigan's office of the great seal and and that that can take some time so petitioners typically like to get the annexation portion going um in in in this case um the the five parts the five original parcels that have been annexed are now able to go to planning commission and council for site plan approval and r4a zoning and so that is going to be coming to you over the next couple months so you'll be entertaining a site plan and offer a zoning recommendation that you'll be making to city council this site plan will go to city council because it includes a rezoning and so um you'll hopefully see this within a couple months and it'll then go to city council

112for final action on the site plan and the r4a zoning thank you for clarifying other questions on the annexation or comments uh can we just voice or can we no oh sorry sorry commissioner gabe randle i turned my head too quickly yeah yeah um i just want to um because i know this is part of a bigger picture too and um i just hope the petitioner is also paying attention to what some of the historical vegetation is in this area if you look back at some of the old um historical ariels there's like a hedgerow that moves through at the back side of this property that looks like it probably has some big old oaks in there and i know there's probably a bunch of junky stuff in there too but then there's also in

113some of these other areas that again are outside of what we're voting on tonight but um but look like there's some some really nice um at least from the aerials more native forest fragments and i would hope that the petitioner is really thinking about how to design with and around these things rather than just starting with your units and and just letting everything fall where they may so please take some time to think about some of our ordinances around this and right now an environmental commission there is some movement around creating a heritage tree a protection status i'm not sure when that's going to be done in comparison to when you're actually coming through the process but it it adds another layer so of of um really trying to work around the the significant and

114important trees that we have so i would hope that the petitioner is not only paying attention to our a20 plan from the get-go but also some of our natural features ordinances from the get-go as well this is a big site and i really am hopeful that you will be sensitive to the things that we value in this community so that we can come up with a site plan that really works for everybody other questions comments you need us to roll call yes all right i don't see any other hand so please commissioner sovay yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee yes commissioner clark yes commissioner weich yes commissioner mills yes commissioner gibb randall yes motion carries very good all right uh thank you item 8c the presentation on the ann

115arbor sustainable energy utility you are promoting a familiar face from your last meeting mr wass smith welcome back hello good to see you all again you too thanks for sticking with us no problem i think that we go directly to i was going to say you're sharing your screen we go directly to the presentation so you've got a captive audience great uh it's coming through all right you can see this it can cool well um thank you for the chance to present tonight um uh enough time together i just want to give you a brief overview of what the seu is again my name is zach i'm a community engagement specialist in the office of sustainability and innovations so we'll take a look at the su and how it could operate in ann arbor and

116some of the next steps um so jumping right into it here um as i'm sure many of you know ann arbor has set an ambitious goal of achieving zero climate pollution by the year 2030 and to understand how to achieve that goal it's important to understand where our climate pollution comes from if you don't already know locally 40 of our community-wide pollution known as greenhouse gas emissions or ghgs come from building electricity use and nearly two-thirds of our ghgs come from building electricity use plus natural gas used to heat our buildings and our water given this reality we know that the solutions to reducing local climate pollution necessitates finding pathways to clean our electricity grid and support the transition away from fossil fuels like gas for heating and cooling to clean electricity um and i

117was on the wrong slide there let's take a look at this one so as we look at ways uh to improve the reliability and the energy mix of our energy supply it's important to understand the energy landscape in michigan ann arbor has what is known as a pre-foot act franchise and what that means is that dte has the right in perpetuity to provide power to the city however the foot act franchises are not exclusive and the michigan constitution protects the rights of cities and villages to create their own municipal utility and this can be done either via a taking or a condemnation and a buyout of an incumbent utility and their infrastructure or through the creation of a supplemental utility to date every community that has started their own municipal electric utility within michigan the

118last one being zealand which was originally formed in 1902 did so by starting a utility from scratch when service was not widespread perhaps you can't imagine why setting up a full set of poles and wires to directly compete with the incumbent utility is an expensive proposition as is buying out their infrastructure through condemnation which means you acquire the infrastructure that is often in poor condition but what if we created a complementary community owned energy utility that provides electricity from local solar and battery storage systems installed on homes and businesses in our community and what if that community-owned utility provided a hundred percent clean reliable locally built and affordable electricity built right here in ann arbor this utility would give residents a choice for where they procure their energy a choice that we don't have today

119and this parallel utility would not duplicate the traditional grid with all of its vulnerabilities but focus on general clean on generating clean reliable and affordable power now and that is what the city of ann arbor is looking to do through the creation of a sustainable energy utility or an s e u as envisioned an seu would focus first on generating local clean energy energy that would feed directly into our homes our businesses our places of worship and community centers and this clean energy would be paired with storage to help improve energy reliability and offered and would be offered in conjunction with deep energy waste reduction programs to help our residents lower their energy costs and usage all while improving comfort pretty cool right so um the concept of an seu is grounded in choice providing

120ann arborites another way to procure a large portion of their energy one that is coming from clean local reliable and resilient sources the seu would enable a lot more people to get the benefit of solar by directly paying for solar installation on homes and businesses on the roofs on carports on ground mounted systems and residents wouldn't own the solar system that's installed on their property the public would or more specifically the seu would um and residents would subscribe to purchase their energy at a rate that is based on costs and scu operational needs from the system on their or their neighbor's roof and if all of those residents power needs are met the excess gener generation from the solar system on their property flows into a battery system and this means that residents could still

121have power if the big traditional grid goes down and this is already possible today additionally the seo would not be limited by current utility restrictions that constrain solar system sizes and the amount of solar that is allowed on the grid you might have heard of this as the one percent cap and if you're not familiar with that dte currently restricts the solar capacity of the system that each of us are allowed to install on our homes to whatever our historical electrical consumption is at each of our homes and this is troublesome in part because it means generally speaking that you cannot over produce energy for your neighbors and it also doesn't uh allow for you to account for future electrification or future increased demand in your home so instead the seu would seek to maximize

122solar installations uh it will leverage all viable sunny roof space that's available over time individual solar systems would be connected through a series of micro grids as opposed to dte's grid the seo could also offer a series of robust energy waste reduction programs which would help people lower their energy demand and improve their comfort and these services will be available to anyone that participates in the seo kind of like the current energy waste reduction offerings that are available through our incumbent utility however we could offer a slew of additional opt-in services that individuals can use to improve comfort and reduce bills and save energy and these additional offerings can be paid for through on bill financing and through on bill financing the seo is able to pay the upfront costs of improvements like energy efficiency

123or electrification upgrades and then the residents simply pay back the costs through their utility bills this allows the cost of the improvements to stay with the home as opposed to the resident and it helps reduce the initial upfront costs needed to make the improvements this makes these types of investments much more accessible to all residents especially low-income individuals and renters individuals who are historically emitted from most utility programs and the seo will also provide support for beneficial electrification which ensures that we have safer more comfortable and cleaner homes and businesses and eventually we'll offer community solar programs so that individuals without viable solar access can still reap the benefits of clean energy okay so i know that's a lot to digest um but let me reiterate the core of an seu an seu is community

124owned it's a community utility that focuses on generating local clean reliable energy and fast it's about leveraging existing technologies and practices such as solar and storage to reduce emissions quickly while improving reliability it's about ensuring that all in arborites have access to solutions to improve comfort reduce bills and meet the benefits of the clean energy economy so the scu as i mentioned before is about generating locally owned reliable clean and affordable energy and because we are generating it locally we don't need a large and vulnerable distribution network this also means that we don't have to worry about buying a lot of poles and wires or worrying about extreme weather events that can knock out the seu whoops excuse me it could um could knock out the power supply instead we focus on generating clean reliable

125local energy fast and reducing climate pollution rapidly uh so to close out i would like to share just a few examples of how the seu could work and this isn't meant to be an all-inclusive list of examples but i just want to illustrate how some of the concepts i've discussed here could work in practice let's start with the example of a homeowner or a business owner who has good solar potential but doesn't have the capital or the ability to install solar on their roof by themselves in this case the individual would subscribe or enroll to the seo as a supplemental utility to dte the seo would work with that homeowner to conduct a needs assessment which is a process of identifying the potential energy waste reduction and electrification opportunities at that home or at that

126business and then the selected opportunities would be implemented at and the homeowner would have the option of financing those through the sdus on bill finance program su ames would always aim to create a financing package where the electric bill that that tenant or homeowner is paying is the same or ideally less than what is currently paid and and once those are paid off the resident reaps the full benefit of the improvements at the same time as identifying the maximum potential um the seo installs solar on their roof and the resident pays their energy bill as they always have paying per kilowatt hour of usage generated from the on-site solar system any additional power that they draw from dte is paid directly to dte and so in this scenario the resident would have two bills um

127the one for the seu bill for the energy used from the on-site solar and then to dte for the power that they draw from the grid in another example we'll look at a resident a business who is interested in energy waste reduction and beneficial electrification but they can't install solar for a number of reasons maybe they have a big beautiful tree that blocks their solar access and in this case the individual would receive that on-site assessment to identify their energy waste reduction and beneficial electrification opportunities just like in the previous example and then the individual would choose which options to move forward with and they would have the option to pay for them through the on bill financing mechanism um the individual could also register to join a micro or nano grid which means they

128would be sharing power with the residents that have better solar potential once a critical number of neighbors sign up for the seo this individual would receive two energy bills just like the last one one for the portion that was finance for through the on bill financing the portion of the improvements and then one for their the energy that they pull from dte a third example is a resident who already has solar on their home or business we know that with solarize it has been very successful and there are [Music] are already a lot of residents who have this and in these cases those residents could still take advantage of all of the energy waste reduction and beneficial electrification support offered through the su and they can still leverage the on-bill financing to pay for those

129improvements but in addition to that they could also enroll for an seu battery if they don't already have one um battery storage is a huge part of the seo in addition to the solar generation so um this resident can still enroll in the su even even though they have their own solar and then they can sell their excess power to the seu that way it can be distributed through the local micro or nano grids which just means sharing it with their neighbors and their rates for it being sold to the seu still need to be determined but an intent is to get as close to net metering as possible and so that residents who already have solar would be helping to provide the power to the seu and their neighbors okay uh just a couple

130more examples the fourth example is for a multi-family rental in this case the seo would work closely with landlords and property owners as well as tenants to customize solutions that meet individual needs rental units are eligible for all seo offerings so all the energy waste reduction the solar and storage installation beneficial electrification and and as well as being tied to the local microgrid so the city's work on green leases paired with the on-bill financing offered through the seu help ensure the cost of the improvements stay with the building and it allows the cost of those improvements to be spread over longer periods of time and doesn't burden a single tenant with the cost that they want to make to their rental unit which offers the opportunity for immediate health safety and comfort improvements and and

131access to getting those improvements at reasonable costs so the last example is of community solar so in some cases individuals won't have access to on-site renewable energy generation because they've got a big beautiful tree or something along those lines and in these cases um [Music] off-site solar will be installed in common areas like parking lots or school rooftops or parks or other shared places and so um if for individuals who can't get on-site stole solar they can subscribe to take a portion of this shared energy to help power their their lives their businesses and in this way anyone in the community can participate in an stu even if they don't own their own home or they don't have viable solar potential on their on their property and just like just like in the other cases

132the individuals that subscribe to the community solar offering would pay per kilowatt hour of whatever energy they use directly to the seo and then for anything they need beyond that they would pay dte for the power that they draw from that grid um and so those are just a few examples of how um the seo could work uh they're not comprehensive but just kind of gives you an idea i do invite you to learn more i know that i threw a lot at you um i went kind of quick because i know that it's late um but i invite you to to check out the website a2gov.org a2seu and if you are interested in seeing either any of the planning commission commissioners or anybody watching right now if you're interested in seeing the city move

133forward with an su we ask that you just take a moment to register your interest there's a short five question survey it's it's at this second bullet point but you can it's at the top of the um seu website it's easier to find it that way i think it takes most people about 60 seconds to take this survey and so we invite you to check that out you can send us any questions to sustainability at a2up.org and i want to thank you for letting me share a little bit about the seo i know that there has been a lot of murmurings about this um we did make it public recently it was something that went before council a little while back um so some people know what it is but i thank you for letting

134me take the time to share with you some of the details about it and i'd be happy to take any questions if you have them very good thank you um any questions for miss derwa smith uh commissioner lee thank you that's awesome i'm sorry i'm very excited to see how far this has come also did you get a haircut no it looks good uh maybe since last week yeah maybe i did yeah i think this is awesome thank you for the presentation um a few things i want us to kind of like think about um the financing of the upfront cost uh and advocacy of additional federal and state level funding do we have an understanding of how that's exactly going to be financed so it would be through city funds um okay and so

135that determines on or depends on what how much financing we are able to get our hands on at first and that is simply up to a council vote city council can decide how much they want to make available to this of the climate millage that's going before um the public this fall uh before the antar republic is passed there are certainly funds that could come from that um we are aggressively pursuing other financial options um and it just kind of depends on scale and how much we want to start with gotcha thank you um the other thing that i wanted to kind of think about was maintenance and repair of the panels let's say that somebody is licensing this like on a roof you don't necessarily own the solar panel but they'll have to agree

136to some kind of an access agreement so do we have has has thought been given to kind of the level of infrastructure that you'll need to and by infrastructure i mean like the people that you'll need to you know kind of go and repair things replacement schedules things like that i i don't know that um i don't know if that's you know been really kind of like developed i guess until the demand is kind of i guess solidified yeah that's a good question um we are actually working on a feasibility study right now uh to determine to be able to answer the questions like that uh what kind of staffing we would require um i don't know were you asking about easements and infrastructure in that sense at all yeah i guess both um prologists

137does a solar panel license agreement where they effectively rent their roof space for solar panels so um the the question would be really like from a a lease possession and contractual right obligations created between a landlord and so that somebody that's looking to install this relative to like how long does the program need to be if you were to go into this and i think prologus is actually uh would be a good person to look at as far as renting roof rights essentially um so i would just like my question uh my head just went immediately to what kind of contractual rights between the parties and how much who's the maintenance on like if you do end up going this direction great question um so with the uh in terms of like infrastructure easements if

138the seo is passed by council by a simple vote um then it becomes an official utility and therefore we would have access to all the same utility easements that are already in place when it comes to maintenance of the systems that are there um we the city would be responsible for those i'd like to add that because this the seu is not proposing any large-scale distribution so there aren't any poles and wires it means that maintenance is actually pretty minimal solar panels are generally fairly low maintenance and battery storage but the city would yes be responsible staff on hand to support any maintenance needs of those gotcha overall thank you overall i'm super excited to see how far this has come let me know how i can help i have a laundry list of questions

139that i won't bore everyone else with right now the thing that i ask some of the architects and design-minded folks to think about is how can you integrate solar panels to make them look beautiful on buildings and so that's something i'd love to grapple with you know how do you make it desirable right and then really kind of integrate it into the overall design so just awesome progress we'd love to see how we can help you you know develop it further i'll send you a list of questions so thank you yes please do yeah thank you other planning commissioners have questions or comments go ahead commissioner g randall can you explain more specifically what on bill financing really means yes absolutely on bill financing is a mechanism by which you can it's get funding to

140pay for energy efficiency improvements so let's say my house is really drafty and i know that i need some air sealing and i need some attic insulation as well i can contact the seo the seo would visit my house and they would do an assessment and verify what it is that i need um and they will front me the money to be able to pay for these um upgrades and so i get i can get to air seal and insulate my house and because these are energy efficiency improvements the seo will pay for that then what happens is that i pay that back by adding a little bit of money to my monthly energy bill so in addition to what i'm paying for my energy i'm on a little bit extra but because it's done

141through my energy bill and as a utility the scu would work with me to figure out what that best um that that what would make the most sense in terms of how much cost i should expect um for doing that those upgrades and then how much that would affect my bill and so we'll find that speed spot for for what i can afford and and it allows it to go out long so it's like a no interest loan got it okay thank you super exciting it's great to hear about this other questions we spent a lot of time with you last week and this only came up in passing so my is there anything with the next uh the next item on our agenda here this evening yet is to talk about our work plan

142for the next couple of years is there anything that you that is directly related to this that we should be considering um great question i think as we um let's see directly related to the su uh i think that the planning commission is already doing a really great job of asking the questions that help petitioners think about the way they are incorporating sustainability into their projects continuing to do that is going to be really beneficial for the seu the um the more that we can build our um new construction and retrofit projects correctly uh and and really incorporate as much energy efficiency and in the process at the get-go reduces the cost burden on both the seo and residents in the long run so i think the planning commission is really doing a good job

143of that um i i don't believe i would i would say my natural my instinct went to encouraging more solar but this is something that even whether or not the planning commission does that if the seo passes that's something that the su can pursue on its own um through its own means so i would just say keep up the good work and just keep encouraging as much sustainable development as possible great and uh the comment that i would give along with that is that i was going through my mind about what how i would translate this and the only thing that i could think of as additional like opportunities for solar and so front yard solar might come up in the work plane discussion um [Music] anything else go ahead commissioner survey the front your

144solar was gonna be one of my comments to look at i mean this really does raise kind of a lot of land use questions about uh i think we've addressed it a bit in building height uh front yard solar but i think there are a lot of conditions where we can probably improve our land use strategies to layer this in but what we don't want to do is incentivize losing trees to like reducing shade to gain solar as well so i'm not really sure like all the cursory review through our udc to make sure we're balancing that um but that there is kind of where we might be able to get variances um one of my the this balancing act of over improving building stock that might have opportunity for higher density and exactly what

145that sweet spot might be we understand the embodied energy and value of existing buildings being renovated but some of them are kind of beyond their years and very leaky and all of those things and so even a study of you know when we should be improving and adding to that sort of infrastructure versus when we should cite opportunities of eight-story unit units downtown as adding density with solar on top so i think for us if there's any additional insights into that sort of land use strategy planning we can do would be really really helpful the only other comment i also have is my understanding especially in kind of the single family financing is if there is private solar and it's financed separately people have been having issues refinancing so any conversations with banking around mortgage

146and refinance and the liabilities of being able to refinance or sell your house when something's on there i've seen those conditions before so that sort of banking issue might come up and figuring out what local banks might be more in tune to how this structure might work and be willing to work with homeowners to make sure that they don't kind of get stuck in a certain financing structure so i've understood that to happen so if that's not on your radar yet i'd recommend that to be something to look at too other questions or comments sorry my duck bill hit the microphone all right well thank you again for sticking around with us and joining us two weeks in a row um and uh while we don't expect you to come back next week um or

147the week after uh please like i i think regular communication between your office and what we're up to is really useful for us so thank you i agree thank you so much for having me all right next is discussion of our work plan but before we do that i need to stretch my legs or get a quick drink so like a five minute recess is that okay we'll come back at quarter to 10. that sorry in case it needed to be picked up by the microphone we are back um and we are now talking about item 9a which is the 2022 and 2023 city planning commission work plan and staff work plan planning commission and staff work plan mr leonard are you leading us i am so as outlined i'll walk you through a couple

148of pieces of this information that was provided first of all you're going to see this quite a bit i wanted to present a this version to you well in advance as we already discussed at our next meeting we'll be holding up the annual public hearing for opportunities to consider updates to the comprehensive plan um your deliberation and that feedback could influence the work that the planning commission wants to do so i'm proposing that to just sort of keep this front and center on your agenda and as i've described here so this evening is sort of an early opportunity we've we've already started some discussion on it and i've done [Music] somewhat of a balance of trying to decipher some of the previous conversation that we had into this preliminary draft so tonight happy to take

149any early feedback suggestions questions not asking for any action on it but just the goal is to start moving this towards a more refined and adoptable work program the second piece is a series of resources that commissioner weich has provided um i would let him address that i think some of these were in response to my proposal to no longer pursue the race the residential zoning and equity committee many of them are related to that some are related i think to more sustainability aspects of missing middle housing and parking requirements share those resources as well then you have the last adopted work plan which uh i will just again put a plug into good work there's a lot of check marks on those items there and then the last couple pages is the proposed work

150program not yet incorporating the i don't know how else to describe it but the right-hand columns that the planning commission discussed that we can incorporate which one of these tends to advance sustainability goals which tends to advance affordability goals which tend to advance natural resources goals um probably some more conversation warned about what those categories are that we want to track the inter the relationship of these items to those categories the uh and then i won't uh highlight that other than i've tried to your wish list is often in big and so i've attempted to try and start breaking it into a annual work plan kind of approach to start thinking about how what sort of time horizon we program different items [Music] i will point out that um osi as we reference zach and

151i have some more work to do out of our conversation at the working session regarding sustainability i've put that in here as half of a place mark calling it electrification net zero buildings and half of a shot across the bow that i might start our framework around incorporating the sustainability provisions in that specific requirements so with that i'll stop again not asking for approval asking for any feedback suggestions or additional information that i can start providing so that as we near the end of next month you will feel in a position to adopt the work program you very much does anyone want to kick there's no there's not a public hearing for this so we do go directly to this anybody want to kick off reactions questions suggestions go ahead commissioner hammerschmidt if we do

152things faster do they get bumped up like you know if when tc1 rezoning is done can we start our first stadium can we start for washington or do we have to wait until 2023 or does that depend on what other things staff is working on yes got it so all possible but i guess this is a realistic you're trying to be realistic and timing part of this is me trying to um set some expectations of what we will be able to accomplish and what we will have to kick off like the one thing i can tell you is i can't do all we won't be able to do all this in a year and i think i i think i have at times struggled with this group and trying to find that balance of we

153can do five ordinances a year or we can do ten ordinances a year um i've been reluctant to set that goal because uh the ones sometimes i think that are going to be easy aren't and the ones that i sometimes think that are going to be difficult aren't but this is my starting point that my initial reaction to that would be no commissioner hammersmith if we get that done then that puts us in a good position to stand track and then to kick off the following the following year so i just know there's a lot of excitement and energy around tc1 in particular in the community so that's why i like to you know extending this all the way to 2024 might get people a little bit heartburn but i get it i think this

154looks good so thank you go ahead commissioner silvae sorry i'm chatty tonight um you talked about the extra columns for like sustainability are those going to highlight the comprehensive planning document elements that'd be great sustainability for example as we've talked about our plans are pretty high level in that regard but yes i i think that's possible it so i think the question is we discussed before rather than it being a sustainability column with a check mark it's a sustainability column that says the 2013 sustainability framework encourages the uh advancement of more renewable energy yeah yeah that's probably a very deep dive in part of the comprehensive plant like to do all of that work but as much as we could even call out what elements you can find some of that resourcing in i think

155that could do a lot to overlap those two discussions that are coming to the table in may great cool commissioner abrams go ahead um i'm i'm wondering if there's any way to get parking maximums on the 2022 agenda and or even the beginning of that and maybe what would help me understand that is just to review the things that are already on the 2022 so for instance the first line parking regulations there's we've we we have completed that one right has commissioned except for i'm bringing that back that i noticed during my report that that's coming back on the 17th you did pass the recommendations but the full set of references are a little bit more expansive and i i think it warrants full commission review there for example some of our specific use regulations

156still had minimum parking requirements we need to reconcile where we're saying there's no minimums anywhere but if you do a daycare center there are minimums so i think i apologize that i didn't bring those initially i think it warrants planning commission review of those before it advances so maybe optimistically we're almost done there hopefully no uh well and then [Music] yeah or maybe it just helped me to maybe hear from you a little bit about what kind of effort you think these items will require on our part like uh the rezoning the tc1 rezoning of stadium given that we've gone through that process once how much time you think that would take i think uh it was about a nine month process i think for the state eisenhower area so i'm i'm using that as

157sort of our our benchmark we're working on stadium now uh stadium has had one discussion at the ordinance revisions committee it will be that will be repeated this month that's in the stage i would say of refining the map we're starting with a pretty wide cast and the next step will be working with the ordinance revisions committee to suggest help us refine the area or not we're also doing the research of existing site plans you know pud districts like we did similarly so um if presuming we're going to follow that same course where we're stat staff we're going to be doing a lot of that research and legwork and sort of presenting that for validation probably a similar time frame um if there was an opportunity to pick it up um i guess we could

158explore the commissioners taking on some of that but um i don't know that that's always gonna be efficient because some of it's just ingrained in our systems at city hall so do you think there's any way we could get to parking maximums this year or no um so are you suggesting adding that are you suggesting sort of like swapping out one of the other priorities like premiums or sustainability uh i'm open to either obviously adding it i guess would be preferable to giving up something else but if that's unrealistic then maybe i'd be wanting to hear from others and consider swapping it yeah in short we can look at it if at the end of this discussion there are five things that we're considering adding to 22 uh it's less likely but that's the kind

159of feedback that's helpful is yeah that's something that really elevates so maybe that would just be yeah maybe we could be that simple that that's something that i would like to flag as being a priority thanks commissioner lee i'm looking at the future kind of at the like the list of future ones um since we're talking about tc1 i wanted to ask about pedestrian complete streets implementation what i mean other than the implementation of the cip what else can can we do because tc1 land use i think is in tandem with transportation so so how can we better i guess that's one that kind of like you know comes to my forefront of you know connected streets complete streets full pedestrian and bike infrastructure how can we help in that respect and does that fall

160in the priority in the next two to three years so if anybody has any ideas about how we could as a body effectuate that would be helpful so i think a couple of ways that that could happen uh making sure our ordinances are correct you know like i think somewhere on here actually is for example on private roads i don't think currently we necessarily require sidewalks on both sides of the street so making sure like when construction is happening that it is meeting requirements another example of that would be a lot of development happens in the city that aren't streets they are basically parking lots so looking at parking regulations to make sure that when a parking lot is sort of functioning as a street or an access is that providing sort of the complete

161streets benefits that we're looking for other pieces could be connectivity uh this came up you know i think there's some discussions this came up with the the bright dawn petition um on burton road where uh there was a connect it was approved by the planning commission with a connection at the city council table it ended up being modified with like a gate access so what are our ordinance codes not only encourage but maybe require connectivity that can be really challenging it's rel it's i don't want to say it's easy but it's more possible when you're talking about public rights of way it becomes really challenging when you are trying to find the levers to say that these neighboring private property owners maybe one's under a proposal and one's not how do you effect cross-connection between

162those properties and sort of cultivate the access easements that are required and the agreement between those properties so that would be another way and then i think probably a more ambitious way would um require some sort of higher level city capitalism planning where we do some sort of right-of-way planning saying that this is our long-term aspiration for a particular right of way if that includes additional right-of-way that's necessary that we are making sure that as part of our development review we're incorporating that over time into sort of incrementally providing that right of way so that we can do that that is um i would say generally that's probably more pie in the sky we to build right-of-way widths incrementally in that way unless the city was going to come in with perch purchase which is

163going to be much more costly such a long road to get some of those benefits i don't know as a community that we want to wait for that being the solution to those connectivities so so it could be those are some ways off the cuff but that would be part of the exploration gotcha thank you yeah i think it's just pertinent given that we're implementing tc1 so talk about transportation and connectivity so thank you other questions comments observations uh go ahead commissioner dish i hesitate to bring this up because it's gonna get us into a chicken and egg but uh at a meeting with public services staff this past week we talked about the the need to provide the need to ask new construction to provide space for composting in multi-unit dwellings and we also

164discussed the inability or at the very least awkwardness of requiring that when we don't yet provide that service and uh i don't know if there is and in any case i don't actually think that's us that would have to be the building code in fact um i'm not sure actually i think mr leonard thought once it would be anyway directing a question in the middle of my speech yes no no i'm just going to say i'm not sure that it would necessarily be a building issue it we do require solid waste some solid waste provisions and as part of our design standards it's conceivable because that could be there so this is this is a tough issue because we are steaming forward with tc1 and those you know we will have at least one of

165those proposals within the next year i'm sure and we are seeing you know even this this one proposal tonight that we saw there's probably no provision for composting i know it's only seven to eight units but that's an issue and um it's incredibly complex because there's a lot of you know you need the room and so i i just throw that out there because it's um you know we can't get the reduction that we need to get of our of our carbon footprint simply through recycling better we have to reduce the amount of stuff that goes to landfills and food food is the worst thing you can throw into a landfill so i don't think it should i i'm putting it out there not because i think we should put it on our work plan

166because i'm afraid it's a more aspirational and also this just the timing might not be right but maybe it should appear somewhere like maybe 2024 we're going to start trying to get at this to future proof some of these multi-family um you know dense residential development that we are welcoming adding that to the future list i think is not bad that's like what we do on the cip when we say like the very last year and the budget is way bigger than we have money for um but it makes the list i others go ahead commissioner weich i think i understand why the tc ones are staggered over multiple years because of the staff resources but i just want to confirm that for the public a number of folks have commented that we should do

167all of the tc ones at a time so that we would avoid the controversy of the previous one that we are picking winners and losers by how we are targeting various transit corridors so is it true so maybe that's a question to mr leonard that the reason or orc the reason why they are spread out over years is because of the significant amount of staff time that it takes to assess the transit corridor and then to prepare the zoning for it or the zoning change yeah i would i would the short answer is yes as a as an example with stadium stadium involves many more parcels than what state eisenhower did and so already at the ordinance revisions committee we talked about the corresponding need to make sure we're providing more public engagement opportunities so

168as it's not to say that that's an answer not to do that but i think that there is some level of yes you can scale it but it it it's not a matter of doing both of them in the same time frame by scaling them up i think you are i mean that's something we could look at it might be the difference between doing uh you know stadium in nine months or doing all of them in a year and a half so we could look at we could look at those scenarios for sure i have some specific things in terms of either missing or more detailed based on our conversation last week and just more reflection on this so under the osi like the electrification in net zero buildings i took away from our conversation

169last week that there's a lot of educational things that that we're hoping happen and we gave some tangible ideas but that are really out of our purview and and but knowing that it is happening would free us some space um not that it wouldn't continue to have some amount of education at the table but but i think that that would be helpful overall but i also took from that what we could do in that space is process efficiency so like by having an all-electric building being able to do a site plan light or jump to the front of the queue or that kind of thing and so like just be more explicit so that's not so vague um the other thing that relinks to that i think that came up briefly last week but really

170came up tonight is this i think it's very easy to resurrect our front yard solar ordnance it's it was written it was just not passed so i hope that we could add something to that list that would really like and and we would be moving towards that and facilitating more opportunity for solar so so under electrification those would be like where i would put my vote i also think that housing diversity increasing diversity of housing is important on here tangibly the thing that i kind of hang my hat on is tc1 but i don't think that's the only thing but i'm not sure what other specific thing we should include um but i just i don't think it's necessarily like explicit in any of this the other thing that's missing and this is in the

171moving to zero the transportation plan it's not just vision zero though because it was a two zero moving towards vision zero moving towards vision zero okay but it's not right it's safety and a two zero we've got moving towards vision zero and we've got a20 two different things but but the master the the transportation plan effectively i think took both a safety and a sustainability perspective okay to make sure one of the things that they specifically called out in addition to the pac parking maximums so i also vote to move that up and that when mr khan and you get through the next round of parking to take that up immediately so i don't think it would be done in 2022 but would hope that it would move farther up the list is um mixed

172use and the i the was it the 15 minute neighborhoods like and allowing for more 15 minute neighborhoods and i don't we haven't really taken on what that looks like yet i don't know in terms of like the specificity of that but i and maybe that is something for the comprehensive plan but i think we that's i don't see that i think we need to make sure that we're moving towards that since we have a comprehensive plan that suggests that those are like the specific things but then just the bigger thing linking to staff is thinking through we've been talking a lot about what's in the green but also thinking through what's in the blue and both of those require staff time and commitments and um launching the comprehensive planning process i would imagine takes

173a lot of resources but i also do want to not to if to bring up the fact that there were additional things in blue previously that got pulled because we just didn't have enough time and attention and um and you mentioned this in terms of what came out of your of the what is it the talk last week that you were giving so yeah so originally as part of the proposed work plan it wasn't adopted but i was proposing a committee to look at the history of race economic equity but mostly racial equity and our residential zoning district and with all this discussion of other items and the housing and human services advisory board conducting an educational series i'm continuing to continue to be interested in it i am starting to piece research together but

174i think in the context of other things that i'm not proposing that that committee be formed i'm not proposing that we um spend significant amount of time and resources going back i would like us to be mindful of those things as we embark on our plan to make sure our plan is more better and founded in equity and sustainability diversity of housing mixed income i think i think that's a hard it's it's hard for me i that was something i was really interested in in the context of that other conversation and i i want to be clear part of it the research i've done so far i think that i don't i don't want to profess that it's comprehensive or i can conclude it but i have not yet found the public policy dis uh

175discussions that were very explicitly exclusionary uh with a racial intent there were converse policy conversations that happened in the city that i think contributed to redistribution of particularly black neighborhoods particularly the kerrytown neighborhood but i've yet to find the zoning policies that get to that again i don't absolve the city of that there's a lot of conversation there's a lot of tension i don't know that the city experienced anything in a more unique manner than the country did and i i think our resources and how to do it better going forward might be best placed well and we started to meet right like it was like even if it wasn't adopted we had meeting and i think coming up with a remit of what that was and even what the type what the name of

176it was is one of the things that i think what what that effort showed to me was like having things with specific remits and making sure that we have staff dedicated to specific things and not over stretching make sure that we get everything done so i wanna i also just i put this in the context of like there's lim you have limited staff and when we are thinking about what's on the priority list we need to be thinking not just about the green but like not just about the yeah green but also about the blue um on here in terms of where we direct we where we help shape where we spend our time but also where staff spends their time so um if knowing also that the comprehensive plan is something that i think

177we all agree needs to have um a lot of time and thinking what should ought to go in that effort um and where we might be able to give on either the top half or the bottom half and i don't know i just want to bring that up that yeah that i think there's limited go ahead commissioner weich i would be remiss not to uh just comment on uh mr leonard's um assessment of the research i would not as a direct rebuttal because i haven't seen your research but just as the general climate in which housing occurred in the united states it was done in a way to be race neutral while at the same time enforcing racial segregation so i think it's important for us to step back like planning commissions were created to

178keep people of color from being in communities i mean it's just at the origins when you read the origin documents they they say the quiet part out loud so that it becomes a race neutral way of being able to inform a race caste system so that 20 50 70 years later we can actually sit at a table and say well we didn't do anything explicitly racist well we didn't do anything explicitly racist because the whole thing was racist from its origin so it is quite overwhelming um both as a resident and as a planning commissioner to have to um just have to say this you know it it it's just taxing and it we can look at the outcomes to see that the design did what it was intended to do we do not live

179in a multi-racial city um we just don't and it was designed that way and so it is it is just it's overwhelming to have to continually remind us not and i don't mean this in a condescending way because you know i'm still getting to know all of you all it's just i'm exhausted you know i have to fight for my human dignity at every stage of my life and it is um it's just exhausting and i want us to to design a city that welcomes everybody who wants to live here that removes the barriers and and now we're not talking about race we're talking about economics but that is just another proxy for race uh because of the systemic ways that people are excluded like in my neighborhood i can count on one hand the

180black people who live in our neighborhood and on the other hand the other people of color who live in our neighborhood and our our housing prices are going up i am the beneficiary of it my house has doubled in 10 years and it's going to continue to grow which means i can't i couldn't buy my house today with my job uh it's just it's not possible and so we can say hey there's nothing that says this was explicit but we can see that it's not possible which is why i've been advocating as i've said at the table for the missing middle because it's a way for us to preserve the neighborhood character while bringing more density into our neighborhood so that we can welcome more neighbors i have supported every housing development that we have

181initiated uh that's come before this table because i want more neighbors it's a better community for me and for my family for us to have more neighbors so i would just be remiss not to to say that again at the table so thanks for the time other questions observations food for thought for the planning commission or mr leonard before we see the next version the next draft of this do you feel like you got some more feedback and actually i asked that question and i looked on this side and i did not see any hands but i did not turn my head okay uh and now commissioner silva snuck her hand in on this side i think to commissioner weiss's point and our discussion on may 4th about preparing for the comprehensive plan discussion and

182if we're starting to think about our work program by creating some of those columns as well i think it is really helpful to again think of these things in tandem in the as much information sharing about these resources i think i i appreciate the comments and i think one of them is uh a bigger some things are bigger discussions than the policy we can kind of rapidly change i think the single family housing is a big conversation that's going to come off of that committee uh and how we might address it but it may not be a direct zoning you know condition but it is how we financed or gave financing to those types of zoning structures and so we should be addressing it and i think there is great overlap for a very near

183next discussion about how we kick off the comprehensive plan so maybe this is like a tandem comment to figure out ways to maybe move and make sure those agendas items show up in the comprehensive planning discussion as we kick them off that's all go ahead commissioner dish follow on both of those previous comments commissioner weich and commissioner sovays i think we want to really also keep our eyes on lot sizes because that's been a huge way that that the that we've gotten the kind of growth that we've gotten and there has always been enclaving of certainly the african-american population in ann arbor kerrytown was an enclave that was created by economics and undesirable land uses and then we created cooperative housing which is not a bad thing to have but if that is enclaving for

184for mostly african american and now more diverse that is a particular way of it's not total displacement but it's certainly not equity and so i think there there are aspects of our history that we have a are getting some kind of handle on and of course there's the general problem of single-family sony absolutely that's a general problem i don't think there's anything particularly interesting or unique in ann arbor about that one but so we're i think that we have learned some things about the history that we can carry into the master planning process i'm interested to continue pursuing that research but i agree that this is not i don't think that the planning department is set up with the expertise to take on writing a book about you know mystery and that is a problem

185right we and so uh i think this is going to be the it is an ambitious um thing to try to understand and so uh so i want this to continue but i don't necessarily think that we can do the research as much as we can learn from the research and so what we have to do is take the stuff that we have and try to find ways for people to carry it on for us in the way that mike steinberg and rob goodspeed did the racial covenants project which made such a splash so go ahead commissioner abrams um yeah i mean i just i think what commissioner white is saying is really important and i wanted to just kind of lift that up and also maybe encourage us not to feel that because it's

186overwhelming or because we are not maybe don't have the expertise that therefore we shouldn't try to address it i think we should basically be talking about uh issues of racial equity affordability and inclusivity uh like every single evening and i think we do try to do that but i think maybe we need to be addressing it more squarely and so um maybe it's even kind of maybe it's important to always be reminding ourselves how we understand the connection between something like looking at lot size and the history of racial exclusion in our community and drawing those lines because i think those lines are there to be drawn they're not that abstract actually i mean we can just think about the way in which people have been excluded from something like homeownership and therefore generational wealth

187and therefore therefore so um i think yeah i guess i just wanted to um i don't know like acknowledge acknowledge the comments from commissioner weiss and support them and um and then i want to pivot to a much more mundane thing which is can you please remind me what what about 4c zoning was on the table for consideration you just covered it uh it's a lot is it lot sizes okay i think one of the ways that the city has excluded the development of housing and particularly lower cost price point housing is that from 1963 to today we have increased the size minimum sizes for r4c we've increased the minimum square footage per dwelling unit and that has resulted in less less dense development on lots and it has also resulted in probably larger units

188per lot and so the the discourse of that at the time was was focused on student encroachment into residential neighborhoods but it has had an impact on equity by severe impact of the housing supply generally across the city so so that that is an issue that as a community i think we have struggled with made some poor decisions with and and it's been revisited unsuccessfully in recent history and and that condition is unique to r4c there was a specific mission established previously for r4c it met for many years put together a series of recommendations that did not result in consensus to be adopted okay so when the time comes it'll be helpful for those of us who weren't around then to revisit that and also front yard solar for those of us who weren't here

189at the time that sounds exciting though thanks go ahead commissioner survey i'll just like we had a recent discussion similar of the c1ar district um which was created around student housing and density mixed use and walkable 15 minutes was a lot of the purpose but with the clout of student proximity which is the same as as the r4c but the repercussions of the right sizing and right location of this being restrictive to it so i would actually kind of mention that to bundle the c1ar and the r4c as having similar kind of narratives and characteristics with them um along that same kind of what is the density and appropriateness at certain edges of downtowns to then the single-family neighborhoods because that's really the edges that we're starting to see there and so i just kind

190of bring it up as another kind of difficult zoning factor that we've been seeing recently and the dialogue is kind of circumventing some of the rationale maybe around where it came from and you know opportunity and kind of restrictions to it just to add on for what it's worth the r4c stuff was even before my time it was like like a couple years and there was a discussion like if we should take it back up a lot of it my understanding is um and i have notes somewhere buried in like my email box because i feel like someday we're going to come back to it was around parking and so the elimination actually of parking minimums and establishment parking maximums may help um potentially who knows um other [Music] other questions comments we're gonna see

191this at least two more times great do you have what you need i am so the next time you see this will be hopefully a successful integration of the comments and feedback i've heard tonight that will be presented as a resource to you the meeting the evening of the public hearing on the comprehensive plan and all things going well you will make any additional refinements suggestions either adding things to either category prioritizing the like and i'll present it at the 17th meeting for adoption thank you very much all right uh we are on to item 10 public comment this is the final opportunity to uh for persons to speak for up to three minutes about any issue um we'll again first call on folks that are here and then move to remote participants you can

192press the raised hand button on your zoom screen push star nine or dial in eight seven seven eight five three four two five two four seven our meeting id is nine seven seven sixty six thirty 34 12 26 please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments would you like to kick us off kick it off and also finish it off i highly doubt anyone is watching at this point um i i commend you on your stamina as always and feel free it's very late feel free to tune me out um i won't take offense um i'm gonna i just have a few comments on the seu presentation by zach smith um yeah this is a really attractive and creative approach and to decarbon starting to decarbonize the city and we should

193definitely move forward with it as quickly as possible [Music] you know but mr wattsmith framed it at the start of his presentation as a more attractive alternative to the condemnation route of establishing a municipal electric utility you know to the effect that buying poles and wires is going to be very expensive dte's infrastructure and it's going to be defective anyway so let's avoid that and um work on this more decentralized distributed energy kind of approach and um yeah i i don't really quite agree with the framing um you know the we should definitely take distributed energy as far as we can but it has limitations paul fenn who the boston consultant who helped conceive ann arbor's seu idea told energy commission that maybe 20 percent of buildings are optimally suited for microgrids they're limited by

194things like building energy use intensity and economic factors so the scu can only take um the goal the a20 goal of powering our grid with 100 renewable energy so far the rest of it we're going to have to get off the regional grid and the 820 plan envisions doing that through community choice aggregation which is collective bargaining on behalf of city residents by the city with outside providers of clean power that would be great if we can make it happen it's currently not legal and it may not be legal for a long time in part because dte and consumers are lobbying so heavily heavily against it but there is you wouldn't may not know but there is a very very strong grassroots movement towards establishing a municipal electric utility that would take over the infrastructure

195from dte here in ann arbor the organization is called ann arbor for public power mostly it's a bunch of idealistic kids um with a few older people i'm involved and it's not a fool's errand necessarily there have been some recent examples where this has worked winter park florida jefferson county washington boulder was a failure in their effort to mailing supplies but even they got their utility to agree to go to 80 percent renewables by 2030 if they drop their muni plan and if the utility doesn't they can resume unit municipalization so anyway that's out there maybe worth looking at thank you thank you do we have anyone who's listening who wants to provide public comment mr leonard we do adam joskevich you have three minutes to address the planning commission hi um i'll i'll be

196brief i just i just wanted to um you know poke a little fun at the the previous speaker you know not like other people are paying attention and watching these things so um but anyway i think the seo stuff is really cool um great presentation i i think municipal municipalization is something that's you know worth pursuing as well alongside that in parallel and you know i think that's that's something we should be looking at but i don't think it should slow down anything with the scu um and i am excited to um to jump into scu stuff once there's something available to sign up for so i think it's it's pretty cool um as far as the work plan and zoning um i do think we really need to be cognizant of the fact that

197any discussion of zoning in ann arbor really in america as a whole has to um has to include that discussion of the racial equity and [Music] that just pervades zoning in general so we we need to be continuing that discussion so thank you thank you any others mr leonard nope all right then we're on to item 11 commission proposed business annie all right oh oh i looked this way yeah yeah sorry i'm coming back okay i'll make it really brief i just wanted to thank commissioner weiss for sharing those comments um we're always going to have to engage with the balance of sustainability affordability economic feasibility and social justice and that last component is always going to be something that deeply that we need to you know grapple with no doubt in my mind that

198there's systemic racism that's resulted in geospatial concentration and we have to do everything we can to be actively anti-racist so thank you for sharing that's very brave of you too uh share those comments with us so that's all thank you thanks anyone else all right item 12 is adjournment all in favor oh moved by commissioner white seconded by commissioner clark now everybody can raise your hand if you want to go and that is all of the hands