Ann Arbor Planning Commission Meeting 3-15-22

001it is call us to order good evening and welcome to the tuesday march 15 2022 regular meaning of the ann arbor planning commission for detailed information on meeting procedures please review the full printed meeting agenda which is available online item number two is roll call mr leonard will you please assist with that absolutely commissioner mills here commissioner gbrandall here commissioner sovay here commissioner abrams here commissioner hammerschmidt here commissioner dish here commissioner lee here commissioner clark yeah commissioner wage here full board very good item three is approval of the agenda can i have a commissioner move the agenda moved i will be able to speak tonight moved by commissioner um sovay thank you seconded by commissioner dish uh a discussion of the agenda all in favor of the agenda please raise a hand that has all

002of the hands the motion carries item four are the minutes of the previous meetings and in our packet this evening just in time we had the minutes for both the february 15th and march 1st 2022 meetings can i have a commissioner move those we've got by commissioner abrams seconded by commissioner lee any discussion or correction within the minutes all in favor of the motion please raise a hand or say yes that is all of the hands uh next up are is item five the reports from city administration city council planning manager planning commissioner officers and committees and any written communications and petitions and i'll just say on the um that last item we had numerous communications including webster township's draft master plan for our review commissioner dish so at the last city council meeting uh

003we had tc1 the state eisenhower uh geographically specific zoning passing on first reading and we had the concept plan for 350 south fifth passing on first reading so there will be a public hearing and all of that final approval at the first meeting in april i'm pretty sure and the council approved the resolution to establish an industrial park for sartorius so thank you for sending all that forward mr leonard anything to add nope no reports this evening any commission officers or committees to report out committee liaisons all right then let's move to item six uh the public comment so this is the first opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about an issue that's not listed as a public hearing on this agenda so to be clear we will have dedicated public

004hearings on the two amendments on multiple amendments within the unified development code we'll have public hearing on the ann arbor chinese church expansion and on maple cove 2. but if you'd like to provide public comment on anything else now is an appropriate time first we'll call on folks that are here in council chambers and then remote participants if you're watching us now please press star 9 if you're listening by phone you can use the raised hand button if you have joined us through the zoom link or if you need to dial in our call-in number is 877-8530 and then the meeting id is 977 6634-1226 mr leonard um for people who are joining remotely mr leonard will call on those who have raised their hand calling on you by the last three digits of your

005telephone number or by your zoom name [Music] when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any background sounds so that we can hear you clearly and whether you're here in person or calling in online if you could please uh state your name and address at the beginning of your comments so for those who've joined in person if you have a comment about anything that's not having a public hearing this is an appropriate time all right mr leonard is there anyone online there is caller with the phone number ending with five three four call her the phone number ending with five three four you have three minutes to address the planning commission good evening this is tom stallberg calling from lowertown in ann arbor uh later on we'll talk about the r2a revisions i

006found myself in a long conversation with somebody about that that led to uh differentiating that from adus so i found myself explaining the difference between the two uh and setbacks and building envelopes so it occurs to me that it might be helpful when you discuss it later on to discuss um some of the difference between an adu and a duplex and and some of those specific issues like setbacks and building envelopes so that people can understand and the occupancy per lot i think that'd be helpful to anybody in the public who's watching about that uh and while we're on adus i think it'd be interesting for us to know uh some that's how many adus since the uh ordinance was revised have come in uh since we've eliminated the owner occupancy requirement either adus that

007used to be owner-occupied that have no longer are things like that it's nice to know after a period of time you know what the impacts of our changes to our ordinances are we set certain goals back then or at least desires that were stated in terms of some numbers to achieve and it'd be interesting for the public to be able to have that information so we can gauge how it's gone and then the other thing that came up with uh adus was noticed uh and so if somebody wants to build an adu that there is no notice given to anybody uh it's really a building permit and that had been mentioned uh by another member of the public that i recall uh back when the ordinance revisions were being reviewed uh is is there a

008way to give some notice uh and this came up in a conversation with somebody else about restrictions in certain neighborhoods that may be in the subdivision restrictions bylaws in an association uh and that the adu might be in conflict with those restrictions but when somebody just builds a building permit to get an edu that there's no notice to neighbors so they really don't have a heads up to try to work with the neighbor who might be unknowingly violating uh restrictions in bylaws or whatever other limitations are on as lot even though they might be on recorded documents that this person should be aware of 30 more seconds building department doesn't check that so uh one of the things that was suggested back a year or so ago was simply to give some kind of notice

009to neighbors when an adu a permit for one is uh being applied for and then we can head those things off before there's a conflict and things are a little too late and contractors are hired and maybe equipment shows up on site uh so that's it thanks thank you any other callers mr leonard oh no no other callers are indicating uh to speak okay very good um then let's move on to item seven which are is the public hearing scheduled for the next business meeting sorry i'm getting there the packet's thick tonight folks okay we have two uh new uh quasi new public hearings uh scheduled for the april fifth meeting of the planning commission maple cove two for city planning commission approval this is a proposal to construct a 70 unit apartment complex consisting

010of three buildings 79 482 square feet including 86 vehicle parking spaces 38 bicycle parking spaces underground storm water retention and associative utilities on a 2.5 acre site um you might note that this is also scheduled for public hearing this evening unfortunately when the notice went out it had an error in the parcels that were indicated and also failed to identify a required wetland use permit so we've re-noticed that for the following meeting that is the basis for the recommendation on this evening's agenda then second proposed amendments to the unified development code section 5.19 parking standards and section 5.1 6.3 p transit corridor developments regarding parking standards in order to reduce impervious surface encourage land use to be efficiently incentive and incentivize the construction of new residential uses reduce the cost of constructing new residential units

011and support transit service proposed amendments include eliminating minimum parking requirements for all uses consolidating parking use categories eliminating some use categories eliminating the ability to provide bicycle parking off-site amending the weight limit of vehicles prohibited from parking in driveways changing the standards and formats of special parking district requirements already in place for d1 and d2 and adding the tc-1 district and amending requirements to electric vehicle parking regulations very good thank you we can move on then to item 8a which is our unfinished business if you'll recall at the last meeting because of the technical difficulty uh we decided to postpone these but now they're broken into two different groups um so first we will take on the amendments within the udc for the religious assembly use in m1 and the minimum lot size in r2a

012and i'm assuming that we're going to start with staff presentation before having uh the public opening the public hearing yeah i think commissioner lee would also like to address go ahead commissioner lee yep so i'm gonna go ahead and recuse myself from these two particular discussions and i'll be back for the next three all right very good we'll come and get you at the end of this and then yes we will start with a presentation from city planner alexis de leo all right um good evening everyone um it is a quirk of zoom that i can't see what you see so is the slide show uh not we do not see the slide show view oh but you see something we see something yep okay how about now it looks great go ahead fantastic okay

013good evening um we are here this evening to talk again about some udc amendments um for the benefit because we had so many technical difficulties at the last meeting i will go through um the presentation again it is um short i'm having a slight moment of panic did i start um yes i started with the correct amendments we're proposing um a total of five amendments i'm going to talk about just two right now the first is an amendment to the primary use table section in section 515 and this amendment is to allow religious assembly uses in the m1 district this slide shows how the amendment will look in the udc i have circled what is chain um the row and the columns of the table that are changing second amendment is related to two family

014the r2a district which is a two-family residential zoning district in this table table 517-2 it provides the minimum lot area minimum lot width and the minimum lot area per dwelling unit we're proposing three changes first to reduce the minimum lot area from 8 500 square feet to 505 thousand square feet proposing to reduce the minimum wa width from 60 feet to 40 feet and the minimum lot area per dwelling unit to 2 500 square feet um these changes will bring this district more in line with the are and they are the same as the r1d district the r2a district was intended to um be a higher density residential district with the same characteristics as some of the single-family districts and we believe these changes will bring it more in line with that intent and also

015address some of the non-conformities that we find in the r2a district here you can is a table and this is um an attachment in the packet it shows the r1c r1d and r1e zoning districts and their dimensional standards those are one districts or single family districts the r2s are also listed here plus the r4c which is a multi-family district but again it is supposed to have the proportionality or proportions of the higher density single family districts this is a map it's very small but this map of the city and the orange yellow are the current areas that are zoned r2a you you can kind of see that there's a big pocket in the water hill neighborhood north and west of downtown also there's um pockets just directly west of downtown on the old west side

016and some of the middle west neighborhoods and there's a few in the burns park area south of campus also i should mention that the broadway area and in the traver pontiac trail trevor area near plymouth are pockets of r2a i hope that the planning commissioners can see this table but if not you can see the colors right now our 2a logs it's actually about at 39 comply with the minimum lot area requirements and about 32 i'm sorry i said it backwards 39 comply with the minimum lot width i mean 61 do not comply they are not 60 feet wide or more 32 comply with the lot area but 68 don't meaning 68 of them are 8 500 square feet or less with these changes we're more we're better than flip-flopping those percentages lot width will

017become 13 non-conforming meaning 87 percent compliant and lot size would become 27 compliant um non-compliant and 73 percent compliant the last meeting uh planning commissioner asked what would it take to get down to almost zero non-conformities so that the huge majority would be conforming and a deeper dive revealed that our data is not good enough to pinpoint that number we can keep working on it but it won't be soon this concludes my presentation component give me one second and let me check um my staff report um mentioned in the staff report that this is actually a part of a package of five amendments um the proposed ordinance uh includes all five um the motion that we have suggested for you um moves forward two of them and we'll follow this up with the others uh

018both of these amendments are one of these amendments was requested by um the public and one amendment is proposed and set forth by staff we are recommending approval of both of them and they have been discussed by the ordinance revisions committee i'll stop now but i am happy to answer any questions thank you very much before we get to questions for you we'll open up the public hearing this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the proposed these two proposed amendments to the udc so specifically the proposal to related to permitted uses in the m1 district and the dimensional standards of the r2a district as before we'll first call on folks that are here in the audience and then those who have joined remotely if you have joined remotely

019and you've already dialed in you can press star 9 to indicate your interest in participating in the public hearing you can use the raised hand button if you've joined through the web link or if you're watching us now the call-in number is 877-853-5254 and our meeting id is 977 66 34 12 26 mr leonard again we'll keep an eye on those who've raised their hands um calling on you by the last three digits of your telephone number or the name that you use to join through zoom uh do please mute any background sound so that we can hear you clearly and um if you'll have up to three minutes to speak if you could please start your comments with your name and address first i'll open it up to those here any interest in providing

020public comment during the public hearing all right mr leonard is there anyone online yes there is uh brad moore you have three minutes to address the planning commission yeah this is brad moore with jay bradley moore and associates architects i would like to urge the planning commission also consider reducing the rear yard setback of the r2a to more closely align with the r1d thank you thank you any others mr leonard caller with the phone number ending with five three four you have three minutes to adjust the planning commission hello again tom stahlberg calling from lower town in ann arbor uh as many of you may know one of the hats i wear is a property manager and both my own investment group and for people other people as well we managed a number of duplexes

021uh we like them we found them to be great uh ways for i'm also a buyer's broker great ways for owner occupancy of one half of the duplex for people to get a start in home ownership uh that's very advantageous so i'm definitely in favor of duplexes overall uh and i will definitely personally benefit from these changes we will get more yield from our existing properties so i don't mind disclosing that on the same goes for some people that we manage properties for that we that i have no ownership interest in um i do want to mention a couple things about it is uh compared to adus for example um in the r2 zoning district uh people know that it's zone r2 and the lot size might not have allowed them to have two units

022but people in the general area uh would have expected and recognized that it was zoned r2 so there's a little bit less surprise here than there was in the adu where we allowed a second home on lots up to 800 square feet depending on the lot size not necessarily expected by the neighbors in that case so in that sense i find this more appropriate i wish we would have done this first prior to the adu might have helped open some doors to people understanding what it might mean to have additional units where they've been anticipated by zoning that's all thank you thank you caller with the phone number ending with four four zero you have three minutes to address the planning commission yes good evening uh planning commission my name is luis vasquez i have

023a residence at 909 barton drive but i also uh own a property at 1442 pontiac trail which is which falls under uh r2a zoning um my uh concern would be well first of all i'm i'm in support of um lowering the uh the amount of uh square footage that needs to be put into the zoning but also um i mean i i would i'm entertaining the notion of um building a fourplex on that property so uh you know how how would uh your proposed um uh resolutions um deal with that um i i would love to uh know um but thank you for your time uh and yes i'm in support of of your resolutions here thanks thank you no other speakers are indicating desire to speak all right then i'll close the public hearing

024and read the motion the ann arbor city and the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the amendments to chapter 55 unified development code as proposed and generally described as table 5.15-1 to allow religious assembly use in the m1 limited industrial district and table 5.17-2 to decrease the minimum lot size minimum lot area per dwelling unit and minimum lot width in the r-2a two-family dwelling district can i have a commissioner move that moved by commissioner sovay seconded by commissioner clark discussion go ahead commissioner dish two questions saying how thrilled i am to see this i have been hoping that we would do this and and requesting that we do this for a while so i'm really delighted that i know that a lot of work and thought goes

025into this and i'm so happy to see it so um i just wanted to know the rationale for uh retaining a larger side setback for r2a then we require an r1d so it's six foot for r1d and it remains 10 feet for r2a and similarly the rationale for uh holding on to the the larger minimum rear setback so we're 20 feet set back rear r1d and 30 and r2a so that's actually one question because it's about or whatever it's about why did we retain that my second question is if someone had a site zoned r2a and they wanted to put a fourplex there is there a path for them to do that clearly this does not permit that this permits duplexes but is there a path for them to do that and if it's too

026long an answer we don't have to talk about it um i can i can speak to those um first regarding the setbacks um i believe that we did not address the side setbacks because we were focused on the intent statement and non-conformities and specifically lot non-conformities um there may be and i i don't have any data but you there are three kinds of non-conforming situations a non-conforming use a non-conforming lot and then a non-conforming structure we were focused with these on non-conforming lots and so to make the locks themselves come into conformance we were focused on the lot area dimension the 8 500 square feet down to 5 000 and the lot width now um the next level might be and there we can certainly discuss but [Music] um changing the setbacks would then be

027in a conversation about reducing possible non-conforming structures um so that would be a short answer and it's more it's just more of a why what was our background about that one the four plexes the r2a district does not allow a fourplex you could have four units on the lot but it would have to be two duplexes um and that's just the rules that we have it is a two the maximum building could be a two family dwelling um a duplex but there is a path for getting four units but again it would have to be two duplexes um or however many number of buildings that the minimum lot area per dwelling unit can support but each building can only have a maximum of two if i could just add to that uh alexis mentioned the

028data and and so i want to caveat this is that a lot of our data is actually based on tax parcels which isn't always the same as lots tax parcels form a lot of our or how we organize property data because that's important for how the city communicates sends out information that said we've done our best to sort of slice some of that data it's imperfect but we have of about 1600 lots that are zoned uh or excuse me about 1700 1693 according to my account again best data i got 350 of those lots are greater than 10 000 square feet which would potentially open up that avenue that uh alexis was talking about or conversely would allow potentially a lot to be split into two separate lots so to give you a sense of

029that scale about 350 lots in the city out of seven around 1700 might be eligible for that go ahead commissioner dish so the the i understand entirely your rationale for saying that we're not looking at non-conforming structures so we didn't think about setback um the reason why it was intuitive to me to ask about it was the sentence in the intent statement for r2 a2 family the district is intended to create areas of essentially single-family residential character utilizing two single family dwelling utes that are attached either side to side or vertically so we're looking to mimic the r1 district i suppose or a lay person which is what i am would think that we're looking to to to get closer to the characteristics of the of the single family district and so to me then

030it would make sense that we would also modify we might it might make sense that we would also modify the side and rear setbacks unless there were a reason that we felt that a greater setback would be needed if someone were to put a duplex on an r2a lot that's that's the only reason that my thinking is there but i i can tell from what you said earlier um ms deleo that this isn't like something we could take white out to and change those numbers it would require time and energy and debate and so i don't think i want to carry it further unless you said oh yeah i've just got a bottle of white out here and i'll do it for you well i would respond just off the cuff that um i'm a

031cautious planner um there is no reason not to perhaps put the planning commission can put forth an amendment tonight and and change the setbacks but my advice would be to either table or move forward with what is on the floor and then be ha and then we can you know the next ordinance revisions committee meeting um just do another amendment um just mostly honestly because my nature is um not amendments on the floor but i think that you bring a great you bring up a great point um perhaps we i we should have looked a little more holistically i would mention one thing and maybe it's a reason for not changing tonight but um i do know from working with the building department the r1d has a three foot side setback minimum side setback and

032so the planners and the zoning officials will sign off on a building that is three feet from the side setback but the building code imposes a significant amount of more restrictions when a building is that close to the property line and it reduces or makes it much more difficult to have windows and so if you want windows on the side of your building you might want to voluntarily put that building at five feet or greater setback that is a reason to keep the five foot setback of the r2a existing the the rear setback is different story you know there's no difference in building codes between building placement 20 or 30 feet from the rear setback line rather than joining on that's my professional opinion for the board but i am your uh i'm your humble

033servant in this regard go ahead mr leonard yeah i agree with um alexis thanks for that response alexis and i would just i would just add that as a reminder the udc is living i think that and i would i would point out um as i caveated all the data about lot size and lot width that data is not perfect but i want to be clear we definitely i can't tell you of those 1700 parcels which ones have which setbacks and so that would be more of sort of a hypothetical exercise of a typical lot of these dimensions under this proposed scenario a 40 foot wide lot would still give you a 30 foot wide building envelope with those existing 5 foot setbacks i think that that's adequate but i just want to be clear

034that that would be even that would not be challenging data for us to be able to bring a lot of detail about our existing lots that would be impossible data for us to bring for our existing lots as to what the existing setbacks are it would be again it would be more of an exercise of on a hypothetical lot of this dimension what would that look like so anything else commissioner dish any others go ahead commissioner abrams i wondered i also had the same question about the rear setback and maybe before we heard from alexis and brett was going to propose an amendment on but to the motion but um i will all withhold that but i wondered if there's another way to think about it which is not about conformity but about um you

035know increasing allowable density so the 30 foot width um is seems viable but the lot depth we don't know and it's probably more variable but that extra 10 feet would make either side up down or side by side getting two units on there more feasible so um i think i would i would vote to support that change whether it's tonight or at a future date other comments questions go ahead commissioner hammerschmidt first of all thank you for looking into my confusing request from a couple of weeks ago and i said one more question also related to those pie charts a lot of stuff going on so if i'm reading it right so making these changes would be brought into compliance by lot width and 73 by a lot size i assume that if one is

036still non-compliant that whole lot would be considered non like out of compliance so what is the over is that right you were nodding yes okay yeah so zoom in person hard i know do you have a sense of like so you know the 73 that would now be in compliance by lot size are all of those also by lot width do you have a sense you know what i'm saying like of the overlap between those two numbers i don't have a sense okay it'd just be interesting i think it'd just be interesting to know like it would be we we could run that i don't have it for you tonight yeah that i don't need it tonight with the best of our data we could make that comparison yeah that was helpful yeah if we're

037gonna if we don't end up changing um anything with the rear setback tonight and bring that back maybe if that does come to another orc meeting it would be interesting just to sort of look at like how is it you know like those 87 are now compliant by lot width but like they're not compliant by something else so they're not really compliant just be interesting to know thanks other commissioners i'll chime in with commissioner abrams that i um agree that the rear setback is what i would be most interested that i think would have the biggest impact the kind of side setbacks we've heard this before in our discussion about adus in terms of even though even though accessory structures are allowed to be three feet in in all of the districts from the property

038line that if it's habited that there are additional building code issues with that so i think five feet seems reasonable to maintain on the sides but i think um i think changing the rear would also be fine i think that that's not a dramatic change so making it on the floor makes me feel relatively comfortable i don't know what additional information staff would actually bring to that um but i also like think that to commissioner hammerschmidt's point passing this tonight so that we get more even if we don't know the full totality of how many more in um in compliance on both measures getting more into compliance i think is helpful um and if others feel like that part should wait i would be fine with that but i would also just signal that i

039am totally comfortable making an amendment to have the rear setback change tonight commissioner brandel i'm in support of it too but i feel like we should wait because i think there's always always unintended things until you get into actually changing the code and all the domino effects that happen i i feel like we should you know alexis is the one that's been working on this she understands just how complex and intertwined all of this is and i would feel a lot better i don't want to do this on the fly because i feel like um they need to be able to do their due diligence and i don't want to like unwind it and then have all like just have other things go awry because of that so i'm generally um supportive of it too

040but i'd like to give them the time to be able to do what they need to do to feel confident about moving it forward um i would definitely be supportive and interested in that but i think that we can save that um too but i just want to give them time to be able to do let the professionals do what they do and um and i i trust that alexis knows that you know it would be good to to wait on that one other commissioners go ahead commissioner silvay i might play the other side with all of the conversations about our work plan that i don't want to commit a like an owner's amount of time to staff and like this coming back on the agenda for a change and i think looking at several

041of the maps as well like they share backyards in many of these districts um you know like we don't know exactly all of them but i guess i also take staff's point that this would be kind of a speculative scenario that we can't gather the same amount of data and so this seems like a purposeful match to the intent of looking towards the single family districts as kind of a transition one and that this would then match in that 20-foot setback to be kind of complimentary i don't see with any kind of critical backlash to that change in in many of these projects so um i'd be in sort of support of changing it this evening if an amendment came forward does anybody want to make such a motion go ahead commissioner abrams before that

042um maybe it would help me to hear from alexis and or brett what the due diligence would be that you would do to inform this conversation if we were to postpone that amendment um i'll start and alexis please correct me if you would approach it differently but i would probably come up with some um sort of hypothetical lots and just show the difference um just doing some math here like a sort of a minimum lot that was 40 feet wide and meeting the 5 000 square feet would be about a if i'm if my math is ready to be a 40 by 125 foot lot with the current 30 foot and a presuming a 25 foot front setback that would give you about a 30 by 70 building envelope which is about 2100 square feet

043so i would probably approach it by showing you some examples similar to that where um would show how different lot sizes might be configured and how that setbacks would change the buildable footprint of of of that and as you of course went larger from that you know you just have to make those adjustments but i think um i'm going to i'm sort of half throwing this out as a question to alexis to see if she agrees but generally without a change to the side yard you're talking about losing 10 feet in width and with the existing front and rear probably less than 30 plus 25 because most of our neighborhoods have an established front yard setback where we're going to take the average but probably that's the outside largest loss of lot to set back

044where you couldn't build in is going to be 55 feet so alexis how would how would you approach it um that same exact and then just uh talking with our um sort of development team double checking with building if they know of any um issues that we should be concerned about and um i probably would also double check the do a little bit of research into some of the original plaques where we do find r2a like what was the planted lot size um and what were some of the the older r2a setbacks and the setbacks dimensional standards if it for example if we find that these setbacks on the side have always been five feet i don't see how it would maybe help too much to reduce them down to three feet um but if

045three feet maybe was the the norm at the time most were developed there could be gains there same with the concept of the rear basically i would just take a little time to review um what data do we do have and basically just sleep on it to make sure we thought it through anyone else see go ahead commissioner weich so i'm ambivalent either way but i do want to throw support around doing the amendment tonight if there's table agreement just so that we can get to the other things that we need to get to and later i'm going to ask if we can rezone all of our existing r1as to r2 a anyway so this just feels uh fortuitous for me so i would i would recommend we amend um at the table today and

046then uh continue on so are you proposing um you're you're making a motion to amend no no i wasn't making the emotion i was just weighing in okay as another voice and favor of someone who will make the uh the motion i will second it once once it hits the table so does anyone want to make that motion all right commissioner sovay is making motion i'll make the motion to amend the minimum rear yard setback to 20 feet for the r2a district moved by commissioner silva seconded by commissioner weich discussion of the motion to amend oh go ahead commissioner good randall i'm uncomfortable supporting it so just so people know where i am i i just want i i'd kind of like to see i don't want to i don't think we need to take

047up three meetings with this i feel like it's pretty straightforward but i would like to have some sense of the implications and things like that so that's that's just where i am just letting folks know go ahead commissioner dish i want to second what commissioner randall said precisely because uh unless i misunderstood or misheard it didn't sound like this was going to take a lot of staff time to bring forward the data that staff cares about or feels could shed light on this and that being the case i you know when i hear someone say i'm cautious and they are the professional in the room and it's not like we're talking about a year's delay or anything like that i feel like deferring um to staff so but i i wouldn't be unhappy if there

048was so much support for this amendment that we might as well you know but but i my gut is saying let's just there's no big i don't think there's a big delay so it doesn't feel like it needs to be a big rush go ahead commissioner hammerschmidt my gut is also saying to delhi but i also would like to hear from bret and alexis like how much time would this actually take to do like what how much would this actually set us back if we collected a little more data on this and brought it back to brought it to rc and then brought it to the next meeting like how many hours are we talking um well it depends on what we find of course i don't think yeah i don't as far as putting

049together some lot scenarios that's pretty simple as long as you're going to accept my rudimentary graphic skills as far as platt research i'm going to say that that's something maybe we could put together in a matter of i guess i would putting together sort of a fully fully formed sort of opinion on it i'm thinking would maybe be a two to four week endeavor but not like full time right that's not i'm not saying that that's in terms of when the meetings time in the context of our other work to pull the data put together our thoughts that's my that's my rough i mean how much do you think it would delay i mean it's a way to delay whatever we want to tackle next on our work plan let's just say tc1 hypothetically would

050it delay that then by two to four weeks something like that yeah i if i could offer another like obviously there's there's some difference of opinions on this i would just add another another piece of it is that if the planning commission wanted to pro wanted to pursue this amendment i appreciate the thoughts about you don't really have all that information and i i want to be clear like i don't i don't know how much information or data as i said we're going to be able to provide you it'll be more scenarios and some sort of i don't want to say anecdotal but some sort of pinpoint research in a couple areas of the city probably we could also provide that in concert with this progressing from the planning commission to the city council so

051that the city council has the benefit of that same kind of information so that doesn't necessarily address some of the concerns here at the table but i just want to put that out as another opportunity that we can frame the question that was raised the if the amendment is proposed why it was proposed and we can provide some of that same information to the city council for their consideration of that okay how much would that delay like are we i mean i like that approach um but are we still would it be less time because it has to come through less meetings for us are we still talking about like the research is still going to take the same amount of time right yeah i mean we still got to put that together but it

052it would sort of move your it would move it from your agendas for your agendas to be opened up for the next yeah okay if alexis is okay with it i'm okay with it your wish is my command [Laughter] i would i would just say i think that the generic kind of what the impact does on the lot is probably less interesting to me um i think that kind of going back and looking at the plots and if once upon a time the setbacks in the r2a used to be three feet i think that that's that could be that data point and that research in my mind was the most interesting thing even though i'm not proposing that we changed that or that's not the motion on the table it just suggests to me that

053that could be an opportunity to get fewer non-conforming structures to allow for then amendments what adaptive reuse i'm just going to throw that out there like it's not necessarily adapting but like for those pla for those things to happen so if there i would be in support in the research in the interim to really triage and go towards that and or whatever staff finds most interesting i don't think that this is worth delaying all of the other things on i don't think that this is worth delaying the other things that are applied to much more many more than 600 properties in our city so any other comments before we vote on the amendment to modify the rear setbacks to 20 feet go ahead commissioner randall if we do the the scenario that mr leonard suggested

054do we need to adjust the amendment the scenario that mr leonard suggested would would stand and it would go on to city council and city council looks at what we pass them along but if there's additional if they want to reverse that that is their prerogative okay right if your research turns up that this would be awful or that it needs to go farther okay okay so that amendment would go forward as an amendment that came up but we didn't vote on or that we voted no we would vote right now we should vote whether or not we as a body think that they should change the the rear setback to that what we pass on to city council we should vote yes if we think council should so now we're voting to advise council

055yes thank you yes but we would be allowing them to continue to do more research between this meeting and the next meeting yes exactly that's right i just wanted to know if i was supposed to vote no right exactly and i would just acknowledge that they any of the research that they do are the same staff that are helping us move forward all of the other things so that is among the reasons that i would keep it minimal the research in the interim um and just for your first taste of that research uh in 1964 this the r2a we were just reflecting a continuation of setbacks in the city you know and our r2a in 1864 was five foot setbacks and a 30-foot rear setback so um to i know alexis was talking about platts

056and lots but from a regulatory perspective you're seeing inertia well that's quick on the fly any other comments before we take a vote on whether we ought to change that rear setback to 20. we're voting on whether we should change it to 20 feet do you can you roll call of that we can do a roll call whenever you want you don't have to for this item but if since there's different opinions maybe it makes sense i think that might probably make sense all right so the motion is to amend the rear setback for the r2a district from 30 to 20 foot minimum commissioner mills yes commissioner gbrandall yes commissioner sovay yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee recused commissioner clark yes commissioner wage yes all right the amendment passes

057great and now we have an amended proposal anything any other discussion of m1 or the r2a as amended just now all right i think we're ready for a vote i can do we need to do this as roll call yes yes please commissioner mills yes commissioner gabe randle yes commissioner silva yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee is recused commissioner clark yes commissioner wage yes motion carries as amended or the ordinance passes as amended very good let's see do we know where commissioner lee went shall we go grab him i will some summon him shortly thank you and i will find the motion for the next one too in my packet nice okay so we are ready uh for item eight b which are three additional amendments to the unified

058development code and rather than introduce them mr leo can you rather than me talk about them can you introduce them for us yes i can let me argue with um uh zoom sharing again looks good all right let me uh okay there we go cooking with gas okay thank you we have three more udc amendments for you tonight they um deal with marijuana facilities and their licenses and types they deal with curb cuts and street trees street trees mostly curb cuts part of it and with the landscape modification section again the proposed ordinance has all five amendments that i am proposing but right now just talk about the last three the first to section 516 3g regarding marijuana facilities we have two changes and then a reorganization we are proposing to delete paragraph d entirely

059and that is a table mostly that talks about the number of state licenses per watt um as you can see on the screen um the m1 m1a and m2 district allowed five licenses per lot re for research and orl for office research light industrial allowed two and all other districts where the facilities were allowed had one proposing to delete that also proposing to delete paragraph e which was the types of facilities on the lot and paragraph e said no more than one type of the following shall be located on the lot and we'll be deleting that entire paragraph um then we are proposing to reorganize um whereas before the old layout in this section um was organized by the types of restrictions we are proposing to reorganize it with the same restrictions to just be

060by facility so a little bit better one-stop shopping um the um because we are not proposing to eliminate any other restrictions um there will still be the requirements that um there is spacing between certain facilities and schools spacing between certain facilities amongst each other and so on and so forth all the same standards apply these changes though will add a little bit of clarity in our ordinance um and they would better align with state standards happy to go into that a little bit more but i did talk about that at the last meeting the other another amendment that we are proposing is to section 520.10 b which is trees in the public right-of-way we are proposing to exclude the width of a curb cut when you are um measuring for required street trees um and

061then we are proposing to put two headings there one authority and or a authority um site plan requirements the site plan requirement would be that one street tree is required for every 45 linear feet of existing and proposed public street rights of way minus the width of the kirk cut existing trees can account for that standard and our final amendment is section 5 30.1 which is our landscape modification section currently it allows flexibility in five sections of the landscape requirements um dealing with vehicular use areas in the parking lot islands dealing with conflicting land use buffers shared driveways and private streets uh refuse and recycling container screening and then the material and design standards in this section we're also proposing like the marijuana facility section to do some changes and then some reorganization the current

062format has all of these things just listed in one sentence i'm proposing to just literally list them out one to six and adding trees in the public right-of-way as a thing that you can modify as part of a site plan approval the other things that we are proposing to do in this section are to change um change two and clarify two other modifications the set this section says that there are certain sections we've just dealt with that um that can be modified for specific reasons um and i've summarized here on the slide uh one reason is if you're in a special parking district that is basically in the downtown in the dba it is defined but basically another is if you will result in the loss of required parking spaces that's a what we consider

063a acceptable reason to modify the requirements a third and the ones highlighted in yellow are what we are changing and the strikethrough ones are what we are really proposing to change the non straight through is just what we're trying to clarify it says now that the topographic features if you do strict application it'll be less effective screening that's a reason for modifying on the other side on the right side of this um slide we're proposing a little bit different language to talk about when the topography or elevation relative to adjacent sites makes the standards less effective um currently we have a reason of adding new plantings would be detrimental to the plants or create undesirable conditions and in the exact wording it's a little bit awkward and clumsy we are proposing to try to explain

064it as when new plants would be more detrimental to the overall effect and the benefits that you would receive than keeping the existing plantings oh there's also um we have a reason that talks about when you're proposing bio retention areas prairies and xeriscaping and because of our experience these things are not proposed so they're not really a useful reason to modify so but what is would be i'm changing that one number five to talking about when the conditions prevent the strict application of the landscape requirements examples being when you have contaminated soils or maybe clay soils that do not infiltrate or if you have underground utilities that just cannot support any plantings on top um those should be reasons to modify a site plan one listed reason is proposed plan projects or puds we don't

065have plan projects anymore so no one is going to use that as a reason and puds already have an embedded way to flex the landscape requirements so we don't need to modify a pub it has its own procedures but we can replace that with a modification for when new street trees are prevented by obstructions in the full language i'd give some examples about what an instruction might be and then it is a landscape modification can be approved when you are trying to maintain approved but now non-conforming elements keep that going forward and this is just a um a whole picture the current layout has the section header the sentence that lists all of the sections and then its standards of approval contain both the standards and the modifications eligibility and we are proposing here to

066just make it a little more user friendly by having an eligible requirement section and listing out the seven listing the modification conditions you can better determine your eligibility and then providing the same exact standards for approval and the approval procedures um staff is pro are recommending approval of all three amendments and as proposed and i am happy i will conclude my presentation and happy to answer any follow-up questions thank you very much um and uh the next thing that we'll do is open the public hearing for this item so this is an opportunity for persons to speak about these three amendments to the udc marijuana licenses trees in the right-of-way and landscape modifications if you've if you're joining remotely uh you can press star 9 if you're listening by phone use the raised hand button

067or call in again our call-in number is is 877-853-5247 6634 1226. mr leonard will call on those who've raised their hand you do that by pressing star 9 again or using the raised hand button and they'll call on you by the last three digits of your telephone number or by your name please move to a quiet area and mute any background sounds so that we can hear you clearly and whether you're in person or making participating in the public hearing remotely please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is there anyone in chambers that would like to participate in the public hearing jeff femko 213 west madison following up on the comments i made at the last meeting concerning the marijuana amendment i believe increasing the number of licenses for any

068lot would not be in ann arbor's best interest in the commercial or industrial areas for these far from residents it would be inequitable to increase capacity for only these sites any discussion of increasing overall capacity needs to really involve the potentially altering the limits on the number and the separation distance of these facilities as well for any lots near residents it would be unfair to remove the protections provided to them as one who lives in these near these facilities object to removing these restrictions i know my neighbors are also concerned and i do not believe council would have would receive support from the residents from the residence for this amendment the motivation that was mentioned at one point about you know allowing growers to more fully utilize their lots does have some substance and could

069be further considered but obviously the amendment goes much further and should be reworked thank you for your time and attention thank you anyone else mr leonard is there anyone who's joined remotely who is interested in participating no speakers have indicated a desire to address the planning commission all right i will close the public hearing and read the motion the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the amendments to chapter 55 unified development code as proposed and generally described as changes to section 5.16.3 point g to eliminate marijuana license type and number of licenses per lot as well as to reorganize for clarity section 5.20.10 to exclude curb cuts from street tree planting frontage calculations and remove references to street tree escrow and section 5.30.1 to add eligibility and

070conditions to modify street tree planning requirements by landscape modifications as well as clarifications and reorganization can i have a commissioner move that moved by moved by commissioner dish seconded by commissioner sovay anyone want to kick off discussion or questions go ahead commissioner weich i just want to unders can we talk to the commenter uh yes the floor is yours well i just want to understand what the concern is because because i'm i'm confused because the the number of licensees won't change it's just the type of license that the existing licensees have in their lot so they could have a retail and a growing in the same lot and that's what's what is what is being changed or i guess i'm really trying to understand what it is as a resident you're objecting to because we're

071not there's nothing that's going to increase the number of licensees they're still bound by the 28. and it's it within the lots that they already have so i'm i asked this question the last time and i think alexis answered it satisfactory but i'm concerned about your comment that i'm still missing something so you're allowing so this restriction of the 28 so but what if you at some point in the future want to increase that then this then the slot has unlimited you know can increase those those same types it would have to go through this whole process again because it would be a change to the code written in the code is the restriction so if someone wants to change it it starts here and then it goes to council is that correct that's a

072great question for staff okay thank you yes staff is that is that correct sure let me uh uh so the way the ordinance is concerned currently i want to say something is we have two limits we have there there are multiple facility types of those multiple facility types two of them have or three of them have quantity limits designated consumption facilities of which we have one in one granted in the city so far micro businesses which we have one granted in the city so far and provisioning centers retailers which we have 28 max and 28 granted in the city so far so currently we regulate all those facility types by two ways of by the use by the proposed zoning districts which they are and in the code it says the planning commission shall not

073issue more special exception uses then the city council has allotted to that so in the case in the example that the speaker is addressing if the city council were to amend to say we would now like to establish up to 38 provisioning center licenses then what this change would do currently you couldn't have more than one provisioning license at that location if that were to happen other licenses were to come up and no other changes happen then a petitioner could come and ask to amend a special exception used for that same property to add two provisioning centers to that you were right they would have to come through this process but there could be actual action at the city council that impacts the sort of opens the door for that differently um so this does

074not change it doesn't change the uses that are permissible at that location but it could for example in another example it could say that a micro business then could also seek approval at that same location whereas currently well currently depending on the number of licenses in the zoning district you would be limited so in the vast majority of the city only one license per lot so this change would allow in that case potentially a second facility to locate on that lot who grants the license is that the state or the city or both both okay but and and so there there's just a lot of steps i feel like and so the the amendment changes that were modifications that we're making here don't seem to address what you raised so i wanted to make sure

075i understood what you were raising because you were concerned well you you're if the chair permits you can restate it so that i make sure i understand exactly what you are objecting to go ahead okay so one just comment as far as that um but if it's not making any change then why do it so my perspective on this as somebody who lives in this area you came and the city asks or we went through the process of being requested for a special use exemption on a medical marijuana facility okay it was changed without any of our awareness or going through the process to change it to recreational and now you want to again just increase it remove any restrictions on the amount of these things that are here it seems like you know we

076we made an agreement on medical marijuana and it's continually eroding away that is my concern is that it is um i don't know who to properly address this to as we debate so i if if i can just talk to you chair mills so the state changed the law around medical to recreational and so because of that there wasn't a stop at planning commission to say hey city of ann arbor this state change is going to change these local things do you want to change your ordinances to reject this in some way so there wasn't a there wasn't we didn't skip a step in our deliberations as a body so i um i don't trust my memory even though like i've been here from the beginning of this i don't trust it so that i

077think is a good thing for staff because i i do think we did have that discussion yeah so um the that that sort of evolution that was addressed that was a result of a couple of items when the state legislative framework was enacted that allowed for medical marijuana facilities that was the first the city chose to allow those facilities in the city so at that time the city then modified its zoning code and a licensing ordinance to allow for medical marijuana facilities to be established in the city that established the special exception use permit that required a medical provisioning center to be established to require that step before it should be established and a cap was established at that same time subsequent to the city enacting that the voters of the state passed a new

078law the taxation and recreational marijuana act within that act it said two things it still provided some flexibility for communities to decide if they wanted to opt in or not but it also included language that said a community cannot withhold a retail license from a medical marijuana provisioning center okay so in that state law was a link that then the city subsequently followed and followed that that that change and modified our definition to similarly equate those two facilities the same so it is true we did not re require that medical to go through the special exception use permit at that time the voters had enacted a law with that length that says if you have a provisioning center the community cannot deny you a retailer okay so so they did change and it was that's

079sort of a snapshot of that framework so we did modify our code to reflect that language but that was state law so we had to be uncompliant so we modified it would have been out of compliance we modified our law to not only reflect that but to also clearly provide the other types of retail facilities that were enabled in that state legislation as well which are the three that you mentioned so again i'm i'm not quite sure i was gonna say yeah usually i was thinking it's not super conventional to uh to pull people back in but i would say if it's helpful to clarify i'm okay with it okay but yeah so so then the new concern would be i have a provisioning license and i want to have a consumption license and i

080have obtained these from the state and now i've obtained them from the city and this revision will allow me in my same facility to hold both of those licenses but it would it doesn't necessarily mean that those activities are happening in the same space it's just in the same lot correct so i could create a a consumption first level a provisioning second level in a growing third level in my lot and our law now says if we pass this revision that i can hold all three of those licenses and operate in this same lot it's not about me creating a new side business next to unless i build a new structure and i have space within my lot i'm just trying to make sure i'm understanding okay so everybody's shaking their heads yeah all right

081and then i just want to turn back to the commenter and make sure that your understanding is my understanding and you still maintain your objection but i if i if i could just clarify what you said is correct right now there right now even if the zoning allowed all three of those uses right only one might be allowed because of this restriction i want to be clear though in most cases you're not going to be able to have those three uses because we this does not wipe away the zoning requirements if growing is not formidable and permissible in that zone right growing still can't go there however if the other two uses are permissible and they require two licenses then i can then they then you could do that whereas now you're limited to one

082license per lap okay and it all right okay sorry it is a lot to hold i'm i'm just struggling as i as i navigate and um i'm trying to understand what your objection is to make sure that it it's clear uh to me so if you want to if you know if the chair permits and you want to make another quick comment i think i think and that's questions that's yeah at your request yes well you're you're the chair so you get to tell me no and i will i think [Laughter] so with medical special use you get six you know send out a postcard of 60 600 feet of residents are able to you know voice their objection about it um what was asked of us if medical marijuana would be there would there

083be recreational no that was off the table it was illegal to do it at that time and that was changed now there was a you know the the constitution was amendment for that at that time or you know and so what ann arbor did was they decided to make um to accept that and automatically grant that medical one to the recreational one so i mean basically the ann arbor was willing to was not didn't have to accept that but they had to in order to bring it in they were willing to grant recreational permits to areas that may not have received them in the past or in the current legislation that's my concern where i'm coming from and now you're saying that well let's just expand it out to everyone else and so i just

084see this continual erosion of the rights that were that we originally discussed at the for the medical permit thank you so much i appreciate the back and forth commissioner dish um thank you uh uh commissioner watch because i missed the meeting when this came up the first time and so i thought it was just me so i'm glad you walked me through all that so i'm still fuzzy on one on one thing and would like a a clear answer to another so i'm fuzzy on whether the city of ann arbor had discretion with respect to granting a retail license to existing medical marijuana centers i i thought i understood mr so i want to i want to be clear it's a very complicated question and i think that it would probably be best posed to

085the city attorney's office but from my my interpretation once the city decided to enable medical provisioning centers and the constitution was amended my read of that is that it forced the city's hand at that point to allow retailers for those facilities it didn't require us to expand or provide other but for provision for allocated provisioning centers it the legislation from my read is that it makes it clear that we could not then say you cannot retail subsequently the city council memorialized that in ordinance amendments both at in the udc and in the licensing to i think fully acknowledge and accommodate retailers specifically so can we increase the number of retail no okay thank you we to be clear we modify the definition whereas before it said medical marijuana provisioning center the definition was modified to

086say that and retailers shall be used interchangeably i will follow up with the city attorneys to verify whether there was in fact no discretion okay and then just the my second question is and is why do we think where zoning permits it's of benefit what is the benefit to where zoning permits allowing more than one type of license to be held on the same lot that's a staff question i know you guys are looking at me because it's kind of weird that staff's behind you and on and on the tv screen but i like i don't know the answers to these just to be clear um i keep talking i apologize to ms deleo alexis jump in if um um but but so this um this this this ordinance was brought to us by um

087a property owner which is provided for in the ordinance the opportunity to apply for such text changes and the barrier was currently our ordinance um in some districts specifically the m1 districts allows up to five licenses but it also isn't it also reads that you can only have one of each type so what that means is in an m1 district you could have a provisioning center a grower a safety compliance facility a processor and what am i missing a transporter but you could not in fact have two growers you could not in fact have two processors and the industry at the state does allow you to quote unquote stack to grow facilities for to grow licenses those licenses are issued by the state under a maximum number of plants and at times the state does

088issue you to grow licenses our ordinance prevents that because we only allow one of each type so that was the initial application and and in presenting that and discussing at the ordinance revisions committee i think that there was a recollect sort of um i don't want to speak for them but i think there was some conversation of that part of that restriction of licenses per lot was similar to some of the locational restrictions and i think it was out of a sense of we didn't know exactly what this impact was going to be in our community and it was as we talked about with other things maybe it was a more conservative approach to provide some opportunities for this but it was also cognizant of maybe we don't want to open up the door for

089a entire multi-suite building to be solely marijuana as opposed to that being a couple of uses i think again not speaking for that orc but at that conversation i think those fears have started to roll away as we've experienced in our community that these uses have been established and the city is still functioning largely it doesn't seem to have a negative impact in a lot of business areas so there was i think a thought of perhaps there's an opportunity to go further and be more flexible with these and that's how we got to the framework that we have here and alexis is not shaking her head no oh well i would only add that we were regulating what we thought of the industry would be like we were basically trying to regulate for a brand

090new industry that had very little case history um now that we have some years under our and we exactly what brett had talked about um we thought that limiting and spreading and um spreading out would be better we both have um experience and the industry is maturing and also the regulations are a little bit changing so now i think the benefit is um our experience is showing that um the industry is lit is physically not spread out around our city it's concentrated but also i think we assumed that um the bigger operations would just get bigger would be getting uh different licenses single licenses but the state is changing how they regulated and we didn't know that at the time and they're not giving one the numbers won't work but for discussion they're not giving

091um issuing a a 1 000 plant permit a license i mean and 5 000 and the 10 000 they're issuing two or three 5 000 plant permits they don't have a 10 000 option so our change means that the same exact facilities can grow in place and will not literally spread out i think this is actually helping us our regulations are now turning might turn out to harm us and forcing growers as one's facility to literally spread out but if we take if we make these changes they can be more compact and they can do the same things that they want to do in their existing building we're not forcing them to spread out this is a i think a combination of um experience now we also know how the industry is being regulated we

092can match better i think that's one of the benefits to making this change for our city is that um we're not forcing people to separate from themselves to find additional lots they can do more in the same space they can densify if you will commissioner gibb randall i'm going to need some reminding on this because i know i think it was with the grow license that you were required to do a certain amount of solar and i want to understand the implications of this because what i do not want is to be able to get out of that or to minimize that because this industry is just an enormous energy hog and it is completely antithetical to our 8 to 0 goals and so i want to make sure that if we make this change

093that we are not compromising that at all you know no change again we're not changing any of the requirements associated with any of these facilities we're not changing the zones in which they are allowed is only how they can be realized in those zones in multiples as opposed to in one per lot so there would be no change to we require i forget the percentage but we require a percentage of the anticipated energy load to be provided via on-site solar renewable for grow facilities and for micro businesses which includes a grow component no change to those requirements so if you added that component to your lot and you did not have solar because you weren't doing that you would be required to add solar because you're doing that correct okay that's why i wanted to

094know thank you but to be clear for that use the requirement doesn't apply to a provisioning center it doesn't require other uses that's right that's right okay and i small amendment because it's based on the percentage of annual electricity used if you need to add more lights whatever to grow more plants and you generate more electricity like you have to add solar panels too so then the petitioner would be required to project what that would be in order to be able to add additional solar panels okay other questions comments go ahead commissioner survey i just had a point of clarification for staff because we're all other zoning districts where this is permissible right now say the d district c districts those are still one license and so those intensities aren't changing with kind of the

095stacking of licenses correct well um the change would make it the change does say basically you can stack that's the bottom line is the change is that now you can stack as many licenses as you're permitted to have before um the the most change you're going to see though is in the industrial districts and uh is in the industrial districts because those are the ones that allow the most types of facilities in the um the downtown districts and the commercial districts on the one hand you'll be able to stack licenses but we still have all of the separation restrictions and then just the plain fact is it a permitted use or not restriction um i guess what has changed yeah i guess specifically i'm reading the m1 m2 can have up to five licenses the

096orl up to two all other zoning districts that's going that's gone that's the gone and now all of them are completely opened up that's the transition right for for stacking purposes and um variety purposes that compo those components are gone but what remains is 600 feet between provisioning centers and provisioning centers um and just the plain old permitted uses you can't have a grower in d2 just can't have right so so you can't stack a provisioning center and a grower um that's helpful yeah those are the kind of things right like the matrix of you zoning district conversation i want to just kind of have clarification in conversation so thanks for the um in for general discussion purposes what it means in the industrial districts is all of the types of facilities can stack on

097the same lot and so you can have a much more cradle-to-grave operation i if you want to describe it as that that's really the change that's happening in the industrial districts um you can stack in the same lot they don't have to be all next to each other down the street could also be under the same roof for the really the only change in say the um regarding provisioning centers and the downtown and the the sea commercial districts and our commercial corridors the only functional change is that you can have a provisioning center retailer and a consumption facility in the same building same lot you can't have multiple provisioning centers um under different oh you i get under different ownership because they literally need to be 600 feet apart from each other you also can't

098have the combination of the provisioning center retailer and a micro business because those guys also need to be they literally need to be 600 feet apart so really the only stacking that's possible just for discussion purposes is that the consumption facility can co-locate in the same building up down side by side whatever as the provisioning center that's like sort of the boots on the ground changes in for discussion level but again the permitted uses where they can go in the first place not changing and the other the number 28 not changing the num the number of 600 feet or a thousand feet not changing i think that's helpful thank you i guess like as kind of a point of clarification of where this intensity really does happen like we're talking about stacking but because there's

099only so many permitted uses you know it it reads like it opens up a lot from one license to many but there's many less permitted uses and stronger regulation in those districts as well that rebalance it so i feel really comfortable with this other comments i will say i do remember talking about this at orc but i feel like it was a while ago that we talked about it at orc um and my memory i it i don't know i mean i can't remember your names tonight so um uh i think the point that was just made about the distance between kind of dispensing facilities i also recall that we talked a bit about this not too long after we had approved the consumption facility downtown which was right next to a provisioning center but

100it had to because of our current law it could not be on that same lot um and understanding the air sealing requirements associated with a consumption facility so in most of the situations that we're talking about and i want to be clear most of the situations that we're talking about where we have neighborhoods nearer to retail facilities if the the only stacking possibility would be with a consumption facility these sealing requirements suggested to me like they would be held to a much higher standard than folks taking product from the retailing facility and so i think i this is the people who are in orc like we talked about this a little bit i think um and so that seemed in some ways to while yes it may be more of the square footage associated with

101it it may actually lend itself to um to a consolidation that could have additional benefits um associated with it so thank you for the discussion though about this um this is all on that one and in case people just to know we also have street trees um landscape modifications but commissioner lee you are welcome to provide comment or questions on any of those three yeah sounds good thank you uh so just wanted to as a point of information that the minimum of 10 of energy uses need to be in solar panels for uh marijuana facilities that's in section 7e um all of the regulations with respect to again a thousand square feet from public schools as well as 600 feet um from any other lots uh are still in effect and there's still a lot

102of regulations in this ordinance about emanation of voters like none of those are you know getting deregulated here so i think really to me where it makes a lot of sense uh is from for example um the concept of a safety compliance lab next to a grower or something along those lines so it's like uh and i so i do hear what planner the leo is saying with respect to you almost are creating a little more uh density rather than having it spread out further um so that i just wanted to point out that the solar panel requirement for growing facilities is still at ten percent of energy usage um those were the two kind of uh just uh i guess factual statements i wanted to make uh street tree escrow um all that makes

103sense to me so i'm obviously in support of that as well as the landscape modification so i just wanted to at least bring our attention to the two other discussion points that we have here so thanks while we're talking street trees this is a question for staff about where this arose my understanding of the impact of this is that it will lead to fewer street trees because we're excluding now that curb cut portion was this a practical consideration or how did how did this come to be and are is there concern anywhere within among planning staff or the street tree people uh the urban forester person on that um it was it was urban forestry who actually who requested this um the street tree rules were not originally in code um for a long time

104they existed outside of code in the land development regulation attachments which were referenced by code but were not a part of code so when issues like this came up where there was literally not enough room for a street tree it was dealt with administratively um a wafer if you will um and then as part the zoroa vacation and when we moved from the individual chapters to the chapter 55 the udc street trees went in the code and i can't i know there's been a one or two there's been some variances i think for because now when it's in the udc the only way to get out of it is a variance um or this landscape modification section um and this it comes into play when you have a pretty small lot if your lot is

105only say uh you know so wide or if you're you round up in the street trees i believe so if your lot is like 60 feet wide you're supposed to have two street trees but your driveway takes up 30 feet and so in that remaining 30 feet you gotta jam into trees it's not healthy for the trees um our urban forester came she requested this because um we need she is was wanting to exclude the way you can't plant trees in concrete and or when you need to drive over them so they're fine with it um the reason why you might not think oh this is uh has this really been an issue in the past for many years it wasn't because this was not a code requirement it was a policy and it was

106dealt with administratively um because there have been some variances and we thought you know this is maybe not such a variance thing maybe this is just really a modification thing so not only did we make the linear measurement adjustment as requested by forestry we added the component let's get some flexibility that's not so strict as a variance but that recognizes when you have some hardships for the health of the tree thank you that was great background yes commissioner gabriendel thank you for making this change um it was really difficult to follow in the code before about what was required and this clarifies it a whole lot and i appreciate the flexibility with it too so um i'm grateful that you all recognize that and that the city forester brought it forward to be able to

107change are we dealing is is this a different section than the the island business or is this part is this part of the same discussion that we're talking about with the landscape islands or should we uh i think you can go ahead all of them are okay i would say that um i would um between now and council when you talk about the landscape um the depressed landscape islands for storm water i think using the word clay is too vague and that i would use more specific terminology about the type of soils that usually require you to to not you know because some clay soils will be okay and so um i would use language more around like c and d soils rather than a and b soils because uh and and double check about

108that but that's just going to be way clay you could just be pretty vague about that in terms of the soil types that you have and there are lots of different kinds of clay in terms of infiltration rates and none of them are like fantastic and a soils which would infiltrate really quickly but um uh b soils you might be fine you know with it so i think clay is just a little vague i used i used clay in the powerpoint but in the actual code so your your expert opinion please in the actual code it says soil conditions underlying the required landscaping and screening area prevent strict application of the requirements because for example soils are contaminated soils are unsuitable for infiltration or there is a significantly sized and shallow depth public utility such

109as a main or enclosed culvert so do you think that uh soils are unsuitable for infiltration is that either broad enough or too broad um that's probably okay unsuitable meaning you're not going to get much infiltration in it it's not really defining it so a whole lot so you may get some people kind of getting a little wishy-washy with that yeah about sort of how quickly they infiltrate versus not if you're not giving a threshold yeah for that for for all of these um modifications so the procedure is the section landscape modifications both gives you the sections that you can modify from very specifically you cannot modify every standard but these are the six seven and then we've predetermined it must be for one of these predefined reasons and they'll need to the applicant will

110need to say hey i think i fit this but uh planning staff generally and certainly our urban forester they provide comment it's a separate motion or if it's not a separate motion it's uh it's specifically called out in the motion for approval it's site plan approval with landscape modifications and our urban enforcer provides their recommendation and so you know um although this is speaking to um this standard needs to be both supported or offered by the applicant supported by our staff and then ultimately approved and it may be denied so um um even if someone has said i've got soil c well if our experts if our landscape architects and our urban foresters say yeah you do but it's also special conditions this we don't support it okay yeah account of this is a um

111entitlement i should say it's just a tool okay that seems fine to me then as long as it has another another filter on it um of approval then that seems fine to me thank you anyone else on the three udc modifications you can speak to any or all all right mr leonard i think we are ready for a vote commissioner mills yes commissioner gibrandal yes commissioner sovay yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish commissioner lee yes commissioner clark yes commissioner white yes my friend carries very good that takes us through eight given that it's almost nine can we take a six minute break and come back you can't run to refill your water at home run to a refrigerator anymore but you can run to the bathroom back to order so we're all

112here yes yeah yes okay so that we can take up move on to item 9a which is the ann arbor chinese church expansion for city planning commission approval and um i'm not sure if is the petitioner joining us or are we going right to the staff report we are going to go right to the staff report at this time i would advise the petitioner i'm going to do a short presentation and they are available if there's any questions excellent so mr kowalski whenever you want to take it away go for it okay thank you all i'm going to try and uh as i said a brief presentation um i should be sharing my screen here in a minute hopefully that is is everybody seeing my screen correctly hopefully yep all right good now we'll try

113to advance there we go okay and did it move on to the zoning screen it did we're seeing a map okay i want to make sure sorry i've had some issues where the screens aren't advancing so okay um again really briefly uh good evening everybody again matt kowalski here introducing the ann arbor chinese christian church um i'm gonna go through a really brief presentation here tonight this is a project again that may seem very familiar to you um so again i'm gonna summarize up the staff report in just one minute we'll give a little bit of background here you can see the subject parcels outlined by the yellow uh highlighted area right there it's on duverne road just east of uh pontiac trail again you can see an aerial photo of the subject property the

114church located kind of in the northeast corner of the site a little bit closer in here okay so um what again this you may obviously you will recognize this project it was before you all in uh december of 2021 so about three months ago for site plan approval as well as special exception use approval and at that time um the project was recommended for approval contingent upon variance is being granted by the zoning board of appeals so with that and the planning commission also approved the special exception use however since that time as you planning commission is well aware we've had numerous code revisions one of which that now made this project approvable by city planning commission but when it was in front of you in december that action was for recommendation so basically it's

115back before you tonight for an approval so if this is approved here tonight this would be the last stop the special exception use as you'll notice is not included tonight a special exception use is approved and has always been approved by the planning commission so that was again approved in december of 2021 so that did not need to be before you here tonight um some of the changes most notably as i mentioned is that the project did require a couple of variances from the zoning board of appeals that happened after your recommendation for approval in december of 2021 so this was before the zba in february of this year so they were granted the petitioner was granted actually i want to back up a little bit um they had two variance requests one if you

116remember was for 17 spaces of the um for the standard parking amount those were spaces were um provided across the street at the um the food sorry the um drawn to blank care away the caraway development across the street in the warehouse there so uh that of that variance was approved as requested for the 63 sorry they have 63 on site so it was a 17 space variance the second variance when it was before you in december they were proposing to install um at that time they're proposing to us we're stall uh six sorry they they increased the requirement which i'm looking at my notes here the petitioner added the six ev capable space to plant so at that time they're proposing four ev spaces originally um when this plan was before planning commission and

117those spaces were in the area you can see my point are kind of adjacent to where the new building edition is going um and through the discussion at the planning commission there there was notice that some of the grades in that that area were a little bit steep so as a result as well as there is some concern about the number of ev spaces that were proposed so um as a result of that discussion they did uh even out the grades a little bit more they so which resulted in a little bit of an additional disruption to the existing parking lot so with that they took advantage of that and are installing an additional six ev capable spaces so again kind of as a result of some planning discussion the grades were changed a little

118bit they're an additional six these spaces that were added so now there's a total of 10 ev spaces and that variance was granted by the zoning board of appeals so right now the plan you see before you has a total of 10 uh eevee spaces eight of them are ev capable and two of them are easy installed spaces and again i just um well i'll zoom in a little bit more again the main uh subject of the request again for the site plan before you is the new proposed building here the multi-use building um it's a two-story about 9 200 square foot multi-use building as in addition to the existing church building here you will see where the the limits of grading i wanted to focus in on that so you can see where the

119additional ev spaces were added and um again i did cover the grading changes as well as the variances that have been granted there have been no other changes uh proposed to the planet beside the plan since you guys have last seen it in december so with that i would conclude my staff presentation thank you the staff is recommending approval very good um now we will open the public hearing for this item this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the ann arbor chinese christian church site plan that is for planning commission approval we'll first call on individuals that are here in council chambers and then remote participants if you have dialed in and are listening by telephone you can press star nine to indicate your interest in participating in

120the public hearing if you have joined through the web link you can press the raised hand button and if you're watching us right now you can dial 877-853-5247 and then enter our meeting id which is 977-6634-1226 and once you get in then you can press star 9. please move to a quiet area and mute any background sounds so that we can hear you clearly and per our usual please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments is anyone in council chambers liking to address the planning commission for this public hearing mr leonard are there any indications of folks joining remotely who wish to participate nope all right then i'll close the public hearing and read the proposed motion but if a hand sneaks in just let me know the ann arbor city

121planning commission approves the ann arbor chinese christian church site plan dated march 8 2022 as the site plan complies with all applicable requirements of the unified development code and other applicable laws ordinances standards and regulations the planning commission approves the following landscape modifications one allow existing landscape islands to remain without bioretention capacity and two allow parking lot to continue with greater than 15 spaces in a row without a landscape island can i have a commissioner move that moved by commissioner lee seconded by commissioner hammerschmidt any discussion go ahead commissioner lee thank you uh i apologize if this is redundant but please uh if somebody could remind me why there's no bio retention required for the island i i imagine we talked about in december but if i could get that reminder that would be very

122helpful sure that was um originally proposed due to the or not proposed due to the uh limits of disturbance that were not including those areas and some landscaping in that so that was the one of the original landscape motions uh lance sorry landscape modification requests originally that was granted back in december but because it was tied directly to the site plan that's why it's included again before you tonight so there's no changes from what was included in the december plan but but really why it was granted i believe the first time was because of the lack of disturbance in those areas perfect thank you other questions or comments this seems to me based on your description of why we're seeing this again is that it was caught in that limbo um [Music] just out of

123curiosity is there a sense of how many additional proposals are in that situation that we're gonna have deja vu all over again i don't um i can try to report that i don't think too many uh in these circumstances we had one that was came back because it was awaiting a brownfield plan and so that's why it didn't proceed immediately to the city council in this case a variance was associated with it off the top of my head i do not think of a lot of other in that example but i can do a quick analysis and share that with the commission at a future meeting please don't put any effort into that um it was just out of curiosity because i'm i'm just wondering like our changes have consequences yeah i guess then i'm

124gonna get somewhere between zero and three okay that is amazing i think it's a pretty low number because i don't have any others that are caught in between there and yeah it's kind of unusual that is the amount of research that i'd like put into the matter thank you very much anyone else all right mr leonard i think we're ready to vote commissioner mills yes commissioner gibrandal yes commissioner sovay yes commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee yes commissioner clark yes commissioner weich yes motion carries unanimously it's approved very good next up is thank you sorry thank you bye i can't see that now that where did that voice come from now we know um all right uh next up is item 9b which is we're only going to hold the

125public hearing and this is for the maple cove 2 for city planning commission approval and before we open the public hearing if you just want to quickly remind us it was because there were yeah mr kowalski can provide an overview of why it's being rescheduled the public hearing's being rescheduled and then i think we do have some petitioners available if questions arise but i think based on our error uh mr kwalski is going to provide a sort of high level overview of the petition as well and then we can proceed to the public hearing if you're comfortable very good go ahead mr kwelsky i don't have a presentation of course though um just really the high level overview of the um so what the maple coke project is we gave you a brief background earlier

126it's a 70 unit apartment complex there are there's going to be three buildings 86 parking spaces it's located on the corner of miller and um maple of course and there is a small wetland kind of in the middle of where the apartments are being proposed and um with that there's it requires a wetland use permit because they are maintaining that water budget to that but there will be some alterations within there and unfortunately the the first pass of the public notice did not um i left out the wetland use permit so now we we so obviously that's an integral part of the petition going forward so that was why we had re-noticed it again for the next meeting that would include the wetland use permit at that time all right very good we'll get all

127of the details and see what this looks like then at the the next meeting which is in a couple in a couple weeks um so we will then move to the public hearing as before uh if you've dialed in you can press star 9 if you'd like to participate in the public hearing for the maple cove 2 site plan um if you have joined by weblink you can use the raised hand button and if you're watching us now you can dial 877-853-5247 [Music] please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and i want to make clear now that even if you participate this week you are welcome to participate when this comes back before us so if there's anyone in the audience that would like to participate in public hearing go

128ahead mr garber thank you chair mills ken garver 28 hammer hill cord i guess i get two shots at this which is unusual but welcome um but it's hard to come in tonight on this petition without a full development team presentation and staff report um kind of out of my element without that help i'm glad there will be another public hearing um but it looks to me from a design point of view this strikes me as a parking lot strewn with three blocky buildings surrounding a small wetland not great but acceptable there's no affordable housing maple cove one charges more than fourteen hundred dollars a month for a one bedroom apartment and i doubt maple co two will go lower that's crazy expensive at least to me uh but the petitioner can charge whatever the

129market can bear um what i have real trouble with is the use of gas to heat these buildings this is 2022 we're in a climate emergency and the city has a climate action plan that assumes no natural gas in new construction as i wrote you earlier gas heating at maple co2 will generate 910 metric tons annual co2 equivalent emissions for perspective the city is developing a project to install 3.2 megawatts of rooftop solar panels on city buildings this will prevent 2 700 metric tons co2 according to osi that city solar project will cost taxpayers 6.7 million dollars so maple cove 2 just by burning gas will wipe out fully one-third of those emission gains so even a mid-sized apartment complex like this if it proceeds with gas heating really undermines the city's decarbonization goals in

130the meantime the city just unveiled its green rental housing plan to encourage landlords to retrofit their existing buildings with electrified appliances including heat pumps this effort feels kind of futile when we are at the same time constructing brand new rental housing with gas furnaces buildings that someone will have to retrofit at some point at huge cost without a full staff report i don't know if this project is fully compliant with local ordinances mr kowalski didn't say there may be issues with parkland contribution or with the wetlands permit i don't know but since the petitioner is on hand i will [Music] direct my comments directly to them if your construction manager has no experience with vrf heat plumb systems please consult with some of the fully electrified apartment projects in ann arbor now underway uh i

131suggest contacting brad moore who called in earlier tonight or eric doyle on the valhalla glen development team steve gabers at lockwood senior living or sean bus and ryan tobias at 211 package thank you thank you mr leonard is there anyone calling in yes caller with phone number ending with five three four you have three minutes to address the planning commission good evening this is tom stalberg again calling from lowertown in ann arbor i read mr garber's letter that he wrote to you and heard what he just said and i really want to thank him for his comments and thank him for doing the homework and the math for all of us if we're going to adhere to eight to zero if we're going to make an attempt even to get close i'm not sure how

132we can keep building the way we're building ken said it well i'm not going to go over the same ground i will add that there's uh a pud coming in just north of here uh where the developer said in their pre-pud meeting that they intended to meet the type of sustainable building techniques on that project that we'd be looking for and they're also intending to have affordable housing on site i believe 15 of the units it is maybe 80 some units so i think 13 units of affordable housing so we have affordable housing goals we have sustainability goals and we need to be meeting them with every project every step we take in the wrong direction in terms of sustainability and building is something we have to somehow overcome and mr garber laid out the

133math on that quite well this is one of my big concerns about tc1 which i won't get into because that's not not what we're talking about now but the similar thing occurs in many cases here if we're going to meet our 820 goals we can't be missing golden opportunities for some of the biggest differences in our carbon footprint and then be just chew it around the edges with some of our other actions the one question i would have for you there's certain things we can and can't do we understand that there are certain things we can legally do in zoning and that we can't do uh but is there something perhaps you can talk about like you did with ev chargers being quite eevee ready can you have a building that is currently built to

134be powered by gas heat but that is electric ready just like you did with the ev chargers what is our ability as a city to somehow build in a requirement for electric ready when a building is going under new construction in 2022 2023 whatever this would be uh or if we can't do it on this project but in if it needs to be a law change to make it happen in projects as soon as possible some way to require them to at least be able ready to convert over to electric usage if we don't do that now these buildings are going to be standing for decades and we're in a deficit in our 820 goals starting immediately and we're going to have a hard time achieving those goals thank you no other speakers indicated all

135right then i will close the public hearing and since we don't have a motion to read in front of us uh yeah just uh no motion or action but just to be clear the same uh this petition will reappear on the april 5th agenda there will be a dedicated public hearing and a full presentation of that meeting all right um now we're into the other business section two items that i should know were had additional memos sent to us by staff late today uh the second of which we did talk about at the the uh working session um but i will certainly happily read the room as we're talking about these to decide whether we take action tonight or we want to come back to these um so item 10a is commission review of the

136proposed um workforce housing resolution mr leonard yes so this briefly appeared shortly it was presented just like a copy of a draft resolution that was put forth by city council and referred to a series of boards and commissions for feedback or advice on future consideration of it the this was presented to the planning commission and we had a very brief discussion it was um i think it had you know been in uh provided the previous night so i shared it at the table and frankly i just honestly sort of had some difficulty in finding the best way to provide some support to the planning commission on how to approach that feedback generally the resolution proposes a a dialogue with the university of michigan towards the goal of adding 2 000 workforce housing units to north

137campus oversimplification but the bulk of the resolve clauses are around the city staff specifically the city administrator structuring a conversation with the university with elected officials potentially with state uh elected officials and and statewide agencies towards this goal and we also uh at your at your direction i reached out to a couple members of the university of michigan to invite them to come and talk about this and or their upcoming north campus master planning i think they were sort of in the same mode of processing what the implications of of this resolution might be and declined that it was sort of too preliminary to have that conversation with the planning commission r so given that i look back to our policy documents our comprehensive plan and included some probably the most high level relevant sections

138of the comprehensive plan that specifically relate to north campus and i'm to summarize uh our our document our plan says that in the event that the university were to uh sell or otherwise private development might occur on areas on north campus these are a series of recommendations about how the planning the city should respond to that to be clear i didn't go into a lot of detail about proposed density in those areas in those recommendations versus existing density on those those areas but generally my read is that the land use recommendations in the comprehensive plan are pretty consistent with what existed there at the time the plan was adopted around 2009 and so this resolution summarizes that and it provides potentially two scenarios for the planning commission to consider of course i am happy to

139provide any additional support or information that would be helpful for you to provide that feedback if desired but one option a is a pretty um minorly amended resolution that is my review of the areas that might be most applicable to the comprehensive plan recommendations and the planning commission specific role in land use policy and it follows a lead that some of the other boards and commissions i think specifically the energy commission i don't know where the environmental commission or transportation commission are on it but i think they are um looking at this resolution from how do if this were to occur how does it relate to sustainability goals if it were to occur how it might relate to transportation goals as the planning commission and legislatively the city doesn't have review authority over the university

140so that's why the comprehensive plan is structured in the way it is that in the event that this were to be developed as private property then this is how we would look at it so option a is acknowledgingly sort of a pretty minor level of feedback i think to that resolution recognizing that the planning commission doesn't have too much role in it this is resources of conversations of city leadership and university leadership and ultimately the university taking a path to undertake that type of work option b is another scenario that i've presented here which is in short recognition that probably highly emphasizing that legislative framework that the city doesn't have regulatory impact over what happens on north campus that thus far and it's only you know i want to be clear it's one email and

141one response so i don't want to define a lack of interest but perhaps given that we don't have land use authority over the university they have thus far not expressed this as a goal that they've identified maybe it would be best for us not to devote city resources into this conversation and in fact put similar resources into maybe the areas of housing policy that we might have more influence or impact on to be clear i think adding housing units there could have a positive benefit to the city it would provide another housing typology it would provide more housing units more than likely i would anticipate that if developed it would be by the university itself which would be a narrow um a narrow market if you will but an important and significant market in the

142city but um so um that's that was my intention here it definitely was delivered to you late that's part of a reflection of my trying to find my voice with ways that i could tee up some possibilities for the commission to consider um happy to answer any questions that i can or as chair mill said if it's something that you'd like to spend some more time on it could be postponed it's not under a particular deadline we could postpone it to a future meeting if you wanted to just consider it or if there's other information i could provide thank you mr leonard um also late and so it got printed out and put on your at your seats is my uh email exchange with uh john mursky who chairs the environmental commission energy commission energy

143commission okay i couldn't remember which of the e's one of them has already passed it and so he sent their marked up version and you can see from the email chain just wondered what we were doing i hope i did not overstep my bounds and saying this is what i think which is trying to report back that like we saw initially effectively what mr leonard had said um i i believe that like it's important as we're thinking about planning personally to know if there's any indication of what enrollment's happening so that we can plan accordingly like that's really important for us like an input into kind of the trends that we ought to be taking into consideration um in the future that's my personal opinion um i uh but but that's effectively where this email

144exchange came from so other thoughts on what we ought to do option a option b option c that you want to come up with commissioner abrams just a um question about process our our role here you mentioned that another commission had passed it do we have to vote do we have an up or down vote on passing a resolution or is city council asking for our feedback which could take any form yeah i'm seeing a nod from city so city council has asked the planning commission for your review and feedback on this resolution so that because you speak as a body if you want to provide any feedback i think it should be a vote but it is not you are not authoring this resolution um you could endorse the resolution but the city council

145will be taking any action that this body shares other bodies share and then ultimately they will be considering what if any of those suggestions changes modifications ideas might be appropriate to include or not and ultimately city council will be deciding whether or not to direct staff to undertake these roles thank you for that clarification um just in response to option b my sense is that this so far is a one-way conversation and that there's not a lot of initiation and enthusiasm coming from the university about engaging in this dialogue however i also don't feel that i personally understand how resources are allocated at the city level in terms of the city administrator's time and even the city council work plan so i don't feel that i'm in a position to say that i you know

146uh necessarily want to weigh in and how that how resources are allocated i think my how how we could weigh in potentially as a body is to assert the importance of housing uh and maybe just what we think are the most effective ways to increase housing in ann arbor which i think on my top five list of top five ways would not include probably this conversation with the university because i don't unless they indicate but we also could declare our you know enthusiasm for having that conversation if they ever wanted to have it with us um that's that's my initial two cents other two cents or more worth go ahead commissioner dish i i just would like us to dispatch with this efficiently i am not inclined toward a because i don't actually want us

147to pass this resolution i would rather that we not vote on it but that we send some remarks forward and i i like the list of things that's under b and i think adding to b uh just what commissioner abrams just said an affirmation of the importance of housing just that um the i think that that would be fine i don't think we have a very charged work plan and i don't want to take any time with this other thoughts go ahead commissioner gibrandal i agree with commissioner dish that i feel like um like some comments are great you know if people are seeing things i personally don't want to take a huge you know side track for making this perfect the way that we would see it to be perfect because i feel like

148we have a huge agenda in front of us that we do have a lot of control over and that this is something it takes two to tango and we just have no idea what the other side is interested in or has any you know and so you know i think it's great to kind of put pressure on the university to see that we're interested in this that's awesome but um i don't i feel like we just in terms of our bandwidth i just feel like it's more um efficient and effective for us to focus on the work plan that we have and to offer comments in you know in good faith with this at our session now if people see things that are obvious or whatever that's great um but i don't want to devote

149this could take several work sessions i think to really get this to a point where it feels like fully vetted by but by the work that we do and i'm i don't know that i want to take that kind of time given that um it sounds like there's been a rather kind of lukewarm um reception on the other side at this point that i think it's i think it's awesome that people are you know want to create this i think that's great um if they have time to work on it but i just feel like we have a lot that i feel like we really we've been so frustrated by so many things that we can't do with our the things that priorities we do have that we are limited by and i feel like

150we have a agenda in front of us that we just decided on that are things that we can do and i would really like to spend our time and energy primarily on that um and and to support this that's great but i just don't want to spend a lot of our bandwidth on it that's where i am right now and i would also just say that environmental commission has discussed it once um but there hasn't been any kind of vote um on it lots of questions brought up and and things like that so i think only energy commission has passed it okay go ahead commissioner sovay i'll just add that i appreciate you know the understanding of what is public land and where our body can actually weigh in and not and that the comprehensive

151plan that we have in front of us has recommendations if it becomes private land and i would only reinforce then that the future comprehensive plan is where these may be the most productive conversations uh in the bigger conversation where the university might come to the table since we are doing like larger visioning and city planning at that time so it may be the most productive point of resources to allocate more funding and resources into the comprehensive plan to push this conversation forward in that agenda instead of in a separate resolution so that's kind of where i see this and comprehensive plan um kind of battling for the same conversation and it's more productive in that arena than seeing this resolution spending time on it now that's about all i have to add go ahead commissioner

152weich i'll start with a question to staff um the radric farms golf course which is outside the city if the university were to release that could we annex it even though the what us 23 sort of separates it do we have enough contiguous land to bring that end to the city that seems unlikely to me given the annexation agreements we have with the surrounding jurisdictions okay so my recommendation was going to be that if the university wants to help with housing they could release that 285 acre golf course and then we could zone it appropriately for density but it seems like that's unlikely but it could come into the comprehensive plan conversation around um developable land that sits around the city to try to serve uh the community in its housing crisis but i echo

153everyone else's comments that i don't i really would prefer not to spend a lot of time on this commissioner hammerschmidt i'll fourth or fifth whatever number i am um everything that was just said it's like one comment and then a question i mean i get i guess to me i'm not really understanding this in light of the university not you know indicating that they would be a willing participant in this conversation to me it does seem more of a comprehensive plan conversation i mean if they wanted to sell off frontage on plymouth and like make that private and that could be developed as housing that feels like a better route to pursue than a conversation to discuss the university building units of housing that then aren't even in our tax base and we don't even

154as a planning commission we have no control over what they do anyway so why would we weigh in on that so i guess my question then is if we go this route of like maybe we just send a note or something brett what is the what is the next step on that i think we've all i think we all probably agree we don't it doesn't make sense to spend a lot of time debating and making comments and line changes and stuff to this um this proposed resolution so what what do you think the next step would be would you draft something would we working session it yeah i could present sort of a more refined if it seems like we're leaning towards some version of option b i could present a more refined motion to

155a future meeting or if this is in the ballpark the the other things that i've heard are the importance of housing and i could reference some of the aspects of our existing comprehensive plan that talk about the importance of diverse housing types i'd probably just sort of pick more general as opposed to specific references to recognize that we value a diversity of housing typology and then we could put a reference that that this seems more applicable to a comprehensive planning conversation and if that if those two seemed like appropriate if those two are the points those could be the sum of what you communicate or um and i think that'd be perfectly fine um i think the bullets that are on there were sort of you're seeing me trying to process um how i would

156present some different scenarios to the commission but um it could just be as simple as i would i do want the commission to speak so um so whether if it's you would like to convey the comprehensive plan emphasis on housing and that this is a more appropriate comprehensive plan somebody could make that motion second it we could vote on it and i would i would forward that and share that communication with the planning commission and we would send it to city council similar to like a memo similar to what we did for whatever it was that we did however long ago that was yeah okay does that help anybody want to make that motion because those are the two points that i thought should be brought up commissioner abrams i would like to make that

157motion great so anybody want to second it moved by or seconded by commissioner dish any discussion can i just clarify that it is um that generally the city the planning commission believes that housing is important this conversation about this goal would be better housed within a comprehensive company comprehensive planning process and that's it it's not necessarily a declaration that yes this resolution is good or bad but just the feedback in response to it yeah okay and i would like maybe this is too much editorializing but in comprehensive planning process thinking about like there is a deficit of housing right now we know that also like planning for the future important to understand also what like what growth is anticipated that's what a good planning process also is thinking about so um those commissioner abrams and

158dish on the move in section other discussion about what it yeah i guess i would i just want to just bring a little bit of context too and just the understanding that the university owns an enormous amount of land over on the north campus like it's it's rhetoric farms is a drop in the bucket of what they own and and there is a certain amount of like supply and demand and they they own a lot of land and so it would be very significant if if they were to release some of that towards this so i just i want us to just get that i'm not changing how we're thinking about it but maybe that's part of kind of what we communicate is that we're kind of stuck with what you know what's left right

159with some of these things and they have a lot of it i mean they really do so um i don't know how that gets integrated but i i do want to just set the stage with that a little bit about just how much land they do own over in that area too that like even even a tiny percentage of that could really go somewhere and i know they also are you know they are getting towards the end of some of the age of some of their housing over in north campus too where they're having to make decisions about these things because it's either fix a whole lot of stuff or or change it all over whatever and there is you know opportunity with that so i don't think this is just like pointless but i

160also just don't want to take up a bunch of our time on it so i don't know if there's a way to kind of contextualize a little bit around some of that too because it is a huge opportunity if they were to soften on their willingness to be able to think about housing beyond students well i would one way to do that would be to think about the framing of the comprehensive plan so the comprehensive plan says if this land were to be sold this is how we would look at it one way to do that would be to sort of raise that and say this would be a really good thing if the land were sold and this is how we would look at it right so i that would be one way to

161address that or just simply as you said this is a very significant land holder it occupies a lot of land in our community and the decisions that are made there are impactful i also think that the infra the research that you've pulled together the snippet that you include here um at the bottom of page one and the top of page two i think would be helpful to you've done the research already if we communicate that that we've already acknowledged this relationship um between within our existing comprehensive plan which effectively says if we just had a little bit imagine the goodness go ahead this is just a comment i don't many of you probably are already following this but there's an interesting battle going on in berkeley right now between neighborhood groups and the university um

162and the neighborhood group recently won a court case that forces the university to limit enrollment to 2020 numbers uh but the state legislature i think is actually swooping in to save the university but um and the neighborhood group is using you know california's environmental laws uh and claiming that the increased enrollment is a pollution anyway it's just it's interesting i think it's really complex i don't think it's such a clear clear sides but um it's definitely other communities are are trying to figure out how to handle this situation as well mr leonard uh based on our conversation now what i am envisioning is a a memorandum from the planning commission to the city council that will highlight that portion of the existing comprehensive plan that emphasizes if this land were to be sold this is

163how we would review it i would probably editorialize that on behalf of the planning commission to say and this is a significant portion of land in the city it's impactful then would highlight our existing comprehensive plan language about the importance of a diversity of housing types and that this level of conversation is probably better suited to a comprehensive planning process perhaps the cities the universities or both and that's what i would communicate based on what i'm understanding and the motion made go ahead commissioner weich it's just a clarification which i think may get resolved when we get to the comprehensive plan which is we talked about the university releasing lan back into the public domain for purchase what have you but is there some way we could be strategic in how we signal that so

164land that could be annexed um back into the city so i don't know if that is meaningful at this stage or if that's a conversation for later but just as i heard you read that out it occurred and my question about the golf course because they could release the golf course but then that would be problematic because we wouldn't be able to annex it so um yeah just i'll i'll give you that and we can do with it what makes sense i guess my intention would be to just highlight what commissioner randall was saying is that they have we're talking about a very significant portion of property that could be used in a lot of different ways i think that i think that's sort of what i was envisioning i don't know if i'd go

165so far as to say like for example area a is probably the most promising so that's i don't think it's quite going to where you're going but but it's trying to recognize that the decisions that are made there have some real potential to impact have ripple effects on the the balance of land use planning and how the city goes other comments before we vote to say and we're voting effectively to say mr leonard come up with a memo that can be sent on rv behalf just to be clear and it'll be shared with you for some reason you say that's not what i meant and then great okay all right all in do you want to no all in favor please say yes or raise a hand i see all of the hands so thank

166you mr leonard for helping us with this um next up is the review of the is 10b which is the review of the fiscal year 23 city council policy agenda we did quickly review this at the working session last week yep similarly this is uh city council on an annual basis uh shockingly from the title sets their legislative policy agenda this is how the city council ultimately directs staff to tend to pending legislation allocate resources be it lobbying legislative changes the like we this was presented at the working session i am it's an opportunity for the planning commission to provide feedback you don't have to but it is welcomed um to that end i've made sort of a couple of very minor changes to it uh one uh under the first page instead of i've

167taken a step further to specifically encourage the opportunity for virtual meeting flexibility that's a conversation that the city has been initiating or having at the state so i think we've learned that it provides flexibility for participation in a variety of ways so if we could uh make that permanent that's great uh we talked i mentioned at the meeting the elimination of racially restrictive property covenants that was actually already included i was referencing it like it wasn't just proposing a simple change to facilitate and specifically make it easier there are a couple of house bills that have been introduced i didn't go so far to specifically reference that just again this is intending to set the city council to set sort of the direction that they want us to pursue um to support those activities and

168um those are the only changes that were loosely discussed at the work session that i threw in there if planning commission is interested in adapting this forwarding it or any different changes you may but you don't have to commissioner clark um it's not an appropriate time for just a question that's something that's not a change that's already on there um i'm just curious about the advocacy for inclusionary zoning and um given that i think the last working session we were kind of discussing um the affordability premiums and whether or not those have been successful and just i'm curious where the advocacy for inclusionary zoning has come from and just like if that's based on research um across the country many different cities exclusionary zoning um which is the uh ability for like rent control and

169things like that um it hasn't been effective and i'm curious just where that originated from uh good question i think it's been on the legislative policy for some time historically the city and other communities have been pretty hamstrung legislatively to find ways specifically to lever private development to advance affordable housing goals i think inclusionary zoning has a long-standing tool that many communities have sought to utilize for that purpose i agree with you that i think well i don't i don't profess to have a great bank of knowledge but my i will tell you of our local experience is that i think we're seeing some of this and we'll probably encounter this when we revisit premiums we've seen it in other times where when we are asking traditionally market rate developers to provide affordable housing units

170that can also often be very challenging and so i think inclusionary zoning is i think it is probably a worthwhile policy goal that it gives cities the ability to do that but i agree that i don't know that it's the right tool and it i don't i don't know to the extent that the city is resourced that particular item i did i did think about whether or not that was still appropriate to include down there at all but my sense was if the state legislature enabled it a tool it gives us and other communities the ability to think about the potential to do that um so in short i think it's probably just been on there for a long time because we haven't had other tools as a means because of the rent control act

171that would otherwise allow us to require affordable units in private development do you want do you have do you want to keep going follow up yeah go for it um i would just kind of maybe encourage us to consider what would be in our best interest because um if ann arbor if it were allowed in the state and if ann arbor or like you know just what it would do to competitive um our ability to attract developers compared to other cities that did not have that policy and whether we might want to carefully consider what's in our best interest in the long run and what's worth prioritizing rent control i'm pretty you know i haven't seen any evidence that rent control doesn't do anything both sides create two separate markets and slows down development and

172new market opportunities so i would want to really strongly encourage us to reconsider at least how we approach that lobbying advocacy other comments go ahead commissioner survey i think this is kind of raised but number nine advocate for the inclusion of non-binary bathrooms in the michigan building code would be the change advocate for the inclusion of non-binary bathrooms it's the more appropriate language to match and if i could to commissioner clark's point if if it's desired you know again this is an opportunity to share that feedback with the city council if we don't think that's a worthwhile endeavor for the city to be advocating for we could also propose that that be removed as well i mean it's ultimately council's decisions but that's this an opportunity for us to provide that feedback i trust the

173research um i think that a lot of things that we do sound good like we get behind an idea but if that's what the research suggests that it's not effective i'm not an expert in that space um i i think commissioner clark certainly has more expertise in that space than i do and so if that's the recommendation that it may cause more problems than good i don't know that every anybody on council necessarily knows that and sharing that i think would be helpful so i would be supportive of of suggesting deleting that along with the comment about why it was deleted go ahead question i mean i think inclusionary zoning is typically broader than rent control and so inclusionary zoning would enable us to do by right what we are having to do by premiums

174right now and presumably we could craft it the way we craft our premiums that if you want to build here 15 of your units need to be affordable which you can meet by a payment in liu to our housing you know fund i know that's the way that they do it in evanston illinois which is the only other place i know um because i'm not a professional and that that is something that we do do but we're having to do and end run around the lack of of that particular form of inclusionary zoning which i know that teresa gilatti does like that um i think you're absolutely right about rent control it's the the result the research on it is is very very mixed and um so you know i don't know if there's really

175we could put some nuance in there you know with caution towards rent control but you know or something like that but you know none of this is until the legislature changes this is kind of a wish list so i'm not sure how much nuance we need on a wish list go ahead just wanted to um a clarification point i guess is that the premiums um and we had our work plan discussion i think there was some conversation about the premiums maybe not being utilized or being a detriment to the growth of those areas um and i guess i would just worry i think maybe we could say something about exploring it or maybe at the city council level could maybe explore that as a goal but i think that maybe there might be putting resources

176into other objectives for lobbying might be until we sort out where that might be and what happens with our affordable premiums that we currently have and maybe reevaluating those and then the next step might be at the state level but i think we might have some like housekeeping to do with our affordable housing premiums sorry that's a bad pun but yeah so um i think there might be some space there go ahead commissioner silva is there just room to kind of add a second sentences line to request you know like the pros and cons research to be done right like right now it says support and advocate for the ability and really i think it is like um like support and explore the ability of these things like maybe it's just that word that changes

177but really kind of pushing that we're not going to support and advocate everything that's currently on the table but there is one of the policy and gender goals might be more about exploring that work and i think that's what i'm hearing more there's there's kind of more homework to do instead of just jump on this bandwagon right away it's that possible language yeah but that tells me that it shouldn't be here because this is this is directing staff how when when posed the question in between the opportunities for council to weigh in what should the city administrator tell the state legislator the city's position is on this and so that would suggest to me that we don't want to be representing to the state legislature that ann arbor definitely wants inclusionary zoning because we have

178questions about it so um so we could add that but i think it's i'm hearing that you're making a case that we're not quite ready to declare that as our legislative policy and probably it shouldn't be there but uh i don't think i feel like rent control is one of the policy my uh this is where i'm getting into areas that i don't fully know about but it's not synonymous with inclusionary zoning and so i feel like if there's some part of what could fall under a big umbrella that there's questions about i think that that's different than throwing like i don't want to throw the whole thing out because i do think more inclusive policies are important if that makes sense and as a reminder we don't have to take action on this tonight

179if you'd like some other language on that we could um i could bring some um perhaps uh coach clark could help me share some of that research as well we could get from the office of community economic development their kind of perspectives and provide you with a little bit more information go ahead commissioner clark i think it might be helpful if we have all of the same definition of inclusionary zoning because i think we all might be kind of looking at it from different lenses like a maybe more colloquial use versus a more technical and it just might be helpful to know exactly what we're asking for when we say inclusionary zoning and i think it would be really helpful for our staff and our lobbyists to know that too right being being more explicit

180i think would help a whole lot of people so yes go ahead commissioner weich uh so would this be the place where we would recommend to our lobbyists to try to get the state to change how our planning process can require various forms of energy uses and developments that is under and i was going to talk about that okay um that's on page five under number five support the adoption of the 2021 building energy and construct sure if it was in there because that's such a broad statement and then i went and looked it up and it's a really big document so i couldn't scan it quickly so it's so exciting so i would say yes so there's two different things kind of at play here one is like get rid of uniform building codes

181entirely which i don't know that that's totally what we would want to do instead this would allow for us to have stretch goals and my psa associated with this was this is being taken up today actually there were hearings yesterday today and tomorrow if you right now um they are getting ready to pass a pretty good but probably could be better 2021 building code um for both uh residential and commercial okay comments are due by 5 pm tomorrow night that is the psa for everyone so you could also go to lansing tomorrow and speak but so yes it's there and that's what i wanted to make sure was in here too i mean it but it'll be moved by the time this goes for a way because for the lay person it may not feel

182like it's in there in that sentence it would it would it be helpful for the city administrator or the lobbyist to sort of detail like for example dot dot dot and just a sentence under it as opposed because otherwise you have to go into the ibc to try to figure out like does that allow a city to require um you know geothermal as an option that gets considered as a part of a site plan so i think i i hear you saying it's there i think i'm asking for clarity for layer people including myself lay people that there's some kind of statement that would be like for example this would permit the city to restrict the use of gas which like mr garden has been talking about right every planning commission meeting so yeah yeah

183and really that's kind of talking about what's in the zero code appendix which will enable that yes so i think that for adding that sentence i i can commit to helping if we postpone this i can commit to helping write a sentence associated with that other thoughts sorry my duck bill keeps getting in the way underneath your duck bill too yeah all right it sounds like then we want to um do a little bit more tweaking and bring this back okay great um we didn't make a motion to move anything so that's what what we just will do unless anybody objects okay super um then we will move on to item 11 which is public comment um this is the final opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about any issue um

184on this agenda or not on the agenda whatever floats your boat um we'll start with folks that are here in council chambers and then move to remote participants if you've held up with us this long you know you can press star 9 if you've dialed in you can use the raised hand feature if you've joined through zoom or dial 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id 6634-1226 mr leonard we'll call on you if you have raised your hand in one of those ways um please move to a quiet area and mute any background sound so that we can hear you um and start your comments with your name and address please all right see no commenters in the audience here are there any online mr stolberg you have three minutes to address the planning commission hello again

185this is tom stalberg calling from lowertown in ann arbor a couple items that you discussed um first off as far as the university and housing goes i think it's important to note that the university has added about 8 000 new students over the last 10 years that's fully attributable to out of the country and out of state students which tend to be a wealthier demographic which has led towards uh what we've seen which is the development of luxury student housing to try to meet that need the university put in i think a thousand beds or so the private sectors put in thousands but we still haven't even hit that number just attributable to the university's increase in enrollment over the last decade so they are a player in our the dynamic of our real estate

186market and it should be addressed i understand why i listen to you and understand why you don't want to spend your time on it right now and understand the route you're taking but we should also understand that the university owns a ton of land and the university is participating in bringing in additional demand other universities right now are seeing declining enrollment that the university of michigan is not so again that's another consideration of one of the commissioners mentioned what that what are the trends and support for us to know in our planning uh and that does belong as a comprehensive plan type of discussion speaking of the comprehensive plan uh it's time to get back to that um there were some questions raised how do we get four units uh on every lot or how

187do we re-zone single-family to everywhere all the ours whatever to duplex well we have a comprehensive plan revision process and if the citizens of the city of ann arbor our community say that that's what they want we revise our comprehensive plan to say that then you can look at making zoning changes to codify into law what we've changed in our comprehensive plan until such time there's an expectation based on the master plan excuse me the comprehensive plan of what the zoning law should be i think r2 tonight changing the lot dimensions is appropriate because r2 is still r2 it's still a duplex other things that are less appropriate would be things that are not expected under existing zoning for example four units on single family or duplex slots um with the one exception that was

188mentioned earlier but 30 more seconds has to do with very simple uh common sense that we have a comprehensive plan it sets up an expectation and then our zoning codifies that in the law and it's not intended to deviate uh from the comprehensive plan we're supposed to update that comprehensive plan and then make the zoning law to match the new comprehensive plan so i look forward to that process when it comes hopefully soon thank you very much thank you no other speaker is indicated all right we can move on to item 12 then commission proposed business commissioner g randall i'm sorry that i totally missed this but we never really discussed the churches within the industrial use thing in any kind of way and so i just wanted to just briefly say something about that

189um and that is uh that the setbacks are really different from manufacturing than for some of the other districts and that i just want to make sure that if churches are part of that that they realize an industrial facility might be like literally right next to their church and so that's the thing that i feel like is a little funky about that because they can manufacturing can be all cheek to gel and that's fine but if you have a group of people you know singing beautifully together and there's huge clanging and you know things like that going on next door that seems a little tricky to me in unless the person the petitioner like has their eyes open about what that actually means because i think that um most people aren't really paying attention to

190that kind of thing when they're thinking about buying land and oh we can we can use this so i don't know how to address that because the setbacks are zero which is kind of incredible really but that's the way that it is there so um in the charts you know of the setback so i'm not quite sure how to best address that i'm not saying that we shouldn't have churches within that but it's somehow it seems like you could lead to upset parishioners when there's an industrial use next door and they don't quite get that they have to be right next to it so i guess that's my only thing i would like to just kind of do a post script because we didn't really talk about it as part of our main agenda even

191though it was one of the things that was on there and i don't i think it was just kind of part of the package and we sort of voted in the package but we didn't ever discuss it as an item so i just wanted to kind of register that as my concern about that do you voted with the majority do you want to bring i we don't we don't we can bring it back for reconsideration if you'd like at it at the next meeting i guess i'm just wondering if if staff had any kind of thoughts about that moving forward if you feel like there's safeguards in place that of which i'm not aware that would you know call my my concern about that yeah i guess um if you wanted to explore it i

192would suggest maybe reconsideration makes sense generally i will just um share and i i would i would want to bring um c planner alexis to leo back but there are other uses of the m1 that are of a similar differing nature right to other m1 uses and so i would just say that that was definitely a factor in trying to figure out sort of equal impact and so from from our perspective we saw i don't not to disagree with those potential conflicts but they exist now right this is definitely adding a potential exacerbation of that by adding another use but i don't believe in any way we're sort of creating that framework that doesn't exist already and so on the flip side i think that was part of the rationale is that other very similar

193uses are already established in that they might experience similar things this seemed to be a compatible use with some of those other ones yeah no i agree i think that that makes a lot of sense because there were a lot of other uses in there that you could have like daycares and funeral services and funeral services and things like that too um i guess um maybe it's just a matter of um i don't know you don't really have control over when people are buying and selling property you know so that's up that's on the that's on the buyer i guess to be aware of that it's just something that um i'm working in an m1 property right now and so i just said there was something right next door and it's like wow it's zero

194setback there you know and you kind of don't i think you assume there's a setbacks with almost everything and it's just not there so i agree i think it's it's because it's part of a larger context of other things that have that too i don't want to necessarily hold up the process but i just kind of wanted to put that out there and say it out loud so that's it if you sleep on it and still feel uncomfortable with it i believe that at the begin for the next meeting you can bring it back for reconsideration so if you think that we ought to talk about it more feel free commissioner weich just in quick response to that because i asked uh miss deleo about that at our working session it was a church that

195brought this petition for us to change because they are in that zone and now they're they were non-conforming until we made that change tonight and then we checked my church because we have an auto dealership uh immediately to our north two of them and so that that very um same situation but we're an o so which was okay i guess other commission proposed business all right i will entertain a motion to adjourn moved by commissioner weich seconded by commissioner clark all in favor that is all the hands have a good night folks and a good week you