Ann Arbor Planning Commission Meeting 9/8/21

001evening and welcome to the wednesday september 8 2021 meeting of the ann arbor planning commission this meeting is being held electronically to protect public health and safety due to the covid19 virus and to comply with issues ordered by the governor the michigan department of health and human services and or the washington county health department we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues to speak during the public comment opportunities you'll be able to speak through the webinar link or by phone depending on your method and the web link are available on the published agenda in the public notices section of the city website for phone access please call 877 853 525 and then enter meeting id 977 1226 this information is also available on

002the published agenda it's in the public notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 at t channel 99 and online at a2gov.org watch ctn where you would select the government channel item two on the agenda is the roll call mr leonard will you please assist with that of course commissioner mills present in ann arbor commissioner gabe randle president in ann arbor commissioner sovay you're from ann arbor commissioner abrams here from ann arbor commissioner hammerschmidt you're from ann arbor commissioner dish here from ann arbor commissioner lee also here in ann arbor commissioner clerk commissioner clark i see commissioner clark but they don't hear so follow up commissioner white here uh there we go uh full commission and quorum very good okay item three is introductions and are

003there any great then we'll move on to item four can i have a motion to approve the agenda moved by commissioner watch seconded by commissioner lee is there any discussion on the agenda all in favor of though of the motion please raise your hand or say aye aye that is all hands and i'll see commissioner clark in a minute there's her hand great um next is the minutes of the previous meeting may i have a motion to approve the minutes of the august 17th 2021 meeting moved by commissioner sobe seconded by commissioner abrams any discussion or corrections in the minutes oh right then um all those in favor of the motion please say i or raise a hand that's all the hands all right so the motion carries item six are all of the reports

004um from city administration city council and so on council member dish do you have a report from last night yes we passed the lighting ordinance on the second reading and we had the second reading of homo occupations and that also passed and we had a demonstration of how hard it is to read a site plan at a council meeting but that was related to none of those ordinances mr leonard do you have anything to add in sure um i would also add in that uh the revised bylaws of the planning commission were also adopted um and um um the um yep uh i think that was everything and then for uh just a um preview for the working session next week we have invited the petitioner of 2060 west stadium to come and present an

005alternative concept you uh you'll recall this petition came with a lot of discussion about a drive-through and so um in consultation with the petitioner they have developed a sort of an alternative concept and we're going to bring that back for any sort of feedback that you can provide before that is either refined or not so and that's all very good so this means that this will be the last agenda that we have with introductions it will okay excellent that was among the changes that were that was in our bylaws um are there any other commissioner officers or committee liaisons that want to report out what happened in their other committees it feels like it was eons ago but i'll report out on the orc we did meet on when was it the 24th i think

006yes tuesday the 24th and talked about tc1 rezoning um some additional conversation update on kind of where that stands um parking we talked a lot about parking regulations and what we might see um want to see in that and how it links to our existing documents within the comprehensive land use plans um we also talked about a potential ordinance change to simplify the fences so regulations related to fences all right nothing else to report okay then we are on to item seven which is public comment this is the first of two opportunities for persons to speak for up to three minutes about uh general topics this is not um a time to speak for about an item that is listed as a public hearing on this agenda so please note that the public the planning

007commission will hold dedicated public hearings for the site plan review thresholds discussion and 660 earhart if you wish to address the planning commission on any other matters now is the appropriate time to raise your hand and indicate so to speak if you've dialed in press star 9 on your phone so you uh to use the raise hand feature um or sorry and you can use the raise hand feature if you're viewing through the web link for phone access you can dial 877-8535 and then enter meeting id 977 6634 1226 mr leonard we'll call on you by the last three digits of your telephone number if you dialed in or by your name um if you join through the web link and when you're speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any background sounds

008so that we can hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments caller with a phone number ending with five three four call her with the phone number ending with five three four you can press star six don't meet your phone and address the planning commission for up to three minutes thank you this is tom stallberg calling from lowertown uh some of you have heard me talk about being a developer of subdivisions in the past and perhaps some of you have not so i'll briefly review that that that is one of the hats that i've worn in oakland county and many communities throughout oakland county i developed subdivisions sub divisions including getting rezonings and working with city councils township boards planning commissions planners including in west bloomfield where there

009was a very strict wetlands woodlands ordinances uh our company received not one but two awards for being an environmentally sensitive developer in that area and one of the things i learned a lot about there was what storm water does to sensitive environmental features uh and that was when we had a lot less storm water than we have now so i'd like to talk about stormwater uh which is something i'm going to talk about uh in the near future on repeated occasions because i think it is a crisis that's already here uh and that we need to deal with it and that there are ways that we can deal with it uh one of them is in our ordinances such as tc1 uh to do something similar to what was done in the uh repealing and

010replacing of the plant project modification and that would be to incentivize through bonuses uh additional stormwater management measures such as similar that we did to affordable housing or sustainability measures in the uh what repealed and replaced time project modifications i know that's not uh there was a call for some city council that was voted down 7-4 about adding in such things to tc1 uh but i think you should still consider it and why you know i've seen what a mere small amount of extra stormwater can do to a wooded wetland what it does is it turns it to a dead swamp and that's a small amount we have a large built infrastructure that was built to the standards of its day our standards are pretty good right now but our standards now are insufficient to

011make up for our built infrastructure how are we going to make up for what's already built that we can't change easily when we have new development particularly redevelopment particularly in pc1 if we have additional stormwater management features that are above and beyond what we can require legally of the developer by incentivizing them 30 more seconds premiums options bonuses whatever you want to call them by incentivizing enhanced stormwater management above and beyond what is required is about one of our only ways that we can make up for the already built environment that is inadequate for today's stormwater and inadequate for what we can really anticipate is going to be increased frequency duration and severity of stormwater events uh that we're already seeing coming and it's going to be even worse in the very near future so

012thank you very much thank you if anyone else wishes to uh speak at this public comment opportunity about an item that's not listed for a public hearing you can press star nine if you've dialed in or if you're joining via the web link you can use the raise hand feature at the bottom of your screen all right seeing none let's move on to item 8 which is the public hearings for the next business meeting mr leonard yes we have one new public hearing scheduled for the next business meeting it is for 1300 south mabel road grace bible church site plan for city council approval this is a proposed thirty four thousand forty five square feet uh addition to the building and parking lot expansion of a hundred and seven spaces on a 15.5 acre site

013site improvements will include new landscape plantings new stormwater infrastructure for building expansion and new parking lot and bio retention scales all right very good uh first up is item 9a unfinished business so this is the proposed amendments to section 5.29.6 site plan specific standards in our unified development code um i see you're promoting mr kowalski to provide the staff presentation and then just um a reminder of the order of operations mr kowalski will provide that presentation and then we'll open up the public hearing before we discuss if i could before kwelsky to the public sorry sorry there's a lot of echo map matt can you try muting itself to see if it's you it's you you're the problem um so see if you can fix that with your it staff so first of all i

014wanted to apologize to the commission and to the public i want to be clear we are recommending postponement of this item and i want to give you just a quick background um the short of it is is that uh we made an error and i want to fix it before i am confident um making a recommendation that you adopt it um uh we're gonna we're gonna provide a bit of an overview of that as we go through the presentation to be clear we're not recommending changes to the thresholds that we've already discussed at this time but what we've learned is that i think that there are some unintending consequences from our error specifically as it relates to storm water standard being applied to these projects so that's going to go over some of the changes

015that were made based on previous discussion i am going to then sort of bookend that with an overview of specifically how we're um how these stormwater standards relate to these changes and tee up some feedback that we're hoping to get from the commission before we bring it back in its final format uh with that um let's give it a try matt maybe it'll be a little less likely i turn my volume down a little bit i hope it's not too echoey yet but um okay we'll see um all right good evening everybody on attempt the uh good old share screen here hopefully that works we all looking at the uh a powerpoint sir perfect okay all right okay so um basically again as brad had said i'm kind of gonna go over what uh we

016have changed in the in the table as a direct response to the comments at the last uh planning commission meeting so i will be showing when my screen advances here we go okay here we go okay so um i'm kind of read through them in order as they were posted on your staff report as well so we did have some questions about trying to clarify some of in particular like what exactly is the site plan not required you know the exam thing so what what we've tried to what we have added on to that is a is a footnote that you can see where it says site plan not required there's a one as we go through and i'm just going to scroll quickly to the last page you can see that with a little

017bit of an explanation stating no site plan required however this does not exempt the action from any required permits and corresponding code requirements um so that again that was a concern hopefully that helps address that issue and if not again we can make further changes to that as well um we did i make a slight change to where you see in blue here where it says work slash modifications on existing buildings just again it was something that we went through a staff to kind of make it clear that anything that is going on within that building is going to um fall into that category um the next change you see down there in blue says area of the building that was again a comment directly from planet commission we also heard from some of our

018advisory committee members that you know what the uh the ten percent you know is that of all buildings on site or is that of one particular building so it's we've always treated it as of one building so we've basically added that text into there to you know to make to make sure to make it clear um and again right directly below that you see kind of the same change it has um of the building added as well um interior construction we did cover that last time uh that was still highlighting blue however that was a change that we did um highlight for you guys last time um a little bit further on in this sorry here was this was one that we had that had been left out that was uh caught um i believe

019by commissioner mills that uh wireless communications tower was not specifically called out in there although it could again could have lumped it under a building structure kind of thing but calling that out separately we don't see a lot of them but again we'll put that in as kind of a separate category there just to make sure that we are covered in that um scrolling along to the next page we have another footnote that's added if you go near the top to that the footnote too that that was again this is accessory structures and canopies and things like carports when we go to the the last page here with the footnote it does note that the section number for the solar energy systems if you all remember that we did those are accessory structures but we've

020kind of got a special category for them which allows them to exceed that um that requirement and without site planning as long as it falls within those certain standards of that section that we have listed there um alas sorry the next oh well one of the ones the one highlighted in yellow again that was a a planet commission this is uh kind of our follow-up discussion we'll have after this regarding the stormwater planning commission last time kind of felt it should be a little bit larger but now again with the correction to our stormwater we want to make sure that we're clear on what would happen with that one so that's why that's highlighted there is no change to that per se but that was what was highlighted there next change down um removal disturbance

021of any regulated natural features again that that could have been covered in other areas but we really wanted to make it clear that again landmark trees or anything else disturbing or wetland um that triggers a site plan now whether it may be a planning manager for certain projects and a mixed use and larger residential projects that would require planning commission approval uh same as today um and one uh removal so the last kind of change on this is you can see a strikeout uh removal of a tree identified as a landmark tree to be saved but then as so the plan comes back in and it's now recognized as invasive um that i'm not sure why that's even in there i've never had that come it probably was a direct response of one project but

022if it's an invasive tree you don't have to mitigate it for it so it's it's kind of redundant um so we really don't need for that as a matter of fact a lot of times we want the we want the invasive trees removed so um and that really so that covers again kind of the highlights to the table i'm going to probably stop i'm going to stop sharing it this time and then kind of have brett wrap up a little bit more i can bring up the table and we can certainly request or sorry answer any questions as we get through all right can everybody see a table uh sort of a very boring looking white table so uh so i just want to go through this is how i've been thinking about the the

023omission in our thinking about this and so i'm gonna i'm gonna probably spend a little bit more time on how stormwater is regulated um some of you this is uh you know much more about this than i do i think for others it might be helpful context so i'm going to start with this table which is this is how how we regulate stormwater currently if you are a one or two family residential use in a residential lease owned property and you are adding less than 200 square feet of impervious surface regardless of what is happening on your property now no storm water is required so based on that land use and a very small addition of impervious surface there's no storm water obligations to be incorporated onto your site or property for that purpose that

024does mean over time that you could add small bits of impervious surface over time increasing that on an incremental basis without changing site-wide how storm water is being managed apart from that when you exceed that improvement or you're talking about a an overall site improvement of the one and two family that has a larger impervious area we provide a a worksheet and the worksheet is a calculus that both the petitioner and the city review that's generally calculates the impervious areas on the site including all buildings walks drives assigns a volume to that and requires detention of that which is i'm generally going to call here first flush and that's roughly about an inch of rain an inch of rain over those surfaces and first flush is very much intended to define that that that initial

025um shot of storm water into that system does have the effect of sort of flushing out the infrastructure whether it's downspouts or drainage pipes or the like to uh for that for that occurrence that exercise applies to one and two family regardless of the impervious area that the site covers so whether it is a up to five thousand square feet of impervious or it is twenty thousand square feet of impervious that same exercise happens now to be clear that exercise resolves results in different volumes that have to be addressed some of the common areas that are common ways that that's addressed with residential properties might be rain gardens it might be swales it might be rain barrels it might be dry wells so there's a lot those are a lot of ways that that can

026be accomplished but the the standard the goal sought to be achieved is the same for that category of land use regardless of its size then when you shift into multiple family residential and non-residential alternatively think about these as those developments that require site plan review those that 200 square foot no longer applies that's a that's a unique provision that is applying to the one and two family residential up to 5000 square feet of those site plan projects no storm water is required so that is a current feature and requirement of our ordinance for for site plan projects that have a small area again defined as up to 5 000 square feet of impervious area there are no specific standards that we are measuring that site to storm water treatment and management as you progress through

027the size of impervious areas more requirements are added to those sites you can see here they're the same in both of those categories again think about it from all those developments that require site plan review when you are five thousand to ten thousand uh square feet of impervious area then you have to retain or infiltrate the first flush storm event so that's a very similar exercise to what you're seeing across the board one and two family residential once you go into a larger category of impervious area from ten thousand to fourteen thousand nine hundred ninety nine i hope i got the ones and the ninety nines correct but generally that range um we add requirements not only do you have to detain for that first flush but you also have to detain for something called

028bankfull storm events and this is where somebody's probably going to correct me if i mistake it but this is another calculation of stormwater volume from that site as it relates to what volume would be generated when the corresponding bank of a creek or tributary or river is being impacted by a storm event and so the the sort of relative volume that's happening at this site relative to that creep being at its full capacity without overflow that's the calculation here then that needs to be detained on the site as well when you progress into the larger uh areas larger sites with by larger larger areas of impervious surface greater than 15 000 square feet you have to design your system to meet those standards you also have to design your site to detain a 100 year

029storm event so again these these storm events are starting to increase in intensity and volume as we progress through these requirements with these larger sites you have to detain that that's where a lot of times when sites are coming to us if they're unable to infiltrate the rules require you actually detain that hundred year storm event volume at a hundred and twenty percent rather than a hundred percent if you are unable to infiltrate and uh we also require a design feature of a sediment for bay or a mechanism to really attempt to improve the water quality in those larger systems as part of that strategy first flush has some benefit of water quality regardless this is obviously applying another water quality condition to larger systems on larger sites so the mistake my apologies that because

030of this structure the way this is constructed in our ordinances is quite specific one in two family is regulated in this way everything that goes through site plan review is regulated in this way and so when we start looking at making some modifications to those that framework that's where this comes into play and so we've added a couple of examples for example if we now add three and four residential as exempt from site plan review right now barring any changes to those storm water requirements that has no storm water regulations i don't that's not my intent i don't think it's the planning commission's intent intention to do that nonetheless one of the things we need to decide then is does that feel more appropriate to follow that one-two family residential first flush or is it

031something that we want to pursue that great graduated approach to a more intense robust and expensive system as those impervious surfaces increase it's not to say that we can't do we can definitely do the first flush obviously absent a site plan i would say as we start talking about the other tools and the other measures even if we're doing it outside of a site plan it's still going to start leaning towards a pretty robust and comprehensive assembly of information design standards for review it's going to start feeling quite a lot like a site plan in some ways so similarly when we're talking about a 300 square foot addition or patios up to a thousand square feet that same standard is going to come into play that is absent a site plan for kicking in those

032last three columns particularly when we pull those out of sight plan right now absent any changes to those storm water regulations there is no requirement for storm water management on those sites again the city has a lot of goals towards storm water management and that's part of the balance of course with smaller projects and the cost that we're adding to them at the same time i wrote it down to make sure i have it right about 15 percent of the land area in the city is covered by detention so 15 of the land in the in the city has detention that means 85 was constructed without detention prior to and typically prior to the requirements and design standards that we have in place now so whether it's a single family home with a rain barrel

033or a larger site the opportunity when these things are improved or reviewed to make incremental or large changes can have a pretty significant impact on the city's stormwater goals so as part of the discussion again i i still feel a confidence about that we've have these these identified correctly we need to fix this aspect and the feedback that i would value is does it feel more like finding the methods for this graduated storm water approach applying to those in a perhaps efficient building permit method or is there more comfort in saying a first flush is still a benefit recognizing that we have to adjust our thinking about one and two family down to up to four family or down to up to four family with a thousand foot patio or something in between so that

034we can then come back to you with probably those corresponding changes in the stormwater regulations that match with our site plan review thresholds so we're not creating these gaps so i'm happy to answer any questions again my apologies to those that know this a lot better than i do but this is um this is something that we value some feedback on and i'd like to come to you with a more complete response and solution to these gaps prior very good thank you uh before we dive into giving some feedback on that we will have the public hearing so this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the proposed site plan specific standard amendments if you wish to address the planning commission on this item please dial up press star

0359 if you're listening by phone or use the raise hand feature if you're viewing this through the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and then enter our meeting id which is 977-6634-1226 leonard will call on those who have raised their hand calling on you by the last three digits of your telephone number or by your name if you've joined us through zoom uh you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak and when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or other background sounds so that we can hear you more clearly and please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments if anyone on the line or who has joined through the web link wishes to address us it's star9 to raise your

036hand on the phone or the race hand feature at the bottom of your zoom screen all right well then i will read the motion the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve amendments to chapter 55 unified development code to amend sections 5.29.6 related to site plan review and approval standards moved by commissioner hammerschmidt seconded by commissioner dish is there any discussion commissioner give randall thank you um first of all mr leonard you did an excellent job of describing everything so um even though you criticize yourself several times i think you did a really great job of outlining all of that it would be helpful for me actually if you brought up that sheet again that had the yellow um highlights on it so um one question i have

037with the three to four family residential are we how are we handling parking with these in terms of i'm just trying to get a handle on like the amount of impervious surface that really maybe we really may be dealing with and i don't recall that off the top of my head how we're we don't we're not requiring a whole separate parking lot correct or am i wrong about that so generally you know it's it's just going to be based on the parking requirements which and um i'm thinking um matt correct me if i'm wrong but i'm thinking the majority of these are probably r4c which are one and a half spaces per unit so you know this is going to be um it's probably akin to the recent developments we saw on i want to

038say that there are a couple on hill recently a lot of probably three and four units six bedroom um student focused apartments with five to six space parking lots um it's a good question i i don't know i had i didn't go to those and sort of start categorizing some example projects about which of these they fall into um which is maybe unfair to ask for you to then categorize it that's something we could certainly follow up with and or and or bring to you a recommendation based on some of that data but um if you could at least point us help point us in the direction and be helpful yeah yeah i know that's that helps because if we are definitely requiring you know one and a half per um per unit then then

039you're going to have a parking lot there i mean i guess that's part of what you know is it going to have to have all the same dimensional standards and everything like that that we require of our parking lots which you know like have it's not what you see in um you know burns park where somebody is an old house has rented out their place for years and they have a bunch of parking in the back those things don't meet our current standards at all you know in terms of like islands and spacing and all that kind of thing so um having some sense of the kind of the order of magnitude of impact i think would be really helpful um i think that it starts getting really pricey when um because i know part

040of this is around that right we're trying to identify and make this more like viable um first flush is probably the most important out there in terms of what we've got going on i would point out that first flush according to the county is different than first flush according to your residential stormwater code and so it might be um it might be like and so first flush for the county is more in the two inch range now i think um i believe you should double check on that but i'm pretty sure that's kind of how they were last categorizing it and um doing a first flush two inch storm covers a lot of storms like a whole lot of storms it covers i think like i think you know over 84 or something like that

041it's a lot so it's not going to address the big flooding issues that we have it will address the water quality issues that we have and water quality is a big big big part of it it really is and the thing that there's there's one little correction i would make in the way that you're talking about things is that and this is getting technical but it's there's a difference between what they call detention and retention and detention is when you have the water in a pond and you see that pipe and it's being let out at a what they call a pre-development rate it's like a little tiny hole and the water is coming out slowly retention is what we are like a rain garden is where it fills up and then it infiltrates into

042the ground and so these one and two family residential ones those are all retention they are they have no way they just go down or they spill up and over but it's not like let out at this predetermined rate so um if we have uh the three and four family residential do a kind of two inch storm but have it be basically rain garden style that is not prohibitively expensive what gets way way expensive is the and it depends on how much space you have obviously but what gets way way expensive is you know having the big standpipe or having the whole underground system i mean that's crazy expensive but a lot of that is based more on like the huge amount of volume that you need for these things so i would recommend first

043of all just getting a sense of how much we're dealing with in terms of the impervious area for these three and four family um like what that really shakes out to be and considering doing essentially a little bit more robust like two inch um first flush but double check on that one for me in terms of the the county rain garden style um and that if the soils are really poor that it can be a similar kind of thing to um [Music] the like 20 more business that we have for the 100 year where we have really poor soils um but you the thing that's also gets really expensive is the uh soil testing that is required by the county as well so if it could be something that is checked by um your uh

044very capable stormwater manager um peter stevens to go out and dig the hole and check out the the the soils that you see you can even do a pretty like straightforward perk test kind of thing to see i like it does it stick around for 24 hours just stick around for two hours something like that you can get a really good idea of what how things are going to behave so i feel like that in the in the i want to control something here i don't want it to just slip through the system um but i feel like there's a way to still hold them to a standard that's going to make a big difference but it is not as crazy robust as our county system which is like a complete leader in the field

045i mean really like way way above what like any county in in the state does i mean truly they are like leading the way in all kinds of things here but it's also really expensive to go through that whole process so i would say two inch rain garden style with some sense of checking what the soils are to see if you really have any capacity um the 20 thing i could be talked down from one of the things that i think that would make a big difference is if it's actually a planted rain garden the plants actually do a lot of work over time and can open up those soils if you it may be that we have um kind of a more standard detail about how we want to handle soils and plants in

046that situation which we don't really have right now and so if we have some guidance for some of these smaller systems about how to do it then we can have kind of more of a standard of yeah you need plants planted every 18 inches and you need to do this to the soils and you know what i mean something that's going to sort of guarantee you a little bit more quality when it comes out of it um so like when the one or two family residential it's like usually those people are kind of into it and it's their own place and all that kind of thing you don't really know you know with the three or four families sort of how that's gonna uh play out um uh with that so that's my feedback on

047the three to four family um one and the 300 square foot addition i think that you could easily handle that with the way that you handle the um the one and two family residential one it's just like a little bit more impervious surface i think the thing that's important is that because you may be adding something on in a funny way and you can't capture the water right there wherever your addition is going that it's your as long as you can get water there from a different part of the site that's from an impervious area that is 300 square feet it counts so you may put the addition on the south side of the site but you direct some of the roof water from the north side of the site to your new rain garden

048area that works okay too it's just more like you just want to make sure you're capturing that with the patios i kind of see that as it's it's not going to be the same level as the um three to four family residential in terms of the size um it's it's you know a little bit bigger and i think that in my opinion that could be handled kind of like the um either the one or two family or the three to four family like some with the rain garden style um a little bit uh not not nearly as kind of um like super high level of regulatory you know performance and compliance with that but that still makes a big difference you know with with things so um i think that that could still fall in

049that category and work and work well and we still get a lot of bang for our buck uh with this approach um without it costing it would just be a huge thing to put those people through what the county standards are i mean it really is incredibly rigorous so that's my that's my i guess more than two cents on this one mr leonard can i ask a couple questions of our ex our resident expert um so um you you mentioned the county first flush versus the city i do would it as i as we look into this would it make sense to um sort of point to the county's first flush standard or are you saying sort of just sort of set a two-inch standard i would first of all corroborate that one yeah i

050would set a two-inch standard there i mean you'd be you'd be having people wade through like a huge document to get to that and it'd be completely overwhelming and so i think it'd be better just to kind of take the point that you want and then go from go from there um and again i i feel like i could be talked into like an inch for all of these and it would probably still be fine because what again what i have seen over time is that even if they fall apart in terms of their weediness and they don't look very good they work better over time the plants just do an incredible job of sucking up the water and opening up the soils and so um what doesn't necessarily work over time are the underground

051basins that just have the soils to rely on if it's not sandy and so um that's another kind of nuance that might be interesting to to tease apart is that if it's um an underground system that maybe you have it up capture more than a rain garden because the rain garden performs better over time and the one underground really does not it just is purely volume oriented so that may be another nuance that um that might get people to do the more surface application that is actually better in the long run anyway in terms of how it's managed over time and and then with uh applying sort of a similar approach to say uh a patio being added on to a restaurant um in that case you might have a circumstance where the bulk of

052the site is actually managed through uh a system that might fall into one of those more robust categories and i just want to be clear um like me is that's that that might be if you don't have capacity there then we go to this sort of two-inch model alternatively maybe we provide the option to say uh if you um if if you can demonstrate that if for some reason it's over capacity it seems unlikely then that can be accommodated yeah i mean if it's a site plan then they've already done the calculations and they can i mean a lot of people build in some slop because you just don't know how you know if what um like if someone's gonna add something or whatever and it's a little bit over and you can fit it

053in um but there's plenty places that just never went through site plan you know that were are going to fall under this and they can still like you can still store it kind of underneath the patio itself as long as you have soils that are going to work and there's other just creative ways of being able to handle that for sure so you don't necessarily have to have lots of land you know to be able to do this you can handle it in other ways but it's really really soil dependent basically what it comes down to any other questions or feedback i can i'm just i'm not sure that i'm understanding the 300 square foot edition in the patios um and maybe this is also the the way that the total impervious area of the

054project site is calculated so that only refers to what you're disturbing in your site plan like if you're doing a change you don't have to you don't then go back and say how much imperviousness is there on the site overall yeah so that's um that's what's a little confusing about it so when when you are disturbing a small portion of the site actually the whole all of those columns only apply to the area being disturbed if it is less than i think 50 of the site if it's over that for example for some reason that thousand square foot patio involved that then you are looking at the whole site um but even if you're only looking at that portion of the site i i've my sense is that a way to open this up towards

055the city council's goal would be just that how do we decouple it from the system regardless of 50 well it's probably always going to be under 50 a thousand square foot patio um how do to what extent are we comfortable decoupling you get we want the whole site managed by one storm water system versus we want the site managed by stormwater system but now we're going to take a component of it and do that through a different management practice and so that's what that's kind of what i was trying to get to with the question i think but your point is a good one if you're adding a thousand square foot patio it's not going to bring that into the entire site um but now by going through site plan we're still looking at those

056quantities if there's no stormwater system there we might be doing some water quality improvements again as part of that first flush in a way the question is do we even want to look at that or do we want to provide if you can find some way to do a rain garden on the site to accommodate this thousand square foot patio we won't even look at that system got it well and the other question is if and again make sure to make sure that i'm reading this rate in multi-family residential and non-family residential currently if they're adding a patio an outdoor patio of a thousand square feet according to this table i'm reading it is that they don't need to worry about stormwater because it would be under 5000 square feet is that fair if that's

057the only thing that they're doing it depends on the extent that they end up just disturbing of that site as part of that so if they're doing it as part of like a uh like a large fraternity house like it's possible that the size of that patio could get to a point where it starts creeping into that 50 percent of impervious of the site so got it but but your question is a good one that it automatically goes to site plan now so it's getting looked at from that lens um i think that's something but i i take your points i think that's something that i don't know if we need to clarify on this table but certainly and what we're bringing back about and that's that's kind of what i'm trying to get a

058comfort level on i think i i'm hearing comfort in it's not that all the storm water has to be accomplished through the same method all the stormwater has to be managed and i would just say i don't know what the stormwater side looks like in terms of the table but if it can be as if it can be clearer um this is what you're doing and this is if especially if we're adding different categories of stormwater management or different levels of requirements for stormwater management like hopefully moving to a system where it's easier to look up um i agree that's why i created this because i couldn't find that i was trying to get my head wrapped around it okay so and i defer to commissioner gibrandal on all things like what is appropriate and

059and right priced and environmentally like responsible so um yeah commissioner dish thank you this is very illuminating and i just wanted to make sure that i am completely following that it it sounds to me like there are two issues there's the issue that we just walked through with commissioner gbrandall largely which is what would be the appropriate level and the preferred ways of treating stormwater on these smaller projects that we don't actually want to exempt from stormwater management but we do want to exempt from site plan review and then the other issue is where do we put their the thing that what mechanism do we do to regulate their storm water if it's not going to be a site plan and so okay so good i'm following so far and then what i also understood

060you to say mr leonard was that well so wait let me back up so has the technical discussion that we've had with commissioner gibb randall who said that a rain garden that can retain two inches of storm water would be a fine and dandy thing for multi-family residential as well as for patios over 300 feet um does that alleviate your concern mr leonard because you were saying that you worried that as we get up into those more complex stormwater management systems we're going to need something that looks a lot like a site plan in order to design those and has commissioner gibb randall just alleviated that concern or did we not reach the you know the more larger and more complex systems i i i think it's from my lens it's helpful that what that

061that's what i want the what shrinkage brandel indicated is kind of the feedback i was looking for for example under the scenario if you got to a 12 000 of square foot of impervious area of a four unit apartment which i think i think you could very well get to um do we want to provide a more simplified approach where akin to our one and two family you as the property owner actually fill out a worksheet and you say this is how big my the area of my driveway my building my sidewalks you add it all up we tell you what to multiply it by to get to a volume and then you go to the next part of that checklist that says um this is how i'm going to this is how i'm going

062to address that i'm going to provide a rain garden here which is going to give me this credit i'm going to do a rain barrel here which is going to give me this credit and there's a brief menu of actually choices that you can get to that volume for and if that works out check proceed that's different than i think i think that is a different exercise than it's simpler than doing that same calculation for the first flush and a bank fill and that is going to result in more storage of volume if you do both of those and so what we're what we're talking about here i think i i don't know what a bank full is versus a first flush i'm presuming that it's sort of splitting the difference a little bit potentially

063and that we're saying yeah what this means is we might not end up with as much detention as you would have under a site plan but we're gonna still have a comfortable amount and comfortable amount of water quality improvement if i can ask just one more thing based on so so that is how i understood it and i like this idea that if you do this it counts for that it'll it'll take care of that volume and the other things that i didn't really understand the bankful things i didn't really understand were taking them a little bit out of the picture so but you just said detention and i think it'd be retention right and that's okay no it's just that i was trying to follow that and i'm trying not to be confused which

064is my daily struggle um and then when you said that 50 of land area in the city is covered by detention this is before yeah 15 i'm sorry i yeah i'm sorry what i said i meant to say 15. i was reading it whatever i said did when you said it was covered by detention was that a blanket term for you meaning detention and retention um i believe so i was um scout's honor our stormwater manager i promised her i would share that with you as to the importance of activity is happening and every incremental bit that we can do to improve our system matters whether it's a single rain barrel or a larger um pond with water quality and storage and reduced managed outflow all of that matters in the context of only 15

065percent of i i i'm interpreting that what she meant is 15 of our land has infrastructure in place to help manage it everything else is just a free-for-all when it rains it goes where it goes right so we want to get in other words if we want to maximize the opportunity to facilitate people bring installing retention and or detention whichever they choose it's probably going to be retention then we don't want to price it out of the market we don't want to attach it to things that are or look like psych plans because the projects won't happen and the the storm water management won't happen either and so i think that this simplifying way of doing it and setting the two-inch standard rather than the one-inch standard i think this is an elegant solution to

066a potentially sort of complex and expensive and therefore not going to get realized problem i am i oversimplifying but i just feel like this is great uh it sounds pretty brilliant to me i do want to so that's the feedback that i was looking for so we can we're going to go back to work with our stormwater staff to propose this that's kind of the direction i was looking for i think what i am going to take from this is working on sort of a new version of our one and two family worksheet that is going to be our three four family thousand square foot plaza 300 foot addition worksheet that is probably going to use a process that we already have and then apply it perhaps with this higher two inch standard to this

067different category of properties and so that feedback is really exactly what i was looking for i do want to go back to that team now and propose that to them they are the ones that are going to have to be reviewing managing determining that so but um we've had great conversations with them and um in fact i specifically talked to them you know we we're hopeful to bring this back to you in a month with all of those changes uh completed so commissioner uh solvay or commissioner gabe randall do you wanna like was that in response okay commissioner silvay then commissioner white then commissioner did randall um two things one if we're talk i like the two inch especially if it does the 85 percent would that apply to the one and two family as

068well are we just going to upgrade first flush standards to all first flush standards not just these new columns it's definitely something we could look at it i think that would be ideal i mean if that's what we're like why not um it's going to capture a lot of it um and then next given this kind of easier rubric and like kit of tools to do some of these upgrades this feels like the first piece of site plan light maybe so i like i don't know like it's probably not like a thought exercise right now but it is just something i want to bring up that this does feel like an opportunity in the deeper weeds of how to resolve sight plane light that this is the first thing to tackle so as you're going

069back and betting this out through this process seeing how it could be evaluated in that to be a point of that area i'd be interested to kind of see that conversation come back and if how we've reset this tool with that graph and those worksheets it could probably be expanded upon which i think would be great that's it thanks commissioner witch i just had a question about the rain gardens um who manages that does that come it's not in the udc as far as i could tell um on the website there were some recommendations but not a specific set of guidelines outside of a minimum of um square feet and 18 inches um and then i wondered where the size of the rain guard proportional to the impervious space and were there some minimums around

070that because rain gardens can actually be pretty costly um based on just my preliminary research depending on whether the i'm thinking of the homeowner or you know a if we ever get to an exclusionary zoning that allows for multi-dwelling in in one of the residential spaces um having to put this in um and then sort of not expecting it so like i'm just trying to link the two things together so i'm building like a aud or i'm building an addition onto my house that because i have a driveway that's pretty long i have sidewalks i have the actual physical space plus this new addition now i'm about to jump into this threshold and the rain garden is a solution which i think we're all in agreement with and i'm not questioning that i'm just trying

071to understand like oh do i have to build a 300 square foot rain garden on this side of my house and then rain burrows and that and then as i walk into that where i heard the worksheet so that could be the answer which is you get that worksheet while you're in the midst of this planning process and so when i go to do my design process with my architect they're going to say hey you're gonna exceed this code and you're gonna now need to build these extra things in so let's add another four to six thousand dollars for our rain garden so that we can capture all this water so like as i was following the conversation that's what i was doing if anybody wants to say no you're way out of line it's

072like 400 this will be great let's move on i will accept those answers um well i can start ultimately i think you you i think you sort of got to the answers perfect question the property owner is of course responsible for the installation maintenance of the rain garden but as far as the design of it that's sort of the intention of the worksheet is also to empower the property owner to make design decisions about that rain garden to achieve the goal um i'm happy to actually because we're talking about i'll share that worksheet with the whole commission perhaps after this meeting just yet as a reference but um ring there there's a series of potential responses to that calculation that you need to get to and the rain garden is simply a plugging in how

073wide is your rain garden going to be how long is it going to be and how deep is it going to be and we that worksheet gives you a volume for that if that gives you the ability to say okay as i'm considering those options do i want to make that rain garden of a size to accommodate all the volume or i also get so much credit for a rain barrel if i put it on my house too and so it gives you sort of a planning tool to sort of pick and choose the options to get you to that goal as far as cost i don't i don't know but i think one of the i presume one of the great things about rain gardens is they're not sort of four to six thousand

074dollars there are a lot of native plants and uh grading but i'll leave that to maybe somebody else who knows ahead commissioner get randall um [Music] so i would say uh cost wise you know first of all like if you put anything over 200 square feet at this point you're required to do this anyway no matter what you're doing so it's like this is already like happening and it's been happening for a while so this is not a new thing all the builders know about it at this point and we have a reviewer at the city that does this i guess what i would have mr letter check is like does he have the capacity to be able to review all these other ones too which would definitely add to the workload i mean i

075don't know how often this is happening but it's or how we you know often we anticipate this to happen but it would definitely be adding more you know for for this kind of thing um so um uh the cost is is not that crazy um it definitely costs but it costs the rest of us if you don't do it we pay for it in all kinds of ways in terms of flooding in terms of what we're handling with our creeks we we need people to realize that the impacts they have when they build something that has impervious surface we're all paying for that and so i think that people should be paying for some of that themselves because you can't just push it on down the line and have the next you know the next

076person in in in the water said take it on for you you know you have to hold some of this back and so i think it's okay that we're spreading that cost around and that everybody i think all of a sudden also realizes oh my little bit matters my little you know shed that i'm putting up or patio i'm putting up or addition i'm putting on or whatever that matters and i do need to take responsibility for this and engages people in a way that i think is really important in terms of understanding all of our stormwater is one of those things where it's like all of us doing our little thing adds up to a big problem and there are sites that are uncontrolled and huge and those are big problems too but i

077think it's important that we all do start to understand our impact on these things so i'm i'm okay with people paying it's also not like a massive amount of money either in terms of building these things it costs they can range anywhere i mean i teach a class at the county you can do these things for free if you put in your own labor and you come to all the plant swaps which are currently posted all over the you know washington county rain garden website you can get donated plants you can figure it out if you want to do it yourself for free with your own labor but um you also can be somebody else to do it too you know so it can it can range a lot it can literally be like nothing

078to maybe it's like nine dollars a square foot or something like that but in terms of the amount you're actually the area like when you do the calculations for these things they end up being pretty small they really are um that's why partly i think that we should maybe up like mr leonard i would like you to sort of explore really what that first flush is like how things are changing in terms of climate and this addresses what you know the caller was talking about before thinking forward a little bit with some of this and so maybe raising that bar a bit in terms of what we're asking people uh to be able to um to infiltrate into a rain garden scenario um so the other thing is that one one layer that i would

079add to this that makes it um a little bit more regulatory but i think the performance will be better is to follow some of the standards that the county has for what a rain garden what they accept a rain garden to be because and and it's it's not that it's going to be that you the person reading their whole handbook and you know all of that kind of thing but just providing some specific specifications about how deep because what you don't want is something that's three feet deep and five feet across because that it's just it drowns the plants they don't they don't survive that much and so then you're like not harnessing their power and they have a standard of no deeper than eight inches and so i think that that would actually be

080a fine thing to use as a standard they have a standard detail it's something you guys could incorporate probably pretty easily into the system and then that ends up it still makes a little bit less like complete and total freedom for the person who's you know going through the worksheet but it still um seems totally reasonable in terms of like plant survivability still being able to fit it on the site and and being able to you know meet the standard that we're trying to just get some level of water quality dealt with by taking all of the stuff that comes off the pavement and having it be in a rain garden rather than rushing into the system and polluting our streams and also like if we're doing two inches that's like that's a little bit

081of volume there too you know this being held back um so i think that um having that a standard detail or some specifications about like some restrictions on that because i've seen just some pits around just kind of like wow it's it just doesn't have to be like that and and the plants just are not that happy in a situation like that and the plants are a big part of how these things actually work and function so i'm also happy to kind of talk further offline about this too because we we i just do it all the time for my work so i'm happy to talk further about it if you want to get further into the weeds so to speak on it they're native plants they're not weeds right commissioner vandal [Laughter] um anything

082else uh commissioner hammerschmidt this is unrelated to stormwater that's okay although i feel like convinced now to put in the ring garden um i appreciate the footnote um one for the the not applicable or the n a kind of meaning that it's not going to require a site plan i still think i could be wrong but i still think that there's two different types of nas on this table there's and it's i think it's just in the new construction um section of it because there's an n a meaning that a site plan is not required but that's a project that can exist and then there's an n a that's like you know the construction of residential buildings and residential districts you're not going to do in that all other uses piece so it's like two

083different types of n a so i wonder if there's a way to just sort of like black it out if that is a scenario that like just couldn't ever happen just so that we don't have like two different things and just like extra confusion cool that's it i learned a lot about stormwater so thank you anyone else all right uh staff recommended that this might be postponed until that this be postponed until october 5th the first meeting in october uh would anyone like to move that postponement moved by commissioner sovei seconded by commissioner gibb randall any discussion of the postponement all in favor of postponing this until october 5th please raise your hand or say yes and that is all of the hands so this is postponed we'll talk about it in a month next

084up is item 10a which is the 660 earhart road site plan and wetland use permit for city council approval the order of operations for this will be that the petitioner will have up to 10 minutes to provide a presentation of their project and then um mr chang will fill in the any um the staff's perspective and then we'll have the public hearing before we discuss it and all of the squares are moving so um from the project team would anybody be sharing a visual as part of your presentation we had not anticipated putting a presentation together we thought we weren't informed that we'd have a 10-minute window but we can certainly talk through the project um and know i have some things i can certainly share if that helps um good evening my name is

085alex martin i am the division president for toll brothers here in michigan um i'm joined by several members of our team uh scott hansen as well as matt bush um we're proposing a 57 unit single family tax home project in community on this property we have gone through you know a number of staff reviews and comment sessions and the project that's before you uh we believe has been fairly well vetted at this stage considering we're at the planning commission preliminary site plan approval um you know really excited you know we have completed a number of projects within the city as well as township um and like i said we're excited to bring another toll brothers community to the area um you know the community was designed to be thoughtful not just to you know what's

086the best use of the property but to also work within the natural you know constraints of the project and the natural disturbances and minimizing those to the best of our ability and ultimately you know each home you know will have some green features to it like ev charging stations um knowing that we're trying to build not just for today but into the future as you know the world itself evolves um you know in an effort to be respectful of our neighbors we did conduct a neighborhood meeting i was attended by approximately 100 participants letters were sent to neighbors within at least a thousand foot boundary of the project as a follow-up to that individual meeting we did meet several times with the erhard village condo association board and property manager um to address any questions

087or thoughts they had um being that they were the property immediately north of our property line um you know like i said we're really excited for the project and we're you know certainly here to answer any questions whether you know they're marketing related and or specific as it relates to design and construction and development very good thank you mr chang yes um i don't know if if i have the option to share the screen i could probably put up it may be a little helpful to to probably put the site plan up and give a little more detail and and while i'm waiting to oh sure there we go share the screen it is zoned r1b let's see if i can find uh which is it's got uh you know us 23 to the to

088the east it's got green hill school to the north it does have residential also to the north it's got concordia university to the south and and a church in residences to the to the west unfortunately i'm having problems show all windows let me see if i can find go i think this will help as far as a layout can everybody see that yes we can okay good there we go so as yeah you can see a little bit of um green hill school to the north and get it there so i can at least this is the proposed layout the 57 single-family homes that were proposed with one access point off of irhot drive it wasn't reviewed and approved by the fire marshal uh because it previously it had two drives uh that didn't meet

089uh the turnaround code stormwater detention located in the southwest southeast portion of the site it's a little confusing because it's actually two pages the way that it's laid out so i'll kind of scroll down that's the southern portion of it there's the other detention pond it will be outletting here's one of the wetlands they do require to have wetland use permit approved tonight by planning commission that is because they are discharging into the wetland and also boring under uh which is going to connect to a sanitary sewer but there are no structures that will be in the in the wetlands um the approval is also contingent upon a land division with concordia university to carve this out and then connect a portion of it with the with the parent 20 acre parcel it's approximately another

090i think 10 acres that there will be adjoining there are significant natural features on site i believe we have the city forester here who can go into greater detail i will off the top of my head um i want to say there's going to be a mitigation of 230 000 something along those range that's why there'll be a development agreement with this there'll also be a parks contribution in the range of something around thirty five thousand six hundred dollars that'll also be part of the development agreement um as i'm going through this may give you an idea of you know there's woodla this site really has all the natural features on it it's got landmark trees it's got woodlands it's got wetlands it's got steep slopes so any questions you have it has been reviewed

091it does have alternative analysis but we can get in further i think with the the city forester who's reviewed all the natural features uh so with that you know i'm happy to refer to the to the site plan and if you have any questions i'm available i'm hopefully available to answer them thank you mr chang okay um could i just uh this may come up later but chris um could you um i think one of the things we've learned is that there's some planned road improvements planned for this area as well chris could you just kind of give a quick overview of what's planned uh for earhart road yes in fact i coordinated with the engineer and spoke with them and they had a public meeting just last week they are it's a resurfacing project

092for earhart road they will be installing bike lanes on both sides of the road uh there is sidewalk proposed as part of the earhart development but they will as part of the resurfacing project that's going to be a future project to actually connect the sidewalks eventually so um you know there is something and that's supposed to take place in the spring of very good all right then let's we'll move to the public hearing this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about the proposed 660 earhart road site plan and wetland use permit if you wish to address the planning commission on this item and you've dialed in please press star 9 on your telephone if you joined us via the stream through zoom you can use the raised hand feature

093at the bottom of your screen for phone access you can call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id 34 977-6634 26 um staff will select callers that have raised their hand i see some already in the queue you do that by pressing star nine again um and as always if you can please mute any background sounds so that we can hear you clearly and um if you can state your name and address at the beginning of your comments please caller with phone number ending with five three four caller ending at five three four you have three minutes to address the planning commission thank you this is tom stahlberg again calling from lowertown uh i have a question relating to our recent accessory dwelling unit ordinance revisions which uh if you recall uh would permit accessory dwelling units

094on every single family zone lot including every lot that would be in this development i would think also that we do not prohibit non-owner occupied accessory dwelling units so the uh i'm not owner occupant could own a home and adu on the same lot so with this development coming into the new development recently uh how many new single-family subdivisions have we had proposed since we passed this adu revision normally in the bylaws development regs there often can be prohibitions against such type structures and such type of ownership so i'm wondering in this particular one and i know the petitioner doesn't have to answer me but i'm hoping that one of the commissioners would think about this question uh and asking them whether these will be prohibited or the uh by the developer themselves and we

095do have some control because there is a development agreement thank you a caller identified as kb you can unmute and address the planning commission for up to three minutes okay uh this is ron stempier i live on earhart pine bray and earhart and in the 660 earhart development agreement item p20 is about noise control and i'll read part of p20 the developers shall review existing noise sources surrounding said development incorporate necessary design and construction techniques to ensure that future tenants will not be exposed to noise sources in violation of chapter 119 chapter 119 deals with various noise sources and the big noise source here is southbound m23 if anyone has stood on this property or adjoining neighboring properties you'll feel the ground shake from some of the empty trucks going on m23 not only the

096full ones but the empty trucks and you will also be shaken by the engine braking that many of the trucks going 80 miles an hour that are heading to an on ramp on m23 so um p20 says that the um the developer shall review existing noise sources i think we should take this very seriously and uh because um this southbound m23 without this being looked at carefully the city could be in for some clamoring tenants in the future of these houses to build a noise barrier wall um so consider in this plan that a review is being that a review must be done and we consider the noise for two reasons not only the future tenants but the existing tenants that live along pine bray and to the north where the existing trees which many

097of which large pines which already are a noise barrier once they're taken down the noise of m23 will be filtering through even more 30 seconds okay and so first include noise barriers into construction design and techniques for future tenants and also provide for noise abatement for the trees that are being reviews removed thank you thank you there are a number of other folks who've joined through the zoom stream if you'd like to provide a public comment you can pre um press the raise hand bunk button which should be um beneath our faces in the middle of your screen all right seeing no hands i will go ahead and read the motions we have to the an arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the concord pines site plan and

098development agreement subject to comply combining the lots and approving the land division prior to issuance of building permits and then the second is the ann arbor city planning commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approve the wetland use permit for the concord pines development can i have a commissioner move these moved by commissioner white seconded by commissioner dish is there any need from anybody's mind to take them separately we can discuss them together okay great anyone want to start with comments or questions commissioner gibrandall um i guess i just don't feel like there was really much of a real description of what um what is being taken out of this site when i read the review it was pretty astounding to me the number of landmark trees that are coming down um and

099so i would like the developer to present that information to us i feel a little like we're you know not getting the whole picture here with the presentation and maybe matt matt bush is our engineer i think he can answer that for us sure i'd be happy to so um in the site plan package on on sheet there's natural features planned it kind of goes over a description of of the breakdown of the the woodlands on site versus the uh trees on site in the bay's larry calculations and all the detail there but but essentially what we have here is um and it was in i believe the uh the the summary that chris put together but we do have a certain number of landmark trees um that are coming down we're fully mitigating for

100those per ordinance um we're replanting on the 50 requirement or more on the site um and just to kind of give you a lay of the land the north side of the site where we're predominantly have the development placed is not classified under the basilar calculations of city woodlands uh if you jump on google earth you can go back to historical areas and you can see it was like an old pasture use or um some sort of agriculture use it's kind of grown back with shrubs and then to the south it's qualified kind of on the natural features plan but the south is you know wooded area and we are mitigating for all the wooded trees um on the south section because they classify as woodland area we are mitigating for all the landmark trees

101on the site but it um you know it's considered an urban or an isolated um with a bunch of mid-story ground layers that don't function as a self-sustaining ecosystem and a bunch of uh lower story uh invasive species so the um the kind of chunk of of green in this area is not a a highly uh functioning um woodland ecosystem to begin with but on top of that what what i will say is that we are saving where the more dense trees on the south we are dedicating more most of the open space in the south side we are going through cost measures to install um uh vertical walls uh to limit the disturbance areas outside the limits of units and we are incorporating um large setbacks from from the adjacent properties in order to

102uh save as many trees along the perimeters of the property as possible so um the details are are in the site plan and that um there are quite a few trees for sure but um but i believe we're meeting the ordinance and uh we're finding uh a balance to be able to still use the land um without clear-cutting the whole thing so and just to answer your question too there are 447 landmark trees on site and we're proposing to remove 311. that's about a 30 save and a 70 removal perhaps the um city forester could get on and um describe her thoughts on the i read you know what was there i went back and looked at the old aerials and saw there was a you know pretty sizable pine plantation and things like that

103and that lower portion that looked like it was planted you know before 1960 but after 1940 um so that's clearly not like native woodland however there were a lot of oaks that were coming down and so i would and and i i know it's probably not functioning at the same level as some of the other native uh woodland fragments that are in that area but i would be um uh and i just put your name every single time city forester and so i'm not even going to say it so you should get around by saying your first name but like i'm just going to allow you to speak with your title rather than addressing you my name i apologize but i would like you to weigh in i realized they were meeting the code i

104was rather astounded by how much was coming out um and that there uh seemed to be some attempt at the very perimeter of saving things but there really was like zero attempt in the middle it was just basically plowed all down make it blank slate so that we can put our houses in here so i was a little disappointed to see that so i'd be curious to um get your take on i'm sure you've been out there to kind of see what's going on understand what's happening and i would just be very curious about your your own assessment you know as a forester and what you saw yeah um i when this was first uh presented as a pre sub um obviously i i had a lot of concerns when i saw the sheer volume

105of trees coming down when i went out and looked and when i was looking back at the history of it um if this were a higher quality woodland um area and because there are so many invasives there uh i didn't have as many reservations of course i'd like less to come down um but because they're meeting code and it's not top quality woodland it's not even really mid-level woodland um based on mitigation measures and the fact that they were we they weren't building out to the maximum that this site under its zoning would allow uh you know i could i could be i could stand behind it and say approval as long as they met all measures for code and so basically i i don't know how you can put that many trees in the

106site in terms of the mitigation so that's where the the price tag comes in is that's that's making up the difference essentially yes they're putting 50 of the mitigation on site and then they're doing alternative or proposing alternative mitigation of 50 to go into the city's fund that we use to fund tree planting elsewhere in the city if there's no way to put you know i know there's not yeah right exactly yeah right there's absolutely no no no way to do it um is there any kind of way to focus it i mean i know one of the things that part of the site flows to fleming creek that's the highest quality creek we have that's flowing through the city um i would be especially curious i mean again i know they're meeting code and

107so there's only so much we can do about that i would be especially interested in i guess um measures that would additionally shade and protect that creek as it flows through the city i know there's not a lot of places where it does um but that's one of the that is by far the healthiest one that we have um in terms of water quality um and erosion and things like that so um [Music] i would be interested in because it's going to a general fund thinking about ways that it could bolster that that creek shed in terms of protections for it i realize you only have so many options in terms of public land and you know things like that um but that's something that i would be interested in because again i know the

108whole site doesn't flow there some of it just flows down to the huron river as well more directly but some of it does float to um towards fleming creek as well so again that's sort of beyond the site plan um but um that would be my two cents i guess in terms of in terms of that because that is one of our better better quality creates well and and someone can correct me if i'm wrong but um you guys i think have the authority to say you don't want or don't recommend paying 50 into the tree fund or what we call the tree fund it's really just what we plant out of but that if you wanted them to direct plantings into a specific park or specific area then they could work with you know

109we'd bring in someone like hillary or whatever um i'm okay with it going into the tree fund but that is an option i think that you guys have is to say no we want it the trees to go in the ground in a specific area that's a lot of trees in one area but yes i don't know it's a lot of trees period yeah right right um i don't just a thought if there was something that you wanted that you know to have on a plan for approval for mitigation for trees to go somewhere that would be another option another option okay anything else commissioner randall uh not for now okay commissioner weich okay uh commissioner gibb morano did all my tree things i do want to because that's i wrote down a lot of

110notes about the trees because it was 74 percent not of the landmark trees that were being removed i think it is helpful to hear from the city forester around the quality of the wood or you know how you relate it to that and i wondered um mr leonard if when this comes before council there could be an attached report that details that because if my memory serves there was a big council conversation around a parcel on packard related to all of the landmark trees um and so having watched um council last night and it's discussion around the sidewalk on gettys anything we can do that sort of mitigates a repeat of the conversation that we're having now with council i think would be helpful so i don't know if that come if there's a separate

111report that can sort of address the fact that this woodland is not of equality that would want to be preserved and that's why the forester is willing to accept um the um offerings from the petitioner is that something we can request we can definitely clarify that to be clear uh tiffany and the petitioner spend a lot of time on that tree inventory and assessing what's there and the condition of it but i take your point well we can we can do our do a better job to communicate that summary and that processing conclusion to the council than we have to you here yeah because it's just in the site plan and if you aren't conversant enough with the site plan you're going to read that 74 percent of landmark trees are being removed and it's

112gonna um i don't want to telegraph to the petitioner what council is going to do but go back and watch council meetings around land trees and i would i would tack on to that relative to commissioner randall's point um if um i think that that we could explore with parks for example if there are some distinct um areas that might be appropriate we're happy to pursue those as well i don't think that would be a huge adjustment in that street tree um escrow but i'm happy to work with you know city staff here and at parks and recreation to see if there's something that might be worthwhile pursuing there but at least as it's framed now it's going to go somewhere for good for sure okay um i have a few more things if that's

113okay all right so sidewalks the petitioner made a comment about sidewalks in phase two or something um could that be clarified because the site plan or at least the what am i looking at now the report says that there's sidewalks on the interior and then they will connect to the public and so i just want to be clear i want to be clear that sidewalks are being installed at the time of the um construction and not at a later phase did i misunderstand something yeah so the the private road which is the interior road they will have sidewalks on both sides of the private road that will connect out to the sidewalk fronting their site um you know along earhart road okay so there will be sidewalks um in the property as it's constructed not

114later added yes um as i'm looking at the site plan i and and someone please help me um is it normal for petitioners to address the a2 0 goals in their construction or is that just something that we raise here at planning i would say that the latter it because it is not codified into code yet so like the electrification of the property whether it's using natural gas or electrification whether they're solar i i did hear the petitioner talk about the ev and and is that ev ready ev capable eva installed um i was scanning it very which is required by code so they have 57 garages that will be ev ready okay and then um there isn't and i can keep directing these to you chris thanks for answering or mr chen sorry um

115the um where are we with electrification or solar in this site is was there any consideration for that from the petitioner there wasn't but if they wanted to expand on that i would probably punt that to the developers okay the petitioners are here do you want to talk about why you didn't include that in this site absolutely uh solar is something we do offer as an option or upgrade to our homes um so it's not that we would make it a mandate or a requirement but it's certainly something that if someone felt it was important to them they could certainly purchase that um so that's typically how we handle solar and this is from an aesthetic we typically don't want the solar panels visible from the streets that that's a big consideration from a streetscape

116and appeal perspective um so that's most of where we have the green energy upgrade packages certainly a lot of smart home technologies built into the homes um to manage you know hdc controls during the day when maybe you're not in the home first when you know the evenings that way you know energy conservation is capable that's predominantly smart home technology okay so you just you just make it as a add-on uh to the um floor plans that you have for the the homes that you sell within the property that's correct so there's a standard smart home package everything can be you know everyone has thermostats and controls that are remote today um this certainly upgrades above and beyond that our customers you know personalize their homes to whatever effect is most important to them um

117and same thing with solar panels you know all of them we don't the take rate is actually very low um people certainly have the opportunity to add that to their home if they so choose to okay and then um i did want to ask the question around the mitigation of the sound once the removal of those trees um off of 23 um was there you said there was some consideration around that i think mr bush said something to that effect but i could be misattributing uh something to him like trying to figure out how to mitigate the sound off of 23 into the development no yeah i didn't mention anything with you into this round but i thought you were talking about it when you discussed the trees because you were saying there was something

118about trying not to go all the way to the edge and trying to create some kind of area and that's what i was just gonna remind is that we are leaving some large buffers from uh 23 and elsewhere on the site from the perimeters so um you know from the from the property lines um i believe it's over 50 feet to the or 50 feet to the um the right way of us-23 so we're leaving some significant buffers along perimeters there um and and also along the uh pine bray um we're to the south there we're leaving some significant tree buffers as well so yeah i think just to add on to that too there's a significant amount of toppo on this site and i think a lot of that helps with the sound as

119well and we did the best we could to try to match the existing topography so we're trying not to cut down ridges um we just tried to stick so a lot of that topography will stay similar to what it is today too okay and then another question either for you mr leonard or chair mills is around um well geothermal was a thought that i had but i know that that's not in the code um yet but it was really around um like microgrids like as these new developments come in is there anything that is accessible to us in terms of the build out that would make the development more amenable to a microgrid should the residents choose to solarize their community um is there anything with either and this is to staff as well is

120there anything inside the the udc that would allow planning um to either require requests or demand uh sort of the build out to be to allow for that kind of micro grid um capability because doing it after the fact i know is cost prohibitive for most neighborhoods but since we have an opportunity with a new development is there anything that would allow us to um get that since we can't get a solarized community uh i'll happy to take a stab at it um and then those are my questions thank you yeah the the short answer is is that there's nothing in the udc now that would require that um i will um it's it's sort of an ongoing discussion at staff and i think with a lot of boards and commissions such as the planning

121commission and other ad you know other advisory boards in the city too one of the particular challenges when you start talking about microgrids and whether it be geothermal or solar is there are um state regulations and i'm not going to go much further than this because i don't profess to know them but i think that there are limitations in the ability to move energy between properties um and i think that there are real differences as to the ownership structure of those properties that is two apartment buildings owned by a single entity versus two condominiums owned by different people i think have the potential to be regulated differently and the ability for those types of smaller collaborative systems to be set up um that said um uh we and going back i think a little bit

122here to your other question we do um talk to petitions about the city's climate goals regardless of them being in code at times we do bring up those creative ideas about microgrids or geothermal systems but i would generally say that the combination of legislative barriers that we are regulated by a building code that we we don't have a lot of ownership over or to modify although we can advocate for it and some of those things really being more in that category of sort of building code requirements as opposed to land use requirements makes it challenging to require from a land use perspective i think there are opportunities for us to figure out ways to incentivize it using land use tools i think requiring is probably more of a challenge thank you i would just add

123to that point everything that brett said was right um and in the petitioner's discussion with dte saying that this is something that might be of benefit to their neighborhood microgriding so that the power might stay on if there is an outage in the future um the more that dte hears that that may incrementally move us towards some of those policy changes that right now are hindrances so commissioner dish and then commissioner hammerschmidt yeah i have uh just two questions i i also did want to raise the question that commissioner white just raised about whether a geothermal would be appropriate for this site it's a relatively self-contained site and whether it would add prohibitively to the cost i noticed in the land use element that yes certainly this residential use is recommended here but the land

124use element also said that it would be great to have mixed housing and of course we're not getting a mix we're getting 57 single-family homes which is what we're getting um it it's not the most efficient way to use our open land and so i would love to see an efficiency boost by you know not having this be infrastructure that's going to be fossil fuel dependent for the next 60 70 80 years um but i understand that that's out of my control but i can still express my my vision and i just wondered if mr chang could specify the i'm delighted to hear that there's a an earhart road resurfacing thank you and bike lanes on both sides i wondered how what's the from where to where how how far are we talking on earth

125um i asked that question now i've got to go back to my memory bank um i want to say i have to look at my notes here it's not all of erhar because that question came up it is a segment of erhar um if you give me a second i'm going to see if i wrote it down in my notes and i'm gonna give you specifically where that's at let me see if i've got it anything else commissioner dish or commister can commissioner hammerschmidt go ahead while mr chang's looking up his notes actually i had a question about their heart rate improvements too so i'm i will be interested in that answer um so i live about a mile from this site and i drive by it almost every single day and i think a

126lot of my questions and comments i mean i i share a lot of what commissioner dish said um you know this is what we're getting but i i just sort of feel like the state of the world that we're in right now the the you know challenges that we're facing like it's just feels kind of basic to me um i know this is what you guys do but you know i i guess i'm disappointed that there's no park element included like fully appreciate the you know thirty five thousand to parks but you're putting in 57 single-family homes i'm imagining that they're probably going to be like 2 000 to 2 500 square feet i would also imagine that families are gonna be moving into these homes um you know it's pretty approximate to king elementary

127school there's nowhere for these kids to play except for in their own yards and you know that's great and all but like housing houses located in close proximity to public parks have higher value than you know houses that aren't and there's really no parks in this area for kids to play in i i read through the um transcript of the public meeting that you had that was really helpful and there was mention in there of a pocket park but maybe that was removed at some point i'm not sure because i didn't see anything about that in the staff report but i just i also read something about a trail that was cutting through this um somebody had mentioned and you know connectivity into these other neighborhoods this just feels to me like an island um

128i don't know if it's possible to make connections into like the the the neighborhoods that are you know directly north and south it sounded like if residents current residents are saying that there's a trail like maybe there was but again i didn't see any mention of that outside of that transcript um so i i don't know mr chang did you how would you go did you find any of that information okay it was actually in an email not in my notes so i knew i had it somewhere 200 feet north of gettys road to 200 feet south of the green hills entrance 200 feet north of gettysburg is where it's starting for the resurfacing to 200 feet south of the green hills entrance okay i have absolutely no idea where that is to where that

129is but it that does that encompass this stretch yes okay and when that road resurfacing is done which i am delighted about because road is a mess is the city putting inside is this part of the sidewalk millage that we're filling the sidewalk gap that it is a it's a sidewalk gap program that they said that will be put in incrementally i believe the city may be participating in the the future of those sidewalks but it won't be immediate it won't be part of this project so is the petitioner required to put in sidewalk for for their instructions yup for their stretch okay all right um okay the the the dte thing i think came up too in the transcript of the meeting and i will say like this area is prone to power outages

130and i know that you're burying the power lines but um you know it's a lot of blown transformers and faulty equipment and stuff that dte claims is fixed but trust me is not so i was just curious have you had any conversations about with dte about that specific issue in this area that's the position i can speak to that um we haven't had any specific conversations with dte about outages um we've only discussed capacity for the project um which they say that put in this area but that was obviously a comment that came up from the earhart village about power outages um but no that there was no mention of that in our discussions to date i mean i don't know what good it would do to honestly to bring it up to them but

131i think just like there are a lot of power outages here and there is some sort of infrastructure that they claim to upgrade that was supposed to fix that issue and it does not seem to have so i don't know these new residents might be coming in and like having a lot of disappointment with the number of power outages that we get um i i could add one more thing to that too um dte did just recently clear a lot of the trees um along basically their power lines that run through like across the frontage of the site too so there are less limbs and trees in that area so maybe that helps a little bit because this was one of the spots that was definitely not maintained yeah maybe i mean we also just

132lose power when there's no wind because i think they just have like equipment issues in this area okay um the ev charging and bike parking so i'm imagining that this these homes are designed by the you buy a lot and then you design the home so is that something that just automatically is going to go into each home at like no cost to the purchaser yeah i can take that one yeah there'll be an ev charging station each one of our homes you know some folks may never use it but they get it anyway um all of our homes will have what we consider garage storage additions so they're deeper than a standard garage so they're not going to be you know 22 feet wide by 20 feet deep and if you drive a suburban

133it's end-to-end um there'll be about a four foot extension designed into the home that allows for bikes for all the things you'd otherwise need you know in your day-to-day life besides just your car in your garage um and since i just ranted about parks can you explain the reasoning um you know like any sort of assessment that you did and in looking at this this particular site looking at like the the adjacent land uses in like where there actually is proximity to open space and just sort of like the decision-making process there absolutely so there was a park a pocket park initially contemplated in the project um and it was a byproduct of the fact that we had originally proposed a secondary exit an emergency access for a second exit point that unfortunately was not

134approved by the fire marshal so with removing that we then had to offset the cost of that ro of removing that road with fire suppression um so where the park pocket park was located which is where the road was you know exiting from the main body of the project we replaced that with an addition a 57th unit um so that was unfortunately a function of economics and then we did contemplate because there is quite a bit of open space um of what we could do to create a park but quite frankly the challenge would be we're already removing enough trees we didn't want to remove more to create paths and walkways or open space to create a park knowing that you know trees are the best amenity any of us can have so the open

135space in and around the community creates a park-like setting of itself in particular you know the western side of the project you know that's a pine stand like i've never seen before it's the closest thing to being in like a redwood forest in michigan you're going to find it it's beautiful back there so it's being a child that grew up across the street from the woods um that creates its own environment and park but it's passive if there's only way to make a real park we'd have to remove more trees which we all agree we don't want to do is the typography back there in that area like amenable to i mean i just noticed from from the road and i'm assuming this is where the detention or retention or whatever i just learned thing

136is going to be on the southwest corner like it dips a lot like i'm assuming that's closer to the east it's closer it's funny up to the pine gray portion of the project which runs parallel to our north south uh cul-de-sac um it's it's very walkable this existing you can tell people walk back there often there's natural paths there we walked in the winter as a group and as well as during summer and it's passable at all times okay that is good to know now the crosswalk to cross er you are putting in a crosswalk correct to cross your heart correct is what tell me about the crosswalk is it just like a like a lane or like a it's just a striped crossing with signage there's no push button associated with the crosswalk okay

137so similar to what already exists like further north yeah and there's another one i think further south as well um at pine brey okay okay and one last question and i think this is probably to stop based on one of the public comment comments can hoas prohibit adus if they so choose same commissioner dish telling me yes i believe they can yes they put in the the association by laws they could limit it to single family you use have the petitioners even has this even come up for you guys the first year no you know obviously you know we're a large company we operate in a lot of states and you know adus are very popular in certain municipalities but they tend to lend themselves to a different housing style typically when you have an

138alley loaded or rear entry garage that's detached or attached to a breezeway you can pop up the garage and do a like an in-law sweetheart apartment these homes really aren't conducive to it because of that fact um so we're not opposed to them fundamentally um i'm not sure we even prohibit them in our hoa docs necessarily it's just this type of home style is really not conducive to it yeah i mean yeah context is really important but that's that's good to know that you're probably not going to explicitly prohibit them because who knows why people decide to build them yeah it's great not to keep it going but it's a great opportunity to create an affordable house that's really what it creates and it's it's some of these pallies love it others are very against

139it so i'm encouraged to see it sounds like something ann arbor is supportive of which is great i think that is it for now thank you while we're talking about what's in the homeowner's association documents this is probably a question for staff um i'm glad to see that adu limitations are not part of this but i am concerned about limitations on solar on the front of the roof or like a street side as something that is standard um i will this is for the entire development team to know that i mean we have super aggressive climate goals we are going to need all of the rooftops we can get and so limiting a roof with good solar access which i mean maybe it's not because maybe you've retained enough trees but that concerns me just

140overall the question to staff is is that something that we can have any discretion over in the development regs to say like we're not okay with you including that a prohibition on where solar panels can be put um would the petitioner be amendable just to reduce removing that restriction from your bylaws absolutely because quite frankly it's a long-term benefit not a short-term benefit why we're operating the challenge is people don't necessarily keep up with whatever infrastructure or things they have in their home and while solar might be important for the first resident we sell the home to it's not the second and they don't maintain it well nobody wants that that aesthetic so but if it's something important again it's a long-term concern as opposed to a short term so i don't think it would

141it would be prohibitive on our side it was something it's clearly important to the city um so we wouldn't want to stand in the way of progress i think that it's only going to be more important um so i would encourage that and and likewise i mean i um i'm curious about your conversations with dte about um you know getting the connections and um my understanding was that particularly for a single family home the load that was associated with an ev charging with ev charging um was can can almost match what the overall load for that house is i'm just because there's a large draw at one time had that come up in your conversations um and yeah i'll start with that question no not with epe it hasn't um and typically we see those

142ev stations used at night or off peak hours so it doesn't always you see you're not really drawing the same amount of energy as you are when you're at home in the evening um but it basically we put in an outlet that's a 240 volt 60 watt um which is similar to like an electric range it's the same type of outlet so this is not a this is not a fast charge that's a slow that's going to be a slow charge on your ev um and this is a further thing just to say like from that homeowner's perspective if they want to put in a power wall um the batter like solar panels and battery like that's going to reduce their costs associated with it and so this is for the reason to not limit

143solar on their roof um just to give them more options and yeah um [Music] i have a question about the noise study that's that is in the development what um steph what is what do you envision that study looking like uh the paragraph in the development study references chapter 119 it says that the development has to be conducted in conformance with chapter 119 which is that noise evidence that sets standards for things like construction activities maximum decibel levels the hours by which those be conducted it's a standard prep it's a standard inclusion in our development agreements frankly whether it's included there or not doesn't matter it is the law we find it in the past it's helpful to include references to provisions such as that one to make sure that petitioners are aware of ancillary

144requirements of the city that might relate to their developing the property so it's not a study in the sense of an analyzing noise across an area it is compliance with the cities noise control measures that limit when how much noise can be generated by the construction and operation of the eventual property got it the part though about what's so it so the the bearing on how what the sound thresholds currently are the the atmospheric not that's not the right word but because it's right next to the highway um that's a noisier place yeah and that same chapter actually has additional regulations that are specific to vehicular traffic so um we regulate uh vehicular traffic in ways that are are somewhat distinct from actually the general noise of traffic they relate to things like maintenance of

145vehicles operational vehicles horns exhausts stereos in fact where you cannot operate vehicles at high decibel levels based on those factors we don't set standards on noise for the construction of housing proximate to roadways either highways or uh arterial or secondary streets in our in our city got it so the the second sentence there about reviewing existing noise sorts is this what i'm hearing from you is this is something that goes into every development agreement and it is not specifically inserted because this is next to a highway correct okay but to that end have you evaluated that and um i mean i you also know that this property is on the highway so in addition to the trees i mean do you have any concerns about residents asking for a wall which may require i would

146imagine have some impact on the vegetation that's along there or what measures are you taking in the design to make your residents happy well it's a great question so certainly you know it's noticeable it's there um and typically how we mitigate it is through the construction of our homes um you know the reality is you know once you're in your house if it's constructed you know we're going to use fiber cement siding our homes are framed with 2x6 material and insulation that fits that cabin you know we use high-end windows we use gaf timberline roof shingles our homes are built of pretty high quality so as a result there's a lot of noise mitigation by default of the materials we use um in extreme circumstances or it's purely marketing so the extreme is overcoming a

147marketing concern um we will install you know sound reducing windows you know to reduce that decibel level you usually you'll see that often we'll see around airports you know there's noise cone issues and things of that nature um so that's certainly what can something will continue to study as we plan the project you know we're dealing with something similar in another project in another part of ann arbor right now where it's much closer to the road it's on the same grade and we are installing you know higher decibel reducing windows to affect it and we've done that again we've done that all over the country so we know we can mitigate the decibel sounds quite quite easily but no good question but we do not have an intention of installing a solid wall at this

148point okay those were my questions commissioner clark and then commissioner white um i just had a couple questions about the wetland permit is this the appropriate time to ask or okay um so i just wanted to know am i understanding correctly that it will just be a sanitary sewer line running underneath the protected wetland area um there won't be anything constructed on top of it that that is correct they're going to bore underneath the the wetland okay um and then is there a home owners association or who's going to be responsible for like is that where is that like the city's responsibility to maintain the line that's going to be running through there it'll be a city sanitary sewer line okay um and then i was also just curious if there were any other alternative

149designs considered with the avoided that or if that would like significantly impact the layout um and other considerations for that um and then my only other question would be um is there any connecting to pedestrian and we've talked about pedestrian access and they're being sidewalks from the development but i'm curious about connectivity to the schools next door to it um oh sorry and then one more question was about um if heat pumps are being considered at all for air conditioning and heating or if it's going to be i'm assuming natural gas yeah so i can answer the question so we did look at some alternatives to the sanitary sewer unfortunately i don't know the specifics but there's there is a sewer line that runs all the way along that kind of southwestern boundary basically in

150the in the center line of the ditch or creek um which is the wetlands um that's the one we're boring into we the only other alternative would be to put a lift station at the southern end of the site and then pump everything back out all the way to earhart road um and you know we didn't really contemplate it and we didn't really run it by city staff i'm not sure what their what the engineering department would say um regarding maintenance on a lift station um [Music] but that would be the alternative to just tapping into the sewer at the south end and we actually had another tap in that would have been in the 25 foot buffer that we we moved so that it taps in out on earhart road um rather so we

151pulled one of those taps out of the buffer um and then your question about the school i can also answer that one too we did talk with green hill school quite a bit um and ultimately their answer and i think chris brought this up during our review period of a pedestrian connection was that they're a private school and so they really didn't see the need since there might not even be any residents who live here who actually go to the school for a pedestrian connection that said they do have basically a gravel road that runs pretty much right to the property line and i think if if people do live in the sub who go to that school i think there is just a walking path way to get there um even though it's not

152something that's necessarily um official and then i i'd uh just add on to that i'm noticing that in the permit review that there was recommendation that the city could consider um a review through eagle and i was wondering if that had been done or if i'd missed that um and if you can speak anything i think it's something about a recommendation of a level three review um has that been done um [Music] matt do you want to answer that i'm not sure yeah sure um as far as we will be getting a permit through eagle it's a it's a very very small minor permit but we will be getting a permit through eagle our wetland consultants um in fact are to be filing the jpa soon or the joint permit application with eagle uh soon

153if not done already so that's something that we'll have that permanent place prior to construction prior to construction plan approvals so yeah so we we went through the pre-application process with eagle so we walked the entire site um they reviewed the flag wetlands we talked about the improvements we were planning to make and that really triggered our requirement for that permit and we have that pre-application meeting summary from eagle that we can share with you guys if you'd like to see it i'm not sure if that was included in any submittals or not do you mind sharing um is that a market like interest decision to not use any sort of like heat pumps or anything like that for heating and air conditioning or what was your reasoning i can answer that one but heat

154pumps tend to be to be consulted correctly are typically up in the attic space of the home um and in climate as severe as michigan that's not conducive um typically and i operate in northern virginia for a number of years we built them there certainly in florida but in northern climates like this it's really difficult to have heat pumps work when they're up in the attic space so as a result everything we use is typically gas go ahead commissioner wage uh i think my questions are for staff um so this development is within an existing um adu zone uh according to the map that i was looking at for the city is that right and so yep there you go yes the single right so it goes all the way up to green hills and

155then there's a little gap but they're within it so um do these existing lots allow for an attached or detached adu someone yeah so someone buys this unit they raise their family in it it's what what are we looking at like average to 3 000 square feet they're like that's too much housing for me my kids are gone i want to move into a smaller unit on my property and then sell my main house um can they do that in this um development well again it would depend on their by-laws i mean i i think i'll defer to the the petitioner but before we go to the practitioner i just want to understand it would be okay so there's no there are no restrictions if i bought a house in there my kids are gone

156and i want to build like just a little apartment for my wife and i and then i can sell my main property or rent it out so the restriction would be because there's a homeowners association and that would say that is not allowed and then how do we so i'm still talking to staff how do we at planning um address that is that something that goes into a developer agreement is that something we ask the petitioner for or do we just seed it because even though it's zoned because they have a separate agreement they get to override the zoning yeah i'll take a stab at that we do review the master deed um we typically review it though for making sure that any long-term obligations are clearly being assumed appropriately by the homeowners association so

157a lot of times in development such as this one the developer is going to have a responsibility for the maintenance of an installation of an operation of systems such as storm water sanitary you name it other obligations at some point when all those properties are sold those responsibilities transfer over to the homeowners association so one of the things we review that for is we make uh assurances that obligations such as wetland requirements or other requirements are assumed appropriately by that condominium association we do not though use that as a mechanism to add additional regulations so in this case if they were to add a prohibition on accessory dwelling units we wouldn't really have a code standard to say you can do that or you can't do that they have that right to make that contractual

158agreement similarly to a private transaction but to your initial question crystal clear you're absolutely right there is nothing in our regulations that would prohibit that so if if they were to add that and it would be prohibited that would be also enforced by the homeowners association we do not enforce condominium association laws we only enforce our zoning requirements sure so they would go to they could build it but then they might get sued okay so um you've talked a lot about administration versus policy so i just want to ask this and then i have a follow-on question and then i'll be done which is um we can as planning tell the petitioner we don't want you to restrict homeowners within your development from building adus because our city zoning allows for it they can say

159thanks for that information whatever all right so then the other side of that is to counsel so can we um could could you or staff draft a motion because i'd like to add a motion to this site plan that goes before council that asks council to [Music] consider a restriction on the prohibition of the development of those adus i you know so if we're we're going to put up a 60-year development here and now no one is going to be able to modify that housing if they choose to in the future if there's a homeowner or associate complete and so i just wanna i don't know if that's a note to counsel from planning commission if it's a motion that our body takes up but i would like to telegraph to council that this is

160a concern within our our code that petitioners can get around what our electorate has enacted by you know um voting for council members who've put these things in place and this feels um this is a carve out and this is a fairly um i am i am actually quite disturbed by it because it's it's it's a um it's a privileged carb out within the code because you have both the means and the opportunity with a complicit developer to allow you um to restrict your housing in this way so even if we re remove all of our exclusionary zoning there's still a carve out um and this is how it gets done and then we just endorse it and it stays in our code uh for 60 70 years and then my kids can't live here

161in the city because we have these carve outs so i don't know if that's a motion or if it's just a note i've been told by the city attorney i can't call city council and talk to them about petitioners so i need a mechanism to tell city council that this is a problem and they need to address it so what i would suggest [Music] so i think there's there's a lot of well let me let me backtrack that i don't know the limitations that the city has on regulating the private relationship of transactional property so yeah sorry i'm just smiling because yeah um that's kind of the problem i think that we're getting to where you're where you're coming from and so um so that's that's definitely a conversation we could have in this circumstance

162to i think your goal in this project what i would recommend is what i'm hearing from the petitioner is they are comfortable not including a prohibition on solar panels on the front so house they are not they do not in fact prohibit accessory dwelling units from in their bylaws the mechanism for in this case because they are offering that what i would suggest is we will modify the development agreement to clarify that when we reduce when we review the master deed in this in this circumstance we will be looking for those two factors to make sure that those are being realized right so i would say that is the mechanism in this circumstance i think the bigger question what you're talking about is what is the regulatory framework that might prohibit that in the future

163that warrants more conversation i suspect it's not is as easy as you and i might like it to be but happy to happy to start that conversation sure and then my second question sorry because i did say ahead too my second uh question to staff is um this is not the first time i've heard a developer talk about the inability to install heat pumps in michigan and my understanding is what was stated is not true um i've i talked to dr schultz about it and she has specifically stated that we can install heat pumps in michigan and they will work um and so i wonder if again from a staffing point of view is is there a mechanism for us to obtain a notice a opinion sort of like what our forester did with the

164landmark trees um uh from our a20 folks to say it is not the case that you cannot install heat pumps you can um and as a matter of fact i'm a property owner and we are we were looking at installing heat pumps and we got a recommendation for 35 to deal with our our heating and cooling and our site here in ann arbor so um is there a mechanism to sort of mitigate this because this is the second time at least at this table uh that this has been stated and it's just factually and true untrue and so i'm just wondering from staff uh points of view if there's some other writer or something that we can provide developers to give them better information uh so that they will stop repeating this uh inaccurate information

165uh yeah we've had some conversations at planning commission about that technology trying to understand it a little bit more what its applicability is for sure we can do that again i would i would put the regulation of it in that same category we talked about when we're talking about building codes sure no i know we can't i'm gonna um channel commissioner dish she's like i know that i can't get what i want but these are my wishes so i'm following her lead and saying let's get some heat pumps because we can get heat pumps and it's actually inaccurate to state that we cannot do it here in michigan that's yeah um we can it's still i i guess it would still come down to uh petitioners such as this one choosing to agree with that

166or their conventions i think in this case absolutely absolutely i i suspect in this case that i'm sure they have probably explored some heat pumps in in climates such as ours and locally i suspect it's as much of a economics and convention and standard practice as it is um whether or not it truly functions or not but the short answer is yes we can definitely provide some of those resources that shows how it can be successful commissioner gibrandal i want to take us back to the adu thing just a bit and that is that um i i would totally be supportive of there being adus here one thing that makes it tricky with this particular site if you look at it is that in the rear of the units there is a 20-foot wide storm

167water easement in the back of nearly every unit which greatly constricts the zone in which you can actually build an adu you can't build it in the front there's really not enough room in the size you really only have the back and um you're you're essentially like filling in the whole back side with an addition by the way that it's laid out so um anyway i just wanted to kind of just because these things are site-specific too in terms of what you can get away with with uh the dimensional requirements and things like that and you certainly can't put a structure in the middle of the stormwater easement so just in terms of how that gets laid out that's part of the puzzle of of this as well i think that it's even though i'm

168supportive of them i think it's probably unlikely that they would work very well with the current geometry of what's there that's all mr leonard uh agree remember accessory dwellings could also be realized within the existing structure right but they can only go so far up and so um yeah i guess my point is you could reconfigure the space that you have yeah that's right yep within it that that's right right right and so but they can they we can't be more than 30 you know the houses can't be more than 30 feet per fire code and we're probably kind of getting in that zone so anyway just wanted to toss that in there commissioner abrams um yeah i guess um [Music] well i have a few things to say and to ask but maybe i'll

169start by just um uh commissioner gabrando's comment about the adus is is highlighting for me via slight confusion between thinking about a single family home on a parcel and the dimensional standards that that go with that versus this where it's actually one parcel with 56 or 57 buildings and so the each or correct if i'm wrong but like each like none of the plans touch dimension for us side set backs front setbacks that's that's given to us as one entire thing is that right in other words the kind of density within which they build each house on its parcel is up to them not subject to the way in which we would regulate a single single family home parcel that's a question i guess for mr leonard or mr chang yeah each one of the

170uh r1b lots they have their own building envelopes on there that's meeting the the setbacks of the r1b so the so it's 57 parcels or it's one parcel it's well they've got it laid out as 57 parcels that is the layout with the the setbacks shown on a building envelope okay so so so each of those parcels is subject to the same restrictions as any other one-off single-family lot r1b lot okay um i think the other thing that makes it a little bit confusing for me is that we're not really given any information about these houses like we have no plans we have no we have some a few elevations that feel like um kind of off-the-shelf elevations of other projects that are maybe specific to this development that may get built here but there

171may be variations or other versions that are get built here um and it's pretty rare or maybe never that we approve something without actually knowing what it's going to look like and i noticed in the development agreement p21 specifically says that uh the petitioner will provide elevations and that everything will be constructed according to those drawings and if they change it they have to take it back to city council and that seems to be something that in this case is getting kind of circumvented because [Music] i mean i could i could speculate i guess on why that is but i i maybe would would prefer to hear from staff about how to proceed in in that um this is the first time i think i'm seeing a project like this that is not one or

172a few buildings where we get to see what it's going to look like on the site the site plan is pretty it's pretty diagrammatic in terms of the actual you know location and look and section information of each building relative to its neighbor and to each other mr chang or mr leonard i think that there was the question commissioner abrams right about like uh what are the elevations and how are you evaluating that standard within the development agreement is that yeah and there's this yeah there's basically part of the development agreement i would assume it's standard language it goes into all agreements it feels like in this case there's a kind of exception being made and i just would like to hear more about that i can address the provision the provision is included in

173most development agreements as you know we don't have specific architectural standards from much of the city but oftentimes those elevations are reflecting something so when there is a significant deviation from them we do have the option to take that to city council for consideration i and i and i and i will just say generally there's often um modifications but they're very very typically they're pretty um minor um so uh in this case what we'd be doing is we'd be looking at the elevations that have been provided in the context of the site plan i think i've got those shared right now this was included in one of the early site plans it's certainly available in the tracking package and so if there was a significant deviation from those that we determined to be more significant

174we would require them to present those to the city council for consideration it tends to have more applicability for frankly mixed use non-residential buildings oftentimes in the downtown but again it is a pretty similar standard that we include generally across our development if i can add this idea of subdivisions right like i mean we haven't seen a lot that are single-family homes but um and where effectively the the home buyer gets to choose what their house looks like but this is something that is not we've seen i've seen a couple of these since being here so this is not um but i think you're right it hasn't been in very recent times because it tends to be more buildings that are already designed um yeah whereas this is like it's a product i guess um

175and it's you know the petitioner is a national company that uh it's a kind of off-the-shelf product i guess that gets placed here on this site to a certain extent even if there's some customization which is very different than something which is site-specific and designed for a particular neighborhood location context neighbors traffic pedestrians etc maybe this will help i don't mean to interrupt but you know these homes are actually being designed specifically for this site so they're not off the shelf plans they're specifically being designed to meet the wants and needs of our buyers um so these plans they've never been offered anywhere else in the country so these are not just like cookie cutter easy adapt to a certain community um so eventually there'll be a whole portfolio of at least five different floor

176plans each floor plan will have at least four different elevation or front styles to them and then you mix in anywhere from six to eight color schemes so the variations if you start compounding those you know become pretty significant uh and varied and then we actually have an anti-monotony code that doesn't allow the same elevation or floor plan to be built next door across the street from one another so essentially you have a block of six homes that will not be the same so we like variation in our communities um we rarely if ever just stamp houses out that's just not what we do but we also control the customization of personalizational homes you know we want to keep that aesthetic streetscape looking nice we don't want somebody to you know personalize it so much

177they they pick something that's not timeless and or you know aesthetically offensive if you will so hopefully that helps a little bit but you're seeing the first three homes that have been produced you know in the early stages of the portfolio for this specific project yeah um i mean i appreciate the information it still means we're basically saying yes to something we don't know what it looks like and the reality is we don't actually have a lot of say over what things look like but we usually like to see it um before we approve it so um yeah i mean i think i'll just end by saying um i agree with a lot of the kind of maybe issues brought up by commissioner dish and white and hammer schmidt um that like there are many

178ways in which this development goes against the kinds of things that this body tries to incentivize and encourage and um rally support behind in the community in terms of like density and mixed using mixed housing type and energy efficiency and um non-car center lifestyle and you know it's kind of not any of those things but i think um it seems like we don't have a lot of leverage in that regard i just would push a little bit harder on the on the idea of building electrification and really please beg you to consider it um it's 57 natural 56 natural gas hookups that you know are going to be around for decades um and i think it would be possible for this to be an all-electric development and that could even be um you know i

179think those kinds of sustainable elements are attractive to a lot of home buyers these days um [Music] and uh yeah and i'll just underscore the sentiments around adus and around solar and around a park if you can put one in thanks other questions or comments commissioner hammerschmidt thanks um did you have a question but just sort of tagging on to what commissioner abrams was saying is you're saying that it made me think of viridian at county farm and how that development really is looking to be a leader in sustainability and net zero and like i just in my mind these are just like almost totally opposite so i mean if you have a chance to take a look at that plan their developer i think would be really open to conversations like how he's doing

180things matt gruffkoff um seems like a great guy i mean again anything you think you could do to like push the envelope just given again like sort of the state we're in with like our climate crisis and like a lot of the goals of the city i think would just be really appreciated even though we can't mandate that but my question um you had mentioned that you know post the february community engagement meeting you've met several times with um erhart village and i was just curious if you could sort of summarize what types of things those like what types of discussion that was and get a sense i couldn't really tell like how that they felt about this development coming in so close to them from that but you have had subsequent conversations and just

181sort of curious how those went absolutely great question um certainly when we had our initial neighborhood meeting we you know we listened you know and we understood that there was general concern um just of change so when we met with erhart village we met with the board as well as the property manager several times and it was really to just drill a little bit deeper into the northern boundary and what that looked like um they were very interested in understanding what the emergency access road which we originally proposed that ran on northern boundary of the project um what was the distancing of that road what would it look like um and ultimately that went away which they were very happy with um and then we also spent a lot of time talking about you know

182there's quite a bit of trio placement so how can we place the trees and the types of trees to create a layering effect to screen from the back of their units to our homes so we spent a lot of time talking about tree placement and where to put them um there's actually a very nice tree on their side of the property line um that we talked about making sure we stay far enough away but still scream behind it um and then we did also talk about and educate them on the distancing between the property lines and between the buildings um i think that helped them understand that we're not going to be right on top of one another that there's actually quite a bit of space there um to ensure that there's enough gap you

183know and ultimately we just want to be a good neighbor that's really what it boils down to um i don't want to speak for how they walked away from that interaction but i felt as though they felt they were heard and listened to and we adapted to some of their concerns um so i don't feel it was adversarial and or contentious um but i'm sure you know if given the choice it would stay the way it was right of course but no i feel like it was good conversations so they're okay with you guys keeping lots one through eight no i saw that come up a lot and then in the transcripts of that i mean yeah there is again i think it's given that yeah yeah if given the choice of course those they

184would prefer they weren't there it would be you know very bold me to say otherwise but i think they understand and do appreciate that you know there's gonna be quite a thick buffer of pine trees and you know camping trees between the two um and we went through all that with them and even walked them through what does that look like now that the emergency fire access had been removed we added even more trees into that space um so that worked out quite well well just i appreciate the fact that you did all that outreach to them and were willing to meet with them um also i would hope that um they would have let us know like that they if they had concerns that they would have you know joined this meeting and made

185a couple of comments or reached out you know hopefully if they know that this is even happening um if our processes are working correctly so yeah we were in communication with them i believe as late as last week i can't we explore like it was end of last week or early this week we were we they asked for some additional information based on the package that was submitted and reviewed tonight so they're engaged right absolutely okay thank you thank you commissioner just a clarification in that transcript it notes uh that the petitioner mr martin says that the property will not have solar as an option and i believe in our conversation tonight we were told that solar is an option and so um can can either staff clarify that or if it's necessary the petitioner

186it's at about 55 28 scott hanson asked the question about solar and mr martin says we currently do not offer solar panels it doesn't means we won't but we typically don't so in the world today we don't offer solar or something to that effect i can certainly speak to it that was in the context of a standard feature in the home not as an option or upgrade um that was context in which we i answered that question a similar vein of how we discussed it today still unclear but i will ask staff a question after mr leonard speaks yours is not relevant to this mr leonard no okay floor is back to you commissioner weich um in our development agreement what are the two things that we're putting in it the adus and the solar

187the development agreement would um what i would suggest uh i would suggest you add it as a condition of your approval if desired and the method of incorporating it would be via the development agreement we would incorporate as part of our review of the master deed that we would be looking to make sure that there are no restrictions on the location of solar panels okay nor would there be any prohibition about accessory dwelling units being realized in the development great thank you any now mr leonard um and i i apologize i should have directed this to mr chang probably a long time ago but maybe the petitioners could respond um did you ever consider uh rezoning to a higher density for the site i can answer that one when we studied the property that was

188certainly contemplation but you know when you look at the plan two-dimensionally it looks like it's very feasible to add additional units or density to the project but being respectful of the topography which then also impacts the natural elements of the project we try to follow the ridgelines of the property um so you know to do anything that's denser and these are relatively small single family lots you would have to flatten the site which means you're only going to disturb more of the natural area in space um so knowing that that was something that's important not just to ourselves but certainly you know the city we didn't want to disturb the area even more because it would be very impactful um you know to to minimize the impact we did have on the site many of

189our home sites are walk out locks which respect respect the grade and then we installed our plan to install retaining walls behind those lots to not chase the grade down the hill if we were to build you know large units of multi-family or condominiums you'd have to flatten that those ridge lines out significantly um and they are also not conducive to walk out so it would be an abrupt change to what you see there today and we just felt confident that that was not what we want to do we want to be good stewards of the environment given our profession but we also knew it would not be very well received based on how important that aspect of development is to the city so that was our logic and rational mind thank you mr leonard

190that was also in my notes that i failed to read when i was talking so thank you for asking that anything else do mr glennar we you just talked about having a condition do you need us to move that um yeah i'd suggest if desired that you add uh amend the motion the first motion to have it add conditions uh or a condition that the development agreement be modified to reflect the master deed and related documents reviewed to ensure that there are no restrictions regarding the placement of solar panels or the construction or realization of accessory dwelling units um commissioner weich would you like to move that i was just going to say so move would anyone like to second commissioner dish seconded any discussion on that proposed amendment to the main motion the first

191of the main motions all in favor we can do a hand vote on this raise your hand sorry but i'm now i'm making thank you i see all of the planning commissioners have their hands up um so now we have an amendment amended first motion and we have a second motion as well seems like we can take them together any other discussion of them mr leonard you want to do a roll call vote i do okay i think we're ready commissioner abrams yes commissioner hammerschmidt yes commissioner dish yes commissioner lee yes commissioner clark yes commissioner weich yes commissioner mills yes commissioner gibrandal yes commissioner soviet yes motion carries unanimously so we will make that modification to the development agreement um we'll also uh as discussed talked about uh summarize the natural features analysis a little

192bit more clearly as part of that communication and uh on to city council very good thank you thank you everyone i did have one question i think commissioner hammersmith you would mention that there's a green development can you give me the name of the development again one more time yeah it's well it hasn't been built yet but um it's the viridian at county farm i think they have a website we approved it i don't remember time a year ago and it's matt prokoff who's doing it oh i can have uh chris can uh send you the link we have all that materials available online they also probably have a marketing website up now i would guess so yeah they do alex i'm familiar with the site we can discuss it great thank you so much

193yeah thanks everybody thank you commissioner clark i was going to add the avalon is also a part avalon housing is also part of that development has done a lot of work on the green side of it and making it more like affordable and feasible so they're also a really good resource and they're they're a little bit further ahead in their timeline so they might be able to give you some concrete good information thank you so much all right it is we i feel like we are in need of a break but we have no other items so is it okay if we power through okay um item 11 on the agenda is public comment this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes about any issue of interest if you wish

194to address the planning commission and you have joined through the web link you can push the raise hand function if you are watching us on tv and you want to call in now one last time the number is 877-853-5247 our meeting id is 977-6634-1226 mr leonard will call on those who have raised their hand if you dial in by the last three digits of your telephone number or whatever name you have signed in to zoom with you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any background sounds so that we can hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and i think i read enough of that to deal with the tv time delay

195so um i don't see any hands so we're gonna move on to item 13 but let me know if anybody sneaks in mr leonard um any commission proposed business i i go ahead commissioner weich i i would oh there's a person who wants to speak let's hear perfect so before commission proposed business we will call on the person uh mr stem ron stem you can unmute your phone using star six or excuse me unmute yourself via the button on your zoom login i think you'll have to mute yourself i don't think we have that ability we can ask you to unmute can you hear me now we can um you might need to mute the background sound though there's a bit of delay feedback about that sorry about that uh i'm a little concerned about

196the the 660 uh earhart the trees um i'm really concerned that it seems like uh we're we're being paid off for the for the 74 of the trees being removed and you know given i don't know 235 thousand dollars to move trees to other parts of the city um it's really concerning this used to be an urban forest and i'm a little concerned that um this vast set of pines some of which are between 70 and 100 feet tall which i've been working to save from the invasive species we're just selling out to a developer when they we really need a park in this area now there was a little bit of talk about putting in higher density units and thereby preserving part of for part of this pine break scottish which means pine hill

197and i'm concerned that the forester really didn't walk this area one person i forget who actually pointed out that there was a nice area of pines i don't think they're going to conserve those pines so i'm speaking for the trees we're cutting down mostly these uh large pines which are 60 to 80 years old and we're being bought out to place trees in other areas this this also uh refers back to the noise control so it would be better to build condos in an area where the topacai topography would allow than putting in 57 single family units and cutting down 74 percent of the trees most of which are the valuable trees so i just want to make that clear it's it's a real concern thank you uh participant identified it as kb you can

198unmute your feet your unmute your link and address the planning commission for up to three minutes there you go you should be unmuted now can you hear us the person yes very good now we can hear you okay would you like to provide a public comment we're done we're finished thanks thank you you're done thank you caller with the phone number ending was six four four caller with the phone number writing was six four four you have three minutes to adjust the thank you my name is kathy boris i live at 1726 charlton and i i too am concerned about all those pines coming down but i do have some different questions about trees is there any difference in the capacity to mitigate storm water between low quality invasive trees and high quality woodland trees

199is there a body of research on the subject obviously we are being pressed by global warming and flooding might existing so-called low-quality trees be valuable for storm for storm water mitigation thank you caller with the phone number ending with one nine four you can unmute yours you can press star six and adjust the planning commission for three minutes hello we can hear you go ahead okay good this is rita mitchell calling um i was a late joiner of this meeting um but very interested in the topic of retaining trees as other has others have said and it is a sad day in treetown when a significant number of trees are going to be removed um i would hope that we can do more than just mitigate fifty percent and i know that means crowding elsewhere

200but we do have uh eight to zero goals of planting ten thousand trees right so um perhaps there's space for even more um on another topic i do want to commend the commission i was really impressed with all of your attention to the kinds of energy efficiency things that we need to do and looking toward geothermal and heat pump installations when a new development is ongoing this is the time to install and be ready for the future these this development if it's passed with gas installation that is a stranded asset that will carry forward into the future and at this very moment before it's built if it is built this is the time to plan for that future without fossil fuels it's a great time and um there could be a lot of energy saved

201so i hope that you will um consider looking into that more discuss it with city council council member dish that would be a great thing to do um and and look forward to the future we we need to be moving in that direction as our a20 plan has directed us so i hope you'll continue with that thank you bye thank you anyone else who's joined the live the zoom stream if you would like to make a public comment please push the raise hand button which should be below our pictures all right seeing none let's go back to commission proposed business commissioner weich you are getting ready to speak um and hopefully um briefly so that we can all go um i just wondered is is there a place on our work plan to have a

202joint session with council uh where we can talk about some of the policy and administration challenges and i asked that because i am finding that it is difficult as a planning commissioner to talk to council about this and it is something that i i just in my five meetings i've seen the challenge between the articulated goals maybe not a vision if i could borrow something that a commissioner said not a unifying vision um with some of the plans that are coming before planning and it feels like um we're stuck in a lot of ways with uh just you know approving things that are built to the udc but don't realize the city's stated initiatives and goals and i feel like there's a disconnect and i know commissioner that you are here also in addition to

203your role on council but i don't know that you should carry that burden on your own uh obviously i don't want to speak for you so if you feel like no i will take care of it let's do that but i don't know if that if that is a part of the commission's work plan um and if something like that has been proposed but i would benefit from that and if it's not something that planning wants to take up if either staff or the city attorney can advise me on how to do this officially appropriately i would appreciate it because the avenues that are available like through public hearings i am not permitted to talk to counsel by advice of city council or the city attorney which would make a lot of sense i like

204your face brett you're you're thinking you're looking for a way for me to change that but i had a two-hour meeting with kevin and um in that two-hour meeting he was very clear that it would be inappropriate for me to address counsel as a planning commissioner about a petitioner's request and i think that is the only place to make it make sense is to say we're looking at something you've stated these goals these things are incompatible have you thought about this and i know there may be obvious answers to that but it it does feel kind of circular right now and so i'm just trying to figure out an escape route so i'm happy for any other commissioner to sideline me as long as four of us don't talk together it's not a violation of

205open meetings so you can call me uh just email me i'll give you my cell phone and you can tell me what to do and i'll i'll be happy to listen to your sage advice so that that was all um chair mills i just wanted to ask if there would be a time in our future to have a joint meeting with council go ahead commission mr leonard um so to commissioner white we have done that in the past we could do that in the future um i would um i guess i would asked um you know you you definitely cannot speak for the planning commission the planning commission speaks for the planning commission so i would say whenever possible as we talked about tonight finding ways to make sure you're communicating via your decisions to

206the city council is important um i suspect that you will find as um i'm speculating that you will find as much frustration at the city council level as at this level with goals that the city has set and barriers to simply and quickly getting there so i think you would find a lot of shared uh frustration frankly but i think to your point those conversations can maybe bear out ways that we can figure out which which things we want to prioritize and resource um so i um so those are those are my thoughts the the short answer is yes i think that when you're talking about addressing projects i wanted i was making that face because you none of you lose your ability to speak to city council you lose your ability to speak to

207planning to city council on planning commission items so um but but you also have a great opportunity to speak as a planning commission to the city council on a regular basis by the petitions that go forward and the other changes that you initiate or that they ask you to evaluate so i would i would also say keep in mind um you mentioned the work plan there's always a room on the work plan it's a question of where what steps you want to investigate relative to other things um i would and i would just generally share that my experience in five years with this group is that the appetite is is big and we can't always we can i can't always deliver you progress on all the things that are of interest at the speed that

208you would like so but i think the group's always been really successful at making sure that those are retained prioritizing those and one thing we have done over the last five years i think is we've made a lot of progress on a lot of these things so um so that's my so i'm i'm a newbie i'm i'm i'm just i'm sitting in the stream of all your excellence not criticizing it let me ask for clarification because what you just said counter uh contradicted what um city attorney macdonald said so you get well you and i can talk separately about that um could you get a um a memorandum from the city attorney on how a plan a sitting planning commissioner could address counsel during a public hearing or a site plan because okay which is

209different than what i just heard you say which is you don't lose your ability to speak to city council which is what i said to the city attorney and then i discovered in fact you do lose your ability to speak city council sorry sorry i wasn't clear you you well a couple things one there is a mechanism where the planning commission could appoint somebody to represent the planning commission on petitions so i want to be clear that is a possibility if that's the case you are speaking though for the planning commission you are not by no means speaking as an individual my i you don't lose the ability to address the city council generally you do lose the ability to address the planning commission on public hearings of site plans or on rezonings or on

210ordinance amendments or other actions that come out of this body you don't lose the ability to address the city council on matters unrelated to your work as planning commission so so that i'm sorry i didn't make that no that's that's what the city attorney said but you just said something different so i was like you just said who do i listen to i don't know my um commission proposed business would be to explore whether or not we can take those limitations within the development agreement on homeowners associations and extend them as apparently the noise stuff is done um whether that's possible to add that into uh any future um development agreements where there might be a homeowners association so different things the noise is referencing a law yeah we're not creating a regulation i think

211what you're talking about is what we added here routinely making sure that finding out if there's a way that we can prohibit private restrictions on private property yes for things that that link better priorities of the city not generally priorities exactly exactly not generally but those priorities of the city because i actually now that um once this got brought up i think that there's there's a lot i especially on the solar side i know that's common in homeowners associations and um hadn't thought about it before that that was part that could be part of our it's in our regulations as well yeah um commissioner abrams i just wanted to to confirm in a summer confirm that i'm right in that um the city of ann arbor is limited in its ability to regulate things like

212natural gas hookups that because it's because it's something that has to be fixed at the state level and that we as a municipality couldn't do something like the city of berkeley and uh remove natural gas any new natural gas hookups from the development um i am i that's my understanding my understanding is that we don't have the power to make that decision i think that there's a lot of interest in exploring uh if that's true if there are modifications that can be made to the legislative framework but i but my understanding in short is that you are right we don't have the ability to tell you as a property owner even though you have we you have to power your house in this way um i wonder are there any mechanisms available to us it

213seems like every single project that comes before us we ask you know we want these things we ask for these things the city needs these things i mean as you're saying there's this uh disconnect i guess between the priorities and the goals and maybe the mechanisms that we have in order to realize this but uh it does feel like every single petition we as a body we say the same in some ways many of these things did you think about solar did you think about electrification did you think about heat pumps so uh maybe it can only be on our work plan if there's any if there's room for us to do anything but if there was that seems like something really worth doing i think there's a lot of opportunity to look at it

214at incentives there's a lot of opportunity like it was brought up a planned project plan project that well we no longer have planned projects but flexibility if based on certain parameters met that is different from dictating those standards um so there is opportunity to do that it and i think it it is it is a little akin to our conversation on downtown premiums it's finding the balance of um it's finding a balance of a sort of an appropriate base level and an appropriate incentivized level and trying our best to get that right yep okay well i can i have more to say but i but this is just proposed business for the future so i i'll save it for when that comes up on an agenda thanks and not just just one other if i

215could just say one more thing yeah there's a lot of land use decisions that are actually are within our control things about how we are setting up regulations how we are setting densities how we're looking at parking there's a lot of opportunities for us to impact sustainability with what i would say more traditional and appropriate land use regulations than at times delving into building functionality considerations they're all related but there's a lot of space towards moving towards those goals like would it ever be possible to tie low density to certain other things that that you would be required to do in order to build at that low density or is it does it always have to be a carrot uh generally generally well i would say carrots and desires go better together so um when

216you do it the other way i think you're the fundamental problem is there are some restrictions on things we can't dictate the more we try to use land use decisions to get around that i i'm no attorney that's when you should listen to mr mcdonald but the more questionable it's going to be that you're just trying to get around something that we don't have the power to do so i would generally say carrots for the things we want have a gener a more logical nexus for us to defend okay thank you commissioner gibrandal i'm wondering um before coving and before actually a lot of the members of this current commission we would have once a year kind of a most of the day workshop where we would have more of time to discuss some of

217these types of items and think about priorities and i'm really missing that and it's really different on zoom and i'm just wondering like before i know these things probably take scheduling way far in advance but before we completely lose our weather just wondering if there's any way to do something in some outdoor setting that is covered or something like that that might allow us with some sweaters on in october to be able to um just have these conversations that aren't at 11 o'clock at night um and i i do we though those were productive times and and it felt really good to be able to kind of have more active dialogue with our with our colleagues and you know covetous putting up on so many things but that's one of the things that has put

218a damper on for sure and you know i don't even know how many of us have really participated in that um in terms of the last time that that actually happened so i guess i would just encourage i would i would love to see that happen again and i think that there's some there's some kind of pent-up demand that i'm feeling about the ability to just sort of talk freely with each other about things that can the discussion can evolve it doesn't just have to be like on you know topic 1a or topic 5b or you know whatever it is to be able to allow some of these things to uh just to have a little bit of a life of their own so that we can see where they go so i would just

219like to put in a plug for that i would yeah i would add in the past it hasn't been with council but it could be yeah though we got yes though we got a lot i think we've only i only attended one uh with council joint session it was televised it was very still very formal and everything yeah whereas the one that we had remember the public could come um not a lot came but uh members of the public incumbent we just had the ability to be just more um i don't know again letting the discussion evolve as it went and sometimes we'd sort of stumble onto different things that we may not have had we not had that kind of more open format so agreed it was a workshop there were sticky notes and

220speed dating on one of them and it was lovely it was seriously it was great um commissioner dish i just wanted to second that and in an entirely self-interested way say that i feel like we are sort of unleashing that a little bit in these meetings and it's awkward it's awkward because it makes them go late um which this is selfish but this is late i was up late last night it's hard for me and these kinds of discussions need patience and not like not be kind and they need not to be framed by something that's before us by a petitioner and so i would love to see us find a way to do this yeah but not at not it not at 10 or 10 15 10 16. yeah i've done worse anything else

221we've covered a lot the so let's move on to 14 which is adjournment anyone want to adjourn moved by commissioner weich seconded by commissioner clark all in favor put up your hand and wave good night thanks have a good week you