MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2000 at 5:30 P.M.

Mayor Rosemary Waldorf called the meeting to order at 5:30 p.m.

Council members present were Joyce Brown, Pat Evans, Kevin Foy, Lee Pavão, Bill Strom, Jim Ward, and Edith Wiggins. Council Member Flicka Bateman arrived at 5:33 p.m.

Staff members present were Acting Town Manager Florentine Miller, Town Attorney Ralph Karpinos, Assistant to the Manager Bill Stockard, Planning Director Roger Waldon, and Town Clerk Joyce Smith.

Planning Director Roger Waldon introduced the Development Ordinance consultants, Lane Kendig and Dwight Merriam, the team selected by the Council in July to provide assistance with the revision of the Development Ordinance. Mr. Waldon pointed out to the Council that a Preliminary List of Issues was included in their memo, which, along with the Comprehensive Plan, will provide a basis for beginning. He said the Town advisory boards that deal with development issues would be asked for comment during the month of September. He said the Council would have its discussion this evening, and, as a result of these comments and input, Mr. Kendig would develop a “diagnosis” report for a major public forum in October. Mr. Waldon called the Council’s attention to several of the items in the Preliminary List of Issues. He said one of the main issues not on the list was parking.

Mr. Lane Kendig, of Lane Kendig, Inc., briefly outlined the project. He said that the persons who needed to understand a town’s ordinance were the citizens and the ordinary business persons, and what the ordinance will allow them to do on their property. He said most municipal codes throughout the country were very difficult to understand. Mr. Kendig said part of the process would be to computerize the ordinance to provide more aids for understanding and the first part of the process would be to make the ordinance more readable in its written form. He said the real purpose of the meeting with the Council this evening was for them to tell the consultants what the concerns are.

Mr. Dwight Merriam, consultant, said the schedule which had been set by the Council was an ambitious schedule, but that it was achievable. He said the most useful information they could bring to the Council would be alternative ways of coming to solutions for problems, many of which have been used by other communities.

Mayor Waldorf said one of the most important issues on the list was to complete work on the MX-150 zoning district, and developing a zoning district for the Horace Williams property or for other large tracts. She said another issue was to adjust the Office/Institutional-3 floor area ratios for the main campus. Mayor Waldorf explained that the University was involved in developing a very complex new master plan for its main campus, and it was clear that the University was very interested in increasing the floor area ratio. Mayor Waldorf said she was interested in the consultants’ guidance on how the Town could address this issue intelligently and consistently, in a way that would provide predictability for the very large landowner in the community. She suggested that the Council needed help in establishing performance standards or measures to use in balancing needs.

Council Member Brown added that she would like to know if, included in those standards, there could be standards for new energy and technologies.

Council Member Strom said he felt that the Comprehensive Plan had enough issues to be addressed in rewriting the Development Ordinance, and he would not like to have the main campus development be a priority.

Council Member Brown said that, whichever were stressed for priorities, she would still like the energy issue addressed.

Mayor Waldorf said she was interested in having professional advice on the ways to deal with very large pieces of property, such as the University, so as not to do damage to the Town and its services.

Council Member Brown said she would vote for tightening the Resource Conservation District regulations, rather than making them less restrictive. She said she would like the Council to address a new zoning category that actually fits the existing neighborhoods. Mr. Kendig asked if that would include the uses permitted in the district, or just the misfit between the dimensional standards and reality. Council Member Brown said these were mostly residential, so she wasn’t thinking so much of the uses.

Mr. Merriam said this was an example that many communities had faced and one approach was to allow a conditional use or waiver provision to allow expansions of residential properties which were otherwise nonconforming. Council Member Brown said in a lot of the old neighborhoods there were a lot of residences which were nonconforming, not just for additions but for the whole picture.

Council Member Foy suggested that the issue of adjusting the approach to requiring landscaping in parking lots be broadened to include consideration of pedestrian needs in parking areas. He said another issue was to incorporate low-impact development standards into the Development Ordinance, and what the Council meant by that was management of stormwater runoff and bioretention devices, and those should be incorporated into the parking lot standards.

Council Member Strom agreed with Council Member Brown about tightening up the Resource Conservation District restrictions. He said the Tree Ordinance statement was a little fuzzy and should be addressed with regards to residential projects and also to clear-cutting. Council Member Strom said the Town needed some data on the trade-offs often made. He said he would like to broaden the focus of mitigating traffic impacts off-site. Council Member Strom said he would like to see individual watersheds and the cumulative impervious nature of the individual watershed approached with overall watershed and stormwater management. He wondered how the Town should define open space, and how the Town would know whether it was making good trade-offs for open space and getting good land. Council Member Strom asked if some of the development requirements used by Cary, such as requiring developers to build schools, instead of just donating land for schools, could be applied in Chapel Hill.

Council Member Ward suggested reassessing the current road standards, with relation to the end of the sentence in bullet three which reads “do not meet today’s standards.” He said he was not sure that meeting today’s standards was what he wanted, since he felt that many roads were being over built. He said, regarding the comments about parking lots, that they should not only include the effects on pedestrians, but on bicyclists as well. Council Member Ward suggested that the struggles over rental properties and the general gentrification in the Northside neighborhood were also spread out in other parts of Town, and he wanted help from the consultants to solve these problems. He noted he would like the consultants to look at the areas of low impact design and bioretention, pervious surfaces, incorporating a list of invasive exotic plants which are not allowed to be planted by the Town, to be included in a list where private owners would be warned against planting as well. Council Member Ward asked if “payment in lieu” could be a tool to aid in other Town services. He asked if there were tools to help the Town protect upland hardwood forests.

Council Member Wiggins asked if there were alternatives to solid walls around subdivisions, for visual and noise protection purposes. She also suggested looking at the heights of fences in residential areas, which could be a design issue. Council Member Wiggins said she felt that the allowed 9 feet was high, and added that the walls diminished the sense of community in a neighborhood.

Mayor Waldorf remarked that what the current ordinance said was that if a residential lot was fronting on a major road there must be a wall. Mr. Waldon said a buffer was required, but not necessarily a wall.

Mayor Waldorf said one of the issues the Council wanted to emphasize to the consultants the need for help in developing incentives in the Development Ordinance to encourage affordable housing.

Council Member Wiggins said that Council Member Bateman, during the Council retreat, had a suggestion for making the requirement of affordable housing less adversarial.

Council Member Bateman asked if that was the waiving of the fee of 15%, adding hat she would like the consultants to see if there was a way of plugging in the loop-holes in the requirement for small houses.

Mr. Merriam said that in most of the issues they were hearing or had touched on, they were very interested in this approach to inclusionary zoning of small houses and market rate without a lot of controls on them, and, on which, he felt the one-year control was not long enough. He said the real question was legally how far the zoning could go. He felt that the market rate would address the question of smaller homes.

Council Member Evans said she was delighted by the remarks of the consultants that they hoped to make the Development Ordinance more “user-friendly,” and that the consultants planned to talk with the users, such as architects and designers. She asked if the consultants had some feedback on the requirements of bioretention devices and whether they really did work. Mr. Kendig said they did work, and, depending on where in the watershed they were, in different places different standards were needed. Mr. Merriam said just about everybody was turning to bioretention. He said that was completely different from the 25- or 50- or 100-year storm and how it would be managed in either on-site or in a watershed.

Council Member Evans said she felt that in many of the Resource Conservation District areas there should be flexibility, and said she was glad to know that the consultants stressed flexibility. She quoted from the consultants’ application that the Town had an overly prescriptive text, with which she agreed, and she hoped that they could help with the regulations and definitions. Council Member Evans said she felt that some of the conflicts would have to do with infill and neighborhood preservation, and that the time needed for the staff to review the conflicts was very labor-intensive and expensive to the applicant. She added to the list of issues transportation management and redevelopment density and preservation. She asked if the consultants could address the belief some people had that the Council should be involved in every aspect of life in the community, which involves many hours for the Council. She added she would like to see a way to encourage good design and good development, particularly in the downtown area, and the need to change the buffer regulations.

Council Member Foy said, relative to the Research Conservation District, that the Town was geographically in the situation where it was not going to control what happened upstream from the Town, which would result in more flooding. He said the Town needed to give strong disincentives to building in the Research Conservation District and that basically the Council wanted people to stay away from streams. Council Member Foy said the popular conception of mixed use was some component of residential, and he felt the Council needed guidance on whether that was a good idea or just a fantasy. He felt there would be some interest in having a mixed-use zoning, not to segregate uses, but rather to incorporate uses. Mr. Kendig said this was one of the murkiest areas of the items on the list. He said presently mixed use was mostly horizontal, and what is hoped for is more vertical mixed use. Mr. Kendig said they were not clear on what was desired and what was meant by a mixed use district. He said they would need to know what the Ordinance meant by mixed use, and if it needed to be defined having several different uses.

Mayor Waldorf suggested that the consultants study the new Comprehensive Plan to try to understand the spirit of what the Town wanted, and not to look at what was currently labeled mixed use. She said what the consultants were defining was what the Council wanted for the downtown, with a mix of office, retail, and residential, in a pedestrian-rich environment.

Council Member Strom agreed that the existing definition be scratched, but he also encouraged a pedestrian-oriented downtown, vertically integrated mixed use, and possibly some other use designated that would encourage the use of office and retail.

Council Member Brown said that there had been considerable discussion on mixed use when she was first a member of the Council, and that there had been some concern with including residential in that mixed use. She considered that decision was a mistake, and there should have been a greater mix of uses, with a required residential use. Mr. Merriam said one of the biggest and most difficult issues that the Town was going to have to address was to decide what would be the density and intensity issues, especially from a historic point-of-view, in the downtown. Council Member Brown agreed, adding it would be a considerable issue for the citizens.

Council Member Foy said the reality was that much of the issues would involve infill or areas in the process of being developed, and how that would affect the issues. He cited Eastowne as an example of what the Town did not want to happen in other parts of Town.

Mayor pro tem Pavão said the Council had invited a group of designers to look at that area and to make suggestions, following the Comprehensive Plan, as to what could go into the area. He said he felt that the Council was looking for a good residential mix, along with commercial and retail, to obtain a pedestrian-oriented community. Mayor pro tem Pavão said the community near Blue-Cross/Blue-Shield should be preserved. He said that, from the interest shown by employees, the Town was going to have to look at a much larger area than originally thought, for employee housing on West Rosemary Street.

Council Member Evans asked the consultants if they could give some examples of what level of density would be necessary to support a mixed use development which would support services such as grocery stores, cleaners and retail.

Council Member Brown encouraged the staff to meet with environmental groups in the Town and neighborhood groups, as well as with retailers and the Chamber of Commerce. She said she would like to have the intent of expectation clarified in the statements in the Development Ordinance, and she would like to have clarity of language. Council Member Brown added the ordinance needed to have a strong intent to protect the areas and streams around the Resource Conservation Districts. She suggested that “user friendly” should be for all citizens, not just particular groups.

Mr. Waldon reminded the Council of what had been done so far regarding the process. He said there was discussion with the advisory boards for their input on development issues, which was taking place during September, but the staff had not yet sought out discussions with other groups within the community. He said there was a Chamber of Commerce group which had asked to bebriefed about the process and he would be addressing that committee the following day.

Council Member Wiggins asked Mr. Waldon if the Council was only going to be dealing with issues regarding development, in revising the Ordinance. Mr. Waldon said the issues in the Development Ordinance focused on land use issues in a variety of ways.

Council Member Wiggins asked if the issue of connectivity of roads between and among neighborhoods would be addressed, and how other neighborhoods had dealt with the issue of closing public roads against traffic.

Council Member Ward asked that the words “near the campus” be struck from the item in the top bullet on page 3 of the materials. He said as the community grows and public transportation grows, everything is then, essentially, near the campus. Council Member Ward added that he would like to have a tool to require developers to spread the affordable housing units around within a development. He also said that the definition of “affordability” addressed a very narrow window of the needs of people who could not afford the homes at the 80% of median level, and wanted to know if there could be another approach.

Council Member Foy asked the consultants what they meant by computerizing the code. Mr. Kendig said the program came with a search mode, some special screens they had developed to pack the critical information into an easy access screen, maps and calculations in the code for models to give the developers a tool to plan, and whether they would meet the code, adding it could be placed on the internet. Mr. Merriam said it was accessible globally.

Council Member Bateman said she wanted the consultants and the Council to look at a certain road in Carrboro, which she thought accomplished everything the Council was looking at. She asked for a process to give the Council’s wishes earlier in the process, to the developers, when they were looking for approval, to try to eliminate the adversarial impression between developers and the Council. Mr. Kendig commented, citing the two opposing items on the list regarding Special Use Permits (SUP), that the SUP process does create an adversarial situation inevitably.

Council Member Strom said he would like to see the percentage bar lowered for rental properties as well as affordable housing ownership. He asked when the Development Ordinance proposals would be coming back to the Council and what the Council’s relationship would be with the Planning Board, as the proposal moved forward. Mr. Waldon said the next step would be on October 18, 2000, with a public forum to hear the “diagnosis report,” which would be posted on the Town’s website a week before the meeting. He said there will, hopefully, be some direction given to the consultants as a result of the public forum with the Council. Mr. Waldon said the staff will be meeting with the Planning Board monthly and the next check-in with the Council will be in January with another workshop with the consultants. He said after that there will be a full review of the report with the advisory boards, and a spring hearing for review of the report.

Mayor pro tem Pavão asked for help for the Council in deciding how many parking spaces would be enough for developments.

Council Member Brown asked if the Town was working backward rather than forward. She asked the consultants what other communities did regarding an ordinance that looked at ways of preserving the environment and ways of preserving neighborhoods, and standards of capacities of development. Mr. Kendig said they were looking even at large cities almost entirely built out and how the infill would affect the neighborhoods and the environment. He said one of the keys was understanding what the community wanted and expected to achieve, and then making sure the code would get the Town where it wanted to go.

Mr. Merriam urged those present to encourage anyone who wished to get involved in the process to get their input in right away, during the early analysis, and not at the last minute.

The meeting adjourned at 6:45 p.m.