City Council Special Called Meeting Transcript –09/20/2017 Title: ATXN 24/7 Recording Channel: 6 - ATXN Recorded On: 9/20/2017 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 9/20/2017 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== [1:05:54 PM] [ Music playing ]. >> Tovo: Good afternoon. Thanks so much for being here. I apologize for the delay. We're still waiting for a quorum of councils. Hopefully we'll have one here soon. [1:10:57 PM] >> We have a quorum in the room. Today -- it is 1:12. We're in the boards and commissions room at city hall. As I said, we have a quorum present. We have two items on the agenda. We're going to take up the item from council first. R. Which is to approve an ordinance relating to the use of festival beach for the pride parade, which is needed to be rescheduled. Is there someone here to speak to this? It's Jimmy Flannigan's. >> Tovo: I'm happy to move approval of it, mayor, if we have enough councilmembers. >> Mayor Adler: We have enough people. So -- we have six. We had six. We have six. The mayor pro tem moves passage of this item number 2. Is there a second to that. Ms. Houston seconds that? Any discussion? Those in favor please raise your hand? >> Hold on a second. [Inaudible]. >> Mayor Adler: We're going to need a seventh person to do all three readings today, which we will need to do. >> Pool: Can you restate the motion? I don't have the document in front of me. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Tovo: I was going to withdraw my motion for the moment or table it or whatever. >> Mayor Adler: We'll just leave it on the table and when the seventh person comes in we'll move to pick that up. What I do want us to do is make the most use of the consultants' time and I think there are a lot of people in the community tuned in to watch this session on codenext. So -- no councilmember walked in. Let's move on with the codenext briefing. Let's go to the codenext briefing. I may have interrupt the [1:12:58 PM] briefing at some point just to quickly take that vote. So we don't forget. >> Pool: Mayor, can I ask a question? >> Mayor Adler: We have a request to make it a little bit warmer, and your question is? >> Pool: Usually we have a packet with information, like an agenda, for example, in the backup. And I know we got late backup just before coming downstairs, but I told my staff not to print it assuming that staff would have printed it and provided it to us. We don't have anything other than this. Is that the only -- because otherwise we should all have our staffs provide us with whatever the backup is. >> Mayor Adler: Manager says she will get copies of whatever the late backup was. >> Pool: Thanks. >> Mayor and council, the copies should be here momentarily of the entire presentation of John Mickey andtron fragnanzi. We can start with generalities and dive into this. My name is Greg Guernsey, the director of planning and zoning. I'm joined by John fragnanzi and John Mickey with opticos. We also have eco northwest and we're going to go through draft in more detail of draft two. We have released copies of the code and the maps last Friday, and those are being looked at I know by the public and boards and commissions. Last night the zoning and platting commission and planning commission met in this room and we spent about three hours talking about the maps and the code. We also talked a little bit about proceeding forward on future meetings with the [1:14:59 PM] planning commission and the zoning and platting commission, and they are right now trying to figure out their schedules about how they're going to handle some of their meetings. I had actually lunch with Jillian kielbasi and Steven Oliver and we have kind of a tentative plan about how to proceed with them going forward to review comments, review the text, and setting up the meetings themselves over the next two months. I don't see the copies have arrived yet, but we can start the presentation if you would like. And then get going. And I can pass those out as soon as they walk into the room. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. You know the presentation better than I do. Do we need the presentation to start or is it better to start now? >> Mayor, the first 10 slides are slides that I think we have presented in the past. So hopefully the backup will arrive before we move on past that. Today our presentation I'm going to give a brief overview introduction. I will talk about many of the draft two improvements. And then John will talk about some of the initial zoning code capacity analysis that envision tomorrow is providing us. And then we'll end with a little bit of the updated outreach and points of contact. In terms of introduction again, imagine Austin really set the goals adopted in [1:17:00 PM] 2012 really leading and guiding this project, as we've talked about in the past, 2013 we started this project with a lot of listening to community. We worked through a series of diagnosis documents, really culminating the rollout of the text this January and then the map this past April. We heard a lot of -- in our diagnosis we found the kind of top 10 issues that needed to be addressed and one of them was really just that again your code is from 1984, adopted in 1985, in effect in 1985, and you amended it over the last 32 years. That led to a complicated alphabet soup and we'll talk more about this later, with again over 400 of your existing overlays and items. This doesn't even include the conditional overlays. In terms of comments that we heard on public review, so we started receiving comments pretty much right after the first draft text came out and then on the maps. There were over 100 office hours held just to have one on one discussions with citizens about questions or concerns they had on the draft code or maps. There were 16 meetings on the code and text. There were over 30 meetings with smaller stakeholder groups and there were five code talk panels that were held on specific documents. From that over 4100 comments were submitted on the text from over 3400 different users. And over 75 position papers are submitted by organizations. So what did we hear during the public review draft? We clearly heard a -- clearly heard a desire for more consistency, more flexibility and for a single spectrum of areas. They really recommended us relooking at the building form dimensions [1:19:00 PM] and really concentrate on those that truly affect your experience from the street so the public realm, and provide more flexibility elsewhere, both to provide for flexibility in terms of design, but also to better accommodate the variety of different neighborhoods and conditions that you have in each neighborhood. And then one of the other big things that they recommended was eliminating the minimum lot depths. We had proposed minimum lot width and depth standards. They recommended that we not move forward with lot depth and simply go with lot width and area, much in the way that you do today in your zoning districts. So we went back and we looked in our draft two and we were crafting it and we looked at both of these things and both of these things helped influence us in understanding how we could get to the same intent of what those districts were doing, but look into ways of using different tools to accomplish the same goals. So again, by doing that we were able to both in the approach and the mapping and in the standards be more consistent and more flexible for -- compared to draft 1 and compared to the existing land development code. And just again emphasizing that draft two is moving Austin closer to implementing imagine Austin's goals and John fragnanzi will talk about that in more detail in a little bit. So draft two improvements. So particularly thinking about just mapping before we dive into other standards. When draft one was released, the staff, consulting, had not had a chance to look at the south Austin combined neighborhood plan and to really implement the vision set forth in that document. For draft two that has been completed to the draft two maps now include zoning districts that help implement the south Austin combined neighborhood plan. Another thing that we heard clearly was that in many of the neighborhoods in the community that had neighborhood office or limited office, these lower intensity office and commercial uses, the [1:21:07 PM] zoning districts either met what the neighborhoods were asking for or the conditions of the single-family houses that were being used as professional office or other uses. In creating that it also loud for different uses that are more intensive. More intense retail and bars and restaurants, and that was of concern. So in draft 2 we looked at -- we created additional Zones that allowed you to get that office use and that limited retail and have residential, but really morphine tune that use table. And that's most evident in the draft 2 when one looks at the main street districts. There are usually at least three districts, an a, B, C. Where the a district is accomplishing this second bullet point of allowing those offices, allowing the limited retail and residential. But not the heavier or more intense retail or the bars and restaurants. The B districts in the main streets are more what you think of as your main streets, bars, restaurants, active retail, hospitality, residential. And the C zone district is just saying that you can have residential on the ground floor whereas in the B it's really thinking about how to have an active pedestrian ground floor and in that case you want to have that retail as opposed to residential on the ground floor. A couple of other map changes that we highlighted two weeks ago, in draft 1 there was an open space zoning district that was created. Draft 2 it has two different distributions, the conservation lens and the park. And I wanted to be able to talk a little about the intent of those two districts. Conservation lands is about implementing the balcones, conservation and planning program. And those are really lands that are intended to remain natural. Versus park, which is applied to city parkland. So parkland that is owned by the city that is intended to remain as some form of either highly active or less active park space, but the intent is to [1:23:08 PM] continue using it as a park. There are other parks in the city that may be zoned public still because they're publicly owned, but we're still working through, and that's why it says work continues on and refining which city owned parklands are labeled as park versus public. And one other district to talk about is formal title 25. This is just to be able to highlight on the zoning map those districts or parcels more specifically that are remaining in title 25, your existing land development code. These include as we've discussed in the past, nccds, the special snowflake cos that are not able to be easily translated, tods, pda's, east Riverside. >> I didn't fully understand your comments on the parkland, some being park and some being public. And I know we had talked that it was dedicated or not had nothing to do with the zoning at the last conversation. I was just wondering if you could say that one more time so I could digest it. >> Sure. So land that's owned by the city and used as a park as opposed to the balcones canyonlands conservation areas, the parks -- my understanding it a work in process of still going through all the city owned parks and transferring the zoning to park designation. The other consideration that's being done is that sometimes on a park it is both completing some of the city functions that aren't necessarily a park, right, but it also includes a park. So there's some decision making that has to be done, are we going to map all of that P public or part of it park and keep some of it public. So it's a fine tuning of whether it's P public or park. >> Alter: And that's a process that you and your staff are working with in pard and our staff is working with to make those distinctions as necessary. [1:25:09 PM] So if folks are looking at the map and they see something that is a park and it's not zoned park, they should bring it to our attention, but know also that this is a process of refinement that's going on. >> That's correct, councilmember. I've spoken with the parks department. They also -- there's some properties that are jointly owned by aid and the city of Austin, and so we're talking about both aisd and we're talking to the parks department about how to address some of those properties as well. >> Alter: Okay. Thank you. >> Pool: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Okay. >> Pool: So on the parkland piece I know my office in the last couple of years, but certainly the mayor pro tem in years beyond the last two and a half have been working with staff to identify all of the unzoned, but city owned land that is used as parks. For example, a lot of our parks aren't zoned. And we had held off doing any resolutions or ordinance changes in order to -- and put that zoning in place because we thought that this process would in fact snag up all of those properties and properly code them, zone them. >> And that's my understanding as well. So those city parks that are dedicated as parkland used parkland they would get the pr designation, which is new with draft 2. >> Pool: Even if currently they are unzoned. >> Even if they're currently unzoned or they're designated P public right now or perhaps some other category. >> Pool: Right. So I'm sure that our staff has provided to our consultants the list of all those properties that are parkland, but that are unzoned that need to be -- or whoever is making these changes on the map. >> I think it's more my staff working with parks department issue. >> Pool: And then I had a question for John on the bccp conservation lands introduced on the conservation program for balcones canyon land and certain water quality protection properties. Will they be coded separately from park pro public? >> Yes. So they will -- I [1:27:10 PM] apologize, I did not include that. They will be labeled on the zoning as CL for conservation land. >> Pool: Okay. They'll have their own designation. >> Correct. >> Pool: That's great. Thanks so much. >> Alter: Is that only for bccp conservation land or if somebody had a conservation easement how would that be handled? >> I will have to get back to you on that one? >> Alter: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Before we go back to the panel, just real quickly, the Mexico has been made on the ifc -- the motion has been made on the ifc. Do you want to pull yours back and let Jimmy make that motion? Mr. Flannigan approximate moves -- the original motion withdrawn. New motion. Mr. Flannigan moves adoption of item number 2, which is to make the extension for the 2017 pride parade. Is there a second to that? Ms. Houston seconds that. If there's no discussion we'll take a vote. It takes seven to vote it approved on all three days. If all three readings on one day. Those in favor please raise your hand? It's 7-nothing, and the members in attendance are alter, Renteria, pool, me, the mayor pro tem, councilmember Houston and Mr. Flannigan. Please proceed. >> So the last few bullet points talk about map changes. We will talk more about mapping later, but in particular just focusing in on sf-2 -- existing sf-2 and sf-3 properties. So for former sf-2 that in draft 1 we had applied t3. In draft 2, in many of the urban core areas, R [1:29:14 PM] 2 a was amplified. In the more R 1 was applied and I'll explain what each of those districts two. R 2 a is a district that allows single-family houses on any lot, but on corner lots allows a corner duplex, and only on corner lots. This is a pattern that's found in allandale, in parts of rosedale, crestview, some of the neighborhoods from that era where single-family houses were primarily built on the block, but on the ends of the blocks, on the corners there were duplexes that were built. So this was an opportunity to kind of be able to more consistently apply one zoning district that allows that, but also allow over time for additional duplexes to be built, but only on corners. With sf-3 zoned districts, in draft 1 there were office sf-3 joined districts from T 4 was mild. In those districts those lots have been mapped with R 3. Sf- 3 along the Austin corridors and within connected grid also may have R 3 applied. But sf-3 in the more suburban areas R 2 applied. Two weeks ago we talked about these districts and the categories in groups. Just a reminder that the number in the R districts indicates the number of typical units one would find in that zoned district. Moving on again to just kind of the zoned districts and how those have changed. This is kind of a condensed version of what we presented two weeks ago. In 2015 we worked towards a hyper code. When we produced that hyper code we had transect Zones and non-transect Zones and we heard clearly through the public review draft process that people were having a hard time understanding how t3 neighborhood related to ldr, lmdr, and how that [1:31:15 PM] related back to the existing zoning. And that really led to this movement that we've been talking about for the last six weeks of switching to a single spectrum where the zone districts are organized by intensity. So again, the Zones are grouped -- are grouped by common intensities, and then categorized by theme. So here's an example where the residential house scale Zones are grouped into R 1 for zoning districts that have an intensity of typically one unit on a R 3 typically has two units on a lot and R 3 has three on a lot. And those three cats are residential house scale, which we were able to talk about this two weeks ago with you all. Residential multiunit, mixed use, main street, regional center, commercial and industrial and then a series of other districts. Again, what this single spectrum allows us to do is have the naming conventions be consistent across those districts so one can understand when looking at the zoning map kind of the relative intensity of each of those districts to each other. We are able to use a mcmansion tent and measurement of height more consistently across all of these zoned districts. We were also more consistently using lot size standards. And in the process we talked about two weeks ago we were also able to take zone districts which had embedded within them standards that applied within the urban core or outside of the urban core and break that into really two distinct zone districts, which would allow you as a community to use the districts that have the additional form controls outside of the core of the city, whereas either in today's existing land development code or in the draft 1 that was proposed, one would have to modify those boundaries of the urban core in order to be able to utilize these [1:33:16 PM] mcmansion tent standards. So we think breaking these party into two zoning districts helps you all to be able to fine tune which zoning districts make sense and you can use them anywhere in the city as opposed to previously just within the core or outside the core of the city. Again, just a chart that we presented two weeks ago. I did add R 2 D and rde to the chart this time. Again just as an overview that you can see a general sense of the meants in this district are based on the number of typical units. All of this means that when we look at a map of existing title 25, draft 1 or draft 2, one can see some of the repercussions. So one of the things about the existing title 25 is kind of the alphabet soup that happens when one has the base zone districts, the various overlays, cos, neighborhood plans, all those additions that got chained on to that base district. In draft one we proposed new zone districts that cleaned up a lot of that alphabet soup, but also introduced additional variables in the length of those names. Draft 2 is much shorter names, much easier to understand the relationship between each of the zoned districts. Again, just more examples here where in the existing title 25, the vast majority of these properties were all zoned sf-3. In the draft 1 we had fine tuned the zoning to match more of the differences between the lot widths on some of them so that we had neighborhood edge, wide lot and we had neighborhood edge lots. So they were different lot sizes. With the more flexibility that we've added into the zoning districts on the renaming, we're more in draft 2 more easily able to just map them all R 3 C where it's more consistently mapped across this neighborhood. Again, another example here of how each of [1:35:16 PM] these drafts have fine tuned the naming conventions and reduced the number of letters and abbreviations that one needs to memorize. In draft -- in the existing land development code there were a lot of these lo parcels that I talked earlier about that were transitioned over to a t4 neighborhood open zone district which said these are existing places that are single-family houses, they just happen to no longer be single-family house uses. Primarily along this corridor are professional office and some limited amount of retail. Draft 1 proposed to make the t4 neighborhoods open saying we want the form controls of a single-family house, but we want to be open about the kind of uses that can happen there. So we allowed additional uses. What we heard very clearly during the discussions was that the use of this open designator caused some confusion because in the neighborhood districts the open meant you could get additional nonresidential uses, but then in the main street districts or in some of the non- transect districts you could get open uses. So there was a lot of discussion about how open was being used. In the newest draft what we have proposed to do is we have renamed this zoning district to be part of the mixed use zone category and all of the mixed use 1 house scale buildings that happen to allow a mix of uses. So we're maintaining the ability to control the scale of the mixed use so it relates to single-family houses, but we're more clearly identifying on the zoning map this allows a mix of uses. So we had heard that that was a concern from members of the public. So we're able to -- again, modify the methodology we're using, but still get to the same intent of preserving that house scale and allowing a mix of uses. I wanted to talk a little bit about impervious cover and building cover. So again, draft 1 really built upon the tools that you have in your [1:37:18 PM] existing land development code, but strengthened a lot of the water quality and flood mitigation iterations. We heard during draft 1 that there were concerns again about the two set of zoning tools we were using understanding how those related to each other and how they related to the impervious cover and the building cover limits you have today. So draft 2 helps us by helping us more easily compare zoning districts and understand what are the impervious cover limits and building cover limits. This slide here is the impervious cover and building cover. Please note that these are the impervious cover and building cover limits for the urban watershed. So the numbers that would be listed in the zone district. Any property that happens to be in a different watershed district would have the same rules applied as today where your impervious cover and your building cover limits would be less. And carried forward as they are today. >> Pool: Can you define urban watershed then? >> So the urban watershed remains the same boundaries that exist today. >> Pool: So maybe somebody can recite those. Because I go by the creeks themselves, so I name the watersheds by the creek. >> I think you're looking at those that like shoal creek and waller creek, but basically it's the area that starts around 183 and then heads south, comes through downtown, and then proceeds south, bordered generally by mopac maybe on the west and going eastward. >> Pool: Does it pick up onion creek and Williamson creek? >> No. Those would be suburban watersheds. >> Pool: And boggy creek would also be -- >> You might even -- yes, boggy creek I think is part of that as well. >> Pool: And walnut creek? >> Actually, parts of our suburban, so I think it's those urban creeks that we talked about, [1:39:18 PM] shoal, waller. >> Pool: Shoal, waller and boggy. >> I believe so, yes. >> Houston: Excuse me, mayor, because that's a concern. Can you make sure we know where the urban watershed boundaries are? >> Yes, we can get you a map of that very easily. >> Houston: Thank you. >> So one of the items that we had produced during draft one was a simple diagram showing the impervious cover limits and building cover limits for the transect Zones. Now that we have a single spectrum we're showing for the zone groups so jumping up above just individual Zones, showing all of the zone groups, the impervious cover and building cover limits and to emphasize on this graph the solid color portion of the bar graph is the building cover limit that exists and the kind of hashed area is the impervious cover limit. So the total amount of impervious cover you can have. Much like draft 1, draft 2 is carrying forward and we're still working through the standards for functional green. Functional green is really about matching the ecological benefits one receives from parcels that have less than 80% impervious cover. So kind of the natural habitat for birds or the different plants, native plant species. And identifying when you get above 80% to get the kind of ecological benefits that you get in many other parcels, you might get different tools that you already have as a city. So awe as a city already allow green roofs. But it's saying that when you are above 80% impervious cover, you have to be providing ecological benefit by either planting more trees, green roofs, rain gardens, cisterns. So utilizing that land effectively to provide some of those ecological benefits. In terms of height standards, draft 1 built upon the existing land development code. Kind of refining the [1:41:19 PM] standards that you all had. It tried to introduce additional tools and methods of measuring height. What we heard pretty clearly during the discussion about draft one was that we needed to relook and see maybe that we had too many ways of measuring height. So I'll talk a little bit about how we've refined that. In draft 2 were much more consistent about the way we measure height across the different zone districts, but also in terms of where we're measuring to. So for instance, in draft one we measured to eastview and to overall and we provided the transect Zones regardless if they were a house scale zone or if they were more of a mixed use zone district. In draft 2 this measurement system measured it even overall and kept for anything that is a house scale zone district. Again where we want to be able to make sure that as development happens, much like today's mcmansion standards do, have those buildings more closely relate to their neighbors. So really worrying about what is the side wall height and what's the overall height of the building. Outside of these residential house scale zone districts we're primarily going to focus now on just the overall height. So outside of these house scale buildings we're just worried about that overall height of the building. One item that we know we'll be working both with staff and with the planning and development is discussions about is the term eave the correct place to measure to? Should we be measuring to eav e/parapet, but that is one of the items we'll be working through both with staff and with planning and development and just talking about the pros and cons of how one might measure each of those. We are continuing to carry forward a modified mcmansion tent. So in draft one we talked a lot about this where the modifications we had proposed were within the first 80 feet of the front property line you could build two stories or 22 feet to the eave and 32 feet [1:43:19 PM] overrule. And behind that you can build one story or 15 feet, I believe, or 25 feet overrule. In draft 2 we're removing the story limits, but we are keeping the dimensional height limits. One of the things that was talked a lot about is that provides the ability that as a building moves further back on the property it does help preserve some of the privacy and concerns, especially in the more -- in those areas where the lots are narrow or smaller and preserve that privacy. What we did here in is that there are many existing buildings that are two stories that go further back on a lot. Or today. It's just a pattern. Maybe the vast majority of the houses would match the mcmansion tent that we've modified, but some houses may have done an a addition and the second story went further back in the lot. Or it might be an existing house that actually fits within this tent, but it's a two story house, but really we heard from aia and others that maybe the house is saying if we do an addition it makes sense to do a second story addition, but we need to go back further on the lot. So one of the new pieces that's been added to the zoning code is preservation of existing houses which says if you preserve your existing house you can build a second story addition further back on the lot. What does this allow? It allows an existing house that already is further back than the first 80 feet of the lot to continue to be that way and still be able to do an addition? Allows a one story house that's in the front of the lot that someone might want to preserve the character and nature of that one-story house to be able to reach the -- build on to their house, but maybe they can now do that two steers in the year -- stories in the year of the yard and be able to do that addition without modifying the original house. Those are kind of incentives to preserve the existing house. But by having it as an [1:45:20 PM] incentive to reserve the existing house and maintaining this modified tent, it means that if one comes in and tears down a house, one cannot come back and build a two-story house from the front of the lot to the back of the lot. They're going to have to step the house down in the rear of the lot. So we think this is a modification that can meet a lot of the concerns that we heard from draft one while still maintaining some of these standards moving forward. On the back side of that same handout is a graph that shows height again by zone group across all the zone districts. And in the hatched area in this case it's talking about bonuses that are provided in some zone districts or zone groups that can be -- there are an incentive to providing affordable housing, so providing in the affordable housing housing pounds program. So there are hatches that say you can only have that height if you participate in the affordable housing bonus program. If one looks closely at the handouts as well you notice there are little lines and zoning districts. This just emphasizes that this is showing the maximum height allowed in any zone group, but individual zoned districts may have a lower height limit than kind of the overall group. So this gives you an idea generally as the spectrum of how heights relate to each other, but more of the fine grained detail of understanding when one looks at the zoning map and sees in the downtown area CC 40, what does that mean? CC 40 means you can get to 40 feet of height versus CC 80, which is 80 feet in height. So some of that fine grain detail is added into this diagram as well. That's the top half of the diagram. This is really talking about height. The bottom half of the diagram is trying to simplify and express how compatibility is being triggered now in new draft 2? [1:47:21 PM] And this was another item thawed in the draft 1 review process is better understanding when capability was triggered and who was that capability being triggered upon. So the rr through R 4 districts or the residential house scale zone districts, these Zones trigger additional building setbacks, building height step backs and/or landscape buffers on the following districts shown here. So in each of the districts that has a colored square below it, the residential house scale Zones trigger some form of capability. >> Pool: Question on that. The higher the building the more required? Is there a general kind of ratio that way? >> We'll jump into the details of changes to the way that we handle the capability in draft 1 to draft 2 in about four slides. >> Pool: Again. And then that relates back to a question that I would like you to answer on a previous slide where we had 80% and greater impervious cover, but you also talk about the Ike logical benefits that would be placed in those areas, but if you have impervious cover that's 80% and greater, where are those ecological benefits? And maybe you will talk about them later. >> We won't, so I'll try to answer that real quick here. So we're working through all the standards and how one rates how one is providing the same ecological benefit, but the tools that are going to be used are tools that you all have in your toolbox already. So you as a community already allow green roofs. Green roofs, depending on how they're designed, can provide ecological benefit by providing native plants and provide some ecological areas for butterflies, birds and other animals. But that's not the only other tool. There are green walls, there are living walls, rain gardens, planting of additional trees on a parcel. So there is a palate of tools that can then be [1:49:22 PM] picked from to help meet the same ecological benefit one would find parcels that have less than 80% impervious cover. >> Tovo: I want to ask a super quick question. The preservation of the original -- of the front structure, can you tell us where that is in our code? Which section? That's okay. We can go back. >> If you open up to one of the R districts, my collection is that it will be one of the R districts that has original form controls, so these are areas that used to have the mcmansion tent or implementing same thing as the Mac mention tent. Underneath all of that, there is one cell that talks about the incentives. And I can try and find an example and put it up on the screen, but I'll have to do that. >> Tovo: That's fine. I'll try to glance through, but that's helpful. Thanks. >> So again in terms of triggering compatibility, so they trigger some form of compatibility across the zone districts that show a box below. There are two zone groups in note here. Downtown currently today, single-family does not trigger capability standards. The draft 2 does not say that compatibility standards will be on the downtown zone. The other to note is mu 1. We talked about that earlier. Those are the zoning districts that are really house scale mixed use and the reason why compatibility is not triggered on this district is the zoning districts from the git-go, from the start, already has a 30-foot rear setback and already has other height limitations that bring it into the same alignment with the standards that one would find in mu 2 in terms of [1:51:24 PM] the compatibility standards that would be Friday triggered, so they're build into the zoning district. So there's no additional trigger by being next to a house scale zone district because you already have the 30-foot rear setback and you already have height limitations. The residential multiunit Zones trigger compatibility in the following zoning districts that are shown here in the second row so one can see that some of the mu and the Ms districts and the more intense industrial districts. And the last being the main street zoning districts, those districts only trigger some form of compatibility in those higher intensity higher zoned districts. So councilmember pool, going more to the form compatibility standards. In draft one we were trying to look at how can we improve upon the existing land development code, help you meet the goals of imagine Austin, but any about how we can adjust those far reaching compatibility standards that you have today which reached 540 feet from a triggering property. We heard really clearly in draft 1 that there were multiple things we were going to use across the zoning districts, they weren't necessarily applied consistently. In draft 1 we had three forms of this kind of triggered compatibility. We had the compatibility that was triggered in the effect Zones, we had - - non-transect Zones, compatibility in the transect Zones and compatibility standards in the T 6 zone districts which is now called uc district. Now that we've created the single spectrum, now that we've looked closely at what triggers each exalt items in other zoning districts, we are able to more consistently across the zoning districts apply an approach. And the standards have been recalibrated. And also being made to make it clearer in terms of in particular when a landscape buffer is required. So an existing title 25 we're showing here a [1:53:24 PM] diagram that we presented maybe three months ago. Draft 1, T 4 main street, draft 1 T 5 main street. Under existing title 25, the first 25 feet from a triggering parcel or use, you're not allowed to build a building. Within the 25 to 50 feet one with build a 30-foot tall building or two stories. Within 50 to 100 feet you could build 40 feet in height. Beyond 100 feet you got additional height based on the further distance away. And that extended all the way out to 540 feet. In draft 1 we had proposed in kind of the T 4 main street zone districts that in the first 25 feet of -- adjacent to the triggering property you could not build a building. But we had a different take on how we were going to handle the depth of building. We measured that in the T 4 main street that building was only allowed to be 100 feet deep and it had to be five to 10 feet of the property property line, which if one was beyond 10 feet from the property line, went 150 back, which on 150-foot lot you would be 110 feet and 40 feet from that property line. So it actually increased that minimum kind of 55-foot setback to 40 feet. But that varied on lot size, but we knew that many of the T 4 main street Zones were 150 feet. This is one of the items that we heard made things more complicated to understand and relate to other zone districts. In the T 5 main street we proposed within the first 25 feet you could get one story. Between 25 and 50 feet two stories. And beyond that there was a tier cake, series of step BACs in terms of the -- stepbacks in terms of the height. And we heard clearly this plus what was being used in the non-transect Zones were too many different approaches to the capability. -- To the compatibility. So in draft 2 here on the left we're still [1:55:24 PM] showing the existing title 25 example. In draft 2, Ms 2, which is the new refined version of T 4 main street where we've loosened up some of the form controls, but made it clearer in terms of the approach to compatibility. So properties that are adjacent to or across an alley of 20 feet or a right-of-way of 60 feet or less would have these items triggered. Within the first 15 feet of that triggering property, there should be a landscape buffer. And that landscape buffer is depending on what the triggering zone district is and what the adjacent zone district is. And that's now in the zone district, it tells you which buffer you have to provide if compatibility standards are triggered. Within the first 30 feet there's a no build zone, so there's no buildings allowed. Within 30 to 50 feet we're allowing 35 feet in height. And in the T 4 and the Ms 2 zoned district, beyond 50 feet it's really set by the zone district. In the Ms 2 zone district it's set by the zone district, but the zone district is already set to a maximum height of 45 feet. And in this case it would be 45 feet in height. In the refine meant of what was being used in T 5 main street, Ms 3, but also in districts of similar intensity, we have a 50-foot landscape buffer, but the type of buffer that is identified in the zoning district so you know whether what part of the landscape code one has to refer to and what kind of planting is expected in that buffer. The first 30 feet is a no build zone. Between 50 and 100 feet it's 45 feet in height. Beyond 100 feet of that triggering property it's the height set by the zone district. When one looks in the zoning code, all of this information is always [1:57:24 PM] provided in the table that discusses height. So whatever zone district you're in that table will tell you whether or not compatibility is triggered and when that compatibility is triggered, what are the additional setbacks, what are the additional stepbacks and whether you need to provide a landscape buffer. Refined uses to improve neighborhood compatibility. One example I talked about was the low cloud deck and no zoned district in draft one, some form of main street was applied to them. We have looked -- that's just one example where we have looked at some of these compatibility issues and we looked and refined the land use tables. So sometimes it meant creating a new zone district which had a more refined and limited set of uses that were allowed and in some cases it was actually looking at uses across all zone districts I terms of fine tuning that. Clarified access drilling R. Dwelling unit standards. We also understood that while we brought all of those under one umbrella of an Adu that that led to some confusion in terms of when one could build a caretaker's congruent in areas where you weren't allowed to build an Adu in the past. Draft 2 really clarifies the intent the of the ads. It uses a consistent way of measuring the size of those ads across zone districts. So we also have identified that this is another point where we will be working with both staff and the planning commission and zoning and platting commission on discussing ads. We heard a lot of discussion about 1100 square feet being too large for an Adu. We'd like to come back and have that discussion and understand, well, with all the regulations, when would you actually build an [1:59:25 PM] 1100 square foot Adu and in our quick mouth what we found is to build that you needed at least a 7,670 square foot lot. And your existing house had to be less than a .25 F.A.R. That combination already on a start, just having looked at some maps that were printed around 2005 that are up in one Texas center. Many of those parcels would not be able to build 1100 square feet because they are either too small of a lot or their house already tykes up more than .25 F.A.R. Because the regulations on the ads were .15 F.A.R. Or 1100 square feet. So again, what we want to do, though, is dig into the numbers and be able to have that conversation about how often on could this happen? What are the benefits of continuing this allow this to happen in the more limited times when it can happen? Because it would allow you to build a larger Adu, which might be more accessible for families, but also understand what is actually the number that's more typically going to happen on an existing lot with an existing house. Because one of the interesting things on the map that's up at OTC is that in 2005 there were already many parcels with single-family houses on them where the F.A.R. Was already above.had. So they're already beyond what your zoning codes allow which means those parcels are already taken out of the potential parcels to build an Adu. So we want to be able to have a more nuanced discussion about accessory dwelling units and about the right sizing of different tools. One of the things we touched on two weeks ago, we're providing more opportunities for housing in more Zones. In particular in zone districts in both the existing land development code and in draft 1 that we're only allowing nonresidential uses. So primarily the commercial zoned districts. [2:01:25 PM] We are allowing now some residential to be built there as well. And this has many benefits in this diagram here in salmon are parcels of land which allow housing today. And in the teal color are additional parcels of land that allow residential to be built in the future. The importance here is that what this does is it allows us along many of your corridors where in the past you've only allowed commercial, across city to allow more housing to be built, to come in as infill. And take some of those underutilized commercial properties and infill on those parcels some additional housing as well. Because we had heard both in the addition of thinking about how we can allow more housing more broadly citywide, how can we also make sure that we're providing housing along the imagine Austin corridors. So again primarily these parcels are located on those imagine Austin corridors. So it allows us both to accomplish moth both of those goals of both more housing along the corridors and more broadly across the city. Talking about the affordable housing bonus program, in draft 2 we were working to really clarify the bonus calculations. We've entered in all the data in terms of when you can take advantage of affordable housing bonus program in the zone district that tells you what additional height one might get, what additional number of units one might get or what additional square footage one might be able to get. Each of those tools or those possible incentives are calibrated for each of the zoning districts, so not every zoning district can take advantage of all three of those tools. And again, draft 2 as we've been working through this, just begin tens to refine many of those standards. The important thing to understand is that this bonus program directly influences four of the 65 tactics deemed needed [2:03:26 PM] in the Austin strategic housing plan. -- Strategic housing plan. It does affect the taxes that are possible to implement through the land development code so many of the tactics that were talked about were using tif funding or alternative sources of financing. Those are things that fall outside of the development code. It's important to also remember that the housing blueprint really looked at the fact that the land development code through a density bonus program, so the affordable housing housing program, can only provide a small amount of the overall affordable housing needs of Austin. I want to emphasize that existing programs, downtown, U.N.O., the existing vmus that have been built, those programs will continue to remain, and you can see here where those are within the city. So each of these colored areas indicate the different tools that are used. We're working with staff to get this map produced as a citywide map, PDF that can be produced, but also on a basis for you to see what the zoning and the basis and the tools and the maps that we're showing in this presentation. Draft 2 proposes to expand the amount of land that the affordable housing bonus program can be applied to. So currently today you have 6200 acres that the bonus programs apply to. The new proposal adds an additional -- sorry, covers 18,500 acres. And one can see in these parcels that are filled in with black how that's spread out across the city. This was accomplished with that expansion of housing. So when we expanded housing to be allowed in the formerly only [2:05:28 PM] commercial districts we were also to apply or provide the opportunity to take advantage of the affordable housing bonus program. So that also -- it helped us expand the potential pool of land that could take advantage of that program. >> Houston: Mayor? Before you go on, Mr. Mickey, I've asked for orientation on these maps because you can't tell where. Can you tell me on slide 60 where the yellow is, is that I-35 or where is I-35 on this map? >> So I-35 is -- there's kind of a dark teal that's indicating downtown. So I-35 is just running to the right of that. So north orientedwise is the top of the slide. Other landmarks is -- >> Pool: I think the area that you're looking at is the domain. That's over above 183 and east and a little bit west of mopac. >> Houston: So again, it would be helpful if there were orientations to north, south, east and west in just the major corridors so people know when you're talking about. >> And councilmember Houston, I think we are working with staff to get each one of these maps again put into the same format that the zone district maps have been released in, the the PDFs, so again it will be by district and have all the street names and have the north arrow to help identify where you are in the city. With that I'm going to hand the presentation over to John fregonese to talk about the compatibility analysis. >> Mayor Adler: Ms. Pool, did you have a question? >> Pool: Yes, and maybe others do too. On page 50 we're talking about compatibility and you've got height versus landscaping. Is that a choice, and if so who makes it? Is it a requirement? If it's a requirement, can it be waived, and if so, by whom? >> So the landscaping is a 15-foot requirement and depending on the [2:07:28 PM] buffer it states what kind of planting is asked for in that area. It be has the equivalent compliance on lots where there might need to be a different solution proposed, but that is again they need to show that it is performing at least the same, if not better than what the standards are that landscape has proposed. >> Pool: Have you have a choice of how to fulfill it. >> The requirement is 15 feet and then there's a requirement for the number of trees and other plantings that's required within that. So that's -- apologies. That is the standard option. There is another alternative which is to go with the alternative equivalence for clients to process in which the applicant has to find and show that when they are proposing, how it's different, but how it's actually at least the same if not better than the standards, the landscaping. >> Pool: Okay. And then who makes that value judgment of it being either at least the same or better. >> Usually that's done by the landscaping reviewers, the environmental outers and development service department, that's something that we actually have today where you might have of having maybe a different species of tree, maybe having larger caliper trees, but maybe not as many, and under certain circumstances. >> Pool: Okay. So there's a choice there and it's a conversation that happens at the staff level. It doesn't trickle up to the city council, is that right? >> That's correct. >> Pool: Okay. And then the other slide with the setbacks, I'm interested aside from the landscape buffer, what modeling are we doing or are we planning to do to capture what the localized storm water runoff will be [2:09:29 PM] into the backyards of those smaller homes? In this picture, which I know exists, you have the single- family home a block off a corridor and you have a fairly -- a big volume, whatever that is. It's an apartment or it's a commercial center, and it is getting closer to the back setback to the property line. We're requiring some kind of a buffer. How are we modeling the runoff from the new impervious cover on whatever that building might be and what requirements will we have to ensure -- because he think we already had it in our code that whatever you do on your property is not supposed to negatively affect my property, which in reality rarely is actually taken care of. You only find out that it's impacting you when the big storm comes. And then it's too late really to do anything. So what are we doing in advance to model what that storm water runoff, the localized flooding, would look like, and ensuring that when those developments are platted and approved that adequate provision for that is made and that it actually occurs? What enforcement and what policing of that? >> So I think I can speak to parts of that request, councilmember pool. One thing I would note is that in the new draft 2, the setback from the triggering property actually is increased by five feet. So in your existing compatibility standards it's 25 feet. We're proposing that the first 30 feet there are no buildings and there's 15 feet of landscaping. So just to da clarify that the building is actually getting pushed back five feet further where compatibility is triggered. In terms of the runoff it's important to recognize that both in draft you 1 and draft 2 we are continuing to move forward with [2:11:29 PM] watershed's recommendations that have been implemented in the code of requiring all properties to deal with their flood mitigation. Currently in your existing land development code if you are a property that already has, let's say 90% impervious cover, and one were to rebuild at 90% impervious cover, one does not need to deal with any of that flood indication. Those are the standards you have today. Watershed proposed in draft 1 and we continue to propose in draft 2 that that same property, were it to be redeveloped, has to deal with all other flood mitigation needs. And that's hugely important to focus on because if we don't take care of those properties that aren't dealing with their flood mitigation today and if we keep pushing that off, we cannot -- we cannot incrementally address the larger flooding issues in Austin. >> Pool: And I think that that provision is one of the strongest elements of the codenext proposal that I've seen since we started having these rollouts. And I'm glad that we're highlighting this because I want to make sure -- because this is such an important element, that it doesn't get lost and that the community knows that is an element, it was in draft 1 as well, and we have-- there's a lot of -- there's a lot of importance and critical importance I attach to this piece. So I want to make sure this doesn't get eroded, so to speak, over time. >> Councilmember, interim city manager Joe pantalion. I want to remind the mayor and council too that this group has asked for a more detailed briefing on drainage and watershed protection issues and staff is prepared to do that possibly even at your next work session so we can do a deeper dive on that when you're ready. >> Pool: That would be really great. I was going to ask officially and formally for the modeling for the localized flooding, so maybe we'll have some kind of a tool that your staff is preparing that can pivot and look at various properties. >> I know that staff is working on certain [2:13:30 PM] analysis of impervious cover, doing some pilot modeling, and we can certainly give you an update. >> Pool: That would be great. Thank you. >> Garza: I have a question. Slide 52, I believe, you talk about the ads and the overall allowance, when is that going to happen. Is that something that -- is it your opinion that that will be in the final draft that comes before council? We're just wondering when that discussion happens because it does need to happen. >> Our intent is to continue that discussion at the planning and zoning and over the next few months get -- have the discussion about and see if changes are needed. The intent is that the draft that would go to you all for first reading would have -- would have the recommendations of staff and planning and zoning. Sorry, I should also mention environmental commission and historic landmark as well. Landmark commission. >> The size of the Adu has been highlighted by the boards and commissions. Some felt that the structures were too large. And I know there's also been discussion by some of the commission members that they want to make sure that they were available for families as far as the size of the unit. But right now our ordinance has tracked what was in the ordinance that council approved previously, so if your lot was 5750 in size, the maximum square footage that you could build today of an Adu is only 862 square feet. And I think as John said you would have to get over 7,000 square feet to develop the maximum size of 1100 square feet. I think a little a little over 7,000 square feet. >> Garza: Yeah. I think that's an important point that there are very few points that allow ads right now that you could even build an [2:15:33 PM] 1100 square foot. I would also like to point out that what is considered family friendly to some is family - - might not be, but to some families they could -- they would love to live in a thousand square foot home in parts of the city. So I hope we don't get into this discussion about what defines family friendly. Because it's different for every family. >> And Adu plays a big role in imagine Austin because it allows folks to age in place, whether they're young or they're old, it provides for that diversity of housing over more neighborhoods, where right now you may only have single-family homes, maybe some larger apartments, but by allowing ads then you could have single people or couples that might be able to live whether they're old or young in these structures and be in the same neighborhood where they may have had a house for years, but choose not to have something as large to maintain or maybe more affordable for them to live in. >> Garza: Yeah, I certainly believe they are a tool for a variety of scenarios and even at 1100 square feet. >> One of those scenarios could house a family. >> Pool: Well, in fact, the house I live in was 1100 square feet to begin with and it was before the people who owned it before I did added a little bit at the back so it's 1400 square feet. It was plenty big. And it had three bedrooms and there was a family with kids with two bathrooms that grew up there. And there is definitely a thing, I think, in American society, for the larger home, and that has some kind of a status attached to it, but I like the smaller house. It's not as much to clean. It's easier to keep up with. And it doesn't cost as much and it fits in the neighborhood really well. So I'm -- the larger isn't necessarily better. I do think that we should scope the size of the ads to have some [2:17:37 PM] proportionality related to the size of the home that it is accompanying. And also we have to keep in mind the impervious cover so that I think what councilmember Garza was saying that the impervious cover would probably limit the size as well as the -- the lot size would limit the size of whatever auxiliary did dwelling unit that we would put on this site. But I want to give a shout-out for the smaller homes because I live in one and it works just great. Having lived in a larger one as well. >> And the amount of impervious cover allowed on a lot would regulate a home with an Adu the same way it would without one. It's the same amount of impervious cover. You don't get a bonus of impervious cover just because you add an Adu. >> Pool: Right. So if you already are at 43% you really don't have any percentage to add an Adu to that lot. Thanks. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter? >> Alter: Thank you. I appreciate the issue of the ads where you are looking for more policy direction from the planning commission or from council. I'm curious if there are other areas where you're feeling like some additional policy guidance or there are additional opportunities. We spent a lot of time in some of our previous discussions talking about the levers that we could be moving to recalibrate and I'm just wondering if you could speak a little bit to what some of those are, or if there are areas kind of either the lack of policy direction or existing policy is constraining achieving some of the goals that you have heard that we have in this process. >> I think one that we are discussing are the ones related to height. I think there will probably be some continuing discussions on affordability in [2:19:37 PM] particular about deeper affordability. We can expect those to be a discussion item that will probably continue all the way through to council and generally what we've been discussing is certainly you can get to deeper affordability, except then you maybe cannot get to as many units to be available under the limitations that we have by state law and incenting affordable housing. >> Alter: So maybe we can have some time when we're having these sessions to have some of those conversations. If there are other ones, maybe you haven't got those all listed out. I know you're preparing a lot and I personally know that it would be very helpful to have those highlighted so that we know, you know, these are the things we're calibrating. I really appreciated the fact that in this new version we have put the F.A.R. Requirements back in. And I think that was a step in a positive direction. With respect to ads, I just want to say that I think there's multiple elements of that conversation, not just the size of the ads. We are going to be having a conversation about the fees and development -- from development services with respect to ads and there may be some opportunity to think about do we incentivize the smaller adus, make those easier through having plans already together that are approved that reduce that or -- there's some ways to get some of these, since we're not going to be able to get 1100 square foot ads everywhere, maybe some of those in some places we'd want to incentivize those smaller adus and we have other things that at our disposal that may be decisions that we're making at the same time that we're making this code. And we need to be considering those things as well and integrating them into this discussion. [2:21:39 PM] The second thing that I wanted to ask, I really appreciated how in this presentation you told us a little bit about what you heard from draft 1 and how you were reacting to that. And I think as people try to digest draft 2, the more of that that we can do to help people understand, okay, this is what we heard, this is what this is a response to, you know, we heard your concerns. This is in fact a process that we're iterating through trying to get to the best possible code. I think that's really helpful. We didn't talk a lot today specifically about the map and how the map was made for individual parcels. I think that same kind of exercise needs to be presented to us and to the community with respect to the map, particularly, you know, what is the summary of the criteria that was used as you approached doing the second map? Because I think there's a lot of questions that people have about trying to understand, you know, the model and the process for getting to that with the second map, and that rather than us all trying to field individual questions for individual parcels on that, I'm assuming that as you approached it you had criteria and you had an approach and that you did learn from draft 1 if there's a way that you can find to communicate some of that to us and to the public, I think that would be extremely helpful. I know the planning commission and zoning I think have asked for something similar, but I really do think that that's a very helpful way for us to understand the evolution of this process and to come back to where we started where we said, you know, draft one was version one, now we'll have version two and then version three and whatnot. So we could see the evolution and that this is that iterative process, but we understand how we move from one place to the next. >> And councilmember, that was a request made [2:23:40 PM] by the planning commission and the zap kind of chimed in last night in agreement and we said we would have backdraft 2 within the week. So I should be bringing something back to them next week. Realizing that we didn't remap the map all over again. I mean, basically we started with that new spectrum of Zones and since we're not using the traditional Zones and transect Zones anymore, we remapped the whole area. I think John did a good job of detailing that in a couple of slides, but we'll have that at the commissions and we can share that with council as well. >> Alter: Great, thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Mr. Casar? >> Casar: Can you explain for me one more time on you've got on slide 36 hatches for impervious and building cover, and then on slide 41 the hatched others for building heights. Can you explain to me what the heights are in one and the other one? >> In slide, and I'll advance on to slide 37 because at least in the presentation it's a little bit bigger. So the solid portion of the bar graph as it moves up is your building cover limit. So -- and then the hatched area is the additional impervious cover you get, generally speaking, for that lot. So it was just really trying to be able to show impervious cover and building cover at the same time. >> Casar: Got it. And then for 41, which is your heights. And as it relates to density bonus, can you explain to me the hatches versus the lettering inside of the bars? >> Sure. So the -- again, the solid area is what you -- the maximum height you can get without the affordable housing bonus program. And then the hatched area is the additional height you can get with the affordable housing bonus program. And then where it lists individual zoned districts is because in that grouping of Zones it varies. So for instance, in mu 4, in mu 4 B there is no [2:25:41 PM] affordable housing bonus. So one can only build up to -- let me double-check the height. Can build up to 60 feet in height. And with the bonus program in mu 4 a, you can build up to 75 feet in height. So again, we're trying to add some of the nuances of the zone districts while still keeping you, as one step back from the image a little bit, understand in the larger picture on the groups, what's going on with height, but as one looks more closely one can understand a little bit more information on individual zone districts. When we originally created this we only did it by group, but what we found is it represented -- it was a little bit misleading because it didn't really emphasize the fact that a lot of these zone districts have additional form controls that really fine tune that height. So we wanted to try to have this represent both. >> Casar: >> Casar: And when I first got briefed on this, I thought there was an affordable housing bonus program in R 4, and in this it would seem there's not because there's no hatching. >> So the affordable housing bonus program again offers three kinds of incentives. Height, number of units and additional floor area. In the R 4 zone district, and again, if this isn't correct, we'll double-check, but I believe in the R 4 zone districts it is the same height but you can get additional units. So that's -- in this case this is only showing you the height one could get through the affordable bonus program. >> Casar: That would make sense. >> We can could create another chart that shows you the different bonuses allowed in each district as well. >> Casar: That's useful. So this probably isn't the most useful chart for understanding if the affordable housing bonus is just an honest assessment of height in each district. So that makes sense to me now how both of these were drawn. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: Okay. Mayor pro tem? >> Tovo: Can you tell me what F 25 is as a [2:27:43 PM] zoning category and if it's in my zoning book? >> It should be in the other zone districts, a 25 is form -- F 25 is former 25 zoned parcels and those are just again indicating that those parcels are remaining under title 25 through this codenext process. >> Tovo: Thank you. And mayor, I have -- [inaudible]. One more. >> Mayor Adler: Go ahead. >> Tovo: I haven't had an opportunity to read this cover to cover yet -- [laughter]. >> If I may offer one thing that we mentioned last night that for our readers to know, that items in text that are green -- >> Tovo: That is exactly what I was about to ask you. >> Are the changes from draft 1. So originally they were red to more closely adhere toed red line, red lining a draft, but we switched to green. It was a little softer on the eyes. >> Tovo: Yeah, better. But I did want to say -- so I was prefacing it with the caveat that I haven't read it cover to cover, but I have heard one piece of feedback from somebody who has embarked on that already, and was reading it online and noticed the green text, but in comparing to draft 1 noticed that the green text seems to signal additional text that's been added, but that there were passages that that person was finding that were new and added that were not marked in green text. Soy just wanted to call that to your attention and really to the public's attention that it sounds -- again, I haven't verified it, but I have a lot of faith in this particular reader and the care -- the careful analysis that was going on. So there may be additional text or changed text that is not currently marked in green in the online version. [2:29:50 PM] Version. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Thank you. One area I'm getting a lot of questions about is respect to the F.A.R.S and the Adu and what the limit is. I believe that the .4 F.A.R. Includes the Adu. Can you provide clarification or is it cumulative to be a .55? >> Councilmember alter -- >> Alter: In r3c. >> That's an item we need to clarify on the draft code. The F.A.R. Of the accessory dwelling unit counts toward the F.A.R. Of the primary building. Where the primary building is limited to .4 F.A.R., that .5 is not above and beyond that .4. >> Alter: Okay. >> I would offer when I noted on the accessory dwelling units there needs to be a discussion. One of the items of discussion is there are many existing houses in the city of Austin that already have a .4 F.A.R. Or very close. And pretty much to the point one would not be able to build an aud because you are not going to build a 50 square foot Adu. >> Alter: Call that a shed. >> And there's the opportunity to ask the question of if one was to provide incentive where one preserved the existing house, could one get additional F.A.R. To build the Adu but in no case go beyond the impervious cover limit. Is that an incentive that allows you to preserve a house but also provide the opportunity for building Adu on other parcels. We feel these are the kinds of discussions that need to be happening about accessory dwelling units both in terms of size and that F.A.R. Being within kind of the overall limit of the primary building. But that really needs discussion as we felt in draft 2 we weren't prepared to make that decision without a discussion. >> Alter: So can you for the public who is trying to make sense of all these terms, can [2:31:52 PM] you explain how that distinction between the F.A.R. Limits and the impervious cover and how that would -- how they would think about what that would mean? >> Sure. So both floor area ratio and impervious cover limit are -- they are ratios of your lot size to one of those two items. So impervious cover, it's the ratio of the amount of ground that is impervious to the overall lot size. And so in most of the R districts that's a impervious cover limit of 45 which means up to 45% of the lot area can be impervious. F.A.R. Works a little differently. It's still a ratio to the lot area, but that floor area is based on every story of the building. So if you have a two-story building, you count every floor of that building and then you compare that area to the area on the lot. That provides some flexibility that in a F.A.R. Of .4 you can build a single-story house that has an area that is equal to .4 of the lot area in most of the R districts, or one could build two-story house that only covers .2 of the area of the overall lot or 20% of the overall lot. So it works a little differently than the impervious cover. But both of those are ratios to the overall lot size. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Something probably easy, I I had a 10,000 -- I could build a two-story house with two floors of 2,000 and still being 4,000, but would be limited to 2,000 per floor. >> Alter: But then if you were saying you were still limited by the impervious cover -- >> Both would have to comply [2:33:56 PM] to impervious cover. >> Alter: So it would be 4500? >> So impervious cover would include driveways, sidewalks, carports, roofed areas, patios, an Adu so all of that is included in impervious cover. So if I had a 4,000 square foot house that would only leave me -- 45%, only 500 more to put in driveways and sidewalks. That's why a lot of times people build a two story house because then they have a lot more impervious cover and it's available to use for driveways, sidewalks, patios or whatever. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Mayor Adler: In the presentation, are we stopping at 3:00 or 4:00 today? >> [Inaudible] >> Mayor Adler: We have another preparation so probably want to get to that quickly. Mr. Casar. >> Casar: I'll make my note quick. Page 60 which shows the total future bonus areas, I really -- I think it's great that the acreage of bonus areas is increasing by that much, but I think I and the council through some votes have really tried to emphasize that we want to affirmatively further affordable housing and seems to me there's a pretty significant -- some pretty significant gray areas that aren't going to have a bonus area in them in this draft that are some of the highest opportunity areas in the city. And I recognize that some of that may be because there isn't commercial land there that we're converting for residential or not corridors, but one of the achievements this draft says it does is it brings that missing middle affordable housing bonus type into the code and I think that we've been asking pretty consistently for staff to follow up on 2015 resolution related to affirmatively furthering fair housing and we [2:35:57 PM] need to get analysis about how this code does that and where it fails in doing that. It would seem to me one measure would be are we producing those income restricted units in some of the areas of highest opportunity. You are doing that some, but if you look at the map there is a pretty -- there are some pretty significant gaps in some of the opportunities where families have -- could have some of the most upward mobility if we were to give them the opportunity there. That's just off -- when I looked at this slide, it's exciting to see it expand so much, but also just immediately seemed to me to stick out there is kind of a donut hole in some of the places where we would want this the most. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you. Move forward with the presentation. >> Tovo: Mayor, I hope that you and I and others on the message board can also talk about setting up some codenext sessions. I think we have a lot to talk about, probably a lot about the next presentation that's coming forward and very little time here today to do it so I hope we can do our regular code next work session. >> Mayor Adler: Lets you and I work on that. Yes. >> Great. This is the zoning capacity analysis of the new zone, of the new zoning map and code. I'm going to go through a bit of a refresher in terms of what we've got given the time. The one thing we wanted to emphasize is that we are showing capacity not a forecast. So capacity is kind of the size of the glass. It's the amount of land times the zoning gives you how much could be built there. A forecast involves figuring out what would -- what would actually happen over time. We are using your strategic housing plan target as kind of a forecast, and obviously if you have more forecast than capacity, you have water -- water comes out of the glass and spills over. So, you know, one of the goals [2:37:58 PM] is to have the capacity greater than the forecast so the water stays inside. And you basically are able to achieve it. The one thing I want to add about capacity is that as opposed to forecasts that are often elements outside of your control, you can control capacity. You have the volume control to change it around. So that is within your control. It's an important element to look at when you are doing a rezoning. I'll go through this real fast because it's the same as we showed last time. We use buildings to calibrate the Austin market. We've got about 81. For the current code we used buildings calibrated to 2010 to 2014. We added some stuff more consistent to the new code. We started capacity analysis with your current code and all the overlays. We took out constraints and there's a number of constraints other than flood plains and we ended with buildable and unconstrained land in 2014. We have updated that to may of 2017, about 3,000 acres, additional acres have developed so those came out. And we are basically using that as the foundation for vacant land. We then went through an analysis where we took rent structures in Austin. There's 17 rent Zones. We then went through and ran a proforma to see if any of these seven structures would make sense to build. We're not worried about developers, we're just trying to see what behavior and what incentives the current code gives to redevelop land. So we have basically looking to see where redevelopment is feasible. And that's how we picked the redeveloped area. What is feasible for [2:39:59 PM] redevelopment given the rent, the cost of the land. So this is the buildable lands inventory. This is the updated buildable lands. We've added the puds into that. Based on the 2014 analysis, their capacity. We took out Robinson ranch because most people seemed to agree that's not available in the short term. We added all the parcels that were greater than one, in other words she all the redevelopment parcels. There's about 2100 acres of that. And we've added as part of that the new mixed use Zones that were previously commercial only. We made those feasible for mixed use. So that all goes goo the current thing. So we have a PDF of this that we are going to be providing as well that -- it's at a high enough resolution and with enough roads and so forth you can zoom down and see what was lit up. We have in terms of Austin, it's important to see that about 88% of the city is neither vacant nor redevelopable. So it's not stable. 10% of the city is vacant and assumed to develop. And the redevelopment is only about 1.3% of the city. But that 1.3% gives you 40% of your new units. So those are higher density, clustered around transit, corridors and centers, those kinds of things, so a little bit of that goes a long way. We have a little sample of what the -- the low hanging fruit that is identified. Just to show you the kinds of things that it's hitting up -- it's picking up. One, this is a gas station and 7 eleven on Guadalupe. This is a car part, car recycling on south congress. This is a Texas department of public safety, an old building, not assessed for [2:42:00 PM] very much and this is a -- a strip mall called -- what's it called? Spectrum. And this is a sonic and an auto parts store. Just to show you the kinds of things that shows up, basically fairly large, low developed, older structures that are the ones that the model picks as being the low-hanging fruit for redevelopment. When we apply -- the thing we've done is we've applied the zoning or the same methodology to the three zoning schemes. The existing zoning, draft 1 and draft 2. And we're comparing it in this with your housing target. You can see that the current zoning is about 84,000 units. And the draft code -- draft 2 is about twice as many, about 160,000 units. The difference is the -- compared to the targets, your target has more single-family. You just don't have the room for that. You are replacing it with multi-family, a lot of it mixed use and you are replacing it with the missing middle. We are getting about 7,000 units of redevelopment parcels, units that are on parcels that redevelopment with existing zoning and 10,700 under draft 2. We're looking at that in detail. There may be some modifications we could recommend to lessen that to get it down to the 7,000 or less level. And this is just the housing mix. If you take out some of the excess capacity multi-family, you can see there's opportunities in single, large and small lot single-family and the missing middle, the [2:44:01 PM] duplex, the Adu, the colt age home, the townhouse, those kinds of things that provide options where you can't provide single-family because you just don't have the land. This is called a heat map so it kind of shows where the housing is in a graphic way. This is the current housing location where you are getting housing under your current zoning. And this is where you are getting it under draft 2. So we'll again provide more detailed maps so you can see where it is, but it kind of shows you where theness kanaly it shows up. And again, if you compare that -- where the capacity shows up. If you compare that, you can see a correspondence between the plan and where you are getting capacity. And we have this broken down by district so you can see where the housing is. We can give you more detail on this if it's interesting. And basically any polygon we can give you information on. We're working with aid for them to get housing and projected students by high school cashment area. This is employment capacity. You can see not as much variation, but still a fairly good jobs to housing ratio in the draft 2. This is the current area of development under your current code. And this is under the draft 2 code. So you can see again a correspondence with the centers and corridors showing up in that. We run -- because we're doing buildings, we can kind of pull out affordability and income, and this is where the units land in the spectrum of affordable to the mfi. And you can see there's a lot of units in the more -- above [2:46:03 PM] 80% mfi and up. And again, that's very typical of the world. That's -- but we have provided -- this does provide more affordable units in the 50 to 80% mfi category. These are not -- these are market rate units so this is by and large at the 80%, not the 50%. It's pretty much 75 and 80%. It's a smaller apartment that's good for a two or three person household, one, two and three. A lot of it coming from the mixed use and main street Zones. And a lot of it is basically concentrated on the corridors. But we are getting affordability in that area. We are going to be in the next couple weeks adding to this the density bonus units and the other income restricted units that we can see coming out of this plan. But this is market rate, and it's kind of a good thing to have a lot of this capacity at that level because it makes it easier for you to go to the lower income ranges. We are also tracking affordable current market rate affordable units especially at the 60% to 80%, and we're going to be using that to see where the redevelopment is threatening existing affordable units and try to turn that down and make some recommendations about some modifications on that. We did some transportation indicators. The easiest one being proximity to transit. Last time we used current transit stops based on councilmember kitchen's request to look at current and future, we went to a buffer. So this is basic if you are along -- who is within a quarter mile of existing or future transit. And you can see right now it's [2:48:03 PM] about 250,000 housing units are within current and future transit. Codenext gives you about almost 400,000 units. And you can see the increment is 140,000 units, roughly. You remember there's only 160,000 units so almost all the units are within a quarter mile of existing and future transit. With housing there's not as much of a distinction. All three zoning schemes are about the same. Jobs, I'm sorry, this is jobs. All the jobs are within the quarter mile. You are getting most of the increase there. About a little more than half of the increase is within the quarter mile of transit. This is decreasing the increase. So under both schemes your vmt goes up. And the codenext is about half of the increase of the standard. We're going to dive into this and see if there's other things that could be done to get maybe some other options to get that a little lower. We've also looked at school children. I think it's important to see that compared to other cities you are similar to Dallas and Houston and -- in terms of renters and owners. And in Austin right now about 42% of school children are renters. 58% owners. So it's important to understand that a large number of school children are in rental units so it's not like they are disappearing. They tend to be not in the core though. This is where households with school-age children are now. This is where renters with school-age children are. And we're looking at -- this is where owners with school-age children live. [2:50:04 PM] You do have more in the core from ownership, but we're working with aid. We actually have a prediction that comes out of this kind of standardized aid -- the director of planning there is helping us calibrate this for what actually happens in Austin public schools to be able to show projected increase. You don't tend not to get a lot of school children out of the rental products in the downtown, but you do get a lot of them in the rental products elsewhere where you are showing and we want to be able to do that as well as looking for products especially in the housing that's coming up that's friendly for school children, especially the missing middle kind of thing that's going to be substituting for traditional single- family going forward. And that's kind of a real quick overview of the capacity estimates we've done. I know we're short for time so I rushed it a little bit. >> Tovo: Councilmember Houston. >> Houston: Thank you, mayor pro tem. And thank you for the information. It was rushed, but -- >> I'm sorry. >> Houston: That's okay. That's okay. On slide 119, did you take into consideration that these are different school districts? We are just looking at the children of school sage in the unit so we didn't look at school districts. We do have that map and we will be looking at that. >> Houston: But you kept talking about Austin independent school district. >> They have been reaching out to us to get -- to understand this from their point of view so they have given us gs coverages in greater detail for the Austin school district. >> Houston: I'm looking at some of the density of school children capacity, way to the east and those in manor ISD. >> Right. >> Houston: Okay. >> And we will be reporting it by school district as well for them. >> Houston: Okay. And because I'm going to have to go, may I ask my other [2:52:05 PM] question? I wasn't surprised, but it was such a glaring starkness that on that slide that shows where housing capacity is coming from, 20% is coming from district 1. And so the question is I guess how much is this from redevelopment in central east Austin versus building on vacant land in northeast Austin? >> We can give you that -- we can give you that number and be able to locate what is redevelopment, and perhaps we should split out two maps, one for redevelopment, one for vacant land. >> Houston: I would appreciate it. >> Alter: Is that possible for us to see that for tall the districts? >> Certainly. We'll do it. If we do it for one, we'll do it for all. It just as easy to do that. >> Tovo: Other quick questions? Councilmember pool. >> Pool: So we have 160,000 new housing units in draft 2 and 30,000 of those units, Mr. Fregonese, would be priced from the 50 to 80% mfi? >> Yes. It's more towards the 80%. >> Pool: Yeah. So we have a situation where many of our residents aren't living in our market affordable units because they are moving to outskirts for more affordability and you can see that in the maps. It looks like we'll be creating more market affordable units. Can you give me a breakdown where the 30,000 market affordable units would be, the bedroom mix, projected represent and where they would be located? And then how they would fit into the 50 to 80% mfi. What I see here with zoning cases that are filed is developers will develop where they think they can get the maximum roi and it isn't necessarily tracking it all with these maps. And I -- and I don't expect that to change. So what is the -- how do you [2:54:07 PM] recommend or how do you expect that Austin will be able to direct the new development and the lower cost affordable units in places in town, we have never been able to do that to date. >> You are creating new opportunity for housing in places that it's not permitted now outside of the high-rent districts. That's one reason is that some of this is located -- and I will be able to do that, but I can tell you just from looking at it that they are primarily in the main street and mixed use districts, which tend to be on corridors, and the lower cost units tend to be outside of the main core because the rent is lower, and they tend to be smaller. They are 750 to 900 square feet. They are,, you know,, 11, 12, 13 hundred dollar a month rents. And they are affordable at the 45 to 55,000 a year. >> Pool: Number of bedrooms and price for square footage. We need to arrive at a standard metric for what each piece of space costs and the square foot costs I think would be a good basic standard measure for that. >> There is a change in that your current code incentivizes, gives a -- gives a financial incentive to build a large unit because you get more rent for that. As long as there is a market for that large unit, your zoning, which tends to have a unit per acre cap, tends to make people want to build a larger unit because you can build a lot of square footage. There's just so many units you can put in so divide 100,000 square fight by 50 units -- the new form is F.A.R. And -- you don't have that. You can build smaller units or bigger units and that's a way to make units economical. [2:56:08 PM] It doesn't help with the family because a lot of these are one and two-bedroom units. >> Pool: Or studios. >> Or studios. But it do provide a path for affordability for the 85 or the 75% of people that don't have children at home. The one and two-person households. >> Pool: It's just that my experience on council in approving the multiple units, the multi-family units is that the developers would prefer to build the studio and one bedroom and we have a very difficult time insisting on two and three bedrooms. They say there's not the market for it and so rarely do we get more than one or two per -- >> Right. >> Pool: It's a really low percentage and we have talked about family friendly or whatever kind of phrase you want to use and the mayor pro tem was saying earlier there have been numerous resolutions that previous councils have passed on how important it is for us to maintain the ability to -- for families to live in the core of the city and continue our good public schools with the kids flowing into and renewing all those neighbors as people age out and new families move in. And my hope and expectation is when we're done with codenext is we will only encourage and make it easier for families to live in the central core or whenever around the city they want to give and have their -- live and have their kids go to the schools. We do that by ensuring we have enough bedrooms -- the size of the house can be rather smaller, I live in a fairly small unit, but it does have three bedrooms. So if you had a family with a boy and girl, everybody would have their own bedrooms. So -- or three boys, three girls, they could still house them. My goal through all of this is to ensure that housing for families is encouraged and there's room for it and that [2:58:09 PM] it is affordable. If you could help us with the metrics. The bedroom mix, the projected rent and where you would find them located, that would be helpful. >> I'll be glad to. And I have to say it's -- a lot of that is going to end up in the missing middle, that big blue -- >> Pool: That's what people also call it. >> And it's a little more expensive, but a 1200 square foot duplex is kind of where you are going to find that family housing in some of the new schemes or things like that, townhouses, cottages, you know, extra units in some of the r3, r4, r5. >> Pool: The neighborhood I live in when it was first built in the '50s, they were significantly smaller than 1200 square feet. It is possible it's just that we have a different measuring stick we use these days. I just want to make sure we have enough room to have a bedroom so a family might be able to fit in and not have everybody sleeping in the same bedroom. >> Tovo: Councilmember Casar. Sorry to move us quickly. That's one of my favorite topics and I look forward to talking more with you about what tools you see that are incentives -- councilmember Casar. >> Casar: I like councilmember Houston was struck by that slide 96 and also actually if you flip to 93 really quickly, I just wanted to highlight again the same point that -- that I made during the other presentation. I think it's highlighted even more by this map. Councilmember Zimmerman always said we didn't have a loop in Austin but I always think we do. If you look at 360 and Ben white and 183 to the east and north, under existing zoning capacity it still -- it's kind of glaring we still have this hole inside of our loop there in some of our highest opportunity areas where there isn't housing -- isn't much [3:00:10 PM] housing capacity even though there's so much more in other parts of the central city. If you flip to the next slide on 94, it seems like we're starting to fix it a little bit, but there's still this hole inside of the central city where we aren't adding housing capacity under draft 2. I just want to flag for my colleagues that's something I want to keep working on because -- if we're trying to reduce vehicle miles traveled, then bring folks -- have housing opportunities inside the city and higher opportunity areas it seems odd we have that hole in the first place and it looks like we're addressing it somewhat, but there's still a gap there. So I just wanted to point that out. And also I do appreciate the showing us what the 80% mfi units are. I look forward to filling in those less than 80% of those less than 60 and less than 30% mfi units when you can measure them. Do you know when you all are going to be able to come back and tell us how many income restricted units this would create? >> We'll have in two weeks, we're working on that with echo and lauralie will be here and we'll have more answers. >> Casar: That's helpful. I think it is useful to see what the 80% units are because we can buy them down and get them further down, and I concur with councilmember pool that people can live in smaller spaces. I have lots of low-income families in my district that do live a one-bedroom apartment. If there was a way to keep the same square foot inch but have it be two bedrooms, that might be useful. But I think the biggest barrier for people is just being able to afford to live in it. That's a -- I look forward to continue to see how we can get that rent distribution further and further down. >> Tovo: Anyone else with a last quick question? [3:02:13 PM] >> Alter: I just want to make sure we're going to get to the last part about the open houses and stuff so that -- >> Tovo: Sure. Let's go ahead and skip to that. I know there are more questions and we've really cut this discussion short, but we're out of time and I know you've made commitments to the public about what happens after our sex. -- Our session. Take us through quickly what the plan is. >> Renteria: Can I just ask one quick question? >> Tovo: Councilmember Renteria. >> Renteria: I know some of these blank areas, you're looking at the map, lakeway, rolling wood, outside of our city limits, if you could put the other cities that are around there so that -- >> We could add sunset valley, lakeway and we could add those. >> Renteria: We're not studying those areas. >> No, and there's a significant portion of the city that is also canyon land preserve that will not be developed. Maybe we should highlight that as well. >> Renteria: Sure. >> Greg Guernsey in planning and zoning. Quickly go through the next steps. We'll be continuing to meet with the planning commission and Z.A.P., zoning and platting commission, over the coming month or two here. They will -- an opportunity to look at draft 3, which will be the staff recommendation. That will be presented on November 28th. Along with an updated map. They will then begin the process of doing their review, public hearings. We'll actually provide a notice of the hearings before the land use commissions and city council so we're still looking for the date for the city council meeting to put it on that notice that we would send out. And in mid November we are going forward with an outreach tool kit which I think is actually going to be available after this meeting or shortly thereafter that kind of gives a brochure that explains what [3:04:14 PM] the new districts are, what the current zoning is and some highlights. We still have the comment tool that's online and we'll keep this up. Even as we go through the commission review as we're coming to town, we're continuing office hours even beyond the dates that are set for the commission review and we'll be staffing those as well. We still will be taking in the white papers or community issue papers as we have before. They will be posted online. And the open houses. And I'll note that the first date of Anderson high on September 30th had been moved because of a conflict with a religious holiday. I think it's now moved to Monday, October 23, if I recall, in the evening. It's a Monday night. But the rest of that schedule has been set. I'll highlight the meeting on the 11th. It will be multilingual, Vietnamese, Spanish, mandarin and Chinese and English. 28th at the dove springs recreational center and that will be focused on Spanish, although there will be some English translation at that meeting. If, the overall schedule so similar to what you've seen and we'll be updating giving you the schedule through the implementation date and we're working on that. It's just the same slide. Council's questions and answer I think the consultants are going to be back on the week of the 4th, October 4th. October 3rd, 4th. And so if you would like another one of these fun- filled work sessions, we can assist you with that on that week. And those weeks that they are not here we could actually go through and have a discussion perhaps on the map or on watershed or subdivision, [3:06:15 PM] transportation types as well as whether staff played a greater role in those items. Thank you for indulging us. >> Mayor Adler: Anything else? All right. Then this meeting stand adjourned. It is 3:06.