You probably need to have these people from Cog, Life, and by now it's Fred, the younger Fred. Yes. Yeah, Fred Jr. Thanks for being available for this. At least I would, I think she was in life one year ahead of me in the playing school. Different last night when I came to this place. You know, if there's a bus, I live just north of, I just, I have to pick out my son after one. And I would have to leave at least four times.  I'm excited. I'll pick my husband. Good evening. I called to order the meeting of the planning commission during planning commission May the 13th 2014 at 531 o'clock. Welcome to the Durham planning commission. The members of the planning commission have been appointed by the city council and the county board of commissioners as an advisory board to the elected officials. You should know that the elected officials have the final say on any issue before us tonight. If you wish to speak on the agenda item tonight, please go to the table to my left and sign up to speak. For those who wish to speak, please state your name and your address clearly when you come to the podium and please speak directly into the mic very clearly. Each side, those speaking in favor of an item and those speaking in opposition to an item will have 10 minutes to present for each side. The time will be divided among all persons wishing to speak. If you are here opposing a rezoning tonight you should be aware of what is called a protest petition. A protest petition can be very helpful to those residents who live in a rezoning area. Please consult the planning department staff for any details on a protest petition and they will be happy and able to help you. You should also keep in constant touch with the planning department as to when your case will go before the elected officials for final vote. Finally, all motions are stated in the affirmative so if a motion fails or ties, the recommendation is for denial. Thank you. Can we now have the roll call please? Commissioner Boyd. Commissioner Davis. Commissioner Guilds. Commissioner Huff. Commissioner Miller. Commissioner Padgett. Commissioner Walters. Commissioner Whitley. Commissioner Wonders. And for the minutes I am acting as chair today as the Chairman Jones is not present with us tonight. So I am assuming that roll. Are there any adjustments to the agenda tonight? To the agenda? Yeah. Mr. Chairman I would like to in the announcement. Speak. Would you speak in your mind? Mr. Chairman in the announcement section I would like to take a moment or two of the commission's time to talk about possible legislation in this session. Okay. Are there any adjustments? Good evening commissioners Pat Young with the planning department. No adjustments to the agenda. I can certify for the record that all public hearing items before you tonight have been advertised in accordance with the provisions of law and we have affidavits to that effect on file with the planning department. And I will mention for the record Commissioner Bieland did ask for an excused absence and Commissioner Lamb resigned due to an employment opportunity in Atlanta, Georgia. So the city clerk's office is aware of that. That's just information for the commission. Who resigned? Commissioner Lamb. The chair Jones was aware of that. I wasn't sure if you all were included on that communication. He has an employment opportunity in Georgia. Okay. Thank you. So I trust each of you had an opportunity to look at the minutes from our last meeting. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Mr. Chairman. A little adjustment I'd like to make. In connection with the comments, reported comments under cases E14 quadruple R3. My comments concerning the downtown open space plan got stuck there instead of the downtown open space. So, okay. I'm sorry. Pardon me. That works. Mr. Chairman, with regard to the comments, commissioner's comments in case C143, my comments concerning the downtown open space plan are stuck there in the minutes instead of in the downtown open space plan section. So I have comments concerning that case, but they're only two and a half lines. And then it says concerning the downtown open space plan, that should be over on the next page. Other than that, that's all I have. Okay. With that correction, can I get a motion for approval? So moved. Can I get a second? It's moved by commissioner Miller, second by commissioner Whitley. All in favor of approving the minutes with the necessary correction from last meeting. Let it be known by raised right hand. Minutes has passed 10 to zero. Okay. No opposition. Okay. Item number five on the agenda is to public hearing. Unified development ordinance, text amendment TC130001. Technical change number eight. Thank you very much. Michael Stock with the planning department. TC130001 is a text amendment to the unified development ordinance. It is a collection of technical and minor policy changes to that ordinance. It is grouped into three categories, at least for this round. Amendments that are necessary to comply to state or federal regulations. Amendments identified as necessary corrections, clarifications or reorganizations or other minor changes to more accurately comply with the intent of the initial regulations or actually codify interpretations of those regulations. And then also, finally, additional corrections or clarifications based upon review of the current standards through changes to the discretionary regulations that this board reviewed, I guess, less than a year ago. And that was approved by city council and the board of commissioners. We go through this process generally once a year or so. We're now at one and a half years. And this is, I believe, it's a text amendment eight, so this is the eighth time we've gone through this process. Also at your chair, I placed a memo with three just additional minor revisions that I wanted included within your review. It is just clarification to changes that are already within the packet. If you'd like, I can go through some of the changes with you or if you just have specific questions, I can answer them. I know it is a lengthy document, so I don't want to belabor any points. The memo tried to summarize what was being changed. I can highlight some of the more extensive changes. One of the things that we are doing is reorganizing the UDO to, as you'll see, a lot of the special use permit processes are being consolidated into one article. So you're seeing a lot of cross-out and underlining for that. We are adding in a provision that allows if a development plan is a more detailed development plan in terms of the use that's being proposed and it would normally need a minor special use permit, it is allowing that if the use is detailed and there's also more specifics within that development plan pertaining to that use, they wouldn't need a use permit. They're going through the public hearing process right now, going through this board, getting elected official approvals. We've seen that, and that's already a process that's allowed within the UDO through a development plan site plan approval, which this board has seen maybe two or three times already. We saw that as a worthwhile change to reduce redundancies that also still provide substantial public input. Also, there are substantial changes, well not substantial changes, but a number of changes to the design district standards. Most of them is really substantially reorganizing some of the text, getting it out of paragraph form and into more bullet point or numerated form. I'm trying to think of any other significant things, items within there that I would want to bring your attention to. Again, I'll be happy to answer any questions as you see fit. Thank you. I have no one signed up for public, but are there anyone in the audience that wish to speak to this item? If not, I'll close the public hearings and bring it back before the commissioners. Do I have commissioners that wish to speak? Okay. Wait a minute. Whitley. There's Tom. Okay. Okay, Mr. Whitley. Commissioner Whitley. I've often, and I just need to know how this amendment would affect developers that want to use land retention measures to save land in swamp land. South Carolina has done a lot of it where they put ponds. They develop ponds in swamp land and it keeps, the water stays there, but it's deeper. They dredge the swamp so it makes it deeper and they retain the land. The runoff runs into the pond and doesn't set on the land. Now, if a developer would want to come to Durham to do that, would this text change get in the way? No, it wouldn't. Before you start, commissioner Smusky, would you please join us? And secondly, would you guys fix the clock to give each commissioner three minutes of speaking time? Thank you. All right, sir. No, it wouldn't. It's not impacting any of the current wet lens or stream buffer regulations that are currently within the UDO and most of those regulations are actually more extensive than state minimum requirements. Thank you. Commissioner Wyndes. There are two sections in here that I would like for you to just kind of explain and comment on some to let me know what's going on in them. And one is the residential density under mixed use. And was that in the old UDO at all? Can you give me the page number? Oh, yes, 37. I see it's gone from like 80% of the maximum density permitted within the development tier and to a definite number or something. And that's exactly what it is. It's just giving you a number based upon what those percentages would actually work out to be. Sounds really, really high. 53 units per maximum density. Again, that's the current regulations. We're just putting it in a numeric tabular form instead of a paragraph format. Yeah. Okay. Would the time keep us stopped? The time when they're answering the question? Okay. And we restart it when they start? I know we're doing these plans for the station areas, you know, the compact neighborhoods. Will that be, is there just want, would all these rules apply to those station areas? Station areas? Wouldn't those plans get done? All these rules within this entire text amendment or within the design district? Within the design district, the compact neighborhood design district? Well, currently the design districts are only applicable to downtown, their zone downtown design district and the Ninth Street compact design district area. It remains to be seen for future station areas, whether it is applicable to use the existing regulations that are on the books for say compact design districts or if different compact design district regulations are warranted for that particular station area. So that's for the future to behold and you'll get a say in that. Okay. And then I see some, a lot of changes related to the Board of Adjustment and I wonder if you could just sort of, that state law and it changes the definition of variance and how is that going to change the way the Board of Adjustments operates? Really, not much at all. The biggest change actually is with the variance section in terms of they specify a specific set of findings that you have to use and it would be applicable to all Board of Adjustments throughout North Carolina. An additional thing that we have added in there is an expiration for variances which currently the UDO lacks. And we have, instead of having things in the ordinance we have the Board of Adjustments adopting rules and procedures. Is that done already or is that not? Well, yeah, as you may recall from being on the Board of Adjustment there is a set of rules and procedures and this body has its own set of rules and procedures. Historic Preservation Commission has a set of rules and procedures and we're kind of trying to reduce redundancies. So it's pretty much the same things or it's not any kind of change in the authority or anything. No, in fact, we're changing it to mimic the actual ordinance standards for the planning as it's currently read for the Planning Commission for how the body functions should refer to the rules of procedure and it shouldn't be necessarily spelled out in the ordinance. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Miller. And just so you know, the first round of questions each commissioner will have three minutes and then we have a second round and a third round depending upon the time that we have. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On page three of the document this is in the Board of Adjustment area. Pardon me? Well, my microphone doesn't work. So I'm a little troubled. Is there some place reposed? I'm probably not in the ordinance, but in the law that explains the difference between a necessary and an unnecessary hardship? It is reflective straight from state law. Yeah, but I haven't actually gone back to look at the statute. Does the statute define an unnecessary hardship? I don't recall offhand. All right, thank you. And then if you would, I see we've made some changes to the definitions to the tables relating to group homes and family care homes. Can you remind me what the difference is? Page seven and also again on eight and then it comes up again later. Family care homes are specifically regulated in much more detail by the state. So we're changing our current definition for family care homes doesn't really coincide with state regulations. So the recommendation from the actually the city attorney's office was to just reference back to the state. I see that. I just wanted to be reminded what the actual distinction between a group home and a family care home. Most of it is number of persons living in the family care home used to be six and below it's still that correct. And do we treat? Do we make a distinction for what? How these people with their condition may be? We're really limited as to what we can regulate based upon their condition. The regulation, at least in the UDO, is a little is more extensive for group homes or such larger facilities and family care homes than with family care homes themselves. So, for example, family care homes basically have a by right allowance to be established as long as they meet a certain separation requirement within residential districts, but in group homes they need to seek a minor special use permit from the Board of Adjustment. I realize that. But so in this section of the UDO and we describe these use categories, we have taken a group home and then it used to say for the care and treatment of psychiatric bubble, we've taken all of that out. Correct. Do we then say what a group home is somewhere in the ordinance? It's defined in the ordinance. Okay, so it's in the definition section. Correct. All right, thank you. And I just wanted, you address this a little bit. I'm on page 15 of the document. So now if a development plan specifically talks about uses and these would be development plans, not in all zoning districts, but in certain districts, talks about uses, the need to go get a use permit from the Board of Adjustment would be obviated if you're dealing with it in the development plan. Do you foresee a distinction in the way as a community will be handling this when we go from a quasi-judicial to a legislative approval process? Not really. In fact, it gives more flexibility for the community to raise concerns where you're in a quasi-judicial as you're familiar with. You're held to a very specific set of findings and that can actually be very frustrating for a community to either counter claims made by an applicant or just provide adequate testimony before the Board to make a case for or as an opponent of a certain procedure, whereas through the legislative process, it actually gets more of a hearing because it's going through two public hearing processes plus the broader extent of the legislative process before the governing body. So I don't expect a lessening of the ability for the public to have concerns or raise concerns or to be proponents of a development plan and it would apply to, it's not for any development plan that's being offered no matter what the zoning district is. So it can't add uses. So if it's a use that's currently not allowed in the district, you can't add it, but if it's a use that would normally require, if it's currently CG, without a development plan, they would automatically have to get a use permit if that use required it, but if they're asking for CG with a development plan and they add that use in and provide the additional more specificity than if the elected bodies find that okay. But in order to get that special treatment, you're going to have to talk about the use. Also location, access, building height, size, all of those things must be there. Okay, correct. Failure to cover them all means you're back to the, you're going to have a two step process. Right. If you decide not to opt for that option, then yes, you would still have to go for the Board of Adjustment. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I commission a moment. Just a couple of things here. Back for a minute to the Board of Adjustment. Where are citizens going to be able to find these rules and procedures since they can't? They are currently posted online under the Board of Adjustment. Okay. Group homes, that one disturbed me too. Can you explain to me from a citizen's point of view, is this going to have any impact in a group home that's already in a neighborhood? I guess it's more of a family care home. Or with someone coming into a neighborhood, is anything going to change with that? No, no. The rules and procedures for establishing a group home are not changing. Okay. It's just that, yeah. Okay, sorry. It was vague to me. Page 1314, the Transportation Special Use Permit. What was it? It was up. And the UDO, there was a long list of reasons and cases given. I'm going to just go back to that page. 14, where does that go? Yeah, it starts on 13 and goes on into 14. Yes. What happened to those? They are relocated. Okay. I mentioned earlier that we were consolidating all. Okay. They're relocated. They haven't gone away. Okay, I just missed it. All right, thank you. They're in the Transportation Special Use Permit section? They're currently in the Transportation Special Use Permit section, but what we did was we have a Special Use Permit section within Article 3, which covers minor and major special use permits. Then there's also, there was this TSUP section that's been in there for a number of years and actually dates back to the prior merged zoning ordinance. And then recently, with the adoption of the CD districts, there was the Design Special Use Permit process and procedures, and that was put in a different section. So what we're doing is just putting them all under the Special Use Permit section and nothing's changing with that. And that's in Article 3? Article 3, yes. Okay. And just one more. On page 29, I'm assuming it got moved instead of just deleted, but I suppose I could be wrong. Under private pools, all of the security rules about enclosing it and protecting it, where did that go? Those are actually handled through building inspections. This was an issue that came up through in front of the Joint City County Planning Committee with redundant and sometimes contradictory rules in terms of the building requirements for these. And it was decided that the UDO should focus on where or when and let the building inspections focus on how it's constructed. Okay. So the two departments aren't tripping over each other. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Huff. I have some questions about these courts. Okay. Commissions, would you please speak into the mic because it's being televised and when you're not speaking to the mic, they cannot hear you back home. Okay. Okay. Page 43 where you're describing the various designs of these four courts on buildings and you've crossed out some designs, some graphics, and you've added new graphics. Are you then enforcing the graphic style on all four courts or can four courts look different from? The graphics are meant to be just a quick visual presentation of the standards found below them. So it's not meant to be look exactly like that. No. It's just meant to give an example or a picture of what they would generally look like. Right. Because there's some, I mean it would really confine them. I was curious about whether or not the stairs can be parallel to the sidewalk as on page 45 to the building. You see those stairs? I'll cross that out. I'm just curious if that now is not a design, cannot be a design feature because you have a real. I think everything is really staying exactly the same. Okay. The only thing we're changing are the, well, in this instance, the only thing we're changing really are just the graphics. We're trying to update the graphics. Okay. Because I had a question about some other graphics, but that takes care of it. Now, vacant lots. You're saying here that a lot has to be planted with grass or landscape material. What if people want to use a vacant lot for a urban garden? That's allowed. It's allowed. Yeah. Okay. No, I got that. Just a minute. They're all over the place. That's a lot. All right. On page 65, you have all non-resident. This is bike parking. Minimum of two bicycle parking spaces shall be required for all non-residential uses, 10,000 feet or more and blah, blah, blah. And then it says bicycle parking shall be provided at a minimum rate of one bicycle parking space for 2,500 square feet. Well, how do you make one bicycle parking space? Because a rack holds two. That's true. We can take a look at that and see if that needs further modification. Okay. The signs section, page 67. These are a category of signs under D, 4D, 11.4.1, 2D. It says signs, there are a number of qualifications here, but the signs for properties for sale lease or rent can be removed or shall be removed when the contract is closed on the property for sale or rent. But then it says in the same list of requirements, signs shall only be displayed from 12 p.m. noon on Friday to 8 a.m. the following Monday. How does that work? That is basically giving allowance for the weekend like the open house, this way, types of provisions where it's allowing for those kinds of off-premise real estate signs without having them up for an unlimited amount of time. But it's the same kind of sign in 4 that says it shall be removed when a contract is closed. So what it sounds like from this language is that you've got a sign that can be up until the contract is closed, which could be quite a while, I presume, and not just from 12 p.m. noon on Friday to 8 a.m. Monday. It just sounds that way. We'll take a look at that so you can clarify it further for you. Okay. Okay, on page 69, right-of-way, it says right-of-way, dedication shall be for the purposes of conformance to adopted plans. You can contain. You can contain. This is my last thing. This is probably just real quick. It's for the accommodation of other public purposes, such as but not limited to street sidewalks, bicycle facilities, and utilities, dedication of right-of-way that does not satisfy or aid in satisfying an identified public purpose shall not be shown or approved on any applicable site plan or plan. What kind of right-of-way would that be? There are times when applicants propose right-of-way to get out of other ordinance requirements in terms of the best instance I can say is that there's a project boundary buffers or a long right-of-way. You don't have to provide buffers if it's a certain width or greater of right-of-way, and sometimes applicants may provide additional right-of-way in order not to have to provide that buffer, because once you've dedicated it, you're out of that buffer requirement. I'm blanking on any other instances, but I'm sure there are, but basically it's putting a regulatory tool that not only planning, but transportation department and other departments can hang their hat on and say, no, we're not taking this dedication. Okay, thank you. That's it. Thank you. Are there any additional questions with reference to this text change 8? Okay, I have Commissioner Miller. Anyone else? Okay, Commissioner. Okay. Why don't you let Charlie go? He hasn't been around once. Okay. Thanks, Kips. I just have one question generally about the historic district overlay. Is this any more or less restrictive, for instance, in allowing compatible design within? I know the historic commission reviews these things. I guess my question is we're not boxing ourselves in any more or any less than what we were. And there is an allowance for appeal for something that would be compatible. It doesn't have to match each of the building structures in the historic district, regardless of where it is. This does not impact any of the current criteria regulations that the Historic Preservation Commission needs to consider in granting a certificate of appropriateness or even staff when they have to do administrative ones. Thank you. Commissioner Miller, two minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Speaking to the mic. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, I have a hard time with mics. It doesn't work. So looking at on page 36, you have two new tables. And so in the table under two, just which residential development can go into these non-residential districts, we talk about townhouses and then down in the lower table we talk, and in the text we talk about town homes, same use. Yes. All right. And then turning over then to page 39 with height articulation in the design districts, can you tell me what the changes that we're making there as it relates to height articulation with podium height? I don't see where we're changing anything except reorganizing the text for a clearer read. I don't see any substantial changes at all. Wouldn't that also be true with section two concerning upper story setbacks? Correct. All right, thanks. And then going over to, I'm on page 41 now in the general standards and it says if a property has street frontage on all sides, a single street frontage can be designated as a service frontage on the site plan and thereby be exempt from meeting all frontage type standards where designated. That's current text. Is that current text? Does that mean that the service aspects of the building have to be located there? No, it's just the applicant can designate a side as a service side. Even if they're not going to use it for service? They would have to be demonstrative details on the development plan that demonstrate how it's being a service entrance. Okay, do we actually say that somewhere? I'm worried that somebody, I'm watching this how we're applying these frontage regulations to real cases. And I'm not satisfied in every, especially with these big multi-family buildings that we're building that we're actually getting what we thought we were going to get. And I'm worried about having language in the code that allows people to manipulate the way these buildings look in ways that we're not regulating. And we actually hear that. We are actually under process of doing a, it's been about five years or so since the first design district has been adopted and a couple years earlier with the compact neighborhood district, compact design districts. And we are actually going through an evaluation and assessment of the current standards and seeing how they're working and taking the comments we've received and going to take more comments and go through a much more formal and intensive review of the current standards. Is that the line item in the work plan? It is line item in the work plan. Thank you very much. That's all I have, Mr. Chairman. In additional, round three. Okay, if not, can I get a motion on? I make the motion that we approve that. Text amendment. Second. Okay, it's been motion to second that we approve. Text change 130001. All in favor of approving this, raise your right hand. All opposition, raise your right hand. Text change TC130001 has passed 11 to zero. Thank you. Next, we have a public hearing, open a public hearing with plans and it's the work program. Mr. Chairman, I have a question for staff. We noted some changes. Would that be changed before it goes to the City Council? Yes, we would take a look at the changes and see, take a further review and see if we need to make further clarifications. We'll do that before it goes to Council and Board of Commissioners. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Good evening. Good evening. I'm Steve Madlin with the Durham City County Planning Department. It's a pleasure to be here this evening. I know it's been a while since I've been here. As you are probably familiar, as part of the Interlocal Agreement, the department is required to prepare both an annual budget and an annual work program that has to be ultimately processed through the Joint City Planning Committee, through the Planning Commission, and then ultimately adopted by both of the elected officials. Board, excuse me. What I would like to do is give you a brief overview of the departmental structure for this next fiscal year, which begins July 1st of this year and runs through June 30th of next year. The department, as you are aware, is composed of 35 FTEs or full-time employees or equivalencies. Of those 36 employees, we're divided into two divisions, one in the development side of the shop, which is managed by Mr. Young and the long-range planning section, our division, which is managed by Mr. Keith Luck, who I think has been before you before. Within each of those two divisions, there are actually subsections that are composed of groups like our land use group. Mr. Whiteman is the supervisor of that group, so you're familiar seeing him coming before you. Our development review group, which is the group that reviews site plans and subdivisions and also deals with street closings, things of that nature, and our zoning administration staff, which in essence are zoning compliance officers as well as our site compliance officer. On the long-range strategic planning side, we are composed of three divisions, research and public information. For those of you that have visited the planning department, if you've come to the front intake area, that is our public information office, which is staffed all day long by three planners that serve as journalists that provide information to the public via both, well, via email, telephone call, and walk-in. That is also the group that does a lot of the data analysis that you see coming before you. Maps and things of that nature are generated by that group. Our policy section is headed by Aaron Kane. I think you all have seen a lot of his work, and Hannah Jacobson are the primary people that come before you on plan amendments, things of that nature. And then our urban design center, which basically are the folks in our urban design group that work with the design districts that Mr. Stock was referring to, as well as are the folks that are primarily tasked with this historic preservation task within the department. We are asking for funding for those 36 positions in this next year's budget. We have been provided a target budget of a little over $3 million, roughly $3 million, $100,000. Of that, $2.7 million is directly associated with personnel costs, salaries, benefits, things of that nature, and roughly a little over $300,000 is associated with operational overhead, paper, pencils, what you would expect just to keep the wheels turning. As you are probably familiar, the work program is divided into three main sections, even though they're divided even more into divisional separations as well. Primarily the work program is composed of those projects that are regulatory in nature, those things that are mandated by both state, federal, and also local ordinances, those things that we actually have to do. A good comparison of what that is, you see a lot of them through zoning cases, plan amendments that also is inclusive of zoning cases. I mean subdivisions, site plans, and also board of adjustment applications as well as things like street closings. A lot of permits that are required through the department are processed as regulatory.  We also have ongoing projects and processes assigned to the department that are related to city and county policies. One of those that you're probably most familiar with is the regulation of mobile vending, food trucks. The planning department is the department that is tasked by the city to enforce and regulate that as well as manage the database for permits for that process. The third are total discretionary types of activities, those things that typically fall into what you saw on the organizational chart are the discretionary strategic planning initiatives. Those are things that we have total discretion over in terms of adding to the work program based on adequate resources being provided to the department. As I mentioned, there are actually five overall major program areas, development review, zoning administration, conference of planning, public information and research support, and department management. If you actually looked at the work program and counted those lines, there are actually about 85 different distinct responsibilities the department has responsibility for over the course of any given year. Within the discretionary initiatives within the work program, we are proposing as you probably have already realized a number of major initiatives that we have allocated staff for, including the affordable housing initiative, our comprehensive plan, community profile, affordable housing incentives, which are changes to the unified development ordinance, significant changes to the wireless communication facility revisions, a text amendment design district update. That was what Mr. Stock was alluding to, I think in response to Commissioner Miller's question. We also have to deal with mandates that are imposed on us by both the federal and state government as related to text amendments or bringing our codes into compliance with both federal and state standards. We are also in the process of completing the local historic review criteria consolidation project. Hopefully we'll have that completed by the end of this calendar year. Once that's completed, we'll be prepared to move forward with the Holloway Street historic district. A lot of work has gone on with that, but we're kind of keeping that on hold until we can get the review criteria project completed. We're going to begin work on some of our design districts. We have a district that is referred to as the Medical Center Design District, which is the Irwin Road compact neighborhood adjacent to the hospital. We're not anticipating that we will come close to completing that over the next year, but we will begin work on that. We also are anticipating having to spend a considerable amount of staff resources working on privately initiated design district rezoning and plan amendments, one of which is already in the door, one of which we're expecting will come in very shortly. And we have been designated as a resource to city and county agencies to provide public facilities design consulting as it relates to both public engagement and also design work, and that is a new initiative within the department. Very quickly, I'll be happy to answer your questions that you have, but what I will tell you is that the work program that you have before you fully allocates all 36 employees at least time-wise to provide services as it relates to each of those work task items. Okay, thank you. We have no one signed up to speak from the public on that item. Okay, is there anyone in the audience who would like to speak during the public? Okay, I will close the public hearing and bring it back before the commissioners. I have them start this side. This is questions. I have Miller, Whitley, Smosky. Okay, Commissioner Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Medlin, I'm concerned that we have, I'm aware that the planning staff has a petition in from a neighborhood for historic, new local historic district, and it's not on the work plan. And it's sat now for quite a long time. I wonder if the petition even has, well, I'm sure it's still legally valid, but I wonder whether it's practically valid after so many years. And just between you and me, I'm a little worried that we're going to go work on a privately initiated design district while we have this other application pending. I realize you have limited people, you have limited funds, and you have allocated all the capacity that your budget request and your people allow. But if it were me, I would deal with this long-pending business, which is festering and causing considerable dissatisfaction before we picked up something else. Sure. It's a question of priorities. I personally, if it were me, would not treat these applications or these petitions for local historic district as discretionary items. It seems to me there are people who are following processes outlined in the UDO and they have a reasonable expectation of action. I would work on those first. You don't just walk in and ask for a local historic district. You have to get a lot of petitions signed. Dorothy has to bring in a pretty big witch's broomstick, whereas this privately initiated design district thing is purely discretionary. That's the way I would allocate those resources. I would be more satisfied with the work plan if I saw that local historic district on here, at least in front of this other item. Thank you. That's all I have, Mr. Chair. Very quickly, my one response to that, Commissioner Miller, is that I think there's one misperception that everyone has that even though there are 36 people in the planning department, that all 36 people can do everything within the planning department. That is not the case, and that's not the case as it relates to historic preservation efforts. The dilemma that I have is I have one half-time employee FTE associated with historic preservation that has the experience, the expertise, and the background that can basically do that work. I don't have the capacity to move other people into those roles because they don't have that experience. They don't have those certifications. So we're doing what we can with the resources, excuse me, with what we have. So I would understand what you're saying, but we're doing the best we can with what we got and there is no capacity to move around as you've suggested. Commissioner Whitland. Well, I think you gave me that same answer. You're going to give me the same answer. But I need to tell you that we're working very hard in Eastern. I thank you for the Holloway Historic Gift Plan. I think that's number something. That's a but to Cleveland Holloway.  But we're spending a lot of money in an Eastern and we really don't have a master plan for the area. We know that that area is going to be impacted by transportation, both rail and by the East End connector. You know, and we don't have a plan for that. We know that it's an industrial park coming. There are a whole lot of good things are happening there, but it's just, you know, whatever happens, happens. You know, so how do we get more specific? How do we get, how do we get it focused so that we can create more synergy, you know, without planning? Well, if I can respond. First of all, I think it's a misnomer to say there is not a master plan. There is a master plan. That master plan is the Future Land Use Conference Plan for Durham City and County, which was adopted by both the City Council and the Board of County Commissioners in 2005 and occasionally gets modified. Obviously within that conference of plan there are action items and as you are aware through annual reports that you receive, we track how we're implementing that conference of plan. There is nothing in that conference of plan that is inconsistent that would not allow for redevelopment of that area, but obviously that's a separate discussion because it involves private monies which we don't have any ability to necessarily direct that area. That is something the market drives a great deal. In terms of a specialized plan, I'm not sure what value would be created by spending a lot of resources trying to redo what has already been done that has already established, let me finish, that has already established reasonable mixture of uses that allows for commercial, residential, and industrial development in that area. I'm finished. Yeah, well 2005, there was no east end connector. It was actually reflected on the plan. Anything? Yes. There was no east end connector. And 2005, there was no conversation. Well, we did talk about rail, but how it would impact both housing and economic development, all those things that happen around rail system. So is not time to revisit some of that? Well, we are with some of our design districts. And Austin Avenue is certainly one of those design districts that we'll be working on at some point in the future. So to answer your question, yes, we'll be finding that down at that point. Thank you so much. Commissioner Smusky. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So we have brought up affordable housing, and I'm glad to see not one, but two initiatives that kind of talk to affordable housing. Can you explain what the differences are between them and why we have two instead of just one? The simple answer is one is actually a text amendment that will create revised standards within the unified ordinance to incentivize affordable housing, basically trying to take what's currently in the ordinance, which is a density bonus for affordable housing and trying to make it into something that is actually workable. As I'm sure you all have heard at various venues, those provisions have actually been on the ordinance for 10 years plus and have never been utilized by the development community, basically because it just does not drive the numbers that the developers need to have in order for an affordable housing project to be successfully developed. Mr. Young and Mr. Cain are working on that at this point. They're looking at other incentive opportunities as well as how we can leverage other departments to work with us very closely on trying to figure out ways to incentivize through other programs outside of the zoning ordinance. In addition, as you rightly pointed out, we are currently working in conjunction on both the plan level in terms of the strategic area infrastructure plan, which is taking a look at what is going to be needed in proximity to transit stations, and as part of that effort we're looking at, what is it going to take in terms of incentivizing affordable housing in that area through the provision of potentially public improvements and what the cost potentially may be with that. In addition, we're working very closely with our counterparts in community development. As you're probably familiar, they do a five-year plan that they're in the process of working on for affordable housing. They've agreed to help us by including additional things in that plan that will help us move us closer to providing affordable housing. I'm sorry? No, no. And I'm sure I'm quickly forgetting something else here as it relates to the work program. Obviously, the design district that we're talking about are going to have at least some component dealing with affordable housing provision. As you are probably familiar, I think you all had actually adopted a resolution that was forwarded to both the Elected Boards for Adoption that required that we work to increase affordable housing in proximity to transit stations within a half-mile, providing at least 15% of those units as affordable housing units. Did you address the Housing Affordability Initiative? Can you tell me what that is? That's a combination of all those things. Okay, that's the rail and other things with the Triangle J, okay? It's just a concise title for a lot of those efforts. Great. All right, thank you. Commissioner Patch. I actually, when I looked over this past week, and I was very impressed with it. I think it says a lot from the planning department. And everyone would be doing a great job in that. Thank you. And you answered several questions in your last statement, so I don't have any questions. Okay, second round of questions. I have Mr. Miller, Smusky. Second round, Mr. Boer. Okay, so let me start with people that haven't spoken. I wanted to ask about the privately initiated design districts. Can you talk about where those are? The one that has actually been submitted is a design district application for what is commonly referred to as Patterson Place, which is located off 15501, close to I-40. We are aware and have been in conversations with individuals who are interested in potentially submitting a second application for Lee Village, which is the area immediately adjacent to I-40 and 54 in South Durham. But those are the two that potentially may be in, well, we know one is in the off of the other potentially may be. Commissioner Wyndish. Oh, I wanted to ask about that. Turn your mic on. On that same topic. So we've been thinking that in the affordable housing resolution, I think we're talking about that we need compact district plans or station area plans. It's like sort of the first step in getting to affordable housing or mixed income housing. And so are you saying that, so is this privately initiated development district, design district?   What I will tell you is that it is a mechanism to move an application into the process, yes, but is it going to be distinctly different than the processes we would use if it were a staff-initiated effort? Only from the perspective that those applications are going to be zoning applications or plan applications versus the typical plan amendment applications, excuse me, versus the approach that we did with Ninth Street or even the downtown design district. It's important to remember that through the work that we initially did with the downtown district and a lot with the Ninth Street district, we've kind of built the basic building blocks for design districts. We're obviously having to tweak those, because we're finding that they don't necessarily do what we want them to do or they're not as clear as they need to be. But in essence, all this is doing is just me moving those forward. I will tell you that both Leaf Village and the Medical Center ones were ones that we had identified initially. There's those that were kind of at a critical point that we felt like there was a lot of development interest in those areas. And so more than likely we would have suggested the priority of those anyway. Patterns in place, not so much, even though there is obviously a lot of development pressure in that area as well. It's just unique that a property owner wants to pay for an application just to move it into the system faster. Unfortunately, it still takes the same amount of staff time to process those things. They don't get handled any more quickly. You still have to go through the same exercise, the same efforts of public engagement and developing what the standards will be, going through the public hearing process. All that still stays the same. Well, how will that 15% goal for affordable housing work into the plans for those? I can't answer that, because that's something we'll have to work on. It would not be a good idea to make those plan amendments before we at least got the housing assessment done. I understand your point. Knowing how slow, and I shouldn't say slow, knowing how the process of development of these types of things occur, it's not going to happen overnight. It's not going to happen within a year. It's going to take time. My expectation would be that some of these pieces will come together as we're going through that process. Commissioner Whitley, two minutes. Steve, when I'm talking about the affordable housing, it brings back my point. On the corner of Driver and Angie Avenue, you have Pacific Island Driver. You have Industrial. On one side of the street, and on the other side is multi-residential. If we put residential once that rail comes through, and with the plant on the other side of the rail, if something happens, we're going to be making a terrible mistake. The time to change it is now, but the plan for the area has it in them. I understand. The Lord knows I would love to have a rail stop at Driver, but then when I think about it, it would be too dangerous. We have to change the zoning to make some of this work. We have plenty of land still in East Durham that we can do that with further down or further up. They're talking about residential housing in that block. That would be a terrible mistake. You can respond to his question. I don't have a response for him. At this point, as I've said, if we get the direction to move forward with a plan, we'll certainly take that under advisement, but at this point there has been no direction to do so. If you have specific concerns about that area, sit down and draw up something, and we'll be glad to sit down and talk with you about it. Thank you. I wanted to save these comments for the second round, but I agree with Mr. Padden. There was a lot of work that goes into this, and I was quite impressed with the detail, you know, the description, responsibilities. Can you speak into your mic? Okay, so I was real impressed with all this, but you said something earlier that struck me while I was reading this, and there seems to be a lot of emphasis here about street closings. Are street closings that common? As much as I hate to say it, we get a lot of street closings that come through the department, and here of late, we seem to have at least one or two a mob that come through. I hadn't realized it was that big of an issue. Well, case in point, there are a lot of unopened right-of-ways within the city and county of Durham by their paper streets, streets that have been dedicated at some time that have never been opened, never used, or if they've been opened, they've never been transferred to public maintenance and the properties were never developed. So we routinely, I know today I saw two applications come through for new street closing applications that had come in the door, and that is actually a statutory process that is established by state statute that were required to handle for the city and the county. It's just one of those things. I didn't realize it was such a big work. Pat, do you know how many street closings on an annual basis that were, Scott? Just to give you a context, it's... This is Scott Wayman. We used to get four or five a year, and then all of a sudden in the last year we started getting like 15 to 20. So it's the new hot thing, I guess. I would say it's free land because the property reverts to the adjacent property. I don't know if it's close, but that's not quite true. That's not quite true. Okay, director Mellon, I have one question. I think it's related to the planning fees, the fees that you charge, that's charged for applications for various adjustments, for permits, for plaques. Is that money collected, go into the general fund? The way the budget works is that all revenues that are generated by the department actually do go into the general fund. They do not come back to the department in any form. The way the actual budget for the department is structured, what they do is the 3.1 million, we are anticipating that we will generate a little over $900,000 in revenues next year, which is down from where we projected this year because we've actually found that the economic forecast that we see is actually flat for the next year. A number of applications have actually begun to decrease again versus increase contrary to what you're hearing. And so that $900,000 is taken off the top. And then the residual portion is then split between the city and county. The current area local is 50-50 split. That is currently under conversation between the manager's office as to whether or not there needs to be any modifications to that split. And that will be defined later this year. Are there any additional questions from the commissioners to Director Metland? If not, what's your pleasure for this item? This agenda item? So if I can, all comments that we receive will actually be forwarded on to the elected officials as comment received from the Planning Commission for their consideration as they're looking at the annual work program. Just so you're aware. Thank you. I move that we approve the work plan and all comments that have been made before this body on the work plan be approved. Be forwarded to the be forwarded to the be forwarded to the elected body. Second. Okay, it's been motioned in second that we approve the work plan and all comments made be forwarded to the elected officials. All in favor of this let me know by raising the right hand. All opposed raise your right hand. The work plan has passed 10-1 10-1 against. Thank you. So the next agenda item is under new business and it's the transit area homing housing. Good evening. I'm Laura Woods with the Planning Department and the presentation this evening on demographics and housing within transit areas in Durham will be in three parts. I will present some basic demographic information and I will turn the floor over to Patrick McDonough of Triangle Transit who will discuss housing conditions in the transit areas. He will then turn it over to Bergen Watterson of T. J. Cog who will give us some insight on affordability in Durham. Now in discussing demographics I'm going to focus on transportation areas which are in and around downtown Durham. My reason for doing so is it's easy to extract the demographic information because some of the information is only available at census block group levels and the block groups for downtown and urban areas are relatively compact and therefore the data fits rather well with our half mile radii that I've illustrated here. So I'll be focusing on LaSalle Duke Medical Center, 9th street Buchanan, Durham Station, Dillard and Austin Avenues. Some of the suburban transit areas actually the data is a bit difficult to extract because the census block groups are rather large here at Lea Village which you've already mentioned once this evening and this is tracked 20.18 block group 3 and as you see Lea Village transit area only occupies a relatively small portion of that and the fact is the demographic information for part of the area may have very little in common with the transit area. So at least in the interim this evening I'll be focusing on the more downtown stations. Now then this is race, ethnicity data for Durham County and we are a community of minorities and it's only a little different if you look at the city of Durham. Very large African-American population, white population, considerable in rising Hispanic or Latino population notice that the Asian or Asian-American population stands at about 5%. But if we move to the station areas west LaSalle and Duke Medical Center notice that the Asian population is very large for Durham as a whole that's a reflection of the Duke University student body. The relatively low percentage of African-Americans is part of the historical heritage of settlement patterns for Durham. As we move east to 9th Street you're still seeing the influence of the Duke University student body. The African-American population is beginning to go up a bit Hispanic population is dropping a bit. If you move to Buchanan you're beginning to lose that influence of the Duke student body. The American population is beginning to rise. By the time you get to Durham station yes? The numbers on the pie graph are not the same as the numbers on the scale, the key in this one in Buchanan or in Durham station. Simply an oversight on my part in formatting I apologize. The numbers on the pie chart are correct. By the time we get to Durham, thank you for that. I'll correct that the next time I do this show. When we get to Durham station it's interesting that downtown Durham actually is very similar to the city of Durham as a whole. It's kind of a microcosm for Durham but if you only move a couple of blocks east to Dillard again the heritage of geographic settlement kicks in and you have a very large number of African Americans, much smaller white population. The Hispanic Latino populations kind of the average for Durham. Move a little farther it's very much the same. Your Hispanic Latino population has gone up a bit and the African American population has risen just a bit. Now then looking at age cohort data you can actually kind of group the stations due to the similarities there for instance the four stations in the west let's call them station areas west LaSalle Duke Medical Center 9th and Buchanan have very similar demographics with regard to age cohorts. Durham station stands alone it's more typical of Durham as a whole and Dillard and Alston share a great deal in common. Looking at the population 65 years and older notice that in Durham County shown at the bottom of the chart it's about 9.8% all areas the station areas are somewhat less than that. The station areas east Dillard and Alston come pretty close. Durham station and the station areas west particularly much lower obviously again you're looking at the influence of the very large Duke student body. Looking at older workers your middle age population 40 to 64 station area east is very high and that's a very interesting statistic as you see it's quite a bit higher than Durham County as a whole whereas station areas west and Durham station are quite a bit lower. Looking at your young adult population 22 to 39 obviously you're going to see jump in station areas west and Durham station is a relatively young demographic coming pretty close to the Durham County average and it's somewhat lower than the Durham County average in the two eastern stations. Looking at the population 18 to 21 no surprise there station area west is enormous Duke University student body again. It's also quite high compared to Durham County as a whole in station area east and Durham station however. The population to 5 to 7 5 to 17 the population the school age population and this is an interesting statistic is much lower in all of the groupings of our station areas and it's very low in the western whereas the population that is less than 5 years of all 5 years of age is rather higher than Durham County as a whole and station areas east and very low and Durham station and station areas west where you have a lot of young adults who do not have children have not well presumably not. Looking at poverty rate significant graph here 19.1% in Durham County as a whole all of these station areas are higher than that. Of course station area west is well it's kind of foxing us because again you have a large student population students don't earn a lot of money I'm not sure you could really consider them in poverty but as you see it's very high in Durham stations Dillard and Alston and it's not surprising looking at median household income station areas east is far lower than is the average for Durham County. Interestingly enough it's quite a bit lower in Durham station and station area west as well. Now this is a very interesting statistic and touches on the whole question of need for mass transit household lacking a personal vehicle that red line indicates the average for Durham County 8.7% but as you see it's very high in the two eastern Durham stations Austin and Dillard and quite a bit higher in LaSalle but again a lot of students don't own vehicles owner occupied housing much lower in all the station areas compared to Durham County as a whole conversely, renter occupied housing is very high vacant housing is quite a bit higher in the eastern Durham stations and is generally higher for all the station areas although 9th Street actually has a lower vacancy rate than Durham County as a whole. Now then I will turn over the next section over to Patrick McDonough who will talk about state of repair data for the housing in the transit areas. Thank you Laura and thank you to the Commission for having us here this evening. The data I'm going to review for you this evening is data that we collected last summer so it is a bit dated because as Laura just pointed out in her final slide with a number of renters we do have a good deal of turnover in most of the station areas along the urban section of the rail proposed rail quarter in Durham I think you'll see things like 9.7% but recognizing that it was last summer and that people do move we recognize that we took a snapshot in time but that as we move into the future this does become mildly dated. Nevertheless I think the overall trends from the data resonate both with what you'll see from Laura and also from Bergen and also do give us some opportunities to think about policy in the station areas. So what did we do? We sat down with some of the county planning staff Aaron Kane and his team Hannah Jacobson and looked at what data did we have in tax records about condition and we found that we did have condition records in Durham that were pretty good. We asked the tax office they said that they felt they were about 80% correct but we thought could we improve on that to get close to a 95 to 100% sense of the state of repair in the various neighborhoods. We tried to put together a protocol we got some help from the GIS folks who programmed an iPad for a junior member of our staff to go out and collect data neighborhood by neighborhood and it was I think a very effective data collection. We stayed within a half mile of the area around the stations. There were some places where that overlapped. We stuck with residential properties only because we thought that getting into commercial might be more complicated so we did that and we went sort of neighborhood by neighborhood and looked at various different buildings and we rated them in five categories. I'm going to go through each of them one by one. The first category was good. Things that have been recently built or in near excellent condition. 7% of the properties this is in the Alston Avenue neighborhood right here. An example of what a house would be if it was classified as good normal sort of standard maintenance so maybe a house that's been around for a while has been kept up well but is showing some normal signs of wear and tear that any engaged homeowner or landlord is taking care of those things as they come fixing them and leaving things unrepaired but definitely there's a maintenance cycle that's ongoing and you'll find that this is far in a way the biggest portion of all the properties along the combined station area. 67.4% and I think this is the 9th Street station area this one. Fair. These are places where when you're going by on the street you can see some cosmetic concerns or maybe things that might be needing towards trending towards if we leave that a little bit longer there could be a structural repair that's needed to the building that's easily visible from the street. That was about 22 to 23% of the properties. This picture here is in the Buchanan station area. Poor and need to considerable work but still habitable. This was something that I think somebody said that a good quote here is if you were going to put it on the market for resale it would be classified as a fixer or something that would need work before the next occupant would likely move in. This one is in Buchanan. The final one here is unsound. Unhabitable and current condition. Less than 1% of properties overall. This building was in the Dillard station area and so if we look at all these different types of properties and sort of look at a neighborhood this is the Buchanan neighborhood. Buchanan station is at the center of the circle the downtown Durham station is the pink dot to the right but also inside the circle but we're focusing on the distance from Buchanan. So if you look at the sort of three different neighborhoods here we have Trinity Park butting the Duke East campus on the north side, Birch Avenue and then Morehead Hill the west end and you can see there's sort of varying levels of what's good or normal or fair very little on the poor or unsound sides in any of these station areas only a few properties scattered here and there. There are some places where you will see multiple properties that fit into the say the fair or some that are fair and one or two that are poor adjacent to each other. So one of the questions that I think when we talk about affordable housing in station areas is that we need to think about if there are places where sometimes helping maintaining an existing unit may be the best strategy to keep a unit affordable or if a unit is actually kind of moving towards too far gone is it better to encourage redevelopment in a mixed income or a 15% inclusive format and the thing that this data I think gives us is a sense of are there places in the neighborhood where you might try to encourage one strategy or another working with community development and planning depending upon what's going on in the neighborhood and of course hearing from the residents to hear what they'd like to see in the neighborhood too. Trying to break this out by different station areas Lee Village Patterson Place and Martin Luther King Junior stations all over sort of in more southern Durham high to mid 90s on normal or good for the structures these places are newer parts of the city this makes sense the older parts of the city you're going to have more where and tear south square La Salle and Duke Medical as we get into the Duke Medical Center and La Salle area you're starting to see some older structures the fair group is expanding a bit some again minor in the poor and unsound categories as we move into Ninth Street Buchanan and downtown though you begin to see where the age of the housing stock begins to play a role we do see a greater number of buildings in the fair category the poor unsound is staying small there at the one to three percent and then in Austin and Dillard there's a bit higher level of aging or perhaps in some cases disinvestment we do have the larger portions of poor and unsound in the four to six percent range there but also more in the fair category so overall this gives us a little bit of a picture on another way in which the housing stock itself varies from station area to station area we've been learning about the demographics we've been learning about the station area it's out there but the takeaways most residential structures in the transit areas are in normal condition the percentage of structures that are fair poor unsound very significantly depending on where you are and we think that with this inventory when as director medlin spoke earlier about Pat and his team looking at things like what's the right mix of incentives to get towards those 15 percent affordable goals this housing inventory we hope is a good piece of baseline data that we can come back to and think about how we would develop strategies that would get towards those goals in the long run at this point I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Bergen from TJ Cog hi Bergen Waterson from Triangle J Council of Governments thank you for having me here so I have a few slides that are just going to talk about housing affordability and then a new way of looking at housing affordability not necessarily new but not a more traditional way of looking at it so traditionally experts have looked at housing affordability as if you spend 30 percent of your income or more than you're what's considered to be housing burdened those spend they use 30 percent as the upper limit for affordability and sort of back this up the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in 2012 that the average housing expenditure was roughly a third of household income so that backs this up as you can see in Durham the percent that a household spends on housing varies greatly by income you can see the lowest the poorest 20 percent of Durham households end up spending three quarters of their income on housing whereas the richest 20 percent spend 11 so it's not equal across households so experts are starting to look at housing and transportation costs together since more affordable housing options tend to be located farther from the city centers and farther from daily needs schools work shopping etc and sort of drive till you qualify strategy that you're going to go farther and farther out until you can find a house that you can afford so they're starting to look at housing and transportation costs together when determining affordability so now it's those spending more than 45 percent of their household income are considered to be housing and transportation burdened and again the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the average household spends roughly half of its income on housing and transportation combined so a little more than what we should be spending but not too far off so there's a tool called the housing and transportation affordability index I'm not going to show any maps or anything tonight we're just kind of giving the the basic idea of what this index shows but according to this affordability index one in six Durham households are cost burdened for housing alone 17 percent you see on there again meaning that they spend 30 percent or more of their income on just housing but when you include transportation costs that number shoots up to more than three quarters of Durham households are housing and transportation burdened so when starting to look at affordable housing policies you want to avoid taking people out of the yellow out of the 17 percent and putting them into the blue 78 percent by creating affordable housing way outside of town where maybe the land is cheaper but you don't want to just switch people from category to category so to reiterate this new manner of thinking households are cost burdened if it's 45 percent or more of their household income spent on housing plus transportation costs the drive till you qualify strategy of finding affordable housing is problematic because living farther away from your daily needs farther away from the urban center drives up your transportation costs studies show that households living near transit have transportation costs up to 10 percent lower than households that live farther away from transit options and again looking at housing policy you want to consider not only affordability of housing but of transportation costs associated with that location and you also want to try to craft incentives for creating affordable housing in areas with affordable transportation costs I think that wraps up our oh I never mind at the end I have some reports I don't know what the protocol is for passing out documents but I have some yeah you can you can pass okay it's a report that Triangle J and Triangle Transit wrote on linking workforce housing and transit in the triangle has some nice maps okay thank you Laura you're yeah I'm going to sum up with a sum up slide can't get enough of those bullets can you median household income in station areas is significantly lower than is typical for Durham station areas exhibit higher rates of render occupied housing and vacancies vast majority residential structures are of normal to fair condition with some variation from station area to station area and transportation is a significant cost for Durham County residents and should be a factor in future housing policy thank you very much thank you okay this was not a public hearing so do we have comments I got Mr. Whitley Winder's Miller his last name is Gibbs Commissioner Gibbs okay Commissioner Whitley thank you for your hard work in putting this together but I'm a little curious because you now you you have lumped into what you call housing all the homeowners and the rental property and I'm thinking where you had the largest population the largest population you it looked like there's a lot of housing but that's not indeed the case we have probably have more in each Durham we probably have more rental property than anywhere else in the city you know and it makes it weird because the next growth area for the city has to be each Durham you know you're just going to run out of land in south and you don't have the transportation taking place in north Durham so and I would love to see a graph that shows home ownership so we can really see the problem you know and who has to be relocated and who doesn't I just want to make that comment thank you again okay that was not a question commissioner winders I wanted to ask miss woods about I guess all of this analysis is based on the census data that you gave right most of it is do you have some sense you know in looking at the new development that's happening downtown and out and towards Duke the medical center and all that you know all those units that are approved and I think probably most of them are under construction now how does the number of new units coming online compared to the existing units you know like what's the percent growth that's going on there in the downtown tier I think it's going to more than double the amount of housing and do you what do you think the how do you think that's going to change the demographics do you have any sense from the type of development that's going up or the price of it I guess we don't know what the rents are going to be there actually probably you can use as a for the rents some of the recent housing over the last five years that's come in or for instance the existing structure pricing at say West Village for most of it my suspicion is it's probably going to attract empty nesters who are in their 20s and have disposable income this is not going to be those poor students at Duke it's going to be new people that aren't living in the area there may be students but I suspect poor might be a stretch well I mean you know technically since it's poor and then I think that as with the goal of and this could be a question for any of you that are working on this the goal of 15% affordable housing is kind of what kind of measures are we going to use or what data do we have to be able to tell whether we're progressing towards that goal or not you know how can or how can we say how many affordable houses do we or much affordable housing do we need and you know in each area sure we take a try at that and Pat or Laura or Bergen pile pile on the so one of the new features of map 21 the transportation bill under which we've applied for the Durham Orange Light Rail project for the first time asks to measure affordable housing in transportation areas and so the federal government hasn't finalized exactly what they're looking for but what they're looking for is some number of rent or cost restricted units they could be owner occupied or rent or occupied so something like a home trust or an affordable rental they're looking to see prior to the investment in transportation what are the number of income restricted units in the quarter and for how many years are they income restricted you would say a five year income restricted unit is not as powerful investment in affordable housing as a 20 year or a 99 year restricted unit they're going to ask us to count those up and what they're going to want to see is the project advances through phases of development how is the community in the city increasing the number of units and either you know keeping to that 15% percentage or at least raising the percentage over what it was at the baseline so that's kind of how we'll measure how we will get on the strategies I would yield to my colleague Pat and let him talk about that young again with the planning department you heard Mr. Medlin talk about the different components of the affordable housing strategy and one of the very preliminary pieces that we should have in the next several months here certainly by the end of the summer is a session I think I mentioned this to you all before that's going to look really in detail at some of this baseline data that Patrick's describing to try to talk about that what the really just an expansion on the work that Patrick and his team did on the existing housing condition existing affordability information and then looking at some of the new construction that Commissioner Widers and others have discussed and looking at essentially kind of the per unit subsidy necessary to make that type of construction affordable at say a couple of different station areas one of the issues we're dealing with here is that each of the station areas have really dramatically different economics of land cost and other infrastructure conditions and other things so we're going to try to create some of that differentiation and talk about it in detail and I think that will create essentially a starting point for the conversation about what types of incentives will work in our necessary if it's helpful so but you're saying that it's not we're not just it's not going to be enough just to have units that are at a certain have certain level we have to have some kind of formal to to although our resolution and our goal doesn't really say say that but there was an understanding that it was one of the major incentives for doing it was to improve the rating on the rail proposal but that we we have to have some kind of legal restriction on it and and along with that would go some kind some mechanism for monitoring it and you know for approving the people who are determining who's eligible and determining that the unit will still be affordable when that person moves on maybe that's not as much of an issue as for rental housing as it would be for right side Patrick may be able to expand on this but I think the FTA will allow us to look at both income restricted housing that like you're describing that's under some kind of deed restriction for direct ownership of a public entity and that's economically available and I think we can get credit or consideration for both types Patrick again can speak to that I think this is sort of we're walking a new road with the federal government together on this question I think so interestingly the map that's in the handout that Bergen just supplied for all of you looking at the existing affordable units if you take a look at that the Durham Orange light rail quarter is in there it's when FTA asked we said what kind of materials would you like and they said we'll send us what you have and I have a feeling that they might open that map and say to Seattle hey we really like Durham's map would you send us one of those and they might like something from Seattle and say hey have you seen Seattle's data tables will you send us one of those so we're waiting to hear kind of as they develop their this is the first time they've measured this and they're basically let's say we're building and permitting new units and they're coming in that somebody at 60% of the area median income can afford and the Dillard Buchanan whichever station area we should get credit for that and we should be able to explain to them now the question they'll ask back to you is well in five years will the rent be double and that's where they'll be interested in the legal the legally maintained affordability and we'll Birgene did you have a comment yeah I was just going to say and he mentioned that the triangle J is currently working on an inventory of affordable housing units in the greater triangle area but Durham is definitely a priority and the maps that are in the report that I handed out were as comprehensive as we could get them by the time we had to publish this but it's a work in progress so we will have baseline data Commissioner Miller Birgene if you come to the mic I have some questions I found your presentation fascinating do we know where the 78% the 78% of the people of Durham who are housing plus transportation burden where do they live if I recall they're all over the place because there are different elements at play there so it's not I mean you can be not necessarily a low income person and still be housing burden obviously yeah if you are in a very expensive house or drive you know two hours to get to your job your transportation costs are going to be high but they really are all over the city but I would encourage you to take a look at the index yourself and you can see you can go as low down as census tract and look at your own neighborhood or the city or the county as a whole it's if you just Google housing and transportation affordability index so are we planning to put transit I mean are we mismatching it because that seems to me that's where your presentation was heading but we never got there in other words are we going to put this light rail system where the 78% can use it well as I said the 78% are scattered all around the city and yes the light rail 78% they'd have to be I don't know that it's directed at that specifically but yes they would have access do you have something to say to that no I just think if you look at that data my conclusion was there's a set of people who are in some sense voluntarily have chosen to be exceed that 50% criteria and there are people who are involuntarily because of lack of choices the data doesn't tell you what that is but that pretty clearly appears to be the case and also you said that the average was 50% so half the people 45% right did you really mean average or did you mean median or something well that is the average and that one was American household because that came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and so it's fascinating to me using the 9th street example which I'm very familiar with so we have as a result of the combination of factors but not the least of which is the the rezoning that we took there to promote redevelopment of the area we've got about 1100 new housing units going in the rents there at least the ones that are published online range from $1100 for a studio apartment of very few square feet up to about just under $4,000 for a three bedroom unit I don't know how many of those people would be in the 78% but that's very high and we have no planned units that would meet any measure of affordability and all of this would be rental occupied so it's really interesting and I think that one of the things that we need to do as we plan for the next stations and the next compact neighborhoods that we start working on is do a better job than we did in 9th street for making some sort of provision whether it be incentive or some other mechanism for providing for some housing where some of the 78% can go it worries me I mean it's thrilling and exciting to see the redevelopment but it worries me and of course the same thing is now happening in I don't know whether it's the Buchanan or downtown area but as we build more and more of these multi-family high rent projects and we've got them coming on all the time and read about them every month in the newspaper can I quickly comment on that I think we pretty clearly have three at least partially competing goals we have a goal of creating high density which is essential to the efficient operation of the transit system we have a goal of affordable housing which we've been talking about and we have a goal of new development or redevelopment that is of substantial value so that it's of a scale that creates a number of jobs and that has a high tax value and therefore adds to the tax base as I said those goals are competing so I think as we go into this process we're going to try to talk about how those things play against each other and what the trade-offs are because that's really what we're talking about and we're going to get the new development there's probably going to have to be a higher per-unit subsidy and there's going to be more rental units if we're going to try to do more preservation of existing stock we can do that that may take land out of opportunity for increased density and increased value and redevelopment so that's what this process is going to talk about are the trade-offs there's no way to get all three of those things at the levels we would want necessarily Pat if I could also respond to Mr. Miller's comment I think one of the things that as we look at some other situations around the region where this is going on Franklin Street and Chapel Hill is another pretty expensive real estate market where we agree the interesting thing that's going on on Rosemary Street right now is that there is a new building being built called the shortbread lofts which will be the newest student-oriented housing complex on the street and the warehouse and the street is cut rent by $120 a month to deal with the competition of the new building and so I think one of the questions in a place like 9th Street that's experiencing and you know your diagnostic of what's coming on is exactly what I've seen when I read those same websites and look at rents and things like that is the competition that those new units are bringing into the pre-existing rental market is it helping to slow the increase in rents and is that helping with I think it was these sort of more organically affordable stock by increasing the supply in the neighborhood so I think one of the things that we can think about and I think you know Pat Young is right when he says we want to talk to FTA about yeah we're trying to do legally restricted units for folks at certain income levels but we're also trying to help you know perhaps moderate the rate at which rents increase so that the market has a larger organically affordable portion of the market that reaches folks at moderate and middle incomes and so I don't know the answer to that question in 9th Street but that's a data gap where if we could learn about some of the rents at the non new properties we might see if the new properties are helping the existing ones remain affordable or increase in rent more slowly because we're seeing that at least in one a couple places in Chapel Hill whether it will last who knows thank you Mr. Chairman I'm really impressed at the level of study and the level of understanding that has been developed here as we go through this because this is a huge public investment of money and you want to make sure that it works but I'm confident that to the extent that we can guarantee success through understanding that that's being accomplished so I'm really impressed thank you Mr. Chairman are there any other comments okay Commissioner Davis Smusky and Winder I just had one question I was looking at the information that said linking workforce housing and transit was there any look at if we look at the median household income under 30,000 what location where they worked such as maybe Duke in those areas to kind of see if we need to place it around those centers of where low income households are actually working to kind of accommodate that that would kind of leave some of that pressure of having to commute so much if they had affordable housing closer to the areas that they work was there any information they look at where these people were working that fit the demographics of low income no for this report we did not look at that that is a good thing to look at I know that there are strategies and I think Duke even did one didn't they Trinity Heights or something like that is a little neighborhood that is specifically for Duke employees but no for this report we didn't look at that but maybe for our next version 2 of this that would be a good thing to look at Commissioner Smusky thank you Mr. Chairman most of the time when I go to Durham open space and trails commission on behalf of this board I'm there to offer that board some information this is an opportunity for me to bring some back to us and that is there was a presentation at the last meeting about an alternative routing for this proposal and I didn't think much of it at the time because everything is going down a certain path but it seems to me this data would make me want to take a second look at it because it goes from around Duke and obviously this downtown corridor that you did the study on is a very important part of the whole transportation scenario that we need in this county but it would go down 40 out into the park where Mr. Davis you were suggesting some of our folks might actually be working to take a turn at 40 come in across the southern part down where there's commercial establishment and come in the southern part of 54 Mr. Smusky I've seen that twice they picked up at the sales street they didn't go all the way to Patterson Point to start they picked up at the sales street and this is following the corridor they need to be picking up at the station at least at Patterson Point at least at the station that we were talking about in our studies here but you're right I think that these stations that we talked about should be included in that study but maybe it's time that we reconsider that but I think what I'm hearing from you is that it's already decided I can speak to we actually took a look at that corridor back in I think 2007 and 2008 through a process called the Special Transit Advisory Commission what we did is we started off oh very sorry sir back in 2008 we had a process where we went to the Metropolitan Planning Organization Durham, Chapel Hill, Carborough and also our colleagues in Raleigh and said pick any major corridor that you guys were interested in for major transit investments we established a list of 18 corridors throughout the region and we went through and kind of looked at the trips per acre for jobs generated by jobs in the corridor housing in the corridor and how that all interplaced together and I've seen that alternative presentation in that corridor that we looked at it was not one of the top performing corridors the corridor that we have proposed and moved forward is basically the top performing corridor in the region and the biggest challenge on the travel demand side from that presentation is that the going from Southern Avenue to the east and using that or somewhere going through the research triangle eastern research or western research triangle park area is that the folks who live there do not have strong commuting, working or recreational trip patterns in relationship to the big generators in downtown Durham and UNC the way that the folks at Patterson Place and along MLK the travel patterns are much more richly interrelated in terms of where they work where they shop and when we did that analysis in 2008 we looked at that and we thought the best bang for the buck and we could forward that analysis to this group if it would be helpful but at that point the MPO decided the corridor that we needed to focus on was the one between Durham and Chapel Hill and that corridor may make an excellent future extension it's just in terms of where we see growth in Durham going and where this board and others have planned for future growth centers and that alternative proposal doesn't speak to the travel patterns that we have today and predict in the future in the same way that the proposal we're moving on does okay and it doesn't have to go specifically there because I think it went further out closer to 147 when Austin Avenue could be a good point to head south and that might be something we want to look at but it seems that if we go down the current plan that we're heading out into a territory that's going to be developed and Mr. Whitley was talking about the need for development over on the eastern portion of Durham and it when we start developing out in the western portion of Durham it's not going to be providing affordable housing it's going to be putting people in the place that Burgney was talking about about putting people out there where they're going to be outside of their transportation and housing housing is going to be expensive when we start developing out there I think if you want to look at affordable housing you want to include a plan and you want to do something that includes affordable housing I think we need to have more of a focus on the eastern part of Durham but we definitely need to go to Duke we need to start over on the far side of Duke over there thank you I think Commissioner Wynders you were in the queue I just wanted to mention that the idea of the competing needs or competing goals shouldn't be over emphasized that affordable housing is complimentary not to economic development and to transit support because having a mix of incomes everywhere it's the concentration of one kind of either high income or low income that is detrimental to the community in general in that if people can't live near where they work not only are those people economically disadvantaged or disadvantaged Duke understands that because they have been put a lot of investment into housing for affordable housing in their part of town and I think also I think we have a policy about concentration of too much affordable housing but I think that and so we're sort of saying we want mixed income housing which is beneficial to the schools if you have I think Wake County has more of a problem with that than Durham does but you know if you have these concentrations of high income and low income it hurts your school system and so I just think that having mixed income housing is just a very necessary thing for the long term thriving for our community to thrive in the long term okay thank you Commissioner Whitley were you looking for a response Commissioner Wilders if we if we have any to do any local data to sort of look at that about how does the price affordable housing relate or when these new housing units come online are they really going to generate more transit ridership or I think there has been some research in other places that ownership actually went up in the areas where this housing was built Mr. Chair Commissioner Wilders if I might quickly I certainly didn't mean to say or imply there's a conflict between affordable housing and the community goals that you stated everything you said is completely true what I was saying is I think what I was trying to say is that because of the increase in land value associated with these significant transit investments that encourage density in these areas land values increase dramatically and the market alone will not produce affordable housing period so we're going to need to have significant regulatory and or direct financial interventions and participation to create the affordable housing which has tremendous community benefits that you outlined which is why we're talking about this subject and so concerned about it Commissioner Whitley well I've enjoyed the conversation and I agree with most of what has been said but I want to talk about go back to this what you know I brought up the subject of rental versus homeowner I live in in East Durham I live in a bedroom community we go outside of our community for recreation for shopping and all the other needs that community have to have and we come back that means we take our wealth outside of our community we don't have banks we don't have doctors offices none of that stuff that other neighborhoods and communities have you know and for when you have a high number of rental property that's more wealth going somewhere else because the owner of the rental property lives somewhere else you know so we don't have a way like West Durham or South Durham have of keeping their money circulating in their own communities and given that we're going to have this big growth coming up because of transportation it seems to me we will start thinking about how to make East Durham more stable we're right next to the airport you know you got to go to East Durham to get there the research triangle same thing you know and I'm very proud of where I live I love the people but I know if we don't do the planning now we're going to be in trouble later you know right now you only have one stop I know that's going to change I just give me another minute I know that's going to change when when Raleigh come on board with their rail rail design you know that we'll have more stops in East Durham but we need to start thinking forward now how do we keep wealth in our community Larry how do we keep wealth in our community that's a big question that's a big question I'm not sure I could summarize in a few words well I have one question neighborhood improvement services just introduce a new tool to look at demographics and look at communities are you familiar with it to pour some same information and I think it's called COMPAS are you familiar with it I have not had an opportunity to look at it yet but I have somewhat I haven't had an opportunity to look at it I have Commissioner Harris at your friends it's called the neighborhood COMPAS I would strongly recommend each commissioner take a look at it what it tries to do is drill down a dozen characteristics including income proximity to transit proximity to other amenities at the neighborhood level so it's a tremendous tool and it definitely can be a platform to talk about these issues and how they differ geographically across the city so I think Melvin that could probably benefit you in looking at East Durham and East Durham communities and neighborhoods so do we have any other questions of Laura and her team with reference to the transit area housing if not this was just information for us right we don't need we don't need to take an action on it right the other thing we have is announcements and I know Mr. Miller had an announcement an item under announcements thank you Mr. Chairman members of the commission I wanted to note to you that during April of this year in the General Assembly the House committee on property rights heard a presentation from a person who's advocating the elimination of the protest petition right which has been part of the fabric of our land use regulatory program in North Carolina since 1923 legislation was introduced during 2013 the long session of this General Assembly to eliminate protest petitions that legislation did not pass however it was a very near run thing it's coming up I suspect it will based upon this presentation which was actually an invited presentation based on this I expect that it will come up again in this short session and I hope that this body if it doesn't if it has an opportunity to we'll be able to communicate to our elected officials both in the city and county so that they may communicate with our elected officials in the General Assembly a strong stance against any legislation that would tamper with the citizens right to file a protest petition thank you Mr. Chairman thank you and I think we will all be in favor of that yes Commissioner Whitley yes can Tom can you send us some information so that we may at some point vote on it on this that will send a louder signal as a new commission member I'm not sure exactly what the protocol would be for a commission member initiated resolution but if the matter hasn't been already determined by the time we meet in June I can bring a resolution like that to you or even distribute it to you comfortably before our meeting next month well we have done that on several occasions and I'm really thinking about July Commissioner I'm afraid the short session may be over by then you all certainly can take up and adopt any resolution that you submit and we'll assist you anyway we can I want to make sure that you understand that Mr. Miller could send out a resolution but if there's a discussion about it via email or more than half of you that would be a public meeting and we'd have to notice it so I guess it's if there's going to be deliberation I would probably send it to the staff so that it might be included in the agenda packet would that be satisfactory? That would be preferred and then if there's a discussion it just needs to be less than and you can obviously discuss it at the June meeting I certainly share Mr. Miller's observation that there's a good chance the short session will be over by the end of June Supervisor Whiteman what do we have Jim I don't know if anyone's ever called me Supervisor Whiteman before we have one we have one case scheduled for next month which is the revisit of the zoning case on Fayetteville Street from last month and for the record the meeting in June I will be in Canada so I will ask for an excuse absence for that particular meeting I just got it Commissioner White I need to ask for an excused absence next month also okay we'll pass those on to the chair he has the authority to grant those thank you are there other announcements from staff nope other comments from the commissioners if not I accept a motion for adjournment it's been a motion that we adjourn in so order