Okay, so welcome to a joint committee meeting of the Ordinance Committee and the City Council of Community Development and Neighborhood Revitalization Committee and Brian Pine, Chair of Community Development, Neighborhood Revitalization, Councilor for Ward 3, just a quick introduction. Chairman Busher, Member of the Ordinance Committee from Ward 1, Adam Roof, Member of the Committee and CDNR, Jane O'Dell, Central District and Ordinance Committee. Mr. Hester, City of Jerusalem, Todd Rawlings, Housing Program Manager at CDNR. If I could just check on microphones. Charlie, do we need to move Jane's microphone over to Richard and staff? Would that be better? I'm exactly thinking of doing this one. Yeah, you want to slide one? Adam and Jane, can you show us? Okay. So what we decided we would do as a joint committee is present a series of recommendations that will be essentially forwarded to different bodies, because several of these go to Planning Commission to come back to our City Council Ordinance Committee. Several items go to the CDNR, the Community Development and Neighborhood Revitalization Committee and what we really want to do is go through the highlights of the recommendations as we have developed them as a joint committee. So I thought we have a hard point. I'd like to have a little bit of an adoption agenda to start out. Good point. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? So moved. Second. Any discussion? Changes? All in favour? Opposed? Aye. Opposed? We'll move the joint committee meeting minutes. Do we have any comments? Move your documents. Second for that. Second. Any discussion, changes, corrections to the minutes that have been made? Just really good. Good job. Thank you, staff. If not, whoever did a great job. All in favour of minutes as drafted? Aye. Any opposed? No abstention? It's a bit adopted. So I think the preferred method is to go through this slide deck. Charlie, I'm going to check with you to confirm if it makes sense for me to stand on that microphone. Those microphones work. Okay. The beginning is that the inclusionary zoning working group, which was established by the council, and the dates are up on the slide, so we'll see those in a minute. I believe all the recommendations that came from the working group, Jane, you can correct me if I'm wrong. Were you damaged? There was no dissenting. That is correct. I think it was pretty incredible that we also accomplished the same vote than anything that we did. I don't think we did. So there's no minority opinion. There's no... We reached consensus on these recommendations, so I think that's an accomplishment without itself. But what we'll do is we'll go through these and we'll hit on the key points. So the workgroup was created by April 2017, council resolution. We started meeting in September of 2017, and we finished up our work this past July. What we are charged with doing is reviewing the recommendations that came from a January 2017 consultants report, and the goal was to identify the pros and cons of the recommendations, assess financial feasibility. When we talk about that, we really mean financial feasibility of development in Burlington with this requirement as essentially a cost of development. To prioritize recommendations, identify supporting partners and address other implementation issues that we'll discuss as we get through this. The work of the working group was jointly referred to be considered jointly by the Ordinance Committee and the Community Development and the Evergreen Revitalization Committee of the Council, and we met four times over the last three months. The membership as laid out here included Councilor Nodell, the service chair of the Unisonary Zoning Working Group, a representative from the Planning Commission as Bruce Baker, two for-profit residential developers, Eric Cochstra and Eric Farrell. You had to be Eric to be chosen for this. Several non-profit housing developers, Nancy Owens from Housing Vermont, Michael Monty from Shantide Housing Trust, two affordable housing advocates, John Davis and myself before I was on the council, was nominated or was appointed in that role, and the CEDAW director or the designee in Noel McKay served pretty much throughout, I think, for the whole time, I think. Up to the very end. And the planning director or the designee, but it was David White who participated. I just want to acknowledge the staff support for this was very well done. It was really Todd Rawlings and Ian Jacobs who provided great level of support for the work we did. We couldn't have done it without them. So it's important, I think, to look back at what was the legislative intent. 1990, this was a five-year debate process that the city council engaged in starting in 1985 when this first came out of the mayor's affordable housing task force was a recommendation, and it took quite a while to get both community and political leadership consensus around what we would do. We brought in a national consultant who spent a better part of a year with us developing this ordinance in 1990, and the legislative intent is really important, I think, to remind ourselves to create housing opportunities for all Vermont citizens as required by state law to ensure the provision of housing that meets the needs of all economic groups by concluding construction of only market rate housing on the limited supply available in the city and to improve the quality of life for all residents by having an economically integrated housing supply throughout the city. So the reason why I want to focus on this for a minute is it's often said that the ordinance hasn't produced a lot of new affordable units, but in fact if you look at the goal, production, actually counting how many units you produce isn't necessarily the most important piece of the intent. It really is to ensure that there be some supply of affordable housing within the private development that would occur, that without the ordinance theoretically would not have the affordable units. So key element of ordinances throughout the country that are really the sort of, you know, critical components here when drafting an ordinance while you look at really what's the percentage or what's the number of affordable homes in any given project affordable to low and how it becomes usually what's the goal. So in policy makers look at this type of ordinance we're looking at which projects are covered, does the law apply to all projects or only some projects based on their size or perhaps their location in a different zoning district, how many, how many affordable homes must be included by ordinance and for whom. So how should affordable be defined and for what duration. Other options are such things as kind of development of the application and alternative methods such as other than on-site which would be a payment in lieu or off-site affordable homes being developed elsewhere. So a quick and dirty summary of the consultant's recommendations. The consultant essentially said address which projects are covered. This was the consultant's belief that we should exempt more small projects from the ordinance and increase the project's size threshold basically that triggers the ordinance. We'll get to that when we talk about the recommendations. How many units and for whom, allowing developers to build more units but for higher income households than the current law or fewer units but for lower income households than the current law that was a question more than an answer I think there. And other options are to create a more meaningful payment in lieu option which allows developers to meet their obligation by making a payment to the city's housing trust fund instead of building the affordable units that are required on-site. So this summary recommendations goes back to the earlier slide of who is covered and how many affordable homes. The Joint Committee recommends, like the Inclusionary Zoning Working Group that there be no change in the current ordinance in regard to which projects are covered. It is any housing development of five or more units triggers the ordinance. The Joint Committee also recommends no change to the current law about how many affordable homes are required. So that's a minimum of 15% of all dwelling units must meet affordability requirements in the Waterfront Zoning District. That's not just the Waterfront as we know it but it's a zoning district that extends in some cases pretty far up to the hill. The 25% of the units must be affordable to the law or moderate income households. If a project is primarily targeted as what we considered high-end housing or luxury housing and that's defined in the ordinance, that required percentage actually goes up. So if you're going to provide very high-end housing your obligation increases as a percentage and it could be as high as 25% no matter where you are in the city based on the market rate units next. So for the ordinance purposes there is a very specific definition of affordable and affordable for rental units. The Joint Committee recommends no change to the current law. Price rental units that are affordable to households at 65% of area and median income with owner occupied units so homeowner units, convidiums that that we're actually recommending reducing that income level from 75% of area and median income to 70%. We'll talk a little bit more about how that will work when we get to that. Other options to meet this inclusionary housing requirement, the payment and lieu option, the current ordinance essentially gives the developer view board the discretion to determine that unique and difficult or challenging site conditions prevent the construction of on-site inclusionary units. Then the DRB has the option of allowing the developer to make a payment instead of building units subject to city council approval. This does not get triggered much at all despite the popular mythology in Burlington that lots of developers have built their units. I've paid out of building their units that that's actually not the case. And I hope people really spend a little time understanding that because you do hear this notion that we've allowed lots of developers to pay instead of build housing and that's just not the case. The payment per affordable home not built on-site. So that payment and lieu of building the affordable unit, in the end it really comes out to a price tag that is approaching $180,000. We did the math during the IZ Working Group and that was viewed as it's more than just a deterrent, it has a major chilling effect on that. That particular option isn't actually a real option, it's just a theoretical option we believed. So we tried to address that in our recommendations. This is what the consultant said to lower the payment and lieu as I was just discussing that it's too high to be considered a real option. It's much higher than the cost to the developer of building the on-site units. And as evidence that it's too high, it hasn't been exercised in over 10 years. We feel that it's an important option. Well the consultant opined that this option ought to be provided and it ought to be something available because it allows for flexibility for developers and that the revenue generated can be used to support other affordable housing development through the Housing Trust when in other locations. Next. So the Joint Committee, I believe in every case here, yes, we followed the IZ Working Group again here. So I'll just run through them quickly. The payment lieu option is one that is present and not viable but it ought to be made a more feasible option to pursue. It ought to be a real option as opposed to one that's just on paper. We agreed, the Joint Committee agreed with the IZ Working Group that the payment lieu should be available by right but on a restricted basis. By right just means it's not subject to the City Council or the City Official or the Planning Commission or really any other city body or individual. Restrictions on the payment lieu option are based on the size of the project and the location of the project and this is where things get a little complicated because this is a new concept for Burlington and I don't know how many other places do it really but we didn't, we got the sense that it's doable. We think it's feasible to base your requirements what you can do with you do them on-site or off-site based on location and we'll talk more about that. No payment lieu would be available to projects in the Waterfront Zoning District and that is a continuation of the existing policy that was based on the idea that this is a waterfront for everyone and if we're going to be meaningful about that we need to make sure that affordable homes can exist side-by-side with market rate so that can't be done off-site. The Joint Committee offers what we think is an innovative recommendation and we have to give credit to the Working Group because it was developed there and I think we actually made it fine-tuned a little bit based on the mayor's input into how it should be done and we'll come to that in a minute. It really is an attempt to address the challenging economics of this requirement which is in our zoning for smaller projects given that there's pretty significant fixed costs involved in developing housing whether you're building four or five units or building 40 or 50 units there's a lot of fixed costs that have to get spread across the units we're trying to recognize that smaller projects infill is a good thing we want that, we encourage it, it's a smart growth principle but yet the ordinance may be a real deterrent is what we believed then in smaller projects and we heard the economics of that pretty glaringly we also found that the concentration of IZ units built to date is largely in neighborhoods, has taken place in neighborhoods that already have a real mix of household incomes so we're succeeding in getting affordable units built but primarily in areas that already have lots of affordable housing to begin with so what we try to deal with is that issue of spreading, sharing this opportunity and creating a choice for people to live in neighborhoods that would otherwise be out of reach for them economically. Next. So for the smaller projects which we defined as five to 16 units the payment loo should have a payment loo option except if the project is in the waterfront district and that payment per unit is $35,000 we thought that was a reasonable number after discussing a number of considerations as to how to arrive at that there actually is no scientific method we defined anywhere out there so we try to go up with something that resembled a reasonable number that would allow the housing trust fund to support more new units so it's not too too high that it would be a real deterrent and it's by right. By right, exactly, that's a by right the medium sized projects which are anything over 16 units so it's 17 to 49 are considered medium in size and they pay more per unit which is $70,000 per unit and once you get to 50 and above you're paying $85,000 as an input payment per unit. This recognizes of course the larger projects have more units to spread those fixed costs over so this requirement doesn't hit larger projects in the same way that it hits the smaller projects. What we wanted to point out in that last sentence there only the incremental units pay the higher rate and I wasn't sure if incremental units is clear to everybody what that means so what it means is if you have a 17 unit project those first based on the math of 15% the first two units are charged at the $35,000 payment and that extra unit that's required after that is at the higher rate of $70,000 until you reach a larger number of units and then it kicks up to $85,000 so I think it's complicated but we can probably show it pretty easily in a spreadsheet. So medium and large projects can only use a new payment and a new option for projects located in parts of the city that have inclusive neighborhoods today. So if your project is actually located in a less economically diverse part of Burlington the requirement's going to be to build them on site. That was a policy decision which is a new approach or I think it's a new component in Burlington which I think really recognizes that there are neighborhoods in Burlington which have not necessarily embraced or taken their fair share and there's a lot of reasons for that land values and density and underlying zoning restrictions and things but we thought this was a way to try to at least humiliate that issue a bit. Next. So the rationale for the IC, the payment loop again it addresses the difficult economics of the smaller projects while capturing some resources for the Housing Trust Fund to support affordable housing elsewhere. It addresses lack of neighborhood inclusion shortcoming of IZ to date in Burlington and our data does show that the city's data should say. So while it has succeeded in fostering inclusive buildings and projects if you will or developments hasn't necessarily fostered inclusive neighborhoods across the city and that clearly was the intention so this is an attempt to get at that. It allows payment for market rate housing to leverage with other funding sources through the Housing Trust Fund to support the creation of more homes and in fact more deeply affordable homes that would have been built on site and that's an important piece. The density bonus proposal which we are advancing to the Planning Commission really looks at the, addresses the fact that in many cases developers have not been able to utilize the existing density bonus despite being required to comply with inclusionary and remember it was viewed as like a trade-off for a care and stick the stick if you will was you have to build the affordable units but the care it was we're going to give you a bonus so you can actually get more units on that site than you would have otherwise gotten and that was part of the contract if you will that the public made when the development community was we're going to require this of you but you're going to get something back in return it's hopefully going to ameliorate some of that financial hit on you and that was really important part of the discussion and it has been lost over the last 28 years maybe the joint committee endorsed the working groups recommendation that developers be granted by right density bonuses as a result and so final language from the Planning Commission should address the provision of by right density but still ensure opportunity for the DRB and the DAB to seek modifications to a project to address site plan concerns and architectural design standards so I think Councillor Busher asked several times does this by right mean that the DAB and the DRB can't address these issues and it was clear that that wasn't the intention so we want to just put that out there that when the Planning Commission develops their language they'll be doing it with this as their charge and there may be one more slide Richard unit comparability I think I described this hopefully accurately if I didn't that the IZ units be basically at par with the market rate units in size and I think that's how we ultimately came down on that one compliance monitoring my least favorite subject in this ordinance but it's important it's critical and right now it's done by CEDA and there's some discussion in the new department of permitting inspections would be would be carrying out that duty that's raised to be seen I think I believe that on that desert part of this change as well I think right now alright increasing funding for affordable housing is a concept the consultant recommended the IZ working group liked quite a bit the joint committee certainly endorsed the idea but we didn't have a specific proposal so at this point it's being referred to community development neighborhood revitalization to come back with a specific proposal given what we have on the plate right now I don't think we'll be doing that right away and in the minutes and I believe they're accurate I pointed out that the funding that we have right now the housing trust funding the money that we have set aside is not in the charter and so I'm hoping that this will start the conversation about what is the right amount and then to make that in the charter so it's not in jeopardy thank you that's a good point yep we tried to grapple with this last bullet item privately developed university housing built outside of the institutional zoning district so it's not housing built on or near campus but it's housing really built in the community by private developers for sole intent is to be occupied by students associated with one of the institutions of higher education that those really ought to be treated similarly to how the development review board treated Champlain College which has provided some documentation showing us that the income mix of your incoming students is an inclusionary requirement and as long as you stay in compliance with that you're okay Richard is the one more, is that it? okay so questions I think really to the public because this is all of you I have two floor come up and take this one just because it's on television got it and just you know for the record I'll take the mic to clarify I guess I should identify myself first for the record so my name is Ero Hartmanca I live in board one and I'm here speaking on behalf of both myself as someone who helped draft the original ordinance as well as on behalf of your mindful housing college clarifying questions I have two just thanks for that really clear presentation on the density by rights issue so does that include the lot coverage increases as well as by rights because there's a lot coverage bonus under icing as well so that would be included okay great I just want to clarify because it wasn't mentioned I know the presentation is high level but I just want to make sure and then the other thing that I was going to ask was the issue with the with the offsite development and I think this goes to the mayor's comment letter about there's sort of a cliff there in the brackets and I'm not sure I quite understood what the committee recommendation was to address the mayor's comment of that cliff I'm trying to explain it as possible that if you build a project of 5 to 16 units your requirement is 15% of those so when you get to 16 that comes out to 2.4 so once you exceed 16 the number kicks up to another unit but you pay the in-loop fee for those first two in the lower you pay the incremental rate so there's a big jump and my recollection of the mayor's letter was that I think there was a recommendation to not have it be that large a jump to figure out a way to make it quite as large I believe that was, we decided as a committee that we were okay with keeping it where it was and what we wanted to make it clear that the in-loop payment for the first two was at that lower rate I think that's what we don't we didn't take the rest of the mayor's letter thank you thanks for those clarifications I'll just say it's a record again Erhard Monaco 1 and 44 housing coalitions to say that we support follow the workroom process we really supported really thoughtful work and diligent work that went into that supported the recommendations also appreciate the joint committee recommendations and support those the one thing that I've raised in the past and I'll raise it again I know everybody's wrestled with the issue of basing the since we had the large jump in the area median income and resulted in a large jump in rents just over the last year and that actually puts the rents into much less affordable range. I know you all wrestled with that and no one really came up with an alternative basis for the affordability alternative to the area median income and that would be a challenge to find something. One of the suggestions that was discussed was the idea of figuring out some way to smooth large increases from one year to the next on the area median income and I don't think there was ultimately a resolution of that and so our recommendation is to we don't have a specific recommendation on it I just want to say that we still think that that kind of smoothing needs to happen and we would be happy to work with the CEDO office or with the committee as its recommendations go to the city council at some point to come up with a methodology for helping to smooth that so that was really the most substantive comment I had that I think that still needs to happen one smaller thing that just occurred to me is remembering and I haven't looked at the zoning maps all that much lately but I do seem to recall and so this goes to the issue of the applicability to student housing. The institutional zone is pretty large and includes neighborhoods adjacent to what is traditionally considered the university campus so just kind of from a neighborhood perspective a comment would simply be I'm not sure the institutional zone is the best criterion for kind of setting that as a boundary because again there may be for example development of student housing that is not on campus but is actually in a neighborhood but still within the institutional zone that I think probably should be subject to the inclusionary requirements so that would be another thing to make sure that we have a manual level of detail of looking at how those boundaries work and whether there's a better way to define that. Thank you. Since we have a fairly small crowd it seems like we could have a discussion as unlike most public hearings where we just take quality comments. So Councilman O'Neill you had a point to make those comments. I think we did talk about income smoothing and we do have to maybe tonight if we're going to do some deliberation I think it would be good to talk about that and I think the point about the institutional zone is a new one that we haven't really talked about and I think it would be worth going back to that a bit and then I also think we need to look at the map of less we have two options in terms of the map and we should look at that as well but we did really grapple with this issue of how do you set the rent what's your basis for setting the rent and it just said we just kept coming back to that area median income because it's as imperfect as it is it seems like the best option that we have. I guess thank you for that. One thing I forgot to mention was at the work group meetings it still remains a comment that I forgot to mention which is simply around the 65 percentage targeting requirement for 65 percent of very median income affordability for rental units so having really not been able to come up with a better criterion I would still say that may be looking at that 65 percent and possibly reducing that to 60 is still remains one of my recommendations. I do understand how the recommendations from the work group were kind of a package deal and how moving any of those that kind of a significant number would cause problems in terms of consensus but for the record I feel like I still need to state that because even with smoothing you're still going to have the potential maybe not for the kind of jump that we saw this last year but you will still have potential for increases that might be disproportionate and render the requirement really unaffordable to the folks that it's meant to be affordable to. What's the pleasure of the committee as far as taking those three items that the Councilor Dela just highlighted income smoothing whether we consider the University or the institutional zone or any other issues Are there any other outstanding issues? Are there any of the staff want to highlight for us? So although it was agreement on almost everything I think I did note that I was not I had not agreed with the elimination of parking in all areas and I had concerns about that and how that relates to projects that may not provide parking with units but make the resident pay for them. We had a conversation that's reflected in the minutes and I just want to note that I believe that those details need to be worked out It's in the record and I'm not proposing that we hash that out but I just wanted to make sure that that was reflected that there was that outstanding issue I think everything else I think we all agreed upon but for me parking was not something that I could absolutely rubber stamp the recommendation for. In follow-up to that I think that this consensus of the committee was where the developer I think they're going to be required to present their parking plan in that process with the DRV the DRV should stipulate that the cost the added cost to residents for parking be factored into the calculation of the affordable rent that was our intent. I think that was discussed I don't know if that was the I don't know. So if they charge $50 to the inclusionary units that's extra to their cost and it really ought to be essentially pull out of what would be the rent that could be otherwise charged to the tenant. It's part of the housing cost really. So I would in order to give direction to planning who hasn't been here and the commission who will be looking at this I would ask the committee or the staff to review what the intent is or what we'd like to see happen so that when it comes back to the ordinance committee they'll leave some fill way in on it they may agree or not agree yeah whatever but that's what I would request because I don't think that's really clear. I'm looking to talk to Melissa if he thinks that would be something that would be not that hard as far as implementation. So just to clarify the intent is to include the cost of parking into the maximum gross rent. Is that correct? When does church start to live from the units? From a monitoring perspective that could be challenging only in so far as it relies on sort of the self-certification but I think administratively my memory was that at the last meeting that the committee had expressed that that would be challenging administratively but I'm happy to dig into that more as we move through this process and give the planning commission and ordinance committee more just a doing a deeper dive into it. I think it would be good. I just think that their planners they hopefully would understand what our goal is and they could reach out and see if there was a way to put that in place and if it's impossible that's information we need to know also and take that back and consider if there are other options but thank you. Sounds good. So there's really two separate issues on parking. One is the zoning requirement. The other is how you deal with the cost impact on the tenant. And so just to make sure I understand it correctly. In terms of the latter issue if you are someone who is eligible for a new IZ unit and you have a car and the owner charges for parking then the rent should be lowered so that your rent plus the cost of the parking is no more than 30% of area median income. That's the idea. So if there's turnover is that kind of the administrative difficulty? Yeah. And I'm just sort of thinking out loud here in terms of the equity between a household that doesn't have a car are we saying that essentially that there should pay more? What we're saying is that if you have a car we're making sure that if you're in an IZ unit there's no cost to you essentially because it's being deducted from the gross rent calculation. And so in a way we're incenting folks perhaps cars in these units but then I think the tension that we talked about last time was that we're removing the requirement for parking for IZ units but in a way we could be incenting more parking in these units or more cars. So you're right. It was a catch 22. I had said well maybe the money that's put in that pot for creating more affordable houses, the payment in blue could be utilized to subsidize the cost of parking for those individuals that qualify and there would have to be criteria. I don't think it's simple but I still feel that in one way it's not fair if you're giving people a break because they have a car and they're paying less in rent but in another way it's not fair if they need a car to get to their job and the parking makes it affordable for them to live there. So nothing's fair. We could be simple but I would say that inclusionary units get the discount for parking regardless of the household circumstances. That might be simpler. So right now let's just do simple math for that. Rent is $1,000 I'll just say for inclusionary rent utilities are $100 a month that is actually taken off for most landlords because they don't provide utilities so the real rent is $900 and if parking was another $50 it would be $850 a month if you're being charged if you're otherwise being charged for parking. So that would require staff to do a survey of parking cost for the market rate units on an annual basis and make modifications to rents or so. Is that could be done through self-reporting? I think it would need to be. Exactly. That I'd like to think about a little bit more about how that might actually work. Do you confirm the rent through by asking tenants to fill out a survey? Is that one of the methods you use for monitoring? No I think that's the intent as we move forward. The first year that we did it was really to get a baseline for just to ensure that landlords were aware of the ordinance to do some self-reporting. I think over time we want to start doing more risk analyses and to deeper monitoring. I don't know if this is a possible solution but to avoid all that administrative difficulty and to avoid actually making it part of the rent and creating that kind of inequity you could perhaps just simply prohibit a charge for parking for an inclusionary unit and that would maintain rents at the same level people would have comparable rents. It doesn't eliminate the incentive to somebody in an inclusionary unit to have a car even if they need it but it gets rid of you having to do a rent survey because if the tenant gets a charge of rent all they have to do is come to CEDO and say hey I'm not supposed to be charged rent for the parking. I think my only concern with that is not to smack into our disincentive people from getting cars and driving where we have competing public policies here and I'm not sure there's a middle ground to the threat. I hear what you're saying and that is a simple solution but it is inconsistent with our policy of disincentivizing you know if I don't pay for a parking why wouldn't I have a car or maybe it's all income fair enough yep I did confirm this after our last meeting that they do charge in their downtown buildings I don't think out when you get out to like Thayer which is out of North Avenue but I think in their new development at Cambrian Rhymes which is the old Diocese college they're essential they don't take out cable for instance because cable is not essential but utilities are because you have to pay for heat and electric that'll be an additional charge probably because of the premium of the space and not wanting people to have two cars that's one of their other reasons I would just request that we identify that this is an unsolved problem and if there are any other insights would appreciate that obviously no matter what we do we create a problem okay anyway thank you and to avoid the law of unintended consequences as much as possible absolutely so the issue of the institutional zone had never come up until tonight that was a new one which raises a good point and I can think of an example we have a for opportunity college campus in the zone that's not the best example the modern sister's emergency property I'm afraid will be up for sale at some point and that's in the zone I think that could be one of that's not on campus so that could be where institution partners with a private developer they come and build 400 rooms that are for students enrollment goes down they go market rated now we don't have any way to capture inclusionary for that zone but even greater than that I feel this is like oh my god it's like you're taking ripping off the scab here and the wound here is that the boundaries for the institutional zone are far greater than what the institution occupies and it it has tentacles that include neighborhoods and so I think that you know I've been caught in the middle of this for so many years and I don't know if Ward 6 has the same issues but Ward 1 certainly does so I think that you would be precluding the creation of some affordable units if we don't address this in some way new issue for us does anyone in the room able to get a map up where we can see the institutional zoning over it's an overlaid district right? so right now our recommendation says applies only to purpose built student housing outside of institutional zones housing built in the zone is not covered bigger than the campus that's the quite a bit yes that's is it in Ward 6 as well carried out it's from either an institution to know I don't know whether this threshold is my consensus we didn't hear from that I didn't invite them tonight Joe should be here in a minute he wasn't invited is it blue and do you think it's it's blue? that's the institution wow all of that blue that's what I'm telling you yes so that's why I'm sharing with all of you that this is a big deal in Ward 1 I think we should think about redefining oh I would love assistance there not changing I mean for the purposes of the I see I mean maybe also that but I think let's stay within our lane here I want to go outside the lane I know I know you do so I'm not sure I understand are you mean one option would be which we're saying in the institutional zone in the institutional zone these IZ don't apply one option would say they do apply regardless I would have some concern that what I'm wondering is it possible and I appreciate we want to do it all now but is that something that we might direct the ordinance committee or someone to look at above and beyond I don't want to tackle something that imperils this project but also that has been identified as an issue and maybe something we could tackle at the ordinance committee next yeah I'd be very supportive of that but I think that there is one way to address part of this is to redefine that the inclusionary zoning doesn't apply to housing that's built on the campus as opposed to the zone and so to me that is the way to address this in the short term I would love to look at the big picture but in the short term why not define it that way and I would love to hear the institution's response I don't think that that would be inconsistent with really what they're thinking also but I have to hear would you consider Trinity campus that would be that UVM bought that so yes unfortunately I would consider that their campus much to my chagrin but I'm saying within their campus within their boundaries that that was a college and they bought it and it remained a college or a university so I'm not really trying to open the door for challenges I'm trying to make sense out of it but keep it within their boundaries so that on Fletcher Place let's say it's let's just say it's not any property that they don't own is not even though it's in the IZ they would still have to be able to meet inclusionary zoning anyways I just think if we could define it by their campus boundaries would be okay so one as I'm sitting here thinking this would really only imply the UVM if this passes Champlain will be required to comply and that test will apply regardless of where they built meaning they meet they meet the 65% or not and they're required to meet that for the current development so if they built another one regardless of where it is they're still going to have to comply so really this is only a UVM issue and the only reason I'm proposing this is so that the disparity regarding this so it can move forward I understand the disparity between what I'm proposing versus what the criteria for Champlain I do get that but if UVM was to now take over Marta Christie they would have to do the same thing that Champlain was doing because now it's outside of their campus just to be clear would we be drawing a line of assumption is if UVM were to make that acquisition they would consider that part of their campus at that point in time so my question is sort of is it the campus does it exist today locked on the ground or is it well actually I was thinking it was the campus that's defined right now that's what I was thinking I was not because how do you prevent CRE from the institutions how do you contain them if you allow them to buy up all the property around themselves so to me it would be their existing boundaries I was trying to be simple on that I don't know if that's okay or not Richard wants to say something I'm just recalling that Champlain had a memorandum of understanding for a 20 year period and when they actually purchased the land down for Eagles Landing from the city the city struck this deal because it was outside of the defined area of their memorandum of understanding and that was the leverage that the city had over them for purposes of forcing IZ I think we really have to explore as Mr. Mason said how to go about altering institutional requirements for IZ because they're going to talk about how they relied on that exception and the fact that they should be able to redraw the boundaries of their campus I don't think they should I understand that I'm saying it's probably a conversation that really needs to be developed with some thought over time we don't have the other party at the table to address it I think in the interest of all we should probably save our position we should just move on to the next sorry that was easy let's go to the next topic I see yes so just reminder that we're supposed to now report to the council and then the council takes a vote on directions to the planning commission right so with income smoothing I mean with any of these we could just say we want income smoothing to be factored into the rent setting because this will get to ordinance and we will be doing line by line so some stuff we can just say we're going to deal with it then we're really into very specific language you know we could just say I think a five year moving average would work or a three year moving average I guess it wouldn't be moving average because you always have the last year three years, five years yeah and three years would probably yeah so one of these I propose three years so minutes we'll reflect that and that will be shared with the planning commission I think five years is too long because especially with time rapidly rising rents one more year so like for example in 2019 time comes to reset the rents for 2019 you would look at the average of the area median income for the years 2019, 2018 and 2017 you would average them and you would calculate 65% and then set the rent to be affordable to someone at that income so um but what I heard and so this is not my world all of you know far more than I do but what I heard was that there was a spike one year so if you have fewer years to smooth that spike is going to play a bigger role than more years so if it was five years and only one of those years was a spike you could soften that if it's three years as I said it's going to play it's going to impact more so I don't know that you're absolutely right however can you come to the mic sir? don't forget to say don't forget the part about you're absolutely right for the record the problem is if you go back if you do a five year average you're seriously behind where people's incomes are and the reality is when it comes to smoothing averages they can work with you and they can work against you and certainly when we're always talking about retirement smoothing averages we always use five well not always but it's usually five yeah you know there's always that problem of that really ugly year that you want to get rid of and with five years it takes to get rid of it but you know that's just the nature of smoothing averages this is not my world the housing world maybe there's maybe three is better you know you spend much more time dealing with this than I do I just three years is to me not even I mean it is a smoothing average but just barely to me I mean you only talk about three variables so you're not smoothing a whole lot but you know again I would I guess we could leave that for the ordinance committee to weigh that or if you you know obviously the best thing to do it which I think would take a lot of time I'm not sure that anybody wants to do it would be to take the last 15 years and see what a five years is and see what a three year is and see if that it really has been affected was that it would be a lot of work so I don't know if that's really the answer probably the better answer is to ask experts I think Cedar would be happy to do that kind of analysis unless I'm misunderstanding it that doesn't sound that scary to me so we'd be happy to bring that to ordinance I would also point out that although 11% spike last year I think the year before it went down almost 3% so I'm not sure if that's an argument for five years or three years necessarily but feels it's very volatile I mean I think that's an argument for five yeah I think so too because the idea of a smoothing average is to get rid of those volatilities and if you've got down three up 11 and then whatever the next year is you're going to have a fair amount of volatility another easy topic I think what we're saying though is we want the planning commission to come back with a recommendation it'll go to ordinance after that I guess because to prove that in a recommendation they come up with a way to then it goes to ordinance yeah I'm sorry I should have said that in the beginning oh okay I'm sorry you weren't here but that's okay I should have pointed out that our approach tonight is to take a number of really anything involved with the zoning ordinance is going to go to the planning commission with our specific recommendations they're going to come back to the council and then it goes to ordinance to work out the details at that level I believe the planning commission will come up with actual ordinance language though through their ordinance so like for example this issue of the smoothing average that would go to planning first so that would hopefully make the lives of people on the ordinance committee a little bit maybe a little bit easier but at least we'll have already had passed if I could Ian Todd Richard if you could just answer that question of sequencing here we're going tonight we're bringing this to the council as a slate of recommendations they get referred primarily the action items that deal with the ordinance get referred to the planning they take it through their process which we believe is ordinance committee of the planning commission then it comes back to the council then it goes through the city council ordinance committee and then it comes back for final adoption is that the sequence that we go back to the council coming from the planning commission for first reading and referral to the council or the council could place an all state to pass it I'm assuming they won't they will first read refer to ordinance committee for their hearing and then back for second that's how I think we walked through it last night I think it's worth stating it again I ran over that with Kimster this morning she agreed great is this going on monday is this going on monday I believe we are planning to bring it on monday we have a resolution it's in london's queue I just told her to hold off in case there was any change tonight just curious do we share the resolution people getting kind of quiet speak up for the crowd all right use your outside voice guys ready next map we have two maps in front of us the map that's titled proposed designated areas for inclusionary zoning based on 80% area median income what it essentially allows is for the it allows for offsite units to be permitted in more areas of the city than the other approach well is that really what it also means inclusive areas so the white areas are more inclusive areas yes and our payment in lieu option says if your project is in a less inclusive area you get the payment in lieu by right nope which is the white areas on both maps so the big difference between these two maps is that in the 100% AMI there's more white area because you're defining kind of the moderate income as 100% of AMI instead of defining as 80% of AMI so I think it has the effect of exclusive so I think it has the effect of expanding the payment in lieu by right geographically quite a bit as compared to the worker proposal of 80% I think the 80% is better this map is very stark just for those who can't see it because we have it in front of us and you don't it really exempts or allows offsite in the entire new north end for once and it expands in the south end a fair amount almost doubles in the south end so really about twice as much land area in Burlington would be areas that could essentially move the inclusionary units by right to another area either through the offsite option or through the payment in lieu which may or may not be to an area outside right, you don't know where that's going so to me the 80% allows more units to be spread throughout the city versus the 100% that's what I see so there would be more inclusionary units that would have to be built they're less inclusive which means they can't move them offsite right? that's what I thought that's what I like do we have this map that we can look at on screen or no? not at the moment I'm trying to get it okay, no problem sorry these are sort of tiny did you know that if Charlie do you want to try to focus on one of these with the camera if we get it on the screen that would be ideal we can just take it right to this table hanging down oh you can do it that way you got some papers just a warning you might need a magnifying glass to see the actual streets we have councilor perspectives we haven't heard a whole lot of what folks think about the two-tier problems I think there was the administration perhaps was advocating for one approach over the other is that what it's been from? I think the mayor's memo suggested what everything do you remember was there a reasoning behind that? I just be interested to know the opposite just got to find it keep talking I think the main point that the mayor was trying to make was that 100% of median is rooted in the ordinance as the maximum household income that you can qualify for an IZU and so that it was appropriate to be tying our inclusion to the actual ordinance language to so a household regardless of what the rent is or the purchase price the which is based on 65% of median income and 75% of median income respectively the actual household income can be up to 100% according to the ordinance household so the notion is affordable to but occupied by a different income level and the idea was and this is a a lot of movement and incomes change and we didn't want to saddle developers with the responsibility to have to fill their units to make their expenses and to make the project feasible didn't want to saddle them with such a small band of people we wanted that band to be a little bigger as they had a larger share of the market that could be allowed so that's where the 80% goes up to 100% of the ordinance to allow that just more flexibility in the implementation who actually gets the units who wins the lottery so he said we further recommend that since inclusion you read this I didn't hear what you said but this is okay regarding the proposed areas which would determine whether and in lieu payment or an IZ unit could be located offsite given that the income limited defined in the ordinance references to median income we support that these areas be defined by 100% median income instead of 80% we further recommend that since inclusion can be defined by factors other than income the areas be designated census below median AMI area and census above medium AMI area council point yeah so I'm using the 100% map just because when we get into the court of public opinion because we've created the payment in lieu by right the more expansive geographic area for payment in lieu by right makes it look like we're okay with almost all the requirement being met through payments which I don't think we want it wasn't the intent and I think that if a real strong point of the proposal as it involves is that this idea of inclusivity, inclusive neighbors across the city and I think that 80% just accomplishes that much better than the other it's my own view I really feel that that this map spreads out affordable units throughout the city which is the goal to have them in every neighborhood and to and people have different areas of the city they'd like to live in and as they develop if a development comes in I would like to see that met in that section of the city people like the new north end for a reason people like the south end for a reason the hill section for a reason I just think it's more in keeping with what the original intent was which you defined at the beginning of this meeting other councillors as a council group what did say let them know if we get into votes or things like that doesn't feel like we've been at the voting level but if everyone thinks I should let them know that you should come up okay I'll ask them to come up the question is that we do I mean part of the whole purpose of this is to promote inclusionary housing and I do agree Gene with what you said that there's a lot of white on the other map I think we may very well be sending not be sending the message that we really want to send I don't I don't know if you know I mean it does appear to me that there are areas of the extreme new north end that appear to be very popular now particularly for people moving into Burlington it's one of the few areas where younger families can afford to live to own if this helps if this helps that then I think that is a good thing so I I don't know if you want to take if you do I would go with the 80% there's a good thing there does appear to be a good sign okay okay Adam can keep doing the did he's battling down here he's battling down there so we'll send him our best wishes wow at the usual all right I didn't keep that list Jane you wrote down whether it was the one more item okay okay I do you know I do think that when it comes back to ordinance the issue of the institutions is is a difficult one I mean I've heard you know your position on that I understand that I've also heard the universities concerns about the fact that they sort of do that internally you know I don't know if they do enough of it internally maybe if they don't maybe that's the way to affect that change without unnecessarily rocking the boat of a good partner in many other things that we do with the university so you know I don't know how that's going to and I'm not on ordinance but I hope that there will be a real effort made to engage them and figure out if we can get what we're looking for without it being overly burdensome on anybody I don't know if that makes sense but I hope that we'll be able to figure that out so may I just say that what I put forward I thought was generous because I was saying no because I was saying to acknowledge that it was excluded from their campus boundaries only if they came outside and I understand the only concern that we addressed here was if the university bought additional property would that expand their boundaries or not and that was really the only thing I heard that was that was unknown and maybe controversial actually that's a good question so for those who you would know the answer to this if the university, if the city council determines that the the university I mean Champlain has done this I'm trying to remember of an example where the university has recently the university decided to buy property outside its own it would have to come to the council they would have to agree that no Champlain has done that so I tried to get so the planning and zoning department at that time felt that that was put into an ordinance that they felt was inappropriate and so they would not do it when I tried to get that for the University of Vermont they felt that that was legally erroneous and so it would they would not replicate that so there's nothing to preclude them if they buy it then they own it that happened at Fletcher Place so it's sticky, it is a sticky issue that I think the community really should resolve at some point and we're just tiptoeing around it because of this but I was just trying to say if you have housing, if you build housing on your campus boundaries right now this doesn't apply if you come into the neighborhood it would know it was institutional zone, yeah that was my point did you want anything Richard? I'm not sure that I was clear before but the Champlain was limited by the MOU originally in that expiry in 2014 but that was also written into the ordinance years ago there was a reference to the MOU but that was a mistake according to all legal people at that time this issue will definitely generate some considerable discussion as it goes through the process so Brian you can just sort of maybe even for the benefit of those who are listening so the timeline is that the work of the joint committee is to the best of our ability completed and then if you can just sort of talk it through talk out the timeline so people know and when there's also going to be other when there's going to be other opportunities for public input yeah the the joint committee work I think commences or finishes tonight and we met the deadline which is the end of December and we'll be bringing it to the council next Monday and the process once the council takes action next Monday for the planning commission to get the items that were referred to it and the community development and neighborhood revitalization committee will take the items that are referred to it and take those under advisement and take action as appropriate so that there's no actual known dates at this point except to say councilor Buescher may know how busy the planning commission is because she keeps a better track but they they've been preoccupied I think the I think that there's a shared understanding and I think a shared commitment that these this process has been going on for a while and that we should try to move with with all due haste but the public will have lots of opportunities because the planning commission is a completely open public process city council ordinance committee will take public comments throughout the process the city council will debate it we are really about maybe halfway through the process but not the timeline I think we're much further along than that just one clarification when it goes to the council is there going to be a public hearing on this or no because it's not really anything it's just an action plan so it's just okay so the item on the agenda for this Monday the 17th and the public can speak at public forum regarding it and in terms of materials that will go with this item we'll have the resolution the power point this spreadsheet the maps or the maps 80% map 80% map and the power point is going to the council to print out of that or I'm sorry since it's not printed out just electronically yeah and it has a model copy of that and can I or can we reference that in its entirety is the power point is the report this spreadsheet is attachment A and the map is attachment B I think this spreadsheet in terms of what gets forward that's comprehensive that's everything the power point is really just illustrative and the map is an attachment to the report the spreadsheet I think the power point that the map and the resolution is that it and all of that will be available I'm just asking just confirming on the CO website next yes this is attached to the resolution we need to go through this out and to the council I'm looking at the co-chairs here yes we know what we're all with didn't know now we're dealing with administration well I'm sure you all know it can get a little dicey I just didn't want Charlie to think we were leaving the public out of something really interesting well thank you councillor Pines for your fearless leadership on this councillor Mason and also to councillor Nodell for curing the IZ work group I went to a couple of your meetings you really got down into the weeds it was they were challenging meetings with a lot of voices at the table it was a good product at the end and I know you spent you and councillor Pines before he was councillor Pines spent a lot of time on this and also to Todd and to Ian particularly for the enormous amount of work that you both did on this when we said oh gee I wonder if CEDO can do that work and oh sure we'll do it and God only knows how many hours that took so thank you anything else for staff or committee members just a clarification so 5 points recommendation 5 should read right now it says consider using 100% of AMI should that read use 80% of AMI correct and 5.1 was there was there a consensus around this 5.1 essentially it's just the name change I just want to be clear about that what is the suggested name change again from what to what are you talking about more inclusive than less inclusive oh I see it was the above median and the below what do you think about that I think less inclusive is descriptive it actually tells you what it is so maybe we can do both could we say yeah less inclusive is above 80% of median in parentheses more inclusive is below 80% of median is that it's 51% oh it is is there are there other communities that use different language so the mirror had wanted census below median AMI area and census above median AMI those are the right terms it becomes irrelevant to the use of 80% exactly only if it was 100% I think this is as good as it gets I think let's just stick with it it's terminology but I think it's descriptive so I think it makes it fairly clear where we're talking about Councillor Paul I'm not aware of another jurisdiction that has mapped inclusion the way that we have it it may be a common thing but I just haven't seen it it'll become a new best practice after this alright I think we pulled it off in an hour and a half thanks for members of the public for joining us tonight those who didn't get a chance you'll have plenty of opportunities but please do avail yourself of future opportunities as they come up our agenda does require a new business thank you chair is there a motion do you have a new business in front of this august committee oh just some housekeeping one of the one of the homework items that we were tasked with was to contact Michael Monti and ask him to connect with the mayor around this from 75% to 70% I'm not aware that the mayor continues to have concerns about this my understanding is that that conversation took place so unless the mayor is communicated directly with the joint committees then just want to close that thank you so do you need to vote on adopting this or Chip and I just discussed it and said we've reached consensus so we don't see a need for a vote is there a difference do you guys think a vote is needed do you think a vote do you rather have a vote no I think what we have is the only person if you want the names of the individual I can just put the joint committee as advanced resolution or I can approach Mr. Roof separately but the way to do it is to say the joint committee isn't doing the following resolution that's really good keep it simple thank you I will move further with this I will move to adjourn second second what's your favorite thank you again something exciting going on