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Suggested format for 11/18 LDC Rewrite work session

Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2019 5:37 pm
by Steve Adler
Colleagues,

I am sure you would all join me in thanking city staff, the Planning Commission, and our community for their hard work to bring us to this point in the process to rewrite our land development code. The Council now has the opportunity to discuss the new draft code and formally consider changes and amendments to help set up the work we’ll do in early December.

We are scheduled for a work session on the new code this coming Monday, 11/18 9 AM – 1 PM. I understand there is a Capital Metro Board Meeting on the same day starting at noon which presents a conflict for a few on the council, and we have advised Capital Metro of the conflict in case some Council members choose to stay and work on the LDC until 1 pm.

Given the limited time available to cover what could be a wide scope of the topics to be covered, I propose a format for handling our work session discussion.

9 AM – 9:45 AM Staff Presentation

9:45 AM – 10 AM Council Questions for staff

10 AM – 12:45 PM Council discussion by Code Topic

o Residential House-Scale Zones (Text and Map)
o Transition Zones (R4 – RM1; Text and Map)
o Residential Multi-Unit, Mixed Use, Main Street, and other Zones (Text and Map)
o Affordable Housing (Density Bonuses, etc)
o Non-Zoning (Drainage, Water Quality, Transportation, Tree Protection, Parkland, Signs, etc)
o Process (Site Plans, Subdivision, Variances, etc)

12:45 PM – 1 PM Scope and Process for 1st Reading

I suggest we begin with an up to 45-minute staff presenting to us the Planning Commission’s report on the draft code, staff’s assessment of the Commission’s recommendations, presentation of staff’s renderings of building scales, and any other updates. Council will continue its recent practice of allowing staff to get through their presentation with questions held until the end. We could then take 15 minutes for questions to staff on their presentation.

The Council would dive into the code by the suggested topic areas listed above. The protocol used by Mayor Pro Tem Garza at a previous LDC work session seemed to work well in moving the conversation along efficiently, and I would suggest we adopt that practice for this work session. For each code topic, Council members will be called upon in turn and have 2 minutes for comments on items within that topic area or a total of about 12 minutes. If each of us uses 2 minutes on a topic, we would spend about 25 minutes on that topic. I will keep track of how much time is used by each council member by topic. Each of us can choose how we want to use our 12 minutes between the six topics. I’ll let people know how much time they have left. The goal is to allow each council member equal time to comment while allowing us to move efficiently through the six topics.

Finally, I suggest we reserve the last 15 minutes of our time to discuss the scope and process for our Council 1st Reading deliberations on December 9. We’ll use the proposal I posted on the bulletin board (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1195&sid=ff2b25074f ... 8a4b#p2598) as the starting point for that discussion (but allow the Council to change it however it wishes), as it appears several of us thought it was a good approach.

I look forward to seeing you all Monday. Please post to the message board thoughts you have on this approach if you are able to give the others such notice.

-s

Re: Suggested format for 11/18 LDC Rewrite work session

Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2019 7:39 am
by Leslie Pool
colleagues, at our last work session, the mayor asked us to list LDC topics we’d like to discuss. Thanks to the mayor for posting the starter list of discussion topics.

We have a few more to add, some of which were mentioned at work session: tax impact (discussion with Travis CAD), parking, protest rights, housing capacity on corridors, preservation incentives, and historic preservation bonus.

We propose that we plan to discuss these topics (and others people may want to add) at our Tuesday, Dec 3, work session, and use the Wednesday, Dec 4, work session to conclude topic discussions as necessary. We also propose for the two Dec LDC work sessions finding an approach to talk about topics with each other, in addition to time for asking staff questions.

We also would like time on Dec 3 and 4 to reconfirm our procedure planning for the Dec 9 meeting as a last opportunity to communicate the plan publicly.

Thanks to all for your continuing efforts to update the Land Development Code.

Best,

Ann Kitchen & Leslie Pool

Re: Suggested format for 11/18 LDC Rewrite work session

Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2019 10:41 pm
by Paige Ellis
Thank you for laying out this plan for tomorrow's work session, Mayor Adler. I think it sounds like a good plan.

And I think the topics presented by CMs Pool and Kitchen are also good topics to discuss at a future work session. I do not have any additional topics at this time, but I may have more to suggest as we move through these discussions.

-Paige Ellis