[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[4:29] According in progress.
[4:32] Good evening. We are convened as level in city council study session. We begin our meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance. All us all who are able to please stand.
[5:05] Thank you. If we could have Lindsey, if we could have an attendance report out, Madam Mayor, there are seven members present. All right. Thank you very much. We move on to our only proclamation of the evening. Native American Heritage Month, Councillor McFaul will read the proclamation.
[5:23] receiving. We have Caitlin Lynn, Andrea Judy, Kathy, Arietta, and I'm sure others
[5:29] Kathy. I'm, yeah, welcome. Go ahead, Councillor McFarlane. See, a level of
[5:34] proclamation. Whereas the month of November is designated as Native American
[5:38] Heritage Month and was formalized in 1990 during the Bush presidency. Yep, got
[5:44] that one. See, now you made me lose my spot.
[5:49] November is a time to distinguish
[5:51] which honor and applaud the distinct customs, backgrounds,
[5:54] and languages of the original people
[5:56] inhabiting our country.
[5:57] And whereas North America has been inhabited
[6:00] since the ice age by numerous indigenous
[6:03] and native peoples.
[6:05] Present day level and was home to various tribes,
[6:07] including the Arapaho and the Cheyenne,
[6:09] who shaped this as a habitable and productive area
[6:12] through Native American contributions and culture.
[6:15] Yet the indigenous peoples were either killed or forced out
[6:18] by US soldiers and new colonists.
[6:19] 48 present-day tribal nations in Colorado have ancestral connections with the Navajo
[6:25] tribe increasing in number the fastest and whereas the United States Census Bureau approximates
[6:31] the Native American population in the United States to be greater than 6.7 million people
[6:36] at 2.09%.
[6:39] Locally a level in Native American population constitutes greater than 928 or 0.8% and whereas
[6:47] as Indigenous people's civil rights continue to be abused
[6:50] and being driven off their lands, facing extermination,
[6:54] suffering hundreds of broken treaties,
[6:56] and during disregard for tribal leadership,
[6:58] lack of access to vote,
[7:00] and withstanding prohibition of expression
[7:02] of their rich culture and spirituality.
[7:04] And whereas the Native Indigenous people's community
[7:08] in a level and has shown unyielding courage
[7:10] and resolute resilience to address prejudice and discrimination,
[7:14] We attempted to amend the suffering of past persecution and breach of trust by raising
[7:19] Native American cultures and voices.
[7:22] Now therefore, we, the City Council of Lebanon, do hear Rybuk claim November, 2024, as
[7:28] Native American Heritage Month.
[7:30] In the City of Lebanon, the NASS residents to rebuke hate based on race or ethnicity and honor
[7:36] the achievements of Native and Indigenous Peoples community, which drive to create a robust,
[7:41] less equitable, inclusive, and safe community, and welcome residents to celebrate the contributions of native and indigenous peoples to our lives throughout our city, state, and nation.
[7:51] Signed this 12th day of November 2024, Jackie Marsh Mayor.
[7:55] We're going
[8:04] to get a photo and then we're going to get
[8:12] some of the things.
[8:19] You're getting a little one in there, but that's one.
[8:29] Okay, which is the one that comes down.
[8:35] I'm walking in.
[8:44] I'm going to do
[9:03] the honors of sharing with us, Lynn.
[9:05] Welcome.
[9:07] Thank you.
[9:08] I'm a little nervous because I'm very shy.
[9:12] So I'm going to start by reading the land acknowledgment after removing my glasses so I can see because on that age.
[9:25] So let's see.
[9:29] Heart and Soul of Lovelin acknowledges that the land we gather on today is on the traditional and ancestral homeland of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Yut and Lakota nations.
[9:38] We recognize the indigenous peoples as the original stewards of this land, the water, the plants and animals who have called this place home.
[9:49] We pay our respects to them and give thanks to all tribal nations and to the ancestors of this land.
[9:57] I
[10:00] also want to say I'm grateful that Native American Heritage is being acknowledged and
[10:08] recognized here today.
[10:10] I grew up in this city.
[10:14] My family group has been here for a very long time.
[10:18] Our roots are in New Mexico.
[10:19] So, we represent those indigenous people who had their heritage stolen from them, where
[10:29] it was forced out of us.
[10:31] We were forced to assimilate, and yet many of us are reaching back and trying to touch
[10:36] base and reclaim the heritage that we lost.
[10:42] I have been to my home land, the area that we come from in New Mexico.
[10:48] I am grateful that it's still there, that I have the ability to go there.
[10:55] I am thankful, I want to acknowledge the work of Jim Tolstrup and the High Plains Environmental Center
[11:03] and that they bring an annual powwow to Lovlin.
[11:08] I never in my lifetime thought that I would ever see something like that because growing up here
[11:14] where I was, it was kind of pushed out, you're not supposed to be native, it's better
[11:21] to be Mexican than native and even to be Mexican was not so good here.
[11:27] So we've come a long, long way and I'm grateful that we've made these strides.
[11:33] I'm grateful that all of these different people who have been part of this nation,
[11:44] who have
[11:44] being seen, not just as these negatives, not just as rapists and drug dealers and whatnot.
[11:53] We bring value to this country.
[11:57] So thank you.
[11:58] I want to close with one other thing.
[12:00] Oh, also, this week is Rock Your Mox Week.
[12:04] It was a movement that started in New Mexico by a young woman who's part of a tribe down
[12:10] there and I cannot remember.
[12:11] but November 15th is Rock Your Mock Day.
[12:15] People are encouraged to wear your moccasins.
[12:19] Do hashtag Rock Your Mock and rock your mocks
[12:22] and show virtual community of those who are touching base
[12:27] with or honoring the indigenous people of this land.
[12:31] If you don't have moccasins, you're encouraged to wear a teal
[12:34] or turquoise colored ribbon.
[12:37] All right, one last thing and then I'm out.
[12:41] This is a quote from Chief Seattle.
[12:45] When you know who you are, when your mission is clear, and when you burn with the inner
[12:50] fire of unbreakable will, no cold can touch your heart.
[12:55] No deluge can dampen your purpose.
[12:58] You know that you are alive.
[13:00] And I'm going to tell you, I know that I am alive, and I know that no cold is going to
[13:07] bring me down.
[13:08] Thank you.
[13:13] Thank you Lynn. You may have been nervous, but you did a fantastic job with
[13:17] that and thank you heart and soul for all you do every day in our community. You are
[13:21] making a difference. So I appreciate all that you do. We'll move on with our study session,
[13:27] procedural information. Council will give anyone in the audience a chance to speak to any
[13:32] item on the study session after the presentation is given. Only residents of Larimer County,
[13:36] persons owning property in Loveland are persons with a stated business interest in Loveland
[13:41] shall participate in public comment.
[13:43] Public comment shall not exceed 15 minutes per item.
[13:47] We encourage speakers to give public comment in a manner that promotes civil discourse.
[13:51] Our first item on our study session 2.1 comes to us from Communication and Engagement Department.
[13:57] We have Kim Nicole and Brandon who are going to talk about the 2024 Loveland National Community
[14:04] Survey results.
[14:05] Welcome.
[14:07] Thank you.
[14:08] All right, can anyone hear me?
[14:09] All right.
[14:10] Excellent.
[14:11] Well, Madam Mayor,
[14:12] Love and City Council,
[14:13] I'm Nicole Yoast,
[14:14] the City's Communication and Engagement Director.
[14:17] And as Mayor mentioned,
[14:18] I'm joined by Brandon Barnett.
[14:19] He's a Senior Survey Associate
[14:21] from Polkow,
[14:22] the National Research Center,
[14:23] the consultant who does this survey for us.
[14:26] And then, of course,
[14:27] Kim Overholt,
[14:28] she's our Communication and Engagement Manager,
[14:30] and she was the lead staff member on this project.
[14:33] We are going to try to keep this presentation to 20, 25 minutes before questions.
[14:40] So tonight we'll be sharing community feedback that we received in 2024 and we'll also be
[14:44] sharing with you some information on how we are going to be using this moving forward.
[14:50] Before I pass it over to Brandon, as elected officials for the city, we feel it's important
[14:55] that you have the data and information that's reflective of what the community is.
[15:00] The city is wanting and how they're raiding our city services, their local government and how they value livability in Loveland. You're going to see a lot of numbers, charts and graphs here tonight. And behind those figures are the people of Loveland sharing how they're feeling about the city, the community, what's important to them as well as their priorities. And as we go through the presentation tonight, I invite you all to look at it with a frame of mind in terms of how can we incorporate this information into city
[15:29] decision-making moving forward.
[15:35] And getting the information is really the start of the process.
[15:38] Whenever we get new community feedback, that is really the start of it all. So for us
[15:43] as staff, you know, how we're going to implement this first, city staff, anything that we can
[15:49] immediately address, we will. In 2025, we expect to do additional community engagement to help us
[15:56] understand or dive deeper into some of the topics that we have leadership buy into support moving forward.
[16:02] And then throughout 2025 and 2026, of course, we'll be implementing this information into the updated city strategic plan and other city guiding documents.
[16:12] And then because this is a biennial survey, we'll go back to the community in 2026 with a chance to have them reflect on what we've done and get their input again.
[16:25] So with that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Brandon to share our results with you tonight.
[16:29] Thank
[16:35] you very much for having me, could everybody hear me all right?
[16:40] Excellent.
[16:44] I'm happy to be here to present a summary of the findings from the Loveland National Community Survey.
[16:49] Before I begin on behalf of myself and my Polko co-workers, I'd like to thank Kim Overholt, our primary contact throughout the survey development and implementation process.
[16:58] She provided thoughtful and detailed feedback throughout the project.
[17:01] I would also like to acknowledge my colleague Grace Arneson, who was Loveland's NCS project manager for this important project.
[17:10] A little bit about Polko. Polko's online community engagement polling platform provides
[17:15] the information to his local government and other public sector leaders need.
[17:20] Now, hundreds of organizations nationwide use Polko for strategic planning, budgeting,
[17:24] and empowering resident voices. We make civil-verified community engagement online not only possible,
[17:30] but accessible. The National Research Center at Polko gives
[17:33] local governments and other public sector organizations the data they need to make more informed
[17:37] decisions. Since 1994, we've worked with hundreds of jurisdictions nationwide.
[17:42] NRC is best known for our national benchmarking surveys such as the national community survey,
[17:46] the national employee survey, and the community assessment survey for older adults among others.
[17:51] Our benchmark database is the largest of its kind in the United States. Polco and NRC merged
[17:56] in 2019 to more effectively serve local government and project resident voices. We are also
[18:01] exclusive partners with the International City County Managers Association and the National League of
[18:06] And we work closely with engaged local government leaders, the Alliance for Innovation and many academic partners, including the American Association for Public Opinion Research, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the Hoover Institute at Stanford University and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
[18:25] Before we dive into the results, I want to emphasize that there are a variety of ways these results can be used.
[18:30] Most commonly, during jurisdictions we work with, use their survey data to monitor trends
[18:35] and resident opinion over time to measure government performance and ratings of public
[18:40] trust and to inform budgeting processes and strategic plans.
[18:44] Our results also allow you to benchmark your community's specific characteristics and services
[18:48] against those same characteristics within other communities in our benchmark database.
[18:53] Our hope is that as these findings are presented, it will spur ideas for you in what could be
[18:56] done with these results or where you might want to dig deeper.
[18:59] The
[19:02] National Community Survey, or the NCS, is a standardized five-page comprehensive survey
[19:07] that allows municipalities to assess resident opinion about their community and local government.
[19:12] The NCS focuses on the livability of Lovelin by categorizing survey questions in 10 main
[19:17] facets of community livability as shown here.
[19:21] These facets have been identified through extensive survey researches, those that are most impactful
[19:25] to residents' quality of life.
[19:27] The NCS includes items within each of these ten facets to provide a full picture of how residents feel about their community.
[19:33] Finally, these facets also tend to align with municipal departments, making it easy for city staff to quickly find the information that is of the most importance to them in the final report of results.
[19:48] This was the second time conducting the NCS for Loveland. All households within Loveland were eligible to participate in the survey.
[19:54] a list of all households within the zip code serving
[19:57] loved one was purchased based on updated listings
[19:59] from the United States Postal Service.
[20:01] Using GIS boundary files provided by the city,
[20:04] address is located outside of loved one's boundaries
[20:06] were removed from the list of potential households to survey.
[20:10] From the list of eligible households,
[20:11] 4,000 addresses were randomly selected to receive the survey.
[20:15] The 4,000 randomly selected households
[20:17] received mailings beginning on July 24th, 2024,
[20:20] and data collection for the survey
[20:22] remained open for six weeks.
[20:23] The first mailing was a postcard inviting the household to participate in the survey.
[20:27] The next mailing contained a cover letter with instructions, the survey questionnaire
[20:31] and a posted paid return envelope.
[20:34] Both mailings included a web link to give residents the opportunity to respond to the survey
[20:38] online, as well as a QR code further and encourage participation.
[20:42] The follow-up mailing asked those who had not completed the survey to do so and those who
[20:47] had already done so to refrain from completing the survey again.
[20:49] The survey was available in English and Spanish and all mailings contained paragraphs in both languages instructing participants on how to complete the survey in their preferred language.
[21:00] A total of 622 completed surveys were received from these efforts, providing a response rate of 16% and a margin of error plus or minus 4 percentage points.
[21:09] We then compared the demographic profile of survey respondents to that of adults in Lovland using the most recent census and American community survey data and weighted the survey results.
[21:18] Waiting is a survey research best practice and helps to improve the
[21:22] representiveness of your community. In addition to the randomly selected
[21:26] probability sample of households, a link to an online community-wide open
[21:30] participation survey was publicized by Lovelin. The open participation survey was
[21:34] open to all residents and became available on August 5th, 2024. The survey remained
[21:40] open for four weeks and 914 responses were received. This presentation and the
[21:45] report are based on the 612 responses from the random sample mail-based survey.
[21:49] The responses to the open participation survey are provided separately in the full report.
[21:56] And this slide will skip over it for now.
[21:59] If you have any questions, we wanted to include a history of participation since the city of
[22:03] Loveland has been offering a community survey, so we've been doing that since 2006, but just
[22:09] to give you some perspective as far as what our numbers this year look like comparatively
[22:13] over the years.
[22:14] One
[22:17] of the advantages to a local government of participating in our community surveys is
[22:21] the opportunity to compare ratings given by your residents to those from a communities
[22:24] across the nation.
[22:26] NRC was the first organization to conceive of the idea to create benchmarks of public opinion.
[22:30] This allows jurisdictions to compare ratings of services to ratings of similar services
[22:34] from other communities.
[22:35] There are currently about 500 communities in our database.
[22:39] Levelin received comparisons to the entire benchmark database, which I will be referring
[22:43] to as the national benchmarks, but also opted to receive a custom benchmark comparison
[22:47] to a subset of communities with similar characteristics in Colorado and surrounding
[22:51] states.
[22:54] We'll now move into an overview of the survey results.
[23:02] In the survey, we have two questions that asked directly about those ten facets of community
[23:06] livability that we touched on earlier.
[23:08] The first asked residents to rate the quality of each, and you can see the resulting comparison
[23:12] to the national benchmark in the shading on the chart.
[23:18] The second question asks about those same facets of livability, but is centered on how important
[23:22] residents think it is for the community to focus on each
[23:24] facet in the coming two years.
[23:26] So we ask about both the quality and the importance of each
[23:29] of these facets, and we use those answers to create the
[23:31] quality importance matrix, which we'll see on the next slide.
[23:36] We use this chart, which is also included in the report,
[23:39] to help determine which areas are relatively
[23:40] higher importance and lower quality to residents.
[23:43] This chart is one of many ways to interpret your data and can
[23:46] be used to identify key findings and help a community
[23:48] determine which areas may need additional focus or resource
[23:51] course allocation in the coming years, and which others are performing well by comparison.
[23:59] Of the 123 items for which residents provided a value of ratings, seven received ratings
[24:03] higher than the national benchmark, 102 received similar ratings and 14 received lower ratings.
[24:09] Ratings are considered similar if they are within 10 points of the national average and higher
[24:13] or lower if they are more than 10 points different from the average.
[24:16] Items, a few items that scored higher than the national benchmarks were affordable high-speed
[24:21] Internet access, community support for the arts,
[24:24] Levelin open space, drinking water, and opportunities to attend cultural arts or music activities.
[24:29] A few that scored lower were air quality, overall economic health,
[24:34] K-12 education, traffic enforcement, and crime prevention.
[24:40] Levelin also elected to compare their results to a custom subset of communities with similar
[24:44] characteristics in Colorado and surrounding states.
[24:47] Of the 123 survey items for which residents provided a value of ratings,
[24:51] 9 received higher ratings, two of which were actually much higher, 107 received similar
[24:56] ratings and 7 received lower ratings.
[24:58] The much higher items were community sport for the arts and yard waste pickup, higher
[25:03] were water resources available affordable high speed internet access and opportunities to
[25:08] attend cultural arts and music festivals, a few of the lower were traffic enforcement, feeling
[25:13] safe in lovedlands downtown commercial area during the day and code enforcement.
[25:17] When
[25:21] compared to results from loved ones NCS in 2022, in 2024, 14 received ratings that
[25:26] were statistically significantly higher than the previous survey iteration, 79 received
[25:31] similar ratings and 33 received lower ratings. A few of the increases were affordable high-speed
[25:36] internet access, city police services, what impact if any do you think the economy will
[25:41] have on your family income in the next six months, adult educational opportunities and opportunities
[25:46] to attend cultural arts and music activities.
[25:49] A few of the decreases were air quality,
[25:52] overall economic health, public information services,
[25:55] employment opportunities and economic development.
[26:00] Moving now in the highlights of our findings,
[26:02] I do want to point a few items
[26:04] that stood out to us as survey researchers.
[26:06] There's a lot of additional data in the full report
[26:08] that we won't cover today,
[26:09] but today's presentation will focus on a few areas
[26:11] that we found to be most noteworthy
[26:13] within Loveland's survey results.
[26:17] Go through some of the highest performing areas.
[26:21] Early 8 and 10 residents celebrated Loveland as a place to live and the overall quality
[26:26] of life received high praise, reflecting strong satisfaction. Around 80% of residents indicated
[26:31] they were very likely to remain in Loveland for the next five years. About two-thirds
[26:36] of residents expressed a positive view of the city's overall image or reputation. Approximately
[26:41] 8 and 10 residents recommended living in Loveland to someone who asks, reinforcing its status
[26:46] as a highly desirable community.
[26:49] There are these consistently high ratings,
[26:51] closely matched national benchmarks,
[26:52] affirming loved ones' exceptional performance
[26:54] and quality of life.
[26:58] Around six and 10 residents commended the overall design
[27:01] or layout of residential and commercial areas,
[27:03] underscoring the city's well-regarded community planning.
[27:06] Public places where people want to spend time
[27:08] were applauded by two thirds of residents,
[27:10] indicating loved ones' success and creating inviting spaces.
[27:13] The variety of housing options
[27:15] and press seven and 10 community members,
[27:16] emphasizing the city's ability to meet diverse housing needs.
[27:20] Well-planned residential growth and well-planned commercial growth received positive feedback
[27:24] from four in 10 respondents, reflecting a solid approach to community development.
[27:32] About seven in 10 residents praised the overall quality of loved ones' utility infrastructure,
[27:37] reflecting strong satisfaction among the community.
[27:39] Nearly eight in 10 respondents expressed high satisfaction with the city's drinking water
[27:43] and sewer services showcasing loved ones' success in these essential utilities.
[27:46] Power services from Leblon Water and Power were well received with 8 and 10 residents offering favorable ratings, highlighting reliable performance.
[27:56] Stormwater management earned approval from roughly 8 and 10 community members, reinforcing consistent excellence in this area since 2022.
[28:04] Affordable high-speed internet access was positively rated by 73% of residents scoring higher than national average.
[28:10] Early
[28:14] 7-10 residents lauded the overall opportunities for education, culture, and the arts,
[28:18] underscoring Lovelins commitment to enriching its community.
[28:21] Lovelins' art scenes received high praise with about 8-10 residents applauding the community's support for the arts.
[28:27] Around 7-10 residents celebrated the opportunities of cultural arts and music events,
[28:32] indicating growing enthusiasm for the city's cultural offerings.
[28:36] The city public library services remained a standout with approximately 8-10 residents
[28:41] giving high marks to Lovelin's well-regarded library system.
[28:44] Nearly seven in ten residents praise the opportunities to attend special events and
[28:48] festivals, reinforcing Lovelin's strong cultural and community engagement.
[28:53] About seven in ten residents applauded Lovelin as an ideal place to raise children, while
[28:57] roughly six in ten positively rated the city as a place to retire, maintaining strong approval
[29:02] in these key areas.
[29:04] Nearly two-thirds of respondents expressed a sense of civic community pride, highlighting
[29:08] a solid sense of belonging and civic engagement.
[29:10] Roughly 7-10 residents praise the vibrant opportunities to participate in social events
[29:14] and activities, about 8-7-10 residents rated opportunities to volunteer as excellent
[29:20] showcasing level and spirit of civic involvement.
[29:23] Voter engagement reached a peak with 85% of residents participating in the most recent local
[29:28] election reflecting a strong commitment to the community matters and scoring above the national
[29:32] average.
[29:36] Moving to some of the lower performing areas.
[29:39] Fewer than half of residents regarded the overall economic health of Leblanc favorably,
[29:43] a rating that declined from previous years and saw downward trend international standards.
[29:48] Only around three and ten residents expressed approval for the employment opportunities
[29:52] in Leblanc.
[29:54] Just two and ten residents acknowledge the cost of living in Leblanc as satisfactory, highlighting
[29:59] concerns about a-
[30:00] Portability in the area. Less than half of the population gave positive feedback on Lovelin's economic development initiatives, indicating a noticeable drop from prior years. Roughly 7-10 residents viewed the quality of business and service establishments in Lovelin with approval.
[30:17] Less than half of residents appreciated Lovelin's government for being open and transparent to the public, marking a decline in satisfaction since the last survey. Looking about 4-10 residents felt that Lovelin's government acted in the community's best interests, a rating that fell from previously.
[30:32] years. Confidence in the local government was endorsed by fewer than four
[30:36] in ten residents signalling a significant decrease when compared to
[30:39] national benchmarks. Fewer than four in ten residents offered positive feedback
[30:43] regarding the government's communication about community issues, showing a drop
[30:47] in satisfaction. While just over half of residents supported the general direction
[30:52] of loved ones government, which reflected a slight dip from earlier surveys.
[30:59] About seven in ten residents praised the quality of animal control services,
[31:03] emergency preparedness services receive positive ratings from roughly six
[31:07] in ten residents. Despite scoring lower than national average, city police
[31:11] services increased from 52% in 2022 to 63% in 2024. Similarly, crime
[31:18] prevention saw an increase of six percentage points from 2022, although still
[31:23] below national averages.
[31:26] Only about three in ten residents recognize the availability
[31:29] of affordable quality mental health care, reflecting concerns about the
[31:32] the accessibility of these services.
[31:34] Fewer than four in 10 residents rated the availability
[31:36] of affordable quality food positively,
[31:38] indicating dissatisfaction with food affordability
[31:42] within the community.
[31:43] Roughly two thirds of residents acknowledge
[31:45] the availability of affordable quality healthcare.
[31:48] Preventive health services were viewed positively
[31:50] by about six in 10 residents,
[31:52] but fewer than two in 10 residents
[31:54] appreciated the availability of affordable quality housing,
[31:57] highlighting persistent concerns about cost
[31:59] and accessibility.
[32:00] We'll now move into some of the additional special topics asked on
[32:05] level and survey.
[32:10] When asked to rate their agreement or disagreement with the following
[32:13] statements about the city, residents top three responses are trusting their local
[32:17] fire department, trusting the city to effectively maintain roads, parks and public
[32:22] spaces, and trusting the city to effectively manage my utilities.
[32:29] This is a quick comparison from 2022 and 2024 on this topic so we can quickly see
[32:34] the growth and change.
[32:35] Police saw the biggest increase in feelings of trust since 2022, rising from 59% to 73%,
[32:42] while trust in the city effectively managing utilities saw a slight decrease.
[32:48] When asked about managing projected budget deficits, community members' top responses were
[32:53] using a combination of tax increases and reduced service delivery and infrastructure spending,
[32:59] maintaining current tax levels and reducing service delivery and infrastructure spending,
[33:04] and increasing taxes in order to maintain current service delivery.
[33:10] When I have to indicate which of the following is used as sources of information about the city.
[33:15] Survey respondents, top three responses were the city website,
[33:20] newsletter in the utility bill, and local news as their top three sources of information.
[33:29] When I have to indicate the importance of each of the following for their local community to implement to help address homelessness,
[33:36] providing access to health care, behavioral health and substance abuse treatment was the top rated response with about 75% of respondents considering this option as essential or very important.
[33:51] When compared to 2022, concerns about homelessness have lessened in a few areas.
[33:58] Creating affordable, permanent housing, providing access to health care, behavioral health and substance abuse treatment, and continuing to help fund organizations that provide services to people experience.
[34:08] experience homelessness in our community, all decreased by at least 10 percentage points in ratings of essential or very important.
[34:17] The open participation responses provided separately in the report are statistically weighted.
[34:22] More positive items were participation related, were participation related, which is expected for a non-probability self-selection survey.
[34:31] A few of those were visiting social media sites attending a local public meeting or watching a local public meeting.
[34:36] A few that were more negative were the overall image or reputation, bus or transit services,
[34:44] city police services, crime prevention, trust in local police department and less support
[34:48] to maintain current tax levels and reduce service delivery and infrastructure spending.
[34:53] It should be noted that most ratings between the two were similar and that it was only the
[34:57] six items that were more negative and three items that were more positive between the two
[35:01] data sets.
[35:05] In summary, the highest performing areas were utilities, parks and recreation, natural
[35:09] environment and health and wellness.
[35:11] The potential focus areas are the local economy, affordability, safety and governance.
[35:20] So now that we have this information, what do we do with it?
[35:23] What's next?
[35:24] I alluded to this a little bit at the beginning, but we're just at the beginning.
[35:28] Now that we have this data and this information, it's time for us to decide how we are going
[35:33] to look at this information, where we need to investigate a little bit deeper in order
[35:38] to truly understand community sentiment.
[35:41] But for us, the next steps here is that we will be sharing survey results with the community.
[35:47] So tomorrow, we will be sharing, obviously it was in the council pack, but we'll be officially
[35:52] sharing this on our community survey webpage and we'll be sharing it out through city channels.
[35:57] This will also be shared in the December City update so that it can reach all residents
[36:01] as we had intended.
[36:04] And then really focusing on long-term alignment.
[36:07] How can we use this information for larger efforts
[36:10] like strategic planning, performance measurement, budget,
[36:14] just to like Brandon mentioned.
[36:16] A media action is already taking place with staff.
[36:18] We're taking a look at some of the comments
[36:20] and some of the things that this survey told us
[36:23] that maybe they also told us in 2022
[36:26] that we've already started to move the needle on.
[36:28] and then based on feedback from leadership,
[36:31] I know our city manager coming on board,
[36:34] we'll be working very closely with him
[36:36] on how to use this information,
[36:38] but also for you as elected officials,
[36:40] what are gonna be those focus areas for us in the new year,
[36:44] and how can our team, what additional community engagement,
[36:47] whether it's going back through the POCO platform
[36:50] to go back to these survey takers,
[36:54] doing council town halls, community listening sessions,
[36:57] Where are the topics that we want to prioritize as a community, and where do we have leadership
[37:02] buy-in in order for us to move the needle?
[37:05] And our team is ready and able and willing to make that a priority in 2025 in terms of
[37:11] when we have that leadership buy-in, how can we help dive deeper into some of those areas,
[37:16] especially when you look at some of the lower performing areas.
[37:20] An example I'll give you is, you know, with the economy, I think there's a lot of different
[37:23] things that maybe could have given us those results, how could we dive deeper and better understand
[37:30] community sentiment in order to understand where we have to move that. And then keeping the
[37:36] community informed, one of the things that we haven't done well, as well as I think we all want to,
[37:42] that we are committed to doing again this year, is as we are making change and as we are taking
[37:48] this feedback and making positive change in these areas, doing a better job of reporting back out
[37:53] to the community to make sure that they know that we heard them, that we're listening,
[37:57] and that we've taken this into consideration, so those are, as far as next steps goes,
[38:03] what we wanted to share with you today, and so we're ready for any questions or any larger
[38:09] guidance that Council might have for us in terms of the direction of this feedback.
[38:15] All right, well thank you all three, I think Councillor Olson, you were the first light I saw.
[38:20] Thank you. Appreciate the presentation. First, a couple of concerns about the survey. There's
[38:29] a couple of things that suggest that the survey might be a little skewed. One is 85 percent
[38:35] of the people said they voted. In our last election, less than 50 percent of the people
[38:40] that are eligible voted. So to me, it's a pretty big gap from 85 to less than 50.
[38:51] Secondly, an attachment to about page six since the pages were numbered.
[38:56] It addresses the age and the sex. Over 74% of the respondents were over 55.
[39:04] Now, I could be wrong. I don't think the distribution of the population on level
[39:09] and that 74% of our population is over 55 could be wrong.
[39:16] So I don't know how we balance that, but it seems to me that we missed a significant
[39:24] segment of our population.
[39:26] And then going back to kind of your remarks, Nicole, what do we do from here?
[39:32] Part of it is, I think we look at what can we change, what should we change in our
[39:39] city, our city operations, our city council, whatever, what can we do to, for a council
[39:48] standpoint, improve our image. But also, as I read through the comments, there's a lot
[39:56] of misinformation in those comments. And so some of it, like we did with Brian, did his
[40:03] road show with the budget. We may need to do a better job of getting out information
[40:08] to address some of those issues that the citizens are concerned about.
[40:16] And lastly, I think people are busy.
[40:22] There's, in my mind, a certain amount of apathy.
[40:25] And maybe it's just because people are so busy.
[40:29] They've got so many irons in the fire doing so many things.
[40:31] But how do we engage them?
[40:37] Because if they're not coming to get the information, how can we get it to them?
[40:41] And it's got to be more than just a reporter here, there's got to be other avenues.
[40:45] So again, thank you for the presentation.
[40:49] All right.
[40:49] Thank you, Councillor Block.
[40:51] Thank you Madam Mayor.
[40:52] Thanks for the presentation.
[40:53] I was eagerly awaiting this and I scoured through a couple of years before and the ones
[41:00] before.
[41:00] So I've been tracking this to I have a couple of questions so the public
[41:06] participation was that it's lowest level than it's ever been do you have
[41:14] thoughts on that on why that might be in terms of the response rate correct it's
[41:21] it isn't ongoing challenge for us especially as survey researchers the reason
[41:27] Even what we're actually looking to get towards is the total number of responses, rather than
[41:32] necessarily the response rate itself, response rate can be a little bit of a misleading statistic.
[41:37] But as we know that residents are becoming increasingly disengaged and it's harder to find
[41:42] them where they are specifically because, quite frankly, most of them are not in their physical
[41:47] mailbox anymore.
[41:49] It does become a challenge and that's why we have increased that sample size with each iteration
[41:54] know in order to be able to hit that target of the total number of responses that we're looking for.
[42:01] So the similar communities to ours are they having the same issues with lower participation
[42:07] rates in their surveys? Yes. I would say the average right now is about 12 to 16 percent.
[42:13] Okay. Thank you. Let's see.
[42:21] So on page 35 of your presentation, it
[42:26] Talked about what's essential affordable housing and forcing no camping ordinances, providing access to health care.
[42:34] I'm just curious why wasn't there a question regarding how they felt about a permanent shelter in Lublin?
[42:42] I can actually answer that one.
[42:44] So in 2022, the first year that we did this survey, we established several custom questions.
[42:50] And we worked very closely with Polkow on what, what are the questions that they currently have that could also be benchmarked
[42:56] marked that are kind of standard from them. So this is the exact same question we used
[43:02] in 2022. So we wanted to make sure for consistency sake that we were in order for us to have
[43:09] our own benchmark year over year, we chose to keep the question the same as 2022. But yeah,
[43:16] I don't know if Brandon, if you have anything else to add on that, but just some perspective.
[43:20] Thank you. And then real quick, so some of the survey information that came back regarding
[43:25] safety? Is that how safe people feel in
[43:31] Loveland or is it specific to safety
[43:35] because of trust or lack thereof of the
[43:38] PD? Can you specify what that meant for me
[43:42] as far as safety? So that would be a little
[43:45] bit of both. So we asked one specific
[43:47] question that is asking about their the
[43:50] residents feelings of safety and that is in
[43:53] their neighborhood in the downtown
[43:54] down commercial area from property crime, violent crime,
[43:57] and from fire flood or natural disaster.
[44:00] So that specifically is asking the resident
[44:02] about their feelings of safety.
[44:04] The other aspects of that are the resident sentiment
[44:09] on the quality of safety related services
[44:11] within the city.
[44:13] Great, I appreciate the answers.
[44:15] Thank you.
[44:16] Councillor McFaul.
[44:19] First off, like Councillor Wilson said,
[44:22] thank you very much for bringing in.
[44:24] And your question on how we use this Nicole and I will tell you from a business standpoint
[44:30] I'd be reluctant to use a 15% return rate on making a strategic plan in and of itself.
[44:37] I think some of the questions are there and I think I'd probably have to understand a
[44:40] little bit better about how the respondents were found.
[44:46] I mean, was it an even balance across wards throughout the city itself?
[44:49] I mean, it bothers me when you only have a 15% response rate on any type of survey whatsoever,
[44:56] especially if you're not sure how it was balanced across and
[45:00] Whether you're getting a response from just one side of the city or another side of the city, or is it equal across the city? So I think understanding that a little bit better might help me look into this as well.
[45:14] Sure. So if you look in the methods section in the report to the waiting table that was mentioned earlier, what we're looking at is that it was pretty even across the board when it comes to geographic comparisons that the highest was ward two, which had 31% of the response.
[45:32] where as the lowest was Ward 3 that had 20% of those.
[45:35] Mr. President, was Ward 1?
[45:36] They're not a very active Ward, unless you piss them off,
[45:38] but go ahead.
[45:39] Ward 1 had 27%.
[45:41] Okay.
[45:42] But in that, in that waiting table,
[45:44] what you'll see is we have the raw responses.
[45:48] Then we have what we waited those responses to
[45:50] and then we also have the target weights for each of those.
[45:53] So the target weights that we're looking at
[45:55] are what comes from the American Community Survey
[45:58] and the most recent census date.
[45:59] So while, yes, it is true that in the majority of all surveys, the majority of respondents
[46:05] are older white homeowners.
[46:07] That's just the case.
[46:08] It is very hard to reach young respondents in these specific surveys because they're
[46:13] just not as engaged.
[46:14] Most of them are still renting, likely renting with roommates.
[46:18] They don't know if their career is going to be in the city that they live in currently.
[46:21] They don't know if they're going to live in the city that they live in currently within
[46:23] a year.
[46:24] So, getting them engaged is one of the hardest parts of our job and really of any kind
[46:29] community outreach. But with that, while it is, yes, a 16% response rate that's still
[46:36] over 600 residents that you heard from. And the science behind that, the industry standard
[46:41] is actually 350 responses to get to a 5% point margin of error or be considered to hit that
[46:47] industry standard. So to get over 600 responses, while yes, the response rate looks low, that
[46:52] is actually well above average for this. And that's, it's the numbers behind that which allow
[46:56] provide that four percentage point margin of error, which is essentially if we were to ask all residents within the community, the
[47:03] response, the final numbers that we would get there would be within four percentage points of the numbers that we have within our report.
[47:11] So the reason we don't do that is because it would be extremely expensive and time consuming and the results would actually become even more
[47:17] unreliable as you try to get responses from every community member than you would with the current system that we have in place.
[47:25] So what we do is we know there is a known probability for every household that we consider within the sample
[47:30] Which is how we can really use those algorithms to create that margin of error based on the total number of responses
[47:36] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I think councilor Foley was he thank you
[47:43] I looked up in both your lights were on so councilor about 10 seconds. Okay, councilor Foley
[47:48] Thank you
[47:50] Can you remind me what the cost was of this survey?
[47:57] Yes?
[47:58] So, we, so for the survey every two years, plus our ongoing access to the Polko platform,
[48:07] which allows us to do this survey, plus additional survey.
[48:10] So for example, the police survey was used through the Polko platform.
[48:14] It's about 26,000 over two years for this survey and the access to the Polko platform for
[48:24] additional surveys.
[48:26] And the number of responses again was how much?
[48:34] The number of responses to the random sample was 612,
[48:38] to the open participation was over 900.
[48:43] All right, Councillor Light Kovac.
[48:45] Thank you so much. And thank you everyone for presenting these numbers
[48:49] and for conducting this analysis for us and breaking it down into manageable bits.
[48:53] I don't have a question for you. This is more addressing my fellow Councillors.
[48:56] I think this data is extremely helpful for us and my hope is when we get our new city
[49:02] manager seated that we would have a council retreat sooner rather than later and that
[49:07] as a council we could look at what is our strategic and policy goals as a governing body for
[49:13] the upcoming year and we can use this data to help inform that discussion of what we as
[49:18] a council would like to focus on.
[49:20] So I just wanted to plant that seed for all of you.
[49:23] Thank you.
[49:24] All right.
[49:25] Thank you, and I also thank you and also all the people that chose to respond, the people
[49:30] that took the survey.
[49:32] I don't think there was anything particularly surprising, and that's probably because
[49:36] I have been watching the surveys in the past.
[49:39] One thing that kind of stands out is communication with the communities, so they understand some
[49:46] of the competing interests.
[49:47] There were a lot of comments about too much development, and yet the way to get to affordable housing
[49:53] is you have more units so that prices come down.
[49:57] You know, childcare is something that we really haven't tackled yet,
[50:00] but I was glad to see that it was on your survey that people are asking.
[50:04] You know, some things are a lot easier to tackle.
[50:07] And other things are much bigger in long-term and communicating with our residents
[50:13] about the competition between how do you get to where they want.
[50:18] And then some things are regional air quality.
[50:20] that's a regional you know so you know I appreciate the information here and I
[50:27] I agree with my fellow counselors here to have it guide us but we need to do a
[50:33] job communicating with the public about you know yeah there's a lot of
[50:37] development what I was a little bit surprised at is there wasn't more angst about
[50:42] traffic congestion I was actually surprised that we didn't see more of that in
[50:48] and this because that's a part of development.
[50:51] So appreciate the survey and the information.
[50:55] Councilor Samson is joining us remotely.
[50:59] Hi, Mayor, thank you.
[51:00] I did join a little bit late into the presentation.
[51:05] So I apologize, I didn't get to hear everything.
[51:07] So my question might or my comment might have already been addressed.
[51:12] So please have patience with me.
[51:14] But I did want to say first, thank you.
[51:16] I always find these surveys so interesting.
[51:18] I also want to say thank you for not, and this probably will come out sarcastic, but it's
[51:25] not sarcastic. Thank you for managing all the questions and not having a space for council
[51:31] to put in our own questions. I think the year that that happened, I think it got a little messy
[51:36] in this way. I think the questions you asked were great. I think you had your finger on the polls
[51:39] as far as what the community cared about, especially when you look at like these long responses.
[51:44] is the written responses, it seems like you really tapped into the areas where people are
[51:50] most passionate and most concerned in the community, so I think he did a good job there and it
[51:54] was good that Council kept our paws off of it for the most part, so thank you for that.
[52:00] And I did also want to say, and I know Nicole, you and I talked about this about having the
[52:04] login, and this is maybe something that you already addressed, but I think there were a couple
[52:11] responses in the long answers to and then I personally experienced where you know you go in and do
[52:15] the survey and then you had to create an account. I think it's very cool it was toward the end
[52:19] or something and I had wished that it had been a front that you would have had to create an account
[52:23] and there's other people in here that I think agreed with that that they people were wishing that there
[52:28] wasn't a requirement for login information. Now I understand that a login means that you would have
[52:33] the unique identifier so then you can't just submit 100 of these and throw the results but I'm just
[52:39] It's curious if there's some way for the next survey,
[52:43] for us to look ahead and find a way to better communicate
[52:45] with individuals kind of, hey, when you take the survey,
[52:48] there'll be a login or something like that.
[52:50] And this is why I don't know.
[52:52] If you feel it's necessary, or even if the other
[52:54] surveys that you do across the country with this,
[52:58] you know, in this fashion, if you've had issues with that
[53:00] and how you've addressed it as well.
[53:05] All right.
[53:06] Sure, as a company, that is something
[53:08] that we are moving away from for that being the standard
[53:10] for that open participation survey and the main reason is because we found that one people
[53:16] are wary of providing their email address and two they just don't see the messages
[53:21] that we have so we actually did have it in two separate places in the beginning of the
[53:25] survey that the registration would be required but the problem is is that we've increasingly
[53:30] found that people just go straight to the first question so that they all can do that.
[53:34] That was me.
[53:35] Hi.
[53:36] Did that?
[53:36] I went to the first question.
[53:38] I skipped it.
[53:38] And I got the end and I was like, cool, like now I have to sign in and then I was like, well
[53:43] I'm a councilwoman, like I don't know if I should, I know this is, you know, uh, uh, unanimous
[53:49] right or unanimous, uh, anonymous, sorry, I haven't got a whole lot of sleep last week.
[53:53] I know this is anonymous, I know that like no one's gonna trace it, but like I don't know if this is,
[53:58] so then I, that's when I reached out to the colon, I was like, I didn't know I had to log in, so that was
[54:01] me totally did not pay attention that the two warnings at ahead of it early early on.
[54:07] So when you move away from that, what is it going to look like?
[54:11] So it will be an optional prompt at the end of the survey.
[54:14] So the survey responses will be submitted and then an optional prompt will pop up that says
[54:19] do you want to register to the jurisdiction's profile?
[54:23] But then how do you prevent complication?
[54:25] Counselor, Samson, yeah, your time is up so we'll come around you in the second round.
[54:31] Councillor Black. Thank you Madam Mayor. I've only been up here for a year so I'm just wondering
[54:40] how has the City utilized these survey results thus far?
[54:48] So for previous surveys and I wasn't
[54:52] here in 2020 for the last strategic plan so maybe City Manager Wencing has a thought but we anytime
[54:59] time we do community engagement like this, this is part of the preparation for things like
[55:06] strategic plans. And then I will say even project specific levels, I'll use the roadway
[55:12] safety study that public works did. I think they started that back in 2021, but this can
[55:19] even inform some of those plans. So when we see that there's a need in various areas
[55:25] and we see that there's community feedback in those areas, it does allow staff to say there's
[55:30] alignment. There's alignment in terms of what we know needs to happen and we're hearing that
[55:35] community feedback and so how can we you know how can we move the needle on that. So past survey
[55:40] efforts have been used for guiding documents such as strategic plans and project plans.
[55:47] Okay. So as far as economic health and development, so I know folks have had the issue with that
[55:57] everybody has their different ideas of what good growth looks like. So and I know part
[56:06] of that is our planning department. And so just since I've been involved for two or three
[56:12] years now there have been a lot of concerns. And that has to do a transparency. And folks
[56:20] not trusting that process. And so I'm wondering has that has anything changed since the last
[56:28] survey? Because I don't think those numbers have changed that much. I think they've gotten
[56:33] worse. I think they increased in fact. And so I'm just wondering have has the city changed
[56:39] that process or gotten more feedback from the community on how to make that a more
[56:45] transparent process?
[56:47] Thank you, Councillor Black.
[56:49] So I'm actually going to ask Brandon.
[56:51] So I think when we're looking at these topics, especially economic health and maybe we can
[56:58] even go back Brandon to slide.
[57:03] What was it?
[57:06] Slide 14.
[57:07] but maybe you can talk a little bit about everything that maybe fell into the
[57:12] economy category and maybe what that tells us or what we, yeah.
[57:19] Are
[57:33] certain Macro
[57:39] almost made it all the way without doing that.
[57:43] So there are the macro factors that are playing into this.
[57:47] So even though there are certain items that decrease, they still remain similar to
[57:50] the National Benchwork, which means this isn't necessarily a unique challenge
[57:54] to love wind itself.
[57:56] When it comes to speaking of the transparency, I'm not sure I can speak to that specifically.
[58:03] But these are still rather strong ratings for each of these items.
[58:07] Another piece to remember when you're looking at these results and when you're looking at the report is
[58:11] just because something says that it's 37% positive doesn't necessarily mean that that's 63% negative.
[58:18] That there is a fair or neutral rating in these scales for each one of these items
[58:23] that we don't include because we consider it's fair, it's neutral, it's average, we want to report on what is above average, what is well above average, to really give a better picture of here are the successful aspects of lovely and here is where residents feel lovely is doing well.
[58:39] So just to keep that perspective as you're looking through the results.
[58:42] Thank you.
[58:43] And then sorry, I will just quickly address for you know specific to your question about planning as an example with transparency, absolutely anytime we get feedback like this, we do look at how you know with what we're hearing from the community with even this survey with other opportunities, how can we, how can we even help educate the community better, how can we provide additional resources in certain areas to help with some of those areas.
[59:12] So in short, yes.
[59:15] All right.
[59:15] Madam Mayor, if I can, Madam Mayor.
[59:17] Yes, go ahead.
[59:18] Just to add to that, I think what's really important here is the follow-up.
[59:24] I think that's really important to get more granular now
[59:29] and having conversations with the community.
[59:31] And certainly, that's the plan moving forward.
[59:35] Because, you know, this information is fantastic, but it also creates curiosities.
[59:40] right? Really wonder what that means. I really want and the only way we will know
[59:45] that is to re-engage with the community and have additional conversations.
[59:50] All right. Thank you. I'm not seeing other lights on. I will also add to my
[59:54] comments. I enjoyed seeing the comments asking for more transit, more hours, more
[59:59] location.
[1:00:09] I'm sorry, I just wanted to make sure I understood the random sample. That was 4,000 surveys mailed to random residents or households involved. What can you explain with open participation is for me again? Sure. So yes, the 4,000 randomly selected through our kind of our sampling and randomizing process.
[1:00:29] The open participation was a survey where the links were put out by the city itself that any resident could take.
[1:00:38] And with that, in the first question, it did ask the respondent to identify which area of lovelin they lived in or if they weren't a resident of lovelin all on its own.
[1:00:48] And how is that information verified, or is it verified, or does it matter that it's verified?
[1:00:53] In other words, isn't whether they're actually a resident of lovels?
[1:00:57] It's a little bit on the honor system.
[1:00:59] And what is in place to make sure that one doesn't take the survey three, four, five, six times?
[1:01:05] We use various security measures like cookies and things like that to prevent one device itself from submitting multiple responses.
[1:01:15] But we also have algorithms that we run when we clean the data at the end of the data collection.
[1:01:21] And we do this for both the random sample and the open participation survey that identifies surveys that
[1:01:26] that have 95% or greater similarity, which we will then analyze, those surveys specifically themselves and determine whether they were duplicates or not.
[1:01:33] Okay, and I, we had a return kind of, but you're seeing up on Councillor Foley's, we spent $25,000, is that what I understood over the last two years.
[1:01:46] And we have got back about 1,500 responses.
[1:01:51] 900 of those were open participation and 600 of those were in response to the 4,000
[1:01:57] mailers that we sent out, which is a low number when you consider the population of
[1:02:02] Lovland is if we round it up to what 85,000, you know, we're really only hearing from a
[1:02:09] very small sampling of residents of Lovland. Do you agree with that premise? And I understand
[1:02:17] statistically it sounds like well it's statistically valid survey but it really
[1:02:22] is a low number of people that responded to this. It is a low number of people but
[1:02:26] that's why the survey science itself specifically exists. Right and I wasn't
[1:02:31] surprised by the fact that 84% claimed to be voters because of the 600 and some
[1:02:36] folks that responded we could probably go through and identify the 600 votes
[1:02:39] that are active or people that are very active in loved ones not political
[1:02:45] seen but governance seen and so we tend to hear from probably a hundred of them on a regular
[1:02:51] basis through email and public comment etc so when the question was asked what do we do from
[1:02:57] here I'm not sure that I mean the survey is important and but it doesn't surprise me the things
[1:03:04] that people found valuable and it doesn't surprise me that things that people found meeting improvement
[1:03:13] Thank you.
[1:03:14] All right. Thank you, Councillor Samson.
[1:03:18] Thank you, Mayor Marsh.
[1:03:21] So I was going to ask the same question about how you can ensure, because if you're going
[1:03:28] to eliminate the login process down the road, how you can ensure that individuals won't be
[1:03:35] able to fill out multiple surveys, a singular individual.
[1:03:38] So that's good to know I didn't know that you had the algorithm and you didn't, but you check those that are so similar.
[1:03:43] So I think that's wonderful.
[1:03:47] And I agree that it is also a lower percentage of individuals.
[1:03:52] But I might have missed this Nicole. Did you say how many did this?
[1:03:58] How many of those who received the mail-out surveys completed in this year versus two years ago?
[1:04:04] Was it a reduced involvement or increased?
[1:04:07] Sure, so on slide nine we'll pull that up and keep in mind, so 2022 and 2024, those are
[1:04:16] the years that we have done the national community survey and the reason we shifted to this
[1:04:20] survey is so that we could benchmark ourselves not just against us but against like-minded
[1:04:26] cities.
[1:04:26] It could align better with our performance measurement, but 2022 and 2024, so these numbers
[1:04:32] are with this particular survey and so in 2022 we had an 18% response rate for
[1:04:39] random sample and we had 1,315 people respond open participation and yeah and
[1:04:46] I would you know that was the first survey we had done in four years and there I
[1:04:52] think where some other things happening in our community at the time that you
[1:04:57] know maybe sparked some more civic engagement. I don't know for sure but our
[1:05:02] numbers are slightly lower in 2024 than they were in 2022. Okay cool so I'll
[1:05:09] say one thing then I have one question or I'll say two things so thank you
[1:05:12] again for doing this. I know it's a ton of work to put all this together. I still
[1:05:15] think the information's valuable even though there isn't this huge sample and I
[1:05:19] agree it's probably people who are more inclined to be you know engaging already
[1:05:22] in some way with government but I still think there's value to it and it's worth
[1:05:26] You know kind of continuing even if we find a way to like make it a bigger sample somehow
[1:05:31] Down the road
[1:05:33] Just kind of through like you had mentioned the community engagement piece after this
[1:05:37] And then I also want to say I'm not surprised that word to was the most engaged
[1:05:42] Because I was Daniel will agree like we saw from the survey. Loveland is the best city up here
[1:05:48] And we of course are the best word in loveland just saying might be biased
[1:05:53] But I did also
[1:05:54] So I want to ask you at what point, what's the threshold as far as engagement is concerned
[1:06:02] where we say look it's really not worth all the work and the $25,000 like we would stop
[1:06:07] after if we only received 12% or something in return.
[1:06:12] Like what is the average threshold for that?
[1:06:19] It depends on what you're able to do with the survey itself and how you want to use the
[1:06:26] results.
[1:06:26] That threshold is going to be different for everybody.
[1:06:28] There are people who would be delighted with 600 responses and trust the science.
[1:06:34] There are people that would get 1,500 responses and still try and discredit the science and discredit the service.
[1:06:42] It's, you are hearing from the majority of voices that you don't necessarily hear from doing a random based sample.
[1:06:49] One of the things that we see in the report is that less than a quarter of the respondents actually reported that
[1:06:54] that they had watched or attended a local public meeting,
[1:06:56] which means more than 75% of these are people you likely
[1:07:00] have not heard from previously.
[1:07:02] So what we're looking for is to really hit that meat
[1:07:04] of the middle of the community where you can pick out
[1:07:08] their face, the people that you know who you're gonna hear
[1:07:10] from on a regular basis.
[1:07:11] You can pick them out, walking down the street.
[1:07:14] The good majority of the rest of them likely couldn't pick
[1:07:18] you out of a lineup.
[1:07:19] And those are the people that we're aiming for.
[1:07:21] Those are the people that we want the responses from
[1:07:23] And that's why we use the representativeness in waiting the results and also that margin of error because if we were to
[1:07:32] Survey you said 85,000
[1:07:35] 80 yeah
[1:07:38] One that would be a significant hard cost in order to be able to get to all of those survey respondents and two
[1:07:44] It would take a significant amount of time where you know if we're looking at let's just use Florida as an example
[1:07:49] We would be looking at months and in those month long spans you could be hit by two separate hurricanes or some other natural disasters or some natural phenomenon which would actually further invalidate the data than it would necessarily make it more statistically valid because you heard from every resident within the community.
[1:08:10] All right councillors thank you. All right councillor block. Thank you Madam Mayor. I've been on the other side of a survey
[1:08:19] I've just been a community member and filled it out. I've also was a former trust commissioner and we did a survey and
[1:08:27] During all those times
[1:08:30] You know some of the comments I heard from councillors and
[1:08:36] The lack of action thereafter
[1:08:39] after, kind of made me feel like my voice didn't matter when I filled out the survey to
[1:08:45] be completely honest with you.
[1:08:47] And that's some of the concerns that I'm hearing in the feedback from the community.
[1:08:52] Doesn't matter what I tell them anyways.
[1:08:55] I will say that the trust issues, the transparency issues that folks have vocalized for many
[1:09:03] years regarding their government, city leadership and city councillors. It's still really hard
[1:09:12] to read, but I accept it. I will not dismiss any person's voice. I don't care if it's
[1:09:20] four people or 4,000 or 40,000. So I want to say thank you to each and every person that
[1:09:27] filled out this survey, it matters to me, and I'm committed to helping the city make
[1:09:35] necessary changes so that transparency and trust and accountability, those numbers raise
[1:09:42] at some point in the city of Wubble, and I'd love to see that.
[1:09:45] Thank you all for the presentation.
[1:09:48] All right.
[1:09:48] I think we're going to open up public comment, so we have 15 minutes of public comment allowed
[1:09:54] out on this item, it's three minutes per person.
[1:09:57] Come on up and give us your name and city of residence, please.
[1:10:02] George Garcliffe's love and colorado.
[1:10:05] A couple of comments.
[1:10:06] First, the interaction between the presenters
[1:10:12] and some of the counselors, I didn't get an A in statistics,
[1:10:18] but I came very close.
[1:10:19] So the disparagement about the numbers, the low numbers, I've said this before, this is probably the same level of involvement that you guys got elected by and I have not heard any complaints about the low numbers that you got elected by.
[1:10:39] So, you know, let's let that one go. Statistically it might not be perfect but you know it's got something that you can get your teeth into.
[1:10:48] And so, you know, I have to stand behind the science.
[1:10:53] The one thing that really stood out to me is the one slide
[1:11:00] where there's probably an incredibly huge disparity
[1:11:04] between what people considered important
[1:11:07] and the level of quality that they attributed to.
[1:11:10] And that's the economy.
[1:11:13] You know, if you take a look at the one slide
[1:11:15] with a large black bar at the top, economies rated as the number two most important thing
[1:11:21] that people considered, and it's one of the lowest things that they said that they
[1:11:25] find in love. I can be corrected on this one. When I took a look at the survey, I assumed
[1:11:34] that people are talking about the economy as their family economy and how they're doing.
[1:11:45] I did
[1:11:45] personal stuff. And this reflects what's happening nationally. There's an awful lot of folks in this
[1:11:51] country that are having a hard time making ends meet. The cost of living is exceeding what people
[1:11:56] have available to them. And that's something that shows up in the last election in terms of
[1:12:03] the vote against getting a raise in the sales tax. People are saying, wait a second.
[1:12:09] You know, that failed by a vote of two to one. And then reflect stuff that happened the other,
[1:12:14] you know, last election too. That's something to get you, you know, get your teeth into. One of the
[1:12:20] other things that I heard is kind of disparaging, you know, the low number of voters are apathetic,
[1:12:27] they've been misinformed and the city has to do a better job educating them. Folks, when the public
[1:12:36] hears you talking about them being dumb, misinformed, they didn't get it right and they need to be
[1:12:42] educated you might get back with a message that maybe you're the folks that need
[1:12:47] the education and that maybe you need to be listening to the folks that you're
[1:12:51] supposed to serve rather than the other way around and that's just my personal
[1:12:57] opinion. So I appreciate hearing the stuff that's been brought up and I wish
[1:13:01] you guys the best of luck dealing with this.
[1:13:05] Thank you. Is there additional public
[1:13:18] I just wanted to compliment Laura for suggesting that there are things I think may be a lot of things that we need to wait on until we have a new city manager who I think is going to be fantastic as you all did.
[1:13:42] So let's give him a lot of chance.
[1:13:46] Thank you. Is there additional public comment from inside chambers?
[1:13:52] All right. Sterling, do we have any phone in public comment on this item?
[1:13:59] Thank you, Mayor Marsh. Users, if you would like to speak to this item, please use the
[1:14:04] raise your hand feature or press star nine if joining by phone.
[1:14:09] When called by the moderator, please accept the request from a panelist and you may begin
[1:14:17] your public comment by starting your microphone and video.
[1:14:22] One more time, users if you'd like to speak during this item, please use the Razer Hand
[1:14:26] feature and I do not have any users with raised hands.
[1:14:31] All right, we'll close public comment.
[1:14:34] Again, I want to thank all three of you and everyone who helped with this and all the
[1:14:38] residents who did respond. So appreciate it. Be interesting to see how we employ these suggestions,
[1:14:44] the feedback, what we can do better, and continue doing well what we do well. All right, thank you.
[1:14:53] We'll move on to item 2.2 from our Community Partnership Office. A presenter will be
[1:15:00] Allyson, hey, it's a affordable housing policy.
[1:15:50] Right, Carrie, we got to find Allyson. So
[1:15:57] I'm sure you're more than capable of kicking us off anyway.
[1:16:03] Welcome, Jamie.
[1:16:41] You didn't think we'd get to you by 715.
[1:16:52] I know we're 15 minutes early. No one expected.
[1:17:01] All right. Take it away, Allyson. All right. Good evening. Mayor members of the council. I thought you might take a break in between. And that didn't happen.
[1:17:10] happen. So we're ready. Let me grab a couple of notes.
[1:17:19] You can see what I'm going to have
[1:17:20] you do on here.
[1:17:25] With me tonight, Jamie Saven from Aspen
[1:17:27] Homes in Carrie Bruchette from planning, also Nicole Hahn and Jim Lee's. I thought that
[1:17:33] I would have room for them at the table but I don't. So is Jim here? Yep, Jim is here
[1:17:42] as well. So at what one point I will have them both come up to the table to
[1:17:47] talk about the things that they're working on. So thank you for this time. I actually
[1:17:52] originally scheduled this as a study session in March and kept putting it off. And I did
[1:17:59] that because we were continuing to collect information and in fact we still are. And I
[1:18:05] realized at some point that it would probably be better to tell you what we're working
[1:18:10] on instead of working on it and then presenting it to you.
[1:18:14] So the purpose of tonight is to get you caught up on the work that's been happening over
[1:18:21] a period of time, really starting in 2022 with the Affordable Housing Task Force.
[1:18:29] So I think that there's some data in this packet that really does talk about why we're
[1:18:36] here and why it's important.
[1:18:38] And again, there are quite a few people in the city that are working on these items.
[1:18:44] You can expect to see people coming back through, I would say, probably the first six months of 2025 to bring three to five items back to you.
[1:18:56] This first started with the Affordable Housing Task Force in 2022.
[1:19:01] And there were four recommendations by the task force.
[1:19:05] We're going to talk about the ones that were accomplished.
[1:19:07] First, ones that were more or less taken off the list, you could say the reason why.
[1:19:13] And again, what we're working on now.
[1:19:16] We did a couple of code amendments in Kerry did in September of 2023 and again in February
[1:19:22] of 2024.
[1:19:24] We're going to revisit those shortly and move through why those are important.
[1:19:31] The hope is with, from my perspective, the hope that it is for every item that we bring
[1:19:39] to you over the next six months, that we can attach a dollar value to it.
[1:19:44] That's going to be really difficult and more than likely those dollar amounts will be
[1:19:49] wrong.
[1:19:49] But we want to be able to get a sense of this, what is this work going to create actually in
[1:19:55] the ability to reduce the cost of building homes.
[1:19:58] So, again, we're going to go over some of these numbers and you'll see why that's important.
[1:20:05] There was a Biz West conference in October.
[1:20:10] Councillor Olson was there.
[1:20:11] I'm not sure if other people were there.
[1:20:13] I may be one of you.
[1:20:14] I don't recall.
[1:20:16] But I heard a couple of things during that, and Jamie was there as well.
[1:20:21] Were you at that one?
[1:20:21] Okay.
[1:20:22] I heard a couple of things that I'd kind of heard in the past, but it didn't really register.
[1:20:27] The one of the reasons that creating affordable housing is important in our community is because
[1:20:34] we have a population that's aging.
[1:20:36] We know that.
[1:20:37] We know that in terms of job growth or in terms of jobs, there are people who are going
[1:20:43] to exit jobs in the near future and far fewer people who are going to take those jobs.
[1:20:48] That's been a statistic that I believe I heard some time ago and it really registered to
[1:20:55] me in October when I realized and they said this, but like what that really means for
[1:21:01] Loveland.
[1:21:02] And the fact that we have younger people who are going to take a lot of these jobs and
[1:21:07] they can't live here.
[1:21:08] So I think about when we're hiring people in our office and our goal, especially when you
[1:21:16] think about winter, to have people who live a little bit closer, who aren't maybe commuting
[1:21:20] from Parker and we have had applicants wanting to do that because they can't afford to live
[1:21:27] here.
[1:21:28] We want to be able to have homes available for people as they're moving into these jobs.
[1:21:34] It helps our economy.
[1:21:36] It helps actually our air.
[1:21:39] We all know that we have air issues and having fewer people on the roads will benefit that as
[1:21:45] well.
[1:21:46] So we have there are a lot of reasons why this matters and you just heard from Nicole and
[1:21:53] that it matters to a great deal of Loveland residents.
[1:21:58] So I want to make sure that as we go through this tonight and into the future that we're
[1:22:03] all working from the same definitions, I know that you have heard AMI or area median income
[1:22:10] forever.
[1:22:11] I want to make sure that you have the chart that's in this packet.
[1:22:15] It will, this packet, I'm anything that I do, I'm going to attach these slides so that there's some continuity.
[1:22:24] The AMI changes every year around April, so for example if I were to come back here in February or March you would still have 2024 AMI numbers
[1:22:32] and that would be purposeful because it doesn't change until generally about the second quarter.
[1:22:38] I know that you're aware of what affordable and attainable mean, but again, having some
[1:22:44] consistent sort of definitions affordable has historically meant no more than 30 percent.
[1:22:50] And attainable can actually be any home where somebody is not paying any more than 30 percent.
[1:22:56] We've interchanged those words trying to say that affordable might mean low income, 30 to
[1:23:01] 60% AMI, and maybe we've used attainable for 60 to 80 or workforce housing, but in
[1:23:08] reality, attainable can be a home that works for anybody at any income level by paying
[1:23:14] 30% of their gross income.
[1:23:17] We want to make sure that as we're building homes, we're going to get into this a little
[1:23:21] bit tonight that families aren't cost burdened by paying far more than they can afford.
[1:23:26] and then again the definitions from 30 to 80 where we can be consistent from very low income, low income, moderate income and middle income.
[1:23:38] AMI, Wilson Commons, I asked Jamie to be here so he could talk about, give you an update on that pilot project at 70% AMI.
[1:23:46] You'll recall that in February we moved LHA and habitat up to 80% AMI.
[1:23:53] So, all of this should be familiar to you, well, I guess some of you aren't on council
[1:23:59] yet, but the very first EPS study, this data was the data that the Affordable Housing
[1:24:05] Task Force at Leigh Johnson presented, that we've lost housing in this middle income
[1:24:11] category, and we've had little other housing growth.
[1:24:15] We know that regionally we've had a net loss of the types of homes that would be affordable
[1:24:21] to young people who would be moving into our community
[1:24:24] or that we would need for particular jobs.
[1:24:27] That medium home price has gone up over time.
[1:24:30] That's very obvious.
[1:24:32] And we've lost our rentals have gone up dramatically
[1:24:36] and that the Affordable Health, the EPS report,
[1:24:40] stated that Loveland has generating more jobs than housing.
[1:24:43] So also if there's any question about this data,
[1:24:46] we can talk about that later.
[1:24:48] Looking at what people can afford, this is, so for somebody who is at 80% AMI doing this sort of math, we've shown that we have 376,027 homes.
[1:25:04] Once you add in an HOA fee, which is very common to do, that number goes down to 10.
[1:25:11] So, even at 80% of the area median income, we need far more homes.
[1:25:19] Also for rent, looking at 80% AMI and 60% AMI, at 60% AMI, I found 13 two bedroom
[1:25:29] apartments.
[1:25:29] At 80% AMI, there were quite a few.
[1:25:33] LHA, as you know, can now build up to 80% AMI.
[1:25:37] The only reason that they would do that is so that they could produce more of the lower
[1:25:43] AMI units.
[1:25:45] So that's just a math equation.
[1:25:46] They need to make a certain amount in rent.
[1:25:49] If they can charge more for some here, they can build more units at the very low income level.
[1:25:55] One of the things that I think is key is just watching both the inventory, the vacancy rate,
[1:26:00] and the cost of housing in Loveland.
[1:26:04] Really, a lot of it is remaining pretty steady.
[1:26:07] I kept hoping that as I watched this over time,
[1:26:10] that we would see, as our vacant sea goes up,
[1:26:12] that we would see our rental prices go down,
[1:26:15] I'm not seeing that in any significant way.
[1:26:21] Okay, I'm going to turn this over to Jamie
[1:26:23] to talk about the Wilson Commons pilot project.
[1:26:28] Just put your push button so you get a green light.
[1:26:31] Okay. Okay.
[1:26:34] So the first thing I want to say is in the difficult environment for building
[1:26:39] affordable homes in today's market, if you're going to do it as part of industry, you need
[1:26:44] to be a part of a team. The builder has to work with the developer and they have to share
[1:26:50] the common goal and work towards that together. Our developer has done that with us, Juliano
[1:26:55] and father construction, and we wouldn't be able to do the things that we did without their
[1:26:59] help. We also have to work as a team with the city, and the city of Loveland has worked
[1:27:04] with us on that, and that is also why we're able to deliver these things. So we deliver
[1:27:10] the end product, we get the credit, but those other members do a lot along the way.
[1:27:17] So typically the affordable projects that happen on a large basis have a set aside area with
[1:27:23] a different product type, that is that affordable product, and sometimes that's looked down upon
[1:27:30] by the other part of the neighborhood, it's pulling down values, doing things like that
[1:27:34] that they're concerned about. It's also very hard on long-term projects
[1:27:38] to make those actually work because you have a very static deliverable that you're doing
[1:27:45] and these large projects take a large amount of time.
[1:27:49] For the concept of this, and then the other thing that happens, sorry.
[1:27:54] The other thing that happens is that with all of that going on, there's not as much
[1:28:00] transparency in where the dollar value, the dollars that the city is giving is going and
[1:28:06] that causes friction between the city and the developer and trust and all of those things.
[1:28:12] So what we tried to do with the pilot project approach is number one increase the transparency
[1:28:18] emergency, and number two, make things work more uniformly throughout the neighborhood.
[1:28:25] So instead of just putting the voucher, the way what we get from the city is a reduced
[1:28:29] voucher on every permit.
[1:28:32] And for doing that, we have to produce 20% of all the homes in the subdivision have to
[1:28:37] be sold to people at 70% AMI or below verified by the city, and Allison's group.
[1:28:44] Instead of just having that one project separate from everywhere else, the concept that we
[1:28:51] came up with was integrating those affordable homes into the neighborhood and we're actually
[1:28:57] building the same product for a market rate house as we are for an affordable house.
[1:29:03] And then the other thing we did is 20% is 1 in 5.
[1:29:09] So we would take the vouchers, the reduced fees that we got, and we would track that amount.
[1:29:17] And then we would group five homes together.
[1:29:20] And we would say, we would price all of our regular homes at market rate like we weren't getting any benefit from the city for those permit fees.
[1:29:28] We were paying full vote, and then we take all that money and put it into that one affordable house.
[1:29:37] And we tracked that with a very simple form and had both us and the city and the place
[1:29:44] of Alice and sign it so that we're tracking all the money going into the project and
[1:29:49] where it is being spent.
[1:29:51] And then we have some nice traceability because we're selling both the same product for market
[1:29:56] rate and we can show that it's sold for this amount and what we sold
[1:30:00] So that worked very well. We started this back in 2021 and in some paired homes, there you'll
[1:30:10] see the market rate price and the affordables. We were able to deliver affordable homes
[1:30:16] to people for $232,000 up to $276. So a very affordable product. We did that through the
[1:30:27] to 2023 as we moved along actually in the beginning it was working so well that we were able
[1:30:34] to do a one in four ratio and we are actually building 25% affordable rather than 20 thinking we
[1:30:41] were getting ahead and doing a tremendous job for everybody. We had some things happen that we
[1:30:48] didn't expect. COVID happened and there was amazing cost increases in our industry and then interest
[1:30:55] rate shot through the roof. We were able to hold our prices all the way through for the
[1:31:00] affordables while the market rates went up. For our first section of homes where we're
[1:31:06] doing affordables, we kept the prices through the beginning of 2023 and we could have completed
[1:31:15] 18 affordable homes that way. We offered three others but as the interest rate shot up, the
[1:31:22] people just felt things were going too quickly and out of control, and we didn't have any offers,
[1:31:26] and we just had to turn those into market rate homes.
[1:31:32] Fast forward to today, we're doing a new
[1:31:36] part of the project with affordable homes once again, but we're farther along in the process,
[1:31:42] the lots were being delivered are not pre-COVID, they're post-COVID, all the other things that increase
[1:31:47] those costs are moving forward.
[1:31:52] Lumber costs went catastrophically high and now
[1:31:56] they're back to just 20% higher than they were before COVID. Everything else is
[1:32:01] still more expensive, nothing else has really come down. We're now able to
[1:32:06] deliver an affordable home at 287 and they are our other one at 309 and we're still
[1:32:17] able to move ahead with everything. So one thing that's been really impressive about
[1:32:22] taking this approach is we've been able to be dynamic and adapt as we went through
[1:32:28] all those things and we're still delivering affordable homes all the way through there.
[1:32:33] And all the phone, all those homes are integrated through the community and they had no impact
[1:32:40] the impact on the home value of anyone else.
[1:32:44] All the value stayed high.
[1:32:46] Everyone is happy and you have this nice intermix of people living within the neighborhood,
[1:32:51] which I think is a very positive approach.
[1:32:54] The other thing that we have going that allows us to move forward is we're tracking all the money.
[1:32:59] We can show you where every dime of city money is gone and where it will go.
[1:33:05] And that increases the city's trust in us.
[1:33:08] and our trust that we're not going to be blamed for not accomplishing something.
[1:33:13] So, I feel that this approach has proven to have a lot of amazing benefits
[1:33:18] considered that are different than the old approach.
[1:33:25] But I will say that we are hitting a point that we're getting close to the edge.
[1:33:30] We're now serving at that 70% AMI at the prices we're doing.
[1:33:35] We're not meeting that true net, net affordability, which is the 30% of your household income for these 70% buyers.
[1:33:45] They are stretching themselves to get into these homes.
[1:33:47] It's still the best deal that they can find, and they are really happy to do it.
[1:33:52] But we're serving a smaller and smaller niche of people.
[1:33:56] And if interest rates continue to climb, I don't really see our costs going up quickly like they were for so long.
[1:34:04] So, that's been nice, that that's stabilized, but if interest rates continue to go up,
[1:34:10] there'll be a point, some point in the future where with what we're doing, we may not
[1:34:15] have a customer that can qualify for this.
[1:34:19] So we've been amazingly successful, and I think that this program can be reproduced in
[1:34:27] a myriad of other ways.
[1:34:28] Can we just go to the next slide?
[1:34:30] I may be talking too much in this one slide.
[1:34:34] I wanted to jump back to another point,
[1:34:38] something else that helped us adapt along the way
[1:34:41] with the changes that were made to the city code.
[1:34:45] We were able to change some large lots into smaller lots
[1:34:49] and in the affordable.
[1:34:51] And I just, you were talking about the benefits
[1:34:53] of dollar values of what we can do.
[1:34:55] So it's hard to say exactly how you're looking at everything, but if you look at the original
[1:35:00] street that we had with large lots and we're doing these three car garages and slightly
[1:35:06] larger homes, we were going to be serving 550,000 to high 600s in homes.
[1:35:14] That same street now is delivering smaller single-family homes in the high 400s to low 500s.
[1:35:24] homes or duplexes in the low 400s and affordable pair homes, 287 to 309.
[1:35:33] So I would just say that's an example of what the small lot size can do for changing
[1:35:39] the end housing product that's on the market.
[1:35:48] So kind of a lessons learned or benefits that we saw, I really think integrating those
[1:35:55] homes throughout the neighborhood has a great benefit for the community and by doing
[1:36:02] it that way no one is complaining and we don't have any downsides.
[1:36:07] I think this approach which just has a small amount of tracking and this five-to-one ratio
[1:36:13] putting everything into one house has a lot of scalability.
[1:36:18] Someone could come here with a small project and say I have ten homes I want to do and they
[1:36:23] can go to Allison and they can say I'd like to make two of those and you guys work out
[1:36:27] a deal where you can do this on a small scale or a large scale of a large project or half
[1:36:32] of a large project. I also think that transparency as I talked about is really good on both sides
[1:36:41] in so that we as the builder developer group can show what we're doing and the city can see where
[1:36:47] that money is being spent and make sure that they're happy with that.
[1:36:51] And then the last thing I kind of already hit was we've been adapting and changing, we're
[1:36:58] actually on probably plan four now in the last four years on how to meet these targets.
[1:37:05] But I do see at that 70% AMI, our pool of people is getting smaller and smaller.
[1:37:12] I hope that the answer phrase don't go up even more.
[1:37:15] If they do, there's going to be some point out there where I have to say, we no longer have a customer.
[1:37:22] So we don't want to take your money, just charge us full amounts and we're not going to be able to do that affordable at this 70% AMI rate.
[1:37:35] Thank you, Jamie.
[1:37:36] So I ran through some of the numbers very, very quickly because I don't think that we know that we have an issue that we have to deal with here and across the United States.
[1:37:47] So none of that is a surprise.
[1:37:48] There are some numbers that were thrown out that are pretty basic and so the reason we're
[1:37:54] really here tonight is to look at this as a pilot project and what we're going to do
[1:38:00] about that 70%.
[1:38:01] So I'm going to touch on briefly about that in a couple of slides from now and why this
[1:38:07] program works and how we can look at this for higher AMIs.
[1:38:11] I'm going to move to the accomplishments, what we haven't done and what we're in process.
[1:38:22] I think some of the most significant code amendments that I have worked on since I have
[1:38:29] been in the city were done in the last several years with the housing diversity and also the
[1:38:36] affordable housing density incentives.
[1:38:38] They have by far created the most impact and I think I was, they are the most exciting amendments
[1:38:46] that I have been a part of, really, because that is truly the need of the community,
[1:38:53] you know, right now, the concerns that we have heard or the cost of living in the affordability.
[1:38:59] So, what we accomplished with the code amendment was to put into place some density incentives.
[1:39:07] We worked very closely with the Affordable Housing Task Force.
[1:39:12] that was pivotal, it was just instrumental in these amendments because it got the planning
[1:39:19] office to speak with builders like Jamie and others that are out there on the field
[1:39:26] trying to pound these homes out and trying to find their customers.
[1:39:31] Often we're a little detached from what is happening in the market, but by working closely
[1:39:38] with the affordable housing task force, we were able to identify the incentives that
[1:39:43] would work, the incentives that were most important to them in facilitating getting
[1:39:49] that product, getting more of the affordable houses constructed.
[1:39:55] And so we included in the code some increases for qualified, deed-restricted housing, and
[1:40:02] And these could be implemented at administrative level.
[1:40:07] And that truly has been one of the biggest excitement from these builders just to be able
[1:40:14] to fast track things through the system.
[1:40:18] We have put in incentives for existing plan new developments.
[1:40:23] These are developments that have been approved probably since the early 2000s to encourage diversity
[1:40:30] in product types. A lot of these beauties were basically kind of zoned for 7,000 square
[1:40:39] foot, 10,000 square foot lots, which is not what the environment is today. So we were
[1:40:45] able to encourage density and kind of a tiered system based upon how many different product
[1:40:50] types and housing types would be incorporated in there. We have introduced the cottage
[1:40:58] development which is actually super excited and we're working right now with two developers that are
[1:41:04] brunna bring in these cottage home products you know at a very attainable rate smaller lot sizes
[1:41:12] and we increased our size of the cottages and we had different fee waivers for these non-profit
[1:41:20] and Allison will talk a little bit about that but so before I give the microphone over to Allison I
[1:41:25] We didn't want to kind of bring something to light that Jamie didn't speak to is accessory
[1:41:31] dwelling units.
[1:41:33] Jamie's done an amazing job with incorporating ADUs into new greenfield type developments.
[1:41:44] We have struggled with ADUs and they are such a fabulous housing type that can help home
[1:41:53] buyers with income, kind of generating some income levels, it helps kind of some of
[1:41:59] these, you know, transitional housing where you can kind of move into a smaller ADU and
[1:42:05] free up your house for a rental. And there's so many different benefits, but we've struggled
[1:42:12] with folks being able to, I think, afford to build those. And Jamie has introduced those
[1:42:18] through the course of the code amendment by listening to some of these incentives into
[1:42:24] his products out there, and they've been very, very successful, so that's another pilot
[1:42:29] project that I absolutely love and hope to kind of increase that a little bit more.
[1:42:36] So I think that we're on the right track in terms of where we're going with these accomplishments.
[1:42:42] Truly it started with the Affordable Housing Task Force, and honestly Leah Johnson pushing
[1:42:48] to say, I recall Kerry gave her some ideas and she said, yeah, not feeling it.
[1:42:54] I think you need to go back to the drawing board and do a little bit more work.
[1:42:57] I know those weren't her exact words, but she really, really got, really got, um,
[1:43:03] Kerry to push for creating this kind of density.
[1:43:07] And one of the things that we're hoping to see is that the degree to which density alone
[1:43:13] can produce naturally occurring affordable housing.
[1:43:17] I think that it's something that a lot of communities are honestly being forced to work
[1:43:22] on through a lot of legislation that we're going to talk about in just a minute, but
[1:43:26] it can't be overstated the incredible accomplishment just in that.
[1:43:31] One of the things that I didn't do on this slide is put the dollar value of the reducing
[1:43:37] CEFs to half and we said we want to, or I said I want to see if we can put dollar values.
[1:43:42] That alone is a little over $8,000.
[1:43:44] dollars, so the fees for the CES go down a little bit.
[1:43:50] Now I'm going to look at the move to the items that weren't completed.
[1:43:56] These were also recommendations of the Affordable Housing Task Force and Kerry, will you speak
[1:44:01] to the first two of them?
[1:44:03] Sure.
[1:44:04] We are always working on ADUs and the next item on your list also tonight, you know, I'll
[1:44:11] I'll be talking more about some state provisions, ADUs, looking at the standards, trying
[1:44:17] to open the door wider for that.
[1:44:21] Right now, our accessory dwelling units, we do have a really great code standards that
[1:44:28] have removed many of the barriers to develop the affordable housing.
[1:44:33] These are barriers that other communities around us have continued to have.
[1:44:37] So I've always felt like we have been on the forefront of ADUs in
[1:44:42] Loveland. We also do not require capital expansion fees for those, which was
[1:44:48] really unique, you know, in the state of Colorado. We still have some ways to go
[1:44:54] that I will, you know, talk about in the next item. Other things that we're, you know,
[1:45:00] We're hopeful for it to look at some kind of prototypicals that we could do with builders, something to ease the path to get that product type more into Loveland. We have, when we continually open the door, and we're still not seeing a great interest because I think they're expensive. They're really expensive for the construction of those. We're lucky to have like Jamie incorporating them into
[1:45:29] some more kind of new builds, which I think helps lessen the cost of those.
[1:45:36] Since the UDC was actually was kind of in place in 2019, we have approved 38 permits
[1:45:46] for accessory dwelling units, so that's kind of low, I feel like, in the last year we've
[1:45:53] had two, so we're looking for ways, that's why this is like on our not completed list of
[1:45:59] ways to increase those and encourage those and make the process a little bit easier.
[1:46:04] The third party services to expedite reviews, and this is something that we tried a long
[1:46:13] time ago in the planning office is trying to see if there would be a way where we could
[1:46:18] have some consultant firm come and almost be kind of a side planner to the office.
[1:46:25] So when we did get kind of large caseloads, you know, developers could have the option to do a third party expedited review.
[1:46:33] And that just honestly didn't work really well for us.
[1:46:37] You know, every municipality has a code that is so unique to ours is unique to loved ones.
[1:46:44] You know, unique to their community.
[1:46:47] and trying to kind of educate, you know, a planner to be able to become effective at processing projects in any kind of an expedited manner.
[1:46:59] It usually takes us, you know, about nine months to a year to get a planner up to speed.
[1:47:05] And so that didn't seem like a cost savings for us, so that's something that we haven't, you know, looked at at all.
[1:47:12] But we are always looking at ways to have process improvements in the code, looking at ways to expedite things right now, any affordable housing project.
[1:47:24] We do expedite it as much as we can, which means it goes to the top of the list, but our list is usually pretty full too.
[1:47:32] So we do try to work with developers on that, they do not go on hold like some other projects do.
[1:47:40] you and that truly has been an incentive for folks to at least pause and think about
[1:47:46] incorporating affordable housing into their development.
[1:47:49] The reason that these four items are on here is because part of tonight is making sure
[1:47:55] that we go full circle with the original affordable housing task force presentation in 2022.
[1:48:02] to. During that presentation, City Council really expressed a great deal of support for
[1:48:11] having us work through each one of the recommendations and this will give you an update for all of
[1:48:18] those recommendations, even though some of you weren't on the council then.
[1:48:23] The last two are 10 million in equity and finding a way to build that up as a fund. It could
[1:48:30] be used as a down payment assistant or for other uses and land banking and there's been
[1:48:35] no movement on those.
[1:48:36] I'm going to move into in process and Jamie and I are going to sit back here and have
[1:48:42] Nicole and Jim come out, come up here and talk briefly about the first two items.
[1:48:47] For the in process list, these are the items that you will be seeing over the next six months.
[1:48:55] There are also items that will go back to the affordable housing task force.
[1:48:58] We're going to start trying to build timelines around them, both so they'll be predictable for when you can see them.
[1:49:04] And also because we have builders in the community who are interested in these items specifically to see what they can do to bring down the cost of building housing.
[1:49:29] Good evening Madam Mayor and Councillors, Jim Lee's Utility Accounting Manager.
[1:49:33] And I'm addressing the first bullet point which is that as part of our water and waste water rate study that we began last year.
[1:49:41] part of the scope was to look at scalable impact fees for water, wastewater, and raw water.
[1:49:49] And so we are working with our consultant on that.
[1:49:52] Our consultant has looked at a number of different methodologies.
[1:49:56] We are also doing a survey of other Northern Colorado water and wastewater utilities as
[1:50:02] far as how they're going about scaling their impact fees.
[1:50:06] And so the result of that will all be folded into this ultimate proposal for scaling the CEFs as well.
[1:50:17] And also working with development services and IT to just make sure all of the aspects of implementing this are doable.
[1:50:31] Good evening, my name is Nicole Hahn, I'm the City Engineer and we're working on developing
[1:50:37] some small lot development standards, some more technical standards.
[1:50:42] As you reduce the setbacks and all of the spatial needs that we have in traditional single
[1:50:47] family homes, you have to fit all of the same utility functions, pedestrian accessibility,
[1:50:53] landscaping into a smaller space.
[1:50:54] and so we're taking a deep dive, our various teams of engineers, planners, maintainers, builders,
[1:51:02] are working together to come up with new ways of looking at our space allocation for utility
[1:51:08] services and more of the technical side to serve these small lots. So the benefit of this will be to
[1:51:14] hopefully bring down some of the costs for developing housing and reduce the costs and still serve
[1:51:20] community well. When Kerry brought the density changes in September of 2023, she started
[1:51:33] getting phone calls from builders who were enthusiastic about the change and wanted
[1:51:39] to know have more information in order to be able to build on smaller lots, et cetera.
[1:51:46] We realize that there's a lot of work to do.
[1:51:50] It feels right now like everything is in the air, from the way that we've done our affordable housing designations and what that means to what we did restrict and what we don't, to using Proposition 123 and meeting our quota there over three year period by building naturally occurring affordable housing, preferably without any incentives, likely without a deed restriction.
[1:52:16] in order to bring money into the community in order to do that.
[1:52:20] It definitely, one of the reasons why I didn't want to come here tonight is because there
[1:52:26] are so many balls in the air to make this happen.
[1:52:29] But having you understand that there are so many items that are being worked on simultaneously
[1:52:35] I think is actually beneficial.
[1:52:39] We do have builders like I said, who are willing to and wanting to go down this road.
[1:52:45] We have to understand if we should work on any of the projects in the same way that we're working on Wilson Commons.
[1:52:54] So, for example, they are, as Jamie said, putting all of the voucher money that they get from all five homes to reduce the cost of the fifth.
[1:53:05] At 70% AMI, Aspen Homes is also putting money into it.
[1:53:09] They know, as Jamie said, that a home at 287 isn't truly affordable to somebody at 70% AMI,
[1:53:17] but the families that are able to buy them are just relieved because it is such a great
[1:53:24] home and it's the best thing on the market right now for them.
[1:53:28] So under those circumstances, what would we be able to produce at 80% AMI at 90% and then
[1:53:39] incentive having it be naturally occurring, being able to meet our proposition 123 commitment and bring in more money to build affordable housing into the community.
[1:53:51] Last year, there was a lot of legislation that was passed around affordable housing.
[1:53:57] Next carries going to talk about the residential occupancy limits and accessory dwelling units in the next presentation, but there are other items that are going to be key as well.
[1:54:09] So minimum parking requirements, you're going to be hearing about that sometime in the future, so that there are not necessarily minimum parking requirements.
[1:54:20] I have no idea what that's going to mean for most developments. I think most of us don't.
[1:54:26] That there's a transit, you've probably heard of the transit-oriented communities.
[1:54:30] I did find out that that doesn't apply to Loveland, but my hope would be that if we do build something that becomes transit-oriented,
[1:54:37] that we could actually bring some money in for those sort of structures.
[1:54:43] If you have something that's transit oriented, the goal would be to combine that in some way with the minimum parking standards,
[1:54:50] so that you have something that where somebody could actually use public transportation,
[1:54:55] they might not have to have a vehicle, so it has reduced costs for the family.
[1:54:59] All of these items are designed to work together to make housing more cost effective for families around the state.
[1:55:07] because certainly this isn't a lovelin thing, this is a state thing.
[1:55:11] And then affordable housing planning, which is now a requirement, I'm hoping that it comes with grant funding to do that, but I also am hoping that we can implement some of these items on our own to see what happens naturally by doing so before we are required to have a housing study.
[1:55:31] And then the last thing is really, how are we going to pay for some of these items?
[1:55:40] There are tax credits that became available from 2024, and the state again is looking
[1:55:48] at pilot programs.
[1:55:50] We have what I'm hoping will be considered free incentives, so we do have the increased
[1:55:55] density and I am hoping that we can actually start to put some numbers around what the density
[1:56:02] itself will do. What we're finding is that builders, one of the things that they really
[1:56:08] want is fast-track. They want to be at the top of the pile. So in a way that's a free incentive.
[1:56:14] It's not something that we would need restrict, but we can't have everybody doing it because
[1:56:19] if everybody's at the top of the pile, then nobody is.
[1:56:21] We have still the fee waiver program.
[1:56:25] Again, I think that that should be tailored in the, so we have the methodology that we've
[1:56:31] used forever for Habitat and the Loveland Housing Authority.
[1:56:36] We have backfilled fees and we won't be able to do that going forward for the housing
[1:56:41] authority with the loss of funding in the community housing development fund.
[1:56:45] But we will still be able to show our support for them, which will be key for them to be
[1:56:50] able to get tax credits.
[1:56:51] If we don't do fee waivers with them, they're unlikely to be able to get tax credits.
[1:56:55] We also utilize our private activity bonds for that.
[1:56:59] So again, we have these two piles of, you know, these two categories of what I'm calling
[1:57:04] the free incentives and the ones where we actually created deed restriction.
[1:57:09] This is also another area where we're trying to figure out what that looks like.
[1:57:14] I do still think that, again, to say it again, we have so much work to do in each one of
[1:57:20] these areas. So as we're walking through these as city staff come back to you for each
[1:57:28] of these items, for decisions for you to make, we're hoping to be able to put these dollar
[1:57:34] amounts so that you'll understand the value and what this can produce. We're hoping to
[1:57:40] be able to continue to build out funding for our partners. We look at things like we aren't
[1:57:47] really sure yet where Proposition 123 will get us.
[1:57:50] I don't know of any organizations in
[1:57:52] Loveland that have received any money so far.
[1:57:55] So we still have this obligation to meet,
[1:57:59] which is I think 83 homes a year,
[1:58:02] and truly very little information from the state
[1:58:07] as to how we report that.
[1:58:09] But we're trying to set ourselves up so that we can access that.
[1:58:12] We have other items on here,
[1:58:14] like inclusionary zoning, which for me personally, I'd like to go down the road of giving out carrots first.
[1:58:23] I think it's something that we can lean on as we get further along, should we need to.
[1:58:28] But I'm really hoping that through the accomplishments that we've already talked about,
[1:58:34] and through the things that we have in process, and being able to look at density,
[1:58:38] that we can have builders excited to actually bring us naturally occurring affordable housing,
[1:58:46] housing at 100% AMI and below without potentially even deed restricting it.
[1:58:52] So, thank you for your time for us to give you quite a bit of information and are there any questions?
[1:58:59] Could you remind me and probably our new counselors as well.
[1:59:02] Well, what were the fee waivers that were given to Aspen homes to do the four at, you
[1:59:08] know, all of the incentives go to one, but it's really five homes, one is affordable.
[1:59:13] Yeah, could you go through that list of what we're waiving or reducing?
[1:59:17] So I'm going to tell you what the process is, and then Jamie will talk to you about the
[1:59:22] numbers.
[1:59:22] Okay.
[1:59:23] So the way the code was written before 2009, a builder would come in, a builder developer
[1:59:29] would come in to get an affordable housing designation. They still do that. They complete
[1:59:34] an application. They go to the Affordable Housing Commission and then they come to you,
[1:59:38] thumbs up, thumbs down. We still do it exactly the same way. Before 2009, when that would
[1:59:44] happen, it would lock in fees. By the way, we still lock in fees. Now we have a five-year
[1:59:49] rolling lock. Back then, it would lock in the fees at a particular year.
[1:59:58] So the Wilson
[1:59:59] year 2000.
[2:00:02] And that results, but the fees cost more than that now. So the difference in fees they don't pay. Does that make sense? Okay, so I'm going to turn it over to Jamie to talk about the numbers. So those numbers, I mean, so we take that in the beginning. I'll just kind of show you how much the costs have changed. When we started in 2021, we were taking only four permits because we needed
[2:00:29] We only needed to get to a differential of about $65,000.
[2:00:35] We were getting about $15,000 in fee reduction waiver on each house.
[2:00:42] So you put those four in there, you get your house.
[2:00:45] You get your affordable house.
[2:00:47] As the costs went up, when we went through that huge change,
[2:00:53] we were bringing up the price of the market rate homes, but
[2:00:56] trying to keep all the affordables at the same rate or the same price because we knew where
[2:01:02] that was. So eventually we had to go to a 5 to 1 ratio and then be at market rate. We're still
[2:01:10] doing that and doing the 20%. That difference now is from 2021 to 2024. Some of the houses we're
[2:01:21] We're producing at the higher rate, which is at the higher price.
[2:01:26] We're getting waivers of up to $24,000 now.
[2:01:29] So now that larger group of money is going towards the house.
[2:01:33] On the last one, we just put in starting this new section.
[2:01:36] The difference between the same paired house that's market rate and
[2:01:41] affordable is $140,000.
[2:01:45] The city's putting about $100,000 in waiver reduction in there.
[2:01:49] And I will say that's kind of in kind money, that's not off the general ledger, that's
[2:01:55] money that you didn't have before until the permit was pulled.
[2:01:58] And we are still paying that $20,000 of permit fee.
[2:02:04] And then in addition to that $100,000 the city's putting in ourselves and our team are putting
[2:02:09] about $40,000 in to make that home affordable in the last income we could have had.
[2:02:16] have we gone not doing affordable. So that's, they're big dollars and they're serious amounts of money, but that's what it takes to make affordable.
[2:02:25] I want to add something to that. It's an opportunity cost for the city, and so there are going to be decisions that are going to have to be made.
[2:02:36] It's a do we don't we? None of the fees that are waived for
[2:02:44] the Wilson Commons homes are backfilled, which means they are not enterprise fees.
[2:02:53] We are waiving or reducing the amount that we are getting in capital expansion fees
[2:02:58] and permit fees, primarily.
[2:03:00] They still have to pay the school fee, for example, but that doesn't affect us.
[2:03:07] So we get less money from permits, we get less money in the capital expansion line items, and none of it is backfilled.
[2:03:18] So it's an opportunity cost, just to keep in mind as we're talking about 80% AMI, 90% and 100% AMI.
[2:03:27] All right, thank you, Councillor Foley.
[2:03:30] Thank you.
[2:03:32] I want to first just give a shout out to Jamie and kind of that out of the box thinking
[2:03:38] to add the 80 use and making something that someone can use to help them buy and pay
[2:03:47] for the home and that's an important aspect in a unique model.
[2:03:54] And then looking at kind of what's occurred is you know pre-COVID you went from about
[2:03:59] $186 per square foot up to $242 per square foot and then after things start coming back
[2:04:06] down, you're still at $194 per square foot.
[2:04:12] One of the big things that I got to take away here is the software.
[2:04:18] And the software and the ease of doing business equates to savings from the developers and
[2:04:24] the contractors that have to do the work with the city.
[2:04:28] And I call it the pain in the butt fee, the harder it is to get things done, they're going
[2:04:34] to factor that into the cost of their end product.
[2:04:37] And so we can do a lot for affordability by truly upgrading the systems that we have
[2:04:45] for our development services, our building department, those things that ease of doing business
[2:04:51] will help lower the cost.
[2:04:52] The other thing, you know, we did the lot size, the higher density, I
[2:05:02] still haven't seen
[2:05:03] us do where we're putting modulars in on owned property because the lots, so think
[2:05:11] about a trailer park, but only it's not a trailer park, it's an HOA.
[2:05:16] That everyone owns the lot and the trailer or the modular that they're homes on.
[2:05:21] That increases density, increases homeownership, and those products are really relatively inexpensive to do, especially when it's mass-produced and you can get it set out.
[2:05:38] So I think that's another opportunity. We've set it, but it hasn't caught on.
[2:05:42] And I think we need to look at that and get a pilot of that, and really look at how that can help, because that puts people into ownership, not just a house, because as things are high, rent prices are just keep on going up.
[2:06:01] Right? And then where ownership then is cheaper, but if you don't have the money to get into it, you're stuck in that perpetual renting.
[2:06:09] which brings me to my last point, and Mayor Marshal and I have said this for several years now,
[2:06:16] in terms of the apartments and the reason for building apartments versus condos,
[2:06:22] a lot of that revolves around the construction aspect and that just to finish up my point here,
[2:06:32] are condominiumizing these at the seven-year mark will help increase in economy
[2:06:42] scale in basically the same box, call it an apartment or call it a condo, it's the same
[2:06:47] box, only one is deeded to a person and the other is deeded to a single owner, so that
[2:06:53] needs to be looked at as well is incentives to say it's only I've got to cut
[2:06:59] you off. Councillor Olson. Thank you.
[2:07:05] Do you want to thank you for being here?
[2:07:08] Allison and Nicole. No, no. I can't read it. My glasses. Anyway, thank you for being here
[2:07:19] and a lot of good stuff, just kind of curious,
[2:07:22] as I look through the material on attachment three
[2:07:26] in page one, it says, the focus and purpose of this study
[2:07:30] is to make capital expansion fees
[2:07:32] and raw water fees more equitable.
[2:07:36] So as I go through the attachment two,
[2:07:43] which is a regional housing study that was done
[2:07:45] for the work group, they look at water costs,
[2:07:48] cash and lose and not the only option we get more water dedication as well. There's a housing
[2:07:55] price breakdown, there's development based approaches, community based approaches, partnership
[2:08:01] based approaches. Out of all those, there's a lot of different, a lot of information has
[2:08:07] provided. So my question is with all that, and if you look on page, let's see what was
[2:08:17] that page six
[2:08:23] of attachment three, it begins to break down by the different housing
[2:08:27] types and so forth. There's a lot of costs and there's a lot of fees in there. So why
[2:08:32] did you focus or why did the work group focus on just those two? CES and raw water.
[2:08:42] That's a good question and that's the first bullet point item here and we're going to be
[2:08:50] into that study a lot more. So whether or not we move past that, I don't know right now,
[2:08:59] but we're going to go through every into that study to see where else there can be cost savings.
[2:09:03] So the first thing we're starting with are the scalable CEFs and the water issues.
[2:09:08] Well, and those are all city stuff. And it says in page 56, city can't do it on salt.
[2:09:17] I don't. Must be a public private partnership. Right. So where's the the so right here? Yeah. Yeah. I know Jamie's doing something. But there's the point is there's a whole lot of other costs and fees and so forth in there that are described in detail in these different approaches.
[2:09:37] So that will happen through the Affordable Housing Task Force.
[2:09:40] What we're doing here is talking about what we can do from our side, and what we'll do
[2:09:46] at the Affordable Housing Task Force is to continue to work with builders and developers
[2:09:52] to say, how can they contribute?
[2:09:55] And for tonight, what we're going to do is bring them all in to say how they could contribute,
[2:10:01] But bring in Jamie from Aspen Homes because we have been actively working with him.
[2:10:09] So, again, we're going to look at what can we do to help reduce the cost of building
[2:10:15] and what are we doing as a pilot project?
[2:10:18] We'll continue to take it to our office.
[2:10:20] In fact, we have Level and Housing Authority with Bartner with.
[2:10:23] And we also Bartner with Habitat for Humanity.
[2:10:26] true. And Habitat, their homes are already affordable, 100% of the time. And with the housing
[2:10:34] authority, and we'll have other items like I said, we're going to be doing this over
[2:10:40] the next six months at least. And so we'll be working, we'll be bringing the housing
[2:10:45] authority in at some point to say what's working for them and what's not working for them.
[2:10:50] Now, if there's there are things that aren't working for them that we can't touch because
[2:10:56] it has nothing to do with us, then we might not.
[2:10:59] So for example, for the housing authority, one of the things that they need, the very
[2:11:03] most from us, is our private activity bonds.
[2:11:07] So I don't know a year that I've been here when we haven't allocated our private activity
[2:11:11] bonds to them.
[2:11:12] That's huge.
[2:11:14] They need gap funding.
[2:11:16] We're not going to be able to fill that gap funding.
[2:11:18] And in fact, we're taking gap funding away.
[2:11:20] So we'll bring these items back when there are decisions for you to make around CEFs and
[2:11:28] having them be scalable, having water, raw water, and waste water be scalable, but also having
[2:11:33] it remain revenue neutral.
[2:11:37] So you'll have a part in this.
[2:11:40] And at some point, I hope to put a pretty bow around it and bring everything in and say
[2:11:46] We did this. We did this. We did this. We did this. We did this. Right. And this is the benefit and this is the benefit. And now this is what the private builder, private developer is able to do.
[2:11:58] And what they are bringing in reference to what page 6, right. So what they're bringing to the table as well. Jamie.
[2:12:07] I think, to your point, in the not too distant future, the task force will come here and give a very detailed explanation of that area, and benefits and way to move forward on that, and as a member of the task force, we are working on that, we're just not ready to come to you with that quite yet, but that'll be here and it'll be well documented and shown the benefits.
[2:12:33] Two other things if I could throw in there, just to throw out, because everybody's
[2:12:37] been talking about the ADU's a little bit, on that same single family lot, adding
[2:12:42] ADU to a house that we already delivered and integrating them together, the additional
[2:12:48] cost to the buyer at the end for that almost, I'm not going to forget the square footage
[2:12:55] off top of my head, but it's a single family, a single bedroom, one car garage
[2:13:00] attached to the house, making it look like a three-car ranch when it's a two-car
[2:13:05] ranch with a three-bedroom and a one-car ranch with a one-bedroom. That one
[2:13:10] bedroom, one-car ranch, was $180,000, so very affordable. So I do think the
[2:13:16] ADU can be a great solution moving forward. There's something else but I don't
[2:13:20] remember. All right, we're gonna move on to the next.
[2:13:25] to respond to what you mentioned about the conduitization approach. I completely agree
[2:13:31] with you. I've been trying to figure out how to do that for a long time. We have projects
[2:13:36] that we'd like to move forward with doing affordable rental projects that meet all of the
[2:13:44] affordable goals. And then after seven years when we can get away from that problem, then
[2:13:48] and selling them off.
[2:13:50] What I found is, at that seven years,
[2:13:52] if they've been all rental,
[2:13:53] you can't find a mortgage company to lend to you
[2:13:57] if there's more than 50% rental.
[2:13:59] No one wants to mortgage into that.
[2:14:01] So we have to come up with a new mortgage product
[2:14:03] to make that idea work.
[2:14:05] Okay, thank you.
[2:14:06] I'll help you.
[2:14:07] I'll help you.
[2:14:08] All right, Councillor Foley,
[2:14:09] we're moving on to Councillor Crenning.
[2:14:12] Thank you, Alison.
[2:14:15] Is it possible that our efforts
[2:14:18] at establishing affordable housing and unintended consequences that we are
[2:14:25] driving up the cost of affordable housing. In the example, I'll use your five
[2:14:31] home example and I'm not suggesting this is Aspen Homes but it could be
[2:14:34] developer X. He's got five homes. One of them is going to be priced and I'm using
[2:14:39] your slide number 11 I believe it is. The affordable price is $287,000. The
[2:14:46] market price is $426,000. The difference is that's $139,000 difference. If you were to
[2:14:55] to spread that $139,000 out over the four other homes.
[2:15:00] Is it possible that developers are adding that extra $35,000 to the cost of the affordable home to subsidize basically the affordable home? So there are a couple of things that are, I think, are key in this area.
[2:15:15] And these are things that I've thought about over quite some time. I'm cognizant of my three minutes. So if I have to just briefly, is it possible that we are an unintended consequences that we are driving the market homes prices up?
[2:15:31] So, without going into a lot of detail so you can retain your three minutes, the only
[2:15:36] way to really work through that is with a builder that you trust.
[2:15:40] Okay, so it's possible that other builders maybe are doing that.
[2:15:44] It's a concern of mine.
[2:15:45] It is a concern.
[2:15:46] It's a big concern.
[2:15:47] Because that also is a concern of others that if our efforts to bring affordability to
[2:15:54] loveland at the same time we're driving up the yep it's a big concern of mine okay
[2:16:00] and with my last one minute i'm going to again um buttress up with uh counselor fully why aren't we
[2:16:07] doing more i when i look at realtor.com there are 25 homes that fall under $350,000 all but two of
[2:16:13] those are condos or what i would consider to be stackable or townhouses the other two if i add
[2:16:21] mobile homes or modular homes it goes from 25 to about 38. What are we doing? Why aren't we
[2:16:28] doing more to make modular products available for real ownership to get somebody into the ownership
[2:16:36] market? I like that question a lot. To date I've only met with one group that is talking about doing
[2:16:43] that. I loved the visuals of the homes. I loved the project. I loved every bit of it and then at
[2:16:51] the very end, realize that they were talking about the typical with a lot rent and I loved it less at that point.
[2:16:59] Is it our code that prevents the developer from coming in with that idea?
[2:17:03] I mean, there was a project down near a campaign that started out on that track and it never came out of the ground.
[2:17:10] So is it a code problem or is it a financial problem?
[2:17:14] Let's see what Kerry has to say.
[2:17:23] I see the clock is not running for me.
[2:17:28] So we have made adjustments to the code, basically establishing smaller lot sizes and
[2:17:35] that urban cottage that we didn't have before.
[2:17:39] We had prior to the last round of amendments, we had our cottages set at 800 square feet
[2:17:47] or less. And we just could not get anybody in the market that was interested in doing
[2:17:53] a product like that. We had also some other cottages that were 600 square feet in less.
[2:18:00] And they were actually smaller than our accessory dwelling units, which are 900 square feet. And
[2:18:05] so we've made those adjustments. We have, you know, talked to developers about, you know,
[2:18:11] what do they think they can sell? They didn't feel that they could, that at 800 square foot
[2:18:16] but or less product was marketable to them.
[2:18:20] They said that folks needed two bedrooms, at least,
[2:18:23] was what they were looking for,
[2:18:25] which is why we bumped that cottage up to the 1150
[2:18:29] for this square footage to try to open the door more for that.
[2:18:33] I think in terms of modulars,
[2:18:37] I worked on a small project with the Housing Authority,
[2:18:41] where they were looking at using some of their,
[2:18:44] are kind of areas around some of their detention ponds,
[2:18:48] putting in some kind of prefab, little small, tiny homes,
[2:18:54] and it's just that, and we were really excited about it.
[2:18:57] But the product wasn't there that was reliable
[2:19:02] for them to actually get cost savings
[2:19:06] from doing that versus a sick building at the time.
[2:19:09] I think that every year, some of these modules
[2:19:12] are getting better, these prefab kind of bring in on a kind of a truck.
[2:19:18] They're getting better, but at that time, they definitely were not.
[2:19:23] I think that the development in campaign that you're referring to,
[2:19:29] that builder had looked at Loveland, and it's just, I think the land costs and
[2:19:37] for structure costs for the product that he was looking at
[2:19:40] just made it intrusible for him to develop that.
[2:19:45] So, you know, with what Nicole was talking about
[2:19:49] is these small lot standards
[2:19:50] and trying to get all the utilities to work out
[2:19:52] coupled with what Jim was talking about,
[2:19:55] which is trying to get our fees aligned very equitably
[2:20:00] with what you're using instead of every single family
[2:20:03] having a standard C E F, you know,
[2:20:06] when they're not using as much water, the smaller units,
[2:20:09] they're not using, you're not taxing
[2:20:11] onto our infrastructure as much.
[2:20:13] I think when we start getting all of those down
[2:20:15] to like the sweet spot, I think we'll get more interest.
[2:20:19] I think we're working on a development right now
[2:20:22] that is interested in cottages with detached garages
[2:20:25] and ADUs on top in a very dense kind of urban environment.
[2:20:31] So I think that the market is showing
[2:20:34] that there is a need for that affordability and I think that they are responding with
[2:20:41] new designs that we're seeing, you know, every day.
[2:20:47] All right.
[2:20:48] Councillor McThaw.
[2:20:49] Oh, did you want to go ahead, Jay?
[2:20:51] Good, Jayme.
[2:20:51] Go ahead.
[2:20:52] If I could also respond to your point about an unintended raising limit, I think you go back
[2:21:00] to that team approach and I think you have to be careful who you include on your team.
[2:21:04] But the builder should be able to work with the city well enough to prove where all that
[2:21:10] money is going and that differential.
[2:21:12] The only thing I would say is I don't know what market you can push up past the market
[2:21:19] rate and it's a competitive market and for a small builder like myself we just don't have
[2:21:27] any interest in trying to take too much in one step rather than stay alive.
[2:21:33] If you take too much in one step, most people don't want to come to you.
[2:21:39] We try to just have a very basic profit margin to keep us alive, and we go off of volumes.
[2:21:48] And while everyone else is slowed down, we continue at the same rate.
[2:21:52] And we're even in this tough market, we're doing that.
[2:21:55] So I think the more builders you find with that like mindset, you can use this framework of that five to one
[2:22:02] in a transparency where the actual city dollars are going.
[2:22:07] There's just no extra to do anything with.
[2:22:09] I understand.
[2:22:09] And certainly don't take my comments as being geared towards you.
[2:22:13] I think you're doing a wonderful job and glad you're here.
[2:22:15] But you spread that out.
[2:22:16] Instead of talking about five houses,
[2:22:18] now talk about 25 houses and talk about a developer
[2:22:21] that's in mass production.
[2:22:22] And you could easily see where one could spread a $15,000
[2:22:26] to $15,000 bump up to the market rate houses
[2:22:30] to claim that they're building affordable houses.
[2:22:32] Okay, and I'm going to cut this off just so we stay with our rules here.
[2:22:35] Councillor McFarlane.
[2:22:37] I totally appreciate Councillor Crenick staying within three minutes and getting 40 minutes
[2:22:41] of answers. I think it works out perfectly that way.
[2:22:46] Actually, going to you and he saved me some because he asked some of the questions I was
[2:22:49] going to ask on that and that was the aspect and Jamie, you made a really good point in
[2:22:52] there. When you said that, you know, part of it is funding from the city where we're
[2:22:56] cutting back on the fees themselves, but part of it is on you as a developer saying,
[2:23:00] I could have sold these at a greater price, but I'm not, and I think it's that trust
[2:23:05] aspect out there that we take a look at and try and go from there, and along with that
[2:23:09] same factor, I'm looking into why are we not getting into more of the current cotton
[2:23:13] chomes out there, why are we not getting them out there?
[2:23:14] And I get the fact that we've got to find the developers that are willing to really invest
[2:23:19] in that and go that route with us and work that aspect.
[2:23:22] But I am worried about some of the unintended consequences out there and the fact that how do we put the guard rails around those going there?
[2:23:31] The other thing, you know, also one of the slides that you had in here is that you're looking at
[2:23:35] possibly looking at lodging taxes for some of this and that being the
[2:23:41] The liaison for the community mark. I think one of the areas you said you're looking at it lodging. It's one of your last slides
[2:23:47] Yeah,
[2:23:53] lodging tax increases, that concerns me.
[2:23:56] I mean, on the lay as I'm for the community marketing commission, obviously they use
[2:23:59] the lodging taxes itself and I'm hoping that if you're looking at that, you're having
[2:24:05] a discussion with economic development, you're having a discussion with the, because they're
[2:24:09] looking at some increases as well, but they're working with the hotel community out there
[2:24:14] on this and not just raising the fees.
[2:24:17] We would never do it in a vacuum. We have been talking with Marcy for quite some time.
[2:24:22] This is on there because we've been having these conversations, not because it's necessary.
[2:24:27] The necessarily something we're going to lean put our hat on.
[2:24:31] Well, I appreciate you talking to Marcy, but I'd also appreciate you to be talking to the Canadian Marketing Commission as well.
[2:24:36] She has been taking care of that aspect versus our just.
[2:24:40] I haven't heard that.
[2:24:41] Oh, okay.
[2:24:42] And I said it every single one of those meetings.
[2:24:44] Okay, I thought she had.
[2:24:46] It may have made some come up in the past, but I just want to make sure that we are
[2:24:50] talking to it.
[2:24:51] There's been some change at that at that board, especially with the folks that are there
[2:24:54] from Cindy Mack and to Marcy and just make sure that the communication is going there
[2:24:58] because if we start losing that communication with our commissions, we lose that trust.
[2:25:02] Yep.
[2:25:03] And we lose that trust.
[2:25:04] We lose the commissions.
[2:25:05] And I don't want to see that happen.
[2:25:06] Agreed.
[2:25:08] Fair enough.
[2:25:09] All right.
[2:25:12] So I think, you know, you're obviously going to be coming back with round two of
[2:25:16] this, so giving you some input into what I would like if possible, some type of information
[2:25:22] study on what are the needs, how many senior housing units do we need, how many single
[2:25:28] persons, somebody just out of college, or somebody out of a trade school, young families, so we
[2:25:35] get a grasp of how many categories we need, so we know what we need to incentivize.
[2:25:40] so we target. And when we talk about incentives, no metro districts, no URAs, they don't get incentives, they've already got enough of their own.
[2:25:51] You know, but focus on what our actual needs is and incentivize what we actually need. And I would do it in the form of a moratorium on certain fees, you know, work with our city manager.
[2:26:04] or what, you know, it's in revenue that we're not going to receive.
[2:26:07] It's not that we're back filling out revenue that, a moratorium that is designed to encourage
[2:26:13] developers to bail now when we need it.
[2:26:16] And it decreases over time.
[2:26:18] If you're going to get something built in five years, you're going to get that whole incentive.
[2:26:23] If it's going to take you 10, it's going to have reduced.
[2:26:26] If you take longer to get it done, you're going to have a declining benefit.
[2:26:30] Those are just some suggestions I have.
[2:26:33] Councillor Foley.
[2:26:36] Thank you.
[2:26:37] I'm going to just follow up because I don't really think Councillor Crennion's question
[2:26:42] was answered.
[2:26:44] And that is about modular homes and mobile homes, nuts and bolts.
[2:26:51] What's the problem with them and why are they not specifically designated in our code so
[2:26:55] that people can put them in?
[2:26:56] So we do have in the UDC mobile homes and an allowance for those.
[2:27:04] So that's something that we can certainly reach out to developers and inquire about that.
[2:27:11] But we do have that category and we do have those standards in the code.
[2:27:18] We're just not getting inquiries about those.
[2:27:20] We're not getting anybody that is coming in to request to do those.
[2:27:24] I mean, we're really seeing cottages coming in, but they're kind of the stick-built, but
[2:27:33] we would treat a manufactured home the same as we would a stick-built as well.
[2:27:39] But it is in there, and happy to look at those standards, you know, and kind of troubleshoot
[2:27:45] those.
[2:27:46] Just right now, we're not getting the question.
[2:27:48] To me, that's a missing, that's a missing inventory, a missing diversity of product that's there.
[2:27:55] I mean, you can, you can drive around Lovelin and you can still see some of the old mobile home parks.
[2:28:00] Now, granted, they may not be the most pleasant things when they are as old as they are, but they still work.
[2:28:08] And, and people rehab them and they're fine, they're, they're a fine product.
[2:28:14] And so, what was done back then, what we have now, maybe even better, better insulation,
[2:28:22] it's just overall a better product and so, you know, when you really sit and think about affordability
[2:28:27] and thinking about where to really place our limited resources that we have,
[2:28:34] maybe it's putting it in there so that we can increase ownership, increase our inventory.
[2:28:39] Instead of a hard stick bill, you know, and I understand it's just a product that's missing and I think that gives a lot of people some opportunity for attainability and affordability.
[2:28:58] Councilmember Foley, I thought I'd just chime in just briefly, good evening.
[2:29:03] The PUD or the planning unit development option would also be attractive.
[2:29:07] I think if you had a developer come in who was interested in that concept, that would
[2:29:13] allow you to, whatever the standards are, and I haven't familiarized myself, I don't know
[2:29:17] if I have to look at them, but to the extent that those were an obstacle, the PUD process
[2:29:22] would provide that developer with and out to ensure that there is a method or a vehicle
[2:29:31] by which that type of development could occur in our city, particularly in sort of a
[2:29:39] green field type environment.
[2:29:41] So I just thought I'd add that little bit.
[2:29:43] All right Councillor Black.
[2:29:45] Thank you Madam Mayor.
[2:29:46] So what I'm hearing you say and correct me if I'm wrong is that you don't have developers
[2:29:52] coming to you that want to do develop that kind of product.
[2:29:58] Am I correct?
[2:29:58] Correct.
[2:30:00] We can't force anybody to do it. We can have our UDC codes. We can have everything set up to where they have a chance to go through all of this and get an approval. We don't have anybody interested. So, is that typical in our area that, so is it this, is it the profit margin? I mean, my husband is a small builder too. He keeps his profit margin. We've never, but we're not ambitious people.
[2:30:27] So, um, but a lot of people are and their profit margin is a hell of a lot bigger than my husband's and likely Mr. Sabin's and so is that the problem?
[2:30:39] We have developers that want to large of a profit margin and just aren't willing to do this.
[2:30:50] I can't speak to that directly.
[2:30:52] What I can speak to is that the developers we're working with right now, with the things that have been put in place with UDC code.
[2:31:03] Everybody's starting to think very much more outside the box.
[2:31:07] Even in our project and the file stages, we're going to come into the city with something that they haven't seen before.
[2:31:12] That we think is going to be amazing and make everything affordable in that section without
[2:31:21] without needing any city money involved.
[2:31:25] So the flexibility that the city's providing is really helping all of those things happen.
[2:31:31] I think everybody has their niche and what they're used to.
[2:31:34] You know?
[2:31:35] So you do what you know how to do.
[2:31:37] But we're thinking really outside the box and I think everybody else is too because the market is very hard.
[2:31:45] So, I think in the next couple of years, you're going to see people coming to you with more and more dynamic ideas.
[2:31:53] And the thing I would say is if the city can't, if it's a well-thought-out idea,
[2:31:58] and you embrace those dynamic ideas in the coming years,
[2:32:01] we can continue to chip away real quickly and strongly at this affordability issue.
[2:32:07] But that has to be that team approach that goes back and forth.
[2:32:10] I'm sure there's someone out there that hears this conversation and is going to go, all right, I'll be that guy, but it's not me, and it's not the guy that I'm working with, but we are thinking way outside the box and thinking about doing very non-traditional things, and if the city can come to us, but we're trying to make sure it fits within the neighborhood, build continuity.
[2:32:36] Really?
[2:32:37] Real quick, Jamie, for my seconds.
[2:32:40] So on the Affordable Housing Task Force, Leah, everybody, do we have a builders that
[2:32:45] are involved in that that want to do this type of building?
[2:32:52] They're prepared to have a smaller profit margin.
[2:32:55] We have builders, Jamie's on the Affordable Housing Task Force.
[2:32:59] We have several other builders who are talking about it, but I'm not just talking about it.
[2:33:05] We don't know yet.
[2:33:06] We don't know yet.
[2:33:09] Thank you for your time.
[2:33:11] All right.
[2:33:12] And we have other builders who are inquiring.
[2:33:16] Councillor Olson.
[2:33:19] I want to get you to think like an accountant.
[2:33:22] You know, debit's credits pluses and minuses.
[2:33:24] So many times the presentations that were brought before us,
[2:33:28] we get a lot of the debits.
[2:33:30] We get a lot of the pluses, but we don't necessarily see the minuses.
[2:33:34] They've been, some of them been addressed to as consequences.
[2:33:37] For instance, in density on page 54, it says,
[2:33:45] where market demand exceeds maximum zoning densities,
[2:33:49] densities, bonuses are powerful to leverage that
[2:33:53] and they do not come at a cost to the municipalities.
[2:33:57] And I would take issue with that.
[2:34:00] In case density, you increase traffic.
[2:34:02] You increase the need for additional police protection,
[2:34:05] and fire protection, utilities, and so forth.
[2:34:09] So the excised taxes that are mentioned in that handout,
[2:34:20] that's shifting the costs to somebody else.
[2:34:24] The inclusionary zoning, while other residents in the development pay.
[2:34:30] I experienced that directly in Maryland with an inclusionary zoning.
[2:34:35] I paid an additional fee to cover for the affordable homes that were built in our development.
[2:34:43] So what I'd like to see is us to try to make an effort to say, okay, here's the positives.
[2:34:51] What are the drawbacks?
[2:34:53] Because if there's some unintended consequences or there's some negatives from this,
[2:34:58] how are we going to address those are we shifting costs to somebody else there's no free lunch I mean
[2:35:07] somebody's got to pay for this if it's if it's the city we're for sacrificing some of our fees
[2:35:15] and the city's paying because now we can't use that money for what we're going to do for the city so I
[2:35:21] just ask as we go forward on not only this project because some of the other stuff that comes before
[2:35:26] Council if we look at well what are some of the the things we might have to address that we're are following through cracks
[2:35:35] Councillor Crenning
[2:35:36] Going back to my mobile home modular home manufactured home theme when I when I plug that into the realtor.com
[2:35:46] The affordability affordable houses ago from 25 to 45 so it almost doubles and
[2:35:52] You are seeing what they are classifying is mobile homes selling for a hundred and forty five thousand dollars
[2:35:58] and yet still paying lot rent.
[2:36:01] So while we don't have anybody knocking on the door,
[2:36:04] I would question why is somebody knocking on the door?
[2:36:08] And if we ever had a discussion
[2:36:10] with a manufactured home dealership
[2:36:12] and ask them what would it take for you
[2:36:14] to envision a project in Lublin
[2:36:16] and get the feedback, is it really, is it code, is it cost?
[2:36:21] Is it just nobody wants to be bothered
[2:36:23] with subdividing up a piece of land
[2:36:25] and putting 18 manufactured homes on it there's got to be more to it than nobody's knocking
[2:36:33] on the door.
[2:36:34] People are making profits selling manufactured and modular homes.
[2:36:39] I can't imagine that a developer couldn't work in tandem with a manufacturer and build
[2:36:44] an affordable project because when you look at these homes and this originally probably sold
[2:36:50] But this modular home originally probably sold for less than $20,000.
[2:36:55] And now it has experienced the same appreciation skyrocket that everybody else has enjoyed.
[2:37:01] To get somebody into something that they own and can be a benefactor of the equity or
[2:37:08] the prices go up to benefit from that is where it needs to start.
[2:37:15] So now you can have a minute and a half.
[2:37:18] When I cut people off, it's not because I'm trying to cut them off, it's because of the three minutes.
[2:37:23] I want you to think more like a lawyer, yes or no, is the only answer I'm looking for.
[2:37:26] I am talking to, I have been talking to a group about that.
[2:37:29] Okay, and what are you hearing?
[2:37:31] I haven't, the last time I met with them, it's been quite a few months, and as far as I know, they're still in.
[2:37:39] Looking at loved ones.
[2:37:40] Yeah.
[2:37:41] And I would like to hear when you come back with the mayor's list of things she wants to hear.
[2:37:45] I'd like to hear what incentives we could be offering them, and not necessarily dollars incentives,
[2:37:51] but breaks in our code or whatever we can do to attract something like that.
[2:37:56] I really think that's a missing element.
[2:37:59] Agreed, but making sure that they can also afford the lot rent.
[2:38:04] Not rent, I'm talking about own the grant.
[2:38:06] So I've never had anybody, I know, I already know that that's, I've never had anybody approach to sell.
[2:38:13] Let me, Jamie, before he could in my last 25 seconds, because the Merrill cut me off,
[2:38:17] she won't cut you off.
[2:38:19] Fort Collins was successful in converting at least one, if not two, of the mobile home
[2:38:25] parks on Harmony Road into owned properties.
[2:38:30] And is there, is it possible we could follow in those steps?
[2:38:35] Now you got free reigns.
[2:38:39] So.
[2:38:40] But they own it and they can sell it for the whole thing.
[2:38:42] Okay, Jamie and Alice and tackle that question.
[2:38:45] So I, yes, and there is money to do that.
[2:38:49] And so it requires that one, it's for sale, obviously, and two, that the occupants
[2:39:00] they form a coalition and their groups to help them, one of them is called Thistle.
[2:39:05] And then they need to go out and raise the money.
[2:39:08] And I did talk to a group here years ago.
[2:39:11] and they were trying to do that.
[2:39:13] And I don't believe they were able to pull it off.
[2:39:16] Amy, you had an answer as well.
[2:39:19] I'm just gonna give you a pragmatic response
[2:39:22] to why it's not happening in my opinion.
[2:39:25] And to be honest, I've never even thought about it
[2:39:27] in my little world before tonight.
[2:39:29] There you go.
[2:39:30] There's problems.
[2:39:31] So there's one thing solving a problem.
[2:39:33] But I would say that myself and the people I work with
[2:39:40] would be terrified to bring that project to review, but before City Council based on what we've seen other projects go through, if you look at Sugar Creek, what they went through
[2:39:53] and how difficult and the outrage that came out because of they were talking about doing some affordable and some smaller stuff, I just wouldn't even try.
[2:40:03] That's just me, and I believe in affordability like no other, like I want it, but I can't see
[2:40:10] winning that process to be honest with you. I can't see you happening. I would love to do it.
[2:40:15] If I thought it would be accepted, you know, we'd put some time into it, but I can.
[2:40:21] I'm just saying, I think that's where a lot of your problem is, is the nimbyism in the city is high,
[2:40:28] Okay. And that affects affordable housing, too. I hate to say it that way, but I think it's a reality.
[2:40:34] I can't sugarcree count a lot more issues than affordable housing.
[2:40:36] Okay. All right. Councilor Samson.
[2:40:41] Thank you. Jamie, I just can't even agree more with you about that than the NIVISM that is.
[2:40:48] It's an interesting situation because a lot of the individuals who are, you know,
[2:40:53] hollering about affordable housing are the same individuals who are like, yeah, but not there.
[2:40:57] But not like that though, that's not how you solve it, but not in that place and not
[2:41:01] with that many people.
[2:41:03] So it needs to be a more broad, sorry, it needs to be a more broad conversation for sure
[2:41:10] and something that we have a better, more positive engagement about, I think is a city.
[2:41:15] So I would love for not that you guys aren't already doing a ton of amazing work and are
[2:41:20] busy busy busy at the affordable housing task force.
[2:41:24] But if you could also maybe bring back some talking points that you would encourage for us to share and that in other individuals across the city can share
[2:41:32] about affordable housing, about these cottages, about ADUs, about manufactured homes, about, you know, some of these solutions and these diverse solutions, and how we can start kind of changing that narrative.
[2:41:42] Because you have that information on that task force in particular, the information you have that task force has is just incredible and your personal experience is incredible too.
[2:41:52] so I think that would be a great way to start hopefully shifting the way people proceed affordable housing.
[2:42:00] And then the other thing I want to bring up to was, and I think the mayor touched on this and that is targeting.
[2:42:06] So like, who needs the houses? So as a mom of two young girls, I often look at these affordable rents, these affordable houses.
[2:42:19] And I see very, very few that are three bedroom or even four bedroom.
[2:42:25] I'm the oldest of four kids.
[2:42:27] I'm, you know, like big families is something that, you know, growing up we had a lot of friends who had big families.
[2:42:36] So, I mean, a three bedroom really isn't even that big.
[2:42:39] Is it that when you start to have more kids, generally, if you're, if you were already at an AMI where you would have afforded like when, you know,
[2:42:47] that have reduced the portable houses in your neighborhood.
[2:42:51] For example, Jamie, is it when you start to have more kids
[2:42:53] than you kind of are qualified for a different level
[2:42:57] of AMI?
[2:42:57] Is that why we're not seeing more of like the three bedroom
[2:43:01] versus, you know, like, or more of the four bedroom
[2:43:03] versus like the three and two that you know of?
[2:43:06] I mean, where did, how did you land on three?
[2:43:09] And are you, do you have intention of doing more?
[2:43:11] And what do you think the consensus is across, you know,
[2:43:13] for builders and developers across the city
[2:43:14] to increase like bedroom side or bedroom count.
[2:43:22] That window of who can-
[2:43:24] Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, before you finish, sorry.
[2:43:26] And is there a need for that?
[2:43:28] Or is that just my perception?
[2:43:29] Okay, I'm done.
[2:43:32] One of our goals is to provide homes for young families
[2:43:37] and young and growing families.
[2:43:39] And those families on what they can afford right now,
[2:43:43] if you build into a bigger home,
[2:43:45] you're going outside of that income bracket
[2:43:48] where they can afford it, unfortunately.
[2:43:50] So even at the three-bedroom home,
[2:43:55] the small family, the young family,
[2:43:57] that's topping out where they can do
[2:43:59] and what we're doing currently.
[2:44:01] I think it's for future product mixes and things like that.
[2:44:05] Okay, that makes a lot of sense.
[2:44:06] Do you know if there's a need?
[2:44:08] It's, I'm sure there's a need,
[2:44:11] but not a need that qualifies for what the requirements
[2:44:16] the requirements of that 70% AMI, and what they can afford to purchase versus the cost of building a traditional home that way.
[2:44:25] Right. I understand. Okay. Thank you very much.
[2:44:28] Thank you. Councillor Light Kobach.
[2:44:31] Thank you. And going back to the idea of the modular homes in the trailer parks,
[2:44:36] I understand that we don't have builders that are interested in going down that road.
[2:44:40] Or if they are, they're not looking for the person to own the land,
[2:44:45] maybe just the trailer. Could we do a little outside of the box thinking, though, and could that be
[2:44:50] something that the City of Loveland does with Prop 123 money? Could we land bank and craft modular homes?
[2:44:57] You know, is that something once we figure out?
[2:45:00] Where is this money coming to us? Is that a possibility? I've had that thought in this conversation. I would hesitate to say yes because I don't know how to install curbs and gutters personally. It would take a lot more than that. We would have, yes, there's the land banking and then there's finding somebody to build the infrastructure and that's probably the harder part and I don't, we'll see. Okay. Something to think about. Thank you, Alison.
[2:45:30] Okay, we will open up public comment on this item. Is there anyone in chambers that wishes to give public? I'm not surprised you're coming up, Leah.
[2:45:43] Good evening.
[2:45:45] Council, Leah Johnson. I live in Ward 3, but I have facilitated the affordable housing task force for the last four years.
[2:45:53] And there's just a couple of things I want to say, one, when we started on this,
[2:46:01] the goal was how do we create more units of housing?
[2:46:05] We, it is a supply and demand challenge.
[2:46:08] We do not have enough supply to meet the demand simply.
[2:46:12] That's not to oversimplify this very complex problem, but that's where we're at.
[2:46:16] And so all of the things you've heard tonight over the last couple years that we've been working
[2:46:22] not, started from this very systematic, what are all of the things that we could possibly
[2:46:26] do to help create more housing? Now, it doesn't mean that any one of these stand alone
[2:46:32] is solving the problem. It's all of these things combined that are incentivizing the private
[2:46:39] sector to come to Leveland and build the right kinds of units. And I think as we move forward,
[2:46:44] that's the most important thing is making sure that whatever we're doing and this conversation
[2:46:49] about modular homes is really important too.
[2:46:52] Whatever we're doing is encouraging more of the right kinds of units,
[2:46:56] which means we get out of this ideal of single-family zoning.
[2:47:00] And it's just a reality.
[2:47:02] I mean, I grew up in Loveland, and I say this all the time.
[2:47:05] This is not 1990s Loveland anymore.
[2:47:08] We cannot develop our community through single-family zoning
[2:47:11] and accommodate the demand that is out there to ensure
[2:47:15] that people have affordable housing.
[2:47:16] We can't. You can't live in
[2:47:19] loveland and say you don't want
[2:47:20] density, but you also want
[2:47:22] affordable housing. We don't get
[2:47:23] that luxury. And so I think it's
[2:47:26] really important as we look at
[2:47:27] this to remember that. And so all
[2:47:29] of these efforts were, you know,
[2:47:31] put together to create incentives
[2:47:35] for the private sector to create
[2:47:37] the right kinds of units. And there's
[2:47:39] still a lot of work to do. And I
[2:47:41] do really want to commend all of
[2:47:43] city staff over the last couple
[2:47:45] years, we've pushed them hard.
[2:47:49] You know, the task force has really said, let's think outside
[2:47:53] the box, let's go bigger, let's go different, let's do things differently. And in some
[2:47:58] cases, we were ahead of the state on a lot of that because we were having those tough conversations
[2:48:03] about how do we do things differently. And you know, I think that has been the role of the task
[2:48:09] force. And there are many private sector folks on that who have come in and out over the years,
[2:48:14] who want to be part of the solution and and they really do and so you know we have partners from
[2:48:21] poor Collins and partners here in Loveland and there are there are people who want to be part of
[2:48:25] the solution so I think that that's really important to remember and while I won't be here after
[2:48:31] December leading the task force any longer I know that they will keep pushing city staff Jamie will
[2:48:38] I'm going to pass that baton to Jamie to ensure we're thinking outside the box to create
[2:48:43] the right kinds of housing for loved ones.
[2:48:46] Hang on, Leah.
[2:48:46] Councillor McFarland.
[2:48:48] Do you have a question?
[2:48:49] A clarifying question.
[2:48:49] I have a clarifying question though.
[2:48:51] So Leah, could you clarify who the Affordable Housing Task Force is and why it's so important?
[2:48:57] Yes.
[2:48:57] So the Affordable Housing Task Force was created under the love and housing authority back
[2:49:04] in 2021 kind of directive by the mayor and other folks says how do we get more voices to the table
[2:49:10] to solve this challenge. We recognize that the housing spectrum is vast. I mean everywhere
[2:49:16] from homelessness to 120 percent AMI, that's a big area to cover. So the affordable housing
[2:49:25] task force has really taken on that both qualified affordable housing and the deed restricted affordable
[2:49:30] housing, but really then looking at market rate housing and how do we generate more
[2:49:35] what they call naturally occurring affordable housing, and that's really something that
[2:49:40] someone between say 70 and 100% AMI can afford for home ownership purposes.
[2:49:46] And that's always been the goal, is really that home ownership part, because as you all
[2:49:52] are discussing tonight, that is so critically important to ensuring someone becomes part
[2:49:57] of the community and and is able to build that equity and their own wealth. And in many cases
[2:50:03] that's that's their savings account over time. And so that's been a key emphasis is really
[2:50:08] that 70 to 100 percent AMI and creating more market rate units with the work with Carey and
[2:50:14] the development department and that sort of thing. We have now ventured into where your lodging
[2:50:20] tax thing comes in. As we've created a funding grid of all of the options that are available that
[2:50:26] we know of now, no, there's more, you know, we're all for creativity, so if you've got more ideas,
[2:50:33] that's great too. So because what we also know is we need money, we need money to create more
[2:50:39] qualified affordable housing, we need money to support programs like Jamie's and so how are we going
[2:50:45] to come up with those funds? So we were looking at, you know, like I said, it's a vast grid, which at
[2:50:51] some point I imagine we'll come back to you all next year as well, of how do we potentially fund
[2:50:56] various projects whether they're de-restricted or, you know,
[2:51:01] or not. All right. Thank you, Leah. Is there additional public comment from inside chambers?
[2:51:10] All right. Sterling, do we have any phone in public comment?
[2:51:15] Thank you, Mayor Marsh. Users, if you would like to speak to this item, please use the raise your hand
[2:51:20] feature.
[2:51:26] And I do not have any phone in public comment or users with raised hands. All right.
[2:51:31] We'll close public comment not seeing any other lights on want to thank you all for being here
[2:51:36] And I know there's a lot of supportive staff in the background as well
[2:51:39] Look forward to the next session with you. All right
[2:51:43] We will take a break until 9 p.m. And then we'll go to our last item when we return. We are in recess
[3:06:23] We are reconvened as level and city council study session. We begin our last item on tonight's agenda, item 2.3, from development services, presenter that says carry, but it's actually Bob Paulson, UDC code, amendment discussion based on House bill 24-1007, residential occupancy and House bill 24-1152, accessory dwelling units and carry has joined us. Welcome both of you.
[3:06:53] Thank you and take it away.
[3:06:56] Thank you.
[3:06:58] My name's Carrie Berset and I'm with the Planning Office.
[3:07:02] Tonight I am going to be talking about a couple of the house bills that were recently approved by the state.
[3:07:09] And those house bills both affect land use and
[3:07:12] affects the standards of the UDC.
[3:07:15] So right now I'm currently working on some code amendments that would align
[3:07:21] those house bills kind of align our UDC with those house bills. And so that is why I'm here before you tonight
[3:07:28] because some of those land use kind of bills. They do have some kind of policy choices
[3:07:34] that I want to discuss and hopefully get some kind of
[3:07:40] guidance and some feedback from council that I can use in preparing those code amendments.
[3:07:45] Okay, so the format of the the meeting tonight I'm going to go through just a really quick overview of both of those
[3:07:51] house bills. And then we'll take them one at a time. In your staff can memorandum that
[3:07:58] you have in your packet. I tried to outline those house bills and put some of the various
[3:08:03] options so we can talk about those. And then lastly, we talk about some terminology updates
[3:08:09] that the state is using and go to next steps.
[3:08:16] So to begin with the two house bills that
[3:08:19] that we're talking about tonight are House Bill 24107 and House Bill 241152.
[3:08:26] Both of those have a goal of increasing affordable housing.
[3:08:31] House Bill 107 is a prohibition on residential occupancy limits,
[3:08:37] and then the other House Bill focuses on our accessory dwelling units.
[3:08:42] So from Nicole's presentation earlier tonight and
[3:08:46] And talking about the local concerns of our citizens that have always been some affordable
[3:08:52] housing, the cost of living in the community, those concerns have also risen at a state
[3:08:58] level.
[3:08:58] And so the state has in these implementation of these land use bills have indicated that
[3:09:05] affordable housing and the cost of living throughout the entire seat of Colorado is of concern.
[3:09:12] So they have become involved in land use.
[3:09:15] Allison talked about that there's five land use bills that have been approved.
[3:09:21] I'm only taking two of these tonight.
[3:09:24] That just means you'll see me more in the coming months, probably with other adjustments to the code that we need to do.
[3:09:31] But both of these house bills focus on opportunities and removing barriers from the zoning code that would support
[3:09:39] just alternative housing and accessory dwelling units.
[3:09:45] So, as I mentioned, you know, aligning the UDC with these house bills is extremely important.
[3:09:52] The first house bill for the residential occupancy, it's already in effect.
[3:09:56] It went to effect in July.
[3:09:59] And so, that's something that we're not enforcing.
[3:10:02] We're not, you know, implementing any of those occupancy standards.
[3:10:05] the other house bill has an effective date of June 30th of 2025.
[3:10:12] So we need to get our codes all in line with these house bills.
[3:10:16] The three policy items that I'm seeking feedback on tonight are related to these.
[3:10:22] One is what do we do with our boarding house category?
[3:10:27] Whether we implement the design standards for accessory dwelling units and some existing PUDs
[3:10:33] And then we'll talk about should the code be updated to kind of align with some terminology
[3:10:38] that the state is now using regarding the word family.
[3:10:45] Okay, so we're going to roll up our sleeves with this first one.
[3:10:48] This is the residential occupancy limit.
[3:10:51] This new law eliminates the local restrictions on the number of unrelated individuals that
[3:10:57] can live in a dwelling unit.
[3:11:00] This is really a zoning kind of code item only.
[3:11:04] This does not affect any provisions that would be health and safety, you know, for occupancy
[3:11:10] in a structure.
[3:11:10] So any building code, any fire code is still applicable and would be applied.
[3:11:15] This is purely a zoning type of an allowance.
[3:11:20] So some of you were on City Council previous back in 2021 when we were focused on our occupancy
[3:11:29] limits.
[3:11:30] Remember that.
[3:11:31] I remember that.
[3:11:32] And planning was that's true, and planning a mission.
[3:11:36] Yes, so that was part of a larger code amendment package that we brought through
[3:11:41] that talked about how to increase our occupancy, which at the time was three unrelated individuals.
[3:11:50] How could we open the door to five, which is what we settled on, but it is still an occupancy limit.
[3:11:56] So that was limiting it to five individuals that were unrelated and a household once you
[3:12:03] hit six or more, you'd be classified as a boarding house.
[3:12:07] Those two land uses are very intertwined together.
[3:12:10] I do need to do like a quick shout-out to many of your counselors, Mayor and counselor Samson
[3:12:19] who I recall I was sitting here at that study session and both of you were saying, why do
[3:12:26] we need occupancy standards and I explained a lot of how these land use codes are so entangled
[3:12:36] with what's a boarding house, what's a multiplex, what's multifamily, you know, it's single
[3:12:42] family and that it was extremely complicated and so could we not just open the door a little
[3:12:47] and make the bar higher without having to go through the code and try to untangle some
[3:12:54] these land use categories. So in hindsight I probably should have said let's do away with the
[3:13:01] occupancy standard and then I could be here very proud that we were you know we got here before
[3:13:07] the state did but unfortunately that was not the case and I'm back before you to talk about
[3:13:13] the occupancy standard and what we need to do. So the implications of the house bill on the UDC
[3:13:20] C is number one, the occupancy standard needs to be removed, so that's just something
[3:13:25] that is definitely going to be done, but what do we do with the boarding house category?
[3:13:31] So our boarding house category indicates kind of, it is linked with that occupancy.
[3:13:38] So it says in there by definition that anyone over that occupancy limits are going to be
[3:13:45] considered that boarding house land use.
[3:13:47] So we have two choices and the choice for the code amendment is either eliminate the boarding house category or we need to redefine it so that we set up some parameters that are not associated with occupancy because it's that occupancy that the state is not allowing any kind of standards with that.
[3:14:10] So
[3:14:15] to begin with, what is a boarding house?
[3:14:18] You know, boarding houses in our code, which is kind of a form-based code.
[3:14:23] You know, it talks about that these are typically they look like from the outside a single family house.
[3:14:31] They have shared kitchens, they have shared living spaces, and really where they differ is how the structure is rented.
[3:14:40] So in a traditional kind of conventional standard house, you would kind of lease out the house in itself as kind of a one lease type of a situation.
[3:14:52] With the boarding houses, the leases are individual for the bedrooms.
[3:14:57] rooms. So each bedroom would have a-
[3:15:00] The specific lease that would be very unique, you could lease out that for a week, you could lease it out for a month, but each of those bedrooms would contain their own lease. That really is the difference between that kind of a standard rental versus what a boarding house is. Some of the benefits of these boarding houses is that the rooms are often furnished and they often are present like a lower cost of living than going to an apartment.
[3:15:28] So it is part of an affordable housing, kind of the dynamics of different housing types.
[3:15:35] So we have a couple options in here for Council to kind of think about as we prepare the
[3:15:42] code amendment.
[3:15:43] And the first option is the option that the staff is recommending.
[3:15:48] And that would be to just eliminate the land use of a boarding house.
[3:15:53] There are certain advantages to doing that.
[3:15:57] Like right now, we're aware of one rooming house in Loveland.
[3:16:02] It is kind of the rooming house on 7th Street.
[3:16:06] That isn't approved boarding house in the city.
[3:16:09] There are probably others.
[3:16:11] I think there's a lot of popularity, a lot of movement going with kind of co-living housing arrangements.
[3:16:18] at the code amendment hearing, some of you may have remembered we had some kind of some
[3:16:24] members of the public saying, well, I do that.
[3:16:26] You know, I rent out my bedrooms.
[3:16:28] It's a option that they have as many benefits.
[3:16:32] One, it's more affordable and there's a lot of social benefits too with a co-housing arrangement
[3:16:39] that's something that's pretty new.
[3:16:41] I think it's just becoming more popular as the cost of living has raised in the community
[3:16:48] people are seeking at this alternative type.
[3:16:51] So by eliminating the boarding house as this separate use,
[3:16:55] really we would be essentially kind of supporting that housing type in traditional single family homes.
[3:17:02] So we would not distinguish it by an occupancy.
[3:17:06] We would really just say if that house was built and looks like a single family house,
[3:17:10] we have no restrictions with the house bill on how many people can live there.
[3:17:15] And that would say that, and we don't care whether you rent the whole house out, or you're renting individual rooms, it really functions the same way.
[3:17:24] The other advantages to just eliminating that as a land use category, I've listed them in bullets here, is that it would open the door for another housing type in a traditional neighborhood.
[3:17:38] Right now, a boarding house in our low density residential zones do require planning commission approval.
[3:17:44] So that's the neighborhood meeting, that's the planning commission, and a lot of times
[3:17:50] that does, you know, there's uncertainty with the process and I do think that that either
[3:17:56] discourages transition to that type of a housing arrangement or people just really don't
[3:18:01] come through our process and may just go ahead and convert kind of homes that way.
[3:18:07] So it would legalize kind of housing option that we're very aware is occurring in the community.
[3:18:13] All of the provisions, once again, of safety building code that would still apply, this
[3:18:19] is truly just a zoning requirement that would be removed.
[3:18:24] Now, there may be some disadvantages as well to removing that category that we want to
[3:18:29] think through.
[3:18:30] Some of those are that, you know, in traditional single-family houses, you know, it's not a
[3:18:36] land use that is really expected, it does have more transient type leases, you know, where
[3:18:43] you're there a week or a month, as opposed to like a year lease of a household.
[3:18:49] That could be, could create concerns in a single-family house, off-street parking, generally
[3:18:56] when we receive a call that has anything to do with occupancy, it's really based upon
[3:19:02] There's too many cars parked on the street or cars parked in front of my house
[3:19:07] So obviously there's too many people that are in that structure. That's just where we see that complaint come from
[3:19:14] It does add more parking. I mean it adds more you know cars, you know our public streets do allow parking but
[3:19:25] But our boarding house category requires off-street parking spaces.
[3:19:32] And while I've labeled that as a disadvantage, it's kind of a toss-up.
[3:19:38] It does, our boarding house parking requirements are based upon a space per bedroom that you
[3:19:44] have.
[3:19:45] And that means you have to find some kind of a parking spot on the lot, in the garage,
[3:19:51] driveways, extra driveways kind of paving some of the areas. And that, in a sense, does
[3:19:57] create a different character in the neighborhood. And so, allowing like that on-street parking
[3:20:03] does keep a single-family neighborhood more intact as to what it was built for. I think
[3:20:10] the other disadvantage to removing that land use category is that, you know, we do start
[3:20:16] are blurring different land use categories.
[3:20:19] This is one of the concerns when we first started thinking about do we need an occupancy
[3:20:23] standard?
[3:20:24] We do have single family units, we have boarding houses, we have multiplexes that are large
[3:20:31] single family homes designed to accommodate more people and we have multi-family and it
[3:20:39] does get hard to distinguish between those.
[3:20:42] So that could be something that we would just really need to take a look and make sure
[3:20:47] that all of the other categories that we have are very clear and either redefined to make
[3:20:53] sure that we understand what is what in the code.
[3:20:59] So another option, this is option number two, would be to retain and just redefine the boarding
[3:21:06] house classification.
[3:21:08] So the city could create some kind of a threshold.
[3:21:11] We could raise the bar pretty high and say that there is a certain line which, you know,
[3:21:19] base upon not occupancy, but maybe base upon the number of rooms you're renting out,
[3:21:25] or the number of leases that you have that would all of a sudden kind of trigger you into
[3:21:31] that boarding house category where you would need to add more parking and go through this
[3:21:36] neighborhood process. So advantages of keeping that category do kind of help try to balance
[3:21:45] the character of a neighborhood with kind of allowing some of these homes to transition,
[3:21:52] but it would kind of prevent somebody from purchasing a single family and then just putting
[3:21:58] you know, bedrooms in the basement, bedrooms all over and could create a neighborhood concern
[3:22:04] with that. The other thing would be that it would allow public participation in the process,
[3:22:11] so these do require planning commission hearings, but the disadvantages of this option are also
[3:22:17] pretty strong, and that it does, it would be very difficult, I think, to differentiate a boarding
[3:22:25] house category from a single family. We do not have a rental program where we could check leases,
[3:22:32] and understanding how many bedrooms are in there,
[3:22:36] it really could be arbitrary, you know,
[3:22:38] and there would be an equity concern with that.
[3:22:40] You know, whatever we kind of the direction
[3:22:42] that we go with,
[3:22:43] we do not want to create any kind of consequences
[3:22:47] that would result from large families
[3:22:49] or multi-generational families in a house.
[3:22:53] So there would be some kind of difficulties with that.
[3:22:56] I think that it would be really tricky
[3:22:59] to enforce an administer without having an occupancy standard and differentiating because
[3:23:06] you lease your bedrooms, that's different than leasing the whole house.
[3:23:11] And then that approval process with the public hearing, a disadvantage of keeping that
[3:23:15] could be that it does create a lengthy process for somebody to go through.
[3:23:20] There is uncertainty, and it is a public involved kind of findings of compatibility with the
[3:23:27] neighborhood that would discourage somebody from that, from coming in with that use.
[3:23:32] And really kind of stepping back from, I know I'm kind of in the weeds with all these
[3:23:37] little things, but the intent of this legislation and removing occupancy is to open the door to
[3:23:44] allow more people to congregate in these homes, build equity by, you know, and build credit
[3:23:51] rating by being included on leases.
[3:23:55] So that is item number one went through it really fast that I'll be asking for some policy feedback
[3:24:02] for that to either remove or to redefine the boarding house category in the UDC.
[3:24:11] So we're going to completely switch gears to the next house bill and that is focused on accessory dwelling units.
[3:24:19] So this is a house bill that we have until the end of June to align the UDC with, but
[3:24:27] this is a house bill that really looked to try to remove zoning barriers that really
[3:24:33] prevented the construction of accessory dwelling units, you know, as this alternative housing
[3:24:40] opportunity with single family homes.
[3:24:43] Good news about that is many of the barriers that the House Bill sought to remove are barriers
[3:24:49] we've already removed.
[3:24:51] You know, owner, occupancy, lot sizes, we've removed a lot of those, and even further
[3:24:59] incentivize accessory dwelling units without the capital expansion fees.
[3:25:05] So the House Bill does go further in doing a little bit more items that does have impact
[3:25:12] on our code that we would need to adjust, those include architectural standards.
[3:25:17] So the UDC does have a standard that looks to kind of make the accessory dwelling unit
[3:25:23] compatible with what that house is.
[3:25:26] You know, it didn't have to match, but it needed to be similar in terms of, you know, you're using maybe
[3:25:31] the same colors or the same materials, but there was some relation between that accessory dwelling
[3:25:37] you the appearance of it and what that principal house was.
[3:25:42] So that is one thing that we are no longer allowed to do under this house bill.
[3:25:46] We will need to remove our architectural standards.
[3:25:50] That also includes the height of an ADU, which we kind of connected with a past amendment,
[3:25:58] connected the height to not exceed the height of the principal house without going through
[3:26:05] a neighborhood meeting process.
[3:26:06] the height of an accessory dwelling unit where that came from is we have received
[3:26:10] complaints from neighbors, you have a ranch house, and then you do a two-story ADU,
[3:26:15] and neighbors didn't like that.
[3:26:17] So we had embedded a process in where you could ask to go higher, but it involved
[3:26:22] in neighborhood meeting no more.
[3:26:25] The height and all of the architectural standards for an ADU has to be the same as what
[3:26:32] that we would require in a principal dwelling, which means that if that house could be 28 feet, even if they didn't build it at 28 feet,
[3:26:42] then the accessory dwelling unit can be 28 feet.
[3:26:45] So it's moving a lot of these obstacles in the zoning code that kind of had some restrictions on the appearance and the height of the accessory dwelling units.
[3:26:57] All accessory dwelling units would need to be approved in an administrative level.
[3:27:03] No hearing process is no neighborhood meetings.
[3:27:07] So anywhere where we had options to say, or you could go bigger, or you could go with more square footage,
[3:27:14] that actually is going to be removed.
[3:27:17] In Loveland, the maximum square feet foot of a accessory dwelling unit is 900 square feet.
[3:27:24] everyone would be allowed that 900 square feet you would just need to meet your
[3:27:29] setbacks which are 5 feet from the side in rear. Okay. I think one of the most
[3:27:37] significant parts of this bill is not so much what it does to our UDC but really
[3:27:45] what it does to HOAs and the Covenants, the Bilal, the declarations.
[3:27:52] Lovelin is a community that has a lot of Flanuna development.
[3:27:57] 72, we have 72 residential PUDs that allowed low-density residential.
[3:28:03] Each PUD is incredibly unique, none are the same, and most of them were basically approved in the 1990s,
[3:28:15] the early 2000s when ADUs weren't even a thought at that point.
[3:28:22] So a lot of them are very silent on ADUs.
[3:28:26] Some of them have restrictions that say you can't do any detached structures.
[3:28:31] Sheds, you know, accessory and anything that's detached.
[3:28:35] And some have standards that are like housing standards for the principal house, but they
[3:28:42] They call them housing standards, which would apply to ADU because ADU is a housing too.
[3:28:47] But they have pretty strict standards about how much masonry you need to use your roof
[3:28:52] pitch, all of those things.
[3:28:54] So what this house bill does is it supersedes any of the bylaws and declarations in a HOA
[3:29:05] or in a planned unit development.
[3:29:07] It opens the door to say in any community, in every community, in the City of Colorado,
[3:29:14] if you have a single family house, you have the right to develop and construct an accessory dwelling unit.
[3:29:22] And the cities, the counties, and the HOAs cannot preclude that.
[3:29:29] Any new PUD that comes before the city cannot have any design standard stricter than what
[3:29:39] the design standards are in the UDC, which are also basically the design standards for
[3:29:45] any single family house that we have.
[3:29:48] So the new PUDs are covered, but what this house bill does is it gives the city these
[3:29:55] options of how to tackle those old plan unit,
[3:30:02] So it essentially says, city, you have two options. One, you can supersede all of the standards in these PUDs, and only apply your code to any accessory dwelling unit, or you could implement the design standards in the existing PUDs that you have. So it's giving us the choice.
[3:30:30] a community of what to do. Here lies the options.
[3:30:40] Here lies the options. Here we go.
[3:30:45] The first option is the option that staff is recommending and that is that we would supersede
[3:30:51] the standards in these old planned unit developments. The advantages to that are very clear, equitable
[3:31:00] standard citywide. It wouldn't matter which subdivision you're in, it wouldn't matter which
[3:31:08] PUD that your ADU was in. You would all have the exact same standards that are set forth
[3:31:15] in the UDC.
[3:31:18] I think another advantage of superseding that is as I mentioned before is that each
[3:31:24] PUD is extremely unique with design standards that weren't necessarily tailored for ADUs,
[3:31:30] but it would get us into the position as staff of trying to determine which standards
[3:31:35] apply to the ADU and really interpret those, which is really difficult with 72 planned
[3:31:44] unit developments in the city.
[3:31:46] There are some disadvantages that we want to talk through too as well.
[3:31:51] Along with these unique PUDs, they do have some have, you know, very thematic architecture.
[3:31:59] You know, they have designed standards and expectations that are set forth in that subdivision.
[3:32:06] Now with the state opening the door to allowing everybody an accessory dwelling unit
[3:32:12] where you once thought that there's no way your neighbor was able to put an accessory dwelling unit
[3:32:17] And maybe some expectations that it does look closely like the house that could be developed.
[3:32:25] If Masonry was required on the house, for example, Masonry would be required on the accessory
[3:32:31] dwelling unit.
[3:32:33] So it would match potentially match expectations in some of these existing developments a little
[3:32:41] bit greater than not having those design standards.
[3:32:45] Now, I think one of the other kind of big ticket items in removing the architectural standards
[3:32:53] with that state bill is that it does open the door for some more modular type structures
[3:33:00] in people's backyards.
[3:33:03] And, quite honestly, with the standards that we have in the UDC,
[3:33:07] that talks about matching that house, it really precluded a lot of these manufactured products
[3:33:14] because the manufactured products are not going to match the house.
[3:33:20] So by removing these, it is going to open the door.
[3:33:24] We hope that it encourages more accessory dwelling units to be built.
[3:33:29] But that may be different than the expectations in one of these existing plan unit developments.
[3:33:36] So those are the disadvantages option two.
[3:33:39] It's almost like the flipped is saying, we will enforce those ADU standards in PUDs,
[3:33:48] promote consistency in the homes within the neighborhood, and then the disadvantages
[3:33:54] are really good.
[3:33:55] And the advantages that I had said before, does create some barriers.
[3:33:59] It could create extra costs, to put in materials that really we're designed for a primary
[3:34:10] And once again, when you step back from kind of getting in the weeds in the very detailed,
[3:34:16] what was the intent of the house bill?
[3:34:18] It's really to open the door to allow the construction of these.
[3:34:23] We have opened the door quite a bit in love and compared to any of our neighbors along the front range.
[3:34:29] And we're still not getting many accessory dwelling units.
[3:34:32] I said in the last presentation, 38 since 2019, to this year, and I think that they were
[3:34:39] Jamie's.
[3:34:41] So they're still expensive.
[3:34:44] They are still expensive, possibly, with allowing more of these manufactured products
[3:34:51] in these backyards.
[3:34:53] We may get more.
[3:34:55] We're hopeful of that.
[3:34:56] But that is like question number two for the Council getting any policy feedback for
[3:35:04] that would support either implementing the design standards and these existing
[3:35:09] PUDs or superseding that and doing just the standards in the code.
[3:35:15] The last item that I have for you tonight is to talk a little bit about some terminology.
[3:35:21] Well, we've been noticing in these house bills is they have been redefining items.
[3:35:27] They have a new definition for an example of an accessory dwelling unit.
[3:35:32] The code amendment, we are just going to replace it.
[3:35:35] We're going to try to be as consistent with the state as possible.
[3:35:38] The other terminology that the state is using in these house bills, they have removed the word like family from kind of the traditional term single family, multi family.
[3:35:50] They've gone with really the terminology of unit, so it's a single unit, it's a multi-unit.
[3:35:58] And I do think that we talked a little bit about this two years ago when we were going
[3:36:02] through some of these occupancy standards, you know, should we, you know, just go and remove
[3:36:09] that term, kind of update the code, go with single-unit, multi-unit.
[3:36:15] I did a quick word search.
[3:36:16] I think we view single-family 82 times in the code, but it's all relevant to, you know, single-family, which would be easy to replace, but we want to, before we go to any lengths of doing that, we would want to make sure that we had some guidance from the City Council and some feedback on if that's something that you'd like to do with our UDC.
[3:36:40] So
[3:36:43] I am done actually speaking, whatever guidance that we get, whatever feedback would be
[3:36:51] incorporated into a UDC amendment package, we would then begin the outreach process
[3:36:57] with our commissions planning commission, affordable housing commission, construction advisory
[3:37:03] commission.
[3:37:04] I will never forget that one and then bring that forward to City Council.
[3:37:10] All right.
[3:37:11] Ready for us?
[3:37:12] Yes.
[3:37:12] All right.
[3:37:13] Councillor Olson.
[3:37:14] Thank you.
[3:37:16] Let's talk about the occupancy requirements first.
[3:37:22] As I look at the House Bill, it doesn't address parking.
[3:37:28] In your description, it leads me to believe that you promote that we can't place a restriction
[3:37:37] on parking or require parking.
[3:37:39] so but to me the law doesn't say that so I guess where I'm going is would it not be
[3:37:46] advantageous to us to have still some control over the parking and I don't know
[3:37:53] Vince if that's a legal question or you want to give a planning answer first and
[3:37:58] then Vince can answer if he wants I'm gonna go planning first okay so we have
[3:38:04] parking requirements for our single-family detached homes to parking spaces are required
[3:38:10] per unit. So, if we were to remove the boarding house category, the zoning category for that,
[3:38:18] we would be considering any one of those kind of uses, whether you rent it out individually,
[3:38:24] the bedrooms are not, as a single-family use, they would be required to off-street parking
[3:38:30] parking spaces. Traditionally, we have the garage spaces are counted and the driveways are
[3:38:37] counted. Usually we have more than two parking spaces, but that would be all that we would
[3:38:42] be able to require unless we altered how many parking spaces a standard single family
[3:38:50] home would need. Okay. Then the last item you have the terminology. To me,
[3:38:57] a single family, it's a description, and a multi-family, single unit, multi-unit, doesn't
[3:39:06] convey to me much of a description. I mean, for me, leaving it in there as a descriptive,
[3:39:18] I think, is just fine. We don't have to reword everything. And then on the ADUs, the ADUs,
[3:39:25] The legislation is pretty extensive, and you're recommending the first option, which is to kind
[3:39:38] of eliminate, let me make sure I get it right, if I can get my thing to move.
[3:39:47] So you want to supersede PUD design standards, and in here you say that it would make equitable standards citywide.
[3:39:56] But if you remove it, there is no standard.
[3:40:00] So what's equitable?
[3:40:04] So all accessory dwelling units would
[3:40:08] be subject to those provisions in the UDC.
[3:40:11] It does not contain architectural,
[3:40:13] because we can't apply architectural standards to this.
[3:40:17] But it would be setbacks.
[3:40:19] It would be standards about we've got utility standards.
[3:40:24] We've got, you know, building code standards, they would be all treated the same, which is how all new
[3:40:33] PUDs and any development that's not in an existing planning development would be subject to.
[3:40:41] So what this would say is that whether you're in a new PUD, you're not in a PUD, or you're an existing PUD,
[3:40:49] We're all going to do the standards and the UDC minus any architectural standards because those would have to be removed.
[3:40:57] Okay, thank you.
[3:40:58] We move on, Councillor Foley.
[3:41:05] Thank you.
[3:41:07] You know, when I sit and I look at, on the boarding house issue, at the end of the day I like it to what I've seen a lot in Boulder and
[3:41:19] a lot and for Collins and a lot and Greeley and in the form of student housing.
[3:41:27] At the end of the day, I think you have to have parking or maybe as we look at this,
[3:41:35] maybe we can,
[3:41:38] I don't know if we can restrict it to a specific lot but cornered lots are
[3:41:43] better than mid block lots in terms of allowing for off-street parking to be considered, and
[3:41:51] a corner lot is going to give you a little bit more on-street parking than say a mid
[3:41:59] lot down the street.
[3:42:04] I think it's important to still keep that just from the standpoint
[3:42:09] point that it's ran more like a commercial business and it's not necessarily
[3:42:16] residential. It's habitational in nature. And so I think there needs to be a there
[3:42:23] needs to be that distinction because when you do while you may not be able to
[3:42:29] limit the number of people you do start to get into life safety code issues that
[3:42:34] need to be addressed and we can do that in a specific design with it being a boarding
[3:42:41] house versus eliminating it and just saying it's a single family.
[3:42:47] If you're operating a business and you're renting out units, that then takes that unit
[3:42:55] out of the residential, private owned and puts it into a commercial side of things, at least
[3:43:03] from the insurance standpoint. So I think you need to keep it, I think we need to retool
[3:43:07] it so that it fits. But again, I see Boulder, Fort Collins is really, they have to deal
[3:43:15] with this all the time with all their student housing, but you could call it student housing,
[3:43:19] you could call it workforce housing, you could, you know, instead of it being a boarding
[3:43:24] house necessarily. But I do think we need to also look at the parking. If you're going to
[3:43:32] going to rent it out, those people are going to have vehicles and whether you say, you don't
[3:43:41] need to plan for it, the neighborhood is going to end up having to plan for it and deal
[3:43:45] with it because we don't have a standard. So I think we need to have a standard moving
[3:43:51] forward.
[3:43:52] In terms of the ADUs, I kind of like to stay with what the PUD originally had. That's about
[3:44:02] property rights, people bought into that, and that needs to be preserved as best as possible.
[3:44:08] All right. Thank you, Councillor Light-Covach. Thank you. Thank you so much, Kerry, for your
[3:44:14] presentation and for bringing us these options. I am in favor of eliminating boarding houses
[3:44:20] as a separate use as per the staff recommendation. I do understand that it could lead to a parking
[3:44:26] issue, but it sounds like we only have one boarding house right now, and so I'm not sure
[3:44:31] or just how big of an issue we're actually going to have with that.
[3:44:35] As far as the accessory dwelling units, I am also in agreement with what the staff recommended
[3:44:41] to supersede the PUD design standards, make them clear and equitable citywide.
[3:44:46] I feel like if we go with the other option, it's just going to be a resource intensive nightmare
[3:44:51] trying to manage all of that and enforce all of that.
[3:44:55] So that's going to be a code enforcement issue, I think.
[3:44:57] and then as far as terminology.
[3:45:00] I think we need to be in alignment with the state as much as possible to avoid having to make changes downstream, so I'm in favor of replacing the family with single unit, multi-family unit, although I don't feel strongly about that. So if the rest of council wants to keep family, I'm fine with that too. Thank you. Thank you, council member fall. Yeah, I'll make it easy on you carry it. We're at a boarding house. We sat through hours of talking about that planning commission to begin with. For me, it doesn't matter.
[3:45:28] or you know, here's the thing, and this is something we talked about at Planet Commission.
[3:45:33] We don't have anybody out there that's going to be the truth copper, the birth copper,
[3:45:37] anything else like that.
[3:45:38] So if somebody coming in and saying these people are my relatives, whether they're second cousins
[3:45:43] or whatever, if they want to run a room out, they're going to run it, stay, go that way.
[3:45:48] I would say go with option one the other way around with the ADUs and I say super seed,
[3:45:54] and just make it a lot, and I get what Councillor Foley is saying about property rights, but we're not eliminating property rights.
[3:46:05] Basically, the state has come back and said, look, we're going to supersede this, just the way it is.
[3:46:11] And I say we go with it. I'm for the single-family, multi-family itself.
[3:46:18] Thank you, Councillor Crenning.
[3:46:24] Kerry, I would support removing boarding house, eliminating it.
[3:46:29] On the ADUs, I would support the staff's recommendation, although I certainly understand
[3:46:35] the position of Councillor Foley that we might be impeding on property rights, but we aren't.
[3:46:42] The state has, and that sounds like a good fight for an HOA lawyer to take up on a taking
[3:46:46] problem but that's not our fight and then with regard to the terminology to be
[3:46:52] consistent single unit multi unit I would support that. Thank you Councillor
[3:46:59] Black. Thank you Madam Mayor. Thank you Carrie for the presentation and these
[3:47:06] options. I'm in favor of eliminating the boarding house zoning in the UDC and as far as
[3:47:16] parking goes I will tell you the blue collar workers tend to have trailers and
[3:47:21] they're already up against having a hard time with parking and so our
[3:47:27] worker men have a lot of equipment and so we need to always keep that in mind
[3:47:32] when we're talking about parking standards. We do need to have a place for work
[3:47:38] and class folks with their equipment and trailers to be able to park on the
[3:47:42] street. So that's just food for thought. As far as the ADUs go, I'm in favor of supporting
[3:47:50] the recommendation of staff, option one, supersede the PUDU standards. We're in a different time
[3:47:56] and we need housing and I think it's going to be a sacrifice for some folks more than others.
[3:48:05] But that's what we do as a community. We try to take care of each other.
[3:48:11] terminology. I'm in favor of single unit and multi unit. Thanks so much.
[3:48:18] All right, thank you. To me, in regards to the boarding house, I go with option one,
[3:48:25] remove the category of boarding house with ADUs in regards to PUDs. I go with option one,
[3:48:34] Superseed and in regards to how to describe, I go with single unit and
[3:48:40] family or single unit and multi unit versus family.
[3:48:45] Simple, okay, Councillor Foley.
[3:48:47] I did not weigh in on the family versus unit.
[3:48:53] My preference is to keep the word family.
[3:48:57] I think we're constantly trying to take that out as a nucleus of our society.
[3:49:03] And I think we need to keep it in there as a point.
[3:49:07] We want people to raise their families here.
[3:49:10] We want people to bring their families in,
[3:49:14] and especially when you start talking about ADUs
[3:49:17] and bringing in your relatives,
[3:49:19] you're bringing in your families to come in
[3:49:22] and take care of them as people age out
[3:49:27] or as people fall on hard times.
[3:49:29] They have a place to go.
[3:49:30] So you take care of family first.
[3:49:33] All right, Councillor Samson.
[3:49:37] Thank you, Madam Chair.
[3:49:39] Okay.
[3:49:40] So I will do your recommendation, Terry.
[3:49:43] And then I have a question again.
[3:49:46] So first, I'm sorry, women being boring, separate, lonely.
[3:49:51] I'm fine with that, too.
[3:49:52] I do have concerns about art, but also not.
[3:49:56] There's big families, but at one point all of my siblings
[3:50:00] And I, and a couple of us, I was in the United States, I was like,
[3:50:04] hearing in a single family home and kind of broke and I would find parking on the street
[3:50:09] in my case, but they had a park there.
[3:50:12] So, I don't know how, we didn't expect that, but if it was possible,
[3:50:18] so I wouldn't want it to get any news right now.
[3:50:21] I definitely think this is one of the main things I want to do.
[3:50:23] No, it's selfish.
[3:50:24] There are comments around that.
[3:50:26] I also support the communication staff that they use and I'll show it up on the connection.
[3:50:32] So far, I do know our family.
[3:50:34] I think I appreciated your shout out, so when we were back on board about this, all of this in 2021, it was endless.
[3:50:43] I never had the word, using the word family, but it comes housing.
[3:50:48] But I also don't really love units, I feel like if you have a boarding house, they have multiple units, so they maybe have a whole family, actually a house is one of the many units.
[3:51:00] So I don't, that to me might have noticed it well, so I have to say it's more important if we roll the unit or video, but I would have to say, you know,
[3:51:12] I just agree that we need some sort of family in order for people living here to know that family is going to be the house.
[3:51:20] Without our family center city, I think we don't need the work family.
[3:51:25] There's a lot of learning families, there's a lot of friends, there's a lot of family friends.
[3:51:29] And you're right, there are a lot of social and racial families in houses as well.
[3:51:32] But I think the family isn't necessarily just the people that share the same place.
[3:51:39] That being said, I do have a question for you, Perry.
[3:51:43] When it comes to any news.
[3:51:45] If there are requirements for fire access to any news,
[3:51:52] what is that looking for the fire access?
[3:52:01] That is a great question.
[3:52:03] The fire department reviews all of our accessory dwelling units
[3:52:07] through the building permit process.
[3:52:09] and what they require, they require it to be addressed and I do believe that they have
[3:52:18] to put an address kind of by the fence so that they know to go back to it.
[3:52:24] It does have a separate address than the house structure does and then just really fire
[3:52:32] code provisions.
[3:52:41] No, so they just have to have a clear access to get there, like with the hose.
[3:52:49] So it can have a fence, they just need to have a gate so they can kind of walk through
[3:52:54] and get to the back, but they would serve it just like a single family house from the
[3:52:59] street.
[3:53:00] All right. All right.
[3:53:04] Councillor Crunnan, your light is on. Did you have another comment?
[3:53:08] Okay. Councillor Foley.
[3:53:10] I do. Just to add on to the single family, multi-family, etc. Every single code out there,
[3:53:20] your building codes, your fire codes, they all have the word family in there. Your insurance
[3:53:27] language. All of that has the word family in there. It doesn't matter what the word police
[3:53:32] at the state said. Let's keep it consistent so it's like and kind in when people are
[3:53:39] dealing with stuff. They know what codes they're not. Oh, it's a unit versus this because
[3:53:46] there are different areas in various codes and various standards that do distinguish between
[3:53:52] a unit and a unit within a multi-family structure type of thing. So let's not confuse and
[3:54:02] immense what it is by throwing the word unit in there just to get the word family out.
[3:54:08] All right, so I'll open up public comment. Is there anyone in chambers that wishes to give public
[3:54:13] comment on this item?
[3:54:17] Sterling, do we have any phone and public comment on this item?
[3:54:21] Thank you Madam Mayor, if you would like to speak to this item, please use the raise-your-hand
[3:54:26] feature or press star 9 if joining my phone and
[3:54:33] I do not have any user's raised hands.
[3:54:35] Thank you Sterling, Councillor Limburg-Faul, did you have a comment?
[3:54:38] No ma'am.
[3:54:39] I'm ready to vote.
[3:54:41] You are not voting.
[3:54:42] It's a study.
[3:54:43] That's what we're saying.
[3:54:44] Okay.
[3:54:45] I'm going to use a smile more.
[3:54:46] What happened?
[3:54:47] Yeah.
[3:54:47] So we want to thank you.
[3:54:55] So, I think you probably, I saw you taking notes so you have feedback from Councilor
[3:55:02] each Councillor, is that City Attorney? Did you have something to add?
[3:55:05] I did. I just wanted to add one quick note. I didn't come up, so I don't want to create more
[3:55:13] of an issue, but the general assembly through both these pieces of legislation identify
[3:55:18] that these are matters of mixed and local concern, and if you've heard me talk about previously the sort of buckets when you do the home rule analysis, you've got matters of statewide concern, matters of mixed concern where the rules can't conflict as long as they don't conflict they can exist in harmony and matters of local concern.
[3:55:36] I just wanted to highlight for the council that there are a few municipalities out there, there's not very many, at least on these issues, because I think there's a shared interest with the state.
[3:55:46] But there are a few municipalities that are taking the view that some of these issues,
[3:55:52] not these particular two pieces of legislation, but that anything having to do with land use,
[3:55:57] more or less, is a matter of local concern under Article 20 Section 6 of the Carl Constitution.
[3:56:04] That certainly has not been our position.
[3:56:07] These options here give lots of flexibility to the council, ultimately.
[3:56:12] But I thought I'd just mention that, that there's still this sort of tension between,
[3:56:16] you know, the locality being able to do what it wants to do, and the state having
[3:56:21] its reasonable objectives related to affordable housing.
[3:56:24] So I'll even at that, I probably should have said anything, but I wanted to make sure
[3:56:28] that that's kind of going on in the background.
[3:56:30] Well, this will be coming back before I assume.
[3:56:33] So appreciate that perspective.
[3:56:36] You are not voting.
[3:56:37] We don't vote in study sessions.
[3:56:40] So again, thank you for the presentation, thank you for being here, everyone, we are adjourned.