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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.apz.20180515 Aspen Planning and Zoning Commission Regular Meeting May 15, 2018 Vice Chairperson Spencer McKnight called the meeting to order at 4:30 Commissioners in attendance: Kelly McNicholas Kury, Spencer McKnight, Rally Dups, Jimmy Marcus, Teraissa McGovern, Ruth Carver Absent: Skippy Mesirow, Ryan Walterscheid, Scott Marcoux Staff present: Jeannine Stickle, Records Manager Andrea Bryan, Assistant City Attorney Phillip Supino, Principal Long Range Planner COMMISSIONER COMMENTS Ms. McNicholas Kury had some concerns that she emailed to Jennifer Phelan regarding ADA access on some newer buildings. She asked how the Art Museum and the Jewish Center get away with not having electronic door entry. Ms. Phelan’s response was that it does comply with international building code as long as the handles on the door comply, but that they are considering reviewing that. Ms. McGovern explained that the accessibility code trumps the international building code. The doors don’t have to be automatic. Mr. Supino commented that staff’s position is in line with what Ms. McGovern said. He noted that Building Department staff are very aware of and focused on ADA compliance. To the extent that there are buildings that don’t have the amenities that people expect, they do meet the code. STAFF COMMENTS None PUBLIC COMMENTS None APPROVAL OF MINUTES Mr. Dupps moved to approve the minutes from April 3rd, 2018. Ms. McGovern seconded. All approved. Motion carried. DECLARATION OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST Ms. Bryan commented that she does have a conflict of interest regarding 465/557 N. Mill Street, however, since that hearing will be continued, there is no need for her to step out at this meeting. PUBLIC HEARINGS 465/557 Mill Street Rezoning. Mr. Dupps motions to continue the Mill Street rezoning hearing to July 17th, 2018. Ms. McGovern seconds. All approved. Motion carried. OTHER BUSINESS 2018-2019 Planning Work Program Update Phillip Supino, Principal Long Range Planner, introduced himself and his presentation. What we’re doing here this evening is a brief check-in with my job, which is to work with P&Z, HPC, and Council to identify priority work program items coming out of Community Development. The work program for building, planning, and zoning. That work program, both the current activities as well as recommended future activities, were outlined your memo. Rather than going through memo line by line, I will just introduce some general concepts as well as a little bit about where the department is now. Then I’m open to discussing any of the items listed in the memo. In summary, we identified some statistics about our workflow. There are 150 permits in the review queue presently. 25 active Land Use cases and 20 major policy and code amendment processes in some stage of the process. That workload is significant were we to be full staffed, but we’re currently down a planner and June 1st, we’re going to be down a second planner. There’s also been some significant turnover on the admin side in the Building Department. The cumulative effect of that over the course of three or four months has been a lot of staff time getting sucked into hiring processes as opposed to us actually doing our core functions. And also decreased ability to process our permit queue. And so, what we have suggested in the work program memo and in our discussion with Council last month was: we’re not in a position to add many new items to our work program for the second half of 2018 and 2019. Council was supportive of Community Development’s position. The items that were added to the 2018 program are: an update to our development fees, updating affordable housing fee and lieu rate. Finally, the creation of an affordable housing zone district. Just a brief description of that, conceptually. We have an affordable housing multi family district as well as the development option. But the affordable housing multi family zone district might not be appropriate in every neighborhood because of the densities and building heights it allows. The affordable housing zone district allows for housing to be redeveloped as affordable housing. None of the details have been hashed out yet. We just got conceptual approval from council to pursue that. Those are the items that we’re going to be pursuing in 2018 in addition to normal core functions and workflow and in addition to trying to fill the holes in the planning staff. Those are the items that I have in terms of the presentation. Let me know if you have any questions. Ms. McNicholas Kury commented that she noticed that Mr. Supino’s memo states that staff suggested that items one through four were added and there are only three items. I am wondering if there’s something missing that’s supposed to be there. Mr. Supino stated that it’s just a type-o. Mr. McKnight asked if there are any other questions from commissioners. Ms. McNicholas Kury asked if staff track how long the process is taking? Mr. Supino stated that he doesn’t know the numbers off the top of his head since he’s not really in the current planning side. I would expect that our zoning officers could give a number off the top of their head, but it’s certainly measured in months and that’s sub-optimal. We hired another zone officer about six months ago to add capacity to the zoning review side. There’s been some discussion about how to staff in the future based on that size of permit queue. Ms. Carver asked if they would assign someone to the shorter term, easier permits, and someone else to the longer term ones. Mr. Supino replied that they have a process to triage the permits coming in. They try to identify those that are the priority and we try to pull those out and give them expedited review. Because I’m not working with that on a day to day basis, I can’t tell you exactly what the standards are. Ms. Carver asked how long Mr. Supino has been in the department. Mr. Supino responded that he has been here for two years. Mr. McKnight asked how the hiring process is going. Mr. Supino responded that it’s going. It’s challenging because of the low unemployment rate in the state of Colorado. The result of this is a lack of compelling candidates in some cases, particularly for more skilled positions. Also because of our unique approach to planning here, we’re looking for pretty robust skillsets that can be pretty tough to find. For a previous position that we filled in the Spring, we had it open for four weeks, maybe six weeks, and didn’t get a sufficient number of compelling candidates. We re-opened the job position and then finally got there. The round that we’re doing now, we did some in-person interviews last week and I think we’ll make a decision this week. But, it’s tough. Mr. Dupps asked if there is the opportunity to promote from within. Mr. Supino responded that there is the opportunity to do that, at least on the Planning staff side, I can’t speak to the Building staff side. We actually did that to fill a position a few months ago with Garett, who’s been great. But at a certain point, you’re sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul. If people inside don’t have the skillset to justify being in the position, you really need to bring somebody in to fill that more senior role. We love promoting from within and it’s certainly something we try to do. Mr. Dupps commented that the sophistication required to fill a planning job is high. I can’t imagine somebody from another jurisdiction coming here and then getting up to speed within half a year. Mr. Supino responded that six months is usually the steepest part of the learning curve. You’re just not going to find people who have that level of sophistication already. It’s a question of their skillset and how many years of experience they have. Ms. McNicolas Kury asked for a quick rundown of the requirements and if there is a relocation budget. Mr. Supino stated that the relocation budget is generally not available, except for higher up positions. I would be happy to email you the job description. Ms. Carver commented that housing has to be a huge problem. Mr. Supino replied that it is. It is not uncommon for successful candidates tp turn down job offers after they have looked at the housing market. That’s the first question we ask in an interview is: have you looked at cost of housing? Ms. McNicolas Kury asked about an arts council and how that would integrate with these priorities. I would assume there would be some code requirements associated with that. Mr. Supino responded that his understanding is that, to the extent that there’s an art council, their overlap with land use regulations and permitting may be about the standards that we have for murals downtown, public art in rights of way, or the distinction between public art versus private art, things like that. It’s not my expectation or my boss’s expectation that the creation of an arts council would have a significant impact on our workload. Mr. Dupps asked if there is any discussion of a moratorium on new permits. Mr. Supino stated that the moratorium thing is a political conversation. What I can say is that our department is going to continue to respond as effectively as we can to our current workload at our current staffing. The discussions that we’ve had, both with the elected officials about these issues as well as upper management in the city. The response we get is understanding that the most important thing for us is the core functions of processing permits. Secondarily, we need to work on policy things, which is the majority of what’s in this memo, because that’s what I do. As far as taking drastic action to try to slow things down, I think the approach in the short term would probably be hiring third party assistants for permit reviews, for example, rather than trying to slow the rate of permits coming into the queue. But, again, I’m not really empowered to make that decision. Ms. Carver asked if we recently had a moratorium for a year. And look what’s going on now, there are so many that are permitted, ready to go. It’s amazing. Mr. Supino stated that Ms. Carver is right. And the moratorium that wrapped up a while back was focused on the commercial zone district. Since that moratorium was completed, the number of permits we’re seen for land use approvals and construction permits in those zone districts has nose-dived. Most of the impacts that you’re seeing in terms of the construction activity that you’re seeing presently are residential single-family construction and right of way permits. So people doing work on utilities and sidewalks and things like that. Mr. McKnight asked if the commissioners had any other questions. Ms. McNicholas Kury commented that, should the arts council come together, it would be awesome if they could work on way-finding. Mr. Supino stated that he believes that there will be opportunities for public comment regarding the wayfinding. It’s been another staff person from our department who’s been staffing those meetings, which also involve engineering and parks. I believe there will be opportunity for public comment before anything’s finalized or implemented. I think that’s a really good suggestion to say there’s a nexus here. It sounds like you’re suggesting that the wayfinding should be more robust than just “river trail this way, Gondola Plaza this way.” To sort of add more and different types of amenities to the wayfinding. Ms. McNicolas Kury commented that under the commercial vitality, it’s mentioned that there’s work on AACP Coordination and asked for clarification on that. Mr. Supino explained that the way the memo is structured harkens back to a year ago when they were just coming out of the moratorium. The purpose of the moratorium was to coordinate the land use code with the Aspen Area Community Plan. That was the term we were using for that process. Throughout this, there are references to the AACP and a number of the work program items that staff didn’t suggest pursuing in the next year, but were included as items in the menu were products of discussions with Council during that coordination process. Ms. Carver asked Ms. McNicholas Kury if she is proposing a government arts council. Ms. McNicholas Kury stated that it’s been discussed that there be something similar to a public board or commission that would serve as a public arts. Mr. Supino stated that he believes some Council members floated the idea. Ms. McGovern stated that it was discussed at a City Council Work Session not that long ago. Ms. McNicolas Kury state that she would be supportive of it. Mr. McKnight asked if there was anything else from anyone. There was no reponse. He thanked Mr. Supino for the information and answering the Commissioners’ questions. He wished him luck on finding sophisticated candidates to fill the open positions. Mr. Supino thanked spencer and the Commissioners. He stated that he was not sure when they are scheduled to return, but stated his hope that they will be returning with new, capable staff. Mr. McKnight stated that that’s all that is on schedule for the meeting. He asked if there was a motion to adjourn. Ms. Carver motions to adjourn the meeting. Mr. Dupps seconds. All approved. Motion carried. Meeting adjourned at 4:53 PM. Jeannine Stickle, Records Manager