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AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance amending the Denver Zoning Code to revise parking exemptions for pre-existing small zone lots. Approves a text amendment to the Denver Zoning Code to revise the Pre-Existing Small Zone Lot parking exemption. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 2-14-17. On 2-27-17, Council held this item in Committee to 3-20-17. Amended 3-20-17 to ensure that the parking exemption is applied for all uses. Some parking requirements are calculated based on gross floor area while others are on number of units and not explicitly for gross floor area, to further clarify the legislative intent of the proposed bill to emphasize the city’s commitment to more comprehensively address transportation demand management strategies in the short term, and to require a Zoning Permit with Informational Notice for all new buildings on Pre-Existing Small Zone Lots that request to use the small lot parking exemption; Enables all expansions to existing buildings to receive the full parking exemption; and clarifies at what point an “existing building” is considered	DenverCityCouncil_05012017_17-0161	0	Please refrain from profane or obscene speech. Direct your comments to council as a whole and refrain from individual or personal attacks. Councilwoman Gilmore, will you please put Council Bill 161 on the floor? Yes, President Brooks, I move that council bill 161 as amended, be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. Councilman. Clerk, go ahead and offer your motion to further amend. Thank you, Mr. President. I move that council bill 161 as amended be further amended in the following particulars on page five, line one, strike 13 .1.9 and replace with 13 .1. ten on page five. Line three strike 13 1.9.3 and replace with 13 one dot and four. Add a new section to the bill which reads as follows Section six A except as otherwise provided in Section six B of this ordinance. With respect to certain site development plan applications, the amendments to the Denver Zoning Code adopted by this ordinance take effect on May five, 2017. B Notwithstanding Section six A of this ordinance, if requested by an applicant, a pending formal site development plan application may be processed under the provisions of the Denver Zoning Code concerning the small LA parking exemption prior to the adoption of this ordinance. The prior small loft parking exemption. If CPD receives a complete application for a mandatory concept review pursuant to section 12 .3.2.2 of the Denver Zoning Code, which was submitted in advance of a required site development plan per section 12 .4.3.3 on or before August 26, 2016, and such application sought to use the prior small loft parking exemption . Great. It has been moved only a second. Great. It's been moved. And second, it comes from members of council. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Mr. President. This amendment updates the zoning code reference that changed as a result to the passage of Council Bill 17 0311. Additionally, it establishes an effective date of May five to mirror the effective date of Council Bill 17.0311. Lastly, it provides clarity that certain applications were not subject to the moratorium on small light parking exemption enacted last August, and those applications may continue to use the small shop parking exemption as existed prior to this proposed text amendment. We had a number of projects that were in the pipeline and the moratorium clearly set forward that they could remain under the rules that under which they had applied. And we just missed that. I think in the bill, I believe the intent was always to allow those to continue progressing, not to progress, and then all of a sudden have the rules changed on them. And this fixes that for the projects that are in the pipeline. And I would ask that all my colleagues please vote to further amend this amended bill. Thank you, Mr. President. Great. And I'll further explain. And I'm looking at CPD. I believe there are 11 projects in the current pipeline that have been talked about and agreed with with the community even before we started this process. So. That's why we're doing that. Everybody in the public, we did not want to change the rules, whatever we did on people who had projects in the pipeline. So thank you, Councilman Clarke, for bringing this forward. Councilwoman Sussman woke up, she. I said, that sound like Councilwoman Sussman. And sure enough, it is. You look really good. Okay. All right. Madam Secretary Rocha. Clark. Right. Espinosa. I. Flynn. I Gilmore. I Cashman. I Lopez. I knew. Ortega. I Sussman. Well, I better not vote because I'm not sure what we're voting on. You can abstain. Oh, they keep the pipeline. Okay. I just flew in from South Carolina. And, man, my arms are tired. Yes, I had studied this and know this, so I'm going to vote II black. All right. Mr. President. I police voting and as results. 11 eyes. 11 eyes. Clarks amendment to keep the folks who had prior projects out of the pipeline for these amendment changes passes. Okay, Madam Secretary, do we need to vote on 161 or do we want to wait till the public here? No. You want to open the public hearing? Great. All right. The public hearing for Council Bill 161, as amended, is open. May we have the staff report? Jeff Hart. Oh. Champagne. Good evening. My name is Karen Champagne. I'm the director of Planning Services and Community Planning and Development. I am sharing in this presentation this evening just to provide a broader context for the staff recommendation. So CPD recommends denial of this text amendment to the Denver zoning code. And in a few minutes, senior city planner Jeff Hertz and then zoning administrator Tina Axelrod will provide a lot more technical analysis and details to explain that position. However, just please understand that despite a recommendation of denial of this particular text amendment, no, that we are committed and we do share in the concerns about the issues of parking management in our neighborhoods. We want to make sure that that's important and underscored with this discussion tonight. That is why we are committed and want to state tonight that we're committed to working with our colleagues in public works in the mayor's office and of course, with the community to take a further take to do further analysis of the bigger picture issues in the bigger picture parking management challenges, and explore more holistic common sense solutions which are relevant to a variety of contexts and lot sizes throughout Denver. And to effectively explore the concerns raised during this process, we want to step outside the narrow scope of this particular text amendment, which only addresses lots that comprise 1% of our city. We are committed to near-term solutions and answering tough questions, and that includes how can we promote and expand transportation demand management and integrate TDM programs into private development and strengthen partnerships with existing transportation management associations that are already in place? They're great resources for us. We also want to help answer the questions of how do we better implement Denver's strategic parking plan throughout it, through innovations in pricing and regulations to better balance parking supply and demand. And another hard question that we want to tackle is how do we pay for major improvements to our multimodal network? So fewer people, people are taking trips by car and households can choose to own fewer cars. So in addition to a lot of these really important short term strategies that we're committed to solving, we also have Denver rights, our community driven process that will take a longer a longer term look at advancing these policies. And we are and we, of course, encourage engagement in that process. So we just want to give a little bit of that context. And I'd like to introduce Jeff Hertz, senior city planner for a staff report. Thank you. So Jeff Hurt with CPD. So why are you skipping ahead here? So the scope of this tax amendment before you tonight relates to the section of code on the screen, which is a fairly short, discrete section of the Denver zoning code that essentially says that all preexisting zone lots that are less than or equal to 6250 square feet and zoned mixed use commercial do not have to provide any parking. So this is the baseline we're working with today is a full exemption on these lots. This exemption has been in place since 2006 and it originally applied to the Main Street Zone districts, with four primarily concentrated on Colfax. And the primary purpose of that of that bill, among other purposes, was to encourage redevelopment of these small lots without assembly into larger lots. So in this image up here kind of highlights what we're talking about, this smaller pattern of development, typically 50 foot wide by 125 foot deep. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. And then in 2010, the exemption was expanded citywide to all mixed use commercial districts. I think with the recognition that these small lots of the same challenges, regardless if they're in a, you know, on Colfax or anywhere else in the city in these mixed use commercial areas. And then, of course, last year, last August, Council approved a seven month moratorium to study the issue further. And during that time, Councilman Brooks convened a steering committee of about 13 people across different disciplines affordable housing, historic preservation, community activist developers, others. And during that time, I believe they met five times over the course of late 2016, they developed a series of recommendations and input that informed Councilman Brooks's proposal that he brought to the Planning Board in February of this year. And so that proposal was for all of these preexisting small, zoned lots for the first three stories of any new buildings on these lots to be fully exempt from parking, provided that they're in what we're calling transit shared or transit rich areas. And I'll talk a little bit more about what that means here in a minute. And then all other preexisting zoned lots outside of these transit areas, the first two stories are exempt and then further existing buildings would be fully exempt. So this is the prior proposal. Planning Board voted on that proposal on February 1st of this year, 8 to 1 to approve it with the condition that city council not require any additional mandatory parking as the tax amendment advanced. And so following planning board, the Liberty Committee met three times on this issue. And then you all know the moratorium was extended by 60 days. During that time, several amendments were proposed by Councilman Clark. And that gets us to where we are today. So the current proposal that's on the books or in front of you tonight is for, again, preexisting small zoned lots, zoned, mixed use commercial, all new buildings for all new buildings. The first two stories would be exempt in these transit rich areas and for all other new buildings on other preexisting small zoned lots. The first one story is exempted. So it's a reduction in the number of stories by one under these amendments. And then additionally, for all new buildings wishing to use the exemption, they would be required to go through what's called a zoning permit with informational notice. And we'll talk a little bit more about that here in a minute. And under this amended bill, all existing buildings are also fully exempt, but further are allowed to expand up to kind of what the zoning allows a number of stories and get a full exemption. So that's the components of the bill that is before you tonight. And just a real quick overview. I know some of you have seen this before in terms of the scope of where these lots are in the city. They are less than 1% of the city's land area. There's about 3400 parcels that meet this criteria. We unfortunately don't map zone lots, so it's a big approximation, but about 3400 parcels may be eligible for this exemption, and it's actually a fair amount lower than that. When you look at the individual developer ability of these lots and whether or not they could actually use the exemption. 64% of this universe of small lots are in these newly fine transit rich areas that are in the text amendment, and about 90% of them have maximum height entitlements per their underlying zoning of greater than or equal to three stories. And they are concentrated. And we'll look at a map here in a second. They are concentrated along the city's commercial corridors all over the city, really, Colfax, Broadway, South Pearl Morrison, Road and Tennyson, others all around the city. And here's I don't want to belabor this, but if we want to come back to it, this shows the transit rich areas or transit shared areas that are defined by the text amendment before you tonight, which essentially says that if you're in these areas, you get a greater exemption. And that would be if you are within a half a mile of a rail transit station and a quarter mile of a high frequency transit corridor with with, you know, the best bus service in the city. Essentially, the public input we've received on the bill has mostly been on Councilman Brooks's bill, the prior bill that had an increase in the number of stories and different components to it. So we haven't gotten a lot of public comment at least through CPD on the current amended bill, although I know some comments came in over the weekend on this. So staff's analysis focuses on the three criteria, and the Denver zoning code were tasked to look at and reevaluate text amendments. And I'll go through each one of these briefly. Note that the the evaluation and the recommendations were based on the amendments because the staff did do an analysis and make a recommendation on the prior bill, Councilman Brooks's bill. So we're focusing the analysis on the amendments themselves. There's more detail in your staff report, certainly, but these are the three criteria we look at in terms of consistency with adopted plans. So looking at the First Amendment that's on the table, which is the reduction in the number of stories eligible for the exemption. City staff finds it's inconsistent with citywide plan policies to reduce parking requirements near transit because it would result or is resulting in an increase in mandatory parking on these lots, which staff finds is inconsistent with these policies here and others in the staff report and blueprint differ in the plan. Further on this amendment regarding the number of stories staff finds, it's inconsistent with citywide plan policies to maintain value development patterns. And I'll talk a little bit more about what that means. But we're essentially referring to the smaller development pattern and that kind of increment of development, that rhythm of development that's common on a lot of the city's commercial corridors. And the concern about sort of a threshold or a tipping point where once you start requiring mandatory parking above a certain amount, it may encourage developers to start to look at loft assembly into larger developments that perhaps break that pattern. So this is just a few slides that we have to illustrate the issue. And I don't think these are new slides for everyone that has looked at this. But essentially what we're talking about when we talk about a, you know, the space constraints that these lots have and that tipping point, what we're looking at here, I want to pull up my little laser pointer. So what we're looking at here is a is an illustration of a common small pattern. You see in Denver, I'm looking at three preexisting small zone lots, 50 foot wide by 125 foot deep. And the the image on the top or on the right shows that for most of these lots, which are primarily alley access, you could only physically fit five parking spaces. Once you get above that five parking space threshold, then you start to get into the space constraints where you're essentially mandating unless there's some other really creative way that no one has been able to figure out that we haven't seen yet. You're essentially mandating a different form of parking with tuck under parking or structured parking, because now you have to accommodate the space of the additional parking spaces and the adjacent drive aisles going into them. So there's a number of issues with that. One is that, you know, you're obviously eating into the buildable square footage of these on these lots on the first floor significantly. And then to just looking at the cost per space, that's typical of a parking space. Surface parking, like the ones in the example to the right are going to be far less expensive than structured parking that you would see at the tuck under parking scenario. So just to highlight the scenario and how it plays out with the different sort of components of the bill and the amendments to the bill and that related to the number of stories. So looking at the the prior bill, which had an exemption for the first three stories for any new building, and these are assuming that this scenario would be in that transit shed. And looking at the C.M. Zone District in this scenario, which is a very common, I believe, the most common zoning that these this universe of parcels has the prior proposal would have would have allowed zero parking would have gotten full exemption because it was three stories in the transit shed. And when you look at the the amended bill, it goes up to eight spaces. In this scenario, there's a number of scenarios of different development types. This scenario has a three story mixed use building where you have ground floor, commercial and upper floor residential. And so there's all kinds of ways to slice and dice the course. But looking at a common scenario, this is sort of what the the change in the number of stories might do to a project and kind of kick it into that that threshold of requiring more parking and creating challenges. So for the for the Second Amendment regarding the zoo, Panama, I'll let Tina Axelrod, our zoning administrator, speak to that briefly. Thanks, Jeff. Tina Axelrod with KPD Development Services and the zoning administrator for the city of Denver. So I have overview of all of our permitting staff who would have to implement this tax amendment. And we appreciate the opportunity to talk about this one particular element of the bill that will affect the everyday life of the permitting staff , and that is the introduction of a zoning permit with informational notice process attached to a determination of whether new buildings on existing small lots will get the exemption or not. Generally, staff has looked at this quite deeply and seriously, and we find that it's inconsistent with a couple of key citywide goals. One is creating a predictable zoning process, and the other is where a process is put in place with public participation that that parties and participation be meaningful. And we're finding that in this case, we can't find that that exist. We believe that the Zipkin process, the way it's structured and the amendment does not give any guidance or criteria to staff to use during the process, as the plan involves a staff review after several steps of notification to the public and an invitation for public comment to take all that information and decide whether one the request is meeting the requirements of the code. So in this case, is it a new building and is it on a small lot that should be easy enough? And then the additional criteria of whether the proposal will have adverse impacts on surrounding properties that cannot be mitigated. And it's that part that's going to be unpredictable for applicants. There's no guidance for staff as to what those impacts are that we should be looking for. Generally, the types of impacts we hear about is on the public right of way and the impact of on street parking, which zoning does not have jurisdiction over. So we couldn't condition an approval to provide more on Trey Parker or to mitigate that impact. Similarly, on the public engagement, the invitation of public comment, what we've seen mostly again address a lot of issues that zoning doesn't have jurisdiction over. If there's an impact. On the demand for on street parking, we can't really address that. That's kind of embedded in the amendment itself that there probably will be some impact if you don't provide it on site, maybe people will need it off our site. And that creates perhaps a false expectation to the public that their comments and complaints will affect an outcome that might already be pretty straightforward otherwise. So together with that, I'll turn it back to Jeff, and I'm happy to answer any questions about that. So here's just a couple of the the citywide planning policies pointing to the discipline issue as well. So the second criteria, so there's first the consistency with adopted plans. The second is regarding public health, safety and welfare. On this criteria, State finds the proposed amendment does not further the public welfare. On balance, with looking at all these issues, because, one, it increases the challenges to redevelop small zone lots, especially those in transit rich areas. Two, that the small pattern is a valued community attribute and the proposal may lead to increased assembly of small lots. And third, by making the redevelopment more challenging on these lots, it will likely detract from the city's goals to build more affordable housing. And the last criteria uniformity of district regulations and restrictions, fines. This is consistent because it will result in new regulations applied consistently across preexisting small zone lots zone mixed use commercial. So CPD does recommend denial of the bill, finding that two of the three text amendment criteria are not met. In addition to the inconsistency with the with the Planning Board's recommendation and the steering committee process as well, but mainly the text amendment criteria. I'm glad to answer any questions. All right. Thank you. We have 22 speakers this evening and I'm going to ask that we reserve this front bench. Even staff of the staff can sit right over there and we can get all the folks on this firm. But first five to call you up right now. Margie Valdez, John. Ricky George, male. And Joe Berrios. Let's see. One, two, three, four. And Sharon Nunnally. Five. First up is going to be Margie Valdez. You have 3 minutes. Thank you. Good evening, Council. I am pleased to speak before you tonight in support of the adoption of Bill 17 161. I speak on behalf of Inter Neighborhood Cooperation and the Zoning and Planning Committee, which I am the Chair of December 3rd, 2016 32 to 0 at the zoning and planning meeting. Proposed language for small parking exemption. Language presented by CPG was confusing and members could not approve the proposed zoning amendment. That vote was 32 to nothing. On January 14th, 2017, the vote at the delegate meeting, the delegates voted 42 nine to extend the moratorium. March 2nd, 2017. Zoning and Planning Committee Members voted to support. Councilman Clark's amendment. The vote was 27 nine. April 3rd, 2017. Delegates were advised to that I would be sending thank you letters to both President Brooks and Councilman Clark for their leadership with regard to the small to the small lot exemption and appreciate all the effort that they have put into this. I and C is most appreciative of the Zoning Zep pen process. We understand we don't. Neighborhoods are not going to be able to have a veto process, but it gives us an opportunity to engage in conversation with the developers and to hopefully mitigate some of the impact to the neighborhoods. But we do understand we do not have veto power in our opinion. The proposed ordinance balances the concerns of the neighborhood and the developers. It takes into consideration the impacts to the neighborhood, and it is a win win solution. It supports the ordinance adopted by this Council last week. Concerning environmental issues which impact this precious planning. We urge Council support for a bill 17 161 the the intent of i n c that has always been to support the proposed ordinance of Councilman Clark. And we have never wavered in our support of that proposed ordinance. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Valdez. John Rickey. Hello. My name is John Ricky. I live at 945 Washington Street in Mr. News District. I'll start by stating stating a simple fact. If council votes to increase parking minimums, it is voting to increase housing costs, whether affordable or market rate or luxury. There will be fewer new units on small lots and they will be more expensive. Every dollar spent housing cars is a dollar not spent on housing people. Every dollar spent on unneeded parking is a dollar not circulating among local business. Every dollar spent to store a car is a dollar not spent buying shoes or eating out or paying for medication or being saved for retirement. Adding parking requirements, by definition, adds to the cost of living in Denver and reduces our quality of life. Council has repeatedly stated its preference for less driving and more walkability in our neighborhoods. But here council is focusing solely on the desires of homeowners to protect their use of the commons for their car storage. All other citizens. Those too young to drive. Those too old. Even the working poor. All their needs for affordable housing, safe streets and walkable destinations within their neighborhoods are being put aside to protect the parking privileges of a few lucky property owners. Why is council considering a vote today to protect a preference for free street parking over the need for affordable housing? Why is space for parking cars more desirable than space for small neighborhood businesses? This isn't just unfair, it's bad economics. Even The Economist magazine, which is no bastion of lefty urban utopianism, recently ran an article decrying the damage done to cities by parking minimums, respected academics, authors and city planners from Donald Shoup to Jarrett Walker to Charles Miron have all pointed out the increased cost and decreased livability that comes with parking minimums. I call on you not to let the potential scarcity of parking determine Denver's future. We deserve better than that. I urge you to remember the pictures of downtown when parking was considered more important than people or places. Denver deserves better than that. If we prize parking above affordable housing, more than walkability, greater than the needs of small business, and consider it more important than the livability needs of our youngest, oldest and poorest citizens, then we are not looking to the future and we are not building an equitable or sustainable city. Don't vote for increased housing costs. Don't vote to subsidize car ownership. Don't vote to continue the failed transportation policies of your predecessors. Don't vote for this amendment. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ricky. George. Male. Good evening, city council members, and thank you for allowing us to have this opportunity to address this issue. My name is George Male. I reside at 1075 South Garfield Street in beautiful Corey Merrill, District six. I'm going to cut to the quick. All of you were apprized of the results of the i.n.s. citywide survey. Encompassing all the major concerns of your constituents. All of you were met privately on the results of that citywide survey. And if you'll recall in that survey, the number one issue was extreme, unbridled development. And if you recall, all of you solved this on your meeting with the ANC representatives on this survey, 70% of constituents noted unbridled. Concerns on that. Also the number four pick. Was parking. You all remember this, don't you? From. From the meeting we all had. So bear that in mind. What you decide here will have ramifications that will affect the city for generations. And all indications are that the automobile will still play a part in that. Unlike past city councils, we, the voting citizens of Denver, hold you responsible now for the protection of residential neighborhoods and smart development. You are accountable to us, not CBD, not excise and licensing. You're accountable to us. And we will remember every vote that is cast that does not take into consideration the protection of our neighborhoods. You. Your respective council districts have spoken in regards to their concerns. It is up to you to leave them of those concerns here today. Now, I have spoken to you before about perception of developers having sway in this city. But we have the votes and we will get the votes. It's time for you to tell your constituents, we hear you, we agree with you, and we are going to do what's right for you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Joe Berrios. Hi. Oh, good evening, City Council. So I was here seven months ago now, I guess when we introduced the moratorium and I talked about this various quantities. No, just. Just say your name. Oh, okay. Residents for. Joe. Berrios and I now live at 1131 28th Street. Okay. Do I get a restart now? All right. Okay. I'll give you a couple more. Seconds. There. So I was here a couple months ago and I talked about how important this decision was to my family. So I just want to catch you up. What's happened with my family since then? So we were living at 1950 Logan Street in a one bedroom apartment that cost us 1300 dollars we were renting. We needed a bigger place because we were having a baby. And so we started looking. We couldn't afford anything in that neighborhood. And so we moved to another neighborhood. And then that same apartment rented for 1700 dollars, and it went in one day. So it just. Just think about that. For one, it went up $400 and was gone in one day. And so when we talk about this parking exemption, there's no decision that you make that's in a vacuum. So if you think that this doesn't affect affordable housing, please think again. I received a response when I emailed a few of you that this is considered a false narrative because developers aren't required to provide affordable housing as related to these exemptions. But that negates a basic supply and demand principle, right? If they're required to provide parking, the cost of their projects goes up. They pass those costs along to the customer, which in this case is the renters, and then we end up paying for that cost. So our costs as families, as workers go up. Now, I've heard a lot of you talk about sustainability. And transit and pedestrians and. Workers and families. This is a decision that affects all of those. You cannot make this decision in a vacuum. So while some folks here are defending their right to park their car, I'm here defending my right for my family to be able to afford where we live. Those two shouldn't be the same. So I ask you to please consider what you're doing to the housing costs when you make this decision. Don't forget about us. We may not be as important as somebody's car. That. I hope that's not the case. Thank you. Thanks, Ms.. Barrios. Sharon Nunnally. Good evening, council members. My name is Sharon Nunnally. I live at 1643 North Humboldt Street. I have been involved with many boards and commissions in this city and I was on the planning board when the current code was adopted. The zoning code is a fluid document that sometimes requires. Adjustment for real issues in real time when the code was being rewritten. Throughout the process. The public and property owners were reassured that they would have an opportunity to address things that might become problems in the future. Things that were not working, things that might never work. So I think that that was a very particularly important process, part of the process, and it made people feel more comfortable about the code since it was really different from Chapter 59. One of the things, though, that I am really happy about is that the process of yes, we are going to look at things is indeed working. The planning staff has a very hard job. I understand it and I know that is hard to get to some form of compromise on complex issues like this one. This is not just about people wanting to quote unquote, keep parking. That is not the issue here. The issue here is how do we move forward in this city and bring good development? We can do it with limited parking, but we do still have some challenges. Our transit system is not there yet and we've got a long ways to go with that. And unfortunately, the city does not control our transit system as it exists right now. So we have come to you with an amendment that I think has been vetted with the appropriate agencies, with council. Is it perfect? Not by a long shot. However, we have to start somewhere and do something. The beauty is that if this doesn't work, we can still work on it. And that is critical. It will not cause developers to build more or less housing that's going to be affordable, but I certainly believe that it will cause them to be more creative in getting us to some more and better housing. I urge you to support Councilman Clarke's amendment. Thank you very much. Thank you, Miss Lenawee. All right, Ben Gerhart, I'm sorry. Going to call the next five up. Mr. Rickey, you can head back. Ben Gerhart, Craig Damon, Charlie Bosch, David Engel in two, three, four and Gertie Grant. Mr. Gerhart, you're up first. Good evening, Ben Gerhart. I live in District one at 3931 Julian Street. And just wanted to thank counsel, really. I'll be short and sweet for making that amendment on projects that were. Submitted prior to the moratorium. Appreciate it. We move forward with good faith and knowing that you guys supported that. So that's it. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Craig. Good evening. I'm Craig Deming and I reside 1744 Vine Street. I'm here to speak on behalf of the Uptown Urban Design Forum. As most of you know. The forum includes representatives from Kaiser Permanente, National Jewish and St Joe's Hospitals, Presbyterian Saints, Luke's Hospital, Children's Hospital in Denver, and various registered neighborhood associations adjoining them, including San Rafael and Whittier Neighborhood Association, at the forum meeting last week. The representatives present voted unanimously, unanimously to have me represent them at this public hearing and to request your vote in favor of the small text amendments you have before you. In doing that, we would like to express, on behalf of the Forum our gratitude for your long and careful deliberations and the shape you've given to this text amendment language. Excuse me. Over the past 12 months, the forum has several times voted and sent letters of support. First, for the small lot moratorium, which you passed unanimously in last August, and then for development in various committees and in council of the Text Amendment language you have before you. We feel it goes a long way in providing a fair balance between the hospital's own neighborhood and developer interests. When Reform first began consideration of its importance. One thing that stood out for our representatives of our medical care institution was the growing importance of the many new and diverse 17th Avenue restaurants and businesses which are at the point of an important amenity for our patients, family and staff. The residents, particularly on Humboldt, Franklin and Gilpin Streets, provide essential overflow parking support for those restaurants and businesses which do not have parking lots themselves. We welcome your votes in favor of this balanced language text amendment, which will help to maintain the success of that mutual support between our health institutions, with their patients families, the excellent diversity of our 17 avenue businesses and our neighborhood residents. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.. Charlie Bush. Hello. And thank you. My name is Charlie Bush. I live at 715 South Sherman Street, which is one quarter mile less than a quarter mile from the I-25 and Broadway station, about a half mile to the Alameda station and one block from the zero and zero L line. I live right smack in the middle of all these big transportation quarters you're talking about, with the exception of Paul Lopez. This is a pretty new council and I've been gone for a couple of years. So let me give you my credentials. I have been working on transit oriented development and parking and traffic issues since 2005. I have worked on the first three of four transit oriented developments in the state in in the city in county of denver. I know more about traffic and parking than any i.t. Geek ever really wanted to know. And i say this just because of that. You know, i'm not just somebody trying to protect the parking in front of my house. I mean, looking at this large the larger picture for a long time, i'm in support of this bill with its amendment, even though it will further crush my area of my neighborhood. I don't think this bill and the amendment go far enough. I see it as a first step. You know, I've been hearing the ongoing thinking push by developers that just if you just don't build parking, then people will get there and they won't use their cars. I keep hearing about the strategic parking plan and that millennials won't own cars because they're a different generation. Supposedly by now, we should have been all driving bicycles, scooters and skateboards. This makes me very weary. Let me tell you about my corner of near I-25 and Broadway. I live on one of those little blocks that has a bungalow every 3700 or. We only have 37 feet on the front. I have 18 different little townhomes along exposition between Lincoln and Logan. In addition, we back to Lincoln and there are a bunch of formerly illegal bungalows that were illegally put into smaller and smaller and smaller units. And guess what? They mirror exactly what you're talking about. Lots of little units with no parking. And you know what? They're all millennials and they all have cars and they all try to park on our street. We already have heavy parking issues with this. Then RTD took out the Alameda parking and said, Oh, don't build the parking. They'll find other ways to get there. Yeah, you know how they get there? They park on our streets and then they go to I-25 and Broadway. The last zoning code provided mixed use combined and consolidated parking, which was supposed to be up and down Broadway. It has never happened. Responding to the request, all of the neighborhoods. We did do a parking plan from Alameda North to try to alleviate some of the parking of all of those businesses into the neighborhoods. It has provided a little relief, but according to people there, not much. We haven't had anything from Alameda South. What we are experiencing is an increasing incidence of violence in the parking area. So far it has only been property damage. You might not hear about it because right now it's just taking the form of nails in tires and keys on cars. I've had both. Now, for me, it doesn't matter that much because my car has sat outside for 20 years and doesn't have a whole lot of paint on it. You know, so that big scratch that I now have down the side of my car. You know, they had to work pretty hard to put it there. The last time that I had to fix a tire because I had to park a street over and I had to leave it there for three days was just three weeks ago. And I'm hearing the same thing up and down. Sherman and Sherman and Grant all the way to Alameda, especially around Alameda. Don't swallow the pill that says if you don't build that, everybody will take transit. I'm not seeing it. And I've been doing this for 12 years. It's getting worse. It's getting vicious. And it's getting dangerous. Again. I do support this bill and the amendment, but please take it as a first step. Please do not swallow the pill. If you don't build it, everybody will take transit. It might happen 20 years in the future, but it's not happening soon. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mrs. Bush. Uh, David Engel can. All right. I'm sorry. Let me see here. Gurney Grant. Good evening, council members and thank you very much for the opportunity to address you tonight on this issue. My name is Gertrude O'Grady. Grant and I live at 242 South Lincoln Street in Denver. I've lived there since 1997. I'm on the board of the West Washington Park Neighborhood Association, the boundaries of which are I-25 to Speer and downing to Broadway. And I'm here tonight to tell you that by a vote of 12 to 0 two zero between Wednesday, April 26th and Saturday, April 29th, the board voted by email, pursuant to our bylaws, to approve a motion to support the compromise ordinance, amending the zoning code to provide. The off street parking. Exemptions for preexisting small lots. We've been discussing this for over a year and a half on our board and on our zoning committee. And we recognize that this is a compromise. It's not what everybody wants, but it's a whole heck of a lot better than it was before it before this amendment. Personally, while I completely support the admirable goal of reducing auto use and encouraging everybody to use alternative ways to get where they want to go, one major alternative for people in my age bracket is public transportation. And to call it enhanced transit doesn't make any sense to me when I'm standing there in July with ice. Cream dripping out of my bag waiting for the zero bus to go home from the supermarket. Denver doesn't have what I would call an enhanced transit zone. Secondly, many of my children's friends who have moved to Denver for job opportunities came not only for jobs, but because there's recreation in the mountains. And guess what? You can't get there on a bike, at least not. Within a day. And you can't. The only way you can get there is a car. So they save their money and they buy a car. They want cars to get to the mountains. We don't have a transit system. Not only within the city of Denver, but enough to get people up to one of the main reasons that people have moved here, which is recreation. So I urge you, please, to support the ordinance amending the Denver zoning code to revise the parking exemption for preexisting small lots. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms.. Grant McCall. The next five up. Bob Heckman. John. Joseph Nieman. Tricia. Hutch. Joseph. Chip. Capella and James Davis. Bob Hickman. You have 6 minutes. Good evening. Council President Bush, Brooks and council members. I'm Bob Hickman. I live at 291 South Kilbourne Street in Denver. Tonight you have before you a bill born of the moratorium molded by the small committee, chiseled by the original bill brought by Councilman Brooks. And polished by the subsequent amendments brought by Councilman Clerk. It seems to me there are two choices this evening pass this bill, or practically speaking, the moratorium will end and small lots are back to a full parking exemption. This bill is balanced. It most likely doesn't satisfy any interests entirely, but it does represent the best approach for an interim solution while a citywide transportation and parking management plan can be developed and implemented. This balanced bill weighs several major interests. It does require less parking than for small lots than would be required for a typical larger lot a step towards fewer cars and less car ownership. The bill provides significant developer relief from parking constraints inherent in small lots. It encourages a developer to actively engage in the parking solution for their project, such as providing minimal parking and taking advantage of existing reductions, like a 25% reduction for being in a transit area. 20% for building affordable housing, a five for one trade off for car share, five spaces, one car share. These are significant things that a developer can pursue to reduce his parking requirement and help that project get built. It provides neighborhood relief from parking being forced to the streets where they live. It also provides notice to potentially impacted neighborhoods for a given project. And very importantly, it sets up a scenario that will provide incentives for all interests to engage in finding a better transportation and parking management plan as we move forward. We will all have a stake in making sure this process is undertaken efficiently and expeditiously. On the other hand, if this bill does not pass, the moratorium will expire. And we are back to the language allowing a full parking exemption. All the issues from projects that spawned the moratorium are still in place and could be repeated hundreds of times throughout Denver, including those of, quote, unintended consequences, unquote. No neighborhood notice is required. No process is established to arrive at a solution with greater emphasis for all projects, not just those on small lots. There are exciting and far reaching mobility issues, solutions in our future, whatever they may turn out to be. It will be several years. Further effective implementation prototypes will be developed and tested. Refinements will be made with retesting. Impacts will be measured. But we will get there. Probably not in my lifetime. But we will get there. As I've stated to you before, I believe in balance. And even more firmly, I believe in evolution, not revolution. Let's prepare a thoughtful plan and move forward to its goal in a measured way, step by step. I urge you to pass this bill this evening, and thank you for allowing me to speak. Thank you, Mr. Hickman. John Joseph Neiman. Yeah. My name is John Joseph and I live at 2786 South Wolfe Street. Denver, Colorado is my home. I'm a native. I've seen the way our city is changed. And what I want to talk about today is a bit about the process that you guys have gone through in order to come to this bill and show some appreciation for the work that you've put into taking what was kind of came about suddenly and turned it into an opportunity to talk about one of these big issues in our city. As George May alluded to, parking and density are some of the major concerns of our neighborhoods, and those concerns have been talked about at length in the formation of this amended bill. And I think that process was worthwhile. And bringing this bill to city council tonight was worthwhile. So what I'm asking as a citizen and also as the president of the Denver Neighborhood Cooperation is that you guys respect the amount of time and effort that community has put in to discussing this and that you guys have put into discussing and coming up with a better solution short term and allowing for an opportunity for us to become better at managing parking long term. So I really commend us for taking this small exemption in a small way and turning it into a bigger discussion and one that I think has benefited the city and benefited neighborhoods as far as I can tell. So thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Newman. Tricia Hook. Sorry if I mispronounced that. Good evening, Councilman. President Brooks Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Tricia Huth. I live at. 1633 Humboldt Street. I would like to speak to the conversation that's been going on that was addressed in the Denver Street Blog's article, and it's it was entitled Simple Data Shatters. There Is No Parking Myth. The article says that there's an average of 187 spaces available in a three block radius of 16th and Humboldt. The numbers are from a parking inventory by public works and are a snapshot of three times of the day 5 a.m., noon and 7 p.m.. The respective totals of available parking are 256, 168 and 138. Really. I live right in the heart of this and I have never. Seen anything like that. A couple of problems with with this citation. First of all, there's no description. Of what the actual. Area was. Is the radius based on north south blocks, which are. Considerably longer. Or east west blocks which are. Shorter? There's no description of the actual total spaces. There's no way to calculate the percentage of spaces occupied. And is the three block radius a reasonable distance from a parked car to a residence? I can tell you from where I live, I'm locked in by a three lanes of one way traffic on 17th Avenue and four lanes of two way traffic on Colfax. So if I go three blocks in either direction, I would have to. Cross one of those main, main areas. And we did our own survey over the course of dates from from April 9th to April 29th. And we sampled for four blocks, a stretch of two blocks each, making a total. Of ten blocks. There were 11. Samples taken in the early morning, late morning, early afternoon and evening and 10 p.m.. And the average availability in those eight square blocks was nine spaces. How much time do I have left? I raised my children in this neighborhood. It's always been an issue. When I would pull. Up with groceries and children in car seats, it was it was always this weighing, do I take the children in first? Do I take the groceries in first? It's only going to get worse. It's going to be very. Very difficult for. Families to live in these conditions with this parking deprivation. So I am asking you to vote in favor of this bill. Thank you. Thank you. Most of all right. Joseph Coppola. Coppola. Thank you. My name is Chip Coppola. I live at 1410 South Pennsylvania Street. I was on the steering committee, as you know. Councilman Brooks and Councilman Cashman for the old South Pearl Street area of Platt Park. I'm here to support the bill as amended. If the bill hadn't been amended, I would not have been able to stand up here and say I support it because the changes in particular the Z pin and lowering the height were so critical to what we believe in. Our neighborhood is necessary. We have on the 14 and 1500 blocks, we have 11 restaurants. We have a 16 unit micro building going up. And I know that the merchants there are wondering, what are we going to do? Where are we going to go? We just went through with Cindy Patton and staff a two year process of trying to figure out the parking in our neighborhoods. And it's because of amendment that we can support this and would look forward to it. And we hope that you would adopt it. One thing I would just like to point out, having to do with Mr. Hurt's presentation about what you can do on this size lot here and there. We have one double lot that is under development right now on Pearl Street. That is 16 units and they're providing either seven or eight parking spaces. I'm a real estate attorney. I have a client that's going through the process and she's putting eight units with eight parking spaces on a double lot. Economically, it's still works. You just don't need to be greedy. So thank you very much for your support and all your hard work. Thank you. Thank you. Ms.. James Davis. Good evening. How you guys doing? It's good to see you. I want to thank you for your time. This has been a really engaging process. I've been watching at home. As I did it, I knew it. Thank you for stopping me. James Davis. 2380 Ivanhoe. Street. I told myself it wasn't. Going to do it either. I told myself and there I go. 2380 Ivanhoe Street. I'm a millennial. I sold my car when I moved here. Hey, Kendra, it's nice to see you. I sold my car when I moved here. So we're going to talk about actual experiences. You know, anyone cases? I am. I am that person that those developers point to who rides his bike every day and makes 60% of his trips via bicycle. So we do exist and we may seem like unicorns, but we are out here. We're right here. But on a more serious note, you know, as somebody who was raised by a single mother, somebody who was raised in a low income household, I always ask myself the question. How does this impact working people? How does this work impact people that are of the working poor who are trying to make it in Denver? You know, and identify one key area where this is important to them. And that's in the affordable housing domain. You know, we've talked a lot. We talked a lot. A lot of people have brought this up. But I really wanted to talk about that in the public record, because I think it's really important to note that when you require more parking, it does make developed more expensive. It makes it harder to develop affordable housing. The recent Obama administration report that I sent to all of you today via email, the housing development tool kit look in your emails, it's all in there. One of their key strategies is to reduce on excuse me, reduce off street parking requirements because it has the cost of that parking makes it very, very difficult. It just increases, you know, costs of housing in general. You know, it's a it's a simple thing. The even the Urban Land Institute also chimed in on this. That's another report I sent along to you all. They also said that one of the key strategies to increasing the affordable housing supply is reducing off street parking requirements to reputable organizations. Please peruse those reports at your leisure and feel free to contact me if you have any questions about them. The empirical evidence backs this point. It's a very simple point that when you reduce parking requirements, it makes things more affordable. They've done this in Seattle. There's great anecdotal discussion in that report. The White House Housing Development Toolkit that talks about Seattle's experience of this, they actually talk about Denver and point out Denver and their recent work to reduce parking requirements in their zoning code as a best case. I want to echo something that Councilman Brooks said in this process. He said no other city is doing this across the country. No other cities are adding parking requirements. Let's keep moving in that direction. Let's keep moving in a direction where everybody can live in Denver and people aren't priced out and forced to drive 45 minutes to an hour just to get in because they don't make enough money. Let's live in a Denver where everybody can get around and has options to bike, use, bus or walk or use car. Okay, you got it. Just in time. Thank you, Mr. Davis. All right, I'm going to call up the next five. Paul Davison, Sue Glassmaker, Eileen Feldman, Barbara Stockland Staley and Doug Geddes. All up, all to the front, please. Paul Davidson. You are first. Thank you. My name is Paul Davidson. I live at 3230 Arapahoe Street. I am in Curtis Park. I serve on the Curtis Park Board, although I'm speaking as a citizen here. And I was a member of the steering committee with Councilman Brooks and Cashman, where I opposed the original decisions in the bill. But first. I just want to thank you for your deep consideration and openness. Emails are read and responded. To and it's a testament to. Your passion. I was stunned when I heard about this parking exemption. I thought because it was about 300 feet from my house, which was an 1891 rowhouse that. Did not have alley access where I lived for 15 years. And I thought, how is this possible and why would they have this exemption in the neighborhood? I wondered why Xp-Pen Xp-Pen would not be required or it would be required for greater than 50% reductions in parking requirements, but not required for a 100% parking exemption. Why wouldn't they tell. Us about this? I wondered why would the developer claim that the people that would stay there would be car free when that's demonstrably false? Even in Capitol Hill, where there's nearly one car per household, I wondered why would large developments be allowed to take this parking exemption when it was clearly intended for small developments and then side by side, 50 units, side by side? I wondered why was it implemented on East Colfax, but never used anywhere else or never used on East Colfax? And then in 2010 expanded to citywide. For these laws that are so varied and so abnormal that even in Curtis Park, the two that are right next to each other, a completely different types of lots. Where. One really requires this exemption and the other one can take a few parking spots so long as the developer did it. And they did it by working with the city, with the neighborhood. I wondered why make claims about affordability when they're actually being sold at market rates and when micro units actually. Go for more per square. Foot than typical units? That's not true. Affordable housing. I now understand the nuances and I believe that what we're looking at tonight is a good, balanced and interim solution. And I hope that the team process will will look closely at the issues that I feel don't totally get addressed, which are retaining the existing buildings and keeping our neighborhoods character on South Coast and South Pearl and Tennyson and encouraging commercial use on the first floor to ensure that our Cemex areas are truly Cemex areas. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Davidson. Sue Glassmaker. I'm Sue Glass Maker, and I also live in Curtis Park. I think this bill is mediocre at best. It's not. It's what we have to work with and what was given to us. And but it has something going for it. It does the job. It slows things down enough so that we don't. Create a problem and we can work on everything CPD talked about. I think there are a lot more things that we could do on this small lots and it's it just needs more study and you can change this bill. You can overwrite it just like you did with affordable the portable housing bill. We changed that drastically. So you can change this again when we have something better. But for now, it's a conservative approach in that. You're not letting you're not just saying. Go, go, go do it and do it all. And then saying, Oh, we created a problem. So let's take this a little bit slower. In times. Of this unprecedented. Development and growth that we have. Let's be a little thoughtful. Now, the other thing is it's only 1% of the lots. My councilman pointed that out to me. And if it's only 1% of the lot, how is how is 1% of the lots going to fix the affordable housing problem in Denver? I don't think it's going to be that 1% that really makes the difference. And I don't think it's going to hurt the development community that 1% of the lights cannot be maximized to the absolute highest level. So I don't think there is a problem passing this bill, and I would encourage us all to continue and do better . And I do think there is better out there. But I also don't think it's going to hurt us to pass this and it will help us. And I thank you very much. Thank you. Ms.. Glassmaker, Eileen Feldman. Yes. Hi, my name is Eileen Feltman. I also live in Curtis Park and I am up here to say support the zone lot parking exemption amendment as it was presented by Councilman Clark in Detroit. Quite truthfully, I don't think it I think it's a decent compromise. I don't think it addresses all the things that are important. But it's a great start. And I urge you all to do the same and support this. You know, I know we all want greater opportunities with with regard to affordable housing, attainable housing, neighborhoods, sensitive and responsible development, and of course, a significant reduction in the use of car ownership and usage. However, the elimination of parking requirements at this time will not do this. Not right now. Denver is not there yet. We have a lot of things to work on. With the exception of the East Colfax corridor, we do not have in Denver other high frequency transit opportunities for citizens. Even on Welton Street. It's a little short rail line that goes to nowhere, that runs infrequently for people to be able to get to work, to school, whatever. It's not there yet in Denver has the opportunity to let this be a place to start. Um, one of the things that I've noticed is in fact with each regional train addition, teams like local bus service is eliminated. That actually puts low income people at reduces opportunity for getting to work, getting to school, whatever the responsibility is, and actually makes people more car dependent. So I think what we need to do is pass this and as Sue and other people pointed out, this can continue to be a work in progress along the lines. I think that Denver really needs to take the opportunity now to really start looking at a really comprehensive city bus service as RTD continues to become more regional in less and less serves the inner city population and is where we really need to make some of these parking exemptions really contingent on true affordable housing opportunities. Quite frankly, developers are just using too many developers are using the opportunity to max out their build. When you have 350 square foot market micro units going for close to $1,000, that's not affordability. That's exploitation. So let's slow this all down. This would be a really good place to start. And we have opportunity to have more conversations and to refine this further. Thank you. Thank you. Ms.. FELBER. Barbara Stockman. Celia, I think I've seen you before. Hi, I'm Barbara Stockman. Celia, I live at 1003 Emmerson Street in Capitol Hill. Good evening. Members of the City Council. I am here representing Goddess. And he was when I left the city about a year ago. I was he was one of my first clients and I was hired to help him through the landmark and the neighborhood processes. He is the developer of D Line, which is 3148 Stout and 3021 Downing in the Curtis Park historic district that uses the smallest parking exemption. And just I just want to give you a brief snapshot of what this process is look like for for him. He purchased the property and fall of 2015. These were lots that were not being snapped up. They were they had a lot of issues. They had were in poor condition with semi abandoned buildings. He worked on them and filed for concept review in June of 2016. There were a lot of neighborhood and landmark commission issues because it is in the Curtis Park historic district. So he worked with the neighborhood, went many rounds with the neighborhood, and LPC resubmitted his concept on August 24th, 2016, got the landmark commission first round of approval in September of 2017. Continue to work through building fire code issues as well as additional landmark and neighborhood issues. Eventually got the landmark second approval on February 21st just this year, filed for site development plan in early March, got comments back in April and is slated to log in for permits this week, May 3rd. All of this. This has been nearly a year since the first concept review, but we greatly appreciate the public and design review process. I think it's made the project better and it's going to be compatible and a great addition to the Curtis Park neighbors. Having said all that, we greatly appreciate Councilmember Clarke's amendment added to the. Today to allow applicants such as the goddess who are midstream in the development process to operate under the existing zoning code. If this bill passes tonight, this amendment would allow developers who have been operating in good faith under the process to move for and not have to circle back and be subject to a new set of zoning rules and processes. Additional Process. While we have no comment or opinion on the bill, we greatly appreciate your support for the May 1st Amendment. If the bill is passed tonight, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Steel, and come visit us again. All right. Doug Harris is not here. The last two, Keith Pryor, John Hagan. Come on up to the front. Good evening. Keith Pryor, 2418 champion Curtis Park. One staff does not support this. That's a huge red flag to me. Huge red flag. You've done a lot of work. There's a lot more work that needs to be done. Most of the speakers said that this is a great first start, but it needs to be amended. There needs to be more things done to this to actually make it work for our city. People have talked about affordable housing. Well, it may not necessarily be related to the parking issue. You only have so many mixed use districts in this city currently, and as a result, everyone wants to live in them. Guess what? Your price goes up in those desirable, walkable, mixed use neighborhoods. We need to create a lot more of those, which by having this go and past today, you're denying those opportunities to create other desirable areas in the city to help combat our affordable housing crisis because only people want to live in mixed use areas that are walkable. It doesn't matter if you have a car or not. This is where we want to be. It's clear. And if you're telling me that Colfax Morrison are not appropriate places to have mixed use development, where is clearly a lot of residents are concerned. They're adjoined to mixed use districts and that putting a lot of parking pressure on them. Why are they living there? It's a mixed use district. There's going to be tradeoffs. And so really, we need to be focusing on this particular bill to address the issue. You're not requiring or incentivizing mixed use products. You're saying this can be a one use product. Sure. You're going to have a lot more parking if it's only micro units because you're not having this bill include or incentivize because the banks are only going to lend on basic, surefire things. And so unless the city is requiring the developer to do it, the bank is definitely going to go with the least risk and only lend on things that are a sure fire piece. So you need to be pushing the pressure on the developer to do what's right to help affordability, to create these mixed use districts throughout our entire communities. Let's see here. So that's one piece of it. Deal with the existing zoning in these neighborhoods. Clearly, we have a lot of neighborhood plans. We're working on new neighborhood plans. If this is an inappropriate zone, if the heights inappropriate, then let's let's work on that. Let's not sit here and talk about parking. Obviously, if the mixed use district is not appropriate and again, most of these lots fall within existing mixed use places. So they're clearly appropriate. So I don't think that this particular bill is addressing the issue and really needs to have a lot more sustained, sustainable piece on what's going on. So I oppose this. I think that staff red flag, we need a lot more work on this and I think it should be done. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Pryor. John Hagan. Hello, counsel. Thank you very much for your consideration tonight. My name is John Hayden. I am the president of Curtis Park. Neighbors, you've heard a lot from our residents tonight who have worked very hard on this because of the D line project that was proposed in our neighborhood. And I'm very proud of them for the work that they did. And actually over a year process, bringing us a development that that ultimately will get built, will be complementary to the neighborhood and will provide, I hope, affordable housing with fewer parking spaces. So that that actually ended up being a win. And I would like to say very clearly to those who are concerned about all these people coming to Denver and that that's going to make the city worse, I believe it's going to make our city better. The people coming here, the diversity of the people coming here is fantastic. And we need places for them to live and we need places for them to live where they don't need a car to access everything, which is the one thing Curtis Park Neighbors Board decided not to take a position on this amendment, on this amendment. And the reason was because it didn't it neither of the bills or the amendment fundamentally address what we believe is essential as you move forward to address, and that is that we need to have diverse, mixed use communities. In order for our city to be sustainable, people need to be able to access services by walking and biking and transit. That means that we need to have mixed use districts. What the amendment before you what that does not do is make any requirement that there be any kind of mixed use in our mixed use zones. So that's that's a big miss in our opinion. And so we did not decide to support or oppose it because we think it just missed the boat. So as you move forward, we hope that that will be something that city council can work on, that we make sure that we preserve our mixed use districts so that people can walk to services and that within those districts we have affordable housing. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hayden. All right. This concludes our speakers and our time for questions by members of council. Councilman Castro. Thank you, Mr. President. Anybody from CPD that would like to. To talk? I have a few questions. Let's see here. So the the project that brought this to everybody's attention up on Humboldt Street, that is going to be about 104 units on two lots. Correct. Something of that nature. It sounds sounds right. Don't have the exact unit count. Okay. So and they had zero parking requirements because they're under the old. Ordinance, correct? Yes. They've been approved. And is that affordable housing? I don't believe it's needed as affordable housing, but they are small units. They're all. But they're not. It's not an affordable housing project by any definition. The city has. There's no tax credits. It's not being sold at less than market value. Not that I'm aware. Of, no. Okay. So I'm wondering, do we have evidence that shows that if we don't build parking, that developers are going to become kind hearted and sell their units at less than market rate? Or is this a supposition? I think the supposition is that surface parking on us, you know, a 60 to 50 lot takes up a lot of space, one in costs, you know, as a significant cost. And so when you factor those things together, you know, it trickles down to the affordability issue. But I can't I can't say I have specific statistical evidence that. I agree with that. The. The original bill was written in 2006. There is no way that bill could have envisioned 54 units on a lot. Right. I mean, is there any part of you that thinks that they planners were thinking about that back then? I think it's evolved in the last ten years and there's a lot of unintended consequences. Right. So as that being a baseline wouldn't make a lot of sense for the reality that we exist in today. I don't think. So I hear a lot of concern from CPD about how this affects affordability. So when this council. Passed the zoning for I think it's about 100 acres of Arapahoe Square. Without any affordable component in downtown. As as fine a transit location as you could find with CPD concerned about affordable housing then. I can't speak to that. Sorry. And I also would like to stand up straight and. Um, I may have one more. So and this bill, as I understand it, makes no requirement on any developer to provide. Car share. Transit passes or anything of that nature. Correct. Those incentives are already built into the code for for parking reductions you can get. So so they're already there. But that's not a mandatory thing with this bill as it's not mandatory now. And my understanding is that Denver's single occupant. Vehicle ride share has gone up the past two years. Am I remembering that correctly? Not sure. I see. Harris nodding. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Those are my questions. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cashman. Councilman Cashman. And I just wanted to jump in on the wrap Hull Square piece. And, Sara, I'm a look at you, but we have no parking requirements in the proposed square, new zoning, because that issue came up. I was talking about parking requirements and housing. I just wanted to give further context. And in our zoning to date, we don't have a mechanism for affordable housing, but it's coming up at 30th and Blake. So stay tuned. I like your. Questioning. It's a large part of this discussion, so I wanted to do drive it. That's good. I see it. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Mr. President. Jeff, that can be. And sorry I can't find the presentation that you had in our system. I'm sorry if I. If I misspeak, you can bring up the slide. I don't know if it's still in there or not, but I just want to. So. So CPD supported Councilman Brooks Bill before my amendments were adopted, correct? Yes. But is now opposing it because of my amendments? Correct. Yeah. I mean, that's essentially it. Yeah. So on the slide and since it's up here, we can bring it up. The justification for opposing, at least on one of the conditions was that it was not consistent with adopted plans because it increased the level of parking. Correct. Now conveniently, the slides after that showed one example that would have still been zero with Brooks Bill and would have been eight with my amendments. But add another story to that building. Add two more stories to that building. And Brooks number is not zero anymore. So there are circumstances under Brooks Bill that would have added parking, correct? That's fair. Yeah. Yeah. So I that's it's it's the tipping point and sort of that threshold, which is not, you know, you can't get at a specific number. This isn't super scientific, but but it did reach a critical sort of tipping point from our perspective. Okay. So talk to me about that tipping point, because I don't see where you have outlined in a plan that it says adding parking is okay up to a tipping point. I see that it says adding parking is not consistent. They both added parking. That's a little bit more parking. But that seems to me to be a very subjective decision that staff has made on what that tipping point is. Yeah, I think it's the tipping point and part, which is a you know, it's based on there's any number of scenarios you could look at for how many parking spaces would be required depending on number of unit square footage. So it's that sort of threshold that we looked at one but then also the, you know, the planning board process and recommendation and the steering committee process and recommendation that represented a compromise which wasn't, you know, it was added parking to what we were sort of working with our baseline now. But, but at least from our perspective and others, feel free to jump up. It was all of those things combined in terms of the process leading to a compromise and our analysis of of, you know, how many additional parking spaces would be required if you take off a story. And we're not digging into all that right now. I just I took particular issue, I guess, with the slide that said that you were opposed because my amendments added parking and I just wanted to clarify that I hadn't missed something. Councilman Brooks proposal also added parking, but a subjective decision was made on staff's point that cannot be directly linked to any adopted plan that tells us what that tipping point is, or that even makes mention of a tipping point. Yeah, I don't think we have any plans that I would get into that level of detail at all. So no, we don't. So again, I guess on this not getting to planning, we're not getting anything else if there is no adopted plan. That says that or defines a tipping point. But South has made a decision. To oppose based on a tipping point. But then claiming that it is because of adopted plans seems to me like a little bit of a stretch. There's also the VPN component as well. Yeah, we'll get to that one. I'm just talking about opposing due to my amendments adding parking. When Councilman Brooksville also added parking and that was under the slide specifically saying that it is inconsistent with city wide plans, which means that somehow Councilman Brooks proposal was consistent with those same lines. Sure. So and I do think the zipline component is important that Jeff was going to talk about since you were talking about this particular topic. The only point I wanted to add, I think everything Jeff said was very on point. I guess two things. One is just to clarify, you know, is the the process to even look at amending this exemption to begin with was initiated by Council on the moratorium. And CPD has been trying to provide a technical lens throughout the process. And when it comes to and analyzing where the current amendment is, I think the tipping point that we're talking about is I think we'd agree with you. I wouldn't necessarily call it subjective. I think we're trying to make it as objective as we could based on actually looking at parcels and what you can build on them. But where the tipping point really comes in and the plan analysis is also about preserving the pattern of small lots. And our concern is that the tipping point that's being reached will encourage a lot assembly and go against our adopted planning policies of preserving that pattern and a kind of cherished attribute of the community. And I think we we definitely agree with you that there's not a bright line or a clear objective. If there was, we probably wouldn't have had to do this process because everybody would have been able to say, Oh, if we just apply this formula or follow the science, then we know the right balance. To make sure these lots can still be developed is x number of stories get exempted and you know, X number don't we don't have something that clear but our analysis was trying to get at when do you reach that tipping point where we're afraid that the lots will not be able to have enough flexibility to redevelop and therefore we lose the pattern of those small lots? I guess still confusing because that analysis never said once you reach this number, so it should be added parking. But at this number there are instances even under bricks proposal with the certain number of stories that would have exceeded that. But you guys weren't opposed to that. So anyway, I think we've hashed that one out. Getting to the zipline and maybe if Tina can come answer a few questions about that and then Jeff, if you want to jump in back to that. But so are there is there anywhere else in the code where your staff is required to review something that calls for less parking than would just be allowed? Yes. Yeah. So there are other places where staff is making a decision on how deep the discount or the reduction in parking should be beyond. City Council says yes to this and no to that, or our rules say yes to this notion there somewhere else where there someone is, there. Is an existing provision that's been in the code. Since before 2010, it came into play in the nineties. I think that requires essentially a Z pin process. If a combination of asked for reductions exceeds 50% of the required to carry over, if I had to redo it today, I'd. Say. For the state. On the books right now, somebody could walk in tomorrow with the proposal asking for a reduction in or below 50% per those rules. Nothing to do with my lights and your staff. We you know. It's not an all or nothing game. I mean, here you don't get anything until you go through the Z process. And then somehow we're supposed to come up with the number. It's it's if you all or nothing, you either get the exemption or you don't. But if you want less than 50%. But if I get less than 50%. Gotten 50%. Off, reduce through. The code, and it's a lot easier to understand the underlying intent that this had to be something pretty extraordinary to get more than 50%. We don't have that kind of direction here. It's do you get the exemption or do you not? And somehow this EPM process is going to tell us that we don't think so. We could make that decision upfront if you would just make them subject to the exemption or not. Okay. All right. Those are my questions for now. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Clark. Let's see. We had Councilman Lopez pop out. Councilman Flynn was first. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. President. And actually, I want to thank Councilman Clark, because he asked almost all of the questions that I had about the inconsistency of recommending one, but not recommending the other when they both were apparently inconsistent. But one other thing, maybe, Athena, to expand on the the rec the recommendation that we deny this also because it provides for zip in, because it creates a false expectation for public input or whatever it was, the slide said. Can you talk about that a little more about why letting the public know what's going on in their neighborhood is, well, something that's going to create a problem? Sure. There's no problem in letting people know. And we always encourage developers to do their their part to let the neighborhood know what's coming and be a good neighbor. Whether you do it or not, there's no code requirement for it. The zip bin. It's not just that. It's asking for public input. It's a lot of steps, a lot of processing, a lot of resources to put out there, an opportunity to make comments to the city. And we're supposed to take those comments and somehow use them together with the criteria in the code and come up with that decision. We don't use the zip pin process to let people know about a project that something else. So we're using a zip pin. From what I can tell, to give notice that this project is happening. But the zip code is supposed to be more than that. So it's a bit of a misuse, I think, of a process without a lot of value added back. Okay. And I had a question for Karen, but maybe Tina, you can answer it since Karen's all the way in the back. But if we vote no, if we follow your recommendation of vote no, then effectively we go back to total parking exemption. Correct? Okay. Thank you. All right, Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Yes, thank you, Mr. President. Cindy. I don't know if you can. Come to the front. I. I just. I have a question. This may be planning in public works, and I just wanted to ask the status. So we talk about mass transit, modern day transit system, moving people. I know that we had. Discussions. And there's just a lot of different ways and a lot of different plans that are out there that we're working on a new No. One intimately. There's just so much that goes by. I kind of. Forget where things are right now. And I was wondering if you can give us an update on the bus, rapid transit, the BRT plans today. Kind of an update on where that is on Colfax and if and if. And I don't want to just I'm not just trying to put you on the spot. I'm just trying to get a little bit more information about where we're at there. And I don't know if CPD has been working with you to. Yeah, I'm by no means the expert. Hi, everyone. Cindy, Pat. Just generally just generally. Speaking, manager parking and mobility services in public works. And that is it's not one of my projects, but in general, the conversation about. BRT Uncle VACS has been in progress for quite some. Time right now. The project is funded. For design, I believe, and is moving through that process, looking at environmental impacts and those types of things. Also looking at configurations and how the, the the transit service will most efficiently operate on Colfax. There's, as you. Know, a go bond process happening right now talking about funding of different transit opportunities. There's a number of different transit enhancement options on that list and that that list will continue to be reviewed as it moves. Through the go bond process all. The way until you all refer that list to the ballot in July, I believe so. Does that help? It does, aside from I know that we have, you know, some funding on Colfax on the bond. Should it, you know, move on to voters and be absorbed. So I definitely understand that piece in term and I really appreciate the update. But have we added any additional length because right now it goes from Yosemite? No or no? I'm sorry. It goes all the way from two to to 25 or something like that. And it stops at federal. The Denver portion. The Denver border. But it goes all the way to I mean it basically goes. To 20 to extend is certainly there but it's related to the the funding and our partnerships with other jurisdictions. Cindy, we haven't added any funding to go further west right to this date. I haven't that I don't. I don't believe so. Okay. I just want to know if we made any progress, because this is something I brought up a year ago, and I'm not trying to put you on the spot. You're just the messengers. I don't want anybody to think that I'm trying to give her hell. I just the idea. I just want to know if we made any progress since our last discussion. And I know that there's other folks that it's their baby that they're working on. So now I appreciate the the the answer that you have for me. Cindy Yeah, Mr. President, I just wanted to ask where we were, if there was any new plans or anything else because I. We can. Get you instantly been trying to ask for it to continue down to the other side of the city. We can we can have ask Gaby in the mayor's office to get you some information through public works and CPD on that, folks who are working on that. Okay. Thanks, counselor. Olympic Council Lopez and Cindy, who works in parking. Oh, let's get Councilman Espinosa. I actually didn't have any questions until all the questioning started. So question. For staff. Did staff steer the task force away from or diminish the request to add to add xp-pen did diminish a request by members of the task force to add zip in language because of policy. Yeah. You know, that was Councilman Brooks's committee. We weren't in a position to do anything steering. Were there more from technical. So. So I can I can answer that. I think the conversation did come up and in all honesty, I think staff did push back and said this would create some issues for A, B and C reason. But the committee did have that conversation. Okay. When engaging the public for input and having community input on zoning challenge changes, the CPD policy framed the discussion. If so, God help us on anything. On what makes the Blueprint Council recommendations or what gets me followed through on by the agency? Is this a question or is this a comment? Yeah, we have policy and I have seen this happen before, which is there might be a good suggestion, but it's not consistent with policy, not the law. The ordinance, my new policy. So our our staff is reviewing this task force recommendation and what gets printed and shared with the public. Same with the you know, larger issues is policy driving what is and isn't basically put out there for public consumption and consideration. Well, the only policy we have to stick to the Tex amendment criteria and in the code and and that does point to citywide policy. So that's the only policy we're really looking at. When we were making our recommendation. We're talking about change, changes to adopted ordinance. And when we when we open a task force out to to both developers and the community and we get this this thing, and we try to achieve consensus, the idea is, is that we open it up completely. And if that means depend, what, like it or not, we should be considering that, shouldn't we? I think that all options are on the table. Okay. So, you know, we're talking about 11 small parking exempt projects in eight months. The public expectation is that the zoning administrator is comfortable enough customer and competent enough to make a decision regarding the impact of development on existing context. Council Knowing the skills of our staff. Councilman the people up to the task and the 11 projects were prior to. This process even starting. So please keep it to two questions. You got plenty of time and comments. Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you, Mr. President. I'd like to ask Joel Noble to come up. I have some questions. But he should. You know. Thank you, John. As you as you know, I have a lot of concerns about this. These bills, not the least of which is concerns about developmental on Colfax and how much we're trying to support new neighborhoods serving development, but also in federal and other places are Main Street places. Can you address what you think this amendment might mean for the sort of the small lot, the concepts that we're trying to promote? Or I guess it was more that we heard it was that for small, smaller patterns. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me up. I wasn't planning to speak tonight. I'm happy to speak to you on my own behalf, my own opinions. I do serve on the Denver. Planning Board, but. Based on the Denver Planning Board bylaws, I can't speak on their behalf. So. Right. But I'd welcome your opinion. Okay. I try to listen pretty carefully to public sentiment. What are people interested in? What are they interested in preserving? What are they interested in defending against? And in the zoning code update process that I followed very closely with Councilwoman Madison. I heard a lot of people in the public concerned about preserving the pattern of small lots of small buildings, whether they're new buildings or old buildings. That character along the street and this parking exemption as a tool prototyped on Colfax to preserve that by not requiring more parking than can actually be fit on the sites was viewed as pretty successful just a few years in. And the zoning code the zoning code update process extended it. And when we look today about frustrations that we hear in the public, one of the frustrations we hear is we're losing the character. People say things are ugly and new development is too big. It's out of context. It's changing the character. So it's been of particular surprise to me throughout this process that there hasn't been more discussion either in the public or, frankly, at council about preserving that small character. Instead, we have a proposal here that while talking about parking and whether we believe people will have a car or not. And talking about supply and demand, fundamental supply and demand issues. If you produce more housing, then there's more supply and the price should come down for a given amount of demand. Nobody's really talking about the preserving the small lot character. I brought with me CPD produced an analysis on a sample project, the same sort of sample project they showed earlier of the amount of parking spaces that would be required for a sample project under various scenarios, how much is exempt, etc.. And in nearly all the cases in the scheme, zoning, which is the Emacs, is the most common of any of the zoning that any of the small lots have. Far more parking is required that can be fit on the site. 16 spaces, eight spaces, 2448 depending on the mix here. So it's obvious that if something can't fit, it won't be done. If if you can't fit 24 spaces on one of these very small lots, you're not going to you're going to do one of three other things. You're going to let it go. And we don't get revitalization. Things stay dormant. And that's a problem we have on Colfax quite a bit. And throughout the city, you're going to tear down every other building, right? So redevelop this building. Redevelop this site. Tear down the one next to it. To park it. Because I've met my parking requirements. And I got to tell you, when that happens, the public isn't happy because they're like, what happened to the character of the street? We have these parking lots, every other one, or you're going to assemble several lots together and do a much bigger building. That means you have enough space to provide all the parking. And then the public is going to say, what happened to the character of our small lot pattern. So I really regret the way this conversation is going because I was part of the conversation leading up to 2010, and I know that people who think about design and regret the changes they see happening in the city are going to regret the inevitable either lack of preserving the small lot character or stagnation or the missing teeth . The fact that we're going to get if this passes. Thank you. I was going to use that missing teeth analogy, too, because I hear it from developers. And when you have the missing teeth along a street, it discourages any new kinds of concepts going on. I appreciate and thank you very much, Joe. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. Councilman Espinosa. You have a question? Yes. Jones, come back up. Since. Since Mary Beth put you on the spot and might as well ask you the question related to what was already discussed. If the if the recommendation of the task force and I mean, are you from. Let me first ask are you familiar with were you here for the entire staff presentation today? Yes. And then are you comfortable and familiar with the proposed text amendment that's on the table today? I'm familiar with it. Are you asking if I'm comfortable with it? No, I'm familiar with the actual language. Yes, yes, yes. So if that language were the recommendation of the task force and presented to the planning board, given the criteria of planning board. Is there any reason why Planning Board would not have recommended approval? Again. I can't speak to Planning Board, but I'm happy to talk about the topic of the criteria because a couple of months ago, when the moratorium was going to be extended, a comment that you made about the criteria of who caught my attention, you said that the criteria that the staff report was reviewing and the planning board reviewed is different than the criteria the council reviews, which actually is not correct according to the zoning code, the criteria is exactly the same. It wouldn't make any sense for planning, board or staff to to weigh in on criteria different than the criteria that you're analyzing. So the key criteria in a lot of these things is consistency with adopted plans. And if you read the staff report and you read the the letters that were sent in from the people who did speak to that, including Ken Triple A, professor of Urban Planning. It goes point by point through all the things in Blueprint Denver that argue for the kinds of diversity you can have when you lower the parking requirements. And I couldn't find anything in my analysis for the planning board work that argued for increasing parking requirements. And so today, you've got staff saying to you that they don't find this proposal consistent with adopted plans. A planning board we had to look at, okay, how inconsistent is it versus other goals? And the recommendation of the task force for me and I can only speak for myself that very, very popular three storey zoning, very neighborhood compatible, keeping the small lot character at the three story zoning was the tipping point to Councilman Clark's comment. The fact that Councilman Brooks proposal, when it's near transit one, is that the places that can best support people's ability to live a car for your lifestyle if they choose to. And if a developer chooses to provide that product, that was a good tipping point to say we're providing a diversity of options, meeting all the goals and blueprint Denver well enough because you can still build that very popular three story product on the three story zoning, which I think is the most common zoning where these small lots are found. When you go beyond that and to your point, if if today's proposal had come to planning board, I can't speak for anybody else, but I would be very challenged to find it consistent with Blueprint. Denver That's interesting because most of my point when I spoke at the planning board were on the the argument about density and units per acre that are very much part of Blueprint Denver But nowhere in our code which this does not go to to addressing which has dramatic impact because 54 unit project on a seventh of an acre is 240 units per acre, which is not at all representative of single family duplex zone districts that are areas of stability where the councilman. So to that, I asked you to sort of consider the language it by itself and all you did was a comparison which that in fact occurred at planning board as well. Because Councilman Clark's proposal was mentioned in the the comments from Planning Board were very clear to sort of put, put put down that suggestion. But I'm asking is if if this if this this still represents a reduction in parking requirements over any base zone district. So is the criteria that is met. I mean, that needs to be met in order to get planning board approval is the criteria met by this ordinance or we now. So if we approve it, are we in violation of our own criteria? I probably can't do any better than planning board itself did. And because Planning Board recommended of the original approval of the original proposal approval with a condition that the parking requirements not be further increased because in my opinion it would reach this point where achieving the goals and blueprint Denver of having a variety of housing options and having a variety of being able to live with or without a car would be compromised. Staff's staff's report today, I think, emphasizes that. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you, gentlemen. As soon as was Councilwoman says. Yes, sir. Mr. Hickman, I have a question for you. If you could come to the podium. Mr. Hill. Yes. I notice that you've been attending our geo open transportation and mobility meetings and very grateful for that. And in all of the volunteering you have done on this issue. Well, I attended one this last. The last one, which was a very important one that's. Stimulating. That's for sure. And we had many we had several speeches by the can travel that was mentioned. And Jill Lo can talk about our need to consider how much we subsidize cars and particularly single occupancy vehicles and how the experts and the people who are studying this says we have to think very, very difficult situations about are not subsidizing car use as much as we do. And as I was watching you, I was wondering, I wonder what Mr. Hickman is thinking about this in terms of the small parking exemption issue that I know you've been promoting. Wow. Do you really expect me to answer that? Yes, I. Do. By midnight? Well, maybe in about 2 minutes. 3 minutes. Thank you. The issue, of course. Is that anything we do? Needs to be weighed against the resources that we take to do it. Okay. At the root of this issue, I think, is the fact that people still own cars. We hope, and I'm one of them. We hope that people will own fewer and fewer cars in the future. I think I said that earlier tonight. But meanwhile, the reality is people have cars. We have to store them somewhere. And our streets have only so much capacity for anything. And I think one of the last things. That we need to do is to use that right of way. That was discussed a lot in that meeting. For more parking that right away is there for other uses that would be much more beneficial and advantageous to the citizens of Denver? Does that does it help? That's a really good and I appreciate that response and I thank you for attending. So thank you. Thank you. Do you have time for a small joke? No, I think that's only in common. I will. Yeah, I'll answer for no, she doesn't right now. Councilman Lopez. This is mine. It's my. Got it. Did you have did you have some. You know what, my. I do, but for the next four comments. Okay, great. I'll make my comments. Great. Couple questions. I think we. First of all, let me just ask. Just raise your hand if you are a developer in the room. Okay. Great. And the deadline, folks, that they leave already. Okay. That's unfortunate. Okay. We'll go on to common sense. Let me. Where's my. Oh, there's my gavel. Okay. The public hearing for 161 is now closed. We're going to comments. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Mr. President. This has been a long haul, and we've been beating this one up a lot. You know, I'll start with once again thanking you, Mr. President, for taking this on and for also being open to disagreement and conversation and evolution and and and helping me along the way with how I worked things that that you didn't agree with. And so I think that is an important part of our process up here. Councilman Hurd did not hear what he always says. We can disagree, but that doesn't mean we have to be disagreeable. And I think I take that with me and I just really appreciate how you have led us on this issue . I also want to thank staff sitting here in the front row tonight. I know it's not easy dealing with us up here, and we're a cagey bunch of crazies. You quote me on that one, and I just want to say thank you again. We get heated, we get into this, but at the end of the day, you guys have the hardest job in the world trying to balance all of this and all of us who have very different feelings. You know, a couple of things that I just want to say that I think that, you know, very quickly to go through the stuff that I touched on in questions, I was asking questions about if you want to develop on a small lot with no exemption, there's no zip in. You can go to vote if you want the exemption, there's zip and that gets you down to a very low percentage of parking. If you're on a bigger lot and you want to develop without going below 50%, there's no zip in the joint, less than 50%, there's a zip. And it sounds to me like a very similar process. I am eager and I wish that, you know, I hope that we can we can move forward. And if there are ways for us to define it more down the line, that makes it easier for staff. I would be happy to take that on, too. I wish that, you know, somebody from from the zoning administrator's office might have reached out and said, what would that have looked like? Rather than just you're not doing it? And so it's hard. So for me, that to me, Xp-Pen is so important to this. And to me it doesn't seem that out of line with what we already do. It's new and different territory here, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad thing. You know, I also, again, want to point out what I pointed out a lot of times, that my bill isn't the only bill that adds parking. The bill that was put on the table added parking. And I do think that that tipping point is is tough. And so I guess I'm not saying that I think CBD necessarily should have supported the bill as amended, but I'm just not also sure that you should have supported Brooksville based on the same some of the same criteria that you looked at on mine. What's really important to me at the end of the day is that support or not support. We've had a really robust conversation and we moved something forward that can be good for the for our communities. I also, you know, understand that this bill, as amended, does make CPD and public works and everybody a little bit nervous. And honestly, I think that's a really good thing right now because since we doubled down with our second vote on these amendments a couple of weeks ago, I have had more awesome conversations with staff about how we are going to move very quickly on TDM and and you know all the things at the very beginning that were said about parking management and TDM and all these great things. And so I think that this puts us in a place where it's not perfect, but it does put us heading in the right direction. I wish that tonight we were talking about a bill that was all about TDM and multi-modal improvements and parking management. I wish we would have been talking about that since the beginning of this process. Not getting really excited about at the end when we're getting nervous about what's going to happen. I wish that we were talking about incentivizing mixed use as part of this. I wish that we were talking about context, sensitivity and what works in downtown might not work in the highest point in Denver and District two. And to be very clear, I don't love this bill. This bill is not my baby that I am so excited about. I think we have a lot of work to do. I don't think this is a perfect solution, but I do think it's a good start and I think it's a good start that brings the neighborhoods, the ones who are experiencing this firsthand and not theoretically and not from a book, but in real time, in real life in the world that we live in today, not the future condition. It brings them to the table to say, this isn't perfect, this isn't what we wanted, but it's a compromise we're willing to start with. And I think some I can't remember who said it. I'd give you total credit, but somebody said, Well, you know, if everybody in the room, there's nobody in the room who is really like, yeah, this bill, right? That means we've probably landed at a pretty good place for compromise. I feel like this is a good start. It's a good compromise. It's much better than a full exemption, which is where we are going tonight with the no vote, no vote go takes us back to full exemption. And so I sincerely hope that this is the start of the conversation, not the end of it. And I would ask my colleagues to please vote yes on this good compromise so that we can start the process of moving forward. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, President Pro tem clerk. And I'm just going to go down the line because we we got them lining up, you all. And I don't know how you came in. So. Councilman Espinosa. Thank you, Mr. President. I second Councilman Clark's comments for working with this body and allowing us the space to voice and address the concerns of our constituency, especially those impacted as yours, mine. And Councilman Clark's is speaks well of your leadership. And thank you. We are not listening. So I can tell you all that this that I don't have consensus support of even this amended version for my R.A. It still doesn't get there. As many of your comments mentioned, no consideration for true mixed use development, transit alternatives or affordability, but it's a good compromise and hammered out amendment. And so with that I'll be supporting it. But I wanted to speak to a few things here. A speaker mentioned how they're already built. Existing unit went from 1300 dollars a month to 1700 dollars a month after she moved out. In one day. It was it was re rented. The cost of that building did not go up because of the parking requirement on that project. It was an existing building. The rental market isn't being driven by parking. Ironically, the new zoning code has always had parking reductions for projects with affordable units, given the expressed difficulty demonstrated by staff to capture some of the required parking. Maybe, just maybe, savvy developers seeking square footage for development would look to those affordability reductions or reductions for alternative transit to resolve design challenges as they meet on these small lots to council and clerk's observations. In the Q&A, staff claimed that the amended amendment is inconsistent with Blueprint Denver requirements related to parking. Mind you, at the time that that was adopted 15 years ago, all areas were subject to Chapter 59 zoning regulations. At the time of Blueprint, Denver Tennyson Street was zoned before that, zoning would require multifamily development to provide one space per dwelling unit. The impact is easy enough that impact is easy enough to figure out. However. If one wanted to build a structure for a brewpub, an eating place or retail, the parking requirement would be required at a rate of one per 200 gross square feet. That is. Is. It's the fourth category. Sir, if anyone is interested in chapter 59. The entire first floor in and of in our current amendment, the entire first floor is exempt over 6250 lot which remains exempt with this amendment. And we're one of those commercial uses on in that old chapter 59 zoning code that's 31 required spaces. That's now exempt. We had mapped. Had we mapped to mass or zoning without small lot exemption, we would have been consistent with Blueprint Denver then. That is a massive reduction and we are now period. If the recommendation of President Brooks's task force were the language we have today. The criteria of the planning board would in fact be met. And would be recommended for approval. There is nothing in this amendment that doesn't meet that criteria despite what is being said on the city staff. So I'm disappointed that the director of CPD has wasted so many precious staff resources defending the President's text amendment on a fraction of 1% of the developable land in this city. Those are resources that could have been working on helping fund transit through development of transit demand management policies or land value capture. We could and should be 60 days into that future. Mind you, I now know that we are in fact, working on that. Thank God. But I've been talking about that specifically to the managing director of CPD almost since the day I got here. So I wish we were voting today on TDM Inland Value Capture because those are the tools we were presented long ago. The case was made that when we re zoned in 2010, we did not have restrictive enough basis zoning. So some of these assets that we're trying to make are going to be harder and heavier lifting because we have already massively reduced the parking requirements in this city. That is the model that other communities are looking at. Our base zoning without exemptions. In fact, to the point about cities not making parking, increasing parking requires Boston, South Boston just three months ago increase their parking requirements from 0.9 units per I mean point nine spaces per unit to 1.5. Why? Neighborhood preservation. So there is a give and take here. I'm totally on board with getting zero mean 100% parking exemption, but we need have to have the tools and the keep and skills adopted by this city and put in place so that we can get there in a more managed, thoughtful way. And so with that, I will be supporting this amendment because I think it's as good as we can do right now. Thanks. All right. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. First of all, let me just. Let me thank you for all of your work. Also. You are very passionate. You stayed on top of this. You. Convene a lot of people. And I, you know, in the light, the last vote that we had on this bill. You know, I. I saw the disappointment that you had. I don't want you to think for 1/2 that this is a critique of your work or your work ethic or your leadership. I think, you know, I say this and I know my my colleagues and the folks around us know how hard you work. And I wanted to commend you for that on the floor. This is a tricky issue. And why. You know, I kind of felt conflicted going back and forth. And what it did is. For me, it's allowed me to take a look at how this would apply to them. To my area a little bit. A little bit more. And I cannot. So I did. I was able to engage with more of my constituents, with folks across the city and kind of compare the two. And I know this song and I feel like the Rolling Stones I need to sing sing the same song with the same kind of excitement as it did the first time. Right. So it's a little tricky, but it comes across it actually is pretty, pretty good. I'm looking at Paul Cashman and I know he's looking at me real skeptical. I think I want to poke fun at the Stones. I'm not. So that's how it comes across. I'm glad you're laughing. So. So is laughing at my joke. So I say this because. I the the woman that got up, I don't know if she's still here, but she got up and said, you know, these are family grew that child and they're looking for a place that was like 1700 a month. I can't help but think. Come West. There are some places in Barnum and we'll park in our neck of the woods on the west side that are that are about that budget. And you're going to get a good a good unit. I mean, you'll get three bedrooms with your own driveway and your own yard for about that much. It's still expensive, still absolutely expensive to live in Denver, no matter where it is. Everybody's getting squeezed out. I. I paid a lot of attention to her because I'm wondering why she hasn't come west. And when I ask people, well, why out here? Well, it's not as connected. And it's the same answer I've gotten. It's not as connected. And then I go back into my neighborhoods and I don't need to go back. I mean, I'm from the neighborhood, I. Eat, sleep. And I mean, JJ is man, I was a pitcher. He was a third baseman. We were on the same team, literally in Little and Little League. Not much has changed on our side of the river. And even with plans. And I wanted to make sure that that that. Cindy didn't feel attacked when I said this. I just was honestly looking for an update. Cindy's an amazing visionary over our public works. You are. But it goes back to American if we were. So there's two ways this is framed. One is affordability, the other is mass transit. This whole argument for or against? And this is why I'm going to tell you why I'm supporting this bill. I supported this amendment because. If we were so engrained in wanting to make this happen in multi-modal city happen. The BRT would be without question. On the West Side. It's not even funded going past federal boulevard. We had to fight for it just to come across the river. I was told a million times you couldn't put it on Colfax or the Hill. It's heavy, you know. Well, they usually there's trains in San Francisco, so. If a kitchen can exist in San Francisco over on a on a steep grate again in Denver. And then. Just the planning and we are looking at. West Side kind of the neighborhood plans and bringing him up to speed. And these are plans that were done that were created all about the car and it was all about just driving everywhere. These are plans from the eighties and nineties. They're not going to get touched until 2019 according to the phasing that that they're working on in CPD. I won't even be a councilman. And we're all about it. We want to start now, but we just don't have the capacity to to do it. We don't have the staff to actually get it done. So that and then, you know, I came to this council a year ago with a simple amendment to the budget to ask for to for a block of sidewalk. On South Florida, on the west side, southwest Denver. $170,000. I mean, it's not it's not cheap, but it's also not going to break us. That request was denied. I couldn't get more than four votes for that. So where is this multimodal city? I've been hearing about. Not in the West Side. Now we've been pushing to give some folks in credit. We've been pushing. But the bike boulevard that we needed implemented. They said we're going to implement of Denver's first bike boulevard four years ago. We still don't have it. I'm seeing it all built out and striped all over this place down here. We're not getting it over there. So I don't buy this thing about well, we want to make it so that you can get anywhere. Well, apparently not in the West Side. That's what we're fighting for. And look, I'm not it's not a critique on our staff. It's not a critique on the people that make it work. It's the critique on our priorities as a city, in our budget, what we're not willing to fund. The other thing is affordability. I don't think this this isn't an issue about affordability, folks. Seattle. Portland. People that are kind of there with it. They still have an affordable housing crisis. You look at other cities with equivalent or higher parking requirements that are more affordable. Denver. Phenix. Albuquerque. Salt Lake City. Dallas. Columbus, Ohio. This exemption has been around for 6.5 years. You think that's made a dent in our affordable housing crisis? It hasn't. And also go take a look at some of these micro units. Column. Pretend your. Your. Your. I'm trying to be cool, like. Get in there and be like, hey, I want I want a unit and I don't want to share anything. I'm a millennial, whatever. Right? Well, I want to share everything. I'm millennial. I want a small unit. IKEA couch, whatever you call them. Asked what the month to month rent is 1300 dollars for 400 square feet. Are these really affordable? Are these families? And if that's what we're incentivizing. On these in these locations and. How is this going to increase affordable housing? And, you know, one of our to give to give is to bring something out and don't want to be to I don't belabor and I'm sorry, but I really need to make this point because last time I was conflicted. Somebody on our council said, Well, why don't we? Why don't we all walk or bike or transit for a whole week? To work. For Joel. That was you that said that for Joel and John's the guy that has taken all the heat saying the call in the parking council. I mean, he's the only one biking down here. All right, I'll tell you what I would, but I have a daughter to pick up after school and take to her after school program. I have a mother to go leave dinner for who lives outside of Denver. I got to do that every single day. I can't do it on a bicycle. I can't do it on the 16. And let's try. You know, this is fine and dandy when it's when it's warm outside. But what happens in the winter? So this is why I supported the amendment and this is why I support this moving forward as until we are there. I'm not there. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Councilman Lopez, Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. And what a joy this meeting is. And if you want to get up and stretch your drinks and poison whatever it would take to make you feel better, please feel free. So you know what? I've said this before, so excuse me if you've heard this before, but when people ask me what is my biggest surprise since taking this job, I always tell them two things. I tell them that my biggest surprise is how competent city staff is. By and large, I mean, when I was just another citizen out there at home reading the paper and watching TV and thinking people are idiots. They don't know what they're doing. They don't care. And you see that once every how many years exposed because some poor parks worker was overtired and took a nap in his truck. And so everyone thinks everyone's sleeping through the day. And you get you get inside the process a little bit and you realize how competent and how hardworking these people are. And people ask me about my council colleagues and I tell them, you know, we're we're obviously 13 different people, and it ranges from fairly conservative to fairly liberal . But we're a very collegial group. I mean, we work together well. I think Councilman Brooks does a wonderful job as a whole as our leader this year in facilitating that collegial atmosphere. And the reason I bring this up is I don't think any of us have done our best work on this process. You know, I think as as we've gotten into it, the topic has revealed itself to be more complicated. And I think it deserved more time and more more time in the weeds to I don't know, you know, I believe that the staff is having fits over the idea of CPM. I believe they are. They're seeing some real problems with it. And I think with more time, maybe it would be a different kind of pain and it would have different types of of of processes. But I believe we can make it work. You know, and I think, you know, we're looking at these maps with the quarter mile, half mile areas around transit zones. I'm thinking, why are we getting off the transit corridor? Maybe we stay on the transit corridor. I'm concerned about Councilwoman Sussman and her concerns about Colfax. There are areas that I think we really need to pay attention to. But I for me, I'm just very clear what my constituents want. Want in or out of this process. You know, I think we've made some fairly mediocre sausage. You know, if I were ordering breakfast at Sam's three and this was the sausage, I'd probably either ask for bacon or some cottage cheese on the side. We need to continue working on this. And also, I mean, I need to just reiterate, I mean, where people are sitting here with, oh, my God, you're changing the world as we see it. It's 1% of the lots in the city. Okay. 1% of the lots in the city. That's not saying I'm satisfied with this. I think I've been clear. We need to keep working on this. No one's happy with this. This is not doing what anyone wants. And, you know, affordable housing. Please, please, please. You know, I can get an affordable meal at the Brown Palace at Ruth's Chris. At the fanciest restaurants in the city. If I want to go eat a potato and go home and call that a meal. That's not to me, a meal. And a thousand 1213, 1400 bucks for 400 square feet is not affordable housing, you know, I mean, it's it's just not my definition of affordable housing. So I will. I'll be supporting this sausage. You know, and Councilman Clark and I sat down with the director of CPD just because we wanted to exchange ideas and look for ways that we can figure out these remaining gaps. How do we get development on Colfax and protect the neighborhoods that I believe deserve being protected? I my my friend Espinosa, Councilwoman Espinosa said a few meetings ago that and I definitely empathize with this. There are people in these neighborhoods who have been building these great neighborhoods for decades. So let's give them a wee bit of slack because they don't want 104 units dumped on their block with no parking. I get I get I get the argument against. I'm concerned about the argument against. I always keep in mind when I'm assessing these issues and I get to the point where I believe what I believe. I always keep in mind I might be wrong. You know, I might be wrong. My vote might be the wrong vote. But this is the way I'm seeing it today. Thank you, staff, very much. I think you're all incredibly talented people. So we're at odds on this one. So be it. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Cash. Councilman Neal. Thank you, Mr. President. I echo the thanks to Councilman Clark and Counsel Brooks and also to Councilor Cashman. He filled in while Counsel Brooks was out and carried the ball initially, and it was part of the all the discussion with the group. So thank you for all your leadership on that. I also want to thank all the residents, you know, Bob and David especially and Margie. I mean, the analysis y'all did were just unbelievable. Every time you come in my office, you bring out some new analytical report and data that you accumulated. And it was so thorough and professional. I just really appreciate you helping us. Understand all the issues. That were around your mind and what was important to you and and your neighborhoods. I really appreciate that. I got really excited when City Pan came up because I thought City was going to lay out a transportation plan for us. But, you know, but but I knew she she was going to do her best to answer Paul's questions. But we still don't have that plan, and we hopefully will have it soon and look forward to it. I was I was glad when Councilwoman Sussman called up Joel. Joe, such a smart guy. And, you know, the planning board and and his kids comments about character are right on target with Colfax. We've been talking about that quite a bit for the last year or so, but I think it's going to come down to a discussion about character and density. When we get to Colfax, it's all going to be about affordable housing and density and and what's going to happen to Colfax and Transit going down to the heart of Colfax. So it's going to be a very interesting discussion. I really wish that we had that transportation plan and I really wish we had Councilman Sessions. Transit agency that she's been talking about so fervently so. And she's right on target. The city has got to have a transit agency to help implement that plan and and take control of our transportation system. So and if we had that plan and that agency, I think today would be a totally different discussion. We wouldn't be talking so much about parking. I think we'd be talking about and developing and moving people around and possibly even getting people out of the cars. So so maybe that maybe that'll happen one of these days. But I think what the alternate animated approach is a balanced approach. And so I can't imagine it's going back to to the old ordinance and and being totally exempt. So I think in my my constituents believe that to you know, I do surveys on all the major issues with all my constituents and I get about 800 to 1000 residents giving me feedback. And this was the highest I've ever had on a survey so far in my two years. And 85% of my Rosa said no to the exemptions. And but if they had a choice between three and, you know, council clerk and councilman Brooks it was council was Clark was the amendment they preferred so so I'll vote yes tonight and I'll encourage my colleagues to do so. And and like everyone said, you know, we got to keep working on this. We were this was just the start of this whole thing. And we've got to get transit and transportation solved and implemented in our city to become a great city. So thank you. Thank you, Councilman. Now, Councilwoman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I also want to thank not only my colleagues, Councilman Brooks and Councilman Clark, for their work on this. I want to thank city staff and folks from the neighborhoods on both sides that were. Passionate in bringing forth various points of views that helped us get to something that I think is an even better compromise. You know, over the years, as I have been involved in the land use process, city council clearly is is responsible for this. And it is not unusual to have a recommendation come out of the planning board that is not supported by city council. So, you know, and again, this is part of the deliberative process that we go through in listening to community and making sure that we're trying to find that that, you know, important balance between the very and various points of view. You know, I can remember back when the chamber took a large group of people to Vancouver. And everybody came back excited about wanting to see more density in the city of Denver. This was before 2003 when we had, you know, ten members of city council leave. That's when we started talking about density. And everybody kept saying, where we see density, we're going to see affordability. Well in our large development, that hasn't translated to affordability. So where you would think in large scale developments. Where we're we're, you know, seeing massive units being developed. We should see affordability, but that hasn't been the case. So to expect that in small unit developments, you know, doesn't mean that's going to translate either. The other thing I think is important as we talk about the need for transit management a TDM for the core of the city, you know, we've got a great one out at Stapleton that's doing great work. They've got businesses providing discounted passes for their workers. But guess what? RTD just did away with that discounted bus pass. So how do we make sure that there's equity in the kind of work that we're talking about so that people who are the poorest among us could afford to ride public transit there , the people who need it the most, and by and large end up paying more. Because when you look at, you know, the fact that, you know, government employees, the city discounts that pass for for for city employees. You know, there are other programs. But when it comes to folks who are at the bottom of the pay scale, they're the ones that get hit the hardest with the affordable housing, the highest transportation cost. So we got to find something that works for everybody and doesn't create this push out effect that says, you know, geez, your city, that we just can't accommodate you. So you got to go somewhere else that you can afford. And that's that's the wrong message. I think we as a city should be working to address. So I'm going to be supporting this amendment tonight. Again, I think the deliberations that have taken place have been an important part of the process. And I appreciate the work that everybody has done on all sides of this issue. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm afraid I'm not part of this Kumbaya group. I'm going to probably be the first one to speak against support of this bill. It's I I feel like Councilman Cashman does that. We are a very, very collegial group, and we do work well together. But we've had the leader of this bill say it's not a good bill, but I'm I'm going to back it anyway. We had Mr. Cashman say it's mediocre sausage, but I'm going to vote for it anyway. I just don't know if that's a sustainable way in which to vote to. Let's not let's make bills that we don't like, but let's vote for them anyway. I think that. Well, first of all, we're putting a lot into 6250 square feet. And it seems actually it's a small thing, but we have to maintain our principles and our vision and our ways for transforming our city. I think making decisions like this puts us on the wrong side of history. This bill moves us one step, a little step backward. We've had taken great strides. Couple of steps forward. But we have to keep. Pure to our ideas of what it's going to take. To really turn around this city and get and reduce the amount of single occupancy vehicles. And there is lots of research out there about how to do that. We want a walkable, bikeable, transit rich city. Neighbors are concerned about congestion in the top three issues in my district are traffic, traffic and traffic. The only way you can move forward on something like this is to make really hard decisions that are unpopular with some and popular with others. But we have to stop subsidizing car use. With low gas prices. Low gas tax. Roads that are built primarily for cars that have for generations had the right of way before all people, these £3,000 things. And the other thing is parking requirements. It's a huge subsidy for car users. Huge. We all feel like we deserve a free parking space. Our cars deserve a free parking space. Where did where did that come from? There is so much research out there how minimum rear parking requirements and the other subsidies are a major part of our problem with congestion. And to say it isn't so. I'm going to just be kind of harsh here. Sounds like science deniers. You can say, okay, this is what they're saying in the science, but I really don't want to do that. There. There's just no evidence otherwise and that we have to reduce our subsidy for cars and the way in which our our country is. And and I'm making all these, you know, grandiose statements on a little thing, you know, whether three stories get exemptions or two stories get exemptions. It's a really small thing. But when you've got a plan and you have a transformative vision and you have a goal, you can't let the little things slip by you. You can't do that if you're compromising your principles. The other principle that I believe in, too, is community input. Councilman Brooks ran a very comprehensive community process at looking at all the issues related to this, and they made a plan. I'm not sure. I wouldn't have supported the original. Parking exemption for small lots. For all of the reasons that CPD did and the planning board did. But at least we had a community process and I know those people who were on that project or one are feeling like they were unheard. Where did their recommendations go? Why were they unheated? Why? And then I've even heard one say, why participate if you're not heeded? I, I just wish that, you know, and I wanted to say our, our CPD leader took the time and our CPD people took the time to look at this because we asked them to we put a moratorium on this. And so they had to spend their time and resources on this because the council asked them to. And TDM is an important issue. I'm glad we're talking about it, but it's not just CPD, it's public works, it's housing, it's it's all of the agencies in our city. This particular 6200 feet, 60 to 50 feet has a lot to do with my Colfax issues and federal. It has a lot to do with affordable housing. It has a lot to do with the way we want our city to look. And it has a lot to do with equity in the ways we move around that. Pedestrians, bicycles and cars should have equal access to our right of way. They should have equal access. And that's an important value. It's probably not. As popular. But it is the science and I won't be voting for this change. Thanks. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. Councilwoman Black. Thank you. I hate it that I'm next because I am so wavering. This has been the best public comment. Everyone here has had a very persuasive argument. And I really appreciate you all being here and being here so late. I'm very tired and I'm sure you are too, because I have a much more comfortable seat and thank you CPD. I'm very dismayed because I feel like there's a lot of misunderstanding about the original parking exemption, which actually was about neighborhood preservation, and it was about small scale and historic buildings. And it does it dismays me that now it's it's if you're support the exemption that you're against neighborhoods because that's not what it is. Just as Councilwoman Sussman just said. I also I feel like it's turned into now a fight over who owns the street parking. And and that's not what it was ever intended to be. And I also think it's it's not right that it's somehow a developer against neighborhood, because that's not what it is either. It was it was intended to preserve small scale buildings and not tear them all down and build a giant monstrosity like we have on South University in his district. Anyway. That said, the both the exemption and both of the compromises, the Brooks compromise and the Clark compromise were well-intended, incredibly imperfect, have unintended consequences. And they don't necessarily solve the problems that they intended to solve. We need a much more pointed and neighborhood specific solution, as John Hayden, I think he already left and others suggested. Every part of our city is unique. There's only one part of my district that has small lots. The rest of my district has more parking than we could ever fill. In fact, if you want to park in my district and I take the light rail into town, you should do it in. The one neighborhood that is impacted, however, is in undergoing incredible change and densification right now. And they support Dolan's bill and have asked me to support it. Councilman Susman is right. Nobody is excited about it. Sue Glass Maker said it's mediocre at best. Keith Pryor said this particular bill is not addressing the issue. We need to look at better ways to preserve small lots and encourage affordable housing and mixed use. I've wavered if I'm going to support it or I'm not going to support it. I think it's going to pass. My I told you, my R.A. has asked me to support it. I. I don't think the exemption has been successful. It hasn't I don't think it's resulted in affordable housing. I think there's been unintended consequences, Sharon Nunnally said. We can still work on it, and that's that's the spirit I like the best is that whatever we had wasn't what we needed, but we need to all get together and find a better solution. So I'm still pondering this, but thank you. How could you be pondering after all this time? Okay. So. Councilwoman Black, thank you for your great comments. Council it, Councilman Flynn. Thank you. Sorry, sir. Thank you, Mr. President. I think I'm most distressed to hear that Councilwoman Sussman is going to destroy the Flynn corollary that I developed back in the eighties and nineties over at the press table that the longer we debated and talked and commented is seemed, the more unanimous the vote would turn out to be. So another another one bites the dust. All 13 of us up here, those who are present and the three who are absent tonight, have free, reserved private parking in the most transit rich. Node in all of Colorado. And to my knowledge, only Councilman Clark and I frequently use alternative modes, councilman bicycles, although he has that power assist battery. That's really kind of cool. It's a cheat. It's a cheat. And he's a young guy. He's a young guy despite looking as old as he does. But and I take light rail, but I have to drive to Englewood because there's no reliable transit for me to get to Englewood Station to come in. And and as Councilman Lopez mentioned last week, I did email all of us and said, why don't we try to use alternative mode to come here in last week to see. Yeah. To get some appreciation for it. No one took me up on the offer and I regret to say that I couldn't do it any day either because of the demands of my schedule to be here and there at certain times. I wish that we could be nuanced enough and nimble enough so that we could address the very legitimate concerns that I share with Councilwoman Sussman and along Federal Boulevard to try to maintain the character and the small parcels. I wish that we were nimble enough to to be able to address those without also suffocating the bungalows of Platt Park in West Wash Park by straight jacket ing them with the exact same one size fits all jacket. It seems to me that sometimes we argue for strict uniformity of regulation because we like predictability and certainty when it suits our ultimate philosophical purpose. But then when it doesn't, we like to be context sensitive. I wish we had a context sensitive solution to this. I'm going to obviously vote yes for this, but I will work with every other member and with CPD to try to find a more flexible and nimble solution so that what works on Colfax but doesn't work in Platt Park can still. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. All right. Councilman Cashman and Lopez. I'm going to go to Councilwoman Gilmore just to give since you guys already won. Okay. Lean forward to lean back. You got to lean back in that comfy chair there. Okay, Councilman Gilmore. Thank you, President Brooks. You know, listening very thoughtfully to all of the public comment and all of the the great conversation by my colleagues. The one thing that. Either. Bill really highlights is our enormous gaps in transit in the city. And it's unfortunate and an equitable I think to pit affordable housing against. A failing transit system. When we're also trying to maintain the character of our neighborhoods, because I think there's a much broader and bigger conversation that we need to be having. And as it's been said time and time again. It's not a perfect solution. But Councilman Clarke's amended bill is a compromise and what I hope is an interim solution. To this issue, but that we're going to have to come back and address it again and again and again. The one thing that we haven't necessarily talked about. In an intentional way is the equity question that this brings up, especially for my family who resides in the Monticello community. And I would love to take Councilman Flynn up on his, you know, challenge to take transit, to come to the city and county building. That's not a reality for me. I have children who are in school who need to be there at a certain time. They need to be picked up midday. And so I just hope through all of the conversation that we've had here tonight, that we can elevate the conversation to one that looks at transit and affordable housing and a team plan from an equity lens, so that we're making sure that we're not only addressing certain parts of the city, but that we are truly being inclusive and including Councilman Lopez's district and my district and all the people in in Denver. And that to have the privilege to utilize transit. You live in certain areas of the city, and unfortunately, that doesn't always cover all the communities of color in the city. And so I hope that we can work more to broaden the conversation where it needs to go so that my three kids can choose if they want to own a car or not, that it's not a necessity for them to own a car. And so that being said, I'm going to go ahead and support Council Bill 161. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman. All right, Council Councilman Cashman. And thank you, sir. I will keep this brief, but I had to answer a couple of things. Look, I take this job very seriously. I don't set out in the morning to make legislation that I'm not proud of. If it wasn't clear enough, I support what I consider a mediocre bill because I consider the alternative poisonous. To go back to go back to a place with no parking restrictions, I think makes no sense at all so that the inference that somehow people are satisfied with mediocre legislation, I couldn't let sit and to infer that we're somehow science deniers. When this entire council. Placed as its number one budget priority, increased mobility and transportation. And then on this one issue that affects 1% of the lots in the city. We disagree. Makes no sense to me. I mean, Brother Murray has already tweeted out my sausage comment. You know, it makes and it makes an easy headline. I had done the same thing when I was writing, so. No offense taken, John, but yeah, I mean. Well, what I said before about the fact I don't think we worked well together. You know, you have the legislative and the executive branches and there's separation of powers. But we need to partner better sometimes. And I'm seeing another situation evolve that I'm interested in. Where I'm seeing silos when they are sometimes don't serve us real well. So we need to work better at that. You know, I sit with the SAT, with Councilwoman Susman, with the mayor, urging him to form that Department of Mobility or Transportation or Transit, whatever whatever you want to want to talk about. So I think we have 13 people up here who are very clear on the need to improve transit, to improve mobility options, to provide affordable housing. And we're just differing on this one tiny part of that discussion. So thank you and good night. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilman Lopez. You know, I realized I forgot a couple of things and I'll be quick. I forgot the thing, Jawn, as well, too. Councilman Clark and Councilman Brooks. You know, for both of your work and your advocacy on that and just just on that tip. Councilman Cashman, look, the one thing I did not say, I mean, we complain about the sausage. But we don't talk about how to make it better sometimes. So here are if you really want to go after affordable housing. Give somebody a living wage so that so rent doesn't become an issue, for crying out loud. Let's pay somebody a fair wage so that, you know, one month to the other they don't get kicked out because they can't make rent. Wages are still low and we have an opportunity to make that happen. And we we really have to put a dent in affordable housing that way. And just think beyond micro units. There are families. I want families to get on a transit route. I want families to bike together. None of us up here believe in a 1980s Denver where, you know, we're pumping crude and filling up at the tank and the gas station and just driving around just for the sake of it. But we want to see this multi-modal Denver, but we want to see it equitably. Fully fund the BRT on Colfax. Playboy calls it the longest, wickedest street in America. That alone would be an awesome Ryan pundit. Right. Funny sidewalks. And not just with bond money, but it's upon us. It's our it's us as council to say this is these are this is the money that we want to put towards our priorities. We can't just make it a priority and a plan and have our awesome staff work on it are awesome, awesome city employees work on it and not fund it. We have the funding, right? That's where. That's where. Let's put our money where our mouth is. The second thing and Councilman Brooks, you're going to probably censure me after this. I was going to do that. But Denver's Brooklyn Bridge, that Colfax Viaduct, and you cannot bike across it. Well, you cannot walk across it. Well, let's transform it. It's the one thing that has kept the west side and the east side from not being one city. That's the biggest problem. Let's fix the core facts via diet. You can bike, walk and drive and maybe even take the train across it to Bad Colfax being the longest street in America. The only way you can do it is driving. Let's fix that. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. I think it's the first time Playboy's ever been quoted in a in a council meeting. All right. Read the articles. Council. Councilman Espinosa. Hopefully you won't take off this time when I praise you. You'll have to rewind the tape there. That's all I'm going to do right now. And doesn't necessarily need to be said, but. This is, you know, councilman or President Brooks. You heard your constituents. Express this concern. You took action. You led this moratorium process, you led that discussion. So it's this is your bill. And you may not agree with the text amendments, but these words are your your words, you know, and you put this out and that directly in response to what you heard. And so it needs to be noted that this is not mean that that that is that is you doing your job, representing your constituents and us doing our job representing our constituents, trying to, to, to put this forward. So I whether it feels like it or not, I see this as the the the Brooks. Brooks Brooks. Clarke. Bill, because you got us here to a point where we're talking about things and moving forward on that TDM discussion and all these things because we recognize that we don't have the tools that we actually need to make. Denver This sort of pedestrian bike transit city that we know it needs to be. And so I just want to say that, you know, thank you for listening to those concerns because it would have been possible to not. And the fact that we're here today, I just want to thank you topics. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. All right. We got some others up, Councilman Flynn and then Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. Just a brief note, because no meeting would be complete without some pointless historical trivia from me. But just to follow up on Councilman Lopez, the Colfax Viaduct originally was built with the Larimer Viaduct in an open in 1916, was built for Denver Tramway at a total cost of $715,000. Thank you. Built for transit, not for automobiles. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Flynn, for that. How much or how. Much concrete. History. Councilwoman Ortega. I'll be really brief, and this is probably for a different conversation. But can we talk quality design? I think we should be ensuring that we have units that are going to last for generations into the future and not units that are going to be, you know, falling apart, that need to be replaced in, you know, five, ten years from now. So different conversation for different time. But it's a missing part of the overall big picture conversation. Thank you. Thank you. In a plug for council. Councilman Espinosa's urban design deal happening on Wednesday. If you're if you're not available to attend, send somebody who can. It's a it's a pretty interesting conversation at 12:00 in the committee. Okay. I'm going to be going to be the last one to speak is one of the privileges that you get as president. And this is a bill that I've been a part of. Councilman Clarke, thank you so much for working hard. It's it's as you can tell, we're friends, frenemies in our district and we're friends. And it's it's it's so great to have very different perspectives on this small piece of legislation, folks, you know, come together and figure out a way forward. So I really appreciate you on that. STAFF Thank you so much. I know you've been through a lot and you've been great and you've provided some incredible information. And Ryan Winsberg, wherever you are in Portland, appreciate you to the committee that serves. Some of you guys are here. Some of you left this conversation a long time ago and when you started getting emails from people because people can be a little harsh and not realize the time that you put in. And so I just want to thank you all from for walking through that process. Councilwoman Jeanie Robb, who originally took this up in 2011. Thank you. And then to all the people who are still here at 915 when you can be doing a million other things, you are here because you love this city. Thank you. You went through security. Some of you pay for parking. And you're sitting in hard, hard seats. And we really appreciate you. And we always respect the right for you to petition your government. It makes us better. So thank you, George. Mail. I want to respond to you. We are not having a conversation really with developers, and I will respond to a lot of emails that I've received that this is mostly developers and neighbors. I can count the number of developers who have been a part of the conversations in the last. Nine months. And it's really neighbors and neighbors, neighbors that have a certain opinion around transportation mobility, neighbors that feel like we're not getting there yet on transportation and mobility. So this is actually a very tough, complex issue because you can't just make it black and white and make a quick decision. So I just wanted to say that Councilwoman Ortega is she drove home. My point and I appreciate you bringing in the urban design. I think that and I counted that's the 11th topical issue that have been thrown onto this very little bitty deal called 60 to 50 lots. It's less than 1%. Just so you know, not more not one less than 1% of our overall make up of 151 square miles. And I get it. There are a lot of issues in our city, but I believe we try to solve way too many things. And it got very confusing. We have parking issues in our city. We have urban design issues in our city. We have affordable housing issues in our city that won't be solved with 60 to 50 square lot exemption. It won't. But you've helped us to say we need to have outlets on urban design. We need to have outlets on affordable housing. We need to do this. We need to do that. We need to do TDM. You've helped us, but this isn't, this isn't gonna solve it. So. The last piece of this? Well, not really the last piece, but. I do have to point out something real quick because we had the affordable housing and folks got pooh poohed. And, you know, this is not affordable housing. Yes, it is. You know, all this conversation according to HUD. Income limits for 80% AMI units. Do you know what the price point is? Anybody want to know? $51,176. Most of these micro units are actually identified as 80%. Am I? So I'm not trying to drive home anyone's point. I just I think it's important to know that standard that if you're at an 80% AMI, the max rent that you can charge in the city is $1,176. Okay. So the city of Denver, we pride ourselves, all of us, to putting forward, you know, progressive legislation and leading the nation in certain issues. We definitely do that socially. We rarely do that from a transportation mobility perspective. I think we're starting to, which is really exciting. Unfortunately, both groups in the social justice part and even in the transportation mobility justice and and just they don't talk. They don't connect. And this is very apparent during this conversation. I feel like. We as a city can be doing much more progressive things around our transportation mobility issues. And it's one of the things that have that has really come clear to me and have in this conversation and pushed me in some areas that I must be much more progressive in the way that I think around this . But I'll be making my decision tonight on two things fear based over data driven analysis. I want to know what is the the 6250 development that has been built in this city. That is causing anxiety. We don't have one. Now, there are some suppositions that could happen when one comes and we're thinking about, Well, this will happen, but we really don't have a development before. So we can study it and analyze and say, okay, because of this, we know that, and now let's make a decision. My bill didn't do that. Council. Councilman Clarksville didn't do that. And I can't support that. I think we need to go back to the drawing board. I love where Councilman Clarke is going and the team, but over. The conversations that I've had from both sides of my neighbors. I do think we need to go back to the drawing board. What that would mean is today if we voted this down. The moratorium. May 26, May 26. The moratorium is up. And we can have a conversation about where we go from here. But I'm just saying. I'm not going to put my name on this because I just there's too many questions. There's too many unanswered questions around it. And with that. Madam Secretary, roll call. Clark, I. Espinosa I. Flynn I. Gilmore, I. Cashman. Lopez. I knew. Ortega I. Susman. No. Black. I. Mr. President. No, please close the voting and announce the results. Sorry. I'm just making sure Black didn't vote. Hmm. It's in the system. There we go. Oh, my. Is it working. Or is, isn't it? Shoes. Shoes. I need to wear this. Okay. Nine two. That's correct. Yeah. Nine eyes, two nays. Council Bill 161 has passed as amended, seeing no other business before this body. We stand adjourned. Thank you, everybody. Through the process of awaiting the issuance of a license, they would not be able to expand their hours to 10:00 until they are granted a license and shown they are in full compliance with state and local laws.
AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance amending the Denver Zoning Code to revise parking exemptions for pre-existing small zone lots. Approves a text amendment to the Denver Zoning Code to revise the Pre-Existing Small Zone Lot parking exemption. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 2-14-17. On 2-27-17, Council held this item in Committee to 3-20-17. Amended 3-20-17 to ensure that the parking exemption is applied for all uses. Some parking requirements are calculated based on gross floor area while others are on number of units and not explicitly for gross floor area, to further clarify the legislative intent of the proposed bill to emphasize the city’s commitment to more comprehensively address transportation demand management strategies in the short term, and to require a Zoning Permit with Informational Notice for all new buildings on Pre-Existing Small Zone Lots that request to use the small lot parking exemption; Enables all expansions to existing buildings to receive the full parking exemption; and clarifies at what point an “existing building” is considered	DenverCityCouncil_04102017_17-0161	1	An assessment has called out council bill 161 for an amendment. Madam Secretary, will you please put 161 on the screen? Councilman Lopez, will you make a motion to take 161 out of order? Want to remind everyone this motion is not debatable. Thank you, Mr. President. I move to take Council Bill 161 series of 2017. Out of order. All right. It's been moved the second it. Madam Secretary, roll call. SUSSMAN All right, Black. CLARK All right. Espinosa. Flynn. Gilmore. Herndon. Cashman can eat. LOPEZ All right, new. ORTEGA Hi, Mr. President. I. Close voting announced results 13/39. That's the second third of America's 13 ice. All right. 13 ice caps. Well, 161 has been taken out of or kills for Lopez. Will you please put counsel BELL 161 now on the floor. For publishing. Are we putting it into final consideration? You can just put it on the floor. There'll be no vote. Just put it on the floor. Replace it to be amended. Okay. All right. Are. Mr. President, I move that council bill 161 to 2017 be placed upon the floor. Final consideration to pass. It's been moved and. I need a second grit. It's been moved and seconded. Councilman assessment. Go ahead and offer your motion to amend. Thank you, Mr. President. I move that council bill 161 be amended in the following particulars on page three. Line eight. Strike the number two. Strike two and replace with three. All right. That's the only change. Okay. It has been moved and seconded comments by members of Council Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you, Mr. President. I know that we've seen this bill a couple of times, and I want to thank Councilman Brooks and Councilman Joe Allen, who worked on this bill so diligently and continue to do so. I'm bringing what I hope is a friendly amendment tonight that retains some of the work that Councilman Brooks did and some of the work that Councilman Clark did. It retains the definitions of a transit corridor as a quarter mile and retains the definition of a station corridor, train station corridor as a half mile. It retains the lower exemption for development outside of these corridors to the first floor. It's only changes to return to the three storey exemption for development within transit and train corridors. Change two three from the two story exemption. One of the big concerns that I mentioned about the lowering of this exemption within our corridors is the effect it could have on our efforts to revitalize Colfax and other of our main streets . Such as federal and Broadway. Lowering the exemption can frustrate our efforts to preserve the environment of our main street corridors where there are stores on small lots. On Colfax, we have the added barrier. Of lots that have very little depth. To meet greater parking requirements. We are incentivizing the preferred development that retains that Main Street feel of small businesses along what we hope will become even more pedestrian friendly streets. Development with this may have to create assemblages of several lots to meet the parking requirement and thus may be building larger structures that thwart the esthetic of these unique streets. We're working hard on Colfax, many of us, to bring more neighborhood serving businesses to the street. Requiring more parking just makes that effort more difficult. I understand that people are going to come with cars. But I feel confident that we can leave the parking requirement to the market. People won't rent or buy apartments if the lack of parking is a concern. And development will adjust to the market demand. Remember that we are not setting maximum parking requirements. Only minimums. The three story exemption is a significant departure from the original zoning that exempted all development on these small lots. Significant. For us in the communities who are seriously concerned about our dependance on cars and our city, state and countries. Historic practice of both subsidizing and incentivizing car use. I think the decision to lowering the parking exemption even further is antithetical to what our council has been encouraging for the six years I've been on council, and that is better pedestrian bicycle access and greater transit use. This is really a small change, but because of its considerable discussion and work. I believe it has big significance for what we stand for. And the significance to our work on transit oriented development. I asked my fellow council members to consider what it means for at least a good effort to be responsive to those special corridors in our city that we want to see retain their main street feel and meet some of our goals for a more livable city. I therefore urge everybody to pass this amendment. Thank you, councilman. Assessment. Councilman Clark, I see you logged in some just. Okay. Councilman Clark. Thank you, Mr. President. You know, I feel like we're having a little bit of deja vu, because last week I read strike three and replaced with two. And so I'm you know, I think that we've hashed this out. We've had this conversation. The will of the council last week was to move from 3 to 2. And I guess I don't see this as an amendment, but as a repeal of most of the work that was done last week. And that amendment I don't want to get back into the all the reasons that I said I was bringing the amendment forward last week again, other than other than to say that, you know, in large part for me in my district, the zoning in these transit corridors is three story zoning. And having three floors exempt means that that's a full exemption. And that was not why I supported the moratorium, was to take a look at this. You know, this this bill is far from perfect and has been, you know, a work in progress. But I feel that that going from 3 to 2 was a good compromise. And I stand by that. I would encourage my colleagues to to reinforce what we voted last week and defeat this repeal of the amendment that was offered last week. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Yeah, I would like the city attorney just for the viewing public, because this is already posted and we keep making amendments to explain to the viewers how it continues to be acceptable that we keep modifying things that will definitely impact communities within the posting period. Mr. President, you want me to answer? Yes, David. You can try to answer. David. Bravo, assistant city attorney. The there is no council rule that prevents you from revisiting and re debating something even when you voted on it once. In other words, you don't have anything like a settled question rule. So the motion is in order to to go back and revisit the issue of two stories versus three on the issue of publication and posting. I've consulted with the other city attorneys in our office and consistent with prior advice we've given. You can stick with I believe it's a May 1st hearing day. Do I have that correct? You can stick with a May 1st hearing date, even if if the motion is successful and is modified again to return to the three stories, it will not require reposting. Because traditionally we have advised that if in between first and final on a zoning a an amendment is proposed to make the regulation stricter, then you need to repost and move out the public hearing. But if an amendment makes the restriction less strict than current law or than the current proposal, then you don't need to repost. So it'll be possible if council chooses to pass the motion and to stick with the May 1st date and then the public hearing will occur on the proposal as amended. Great. Thank you for that. So then. Well, that's that's my only. Question or comment. And we're. Both. So there's only. Thanks for the clarification. The only other things I wanted to sort of point out is that the an even less restrictive law has been in place on Colfax for 11 years. And so if the goal is to now make this an additional change that is still more restrictive than what has been in place for 11 years, more restrictive sort of debate, the validity of that. But that said, again, I go back to having a third of these parcels in my district and the fact that this half mile transit corridor definition largely affects, you know, the bulk of it in my district is along the I-25 corridor, which isn't a high frequency transit quarter, but that's where the rail system is that serves District one. It's on the other side of the railroad tracks and the other side of the highway. And I only have five crossings to get from District one to that rail. And of those five crossings, only two would sort of well, one pedestrian and one bike would sort of satisfy any sort of modicum of what is a desirable way of crossing the highway. It's not 23rd Avenue that's never been safe, but we've worked as a community time and time again to increase the rail height, to add guardrails , to to dedicate some bike portion. It's only 15th Avenue and 15th Street and the pedestrian bridge. But the rest of my district is cut off, severed by physical impediments to getting over to the high frequency transit. And so when we do this sort of blanket definition of TOD as being this half mile radius, we're not actually articulating what areas are truly accessible to those. Tods In the way that I think is desirable, a number of minutes traveled how safe that access is and what not. And so I've always articulated this should have been a mapped boundary where we made this exemption in this this without negatively having potential net negative impacts to communities that are very real and very present. And so, I mean, I've articulated that time and time again in different ways. So once again, I'm just trying to get would like my colleagues to recognize and understand that there are very, very real consequences to making this change to areas that are not truly served by high frequency transit corridors, but yet fall in the as the crow flies mapping of it. So I would encourage everyone to vote. No, thank you. Okay, Councilman Ortega. Thank you, Mr. President. I was pretty quiet last week when this came up. I didn't make comments, but I just first want to thank you and Councilman Clark for initially working on this issue and Councilman Susman for attempts to try to, you know. Address it once again. But I guess what I want to say is that in this city, as we're seeing development pressures all over the place. We are not a city that has addressed first mile and last mile connections. And until we do that, people will still drive their cars. Yes, we should do as much as possible to try to encourage people to get out of their cars and use transit. And if we were really serious about that, we would not be building a 22 lane I-70 corridor. But I'll put that aside for a minute. So I think that as long as people continue to drive their cars, as they move into this city or already live here, they're going to use their cars to go to the mountains. You know, if they can't get to transit and I've talked to a number of people in Councilman Flynn's district who, you know, may live half a block away from a bus stop. But that bus doesn't get you down to transit to any of our train lines that could afford them the ability to get downtown. So we need to address that first mile last mile issue in order to encourage people to get out of their cars. I had an opportunity to go to Seattle to take a look at some of the micro-housing units that were being built there. We had met on numerous occasions with the developer of that project, who is also interested in doing development here in Denver. And, you know, their focus was attracting millennials to their development because they don't own cars. Well, when we went and met with some of the residents, what we learned was a good number of them owned cars , and they were challenged with where to park them if they did any grocery shopping. When they came home, they had to walk three or four blocks away because there was no place in the immediate area to park. So as much as we want to get people out of their cars, it's a reality that we are dealing with and it's an impact that is imposed on the adjacent neighbors. So I think the the request that. Was put on last week that amended this bill. Is reasonable. And so I am going to continue to support that particular amendment that was made to this bill. And my hope is that's what we have the public hearing on. So for all those reasons, I will not be voting for the amendment tonight. Okay. Thank you. Councilwoman Ortega, a jump in because this was my bill that presented for. No, it's Clarke's bill. This has been this has been we've talked about this a lot. And there's a lot of issues around this. And I really respect Councilman Clark in the conversations we've had around this and the folks that he's representing on this very important subject. And I just see councilman new poppin. Go ahead, Councilman Neal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Sorry not. To. Press the wrong, but I really appreciate what Councilwoman Sussman is talking about, because we've been working hard on Colfax redevelopment, and I'm looking forward to seeing that prosper and be a wonderful street that's going to be full of affordable housing. And people won't need a car. But I'm also worried a little bit that we haven't had enough discussion about this whole issue. You know, I think we extended the moratorium and was hoping that we'd have a little more discussion because I'm still getting a lot of feedback from our residents about the provision of the bill that's talking about the exemption and other new developments that are beyond their the quarter mile. And in in areas of the neighborhoods and especially got an area in Congress Park the 12th Avenue this you know it's about a half mile from. It's not a rail station, but it's it's a corridor. But maybe it's walkable to transit on Colfax. But again, there's mixed use there, small or large, that they could be developing and may not be good for the character of that neighborhood. So I'm really concerned about about this sort of support, the three stories for Colfax, but I'm not sure that's good for the whole city. So I'm really torn from from what all my constituents are telling me about the need for less exemptions from parking. So I look forward to hearing more discussion and I hope we'll have more discussion about this. And unfortunately, I think I'll have to vote against the the amendments. And I. Okay. Thank you, Councilman New. I'll just say that I think Councilwoman Sussman brings up an important conversation around this around our transit corridors. It's not just Colfax, but it's it's many corridors within our city that that are affected by this from federal, colorable, a ton of corridors that we have in the city. And so I think it's important that we look at it. I think it's in a compromise of the compromise of the compromise. And it looks at just transit corridors, not the other part of this bill, which is outside of the transit corridor. So I'm in support of this. You know, this this council, the city has talked about the importance of affordable housing. And one of the things we did in the discussions, the nine months of discussions we had around this is talk about, you know, what is the actual cost of one parking spot and how does that actually affect housing prices? How does that affect the cost of overall development? And we know that it is higher costs. We know that any parking spot now on a on a lot to create, it is between 20 and $35,000. And so when we add this, we are adding costs to our residents for the particular services they're looking for. So I will be supporting councilwoman assessments amendment moving forward. So it's been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call. SUSSMAN I black? Clark No. Espinosa No. Flynn No. Gilmore I. Herndon High. Cashman can eat. Lopez No, no, no. Ortega No, Mr. President. I. All right. Madam Speaker, I'm sorry. Close voting announced the results. Six, eight, seven, eight. Six, eight, seven nays. The amendment to council Bill 161 has failed. Madam Secretary, we're just going to move on to the next item if everything is right. Okay, great. Okay. All other bills for introductions are ordered published. We're now ready for the block vote on resolutions and bills for final consideration council members. Remember that this is a consent or or block vote and you will need to vote otherwise. This is your last chance to call an item for a separate vote. Councilman Lopez, will you put the resolutions for adoptions and the bills for final consideration on final passage on the floor? Thank you, Mr. President. I move that the following resolutions be adopted. So I'm sorry. Our series of 2017. This is 365 337 363 360. Three 7408. Yeah. All right. All right, Madam Secretary. Two weeks. There's more. There's bills on final. Yep. The bills on the. Final bills are fine. I still use the paper. Yeah. All right. In the bills for final consideration. 338. 330. 331. 332. 333. 343. 29. 352 Oh, right. It has been moved and seconded. Ma'am. Secretary, call black clerk. I Espinosa. I Flynn. I Gilmore. I Herndon Cashman. Kenny Lopez. I knew Ortega. I assessment i Mr. President. I Please go to the voting announce results 3913 ays the resolutions have been adopted in the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass since there are no public hearings, and if there are no objections from members of Council, we will not take a recess in other business before us.
AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance amending the Denver Zoning Code to revise parking exemptions for pre-existing small zone lots. Approves a text amendment to the Denver Zoning Code to revise the Pre-Existing Small Zone Lot parking exemption. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 2-14-17. On 2-27-17, Council held this item in Committee to 3-20-17. Amended 3-20-17 to ensure that the parking exemption is applied for all uses. Some parking requirements are calculated based on gross floor area while others are on number of units and not explicitly for gross floor area, to further clarify the legislative intent of the proposed bill to emphasize the city’s commitment to more comprehensively address transportation demand management strategies in the short term, and to require a Zoning Permit with Informational Notice for all new buildings on Pre-Existing Small Zone Lots that request to use the small lot parking exemption; Enables all expansions to existing buildings to receive the full parking exemption; and clarifies at what point an “existing building” is considered	DenverCityCouncil_02272017_17-0161	2	I Please close the voting. Announce the results. Nine Ice nine Ice Council Bill 153 has been ordered publish Madam Secretary, put the next item on our screen, which is one I believe is 161. I move that council bill 161 be held in committee and brought back to the floor of council on Monday, March 20th, 2017. It has moved it. It has been second it comments. So. Members of the public council. We had this discussion about the small lots conversation, 60 to 50 lots and trying to figure out a compromise on these. And we heard from several council members and folks in the public that there was just not enough time to consider these two competing bills put up put forward by me and our president, pro Tem Clark. And so what I am asking is that, one, we delay the first reading of this bill to March 20th, and we also extend the moratorium, and the moratorium will be voted on in a block its it's council bill 277 until May 20th. And I wanted to give everyone May 26. I want to give everyone a new date calendar of which things will take place. So tonight we will be filing a 60 day moratorium extension February 27th, on Monday, March 20th. First reading will be of the small parking lot text amendment and that it will be the second reading for the 60 day moratorium extension because you'll need 30 days there on April 17th. Second reading of the small lot parking text amendment will happen and that will also be the public hearing. And then May 26, the moratorium will expire. So that's what I am proposing to members of Council to give us about 60 more days to have conversation. We will have this in committee, in the luti committee, unfortunately. Councilwoman Sussman and Councilman New will not be available, but I can chair that committee and we will have a longer discussion on small lots. If that is acceptable, please vote in favor of of Council Bill 161. It's been moved in second. Any more comments? Madam Secretary, roll call. Clarke I. Flynn I. Gilmore I. Cashman I can eat. Lopez I knew with black eye. Mr. President. I was wondering as a. Result. Nine eyes. Nine eyes. Constable 161 has been held in committee till Monday, March 20/20, 2017. Okay, this concludes all the other items that need to be called out and looked down to make sure we got it right. All right, Councilman Clark. Yeah. That's all the items. Okay. All of the bills for introductions are order published. We're now ready for the block. Votes on resolutions and bills on final consideration. Council members, please remember that this is a consent or a block vote and you will need to vote. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Councilman. Clerk, will you please put resolutions for adoption and the bills on final consideration for final passage on floor? Yes, Mr. President, I move that resolutions be adopted and bills on final consideration be placed upon final consideration, and do pass in a walk for the following items. 147 154 164 165 166 146 157 158 134 and 123. All right. It has been moved in second it matter. Secretary Roll Call. Black Eye Clerk I Flynn. I. Gilmore I Cashman I can eat. Lopez I knew Mr. President. I please close voting in US results. 99 ays resolutions have been adopted and the bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass since there are no public hearings tonight, I heard somebody say, Hey man, there are no objections from members of council.
Recommendation to respectfully request City Council approval of the 2017 Federal Legislative Agenda as recommended by the Federal Legislation Committee.	LongBeachCC_03072017_17-0161	3	Motion passes. Hey, thank you very much. Now we're moving on to item 22. Communication from Vice Mayor Richardson recommendation to request City Council approval of the 2017 federal legislative agenda as recommended by the Federal Legislation Committee. There's a motion and a second Vice Mayor. So just a few updates here we have. So we met in November on November 15th to review staff's recommended recommended changes for the 2017 federal legislative agenda. The committee made some fairly substantive changes to the agenda last year when we were reorganized and consolidated some of the statements that may have been repetitive in years past. And because we made so many, so many changes in the last update, and as the new presidential administration gets up and running, the first large committee will be focused on protecting existing revenues that the city current receive currently receives from the federal government, such as the Housing Choice Voucher Program, commonly known as Section eight, CDBG, other HUD programs. We're also going to take a look at workforce programs and supporting those as well. And our existing legislative agenda already empowers us to do that. The committee heard that, you know, the committee may have heard that there's one particular area of the of the legislative agenda, legislative agenda that could use some additional language. That's the area of violence prevention and services to stem the homeless crisis in L.A. County. And because of all of our work, our mayor, city council, city staff have done around violence prevention staff recommended that we add language in the public safety section to support federal legislation that would assist with the implementation of violence prevention programs and in the area of homeless prevention. Staff recommended that the City Council support the city, support federal assistance toward establishing substance use treatment facilities in the region. Language to support mental health services is already existing there. Our committee voted to receive a file. All of staff's recommended and recommended changes and for those to the City Council for Adoption tonight. Since our meeting in November, a number of executive orders signed by the new president make it so that we need to update an existing statement in our in our agenda supporting the expansion of dockets. Read one that reads supporting federal legislation that maintains existing allowances for undocumented immigrants to who qualify for the DOCA program to remain in the United States, as well as being as well as any legislation that protects safety and well-being of all Californians by ensuring state and local race resources are not used to support deportations, collect information about individuals or religious beliefs or affiliations that ultimately hurt California's economy. Specific to the DOCA program, we're talking about immigrants who enter the U.S. before the 16th birthday and before June 27 are currently in high school or high school graduate honorably discharged in the military under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012, and have not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor or other or three other misdemeanors otherwise pose a threat to national security. So these recommended changes come because there's been, you know, since these executive orders, a number of bills that have come out. And we wanted to make sure that our language and our letter agenda is wide and comprehensive enough to support different bills, whether it's, you know, Feinstein's bill or other other people's bills that go forward, it still maintains the intent to support the DOCA language. And so that is sort of a highlight on what we're doing tonight on the failed agenda. Thanks. Thank you, Councilmember Yuri. Councilmember Gonzales. I'll defer Gonzales first. Councilman Gonzales. Q I don't know what's going on, Mayor. I'm sorry. No. It's it's Election Day. I know. That's okay. I just want to say thank you to Diana and to Vice Mayor Richardson. And now we have Councilmember Saranga that will be joining us at our next Fed. Federal legislation relation trip. And so I think vice mayor reiterated many of the new actions that we'll be taking when we go to D.C. and also here on the dais when we're discussing Long Beach initiatives. But the things that kind of pop out in my mind, the items, of course, are immigration issues related to DOCA and the new executive order, specifically with the ban on predominantly Muslim countries environmental protections, which I know we'll have to really look a little bit more into, and then securing our major capital projects like many of the initiatives that we have citywide. I want to make sure that we're securing those and that funding is going through us as we see fit. So thank you very much for your work and I look forward to working with you all again. Thank you. Councilmember Ringo. Thank you, Mayor. It's going to be my first year on this committee and I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be quite a challenging year. Obviously, we've had a change in in our presidency and a different focus. And so I'm looking forward to advocating for the city on behalf of a Long Beach. Thank you. Councilmember Pearce. Yeah, I just want to say, you know, I took the time to read through everything on the agenda and I just it made me really proud to be a part of this council and to look at everything from immigration to gun control, violence prevention, affordable housing. A lot of the things that we aspire to do that sometimes are challenging and tough. And I know that we can't do it all, but I just really thank you for making sure that this is comprehensive and that we, despite what's happening at the federal level, are continuing to advocate and protect those that live in our communities here. So thank you. Thank you. Any public comment on this saying please cast your votes. Councilman, your anger. Motion passes.
"AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance amending the Denver Zoning Code to revise parking exemptions for(...TRUNCATED)	DenverCityCouncil_03202017_17-0161	4	"All right. Pursuant to Council Bill 3.7 consideration of the Council, Bill 285 will be postponed fo(...TRUNCATED)
"AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance amending the Denver Zoning Code to revise parking exemptions for(...TRUNCATED)	DenverCityCouncil_02212017_17-0161	5	"11 Eyes, Resolution 109 has been adopted as amended. All right, Madam Secretary King, please pull u(...TRUNCATED)
"AS AMENDED a bill for an ordinance amending the Denver Zoning Code to revise parking exemptions for(...TRUNCATED)	DenverCityCouncil_04032017_17-0161	6	"Council is reconvene. We have one final vote to take on a previously previously amended council bil(...TRUNCATED)
"Report of the City Clerk on the Certificate of Sufficiency for Initiative No. 134, concerning appro(...TRUNCATED)	SeattleCityCouncil_06282022_CF 314495	7	"Councilmember Peterson has items four, five and six, and Councilmember Nelson has item number seven(...TRUNCATED)
"A bill for an ordinance vacating a portion of the right-of-way adjacent to 2099 Chestnut Place boun(...TRUNCATED)	DenverCityCouncil_10282019_19-0776	8	"All right. Seeing done council members Monday, November 4th is the last night to offer amendments. (...TRUNCATED)
"Report of the City Clerk on the Certificate of Sufficiency for Initiative No. 134, concerning appro(...TRUNCATED)	SeattleCityCouncil_07052022_CF 314495	9	"Agenda item two. Clip 4314495. Report of the City Clerk on the Certificate of Sufficiency for initi(...TRUNCATED)

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Overview

MeetingBank, a benchmark dataset created from the city councils of 6 major U.S. cities to supplement existing datasets. It contains 1,366 meetings with over 3,579 hours of video, as well as transcripts, PDF documents of meeting minutes, agenda, and other metadata. On average, a council meeting is 2.6 hours long and its transcript contains over 28k tokens, making it a valuable testbed for meeting summarizers and for extracting structure from meeting videos. The datasets contains 6,892 segment-level summarization instances for training and evaluating of performance.

Data Structure

{
  "id": 0,
  "uid": "SeattleCityCouncil_06132016_Res 31669",
  "summary": "A RESOLUTION encouraging as a best practice ...",
  "transcript": "The report of the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic ..."
}

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset
meetingbank = load_dataset("huuuyeah/meetingbank")

train_data = meetingbank['train']
test_data = meetingbank['test']
val_data = meetingbank['validation']

def generator(data_split):
  for instance in data_split:
    yiled instance['id'], instance['summary'], instance['transcript']

Acknowledgement

Please cite the following paper in work that makes use of this dataset:

MeetingBank: A Benchmark Dataset for Meeting Summarization
Yebowen Hu, Tim Ganter, Hanieh Deilamsalehy, Franck Dernoncourt, Hassan Foroosh, Fei Liu
In main conference of Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL'23), Toronto, Canada.

Bibtex

@inproceedings{hu-etal-2023-meetingbank,
    title = "MeetingBank: A Benchmark Dataset for Meeting Summarization",
    author = "Yebowen Hu and Tim Ganter and Hanieh Deilamsalehy and Franck Dernoncourt and Hassan Foroosh and Fei Liu",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)",
    month = July,
    year = "2023",
    address = "Toronto, Canada",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
}

Multi-media Resources

MeetingBank dataset will be hosted at Zenodo. The audio files of each meeting will be hosted individually on Huggingface. All resources will includes meeting audio, transcripts, meetingbank main JSON file, summaries from 6 systems and human annotations.

Text & Audio: zenodo, Huggingface(splits, audio&transcripts)

Videos: All meeting videos can be found in https://archive.org/