[Music] foreign [Music] thank you everybody for being here I'm going to call this meeting to order this is the land use planning and zoning committee of the city council all counselors are present and counselor Jones is in attendance via Zoom this is a hybrid meeting where all participants will be in person our video or audio conference members of the public had the opportunity to address the committee if they had signed up for the public comment period per the rules published on the agenda and on our website Friday Council staff has confirmed that no individuals signed up to speak this evening we are going to go right into agenda item a counselor Britton thank you madam chair item a is r156 amending floor substitute r0847 with respect to the composition of the Rail Yards Advisory Board and move a due pass first and a second by counselor grout um uh counselors The Rail Yards Advisory Board was created uh as indicated by the original resolution back in 08 uh roughly the time period in which we purchased the Rail Yards um as a city at that time um I think the desire of the neighborhoods and and of the council was that the Royal is not would not just you know be an investment that we make and then that can can become some of the that might might just be at the whim of of any mayor or change of administration change of counsel and so we also wanted to give some real serious credibility to the neighborhoods joining The Rail Yards South Broadway and barellas and and to um give them the most accountability on the part of the city is possible so we created a board that includes the electeds from the area includes uh the county commissioner the city council or the senator the representatives from the area includes a member uh from the Urban Land Institute as a reality check on discussions about development um and also the Governor has had a seat hasn't been filled in recent past but has had a seat on the board um I think that covers the voting members of the board and then each neighborhood also has a voting member and and we ask that the neighbors elect those members and we're trying to clarify that a little bit that it be done according to the neighborhood recognition coordinate standards for uh an advertised meeting when they elect their officers so we're updating this a little bit the board has worked very well so I meant to say the mayor has a representative which usually has been the Cao and um so it's a good well-rounded group and um and it's worked well um you know we've had fits and starts with The Rail Yards you know we had a previous development team that didn't pan out and we did a reset that's all fine the kind of decisions that that uh have to be made but um but the board has worked well but there are a few holes in it and this is really kind of a cleanup more than anything uh and as as uh described in the in the write-up um the uh we clarify and this has been a de facto situation that I've been the chair of the board I've been on the council uh the resolution was silent about that but that's kind of the way it's been and we have the staff to help staff the board and that's worked out pretty well so we're clarifying that the city councilor from that that represents the District of districts were to change in the future would still be whichever city council counselor represents the district would be a member and a chair of the board and then um also addresses the issue of the state senate redistricting where there's some changes there that are going to go in effect in a couple of years IT addresses that with regard to the state senator representing District 12 which will be changed to District 13 in on January 1st of 2025 and then clarifying the election of the representatives from Burleson South Broadway and uh and it also as and this is sort of just a recognition of the way it's been so good that we've had members such as uh former uh house leader uh Rick miera was very active on the board and uh he's no longer a representative of the area but he comes every meeting and he's got a lot of information and we've had also neighborhood Representatives who served in the past who still come to the meetings and still weigh in so we're making a place on the committee for ex-officio members and just they do have a seat at the table or a zoom call or whatever but they don't have voting rights so that's pretty much it thank you councilor Benton are there any questions on this proposal seeing none we'll move to a vote um we need to do a roll call vote since there's somebody on line okay go ahead councilor Bain yes counselor growth yes councilor Jones yes counselor Lewis yes that's your feeblecoin yes that passes on a 5-0 vote great we are going to move on to agenda item um B and I'm going to move this for counselor Davis r158 amending the level a community frame framework plan for Mesa Del Sol to change the allowable maximum Building height in the 92 acre urban center from 60 feet to 80 feet and up to 128 feet with applicable height bonuses and would not change the maximum Building height in the 88 88 acre Community Center of 60 feet but would allow up to 84 feet with applicable height bonuses I'll move a due pass and seconded by counselor grout this r158 is a quasi-judicial request which requires special procedures to allow the applicant staff and the public the opportunity to speak this agenda item will proceed as follows one we're going to have Council planning staff do a presentation for five minutes then we'll have the applicant's presentation that will be limited to 10 minutes if we had public testimony which we would do not we would then go to testimonial rebuttal then we'll go to cross-examination by anyone who spoke nope that one's not applicable either then we'll go to comments by the planning department if they have any that'll be five minutes and again Council planning staff will do closing comments of five minutes um City staff and the applicant must be sworn in if you will be speaking to this item as a staff member or an applicant please raise your right hand do you affirm under penalty of perjury that your testimony today will be true and I saw everyone's mouth move so we're good Ms Schultz please begin with the Council planning staff five-minute presentation thank you madam chair and counselors let me get my screen sharing here okay good evening everyone I will not reiterate the long title that the chair so kindly read for me this is a request for Mesa Del Sol for some Regional context on where Mesa Del Sol is located it's in kind of the Southeastern part of Albuquerque located holy within District Six there's a map up on the screen for you and there's a big red circle around where Mesa Del Sol is Mesa Del Sol is governed by a hierarchy of framework plans there's a level a plan a level B plan and a level C plan those go from kind of most um kind of big big scale visioning all the way down to very site-specific detail what the council is looking at tonight is only an amendment to the level a plan which governs all 13 000 Acres of Mesa Del Sol the amendment request within that level a framework plan is very specific um we'll dive into the details of that now within Mesa Del Sol there are various kind of land use categories depicted on the map here and in the staff report provided to the council the changes proposed are very specifically to the community center and the urban center which are depicted in red circles here the request from the applicant is to amend the height allowances within both the urban center and the community center um I'll quickly run through this table that summarizes the allowances today and the requested allowances from the applicant in the urban center today there's a maximum height restriction of 60 feet with a proposed maximum height of either 80 feet or if all allowed new bonuses were to be used a potential of 128 feet today for both the urban center and Community Center there are no Building height bonuses contemplated what this amendment also contemplates is four new types of bonuses for context the integrated development ordinance generally allows building hype bonuses so I suspect that this idea of building height bonuses for the framework plan was maybe stolen from that those good ideas in the Ido um so the first one is a ground floor commercial bonus where if you're doing commercial uses on the ground floor of a mixed-use building that building could be an additional 12 feet generally 12 feet is about one story there's a structured parking bonus where if you're going to put Subterranean parking or a parking garage underneath the building you would also get another 12 feet of Building height bonus a Workforce housing bonus where if the development is providing a certain percentage of Workforce housing again another 12 feet or one story and then privately owned public space this is a building height bonus that the Ido doesn't contemplate so this was a new one for me if a development is going to provide a certain amount of square footage of privately owned public space that to incentivize that you could also get another 12 feet or one story um so those are the proposed changes for the the urban center the community center is very similar in that they're the maximum height restriction today is 60 feet The Proposal um would be that 60 feet stays as the maximum height for the community center however a project could utilize two of those four bonuses that I just listed to get an additional 24 feet or two stories so they wouldn't be able to do all four of the bonuses but they could pick and choose two if that's what fit their their development to get an additional two stories additionally specific to the community centers this idea of kind of a step down requirement the community center I'll go back to my map for a moment is located near some of the low density lower density residential area I believe that's shown in yellow around the community center this new step down requirement would say that any building within 30 feet of any of that residential area would be limited to that base height of 60 feet so any of those bonuses that they might be able to utilize within 30 feet they just couldn't and I'll note that that step down requirement is only applicable in the community center and not the urban center uh the review and approval process for this request is as follows the city council is the final review and decision making body this body was the original approval body for the framework plan when it was first approved therefore any amendments to the plan have to come all the way up to this body in perpetuity the application is subject to the review and decision criteria in the Ido that's section 66i3 there's about seven or eight review and decision criteria I can dive into the details of those if you'd like but I don't have them on this here this request was first heard by the environmental Planning Commission earlier this year in May they only had one hearing on the matter that's where they're kind of diving deep into those review and decision criteria taking public testimony and the applicant is justifying the request to the body based on those criteria there was public comments by only two members one representing the nearby neighborhood association who has kind of participated in the application since its Inception and also a representative from the Pueblo of Isleta um that's my five minute timer my last sentence is that the EPC did recommend approval to the city council for this request with that I can stand for any questions thank you Miss Schultz I think we'll move on to the applicant's presentation and come back to q a at the end so go ahead and come forward introduce yourself and you've got 10 minutes great um thank you uh Madam chair and counselors my name is Jim strosher I'm principal of consensus planning and it's a real pleasure to be number one back before you in person and and in this in this setting uh but also to bring forward uh this project we're very excited about I think there's a lot of things a lot of really positive things happening at Mesa Del Sol right now and this uh this requested Amendment really came from looking at the vision for Mesa Del Sol and and also as Ms Schultz indicated maybe stealing some ideas from uh the Ido there's some really good ideas in there so um and that is the idea of height bonuses and tying those to things that will further the objectives of the plan and so we have two mixed-use centers in Mesa Del Sol and we really realize that in order to achieve the goals in the plan which is really combining job creation and sustainable urban community planning in order to balance environmental resources economic objectives and social amenities in a community that is forward-looking with a highly defined sense of place in order to do that we wanted to make it available to increase the intensity within the community center as well as the urban center areas within the plan we met with the with the community representatives and it became very clear that um and and we changed our thinking because of the conversation at with the community is that they felt comfortable with leaving the base height restriction at the community center at 60 feet and allowing up to two bonuses they liked all four of the bonuses but they didn't they didn't think it was appropriate to apply more than two of them to any given project and so that was definitely um at their at their direction we agreed with that and we took that forward and they have supported that with the urban center which is down located down by the interstate we did not have the same concerns and so we felt that it was appropriate to allow more intensity in that location in the neighborhood was very supportive of that as well and they see that ultimately as an amenity for them as residents so I wanted to make those comments and now I'll turn it over to Mr David Campbell with Mason thank you good evening Madam chair and counselors I'm David Campbell I'm Chief counsel for Mesa Del Sol and I I want to reiterate and sort of give some context to this Mesa Del Sol is governed by a master plan that was developed in around 2005 so we've had 18 years of a very robust and resilient plan there haven't been that many amendments to it and at the time it was a four-sided plan developed by the the guru of new urbanism Peter calthorpe who made sure that this would be a place that we could live work play create recreate all in the same area and it had some principles that were at their time ahead of their time such as sustainability and walkability and bikeability and so on so we're seeing some success with that we've found that we were attractive to places like Netflix and now as of last week maxion and we want to build higher not wider we want to not have sprawl we want to build up and so this will allow us not require us but allow us to do the kind of development in the mixed use areas where we have residential dwellings where we can add structured parking and so on in ways that are that are urban center and Community Center related so we like the idea of the bonus structure that is borrowed from the IBO thank you councilor Jones and councilor Benton for uh for your work on that and we also believe that it's better for us now that we're attracting these new employers we've got to have places for their employees to live we want them to live right there nearby and this will assist us in being able to do that I would urge your support and be ready to answer any questions you may have thank you thank you Mr Campbell and the next item is comments by the planning department but I don't believe we have anybody Madam chair Ms Jones from the planning department is on Zoom Ms Jones do you have any comments on the application but thank you for that um no at this time uh planning department staff does not have any further comments on this application thank you all right let's move to Council planning staff closing comments and then we'll go to q a from the committee Madam chair no further comments but happy to pull up any Maps or answer any questions that the committee may have okay questions from the committee all right I have a couple um uh Miss Schultz I I know I asked about this all the time but um you know I I don't believe that we have the tribal consultation mou signed with Mesa Del Sol yet and I'm wondering what you can tell me about the status of that Madam chair based on the EPC record a member of the Pueblo of Isleta did provide public testimony at EPC related to this matter I'll note that generally they said that the Pueblo is supportive of these changes in this request however they did comment that they've been waiting on an mou from Mesa Del Sol that has not yet been executed um I would defer further comment on that to the folks at Mesa Del Sol um about that okay thank you um Madam chair I'm glad to address that we have been in discussions um being a lawyer I hate this phrase but it's with the lawyers uh and it's going on between council at this time Council for the Pueblo and also uh for Mesa Del Sol we haven't reached an accord but our understanding is that the concerns that the Pueblo has is not in mixed use commercial development as much as industrial work and that's what we're trying to reach an accord about and have an mou signed but our indication is and they're not objecting to this this uh this change so thank you and Miss Schultz is that your understanding from that from this at the EPC that they're definitely not objecting to this change Madam chair um yeah they testified pretty directly it's it's in the record that they do not object to the change but would like to see movement on the mou as would I um do we have a timeline for that mou um Madam chair uh no we don't have a timeline and it's it's an iterative process um one of one of the difficulties and let me be candid is that um there are sovereign issues here that this is the this the city council is the zoning Authority for the City of Albuquerque and for uh another sovereign to ask us as either landowners or developers to stand in the shoes of this body of the city council uh is not something that can be done because after all the council is the zoning Authority for the City of Albuquerque so for us to limit this sovereign's rights abilities and Authority is a difficulty so we're trying to figure out how to get through that and we may end up visiting with you and your Council about how that how that gets done understood um oh counselor Lewis about unsure yeah since uh Mr Campbell brought that up I think it's a good question uh Miss runkyo if you would address the would you address that if is there basically um this agreement and it makes sense that it would really you know limit our ability as we're the presiding you know we're the we're the uh municipality over this issue but I mean apparently at an mou an understanding like that with another uh you know government um are we is that I guess I want to hear the legal legality of that I mean I mean is something like that what's the Precedence for it what's the legality of it does it put the city in any kind of a liability uh Madam chair counselor Lewis my understanding is that we would not be a party to that agreement and so we would not be bound by it so um if we're not bound by it then how would the uh how would Mesa Del Sol be bound by it Madam chair Council Lewis as a as a party to that agreement um they would be bound to follow whatever ends up in that agreement but yet we could override anything like that any any agreement we would we would the city council would be able to override it or it just wouldn't apply to I mean what would be binding I mean how could they go into a binding agreement on how they could develop that property um and and the city wouldn't be affected by that Madam chair councilor Lewis a parallel might be how the city considers private covenants which is a binding agreement between a property owner and an HOA type of organization which do sometimes set their own kind of development rules such as fence Heights plant types Etc the city in no way can enforce those that is up to that HOA and that property owner because it's a private agreement between those two parties um I think this would be very similar in that if there was any kind of development regulations which I I don't understand that the intent of this mou is to contain anything of that matter because that all lives within the master plan but the city would not be able to enforce that mou in any way this the city would not be able to enforce it but if it's conflicting what the city's ordinances would say the tribal agency be able to enforce it or Madam chair counselor Lewis if there was something in the mou that say that the city could not enforce um they would have to go through kind of a civil litigation process between those two parties um because the the city is only responsible for enforcing ordinances that we have been party to or agreements that we have been party to um the city just simply would not take part in that in any way Mesa Del Sol Mesa Del Sol nor the the Pueblo of Isleta would be able to come to the city and say our private agreement said this so you need to enforce it we just simply wouldn't do that is the city involved in in the negotiations at all you madam chair councilor Lewis no this is solely between Mesa Del Sol and the Pueblo of Isleta and Mr Campbell would you would it would would you all want the city to be a part of the negotiations in that in that regard beneficial to both parties I think that that's that's not our desire um because the the way we get changes made to our plans or approvals done is by coming to this Sovereign this city uh this city council and um so any attempt to create another um Authority by another Sovereign over the city's uh territory or sovereignty uh wouldn't be appropriate and I don't think that that works I think the closest analogy is what Ms Schultz says and that is to arrive at some form of covenants that would not be uh the same as zoning but query well we'll see the the possible the covenants or the agreements that you might make with uh with the tribal agency being in you know I guess in conflict with the city ordinances they easily could be and that's that's the kind of thing that is our concern and what we want to avoid let me just say this is a process it's a work in process and it is uh it is advancing um but it it requires a great deal more consultation the other part of this is sort of a good neighbor agreement to make sure that we are Consulting with each other as we develop our respective properties which are adjacent to each other uh in a similar way we consult with Kirtland Air Force Base and the department of energy which is another neighbor of ours we sit uh frequently with members of that entity to make sure that we are Consulting and so a consultation agreement is quite different than a covenant and enforcement land use enforcement agreement the agreement with the tribal agency is it similar to other we believe that it should be about consultation and deliberation but not to attempt to usurp or interfere with this sovereign's rights of land use control and Authority you're concerned that it's going a Direction that's not the case that it's uh that it could be recommendations of the tribal uh Council there that's different than a in an understanding or a covenant type situation that you might have with Kirtland Air Force Base or the Department of Defense I think uh we are working on that process right now I mean that's the kind of thing that we you you sit down and you try to uh work out Wordsmith make sure that everybody understands what's uh what's intended and not overstep our bounds and that's the concern is whether we would be overstepping our bounds councilor Benton yeah you know tribal consultation is a big deal and it's really important and I think it's easy to some of the discussions that have gone on with regard to that for instance Petroglyph uh zoning question right these are these are areas where you know the city was criticized or not being as proactive as we may could have been with regard to do issues of consultation with the tribes the pueblos um but I do think this is different in that this really is an agreement that that and I'm sure it would be carefully crafted to not step on our zoning Authority but that would that would deal with a consultation and create a process for that to occur um and it would be outside of the purview of cities owning so I think it's in the nature of a private agreement of a private entity with a tribal uh entity that could have interest on a neighboring property such as cultural artifacts or things of that sort that might uh I'm just guessing it's the type of things folks will be interested in and you know certainly suddenly environmental um issues uh even our own zoning code we we keep an arm's length from those depending on on what we're talking about air quality and so forth as you know um so I think this is something that that should be able to be worked out and I'm happy that it is moving forward uh between Mesa Del Sol and and the Pueblo but uh I think in terms of our Authority right music my sense okay I you know I just I just want to say that I think tribal consultation is incredibly important um we've been having this conversation for some time now and the answer is always we're working on an mou and it's not there yet and we just keep having additional legislation come through our purview and um I just don't want the the Isleta Pueblo to feel that they are not getting the good neighborly consideration that other neighbors do and so I would just encourage that that mou be prioritized and finalized so that they can stop coming to our EPC hearings and saying gee we sure would like to have this finalized so any other questions comments all right we will move to a vote counselor Ben yes counselor grow yes councilor Jones yes counselor Lewis yes that's right people corn yes and then while I have you here I believe that um is there a reason that we need immediate action on this bill um yes yes Madam chair there is we would like to have this considered at the very next council meeting so that we can continue to entertain requests from people who want to develop in these areas and having the assurance that the council has ruled on this will be um will be very helpful in those discussions and is this at all tied into the max project I would say not directly uh at this time this this process has been going on for longer than we've had the maxion development but that certainly adds weight and urgency to our being able to get started on the development of new facilities is it the will of the committee to move for immediate action I'll move immediate action all right and seconded by counselor grab go to a real call foreign yes counselor grow yes counselor Jones yes counselor Lewis yes yes I'm a five zero vote all right thank you very much there being no further business this loves committee meeting is adjourned all right [Music] thank you [Music]