[Music] is it 11 exactly yet maybe don't do it good morning everyone good morning welcome to the zoning committee it is august 22nd i am mercy call your overstreet you're a chair for zoning and i am joined by my colleagues to my right we have mary norwood and to next sitting next to her and right next to me is council member andrea boone and to my far left we have council member baron amos next to him is council member shook next to him is council member amir feroki and we're being joined by councilmember westmoreland also so we have a full house full house i don't think this has happened before on zoning happy august so with that being said let's get started um i move to adopt the agenda second by how it should please prepare the vote the vote is open and the vote is closed at seven years as uranus thank you and with that we'll move on down and i move to approve the minutes second by shook please prepare the vote the vote is open the vote is closed seven years and this is the portion where we get to public comment do we have any public comment prophet signed up for public comment and you have three minutes forget that it cannot be um anything that's on our legislative agenda for today cannot those go to the zone review board y'all know my name prophet harrison the same prophet that they told you it was going to happen but nobody wanted to believe until it happened right okay now i want to talk about martyr bus station that for one i called them twice they never showed up and i was in danger some i don't know what's going on i don't know what's going on with them and some part of atlanta police suit and i'll be back at one o'clock okay i called mata this guy was threatening me now i can handle myself but i called i was on the phone with the police modern police i'm talking to her she told me to hold on for a minute this guy's threatening me he's getting ready to beat me up wait so he thought he was gonna be young i'm on the phone with the police they never showed up see that's the problem with people i'm talking about me i ain't talking about nobody else this is what i observed and also i observed i observed me this person you're talking to the prophet right here i'm in the middle of two guys organ both of them got guns on modern station police never showed up that's the problem that we had with police now kids everywhere there were kids on this buggy mo monopolies never showed up now i'm saying yesterday yesterday i'm walking through the modern states marijuana everywhere police over there they ain't saying nothing that's what i'm trying to tell you now you're arresting folk for walking through there for 2015. they arrested me for 2057 for coming through motor station last two weeks ago three black guys but you i called you and you didn't show up that's why folks sue mother that's why people don't like police officers see but y'all coming in and looking like why are you going out why this woman gonna write this man because they being mistreated much less what's happening on these jobs with racism on these jobs and what's going on in the jail station homeless people living underneath bridges see but y'all act like nobody down here protesting and saying stuff this is a city we all govern each other this is not about just i'm just upset at the church about homelessness i'm the same way at my church i talk to you the same way i talk to my pastor so i'm talking to lawyers thank you for commenting today going forward our public issue should really pertain to zoning just not the ones that's actually on the agenda thank you so much though what you said we needed all of that information so we're moving on now we have something that we don't have that often that's a presentation so we would uh like to invite the city of atlanta zoning ordinance rewrite update to start the um the presentation introduce yourself sir good morning honorable zoning committee my name is caleb rosico i am project manager for the consultant team for the zoning ordinance rewrite and joining me today is bob zucker who is providing legal guidance for our team let me make sure that uh this works before i proceed what i wanted to do this morning was to brief the committee on some of the work to date but very importantly tell you about what we're going to be beginning next week which is really the second phase of this process focused on engaging public involvement now as you know we finished up the process last year with a series of idea labs which included alternative options for very high level approaches to the zoning ordinance since that time we've been doing a lot of work to get us to where we are today and i wanted to share some of that with you the meeting next week is one of four workshops that are going to be incredibly important for the community to attend because these are where we begin to develop the actual content direction that's going to go in the zoning ordinance as you'll see in a moment we've done a lot of work we've identified many issues and we really need to hear from the community to understand what the diverse needs of various neighborhoods are and so we've put together a series of four workshops that move from very general to very specific and i want to emphasize the fact that we're going to be taking baby steps here in this process because we want to make sure that we hear from everyone and then very importantly i need to make sure that the recommendations that i make to the office of zoning development which invariably will go to the city council are truly grounded in the needs of atlanta's neighborhoods so that's a a personal commitment that both myself and mr zechler and others on the team bring so with that said the four upcoming meetings are focused first on city-wide issues uh zoning regulations that are more about the structure of the code how do we handle zoning districts how do we handle parking how do we handle design issues from that we're then going to go finer and final grain with a series of meetings and exercises focused on the atlanta city design growth areas which are the more high intensity areas of the city and then finally early next year we're going to get to what i think is going to be in many ways the most important conversation of this effort which is how do we address growth and development in the the conservation areas really the beloved trade neighborhoods of the city and so again the idea is to go from very general to very specific with each step in the process providing feedback into the next now i wanted to remind everyone that we are also supported by a very great outreach team uh content consulting who has been hopefully you've seen some of the signs they've been putting around the city advertising for the upcoming meetings they're putting together email blasts social media etc and we've put together a great website with all of this information atl zoning.com that is where we're going to share all of the materials from the process all of the workshop items and very importantly virtual exercises for those who cannot attend one of the meeting dates additionally for those who do not have internet access we set up a hotline zero one 404-546-01 six so that they can leave their comments and then of course conventional approaches like email or youtube are available so with that said um i wanted to talk to you a little bit now about what we've been working on to get to the very important part of the process that we're in as a reminder zoning is the tool that determines what can be built in various parts of the city but very very very important and this is something i can't stress enough zoning is a tool of the comprehensive plan and it is a tool of various city policies and so we are going to focus more on making sure that we have the right kind of tools that atlanta's neighborhoods and business districts need at this point in the process rather than talking about necessarily where in the city they might apply and that's important because the zoning code is over 40 years old the last full update was in 1982 and atlanta has changed i'm sure you've all seen this before where you know sort of the time atlanta's zoning ordinance was written was a high point in population the city then decreased in population and then we're now back at an all-time high today but late 1970s atlanta was very different just incredibly different city different ideas about what made great neighborhoods different ideas about what made great business districts and it's important that that while that has worked very well for the city it's time for a refresh it's time for thinking about a new code and so our process as i mentioned is going to focus on the zoning ordinance the written part of the zoning code which is general standards zoning districts etc and we anticipate quite a few changes are going to come out of that our team includes a national code writer a code studio out of austin texas and they've told us that typically when they rewrite a zoning ordinance about 70 remains the same it's just cleaned up and reorganized but you know 30 is typically new updated content so i i think that that 30 percent is is critical and then of course there are a lot of other city ordinances that are not part of the zoning ordinance but work hand in hand so we're going to make sure that whatever we do aligns with tree preservation storm water stream protection and and other city initiatives now i did want to mention that as all of you know but the viewers at home may not the zoning ordinance is only one part of the code there is also the zoning map which designates where different zoning districts go in various parts of the city we are going to be preparing a new zoning map as part of this process because we might change district names or we might come up with new terminology and so we really have to do that from a legal perspective but our team does not anticipate significant changes to that map at this point and again the reason for that is that i'm a planner and as a planner and as someone who's very familiar with the procedures in the city i respect the sanctity of the cdp as the process to determine what zoning should go where in the city so we're going to effectively translate the current zoning map into the new terminology into the new structure build in tools that could then be applied to other parts of the city based on whatever comes out of the updated cdp process but we don't foresee significant map changes at this time and that is again another recommendation from our national code writers rewriting a city's zoning code is very difficult and very um it really affects everyone and those cities that have been successful have separated writing the text from math map changes when you tie them together they don't tend to pass and my my priority is obviously to give the city something that we know can get through the diversity of the city which is why we we strongly focus on on the text at this point so um how did we get here well as you know this is part of a multi-year process that began many years ago with atlanta city design a series of supplemental documents and then in 2017 2018 uh mr zeckler and i and others had the privilege of working with the city on a zoning ordinance diagnostic that sort of laid the foundation for where we are today it included hundreds of interviews literally thousands of comments from the public and identified the important issues that the city needed to look at as part of this full update it also provided a series of shorter term changes that were made as part of the quick fix ones and twos but now we're really at at the important part of the process and as you may have heard this is going to take a while uh we don't expect to have a full zoning ordinance for your consideration until nearly the end of 2024 and i know that's a little ways away but any of you who have dealt with the code which i know you all have will respect the importance of getting it right before we hand in anything to the city council for for consideration and again the idea is to move from very general to very specific over time and so now we're about a third to a half of a way through the process we have done a significant amount of work as i mentioned we got some great feedback from the idea labs at the end of last year about the kind of things that people wanted to see some receptivity to some of the concepts presented and very importantly the option of doing it online and reading everyone's chat was was brilliant because it gives us the opportunity to see what folks are thinking even though they're not you know formally submitting a comment to the city so reading through the chats are are really insightful in terms of what what the community's talking about um and so from that since that time we have updated a new diagnostic if you will that uh will will determine the direction for the actual rewrite we've done some technical analysis and then we started to develop alternatives which are the focus of the the workshops next week so in terms of the technical analysis work we've done some really fascinating synopsis if you will of floor area ratio and special administrative permits in the city for members of the public who are watching floor area ratio is basically density and special administrative permits are a kind of permit that the city has in its various districts and what we found is that a lot of the city outside of you know the downtown midtowns and buckheads are not actually using their floor area ratio a lot of the developments that are coming in are significantly under building and so it it was very useful information for us to think about because far is one of the critical pieces of the code and then of course we've looked at the saps we've looked at the uses and quite frankly the the the whole structure is incredibly confusing and i i have great uh empathy for the office of zoning and development for having to administer it every day because because we can do better we can make it clear we can make it easier to understand and that analysis as well as the ideal lab and as well as the work from 2017 influenced the new updated memo and diagnostic which is a 80 page document that goes through in great detail an analysis of how well the current code does or does not support the atlanta city design and the core values and and it doesn't fully support but it does a fairly good job has identified a lot of areas where the physical framework of the kind of development that the code allows meaning the height the scale the density doesn't fully align with the atlanta city design in a variety of categories and then of course we even looked at how the zoning today relates to those atlanta city design areas and that we found that many of the communities many of the neighborhoods with the newer spi's and the newer quality of life districts align a little bit better and those are often areas that have been proactively rezoned from the city but if you're a neighborhood if you're a community that hasn't had that benefit the codes today don't work as well as they should and those are primarily those those conservation areas that i've talked about additionally um we found that the city design and other policies just don't support many of the other visual visual aspirations of the unicity design open space connectivity uh transitions and that sort of thing and parking and use so all of these ideas which i'm not going to go through are the foundation for this workshop next week and then finally one of our key findings which again the zoning committee will all know is that the current zoning ordinance is very unclear at times um it is sometimes contradictory it sort of it was you can see that it was developed by different authors over different years they had different writing styles so they may think they're saying the same thing but they use different words and so the question logically becomes why are they actually saying the same thing and it's it's just very hard for for the office of zoning to administer it also has a lot of outdated terms um that that quite frankly i had to look up bob knew because he's the zoning attorney but there were used terms and other definitions that i i was not aware of that we need to modernize additionally there are over 200 separate zoning districts today when you factor in sub-areas and and base zoning and so that's a lot of work for your staff and then finally there's just a whole bunch of conflicts um internally within the zoning again about terminology and the way something's worded and then opportunities to improve alignment with with other districts other codes so from that we then looked at a series of ways that we could structure this new zoning code that would begin to meet the policies of the comprehensive development plan the framework of the city design the feedback from the ideal labs and then the feedback from the previous diagnostic and had a series of internal brainstorming sessions where we looked at various code structures i mean do we keep the status quo do we consolidate the code meaning maybe we keep the same districts but we combine some do we go to a really lean ordinance which is sort of a new trend in zoning but it just it doesn't it doesn't meet atlanta's needs it really is is to one size fits all and then at our last idea lab we reviewed this idea of what were called zone strings which effectively was a concept that takes a zoning district and divides it into various parts that can be interchanged so there would be a part about permitted uses which if you've looked at the zoning code you know there's always a section called permitted uses there would be a part about the form of development there may be a part about the the relationship to the street and we realized that we can actually those parts into various modules that can be combined in different ways in different neighborhoods so for example if you find in five years that there is a neighborhood that wants everything to have the same form as r5 but they may want to allow up to four units or five or six units in a building they can keep the form standards they can keep the design standards but they could tweak the use standard so it's almost like a way of making spis and making custom zoning without having to add another chapter to the zoning code and so it's it's a really important tool that i hope you'll join us next week to learn more about because i feel very very strongly that this is what atlanta has needed for a long time to reflect the various needs of the city there's also a documentation of our outreach strategy in there which i've reviewed with you already i won't go through that and then very importantly we know that when we get down the road and we start to have specific regulations to consider that it's really powerful to not speak in the abstract to not say there's a 20-foot transitional yard between c3 and r4 but rather to show how any zoning changes might affect real sites in the city so we're going to be doing a call for nominations starting next week to ask the public to submit properties in the city that they've always felt were important to their community that we can actually apply different zoning concepts to as we begin to think about the code so there's going to be a call for sites across the city and over the next year and a half or two years as we begin to codify we can say okay look we might tweak that setback from 15 feet to 13 feet this is what it would look like on that property or we might change the buffer this is what it would look like on that property i think that's going to be a really useful tool for neighborhoods especially those that haven't had access to professional resources to do planning and design work to understand really how this zoning code will affect them and so i would encourage all the council to uh to let their neighborhood leaders know that that is going to be another part of it we're looking for test sites that vary all across the city we want we want everything from you know maybe maybe the large lot property that that might have one set of issues to the very urban core that may have a different set of issues but diversity across the city diversity across current zoning and diversity across income spectrums is really important to us because we're designing for an incredibly diverse atlanta and then of course the final part of the diagnostic is our esteemed legal team's research into various legal considerations as we move forward and so there's a there's a series that talks about conditional rezonings there's a series that talks about vested rights and then there's a very important series that talks about non-conformities so that's sort of all the background but the really important part of this updated memo and diagnostic is the recommended approach this is this is the this is where the rubber meets the road so this recommended approach contains over 130 unique topics and 130 is a lot but our current zoning ordinance is almost 800 pages so so you know the world we're dealing with and they're grouped by themes so there are topics that relate to preserving neighborhood character there are topics that relate to ensuring housing diversity and their topics that relate to transportation and sometimes you know they don't always align today and we're very aware that they may not always align today but but we need to set the ground for what we're going to be talking about and and so this is this is a tool that does it and so within that framework there are updated recommendations and i'll be quite honest some of these are really specific you know the diagnostic knows that the diagnostic stated some things that i'm very confident will will be very easily doable so for example total open space requirement that's uh that's one of those things that is in the zoning code today that basically requires you to build parking lots if even if you're built because it requires uncovered land but it doesn't actually have to be green space we've known for years that that doesn't make any sense that people really care about green space so what we're recommending is just to get rid of that and that was actually in the 2017 diagnostic but there's a lot of other areas where we need to hear from the community we need to hear from from all of the stakeholders before we can know how to codify so issues of of housing are going to be really really critical to the process issues of transportation are going to be really critical so as you if you do have an opportunity to read through the diagnostic there's a reason some of the recommendations are really definitive those are the ones that myself and our team and i would say probably even ocd recognizes are not going to be hot topics there are things that that are that are relatively easy to do but there are other ones where we've prefaced it with have a conversation about or determine direction or confirm those are all the ones that are really critical for the conversation and so we've broken those into technical updates which are oftentimes the easier ones these are just about clarifying language format clarity making the document more user friendly but those policy changes there's one of those 130 those probably 50 or so that are heavy policy changes are really the focus of the engagement process and again we're going to be taking baby steps we're going to be starting with general and working towards specific and we're going to be crafting a code that can apply both today and can apply in various parts of the city in the future as as the city's need changes so with that said the exercises are also going to incorporate discussion where we encourage folks to think about both current atlanta needs and future needs to respect the importance of the cdp especially with regard to map changes i can't emphasize this enough the cdp is the basis for map changes in the city of atlanta and then incorporate conversations about trade-offs because again some of the policies today some of the the aspirations today are in fact contradictory and so we need to use this process to have a conversation that's that's not legislation before your body or city council early in the process to build a foundation for going forward so with that said i would um thank you very much for the opportunity and love to answer any questions that you may have thank you for that presentation and just bringing us up to date on where we are with our zoning rewrite as you know uh there's a silver lining about what we all went through with um our zoning rewind um stab at it last year um it is that now we have a heightened awareness so people are engaged and really paying attention which we all need so i'm glad that we are here today getting this process started um in a different way that is actually going to take care of of what the city needs i agree with you that is needed um it's not easy kind of like our tree ordinance it's just something that we have to do um and it'll be good for us because we do need to grow in a very special way here in atlanta um i do appreciate and what what i got from the presentation is that we really are looking at atlanta for what is known for and that is all of our different types of neighborhoods and i advocate for that because i think that it's important to preserve the different personalities in all of our neighborhoods i love that we have such a diverse option of of types of lifestyles and living right here in this one city and it really does um when i have friends and family to travel into the city they're amazed they're like it's still is this still atlanta is this atlanta too is this atlanta and i'm always like yes yes yes yes atlanta proper and um just making that better to me is is us winning all in all neighborhoods preserving where we need to growing where we need to and realizing that we have the opportunity to do that so thank you for the presentation i will say that i looked at the card here that talked about the let's go to work where we're engaging in these workshops and i would like to add one more in february if i can yes yes and it's because atlanta goes all the way up to camp creek marketplace we don't stop at 20. and i would like to either go to camp creek marketplace or campbellton road i think we need an engagement up in the far west south south south of atlanta it's pittsburgh yards isn't close enough habitat for humanity isn't close enough trees atlanta isn't close enough and buckhead library isn't close enough so i'd like to add a february thank you okay and with that let's get some questions from our council members uh howard shook well thank you madam chair um it's great to see you guys caleb you haven't changed a bit thank you [Laughter] um no i know i have so couple uh questions first of all have you sent us this electronically because some of your maps look really cool but in here it's too small for me to yes sir you've received that electronically all right thank you um so the cdp gentlemen what do you think about the reality that you're shackled to a cdp that [Music] was the vision for how atlanta should build that's now 40 years old in a lot of cases it's just ridiculous we're very aware of that um that said i'm also very aware of the needs of various communities today so councilman shuck i believe what we're going to do i know what we're going to do is we're going to write a code that will have options in it for various communities that may choose to apply them in the future as the cdp is updated and neighborhood plans occur and and things change that's what makes this zone string option so useful is that as i said before if you have a neighborhood that wanted to do something similar to the city design housing legislation last year they could petition the the council or for an amendment to cdp but it's just changing one one metric it's just changing permitted uses if they wanted to keep the form the same if they wanted to keep the lot coverage the same so that's very different from today where they have to do an spi or they have to do a historic district or they have to do a very long convoluted conditional rezoning so i think we can create the tools and mind you we are in collaboration with the team that's going to be looking at the cdp and make sure that that we're sort of linked at the hip as things emerge from that process going forward that we might identify opportunities for the zoning to change but but i don't envision because atlanta is so diverse i don't envision that we would need new types of zones because we already have so many different communities today and i think if you reflect those patterns there's an opportunity to learn from other neighborhoods if you will okay but the cdp has to change in order yes so so legally uh the cdp is is the foundation for zoning changes and so we cannot you cannot adopt a new zoning map that is drastically different from the cdp i mean it's it's a whole other legal process that we have to think about but that's why when i said we would adopt the map and it would be very similar to what we have today part of it is because we are assuming that that that cdp is going to remain substantially similar and as i mentioned because i don't ever recommend major zoning changes as part of adopting a new zoning ordinance and a new map at the same time it it is very likely to fail on a national perspective and i you know i know atlanta i don't i don't feel that that's the right approach for here okay well so that'll be an interesting discussion and yeah follow up um how concerned is your team about the reality that you can propose a new code and will adopt something but then a lot of it is open to interpretation so as i mentioned we have the nation's best code writer on our team two of them lee einsweiler and colin scarf out of austin texas they are with a company called the code studio they have received dozens of national code writing awards and part of the reason for that is they write zoning in what is called plain english so they get rid of all the legalese they write it in language that folks can understand and colin who is actually their um their proofreader is he's he's just brilliant in terms of the english language like he understands how to be clear and so we are going to work very closely internally as a team to make sure that language is clear but then we're going to work very closely with ocd and department city planning to make sure that as the draft text is out there that it's understandable and i also want to when we have a draft we want to put that out for full public consideration and let folks tell us if the language is unclear and obviously with mr zechler and jeff haymore who are also on our jeff's also on our team are going to be making sure that we avoid any nebulous language that that is something that we are committed to avoiding okay so i assume you so you know whatever if we have a zoning land use lawyer who just stepped off the stage they can pull the rug out from pretty much anything that you wrote and we adopted right but um all right well i mean we'll deal with that uh council member can i comment on that hey bob you love what you look good too thank you sir as do you and all of you um manager and members of the committee good recovery [Music] you know with howard you have to be careful um your question started with how concerned are we about you know the interpretations and uh and so forth and i i've got to say that from my perspective and from jeff's perspective it's it's a primary concern um it's one of the reason i in terms of my role i've done this a lot of times before many times and i've worked with code studio on lots of different codes and they are excellent and what happens though as part of the process is we go through this they start crunching the code and doing drafts and then the drafts start to come over to the team and we're vetting this stuff i mean that's what what i consider to be one of my primary responsibilities the other thing about that is that the definitions become super important one of the big problems with atlantis code is the definitions not only are hard to find because so many of the definitional issues are embedded in the draft of the code so it's not like you look at the definition section and you have everything you need sometimes you have to go to you know chapter 21 and find it so all of those things are extremely important to us and the process will ensure that there's a vetting of the draft before you know anything gets over to city council or adoption so i'll make one more point on that i used to lecture over at uh georgia state and one of the things i used to tell my students was i consider this work which has become zoning work laney's work which has become extremely difficult and complex um that what you're striving for is some sort of better percentage of the product you know if you've got two eyes on it maybe you go from a 60 good product to 65 and if you get really good people maybe you're bumping that up so nobody can ensure that this is going to be bulletproof but what you can say is that the odds improve as we have good people looking at draft and prioritizing the issue that you identified so also in terms of interpretation there's a kind of a sister concern which is to what extent you know are you talking to the bureau of buildings because they have to be able to correctly interpret what's in the zoning code absolutely i mean you know director pace's team is just extremely important okay and um they're they're they're a part of this process with with um director holmes so um yeah i understand that and i think we're probably gonna get also some comments from you know various stakeholders as this this process goes through which i think so you shall appropriate um when you're done is this code going to be longer or shorter shorter much shorter and much easier to see much easier to read thank you thank you [Music] councilmember norwood um guys thank you very much thank you for your hard work um i had the opportunity to participate in the last idea lab where the the strings were were presented and i would love for all my colleagues to have that opportunity as well i don't know if we might want to schedule just that one section for one of our meetings um not going through the whole thing and and the reason i say that is august 30th 6 30 p.m update northwest atlanta beltline so i've got to be on the beltline call i cannot be at buckhead library and they're going to be other people that are going to want to be on that call as they're finalizing and presenting where they're coming through so it's just the way it goes can you um give us as council people a flyer that we can send out email with these four dates just in electronic form and i will certainly send it out to my database and i'm sure five the five meeting five dates amid amended to b5 thank you madam chair um but that would be great if we could have something that we can send out now people can get it on the calendar and they can understand so one short paragraph come and participate would be great uh the last thing i want to mention is you are you talked about the 2017 diagnostics and that there were 50 that you considered heavy policy changes um can you can you uh show us how to get to those um yes um i am doing this from memory but if you go to atl zoning.com there is a there are three buttons at the top it's the it's which i don't remember the website i think it's called learn learn and contribute and the diagnostic is right under there now uh councilwoman norwood we do have the updated one i i may recommend that you wait until the updated text because you would be looking at the 2017 i would wait until the updated one is uploaded so we need to coordinate and just make sure that office of zoning and development is prepared to release that but um i will certainly wait because good work between 17 and now yeah we certainly want to be looking at something that's represented and when you get the new one i i went ahead because i sort of try to organize stuff in this way and in the last couple of pages of the document there's a summary table that talks about all of the changes and i've classified them are they technical meaning they're just updating the words they're making it clearer or are they a policy change and then if they're a policy change i've sort of categorized them as high priority for outreach medium or low priority we all know that what the hot topic hot topics are and so that is really useful i would go right towards the end and look at the summary of the recommendations when you get it because that's going to tell you what you need and i i did also want to mention and if i fail to mention this at the presentation i'm sorry the workshops are going to be recorded they're going to be hybrid and very importantly we're going to have them available online for at least two weeks following each workshop and we've done that because the idea labs were great but if you weren't able to commit to those two hours you weren't able to participate in the same way as someone who was and so we've set them all up such that the the video of the presentation will be there the boards will be reviewable and then everyone is going to have the same series of exercises if you're there in person you'll have worksheets so you can use your phone to take them or if you're taking it online you go to uh the same website and you fill in that you participate there so we've done it such that there is no absolutely no disadvantage of joining us in person or joining us online and joining online later online later for at least two weeks we you might be able to understand that a little bit that's wonderful thank you thank you [Music] councilmember thank you uh chairwoman overstreet and caleb good to see you i'm excited you and your firm and bob are part of this process it's no small task because you're well aware and we'll probably leave you with more gray hairs than you have today by the time we get to 2024 but your last point on the workshops and availability one of the challenges of uh public policy making really at any level of government is how we value and approach public input i represent almost 56 000 residents i probably hear from the same 250 residents over and over again almost all those residents if not every one of those residents is a homeowner or property owner fine valid for you know wonderful people valid opinions and one of the tricky things about zoning changes whether it's housing decisions industrial just you know however we think about zoning right uh is that essentially we are making existing residents or making decisions about residents that don't yet exist in the city right it's one of the few areas where that kind of weird tension exists right i live here i don't want you to live here because i like it video and so i guess my question for you is in the in these workshops and in all the public engagement what happened over the coming years what steps if any we all take to try and uh you know entice as many people as possible to participate most the average citizen couldn't care less about zoning policy right your eyes place over you just want to go out your day and go to work get you good to school i get it most people don't realize how zoning shapes our life and how we interact but and so you're going to have a smaller population people that are interested in participating in this but i think we would be richer in this process if there's a wide array of folks who attend the workshops offer opinions i'm curious if y'all have thought about how to get more people involved in this process yeah so the workshops are not the only engagement exercise our team actually was out at the freedom farmers market this weekend they were out at west end mall canvassing this weekend and they were one more place but my my brain doesn't remember right now so the outreach team content consulting is assisting with the workshop but they're also doing a series of just intercept surveys where they'll be walking around with the property owner's permission of course and saying hey we're working on zoning what is zoning give us your you know what what does this thing have any impact on you and and trying to make it more approachable so so they're doing that and we are continuing to refine what that means we're also working with some potential influencers if you will in atlanta about how do we reach the folks who are not normally engaged so that could be things like going to events that are not not typical zoning events and setting up booths that could be things like um putting qr codes at bus stations so people can you know they're waiting for the bus and they see something on the sidewalk and they click it and it has a few couple really general questions about about things that relate to zoning but we're still working on defining that but we're very sensitive to the fact that we need to engage as many people as possible thank you is that it for the questions colleagues uh just one more thing um i'm the one who asked for the fire and i would love to get a rough draft of the flyer just so that if we have some language that we think would be more enticing um that we could that we could just see a rough drafting before it's final we will absolutely share the source language i do have to remind you that we're required to get approval from marcom on everything that we sent out so i'll let uh department of department of city planning determine what the appropriate procedures are but we'll share whatever we need to thank you okay with that thank you for the presentation the update looking forward to the next one and the meetings in between um and now we are moving on to legislative items um [Music] read ordinances for first read and there are two ordinances for first read that will be sounded and referred back to zoning committee and at our next full council which is tuesday september 6 after labor day holiday so no action is needed right now and we will move on then to our ordinances for second read so director of zoning and development kieta homes will read the captions for our second re-ordinances item number three 222 o 14 25 z 2259 an ordinance by council member alex wants his own property located at 1195 university drive northeast atlanta georgia to the r4 single family residential zoning district staff npu and zrp recommendation approval in the request is to hold this item for the next quarterly cdhs meeting okay the motion is to hold second by shook please repair the votes the vote is open but all members please vote and the vote is closed success [Music] item number four 22 o 1580 z 2241 in ordinance by zoning committee to rezone from single family residential beltline overlay to mix residential commercial beltline overlay for property located at 1070 deal avenue southwest staff recommendation denial mp recommendation approvals erb recommendation approval i move to approve is there a second second please prepare the vote oh the vote is open second by for rookie is that what you got and the vote is closed 680 item number five 22 oh 1586 u2213 an amended ordinance by zoning committee for special use permit for a data center pursuant to 16 18006 for property located at 10 for site street northwest staff recommendation approval mpu and zrb recommendation approval conditional so i move approval as amended second by westmoreland please prepare the vote the board is open and the vote is closed six years zero nays and item number six twenty two o twelve thirty two z twenty two a substitute ordinance by zoning committee to re-zone from single-family residential to planned development housing for property located at 889 with williams road southeast staff and zrb recommendation approval conditional ap recommendation denial i will move to approve as substituted is there a second second second boom please prepare the vote the vote is open and the vote is closed five years days one abstention item number seven twenty two oh fifteen seventy nine ordinance by zoning committee correcting ordinance 22 oh 1234 z2211 which was adopted by the city council on june 6 2022 and approved as posted the city charter 2403 on june 15th without signature by operation of law tourism on the property located at 1355 fund student street southwest for the purpose of attaching the conditional site plan approval move by council member norwood second by overstreet would all members please vote and the vote is closed it's six shades and that completes our legislative items because we are not bringing any held items forward which will bring us to the end of our legislative agenda and with that does anyone have any um remarks any general remarks colleagues i do but i'd like for you to go first okay in that case i did just have one um because of labor day um on september 5th our next full council where these legislative items will be taken up is on september the 6th and until then we will see you all this meeting is adjourned [Music]